by C H Gideon
“I’ve scanned the entire outpost and have a basic map of it,” Ria reported. “Since the compound isn’t shielded, I was able to do it easily enough. It’s a live recording, so it should update to show you where the cultists currently are.”
“Excellent. Transfer it to Takal, and have him adjust the beam for a location nearest what might be the administration section of the compound, and where there is the fewest number of people,” Reynolds told her. “We’re going to test the accuracy of this system.”
“Information transferred,” Ria said.
“I’ve got it plugged in, and we’re ready to go, Captain,” Takal reported. “I believe I have a suitable location, although it’s not directly into the administration area since that section is far too populated to risk transporting you into. All it would take was for a person to slow down, and we might end up merging you with them.”
“Fair enough,” the AI confirmed. “You’ve got the conn, Asya. Takal, transport only me down there right now, and I’ll survey the location and confirm when it’s best to send the rest of the crew.”
Ka’nak chuckled. “You just want to go it alone, huh, Captain?”
“You found me out, Ka’nak,” Reynolds joked. “Transport me, Takal.” He cloaked himself.
Seconds later, the bridge disappeared and Reynolds arrived on the planet, exactly where Takal had intended to send him.
I love this system!
Reynolds glanced around, surveying the landing spot and comparing it against the electronic map Ria had created. It was a perfect match.
Even better, the map continued to function, showing Reynolds where every cultist was in the outpost.
If only it were always this easy, he thought.
He triggered his comm and called up for the rest of the crew. Jiya, Ka’nak, and Maddox appeared beside him moments later, nothing more than hazy outlines picked up by his enhanced senses tuned to identify them in their cloaked state.
“Nice landing,” Jiya quipped. “Now, what are we looking for?”
“Anything that points to where Phraim-’Eh might be hiding out,” Reynolds replied. “We’ll go from here, and make our way to the administration section, taking out anyone who gets in the way.”
The crew acknowledged the order and started off behind the android AI.
They made it through several winding corridors before running into anyone. Fortunately, they’d had a heads-up on their arrival.
Two cultists strolled straight toward them through the corridor. Ka’nak and Reynolds moved to either side, pressed against the walls, and waited. When the cultists drew close, Reynolds and Ka’nak reached out and snapped the disciples’ necks.
They died without a sound or even realizing what had happened.
The crew stuffed the bodies out of sight down a corridor that showed no cultists nearby, and they moved on.
Down another corridor, a short distance from what they assessed was the administration section, they came upon four cultists standing guard in the hall outside a door.
“We do this quietly or out in the open?” Maddox asked over the private comm, knowing his voice wouldn’t carry outside of his helmet as the crew lurked around the corner.
“No point making a mess so soon,” Reynolds answered. “Each of us picks a target, and we take them out quietly, no muss, no fuss.”
“Roger that,” Jiya replied, and Maddox and Ka’nak nodded agreement.
They were on their way a moment later.
The crew eased up in front of the cultists, who were chatting back and forth.
Reynolds grinned as he stood there, ready to end the life of the person before him who couldn’t even see him coming.
It wasn’t very sporting, and normally Reynolds would hesitate to be so callous, but the cultists had proven they didn’t give a damn about morals or the well-being of anyone else besides themselves.
Besides, Reynolds had inherited Bethany Anne’s sense of judgment, and that left these cultists, even friendly, chatty ones, wanting.
He glanced at the others, and the crew coordinated their attacks. Then he gave the signal, and they launched into motion.
Four bodies fell as one without a fight, helped to crumple silently to the floor.
Reynolds was about to congratulate the crew when another cultist turned the corner and spotted the four bodies slumped outside the door.
“They’re here!” he screamed. “Intruders!”
“Oh, shut the fuck up,” Reynolds told the cultist, removing his cloak and blowing his head off.
“So much for stealth.” Ka’nak chuckled, turning to cover the door to the administration section, expecting it to come flying open.
Alarms rang out, bathing the corridor in crimson lights.
“You stirred up the hornet’s nest,” Asya reported from her post aboard the SD Reynolds. “Pretty much everyone in the compound is headed your way. I’m updating your maps. Seems there was a slight lag in them, thanks to the transport system.”
“Sorry, guys!” Ria called over the comm.
“Geroux and I are adjusting the latency of the system on our end,” Takal reported. “Seems there is a bit of lag between systems when you’re transported. Hadn’t noticed it before because your suits always caught up before you checked the systems.”
“Good to know,” Reynolds replied, raising his pistol and firing down the hall as one of the red dots on his map appeared.
A cultist shrieked and slammed into the wall behind him, his head a smoldering ruin.
“Seems to be synced up again,” the AI reported.
He fired a couple more shots at cultists who stepped out into the corridor, dropping them alongside their headless companion. The rest of the cultists wised up and stayed behind the cover of the wall.
“They’re massing on the other side of the door here,” Jiya informed. “Looks like fifteen arranged to cover every angle once the door opens.”
“Now would be a good time for a grenade,” Ka’nak said, grinning.
“It’s always a good time for a grenade with you,” Maddox told the Melowi.
“Hey, don’t mess with what works,” Ka’nak fired back.
“No grenades for you,” Jiya told him, waggling a finger his direction.
“Awww, Mom!” the Melowi whined, sniggering a second later.
The door started to slide open right then.
It was about halfway when the first barrage of fire exploded out from the inside.
The crew hunkered down, pressing against the walls, but it would only be a second or two more before the door opened wide enough to expose all of them to the cultists’ shots.
“Grenade!” Ka’nak screamed, using his helmet to amplify his shout.
His voice reverberated through the corridor as if he’d used a loudspeaker.
“Oh, fuck!” Jiya growled. “You better not—”
She watched as Ka’nak stepped forward and threw something into the crowd of cultists on the other side of the door.
“You didn’t?” She started to groan when she realized what he had tossed into the room.
It was his pistol.
The unarmored and unprepared cultists, however, didn’t realize that.
They scattered and retreated into the room in a frenzy of assholes and elbows, desperately trying to put something solid between them and the grenade as it thunked loudly to the floor.
“Seriously?” Jiya asked the Melowi. “You threw your gun?”
Ka’nak shrugged and bolted into the room. “They didn’t know that.” He scooped up his weapon and turned it on the fleeing cultists, who were only then realizing that nothing had exploded at their backs.
By then, many of their heads actually were exploding, only adding to the confusion.
Ka’nak blasted the cultists from behind, plowing through half of them before the others managed to recover and spin around to attempt a panicked defense.
Jiya joined him at that point.
She sprayed the room, being
careful not to hit anything crucial that might contain the information they needed to track down Phraim-’Eh.
Maddox joined them, sniping cultists who’d avoided slaughter and found the wits to return fire.
Seconds later, all the cultists in the room were dead or incapacitated.
Reynolds stepped into the room, firing down the hall to keep the remaining cultists at bay. Ka’nak joined him on the near side, the pair ripping off shots as needed to keep the cultists honest and back behind the cover of the wall.
While Phraim-’Eh’s disciples piled up in the halls at their brethren’s backs, the corridor between them and the crew had been unceremoniously turned into a killing field. There was no way for them to clear the distance between the corner and the administration section without being gunned down.
“You got that?” Jiya asked Reynolds.
“Sure, I’m not going anywhere,” he replied, lazily shooting down the hall anytime a cultist dared to pop his head out. “Take your time.”
Jiya chuckled, and she and Maddox angled around the room, out of the line of fire, and started searching the place.
“Damn, this place is prehistoric,” the general muttered as he dug through file cabinets and rifled through papers left on the desks scattered around the room.
“Too damn cold for computers,” Jiya joked as she did the same, using her suit’s scanners to examine each document quickly before discarding it.
“Waste of resources out here, more likely,” Reynolds said from his post at the door. “This here is the sticks. They probably wipe their ass with rolls of brown paper towels, extra rough.”
“Which only makes me glad it’s so cold out here,” Maddox stated. “There’s no smelling any of that.”
The two continued to search as the cultists piled up down the hall. They looked ready to abandon any sense of tactics and rush forward as a group, hoping that some of them made it close enough to take out the intruders.
It might have been a valid plan if Reynolds and Ka’nak were any less efficient with their hands than they were their weapons.
Which wasn’t the case.
“You find anything?” the AI asked, getting tired of imagining the scenarios the cultists might be planning in hopes of stopping the ransacking of their master’s paperwork.
“Not a damn thing,” Jiya told him, shaking her head. “All this crap is invoices and supply recs and busywork bullshit.”
“Well, we had to give it a shot,” Reynolds replied, shrugging. “We couldn’t know that without coming here.”
He opened a channel to the ship.
“Get us out of here, Takal,” he called up. “We’ve got bupkis.”
“Is it contagious?” the inventor asked. “Do I need to alert Dr. Reynolds?”
Reynolds shook his head in disappointment. “Just transport us home, Takal.”
The AI snapped off a couple more shots before he found himself standing on the bridge, pointing a gun at the wall.
He chuckled and holstered his weapon, seeing Ka’nak do the same, a silly grin on his face as he did.
“We’re going to have to time that better when we transport in combat, I think,” the AI announced. “Someone’s liable to get shot up here without clear signals about when we’re poofing.”
“Any clue as to where Phraim-’Eh is down there?” XO asked.
“Not a one,” Reynolds grunted, turning to Tactical. “I’m thinking those cultists down there are feeling the chill right about now. How about we heat them up?”
“A dozen super-toasty missiles coming right up,” Tactical replied.
The viewscreen zoomed in on the compound as the missiles hit, turning it into a blazing fireball.
“‘Build a man a fire, and he'll be warm for a day. Set a man on fire, and he'll be warm for the rest of his life.’ So sayeth the wizened maestro of merriment, Terry Pratchett,” Tactical quoted.
The crew burst out laughing as the outpost burned.
It wasn’t until XO’s hardened voice cut through their amusement that they stopped.
“You remember how I asked if you’d found anything about Phraim-’Eh’s whereabouts a minute ago?” the XO asked.
Reynolds quirked an eyebrow. “Yeah?”
“Well, I think I just found him,” XO told him.
“Where?”
“Right outside,” XO said.
The viewscreen shifted to show a massive armada of alien ships Gating in around the planet, a massive command ship too similar to the design of the Pillar to be coincidence in the lead.
“Oh, fuck me,” Reynolds muttered.
Chapter Fifteen
Thirteen massive ships appeared in the space over Hajh, and there was absolutely no doubt in Reynolds’ mind that they belonged to Phraim-’Eh.
“Guess we got his attention,” the AI said, staring out at the fleet as it maneuvered to challenge the SD Reynolds.
“I’d say so,” Jiya commented.
“No time like the present to punch a god in the nose,” Tactical said.
Before anyone could stop him, he opened fire on the command ship with everything he had except the ESD.
The ship’s shields flared in response, deflecting the vast majority of the SD Reynolds’ power. The other ships started forward to defend their leader.
“I’ve fed the tracking rounds into the railguns again,” Takal reported over the comm, “seeing as how I don’t see us standing our ground here for long.” He paused. “Not to be presumptuous, of course.”
The SD Reynolds’ shields were rattled by a wave of incoming fire, shaking the bridge and dimming the lights.
“No, I don’t think you’re being presumptuous at all, Takal,” the AI answered. “You and Xyxl wouldn’t have something to show me regarding your long-distance romance, would you?”
“Not yet, I’m afraid,” the inventor came back. “Our collaboration is quite enlightening, but the code is proving to be quite daunting, and my Gulg companion and I are struggling with a key piece of it.”
“That sucks,” Reynolds grunted. “Guess we’ll make do with what we have.” The android turned to Tactical. “Keep hitting the motherfucker and warm up the ESD. We’re going to need some shit-eating death right about now.”
The ship rattled again as another wave of fire pounded its shields despite Ria’s efforts to evade.
There was little she could do with so many ships closing on them the way they were.
Then the onslaught faded without warning, an unexpected lull settling over the battlefield.
“We’re being hailed,” Comm announced, explaining the sudden break in combat. “The name of his ship is the Godhand, interestingly enough.”
“Really? How egotistical,” Reynolds said, raising an eyebrow. “I wonder if this prick is looking to monologue?”
“Maybe he’ll spill all his plans, and we can kill him while he talks,” XO offered.
“Put it onscreen but don’t stop moving, Ria. We’re not getting shot up while he chats our ears off,” Reynolds said.
The crew was silent as Phraim-’Eh appeared on the viewscreen, a gloating smile affixed to his lips. The crew looked upon his visage for the very first time.
He looked a lot like someone from Lariest.
His skin was a deep, bruised red, and he wore his jet-black hair long. It flowed over his shoulders like water. Pits of absolute blackness peered at the crew from over the jagged ridges of his cheekbones.
It wasn’t until he opened his mouth and revealed the rows of small, sharpened teeth that he shed the appearance of Jiya’s people.
He was clearly something else.
“We meet at long last, Reynolds,” Phraim-’Eh said, the power of his voice seeming to lower the temperature on the bridge by a few degrees.
“The pleasure’s all yours, I’m sure,” Reynolds replied.
Despite everything, he hadn’t expected to come face to face with the wannabe god just yet.
He didn’t look all that impressive, Reynolds had
to admit, but there was a definite aura to the being that spoke of power.
Of course, that might have something to do with the thirteen ships arrayed around the superdreadnought.
Or it could be gas.
Well, if Reynolds weren’t an android.
“You have caused me much grief,” Phraim-’Eh continued. “It will be my honor to grind your synthetic bones to dust and send your burning ship crashing to the planet below, your crew screaming in its bowels.”
“Descriptive,” Reynolds said, nodding. “You have a gift for fiction, it appears. Kind of like this fantasy of you taking us out before we get you. Now, that is one hell of a story. I don’t want to spoil the ending for you, but the one thing I can tell you is that you’re the one who’s getting his ass kicked.”
“You mask your fear with humor. How human of you, android.”
Reynolds chuckled. “I’m an artificial intelligence, buddy. I don’t know fear, but nice try psychoanalyzing me.”
Phraim-’Eh snarled, the first sign of Reynolds getting under his skin.
The AI grinned.
“I was disappointed when Jora’nal failed to destroy you, but now I find myself believing it to be providence that his death has allowed me to do the deed personally,” Phraim-’Eh said.
Reynolds’ grin turning into full-blown laughter. “Joke’s on you, asshole. Your little buddy Jora’nal is still alive. We’ve got him locked up tight in one of our cells aboard the ship here. He’s been singing us a beautiful song about you and all your installations.”
Seeing Phraim-’Eh’s face darken with rage and surprise thrilled Reynolds, and he thought about recording the image for prosperity.
Bethany Anne would get a good laugh out of watching this so-called god shit himself.
The screen went black then, the connection severed.
The weapons fire resumed with a fury.
“I’m thinking you pissed him off by letting him know his puppet was still alive,” XO warned.
“Guess he’s trying to solve a couple of his problems at once,” Reynolds said.