The Revenant: A Military Sci-Fi Series (Hunter's Moon Book 2)

by Walt Robillard

  “Clear,” Merlin called back.

  Moving through the steam venting from the cave, the heavy infantry mechs stalked in. Justice swept his Vortex blaster across the space, waiting for any excuse to spin up the barrels for mixing up the right amount of carnage. Lucifer carried a heavy blaster rifle in one hand equipped with a phase-tech bayonet whereas the other forearm had already deployed its energy shield. Up ahead, Merlin and Romeo split their formation to let the bigger mechs take the center lead.

  “Why don't you carry spare bodies for me?” Fluff asked.

  Lasher tapped the side of his head in a ‘think about it,” gesture. “Do you remember what it took to fix that shoulder our friend back there ruined?”

  “Oh yeah. We had all sorts of problems with finding someone who would be crazy enough to work on versa-tech enabled bots.”

  “See that, brother? You're irreplaceable.”

  The comment seemed to placate the murderous mech for the time being as the rest of the party slid into the room. Madame Tarot stomped by them both, leading Savoya to a panel near a railway platform. Although the layout for the tram station seemed similar to the one from Outpost-7, Tarot wasn't leaving anything to chance in case the cartels had hardened their security. “You're up. Time to earn your keep and put that woman down for good. Slice us a tram.”

  “What made you think that they would have an escape tram like they did at the other outpost?” Lasher asked.

  “Chen's probably used the one from the Palladium either as an in and out or to the lab facility to work on her shell. If she was running the show here at Outpost-1, you can bet she wouldn't be outdone by someone she felt was beneath her. She probably has a lab and a tram.”

  “Two teams? One for the hit and one for the lab?” Kel said with a slap against the magazine latch on his Stone River M-33 Pulse rifle.

  “We've been split up enough,” Lasher said flatly.

  “If the tram center is set up like the one at Outpost-4, Chen'll know we're coming.”

  Kat patted Tarot on the shoulder with the black notebook she'd been carrying through the operation. “If she already knows we're here, then we should be using this.”

  Lasher flicked the notebook. “Do it. If she's connected like Kenner was, we can track her easily. Take the book back outside just in case she can pinpoint you the same way. While she probably knows we're on station, there's no reason to broadcast our current whereabouts. Can we get a lookout to go with her to watch her back when she connects?”

  Kel raised his hand. “I'll go.”

  “I'm sure she's had her fill of you by now, Kel. Besides, with the amount of special security she probably has in this place, it would be better to send someone who can field a squad's worth of firepower in one package.”

  “That's my cue,” Lucifer put in.

  Justice shouldered everyone else out of the way, using his immense frame to make his point. “Let me go this time.”

  “Thank you, Justice. But they're going to need the offense you bring while she can use my defense.” Lucifer offered.

  If a bot could sigh, Justice would have been good at it. He patted the other heavy infantry on the shoulder, turning back to his duty to cover the tunnel entrance.

  “Stay out of trouble out there, you two,” Kel said, offering an assault pack to the mech.

  Lucifer shouldered the bag, loaded with special equipment, in the event they were separated for too long. “Don’t worry, Officer Huang. I wouldn’t dream of depriving you of your best dance partner.”

  Kel turned to stalk near Justice so that the rest of the strike team couldn't see the blush rising to his face. “Twin Hells, it was one time.”

  “I don' know, Kel. You don't seem as sure of that as you were of your mic being off.”

  Kel glared at Fluff, getting nose to sensor suite with him. “Do we need to have this conversation again?”

  “Nope. All good.”

  Lasher read the interest through Tarot's mask. “Whenever the two of them get into an argument, it's not like Kel can do anything to the Fluff, physically. He always carries a roll of triple-5 tape on him. He takes a small piece and sticks it onto Fluff's sensor node. Makes a little spot in his vision and his claws are too big to take it off. Annoys the big lug to no end.”

  “Twin Hells, I wish I thought of something like that,” Jester said.

  “Stick to the boom boom and leave the funny stuff to me, junior.” Fluff jabbed.

  Temperance rubbed Jester's shoulder. “It's okay. We still love you.”

  The group formed into two columns on opposite sides of the tram platform, guns up and waiting for anything that might come howling out of the dark. Savoya, protected by a re-shelled Priestess, worked on the control terminal. After several tones echoed through the chamber, she gave a nod to Tarot.

  “Alright kids. Eyes up, guns out. Time to blow out the candles,” Kel said, sliding the tactical mask over his face to cover the ever-expanding grin. He'd been cooped up for too long in a shuttle cockpit. Time to stretch his legs and get some trigger time.

  Kat looked over the windswept valley below the main dome of Outpost-1. Aerial displays of masterful dogfighting loomed over troops moving toward the broken ship. Darting above the hard pack ice, a second wave approached the ruined main entrance of the structure. It was like watching all of it on some entertainment vid where they’d remastered old war footage for the morbidly curious.

  “Pretty interesting gamble you have here,” Chen said, walking up beside her. She was in a olive drab flight suit with armored elements. She slapped her gloves into her hand at the same time she leveled a sneer at the raven haired cyborg.

  “I figured if you survived a gunshot to the face, you had to be like Kenner. Had to be like me.”

  “So you used the book. Good. So you know where I am then?”

  A small translucent map floated in the space between them. Pulsing red dots appeared over the image, tracking toward each other until they became one dot floating above a building inside the dome.

  “That's you.” Kat said.

  Chen seared at the revelation. “Very good. Now that you have this information, what are you going to do with it?”

  Kat swept her hand, brushing away the map holo like sand from a table. “That depends on you. If you call off whatever this is, cease operations and give yourself up to the crew coming in the front door, then I'll most likely fade away. If you resist, we will come for you.”

  Chen nodded, slapping her gloves into her hand again. “I know why the half breed and the criminal want me, but what do you get out of all this?”

  “You hurt my family, even if they weren't my family at the time. Besides, you're just a stepping stone to larger prey.”

  “Aren't we all, my dear. I'll look for you during the fight.”

  “Good luck with that.” Kat said, sarcastically.

  Chen walked away, leaving Kat to watch over the tableau of violence playing out in front of her. Waiting to be alone in the interface, she was about to key the release to bring her back to the real world when a sensation stopped her. It was alien but she felt as though she'd experienced it before – like being woken up, only to beg for five more minutes of sleep. She felt she should err on the side of caution and make her exit before some other calamity made today more difficult than it had to be.

  “You want us to ride in a toboggan?” Fluff asked with a tone that he was becoming increasingly skilled at conveying his emotions through without the aid of facial features.

  “It's not a toboggan. It's a maintenance tram. It'll ride on the hover track just like the actual train but won't set off the alarm.” Savoya let the last bit of her sentence trail off. Since her ordeal at Striker Main, she had become soft spoken and withdrawn, nothing like the outgoing Elysian Trooper she once was. Like a beaten dog, she rarely trotted out her considerable intellect unless she was called upon to do so. The rest of the time she was resigned to hang with the bots who had adjusted to her personality, mostly lea
ving her be. She seemed more comfortable around them than she was around people.

  “That's an awfully tight squeeze for all of us,” Lasher pointed out.

  “No different than that time in the Sevis Tathin Basin when we had to use that boat,” Kel pointed out to Fluff.

  Lasher shook his head at the memory. “If I remember that little jaunt correctly, the boat flipped after the mortar round hit that batch of rocks.”

  “No, we flipped the boat to protect us from all the shrapnel when the mortar hit the rocks. See, it was a good thing we were huddled all together,” Kel offered.

  Fluff circled around the Dreadmarr mercenary. “Tactical Tarot lady, help a brother out.”

  Tarot lifted Savoya to the tram bed. Joining her on the cart, the merc took half a heartbeat to gander down at Kel and Fluff, moving to the front of the tram truck as though she hadn't heard them. “Kat, this is Tarot. Do we have a lock on Chen?”

  “Feeding it to your screens now.”

  The holographic sand table twitched, updating the positions on the players in real time over the map. There was Chen, right in the center of one of the larger buildings near the back of the dome, right where the hotel would've been. It was situated a stone's throw away from the skybridge leading to the hangar dome.

  “Normally I'd say we could make multiple trips or bring your ship back so we can offload one of the vehicles to minimize the risk of us getting smoked in a single strike. We just don't have that kind of time.” Tarot brought up a map, pushing her view into everyone's HUD. “Tram, then lab, then hit the target. Elysian air cover means she won't be leaving by hangar. When the main force hits that door, that rat's going to head for the train. We have to go now and hit her before she gets down here or she's gone.”

  “Fine! But I'm not sitting between Joker and Juicy. I'll drive!”

  Fluff bounded near the pilot console, nearly crushing Priestess in the process. Her exclamation of dismay didn't slow him down one bit from activating the throttle. He inched the vehicle forward, despite everyone on the ground still trying to clamber on. Groaning threats were leveled like expert marksman toward the irreverent pilot, deflected off his armor as easily as primitives throwing rocks.

  “You going to do something about this?” Tarot asked Lasher.

  “Oh, yeah. I'm going to hold on. I've seen how he drives.”

  No sooner had Jester climbed aboard than the service tram shot away. Repulsor generators screamed under the combined weight of the occupants carrying their combat loads as it bounced down the rail head. Priestess was up front, clinging to Fluff in a grip akin to a dogsled driver across Tythian's arctic planes. Kneeling down on the deck plating was Savoya, leveling a death grip on Priestess' leg. The rest of the crew was crammed around them, hanging onto retention rails or each other in a desperate bid to keep to the truck bed being driven hard by the daredevil Doom Cat.

  The cab swung toward one of the walls in its dash around a winding section of track. Sparks flew from the prosteel plating making contact with the wall. Hands and arms shot back across the bed-side of the retention rail, narrowly avoiding being sheered off by the maniacal operator.

  “Fluff! Little more control, little less mag-rat!” Kel shouted over the din of the scraping metal.

  “I don't tell you how to drive.”

  “What? What about that time you were on the roof when I was driving that Silverback?”

  “Back on Tythian?” Fluff asked.

  “Yeah!”

  The Doom Cat huffed. “Never heard of it!”

  Smoothly decelerating from its suicidal pace, the tram pulled within a few meters of the actual passenger train, sliding into a gentle halt. The rear end repulsor was fritzing out, causing it to droop periodically. Wisps of smoke from ground metal wafted up from the scraped side, smelling of burnt prosteel.

  Kel shouldered into the mech. “What if we needed the truck again?”

  “We have a tram.”

  Tarot tapped Merlin. “Work with Savoya to secure the train so that we’re the only ones who can use it.”

  “Straight away, Madame.”

  Lasher and Kel assumed the middle of the tunnel, moving to the outsides on their way to the service stairs leading onto the platform. Both carried the M-33 Pulse Rifle held tight into their shoulder with the optics centered on their field of vision. They slithered across the space with a rolling walk meant to keep their point of aim steady, moving as a cohesive unit. It was a testament to the many missions the two had worked together since their chance meeting in a lancer’s cell.

  Savoya moved forward to the command console, jacking into the station with her cell-com. The device she was using was different than the standard model, slightly larger and completely black instead of clear like the common kind. Holographic interfaces sprang to life, the corporal whisking across them in her bid for control of the operating systems controlling the tram and elevator.

  “Got it. We’re ghosting their security, dropping the elevator to us now,” Savoya called over her shoulder.

  “Kat?” Lasher called into the comm.

  “We just met a gaggle of our friends. Helped them take up skydiving. We’ll drop into the exit tunnel for the tram and then its a short run up the rail back to you. Leave me access to the lift so I can catch up to you.”

  “Did you actually talk to Chen?” Lasher prodded.

  “Yes. Tried to convince her that we’re coming in through the front door with the lancers.”

  “She buy it?”

  “Remains to be seen,” Kat said. “If I were her, I'd be headed to either secure an exit out of here or get to that lab.”

  Tarot interjected, “If the lancers aren’t jamming communications, she could cast her consciousness off planet. If they are, then she could cast to another outpost on Doseidos.”

  “Less talking, more stalking.” Fluff croaked.

  “The cat is right. We need to move.” Justice agreed.

  Fluff was already at the lift doors. He pried them open, their metal frames creaking at the effort exerted by the Doom Cat. “See you up there.”

  “Wait!” Tarot yelled.

  The cat leapt to the other side of the shaft, bounding straight up and out of sight from the group. No sooner had the mech disappeared, the lift car descended into place, awaiting its complement of passengers.

  “You should maintain a tighter hold on his leash,” Tarot said firmly.

  Lasher towered over her. While his posture seemed threatening, his tone was anything but. “Fluff knows what we all want out of this. We have each other’s back. He’s going into the shaft in case something happens or they attempt to wreck the lift we're climbing into.”

  “You haven’t been worried that his increased risk taking could be a sign of System Psychosis?”

  “Trust but verify.” Lasher explained. “That's how we've always played it. We had to find a master craftsman in regard to robotics after your friend ran him through with a plasma sword. What she found was an algorithmic variance in his processor matrix she’d never seen in other RIM models, older or newer. Fluff wasn’t given the patch to prevent System Psychosis because he couldn’t suffer from it. It’s why I don’t worry about him being infected by the Swarm-tech. Someone went through a lot of trouble to build him from the ground up to be the perfect combat companion using the most complex military technology we’ve ever seen. Versa-tech isn’t justa machine changing from one shape to another. Much the same that this new Swarm-tech we’re seeing isn’t just about enhancing people. Someone knew something like this would happen and took steps to ensure that bot would be in the center of it. More important than all of that, Fluff’s family to us. And while that might blind us to certain things, it also means we trust him until he gives us a reason not to.”

  “Every time you do more than grunt in single syllables, you risk exposing yourself as more than just an oversized brute.”

  Lasher held his finger to his lips, “Madame Tarot, you keep my secret and I’ll keep yours.
”

  The doors to the lift opened to the lab level. Lasher and Kel went guns up, pouring from the doors into the hall, kneeling on either side. Justice came next, walking in between the pair with his Vortex rotary gun held at the ready.

  “Sensors are clear of threats, Madame.”

  “Thank you, Justice. The rest of you clear and lock.”

  “Yes, Madame.”

  The remaining Card Arkana moved throughout the level. Tense moments passed to see if the work Savoya had done to secure their presences from the system had been a success. Tarot and the broken Corporal remained at the end of the hall where the other two knelt behind their weapons.

  “Sluggers?”

  Kel nodded back to Tarot. “High velocity, ten millimeter explosive rounds with a gel insert full of nerve agent. We call it a Swarm-tech special.”

  “We do not call it that.” Fluff said, crawling out of elevator doors. “The shaft is clear all the way to the top. I sent some of Merlin’s sensors in there to let us know if anyone was coming. No blues on their way down to us yet. Instead of a hotel, it leads to some sort of warehouse. Give you two guesses what they’re storing up there.”

  “Party pants? Monkeys. No wait, synthetic fruit rolls. I’ve always wanted to try those. I mean, how good can they be if they’re synthetic?” Jester asked, scanning his audience for a reaction.

  Temperance nudged Jester on her way back from the other side of the lab. “That was actually funny coming from a bot. Madame, we’ve got something in the lab you should see.”

  Merlin and Savoya were already hard at work on the consoles in front of a strange lab set-up. There was an encapsulated bed sitting at a horizontal angle, surrounded by a technological halo connected to the wall. Above the halo were other coffin like tubes, each with a body within. Two were empty.

  Wearing his studious professor holo, Morpheous's holo materialized to greet the group. “We're going to need Katarina for this. It would seem security protocols went into effect the second the lancers breached the outer door. Although we'd normally be more than capable of corrupting the interface and terminating Chen's duplicates, the protection measures on the system have surpassed our ability to unlock them in a timely manner.”