Joseph and Petricia were nodding and glad-handing their way past the front row. Cory and Dokken hovered near the Flayse, standing out as they tried to look inconspicuous. There were no other animals of any sort in the area. Dokken didn’t care. He looked around before raising his leg and marking a corner post marking off the bleacher area.
The Magnate of the Flayse Conglomeration and the Chairman of the Frikandan Cooperative are both here, along with their top ten subordinates.
That complicates things, Christina replied, eyes darting across the broad area, looking for the threat she knew was there. The one that Joseph couldn’t confirm and the VIPs seemed oblivious to.
Chapter Eighteen
Band Rayal Seven, Okkoto
Tonie and Terry lumbered through the corridor, supporting each other until Terry healed sufficiently to walk by himself, but Tonie was still dogged.
“Not much farther,” Tonie said softly, not looking up from the floor. Terry massaged the pouch with the remainder of his water, knowing that it wasn’t enough for both of them.
He handed it to Tonie. “Drink.”
They stopped so the Erthos could down the last bit.
“We need to find a place to refill that.”
“I think there’s a rest facility next to the control room. It’s not much farther,” Tonie repeated. They began walking again, and Terry crouched to let Tonie rest his arm over his shoulder.
“How much time do we have left?” Terry asked.
Tonie grimaced but didn’t answer.
“That much, huh?” Terry expected that it would be any moment now that the power would turn back on. That the Etheric force field would rage into place and renew its attack on Char, if it had ever subsided. Terry half-picked up the Erthos and propelled them both forward.
Tonie hung on, pointing ahead until he stabbed his finger at the last doorway. Terry removed both laser pistols and stood ready.
“You won’t need those,” Tonie said and activated the door. Terry raised the weapons and followed the Erthos in as if breaching an enemy stronghold. The room was filled with equipment, and it was significantly larger than the room where Terry had found the engineer.
“Why don’t you work in here?” Terry asked. He stuffed the laser pistols into his pockets. Without filled water flasks, there was room. Water or weapons—it wasn’t a hard choice. “Looks to have a lot more going on in here.”
“Sometimes I do, but the other control room is the master over the power systems. This is everything that operates using the Etheric energy. Here are the hydroponic controls.” He waved at a heavy equipment tower with a small access screen. “Environmental controls. Cleaning systems. Food processing. Waste management. Resource extraction...” He continued with a long list of everything needed to keep the outpost functional and its people alive.
Terry waved impatiently. “Maybe some other time. Send the elevator down and have it waiting for us, ready to return to the surface.”
“Yes. That would be over here.” Tonie worked his way into a far corner, and Terry followed him. Everything seemed to be running, even though the corridor lights were still off. “Have the generators kicked back on?”
Tonie held his tongue and nodded tersely.
“How long?” Terry demanded. He started to shake his leg and rock back and forth. “Forget it. Hurry!”
The Erthos started tapping buttons. “I have to reprogram a couple of things. Hang on. Next door is a rest facility. Maybe get some water?”
“Wristband.” Terry held out his hand. He had tossed his security bot summoning device and needed one that worked if he wanted back in. Tonie handed it over without complaint.
Terry hurried out. When the door opened, the lights in the corridor were on. His hand started to shake with the pressure of his impending failure. Hang on, Char, he said. He tried to use his comm chip, but the dampening field that hid the complex also disabled their internal communication.
Flayse Conglomerate, Efluyez Homeworld, Alganor Sector
First Platoon, designated target is the Magnate and his senior leadership. There are ten that we need. Smedley, transmit the images to their helmets. Second Platoon, you have the Flayse. First ten get saved, the rest are on their own. It’ll be a tight squeeze on the drop ships, but jam them in there. We aren’t leaving any of ours behind. Christina looked left and right.
The unit was formed, and the crowd had silenced. The Black Eagles were nowhere to be seen. The Magnate seemed to wear a perpetual scowl. Maybe the mechs rubbed him the wrong way. Maybe his seat was uncomfortable. One never knew the discord prevalent in a totalitarian’s life.
The waiting was over. It was time. She turned the formation to the right and gave the order. “Forward, March!” As one they stepped forward, cloaks swishing in rhythm except for the four-legged platoon. They held their cloaks tightly shut to keep from exposing the heavy weapons they carried underneath.
Anything? Christina asked.
The mechs report no unusual activity, Smedley relayed.
Nothing to report here either, except that the Magnate is quite impressed with how the Bad Company has presented itself, Joseph said.
“I’ll be damned,” Christina said to herself. She didn’t need to call cadence. The four mechs pounded the ground in unison, delivering the beat to which the Bad Company marched.
The formation turned left at a post marking the corner. To get the ranks lined up afterward, the outer personnel extended their strides while those on the inner corner shortened theirs, stepping to a standard eighty-centimeter stride length once they were back on track. All of that took only five paces before the formation was back as a single entity headed in the same direction.
Christina had to force herself to breathe. She was as tight as a piano wire, unable to relax with the anticipation. Kimber marched with the four-legged platoon, the three warriors at the back of the formation with mechs hammering the ground with a steady beat.
The first rank approached the Magnate. Joseph gave the signal, and they snapped their railguns from their shoulders to a two-handed carry in front of their chests, the standard port arms position.
Colonel Terry Henry Walton had determined early in the conflict-resolution enterprise’s existence that the warriors would never salute another power. They saluted within their own chain of command and the colonel saluted foreign dignitaries, but only for a reason, not from custom. When the unit passed the VIPs, they did so combat ready.
That didn’t matter. Joseph raised his hand in alarm, but it was too late. The ground erupted beneath the Bad Company in a massive and violent explosion. Warriors were thrown.
One mech started to fire its oversized railgun before a second one joined the cacophony of chaos.
Band Rayal Seven, Okkoto
Terry splashed his face and tasted the water before refilling his one pouch. He returned to the control room, expecting a fight or something strange in the five paces between the two rooms, but nothing happened.
Inside, Tonie worked diligently to deliver the elevator as a way out of the Erthos shelter. He frowned, tapped buttons, swiped his fingers across the screen, tapped more, and kept frowning.
Terry had had enough. “I have to go check on Char. We’ll meet you at the elevator. Do or die, my man. It’s now or never.” Clichés were the only thing that came to mind, but Tonie had probably never heard them. Terry rushed from the room without returning Tonie’s wristband.
Terry needed it more than he did.
TH ran down the corridor, trying to get his bearings. It wasn’t long before he was lost. He tried a number of doors, but they didn’t tell him where he was or how to get where he wanted to go.
He retraced his steps to the control room. When he entered, Tonie was gone.
Terry leaned back into the corridor and bellowed the Erthos’ name. “Tonie!” He ran in the general direction of where he thought he needed to go, yelling down every corridor, listening, and moving on. After fifteen minutes, he began to realize how
big the complex was. They had entered and explored only one small corner of it.
Once again, Terry retraced his steps. “Every left. Keep taking lefts,” he told himself out loud. He started to run as fast as he could, hitting dead ends and backtracking.
He heard the sound before he saw it, but he didn’t have time to mess with it. The hovering security bot appeared around a corner just as he reached it. He pinned it against the wall with a forearm, despite the screaming pain from where it tried to burn his arm with its forcefield, but that didn’t last long. Terry shoved his pistol up from below and fired, letting the laser burn into it. Once he had a hole, he twisted the pistol to scramble the bot’s mechanical guts.
It died without a spark or flash. He let it drop to the floor and returned to running.
“Tonie!” he shouted as he did in each corridor. This time there was a response. “Tonie?”
The Erthos stepped into an intersection and waved for Terry.
“You acted like you knew where you were going.”
“I didn’t,” Terry admitted. Around the corner, TH’s face fell when he saw the immensity of the rock fall.
“It’s not that bad,” Tonie said, trying to restore hope to the crushed man. “We only need to get right there!” He stabbed a finger at a point on the edge of the fall. Terry could see the corner and the empty space of a corridor beyond.
“What are we waiting for?” Terry clambered up the rubble and ripped at the stones with his bare hands. His left arm kept betraying him as the nanocytes struggled against the damage and the new demands being made of it, but the force of Terry’s will kept him churning through the debris until he made a hole big enough to crawl through.
He wiggled into it and slid head-first down the fall that spread into the dining room corridor.
“Go on,” Tonie said, waving as he took more care pushing himself through the opening.
Terry ran the short distance to the dining room. When the door opened, he saw Char holding her head and moaning. BA sat next to her, looking as if she were lost in thought.
Bethany Anne slowly opened her eyes. “It’s about fucking time. What were you doing, clipping your toenails? Getting a massage? Taking a power nap?” BA looked rather annoyed.
“How is she?” Terry asked, dodging past the Queen on his way to embrace Char.
“She has been better,” Char mumbled.
“We’re close. Tonie has called the elevator.” Terry kissed the top of Char’s head and held her tight.
“Tonie has put everything in place so that he can call the elevator,” Tonie called in a tired voice from the doorway. He was dirty from crawling through the rock fall.
“Don’t mess with me, Tonie.” Terry stood before lifting Char into his arms. “We’re leaving. Right now.”
“I have to do some work in the elevator control room first, but come on. It’s right around the corner.” Tonie gestured for his wristband, but Terry’s hands were underneath Char.
“We’ll figure it out when we get there.” Terry nodded to Bethany Anne.
“You finally are able to execute your plan. Bravo, TH. Have your people call my people, and we’ll do lunch.”
“Of course, BA. You need to visit Keeg Station.” He adjusted his hold on Char so her head missed a wall. “We’ll ply you with Moonstokle Pie until you beat all of us senseless.”
Bethany Anne followed them into the corridor. “I have to ask, yet I’m already regretting my actions. What are you talking about?”
“Moonstokle looks and tastes like pineapple...”
BA’s mouth dropped open. “Stop right there, you dripping nipple-twunt.”
“Can’t stop. Saving Char’s life,” Terry said over his shoulder as he hurried after Tonie. BA raced ahead.
“It’s illegal as fuck to put pineapple on pizza!” BA wasn’t joking.
“It’s not pineapple,” he argued back.
“Don’t mince words with me.”
“Your lawyer loves it. Rivka is a huge fan. A gentleman by the name of Frankfurter once said, ‘All our work, our whole life, is a matter of semantics because words are the tools with which we work, the material out of which laws are made, out of which the Constitution was written. Everything depends on our understanding of them.’”
“You’re quoting a wiener? Is that like talking out your ass but facing the other way?” BA loped alongside Terry while Tonie shuffled ahead, pointing left at the last door before the short hallway to the elevator. “Are you saying I don’t understand words?”
“I’m saying that maybe you don’t know a good pizza when it’s placed before you.”
“That’s it, TH. You are off my Christmas card list.”
Terry leaned close with Char still in his arms until his wristband activated the door. Tonie pushed through while the door was still sliding to the side. The room was little more than a closet with a panel attached to the wall.
Terry nuzzled Char’s head, but she was out cold. He let his face hover close to her nose to make sure she was still breathing. “My every breath is yours,” he told her.
Bethany Anne watched carefully, eyes shifting between the werewolf and the Erthos engineer.
“Faster, motherfucker,” she growled.
Tonie ignored her. He had quickly developed the talent after spending time with Terry Henry. Arcs sparked from the box, and Tonie cheered. The elevator doors opened, then closed and opened again.
Terry approached the elevator carefully. The doors finally stayed open long enough for him to ease his way inside, Char still in his arms. “Are you two coming?” he asked.
Tonie hopped from the room and started running but stopped when he saw the door was stuck.
“This is a problem.”
Char’s breaths were coming too slowly, and her skin was starting to turn blue. Terry jammed his eyes closed and prayed for a miracle.
Chapter Nineteen
Flayse Conglomerate, Efluyez Homeworld, Alganor Sector
“Scatter!” Christina ordered. She’d kept her feet through the blast that had ripped from beneath the turf upon which they’d all been standing. The cloaks had provided some protection, and the helmets had let them retain their heads and their wits. A concussion blast, no shrapnel. Unprotected troops would have suffered crushing injuries.
Those directly above the explosives never knew what hit them. The blast came from below, directing the force into their bodies and using their cloaks as funnels until the cloaks were ripped away.
Bodies lined the parade deck, but the rest were already running. The crowd was screaming, and those in the front rows were shoved into those behind. Braced against the bleacher supports, they were crushed. The Magnate was in a separate box, protected independently. He stood with bleeding ears. Joseph and Petricia picked their way through the injured as they climbed to get to the Magnate and the VIPs surrounding him.
On the other side of the field, Cory picked herself up, uninjured because of the cloak’s protection.
That sucked, Dokken complained before collecting his wits. There are injured.
As warriors ran past her to secure the Frikandan Chairman and his entourage, Cory ran the other way into the settling dust of the landmines.
The mechs stopped firing.
What were you firing at? Do we have targets? Christina asked.
Not anymore, we don’t. Seconds before the explosion, we detected two vehicles detach from the parking area and accelerate in this direction, Cap explained.
Christina found his logic sound.
Joseph?
Magnate is secured. Joseph had wrapped his boat cloak over the leader of the Flayse Conglomerate, and he waved from the stands as the Bad Company warriors spread out in an arc surrounding the Magnate and his people.
The mechs took positions on the four corners of the mangled parade deck. The four-legged platoon had been thrown about but was out of the primary blast area.
Two Black Eagles appeared and made tight spirals as they circled the ar
ea, ready to fire on anything that moved in a way they didn’t like.
Weapons tight, Christina ordered. Joseph?
Not anyone over here, he told her as if he knew her question.
Recover to the parade deck and let’s get the hell out of here.
Cory rushed past Christina to care for the warriors mixed in with the craters and uprooted turf. The first two she found were alive but badly injured. Not bleeding, but the crushing blows had done serious damage to their insides.
Summon the cryo-drones, Cory ordered. A single drone had been strapped to the outside of each Pod. Smedley turned them loose, and they proceeded under their own power to the ambush site. I need some help.
Four-legged platoon, at your service, Bundin replied, running amazingly quickly on his stumpy legs. The Yollin and the Ixtali outpaced him, arriving first to provide helping hands to lift the injured into the drones.
As the trio took charge of the first pair, Cory moved on to a warrior, crushed to death from the power of the explosion. “Must have been standing right on top of it,” Cory lamented as she used his cloak to keep him together to lift and put him into a cryo-drone. She activated the controls and froze him, giving the man a chance at being saved.
Dokken ran ahead, barking to identify where he found the injured. Five more—too many for the drones.
They all needed help. She leaned over the worst of the survivors and held her hands to his chest, but his injuries were too deep. She ordered him into a drone, and the four-legged platoon took care of him. The next was the same. And the next.
No more drones, and two who might die. Cory placed her hands on them and willed her nanocytes to work their magic, but she couldn’t feel the injuries. They were too deep, and her nanos had to stay close to her hands so she could feed them Etheric energy.
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