Revengers

by Alex Kings

  This was bad: They were caught in a pincer with a small gang up ahead and Zin, practically a small army by himself, behind.

  “Keep them off my back for a moment,” Rurthk growled, moving deeper into the apartment. He fumbled with his explosives. These were the leave-and-detonate type, not proper grenades, but they were all he had to work with. The bomb itself was a hefty cylinder. He could just about hold it in his hand. It was made to stick to walls, which he realised he could use.

  He armed it, took out his tablet, then said, “Laodicean! A long reach would come in handy.”

  Laodicean was busy holding a rifle through the doorway. When he heard Rurthk, he pulled it back inside.

  Rurthk threw the bomb across to Laodicean. “Everyone, get back inside the moment it's in the air,” he called. “And activate your helmets.”

  Laodicean reached out with his effector fields, and hurled the bomb ahead of them with considerable force. Rurthk activated the bomb's adhesive system as he turned and ran back through the apartment. On the way, he activated his helmet: A thin film of smart matter extended from the collar of his armour to form a bubble around his head.

  A fraction of a second later, he heard a faint grunt of pain, followed by the sound of one of the mercs falling backwards. Laodicean had managed to hit them with the bomb. Good shot, he thought.

  He reached the back room of the apartment, dived behind cover of the wall, and detonated the bomb.

  There was sharp crack. He could feel the habitat structure shake around him. His armour registered a flash of heat against the far wall strong enough to burn exposed flesh. Outside, air began to whistle past.

  He activated his comms. “Everyone still there?”

  “We're both fine,” said Eloise.

  “I am uninjured,” said Laodicean.

  Outside, where the bomb had hit, the hallway had inflated. The force of the explosion had pushed against the heat-softened metal, opening it up. It was riddled with holes and still glowing a dull red. Air rushed past into the vacuum, carrying scattered trash with it. Of the mercs, there was no sign.

  Eloise, Olivia, and Laodicean emerged from various doors.

  Rurthk looked back the way he'd come, rifle ready, to see if Zino was still there. The corridor was empty. Presumably Zino had taken cover in one of the apartments. He could emerge at any moment.

  “Move!” said Rurthk.

  Once again, Eloise led them down the corridor, with Olivia in the middle, and Laodicean and Rurthk guarding the rear. The wind was at their backs until they passed the damaged section of the corridor. Then they had to fight against the rushing air.

  There was still no sign of Zino.

  At the end of the corridor, a safety airlock had closed automatically to prevent the rest of the structure losing air. Olivia fiddled with it for a moment, and the airlock opened. They made it through into an undamaged and fully-pressurised section of corridor.

  Inside, the corridor sloped downwards sharply, descending into tunnels in the rock. Here, the original industrial purpose became evident. Old pieces of mining machinery – conveyer pipes, drill bits, lasers, lay scattered in cavernous chambers. They were broken. They had long ago been stripped for parts, anything of value taken.

  “We need to get out of here,” said Rurthk. “Zino's still out there, and I bet he has more backup just waiting.”

  “There aren't any good transportation systems in this section of the rock,” said Eloise, looking around. “People here used to use buggies to drive down the corridors. And I mean, buggies with wheels. Here, even effector field generators are a rare luxury.”

  “So, what, we keep looking for a buggy to steal?” said Rurthk

  As they entered the next chamber, he was rewarded by the sight of a buggy. It lay behind the shattered casing of a giant mining laser, filled with damaged undulator electromagnets.

  “Well, that worked better than expected,” he said, waking around the laser.

  The buggy was missing a wheel, half an axle, and most of its motors.

  “Or … maybe not.”

  He returned to his team, and they continued forward.

  “What's through there?” Olivia asked, pointing. Against one wall was a broad sliding door, covering a large opening that looked like it was meant for the transfer of heavy cargo and vehicles. It was the same weak grey as the rest of the walls, with some Glaber text that had long since been scratched into intelligibility.

  Eloise took out her tablet and checked the map. “It's not terribly clear. On the other side is a room as big as this one, a dead end.”

  “Maybe there's something intact on the other side,” Olivia suggested.

  “It's worth a try,” said Rurthk. He turned and looked back the way they'd come, rifle ready. “Let's be quick, though.”

  Olivia hurried over, taking out her tablet and calling up some of the generic hacking programmes Yilva had given them. After a moment, Laodicean followed. Rurthk and Eloise came after them slowly, guns raised in case Zino appeared.

  Olivia tried the door's control panel. “It's still got power,” she said. She worked for a few moments with Laodicean. They kept apologising when they got in one another's way.

  “Well …” said Olivia. “Let's see how it goes.” She gestured at the tablet.

  The door groaned loudly. Rurthk winced internally; that had to have given them away. The door rose up a metre or so, then ground to a halt. It was dark on the other side, but after a moment light came flooding out as lamps activated automatically.

  Olivia squatted down to look inside.

  “Anything we can use?”

  “I think so,” said Olivia. “A mining capsule.”

  “What?” said Rurthk.

  But before he could get a reply gunfire roared across the chamber.

  Chapter 35: Knives

  Another group of mercs, this time Glaber, came running into the chamber. A group broke off immediately to cross the chamber, cutting off the other exit. Rurthk and Eloise managed to mow a couple of them down, but it was clear this was a losing battle. There was no good cover nearby.

  “Inside, now!” he shouted, pointing to the door that had just opened.

  Laodicean's globe flattened at he moved underneath.

  Eloise and Rurthk rolled underneath together.

  “Olivia, the door!” said Rurthk.

  “I'm working on it!” cried Olivia in panicked voice. She stood by the inside control panel with her tablet connected to it, gesturing hurriedly.

  Rurthk and Eloise moved back.

  A Glaber came sliding underneath, firing at random. Laodicean snapped an effector field like a whip, striking the Glaber's gun from his hands. Rurthk shot him.

  The door whined, then lowered with a thump.

  There was a crash from the other side, then quiet. It wouldn't hold them for long.

  Rurthk looked around. It was as if they had stepped back in time. The same mining paraphernalia as outside was here – lasers, drills, pipes – but it was all intact, undamaged.

  “Where's this way out, then?” he asked Olivia.

  She pointed to an odd structure in the corner. It was about as big as a shuttle, but vertical rather than horizontal. The main body was cylindrical, narrowing into a conical “roof” on top. Its surface was a uniform, featureless matte black, encrusted with was looked like melted stones. Actually, now the Rurthk looked closer, it seemed to emerge out of the rock floor, sitting on a patch that looked like it had once turned to lava and then re-solidified.

  “It's a mining capsule,” Olivia said. “I read up a bit on Bloodspray while we were travelling. They used to use these for prospecting. A microfusion reactor inside heats up the surrounding rock until it melts, and then it uses effector fields to swim through the lava.”

  “So, uh, does it work?” said Eloise.

  “I don't know,” said Olivia. She looked at the wall, where the tip of a plasma blade had just begun to cut through the door. “I hope so,” she said.


  “Yeah, me too,” said Rurthk. “Get on it. Laodicean, help her.”

  Olivia ran over to the mining capsule with Laodicean in tow.

  The blade had already cut an incision a metre long in the door.

  “Two can play at that game,” Eloise muttered, taking her own plasma cutter off her back. She turned it on as she strode over to the door and extended the blade to its full length. She paused for a second, watching the angle of the incision on the other side. Then she jabbed her own plasma blade with a stabbing motion into the door. It took half a second for the blade to burn through to the other side. Then there was a cry, and the cutting stopped for a second.

  There was some commotion, then the cutting resumed. When Eloise tried stabbing again, there was no response. The mercs were standing back.

  Rurthk, meanwhile, took out the last two explosives. He fixed one directly to the door. The other he hid under a jumble of equipment by the wall. He set them both to explode after a ten-second delay upon receiving his signal.

  The mercs had already cut through two sides of a rectangle. The plasma blade began to descend, cutting through the final line.

  “Olivia!” shouted Rurthk. “Now would be a good time.”

  A hatch had opened on the mining capsule, and inside, Olivia worked on a panel. “It's definitely working,” she said. “We just need to figure out how to drive it.”

  Rurthk and Eloise retreated towards the capsule, their rifles ready.

  The mercs finished cutting out their rectangle. Someone kicked it aside, and then there was a roar of gunfire.

  Inside the capsule, Olivia yelped and leapt back. Rurthk and Eloise took cover behind the capsule. Low-ranking Glaber, unconcerned for their own safety, rushed into the room, firing.

  There was no way to get to the door while staying under cover.

  “Go!” Rurthk cried to Eloise. He leant out and shot down the nearest of the Glaber.

  “We both go together,” she snapped back. “Come on! Now!”

  There was no arguing. Rurthk leapt out of cover at the same time as Eloise. They sprinted around the capsule towards the door. Eloise went in first. Rurthk followed. As he stepped forward, he felt something hit his leg just below the knee. There was no pain, just a momentary sense of pressure. And then that leg gave out and he fell forward.

  Gunfire roared above his head. “Get him!” he heard Eloise cry as he tried to scramble up the ramp. He turned back to see the knife handle embedded in his armour. And behind a laser, he caught sight of Zino.

  Then effector fields appeared and dragged him up the ramp.

  Another knife came flying through the air, penetrated Laodicean's globe of water, and went into his shell. He didn't stop pulling Rurthk up. As the hatch behind them closed, Rurthk felt a final knife hit his back at an oblique angle.

  There was commotion. There was blood.

  Eloise crouched over him. “Damnit. Hold still, will you?” she said.

  Rurthk caught a glimpse of strings and coils of blue blood dissolving the water around Laodicean's would.

  “I have it” cried Olivia at the same time. “We're going!” An electrical buzz and a distant roaring sound filled the capsule, and then it began to shift.

  Rurthk activated the countdown on the explosives.

  *

  Glaber continued to surround the capsule, mindlessly firing at it. One of them ran forward with a plasma cutter. Glowing red effector fields surrounded the capsule. A moment later, the matte black shell itself began to glow red with heat. The rocks below it melted, and it began to descend into the molten mass.

  As its conical tip descended into the pool of lava, the bomb hidden in the corner detonated. In just over half a millisecond, superheated vapour filled the room, evaporating everything. It roared out into the chamber beyond, scorching the opposite wall.

  Chapter 36: Swimming Through Lava

  The explosion shook the capsule, but soon they were away, dropping swiftly through a self-made tunnel of molten rock.

  The capsule was like the inside of a lift – cylindrical, about three metres across and four metres high. A long lamp formed a circle on the wall just below the ceiling. Every surface was some greyish allow, textured with a pattern of fractal crosses. One side was covered with a control panel, which features both the whiskery Glaber input system and a normal gesture input. Olivia used the latter.

  She glanced at the scene behind her, saw the blood – there was a lot of it – and then swallowed and turned back to the console. She had to get them out of here and onto the Outsider as quickly as possible. She started looking for a sonar.

  “Rur? Rur, can you hear me?” said Eloise.

  There was no response. Rurthk was laying on his front, breathing heavily, with the handle of Zino's knife emerging from his lower back. She paused, grimaced, then looked up at Laodicean. “How bad is it?” she asked.

  “It has severed an optic nerve, part of my breathing siphon, and beak muscles,” said Laodicean.

  Hearing him describe it in such coldly clinical details sent a chill up Olivia's spine.

  “I am in pain, but the damage is not critical.”

  “Okay, good,” said Eloise. “Hold these knives in place. Don't let them slip.”

  Olivia forced herself to concentrate on her work: The capsule had a sonar system, and she was close to figuring out how to navigate. The capsule wasn't particularly fast, and the longer they took, the greater the risk of Zino finding them. If he had survived the blast. Of course he had, she thought to herself, who was she kidding?

  With Laodicean's effector fields holding the knives steady, Eloise took out some of Rurthk's armour and put her hear to his back. She grimaced. “His breathing's fluttering,” she muttered.

  Olivia remembered off hand that Glaber breathed using an organ like a heart, but pumping air instead of blood. It was deep inside the body, protected behind bone, but a strike at the right angle could reach it.

  She turned to Olivia. “Well?”

  Olivia was studying a sonar map of the surrounding rock. They were descending close to the wall of the canyon, so they could come out there. It might be too exposed. But, she noticed, there was a small structure nearby, a sort of canyon within the canyon

  “I think I have it,” she said. She gestured at the controls, and tried steering. The capsule changed direction slightly. “I know where we'll come out,” she said.

  “Good,” said Eloise. She activated her comms. “Mero, how close are you?” she said.

  “Almost there!” said Mero, audible to everyone's comms.

  “Go faster,” said Eloise. “And tell the doctor Rurthk is hurt.” She glanced up. “And so is Laodicean.”

  “Sure thing,” said Mero.

  “Olivia will tell you were to meet us.”

  Olivia gave Mero the co-ordinates of the sub-canyon along with her best guess at an arrival time.

  “On my way,” said Mero.

  She turned the capsule towards the edge of the canyon. The floor below them tilted. Apparently there was no gravity-normaliser on this thing.

  Rurthk groaned softly.

  Eloise put her hand on his shoulder immediately. “Don't move,” she said.

  “Rurthk shifted slightly, snarled in pain, then said weakly, “Yeah … good plan.”

  “How does it feel to breath?” Eloise asked.

  “Painful.”

  Eloise smiled weakly. “Yeah, I'm not surprised,” she said.

  “You think that bomb caught him?” Rurthk said.

  “If it didn't,” Eloise said slowly, “I'm going to rid the galaxy of that smarmy, sociopathic bastard next chance I get.”

  Rurthk laughed, then growled with pain again. “I … I …” he said.

  “Rurthk?” said Eloise. “Come on, stay awake.” She listened to his back again, then muttered, “Damnit, damn.” She looked up. “Olivia?”

  “I'm going as fast as I can,” Olivia promised. She looked round at Rurthk. He didn't seem to be moving.
r />   “Just a little longer,” Eloise assured the unconscious Glaber. She started pressing at his back, just above the wound.

  “Allow me,” said Laodicean. “I can better apply broad pressure.”

  Eloise looked up at him, almost protective or her role to save Rurthk. But she fell back after a moment.

  Olivia concentrated on navigating. She felt a lump in her throat. They'd lost Kaivon while she was away. They couldn't lose Rurthk too.

  But she knew the universe was not so forgiving.

  They were edging closer to the rock face, back into open space. How would they get the capsule bursting out the side in a plume of lava safely into the Outsider? She discounted just opening the door: The heat outside would be lethal.

  “Mero?” she said into the comms.

  “I'm in place,” said Mero. “There's nothing here.”

  “You're going to have to be ready to catch us,” she said.

  “What?”

  “We're in a mining capsule. We're coming out of the rock.”

  “Abyss. Fine, okay, I'm ready and waiting.”

  Instead of plunging straight out of the rock face, Olivia took them out at as shallow an angle as she could manage. Soft, hot rock fell away from the side of the canyon as the capsule descended. Lava from inside poured out. One side of the capsule was exposed to the vacuum outside.

  If there were windows, she might have been able to see the Outsider waiting for them. As it was, she could only trust Mero was there.

  Olivia cut the capsule's furnace. The capsule continued forward, edging out of the cliff, but slower and slower as the molten rock around it cooled and thickened. After a few seconds, it stopped entirely, half inside the cliff and half out. Cooling rock cracked, shattered, and tumbled down gracefully.

  She waited for a moment, letting the worst of the heat drain away.

  “We'll need to brace,” she said.

  “Laodicean, can you keep him steady?” Eloise asked.

  “As you wish,” said Laodicean. His effector fields cloaked Rurthk. “I can keep the rest of you steady if you wish.”