by Chris Turner
“That’s them.” I firmed my lip. “We see them in our helm scopes. Unless they’re indigenous deer, it has to be them.”
Mong and his company had no chance. When the rebels blew his fucking, wretched Warhawks out of the sky, neutralized every last one of his killing machines, he’d have nothing. This cat and mouse guerrilla war we were playing then would be pointless. But a nagging uncertainty still tugged at the back of my head. What if those jammers failed? What if Mong’s ships came streaking down out of the clouds and incinerated us instead?
I swallowed hard. What mess did you get yourself into, Rusco? Did you think it would be that easy? Your impetuousness may have landed you in a bigger jam than last time.
Voices of doubt. Ghosts of fear. I shook them from my mind and moved ahead, nudging Grild in the ribs.
A deeper feeling hit me, struck now with the growing suspicion that if I didn’t catch Mong here, we’d never get him. He was a monster larger than life, an ulcerous cancer armed with an unnatural tendency to escape justice. I could envisage his hulking frame disappearing in the soil forever, like an everlasting termite, hiding, escaping the justice he was due.
I was not going to let that happen.
Like weasels we moved in undulating, semi-crouched positions while the dim light of fading day filtered through the spiny twigs, lending an eerie unreality to the lands around us.
I heard Noss’s voice hiss over the helm’s com. “They’re moving away from you, Jet. But we don’t have great resolution up here. Grainy. You’ve got to cut them off at the next ravine—A25.44. I can’t blast the area without taking you out too.”
“Affirmative, Noss. Keep scanning. Let us know of any anomalies.” I kept my voice to a bare whisper.
The petrified twigs, like crazy fractal patterns, obscured our view. Surreal this landscape. As from a dream I studied the impossible foliage—a massive primordial canopy that blocked out the little light remaining in the sky and left only a dull golden-amber staining the shattered earth floor.
Distant gunfire echoed hollowly through the trees. Impossible to gauge distance with all these stony echoes in this strange geography. The sound bounced off trunks and ricocheted to other places, prompting even a professional soldier to draw false conclusions.
With less confidence than before, we stumbled forward.
We’d gotten no further than a bend in the knoll when fire bit at us from out of nowhere. Grild fell, uttering a moaning cry. He lay face down in a riddled heap.
I grimaced, dove out of the way just as more deadly fire ate into the trunk behind me. I crouched in the dusky light, a wary wolf, my heart pounding. No hits, but I could hear my blood pound in my throat.
Grild wheezed, shifted his gaze toward me. He snuffed out a trickle of blood from his nostrils. He was in a bad way. I motioned him to silence, and to stay still. No way of getting to the man. He was six feet away. Damn it! Mong or one of his gunmen was closer than I thought. He was covering the area with a marksman’s expertise. How could I have been so fucking stupid? That fiend moved more stealthily than any predator. Now the hunted stalked the hunters.
Chapter 31
I inched forward, creeping on my stomach at a snail’s pace, moving toward shelter amongst the petrified roots. I felt like a foreign grub here, with my R4 trained—hoping it didn’t clink on the flaked shingle, alert for any sound or signal.
Grild gasped behind me. Poor bugger. What could I do for him? I’d get my head shot off if I tried to double back and minister to him. What good would that do either of us?
Where the fuck was Mong?
How far I crawled through that rooty hellhole like a miserable worm, I don’t know, but it was far, and I could feel Mong’s or his marksman’s hawk eyes trained on me all the time. Why’d he keep me alive? I knew he could have plugged me anytime. I had no idea where they were. He could be hiding behind the next trunk or crouched behind some shattered boulder, anywhere in the heavy, dusky, growing shadows, waiting like a ghoul for me to slip up. Where the fuck was he?
“Wren,” I hissed in the com.
No answer. Maybe she was playing possum too on purpose, staying dark.
A stone turned several feet away to my right.
“Looking for me, Jet Rusco?”
I whirled in the red shale, my gun raised. I sprayed out a stream of fire and Mong leaped back in all his charred, blooded glory, sheltering behind a massive rocky trunk. His rifle pointed out. My fire ricocheted off the rippled bark and took out large chunks of the petrified wood he crouched behind, spewing flakes every which way.
“That’s a waste of bullets, Jet.”
Closer he limped. I sprayed more fire but missed. He ducked back behind another tree, less wide than the others, but enough to conceal his ape-like frame. He’d timed it so he’d make it. I gave a silent curse. I panted, my eyes darting wildly from trunk to trunk. Maybe the fuck’d already hopped to a new hiding place while I rubbed the grit out of my eyes. I wouldn’t doubt that his injured leg was crippled enough, but he could still walk on it. Bloody hell! Didn’t surprise me.
A metal barrel spat a few rounds at my heels—just to tease me. I wormed my way more desperately along, the blood hammering in my skull.
My rifle caught on a rock and I heard a grunt of triumph somewhere to my right. That last glimpse of him I saw: his face so placid, untroubled, it unnerved me. As confident as the wild animals that once roamed this forest habitat.
Thirty feet separated me from his last location as I scrambled behind a tree of my own, barely avoiding his return fire. I kept my head and body under cover and my gun low. I dared come no closer. I knew the man’s illimitable power. Even maimed, he was a threat. A surge of raw panic tickled up my spine. My mouth felt like a dried prune, a sandpaper desert. Mong was a force to be respected. Any fool could see that. My breath rasped in my throat. The worst stranglehold of fear was on me, having a monstrous tour de force so close. The ultimate psychopathic sadist...
A vision sprang in my mind. The lurid memory from back in the tanks when I experienced that horrible case of deja-vu. I saw myself again on an alien, freaky hillside on a faraway world, facing down Mong. The same as now.
I heard a familiar voice wheeze out a tired breath. “Yes, Jet, one must be careful when he hunts the tiger. Star Lord and con man—here we are—Hustler wanting to be Star Avenger. No need for quiet. My colleagues will keep your friends busy for some time, so we may converse freely.”
I peeked an eye out from behind my trunk. I could not see him. I pulled my head back.
“I must commend you for taking down my flagship and shuttle. I don’t know how you did it, but I guess you managed to reinstate the Melinar jammer. Very good. Funny how I dismissed that tech. I don’t know how you defeated Balt either and liberated the Mentera. But I can guess. You capitalized on my mistake. Kudos to you, Jet Rusco! Ingenious and spontaneous. Perhaps my teachings were not in vain after all. Balt will stay in his glass prison; in fact, he has moved to primary exhibit in my new ‘restored’ Temple of Light on a different world, far away in the Butala sector that nobody will find. You’ll have to visit it sometime. I’ve renamed it ‘The Temple of Wrath’—in dedication to all the worlds of this filthy system who will pay for rising against me.”
The man was talking far too much. Why? I snatched a quick look over my shoulder. The gunmen I expected to come leaping out, fry me from behind, were not there.
Mong must have caught the movement for his lips curled in a blood-smeared grin. Double bluff. My head spun. The man was mind-fucking with me. “You don’t seem to be in any position to uphold that claim,” I croaked.
Mong clicked his tongue. “Armies can be replaced, Rusco. Ships can be rebuilt and amassed. Like the rich man who loses all his money. Within a week, or two, such a man has rebuilt his empire stronger and bigger than ever.”
I raised my weapon.
Mong gave a cynical flourish. “Let’s dispense with our toys. I propose a duel. A test of strength and w
ill. We compete with only physical and inner components. The best man wins. Are you game?” He tossed aside his rifle in a clatter of metal on stone, his R9, a rare and deadly weapon, smaller and more efficient than my R4.
Why would the sod do that? Was it jammed up or kaput? Or just another mind fuck?
“I’m not that stupid, Mong.” I clutched my weapon tighter.
He narrowed his eyes. “Just stupider in other areas. I see you had the fool plan of trying to take me alive.” He shook his head, smirked again and clicked his tongue. “That narrow ambition is revealed in your eyes. Hero Rusco captures Star Warlord! Pah! You still have a dreamy sentimentalism to you. Nor have you lost your old crone’s desire to get ‘one up’ on your enemy. Shame on you.” He exhaled a long breath. “Let it go, Jet Rusco. It’ll only kill you, like a pig with a skewer in its belly.” He motioned his right arm, his augmented arm, to unleash some foul telekinesis on me.
But a sharp burst of fire caught him sideways, slamming the other weapon he was trying to draw from his half-burned furs. The R3 vaporized in his hand and I whirled out of hiding and sprayed fire as I looked to see where the flare had come from. Who was it? Wren?
Mong rolled, grunted, and was up on his knees in three seconds, lifting his augmented arm, as if he’d caught in his grip some of that vicious fire flare.
He gave a wheezing sigh. “Do you need a woman to fight your battles? Die, you miserable coward! You’re not deserving of my instruction.” He flicked up his augmented arm.
I felt a terrible stinging pain course through my bones. Unbearable agony. As if I burned from inside. My fingers could not clutch the gun’s trigger. I fell, gasping, clutching at my abdomen, gasping for air as the rifle fell from my nerveless fingers.
The stinging pain reached an apex. I fought nausea and unconsciousness. Blackout and death. All of a sudden, I snatched myself erect, struggling to save myself from falling into that deep abyss, staggering like a straw figure, with the cellular memory of all the times I’d withstood the depths of his torture, hanging in the Chamber of Redemption. I twisted to face him and used my inner force to redirect that hateful burst of energy from his synthetic limb back at him. How, I don’t know. It was as if the Jet Rusco of old went away, and another Jet Rusco of the future took his place, some ancient incarnation of a dead, blooded warrior who raged and gave me the power to wield such formidable magic against a primordial enemy. I focused the energy with my mind, knocked Mong backward, sent him spinning on his heels.
His lips parted in soundless cry. “Wha—” It was like a sound a child might make who sees too late the vicious dog come bursting out of the neighbor’s yard.
I snatched up my rifle, sprayed him with death-wielding fire. His right limb disintegrated in a ruin of machine parts and synthetic flesh. The limb hung severed from the shoulder.
His mouth dropped into a silent rictus. And yet, a flicker of amazement touched those swarthy lips, triumph even, that his magical teachings on me had worked—but also fear, for the first time in that man’s brain, that defeat quite possibly loomed at the hands of his unwilling pupil.
Powers, it is said, come into the body through penance, or out-of-body experiences. Maybe they had?
Mong wheezed out a hoarse gasp and dropped to his knees. “I—sensed it back on Othwan. I gave you that power, Jet Rusco, would you bite—the hand that feeds you?”
“I would cut out your heart and feed it to the crows,” I barked at him.
He nodded and sagged, his head lolling on his chest. Broken wires and white plasma oozed from that smoking shoulder socket, the mechanics of his augmentation. “I have trained you well,” he croaked. “You’ve made me proud. But still you are only on the first rung of the ladder.”
Bootfall echoed from behind the nearby trees. Wren approached breathless, training her gun on the weaponless, mutilated man.
I reached for her to steady myself. “Glad to see you! The others?” I croaked.
“His point man is dead. Blest is back there scouting the perimeter for the other one. Where’s Grild?”
I shook my head. “Grild’s not good. Back there too. Shot up.”
Wren winced.
The whine of engines buzzed down through the treetops, echoing over our grim, bloody pasture. Not the deep-throated roar of Warhawks, but the higher-pitched thrum of Vendecki fighters. I could have jumped for joy. Mong’s world was crashing down on him, his luck turning sour. I was fucking glad. Mong’s eyes bulged, with a white flare of disbelief. He could be conquered and lose.
Blest came limping out of the swatch of trees. He stared at Mong and gave a crooked grin. “So, the mighty Master Mong isn’t so mighty any more.”
“Any trouble with our friends?”
Blest shrugged. “Sorry to say, the last loose runner has offered his body as fertilizer to dandelions.”
I breathed a sigh of relief. I croaked into the com, “Noss! get over here, we need backup. Grild is down. I repeat, Grild is down.” I turned to Blest. “Blest, run back and see if you can find him. I didn’t leave him in a good state.” I motioned in a vague direction and tossed him my extra pack of regen. Blest gave a crisp nod and hobbled away.
Wren wheezed out a hoarse breath, her weapon still trained on Mong. “I saw this bastard through the trees and fired from long range. I must have clipped him. I thought you were dead when you crumpled. What happened?”
“Mong fucked up and you and I blasted him.” I debated telling her the whole story of how my inexplicable powers had deflected his killing blow but quickly decided against it.
She stepped over and lashed out a boot to smash in Mong’s teeth but I quickly pulled her away from him. “Careful, that viper’s—”
Even as I spoke, Mong’s left hand flashed out and snatched up a long bowie knife from under his furs. The edge caught Wren’s shin and drew a thin line of blood. She leaped back with a shriek, whirled and spat fire at him, catching him in his legs. He howled, yelping like a wolf. I surged forward and kicked the weapon out of Mong’s last good hand as he tried to use the knife to cut his own throat.
“No unheroic behavior at this late hour, Mong! Die like a warrior, for Christ’s sake. None of this hara-kiri shit,” I sneered.
In a snarl of rage, he clawed for the knife, blinking back the agony from his ruined legs. “You have not won yet, Jet Rusco. You forget—the Mentera. The ones you let escape from the tanks. They’ll bring back others to this world. You revived them from their slumbers—” he choked out a gob of bloody phlegm “—I would bet my life on it.”
He half pulled himself upright among the sprawling roots with his twitching arm.
I wanted to plunge that knife into his throat, rid the universe of him once and for all. But my heart sank in my chest, my eyes glazing in horror. Ships blitzed over the sky. I was lost in a daze. A dangerous one. Mong scrabbled before me, seeking escape, looking for some way to end this life, but I would not let him. I hopped back to tower over him with my weapon cocked. He croaked, wearing a grin of lunatic rage on his grime-smeared, blood-dripping face. “Do it, kill me!”
I shook my head and watched him crawl his way toward the cover of trees, like a sick animal that slinks away to die.
I heard the cries of animated figures through the screen of trees, snatches of dim conversations, shapes of villagers emerging with hoes and rakes and shovels, seeking vengeance on the one who had caused them so much misery. Doubtless they’d seen the smoking wreck of Mong’s flagship and put two and two together.
Wren lifted her R4 to go after him and finish him off, but I held her back. “Let the villagers have him. It’s a worse punishment than the quick death he desires.”
Wren lowered her gun and clasped me. “It’s about time for that holiday vacation. Didn’t you mention a spa on Palm Monterey?”
I held her close. I caressed her lovely, dust-filled, smoke-reeking hair. My eyes glazed over. “No beaches, Wren. Anytime. Nothing near water.”
She stared at me. “Okay.”
We both looked back with chill horror upon Mong’s retreating shape. The man’s psi power was flickering out fast with such grave injuries. A blank look of resignation had come over his face as he peered back. Not physical but spiritual. His confidence had withered, knowing his forces were being wiped out and his invincible fleet was teetering on its last legs. My pulse hammered. Revenge was here and now. And yet, such a bitter dessert. Why did it feel so cheap and savage? Being in those tanks and enduring Mong’s torture had opened me to a starker perspective of reality—it had given me powers as yet unexplored. True, my life as it was, would change. For better or worse? Who knew? Time would tell.
Villagers came plodding out of the dimness, yelling, gesticulating, a small army of them. Hundreds. Dust-streaked vindictive faces with eyes glaring in hate, following Mong’s slimy trail of blood. I shuddered to think what they’d do to him.
Wren and I looked to the sky, hearing the roar of Vendecki ships blitzing across the darkening dusk-blue followed by more skyslips of the Melinar guard. The Melinarians would not get their revenge today before these villagers took theirs first.
A vague unease stirred at the base of my throat. As Wren and I hustled off to find Grild, I could not dismiss Mong’s last grim warning of chittering Mentera skittering through the amalgamator and back to their dead power plant. Who after all, had let the flesh-eating crickets out of their cages? Maybe you need to clean up your mess, Rusco. If those crickety little bastard grasshopper fucks were to get one of their ships running...The disturbing thought faded and became but a grey smear on the fringe of my mind.
I shoved the worry aside, touched Wren’s shoulder as we loped through the darkening trees. Live today, Rusco. Live in the moment. Today the living is free and easy…
* * *
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