Dying World

by Chris Fox

  “Roston, get in here! Beck. Stein. NOW!” The beefy merc was clearly in charge, and I wasn’t surprised as three more lurkers hustled into view. The leader turned to the last to arrive, an angry-looking woman with a nose ring and a shaved scalp. Also cute. “What’s the deal Roston? Who is it?”

  “How should I know?” the woman snarled, her voice deeper than I’d expected. She withdrew a spellpistol and took up cover behind a crate.

  That shielded her from the ramp, but it put her back no more than two meters from me. Even I couldn’t miss that shot.

  The last two lurkers both wore environmental suits with helmets, so I couldn’t tell which was Beck and which Stein. They flanked the ramp, both cradling conventional assault rifles.

  I licked my lips and thought about options. My whole goal had been to prevent them from retracting the ramp, but now I realized that wasn’t an issue. The issue was they were going to cut down my friends and family, in a perfect crossfire.

  “Here they come!” Roston called, though how she knew wasn’t clear. A head implant maybe? Pers-comps were expensive, but maybe someone with money had taken an interest in her.

  Well, now or never.

  I dropped my camouflage spell, drawing the spellpistol I’d taken from the dreadnought, and sighted on Roston’s back. The pistol tore a chunk of dream from me, and hit her dead on.

  She slumped forward, and elation surged through me.

  It evaporated when I realized the other three mercs were turning in my direction.

  17

  There was one instant of perfect clarity where we all just sort of stared at each other. Then flaming-skull guy started moving, and so did the rest of us. His legs were pumping as he sprinted in my direction, and I did not like the look of that spellaxe.

  At the same time, both mercs had raised their assault rifles. One had a clear shot, but the other was going to risk hitting their bionic boss. I leaned into that. Literally.

  I tumbled forward, taking the merc leader in the legs. There were just two problems. First, the merc was a lot stronger than me, so I just sort of bounced off. Second, there was nothing but my armor to shield me from the merc’s automatic fire.

  The report told me immediately that I was dealing with explosive rounds.

  The first one took me in the shoulder, and something white and urgent and ugly flared there. I was weightless for a moment, then came down in a heap against the wall a couple meters away.

  I tried to rise, but my body was being damnably uncooperative. I tried gasping into the comm, but all I managed was a low groan.

  “I’m coming, Jer!” My dad’s panicked voice came over the comm, from far away.

  A shadow loomed above me, and I realized it was the bionic leader, his axe raised in both hands. The muscles in his arms and shoulders all bunched, all working together as he brought that weapon down to end me.

  Imminent danger detected, flashed across my HUD. Full offensive mode engaged.

  Magic rippled from the armor, into me. It was the opposite of the other times. Up until now I’d been powering it, charging it, bonding with it. Now it gave some of that magic back, and did it in a way that would mystify our best artificers.

  The axe came down, and my arm shot up. I grabbed the axe blade, and my gauntlet hissed as the glistening green acid coating the blade bit into the living metal.

  Power stirred within me, begging for release. I balled my free hand into a fist and aimed it at bionic guy’s knee. He laughed. He literally laughed, and just stared down at me.

  “You got some moves. You stopped my attack.” The merc shook his head in amusement, certain I was about to die. “Go ahead, kid. Take a shot.”

  “Okay.” I shrugged, then I pulled at the fire in my chest.

  The armor amplified it somehow, feeding it more power, and focusing into a single short pulse that lasted a fraction of a second.

  Merc-guy expected me to punch his heavily armored knee from a sitting position where I couldn’t bring any of my strength to bear. He did not expect me to incinerate his knee, his thigh, and most of the calf.

  The suddenly crippled merc spilled backwards with an agonized roar.

  I wish I could say that was the end of my problems, but that exposed me to fire from the mercs at the ramp. One of them was laying down suppressive fire to prevent my allies from reaching me, but the other one had calmly aimed his rifle in my direction.

  He stroked the trigger, and the rifle bucked back into his shoulder as the explosive round left the muzzle. This was going to hurt.

  I managed to get my arms up, but it wasn’t enough. The round exploded just outside my faceplate and ricocheted off the wall, black spots blooming as my head rang like a gong. Multiple cracks had spread down the mask, and the paper doll now showed several red spots, and a handful of yellow.

  Blinking sent shards of pain through my brain, but the parts of it my father had trained were still working. My trembling fist came up, centered over my assailant’s faceplate, and then ejected another pulse of superheated flame.

  Everything from the neck up was just…gone. I didn’t have time to be horrified as the merc’s headless corpse toppled to the deck in a clatter.

  The bionic commander had clawed his way closer, and seized my right leg with both his hands. He yanked me back down to the ground, and then heaved himself on top of me.

  My infuse strength was still active, and I tried to throw him off, but he batted aside my efforts like a parent disciplining a toddler.

  “This is gonna hurt, and I’m gonna enjoy it,” he breathed, close to my cracked faceplate, softly, like a lover might. Then he raised his free hand and a pair of razored spurs emerged.

  He rammed the blades through my knee, and blood fountained from the wound. I’d thought the explosive rounds were painful. I was mistaken. Those were merely inconvenient. This was real pain.

  It rippled through every neuron, commanding my whole attention. Every part of me screamed one unified message. Stop the pain, no matter what it takes.

  Both my hands came up, and I wrapped them around the merc’s flaming skull. It was hot to the touch, but it was the kind of theatrical heat designed to score points at a bar, not the kind that would hurt me through my armor.

  “You like fire?” I snarled, leaning closer and dropping my voice to the same whisper. “This is going to hurt. And I’m going to enjoy it.”

  I poured every ounce of fire I could into the space between my hands, and the armor answered, enhancing that flame. The resulting carnage was sickening, from the smell to the oily residue that burst over my armor and through the cracks in my faceplate onto my cheek.

  The flesh boiled away, but the cybernetic skull remained, his electronic eyes staring sightlessly forward as his body went limp on top of me.

  I’m not proud of what came next. I had just enough presence of mind to order the helmet to slither off my face, then emptied the contents of my stomach onto the deck next to me.

  The dead merc was still pinning me, but that also meant I had cover from his last surviving companion. I craned my head around in time to see my father’s hoverchair blur into view.

  He dodged a point blank shot from the last merc, which passed cleanly under him. Then my father brought up his pistol in the famous Executioner’s Leap that Dag the Slayer had made famous.

  He took the lurker in the head, then shot him again in the chest for good measure.

  The last lurker clattered to the deck, and I leaned back in exhaustion.

  “Yay.” I managed a tired little cheer. My infuse strength spell had expired, and I couldn’t concentrate well enough to cast another. “Can someone get this guy off me?”

  The pain was everywhere, but it was worst in my knee where he’d jammed though spurs. I kept oscillating between passing out and full wakefulness because of the pain.

  The pressure on my chest eased, and Rava’s face came into focus as she heaved the corpse onto the deck next to me.

  “Looks like someone p
ut creamer in their coffee this morning.” She nodded at the mess I’d made on the deck. “Guess it was a good thing you didn’t have that second helping of eggs.”

  “Gross.” I pulled myself into a sitting position, and rested my back against the wall. “Briff, where are you?”

  “Here.” The hatchling clomped his way up the ramp. He cradled the railgun in both arms, and the barrel still had steam rising from where snowflakes had landed. “You okay, man? I know humans are supposed to be all pasty, but…you’re pretty pale, man.”

  “Blood loss,” my Dad confirmed in a knowing voice. “He’ll be fine, if we can get him stabilized and resting.”

  “We can’t do that yet,” I protested through gritted teeth. “We need to finish the op. Strip the lurkers, and toss them off the ship.”

  “What about her?” Rava had picked up the unconscious lurker woman, the one I suspected might have a pers-comp in her head. “She’s definitely still breathing. What did you hit her with?”

  “Sleep spell,” I explained absently, though my mind was on her first question. What did we do? Part of me wanted to lock her up, but doing so meant not only another mouth to feed, but possibly risking the whole op. “I overheard them talking. She’s got a link, and I’m betting they can track her. Dump her in the snow with her gear. It isn’t much of a chance, but it’s more than they gave the Remora’s original crew.”

  My father nodded approvingly, while neither Rava nor her dour father reacted. Arcan had crept in after Briff, but didn’t looked like he’d participated in the combat. That didn’t much surprise me. If there were casualties, why not let that be your companions so you were in a stronger position?

  Having him with us worried me, but that was a problem for later.

  “Are you sure, Jerek?” Briff spoke up, though his voice was tentative. “I mean, she’s going to die if we leave her behind…”

  “If they track this ship,” I countered, still through gritted teeth, “then we’re all going to die.”

  “I get it.” Briff nodded sadly. The hatchling’s tail drooped sullenly, but I didn’t budge. Hard choices needed to be made, even if I hated making them.

  “What now, Jer?” my dad asked.

  “Get to the cockpit and prep for take-off.” I closed my eyes and forced several deep breaths through my nose, then continued when the tide of pain abated a little. “If I’m right we’ve got two prisoners in the brig. I want to interrogate them, and see if they can put some of the pieces together for us.”

  There was just one problem with my plan. I passed out again.

  18

  “Jer?” The voice came from a long way away. I wanted to focus on it, but doing so took more effort than usual. My eyes fluttered open, and I became aware of my surroundings.

  I’d been moved into an unfamiliar room, and since there was only one room on the Remora I hadn’t seen, I realized I was in the captain’s quarters. Someone had moved me into bed, though I had no idea how long I’d been there or whose bed I was in.

  Every part of me ached, but the most insistent pain was still my knee, which throbbed in time with my heartbeat. Something wasn’t right there. It felt like my body was hiding the full extent of the injury, somehow.

  “Dad?” I croaked, my throat raw and painful.

  “Don’t sit up.” I didn’t recognize the emotion in his voice, but it made his words gruff. “Rava dosed you with a stim to get you up. I don’t know if it’s safe since we don’t have a medic. What do you want to do, kid? People are looking for orders, and this is still your op.”

  I forced myself into a sitting position. The quarters were dimly lit by running lights in the ceiling, but I could make out the large bed I lay in, and the functional metal nightstand next to it. The walls were bare of artwork, and there wasn’t a single decoration anywhere.

  “We’re still grounded?” I raised a hand to my shoulder, which had also begun throbbing in time with my heartbeat. Everything had a halo around it, which was never a good sign.

  “We can take off whenever.” My dad whirred a little closer, and I saw the concern etched in normally cynical features. The leathery lines around the eyes were tight. “As long as your wounds don’t get infected, I think you’re okay, but, Jer…that leg is bad.”

  “One problem at a time,” I countered, trying to give him a confident smile. It hurt. Everything did. “I seem to remember someone teaching me that. Can you have Briff bring me one of the two prisoners? Are we prepped for takeoff?”

  “Yeah, we can go whenever. You ready?” My dad whirred over to the doorway.

  “Yeah.” I forced a nod. Oww. “Get us airborne, and into high orbit. We’ve got some time before this place comes apart, but not much. I want to know we’re safe somewhere, so we can make a real plan.”

  “Got it.” My dad zoomed away. He seemed content to take orders. Happy even.

  That got me thinking. My mother had told me about the Peter principle, which had a profound meaning for such a simple name. People get promoted to the level at which they suck. My father had been promoted to a level at which he sucked, but he’d been a god at everything leading up to that. It must be reassuring to be back doing things he knew he was good at.

  I wiggled into a better sitting position, which sent a wave of dizziness through me. It abated, but my stomach gave a threatening gurgle promising this wasn’t over.

  Footsteps sounded in the hallway, then the door pushed open and the pretty lurker I’d first shot with a dream bolt stepped through.

  What I’d taken for black or brown hair was in fact a rich auburn, though given that I was shooting at her the last time I’d seen her…and that she’d actually shot me, well, my mistake was understandable. The woman seemed unconcerned by the grease stain on the chest of her overalls.

  She was followed by Briff, who really had to work to squeeze in behind her. Had she been a real threat he’d have been completely helpless, but I refrained from pointing it out since the lurker simply stood there staring at me.

  Her hair was tied in a simple ponytail, though a few stray threads had escaped. She had clear blue eyes not unlike my mom’s, set into a young face. I sensed her apparent youth was deceptive, though. There was a weight to her that suggested she’d seen more than anyone should.

  “Your name is Vee?” I croaked, aiming for friendly and landing somewhere closer to noisily expiring.

  “Yeah.” She folded muscled arms, which didn’t at all detract from her femininity, and glanced behind her at Briff, then back at me. “What are you going to do with my brother and me?”

  “Your brother,” I panted, every word a victory. “He’s the other prisoner?”

  She nodded.

  I didn’t even need to think about making such a deal. Leaving that woman behind had cost me, and I was still learning about the price. I wasn’t eager to see anyone else die. “If you cooperate and provide actionable intel, then we’ll help you get to safety with enough supplies to get you wherever you’re going.”

  “All right.” She licked her lips, and moved to sit on the edge of the bed. She barely touched the sheet, an animal ready to bolt if needed. “What do you want to know?”

  “Why did the lurkers lock you up?” I rasped, wishing I’d thought to ask Briff to bring me some water. He still lurked by the door, trying to look intimidating, but only managed cramped.

  “That’s…kind of a long story.” She rested her hands in her lap, and darted me an experimental look, as if gauging my mood. “My brother and I are real lurkers. That is to say we grew up lurkers. My parents were lurkers. Their parents were lurkers. We never really spent much time on Kemet. I’ve been shipboard my whole life.”

  “And the others, the ones upstairs, they weren’t real lurkers?” I cleared my throat, and winced as my whole body complained.

  “No. About three years ago we showed up at a ‘clave, that’s a meeting for lurker clans.” She raised a hand and stuffed a wayward hair back into her bun. “A new group had showed up. They didn�
��t belong, but they had credits and O2, and chocolate. Everything we wanted. All they asked was that we tell them when ships were coming up to the fleet from Kemet. Especially ships headed for any of the old dreadnought hulks.”

  Ships like mine. They’d known we were coming, this confirmed it. And whatever they’d been doing had been going on for a long time. But why? And why now?

  I tried tripping Vee up, just in case. Her story was plausible so far, but she’d had plenty of time to perfect it. “After they took over why did these new people keep you alive? They seem pretty ruthless.”

  “I was born with life magic,” she explained. Vee raised a calloused palm and it glowed with a soft golden luminance. “It’s not strong or anything. But any healing is useful among lurkers. It’s how we keep life support running. Anyway, they kept my brother alive as leverage, and because both of us are good with magitech and tech alike. We kept the ships they stole flying, even after…mom and dad.”

  Despite the surge of empathy it still took everything I had not to beg her to heal me right then, but I knew I needed to keep it together. I couldn’t afford to let my guard down.

  “Here’s the deal I can make you,” I promised, though I had to pause before continuing. “If you tend to my wounds, and anyone else who gets hurt, then we will feed you and keep you safe. You’ll have to stay in the brig for now, as a precaution. I hope that’s acceptable.”

  “I suppose.” She gave a shiver. “I don’t like it down there, but I imagine your crew will be taking my old quarters anyway.”

  I didn’t mention that her old quarters had belonged to the people I’d arrived with…before the lurkers had killed them. If it bothered her she certainly didn’t show it.

  “Are you aware of what’s going on down on Kemet?” My breaths were coming fast and shallow, and some sort of morphine was sounding pretty damned attractive.