by Isaac Hooke
Rhea pointed her pistol toward the windshield and prepared to open fire.
The attacker glanced toward Rhea, and a pair of lights abruptly flared, sending a blinding stream of light her way.
By the time her own eyes autogated to reduce the intensity, the light had vanished; as had the man on the SUV’s roof.
A loud clang came from directly above.
“He’s leaped onto our vehicle!” McGraw shouted.
More clangs erupted in rapid succession, and several indentations appeared on the inside of the roof, shaped like human fists. Rhea and the others aimed their weapons upward…
One of those fists penetrated, and the steel fingers unfolded and began to peel back the roof material. More fingers appeared as another hand joined in.
Rhea’s current angle didn’t allow her to properly fire through that hole, but Will and Horatio had at it.
Those hands withdrew as if stung, which they had been.
Rhea could’ve fired directly up and into the roof, but the intervening material would’ve absorbed most of the impact. So instead she aimed at the window beside her, preparing for an attack from that quarter.
She piped Gizmo’s feed into the upper right of her vision; the drone had activated LIDAR, and Rhea could see the attacker crawling across the roof toward her window. She had a thought.
Smiling wickedly, she holstered the pistol, unbuckled her seatbelt, then stood up until her head crowded up against the low ceiling. Then she shoved her right arm upward. Using Gizmo’s LIDAR to guide her, she formed a fist and deployed the X2-59 as she impacted the metal. The plasma-sheathed blade burst forth, perforating the roof and traveling into the space beyond. She could feel the vibration of impact as the blade penetrated the body of her foe.
A blood-curdling scream filled the air.
Definitely not a robot.
“The flyer is returning!” Will shouted.
Suddenly Rhea was airborne. A terrible shattering sound filled the air. She retracted the X2-59 and was ripped from the ceiling. The vehicle and her friends were a blur around her. Something struck her. The roof. No, the floor. No, Horatio’s arm.
She slammed onto the roof of the SUV and was pulled to the side, sliding into the door opposite her seat. Above her, Will and Horatio were still buckled in, as was everyone else in the SUV.
She glanced at her window and saw it had broken; in fact, the entire left side of the SUV had crumpled. She was probably lucky to be alive.
She realized the flyer had struck the vehicle and sent it somersaulting into the air; the SUV had landed upside-down and finally ground to a halt.
“Everyone all right?” she asked.
“We’re fine,” Will said, opening his seatbelt and dropping to the rooftop. The others fell one by one as they similarly released their belts.
Rhea peered through the windshield. The other SUVs were turning back.
But then another SUV was rammed by the flyer and sent hurtling away.
Rhea kicked out the window beside her and crawled outside.
She had crawled halfway when two thick hands wrapped around her neck. She had the impression they were trying to twist her head off.
Those hands hauled her upward, lifting her out of the SUV.
She slammed her right arm upward, deploying the X2-59, and partially slicing through one of those hands.
Both hands released her, and she realized she had been carried into the air—she dropped several meters, hitting the rocky ground hard.
She rolled to her feet, activating her LIDAR. She saw the wireframe representation of the four-armed attacker above her, hovering. He withdrew what looked like holstered pistols.
Rhea dashed forward and retracted the blade to begin a complicated series of acrobats meant to evade the coming energy blasts. They were movements from her previous life, replayed from a muscle memory she didn’t know she had. Around her, the air lit up as the glowing plasma bolts ripped into the ground.
She kept her eyes on Gizmo’s feed, using the drone to guide herself beneath and behind her attacker.
She landed, drawing her pistol as she spun around, and firing at her foe.
The plasma bolts lit up the night sky in turn, and her attacker dodged them using that jetpack of his. He returned fire, forcing Rhea to leap behind a nearby boulder for cover.
More fire came from the direction of the SUV as Will and the Wardenites opened fire. More plasma bolts came in from the other vehicles as the rest of the convoy joined in.
Via Gizmo’s feed, she watched as her attacker landed on the opposite side of the boulder and took cover.
Once more Rhea couldn’t resist a wicked grin.
She holstered her pistol and clambered up the side of the boulder, using her strong fingers to press fresh handholds, and when she was on top, she moved at a crouch to the edge, like a crab, and then leaped, somersaulting.
As she rotated in midair, she deployed the X2-59 and sliced down.
Her attacker tried to dodge, but was too late, and the blade dug into the jetpack.
The thing activated, perhaps of its own accord, sending her attacker skidding away across the terrain. Rhea was dragged along with him, since her X2-59 was lodged in the pack.
She finally managed to tear the blade free, and landed rolling on the rocky ground.
When she came to a halt, she stood up on one knee, and aimed at her receding opponent. But then something hit her in the side, hard, and she was lifted into the air.
The flyer had rammed her.
Her body had contorted, folding over the round tip of the craft. The pistol had been torn from her grasp by the severity of the impact.
Her right side was operational, but her left side seemed completely dead, the servos damaged beyond mobility. More than anything she wanted to shove herself away from the flyer. She wanted to get away from it. But she knew she couldn’t, not while she was airborne: the fall would only cause more damage.
You must mask your emotions in battle.
It wasn’t her voice, but the voice of someone she didn’t know. A memory.
With her working side, she pulled her body onto the upper edge of the craft. She started to drag herself along the outer shell, intending to find the cockpit, or the power center.
But before she got very far, the flyer reversed course rapidly and turned upside down, dumping her. She fell.
She hit hard. According to her accelerometer, she’d traveled eight meters. It felt like more.
She tried to get up, but the fall apparently caused her to lose all functionality in her already damaged right leg, so that now both the left and right were disabled. The only working limb was her right arm, which she used to crawl along the rock, worming her way forward. She could see the remaining SUVs in the distance, on the thermal band.
But apparently they didn’t know where she was, because they were fanning out in a search pattern.
So close.
Yet so far.
She glanced at her overhead map. All the dots had frozen. Had her comm node taken damage, too?
She amped up the range of her comm node to the maximum. The dots remained frozen.
“Guys, I’m here!”
Nothing.
She amplified her voice, and her next words echoed across the rocks: “Guys, I’m here!”
They certainly heard her, because the vehicles stopped. She was relieved when they started toward her.
But then she heard laughter behind her.
“They’re not going to reach you in time.” It was a deep, terrible voice. One she had never heard before.
“Please,” Rhea said. “I just want to be left alone.”
“We all want that.” She felt hard hands wrap around her neck. They squeezed and twisted.
Rhea clenched her jaw, cording her neck muscles. She knew it wasn’t going to be enough to save her. Hypoxia warnings flashed across her HUD.
She swung her right arm upward, intending to deploy the X2-59, but a thick boot struck
her forearm, and slammed her wrist into the ground.
“Oh no you don’t,” her attacker said. “Don’t worry, I’m not going to kill you. I intend to bring your brain in. Just relax and remain calm. Let the process unfold naturally. Disable the pain. Or better yet, shut down your brain entirely.”
Rhea continued to grit her teeth, struggling against the terrible rotations of those large hands. He was going to rip her head right off, and there was nothing she could do about it.
A flash came from the side, and her adversary released her.
“Let her go!” Chuck’s voice.
“Get down!” she heard Will say. The words were meant for Chuck, she thought.
Another flash came from above, sourced from her attacker.
“Chuck!” Renaldo said.
More flashes erupted from all sides. She heard the sound of energy bolts ripping into metallic skin.
And then her opponent dropped to the ground beside her.
Headlamps activated in a circle around her, courtesy of the SUVs that had driven up. They illuminated the metal chassis of her opponent, a chassis that was currently smoking. One of her attacker’s four arms had melted away entirely.
She saw his features for the first time. Like the Scorpion, he had a human face plastered onto a metal skull. But otherwise, she didn’t recognize him.
His lips were curled into a rictus of pain, and the bags underneath his left eye spasmed. A red froth formed around his mouth.
“I want to see her,” came a weak voice. Chuck’s.
She tried to push herself up but could not.
A moment later Horatio and Will carried Chuck into view. They lowered him in front of Rhea, so that he was lying down across from her.
“Hey,” Chuck said.
Rhea was too horrified to answer. He had been shot up very badly. It was obvious he wasn’t going to survive.
She couldn’t help the tears that formed then. “Chuck. I’m sorry. I couldn’t protect you. I failed again.”
“No,” Chuck said, smiling. “You didn’t fail. You succeeded. You let me do my job. You let me die with dignity. This is what I wanted. To protect you. This is what I’ve always wanted. It’s been an honor. Thank you, for everything.”
“No,” she said, reaching out to cup his face in her palm. Her tears flowed freely. “The honor has been mine. Thank you.”
Chuck gave her one last weak smile, then closed his eyes forevermore.
Growling, she turned her head toward her attacker, who yet lay on the ground on the other side of her. Filled with renewed strength, she dragged her body toward him with her working hand.
Will went to her, and tried to help her up, but she shoved him away. “Don’t touch me!”
She reached her disabled adversary and began punching his face repeatedly. Dents appeared in that soft skin, and plasma erupted, but no actual blood.
Her attacker suddenly started laughing, which only made her pound his head all the harder.
She abruptly pulled her arm back, and was about to deploy the X2-59, when she heard Will’s voice.
“Don’t,” Will said. “Not until he answers a few questions.”
Her foe had stopped laughing then. His face was a pulp by that point, barely recognizable above the metal it was laid upon.
“You work for Veil?” Rhea said.
Her attacker chuckled through the gore. “Veil, no. I wouldn’t work for that bitch! I’m an independent.” Frothy liquid trickled from his mouth as he spoke.
“Who hired you?” she asked. “Or who posted the bounty on my head?”
The man seemed puzzled. “Don’t you know? Did you think that crossing him would have no repercussions?”
“Crossing who?” she said.
The man opened his mouth, but no words came. All that emerged was that pinkish plasma, backlit by the SUV headlamps.
“Crossing who?” she repeated.
From the way his head bobbed back and forth, she thought he was laughing, though no sound came. Finally, when he spoke again, his words sounded robotic, as if his voice synthesizer was malfunctioning.
“You’re going to die a horrible death, Warden,” the man said. “My only regret is that I won’t be around to see it. This is what I get for showing you mercy, I suppose.”
“Mercy?” Rhea said. “You call this mercy? Killing my closest friends and followers?”
She activated the X2-59, and the blade slammed into his metal skull.
17
Rhea gathered the men for a full post-battle report.
Two other members of the party had suffered severe injuries in the attack, thanks to the flyer ramming their SUVs, but thankfully no one else had died. The team couldn’t actually find that flyer, though they scanned all four horizons; Horatio speculated it had some kind of return-to-home program that executed once it lost contact with its owner. Will corroborated that via Gizmo—the drone had last spotted the vehicle heading away to the west, at speed.
Three of the SUVs were too badly damaged to continue. With the help of the Wardenites, Horatio and Will quickly salvaged a few of the more valuable parts from these vehicles, and then the group crowded into the remaining SUVs and set out for Rust Town once more.
The Wardenites had turned down the back seats in one of the vehicles, forming an expanded storage section for Rhea. They had laid her body flat on those seats, and Will joined her. Spread out beside him were the spare parts he needed to repair her, salvaged from the latest cyborg, the SUVs, and the earlier hunter killer. For example, he’d detached all four arms from the attacker, and they sat in a pile beside him. He was removing circuitry from one of those arms at that very moment. He wore the usual headlamp on his forehead to illuminate his work in the night.
In the middle seats in front of her, Horatio was squeezed in beside Renaldo and three other Wardenites.
Will set down his mini screwdriver and pulled the circuit from the arm. Then he turned his attention on her own arm. He frowned.
“Going to have to straighten these pieces before I can open your arm.” He retrieved his mallet and began hammering.
“I’m in your hands again, Salvager,” Rhea told Will as he worked.
He nodded absently.
“Seems like I always find myself damaged after every fight,” Rhea said. “I guess I should take a hint from the universe. I’m not meant for this kind of work.”
“Mmm,” he said, setting down the mallet. He pulled, and after a few tries, opened a panel in her arm. “No, I think it’s your calling.”
He used his mini screwdriver to remove a circuit from her arm. He showed it to her. It was broken almost in half. “This is why you can’t move your arm. Well, that and the servomotors.” He set aside the broken chip and retrieved the one he had taken from the cyborg’s arm. “What would you do without me?”
She smiled sadly. “I don’t know. Now that you bring it up… you’re always there to repair me, no matter how many times I mess up. I worry that someday, you won’t be.”
He gave her a comforting grin in return. Or tried to. “I’ll always be here for you.”
From his voice, she sensed that even he didn’t believe the lie.
She thought of Chuck, who was being conveyed in the storage area of one of the other vehicles. They were going to return his body to his parents. Rhea didn’t know how she was going to break the news to them.
“I miss him,” Renaldo said from the middle seats.
“We all do,” Rhea told him.
“He was the best of us,” the Wardenite said.
She nodded. “He certainly was.”
“He’ll never get to see another sunrise,” Renaldo said. “Never get to see his mom and dad again. Never get to love.”
Rhea glanced at Will and lowered her voice. “I should have never approved this mission.”
“If you hadn’t, the slums would be out of water right about now,” Will said.
“At the very least I shouldn’t have come along,” she said. “
Bringing these assassins with me.”
“You couldn’t have known they’d follow you,” he insisted.
“But I had an inkling,” she said. “The Scorpion had followed me into the Outlands once before. After Anderson’s attack, I should have realized the same thing might happen again, and I should’ve stayed well away. But I came. Putting you all at risk.”
“Look,” Will said. “We were well aware of the risks when we signed up to be part of the diversionary force. We knew death was more than possible, if not from bioweapons, then the Aradne security forces. Adding assassins to the mix didn’t change much. In fact, we were safer when the assassins attacked because they concentrated on you. Chuck made a mistake. He stood up when he should have remained in cover. You can’t blame yourself. Besides, as Chuck told you, he wanted this. It was an honor for him to serve you.”
She turned her head aside, letting him work. She knew Will was right. It wasn’t her fault. Yet it still hurt, just as Bardain’s death hurt. And Anderson’s.
I won’t let grief rule me. I cannot.
“You’re a Karnator, right?” Rhea said. “Do you believe he’s already returned?”
“I do,” Will said. “Perhaps in a different galaxy. Hopefully as something sentient, but if not, he still exists. So that’s why you need not grieve.”
She sighed. “The problem with the Karnator theory is, well, it’s a little sad. Sure, in your theory, we get another chance at life. But it means we’ll never see those we lost again. Ever. According to you, if I die, I’ll be reborn as something else, with no memory of this life. I’ll never see you again. Never see Chuck.”
Will nodded. “That’s the price we pay for the chance of life. Would you rather cease to exist, and descend into nothingness? Besides, who knows, you might just meet him again, you just won’t realize it. He could be the seedling you plant in your arbor. Or the neighbor’s newborn. Or the bioweapon you meet on the field of battle.”
Rhea shook her head. “None of that is really comforting. Especially the latter.”
Will nodded. “You already know what it’s like to be reborn anyway.”
She stared into his eyes. “Yes. And it’s an experience I’d rather not do again.”