Shadow Agents: The Benevolency Universe (Outworld Ranger Book 2)

by David Alastair Hayden

  He released the stasis container, and the tether held it securely. Peachy cowered in a corner, his head tucked into his body and his tail curled twice around him.

  Karson secured the fire extinguisher with both hands. In his HUD there appeared a strange blue dot and a yellow triangle.

  “What’s this?”

  "An aiming point and a targeting triangle, sir. The blue dot is mapped to your hands and the extinguisher. Line it up inside the triangle. You'll know for certain you're on target when the dot turns green."

  Bishop triggered the extinguisher. He had thought it would be harder to control, but he was able to keep the dot lined up within the triangle without too much trouble.

  After a minute of spraying out at full blast, the extinguisher ran out of propellant. As he released it into the void, he saw a tiny glimmer in the distance. Checking his locator, he confirmed it was the Outworld Ranger speeding toward him.

  “How’s our position?”

  "It's not quite what we wanted, sir. You didn't get the push off we had planned, and the fire extinguisher didn't last as long as we needed it to."

  “How bad is it?”

  “The Outworld Ranger will only have to slow down by fifteen percent, so it could be a lot worse.”

  He spun around to face the direction he was heading. Though he couldn’t see him yet, he found Octavian in his locator.

  Something several kilometers beyond Octavian’s position glowed a faint blue. Karson marked it in his HUD.

  “What’s that?”

  “That, sir, is the fusion reactor from the research vessel. It’s still leaking. We are quite lucky the containment field held.

  “We’re lucky that railgun round didn’t score a hit on it.”

  As Karson stared at the leaking fusion reactor, a thought came to him. It was the craziest thought he’d had on a day already full of them.

  “Would it be possible for us to line up the Outworld Ranger in a way that we could pick up that fusion core as well?”

  “Sir, why would you want a leaking fusion core?

  "The correct question is why wouldn't I want one?"

  “Sir, I am certain that’s not the correct question.”

  Karson laughed. He could see the gleam in his eyes reflecting on the inside of his helmet. His face was contorted into the too clever smile all his school teachers had found irritating.

  “Well, is it possible?”

  The nearly always agreeable Bartimaeus sighed dramatically. “It is, sir, but picking it up would slow the Outworld Ranger by nearly thirty percent.”

  "Theoretically, is there a way to line up the fusion core and Octavian so the ship doesn't have to slow down?"

  “I believe so, sir. But you don’t have enough propellant in the spacesuit. And if you do pick it up, I’m not sure how long the containment field will hold.”

  “It doesn’t have to hold for long.”

  “And you and Octavian would need to clear the loading bay immediately upon arriving.”

  Karson ripped the spare oxygen tank free. “I can expel oxygen from the container to propel me.”

  “Is using your backup oxygen wise, sir?”

  “It’s do or die within the next few minutes out here. The four hours I currently have left are more than enough.”

  Karson spun around again. “I need guidance.”

  “When this is all over, sir, I recommend therapy. You have some risk-taking issues that need to be resolved.”

  The blue dot and the yellow targeting triangle returned. Karson pointed the canister's intake away from his body and triggered the release. Oxygen poured from the cartridge, propelling him onto his new course.

  41

  Mitsuki Reel

  Mitsuki stared in shock at the wreckage. A fire blazed amidst the torn remains of the back third of the skimmer van. Flames licked the ruptured propulsion engine. The antigrav coils underneath the upturned van sprayed plumes of coolant into the air.

  Worst of all, the impact with the building had crushed the front end to half its original size, driving the antigrav motivator, steering system, and other electronics into the front passenger seat.

  Silky was in there, and while Siv’s shield might have protected him from the explosion in the rear compartment, it could not have protected him from the front-end collision.

  He was tiny, a fragile electronic device far more significant than his size indicated. Mitsuki could only hope that his small size had worked to his advantage because Silky had to survive.

  Without him, they were completely screwed. There was no doubt in her mind about that. Most importantly, he knew how the Benevolence had fallen and why. He knew so many secrets no one else in the galaxy knew.

  Siv dropped the backpack from his shoulders and fell to his knees, stammering uncontrollably and shaking all over. Chippy panic had set in. Not to mention he was undoubtedly worried about his best friend.

  Condrance Wang, with his pack still clutched to his chest, staggered forward helplessly. Despite being uninjured, he was clearly dazed.

  “Madam, I’m becoming worried. I can’t detect him.”

  “Silky?”

  “Yes, madam. I’m not getting a signal from him. And my sensors can’t pick him up, though there is a lot of wreckage and he is at the end of my range.”

  Mitsuki’s heart sank. “Keep…keep trying.”

  “Yes, madam.”

  Siv stopped stammering and shot to his feet. As he ran for the burning wreck, Mitsuki grabbed him by the waist, pulling him back.

  “Let me go!” He wrenched himself one way then another. “Mits, let go of me!”

  “There’s nothing you can do right now.”

  “I’ve got to rescue him!”

  “You’ve got to let the fire burn out first. It’s too dangerous. And the enemy is still—”

  “Screw them! Screw everything!”

  He broke free from her and ran, but he only got a few meters before he skidded to a halt.

  An imposing figure in crimson Centurion battle armor zoomed over them using a Fisk-300 jetpack then descended on antigrav to land between Siv and the wrecked van.

  The armored figure had two pistols drawn: a neural disruptor in his left hand and in his right a sniper pistol capable of firing nearly soundless guided rounds. She had never seen anyone so well armed, to the point of excess. He had a pair of plasma pistols attached to a bandolier, a compact assault rifle magnetically clamped to his right leg, and a lasgun clamped to the left. Mounted on top of his left shoulder was what she thought was a grenade launcher.

  His jetpack alone was worth a small fortune. Mitsuki knew this because it was a more advanced version of the modified one she had used until she'd lost it rescuing Siv and Bishop. His armor appeared more advanced than what the Thousand Worlders were using when they had faced them on Ekaran IV. She couldn't even begin to imagine how much his armor and weapons must have cost.

  The black faceplate on the helmet obscured the person’s face, and the armor bore no markings that she could see.

  “B, can you identify our lovely new opponent?”

  “Affiliation, identity, and origin currently unknown, madam. I will continue searching the net.”

  “Check all the bounty hunter sites you can access.”

  “Yes, madam.”

  Siv brought his plasma pistol up, backing away slowly. Mitsuki pulled out the plasma carbine.

  “Who is that?” Condrance Wang asked, stepping up beside her. “What the hell’s going on?”

  “That’s the person who—”

  “Madam, I’ve detected a threat behind us.”

  A red blip appeared in the locator window in Mitsuki’s HUD.

  Before she could react, Mitsuki heard the whirring and felt a whoosh of air as something zoomed towards them. Wang’s chest exploded as a fist-sized orb with blades spinning around its equator tore through him and flew upward. Wang fell to the ground dead.

  Mitsuki opened fire on the orb, not even waiting fo
r her targeting triangle to lock onto it. A moment later, Siv started shooting at it as well.

  The orb zipped one way then another, as agile as a hummingbird. Not a single plasma bolt came close to striking it. It was almost like it could anticipate their shots. As Mitsuki’s target triangle finally got a lock on it, the orb disappeared.

  She opened fire, but her plasma shots burned pointlessly through the sky. She couldn’t see it anywhere, and the red dot representing it on her HUD had disappeared. Siv stopped firing and gaped at Wang’s corpse.

  “B, did it just cloak and signal-jam us?”

  “Yes, madam. That is a sky-blade, a rare and powerful weapon used by the military before the Fall. A particularly advanced one since it has a refraction cloak. Do not underestimate it. A sky-blade is no mere machine. There is a chippy unit embedded inside it, quite possibly one more advanced than me.”

  Siv swung around to face the man, who was striding calmly toward them.

  “Bastard!” Siv yelled. “You killed my best friend!”

  He aimed his plasma pistol and opened fire, the gun pumping out shots as fast as it could. Their opponent stepped side-to-side, dodging some of the shots. As he moved, he deployed a force-shield from his forearm to deflect the rest.

  Mitsuki trained her carbine on him, but before she could fire, the sky-blade suddenly reappeared to her right side. She darted backward, but it adjusted mid-charge. She cringed.

  But she wasn’t the target.

  The sky-blade buzz-sawed through her plasma rifle, cutting through it as if it were made of nothing more than wood and glue.

  As it sped away, Siv stopped shooting. The gun had overheated and would not fire again until it cooled off. His last shot had knocked out their opponent's force-shield though.

  Siv tossed the gun aside, drew his neural disruptor, and opened fire.

  The man didn’t even attempt to dodge the shots. He didn’t need to.

  The white rings of the neural blasts splatted harmlessly on a full-body force field surrounding him. It would take dozens of neural shots to get through a force field like that.

  “Shit!” Mitsuki said.

  “Madam, I’ve found a reference on an obscure bounty hunter site Silky gave me access to. A picture there shows a man wearing this armor without a helmet. If it’s the same man, and I think it is based on his MO, then we are facing an android soldier that goes by the name Vega Kaleeb.”

  Mitsuki’s eyes widened in shock for a third time within the last minute. She’d heard whispers of Vega Kaleeb. Anyone who worked in the upper echelons of the criminal world knew and feared that name.

  When she was young and new to the extraction game, she’d trained with a few retired Shadowslip agents who’d talked about Kaleeb like he was a god of death. They’d told her never to attempt an extraction if he were even so much as rumored to be involved. She hadn’t paid it much attention though. The galaxy was a big place, and she wasn’t likely to ever face someone like him on a backwater like Ekaran IV.

  They were in way over their heads. If she couldn’t take out the combat drone, she had no chance of stopping Kaleeb. And even if they got through his force-field, they weren’t getting through his armor too, not before he or his sky-blade took them out.

  Siv continued firing pointlessly, his disruptor shots glancing off Kaleeb’s force-field. When he was just a few meters away, Vega finally trained his guns on Siv.

  42

  Oona Vim

  Despite being in a deep meditative state as she sat cross-legged in the command chair, Oona listened in on the others. The technique she was using allowed her to maintain complete awareness of her surroundings without breaking her focus.

  “Mr. Bishop, you are changing course,” Rosie said.

  “I am aware of that,” he replied.

  “How?” Artemisia asked.

  “Good question,” he replied. “I’m using my spare oxygen as propellant.”

  “A much better question is, why the hell are you doing it?” Kyralla demanded.

  "I'm lining myself up so that after you scoop up Octavian and me, you can pick up the Argos Alpha’s leaking fusion core? Do you see it?”

  “We’re aware of it,” Kyralla said. “And we’re trying to avoid it.”

  “We need that fusion core,” Bishop said.

  “Have you lost your damn mind?” Kyralla asked.

  “Possibly.”

  “Possibly?” Kyralla snapped. “If that thing blows anywhere near us, we’re dead.”

  “I understand that.”

  “If it’s onboard and the containment field fails, the radiation will fry us all,” Rosie added.

  “I’m aware of the risks,” Bishop replied. “But I believe that fusion core will give us our best chance of getting out of here alive.”

  “I understand now why Siv put his neck on the line to save you and vouched for you with the Shadowslip,” Kyralla said. “You think like he does. Only you have different skill sets.”

  “Well, are you onboard with picking it up?” he asked.

  Kyralla looked to Tekeru Jones. He started to nod, but then shrugged instead. When she turned to her, Oona didn't need to consider the issue. Bishop had placed his faith in her. She would do the same with him. To main her focus, she merely responded with a confident nod.

  Kyralla sighed. “At this point, why the hell not? Go for it. What else do we have to lose but our lives?”

  “Okay,” Bishop said. “So the plan is—”

  “I don’t want to know until I have to,” Kyralla said.

  “Why is that?” Bishop asked.

  “Because it will freak me out, and then I’ll say, ‘No, it’s too risky.’ But everyone else will outvote me. So the end result will be a lot of wasted time and energy.”

  Oona suppressed a snort of laughter that nearly shattered her concentration. She only barely managed to wipe the smile from her face before Kyralla flicked a glance her direction.

  “Is there anything you need us to do?” Tekeru Jones asked.

  "I need Rosie and Artemisia to run some calculations for me. Bartimaeus will beam over the data. And, Tekeru, I need you to go to my makeshift workbench in the cargo bay. In a blue crate, you'll find three phantom emitters. I need you to grab the one with the orange sticker and load the preset routine called ‘No, I’m the Outworld Ranger.’ Do not activate it yet. Just load the routine.”

  “I don’t know what a phantom emitter is,” Tekeru replied.

  “I’ll send you all the info you need.”

  “Anything else?” Tekeru asked.

  “Place the device in the emergency airlock above the engineering station, but don’t space it.”

  “Mr. Bishop,” Artemisia said. “This is an incredibly brilliant plan.”

  “Thank you,” he responded brightly.

  “But I do think there’s a fifty percent chance it will end up killing us all.”

  “I would say fifty-three percent,” Rosie added.

  Oona was tempted to ask Artemisia what the plan was, but she didn’t want to break her focus. And if Oona couldn’t bring in Bishop safely, then his daring plan wouldn’t matter for squat.

  Tekeru Jones rushed out to follow Bishop’s instructions. He returned in a hurry and flopped back into the seat at the sensor station.

  Several tense minutes passed without anyone speaking. Oona considered each breath and blocked every thought that tried to worm its way through her mind. Those that did make it through, she allowed to slip away without consideration.

  “We’re closing in on Bishop.” Kyralla turned around in her chair. “Oona, are you ready?”

  Oona nodded shakily.

  “Are you certain?”

  She inhaled deeply and steadied her nerves. She couldn’t let her focus fail. A life depended on her. No, she couldn’t think about that. It was too much pressure. All she could allow herself to think about was the inertial dampening system. She exhaled.

  “I’m ready, Artemisia.”

&nbs
p; “Closing access to all other systems, madam.”

  One by one, Artemisia suspended Oona’s access to the ship’s systems through the circlet until all that remained was a connection to the inertial dampeners.

  Initially, she had considered going to the engineering station and touching the manual control panel for the inertial dampeners. But the circlet actually gave her a much more direct link. And by closing off access to everything else, she shouldn't be able to affect any other systems by accident.

  Using the circlet, she suspended inertial dampening in every section of the ship save the loading bay where Bishop would land, rerouting all the power there.

  “Port thrusters activated,” Kyralla said.

  Oona rooted her thoughts in the ship’s systems and focused on the inertial dampeners. She raised them to their normal maximum.

  “Inertial dampening in the loading bay’s now at five times normal,” Tekeru Jones announced.

  “We’re lined up,” Rosie said.

  “Now’s the time, madam.”

  Oona threw her psyche into the dampeners and willed them to power up. She used the same mental technique she had used when breaking the DNA lock on the snubbie.

  She felt an immediate response.

  It was working.

  “Dampening to seven times normal,” Tekeru Jones said. “Now eight times. Now…eight point two…eight point three…”

  “It’s not enough,” Rosie said.

  “We’ll reach him in less than a minute,” Kyralla said. “We’re going to have to change course.”

  “No!” Oona called out.

  Not picking up Bishop now was as good as leaving him for dead. He believed in her. He always had. She could do this. His life depended on it. Focusing on his sweet, awkward, brilliant presence, she put everything she had into the dampeners.

  Something within her psyche snapped, and she cried out. Her thoughts swirled. Her focus fractured. Her identity spread out, and despite their precautions, her consciousness invaded every one of the Outworld Ranger’s systems.

  She saw through every camera feed. She heard the heartbeat of the nearby universe through every sensor. The cold of space surrounded her, and cosmic rays glanced off her diamondine skin. The ship’s thoughts were hers, and she could almost touch Kyralla and Tekeru’s minds through their circlets.