Kill the Queen! (Chaos of the Covenant Book 4)

by M. R. Forbes

  “Dead end,” she said. “Now what?”

  “Not a dead end,” Olus replied.

  He kept running to the windows. They were above the clouds. The sun was shining down on them. The top of the left tower was visible a few hundred meters away.

  “You can’t be serious,” Pahaliah said.

  Olus turned and smiled at her. “You’re an angel, aren’t you?”

  “Those are misappropriated myths and legends,” she replied.

  “We’ll see.”

  He backed up a few steps, firing into the window. The projectile was caught and held by the heavy transparency until it exploded a second later.

  Wind immediately began to flow through the hole, whistling as it bypassed the jagged material left behind.

  The soldiers moved into the room behind them.

  “Get down,” Olus said, dragging Pahaliah with him as they opened fire.

  Their rounds slammed into the weakened glass behind them, breaking it apart more, and giving them a bigger gap to move through.

  A heavy whipping noise joined the powerful breeze. Olus recognized it immediately.

  “No hesitation,” he said.

  “No hesitation,” Pahaliah agreed.

  They surged to their feet, charging the open window.

  9

  Olus reached down, grabbing the small hooks on the sides of the suit, looping them around his fingers and pulling them up and out, spreading the gossamer wings. Then he pushed off, diving into the open space of the window right behind Pahaliah.

  He felt the bullets hitting him. One in the leg, one in the arm, one in the back. He grunted in pain, clenching his jaw and forcing himself to stay focused. The rooftop of the second tower was ahead of them, easily within reach.

  A gunship rose out of the mist below them, between the three buildings. It was angled and heavy looking, with a pair of turrets top and bottom and missiles hanging from racks along stubby wings. It was overkill for normal security, but this wasn’t normal security.

  They fell, kept from plummeting by the suits but still descending. The rooftop of the second tower was getting closer, and Pahaliah dove toward it, practiced in the use of the suit despite her earlier complaint. Olus trailed behind her, still in pain but feeling the effects of the injuries subsiding.

  The gunship started to turn, the cannons swiveling to track the falling Seraph.

  “No,” Olus cursed.

  He rotated, losing his glide to fire down at the gunship. His rounds hit the side of it, pitting the armor and throwing the pilot from his aim. The cannons fired, sending bursts of plasma past Pahaliah.

  Olus rolled over, spreading his arms again and straightening out. He saw Pahaliah reach the rooftop, rolling on her shoulder and coming up, bouncing once into the air, coming down on her hands and feet and sliding to a stop. He was off-course, wide of the tower.

  He looked back, finding the gunship. It was turning back toward Pahaliah, and it fired again, more plasma bursts hissing toward the rooftop. Pahaliah bounced away from them, toward the emergency access door at the corner.

  Olus spun in the air. The gunship was still below him, tracking her. It was also closer to the tower than he was. He adjusted his angle, measuring the distance. He had to have faith in the Blood. It was the only thing that might keep him from dying.

  He glided through the air, headed for the gunship. The craft’s systems had identified his trajectory, and now the pilot was turning it to face him, bringing the turrets in his direction. Good. He had been hoping the pilot would react that way. He breathed in, tucking his arms and releasing the loops, allowing the wings to retract. Then he raised his arms again, getting them up and over his head, pointing the gun forward.

  They both fired at the same time. Plasma burned past Olus, close enough that he could feel the heat of it on his face. His return volley was true, two rounds that hit the plated transparency at the front of the gunship, sinking in and exploding, once more weakening the structure.

  Barely a second passed. Olus closed his eyes as he hit the front of the gunship, a human missile that slammed into the damaged forward viewport. He could feel his arms break at the impact, folding back and protecting his head as he continued through, hitting the back of the cockpit hard on his back.

  He rolled onto the floor. The pilot fought to recover beside him, his face cut by the imploding glass. He reached for a sidearm, his surprise at the insane maneuver slowing his reaction.

  Olus rolled over. His arms were useless. Shattered, though he could feel the Blood flowing warmly through them, putting them back together. He pushed forward with his legs, bringing them up and wrapping them around the pilot’s neck, using the strength of them to hold tight. The pilot choked, the gunship rocking unsteadily before leveling off automatically at the loss of activity on the controls. Olus kept the pressure on the pilot, choking him. The pilot’s hand made it to his weapon, and he began withdrawing it from its holster.

  It was only halfway out when he stopped moving.

  Olus let go, rolling over and pushing himself to his feet. His body was screaming out in pain, and at the same time felt warm and alive. He could move his left arm again, and he looked over to see it straightening inside the seraphsuit, which had survived the strike. Amazing.

  He used his knee to shove the pilot from his seat, replacing him there. The gunship’s onboard systems wouldn’t allow it to crash, so it was hovering in position, waiting for input. He sat there for a few seconds until bullets started raining in from the soldiers in the tower, standing at the broken window. He reached out, taking the controls, the motion still painful but getting less so with every passing second. He swiveled the gunship, diving away from them and toward the rooftop of the second tower.

  Pahaliah was waiting there as he brought the ship to the side of the building and opened the entry hatch on the side. She vaulted the gap, landing inside.

  “That was the fragging stupidest thing I’ve ever seen anyone do,” she said.

  “It worked,” he replied.

  “Now what?”

  “Now we have our way down. Hang on.”

  He moved the gunship away from the building, pointing the nose down and diving. They screamed through the clouds while the HUD began lighting up with what it believed were friendlies.

  “We’ll ditch the gunship and disappear,” Olus said.

  “Roger. Captain, I fragged things up. I’m sorry.”

  “Always look forward,” he replied. “Learn from your mistakes.”

  “Yes, sir,” she replied.

  They came out of the mist a few dozen meters above the topmost air lane. He eyeballed two of the new targets, matching gunships that were clearing a path in the traffic to get up to their level. The need to dislocate the cars was giving them time they desperately needed to escape.

  “There,” Olus said, finding another building in the distance. “Residential.” The traffic was winding around it.

  He guided the gunship to the skyscraper, hovering over it, joining Pahaliah at the rear hatch. They jumped fifteen meters to the rooftop, landing and running to the access stairwell. They went inside as the first of the trailing ships reached them.

  “We’re not out of this yet,” she said.

  “Almost.”

  He brought her down two flights of steps, and then into the hallway. He paused at each of the doors, reaching for the control panels and quickly tapping on them.

  “What are you doing?” she asked.

  “Every residential security panel made in the last twenty years has backdoor access for law enforcement. As the Director of the OSI, I had clearance to all of the codes.”

  “And you know them all?”

  “Most of them. I’ve had twenty years to learn. It’s a government thing. They don’t change often.” He smiled. “The key is to find an apartment that suits us before anyone catches up.”

  He moved to the next panel, entering the code.

  “What does it tell you?”


  “Names and ages of occupants, the last week’s worth of arrivals and departures. Basic info, but potentially useful in an investigation. And of course, direct security bypass.”

  “Isn’t that illegal?”

  “Technically without a warrant, it is. But you would be surprised how often federal agents go into locations to confirm probable cause before submitting the application. It saves a lot of time and money.”

  It took him four more tries before he found an apartment occupied by a couple. He triggered the bypass, and the door slid open, allowing them inside.

  He entered the apartment. Pahaliah trailed behind him, and he closed the door. “Take off your suit.”

  “What?”

  He began removing his, unlatching the invisible hooks that sealed it. “Grow up, Pali. We’re civilians in our own home. Not fugitives. Not Watchers. We can’t hang around in these.”

  She nodded, her face flushing. She started taking off her suit. “Will they know we never left the building?”

  “With certainty? I doubt it. Will they search it? Likely. It will take them hours, and if I can’t sneak us out around them, I don’t deserve my reputation.”

  “What do you think of the Blood of the Shard?” she asked, looking at his naked body as he finished removing the seraphsuit.

  He looked down at himself. There was dried blood on his arms and legs, but he was whole. Fully healed. Hungry. “I told Abbey to make the most of the Nephilim’s Gift. I intend to do the same.”

  “You’re off to a good start.”

  He pulled the mask off his head and dropped it on top of his suit. “I’m going to jump in the cleanser to get the blood off. See if the residents have clothes that will fit, bags to stash the suits in, and a terminal to review the data we recovered. We only have two hours.”

  “Yes, sir. What if the people who really live here come back?”

  “That will be the least of our problems, but I hope for their sake they don’t.”

  10

  Abbey paused at the junction between four separate corridors. Every time she came across a connection like this one she had to slow down, to check every direction and make sure she was in the clear.

  She had been wandering the Seraphim complex for what felt like hours, working to evade the enemy soldiers that had been deployed into the area. She could hear them moving in the hallways around her, and she knew they were setting checkpoints and creating a perimeter that she couldn’t cross, one that would be shrinking as time wore on.

  She peered down the left corridor, pulling her head back at the sight of a scanning bot. It was floating in the center of the hallway, green lasers spreading all around it and taking measurements of the space. The data it collected would be aggregated with other bots and converted into a three-dimensional map of the complex, the soldiers’ TCUs synced and updated, their positions triangulated such that the areas they weren’t covering were obvious and her estimated location clear.

  In other words, the longer she stayed down here, the more fragged she became.

  She raised her rifle, taking aim and firing a single shot. It hit the bot, knocking it out of the air.

  She smiled, crossing the corridor and heading away. Whoever was controlling the bot would know it had gone offline and would be sending someone to check it out. She considered waiting, to try to thin the herd a little bit more. They had gotten wise after her first few ambushes, reorganizing their groups into a minimum of two squads each.

  She went a few more meters before slowing to a stop. The night vision in the cowl allowed her to see ten meters ahead, and now she could tell that the path forward was blocked, cut off in a collapse that had probably happened hundreds of years ago, if not more. Was this the reason the Seraphim had abandoned this part of the complex and had excavated a new one into the side of the crater? She had figured there must be more to the compound than what she had seen. Nearly everything so far had been private quarters. Small rooms, sometimes a few adjoining small rooms. No meeting areas. No formal spaces. Not even a mess hall. Was it behind the cave-in?

  She lingered for a moment. She could use the Gift to move the debris aside and discover for herself what was beyond. If she put the stones back in place, she could hide down there indefinitely.

  Hiding wasn’t her ultimate goal. She wanted to get out, not go deeper. Then again, there was something about the stairs that was drawing her curiosity. Why had they been covered when nothing else in the complex was? Was it an accident, or intentional? If it was intentional, why had the Seraphim done it?

  A light appeared, bleeding into the intersection where she had downed the bot. More appeared, crossing over one another. It seemed as though one of the entire companies was converging on the spot.

  She couldn’t go back that way, and there was nowhere else to go. Her mind had been made up for her.

  She faced the dirt and stone that had covered the corridor ahead. She needed it to move. To get out of her fragging way. She got angry at it, furious that it was blocking her and slowing her down. She held her hand out toward it, and it all started to move, spreading aside at her will.

  The activity drew the attention of the soldiers. The light intensified as they moved closer, coming her way.

  Abbey approached the mess of stone and dirt, shifting it aside until she could see the corridor continue.

  Except it wasn’t more hallway. She could see the back of the wall behind it, sinking out of view.

  She had found a stairwell.

  The first soldier turned the corner, the beam of his light shooting past her and onto the steps, abnormally bright. It reminded Abbey of the white light she had seen before. The same one she had seen on the Devastator, and again in the Brimstone’s engine room.

  The one Charmeine had suggested was coming from the dead Shard.

  What the frag?

  She hesitated, almost too long. She turned just in time to see the muzzle flash and feel something hit her in the chest. She stumbled back a step, infinitely more angry at being shot. Three more rounds followed the first, digging into her flesh and rocking her backward.

  More soldiers poured around the corner, aligning themselves and bringing their weapons to bear. She recovered from the first attack, her body healing as she spread her hands wide, her sudden fury allowing her to easily move the stone she had dislodged.

  The activity caused the soldiers to hesitate, and she used the hesitation, cursing as she threw the hundreds of kilos of rock and dirt forward at them in a stream. They shouted as they tried to avoid the internal avalanche, some of them making it clear before the mass battered them, crushing at least two of the soldiers under the weight and forcing the others to flee.

  It was over in seconds. The mound of detritus that had been blocking the stairs had been relocated; a new barrier created further ahead. It would take Thraven’s forces time to move it out of the way and come after her again if they still wanted to. Through her anger, she vaguely hoped they would realize she was no easy kill and decide to let it be.

  Yeah, right. Not when they had to answer to the Gloritant. They would clear the blockade, and then they would be coming again.

  That was fine with her. In the meantime, she had a fresh desire to find out what this place was, and a niggling feeling that her presence here wasn’t completely coincidental.

  She headed to the steps. They went down a flight before changing direction, giving her only a slim glimpse of what might be ahead, and no idea how far they might descend.

  If there was anything worth finding down here, she was going to find it.

  11

  Abbey had no idea how large the Seraphim complex was until she started descending the stairs. She had expected a second subterranean floor. Maybe a third. Instead, she followed the steps down nearly fifty floors, continuing so far for so long that she could hardly believe what Jequn had told them about the race’s numbers. There must have been thousands of them living here at one time.

  Either that or all of the
extra space was needed for something else.

  It was her curiosity that drove her. The need to know. The same compulsion that had led her to Gradin and ultimately brought her here. This place was a mystery to her, and she wanted to figure it out.

  She stopped going down when she reached the bottom, when the stairs finally ended, spilling out into yet another long, dark corridor. The cowl enabled her to see in the dark, in grainy grayscale. She was quick to discover she wasn’t alone. Insects scurried away at her passing, some of them nearly as large as her head, but all of them afraid of the alien intruder. She had never harbored any of the unnatural fears a lot of individuals seemed to carry with them. Bugs didn’t bother her. The dark didn’t bother her. The small spaces didn’t bother her. Besides, with the Gift, she felt like she could get out of most situations.

  The size of the complex was also something she could use. Even once Thraven’s soldiers got through the barrier, they would have a lot more area to search to find her. The only thing worrying her was that the Seraphim had left secrets here, and they were secrets that she wanted to be the one to find. Would it be dangerous for the enemy to be in here, poking around?

  She paused at the base of the steps, looking down at her demonsuit. She had been shot four times, and while the wounds had healed, the rounds had left small holes behind. The idea of it made her angry. Charmeine had given her the suit, and she had already damaged it?

  “You can knit a fragging body back together, but not a bit of synthetic cloth and some artificial musculature?” Abbey said.

  She put her hand up over the holes. Maybe it was a trivial use of the Gift, but right now she didn’t care. She could feel it moving through her hand, and the area warming up. She pulled her hand away once the warm feeling had subsided, pleased to see the material was as whole again as she was.