Exile (Tales of the Acheron Book 3)

by Rick Partlow

  The body dropped below the parapet, and a few moments later, the battlesuit followed it…and that entire section of the wall was left undefended. His lips skinned away from his teeth, and he felt the wolf rise in his heart.

  “Everybody up!” he yelled, levering himself to his feet with the butt of his rifle, running forward. “Follow me!”

  ***

  When he’d come of age and gone to the house of his father for his naming ceremony, Kan-Ten had been surrounded by a group of newly-named boys in a corner of the courtyard and pummeled by each of them in turn. This, too, was a ceremony of sorts, though not one he’d been expecting. He’d tried to fight back, but there had been too many of them. They hadn’t seriously injured him, but it had been painful, and terrifying, and he’d thought it would never end.

  This had the same nightmarish feel to it, the bare walls and barren ground that surrounded them, blocking off the rest of the world, the sense that it would never end, that his blows were ineffectual. He knew it wasn’t true, that his strikes were just as strong as Vala-Kel’s, that his old comrade felt the same dull ache from each impact of armored fist on armored helmet or chest; but it seemed that the featureless face was unchanging, unaffected. It glowered at him like one of the Angry Spirits in his father’s stories, the reflected floodlights from the walls painting phantom images across the tinted, transparent metal.

  Kan-Ten’s head jerked to the side as a forearm slammed into his helmet, but he clutched at it, trapping the arm against his right shoulder and yanking backwards. He felt Vala-Kel go off-balance and he tried to slice upward with the vibro-cutter on his left wrist, but talons of steel clamped down on his left forearm, unyielding. They were locked together, neither willing to turn loose, each pulling the other a fraction of a step in one direction or the other. Metal pads scraped pavement with a nerve-grinding screech that seemed to echo inside his head, and Kan-Ten reared back and slammed his helmet into Vala-Kel’s with as much power as the servos would give him.

  The crown of his helmet struck in the center of the other male’s visor and this time, he could feel it sink in, could feel the crack splinter outward from the impact. Vala-Kel stumbled backwards, his hold slipping, and Kan-Ten tried to surge forward, yanking his wrist free and plunging his vibro-cutter downward. Vala-Kel interposed his suit’s right leg, bracing on the left and leaning into Kan-Ten’s chest with the footpad, then pushing off, with a blast of superheated air from his jump-jets adding to the shove.

  Kan-Ten felt himself flying backwards, and he had a brief thought to use his jets to right himself, but it was too late; he had already lost his center of balance, and when the weight of the massive suit hit the pavement, he could feel the surface crack beneath him. His head and shoulders slammed into the padding that lined the suit and the breath went out of him in a whoosh, as stars filled his vision.

  Movement. He had to move; to indulge in his pain would ensure its quick end. Vala-Kel would be righting himself, leaping for the kill stroke; he could feel it even if he couldn’t see it, playing out in his mind’s eye like the animation from an instructional text at the Warriors’ School. The suit jets would be firing; he’d be using them to boost himself off the ground, building the momentum he’d need to crack the armor with his vibro-cutter. He couldn’t use his own jets, not with his back flat on the ground, didn’t have time to roll off to the side, wouldn’t have the leverage to block the blow.

  There was one thing left to do, as obvious as it was insane; he brought his knees up to his chest, his feet outstretched. His control singlet read the motions and made the suit move in conjunction with his body, the tree-trunk legs swinging upward, the footpads meeting Vala-Kel’s heavily armored chest as it descended, sending a ringing gong echoing off the fortress walls. The reverberating tone was loud enough that it nearly drowned out the gunshot snap as his right leg broke at the calf. Kan-Ten screamed, unable to hold it in as he followed through despite the agony, and tossed Vala-Kel backwards off of him, somersaulting his own armor to land heavily on its stomach on the pavement.

  He was vaguely aware of the other battlesuit pinwheeling through the air, out of control, in an arc abruptly interrupted by the bare, grey wall of the fortress nearly five meters up. Kan-Ten was gasping, his own grunts of helpless pain drowning out the flat crump of metal on concrete, though the small part of his brain still able to concentrate noticed the impact crater in the wall, the splintered concrete sending clouds of white powder billowing outward. The suit slid down, scoring the grey with streaks of white until it landed heavily on its feet, swaying as the automatic gyros kept it upright.

  Warning lights flashed at the edges of his vision, cautions that the suit’s leg servos were badly damaged, barely operational. Kan-Ten forced himself to stand despite the agonizing pressure it put on his leg; at least the suit did the work, he just had to bear the pain.

  “Pain is the enemy of weakness,” he quoted to himself, bringing his breathing under control. “Pain is the ally of the Warrior.”

  These were the words of the Songs of the Path, the Will of the True Emperor…the words felt right, felt natural. Yet the True Emperor had deserted them; his promises were lies, his priests cowards, and his generals traitors. But perhaps truth remained truth even if couched in lies. The Imperium was dead, and it would never return; he’d known that since before the end of the war. But perhaps the Path had its own benefit even after the death of the society it had built, benefits that didn’t require another Emperor to realize.

  The steps of Kan-Ten’s suit were jerky and hesitant, mirrors of his own motions, as if the armor felt his pain as well as its own damage. He shuffled resolutely, knowing his physical body and its mechanical counterpart wouldn’t survive another clash like the last. The warnings in his helmet had gone from cautions of potential failure to portents of imminent doom in just a few steps on the strained joints.

  Vala-Kel stood stock-still, his visor flat and unreflective from the star fractures in its surface, his chest plastrons dented inward from the unbelievable force that had broken Kan-Ten’s leg even through the duralloy armor.

  I hope he hurts as much as I do.

  He hesitated in front of the motionless battlesuit, wondering if it was a trick, if Vala-Kel were waiting until he was close enough to deliver one last, debilitating blow. One step closer, yet still nothing. He reached up with the vibro-cutter on his right wrist, feeling the hum in the air as it activated, holding it just in front of Vala-Kel’s helmet.

  There was a barely-audible pop from explosive bolts, and the damaged visor abruptly fell away, along with the rest of the front half of Vala-Kel’s helmet. It was, Kan-Ten knew, part of the suit’s emergency medical systems, designed to make the wearer accessible for instant treatment if the primary chest access was damaged…which it was. Vala-Kel’s head looked absurdly tiny inside the monstrous confines of the suit, resting against the padding at the side of what was left of the helmet, gasping fitfully for breath.

  Blood caked his face from a jagged fracture in his brow ridge, but that was superficial. The foam-flecked blood that spewed from his mouth when he coughed out a breath wasn’t.

  Broken sternum, he thought clinically. Pierced lung. Maybe internal bleeding. You didn’t dent the chest armor on a battlesuit without doing nasty things to the warrior inside. He felt something close to amusement. What was it that Sandi said when she fired on a ship? Something like “this is going to hurt you worse than it hurts me.”

  Vala-Kel tried to lift his head, tried to face him.

  “You always were the best of us,” he gurgled around the blood. “Why did you leave?”

  The tone was the hurt of an abandoned child, and Kan-Ten had the sense that perhaps that was exactly what his old friend was. Kan-Ten had taken the pain of the betrayal, of the death of all they’d ever known, and run as far away as he could. Vala-Kel had tried to fight it head-on, but the Tahni no longer wanted to fight that war. It had been lost, and Vala-Kel had been lost with it.

 
He had no answer for the warrior who had once been his comrade, his brother. All he had for him was an end to the pain.

  The cutter didn’t slow as it passed through Vala-Kel’s head.

  Kan-Ten let his arm drop away, feeling the air go out of him. He tried to turn back the way he’d come, to go help his friends, but the suit locked itself into place as the servos in the hip and knee and ankle failed. If it moved another step, it would fall, and the safety systems wouldn’t let that happen.

  My part in this fight is done, he realized.

  He hit the release for the chest access hatch and waited patiently for it to descend. His leg throbbed as he slowly and carefully drew it out of the armor, keeping it straight and loose as he lowered himself to the ground. He’d have to get it treated and set once this was all over…assuming he lived, and they’d won.

  Right now, though, he needed to find the Matriarch and ensure that she was safe. He hobbled unsteadily, one hand against the wall of the Constabulary.

  “Perhaps,” he mused aloud, “I have run far enough.”

  Chapter Twenty

  Jordi Abdullah stared at the spent magazine for a moment before he tossed it to the floor. The plastic clattered spitefully, mocking him with its hollow emptiness. Jordi glanced around instinctively, but the narrow hallway was empty, deserted. He checked his chest pouches one last time and found no more spares.

  “Damn,” he said mildly, as if it were a minor inconvenience.

  He weighed the carbine in his hands, judging it for its utility as a club, then tossed it away as well. The sound it made was solid, substantial, metallic…disappointed, disdainful, telling him he’d regret leaving it behind. He should have taken the time to grab some spare magazines off of Medina’s body, he knew. Or maybe he should have tried carrying more ammo instead of that Tahni blaster that weighed thirty kilograms and only lasted two shots before it shit the bed…and wound up killing one of his own guys in the explosion from that last round that had hit the rover and basically set the whole garage on fire.

  It had looked so damn impressive though…

  He sighed and pulled his handgun from its holster. It wasn’t much against the Gauss rifles the mercenary troops were carrying, but maybe he could scavenge a Tahni KE-gun off of one of his own soldiers. There were plenty of them lying around. The mercenaries Hollande had brought in had bulldozed through them, illustrating, he thought bitterly, the difference between trained soldiers and hired thugs.

  “It’s your own fault, you stupid motherfucker.”

  His head snapped around to where the voice had seemed to originate, the gun moving with it, but there was no one in the darkened hallway. He turned back the way he’d been walking and saw his father standing there, arms crossed over his chest. He was a gaunt, sharp-edged man with a face like a hatchet blade, crisscrossed by a network of scars partially hidden by his thickly-curled dark beard. His eyes were dead black, as dead as they’d been the night Jordi had put a bullet through his head and taken over La Sombra.

  Jordi felt at the drug patch he’d left on his neck.

  Too much, he thought, picking at it, trying to pull it free. I did too much.

  “You think it’s the drugs, you little shit?” He laughed, circling around Jordi, shadowed eyes never seeming to move. “You think I need the drugs to get to you?”

  Jordi’s fingers tightened on the grip of his pistol, but he didn’t bother to point it at the image of Malcolm Abdullah. He was an apparition, a ghost, already dead once.

  “You think you could have done better, you worthless old fuck?” he demanded, knowing the futility of the question but asking it anyway. “You think you could have taken on all the other cartels at once and come out on top?”

  “It wasn’t the cartels that brought you down, little man.” Jordi felt himself bristle at that, just like old times. He’d always hated when his father had called him “little man.” “It was that bitch Hollande. You fucked up when you didn’t kill her.”

  “I know I did.” The admission hurt less since he knew he was really making it to himself. “But what the hell can I do about it now?” He shook his head. “It’s all over.”

  “She’s out there somewhere, boy.” The old man leered, baring yellowed, chipped teeth. “Go make sure she doesn’t live to brag about how she got the best of you. Carve your fucking initials into her corpse.”

  Jordi grinned at the thought, vaguely realizing that if anyone was watching him, they’d think his expression was insane.

  “Boss?”

  Now he did raise his pistol, finger tightening towards the trigger pad, but hesitated when he saw that the half-dozen armed and armored figures approaching down the hallway were his people. The one in the lead was a woman, her hair twisted into twin braids, a holographic tattoo of storm clouds running across her left cheek. Her name was…

  “Kessel.” He frowned, lowering his weapon. “Where did you come from?”

  “I think everyone else is dead, boss,” she said hesitantly, trying not to point the muzzle of her carbine at him. The others seemed afraid to speak. “We were trying to stay clear of those mercs, hoping they’d give us a way out.” She looked around uncertainly. “Is this a way out?”

  Jordi looked behind him. The apparition of his father was gone, though it seemed less that he’d vanished and more that he’d simply stepped away.

  “Yeah,” he told her, nodding slowly. “This is the way out.” He motioned down the hallway. “Come with me.”

  ***

  Ash hurt everywhere. The g-forces battered him from all sides, overwhelming the comforting cushion of the acceleration couch, overwhelming the sensory separation of the interface, too insistent to be ignored. There was the laser again, playing across his starboard wing, and he had to roll into a spin to keep it from focusing long enough to do serious damage.

  Wincing in anticipation, he yanked back the nose, climbing into a barrel roll that took him to the edge of the atmosphere, hoping he could, at last, get the shuttle off his tail. It clung, it latched, a remora on a shark, just too damned maneuverable here in the soup for him to shake it. The planet passed by beneath them, a curved stretch of ruddy brown, deep blue and pale green, nearly forgotten in its irrelevance, a backdrop to the chase, and nothing else. The star Belenus was up where they were, and he vaguely realized that sunrise had been hours away when the fight had started.

  He had to get back; he’d let the shuttle drag him away from the battlefield, drag him away from any possible air support. God only knew what was happening back in Gennich, and no one was answering their comms.

  Well, there’s one thing I haven’t tried yet, he mused, a rueful grin twisting across his face in what felt more like a grimace.

  He threw the Acheron into a dive, throttling back slightly, letting the shuttle close the distance between them to less than a kilometer. The shuttle opened fire with its jury-rigged mining laser, and yellow warning lights flashed in the perimeter of his perceptions as the rear armor began to heat up. He checked his altitude: five kilometers and descending fast. He sucked in a breath, then cut the engines and felt his stomach flip-flop at the sudden sensation of free-falling.

  He didn’t hesitate; the other pilot was good, better than most of Jordi’s amateur pilot; and if he waited, this guy would twig to it quick. A combination of control surfaces and the judicious use of maneuvering thrusters spun the ship around lengthwise, then a burst of attitude jets to keep it stable, falling backwards, for just long enough to line up the targeting reticle over the nose of the shuttle. The bird was already moving, already trying to pull out of the dive, the pilot figuring out the maneuver faster than he’d thought.

  The proton cannon fired. The shuttle was less than three hundred meters away, nearly point-blank for the ship-to-ship weapon, and when the blast hit, the bird simply ceased to be. The explosion was so close it whited out the cameras, filling his view with the light of a second sun; the shock wave hit a moment after, and suddenly, the Acheron wasn’t stable anymo
re, wasn’t just falling. It was spinning, a flat spin that threw Ash forward against his restraints with g-forces that would have made him pass out immediately without the buffer of the interface; even with it, he had to scratch and claw at consciousness.

  Belly jets…he had the thought and they fired, together with the bow and stern maneuvering thrusters, and the ship groaned and grumbled and roared as the spin turned into an unsteady hover, only 800 meters above a rugged mountain range basking in the golden light of dawn. Caution lights were flashing again, warning him of structural strain that would need to be repaired before any more high-g maneuvers, warning him of possible stress to the vectored thrust nozzles.

  The Acheron wasn’t indestructible, even though they treated her like she was.

  “Yeah, yeah, girl, I know,” he mumbled, spinning the cutter end for end. “Later.”

  Acceleration, one last time. He ran away from the dawn, chasing the night.

  ***

  “Poor son of a bitch,” Singh muttered. Fontenot nodded silent agreement.

  It had taken them a while to make their way back to the garage, and the fires had mostly burned out, the smoke clearing through the gaping rent in the garage door. Abel Freeman’s corpse was sprawled not too far from that door, though the only way they could identify him was from his clothes. His head was gone, smashed to jelly, and Fontenot wondered what could have done it…until she noticed what was missing from the garage floor.