by M. R. Forbes
A soldier popped out of the trees in front of her, a young man who couldn’t have been more than eighteen. He aimed his rifle at her but didn’t fire, afraid to pull the trigger. She reached him, grabbing his weapon and pushing, throwing him to the ground. She turned back with the rifle and squeezed off a few rounds, her aim intentionally high.
“Killshot, sitrep,” she said, ducking behind another tree and staying there for a moment.
“You pulled a lot of units away, but they’re filling the gaps from the blockade,” Olus said.
“Can you get to the trees?” Abbey asked.
“Affirmative. We’re on the bounce.”
“What’s the range on the jamming bot?”
“Ninety meters.”
“Don’t get too close to me. I’m trying to find that fragging Springer.”
“Roger.”
Abbey moved again, running through the foliage, pushing through large leaves and hopping over mossy roots. The fire had lessened behind her, the militia losing her in the brush or becoming more cautious as they neared other friendly forces. There was still no sign of the mech, but she knew it had to be hiding somewhere nearby, waiting to make a grand entrance.
There. She caught sight of it out of the corner of her eye, a single glint of metal reflecting light through the trees. She adjusted course, heading toward it. If she could get to the cockpit and tear it open, she could stop it before it became a problem.
She was still ten meters away when it moved, its legs carrying it sideways like a crab, through a wider access point in the jungle and back the way she had come. She came to an abrupt stop.
“Killshot, Springer is incoming. They’ve made your jamming radius.”
“Roger. I'll alter the bot for variable signal blocking. That should confuse him a bit.”
Abbey didn’t have the equipment to see the change, but the mech stopped moving almost immediately, pausing while Planetary Defense tried to adjust for the new dead zone. It would still allow them to get within two hundred meters, but in the dense cover that might as well be ten kilometers.
She sprinted after the mech again, nearly colliding with a squad of soldiers as they cleared the brush. She jumped toward the nearest one, bouncing into him with the force of the Gift, giving her the strength to knock him over in his armor. She wrenched the rifle from his hands, using it as a club and bringing the stock down to his chest. Then she dove to the ground, bullets passing overhead, pausing when she vanished behind the downed soldier. She shouted as she threw out her hand, in awe as the soldiers all toppled backward.
“Nice,” she said, getting to her feet and running once more.
The Springer was moving again, too, headed toward the defensive line. Had Captain Mann led the Rejects into the thick of the defenses?
“Queenie,” Olus said. “Turn left, one hundred meters.”
She followed the directions, covering the distance, clearing a fallen tree and dropping into a ditch on the other side. The Rejects were all waiting for her there.
“What did you do?” she asked Olus.
“It’s still trailing the jamming bot,” he replied. “They’ll have a bitch of a time sniffing us out down here.”
“We still need a ride back to Feru City.”
Olus nodded. “You were a Breaker. You know the value of patience.”
“What are you suggesting?”
“I’m working on it.”
She noticed his fingers tapping at the invisible pad embedded in his softsuit.
“That was your big plan?” Bastion said. “Jump into the middle of them and run?”
“It worked,” Abbey said.
“So-so. I thought you had training?”
“Training to infiltrate. They don’t give us much on escaping. Usually, if a Breaker gets caught, they get dead in a hurry.”
“Good point.”
“Queenie, get ready,” Olus said. “I’m directing some big traffic.”
Abbey grabbed the side of the tree and pulled herself up, peering over the top to the jungle ahead of her. The Springer was coming back again, trailed by a troop transport.
“How?” Abbey said.
“Little trick I picked up twenty, thirty years ago. Jamming bots are good for more than hiding you from scanners. If you shape the frequencies right, you can pretty much lead anyone who doesn't know any better anywhere you want them to go. And Planetary Defense on a planet like Feru is as unlikely to know any better as you can get.”
“They think they’re right behind us,” Abbey said.
“The mech is yours, DQ,” Olus said.
“DQ?”
“Demon Queen,” Benhil said. “Sounds right to me. Shit, you’d have to be a demon to knock out a mech without a mech of your own.”
“Or a suit, at least,” Pik said.
“Is that a challenge?” Abbey asked.
“Call it whatever you want, Cage,” Olus said. “That mech needs to go, or we aren’t leaving this jungle.”
“You’re a Breaker,” Benhil said. “Go break it.”
“Airi, can I borrow your sword again?” Abbey asked.
“No,” Airi replied.
“What?”
“You killed an innocent woman for no other reason than because it suited your selfish needs. You can go to Hell.”
“She was already dead,” Pik said.
“It doesn’t matter. You were going to do it. You were ready to kill someone whose only crime was getting involved with someone false. Demon Queen is a good name for you.”
Abbey stared at Airi, getting angry at her suggestion that her motives were selfish. She was trying to save the whole fragging Republic, maybe even the Outworlds, from Thraven’s control. She didn’t need to be chastised for having the guts to make the hard decision.
“We’ll talk later,” she said, furious. She turned and found the mech only twenty meters away. There was a chance it would spot them once it cleared the fallen tree.
She couldn’t afford to let that happen.
She bounced up onto the tree. The Springer’s torso turned immediately, spotting her and bringing its guns in line. She jumped as it fired, springing up high while the tree was blasted open by the heavy flechettes of the railgun. Her leap brought her over the cockpit, her arc leading her to the mech’s shoulder. She landed on it, making eye contact with the pilot as he turned, eyes wide with surprise.
She ran along the top of the mech, managing to keep her balance as she cleared the shoulder and headed for him.
The Springer dipped, forward legs dropping. Abbey started to fall, reaching out with the gift to stay upright. The back legs crouched too, and then the mech’s jump jets fired, sending it launching into the air. She looked up just in time to see a heavy branch approaching, and she threw herself from the top of the mech, reaching out and barely getting a hand on its back, her fingernails digging into the metal.
What?
She looked at her free hand. Her fingers had elongated into what looked like claws, holding her fast to the machine as it crashed into the branch, breaking it off before dropping back to the ground. She shook at the impact, her muscles wrenching, her shoulder threatening to dislocate. She pulled herself up, back to the top of the mech. It started firing, sending rounds into the brush at a target she couldn’t see.
“Any day now, DQ,” Olus shouted through the comm.
She growled as she dove forward, reaching out and getting her hands on the cockpit transparency, digging into the material and holding herself steady, inverted on top of the mech. The pilot looked terrified, and he reached for a sidearm, pointing it toward the shell.
She drew back her arm and punched, the force putting a crack in the cockpit glass. The pilot was shaking as he brought the sidearm up and started shooting.
The first three rounds were blocked by the transparency. The next three went into Abbey’s stomach. She gasped at the pain, letting it make her more angry. Then she broke through, reaching down and grabbing the pilot by the colla
r, lifting him easily in one hand. She could smell his urine as she dropped him over the side of the mech.
She maneuvered herself into the cockpit, taking the controls and turning the torso back around. She didn’t have the TCU to pick out targets, but she didn’t need it. She fired the railguns, the rounds breaking through the trees too high to hit anyone on the ground but loud and messy enough to hopefully frighten them off. Branches shattered under the assault, and she kept shooting until the noise stopped, the internally loaded flechette cartridges empty.
“Ah, frag,” she said, still feeling the pain in her stomach.
She looked down at the blood there. It was slightly thicker than normal human blood, but pitiful compared to Emily Eagan’s. She was healing slowly. Too damn slowly.
“Queenie, we’re clear,” Olus said. “The transport is ours. I’ve convinced the pilot it’s in his best interests not to mention this to the rest of PD. In fact, today may just be our lucky day.”
"I don't feel that lucky right now," she replied.
She stood up in the cockpit, climbing back to the top of the mech and looking behind it. The transport was there, Bastion standing outside and waving to her. She hopped down, landing hard. She could feel the Gift calming inside her. She put her hand on her stomach. It was still bleeding. She wasn’t invincible after all.
She stumbled over to Bastion, allowing him to take her arm and support her as they boarded the transport. Olus was telling the pilot what to tell Command to get clearance to head back to the city.
“Queenie,” Pik said. “You get shot a lot, don’t you?”
“I haven’t learned to dodge bullets yet,” Abbey replied.
“You’re still bleeding.”
“I know. It isn’t healing like it should.” She clenched her eyes, fighting the pain. “Food. I need food. Protein.”
“Or human blood,” Airi said.
“Frag off,” Abbey replied. “Food bars. Anything like that.”
The pilot turned in his seat, pointing to a storage locker on the side of the transport. “There are ration bars in there.”
“I’ve got it,” Bastion said, opening the locker. He found the bars and tore the packaging off, handing them over.
Abbey started eating, unable to chew as fast as she wanted to down the bars. No wonder blood was better. Liquid was a hell of a lot easier to ingest in a hurry. She pushed the thought away. A blender would do the same fragging thing.
The pain started to subside by the time she finished the fourth bar, and she sat in the transport in silence as it cleared the area and headed back toward the city. She wasn’t quite sure what she felt, or what she should feel. She was losing herself to this thing that had been forced into her against her will. For all the power it gave her, what it took seemed so much greater.
Her soul hadn’t been sold. It had been stolen.
Would she ever find a way to get it back?
14
“Captain Mann, we’re here.”
“Thank you, Lieutenant,” Olus said to the pilot of the transport. “You’re sure about this, son?”
“Yes, sir,” Erlan replied. “If you say there’s something foul going on, I believe it. Heck, I believed it the second we found Ms. Eagan alive on that shuttle. I never expected it to be Emily, though. She was kind to me when we visited the estate with you.”
“Snakes usually are,” Olus said.
“Where are we?” Abbey asked. Her hunger was finally satiated, her wounds finally healed. It had taken nearly the entire stock of rations and the entire ride back to Feru City for her to recover from the damage.
Time she had spent trying to rediscover herself. Or at least, to not lose herself. She looked at her fingertips again. They had gone back to normal, leaving her wondering if she had imagined the claws that had sprouted from the ends. Except she had seen them on Trin and felt them during her fight with Thraven’s assassin.
“Feru City,” Erlan said. “Planetary Defense Depot N3.”
“Planetary Defense?” Abbey said.
“Don’t worry,” Olus said. “We’re making a short stop here for equipment, and then we’re on our way.”
“Equipment?”
“You need a new softsuit,” Olus said. “And all of the supplies that come with it, among other things. Erlan’s already cleared it with Major Tow, though Tow thinks the Lieutenant is going to bring it back to the Eagan estate. They’re still looking for us there.”
Abbey glanced at the young transport driver. “Why are you helping us?”
“I knew a lot of the people that died on the ring station. I want justice.”
“How do you know you’ll get it with us?”
“I trust Captain Mann.”
“How do you know you can?”
Erlan looked at Olus. Then he shrugged. “The way I see it, Captain Mann has no skin in whatever happened to Eagan Heavyworks. Nothing to gain by its loss. Nothing to lose by getting at the truth. Director Eagan, Emily Eagan, they had something to gain or lose, depending on whose side they were on. As for you and yours?” He looked around the transport at the Rejects. “You all scare the shit out of me. But you didn’t kill me. You didn’t kill the Springer pilot when you could have. My gut tells me you’re not exactly nice individuals, but you’re fighting on the right side.”
Abbey smiled. “Have you ever considered taking the RAMPY? You might make a good Breaker.”
Erlan lit up at the compliment. “The military placement exams? Yes, ma’am. I’ve thought about it a lot. I haven’t done it, mainly because I wasn’t sure I wanted to leave Feru. Jesop’s going to be pissed when she finds out I made my decision without her.”
“You’re saving all of our lives,” Olus said. “And potentially the lives of thousands.”
“Yes, sir.”
The hatch on the side of the troop transport slid open. Erlan evacuated the driver’s seat and headed toward it, greeting the other militia members at the base of the ramp.
“Jolip, Kerns,” he said. “Did Major Tow call ahead?”
“Yeah,” one of them said. “We’ve got a standard locker ready to load up.”
“I need some other equipment. Didn’t Tow tell you?”
“He said you asked for a softsuit. You pretending you’re a hacker now?”
The other soldier laughed. “Yeah, just like he pretends he’s a pilot.”
“I am a pilot, asshole,” Erlan said. “The suit is for Sergeant Barnes. She’s the only one rated to use it, remember?”
“I’m just messing with you, Erlan. Geez. What the hell is going on over there, anyway?”
“Outworlders. They came back to finish the job. Ms. Eagan is dead.”
“What? Are you kidding?”
“Nope. They’re on the run in the jungle outside the estate, but we’ll track them down. Barnes got her hands on one of their bots, and she wants the softsuit to try to open it up and see if there’s anything it can tell us.”
“Shouldn’t we be getting the Republic military involved with this? They have ships in orbit right now. I’m sure they must have people more qualified for a job like this than we are.”
“That’s not my call,” Erlan said. “Captain Oxix ordered me to come pick up the kit, so here I am. I already cleared it with Tow, remember? Can one or both of you go get me the Barnes’ secondary loadout?”
“Yes, sir. I’ll go. Kerns, you load up the locker.”
“I’ve got the locker,” Erlan said. “Why don’t you both go?”
“Yes, sir.”
Erlan left the transport, reappearing a moment later pulling a storage locker. He left it in the narrow aisle between the seats, removed the existing locker, and replaced it with the new one. He did it quickly, glancing back toward the hatch every few seconds. If either of the soldiers tried to come on board, they wouldn’t like what they saw.
He got the old locker out of the transport only a few seconds before the two soldiers returned.
“Here you go,” one of them said.
“Thank you,” Erlan replied. “Dismissed.”
He came back onto the transport carrying a large hardcase, which he placed in front of Abbey after closing the hatch.
“That went smoother than I expected,” he said. “All of this action is new for us. You’re benefitting from the confusion.” He returned to the driver’s seat and got the vehicle moving again.
“Let’s just hope Major Tow doesn’t decide to ask Captain Oxix about all of this,” Olus said.
“He won’t,” Erlan replied. “Tow trusts me.”
“How do you feel about betraying that trust?” Bastion asked.
He had been abnormally quiet for most of the ride. All of the Rejects had. Abbey didn’t blame them. After what they had seen inside the Eagan estate? She was feeling out of sorts, too.
“For the good of the Republic, Lucifer,” Olus said.
“We seem to need to do a lot of bad stuff for the good of the Republic, don’t we, Captain?”
“We aren’t demons for nothing,” Benhil replied before Olus could answer. “We do the evil, so nobody else has to.”
Bastion laughed. “That sounds like a good tagline.” He put up his hands, spreading them as he spoke with a deep voice. “Hell’s Rejects: We do the evil, so nobody else has to.”
The comment drew a laugh from the others, all except Airi. Abbey could tell she was still sour about her decision to kill Mars Eagan, and who could blame her? She had been sent to Hell for doing something about the way her superior officer was treating her. She had suffered at his hands, and then because of her need to stop his hands. Mars had suffered, too, and her only reward was going to be death. Had been death. Maybe Pik hadn’t pulled the trigger, but Airi was right about that. He had been willing, and Abbey had given the order.
She wasn’t sorry about it. It was still the right call. Anyone in the HSOC with any combat experience would have agreed. Captain Mann agreed. They had a job to do, a shitty job that the Republic didn’t want to touch, not that they could be trusted at this point, anyway. She wished it was a decision she never had to make, but wishing didn’t make things different. Airi could learn to deal with it or not; it didn’t matter. She would follow orders, or she would be removed from the team.