The Alien Library: Space Mercenaries # 5 (Wolf Cyborg)

by Galen Wolf

  "We're lost without Severan," Atorkh pulled at his beard.

  "No, we're not," Morah said.

  Owain smiled at her, as if grateful for her intervention.

  Gaijann sighed. "Can you take care of them, Morah?"

  "Planning on helping your man-crush?"

  "If I go back quickly, we can maybe get Mehefin and if she's safe he'll come back. It might work, but I need to know I'm leaving the rest of the group in safe hands."

  The witch grinned. "My hands are safe hands?"

  Gaijann fixed her with his green eyes. "I know you can protect them. I trust you to protect them. I won't be long. Then the party will be reunited. Wait here. I'll come back to you."

  "We can't wait. We must go forward now." The Count shouted back at them.

  "Oh, I don't care about you," the assassin said. "You feel free to keep walking. It's my comrades I care about."

  The Count shook his head and turned away, but still didn't walk off.

  Morah jerked her thumb at the aristocrat. "I think he's scared of the dark. Doesn't want to wander off on his own."

  "So you'll look after them?"

  "The boy Atorkh and the pretty little healer?"

  "Yes. Of course." He was growing impatient with her smart mouth.

  "Until I get hungry. Don't be too long." She winked.

  Gaijann exhaled. "Okay. I'll be as quick as I can. Wait here?"

  "Sure, sure." The witch smiled.

  "Okay. I'm trusting you." Gaijann switched on his stealth felid and followed where Severan had already gone.

  When he was out of sight, the Count said to Morah. "So we move now?"

  "Sure. You're the man with the money," the witch answered. "Your word is my command."

  "Hey," Atorkh looked outraged. "You told Gaij, you'd wait for him here?"

  "So sue me? Anyway, you’re free to stay here on your own. I'm sure you'll be fine. At least, until the nasty lizards come to eat you up."

  Atorkh's young face creased with the conflict of either waiting for Gaijann and Severan's return or being left alone as lizard bait.

  "Come on, enough dawdling, let's go." The Count began to walk off and Morah turned to follow him, waving casually without looking back.

  Atorkh turned to Torina who was already shouldering her pack. "What do we do?"

  "Severan's made his choice. I'm making mine." She walked after the Count and Morah.

  "Oh damn," muttered Atorkh and he picked up his drone case and followed after Torina.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN: Severan's Memories

  Severan was already way ahead. He had his visor down, using its image intensifier. The intensifier grabbed any photons available and magnified them. Even so, the darkness was so heavy, he could see little. He jogged the way the lizard tracks pointed. His heavy armour shifted up and down on his back as he ran. Severan wished he was wearing the lightweight k-mesh favoured by Gaijann instead of the heavy-duty λ-Armour. Looking down at the ground, the dust was a mess of boot marks — trails where the wounded had been dragged off, scorch marks from weapon fire, gobbets of flesh and smears of congealing dark blood. There were even small pools of mercury that pulsed with their own inner rhythm as if they were still alive. The jumble of tracks made it hard to track Mehefin, but here and there, he saw the marks of her elegant feet.

  Severan told himself it was his sense of honour that made him go after Mehefin - some promise he once made to some commander, some oath he swore to a dead king to never leave a man behind. But he knew it was really because Mehefin was like Oriel - her hair, her way of speaking, the joy she brought him. Then he told himself that was bullshit too. She was nothing like Oriel. But he knew the chemistry had been stirred, his emotions had engaged for the first time in over a decade. And then guilt hit him like a hammer. That was truly why he was running after Mehefin. He had brought about Oriel's death and he would not be the cause of Mehefin's.

  The Kissag must have known he would follow of course. Severan even suspected this was a trap set to take him but he didn't care. He would get to Mehefin, whatever the cost.

  The lizards were waiting holed up behind rocks. They saw him first. To stumble into them like that was careless, not like him at all and he cursed his preoccupation with the past as the first energy beam played above his head, missing him but lighting up the darkness. Another shot. The wall behind exploded in a shower of rock shards. Then he grinned. Stupid lizards, giving their position away so soon. Severan looked through his red cyborg eye, searching for the Kissag that had shot at him. He found it peering from between two rocks, thinking it was safe, lodged there waiting for another opportunity to fire. Severan took cover while his eye focused on the creature. The eye put its energy inside the Kissag's body and superheated it causing the lizard to explode in a gasp of steam and shreds of cooked flesh. The thing burst with a tired pop, spewing its contents over the rock and filling the air with the aroma of seared meat.

  He looked for the other. He couldn't see it but he knew it was there. He knew the Kissag used human females for sex. Thoughts of what they would do to Mehefin distracted him and pulled his mind from the task of finding and killing lizards. He shook with rage, his chest tight. He remembered what the Ghazzali did to his wife and daughter as he lay on the floor bleeding and broken and unable to help. He heard it all but his muscles had been so damaged that he didn't have the mechanical strength to raise himself from the ground and pull the beasts off. He would make sure that wouldn't happen again.

  Severan stood and instantly the other Kissag shot at him. The energy beam struck Severan in the chest but the λ-armor absorbed the charge. The armor was good, but it wouldn't take many more direct hits and he didn't have Torina's healing to shore him up as he battled them. If he took too many shots now, he would die. And he couldn't afford to die. His eye found the Kissag and burned it. It screamed as its blood boiled.

  With those two dead, Severan moved on. He stood and went down the corridor in the only direction Mehefin could be. He hurried and didn't pay attention to what was watching him. Severan finally arrived back at the room with the silver pool. As he stood next to the calm surface of the silver liquid, he looked up the shaft. It receded far above, the top was impossibly high. So high, it was hard to think they had descended down it.

  He saw there was an opening on the right wall of the chamber that he couldn't remember seeing on the way down. But, sure enough, the Kissag tracks went that way. Severan put down his assault rifle on the retaining wall of the pool, but he was clumsy and he misjudged it, the rifle falling with a lazy splash into the quicksilver that received it hungrily. He grunted. It didn't matter. From now on he could use only hand and eye - the gifts given him by the Lycovores who had reconstructed him from the mess left by the Ghazzali. Gifts they grafted onto him, organs that had originally belonged to creatures that had the power of gods. Severan twisted the icon of the Blind God and vowed his hand and eye would save Mehefin.

  He walked into the dark tunnel, following the marks of many boots and he did not notice the silver pool boiling behind him.

  Severan felt the Ghazzali before he had got a hundred paces further. He felt the memories being pulled from his mind to make them and turned to see the troop of Ghazzali emerge from the darkness. He knew now they were not the real thing, merely phantasms sculpted from the living silver. If what Gaijann said was true, in some way the powers that created complexity and life infused this silver metal to produce images of things that lingered in his mind, the enemies that most preoccupied him. If this was life, it was of a kind he'd never before encountered. He stared at them. They looked alive - complexity from chaos. It was almost miraculous, except these things were hostile.

  Severan snarled. The creations of mind and mercury ran at him, lowering their spears, chanting their religious mantra - "God is great!" Severan felt what he'd felt then and he could not separate what was happening now from what happened long ago. He relived each emotion - hate, anger, fear, and love. Here they came. Their god was g
reat - a god of suffering - a god who forced all to love him or die. Severan clutched the gold medallion round his neck. He preferred his own Blind God of fate. He roared his aggression as they rushed him.

  As they came level, he grabbed their liquid forms with his cyborg hand, freezing and snapping them. Their necks rippled and hissed as they evaporated under the fire of his eye. He punched at them with his fist, instantly freezing them and making the shattered metal clang and ring against the rock. He cut through tens of them, but some of them hit him too. He felt the blood in his mouth from their fists and boots. He felt the cuts of their swords and he felt the hammer blows of their maces. The weight of them forced him down and he bowed before their onslaught. He killed scores of them — hundreds maybe, but there were so many. He roared. He would not go down as he had gone down before - to go down meant they would take his family. It meant Mehefin would die, and so he found strength, the strength that refused to admit extinction. As he returned from memory to the reality of the tunnel, he realized he was finally defeating the quicksilver warriors. Their forms lay splattered in puddles and splashes of mercury that throbbed and ran back in rivulets to the sanctuary of the silver pool. Severan yelled in his triumph, but he knew he was battered and his energy shield flickered in distress. He had suffered the blunt trauma of their attack and his flesh was bruised and sore. Still, he had defeated the silver warriors. He spat blood from his broken teeth.

  But the noise of the fight had attracted the Kissag. They came down the tunnel behind him. He turned and saw them advancing, their eyes red in the gloom, their weapons leveled. They far outnumbered him. If he had been fresh, maybe he could have taken them, but bloodied and battered as he was, he didn't stand a chance.

  The Kissag came.

  "Come and get me bitches," he snarled.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN: Morah Shows Her Quality

  Walking ahead of the group, heading deeper into the library, the Count was with Morah. Behind them tagged Torina and Atorkh. Their feet echoed on the stone floors. Atorkh stopped to turn round and watch the darkness behind them. Then scampering to catch up with Torina, he whispered, "Was this such a good idea?"

  She didn't answer, just kept walking doggedly on. She could have hurried to catch up with the Count and Morah and be part of their conversation but she chose not to. She didn't much want to talk to Atorkh either.

  "I only came because of you," Atorkh continued. "I didn't want you going with them." He jerked his thumb at the backs of Morah and the Count. "Not on your own."

  The seconds dragged by, measured out by the heavy tread of combat boots. Finally, she said, "I know. Sorry."

  "You just seem really upset."

  Again, she said nothing.

  "I guess it's about Severan," he said. "And him preferring Mehefin over you."

  Torina snapped. "It's not that at all. Now shut up and walk faster."

  He did what she said for about five minutes, but Atorkh couldn't bite back on a thought - if it entered his mind, it came out of his mouth. "But what are we even doing?" he stammered. "The Kissag are behind us." His face twisted thoughtfully. "Though probably Severan's killed most of them by now."

  Torina scowled. "We're going to do what the Count wants. Finish the mission. Leave. And then I hope I'll never see any of you again."

  Atorkh's face showed his hurt. "Hey!" he said.

  "What?"

  He hesitated. "I've always kind of liked you Torina."

  She didn't look up from the floor, just kept marching on. "I know," she said at last.

  He frowned. "Oh. I didn't realize you knew."

  She exhaled.

  "But where are we going? In here I mean. What the hell does he want? The Count."

  "Don't know. Don't care. I just want to complete this."

  "The Kissag will still be in orbit I guess. When we get out."

  "If anyone should know that, it's you. You're the comms guy. Check your systems."

  Atorkh laughed nervously. "I was just checking. I can't get any signals from the Kissag down here now. Dunno why. But that means their ships in orbit can't get signals through to their ground troops either. They keep pinging the landing party, but nothing's coming back. They're probably all dead."

  Torina glanced up at the Count and Morah who were deep in conversation.

  "I don't trust those two," she said.

  "Me neither. We should stick together."

  Out of earshot of Torina and Atorkh, the Count said, "So did you consider my offer?"

  "I did," Morah didn't break her stride.

  "And?" He half smiled.

  "It sounds okay," said the witch. "But what do I need to do for my pay? What are my key performance indicators?"

  He grunted awkwardly. "Just do what I say. But of course it's more than pay. I offer you a great deal more than that. My loyalty for one thing."

  "Given that in the short time we've been acquainted, you've sacrificed your servants and your daughter, that doesn't fill me with confidence."

  The Count laughed in a low voice. "Mehefin isn't sacrificed. She'll rejoin us soon."

  "Hmm," Morah said. "With or without Severan?"

  The Count ignored her direct question. "You know, when I begin a business venture, I'm usually looking for more than one prize."

  "A suitably opaque comment."

  He regarded her sideways. "You're clever. You're funny. I like you."

  "It doesn't matter to me whether you like me or not," Morah said coldly.

  "No, but that makes me like you more."

  She snorted. "What are these prizes?"

  "Well, firstly there's the thing we have come down here for. The thing I learned about from my researches. The thing I want."

  "And that is?"

  He gave a low laugh. "I think it's premature for me to disclose that. But I want you to help me get it."

  "I thought that's why we were here anyway."

  He looked thoughtful. "To show you I trust you, I want to let you in on something."

  "Go on."

  "I paid the Kissag to be here too as a back up."

  She paused for just a second. "I see."

  "Just they're very stupid. They were supposed to wait out of sight and follow us in."

  "But it didn't quite work out like that?"

  "No, of course I hadn't realized Severan was so aggressive."

  She laughed. "That's his thing: aggression."

  "He lets his emotions control his behavior."

  She shrugged. "I'd say that was true."

  "But you don't."

  "Oh no. I keep emotions to a minimum."

  They were a long way into the library by now. The tunnels seemed to be inclining down.

  "How long we been in here now?" shouted Atorkh from behind.

  "About ten hours," Morah called back over her shoulder.

  "And how long till we get where we're going?"

  "A few more hours," said the Count.

  "Pity we don't have Gaijann and his book," Atorkh said. "To show us the way."

  "Even without him, I know where I'm going."

  Once he had quieted Atorkh's babble, Owain's attention turned back to Morah. "I was saying there was more the one prize."

  "You were."

  "I anticipated that we would find some resistance in here."

  "And you were right."

  He grimaced. "I thought that perhaps Severan would die."

  "The only thing Severan wants is to die," Morah said. "He's just not very good at it."

  "Quite. I thought that if he died, I would be able to take his eye and hand. They're very valuable. That was the second prize."

  "A lot of people have had that idea," the witch said." It never worked out for them."

  "My concern was that he live long enough to protect me as we descended into the library. Once we reached our goal, then he was less important. But things have changed now."

  "I see that. Having the Kissag as your back up bodyguards seems to have messed up pretty wel
l."

  "Yes, but now I have another bodyguard. A more powerful one."

  "And that is?"

  "You of course."

  "Hey, hey!" Atorkh yelled.

  Torina stopped. Morah and Owain were too wrapped up in their conversation to notice what lay ahead.

  "The tunnel opens out into a cavern I think," Atorkh said.

  The Count halted and stared. Then he frowned. "I know about this place. From my research."

  "Yeah," Atorkh said. "It's like the Silver Pool; just it's like a river of it now." It was true, ahead of them flowed a river of mercury. It cut right across their path and there was no bridge.

  "How do we get across that?" Atorkh said. Beside him, Torina was looking at the river in stony silence.

  "I have an idea," said Morah. "Come here Atorkh."

  Atorkh approached her warily. Behind him Torina was looking at the witch with suspicion.

  "What?" he said.

  "Give me your hand?"

  "Why?"

  "Just do it, retard!"

  Nervously, Atorkh held out his arm. Morah took it in her right hand and with her left index finger drew a razor sharp nail across the ball of his thumb. A red line of blood welled up.

  "Ouch, that hurt!" he said.

  She laughed. "I get sick of bleeding myself as an offering. Thought the demons might like a different flavor of blood."

  She threw back her head and muttered the words of summoning. The phrases were low and resonant and came from deep in her throat. Her eyes rolled white to the back of her head as she reached the height of the conjuration. A whiff of sulfur. The air buzzed and then the demon came, materializing to their rear. Torina jumped forward as she smelled the demon's stink behind her. It stood there half in shadow, its leather wings flapping, its long nails curled and discolored. Its eyes were yellow and its fangs red. Morah spoke to it, "Belphegor - take the Count over the river." The monster shuffled forward and the Count drew back.

  "Don't worry," Morah said. "It won't bite you. Not now anyway." She spoke to the monster again in the same dark tongue she had used to summon it. It folded its arms around the Count who stood still but shuddered as it wrapped its leathery arms about him. His face was white, and he visibly gulped with fear. The demon launched itself in the air and climbed with slow flaps of its wings. When it got over the quicksilver river, it deposited the Count and then began to fly back. Once it touched down, Morah stepped up into its arms and it hugged her. Her black lips showed white fangs. Then the thing began to fly over the river with her and it alighted to place her beside the Count.