by M. K. Gibson
After Macha left, Ehawee sighed. “Never have children. My extended life has taught me that all your experiences mean nothing when rearing one who simultaneously loves and hates you.”
My stomach dropped for a moment, thinking of Jensen. “I—I’ll keep that in mind.”
“Take these,” Ehawee said, producing my gun belt from under her robe.
“Wait, you had them the whole time?”
“Yes.”
“Then why didn’t you give them to me before I jumped on the damn ship?”
Ehawee smiled. “You asked Macha, not me.”
I accepted the weapons and strapped them on. “I’ll remember that for next time.”
“I am extending this courtesy. Do not make me regret it.”
I thought about what she said. With my guns back, there was a lot more I could do. But I was several miles away from TJ and the Outrider. There was no way I could get back there before they got to me.
Ehawee knew that. “Let’s just get this done,” I said with no trace of my usual mirth.
I walked up towards the line of bison hybrids and scoped out the ship. The firelight of the wreckage along with the moonlight gave us enough light to see by. But something wasn’t right. I hated to be that guy, but it was too quiet.
“Move in,” Akecheta told the warriors.
The warriors obeyed, advancing slowly on the gunship. Thoughts of the old war woke something up in me, something else itching in the back of my mind. Seeing the bison-hybrid warriors advancing, I felt the part of my mind that was once Sgt. Lucky Doral open up. And the old sarge only saw one thing.
A trap.
“Wait!” I yelled.
“What?” Macha asked, as she came to stand next to me.
“Pull them back, pull them back now!”
“Why? The vessel is crippled.”
“That’s the problem! That thing’s military grade and modern gen. That kind of ship is built to survive crashes and still be functional!”
“Then it’s a trap,” Macha whispered. “Damn! Pull back, pull back now!”
No sooner had her words hit the air than the landscape exploded into hell.
The gunship’s turrets swiveled about, opening up with concentrated suppression fire. The blasts fired above the bison warriors, forcing them to the ground. The rear cargo door of the ship dropped open and Ahlray stepped out in all eight feet of his mechanized, man-tank glory. Beside Ahlray, Legion stood with a BEDLAM-7.
On both sides of him.
Two Legions. Identical. Both of the assassins had the same shit-eating smile. The gunship cannons stopped suddenly. The cold, dark landscape grew eerily quiet.
“Nice move with whatever EMP weapon you had,” Ahlray called out. “But the ship’s electromagnetic shielding protected most of the vital systems. We’ll be up and flying in no time. So, how about all you nice . . . people hand him over and no one else gets hurt.”
“You talk too much,” the Legion on the left said.
“No shit,” agreed the Legion on the right.
Left Legion aimed his weapon at me. “How’s it going, asshat? I’m really going to enjoy blowing your head off.”
“OK animals, time to move along,” Right Legion called out. “While I could eat a nice bison-burger, we just want him. Give him over, or things are going to get messy.”
Above, the sky rumbled. Dark clouds rolled in and a cold wind picked up. Nice. Ehawee was cooking something up to fry these idiots. I wished for a big tub of popcorn so I could sit back and enjoy the show. I threw a quick glance over my shoulder towards Ehawee.
She was not smiling. In fact, her eyes were closed and her face was twisted in . . . confusion?
Slowly, Ehawee nodded with a clenched jaw. “Take him,” she said.
Wait . . . what?
“Wait, you can’t!” I yelled, turning towards Ehawee.
“Shut up,” both Legions said in unison. Each of them fired a blast from his BEDLAM. The blasts impacted my back and shot me across the cold ground. I skittered to a stop not far from Ehawee’s feet.
Their weapons must have been set to a hard stun, since I was still breathing. Which means they wanted me alive. I looked up at the older woman, who refused to look down at me.
“Why?” I croaked.
“A wise child obeys,” she said softly, then quietly added, “even when the parents are wrong.”
Ehawee stepped over me and strode towards the trio of assassins, completely unfazed by their weapons. “Once your ship is capable of flight, you will take him and leave. Never return to The People, or you will die.”
“You’re not really in a position to negotiate,” Ahlray said. His weapon systems hummed with power. “We could wipe you all out. Please don’t force this situation to become more than it needs to be.”
“Heed my words,” Ehawee said, showing no fear.
“Mother!” Macha called out, reverting back to her human form. “No! This cannot be the way.”
“Silence, Sister,” Akecheta yelled to Macha, also resuming his form of a nude man. “Mother’s will has been spoken.”
“But these killers attacked The People! How many of our own are dead and wounded because of them? I don’t care if they take that fool,” Macha yelled, pointing at me.
“Hey!”
“But their trespasses against us cannot be overlooked!”
“Stand down, Daughter. You are unwise in situations like this,” Ehawee said with cold reservation.
“Yeah, stand down, sweet-tits,” Left Legion said with a smirk and a wink.
Ehawee’s head snapped towards Left Legion. Her staff tapped the ground once as she pointed at the assassin. Lighting crackled through the sky. A bolt struck the staff and channeled through Ehawee’s outstretched finger.
Right through Left Legion’s skull.
Like a hotdog left in a microwave too long, the assassin exploded into a spray of blood and viscera. Not waiting for a response, Ehawee’s form shifted into that of her towering eagle-woman hybrid form. She took two steps towards Ahlray and the remaining Legion.
“Do either of you have something to add to the conversation?!” the creature cried out in a screeching voice.
“No, ma’am, we do not,” Ahlray said, placing one of his big arms across Right Legion’s chest and pushing the smaller assassin back. “We will take him and leave.”
“Good,” Ehawee said.
Ehawee turned her back on the ship and leaped to the sky, crying out. “People, leave. Return home, now.”
“Come, Sister,” Akecheta said. “Obey our mother. A wise child obeys.”
“Even when they are wrong,” Macha said as she looked back at me. Shifting her form into a full bison, she joined the herd as they thundered across the frozen ground back towards their valley.
I was alone. I was cold. I was wounded. And once again, I was captured.
“Hi there,” Ahlray said. “Are you going to play nice?”
“Fuck that,” the remaining Legion said, walking up to me. “No matter what we do to him, he heals too fast. So let’s give him something to keep his body busy.”
“Wait!” I said.
“Shhh,” Legion said with a smirk. As he aimed his BEDLAM, the barrel rotated.
I threw up a body shield from my tech bracer as I reached for one of my guns. Legion fired. The bullet tore through my shield like it wasn’t there, right into my right knee.
The world exploded into pain.
I dropped my gun and clutched my knee as I screamed, “You piece of shit motherfucker!”
“Shh, almost done, sweetheart,” Legion said, firing another round into my left knee.
My vision blanked out from the pain. My jaw locked open. I couldn’t scream because I had no breath left in my body. I lay on the ground, bleeding and in shock. The Collective was pumping adrenaline through my system at an alarming rate, trying to numb the pain.
The assassin had used the same rounds on my knees that he had used back in the junkyard, sho
oting Grimm in the shoulder. Hex bullets. Special rounds that penetrate anything magical or technological.
“I’m gonna . . . fucking. . . kill the both of you,” I grunted clenched teeth.
“Goodnight Baron,” Ahlray said, bringing one of his massive cybernetic legs down onto my face, breaking my nose and knocking me into cold blackness.
Chapter Seventeen
Old Blood and Power
Flotsam Prison Processing Station
Vali’s gift, the one he rarely spoke of, was his sight. The ability to See.
Death.
Life.
The balance between the two. And the most efficient way to kill someone. Everyone he knew. Everyone he met. Vali saw the strings of their lives and knew the quickest way to cut them.
Or he could choose to let them live.
The role of the assassin was not to blindly kill, but rather to carefully select who lives. Each moment he looked upon someone, he knew their weaknesses and their strengths. A perfect gift for an assassin or general.
As leader of Midheim, he was able to turn his sight of death into visions of leadership. If given the variables, Vali could also see the most efficient solution to problems. But when Salem came, and the role of leader was taken, his sight of death returned. He tried to distort those visions, drown them in alcohol. He had to stop the never-ending horror of seeing people and knowing the perfect way to murder them.
But for this mission, he let his sight free. If he did what was needed, and bloodied Hell’s nose, then maybe the variables could change and he would see a new outcome.
Or so he hoped.
Infiltrating the shore-side complex was not difficult. The selkie-skin cloak he took from a Celtic deity allowed him to shift between his normal form and that of a seal. Under the black water, he completed the first step in his plan: getting inside Flotsam’s processing station.
Prisons were, after all, built to keep people in, not out. But more than that, the demons possessed great hubris, convinced that they were all-powerful and that nothing and no one would challenge them. Let alone a lone god with a grudge and a mind for blood, armed with weapons from lore and the divine.
Vali surfaced from the water and shifted back into his normal form. Crawling up the shoreline, he made his way towards the remnants of the underground parking garage Khurzon had described.
The duracrete structure had sustained intense structural damage during the attack. Climbing through the debris, Vali saw there was no light inside. The entire area was cast in near darkness without the overhead lights. A flicker of light down the tunnel caught his eye. No doubt workers repairing the damage.
According to Khurzon, the communications center was past the holding cells and a couple of levels above, and the processing station acted as a relay from the island prison to the outside world. For the next phase of his plan, Vali had to disable outgoing communications.
The workers were between him and his objective. If they saw him, then he would have to kill them. Any alarm raised and the entire mission would be for nothing.
But Vali also did not leave an operation to chance. Not when he could alter the battlefield to his benefit. Which was why he brought Hulidshjalmr, or as Wagner called it in Der Ring Nibelungen, Tarnhelm. The Dwarven-made war helm, which could render the wearer invisible, was essential to Vali’s tactical gear.
As he slipped the helm on, his form vanished and his perspective shifted, not unlike the cloaking technology on Taylor’s skyhopper. As the light bent around him, causing a distortion to his eyes, Vali mused that humankind’s technomancy truly did rival the power of the ancient gods. One of their portable cloakers could duplicate the same effect as Tarnhelm, or the Cap of Hades. But Vali, like many old ones, was set in his ways.
Moving quietly, Vali closed in on the workers. They were blocking the stairwell that led upwards to the holding cells. He paused with his back against the wall, waiting, watching them, looking for a pattern in their behavior to slip by them unnoticed.
“Have any you had a run at the new fish yet?” one of the of the workers, a hellion with reptilian features said.
“You kidding? Those two bitches haven’t stopped screaming at one another since they were hauled out of the water,” another worker, an average human, replied.
“The human one has all those implants and a missing hand. Just gross,” a third worker, a short, gray-tinged Sloth demoness said as she leaned against the wall, refusing to work. Perhaps a supervisor? Or perhaps just lazy.
“I have implants,” the fourth worker, a cyborg with augmentations to her arms and legs, said as she picked up a two-hundred-pound sheet of duracrete and placed it along the ruined wall.
“I stand by what I said. Gross,” the Sloth demon said with a sniff of disdain. “The beauty of your flesh marred with technology is abhorrent. Now that little Lust-Wrath hybrid slut, she has potential.”
“She’d rip you apart,” the hellion said.
“She could try,” the Sloth demoness said with a smile. “I like breaking the hard ones.”
“You won’t have much time,” the cyborg said. “As soon as the prison is patched up, they are being shipped back over. I heard they won’t make it through indoctrination this time. Mastema and Gerhardt are gonna make examples of those bitches.”
“All the reason to have fun now,” the hellion said.
Damn it, Vali thought. They weren’t moving away from the stairs. If they planned on using the prisoners they were talking about for sport, he could use the distraction to get past them.
But he wouldn’t let that happen. It didn’t matter if they were females or not. The god knew many proud shield maidens turned Valkyrie who could fight better than many men. No, he couldn’t allow this evil to persist. Period. If he truly came here to cause damage and leave a message to the demons that Löngutangar was strong, then let it begin with this filth.
“You will do nothing but die today!” Vali’s deep voice rolled forward from the darkness.
“Who said that?!” the Sloth demoness called out.
Vali unsheathed Mmaaghn Kamalu, the weapon of the Igbo war god Kamalu. The weapon glowed red in the presence of evil intent. All the workers saw was a naked red blade wavering. All Vali saw were his first victims.
“What is that?” the Hellion asked, slowly backing up the stairs.
“Your death,” Vali answered as he rushed forward.
The fiery red blade slashed in an upward arc, cutting the Sloth demoness first. Her yellow-gray flesh split along her stomach. Blood and intestines splattered onto the construction site floor.
“If you live,” Vali said to the demon lying on the floor cradling her insides, “tell them of this day.” Still invisible, he was nothing more than a disembodied deep voice.
Vali pivoted and swiped in a horizontal strike, beheading the cyborg female next. Her head fell to the ground and her body toppled over slowly.
“Holy shit!” said the human male worker with wide eyes.
Vali drew the weapon back and lunged, striking the man in the middle of his chest, piercing his heart. “You will never again refer to a woman as a bitch,” Vali whispered.
The serpent-like hellion, true to his form, moved and slithered up the stairs, using the death of his fellow workers as a distraction for him to attempt an escape. Vali gave chase.
The pursuit led into the holding cells, a long hallway beset on sides with cages and containment cells. At the far end of the hall, there was another set of stairs leading upward. The hellion, driven by fear and adrenaline, was just reaching the base of the stairs as Vali was halfway through the prison block.
Vali had to end it quickly. Still giving chase, Vali returned the sword to the sheath on his back and pulled a forearm’s length of cold iron rod from his left bracer. Holding his left arm forward for balance, Vali whipped his right arm forward. The rod elongated. Glowing golden Celtic inscriptions flared as the transformed spear flew straight and true.
Gae Assail, the spear of L
ugh, pierced the back of the hellion, pinning him to the stairs. With a mental command, the spear dislodged itself and flew across the room, returning to Vali’s hand and transforming back into the rod of cold iron.
“Hey, whoever just did that, as long you’re murdering assholes, would you mind killing this particular asshole?” a young female voice called out from Vali’s left. “You don’t even need to set me free or anything. I’d die happy knowing she went first.”
The voice belonged to a female dressed in ragged clothing. She had light brown hair that was short in the back and longer in the front. Along the sides of her head, she had various neural implants. A cyborg.
The cyborg rested her arms through the bars of her holding cell. Her left arm ended in a stump at her wrist. The wound was wrapped in dirty rags and a bandage. With her good hand, she thumbed towards the cell adjacent to hers. “Seriously, de-cloak and kill this one. If for no other reason than I get to sleep in peace.”
“If you enjoy the sight of blood, phantom, then release us both and enjoy the show,” another female voice, this one deeper and more feral, called from the second cell.
Inside Vali could see a similarly dressed Lust demon mutt. She had a flattened nose and yellow eyes that contrasted with her lavender skin. The demoness looked partly human and partly wildcat.
“Shut up,” the cyborg said.
“I will kill you.”
“You already tried, remember?”
The demoness sniffed the air like a predator, taking in the scent, trying to determine Vali’s location. As the god moved quietly past their cell, the demoness spoke again, this time with a sense of mirth in her demonic voice.
“Friend of Salem, you are too late. He is no longer in this place.”
Vali froze. She knew Salem?
“Salem?!” the cyborg called out, gripping the bar. “Salem, is that you? Let me out of here.”
“That’s not Salem,” the demoness purred. “But he knows him. He is wearing something of his; I recognize the scent.”
Vali’s hand went to his chest. Beneath the Green Armor he liberated years ago, he wore one of Salem’s t-shirts of the band Eluviete. Vali had grown fond of the music when the smuggler played some for him one evening.