by Tim Marquitz
“Oh…gack,” he said, clearly regretting his choice to step out of the room and into the line of robotic aggression.
The droid shot straight toward the pair, and a long metal arm clasped Cabe’s biceps and swung him about before he could react. Taj growled as Cabe was whipped around in a circle and slammed into the nearby wall. Plaster and wood exploded in his wake, showering Taj and kicking up a wake of powdery dust.
The bot reversed its arm and flung Cabe across the room, where he smashed into the array of food carts still out from the night before. Food and drinks and limbs went flying in a messy tangle.
“Cabe!” Taj shouted, leaping at the bot with feral intent.
“I’m fine,” he answered across the comm. “Suit absorbed the worst of it,” Cabe clarified, “but I wouldn’t—”
He didn’t get the rest out before Taj collided with the battle droid.
“—get too close to it,” he finished with a sigh.
She managed to strike a blow against its armor before one of the clawed hands, much faster than she could have imagined, snatched her off its robotic frame. Then one of the fists slammed into her ribs. Her breath spewed from her lungs, and the droid hit her again before she had a chance to react.
The fist pistoned into her side, once, twice, and made ready for a third.
Taj saw a blur of movement behind the droid, recognizing it as Dent, but she knew she couldn’t rely on him, or anyone, to save her. She had to do it herself.
So she did.
She swung her legs up and drove them hard into the battle droid’s torso, much like it had done to her with its fist. Taj powered up her kick right before she blasted it, her booted feet slamming into the metal hull with a resounding clank! The bot shot backward in the air.
“Heads up,” she called as she broke free of the droid’s grasp, realizing Dent was awful close to where she’d kicked the bot, but she didn’t need to worry.
Dent sidestepped the flying droid and added to its momentum with a blow of his own, driving the bot into the wall near where Krawg had landed earlier. The Ursite, having cleared the area just in time, stared as the droid crashed through the wall beside him and out into the hallway beyond.
That was when Taj realized it wasn’t alone.
“Bloody Rowl!” she cried out, staring at the carnage in the corridor.
Where the cluster of Heltrol guards had been stationed was now a bloody mess. The second droid was better armed and clearly deadlier. Where the first had metallic fists, the second had sharpened blades that vibrated with vicious brutality. In its clawed hands, the droid held pieces of soldiers that had been hacked away from their owners, showers of blood being flung everywhere.
“We have a problem,” Lina called out, catching sight of the second battle droid. “There’s another one.”
“No gack!” Taj replied as the first droid spun about and pushed its way back into the room, while the second continued its murder spree of the guards.
A burst of weapon fire caught it coming in, but it did little more than slow its advance. Black scorch marks welled up on its armored hull, though they didn’t seem to do more than cosmetic damage.
“That’s not good,” Lina muttered, hitting the trigger again to blast the bot once more. Bursts of energy struck it again, but the bot twisted in the air, causing the bolts to careen harmlessly off its frame, and it shot forward.
Krawg caught it before it got far.
The Ursite grabbed one of the bot’s arms and redirected it downward, driving it into the floor with a loud thud. He kicked it for good measure and yanked hard on the mechanical arm as the droid shot away from him.
There was a painful screech of metal scraping against metal, and Krawg came away with one of the robot’s arms in his hands. He waved it in the air triumphantly and roared.
The droid bounced off the wall and came away in a frenzied burst of motion. It whipped itself in a circle, spinning like a top. Its arms whirled around like shrieking blades, heading straight toward Krawg. The Ursite willed his weapon out of his suit, but Taj could tell he wouldn’t get it out and up in time.
Fortunately, Torbon landed a flying kick on the side of the battle droid’s head where there weren’t any swinging arms.
Torbon bounced away, clawing at the ceiling to control his landing, and the droid toppled sideways. Its arms struck the ground, tearing at the plush carpet, and the impact whipped it about unexpectedly.
Two more of its arms went flying as the droid crashed into the ground, its momentum yanking it suddenly sideways. It slammed into the nearby wall, and Cabe unloaded a barrage of fire into its smoking frame.
“Aim for the joints where the arms were torn out,” Taj called, doing exactly that herself.
Her first two shots struck the hull as the battle droid continued to move, trying to right itself, but her third shot hit the target dead on, slipping past the armor and doing some real damage.
Sparks hissed and flew from the joint, followed by black smoke, but the clean shot hadn’t stopped it.
It righted itself with the remaining arms and spun about, flying straight toward Taj.
“Looks like you pissed it off,” Torbon told her, running up alongside the battle droid.
“Yeah,” Taj replied, staring as the droid came at her.
Again though, Torbon inserted himself into the fight. He triggered the energy blade on his right arm and drove the sword into another of the robot’s open joints. Sparks flew again, and Torbon pushed hard, amplifying his strength with the suit’s resources.
The blade pierced the droid’s insides, and Torbon twisted his wrist upwards, letting the blade cleave through the bot’s electronics as it angled towards its head. Then as the droid twisted sideways to shake him free and minimize the damage, Torbon retracted his blade and leapt away.
The bot smoked and squeed as it spun about, twitching spasmodically. It didn’t have time to react beyond that as Dent stepped directly up to it and unloaded his weapon into a narrow slit where Torbon’s blade had pierced the armor from its inside.
The droid’s head spat sparks and went still.
A second later, the bot whistled and fell to its side, landing with a loud crash.
“Excellent work,” Cabe congratulated, but Taj knew the fight wasn’t over yet.
“Stay alert,” she warned, and sure enough, the second battle droid, apparently sensing the defeat of its partner, burst through the wall beside the door.
Its vibrating blades spattered blood across the room.
“This one’s pissed,” Torbon said, triggering his blades once more and dropping into a defensive position.
“If I were to guess,” Dent started, “I’d say the first of the droids was attempting to capture, not kill, us. This one, however…”
“Clearly has no such compunctions,” Lina finished for the AI.
“Wonderful,” Cabe muttered, raising his gun and unleashing a burst of fire before the battle droid engaged. “But there’s no point waiting on it to kill us,” he said. “Hit it.”
Bursts of energy bounced off its armored hull, doing little more than scorching the metal. It advanced with a purpose, swinging its blades at Cabe in vicious arcs. Cabe sidestepped the first two attacks but was caught by the third.
The blade sliced at him, but his armor held, stiffening in response to the attack and deflecting it, albeit barely.
Cabe stumbled back with a shout, holding his forearm.
Taj engaged the droid from the side to draw its focus, and Lina joined her. Both Furlorians hit the trigger on their weapons as fast as they could, slamming the battle droid with a barrage of fire.
But unlike the other one, which had been damaged and provided access to its internals, this one barely reacted to the onslaught. It shot forward, spinning to minimize the damage from the blasts, and flew straight toward Taj and Lina, weapons flailing.
It never reached them.
A hunk of metal flew over their heads and slammed into the streaking
droid with a massive clang that made everyone’s ears ring. Taj ducked and blinked in amazement as she watched Krawg use the fallen droid as a battering ram against its companion.
The functioning droid was knocked backwards, spinning in circles, but the crew didn’t let up.
Torbon slashed at it with his own blades, cleaving two of its arms off at the shoulders. Cabe slunk low and stepped around Torbon immediately after his attack and blasted the droid over and over up close and personal, emptying his weapon.
When Cabe willed an extra magazine out of his armor, Dent attacked.
He drove his android fist into the head of the battle droid, sending it into the wall with a crash. As it bounced back, Dent stepped to the side and struck it in the back of its head, knocking it to the floor.
The battle droid kicked and shrieked and made to rise, but Krawg had figured out the best way to take it down.
The Ursite stood above the fallen droid, its deactivated partner held over his head. He brought the other droid down on top of the still-functioning one. The room echoed with the metallic clang of their impact, shaking the floor beneath the crew’s feet.
But Krawg hadn’t finished.
He lifted the broken droid again and again, slamming it down on the other until both were nothing more than twisted heaps of metal. At last, when the second bot stopped moving, Krawg grunted and tossed his makeshift weapon aside, clearly struggling to hold it aloft any longer
“Gacking impressive,” Torbon admired, grinning at the Ursite, who panted heavily and looked ready to fall over. Torbon stepped over and supported the big guy to keep that from happening.
The bladed droid twitched and spasmed where it fell, sparks sputtering out of dozens of gashes in its armored frame. Taj came over and stared down at the bot.
“These things are tough,” she admitted, shaking her head. “It looks like it still wants to kill us.”
“I’m sure it does,” Dent confirmed, examining the fallen bot as it writhed on the ground, not yet ready to surrender.
“How are we gonna explain all this?” Lina asked, motioning toward the damaged droids, and then the wreckage outside the room in the hallway. There was blood visible everywhere out there, from the walls to the floor, and even the ceiling, where it dripped down like a crimson rain.
Cabe stuck his head out through the hole in the wall and whistled as he glanced both ways. Holding a hand over his mouth, he mumbled, “It’s pretty ugly out here.”
Taj stopped to listen and realized that she didn’t hear alarms going off anywhere inside the palace. “We might have a few minutes to make something up,” she said, calling their attention to the lack of alarm at the attack.
Once more her paranoia sparked up at the realization that nothing felt right about the attack and the lack of response on behalf of the Orgesse Clan.
Did someone there know the Furlorians weren’t who they said they were, she wondered.
Then a muffled beep sounded.
The Furlorians stopped and glanced around, looking for the source. Dent found it, pointing to the damaged droid.
“The sound’s coming from it,” he stated, leaning into take a closer look as the beep sounded again. “Why is it—” he started, then bolted upright, stiffening suddenly. “Oh dear,” he muttered.
Lina came over to stand alongside Dent and examined the droid quickly. She, too, straightened quickly and took a step away from the battle droid.
“We’ve got another problem,” the engineer announced.
By that point, Taj had realized what had alarmed both the AI and her friend. “Rowl,” she mumbled under her breath. “We need to get out of here. Now!”
“What’s going on?” Torbon asked, his head tilted as he stared at the frantic group gathered around the droid.
“Self-destruct mechanism,” Lina answered, moving away from the bot.
“Bomb!” Cabe clarified when Torbon didn’t immediately react.
That sunk in clearly.
Torbon cursed and darted forward, snatching up Lina and carrying her toward the back bedroom where they’d disabled the alarms on the window. Taj waved the rest after them, and Dent closed off the rear as the group bolted to escape.
“Trigger your camo-programs,” Taj shouted as she knocked the window open and went to climb out.
“No time for stealth!” Dent called, wrapping his arms around the whole crew and shoving them out the window.
Taj bit back a shriek at the unexpected push and found herself in midair, her crew scattered around her. Her tail jutted straight out as she fell.
Two things happened in rapid succession.
The first, the droid exploded in the room they’d just abandoned. Bursts of flame and debris sprayed from the window above, brightening the night as though it were day.
The second thing was that Taj realized her fall had slowed to the point that she settled on the ground as if she were a feather. The rest of the crew landed alongside her, clearly as surprised by the lack of impact as she was.
“What the gack?” Cabe asked, but Dent helped them to their feet as shards of glass and debris rained down over them.
“No time to explain the technical aspects of the anti-grav failsafe,” the AI told them, ushering them forward. “Run!”
The crew did just that as the rooms they’d been assigned were rattled by a second explosion—Taj subconsciously thinking that was the first bot being set off—and the entire section of the palace was engulfed in fiery red and orange flames. Black smoke filled the air around the palace, crowding out the night sky.
Several more explosions sounded inside the palace, but Taj didn’t have time to wonder what those might have been.
The guards on the wall ducked for cover and those on the ground scrambled to hide in the wake of the blasts. Taj and the crew clambered up the wall where there were no guards present, and Lina assured them that her earlier hack of the wall’s security was still in place.
They landed on the other side, all eyes on the palace, and bolted to the same alleyway Taj had fled to the first time she’d snuck out of the palace. She wouldn’t let them rest there, though, leading them up the wall and onto the roofs, having mapped out the safest spots out of sight from the street on her first journey.
None of them bothered to look back as the palace burned, but there was no doubt in Taj’s mind that there would be consequences for what had happened there.
She initially thought about having the crew return to the palace, to speak with Queen Rilan and her people to explain themselves, but her paranoia nagged at her. First the ambush in the caravan, then the attack in the palace, neither of which the Orgesse Clan had seemed to put much effort into stopping.
It was clear the clan was involved or they’d been compromised somehow. Either way, the palace wasn’t safe for the Furlorians. Someone was out to get them, but Taj gacking well wasn’t going to let anything happen to her crew under her watch.
She’d accepted this mission to prove something to the Federation and show what her crew was capable of. And though she hadn’t expected it to be so dangerous, and the General hadn’t either, things had clearly changed. Unless he’d set them up and the test continued. But the death and destruction with the two ambushes made that less likely. She could not believe the Federation would throw away anyone’s lives like they’d seen on this planet.
That took a level of malice that made her fur stand on end.
The crew was on the run from faceless enemies, and they needed to determine who the gack they were before things escalated even further. They needed someplace to hunker down and process everything, figure out a better plan of action to find and rescue Grom Hadar, and then go from there.
That in mind, Taj led them across the rooftops to Grom’s hideout, hoping it hadn’t been compromised since she’d left it.
But if it had been, she was okay with that.
Taj was in the mood to kick some more ass.
Chapter Ten
“The droids have f
ailed,” Vetrus announced, coming into the room where Skol Arduin sat, watching the image of the Orgesse Palace burning on the view screens.
“Of course they have,” he said with a sigh, leaning back in his chair. He looked away from the screens and glanced at his right-hand man. “This is becoming a habit, it appears.”
Vetrus nodded. “These Furlorians are more than they appear to be,” he said, motioning back to the monitors. One of the screens flickered and a holo of the cats fighting against the battle droids appeared, the recording having been taken from the perspective of the bots.
“But what are they?” Skol questioned his man. “Have you gotten any answers from Grom?”
“No,” Vetrus answered, not bothering to soften his answer for his boss. “He claims to know nothing of the Furlorians, nor is he claiming to have any evidence against Alshan Ra.”
Skol grunted, a sneer peeling back his upper lip. “We know both to be untrue, but Alshan Ra doesn’t want presumptions,” he told his second, “he wants confirmation. Without it, he won’t risk going after the Orgesse Clan openly. He can’t afford to have Federation operatives interfere in his business.”
“We’re unlikely to get that confirmation from Grom Hadar no matter how hard we push him,” Vetrus admitted. “The man is unexpectedly resistant to my probes. He’s more likely to die first.”
“Which means we need to focus on the Furlorians,” Skol decided. “Does our agent have eyes on them?”
Vetrus shook his head. “They slipped free of the palace during the confusion. Our operative stymied the alarms before setting the bots loose, but there was no way to confirm anything from that end until after the attack had failed. By then, they’d vanished.”
“Which means the Furlorians could be anywhere in Dulta by now.” Skol growled and slammed a fist into the arm of his chair. “Alshan Ra is going to have our heads, Vetrus. We need to find these creatures before they stumble across any of our operations and connect the dots.”
“We have the footage from the droids,” Vetrus reminded Skol. “Can we use that to draw them out perhaps? Make it public?”