by M. R. Forbes
“More complicated than the Colonel being killed?” Violent said.
“We don’t know he’s dead.”
“Either way, we aren’t in-”
“Not helping,” Tibor said, cutting her off. “Drive the car.”
Her qi flashed red, but it vanished back into a scared, focused state.
“I’m sorry, Witchy,” Tibor said. “I promised the Colonel I would follow his orders. He ordered me to leave him and save you.”
“I know,” Hayley replied. “I don’t blame you. We did what we had to do. We aren’t out of this yet, not by a long shot. We don’t even know if the Nephilim already found the Quasar. They might be waiting for us.”
“I don’t think so,” Violent said. “I tracked her on a secondary sensor network the Nephilim probably don’t know about. It was used by the resistance long before they showed up.”
“Before they showed up?” Hayley said.
“The miners were getting upset at the way the Corporation was treating them. They started planning a rebellion. The secondary array is embedded in the stream broadcast tower. It’s software-based. Only a few of the people here know it exists. My father was part of the original resistance.”
“Doesn’t seem like much of a resistance,” Tibor said. “There’s you, and then there’s, well - you.”
Her qi darkened. “There used to be more. But you and your kind scared most of them away. They would rather live under the Nephilim’s thumb than die free.”
“So you’re saying they didn’t track the Quasar down?” Hayley said. “Wouldn’t regular planetary control systems see her coming in?”
“The ship was in pieces,” Violent said, lowering her voice. “Planetary control’s filters only monitor larger vessels. The rebels wanted to monitor transports the Corporation didn’t care to pay attention to. The return on the investment wasn’t profitable, and when you have supercomputers running calculations down to the last decimal, some things get omitted. So the control sensors may have picked it up, but it’s unlikely they reported it. Unless someone is manually scrubbing the records, they won’t have noticed.”
“Good for us that the Corporation was sloppy and/or cheap,” Tibor said.
“Definitely,” Violent agreed.
“You didn’t tell me before the ship was in pieces,” Hayley said. “What the hell are we even going back to?”
“I told you I wasn’t sure what was left. But there was a large enough signature to suggest something was intact.”
Hayley leaned back against the seat. Her emotions were threatening to overpower her again. She took a few strong breaths to keep them back.
“How long until we get there?”
“Another twenty minutes or so. We’re about five hundred kilometers out from Kelvar City, and three hundred from the Pit.”
“Nobody saw us leave?”
“I don’t think so. It’s possible they put a tracker on my car, but that would have taken a lot of foresight.”
“Set us down,” Hayley said. “We need to check.”
“Here?” Violent said.
“I don’t see a rest stop around anywhere, do you?”
Tibor laughed.
Violent pulled back on the throttle. The shuddering and whining vanished as the racer touched down.
Tibor and Violent jumped out. Hayley stayed in the back, watching them. Violent covered the car quickly, double-checking where Tibor looked. She went as far as to open the engine compartments and check the electronics. It took a few minutes, minutes she wished they didn’t have to spend looking for trackers. Better safe than sorry.
Violent came back to the open driver’s door, holding a small silver disc in her hand. A yellow light was flashing on it.
“Fragging bastards,” she said. “At least we’re still a couple of hundred klicks out. Good call, Witchy.”
Her naniates flared when she crushed the device in her hand, dropping the dust out onto the dry ground.
She and Tibor climbed back into the car. The whining and vibrating resumed as they lifted off and sped away once more.
“Tibor,” Hayley said. “I wanted to ask you what you know about the experiments they did on you. About how they made you bigger and stronger. I don’t see any naniates in you.”
“I was wondering when you would get to that,” Tibor said, looking back at her. “I guess we’ve been a little busy.” He paused. Hesitant. Why? “You don’t see them because they aren’t there. Not in the way you’re accustomed. That’s part of the research. The most important part. The naniates are… I don’t know. Embedded in us? Injected into our bones, not our blood. Trapped, and programmed to do a specific thing. Their intelligence has been overridden. Their brains are disconnected. Don’t ask me how. I don’t know. The point is, it isn’t me and the naniates as two separate things. We’re one thing. That’s why it hurts so damn much to change. They don’t like being slaves. Hell, I don’t blame them. But you can’t take them out. Not without killing me.”
Hayley sat back, considering his words. If she called out to the embedded naniates, would they come?
Maybe she had the means to kill White after all.
30
The debris field started a dozen kilometers before they reached the largest remaining part of the Quasar. Hayley couldn’t see it, save for the small amounts of energy still dissipating from the components, but Tibor described it to her as best he could, filling in a role that her visor AI could play when requested, but with a lot more emotion than Gant was able to provide.
She was thankful for each word he spoke because he was filling in the blanks that her other senses couldn’t. At the same time, the words cut into her heart in a slice by slice account of the ambush that had already taken the lives of too many Riders.
“There it is,” Tibor said for her benefit. “The good news is it looks like the main cage is intact. The debris was mostly extrusions. Atmospheric stabilizers, armor plating, that sort of thing.”
“What’s the bad news?” Hayley asked.
“She’s been sitting there for hours, and there’s no sign of movement around her.”
Hayley’s jaw clenched on its own. No movement, no survivors. She could only hope that wasn’t true. Maybe the Riders were staying hidden, waiting to ambush whoever came to claim the ship?
“Bring us down,” she said.
“Already doing it,” Violent replied.
The racer touched down a few seconds later. Violent and Tibor climbed out. Then Tibor turned back to help her down.
“Can you see it?” he asked.
Hayley nodded. Their qi was filtering the area for her, the colors of their life energy helping to stabilize her world. Maybe it would have been better if it hadn’t?
There was no doubt left that the downed ship was the Quasar. She would recognize the sleek, ovoid shape and the blunt nose no matter how scuffed and dented it became.
Her heart sank a little more. It was one thing to be expecting bad news. It was another to confirm it.
She walked across the hard, dry ground toward the ship, with Tibor remaining beside her. The Quasar wasn’t buried deep in the earth, which meant she had some measure of power and someone at the controls when she crashed. It was embedded enough it was obvious the landing wasn’t a soft one.
The ship’s viewport was small, and so covered by debris she couldn’t see through it to tell if anyone was there. She continued ahead, making her way around the side toward one of the interlocks. She stopped in front of it. If the Riders were in there, waiting to attack, she wanted to give them time to recognize her.
The hatch didn’t open on its own. The Riders didn’t rush out to greet her. Either the cameras were all dead, or they were. She didn’t see any energy from the ship’s reactor, but there was a small trickle of power from the battery, visible as a slight stream of yellow-white dust along the bottom of the craft.
“Why don’t you stay out here?” Tibor said. “I can go in, check things out.”
“No,” Hayley replied. “I’m going in. But I will need your help.”
“You have it.”
“Violent, stay out here and keep a lookout,” Hayley said.
“Okay,” Violent replied. “If I need to get your attention, I’ll blast my stereo.”
“Whatever works.”
She took the last two steps to the interlock. There was a shielded panel beside it, and she pulled it open, revealing the manual controls beneath. She flipped the toggle. The door whined and rattled, but didn’t open.
“Violent, wait,” Hayley said, calling the woman back. “Can you get the door?”
“Sure,” Violent replied. She put her hand to it, pressing the side and pulling up. Her naniates flared through her body, and she lifted the hatch up, opening the inside.
Hayley turned away, leaning over and coughing, the smell that escaped the ship causing her to vomit as tears welled in her eyes. Bile spilled from her mouth to the ground, and she couldn’t hold back her sadness.
It was the smell of death.
Tibor put his arm around her shoulder, offering whatever comfort he could while she finished puking. She remained hunched over, her entire body on fire. This was her worst nightmare realized.
“There’s nothing for us here,” Tibor said.
“No,” Hayley countered. “Regardless of anything else, I need the damn med-bot. And there may be survivors. They might be injured. I can heal them.”
She forced herself back upright. The smell was lessening now that air was getting into the ship, but it was still awful. She didn’t care. If anyone were alive, she would bring them back.
She climbed in. There were matching interlocks on both the port and starboard side, leading to the third of three decks in the ship’s main fuselage. The armory was directly across from the interlock and the corridor that split the sides. Medical was to the left, next to the armory. A ladder ascended from there, connecting the bottom level to the other two decks of the craft.
She entered the corridor, ignoring the armory and turning to the left, heading directly to medical. From the inside, there was little indication the ship had crashed. Everything was already stowed for potential evasive maneuvers, such that no amount of force would dislodge it. It was peaceful, like a regular slice of time while they traveled in FTL.
Or like a tomb.
She shuddered at the thought, reaching the open access door to medical. She was terrified to look inside, but she had to. She turned her head, colors sweeping across the landscape of the room, the shadows giving her detail.
A body was slumped on the floor. It had no qi. No life force. Without it, she didn’t have enough detail to recognize the deceased on her own. Not when she didn’t already have an idea who it might be.
Of course, she did have an idea of who it might be. That’s what she was most afraid of.
“Tibor, what do they look like?” she asked.
She could have asked Gant who it was, but she had a living, breathing, feeling individual with her. She preferred that to the snarky AI.
“A human woman,” Tibor said, causing her heart to thump faster and harder. “Dark skin. Pretty face.” There were three Riders who Hayley thought matched that part of the description.
“Does she have tattoos like mine?”
Her voice broke when she asked. Only one of the other Riders had tattoos like hers.
Tibor didn’t respond right away. She swung her head in his direction. She knew the answer by the color of his qi.
“Fragging bastards,” she said softly, her whole body starting to shake. “Fragging bastards.”
The tears came. She couldn’t stop them. Being a mercenary, being a soldier, was the opposite of safe, but this was just too damn much. Another confirmation that broke her heart.
Tibor’s arms wrapped around her. He pulled her in, holding her while she cried. In the back of her mind, she wondered how out of all of the species in the galaxy, she had wound up being comforted by a Goreshin. One of the enemy.
It was the last thing she would have ever expected.
Well, next to last.
The Quasar crashed, Nibia dead, Quark either captured or dead and her as the only survivor? She never, ever, in a million years would have expected that.
But it seemed that’s exactly where she was.
31
They didn’t have a lot of time.
Even with the tracker destroyed, the Nephilim would know what direction they had gone, and they would be able to reduce the search radius by hundreds of kilometers. Gant’s best guess was a few hours, and the AI was usually accurate about those kind of things.
It meant there wasn’t enough time to bury the dead. There was barely enough time to find them all.
Hayley and Tibor went through the entire ship, searching for survivors and finding none. Every member of the Riders had lost their qi. Everyone was dead. Thirty-two in all that had still been on the Quasar. They were in various states of damage and repose, nearly all of them killed by the impact, though a few had been burned by an apparent plasma blast that had pierced the damaged rear near the reactor. They had made it forward and into the safety of the main superstructure only to die of their wounds.
Or to die from something else.
Looking at the evidence, it didn’t make sense that they had all died. Some of the Riders had managed to strap in and buckle up against the g-forces and the impact. The crash site indicated a semi-controlled descent, which would have mitigated the blunt force. So what the hell had killed them?
There was only one thing Hayley could think of. The Nephilim Gift. But to kill with the Gift at a distance without attacking the vessel? That took a level of power and control beyond what any normal Venerant could muster.
Was it possible one of the Prophets had crossed the gap between their galaxy and the Extant? Was the work the assholes were doing on the naniates important enough to warrant that kind of personal supervision?
If so, it was a bad sign. If there was a Prophet out there, were they still out there? Or had they come down to Kelvar City? Or had they moved on to some other business?
There was no way to know, and it was hard for Hayley to think about. This was her family. Her brothers and sisters and mother, murdered by the Nephilim. Worse, this wasn’t the first time it had happened. The pain of it ripped at her insides and threatened to bring her to her knees. She was determined to survive it. To overcome it. To have her revenge, in whatever form that revenge took.
In the immediate, she had to get herself back into fighting condition. She couldn’t do a damned thing against the Nephilim with one arm, even though she would have tried.
Tibor set about collecting the bodies and moving them to a central location and clear the area for Hayley’s sake. He told her it was so they could come back to bury them after they finished killing White, and she nodded in agreement. It was the only option left.
He was holding Nibia in his arms when she arrived back at medical. He had her cradled almost tenderly, showing as much respect for her body as he could in moving her. Hayley almost started to cry again at the sight of her, but she pushed the emotions deep, moving beside the Goreshin and reaching out. She ran her hand along her mother’s face, remembering all of the times she had done it over the years. It was so familiar to her, and she took it in while she muttered a promise to bring her killer to justice.
“I’m with you, Hayley,” Tibor said as she finished, using her name for the first time.
“Why?” Hayley asked. “So you can save my life and keep some stupid, meaningless promise? This has gone way beyond that. I don’t need you here for your personal bullshit.”
Tibor’s qi flashed red, but only for a moment. It softened, and when he spoke his voice was soft. “Because I respect the Colonel,” he said. “And I respect you. And because I’m no friend of the Nephilim that did this. What they’re doing to the Goreshin is wrong. What they did to you is wrong.”
“That’s enough of a reason to risk your lif
e?”
“For me, it is.”
She didn’t argue any further. She didn’t have the energy to question him. If he wanted to stay and die with her, that was his choice.
“Be gentle with her,” she said, leaning over and kissing Nibia’s forehead.
“I will,” he replied.
Then he carried Nibia from the room, leaving Hayley alone in the medical bay.
She struggled to keep herself together, to stay strong in the face of her loss. She walked over to the med-bot, a humanoid machine plugged into the side of the wall near a table. It would have gone there on its own during an emergency, waiting for activation.
“Med-bot, activate,” she said.
The things eyes flicked on, the cameras adjusting focus. It detached itself from its mooring. A red beam escaped from it, scanning her.
“You are injured,” it said.
“I know,” Hayley replied.
“I can repair it,” it said. “Please remove your clothing and lie down.”
“I don’t need to remove my clothes,” Hayley said. “The wound is right here.” She turned her arm to the bot.
“Please remove your clothing and lie down.”
Hayley shook her head. The damn thing wasn’t autonomous enough to break its protocols. It felt completely wrong to strip and lie down in their current situation, but it would be worse for her arm to remain useless. It took some doing to get her lightsuit off with one hand, but she managed, needlessly stripping herself naked and hopping onto the cold table.
The bot moved beside her, while other equipment descended from the ceiling. It grabbed an IV and stuck it into her arm. A moment later, she began to feel tired.
“Repairs will take approximately thirty minutes. Have a good rest.”
The bot produced a light blanket and draped it over her, keeping her shoulder clear. She was losing consciousness and only vaguely felt a catheter go up into her. Was it really necessary?
The drugs carried her away.
32
“Witchy,” Tibor said. His voice was strained. Urgent. “Witchy, come on.”