by M. R. Forbes
He tried to reach for her, but Violent punched him. The force threw White backward, up and over Hayley on the floor. He landed on his back, shaking the warehouse floor with the impact, rolling over and onto his feet in one smooth motion.
Hayley watched his qi. A short vein of purple was winding its way up from the injection site.
“Bitch!” Klangor shouted, appearing from the side.
He lunged at Hayley, nearly getting his claws into her as she rolled away. She grabbed her Uin and flicked it open, coming back to her feet close to Violent. She looked to where Grun and Klangor had been fighting.
Grun was dead.
“Tibor,” she said. “Where the flying frag are you!”
Everything was going wrong.
She couldn’t believe he had abandoned her. After all his bullshit talk about saving her life, he had gotten scared and run away. He had left her to die. Her and Violent. And what would happen to Quark? Where was he?
She grabbed another needle, leaping away as the Servants started firing on her again. A pair of rounds hit her lightsuit but didn’t get through, the others buzzing past her as she evacuated the area.
White bunched himself and leaped, coming up at her in the air. She brought her Uin around, using it to block his claw as it swept toward her. The force knocked her aside, sending her back and into the warehouse wall and to the ground, her legs buckling as they hit and leaving her on her knees.
White charged after her. Klangor went after Violent, cautious after seeing what she had done to the larger Goreshin. The Servants tried to get a clear line of fire.
A rumble sounded from beyond the warehouse, so loud it shook the entire building and nearly brought the entire fracas to a sudden stop. Hayley didn’t hesitate, sprinting toward the smaller Goreshin. He saw her coming and turned to defend himself. She ducked beneath his claws, sliding through his legs and jabbing the poison in his thigh while slicing through his other leg with her Uin.
She came up on the other side, right next to Violent, grabbing her and activating her anti-gravity pack. She jumped, the pack straining to carry the extra weight upward and buoy them against the incoming storm.
Something massive hit the closed doors to the warehouse, shaking the entire building to its core. The metal doors screamed and whined and tried to hold, but the vehicle tore them from their tracks, knocking them off their guides and causing one of them to topple inward.
Klangor was under it, and the Goreshin scrambled to get out of the way, almost making it before the twenty-ton metal door crushed him.
A mining hauler burst into the warehouse, slowed by the doors but still in gear, rumbling across the floor. Hayley and Violent landed on the other side of a transport, staying low as the vehicle continued. White leaped up onto the forward cab, avoiding being hit, but the Servants weren’t as lucky. The body of the hauler rammed into them, while the wheels crushed them.
A few seconds later the whole thing slammed into the other end of the warehouse, coming to an abrupt stop.
White roared from the top of it, reaching down and tearing into the metal roof of the cab, slashing desperately at it in fire and fury, trying to reach Tibor within. Tibor opened the cab door, jumping out and hitting the ground. He changed to his second form, turning around just in time to defend himself from the larger Goreshin.
He caught White’s huge arm, turning it aside. Then he scampered away, crawling beneath the hauler where White couldn’t reach him.
“Fragging coward!” White screamed, kicking at the hauler. Even with his strength, there was no way he could move it. “Get the frag out here and die like a soldier!”
He was angry beyond sanity. Furious beyond reason. He kicked and punched at the hauler, forgetting Hayley and Violent were even there.
“Here,” Hayley said, handing Violent one of the two remaining needles. She snapped the other one in half, pouring the contents along her Uin.
“I don’t want to go out there,” Violent said. “They’re dead. All of them.”
“So are my Riders, damn it. We started this; we have to finish it.”
“Tibor, you fragging piece of garbage,” White roared. “Get your sorry ass out here so I can rip your damned throat out!”
Hayley looked at Violent. The woman was afraid. Terrified. There was the smallest bit of red and blue mixed with the white.
“We can do this,” Hayley said. “I know we can. We have to.”
Violent nodded. “I’m ready.”
“Go around the back and try to sneak up on him. I’ll cover you from above.”
“Roger.”
“Tibor, we’re moving in. Get ready.”
“Aye, Witchy.”
“And thanks for coming back.”
“I was always planning to. It was harder to find a working hauler than I expected.”
“Good call. Violent, let’s go.”
Hayley hopped onto the top of the transport. White was fifty meters away, consumed by his anger, still kicking at the hauler. He had already dented in the side of it, and she could see he was managing to move it sideways with his blows.
“Hey, shit for brains,” Hayley said, calling out to the Goreshin.
White stopped kicking the rig. His head turned. It was as if he had suddenly remembered she existed.
“You,” he said, lip curling into a snarl. He rushed her, charging toward the transport.
“Violent, get ready,” Hayley said.
She jumped off the vehicle as White slammed into it, sending it hurtling into the wall. The impact slowed him just long enough for Violent to come at him from the side, spearing him with the poison. He cursed and lashed out, his blow hitting her and throwing her across the warehouse, fifty meters or more.
“Bitch,” he said, body heaving as he turned to face Hayley again.
The poison was spreading, joining with the first injection. The purple spots were larger, and he suddenly seemed more labored in his motion.
“Come on,” Hayley said, waving him forward.
He came at her, arms flailing. His qi gave up every motion, and Hayley ducked and spun around him, not blocking, not counterattacking, but dancing only centimeters away from each attempted blow, one after another after another.
“Witchy!” Tibor shouted.
Hayley turned her head in time to see a few of the Servants were back in business. Their bodies were broken but their heads were still attached, and their limbs were functional enough to fire their rifles. She spun back, ducking behind her Uin as she bullets skipped off the metal.
The attack gave White the time he needed to recover. She barely managed to avoid his claws but didn’t manage to avoid his body as he crashed into her, throwing her back and to the ground and landing on top. He pressed his weight down on her, keeping her locked in place as he looked down at her, jaws open and descending toward her neck.
Then the weight lifted as Tibor crashed into White, pulling him away. They snarled and slashed at one another in a fresh round of fighting between the two Goreshin. Hayley got back to her feet as White rammed his claws into Tibor’s gut, shoving them all the way through to his back.
“That’s right,” White said. “Die, you fragging traitor. You always were a weakling.”
He pulled his claws out. Tibor slumped on the ground. His qi was a dark purple, but he was still alive. For now.
“White,” Hayley said. “We weren’t done yet.”
The Goreshin turned, smiling. “I’m starting to like you.”
“I still think you’re an asshole,” Hayley replied.
White charged toward her.
She raised her Uin in front of her, crouching low.
His claws swept in toward her.
She ducked beneath them, spinning to the side, her Uin coming down hard on his arm, severing it above the elbow.
He roared in pain, turning and slashing at her with the other hand.
She moved away from that one, again slashing the Uin hard on it, tearing the superior edge thr
ough flesh and bone weakened by the radioactive isotopes running through his blood. His other hand was severed.
“You bitch!” he shouted, still furious. His head darted in at her, jaws coming within centimeters of her face.
She leaned in, kissing his cheek, humiliating him.
Then she spun around him, climbing his stooped back.
Then she took off his head.
It flopped onto the floor, his body collapsing at the same time. She rode it to the ground and jumped off, looking out to the Servants, raising her Uin to defend herself from their attack.
There was no attack. Violent was back on her feet, standing close to their still squirming but disarmed bodies.
She reversed course, rushing over to Tibor. His qi was weak.
He looked up at her.
“I saved your life,” he said.
“Great,” she replied, kneeling beside him. “Then you need to make a choice.”
“What choice?”
“Either I can save your life again, or you can die.”
“Some choice.” He tried to laugh. “I’m not that into dying. I guess you’re stuck with me a little longer.”
“I guess so.”
“You don’t have any bandages,” he said.
“They help the Meijo. They don’t define it.”
He had his hands clutched to his wound, putting pressure on it to slow the bleeding. She slid her hands under them, feeling the torn skin beneath.
“This is going to hurt,” she said.
“It always hurts,” he replied. “Isn’t this going to knock you out.”
“Not while I’m still high on stimulants. Probably after. Now shut up and let me work.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
She called on the naniates, directing them from her tattoos out to her hands and into Tibor’s body. He relaxed back as his flesh warmed under her palms, and then tensed again when the pain started. He didn’t cry out. He was strong and silent in the face of it, holding on while the Meijo knitted flesh and bone back together.
It took nearly three minutes. By the time Hayley pulled her hands away, she was sweating and cold, the stimulants causing an odd reaction in conjunction with the healing. She was pushing hard, walking a thin line between saving Tibor and killing herself.
Somehow, she had managed not to fall off.
“How do you feel?” she asked breathlessly, leaning over on her hands and knees, and trying to regain her strength.
“Better,” he said. “You?”
“Well enough. Violent, are you okay?”
She could smell the woman nearby.
“I’m okay,” Violent replied. “The power saved me.” She looked back at White’s headless corpse. “I can’t believe you beat him.”
“Only with your help.” She turned to Tibor. “And yours.” She paused a moment and then forced herself up on shaky legs. “I’m going to collapse as soon as we have Quark back. Tibor, do you know where they’re holding him?”
The Goreshin nodded. “I have a pretty good idea.”
37
Knowing where the Nephilim were keeping Quark and reaching it were two different things. Even with White out of the equation, there was still a heavy contingent of soldiers spread throughout Kelvar City they would need to either disable or sneak past to finish what they had started.
None of them were exactly in fighting shape. Violent had been spared from a number of broken bones by the naniates, but she was still bruised and sore from the impact. Tibor had come within a hair’s breadth of dying after being gored by White. And she was operating on borrowed time, propped up by medication that would drop her just as easily as it had allowed her to fly.
It didn’t matter. They had a job to do, and they were going to do it.
They didn’t waste much time in the warehouse. Hayley recovered the discarded data chip, finding it resting in a pool of silvery-metal liquid spilled from one of the Servants. Then she and Tibor reclaimed their firearms from the transports, including the sniper rifle she had taken from the Quasar.
It took ten minutes for them to regroup and rearm. They couldn’t have spared an eleventh. They were standing together near the bashed-in doors of the warehouse when the next round of Nephilim reinforcements arrived, starting with a small drone that hummed as it passed over the threshold. A red beam swept the carnage, likely passing the data back to the enemy’s real home base, the Kelvarian Administration Center, located two klicks from their current position.
One moment it was hovering in the air a few meters in from the entrance.
The next, it exploded in a shower of sparks and metal fragments, hit by the high-velocity flechette fired from Hayley’s rifle.
“I guess they know we’re here,” Tibor said. “I hope the drone got a shot of White’s headless ass before the feed cut out.”
“Never mind that,” Hayley said. “We have to get moving.”
“Roger that,” Tibor said, shifting to his second form. “The other modifieds give me trouble, but I’m still better than a regular soldier any day. And before you ask. No, this isn’t saving your life.”
He bounded away from them, toward the open door. Gunshots echoed as he sprinted through the opening and away.
Then the screaming started.
“We should back him up,” Violent said.
It was a big change from the woman who didn’t want to commit any act of violence.
“Agreed,” Hayley replied.
She lifted the sniper rifle to her shoulder, breaking out from the cover of the transport. Violent did her part, drawing the gun she had taken and aiming it in the general direction of the opposition. She had never carried a gun before. Never fired one. Maybe she would get lucky and hit one of the bad guys.
Tibor was already out among the soldiers, crouched in the midst of a squad next to an armored carrier. The unit was still trying to get out of the vehicle, squeezed in by the narrow hatch and unable to mount much of a defense against the Goreshin. He tore through the group like a raging animal, his qi red and blue and tinged with purple.
More armored carriers were still arriving, soldiers pouring out of them and using them as cover. Hayley ducked behind the nearest transport as they started firing into the warehouse, dozens of bullets pinging into the metal in front of her.
“What do we do?” Violent asked, crouching beside her.
Hayley knew the layout of the warehouse from her earlier efforts. “Stay here. Pound anyone who gets too close.”
“Where are you going?”
“Up.”
She stood and sprinted away, activating the anti-gravity plate and pushing off, the lightsuit giving her the extra bounce she needed to arc high across the space, toward the glass she had hidden behind not that long ago. She fired into it; three flechettes piercing the safety glass and weakening the structure. Then she tucked her shoulder, slamming hard into it and punching through.
She hit the wall on the other side, shrugging off the pain. She turned and looked back down. The Nephilim hadn’t seen her and were still advancing on the transport.
She dropped to her knees, propping the rifle against her shoulder. She aimed by feel, watching the qi of the enemy moving through the field of color. The kinetic energy of the flechettes was a sharp streak across her view, an instant slash like lightning that ended when it struck one of the soldiers, turning his qi purple and then erasing it completely.
She adjusted her aim and fired again and again. Three enemy soldiers went down before they realized she was there.
“Sniper!” one of them shouted.
“Tibor, what’s your status?” Hayley asked.
“I need to move off. There’s too many of them.”
“Roger. Violent, let’s go.”
The other woman was still behind the transport. She stood and looked up at Hayley. Then the naniates flared through her body, and she jumped, the added strength carrying her all the way up to the observation floor.
She landed almost gra
cefully beside Hayley. “There’s too many.”
“That’s what Tibor said. Come on.”
They went out into the stairwell, rounds whipping and cracking into the wall behind them. Hayley started climbing, familiar with the layout of the city from the warehouse roof. Violent climbed behind her.
“Tibor, we’re headed for the rooftop,” Hayley said.
“Roger,” Tibor replied. “I’m clear. They’re giving chase, but… oh, shit.”
“Tibor?”
A familiar whine sounded in the distance, quickly increasing in volume.
Fragging Shrikes.
The warehouse started to shudder, heavy slugs pounding its shell as the Shrikes fired down on the building. A few of the rounds made it through the cement, exploding out into the stairwell and raining down mortar and dust behind them.
“Hurry!” Hayley shouted, climbing faster. Violent did the same, and they rocketed up the stairs, trying to reach the rooftop.
The Shrikes passed overhead, their thrusters growing more distant until they turned back for another run.
Tibor was on the rooftop already when Hayley and Violent exploded out through the already ruined door. He had left the ground soldiers behind, but they still had the Shrikes to deal with.
“Damn, they fixed them fast,” he said. “Get down!”
They all dropped to their stomachs as the Shrikes swooped in, heavy rounds digging hard into the rooftop around them, kicking up cement and snow that splashed down over their backs, lucky that the pilots didn’t take the best angle and missed.
Hayley hopped back to her feet. “Gant, nearest rooftop?” she asked, spinning around.
“This way,” Tibor replied, grabbing her hand and pulling her along.
“That way,” Gant replied, chittering.
They ran across the rooftop. Hayley could see the edge of it ahead, and the closer they got to the next one, the better she was able to determine it.
“I’ve got it,” she said, letting go of Tibor’s hand.
They reached the edge and jumped, all three of them at the same time. Bullets whipped up at them from the ground, coming close enough Hayley could feel the breeze past her cheek. Then they were on the next building, sliding in the snow and getting back on their feet.