Shutting the door, she began to unpack. A moment later, her highly sensitive hearing detected the distinctive whine and crackle of EMP cannon, and two thuds.
Immediately preparing for the worst case, Jill triggered her internal comlink and searched for a receiving ping even as she shoved furniture in front of the door. Finding no handshake, she set the comm to broadcast in the clear and said, “Mayday, mayday, Chief Steward Repeth under attack in the former Skulls complex, possibly by the same. I’m in the commander’s stateroom and will try to hold out as long as possible.”
Setting the transmission to repeat, she made a brief search of the room, looking for any egress. The walls were made of steel-reinforced cinder block, and she had no weapon heavier than her venerable PW5 in its holster. The ventilation ducting was too small to fit through, though given time she might be able to widen an opening using bedframe struts.
She doubted her opponents were going to give her that time.
EMP cannon meant someone was gunning for cyborgs; a blast of electrical overload would shut down and possibly fry her cybernetics, depending on the charge’s power. It also meant they were probably trying to capture the Stewards, since she’d heard no follow-up gunfire.
Jill wasn’t at all sure that was a good sign.
The piled furniture began to rock and move slightly as something slammed rhythmically against the door. She braced herself against it, and then swore as blue lightnings played along its metal frame. Bleed-over briefly fuzzed her senses, but the energy wasn’t powerful enough to knock her out. They must have been hoping she was holding the door shut with her bare hands, rather than bracing the barrier of mostly wooden items.
Shotgun blasts came next, blowing out pieces of the door around its hinges and lock. Soon, the barrier would be shattered and she’d have to fight. Without armor and heavy weapons, against opponents prepared for her, she felt the odds were slim. Hopefully, the cavalry would arrive in time.
Unfortunately, nobody showed up before the door lay in scattered pieces. Through the pile of furniture Jill could see black-clad Skulls, all heavily armed.
Spooky’s words, spoken long ago during training, came to her mind. “As a covert operative, you may end up on a mission you can’t complete or in a fight you can’t win. Resist the urge to go out in a blaze of glory unless absolutely necessary. Surviving and living to fight another day is your duty. No matter how ugly the future seems, no matter what the torture, your goal must be to remain alive for one more day. You never know. That one more day might bring rescue.”
As much as she hated to do it, Jill moved into the head and stashed her PW5 in its air vent, throwing it as far back into the duct as she could. That completed, she shut down all of her cybernetics, hoping that by doing so she would preserve them. Maybe the Skulls would make a mistake – today, tomorrow, next week – and she could surprise them.
Stepping out of the bathroom, she kept her hands raised as the Skulls poured into the room. That didn’t stop the one with the EMP cannon from aiming it at her and pulling the trigger, turning her world to black.
When Jill awoke, she found herself in a cell. Trying to activate her internal comlink, she found it inoperative, whether from the EMP or some more intentional interference, she didn’t know. She didn’t try to bring up any of her other cybernetics, not wishing to tip off any watchers.
Sitting up on the simple bunk, she faced the unconcealed spy-eye in an upper corner. “I’m awake now,” she said, leaning casually back against the wall. “Whatever you’re planning, let’s get on with it.”
Scant minutes later, the tramp of feet sounded outside the door. When it opened, she saw the corridor filled with Skulls. “Put these on,” one of them said, throwing a set of heavy ferrocrystal wrist cuffs, unbreakable even with her enhancements.
Hope for an easy time sank, but the fact that they were letting her cuff herself gave her the opportunity to tense her muscles and lock the restraints into a setting that gave her a tiny bit of wiggle and flex room.
Another Skull waved a scanner in her direction. After checking its reading, the woman said, “She’s dead.” Presumably, she meant Jill’s cybernetics showed as nonfunctional.
A dozen hands gripped Jill roughly, the Skulls surrounding her and hustling her down passageways. By the bleak industrial construction she thought they must no longer be within the palace. Soon, she was marched into a room with nothing but lights, a table and two chairs, interrogation style. She glanced up at the small, heavily barred window set high in the wall, which allowed the blue Australian sky to show through.
The Skulls locked her cuffs to a ring in the middle of the bolted-down steel table, forcing her to sit, arms outstretched in front of her.
Steel, she thought. Table, chairs and lock, all of high-grade stainless. A potential mistake.
The door opened and, for a moment, utter shock seized her by the throat. “Skull?” she said, staring at the tall, bald man who stood before her, his deep-set eyes gazing back confidently.
“One of them,” the man replied. “Their leader, actually, and their living role model.”
Jill realized then who she was looking at, someone she’d only heard about, never met. “You’re the one they call Raven. A Blend. Ezekiel’s brother, Charles Denham.”
“Skull Denham was my father, Raphaela my mother, and you’re right: that weakling Ezekiel is my brother. Shall I recite your genealogy too?”
“What the hell do you want, Charles? Whatever you’re doing here, it’s highly illegal. More to the point, it’s stupid. We can’t have a bitter rivalry between the security services with the Scourges on their way.”
“Who says they’re on their way? Our new allies the Meme? We can’t trust them, nor any of the Pure Blends left. But even if they are, we fought them off once. We’ll do so again. The real enemy is internal – people like you and Markis that are going to undermine everything we built here.”
“I don’t see you built anything, Charles. You started as rebels, but now you’re the new SS, rooting out dissent with immoral methods, which breeds more dissent. And you’re just pissed off because you’re being moved away from the center of power.”
Charles smiled humorlessly. “Spectre built a functioning government over the last two years. He’s moved heaven and Earth to get the economy working again, producing, and now he’s turning it all over to that do-gooder relic Markis, who’s going to send it to hell in a handbasket.”
“You can’t stop Markis from making changes. Spectre will hunt you down personally if you try to depose the new Emperor.”
Charles laughed hollowly. “Who said anything about deposing him? I just want you and your cronies on my side. Between my Skulls and your Stewards, we’ll keep removing the enemies of the state, no matter what Markis wants. It’s not like he has to know about it, after all.”
Jill’s laughter echoed Charles’, though hers rang more genuine. Rattling her chains, she said, “And this is how you think you’re gonna convince me?”
“No. This is.” The tall man stepped forward to take a seat, staring intently into Jill’s face.
“What?” she asked after a moment. “You’re trying to hypnotize me?”
Abruptly, Charles seized her trapped hands in his. “Just relax and don’t try to fight, Miss Repeth. You can’t win. I’m Skull Denham now.”
“That’s Mrs. Repeth, you freak,” Jill said evenly, ignoring his touch, staring daggers into his eyes. “Raven, I served with Skull Denham. I knew Skull Denham. I’d say Skull Denham was a friend of mine. And you know what, Charles? You’re no Skull Denham.”
They remained that way for a long minute, Jill’s faint smile widening and Charles’ expression growing more frustrated. “What the hell?” he asked, half to her, half to himself.
“Why, we’re holding hands, Chuck. It’s sweet, but as I just told you, I’m a happily married woman, so I’ll have to say no to your little mind-rape attempt.”
Charles only gripped her hands harder
with a growl. “You’ve got some kind of biochemical block, right?”
Jill said nothing, only continuing to smile.
Closing his eyes, Charles bore down with an air of tight concentration.
Now, Jill told herself. This is my chance.
Rebooting her cybernetics, she found most of her systems intact, shielded from the EMP by their dormant state. Twisting her hands with effortless strength, she extended the two-centimeter claws in her fingertips and sliced both of Charles’ hands off at the wrists.
His scream of shock and pain drowned out the sound of those blades of sharpened ferrocrystal cutting through the mere steel of the table’s ring. Now free except for the unbreakable cuffs, Jill leaped across the room toward Charles. Before the Blend could shut down his pain and stop his wrists from bleeding, she slammed the heavy bracelets into his head, knocking him unconscious.
Then, she made a deliberate and uncharacteristic decision.
He’s not going to be rehabilitated, and with the ability to reshape his body and with his network of Skulls, he’ll turn into a rebel insurgent again. I looked into his eyes and there was no flexibility there. If I let him live, he might be the difference between beating the Scourge and our extinction.
Hesitating no longer, Jill wrapped her cuffed wrists across Charles’s neck and, with a convulsive heave, tore his head from his shoulders. With no idea the extent of Blend healing powers, she had to believe that detaching the brain from the spinal cord would effectively terminate the being itself. Without fire to reduce the body to ashes, this was the best she could do.
Stuffing the head into her tunic, she leaped for the high window just as the door burst open and Skulls began pouring in. Seizing the bars, she used all the power of her cyberware to rip them from their frame. Believing her enhancements neutralized, they’d brought her to a standard interrogation room, not one built to hold a cyborg.
Flinging the tangled steel at the first Skull, she vaulted through the window, forcing herself through as her uniform caught on the rough edges. Charles’ decapitated head slowed her further, and she felt the hot spikes of bullets tear into her legs and buttocks.
Falling to the ground outside, Jill found herself still within sight of the palace, though outside its walls in an industrial section of the city. Forcing herself to her feet, she felt her flesh scream as she made unnatural demands on it. Polymeric muscle fibers did what human meat couldn’t, allowing her to run down the busy street faster than most of the slow-moving trucks.
Dialing painkillers and stims, Jill tried her internal comlink again, but apparently the sensitive electronics had been fried. Spitting epithets, she leaped onto the running board of a heavy truck – they’d call it a lorry here in Australia, wouldn’t they, she thought irrelevantly – and reached though its open window to grab the arm of the burly driver, her hands still cuffed together.
“Give me your phone,” Jill said, squeezing his biceps until she began to cause pain.
“No worries, Sheila,” the driver said, eyes widening as he pressed the device into her hands. “It’s bog standard.”
“Thanks,” she said, letting go and leaping to the ground, continuing to run down random streets as she dialed the only number she knew here in Shepparton.
“Hello, Jill,” Spectre’s voice came tinny over through the speaker. “Have you –”
“Shut up and listen, Spooky. I’m on…on Drummond, near where it hits Telford, and I just escaped from your oh-so-loyal Skulls. I’m sure they’re looking for me, so I need help fast.”
“I’ll be there within minutes. Don’t hang up. I’ll track the phone.”
Jill slipped the phone into a pocket and considered ditching the blood-soaked head of the Blend, and then nightmares of the thing regenerating itself into a full creature wafted through her mind. No, she couldn’t get rid of it unless she could be sure it was destroyed.
Abruptly, sirens wailed all over the city, calling all response forces to full alert. Workers and vehicles altered their directions, some pulling over, some speeding up. The streets became more orderly all around her.
Jill slowed, and then climbed up a parked heavy equipment hauler with a tank atop it, one of the new Trolls. Using it as a vantage point, she crouched and peered over its heavy main turret, looking back the way she came.
Down the street poured two dozen Skulls, sprinting after Jill in a mob with nanocommando speed. They may not have implanted cybernetics, but their boosted quickness and their weaponry made them damned dangerous, especially wounded as she was. She could feel that her legs remained weak by comparison with the rest of her, and she was beginning to get hungry as the Eden Plague and the nanites within her demanded replenishment.
Behind the infantry, but rapidly catching up, drove several marked Skull utility vehicles with machineguns mounted on them. At the intersection she’d crossed, each vehicle took one of the three directions while those on foot spread out and scouted her way.
The whirr of a VTOL sounded above, and Jill looked up to see the four-rotor vehicle descending directly toward her. At the last moment, it veered to land in the wide industrial street. The passenger door opened and Spectre stepped out, this time dressed in blazing yellow.
Skulls surrounded the air vehicle and formed a perimeter facing outward, clearly recognizing the imperial insignia and the man who disembarked. Spectre made a chopping motion to the pilot, who shut down the engines and rotors. In a moment, all became quiet, except for the background of sirens and horns in the distance.
Jill watched Spectre speak to the Skulls’ officer for a moment, but her cybernetic hearing was down and she couldn’t make out the conversation. The other man became animated, clearly unhappy. After thirty seconds more arguing, he made a gesture of negation, and then began yelling to his men.
Reaching casually but quickly into his jacket, Spectre removed a pistol and shot the officer in the head, dropping him boneless to the tarmac. The other Skulls turned to look, aghast, and then slowly went back to their guard positions.
“Come on down, Jill,” Spectre said loudly, still holding his weapon.
“When I’m sure I won’t get shot,” Jill called back, noticing one of the Skulls had turned in her direction and lifted his rifle. She maintained a position of cover, the tank turret blocking the man’s line of sight.
“Lower your weapon or share your squad leader’s fate,” Spectre said to the Skull, who complied.
Jill slid down the painted metal of the tank, staggering when she hit the ground. “I think I’m going to need a surgeon to dig some shrapnel out of me,” she said as she walked gingerly up to Spectre.
Just then, a truck full of more Skulls rounded the corner and slammed to a halt in front of the VTOL, disgorging its load of infantry while a man atop it turned his machinegun in its mount to aim at the two.
“Stay close behind me, Jill,” Spectre hissed. “They can’t shoot me.”
“You sure?”
“Unless they’ve managed to overcome their bio-psych conditioning…”
Jill moved up as near as she could to her savior.
“Who’s in charge of this mob?” Spectre said loudly. “Come now, identify yourself.”
“I am,” a hard-faced woman with colonel’s insignia said, stepping forward.
“Report properly,” Spectre said, a dangerous edge in his voice.
“Colonel Bondrade, my lord, Croc Troop. That woman killed Raven.” She pointed past him.
“Under what circumstances, Colonel?”
“She was being interviewed.”
“In heavy shackles? Do you know who this is?”
Colonel Bonrade shook her head.
“This is Chief Steward Jill Repeth, an old comrade of mine from before the Plague Wars, in the palace on official business and under my protection.”
“My lord, did you hear what I said? She murdered Raven! She must be tried and shot.”
Jill laughed and muttered in his ear, “Look at what you’ve created, Spoo
ky. Apparently being tried and being shot are inseparable.”
Spectre’s voice rose to a bellow. “I SAY WHAT MUST BE DONE HERE, NOT YOU, COLONEL.” He aimed his sidearm. “Or, as I told these others, you may follow this squad leader into Hell, right here, right now.”
Snarling and fingering the trigger of her submachine gun, the woman replied, “You’re no longer in charge, Spectre. Now you’re just another Yellow trying to throw his weight around.”
“And yet, it is I who am following the fully human Emperor Markis’ orders, protecting his new Chief Steward, and you who are resisting them. Colonel, do you even know who you’re fighting or what side you’re on?”
Anger turned to rage, and the Skull colonel raised her weapon – or tried to. As she lifted it, her arms twitched and she couldn’t hold it steady. She managed to fire one quick burst, the bullets ricocheting from the tarmac to stutter along the concrete wall of a nearby building before Spectre put a single round into her chest. The projectile punched through her body armor and out the back without difficulty, and the woman fell backward with a thud.
Three of her accompanying Croc Troopers tried to fire on Spectre as well. The Blend took his time as they struggled with muscles grown suddenly rebellious, lining up each and dropping them like targets. The rest of those who had accompanied the colonel, including the Skull on the machinegun, lowered their weapons and raised their hands.
“Listen, you Skulls,” Spectre said in voice full of venom. “Raven turned traitor to the Empire of Earth by trying to interfere with Emperor Markis’ edicts, thinking that our new leader is soft and weak because he knows the meaning of mercy. Now Raven is dead, and Colonel Bondrade with him. They dishonored you and they dishonored me. So take the word back to the rest: the Skulls will follow their orders to the letter, and I will be watching constantly from the shadows to make certain they do. No one is immune from another purge, this time of those who wear the black. Now go. Report to your assigned barracks and await instructions from your new chain of command, the Ground Forces.”
Conquest and Empire (Stellar Conquest Series Book 5) Page 8