Mercs!

by Dorian Dawes

  “No!” Mattu cried. He clenched his fist, staring at the space where his squad once occupied.

  The wraith’s face appeared once more over Talisha’s visor. Talisha flew into the air and aimed her arm cannon at Mattu. Rogers ducked out of hiding to fire several decisive shots in her direction. The wraith screamed at him as Talisha dodged the incoming bullets.

  Bluebird grabbed Rogers by the shoulder. “What do you think you’re doing? You could kill her!”

  “There’s something inside her,” Rogers shot back. “It’s controlling her. Making her act all funky. Figured if I could shoot some sense into her, we might dislodge it.”

  Bluebird’s eyes widened. She looked near ready to smack him. “That is a very bad plan! Bad robot!”

  “You got any better ideas?” Rogers yelled.

  Mattu stood and walked to Talisha. She looked down at him, and her visor flashed blue with the hate and anger of the wraith inside. Mattu’s entire body quivered with fear, but he stood strong in the face of her power.

  “First time I met your mother, we’d been brought in to help evacuate the colonists on Barlin V.” His voice quivered, with both fear and the pain of memory. “She scared the hell out of all of us with that alien technology of hers. She was smart though. Capable. A good soldier.”

  Bluebird shouted to him. “Commander Mattu, get down!”

  Mattu pressed forward. “She was also the most beautiful woman I ever laid eyes on. You look a lot like her.”

  Talisha gazed upon Mattu, saying nothing. She turned the cannon in his direction and charged her energy beam. Bluebird had to snag Rogers to keep him from rushing out into the open.

  “If this is to work,” she said. “You must have faith.”

  “She’s the only friend I ever had, Blue,” Rogers said, his voice aching with desperation.

  Bluebird held him all the tighter then.

  Mattu took another step. He was now on the brink of the platform, staring up at Talisha. She floated over his head like an angel of death ready to annihilate him.

  “I’m sorry I wasn’t there for you, growing up,” He choked on his words toward the end. “I messed up. I made your mother hate me. You’ve got every right to hate me too, but don’t let it stop you from living. Don’t make my sins your future.”

  Talisha stopped charging the beam on her cannon. Her visor lifted, and all could see her eyes, tearful and bloodshot. There was so much anger in that expression, so much hate and pain. Her scream and that of the wraith’s became one.

  Talisha clutched at the sides of her head and convulsed about in the air. The wraith clung to her armor even as she wrestled against it. Something crawled out of her back. It looked like a ghostly projection of the armor she wore, like the wraith had bonded to her physical appearance.

  With a final scream she freed herself from the apparition and went tumbling toward the chasm below. Mattu lunged to the edge, catching her by the hand. Her fingers slipped for a terrifying moment, then he hoisted her onto the platform. They stared up at the ghostly projection of the wraith as it screamed and writhed, still holding on to the appearance of Talisha’s armor. It turned its own cannon down to them.

  “Suck my big fat girl-dick,” Talisha said through gritted teeth.

  She aimed at the wraith, charged her beam, and fired. The apparition froze midscreech, shattering into oblivion as the energy blast connected with its fragmented body. Talisha collapsed against the platform, breathing heavily. She turned her eyes to the ashes that were the remnants of the IGF squad.

  “Mattu,” she whispered. Her face was still wet with tears. “I’m so sorry. I’m so so sorry.”

  “They knew the cost,” he said. “As do we all. Do you remember any of what I said?”

  She sat up. “Yes.”

  “And?” He looked at her, face apprehensive and pleading.

  “And there’s nothing to talk about.” She climbed to her feet, joints aching. “This was never about you. You might be my father, but it doesn’t matter right now.”

  He bit his lower lip, then shook his head. “Then what helped you fight back that creature’s possession?”

  Talisha reached down to help him to his feet. “You reminded me that I had something the wraith lacked.”

  “That being?”

  She looked him squarely in the eyes. “The ability to see beyond my own pain.”

  His mouth hung open as she brushed past him to go hug Rogers and Bluebird. He folded his arms over his chest and looked upon the ashes of his fallen troopers. A wounded sigh escaped him, and he forced himself to turn his head away.

  Rogers approached him. “Seeing so much death. Gotta be hard on ya.”

  Mattu clicked his tongue. “That’s the worst part about it. After a while, it stops hurting as much. You become numbed to loss.”

  “Hope I never get like that,” Rogers said. He turned to look at Talisha and Bluebird walking to the edge of the platform, then said in a lowered voice. “You really think Talisha’s your daughter?”

  “Her mother never had that hardened look in her eye.” Mattu’s voice shook as he followed Rogers’s gaze, his jaw clenched.

  “And you do? Is that why you came down here? To meet her?” Rogers said.

  Mattu stared at him, brows furrowed. He hoisted his rifle to his shoulder. “I came to do my duty to the Federation.”

  That’s not what Rogers wanted to hear. He turned his back on Mattu, walking to join Talisha and Bluebird. “Your Federation got a whole lot of people on this planet killed.”

  Mattu’s voice grew low and gruff. “You’ll get no argument from me.”

  CHING SHIH MADE her way swiftly through the rest of the Mayflower, eager to get to the weapon’s command center on the satellite. Any second Madame Inspector could order the weapon to fire on the planet. If the inspector thought that the battle had turned her against her, the planet would fry. It’s exactly what Ching Shih would do were the roles reversed.

  One cranky old woman with a sword and a blaster stood against the annihilation of an entire planet. She’d suffered worse odds. She turned a corner down an illuminated walkway toward a lone platform standing over a fifty-foot shaft below.

  At the end of the platform she could see open doors to a room full of command console. There wasn’t a soul in sight. She exhaled, relieved. She’d plenty of time to step in and shut the entire satellite down.

  Ching Shih allowed herself a moment to smile, congratulating herself. Madame Inspector would have no further recourse. This would be the end of the terrifying reign of the Plymouth Corporation, and the galaxy would at last see justice. She ran to that open room, heart thudding with every footfall.

  Bulky machinery took a thunderous step around the corner and opened fire. Machine guns in each mechanized arm blast a torrent of bullets in her direction. She’d barely enough time to slide under them and into the control room.

  She finally got a decent look at her attacker. It was the largest suit of power armor she’d ever seen. Ten feet tall and eight hundred pounds of nigh-impenetrable metal, and within each gargantuan gauntleted fist were a set of rail guns, each with chains of bullets that trailed along the floor. Behind the faceplate in the chest of the power armor, Ching Shih could see Madame Inspector’s grinning face.

  She brushed her hair out of her face and brandished her sword. “You should have activated the cannons already. You might have had a chance at victory.”

  “If I’ve a chance at securing my prize, I will take it.” Madame Inspector seethed, taking a heavy step in Ching Shih’s direction. “Rest assured, that miserable planet will burn. I want the galaxy to see what happens here today. I want them to understand I’m not one to be fucked with.”

  “I see,” Ching Shih said. Her eyes flicked to the command consoles. “You picked a poor battlefield. Destroying this room only helps my cause.”

  Madame Inspector smirked. She stretched her arms out on either side of her and let the guns clatter against the ground. “You t
hink to manipulate me.”

  Ching Shih flattened a palm against the hilt of her sword. Her expression was serene, and yet somehow her eyes were full of fire. “Every action you have taken has been me manipulating you. Not a single event has occurred in your life that I have not planned. I know your destiny, Madame Inspector. It was I who chose it.”

  Madame Inspector clenched her fists, then raised them and parted her legs in a fighting stance. Blood trickled down her nostril and fell over her lips. She looked ready to charge at any moment.

  “I’ve worked for everything I have!” Madame Inspector screamed, spittle flying out her mouth. She charged, fist raised for a mighty punch.

  Ching Shih darted out of the way. The suit of power armor looked clunky but was much faster than she anticipated. Plymouth had been making alterations to the design typically worn by IGF Troopers and solved the mobility issue. Madame Inspector punched the ground where Ching Shih had been standing but seconds before, leaving a sizable dent.

  Madame Inspector turned on her, hair frazzled and her face like a wild animal. “I control my fate.”

  “You are a puppet of the Plymouth Corporation,” Ching Shih sneered. “You’ve been nothing but a slave to their machinations, one that was easily commandeered to my purposes.”

  “You mock me! Bitch!”

  Madame Inspector whirled around and brought up her leg to catch Ching Shih in the stomach. Ching Shih was hurled through the air where she fell plastered against the slick surface of the outer wall. She stood shakily to her feet, coughing. Blood dripped down the corners of her mouth.

  Before she could get her bearings again, Madame Inspector rushed over to her, grabbed the pirate by the throat and lifted her off her feet. Ching Shih struggled in her grasp, but her strength was nothing against that of the power armor. Madame Inspector pulled her close.

  “My life is mine,” Madame Inspector said. “The galaxy has a new bitch in charge.”

  Bloodied and bruised, Ching Shih couldn’t help but chortle. “You damn fool. Even your life was never yours.”

  “You speak nonsense, old woman!” Madame Inspector’s grip tightened. “Here I stand, ready to choke the life out of you, and still you mock me!”

  “You can kill me,” Ching Shih said hoarsely. “But your memories only go back so far. All that you were before Plymouth doesn’t exist, does it?”

  Madame Inspector roared. She smashed Ching Shih’s face into the floor. Madame Inspector grabbed the back of her head and lifted it with every intention of beating her to a bloody pulp. She hesitated.

  “What do you know?” Madame Inspector’s voice shook.

  Ching Shih continued to laugh. “You’re a clone, you fucking imbecile, and not a very good one. There are multiple inspectors, each of them perfectly engineered and sent to oversee all of Plymouth’s little projects. All I had to do was ensure that the one aboard the Mayflower could be goaded into doing something foolish.”

  Madame Inspector released her, stupefied. “You’re lying…”

  “Do you remember the raid on the R&D facility on Yarmin VI?” Ching Shih cackled a bit, rolling over onto her side. She groaned in pain. At least one of her ribs had been broken. “Of course you don’t; you were born there so it wouldn’t be in your implanted memories.

  “Our people had to make it look good, so we took this fabulous armor, but it wasn’t our primary goal. We contaminated your gene code so that as your life cycle progressed, you’d become more aggressive and less rational. It was almost too easy. Plymouth did their best to remove all traces of empathy from you and your sisters.”

  “For efficiency,” Madame Inspector breathed. “I am efficient. I am cold. I am powerful.”

  “You are a tyrant,” Ching Shih snapped back. “You think logic can function without compassion? You think there can be reason without imagination? You have the thinking capacity of infants, and it was infant minds who made you.

  “A petty dictator in control of Plymouth’s forces who can be manipulated by bruising her ego is just what I wanted. You get it Madame Inspector? You have no name because you are nobody. You are a child playing at god and you have been played.”

  Madame Inspector stared, speechless. She turned her back on Ching Shih, licking her lips, looking suddenly helpless. “The messages moving towards the planet. They were from another…”

  “We’ve been monitoring your communications ever since our first hack on this satellite. You weren’t able to completely force us out,” Ching Shih said with a chuckle. “Another Madame Inspector has been trying to salvage the mess you made of things. Never occurred to you that you might be the one undermining your own authority, did it?”

  “Is it so wrong to finally reach out for something you really want, and take it?” Madame Inspector said in a quiet voice. “I’ve never asked anything for myself.”

  “You are no saint.” Ching Shih chortled. While the Inspector had her back turned, she reached into her robes. “Your drive was always that of power and it enslaved you.”

  Madame Inspector whirled around to face her. “Every deed was for the good of the company! It was only today I chose to act in self-interest! Was that a crime?”

  “Look not upon me to absolve you for your sins, clone.” Ching Shih smirked. “I’m just a pirate.”

  There was a sharp crack as Ching Shih smashed something small and round against the floor. Smoke filled every corner of the room, billowing outward from her position. Madame Inspector whirled around flailing wildly with her fists. Ching Shih took the opportunity to drag herself through the open doors to a hallway on the right.

  “Oh no you don’t!” Madame Inspector charged after her.

  The clone bowled into Ching Shih, sending her sprawling. Her bones were most definitely broken. She reached into her robes and retrieved the small black orb and slid it along the ground behind her opponent. The doors activated soon as the flashing lights flew past them and began to close. Madame Inspector turned around sharply, mouth hanging open in surprise. Several spiderlike mechanical limbs emerged from the black orb and attached itself to one of the command consoles before the doors sealed shut.

  “What is this?” Madame Inspector barked. “What have you done?”

  Ching Shih hurried to her, sword drawn. She scrambled atop the power armor and with a mighty scream brought the sword down through the suit’s power supply. The back end melted off, leaving severed cords and sparking wires. The suit was rendered utterly immobile.

  “It’s called winning, Madame Inspector,” Ching Shih said breathily, her face expressionless. “Not something you’d know a lot about.” She turned her head toward the ceiled room. “How’s it going in there, Cyrus?”

  A gruff, hoarse laughter filled every speaker on the satellite. “Cyrus reporting in. Few moments and I’ll have control over the entire satellite. Starting to feel like Christmas in April.”

  Madame Inspector pursed her lips. She stared into Ching Shih’s eyes and snarled. “Finish it.”

  Ching Shih cast aside her sword and lunged, shattering the suit’s face plate with her fist. She reached deep inside of Madame Inspector’s throat and with a yank of her wrist, used her sharp talons to rip the clone’s tongue from her mouth. She took a moment to savor the victory, feeling the blood dripping from her palm before casting the tongue to the ground.

  She climbed from her perch atop the suit of armor and allowed it to fall with a clang. A sharp burning sensation across her torso reminded her of the severity of her wounds and bruises. She would need medical treatment soon.

  Ching Shih collapsed wearily against the wall, where she rested her sword against her knees and stared at the ceiling. A small bit of laughter escaped her. At long last, it was all over. Her revenge was soon to be complete.

  “Well done, Cyrus,” she said. “Thank you for honoring our bargain.”

  The cranky AI failed to respond.

  She tilted her head in the direction of the closed doors. “Cyrus?”

  TALISHA
LED THE charge after briefly explaining to the others about the Valran wraiths and what was happening to the temple. She no longer had to blast the walls with energy to open pathways. They seemed to part of their own accord. She was part of the temple now, and it was responding to her will as much as that of the wraiths.

  They came to a small room full of several black boxes orbiting a series of alien control panels. The room was separated by a thin glass pane overlooking what looked to Talisha like images of catacombs she’d seen on the net, only these were six-foot-tall cylindrical chambers lining the walls. They stretched for hundreds of thousands of miles in all directions.

  Talisha rushed to the control panels. Her fingers flicked across them quickly, prompting the black boxes to shift and float in front her face to form a holographic representation of the security systems of the temple. Her fingers closed into a fist hovering just inches over the controls.

  “This will stop the temple from destroying everything?” Mattu said.

  “It should stop the expansions, yeah.” Talisha nodded.

  “Then what’s the holdup?” he asked.

  “There’s a chance it’ll release every single wraith in here. Just one managed to get hold of me and it killed your team,” Talisha said. “No telling what an army of them could do.”

  “So there’s no warp-technology here then,” Mattu said, gritting his teeth. “The Council of Thirteen doomed this planet just to raid a damn tomb.”

  Talisha looked back on the thousands of cylinders beyond and shuddered. “The Valran were warp-capable, but I don’t think the IGF would want it if they knew what it did to them. Turned them all into monsters.”

  Rogers turned away, toward the darkened hallway behind them. He raised his pistol, aiming it at the darkness. Talisha noticed the attentiveness of his gaze and approached him.

  “Scanners pick up something, cowboy?” she asked.

  Rogers cocked his gun. “Nergal.”

  Something descended from the darkness of the ceiling, a pale-white figure with long claws that spun about with a flurry of kicks. The pistol was quickly dislodged from Rogers’s hands and Mattu didn’t even have a chance to get off a shot before his own rifle was snatched from his fingers. Nergal darted into the room fast as a bullet, ducking beneath Bluebird’s legs to snatch her by the back of her jacket, holding one diseased finger dangerously close to her throat.