by C. G. Hatton
“What does it do?” Duncan said.
LC stared at it, biting his lip. He didn’t want to but he flashed back to the prisoner cage, the heat and stench, heart thumping, a shaman staring through the bars, leering, orange eyes shot through with black veins, gripping the twisted black metal shaft of the staff with its clawed hand.
Pain lanced into his heart.
He gasped and curled up, tensing and close to blacking out, shutting out the flashback until it started to fade.
The pain lingered, prickling through his chest as if it was never going to let him go.
“Holy shit,” Duncan muttered.
LC looked up through eyes that felt like they were burning. The staff was still hanging there, inert. The monitors weren’t showing a blip, the Science techs shrugging and thinking that it hadn’t done anything, the only screen of interest the one showing his vitals going haywire.
“You okay?” Duncan asked.
He wasn’t but he nodded.
“So it’s some kind of torture device?” one of the techs said.
He shrugged.
“Did they use it to affect multiple targets or just one at a time?”
“Both,” he muttered.
“No need for direct contact?”
“No.”
“Did they use it for anything else?”
LC nodded, struggling to say any more out loud. He glanced at Duncan.
“We haven’t seen these shaman types anywhere else,” the big man said, as if he knew that LC needed a break. “At least not in frontline combat. Was there just the four of them?”
He nodded again.
The Science techs were trying to gauge how much he could take, wanting to know more but not wanting to push him over the edge.
“I’m fine,” he said. “We need to know.”
“Well, we can’t get it to do anything. You want to try something?”
“Yeah, I want to take it with me.”
LC stared through the glass.
“You sure you know what you’re doing?” Duncan said. Everyone else had gone, watching through cameras from a safe distance.
“No,” he said, and pushed through the door into the test chamber.
It sealed behind him.
He glanced back at the big marine, wishing NG was there. NG would know what to do.
He walked in and stared at the staff, stopping just short of it and reaching his left hand out towards it. He could feel the energy in it before he was anywhere near touching it.
He stopped and glanced around again.
“Are you getting this?” he sent, wide link through the Senson.
“Yeah,” someone sent back. “LC, get out of there. Don’t touch it.”
There was something weirdly compelling about it. Powerful. He reached and wrapped his fingers around its shaft, the surface heating up on contact.
“LC, get out of there.”
He gripped it and lifted it from the supports, holding it out and turning it slowly. Especially powerful to be wielding it and not on the other end of it.
‘LC, put it down,’ Duncan warned.
The heat in his hand was spreading. The staff was taller than him, slender, heavier than it looked. He’d seen the shamans use it like a quarterstaff or bo, been on the receiving end of blows as they’d been herded from cage to cage. He’d only been hit by the energy blast twice but he’d seen other prisoners die from it, one guy blown apart by a direct blast, another engulfed in flame and incinerated.
He felt it heat up a notch.
He had his feet planted.
“LC…”
He could feel it vibrating, feel the energy increase.
“Luka, get the hell out of there.”
He turned the staff round, swinging it to take it in a two-handed grip, balancing his weight, feeling the power escalate.
Someone yelled.
Blast-proof barriers crashed down, dropping the cell into pitch black as he looked up, spun the staff and slammed it into the deck.
It was quiet. Inside his head and out.
He heard the hum of the mechanism straining as the blast barriers tried to lift and failed, a thin strip of light filtering in.
He blinked.
He was still holding the staff but it was cold. He had no idea how long he’d been standing there.
‘LC?’ someone shouted, too loud, inside his head.
He thought he replied but he wasn’t sure.
‘Stand back from the door.’
He tried to move but only managed to just about turn around as sparks appeared, the barrier in front of the glass door forced up enough for Hilyer to squeeze underneath and crawl inside, the beam of a flashlight bouncing ahead of him.
LC squinted, shielding his eyes. He let the staff clatter to the floor.
Hil cast the beam all around the cell, lighting up the walls, floor and ceiling, all black, charred.
He didn’t need the flashlight to see it.
“Holy shit,” Hil said. He aimed the light into LC’s face. “You okay?”
He shied away. “Yeah,” he said, vaguely. “I don’t think that was all just the staff.”
The beam hit his face again, the light burning into his eyes. He could feel his internal temperature rising still.
“You sure you’re okay?”
He tried to respond, felt his stomach twist knots, swayed and lost it. He felt his eyes roll back, felt the deck come up fast and hard, and wasn’t aware of much else until he came round too fast, sucked in a breath of oxygen that was too cold to be natural, and hit out, instinctively, coming up against a cold surface above him.
Isopod. Shit.
He didn’t so much punch the release button as send a blast of energy into it, without really meaning to, flinching back at the sparks and tearing wires free, alarms blaring and a puff of smoke spiralling up from the mechanism as the pod opened.
Medical staff were there in seconds, swearing, urging him to calm the hell down and cursing each other for leaving him unattended, as they triggered the release manually.
“Sorry,” he mumbled, lying back and trying to breathe through it. He felt less sore, the pain of the burns and claw marks lessened somewhat, replaced by a vicious pain stabbing behind his eyes. “How long…?”
“Four days,” one of them said.
Four days? Shit.
He needed to get to Hanover. He needed to find out what was going on.
He couldn’t sense any Bhenykhn. They were still safe, still in deep space from what he could pick up from the crew.
The medic took hold of his wrist. “How are you feeling?”
He couldn’t remember her name. That was disturbing.
“Headache.”
“Just let me check your stats,” she said, “then you can go.” She was thinking they hadn’t had much choice but to put him in the pod. He’d been unresponsive, close to crashing, no one with any clue what the shaman staff had done to him.
She had freckles dusting her nose. He should know her name. It felt tremendously important that he should know her name and he couldn’t recall it.
She held a sensor against his skin, puzzled by the stats she was reading. She was also thinking that she needed to tell him but she wasn’t sure how.
His stomach did a backflip, cold. “Tell me what?”
She frowned. “Whatever happened with the staff, it fried your Senson. And not just that, your neural interface is damaged,” she said, thinking it was too weird, that she’d never get used to it, that if it was anyone but LC it would make her skin crawl to think someone was listening in to her thoughts.
“Sorry,” he muttered again. He let out a breath he hadn’t realised he was holding. He was trying to read her name badge but the letters were leaping around as he tried to focus on them. “What does that mean?” He had to force himself to ask it out loud and not just take it out of her mind.
“We can’t connect a new implant. We’ve tried. It’s too dangerous. You’re going to have
to make do without for the moment.”
That wasn’t a disaster.
He relaxed, trying to see if his head felt different. It just hurt.
“I’m fine,” he said, trying to sound more calm than he felt. “Can I go?”
She nodded and helped him sit, carefully, thinking they couldn’t exactly stop him, could they? She’d heard what he’d done to the screens in the briefing room.
Jesus, they were scared of him.
While he was sitting there, trying to dredge up enough energy to move, Hilyer appeared at the doorway, lingering as if he didn’t like to intrude, half a smile on his face. It was weird to see him standing there, impossible to hear what he was thinking, like looking at a dark spot, no life signs, no emotions, thoughts, no nothing.
Except Hilyer broke into a full on grin and said, “Hey, LC, guess who the Wintran Coalition sent as their envoy?”
He couldn’t help reaching out to look. His stomach did another flip. And that time it wasn’t cold.
Chapter 6
“I’m curious…” Sebastian leaned forward. “You must have known about the creatures they call shamans. Why didn’t you warn them?”
The Man was quiet.
Sebastian stared for a long while then gave a dismissive laugh, swiped his hand across the surface of the console and threw enough energy into its core systems that it flickered and came to life. The flat surface danced with alien characters, schematics swirling. He manipulated it, playing with the data and letting it settle on the intel he wanted.
“No…” He looked up. “You didn’t know.” He exaggerated the incredulity, added a laugh. “How did you not see that coming?”
“We did not anticipate such a development.”
“That they would evolve? All they do is evolve. Consume. You said it yourself. Their very name. The Devourers. Why would they not see the threat that humans, albeit mutated humans, posed and adapt to counter it?” Sebastian laughed.
The Man shook his head, grave. “You always said Luka had the potential to be more powerful than Nikolai.”
“More powerful, yes. As effective? As good? Not by a long way.”
“Luka is something special, beyond anything I could have imagined for this race. Even as a boy, before the virus…”
Sebastian cut in. “He was stupid to think he could use a shaman staff. He didn’t know how to control it. And that made him dangerous.”
“There is always great danger in great power.”
It was hard not to snort in derision. “There is great danger in great stupidity.”
•
Hil waited until he showered and dressed, then walked with him through the ship, virtually bodyguarding and fending off anyone who might have intercepted them. He had one of the Hailstones with him, a slight hum emanating from it as it hovered there, keeping pace with them, darting ahead every now and then as if it was scouting ahead, even here in the safety of the ship.
LC flinched from it a couple of times and Hil seemed to sense his discomfort, talking to it or whatever the hell he did, and it dropped back, giving them some space. If it was half the galaxy away, that wouldn’t have been far enough.
LC stuck his hands in his pockets. “Is she with Edinburgh?”
Hil nodded. “Yeah.”
“Anyone else?”
“No. But Jameson is back. Pen’s here, and Quinn. Martinez has bugged out. She’s gone to meet with DiMarco. He’s running evac routes.” The Hailstone buzzed close again. Hil batted it away with half a smile and added, “You okay?”
He needed everyone to stop asking him that. He was fine until someone asked him that.
“It’s been four days?”
“Yeah. Evelyn said no more screwing with the shaman staffs. Science are trying to figure it out. They think it’s some kind of symbiotic organism that focuses energy, similar to the shield pods their grunts have, except it behaves like an amplifier or booster. She said to leave them to it or she’ll put you back in medical herself.” Hil slapped him on the shoulder. “Come on, they’re all in the war room. She wants us in there.”
Every seat at the conference table was occupied, save two. LC hesitated at the door. This was a war council like nothing ever gathered in the galaxy before. Earth, Winter, the Assassins’ Guild, the Merchants’ Guild, the Federation of Bounty Hunters, representatives from the biggest mafia families of the Between, pirate bands and freeloaders, even the Order, their age-old enemy… all gathered together by the Thieves’ Guild and all meaningless now they had a common enemy and one they had no chance of beating. It sent his head spinning just to nudge the minds that were gathered.
Sean O’Brien was sitting right there at the table with them. He didn’t know if he could handle this. She looked the same as the last time he’d seen her and at the same time so different it hurt. She was there as the Wintran envoy, right hand to the coalition chairman, not as a bounty hunter. That was weird but the war had changed everyone. He resisted the urge to look around inside her mind. There were still some lines he wasn’t prepared to cross and breaching her trust was one of them.
She looked up and watched as he walked in, a gentle smile settling deep in her eyes and she kept looking at him as he pulled out a chair and sat. He hadn’t seen her since the alleyway on Aston, when they’d been set up and he’d been shot to shit by the police. He wanted to talk to her, hold her, find out how the hell she was, and here they were, stuck in a briefing. It was frustrating as hell to not have a Senson.
Evelyn gave the briefest nod of acknowledgement to them both and stood, the room falling silent as they waited for her to speak.
“Six months ago,” she said, “the Thieves’ Guild encountered a Bhenykhn reconnaissance vessel at Erica and then discovered one of their forward operating bases at the far edge of the Between. We took heavy losses. We were attacked by their advance fleet and we managed to destroy one of their command ships, but not without the loss of the Alsatia, our own flagship. Most of you know this, some of you were there with us. Since then, you have all experienced the Bhenykhn first hand. What you don’t know is what we have discovered since then, since the first wave of the invasion.”
She paused to let that sink in. First wave. There was a general feeling of what the hell? LC could feel it in every mind around that table, a sinking realisation they were about to hear that there was worse to come.
“We have recently managed to infiltrate another of their bases,” she continued, steadfastly not looking at LC as she said it. “The Bhenykhn are assimilating human culture the same way they assimilate physiological benefits from merging with other symbiotic creatures. They feed on everything they encounter. They absorb, adapt, thrive on learning, overcoming and imitating. They feast on the flesh of their enemies…”
Evelyn paused again, as disgust rippled around the room. He had to switch off, cold, to prevent himself flashing back. That was the last thing everyone there needed to be hit with.
“They eat human flesh?” someone asked.
“From everything we have observed,” she said, calm and controlled considering what she was talking about, “not to gain sustenance. We are not food to them.”
“So why?”
Eloise Drake broke in with a scathing, “To provoke fear. They devour in order to terrify. They are the Devourers.”
Evelyn nodded. “They scavenge ruthlessly. They hunt without mercy. They enjoy the thrill of fighting a new enemy they feel is worthy. And they evolve to meet any threat with a speed that is terrifying. We have encountered at least two new species of Bhenykhn, at least one of which we believe has been brought here to counter our main advantage.”
She did glance at LC then, as she hesitated, a calculated pause.
“The virus, developed from Bhenykhn DNA, that has so far been the only weapon that has given us a chance to fight them. There is new data on the virus as well as intel on the Bhenykhn shamans on the board in front of you. And yes, the Bhenykhn are about to launch the second wave of their invasion.�
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There was a collective intake of breath.
Someone put a bottle of water in front of him and he stared at it, knowing that people were either looking at him, or trying to not look at him. His skin was itching.
Evelyn continued and was soon full flow, running through the intel, prioritising missions and targets, laying out an immediate plan of action. Aston was priority, Hanover secondary. No sign of the second wave yet but no questioning his analysis of the intel. It was just a matter of when. Once she was done, she went around the table to give everyone a chance to contribute.
He listened in, zoning out, as they all gave updates on positions, losses, supply deficits.
Drake, the ancient matriarch of the Order, was as glamorous as always, as calculating as ever. He could feel her staring at him as she gave her briefing, thoughts crossing her mind that he didn’t want to go near. She was offering to go dig in the archives of the Order, find intel that may help in the fight. It all sounded very noble. Hard to believe it was altruistic considering the age-old enmity between the Order and the guild. Drake, her contemporaries and their predecessors had been their enemy for way too long to just forget it now there was a bigger bad guy on the block.
LC kept his eyes down, mind closed. He didn’t believe what she was saying and didn’t like the sharp emotion of lust he was picking up from her that was directed at him.
He only looked up as Evelyn moved to Sean, and Sean spoke, talking about the Wintran Coalition and how Olivia Ostraban was rallying the forces that had splintered when the government had collapsed. When her father had been assassinated after the invasion. Sean glanced at him as she said that. He’d heard the news reports. Hadn’t been able to imagine that Olivia would be that upset considering the dysfunctional father-daughter relationship she’d only ever hinted at with derision when he’d been with her, when he’d had no idea who her father was. Had never imagined Olivia would be the one to step up and take his place. And never in a million years considered the possibility that Sean O’Brien of all people would be by her side as advisor and envoy?