I heard a chirp. And then, I heard another. This time, the sound was less inquisitive and more—hungry.
“Get the fuck back to the trucks!” I bellowed, turning to run as the horde of raptors came streaking up out of their cliffside nests. Their wings were bright blue, with toothy beaks of orange and eyes a solid black. Their feet were primordial, covered in scales and claws like a dragon, and as one they began to shriek in unison, the sound a deafening wave that threatened to split my skull.
Firing our weapons was no use, because there were too many. The team hauled ass, running toward the vehicles like the hounds of hell were chasing us, which was true, but these dogs had wings. And teeth. The first of them caught up to the Daymares, who never stopped running as they hacked and slashed with knives and swords that had appeared in their hands like magic. Breslin was grabbing the beasts out of the air and breaking them in two, throwing the bodies behind him, where the rest of the flock descended in a chittering, snapping mass. I saw Yulin get bit on the leg, and then on her forearm, and then Aristine fired her gun twice as a group of the birds vanished in a cloud of gore and feathers.
Here and there, engineers went down, only to be picked up by a friend as they ran, stumbled, or limped to the trucks. I drew my own blades, cutting the line and then beginning a whirling dance of mayhem as my new ‘bots kicked in and let me see what I could really do.
The birds were the size of an eagle or larger, and with each pass of my blades I took one or more of them down. I stopped, planted my feet, and began to cut, buying time for everyone as they lurched toward the trucks in bloody disarray. I swept my left arm up, splitting three birds with one cut, then followed with a backswing that sent the guts of the third creature spinning skyward in an oblong tumble. One of the birds landed on my head and sank its teeth into my scalp, and I scissored my blades overhead, cutting it in two even as I continued the move to rend four more into pieces, leaping forward and skewering a huge male right through the bony chest. He squawked and shivered in death as I flicked my blade, sending him crashing into an approaching pair of his friends. Their bones shattered under the impact, and for the next moments I was a killing machine, each final blow taking me closer to the truck. I was spattered with blood and shit and viscera, and by the time the truck door thumped against my back, I had enough feathers in my mouth to cough out a pillow. Big hands grabbed me and pulled me in, and I slumped in the seat, gasping as the flock began to disperse, denied their meal by our weapons and the hard shells of our trucks.
Breslin and Mira stared at me, while Aristine looked like she was trying to find something to say but failing.
“What?” I coughed.
Breslin took my blades away, setting them delicately on the floor of the cabin. We were in the oil tanker, and it was spacious, if not outright plush.
“Your ‘bots have really taken hold,” Aristine said.
“Yeah? And?” I asked, still confused.
“You killed a hundred of those things,” Mira said.
I was busy wiping my face, which was speckled like an Easter egg. The stench of the birds was powerful and tinged with ammonia. “Not to be a dick, but . . . so? You killed some too. You all did.”
Aristine looked pointedly at the display then tapped a few keys. “Watch this,” she said.
The screen flared to life, showing a rewind of what had just happened. “Slow it down,” I said.”
“It’s not sped up. That’s you. In real time,” Aristine said.
I was silent for a long moment, watching the recorded fight. “Is that—really? That’s what happened?”
“That’s exactly what happened,” Mira said.
On the screen, I was moving like a wraith, the blades flashing in patterns at speeds that weren’t humanly possible, and yet—there I was. It was me, and the memory of each cut and move was as real as if I was living it again. I was faster than any other human I’d ever seen, and my blades didn’t just kill the large predators. They made them explode on impact if I hit the chest just right. No wonder I was festooned with guts.
“That’s . . . unexpected,” I said.
“I think we have our plan for the oil region, but for now let’s make sure everyone is medically cared for. Maybe back up and lay up here?” Aristine asked.
“Let’s drive north. Looks like a crossing, and we can lick our wounds on the other side,”
I said. She gave the order and we moved out slowly, as there were many injuries and a lot of residual what the fuck just happened still lingering.
In less than ten minutes, we were at a collapsed wall that led right down to the muddy stream, with bright sunlight illuminating the chasm walls. “Cross here,” I ordered, and we chugged forward in a careful line, getting a full klick into the open desert before circling the trucks and getting out with a flurry of groans. Some of the engineers didn’t get out at all, as their wounds were still actively bleeding.
“Camp here. Mira, you and Neve with me on watch while everyone else gets medical care. We sleep in the trucks tonight.”
There were no arguments to that, and the healthy team members went in motion, bandaging an array of wounds ranging from small bites to a massive chunk missing from a Daymare’s right arm. He’d taken one for his team, and his ‘bots were already working overtime to close the gaping wound.
The Daymares had portable field stoves that gave us a hot meal and coffee, two things I hadn’t expected. Aristine and Silk moved among the wounded, stitching and closing the various bites that were still bleeding freely. We all changed dressings and dosed people with antibiotics, simply because the birds had nasty teeth that were, according to Yulin, filled with bacteria.
As the last of the sun fled, the night sky came alive with stars.
Neve and Mira watched their own third of the horizon from our perch atop the tanker, while I kept my eyes in the direction of the birds. I didn’t expect another attack, especially at night, but if we were caught in the open, we’d be hard pressed to fight them off again.
“What else do you think is out there?” Neve asked.
“If fire breathing dragons fell out of the skies, I wouldn’t be surprised. Not at all,” I said.
She grunted, as did Mira, who was peering through her scope at something in the distance.
“What is it?’ I asked her.
“Big tortoise. Slowing down now—ah, he’s going in a burrow. Heluva hole,” Mira said.
“I can tolerate a big tortoise. I’ve never seen one fast enough to take me down,” I said.
“Yet,” Neve chirped, laughing softly. It was a grim joke, made even more gloomy by the uncertainty of what was around us. The birds had been a complete surprise, and if I’d let the column come forward with me, our wounds—and situation—would be different right now.
Different and worse.
I’d been lucky, and I knew it.
A meteor streaked overhead, lighting the sky in a silver light before it flared out somewhere near Orion’s Belt. In the silence that followed, I watched people begin to enter the vehicles as the Daymares banked the fire they’d built.
Aristine appeared at the edge of the tanker, looking up into the dark. “I’ll take midwatch with Silk.”
“Take morning instead, okay? I’ll get some sleep in the morning, and you’ve both been slammed with the wounded,” I told her. She was about to protest, but I added, “Please. I need you both fresh tomorrow in case there are complications.” Her smile was grateful, and there were lines graven in her face after the hectic work of the day.
“Thanks,” was all she said, vanishing back into the night.
“The birds won’t be back,” Mira said.
“You’re right, probably, but there are hunters out here who’re just getting warmed up. We’re a soft target for them, even in the trucks,” I said.
Somewhere, a wolf howled in the distance, and the high keening of it rattled my senses. I checked my weapon and settled in to watch, and none of us said a word as the eyes of The Emp
ty came to life in the night around us.
13
We smelled the oil before we saw it.
The hot desert wind carried the acrid stench, and I held stopped the column to get out and examine a small stream running alongside our route—it was intermittent at best, and as I watched the sluggish water, drops of oil bloomed on the surface like the jeweled reflections of a blackbird’s wing.
“It’s coming from the water, but I don’t think it’s a natural deposit,” I told Aristine and Breslin, who stood next to me.
“Why do you say that?” Breslin asked, tilting his head to watch another small slick of oil bloom and disperse in the water.
“Because of that.” I reached into the water and plucked a dirty rag from it, waving like kelp. It was roughly made linen, stained with oil and partially stitched.
Aristine said nothing but lowered her goggles to stare south, where the little stream originated over a low hill. “The gully is too well lit to have any more of those birds, but this looks more like a drainage ditch than a natural runoff, and that rag is evidence that there are people close by. How do you wish to proceed?” she asked me.
“Carefully. Column stays here, and we—you, me, Mira, and Neve—fan out and advance to sniping distance. Breslin, you keep everyone buttoned up, except for the Daymares. They’re on guard, ready to advance on our call,” I said.
Aristine nodded, calling into her communicator and unshouldering her own rifle. In less than a minute, the advance team was ready, and I began a low crawl along the path we were driving, which became better defined as we went.
“This is a road,” I said.
“Feet, but also carts and maybe a truck or two,” Mira said.
“Horses, too,” Neve added, pointing with her chin to a series of prints in the gritty soil. There was an array of low scrub growing, and as I passed by a low cluster of leaves I saw a splash of oil clinging to a stem. “They’re moving oil here.”
Neve crested seconds before me, to my right. “Two wells,” was all she said.
I took a look. Four hundred meters away, a strange device shimmered in the rising sun. It was an open sluiceway, made of rusting metal and smoking lightly, as if it had only recently been on fire. Several barrels stood nearby, and a second well, better made and taller, with an actual tower, was another fifty meters distant to the south.
“I think . . . they’re refining raw crude in the open. That’s why we smell the oil so far away. Look around for—ah, there it is,” I said.
“What are you looking for?” Mira asked.
I pointed east. “Graves. I’m sure people die here. This shit is dangerous, and this entire setup looks too amateur to be safe.”
“Which means someone is forcing these people to work. Fucking warlords,” Mira finished, her voice rich with disgust.
“Exactly. Let’s find the boss and pop them. I don’t have time to negotiate, and I’m not in the mood to stampede a bunch of roughnecks out here in open ground. Neve, do you have eyes on anyone who looks like a boss?” I asked.
“I do,” Aristine said.
I focused in the direction she looked, letting my eyes adjust through the grit. The air was fouled by the refining, and I was still seeing additional places where oil was actually coming out of the ground, being collected by people with all manner of primitive tools. The more I stared at the site, the busier it got. There were dozens of people working, and a few of them were armed. I marked them, kept a tally, and concluded we were looking at a small operation, with one person in charge and no less than six henchmen working the crowd.
“What do you see, Aristine?” I asked.
“Southwest. Standing in the door of that tent with the chair outside. He’s got—oh . . .” Her words trailed off, and I knew something was wrong.
In the tent opening, a man far larger than me held a leash, and on the end of it were two people, covered in filth and cowering. The big guy aimed a lazy kick at the nearest person, connecting hard. Both people cowered, but I saw the one who had not been kicked reach discreetly to the injured person, as if to comfort them. Fresh blood streaked pale skin, and the big guy holding the leash didn’t notice. His mouth was moving, and a guard hurried over to take the leash from his hand. The boss shrugged into armor and accepted a towel from another worker, cleaned his repulsive face, and threw the towel to the ground.
“I think we know where that rag came from,” I said through my teeth. I could feel my anger rising as the tableau unfolded before us, like so many other scenes in the shithole world the virus left behind. “Get me a count on guards,” I said, my voice flat with anger.
“Five,” came Neve’s instant answer. “Could be more, though.”
“I’m going to start working around the side. In one minute, take every guard. Mortal wounds only, and then come up for support. Time to make an example out of this asshole before we take the oil source,” I said. I crouched and began moving without waiting for confirmation, and my ‘bots began to sing.
My body thrummed to life in a way I hadn’t felt before the last dose, and I was rounding a large, shattered rockpile when the rifles of my team cracked in unison. Then Mira’s slammed again, followed by two more shots from what could only be Neve’s heavy weapon, the echoes barely faded before I peered around my cover to see bodies falling like bags of wet grain. Every guard was down, and three of them were missing most of their heads.
Screams and chaos erupted, then fell to a low whimper as the boss man drew a pistol and shot a fleeing worker in the back, pitching the skinny man forward where he lay still as a corpse.
It was time to move.
I jumped forward and began to run. The boss tracked me instantly, but at this range I knew he could shove his pistol up his own ass for all the good it would do. He fired at me in a calm, methodical way, snapping off rounds that never came close enough to concern me until the last two, because by that time I was moving at full speed and closing the gap between us.
His eyes narrowed as he watched me move, and I got a good look at the bastard. He was taller, heavier, and dirtier than me, and his black hair and beard were trimmed close. His brown eyes glittered with cunning, and when his pistol clocked on ammo, he dropped it without a thought, pulling a wicked knife and tearing a tent support from the ground with his other hand. He swished the metal spar through the air, and it sang a high note as he prepared to receive me. I had nothing in my hands except anger. He would be an example for the people around him, and I couldn’t get my point across without suing my hands.
“You think you—” he growled, then my fist caught him in the gut and there was no more air for speaking. He flew back into the tent, tearing the supports from the ground as the entire structure collapsed around him like a deflating balloon. I grabbed the leash and pulled the two people free as Mira rushed up behind me, followed by Aristine and Neve, who had their weapons ready but pointed down.
I dove into the tent fabric, howling with anger, tearing the fabric with my bare hands to reveal the big bastard who was still trying to shake off the fury of my first blow. He was disoriented and wheezing, lifting his big, scarred hands in weak motions as he tried to mount a defense—any defense, really—against what was coming.
He need not have bothered.
“I’m not going to kill you yet, you prick,” I said. My hands locked around his wrists and I squeezed, earning a bellow of pain from him that revealed big, stained teeth.
“I’ll fucking—” he began, but I ended his comment with an open-handed slap that sent snot and teeth flying in a glutinous arc. He collapsed again, and this time he wouldn’t get back up. I put a boot on his head and let my breathing slow, then looked around at the people, who stared in horror at me.
“What’s this asshole’s name?” I asked, trying to keep the rage out of my voice.
“Doppkin,” came the answer in a small female voice, filled with pain. It was one of the people on the leash, now removed. I turned my head to regard them, trying to school my feat
ures into something friendly. There were two young women—one a blue-eyed blonde, one brunette with skin the color of tea and haunted brown eyes—next to each other, both filthy beyond belief, covered in cuts and bruises, and wearing expressions of fearful hope.
I removed my foot and stepped over to the women, crouching to the one who spoke. Extending my hand, I smiled, and this time I could feel it reach my eyes. I was genuinely happy they were alive. And free.
“Jack Bowman, and these are my people. We came here to find oil, but as of this second you’ll never be harmed again. You have my word.”
“We’re . . . free?” the blonde woman asked. The other choked off a sob.
“You are. What are your names? That’s General Aristine, Silk, Mira, and Neve, who is really sweet despite her rifle,” I said.
The women tried to smile, but their lips were cracked, and it clearly pained them, so they nodded in unison.
The darker girl pointed to her friend. “That’s Anibel, and I’m Tress. We were taken—we were taken south of here. When they burned our outpost during the big movement.”
“Big movement?” I asked, cutting my eyes at everyone to make sure they were listening.
“The animals and people. All moving. Lots of dust and rustlers coming through. They stole everything that wasn’t attached to the house, and then that sonofabitch over there burned us out. Killed most everyone except—except,” Tress faltered.
“The pretty ones, right?” Mira said. Her tone was poisonous with anger.
“Yeah,” Anibel said, the first word she’d spoken.
“You’re safe now. Hungry?” I asked.
“Very. And, um, Jack?” Tress asked, giving Anibel a hopeful glance.
“Honey, would you like to shower?” Aristine said, stepping forward and reaching out to Anibel and Tress. Both women began to cry, and Mira came over, then Neve. They helped the women to their feet.
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