“Not really,” Drav said, tapping his fingertips together. No one had guns out. Yet. “We usually hit highly secured targets in difficult locations. We don’t usually kill just one man traipsing around in the open. It’s kind of beneath us ... even if he is the ‘Angel of Death.’”
My guns were holstered in my most practiced location. It seemed too simple to just draw and kill him. I knew enough about the Shade to know there was nothing simple here. “If you want to let me go, I can try again to make this harder.”
Drav leaned back in his seat, convincingly looking relaxed. “We were given some extra objectives to make this more of a challenge. We’re supposed to make your death public — so people can be sure you’re dead. And they want your death to discredit you — to make you look pathetic. To have you screaming and begging.”
I nodded. “That does sound hard. How are you going to achieve that one? Get a look-alike actor?”
He chuckled. “We have a few ideas. There are rumors you have affections for another human.”
I kept my expression steady. “That doesn’t sound like me.”
“It does not,” Drav admitted. “Still, nothing to lose from grabbing her, torturing her while you listen, and seeing if that elicits a response.”
I nodded. “Yeah, I’m curious about that too. I’m sure we’ll both learn something about me.”
“We also know about your weakness.” Drav was quick — really quick. The knife was at my face before even I could react, slicing into the flesh of my cheek. Immediately, the Fazium went to work, and the pain shooting through me doubled me over. It felt as if acid had been thrown onto my face and was melting it away.
“So we have a couple things to work with,” Drav continued as I took deep breaths, trying to will myself through the pain. “The goal is that by the time we actually kill you, everyone will see it as a mercy.”
I tried to come up with a dismissive response, but I had to use all my will just to keep from curling into a fetal position because of the pain. It was already starting to fade; I just had to keep it together.
Drav held up a radio and said into it, “Do you have the woman?”
“Just about,” came the response, “but we —”
There was a beep that indicated the signal had been cut.
I had recovered enough from the pain to sit up straight again. “I’m sure that was just an equipment failure and not that they were blown up or something.”
Drav stared at me. All I had to work with were his eyes, so it was hard to determine his expression, which I really wanted to see right now. “This is a trap,” he stated calmly. “Good. I was afraid that Rico — known for fighting whole armies alone — was going to try to take us on by himself. But it looks like you’re working with a team now, trying to match us and give us a challenge.”
“Yeah, I got some associates. One of them’s kind of a bitch and really irritates me, but guess what: She’s your problem now.” I pointed to the window beside them. They turned to see Sylvia hanging outside the tram, pointing a gun at them through the window. She fired, hitting the operative to Drav’s left, the shots making big sparks against his heavy armor. I didn’t waste time seeing whether those shots had penetrated, as Dip had already blown the release on the emergency door we had rigged, and I jumped out of the tram, plunging the thousands of feet below it. “Clear!” I announced through my communicator. I glanced back to see the tram erupt into debris and fire as Sylvia detonated the explosives I had left in it.
I really didn’t want the threat of the Shade hanging over me, so I’d thought it best to handle them immediately. A part of me wanted to take them on the way I usually do things — me against many, as Drav had said — but I knew they outclassed me, so I tried something new: Match their team with my own. We were just sloppy enough setting up our assault on the Monolith that I figured the Shade would hear of it and come to intercept. They knew I worked closely with Diane, so I had her split up from me to divide their attention, while making sure she and Wade were prepared. Then all that was left was convincing Sylvia to cling to the side of the tram for the final surprise — not the easiest thing, since she kept protesting that she’d be doing that to absolutely no purpose — which, honestly, I figured there was about a forty percent chance she would be right.
But there was a sixty percent chance by my estimate that the Shade would go for the bait: My charging off on some daring assault — my usual MO. So I’d let them come to me, then blow them up, because it’s a busy day for the newly elected representative of Calipa and I don’t have a lot of time for this sort of thing. Now the only problem left for me was that I was plummeting toward earth at a tremendous speed — but that’s a common problem humanity has solved many times.
I struggled to get my jacket off — disrobing while falling is not one of those odd things I’ve practiced many times — and when it finally fell free, I activated the emergency flight suit. Small panels — something like little wings — spread out under my arms and my fall began to stabilize. I was now speeding forward horizontally more than plummeting vertically.
“We didn’t get them all,” Sylvia said over the communicator. “I saw two leave the tram before it exploded.”
The Shade were not going to make this easy. Drav was the sort of person to always have multiple backup plans. We really needed to take them out on this first strike, though, as we only got to surprise them once; they’d be even more prepared the next time. It was hard to glance behind me, but I thought I saw other objects flying through the air. One of them was probably Sylvia, and I guessed the other two were coming for me.
“You look closer to them,” I said into my radio. “Can you fire on them?”
“How am I supposed to fire while using this thing?” Sylvia asked.
It was a good question. You had to keep your arms out to your sides to keep stable. “We’ll just have to figure that out,” I answered. “Can you make a quick bank to the left so I know which one is you?”
I looked behind me and saw one of the black dots veer off a bit. So now I had the other two as targets. I glanced down to confirm the ground was still far, far below me. I had plenty of time to recover from doing something stupid.
I whipped around, the wind battering me as I lost all my aerodynamics and went back to plummeting. I pulled a gun from the holster under my left arm and fired at the black dots as my body was whipped around in midair, changing speed and direction every second. I turned back around and spread my arms, lurching a bit before finding stability, my right hand still clinging to the gun.
“You missed,” Sylvia helpfully informed me.
That whole attempt had battered my body a bit more than I’d expected. I knew it was possible something like that might cause the Fazium to activate, and then this would just get too interesting. “Maybe we need a new strategy.” The Shade had their new strategy first, though.
I could see a vehicle rise up ahead of me. A small attack ship, with a gun aimed my way.
I banked off to my right as the first shots ripped through the air near me. I zigged and zagged as more shots came at me. The flight suit was actually rather easy to control, and zipping around like this felt rather natural. All in all, flying was a lot of fun — and getting shot at just gave an objective to the flying that enhanced the fun. Yes, most likely I was about to die, but until then ... fun!
I could feel the heat of one of the bolts just barely miss me as I spun around in a new direction. The firing seemed to stop for a moment, and I looked for the attack ship while trying to keep my movements evasive. It took me a few seconds to locate it, and I saw that it had rocketed ahead, trying to get right in front of my flight path. The guns aimed at me again as I flew right toward them. They had me dead to rights, which was probably why they were focused on me and didn’t see the truck ram into them.
The blocky, massive truck hit the attack ship with tremendous force, sending the entire thing lurching sideways. I could see one figure plummet out the door as the
attack ship descended, probably using all its emergency lift to avoid falling into a death spiral. I sailed above it, and the truck went after me. It quickly matched my speed, flying beside me, as the side door opened. I banked a little toward it and into the door, slamming into the floor of the truck with more force than I meant to. The Fazium activated, but it was a small episode of pain, and I fought through it and got to my feet.
“Are you okay?” Eldan called from the driver’s seat.
“Fine,” I answered.
I was about to tell him to gun it when Dip chimed in. “Don’t forget Sylvia.” As I had found out, teammates were useful, but the downside was that I had to worry about their welfare, which just complicated things.
I heard a thump on the roof of the vehicle. I looked out the door just in time to see a figure swing down from above and kick me in the chest.
Not Sylvia.
The Fazium flared again as I slammed into the opposite wall. I realized I must have dropped the gun I had in my hand during my previous Fazium episode. I tried to draw my second gun, but the Shade operative punched me in the gut as he grabbed me. I fought through the intense pain to return a blow myself, but my punch bounced off the thick armor. They apparently had better flight suits than us, as my mine was made of a thin, form-fitting material that wasn’t going to protect me at all.
“Rico!” Eldan yelled from the driver’s seat, which served absolutely no purpose, as I already knew my name. Well, it served some purpose, as it grabbed the operative’s attention for a moment. He looked at Eldan and drew a pistol. I was on it, twisting it against his hand. He hit me in the throat, though, causing me to fall to the floor. Needless to say, I was really off my game, and I’d blame the intense, excruciating pain constantly rocketing through my body if that counts as an excuse.
Good excuse or not, I now lay on the floor as the operative stood over me, gun pointed at me.
Another body flew through the open door and collided with him, causing a panicked shot to hit just by my head. Sylvia was on top of him, gun in hand, firing at point blank rapidly into different spots of the operative’s armor, trying to find a weak spot. She must have found something, because when Sylvia stood up, the man didn’t move.
“Let’s go!” Sylvia yelled as she dragged the body to the open door and tossed it out.
As I struggled back to my feet, pain throbbing in different parts of my body, I could feel the truck shake a bit as it sped forward. Sylvia helped me up. “This was fun,” she said with a slight chuckle. “Don’t know what it accomplished, though.”
“Did you see what happened to Drav?” I asked. “Did the explosion get him?”
“I don’t know. It’s kind of hard to get an exact sitrep while falling through the air.” She set me down on a bench while she went to close the door. “They’re wily bastards. I’m going to assume they’re still after us.”
“Good assumption.” I took a couple deep breaths as I got over the pain.
“If those guys are still after us, we’re not fleeing that fast,” Eldan warned us. “I must have really damaged this thing colliding with the attack ship.”
“Yeah, that’ll do it.” I spoke into my radio. “Diane, we might be in trouble. How are you guys doing over there?”
“We took care of the ones they sent after us, and they didn’t appear to have any backup,” Diane answered. “They must all be concentrating on you.”
“This is Wade,” said Wade. “We’re coming your way with a space-faring transport. Since you’re about to officially be the new representative, let’s just go ahead and get to Vesa and get to the next phase of the plan.”
“Fleeing isn’t going to work for long,” I answered.
“If you have a better plan, I’d like to hear it.”
This was all a contest of who had better backup plans. While we had taken the Shade by surprise, we had not taken them unprepared, a fact emphasized by part of the truck ceiling being blown away, giving us an unplanned sunroof. “They have another attack ship,” I told Wade and Diane. Wade was right: Not dying was enough of a challenge for now.
The truck lurched from side to side as Eldan performed what he imagined to be evasive maneuvers. I almost fell to the floor as we were shaken by another hit. “Go low!” I ordered Eldan.
“How low?” Eldan asked as I felt us dive.
“So low that it doesn’t feel safe, then a bit lower,” I said.
Sylvia stood near me, hanging on to a bar on the wall. She was looking back toward the attack ship — not that we had a window to see it through — and looked more than a little worried. She was quite professional, but she was also scared of death. I guess most everyone is. And we had a moment to be worried about it, as there wasn’t really anything to do now but hope Eldan kept things together. I had thought about taking the controls from him, but I was still dealing with the pain from the Fazium, and that seemed risky.
“This is where you’d say something reassuring to her,” Dip told me.
That seemed like insulting her intelligence, though. So instead I decided to do what I normally do in this situation and ignore the danger. “Good job out there,” I told Sylvia casually.
She pried her attention away from the sounds of the attack ship shooting at us. “What?”
“Good job. The Shade were a bit more ready than we anticipated.”
Sylvia smiled weakly. “Live and learn.”
“And you look cute in that, by the way,” I said, pointing at the blue glide suit on her.
That seemed to annoy her, which was a distraction from death. “You look like a dork in yours.”
The suit really wasn’t my style, so she had a point. I looked to the front, where Eldan was frantically controlling things. We were low enough that we were dodging trees, but the strategy seemed to work, as the attack ship hadn’t hit us again, and the shots coming from it sounded farther away.
“Sending you a location,” Diane chimed in. “Maneuver to meet us there.”
“You got something for this?” I asked, still hearing the attack ship firing.
“We have something,” Wade answered.
I went to Eldan. “You got the location?”
“I got it,” he stammered. “I’m just trying to —”
We banked to the right, but Eldan had to make a sudden course adjustment to avoid some dense woods. Monitors at the front showed the view all around us, and the attack ship was still racing after us.
“Doing good. Keep it up,” I told him, remembering Dip’s prompting. He seemed a nervous wreck, but he honestly was doing better than I thought he would. I really thought we would have been shot out of the sky by now.
And then our time came. A shot shook the entire truck, and the shaking didn’t stop. “We’re going down!” Eldan shouted.
Eldan aimed the vehicle at a clearing up ahead. We hit the ground hard, but it wasn’t too bad; the emergency stabilizers kept us upright as the truck came to a stop.
“Out!” Sylvia screamed as she threw open the side door.
I started to turn toward it when Dip said, “Make sure everyone else is safe.”
I looked at Eldan, who wasn’t moving very quickly. He must have hit his head on landing. I helped him out of the seat and headed for the door. Sylvia jumped out just ahead of us, and we followed just as the attack ship began to rip into the truck. We landed outside, and I turned to see the whole thing ripped to jagged shards and slag. I almost got killed saving Eldan — again — a hazard of being a “good person.”
The attack ship hovered higher to survey what it was shooting. It would soon spot us, and our temporary avoidance of death would end. We were in a big open area — any trees that could be used as cover were more than a hundred yards away. There appeared to be a building here — another stone edifice — and there were dozens and dozens of people about, some of whom were running and others gawking at the sight of us and the burning vehicle. The nearest group of people wasn’t that far and would at least confuse the attack ship i
f we ran among them.
“You can’t use people for cover,” Dip told me. I had forgotten all about how I was supposed to care about all the randos I ran into. That made things so complicated. I didn’t really see an option for us in that case. We could just run for the trees, but I didn’t see much chance of survival. Plus, the little bit of pride I had didn’t want to die running. So I pulled out the other pistol I had on me. Once again, it was an underpowered one, to lessen chance of collateral damage, so it had no chance against an attack ship. Still, if I was going to die, at least I would die shooting at something.
I took aim at the attack ship as it rose above me. I didn’t know if it saw me yet, but that was coming. As I aimed, I saw some other movement, though, something streaking toward the ship.
An explosion rocked the side of the attack ship. It lurched sideways and plummeted hard, smashing into the ground. We turned to see a large vehicle descending about thirty yards from us — a long sleek one made for breaking the atmosphere. A door was open on the side, and there was Wade, holding a large cannon — the anti-aircraft gun.
We dashed for the transport. It hovered low enough for us to jump in, Wade dropping his cannon and helping Sylvia and Eldan up as I took up the rear. I scrambled in and turned to see a large crowd gathered around, having overcome their fear of the conflict to see what was going on. There was applause; they recognized me. I couldn’t let them see the Angel of Death just flee in fear. I stood and gave them all a wave from the doorway as the craft started to lift off.
The shot ripped through my abdomen. As I staggered in shock, I got one clear look at the crowd and a figure in black standing amongst them. I somehow knew it was Drav. And he had his crowd to watch the Angel of Death die. I stumbled back, trying to get out of view, but it was too late. A second shot burned through my chest, and I fell back to the floor just as Wade got the door shut.
These were mortal wounds. I could feel the life fading from me. I knew I just had to hold on to life for a little bit, though. And then the intense pain kicked in, like fire searing my veins and trying to burn me out from the inside, and I soon wished I was dead.
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