Grendel Unit

by Bernard Schaffer

  "Now that's definitely some sort of a mechanical issue," Frank said calmly. "We get that on our ship all the time."

  The fan directly above them sputtered to a stop. Drops of blood began trickling from the fan blades and landing on the floor directly in front of them. Frank looked down at the blood, and then at Bender. "Hey, that doesn't normally happen does it?"

  Bender's face turned a light shade of gray.

  "Because if it does, that would just be kind of weird. But, you know. No judging."

  In the center of the Get High Zone, Vic's face was still turned upward to the ventilation fans, braving the cloud of karjarra swirling all around him. His face was starting to feel numb. He didn't have much longer, and he knew it.

  "Are you absolutely sure this will work?" he'd said to Frank just an hour earlier.

  "I'm, like, really, really, pretty sure," Frank said. "Kind of."

  "That is not good enough, you idiot. Karjarra's one of the most potent narcotics in existence. I take a hit of that crap once and I'm as good as addicted."

  "Listen, twelve-step programs have come a long way since you went to prison. We've got a much better understanding of ˗"

  Vic sighed and rolled up his sleeve. "Why the hell do I even talk to you? Here, just inject me with whatever half-assed thing you concocted and get it over with."

  "Gee, I'm sorry, you mean this insane plan that is certain to get us all killed and you just whipped up on a moment's notice might actually have some design flaws? Say it isn't so! Please, tell me again how you oh so graciously informed me that I had two hours to develop a chemical compound that I've never even heard of, let alone administered. Tell me again how we're about to risk our lives on the word of some terrified prisoner you were torturing for information!"

  "Frank, listen…"

  "Forget it. Just let me give you this unreliable concoction so I can hurry up and get killed by a group of fanged biker freaks."

  "I have faith in you. You know that."

  "You should." Frank lowered the syringe to Vic's arm and slid it in, "Now, this might burn a little."

  Vic's eyes widened as he looked down at the syringe, "What did you put in there, acid?"

  "Only a tiny bit. It's the only thing that can knock out the narcotic before it bonds to your blood cells."

  Vic looked away, gritting his teeth and clenching his hand around the edge of the table until Frank finished the injection. "There, all finished," Frank said. He tossed the syringe in the trash and picked up his notes on the antidote to make an entry.

  Vic rubbed his arm and laughed at himself, saying, "Normally I'm good with pain, but that really burned."

  Frank laughed with him while he scanned the notes, making sure that everything had been checked off. He re-read one of the entries about area of injection and cringed. "Uh, Captain," he said quietly.

  "Captain?" Vic said suspiciously, still rubbing his arm. "What did you do?"

  "The needle wasn't supposed to go in your arm. I'll need you to drop your pants."

  "You're kidding me."

  Frank showed him the notes.

  Vic shook his head and began unbuckling his belt, muttering, "Is it hatred for me, Frank? Is that what it is? It must be that, because nothing else explains the things you do, sometimes."

  Frank prepared another syringe and said, "Well, look on the bright side. With two doses in you, I'd say your chances of it probably working just went up exponentially. Or at least, by two."

  He could feel the smoke swirling around in his lungs, and the lights in the ceiling began to stretch and bend into strange shapes. Vic watched the fans rotating above him, bringing down wave after wave of orange smoke, and he knew that it would have him soon. He knew that he would let it take him, and after that, nothing else would matter. The rest of his days would be spent inside a dense narcotic fog, living for the brief, wonderful moments when he was back in this very same spot.

  He'd always lived his life with a purpose, and still would, but now that purpose was going to be obtaining the funds to inhale more karjarra. The horrible, disgusting things he would have to do to get it wouldn't matter either. He opened his mouth and found himself reaching up with his face to get a deeper breath of it, the first taste of the drug getting past Frank's antidote in a trickle, but that trickle had stirred a wild hunger inside of him for more.

  He breathed greedily, only to realize that he was inhaling nothing but air. The dirty, fetid air of the facility, filled with a dozen naked junkies and confused looking gang members.

  The fans above them had stopped working, the incessant engine sounds grinding to a soft whining stop. Vic shook his head and rubbed his eyes. He spat onto the ground to clear his mouth of the karjarra's taste and inhaled again, glad to be coming out of the fog. It was like climbing from inside out of the abyss, and he slowly began to take stock of the situation.

  The Fanglords were scrambling around the floor, their guns trained on the ceiling, unsure of what they were under attack from. The one at the front with the long blonde hair, Bender, was barking orders into his handheld.

  "Get up on the roof and find out what the hell is happening!"

  Vic could hear men scrambling up the ladders alongside the facility's metal walls, followed by the sound of screams that grew more and more distant. That would be Monster snatching them out of the shadows and throwing them for distance, Vic thought.

  "Call it in!" one of the guards cried out.

  "Shut your face!" Bender shouted back. "We can handle this, just stay calm!"

  Vic watched him raise his handheld again, trying desperately to reach one of the men outside and get a situational report. Smart, Vic thought. He doesn't want to give up his position in here. He's worried the enemy is trying to spread out his resources before they launch an attack against the interior.

  Just one mistake, Vic thought. We're already here.

  The junkies around him were whimpering nervously, muttering that they hadn't finished their cycle yet before the fans cut off. They were going to get sick. They'd spent the last of their money on this dose and needed it to last them until they got their next disability check. Please, a few of them begged. Please don't do this. We need the rest of it! Please!

  Vic leaned down to the junkie closest to him and whispered, "I just heard the guard say we're only getting a half dose. They want us to leave."

  "No," the man sputtered. "They…they can't do that."

  Vic turned to the woman behind him, "They're only giving us that little bit. We need to pay for the rest."

  "We already paid!" she moaned.

  "They have plenty of karjarra locked up behind that gate," Vic said, under his breath. "All of it, just sitting there."

  "Bastards!" one of the junkies hissed.

  "Let's take it," Vic grunted, his voice low enough to be heard by those closest to him, but not so that the guards heard him and shot him as an example.

  "Take it!" someone screamed, and raced forward, arms swinging wildly.

  One of the guards spun with his rifle and fired a burst of rounds into the junkie's torso, shredding his target mid-step. It was a devastating shot, but before he could fire again, two others jumped on top of him and were clawing at his face. The rest of the guards scrambled for safe firing positions, but heavily-armed as they were, and as often as they'd planned for an attack from outside the facility, they'd never trained for what happened on the day when the junkies turned on them.

  Guards shot across the floor, punching holes in their co-workers and splattering the thick metal walls with blood. Everyone was screaming orders, trying to be heard over the gunfire.

  The fiends moved with surprising speed, their hunger fueling them with white rage, all their deep cravings driving them forward. Bullets hammered like anvils on every pylon and stretch of wall, ricocheting like steel-tipped bees past his head, and Vic dove against the far wall and tucked himself down into the corner as tightly as he could.

  Frank tapped Bob Buehl on the arm, "Get
ready. Let's go."

  Buehl looked at the chaos surrounding them and said, "Right now?"

  Bender shoved past Frank as one of the junkies broke through the line, rotted-teeth gnashing like a rapid dog, and he snatched him by the face and twisted violently, trying to rip the fiend's jaw off. Frank scurried back to avoid getting hit and said, "Yes, now!"

  Buehl looked down at his Rangefinder and fumbled with the switches along the side, muttering, "I always was curious to see what this did."

  Bender smeared his hands down the front of his pants, leaving them stained with gore, as he caught sight of Bob Buehl stepping forward with this heavy assault rifle and aiming it at the row of people in front of him. "Finally," Bender said. "I was hoping you two weren't just going to stand there and watch."

  His face fell when he realized Buehl wasn't pulling the trigger. He was simply aiming the gun at each of the people in the room and counting them off, "One, two, three˗" including the junkies and the guards.

  "What the hell are you doing?"

  "Quiet," Frank said.

  Bender grabbed Frank by the front of his uniform shirt and said, "You two can either fight, or I'll feed you to these bastards myself."

  "Bob?" Frank said, snapping his fingers.

  "Sixteen, seventeen," Buehl said.

  "Bob!"

  "What?"

  Frank nodded at Bender, and Buehl turned and began to aim the barrel at Bender's head, when Frank said, "No! We need him, remember."

  Buehl lowered the gun to Bender's right and left kneecap and said, "Eighteen, nineteen." Buehl turned the gun back toward the crowd and was about to pull the trigger when he turned back toward Bender and aimed the weapon at his foot and said, "Twenty." He looked up at Bender and said, "I always liked round numbers better."

  He lowered his weapon at the ground and pulled the trigger, saying, "OMFG, acquire."

  A series of metal balls rolled down the length of the barrel and spilled out onto the floor, no bigger than marbles. They clattered together as they fell, like loose change. Bender looked down at the twenty balls and sneered, "What the hell is this, some kind of joke?"

  A bright beam of blue light shot out from each of the balls, aiming at all of the targets Bob Buehl had previously counted off. There were two beams of light targeting his knees and one at his foot. His eyes widened and he quickly raised his gun, trying to crank off a round at Buehl in time to stop whatever was about to happen next, but it was too late.

  "Activate."

  The balls leapt from their positions on the ground silently, whipping through the air at blinding speed, so that the only sound that could be heard was a soft popping noise of cloth and skin and muscle being perforated simultaneously. A puff of red mist billowed into the air inside the facility, and the entire assortment of guards and junkies collapsed to the floor, dead.

  Bender looked down in horror at the lights shining across his legs and howled in pain as two of the projectiles leapt from the floor and rocketed toward his kneecaps. He felt the knobby bones explode and screamed out in pain. The blow knocked him flat on his back and he reached down, feeling the hard shards of exposed bone sticking out through his pants.

  Frank instinctively reached down to Bender to assist him, when Bob Buehl stopped him and pointed at the one remaining ball still on the floor, quivering spastically. "Stay back!"

  "Must be a dud," Frank shrugged.

  "Still, best not to take any chances˗" Buehl's voice was cut short by the ball suddenly bursting to life and rocketing through the air, directly into Bender's right foot. The shot tore a hole through the man's thick, muddy black boot and Bender threw back his head and shrieked in fury.

  Frank winced as Bender slammed his head back on the concrete floor over and over and hollered out long streams of curses and threats.

  "Don't you think that was a little excessive, Bob?"

  Buehl shrugged and said, "I told you, I like round numbers."

  "Well that's not a round number, Bob! That's three. Two in his knees, one in his foot."

  "You're right," Buehl frowned. "Hang on." He pointed the gun at Bender's left foot and said, "One."

  "No!" Frank said, knocking the gun out of the way. "I can see why they keep you on the ship, you maniac." He held his hand up at Bender to quiet him and said, "All right, all right, I get it, you're dying, you're going to kill our whole families, whatever. Can you keep it down for a second so I can think straight?"

  Bender gritted his teeth and hissed, "Who the hell are you people? You're not...Unification. Who the hell are you people?"

  He saw someone come walking up through the pile of dead bodies, his nude body covered in a sheen of sweat. Frank bent down and stuck an air-syringe into the side of his neck. With a sharp hiss he felt the pain in his legs go dull and felt himself tumbling downward through a black hole. Just before he went out, he heard the naked man say, "We're the Grendels, and it's good to be back."

  25. Black Dog

  Vic zippered the front of his tactical shirt up to his throat and rolled his shoulders back to stretch out the fabric. All those months wearing nothing but prison rags had made him forget what it felt like to dress in real clothes. He snapped his weapons belt together and situated his gear, taking the moment in. He'd escaped from prison. They'd overtaken the facility, exactly as planned. They were chasing down their target, just like old times. Everything was perfect.

  Well, almost everything, Vic thought.

  He looked past the others, through the building's open gate, and saw the bulky, impotent, weaponless ship that Frank and Buehl had brought with them. It was the administrative vessel President Wolmar had assigned to General Milner, just another slap to remind the man of how far he'd fallen. And his men had been stupid enough to use it to complete a rescue mission.

  Typical, he thought.

  There were bodies everywhere. The room was thick with the smell of blood, like wet iron in his mouth. He frowned at the naked corpses, some of them posed with their arms stretched out toward the karjarra stash. Even in death, they still reached for the drug that had driven them to such ruin. It was better for them this way, he told himself. Even in his brief moments among their ranks, he knew that. They'd been reduced to something subhuman, debased from within, and in all the studies he'd ever read, not one single karjarra addict had ever recovered and gotten clean. None had even tried.

  Frank smirked at Vic and said, "You're welcome."

  "What for?"

  "My concoction. It worked, right?"

  "It almost didn't," Vic said. "It's a good thing Monster killed that fan when he did, otherwise, I'd be clawing my way past you to get to that garbage right now."

  The mantipor was wiping himself off with a towel, trying to clean his fur and gear. The towel came away dark red, and Monster scowled as he picked at the knots of clotted blood tangled and twisted into his chest with his claws.

  "What the hell happened to you?" Vic said.

  Frank peered over Vic's shoulder at the mantipor and said, "I'm guessing the most catastrophic litter box incident in recorded history, by the looks of it."

  "Funny," Monster grunted. "Very, very funny. When I use your face to scrub the rest of it off with, though? Maybe not so funny."

  Bender was sleeping quietly on the floor, despite the still-smoking holes in his knees and foot. Vic bent to the key around his neck and snapped the chain with one pull. "Dress his wounds, Lieutenant," Vic said.

  The rest of the Grendels looked at one another. "I'm sorry, what?" Frank said.

  "Dress his wounds. This man is injured and he's our prisoner."

  "No offense, Vic, but that's a bad idea. We've got limited medical supplies and his injuries aren't life threatening."

  Vic stood up and eyed Frank, "This man is our prisoner and you will dress his wounds, is that clear? Those are the rules."

  "The rules of what?" Frank snapped, waving his hand around the facility in a wild, flapping motion. "Of this? In case you didn't know it, Vic, we're way
off the reservation now. There aren't any freaking rules! We are not part of Unification, I'm not a Lieutenant and you're not a goddamn Captain anymore!"

  Vic looked down at Bender and then back at his men, making sure each of them was listening. "Understand this. We didn't leave Unification. Unification left us. This unit still operates under the same exact principals it always has, and I won't tolerate anything else. Those sons of bitches may have lost their honor, but I'll be damned if the Grendels lose theirs. Am I clear?"

  Monster and Buel both nodded slowly, then said, "Yes, sir."

  Vic walked toward Frank until they were only inches apart and said, "I am, and always will be, the Captain of this unit, until the day I die or am relieved of command. You are, and always will be, my second. You can question me, disagree with me, and act in any way that protects the unit, but when I give you a lawful order, you will obey it. Is that clear?"

  Frank took a deep breath and said, "Fine."

  "Fine, what?"

  Frank rolled his eyes slightly and said, "Fine, be Captain. You can be any Captain you want, as far as I'm concerned, Captain, sir. You can be Captain Hook. Or Captain Cook. Captain Crunch, Captain Kirk, and even Captain Caveman. Happy?"

  Vic sighed and said, "Just patch him up."

  Frank reached into his medical pouch and pulled out a canister with a nozzle fitted at the tip, like a whipped cream can. He lowered the nozzle into the wound on Bender's right knee and tapped it once, shooting a blast of thick, foamy paste into the shattered bone. It bubbled up and out of the wound and hardened instantly, forming a tight seal and cast around the injury.

  As Frank moved to do the other knee, Vic turned the key in his fingers and said, "Now, time to get what we came for."

  He moved toward the locked weapons cage and said, "I'm just glad that intel was right. It looks like they've got enough firepower to take on ground units, air units, anything we might need."

  "That's a good thing, because our ship has zero weapons capability," Buel said.

  Frank's eyes shot up angrily at Buehl, "We finally got him to stop talking about the ship, and you go bringing it up again? What's wrong with you?"