As the three genuine legionaries jogged to Bay 27-Gamma, they saw covered trucks scream through the service roads, headed for the northwest corner of the port. Something was going on there; yet another mystery. But as far as Bronze was concerned, it was a good one, just so long as it stayed in the far corner of the port, attracting the attention of whoever or whatever was controlling the Corrupted.
When they finally made it to Fitzwilliam’s bay, Bronze’s heart sank. Weapons were trained on all the ships around, but the Phantom had been singled out for special treatment. The circular pad at the center of the bay was ringed by twenty troops. Equally spaced around this ring were a plasma cannon, mobile SAM system, and two Corrupted legionaries standing near the closed lower hatch with heavy blasters on tall pintle mounts.
If they had faced fewer heavy weapons, they could have pulled this off. Or even if the big guns had been bunched in one spot, they might have had a slim chance.
But this… No, it was impossible. The only way the Phantom was getting out of here in one piece was if the Legion remnant of Chimera Company somehow managed to change the facts on the ground.
“Ship looks like your head, Zavage,” Osu commented.
Normally, the Kurlei would be impressed by the protuberances that swept back from the Phantom’s cockpit like the kesah-kihisia organs on his head. Not today, though. Zavage merely grunted.
Actually, Bronze thought the strange appendages to the ship more closely resembled horns and tusks. Whatever their function, they were tethered to the landing pad now, a part of the security mechanism that could physically clamp down a ship the port authorities didn’t want to leave.
Following Bronze’s plan, the three of them were waiting at the edge of the bay, with Bronze in the lead performing a gas flush of his armor so the Corrupted could get a good sniff of him. The soldiers guarding the ship had noted their arrival and seemed to have decided they were not an immediate threat.
“Here we go,” Bronze said over radio comms. “Act like them. It doesn’t matter if you’re soiling your underwear, so long as they don’t realize.”
Flanked by Osu and Zavage, he marched over to a spot beneath Phantom’s lower hatch from which the hatch camera could get a good look at him. He raised a gauntleted fist. “Open up,” he demanded through his external suit audio.
“I’ve nothing more to say to you freaks,” Fitzwilliam’s voice replied from a hidden speaker in the Phantom’s hull.
“If you won’t see sense, Captain Fitzwilliam, then let me speak with someone more intelligent. Your hovering tin can, perhaps. Or Izza.”
The hatch slid open and the boarding ramp unfolded, lodging against the landing pad at Bronze’s feet.
“No need to bring Izza into this,” said the captain, “you had me at tin can. Which one are you? I can’t tell with that stupid bucket on your head, but I’d put money on the pipe smoker.”
“That’s me.”
The three sappers marched up the ramp, feeling the heavy blasters trained on their backs.
Once they were aboard, the ramp retracted and the hatch snapped shut, but Bronze still felt the blasters’ lethal attention.
OSU SYBUTU
The grinning smuggler captain was standing beside a female Zhoogene a little way inside the ship, bathed in blue light that diffused from the overhead. Passageways led away to other side of the entrance in which the three legionaries stood. In one of them lurked a big Pryxian with a gun so heavy Osu doubted he could lift it even in his powered armor.
He dismissed the show of force. Fitzwilliam wouldn’t be fool enough to fire weapons that could penetrate Legion armor. Not inside his own ship.
The Phantom’s captain was also making sure his new arrivals could see the custom heavy blaster slung low on his right thigh, and the confident grin on his face.
It was the unarmed Zhoogene standing next to him who registered as most dangerous in Osu’s assessment. She wore a burgundy leather jerkin over a gray ship suit stuffed into calf-length leather boots.
Osu had clocked up many thousands of hours aboard navy ships and he’d never seen shipboard footwear like that. Probably a smuggler thing.
Other than her clothing, she was still the strangest Zhoogene he’d ever seen. Her figure was too curvaceous, the green skin lacked the normal waxy texture, and instead of the golden eyes he’d seen in every other Zhoogene face, hers were marbled in ribbons of pink and blue.
Whatever their color, the most striking aspect of her eyes was the way they sparked with anger. She glared at Bronze with pure hatred.
Fitzwilliam himself noticed and whispered something that Osu’s helm picked up but couldn’t translate.
His meaning was clear, though. The Zhoogene released Bronze from her angry stare.
And redirected it at Osu.
“We wish to renegotiate.” Osu directed his statement at Fitzwilliam, but he wondered who was the real captain of this ship.
“Nice job of walking in here without being blasted full of holes,” said Fitzwilliam, “but it’s the same answer, kid. I’m retired.”
“So you say. Your lack of cooperation is noted, Captain Fitzwilliam. For now, though, we seek only extraction and transport to a safe planet with a Legion presence.”
“You can call me Captain Fitz like everyone else. And you can call my first officer here Lieutenant Zan Fey. You’ve earned that much. But off-world transport comes at a premium in these troubled days, and I don’t offer lifts for free.”
“We’ll pay.”
Fitz made a show of rubbing his chin, unimpressed.
Zan Fey entered the negotiation. “The price to take one person off-world is a fortune. To take three…?” She raised a golden eyebrow. “How would you pay?”
“Not just three of us,” interrupted Zavage. “Our entire team. The others are pinned down at the maritime docks.”
Bronze winced, expecting Osu to unleash hell onto Zavage over his intervention, but Osu’s next words were to Fitz and his partner. “The deal is simple. We’re the only ones who can get you off this planet. If you refuse, every ship’s captain stuck at this port would beg to take our offer. We’re getting out, the only question is whether it’s your ship we’ll be leaving on.”
Fitz glanced uneasily at Zan Fey. “One moment while we consider your offer.”
IZZA ZAN FEY
Fitz activated the privacy bubble.
“We’re wasting time,” he suggested, but she noted the uncertainty radiating from those wide human eyes of his. “If they convince me they can get us off this landing pad, then we jump out system and take them with us.”
She knew damned well it was this Special Missions skragg making him nervous, and when Fitz got nervous, he made some very bad decisions. The evil man he had let in their ship was an unwelcome reminder of Fitz’s past. Her human had always hated SpecMish on principle, but he’d once confided in her that after a joint training exercise with them in an earlier life, he’d learned to fear them too.
“I don’t like it either, my dear,” he tried to reason, “but they may be our best route off this mad world.”
She ignored the unprofessional endearment. He couldn’t help himself when he was nervous.
“Leave now,” she reminded him, “and we won’t be able to pay off Nyluga-Ree. If we hold our nerve and stay, we might still collect our fee.”
“No, Izza.” He shook his head, his near-permanent grin slipping away to reveal a look of revulsion. “The city’s burning, and its people are being twisted into monsters by a malevolence far worse than Ree. I don’t know what’s happening, but we aren’t sticking around to find out. We’ve gotta ditch our client and get out of here.”
“What if our client is behind all this?”
Fitz rubbed at his chin. He hadn’t considered that angle. “You think this is Khallini’s doing?”
“Perhaps. Lord Khallini didn’t hire us to smuggle him in to play charades at the local newt orphanage. And if we leave now, we make Khallini our enemy. I
do not want that.”
“No.” He put the swagger back into his stance. “No, Izza. There are things I might not have mentioned to you about Khallini because they were need-to-know. He’s funding the Rebellion, for one. The Panhandlers, I mean, not this zombie plague. The most likely scenario is that he’s already dead, or already gotten off-world and left us for dead.”
“You don’t know that.”
“No, I do not. If you want a career with certainty, Izza, qualify as a tax accountant. We’re free traders, my lady. Unfettered by customs duties and monopolistic trading restrictions. That requires a certain aplomb. I have decided to negotiate a deal with these legionary gentlemen.”
Fitz doused the privacy bubble, revealing Izza shaking her head in dismay. Aplomb! Fitz was using pompous words in place of reasoned arguments. That was a bad sign. It meant they were screwed.
OSU SYBUTU
Before facing the ring of soldiers outside the Phantom, Osu looked over the robot in his new combat attire and felt his confidence surge. When Fitz had said the little droid would give them the additional firepower to take out the Corrupted guards in the landing bay, Osu had thought the smuggler was joking. Then Fitz casually mentioned he’d come across a Legion-surplus combat frame, and had ordered his crew to fashion an adapter so the droid could operate it.
The bot was housed inside an armored sphere mounted on four legs. Three blaster barrels poked out from a domed mini turret while two arms stretched from either end of the body. One was fitted with a percussion spike to penetrate armor, and the other held a blaster cannon with an extra-large power pack.
If the bot hidden inside could control all these systems simultaneously, then it would be a fearsome weapon of war. But there was more to being a good fighter than having a big weapon: you needed to fit into the team.
The notion made him think of Zavage. Was the Kurlei still thinking of Chimera Company as his team? The alien clearly had a passion for one of the human troopers in particular, but in the years Osu had known Vol Zavage, the alien’s colorful romantic life had never compromised his professionalism.
Osu wondered whether he needed a few lessons in teamwork himself, especially if they really were going to pick up that Viking oaf and the others.
Before he could worry about that, they had to escape the spaceport.
One impossible challenge at a time, Sybutu.
He nodded at the droid. “What is your designation?”
“L1-iN/x. Humans rarely trouble themselves with words of greater than three syllables. I think it causes them pain. So the captain calls me Lynx.”
“Humans champion brevity and conciseness,” Osu countered. “The better ones, at any rate. We are very smart at some things, droid. War is one of them. I have less faith in combat droids.”
“Charming!”
“And I particularly lack faith in you, Lynx. Tell me, who are you going to kill out there?”
“Corrupted, sir.”
“And who are you not going to hurt at all?”
“The three heroic legionaries.”
Osu sighed. “Did Fitz program you to have all this attitude?”
“No, sir. But he did reprogram me, a task for which he is not remotely qualified.”
“Azhanti! I didn’t sign up for this, but you’ll have to do. Follow at the rear and remember to obey the plan.”
“Of course, sir. I have always remembered. I remember everything.”
Frowning at the emphasis the bot had placed on its final word, Osu tapped the door release and led the party down the ramp as soon as it had unfurled.
Throughout the bay, Legion helms suddenly snapped their way, but it was the reaction of the two Corrupted with the pintle-mounted heavy blasters that worried him most.
Both of them tracked him as he descended the ramp and he sensed fingers about to ease into triggers.
If they opened fire, he would barely have a chance to register that it was all over before he was vaporized.
He felt a shove from behind as Bronze pushed to the front.
Did the two Corrupted ease off their triggers or was that his imagination?
Expecting oblivion with every step, they walked down to the landing pad and formed a wedge behind the two gunners; Lynx took one flank, Bronze and Zavage the other.
The gunners had relaxed as soon as the party exiting the ship had passed them by. Osu guessed their assignment was to cover the Phantom’s hatch for any sign of escape. Now that they had moved beyond their perimeter, the gunners no longer considered Osu and the others to be leaving the ship.
For an agonizing couple of minutes, the legionaries waited silently in their wedge. Osu ignore the sporadic blaster fire elsewhere in the port and the screams drifting on the wind over from the city. Then, judging the Corrupted had settled sufficiently, the three legionaries moved around the ring of guards, leaving Lynx positioned behind the two gunners.
Osu stood behind the SAM operator while Zavage and Bronze placed themselves to strike the plasma cannon gunner.
“On my mark,” radioed Osu when the others had all confirmed they were ready. “Make it fast. Make it certain. 3... 2... 1... rip ’em!”
——
The SAM operator wore the form of a woman. Osu had been telling himself that it made what he was about to do a little easier, because he wasn’t about to kill her. How could he? She was already dead. He was about to release a sister from an obscene violation.
He raised the barrel of his blaster rifle until it was four inches behind the back of her head and put three rounds into her.
At this extreme short range, the bolt had yet to fully induce plasma before it hit the target. Consequently, it wrapped around the back of her helm before fully activating and slicing through like high-energy cheese wire. The result looked sickening, but her brain would have been obliterated before she knew what was happening. It was the most merciful way to go about this gruesome task, but for all that he justified his actions to himself, it wasn’t easy. And it didn’t feel like the right thing to do.
“Rest in honor, sister,” he whispered to the corpse as it sank to its knees, but he was already firing at the nearest Corrupted legionary, sending a flurry of bolts to his head.
“Rest now,” he said to the brother he had released. He jumped sideways, curling into a roll as crossfire howled into the landing pad where he’d just been standing.
He took a knee and snapped off a bolt at another Corrupted, only to realize his adversary had been shot by someone else.
With the barrage of blaster fire and the plasma cannon loud in his ears, Osu jumped away using all the power his armor could add to his legs. Rolling as he landed, he came up behind the cover of one of the Phantom’s landing struts.
He poked his head out from behind the strut and saw the battle was already over. Zavage had cooked half of the Corrupted with the plasma cannon, and Lynx had wrought carnage with the gore-coated drill spike that left jagged holes in the enemy heaped by the droid’s feet.
“Go in honor,” Osu said to the fallen while shuddering at the thought of how easily the droid had torn through the same armor model he wore himself.
“Check in,” he said over the team channel.
“I’m good,” said Zavage.
“Me too,” added Bronze. “Cover me while I release the docking clamps.”
“I suffered minor damage to one leg,” said the droid. “Nonetheless, I find I rather enjoyed that brisk melee.”
A psychotic droid. That’s all I need, mused Osu as he and Zavage provided overwatch while Bronze busied himself inside the small kiosk that housed the controls for the bay.
Lynx, meanwhile, picked up the plasma cannon and its fuel drums.
“Hey, droid! What are you doing?”
The bot ignored Osu’s challenge and carried the cannon around to the Phantom’s landing ramp.
“Leave that!”
“I’m afraid I can’t, sir. Captain Fitzwilliam would have my guts for garters if I left such valuab
le equipment behind. Besides, I suspect the near future will see an increased incidence of combat activity for all of us.”
The clamps released, and the additional security tethers fell away from the force keels that swept back from the Phantom’s cockpit.
They were good to go.
“What are you waiting for?” Osu barked joyfully, not quite believing they had gotten this far. “Jump in our new ride before it forgets its passengers.”
They hurried past the droid salvaging the battlefield and passed into the relative safety of the Phantom.
Osu made straight for the flight deck.
——
“What the hell is that?” Zan Fey cried from the copilot seat.
“A paying passenger not strapped down,” Fitz growled.
But that wasn’t what Zan Fey meant. She was pointing out of the cockpit at something on the ground. She was pointing to the northwest.
The Phantom tilted radically as it made its escape from the spaceport, but the anti-gravity kept Osu from falling, even though his stomach warned him that if he didn’t stop tumbling, he’d lose his lunch.
“It’s a ship,” said the copilot.
“My lady, we are lifting off from a spaceport.”
“Shut up, Fitz. The ship looks… alive.”
“You’re right,” he said as he jinked the Phantom away. “It looks… valuable.”
Osu stumbled over to the seat behind Zan Fey, bracing himself on the seat back so he could see what she was pointing at. It was a starship. A cylindrical front section with three sweptback wings gave way to a hundred-meter rubbery tail that ended in a spiked club. The last time he’d seen this ship, he’d been with Nydella Sanderson.
This was the reason the Legion had come to Rho-Torkis. It was the reason the Corrupted were here too, most likely.
Chimera Company - Rho-Torkis Box Set Page 33