Steel-Winged Valkyrie (Lady Hellgate Book 5)

by Greg Dragon

  Finding a place in the shadows off to the right side of the door, Helga waited patiently for him to come in. She didn’t have to wait long before the muzzle of his rifle pushed the door open and a man stepped inside, aiming at each corner skeptically. Down came the timber on his hands, unbalancing him just enough to take the brunt of the upward swing that followed directly in the chin.

  Crouching while he struggled to get his balance, Helga pulled a knife from his boot, and slammed it into his groin where the armor couldn’t protect him. This rendered him nearly helpless, and she ripped into him like a tigress. Abdomen below his vest, his neck, were just some of the places she struck until he was no longer moving. She shouldered his rifle and took his radio, sidearm, the bloodied knife, and an Alliance-branded ration bar, which made her feel vindication for savaging him.

  She heard boots in the mud, Raileo’s laser-rifle, and hushed voices sending instructions, bearing down on her location. Cat-walking through the adjacent rooms, which were just as barren as hers, she eventually found an open window facing away from her pursuers. Feeling fitter than usual, pain forgotten, and adrenaline pumping, Helga scrambled out and up onto a low roof, ran across and leaped to another.

  Getting to her stomach, she quickly scanned the skies, praying that a reaper wasn’t close. Nothing but the moon and the rain was visible, and off in the distance, Sunveil’s mansion, where she could see the missing section of balcony from which she fell. It was a long way down to fall, but there had been a pond right below it, deep enough for them to survive the fall.

  The voices were now becoming clear.

  “We don’t leave here until every last one of them is dead,” she heard, peering off the edge to see five black clad, mercenary-types skulking about the area. The whine from Raileo’s rifle cut the silence, and the resounding scream got them moving faster towards Helga’s old building. Lying perfectly still for them to pass her hiding spot, she was ready to get up and jump when a weak splash made her pull up short.

  One of Sunveil’s thugs was standing directly below her, fiddling with his equipment, confident that he was safe below the concrete overhang. Without her PAS helmet to pinpoint enemy location, Helga had to rely on her senses and intuition. Soft steps from behind and she made out another man who had fallen well behind the rest. Had she struck prematurely, she wouldn’t have seen him coming up on her flank while she neutralized his friend.

  Helga exhaled heavily; things had become difficult. When she made her escape, she was counting on contact, but one or two soldiers, not a whole unit. Reaching down to her belt, she grabbed a bomblet she had taken off the man from earlier. She primed it, got up into a crouch, and waited for the man to round the corner before she threw it near his feet, where it exploded into a brilliant cloud of sparkles.

  “What the schtill was that?” the man below her shouted, walking out slowly to investigate the sound.

  He was lightly armored, wearing only a vest, and several meters out from her position. Helga looked for the original four who had walked past her, couldn’t find them, and this made her anxious. Her heart started beating like a generator on overdrive, fueling her adrenaline-run engine. Without thinking, she leaped, landing on his shoulders to drive her knife down between the neck and shoulder-blade.

  She was up and rolling away from him before he choked out his ghost in one last gurgling breath. Slinking back into the shadows, the mineral stench of his blood in her nostrils, Helga tried in vain to catch her breath. “They are massacring us,” someone in the distance shouted. “No amount of credits is worth this schtill.”

  Raileo’s laser rifle responded to the sound, which caused Helga to cover her mouth to suppress a laugh at the timing. Switching her lens to night vision, she climbed through the window of another building, choosing to use its hollowed-out interior as a source of cover from any stray reapers. Outside a window she saw another solo wandering, waving his weapon around like an amateur playing at operator.

  She placed her rifle on the windowsill and leveled the sights at his chest, breathing lightly while brushing her fingertip across the trigger. It was an ESO trick to let off a single round from a weapon meant for suppression and automatic firing. A bullet flew out, striking the leg of the clueless amateur, knocking him down where he lay screaming for his friends.

  Having laid her trap, Helga hopped out the window and made for an adjacent building, scrambled to gain the roof, which proved to be a challenge since it was wet, angled and slippery. Once atop it—thanks to the grips of her magnetic boots—she used its angular design to her advantage, lying near the apex where she could peer over it at her wounded man.

  The four from earlier came running, rifles pointing everywhere, flashlights forcing her to lay flat to avoid detection. One tended to the wounded amateur while the other three issued several loud threats. This was a mistake, which they learned immediately when a beam of red light touched one of their helmets. The marked man fell over backwards into the mud, followed by the familiar whining of Raileo’s rifle recharging its laser.

  Another man, this one of the more athletically built variety scrambled to get out of range of the sniper. He slunk around to Helga’s side, and she tried to slide off using the slickness from the rain to land behind him. Unlike the one she’d shot earlier, this man had an operator’s instincts. He responded as if he had known she was there, spinning to fire on her with a heavy pistol, clipping the left side of her vest.

  Helga fell backwards while letting the auto-rifle loose, perforating his body from boots to shoulder. At so close a range her bullets punctured his light armor, leaning him awkwardly against the building’s exterior wall, his face frozen in a look of surprise. Raileo took out a bigger Marine who was already moving on Helga’s position. She sprinted south past another building, slid down behind a stone barrier and sat with her back to it, listening.

  “Silly me, thinking that you would wait for my rescue.” Raileo laughed over comms. “You don’t come looking for Lady Hellgate, Lady Hellgate comes looking for you.”

  He fired again and another of the enemy went down quietly. The last of them walked right in front of Helga, missing her small body leaning against the stone. It was dark and where she slumped was shrouded in shadow but still, she couldn’t believe he wasn’t checking his surroundings. She raised her handgun, aimed down the sights, and shot him twice in succession, one in his chest, and the other in his head, silencing him permanently.

  “Hard to believe these were ours. They don’t fight like they’ve had a day of cadet training, yet they’re wearing our uniforms and carrying our weapons,” Helga complained.

  “On your flank, Ate,” Raileo announced himself, and slid in to sit next to her, handing over her pack. Punching his arm playfully, she gripped his shoulder to show her appreciation, then reached inside the pack for her cloak. Raileo kept staring at her. “Are you sure you’re alright, Ate? Your face is as white as the stone,” he said, his eyes reflecting his concern.

  “I’m alright,” she tried to convince him. “Where did you see them take Anders?”

  “Back south to the gardens. There’s a whole army of BasPol transports at the entrance,” Raileo said. “We need Q and Cilas, Ate. My rifle’s overheating, and you look like you’re seconds away from collapsing, if I’m being honest.”

  “Anders is alone, Ray. You know this cannot wait,” she said. He reluctantly agreed, and they set out together with him taking point, substituting his rifle for a heavy pistol, and Helga close behind him, checking the sky for reaper drones.

  “Don’t worry about those drones, Ate, I took all of them out earlier, remember? So, what’s our plan?”

  “Distraction and confusion. Sneak out there, flank them, find him, and then the three of us can return to meet up with Cilas.”

  “You say that so confidently,” Raileo returned. “You, the woman who looked half-dead when we pulled you out of that pool. You still look half-dead now. With respect of course, Ate, I just don
’t like the idea.”

  “That’s the plan.” Helga made it final. “Anders needs us. If we wait for Cilas and Quentin to return, we may be too late, and that isn’t a chance I’m willing to take.”

  24

  According to Raileo, while Helga was unconscious, he had questioned one of the mercenaries, who complied under the threat of death. Anders had been taken to what he termed headquarters. There, they would question him to learn the nature of his business, and then he would be airlifted out to the BasPol Corrections Facility.

  Unfortunately for his capturers, however, the Genesian Guard had come to bring peace to the city, and instituted a no-fly zone over the tenements and surrounding properties. Any aircar or flying shuttle would get grounded and the driver arrested if they violated this warning. What Raileo gathered from that news was that Anders would still be alive, and was bound to still be somewhere on Sunveil’s property.

  Helga followed his lead through the remains of the demolished buildings, some so far gone they no longer had ceilings. More spotlights had come on, so bright it was nearly as clear as daytime, and without the cover of darkness to help, the Nighthawks were forced to travel via these decrepit structures. Earlier it had all been shadows, with the sparse lights giving Helga the impression that they were still being used somehow.

  What she saw in the new light, however, was a sad foreshadowing of the tenements and its people. All it would take is one powerful person’s greed and Fio’s home would be reduced to ruins, just like this.

  “Down here,” Raileo whispered, pointing off to his right, where a depression—once hidden by the shadow of a two-story building—ran down to become what she thought was a cave. Switching to night vision, it was revealed to be a tunnel, the walls reinforced by concrete, and it looked to go on forever. Could this be where they had taken him? She didn’t bother to ask. Though the eternal rain made tracking impossible, something told her that they were on the right path.

  Most of the mercenaries not loyal to Sunveil had fled the tenements, and they wouldn’t have done so with Anders. The loyal ones had to keep him, and where would be better to keep a prisoner than a subterranean cage? Once inside, Raileo quickened his pace, and Helga stayed close on his backside, boots sloshing through wet mud, refuse, and some form of fabric. These walls too had scribblings, graffiti, and the signs of a different age, when they served as hospice for the residents of this city.

  The floor angled down before leveling off once more and eventually ending in a set of stairs leading up. Helga’s heart was racing and she felt good despite the mildewed, musty scent of the tunnel, and the nagging thought in the back of her head that she could crash at any minute. Having never taken the revita-shot before, she wondered at the aftermath and the side-effects. Cleia wouldn’t have given them something without instruction or warning, but she recalled the day they received their syringes, she had been in a playful mood and not really paying attention.

  One hand on Raileo’s back, she followed him up, and like the staircase inside Sunveil’s manor, these stairs wrapped four times before opening up into the interior of a large, windowless room. The space reminded Helga of the subterranean caves below the moon of Dyn, where she and the former team of Nighthawks had come in contact with the dredge: a species of giant, flesh-eating worms.

  There were four square walls and a ceiling, caked with dust, and though no rain had made it inside there, it still reeked of mold and wet soil. They stopped at the top of the stairs, checking the shadows for anyone hiding, and as if on cue, a shower of dust fell from the ceiling above the sole exit. Raileo aimed up into a corner, fired, and a shadow fell.

  Helga leaned into her auto-rifle and let off several bursts, aiming at the area where she knew he would land. Two bullets further damaged the already far-gone wall in the corner, but another three struck their target, and their would-be ambusher was dead. “Contact,” Raileo announced, aiming his heavy pistol at the darkness of the doorway, where another merc was rushing in, only to regret it when laser fire tore into his chest.

  While that man toppled to the ground, Helga ran past Raileo, sliding behind a concrete pile-up near the exit. From this vantage, she hoped to see what lay ahead for them through the door. It was how they trained, one person on cover, the other advancing carefully, then the roles would be flipped. Another came through firing at her, but she had seen him on approach and dove behind the rubble. Raileo killed him easily, and joined her at the doorway when it appeared that no more were coming.

  They entered another half-destroyed room, with wall sections broken in half, more graffiti, and on the floor was what could be best described as concrete pews. “Temple of some sort?” she asked Raileo, though still alert as ever for anymore ambushers.

  “Watch out.” Raileo used an arm to keep her from advancing. “The floor has holes, and where you were about to step seems ready to go. I agree, this is a temple. We’re probably inside the big building next to the manor, the one where I cryo-shot the sniper.”

  “Bingo,” Helga whispered in agreement. “Move.” She pulled Raileo down with her to crouch behind one of the pews. Two armored men had come in, which she had picked up on immediately. There was no explaining how she knew they were coming, but she was grateful to have followed her instincts.

  A loud shot struck the concrete, tearing a chunk out of their barrier. Helga shouted “Covering fire” and raised her rifle over the pew, volleying several bursts back at them. Distracted and shifting to find cover to respond, the mercenaries had wrongly assumed that they were only dealing with one man. Raileo’s long night of sniping had many of them thinking he was a solo enforcer from the tenements.

  Scrambling from what they believed was one man’s response, they missed Raileo raising up to aim and deliver precision shots with critical effect. A quick glance at the Nighthawk revealed to Helga just how frightening Raileo Lei really was. The normally jovial and playful operator wore a mask of icy aloofness as he slid back down to a sitting position, one hand clasped over the charge to suppress the whine while he monitored the temperature gauge.

  The cadet academy, Marines, pilot school, all had given them the tools to be effective, but BLAST had changed them all into killers. Helga, like her fellow Nighthawks, had grown to accept this fact. Along with the powered armor suit and passport to the galaxy came the death of a part of themselves that was considered civilized. They were charred in BLAST to withstand anything in the war with the Geralos, but in reality, what they routinely killed turned out to be other humans.

  As if reading her thoughts, he met her eyes and shrugged. “Endless thyping night,” he commented, and got up to his feet. Helga could see that his glove was smoking from where he had held the base of the barrel to force it to remain silent. She wondered why he hadn’t given it to Quentin to modify on Ursula, since the big Marine was an expert at tinkering and had modified her own handgun. Pride, she decided. “Laser Ray’s” Widow Maker was special.

  With no other contacts after taking a minute’s rest, Helga chanced a peek through the hole in their pew, and was able to see over the rubble that the far entrance was still clear. She made to stand, and her legs felt rubbery. Thype, thype, thype, she cursed inwardly, incensed at her body for failing her now before they had Anders. Stubbornly, she shambled forward, gripping the concrete with her left hand, swinging the auto-rifle around with her right to aim at the exit.

  She saw Raileo watching her struggle, conflicted with helping her—and provoking her ire—or pretending he didn’t see it, which could become disastrous if she fainted during combat. Shifting his gaze forward while he remained kneeling behind the concrete barrier, he reached into the pack on his belt, pulled out his syringe and handed it to her. Helga felt weak and pathetic for having him do this, as they both knew the risk of spice and its addiction.

  Snatching it, not out of malice or anger, which she hoped he understood, she jammed it into her neck, bearing the pain. Why not? A part of her felt she deserved it. The
familiar fire tore through her veins, and she felt it travel to her heart to bring false life to limbs pushed beyond their limit. She took the lead and shouldered her auto-rifle. “When this is over, and we’re back where we belong with your darling Cleia, you stay on my rear about getting this schtill out of my blood,” she said.

  “Exactly what I was thinking, Ate,” he admitted softly. “We’re here for Anders. Whatever it takes, like you said.”

  Despite the risks, Helga had to admit it felt amazing getting lifted again. She could be thrown into the midst of the opposing army and her only concern at that moment would be the heat sink on her weapon. Raileo fell in behind her and a little off to her right where his aim would be clear. Stacked and ready for anything coming between them and reclaiming the Nighthawk recruit, they cleared the doorway and stepped into a hallway with a metal door at the end.

  Raileo was the marksman, so the decision on the breach was already established. Those cycles of repetitious training made kicking down doors one of their most common exercises, and muscle memory accounted more for their actions than any thought. There was a problem, however; neither of them had a clue as to what the layout was inside, and with no flash-bang bomblet to disorient the enemy, they would be at a disadvantage.

  The other issue was the gunfire. They had been loud on their push to clear the building. Whatever awaited them inside would be ready with counter-fire or booby traps, and if they weren’t lucky this could be the end for them. They exchanged looks of understanding, one second’s glance communicating their appreciation and care for each other as not only Nighthawks, but as friends. Helga took up position on the left side of the door opposite Raileo.

  Comms came alive. “Nighthawks, this is Rend Mec. You copy? What’s your status? Ray … Hel?”

  Helga, surprised, felt her insides lurch with a bout of anxiety. The timing was ridiculous, and any hesitation could mean death for she and her two Nighthawks, for surely on discovery of who they were, Anders wouldn’t survive past this instance. Ignoring her commander, Helga nodded to Raileo, who—like her—knew the risk of getting on comms in their position.