Gun Runner

by Larry Correia

  The firing from the woods stopped.

  This was his chance to run, but Jackson looked at his leg and cringed when he saw the gaping gash through the muscle of his calf. Blood was pouring out. He took the now loosened TQ off of his wrist, looped it just below his knee, and activated it to auto-tighten for the second time today. And if anything, this time was worse. Jackson heaved himself up using the strut as a crutch and limped for the Citadel.

  The damaged Spider rose, scuttling forward on its remaining five legs. It would obliterate Wulf and friends, then finish Jackson off. There was no way Warlord would trust Jackson’s demise to the wildlife, now that the Originals knew he was here.

  There was a rumbling coming from somewhere Jackson couldn’t place. He wondered if Warlord had called for air support or a dropship home. Warlord’s forces were still intact. Jackson’s heart sank.

  Warlord was going to walk away.

  Jackson supposed LaDue and MacKinnon had completely failed. They’d probably bailed and left their fighters to twist in the wind. The Tar Heel was probably a debris field, nothing more than pretty meteor showers for the residents of Swindle for the next few days. He thought of Jane and hoped she and the others had made it out but knew the likelihood of them escaping the system was nil.

  But if he could get even one decent gun to work on the Citadel, he might be able to take Warlord with him. Jackson climbed into the mech’s torn open chest and started bringing up menus.

  Which was when the noise grew tenfold.

  He glanced through the Citadel’s rib and saw the sea heaving. But it wasn’t the sea. It was a beast. A true leviathan. A behemoth, rising from the water.

  “Dear God,” Jackson whispered as he saw something that shouldn’t exist.

  The surface frothed with wildly whipping tentacles, each as big around as the trunk of the mighty Swindle trees. Then came its head, shaped like a long wedge, a hundred meters long, mottled gray and purple, dotted with spines and ridges, with great bulbous black eyes.

  Somehow, even though he’d only gotten the tiniest glimpse of it before, he knew this was the same thing that had stranded him on Swindle to begin with. And it had come to finish the job.

  It surged out of the sea and onto the beach, shaking the whole world. The noise had drawn it from the depths, and even though it was indescribably alien, Jackson could tell that it was really pissed off.

  Warlord’s sensors must have been fragged by the heat too, because the Spider should have sensed this thing coming klicks away. But from the way the mech lurched fearfully away, Warlord certainly saw it now! The Spider started shooting everything it had left onboard, slinging lead, depleted uranium, rockets, beams, and fire.

  The monster did not care.

  The grass was crushed flat in a circle around the Spider as Warlord engaged his thrusters. The Spider’s legs crouched, gathering energy, preparing to hurl itself into the sky. Warlord was going to blast off, narrowly avoiding the kaiju. He was going to escape and leave the rest of them here to die.

  Jackson found the menu. Saw the repair bots had fixed the ammo hopper and directed the last bit of the reactor’s power to the left arm’s railgun. Jackson slid his uninjured hand into the harness. As he moved his fingers, the Citadel lifted its massive arm. Sand and dirt slid off to the ground. The targeting system was down, so Jackson had to eyeball it and estimate, looking through the jagged hole in the Citadel’s chest, aiming down the arm at the Spider as the enemy mech launched itself into the air. He only had one shot.

  He fired.

  The hypervelocity projectile nailed the Spider right through its main thruster.

  It dropped like a rock.

  The Spider hit the ground, then immediately ran, scurrying away.

  There was another thundering step, a terrible vibration, and then a tentacle swatted the mech across the meadow.

  Warlord tumbled, rolled, and came up guns blazing. Bullets ripped into the behemoth, which roared, a sound that pierced Jackson to his core and left his ears ringing.

  The Spider kept firing, darting back and forth between the thrashing tentacles. Warlord was linked in now, man and machine one, together far more effective than either could be on their own. Explosive shells rent the flesh around one of the great black eyes.

  The behemoth retreated a bit in the water.

  Warlord took advantage of that move, bounding again and engaging his secondary thrusters. He flew toward the creature, firing as it roared in anger and pain. It was a sudden, furious attack, as Warlord emptied everything he had on the creature, hundreds of rounds ripping into the thing.

  The guns fell silent. Warlord was out of ammo.

  The vast black eyes studied the mech then. Technology had gone up against ancient fury, and fury had won, and it knew it.

  The creature surged fully from the water, towering at least a hundred meters high. The Spider moved in reverse—too slow, as the creature shot out two big tentacles and suctioned around it on each side. With a roar it ripped the mech in half.

  Warlord managed to leap free. He dropped to the ground, far enough that the fall should have killed him, except he just landed in a crouch, then immediately sprang to his feet and sprinted for safety. They certainly hadn’t been exaggerating about the quality of his mods.

  But he was still nothing but a bug in the shadow of the monster. It casually bent forward and snatched up Warlord with several smaller tentacles. Warlord screamed in terror.

  The monster pulled Warlord apart, tearing off his limbs one by one, like a cruel child plucking the wings off a fly.

  It tossed the parts in the meadow and turned its gaze on Jackson.

  The Citadel was crippled. He was almost out of power. He couldn’t run, couldn’t fly, and had no weapons. But his arm was still in the harness, so Jackson gave it a gentle command. In response, the Citadel defiantly raised its hand, and gave the giant monster…the bunny.

  “Go ahead and squish me, you magnificent bastard,” Jackson said as the timer on his spine bomb counted down to zero. “This is your planet. We’re just tourists.”

  Except the thing stopped. The vast black eyes looked down at him, unblinking. It watched for a time, anger sated, now simply curious. Jackson thought there might be something intelligent behind those eyes, but truthfully, they were just incomprehensibly alien.

  The behemoth chuffed.

  “What?” Jackson asked. But part of him truly believed that it was sending him a message. Not today, bug.

  It chuffed again, then began moving back toward the water.

  Its shadow began to recede from the meadow.

  Impossible, but there it was.

  Jackson checked to be sure, but by some miracle, he was still alive. A hole hadn’t been melted in his spine. The Citadel’s medical treatment had bought him a little time after all. Probably just enough time for the poison air to shred his lungs.

  He thought about trying to escape, but he could barely walk, and he’d be coughing up blood soon. Truth be told, he was just really tired of running. This was as good a place as any to call it, in the cockpit of the best mech he’d ever driven. That was a lot more dignified than getting eaten by caliban.

  So Jackson lay there, content.

  Then someone stuck their helmet through the side of the Citadel.

  “You lucky schlawiner,” the man said with a German accent.

  Jackson recognized him through the visor. “Hey, beard guy.” Behind him was his son. “And Wulf. Sorry about breaking your nose.”

  “It is forgiven, Sergeant Jack,” the kid said earnestly.

  Jackson coughed at the biting air. “Nice shot.”

  Wulf pressed an extra breather mask into his hands. “Here, take this.”

  It wasn’t until he tried to clumsily put it on and failed that Jackson realized just how truly screwed-up he was. Wulf had to help him get the straps on over his head.

  He didn’t even notice Wulf’s dad sticking him with a syringe until it was too late. “What’s tha
t?”

  “The compound engineered to safely deactivate the bioweapon.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Thank LaDue.”

  “I’d rather shoot her in the face,” Jackson said truthfully.

  “Understandable, all things considered. Now come, we must get you to safety. Swindle never stops trying to kill you for long.”

  As Wulf’s father helped Jackson out of the Citadel, Wulf walked out into the meadow, looking for something. He soon found it, knelt in the weird grass, then rose, holding Warlord’s head by the jaw. A trophy.

  Jackson asked the dead man, “Is this primal enough for you yet?”

  Epilogue

  Jane was sitting on the balcony of the crew’s quarters in Big Town a few weeks after Warlord’s demise. The little sprig of orange blossoms that Jacky had plucked from a wall orchard and presented to her yesterday lay on the table next to her. She picked it up, inhaled the lovely scent again, and smiled. Jacky was overconfident, sometimes rash, but sweet. And he had just saved her life.

  She thought about that moment, Fain and his hellhound slowly careening out into Big Town’s sky. Tui, Katze, and Bushey all injured. Jane herself hurt, with only two partially functioning bots to protect them. The peanut gallery had arrived and been about to shoot all of them when every loudspeaker on the orbital had started broadcasting that Warlord had just been killed.

  The Big Town security forces had hesitated. There was confusion and debate as their leader had contacted his chain of command to verify the reports. A moment later he had told his troops to stand down. It was clear he didn’t have any personal attachment to their governor. Jane had gotten lucky, and her captor had been a thinking man who realized a new government was about to take over, and it wouldn’t be wise to execute those who had helped it.

  So Jacky had saved her life. After, of course, she’d saved his. Repeatedly. Which made the whole relationship that much more exhilarating.

  She inhaled the scent of the blossoms again and thought about a possible future with him. Not that any commitments had been made, but, where that avenue had been closed before, she thought she now saw a way it could be a real possibility. And the thought of it made her surprisingly happy.

  Jane had gone back to reviewing the record of her bots during the battle to see how she might tweak their next evolution, when the red flower icon appeared on her visual.

  Her apprehension rose. Please, let this be good news.

  The video was a man standing in a park, looking directly at the camera.

  No. This was not secret code, nor a sister’s hieroglyphs. This was a message.

  The man was dressed in the Mukherjee style complete with pants, embroidered knee-length jacket, shirt, and earring. But it was his face that drew Jane’s attention, because she remembered it.

  He smiled. “Come home, 25th daughter. You and your sisters have betrayed us. Mary 231 weeps. Yet all youth stray. You were allowed to, but you can be forgiven.”

  He paused.

  “Come in,” he said invitingly. “Or stay out and suffer when we collect you. And we will collect you. It’s your choice. The message from the fathers and mothers is to bask in our love. Bring us gifts of knowledge. You will be forgiven.”

  He held up a card with a message written in a version of the hieroglyphics Jane and the others used, telling her how and when, demonstrating that the unbreakable language of the girls of Mary 231.78 had been hacked.

  And then this member of some new and clearly powerful breed of Shikaa 17 turned and walked away.

  A nanosecond passed. The overwhelming tide of emotion about what had just happened began to swell, but Jane quelled it. She would have time to feel that later. Right now, there were things to do. May whatever god that was out there help them, because the sisters were under attack.

  Jane looked at Jacky’s sprig of orange blossoms and blew out a breath of disappointment.

  It had been such a happy dream.

  And then she sent the orders to the Tar Heel fabricators to build the next evolution of her platoon. She needed to make travel arrangements, and quickly.

  Jane had no doubt what she had to do.

  * * *

  It had taken a few weeks for everything to calm down in Big Town enough for Bushey to finally get that pool party he’d wanted.

  Jackson sat in a lawn chair next to the water’s edge, drank his beer, soaked up the artificial rays from the noonday sun globe, and watched the festive crowd that had gathered to say farewell and thanks to the Tar Heel. The celebration had been put on by the new government. Most of the crew was here, and the Big Towners in attendance had all sided with the Originals during the fighting, so it was a festive bunch. There was even music and dancing.

  Tui walked up, carrying a little bundled blanket in his hands. “Mind if I join the hero of the hour?” Rather than wait for a response, the big man flopped into the next chair with a grunt.

  “I’m no hero,” Jackson said.

  “Sure you are. This party’s mostly because of you.”

  “I’m just the one who ended up on the most vids, and MacKinnon and LaDue needed a propaganda image to rally the people around.”

  “Like that?” Tui jerked his thumb toward the ruins of the governor’s mansion behind them. Someone had spray-painted a mural on the last standing wall. It was the Citadel and the Spider, locked in mortal combat, falling through the sky in a massive fireball. “It’s a good image, Sergeant Jack. Very evocative.”

  Jackson shrugged and took another drink. It wasn’t the first time he’d ended up playing that role in his life.

  Once word spread of their charismatic leader’s death, Warlord’s government had collapsed. Like most despots, he wasn’t big on delegating power. Big Town had a lieutenant governor, but he and several other members of the cabinet had fled on the first available transport with whatever they could loot from the city’s coffers. Which turned out to be a smart move on the politicians’ part, because the mob had been in a hanging mood for a while there, and several officials and officers of the Big Town Guard had ended up decorating lampposts.

  It had been chaotic for a few days, but the Originals had been waiting for this chance for a long time. They’d beaten the last of the Guard, then forced the gangs and various factions to the bargaining table. Planetside, LaDue had declared herself the president of a new Swindle planetary government, while Ian MacKinnon had been named interim governor of Big Town. Actual elections had been scheduled for three months from now, but both of those two had been such forces in restoring order that Jackson doubted anyone would even run against the Originals’ party this time around.

  Of course, Jackson had missed most of the aftermath because he’d been in the hospital, getting the remains of Warlord’s evil nanotech suctioned out of his brain, and new bones grown for his hand.

  “You seen Jane around yet?” Jackson asked.

  “Sorry. Not so far today.”

  That was a bummer. She was the one person he really wanted to see the most before Tar Heel shipped out. They’d spent a lot of time together over the last week. He’d finally gotten to take her on that date. One date had turned into two, and he was really hoping for a third before it was time to leave. It had been a wonderful, and Jackson was pretty sure this was what falling in love was supposed to be like.

  “But check out what I have.” Tui unwrapped the blanket to show Jackson his prize. “What do you think?”

  Jackson leaned over and discovered that Tui had gotten himself a pet. It was a hairless, gray, wiggling thing, about the size of an Earth hamster. “Is that a shanking grendel?”

  “Yeah, pretty cool, huh? Turns out Fain’s monster had a baby. It’s kind of cute, in a Swindle-wants-to-destroy-you kind of way. I couldn’t just leave it, and I don’t know if we could send it home without its momma.” Tui scratched under its mouth feelers and the weird little puppy demon made a happy clicking noise.

  Jackson just stared at his friend in disbelief. “It’s ugly
as sin. There’s no way you’re going to be able to train it. I saw the vids with Fain.”

  “Oh, no problem. Jane reverse engineered that control collar and improved it. The new one will be way better than what Fain had.”

  “It’s going to get big, and then it’s going to eat you.”

  “Maybe.” Tui grinned and pulled out a piece of jerky from his pocket. The baby snatched it up and chewed it in a very vicious and slobbery manner. “But maybe not.”

  The two of them watched the party for a while, talking about the crew and laughing at their antics, while Tui’s new hell hound shredded jerky with its razor teeth.

  Bushey was hanging out in the shallow end, flirting with the local girls, but it was amusing to watch as he gravitated toward one attractive Big Town lady in her fifties. The bridge crew were playing frisbee on the grass with the denizens of the cargo hold. And Katze had drawn a crowd of little kids around her, while she told them a very animated story about life on Amon, sailing the lakes of fire beneath the twin suns.

  “I’m going to miss these guys,” Jackson said.

  “You don’t have to miss anybody. You can still come with us. We don’t cast off until morning.”

  Jackson shook his head. “This is something I’ve got to do.”

  Tui nodded, because he got it. As soon as Tui had gotten stitched back together by nanites and healing gel, he had joined in with the rescue efforts and cleaning up the rubble left from their battle. Because that was just the kind of man he was. “Respect.”

  Then Captain Holloway arrived. He shook hands with the important Big Towners, waved at his crew, and made his way directly toward where Jackson and Tui were sitting. Tui immediately covered the baby grendel back up, which told Jackson he hadn’t cleared having a murder beast as a pet with the captain quite yet.

  “Hey, Chief. Do you mind? I need a minute in private with the new face of Swindilian independence here.”

  “No problem, Cap.” Tui stood. “I’ve got things to prep at the docks anyway.”