Chosen of Chaos (Eve of Destruction Book 1)

by Benjamin Medrano

  At least the locals finally seemed to get the fact that Evelyn did not pull punches when people came after her. When a competitor decided destroying her inventory was a good idea, their crew usually found itself spread over a few dozen meters, and the surrounding buildings often took quite a bit of damage as well. That being the case, her neighbors had made it quite vocally known that even if someone managed to kill her, they’d murder the assailant themselves afterward. That finally reduced the number of attacks to a minimum, and most of them were dealt with by Fya. At least she’d ended up on good terms with the Reanimator’s Guild. Their only complaint was that she tended to do a lot of damage to the bodies which they had to repair.

  The last thing that fell into a pattern was Vania’s visits. After the first visit, it was just over a year before she’d returned, somewhat frazzled but at this time with another bodyguard, as Peldra had a space slug asteroid crash-land into the middle of the country, and they were having a hell of a time dealing with them. Evelyn had to wonder what Vania was paying her advisors for, since it shouldn’t have been that hard to look up what weapons were needed to deal with space slugs.

  She’d sold them the correct weapons and sent them on their way firmly, only to have Vania come back the next year, then the next. Every visit left Fya in a foul mood for a few hours, but Evelyn didn’t mind that much. She made a tidy profit off each visit, which did wonders for her savings. She might even be able to buy the private island fortress she’d been considering, which people said would be going up for sale the next year.

  Then one day, an energy beam as large as her head punched a hole through her front door, destroyed three shelf units, including several lovely daggers she’d only gotten in the day before, cooked off seven cases of small arms ammunition, and destroyed the platinum-plated collector’s edition Echris combat rifle she’d just reserved for a customer coming by in two days. An important customer.

  Evelyn was not amused.

  The blast shields snapped up a second too late, and Evelyn stood up slowly, ignoring the follow-up shot that hit the shields. Instead, she was looking at the molten wreckage of her shelves, the smoking hole in the back wall that had two now-useless chunks of platinum-plated rifle on either side of it, and the damage to the ceiling where the bullets had slammed into it. The fire suppression system activated a moment later, hitting the area with a gas that instantly extinguished the fire, but it was also too late. The chill that pervaded the room certainly suited Evelyn’s mood, though.

  “Backtrack,” Evelyn said flatly, focusing on her implants, and the security system helpfully sprang to life, showing its readouts in her mind’s eye with a helpful diagram over the city.

  The shot had come from a half-kilometer beyond her monitoring zone, Evelyn realized, from a square that her cameras didn’t have a good resolution of. That didn’t help the attackers, though, as she mentally supplied the necessary overrides, and the security system used the satellite tap to get high-resolution photos of the city in real time. It was fortunate that there wasn’t much cloud cover today. Fortunate for her.

  Cutthroat Square snapped into focus, and Evelyn immediately picked out several items of interest. First and foremost was the large object that almost had to be a camouflaged tank, she’d seen enough of them when taking over Peldra. Then there were the dozens of people in excellent vantage points to unload on her if she decided to head straight at them, as well as covering their flanks. There would likely be snipers and other people in the area, she decided, and considering the trail of wrecked shops leading from the spaceport to the square, the group must have decided to plough straight through them. That made her upset, since it told her a few things.

  “Commodore Barstil will have to explain things to me,” Evelyn said frostily, her eyes narrowing. Then she triggered her comm, heading for the back room as another cannon blast hit her shields, barely shaking them. If they’d attacked from inside the monitoring zone, the first shot would never have done so much damage, which made her mood still fouler.

  “Fya, someone brought what looks like a Kraken ground tank into Cuthroat Square along with at least a platoon of soldiers, then opened fire on the shop,” Evelyn said, shrugging out of her jacket, then stepped into the armor stand waiting there. Before the djinn could respond the armor stand hissed and began closing around her.

  “Oh no! Any casualties?” Fya demanded.

  “Three combat daggers, one boarder’s spike, several cases of ammunition, and the Echris. I’d just gotten a reservation on it,” Evelyn replied shortly, shrugging as the armor finished sealing around her and linked to her implants, showing that all its systems were green, and the magic-enhanced shield began spinning up. “I’m a bit pissed.”

  “You should be! That had to be worth two months of sales!” Fya said, outrage filling her voice. “What should I do?”

  “They’re covering the front and flanks from firing positions. Come get me and let’s show them why they should’ve left me the fuck alone,” Evelyn replied, her anger turning icy and cold. Trying to kill her was one thing, but indiscriminate damage to her shop was just about the fastest way to upset her.

  “Be right there!” Fya replied.

  There was a flash of blue smoke, and Fya appeared, wearing her usual outfit, though it morphed into a slightly thicker bodysuit as Evelyn watched, and this week her hair and eyes were bright red. A moment later an energy shotgun appeared in her arms, the barrels painted to look like they were dragons with their mouths wide open.

  “Right, time to kick their asses!” Fya said, grinning widely.

  “Agreed,” Evelyn said, pulling out her energy blade and pistol.

  These were even better than the ones she’d had when she conquered Peldra, so a mere tank was nothing to her.

  Another blast of smoke filled the room, then they were in the middle of Cutthroat Square. It was a perfect name for the location, given what Evelyn was about to do in it.

  Chapter 4

  Gaxxlan had thought this would be an easy job. They’d picked up their cargo and were prepared to lift off, but given that the last couple of jobs had gone off without a hitch and how much a few people were willing to pay for a certain shopkeeper’s death, the Captain had decided to improve their payday by a factor of ten or so. Gaxxlan certainly hadn’t been about to object to that, though he wondered why anyone was willing to pay that much for eliminating the owner of a weapon’s shop.

  Getting to the square and setting up hadn’t been hard. While there were plenty of pirates and scum in Rakal who would be dicey to deal with, most of the people there knew better than to mess with a platoon of soldiers who were following a tank. Sure, it wrecked a bunch of stalls, but what were they going to do? Get themselves killed trying to fight them? The thought almost made him laugh.

  They’d set up, everyone taking good firing positions, and the locals had been wise enough to clear out. Gaxxlan did wonder why they’d sped up after seeing where they were pointing, but he’d shrugged it off. It couldn’t matter that much.

  Then they’d opened fire, and he wondered who in the hell put that type of shield generator on a weapon shop. The tank had unleashed a dozen shots into the shields so far, and every one after the first had bounced off, barely rippling the blue barrier. Gaxxlan opened his mouth, his hands tightening around his autorifle… and a blast of smoke erupted in the center of the square behind him.

  “What the—” Wryl began, but before Gaxxlan had more than half-turned, a blast of a dozen white-hot bolts of energy emerged from the smoke and slammed into the sergeant, riddling his armor with pock marks in most places, but it punched right through a couple of seams, sending the man sprawling.

  “Medic!” Gaxxlan called out, twisting around, but he was so slow… and the attackers weren’t.

  There was the sizzle of an energy sword, and he saw a complex, bright red energy blade through the blue smoke. The wielder was a blur of black and red that lunged at the tank, and Gaxxlan’s eyes bulged as the blade cut t
hrough the armor forming the turret’s base almost effortlessly, then a pulse of red energy surged out of the woman and ripped the turret off the tank, sending it spinning through the air at the plasma bolter emplacement.

  Gaxxlan got his gun around as the smoke cleared enough for him to see a grinning human woman with bright red hair and eyes holding a shotgun unload into the other emplacement, steadily turning toward him as she kept firing.

  “Die, ya bastards!” Gaxxlan roared, pulling the trigger on his rifle before he had a proper shot, and it bucked in his hands, unleashing a stream of bullets that cut across the ground, moving toward the woman like a blade.

  Several bullets impacted against a shield, shocking him because how the hell did someone fit a shield in armor like that? Then the bullets stopped, and he looked down in confusion, blinking as he saw that the trigger assembly was missing along with two fingers. Gaxxlan froze for an instant as the pain started to hit him… then the human turned her shotgun on him and pulled the trigger.

  Gaxxlan didn’t have time to wonder who they were after that.

  Evelyn didn’t bat an eyelash as plasma splashed off her shield, the mercenary firing so quickly that his barrel was beginning to glow. She couldn’t take that for too long, but she didn’t have to, as she shaped her magic via pure force of will into a blade that she used to behead the man. No, the woman, she corrected herself idly, just as she cut another’s sword in two with her blade and removed a good quarter of his torso along with his head. A sniper on a rooftop tried to get an angle on her, but that just brought him into position for her to return fire, and she put a precise energy bolt through his faceplate and into his eye. That dealt with the problem nicely.

  Most of the soldiers were down at this point, and Evelyn could hear Fya giggling behind her as her shotgun roared over and over again. She hoped she wasn’t going to have to fully rebuild the djinn’s gun again, but she knew better than to try to stop her. It’d just make her grumpy, and that wasn’t worth living with for weeks on end. Mostly, Evelyn hoped she hadn’t killed the soldier that Evelyn had deliberately disabled. The rest of them could die.

  One of the last soldiers took that moment to try running, and Evelyn aimed, then put a couple of bolts through his back, perfectly placed to kill. While he had decent enough armor, it wasn’t enchanted, and that spelled his doom. A smile flickered across Evelyn’s lips as she considered that. ‘Spelled’ indeed.

  Movement and fire had pretty much petered out by that point, and Evelyn slowly turned in place, considering, then she realized she could hear the tank’s drive system clicking, as someone tried to get it moving. Unfortunately for them, she knew exactly where the control systems connected to the engine and had severed those at the same time that she’d disarmed the vehicle.

  Evelyn calmly walked over to the tank, hopping up on it in clear view of the nearby shopkeepers and civilians who were watching from behind cover, then slid her sword through the top of the driver’s hatch and jiggled it a bit. The clicking stopped, and she nodded in satisfaction.

  “If one of you wants to contact the Reanimator’s Guild, let them know they have a few volunteers,” Evelyn called out calmly, hopping off the tank again and deactivating her energy blade.

  Turning to the rest of the destroyed group, she considered for a moment, then asked. “Any of them left?”

  “Just the one whose gun you shot!” Fya said cheerfully. “I shot him too, but his armor was good enough he should just be unconscious. Looks like a platoon plus a tank to me. You recognize their markings?”

  Evelyn glanced at the side of the tank, then shook her head, not recognizing the bloody dagger crossed with a missile. The device could apply to hundreds of mercenary or pirate groups, which made her annoyance even worse. There was no way in all the hells this group could have gotten into position without her catching wind of them first. Not unless the Commodore had made that happen. It upset her.

  “Ooh, I recognize that look! Someone’s gonna die…” Fya said in a sing-song voice, crouching down to take the belt off one of the deceased. “Well, more someones.”

  “Yes, yes they are,” Evelyn agreed, slowly moving back to the mercenary she’d disabled earlier.

  The orc man’s armor was pocked with scorch marks, and he didn’t look like he was in too bad of shape, aside from the hole in his helmet and where she’d taken three fingers off him. He was in good enough shape that once awake he could answer her questions, which was enough for her purposes.

  “Wake him up,” Evelyn said, glancing at the man’s equipment derisively. It was so basic she wouldn’t have carried it in her shop willingly.

  “He is still armed,” Fya replied, straightening from where she’d been looting a body. She approached, and as she did so Evelyn gave her a skeptical look.

  “He couldn’t hurt us when there was an assault rifle in his hands. What’s he going to do now?” Evelyn asked, arching an eyebrow. “I doubt he’s going to trigger a grenade, and our armor will deal with that easily.”

  “Unless it’s a heavily enchanted grenade… but none of these people seem to have more than the weakest of items. Really disappointing,” Fya said, a hint of regret filling her voice as she leaned over the man. “I wanted something better than this junk.”

  “It makes me even more upset,” Evelyn told her, agreeing internally. That a group so poorly equipped had attacked her was downright insulting.

  A flicker of light sparked from Fya’s finger to the orc’s forehead, then she straightened, her voice bright and cheerful as the man’s eyes opened. “Rise and shine! Well, not so much rising, or I’ll have to remove your legs, but you get the idea!”

  “Wha—” the man began, then froze as Evelyn pointed her gun at his head.

  “Shut up and listen carefully,” Evelyn said, glaring down at him. “You have three options. If you refuse to give me any information, I’ll cut your tendons and leave you here for the local shopkeepers to deal with. Considering the hash your group made of their shops, I suspect it’ll take a while to die, then you’ll be sold to the Reanimator’s Guild like the rest of your team. You can also give me a little information, at which point I’ll kill you quickly and painlessly. Or you can give me useful information, and I will not only let you live, but leave you with a medic. Paying them would be your problem. You have five seconds to decide, so think quickly.”

  The orc’s eyes widened, revealing them to be a surprisingly pretty shade of hazel, then he spoke rapidly. “I’m Gaxxlan, a member of the Bloody Dagger Mercenaries, um, I think the seventeenth group registered under the name. We’ve got a full company, plus the two tanks, one now, and use the ship Daggerhound under Captain Margvitz. What else do you want to know? I’ll tell you, so don’t kill me!”

  “Why did you attack me with such incompetence?” Evelyn demanded, her eyes narrowing.

  “Look, we were here to pick up a cargo, and the boss said that since all of our gear was in good shape, and there was a bounty worth ten times what we were being paid, we might as well collect on it. I didn’t think some weapon shop owner would be so damned… I mean, so skilled,” Gaxxlan said, gulping loudly as he glanced at the pistol. “That’s it, really. We were going to shoot up the place, then get you when you came out. That’s all I know.”

  Evelyn looked up at the sky for a moment, briefly wondering who’d cast a spell to remove the Commodore’s brain functions. That was the only reason she could imagine for him not realizing what would happen if he let the attack through. Or… she frowned, considering, then realized that she’d never let it known just how powerful the shields she’d installed were. They’d come as salvage off a crashed battleship, and it’d taken some work to get them functional again. That probably explained it and that made her incredibly irritable.

  “Unfortunately for you, that was a mistake,” Evelyn said at last, looking down at the orc as her eyes narrowed. “Where is your ship docked? I do hope you didn’t keep your mythrite on the ship, as if you did, you’re going to have
trouble paying for your treatment. Your captain certainly won’t be in any position to pick up the tab.”

  Fya giggled, and the orc gulped, visibly paling as she looked down at him.

  Chapter 5

  Magdalene Rantha, call her Maggie, had a rough job some days. Many pirates were belligerent, boastful, and prone to ignoring traffic control, which was why she often had to fire up the targeting system to convince them that just maybe they should follow her directions. It could be a stressful job, but fortunately, pirates weren’t a daily occurrence. A weekly one, maybe, but most privateers and smugglers understood that she was just trying to make sure they didn’t land on another ship or crash into the city, so it wasn’t that bad.

  The call she got made her wish that she was dealing with a pirate ship trying to land in the middle of the city.

  “What is it?” Maggie asked as the line connected, a trifle impatient.

  “This is Evelyn Esendria Tarth,” the woman on the other end said, her clipped tones so unlike most natives, and Maggie sat up suddenly, dread washing over her.

  The only times Evelyn had called the flight control tower and used her full name had ended incredibly badly. In one case, they’d been forced to scrap three landing bays, and after the first time the security team had tried to laugh her off, no one got in her way. Maggie wished that she wasn’t on duty. Or maybe that there was a raiding fleet pissed at one of the privateers, or something that didn’t put her personally in danger.

  “Hello, Evelyn. What can I do for you?” Maggie asked, being as polite as if one of the Pirate Kings had shown up in orbit.

  “Lock down docking bay fourteen. If the Daggerhound launches, I’m going to take it as a personal insult,” Evelyn said flatly.

  “Ah… may I ask why?” Maggie asked, dread washing over her. At the same time she glanced at the readouts of bay fourteen, and noticed a lot of activity. She considered, then hit the key to lock the bay doors.