by David Ryker
I heard the cannon roar again and felt the bullet tear through my jacket as it streamed behind me, centimeters from my back.
The force pulled me off balance and I staggered, leaping and rolling in any fashion I could as another round streaked between my legs, barely missing my kneecap.
I could hear thundering footsteps, and then more cannon fire, but this time, not directed at me. I looked up to see a shower of sparks explode off Greg’s hull and shoot into the air. He was coming around the corner, plasma pistol raised, and fired right at the brute, his aim mechanical, sure — impossible to miss. And yet, he did.
The brute leaped, two meters into the air, legs spread wide to avoid the plasma round. It sailed between them, blasting a hole through the tail of his jacket, and set the rest alight. He landed like a cat and pulled it off his shoulders with ease casual, slinging it to the ground, revealing muscular arms and a thick neck. He was at least a hundred and ninety centimeters tall, and there wasn’t a scrap of fat on him. His body armor was state of the art too — no ordinary flak jacket. It covered his torso entirely, right up to the neck. Armored pads stretched onto his shoulders and arms, strapped around bulging biceps. And yet, he moved like a gymnast half his weight. Spry and agile. I knew what I was looking at. Another Tenshi, the same as Fox — genetically engineered superhumans. Faster, stronger, smarter. And yet, he seemed even more brutal than Fox. She’d still been human to a degree, but not this guy.
I was already sprinting toward Greg and he was coming toward me. He knelt and popped the hatch, dropping his hand. I put my heel on it and he pushed me into the air. I landed in the cockpit and sank into the seat, shrugging on my harness as he closed the hatch.
The brute was smiling, but not attacking. I could see his face clearly through the dwindling gap as the hatch sealed, his eyes fixed on mine. I knew he could have put a bullet in me any time he wanted to. Why he didn’t, I don’t know. Maybe he was just satisfying his curiosity.
He took a few steps backward over the smoldering remains of his jacket and peered in through the door next to Everett’s unmoving body. His lips curled down a little as I shoved my hands into the gloves, using every ounce of strength I had to suppress my screaming knuckles.
“Greg,” I said, out of breath. “Everett. Alice. Alive?”
“Affirmative. I detect vital signs, though Pilot Kepler’s blood pressure appears to be dropping slowly. I believe she is wounded.”
“Shit,” I sighed, flexing my fingers. “Then let’s deal with this fucking guy and get out of here. And for fuck sakes, get Mac and Fish on the line, tell them we need their goddamn help!”
I moved Greg forward, pistol still raised, and made for the Tenshi, who was circling carefully into the open, baiting me to attack. I didn’t leave him waiting. I raised the plasma pistol and put four shots in a diamond around him, waiting for him to try and dodge. One to the left, one above, one to the right, and one below.
He watched them come but didn’t budge an inch until the last one. The first three all went wide, as I’d aimed them to, hoping he’d move into their paths. The last one should have blown his feet off, but he stepped backward out of the way like I’d flicked a bottle cap at him.
He smirked a little and raised his free hand, beckoning me forward. He didn’t break the stare as he pushed the cannon back into his hip holster, turning a quarter on and curling his hands into fists.
“Is this guy fucking nuts?” I called, not believing what I was seeing. “He can’t want to fight hand to hand with a goddamn Mech!”
“He does not appear to be completely human—” Greg started saying.
“I know that, he’s a fucking Tenshi, but still!” I didn’t doubt myself though, and pushed onward, kicking into the thrusters. We shot into the air, the Tenshi tiny in front of us, and rained down on him. I still had the pistol in hand, but my other fist was balled. I was going to cave his head in.
My fists whistled downward, my feet slamming to the ground, and a thud rang out that rattled my teeth in my skull.
My eyes blinked open, the sound of whining gears and warping metal echoing in the cockpit. I leaned forward, staring at the bottom of the screen, fighting the gloves, trying to push them down.
Below me, the Tenshi hadn’t moved. His hands were up, palms flat against the heels of Greg’s fists. He was sagging backward, legs splayed and sunk into the earth nearly up to the ankles, but he was grinning, teeth bared in half a snarl. He’d caught my fists with his bare hands. Something that would have splatted a normal humanoid like a ripe berry. And yet there he was, holding me back.
He stared up at the cam dome, his eyes dark and full, and then he flipped us.
His hips turned in and before I knew what was happening, he moved aside, took our hands, and turned them over. We followed with them and I felt everything in my guts press against my throat. We landed hard on our side with a crunch and dug into the layer of dirt on the floor scraping against the buried steel.
My head lolled sideways, my neck clicking, and I stared out at the Tenshi, dumbfounded. He clenched his fists and strolled over, without a care in the world, still smirking with malice.
I saw him approach, watched his foot rise until I could see the tread on his boot, and then everything went dark. There was a crunch as he drove it straight through Greg’s camera dome, crushing it into the hull, and then there was nothing.
I sat in silence and darkness for a few seconds, listening. He took a few steps until he was right outside the hatch, and then paused. There was a quiet vibrating noise and I heard him answer a communicator. “Yeah?” he said. “Okay. No. Dead. Fine.” He sighed and then his heels ground in the dirt as he turned, his footsteps quickly fading away. I sat, holding my breath between my teeth, and then I swallowed. “Greg?” I said quietly.
“Yes, James?”
“What the hell just happened?”
“It appears we lost.”
I groaned, pulling my destroyed hand out of the glove and reaching up to open the hatch. “We seem to be doing that a lot lately.”
“Yes, James, we do.”
20
“Is he gone?” I asked, the hatch opening to reveal a deserted street.
“It appears so. I do not detect his presence in the vicinity.”
“He just left?”
“That is correct.”
“But why?” I asked, hauling us upright. Greg was working the right hand again, pulling us to our feet. We headed for Everett first. She still wasn’t moving. Alice was groaning and clutching her hip, but at least she was conscious. Everett, on the other hand, wasn’t.
I let myself down out of Greg and he stayed still, half bent over, hatch still open. He was totally blind now, so it’d have to stay that way, and I’d have to do all the seeing for him.
My feet hit the ground and I stumbled toward her, still slumped against the side of the building.
I pulled her upright and cradled her head, feeling for her pulse in her neck. It was there.
I breathed a sigh of relief. “Everett, can you hear me? Everett?”
She grumbled a little and then opened her eyes, coughing. She winced and clutched weakly at her ribs. “Fuck,” she muttered, looking around. “What happened?”
“You got hit,” I said, bowing my head to look at where she was clutching. Broken rib, maybe. Probably a few.
“With what?” she asked. “A fucking train?”
I couldn’t help but laugh a little. “No, but close. A Tenshi.”
She grimaced. “Feels like a train.”
“He was built like one. Can you stand?”
She nodded and put her arm around my neck. I lifted her to her feet and let her steady herself on Greg. Alice was already on her knees, checking the blood coming off her hip.
I left Everett and went over, offering my hand. She pulled herself up and nodded, hopping a little as she tried to put weight on the injured side.
“You good?” I asked.
“Could have been a lot
worse.” She lifted the corner of her shirt and I could see no more than a nasty graze on her skin, but it was still bleeding pretty badly. “Don’t think it even hit me. Just the force of it passing by.”
“Thank God,” I sighed with relief. But I couldn’t help but think that if he’d wanted to kill all three of us, then he could have done so without batting an eyelid. And yet we’d all come out of it unscathed, relatively. “Can you walk?”
She nodded and bared her teeth as she put her foot down, muttering curse words under her breath.
My communicator started buzzing as we got halfway back to Greg and Everett. It was Mac.
“We’re coming up on your position now, but there’s some pretty heavy resistance here. Seems like every TC agent on the ship is gearing up for a fight. What the hell did you guys do?” His voice was breathless. I could hear him hammering forward in his HAM, lumbering along as fast as it would go.
“We killed Smith. Turns out he was a bigger fish than we thought. There was a fight. We pulled through.” We came up on Greg and I climbed in, pushing my left hand back into the glove. “Priority now is getting off this damn station. The TC and the Free are working together — we need to report back, regroup. It runs deeper than anyone thought. And Mac?”
“Yeah, Red?”
“Keep an eye out — there’s a goddamn Tenshi here. Don’t cross him, he’s a handful.”
“A Tenshi? Jesus Christ. And everyone’s okay? Where is he now? What happened?” He sounded alarmed.
“Yeah, just about. Couple of dings and bumps. We went toe to toe. We lost.” I looked down at my steadily darkening hand and forced it open and closed a few times, ignoring the jolts of pain. “But we’re okay. What’s Volchec like?”
“Pretty pissed, as you can imagine. But we can deal with that later. You get anything out of Smith before he kicked it?”
“Yeah, some bits. Seems like that Tenshi was Smith’s muscle. He could have finished us, but he bolted instead. Left us alive.” I sighed and pulled on my harness.
“He just ran off?”
“Yeah, there were four of them — two TC, two Free. We dealt with the first three, he put us down, was about to finish me off, but got a call. He said a couple of words, confirmed Smith was dead, and then made for the hills.”
“Weird — reporting back, maybe?” Mac’s words hung in the air.
“Maybe. Shit. If he is… and he’s running back to the mothership, and we can tail him, then he might lead us—”
“Straight to Fox.” Mac swore loudly in my ear. “Shit, that might just get our heads out of the noose. I’ll call it in — you guys haul ass back to the ship, and let’s get out of here before the shit really hits the fan.”
I sighed, nearly dropping the communicator. The sounds of boots on dirt cut through the sound of Mac’s voice like a knife. I turned Greg around to watch a dozen TC soldiers and two more Mech running towards us, still distant, but making up the ground fast. “It already has.” I gritted my teeth. “You get back, tell Volchec to get it in the air, and find us a dock that doesn’t have a hundred fucking guns between us and it.”
I heard him slow down, and then change direction. “Confirmed. Stay safe, Red. See you guys soon.”
I swallowed and hung up, pushing the communicator back into my pocket. “Alice?” I turned to look at her, eyes wide watching the approaching force, crooked to the side to accommodate her flank. “You think you can get to your rig?”
“Not with all those guys coming at us.”
“I’ll deal with them,” I said gruffly. “You take Everett, get to it, and then get to the ship. I’ll hold them off.”
“Red,” Everett said stiffly, still clutching her ribs. “That’s suicide.”
“I’ll be fine.”
“There’s too many of them.”
“There’s too many of them for the three of us, too. Get to Alice’s rig, and then get to the ship. Catch that Tenshi before he gets off Notia. I’ll buy you as much time as I can.” The words seemed to form themselves in my mouth as I scanned the approaching enemies. All ground troops in standard armor, carrying rifles. The Mech were the riot control units we’d seen earlier, but they still looked not to be messed with. I could already feel the thuds of their footfalls as they pounded along. “Seriously. Get out of here. I’ll meet you when I can.”
“We’re not leaving you,” Alice said, suddenly breathless. “We’ll do this together.”
“Everett’s got broken ribs and you can’t stand straight. It’s no use — you’d be better off getting your Alpha, and then coming back for me. You’re in no shape to fight.”
Everett’s voice was cold and clinical, just as she needed to be. “He’s right. We need to fall back, regroup, get your rig. It’s probably still at the bar, but if we leave it behind, they’ll repo it, trace it back to the Athena, and then there’s no denying that we’re with the Federation.” She sighed. “Shit. Red, keep us updated, and for fuck sake, make it back, alright?”
“Sure thing, Lieutenant.” I smiled at them both for a second. “Now get out of here, both of you.”
I didn’t need to watch them go to know that they’d gone. They’d have a much better chance of getting back to the bar than they would getting straight back to the ship. Alice wasn’t going to be able to fight, but at the controls of her Alpha she was a force to be reckoned with. They’d stand a much better chance if she was properly armed.
I took a deep breath and reached under my seat. There was an emergency med kit there and I laid it on my knee, fumbling it open with my left hand. There wasn’t much to choose from, but there was enough. I pulled out a thin canister and bit the top off, exposing a short needle. I rested my thumb on the back of it, on the plunger there, and then jammed it into the back of my right hand. It hurt like all hell, but a second after the plunger went in, a cold numbness began to spread and the throbbing quietened. I breathed out and tossed it into the footwell, grabbing out a roll of gauze before shoving the kit back between my legs. I held it between my teeth, watching the force closing in, and wrapped the end over my knuckles again and again until I could barely curl my fingers.
I tied it off and watched my hand shake, my fingers a scary shade of dark. I shook it out and then jammed it into the glove. My skin, swollen and tight, scraped across the inside of it, but I needed both hands, and it would have to do. I breathed slowly and grabbed for my helmet off the shelf just below the compartment where the first aid kit was, and turned it over. I didn’t dare take my right hand out of the glove. I didn’t think I’d get it back in again, and I could already feel the familiar pulse of pain through the numbing agent.
I pressed the helmet on with my left hand and listened as it sealed and activated. I heard the familiar buzz of static in my ear as Greg established a connection, and watched as figures and data lit up the HUD. “Can you see?” I asked Greg. He was fed right into my helmet, and was able to utilize the camera on the visor that did all the HUD work.
“I can, though we must keep the hatch open.”
“I know.” I swallowed hard, feeling very exposed, totally vulnerable from the mid-chest up. “Alright then,” I said, reaching over my shoulder for my Samson. “Let’s light them up.”
The Mech overtook the ground soldiers and at a hundred meters dropped into defensive positions. The wide sections of armor on their backs angled up over their shoulders and joined together. In perfect synchronicity, the two of them stopped and pulled them over their heads, slamming them into the ground to form a wide shield.
The soldiers clustered behind and then everything went quiet.
“You ready, big guy?” I said into my helmet.
“It is unlikely that we will succeed.”
“Humph,” I laughed. “Tell me something I don’t know.”
“Notia is estimated to have at least two thousand armed Trading Collective Municipal Guards.”
“Why the hell would you tell me a thing like that?”
“You told me to tell you
something you didn’t know.”
“That’s not what I— Just… just try to keep us alive.” I cocked the Samson and shouldered it, standing a quarter on so that at least a portion of the sloped side of the hatch was covering me. “How many sticky bombs do we have?”
“Sixteen.”
“Great. Let’s put them to work.” I took my hand off the barrel of the Samson and punched two bombs into the air. They spat out of the wrist-mounted launcher and arced through the gloom, the lights hanging on the high ceiling above glimmering off the gelatinous projectile as it wobbled towards its target.
They sailed over the top of the shield and detonated behind it, erupting into the air with a bright yellow tongue of flame. Some of the soldiers scattered, making for the walls of the buildings lining the street they’d set up in.
One of the Mech broke from behind the shield and let off a few shots with its shotgun. The buckshot spread out in a wide spray and speckled my hull. I turned my back on it and waited for the rain to stop, and then twisted back around, making for the corner of an intersection that lay between me and them.
Our shoulder hit the wall, the sounds of gunfire ringing around us. It was so easy to forget how deadly bullets were when there was six inches of steel between you and them.
The Samson looked so different without the screen between us. The fish-eye lens on the camera dome presented so much in all directions, and without it I felt like I was looking at the battle through a letterbox. I could see my heart rate and BP was much higher than usual in engagements like this. Guess the fear of death was catching up with me.
I took a deep breath and plunged into the open, shouldering the Samson and raking from right to left with a stream of fire. A couple of the soldiers exploded in fountains of blood, but a few managed to duck and dive to safety.
As the line of fire crossed the shields, sparks flew in all directions, the plating far too thick to be punctured.
I grunted, spun on my heels and boosted away with my back to the onslaught, thrusters carrying me sideways and out of the storm of bullets raining down on me.