"Hang on," I said, and then raised my voice again. I may as well push a little. What harm could it do? "If we win, the XAR leave us alone. When you see us, you turn around. If you hear us coming, make yourself scarce. Our people, our places, and our things will be safe from you, until the Citadel changes hands."
It was a crazy demand, but so what? If the XAR came back with something we couldn't abide by, I'd just reject it.
"No way."
"I get it," I shouted over the top of his thoughts, cutting him off rudely. What they were asking was totally unreasonable, but what both GOR and I knew was that the XAR could probably own at least one human around the clock anyway.
After all, hadn't they managed to grab both Sabine and Lucas at the same time? I doubted that was an unusual event. They could've kept them for whatever purpose they desired, if CAV hadn't brashly rushed off after me with them in tow.
"Okay," I said, as Sabine started cussing me out and Lucas grabbed me roughly by my injured arm. The pain cut right through me, and I saw CAV's faceted eyes watching me closely.
Damn it. If that bastard didn't already know I was injured, he sure does now...
"We'll agree to that, if you agree that the XAR will leave my Faction and our allies alone."
"Adam..." Sabine whispered, "you know that we don't have any allies, right?"
I ignored her.
The XAR Hive have proposed the following REPERCUSSION:
XAR Hive Victory - One Human will act as Host at all times until the Citadel changes hands.
Earth Faction Victory - the XAR Hive will be peaceful to Humans and Human allies until the Citadel changes hands.
If accepted by the leaders of both parties, failure to comply with the REPERCUSSION will result in the permanent reduction of the offending Faction's team by two.
Does the Earth Faction accept?
I looked over at Lucas and Sabine. They weren't happy, but the fact that they weren't currently strangling the life out of me told me they weren't getting the same message that I was.
I knew I was right about what the XAR could do. If GOR wanted to make our life miserable, he could order his warriors to stalk us relentlessly. We might not always have a team member prisoner over there, but it'd be an issue more often than not.
And it wouldn't stop at that. We'd waste our time trying to bust our compatriot free, and the resulting back and forth would drain our resources and sap our motivation.
There was more to it, though. The XAR's Nemesis status was unbelievably dangerous. It made any human who managed to kill a XAR into a useless burden, a beacon to the rest of them.
I needed to put a stop to that shit now.
Besides, I wasn't here to fight the XAR. I was here to take the Citadel away from the Evvex. All other goals were needless distractions.
"I accept."
The Citadel has noted your agreement. All Factions members have been made aware of the REPERCUSSION.
Lucas looked like he was going to murder me, but Sabine was clear-headed and tactical enough to know that what was done was done. She may not like it any more than he did, but she couldn't turn back the clock.
"Now, all you guys need to do is win," I told them. "And that's easy, right?"
Lucas was livid. "I'm going to fucking kill you, back at the Station."
"That's fine," I said. "Just fucking kill your XAR first, and then you can fucking kill me all you want."
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Sabine stepped forward and pointed at the Firefly. "You and me, buddy. Let's rock."
GOR tapped all of his legs in a staccato rhythm at the top of the ridge, and whatever message he sent to his Hive must have been received, since all of the XAR advanced until they were a third of the way down the ridge.
They weren't aggressive, but it was hard to look at the bristling mandibles, stingers and spears without shuddering.
"Take the bucket," I told her, upon seeing that she'd set it down to limber up. "The stuff inside goes boom."
She made a face at me. "I know what Crimson Cluster Slurry is. I'll be fine without it."
"Why waste an advantage?"
Sabine scowled and tucked an errant strand of red hair behind her ear. "Adam, do you know me?"
"No. Not really..."
"Do you know what I can do, or how I do it?"
I could already see where this was going. "No," I sighed.
"Yet you've still got balls big enough to think you can advise me on a fight you wouldn't have a chance at winning yourself, right?"
"I suppose I do."
She hooked a thumb at her opponent, who was still standing beside CAV and the bigger ringer opponent GOR had sent down. "If I give that guy the sort of range that I'd need to not blow myself up with that crap, I'm willing to bet I'll get hosed down with the swirling stuff inside of him. I'd rather not find out what it does, thank you very much."
"Okay," I said, holding up my hands in my best 'don't shoot me' gesture. "I'll shut up. I promise."
The Firefly finally turned his body around and glanced back at GOR. Whatever he saw convinced him that compliance was better than defiance, and after a moment's contemplation he skittered forward into the imaginary fight zone that Sabine already occupied.
"So, tell me," I said to Lucas out of the side of my mouth, "because I'm starting to get a little worried. How exactly did the XAR grab you two?"
"Does it matter?" He didn't take his eyes off of Sabine, and I wondered if I was going to have to be concerned that he'd break the agreed upon rules of combat and rush in if something happened to her.
I shrugged. "No. I mean, the only way I could see it having any bearing at all was if I'd, oh, I don't know, just bet an entire alien civilization's strike force on the outcome of a series of duels between them and us... But that hasn't happened, right?"
Sabine looked ready to go, but the Firefly was stretching his long, jointed legs one at a time. He made sure to hold the end of each of them under his abdomen, spraying a thin coating of glowing gel over their tips.
Lucas grunted. "It's a little late for regrets, Adam."
He was right, of course. "I didn't think I was offering them anything they couldn't already take. You've told me they've kidnapped you a couple of times, and I'm sure the real number is a lot higher. Since I doubt you went willingly, I didn't feel like I was really risking anything."
He snorted. "Says the guy who's been here ten minutes and is relying on me and her to literally fight his battle for him so that he doesn't have to enter a trial by combat."
"Touché."
I didn't see or hear a signal for the fight to begin, but both combatants must have gotten one because they charged at each other at the same time.
As Sabine sprinted forward she clapped her hands together twice. The light around them dimmed and then burst into a blue flame that flickered along her fists. The Firefly's initial thrust was much faster than I'd been expecting it to be, but she parried it with her forearm, the fire extending down her arm and pulsing at the impact.
The XAR pulled back his limb and retreated a few steps. The end of it was charred, a slender tendril of smoke curling up into the air before the wind dispersed it.
"Wow," I breathed. "What the hell is she?"
"A Blitzer. You should count yourself lucky that the XAR aren't good at using our abilities when they take us over."
I certainly did. She was fast and fluid, spinning past a clawed swipe and stepping inside the Firefly's guard in one efficient movement. He tried to backpedal again, but all that did was expose his thorax to a pair of rapid strikes that fractured a section of chitin and let blue flame crawl around in the cracks.
The Firefly wasn't happy. He shivered as his abdomen swelled, and before Sabine could get out of the way he’d tucked the organ beneath hi
mself and splashed a torrent of glowing gel on the ground at his feet.
I could immediately smell the chemical burn on the breeze. Sabine was far too committed to get completely out of the way, and she screamed in pain as it swamped her feet and spilled beyond them.
Sure enough, Lucas went tense beside me.
"Let her do her thing," I said, hoping that 'her thing' included working out a way to melee a creature that'd just dumped acidic goo on the ground she needed to occupy if she were going to be able to get in close and continue to do damage.
It turned out that it did, though. He might have hurt her, but she didn't miss a beat. Sabine ran up his leg, viciously kicking blue flames into his carapace and carving out footholds as she went.
The XAR flailed at her. Sabine knocked one leg aside and dodged another, but the third connected high on her hip.
It was a swift, clean strike. One of those jabs that's in and out before you even know it's landed, and she ignored it as best she could.
The grim look on her face told me that she felt the wound had been worth it, as she used the moment to swing up on to the Firefly's back, plant her feet, and bring a devastating double palm strike down on to the middle of his body.
The XAR's legs went wobbly as it sank to the ground. Sabine pressed her advantage, the flames around her fists throwing showers of sparks and arcing embers as she launched an onslaught of attacks. She'd managed to get to a place he couldn't reach, and she was taking the opportunity to dismantle him.
She was concentrating too closely on being the aggressor though, which meant she didn't see his abdomen swell and curl upward.
"Sabine!" Lucas shouted, but all that did was make her look up at him. The XAR was too far gone to wait for the perfect shot, but the jet of viscous liquid still caught her in a glowing line across her ribcage. The blue fire tried to flash out and combat it, but even from here I could smell burnt flesh and melted fabric.
Sabine whispered something and slammed her fist through the back of the Firefly's head with such force that she almost dislodged it from his body.
The fight was over, then and there. The XAR slumped to the sand, twitching and shuddering. Despite her injuries, Sabine managed to gracefully roll to a safe place on the ground, stepping carefully over the growing puddle of goo spreading out from beneath her vanquished opponent.
I breathed a huge sigh of relief. At least she'd won.
The big bull ant-looking XAR immediately stepped toward her, swinging one of its javelins at her knees. Her reflexes let her jump out of the way, but the only direction she could go was back, toward the Firefly corpse.
The ant tank made sure to put itself between she and us.
"What the fuck?" Lucas shouted at GOR. "This wasn't the deal."
The silver leader of the XAR looked down at us without so much as a hint of movement.
Shit. The bottom fell out of my stomach as I saw my mistake too late. Not that my realization made it any easier to explain the situation to Lucas. "It's my fault," I said to him. "I was wrong when I assumed it was best two out of three, but that's not what he actually said. I misunderstood him."
"You what?"
I looked away, unable to stare down the anger in his eyes. "I think I committed us to a series of one on one combats. Last Faction standing wins."
Lucas was so angry he was shaking, and I managed to wrestle my gaze back to Sabine. We both knew she was in over her head. Between the level difference and the fact that she was already injured, I felt like I knew how this was going to end.
Worse, the XAR she was fighting looked like it was far more equipped to defend itself than the Firefly had been. Sabine fired off a flurry of strikes, but the Ant deflected them each in turn and then deftly spun one of the javelins to an upward angle and rammed it into her armpit by way of counterattack.
"You just fucked us all, Adam," Lucas told me, pounding his enhanced fist into his other palm. "And you're going to get your own ass kicked along the way, right before they kill you. Even then, you'll have to live with the knowledge that your shitty negotiation's crippled our Citadel prospects for good."
Sabine didn't look like she was tiring, but her kicks and punches weren't hitting home the way they had in her last fight. The XAR batted most of them aside. Fire flickered along the shields, but if it caused the insectoid pain the alien was more than capable of ignoring it.
She was fast, but the more I watched the fight the more concerned I got that she simply couldn't hit hard enough to end this.
And I think she knew it too.
Sabine was flagging, her combinations getting clunky and her reflexes taxed. The Ant swung one of its central legs at her. It was an attack I'd seen her dodge several times already, but this time the claw grazed her cheek and drew blood.
I glanced at Lucas, but instead of the concern I expected to see I watched the ghost of a smile glimmer into existence.
She was baiting the Ant. That had to be it...
Sure enough, the XAR lunged toward an enemy it thought it had worn down, only to miss her by an inch as she put on a burst of speed, slipping under the javelin's thrust and dancing forward. She was too close for it to do more than swat at her with one of its shield arms, but she sidestepped that too.
Now that she was right up against it, I was expecting her to attack. So was the XAR. Instead, she grabbed the top of one of the javelins and deftly snapped it off a third of the way down the shaft, right at the joint. The creature looked down, momentarily unsure of what to do.
The weapon she'd just stolen had once been a XAR's leg, which meant it was rigidly constructed on the outside and hollow within. Sabine rammed her fist into it and her eyes flashed with blue fire. The same energy poured into the tip of the javelin, making the improvised claw gauntlet flare with an aura of power that made me have to shield my eyes.
The Ant had nowhere to run, and Sabine took a split second to focus before viciously smashing the stolen weapon up to her elbow between two heavy plates of armored carapace.
The extra time it had taken her to aim cost her dearly, as a split-second later the looming XAR dipped low and used its mandibles to neatly snip her head from her body.
A sanguine fountain erupted from Sabine's neck as the rest of her hit the ground hard. The javelin was still dumping power into the impaled XAR, and now it turned its attention to trying to remove it.
I was stunned by how quickly the fatal blow had been struck, but Lucas' reaction was downright primal. With a roar that sounded like it'd chilled the blood of predators all the way back to Smilodon, he charged directly into combat.
I couldn't blame him. It wasn't like I had a chance against the XAR that had just taken out Sabine, and the new format of our ritual combat demanded that someone step forward and answer this new challenge.
He was like a man possessed, slamming the pickax into the side of the Ant with a fury that made me flinch as each blow landed. Every impact sent chunks of chitin flying. The armored husk that made up its carapace was starting to fracture and split, and the only thing the XAR could do for the moment was brace itself under the onslaught.
But Lucas couldn't go on like this forever, and after ten or twelve seconds and almost thirty swings from the pickax he was spent.
The XAR still had a javelin in its grasp and it ran Lucas through. It looked to me like he let it happen, trading the impalement for a chance to reach up with his enhanced arm and tear a huge slab of exoskeleton away, revealing a tangle of bulging innards that pulsed beneath a leaking, fibrous membrane that was struggling to keep its contents intact.
The Ant reeled, some of its legs giving way and others scrambling in the sand. Lucas grabbed at the javelin, but the backward barbs were wicked. If he dragged it out of his stomach, he'd yank his intestines out right along with it.
Sabine's fire had never died. It licked and lapped at the wounds she'd previously caused. I couldn't be sure at first, but it looked like the blue flames w
ere slowly spreading to the huge chunk of viscera Lucas had just exposed.
He was too busy trying to free himself to see that the Ant was most likely still taking damage, and when he finally looked up to gauge how much distance there was between the XAR and himself, the answer was none.
The alien pummeled Lucas into the ground, trampling him beneath its legs and breaking his body beneath a whirlwind of punishing attacks that nothing and no one could have possibly lived through.
When the dust settled, Lucas was paste. There was just enough of his face left to cast an accusatory glare at me, though that may have just been my guilty conscience taking the opportunity to twist the knife.
I was the only one left.
I deserved whatever happened to me, of course. It'd been me who'd led us down a path I hadn't fully understood. My arrogance had let me make decisions that should have been careful and calculated with an ease that belied their importance.
And now, my allies were dead. They'd paid the price for my mistakes. Worse, every human in the Citadel would suffer because of my ego. They'd learn to rue the day I arrived as the XAR came to enslave whoever had drawn the shortest straw and had to cross the line between person and property.
Everything slowed down as the details of the scene before me jumped out in odd, stark contrast to each other. CAV was rubbing his claws together. GOR was watching his warriors. The fire had found the massive hole in the Ant's armor.
One at a time, I told myself, trying to will my mind away from the edge of a despair so deep I knew it had the potential to swallow me forever. Sabine and Lucas kicked the shit out of that thing. Finish it.
I grabbed the braided handle on top of the bucket, pivoted on my heel like an Olympic hammer thrower and hurled it directly at the Ant. It struck the flames climbing the vitals that Lucas had laid bare dead center and exploded.
The shockwave knocked me off my feet and drove the wind out of me. The stink of my own cooked flesh and singed hair filled my nostrils, flooding the back of my throat with a rush of bile.
Upload Page 16