Cosmic Savior: (A Space Opera Adventure) (Interstellar Gunrunner Book 3), page 31
Gadra scrunched up her face. “We’re not gonna leave him, are we?”
“You’re not leaving me,” I said, kneeling down before the girl. “You’re letting me play here a little longer. Then you’re going to come pick me up. Right?”
Her eyes grew misty, but that stiff upper lip didn’t budge. “Yeah, that’s right.”
I patted her helmet. “Good. Now do what Chaska tells you.”
Tusky’s snout bristled—a clear indication he had plenty on his mind—but he said nothing. Instead, he guided Gadra toward the staging bay.
Ruena, meanwhile, hung around a moment longer. She offered me a solemn nod, then a tight smile, and then… nothing. She turned and jogged after the others, tinkering with her wrist transmitter as she moved.
“So… this is it?” Chaska whispered.
I looked back to find a curious expression on her face. So curious I could hardly dissect its meaning. It was soft, yet fierce. Disbelieving, perhaps.
“Not necessarily,” I said.
“Don’t bullshit me, Bodhi. If you’re not coming back, just tell me now. Please.”
“What for?”
“Because I’m not gonna sit around again, hoping you come back.”
“Again? As in, you wanted me back?”
She glanced away. “You’re so damn annoying. Do you know that?”
“How about elusive?”
“Annoying.”
I shrugged. “Have it your way, dear. Just think of me from time to time, would you? You know, like when you’re about to fall asleep. Something like that.”
“It sounds like you want to haunt me.”
“Okay, fine. Think of me when you’re all alone on creepy ships. Maybe I’ll whisper in your ear or throw a book across the room.”
“You’re insufferable,” she said softly.
Then we had a fireworks moment—a brief, striking appetizer plate of the long and fruitful life we could’ve shared. She gazed into my eyes, and I gazed into hers. Her features softened. We leaned closer, closer, closer…
Our helmets clacked together.
“Whoa,” I said, chuckling as we pulled back. “That got heavy.”
She punched my shoulder. “Do what you have to do. And don’t you dare say you’ll come back for me.”
Then she took off running, lit by the flashes and strobes of the battle outside.
“Hey, Chaska,” I said into my transmitter. She paused, glancing over her shoulder. “I’ll come back for you.”
I could’ve sworn she cast me a smile before heading into the staging bay.
My head was profoundly clear as I raced back toward the pyramid, savoring the intermittent updates Ruena sent me over the radio.
“Almost out of the gravitational pull, Bodhi.”
“Starting the pinch now.”
“Godspeed in there. Hope to see you on the other side.”
I didn’t bother replying—not only because of a lack of breath, but because there was nothing left to say. Heartfelt as I may be, I am not one for goodbyes. Parting words are a miserable way to end things with those you care about. They become phantoms in their head, circling, nagging at them. Fortunately for me, I wouldn’t hear anything soon enough.
Truth be told, the nearer I drew to the first ring of columns, the more I began to appreciate the concept of oblivion. Perhaps the Maker was right. Perhaps what I’d seen in my venom-induced hallucinations had been the truth, and I was heading back into an ocean of peace. At least, that was what I told myself.
“Bodhi!” The voice didn’t come crackling through my long-band transmitter—the crew had already pinched out to safety—but rather through my local radio. “Bodhi, wait!”
Halting in place, I turned to find the worst thing imaginable:
Tusky.
He was dashing toward me, visibly winded from his sprint. His loaded carbine jostled about on its back-mounted sling.
“What in the Halcius-loving hell are you doing here?” I growled. “You’re supposed to be on that ship! You know, not here!”
He doubled over upon reaching me, huffing through his radio. “They think I’m still on board! I did exactly… as you’d have done! I tricked them… hopped off when they weren’t looking!”
“Now why would you do a stupid thing like that?”
“Because… I couldn’t let you die alone. We’re both… doomed men… are we not?”
I gripped his shoulder, helping him to straighten back up. “This is about me, and only me. You aren’t meant to die here, Tusky.”
He met my stare with surprising gusto. “Bodhi… I came into being through the actions of others. I was given sentience… without any choice in the matter. Have I not earned my own fate? My own time and place to leave this world?”
Much as I wanted to rail against that, to shout him down and highlight just how foolish he’d been in following me, I couldn’t. He’d done exactly as I would have. He’d opted to die with freedom, burning up in my personal blaze of glory.
“If this works,” I said cautiously, “there might still be a chance for you to get out of here. You need to do exactly as I say. Can you promise me that?”
“Yes. On one condition.”
“Shoot.”
“I need to know what it’s about,” he said weakly. “To know… what death is, and why you are so eager to experience it. I know you saw death in that wreckage, Bodhi. I know it touched you. And even now… here… its presence is upon you.”
“How would you know that?”
“It’s, as the laymen would say, a hunch. So, will you enlighten me?”
Growling deep in my throat, I yanked Tusky behind a column. “If you came here to ask me what death is about, you came to the wrong place. I’m just here to do my job. Nothing more, nothing less.”
“Very well. Explain this job.”
“I can’t.”
“Please, just humor me. I must know what could compel you to surrender your life. If I grasped this choice… I could grasp death itself.”
“Bold assumption.”
“Bodhi, this is all I’ve ever desired. An answer to—”
I held up a hand, but not to stymy his increasingly annoying demands. Far in the distance, sweeping noiselessly over the tomb’s outer disc, was a flock of Hegemony gunships. They were emblazoned with a trio of black stripes—Kemedis’ personal detachment.
“Here’s the plan,” I said. “We get to the sweet spot, and I’ll tell you what I know. Do you know how to handle that carbine?”
He looked back at our attackers and swallowed hard. “Well, I did score about fifteen percent on our accuracy training—”
“Good enough.”
“Really?”
“No, not even close. But this is the real deal. If I tell you to shoot, you shoot. Understood?”
He saluted me.
It was a ridiculous gesture, one I would’ve loved to decry, but I didn’t have the chance. The gunships had touched down, and streams of Hegemony commandos were pouring down their deployment ramps.
I shoved Tusky into a run, then bolted after him. Not two seconds passed before bullets began pinging off the columns around us. They impacted silently, registering as nothing more than sparks on the impenetrable masonry. As we wound through the maze of columns, separating and rejoining every so often, I heard only my labored breaths and the wheeze of the oxygen recyclers.
“Where… are we heading?” Tusky panted.
“Pyramid!” I shouted. “Look for the pyramid!”
“They’re too close!”
“Then shoot back!”
Much to my amazement, Tusky did. He stopped, wheeled around, and shouldered his carbine like a trained hitman. His normally placid features sharpened into raw, unbridled fury. Full-on rabid mode. Then, with a bestial roar I saw rather than heard, he began dumping his ammunition into the hordes behind us.
I threw myself behind a column and hunkered down for dear life, stunned at the number of bullets slamming into the black stone around us. None of them hit my dear companion.
But when I risked a peek around the column’s edge, I discovered that Tusky had been luckier in his aim. Hegemony bodies littered the otherworldly forest, some hissing vented air and others twitching in death spasms. And just when I thought the mayhem was over, Tusky loaded a fresh magazine and resumed his killing spree.
Still, this was a losing battle. Flashes of movement blurred around us, advancing up through the network of columns in coordinated strike patterns I’d learned all too well over years of war. There was no way out—not without catching a bullet. With a deep sigh and a bit of fumbling, I drew my holdout Puncher pistol and racked the slide.
They wouldn’t take me down without a fight, no matter how one-sided and pathetic it was.
A Hegemony restorer leapt out across from me, rifle trained on Tusky. I panic-fired twice without hesitation. The first round glanced off a column, but the second shattered his black faceplate, slackening his body and forcing a blood-oxygen mist out through the impact site.
The next attacker caught three rounds—two in the chest, one in the stomach. The third took a swipe to the neck, but that was enough.
With shaking hands, I ejected my magazine and popped in a spare. “Ammo check?” I whispered to Tusky.
His radio crackled for a moment. “Twelve bullets.” He shouldered the carbine and fired. “Eleven.”
Then all was still. Temporarily, anyway. There were no further sparks, no hints of enemies lurking in the mist between columns.
That was when I felt the first tingles of pain.
It felt as though a Faurian grazer-lope had back-kicked me straight in the thigh, leaving behind a numbing bruise. Glancing down, I saw a reddish aerosol venting from the bullet hole. At first, my examination was clinical. It seemed to be a stray round. It hadn’t punched through the other side. The helmet’s air indicator bleeped to warn me of impending disaster.
Then the adrenaline wore off, and I realized I was going to die. Not as a hero, not as the Maker’s vessel, but as a nameless nobody. I was going to die of suffocation from one misfired bullet. My heart jackhammered in my chest. Fiery pain burned up and down my leg.
“Tusky,” I mumbled into the transmitter, “I think I’m in trouble.”
Within seconds, he was kneeling by my side.
“Oh, no,” he said quietly. “No, no, no.”
“Don’t say that. You’re freaking me out.”
His face assured me that he, too, was freaked out.
“Just hold still,” he said, rummaging through a pouch strapped to his belt. “I have a sealant kit somewhere in here.”
“Sealant,” I said distantly, nodding. I pressed my hand over the wound, but it was fruitless—the lamellar plating of my glove couldn’t form a full seal. “Tusky, just drag me into that pyramid. Please. I won’t have enough oxygen even if you seal it off.”
Undaunted, the giant sloth produced a rubbery-looking patch and slapped it over the blood fumes.
As expected, one of my two oxygen alarms fell quiet. Depressurization was off the menu; no more risk of air venting. But the other continued to blare its stark warning: low air supply. According to its pretty green font, I had no more than ten minutes of air remaining. Ten minutes is an agonizing length of time when you can’t walk, yet your destination requires running through a hail of bullets.
“Can you carry me?” I whispered. “Get me to that pyramid. Please.”
Tusky held my gaze for a moment, surely sensing my predicament, then nodded. In one deft, powerful motion, he hefted me up and onto his shoulder. I held the Puncher with a tenuous grip.
“Tell me what’s there,” he grunted, trudging onwards despite the occasional zing of a Hegemony bullet. “What’s worth dying for?”
“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”
“This isn’t the time… to be coy, Bodhi. I believed you about the World Serpent, even if the others didn’t. I have always believed you.”
“Why?”
“Because you’re my creator. You’re my friend. And dying with you… would be an honor.”
If it hadn’t presented such a clear risk to our well-being, I might’ve cried at that. I settled on offering him the truth.
“I met the Maker inside that pyramid,” I said. “He told me that it’s my destiny to get inside that machine. The pillar in the center of it, that is. Don’t ask me how, or why, but it’ll kill Kruthara. For good.”
“Why you?”
“The world may never know. But this is our only shot. He said a ‘pure mind’ needs to upload itself into that pillar. That this was my destiny.”
“There’s no such thing as destiny, Bodhi. We always… have a choice.”
I fired a lazy shot as a Hegemony commando rounded a column. No dice, but he backed off.
“Don’t fight me on this,” I huffed. “Just get us inside that thing.”
“Almost… there.”
Craning my head around, I found he was right. By some twist of fate, we were actually there. The entrance to the pyramid was just ten paces away. Nine… eight…
“Stop right there.”
That familiar voice chilled me to the bone. It was a stray signal, one that had spliced through our private comms. Only the Hegemony had that kind of tech. And only one woman was capable of mustering such hatred in her words.
Kemedis.
I glanced back to find the grand mediator herself standing there, flanked by two commandos with their rifles raised.
“Tusky,” I said, “I think you should stop. For your sake.”
Despite some hesitation, the sloth complied.
“Put Mr. Drezek down,” Kemedis commanded.
I nodded. “Do it, Tusky.”
Inch by careful inch, I was lowered to the ground until I found myself sitting upright. On the instructions of Kemedis’ troops, Tusky stepped off to the side and dropped his carbine.
“Now you,” Kemedis said. “Drop your pistol.”
“This old thing?” I asked. “It’s not even loaded.”
“Drop. It. Now.”
“And then what?”
“And then you face Kruthara’s judgment… and your brutish conspirator here spends the rest of his life in our laboratories.”
“What?”
Without warning, the commando to Kemedis’ left fired a sizzler prod at Tusky. The quills bit deep into his suit, dropping him like a sack of rocks. He flopped on the ground beside me, plainly unconscious.
“Give up now, and Kruthara will integrate you painlessly,” she said. “Be grateful that it is more merciful than I.”
“You need me alive, then.”
“I don’t need you in the slightest. I am preserving you as a courtesy for it.”
Far in the distance, squirming high above the columns, were the first tendrils of Kruthara’s mega-body. They’d found their way inside. Next stop… me.
“This will never work, Grand Mediator,” I said. “Your overlord was only using you to get into this place and find us. Now that the field is done for… it doesn’t need you. You’re just puppets to it.”
“I will not ask you to surrender again, Mr. Drezek. I am not a savage, but I am also no saint. Drop your weapon.”
I’m not sure what came over me in that moment—bravery, stupidity?—but I decided to pull off a move I’d only seen in action vids. We were mere steps from the pyramid, after all. Give up here, and everything was gone. Kaput.
Midway through my motion to set the Puncher on the tiles, I popped off a flurry of shots aimed at all three of our would-be captors. Amazingly, most of the shots landed. Kemedis’ guards dropped in a spray of rigor-mortis fire, and Kemedis herself stumbled back, screeching and venting air.
But she didn’t die. That was a problem.
Breathing hard, Kemedis righted herself and aimed square at my head. I fired—ka-chuk. Fresh out of rounds. No ammo, no hope.
I flinched, waiting for that lethal spray… but it never came. Smoke wisped off of Kemedis’ rifle, leaving behind a fractured glow where my bullet had carved its mark.
“You little worm,” she growled. A vicious smile came over her face, fully illuminated by the warning lights flashing in her helmet. “I never imagined I’d have the pleasure of killing you so close. In such a thoroughly personal manner.” Even as she gasped for breath, she dropped her ruined weapon and drew a long, serrated blade from her thigh sheath. “I will delight in this more than you’ll ever know.”
Biting through the pain, I dragged myself backwards. Away from Kemedis, away from the tentacles slithering through the columns toward us.
“Come here,” she cooed. “Let me end you slowly.”
Just before she could lunge atop me, I threw a kick at her helmet. She caught my foot and twisted it to the side, sending a vicious crack up through my calf. The agony followed.
“Let’s do this one inch of flesh at a time,” she wheezed. “One slow, long cut after another…”
With shocking strength, she tore the boot clasps off my ankle. Air wisped out through the gap, only to be immediately stilled by an emergency sealant clamp. She gave another tug, and the boot came free. Bruise-blotches broke out across my depressurized toes.
Kemedis squealed with laughter, raising the knife for her beginning cut. She held me firm as I clawed and scrabbled, ready for blood, eager for my pain…
Then she stopped.
Still holding my foot, her entire body locked up. Her eyes peeled open as she stared at… something.
No, not just something. My tattoo. Gadra’s tattoo.
That damned hypnotic mark.
Despite the pain rippling through my entire body, I burst out laughing. Maybe the Maker was right. Maybe there were no coincidences. Then I caught myself. This was my one chance. My last chance.
Ignoring the worsening pain, I curled upwards and ripped the knife from Kemedis’ rigid fingers. Then I leaned further, further… close enough to spit-shine her helmet. With the last of my meager strength, I drove the blade straight into the bullet hole in her chest plating.
For a long and unnerving moment, Kemedis remained in place, eyes locked, mouth split in a grin. Then a final breath rasped through my helmet’s speakers. The grand mediator toppled backward, jerked a bit on the ground, and fell still. The embedded knife ceased its twitching as her heart came to a full stop.
