Warp Wraith, page 23
Flux rippled and he tensed, turned the weapon to the rear deck of the tank, where figures were scampering up onto it. He raised the muzzle to a harmless angle, recognizing the fatigues of the Freedom Brigade, then Edie in the lead, scuttling up to his side. She met his eyes with an adrenaline-glazed stare.
Malik held out his free, open hand. “Grenade!”
Edie nodded and reached for one of the oblong fragmentation models dangling from her shoulder strap. A quick toss put it in Malik’s hand.
Turning back to the smoldering circle of the turret cupola, Malik thumbed the priming pin and waited more seconds than was probably advisable. But he couldn’t give the crew below time to react, to toss it back. Flux squirmed unbearably within him. He dropped it over the edge and turned away.
A sharp but anticlimactic bang jolted the armor plating beneath him, lifted him a millimeter off the turret before dropping him half onto his buttocks. Recovering, he spun and grabbed for the force sword, still protruding from the tank’s skin like a gravestone. Ripping it loose, he stood, and dropped through the smoke vomiting up out of the turret from the explosion.
Hell and screams greeted him.
EDIE CROUCHED LOW BEHIND what looked like a cargo pod on the Behemoth’s rear deck as a blaster bolt from the road behind it ricocheted off the turret. A glance showed her the Wraith gone, plunged down into the tank. Though muffled, indescribable racket shook its innards.
Shivering, she turned her focus to the fight boiling up the road. She scanned dancing flames and scuttling shapes. One resolved in to the armored shape of a Shock Trooper. She fired, didn’t know if she hit anything. A splatted of blaster beams answered her and she flinched low again.
A figured leapt the cargo pod and toppled into the dead space behind it. Moff, breathing hard, paused to gather himself before lurching up to her side. “Can’t stay here, Sundown!”
“I know it!”
The Theocracy was getting its act together, now that the initial shock of the ambush had faded. Troopers were working their way up, both between vehicles and spreading out to either side in the trees. They’d be able to outflank and surround the raiders in minutes.
But lycanthropic rage still stalked the night. Howls of the hunt lilted over the battle bedlam. Monstrous shadows erupted from the side or from behind as the Shock Troopers advanced, taking armored men apart like toys. The werewolves kept coming, too, even after multiple hits from blasters. Some were practically aflame as they lashed out for new victims, still slashing and biting, even as they went down.
A few surviving Hardcases dashed for the Behemoth and the cover its mass provided. One caught a blaster bolt in the spine and flopped nervelessly to the road. A second turned to reach for his fallen comrade. A bolt glanced off his shoulder, knocked him sprawling on his back. Trying to sit up, a second beam speared him back to the pavement.
“Captain—”
“I know!”
A shaped emerged from behind one of the Vulgs parked on the roadside fifty meters behind the Behemoth. Silhouetted against fire, Edie clearly made out a Shock Trooper hefting an antimatter rocket launcher to his shoulder. She pulled her trigger without thinking and was rewarded with the Trooper splaying backwards, the heavy weapon pin-wheeling from his outflung hands.
But no triumph accompanied the shot as she ducked back behind the pod. Nerves chilled with the knowledge that the Troopers’ rockets wouldn’t harm the over-armored hover tank; but their detonations would assuredly clear its decks.
Past time to go.
A furry shape shot over the top of the turret behind them, chased by cyan streaks and sparks from the front. More glanced off the metal from behind as it slid down the near side and landed behind Edie and Moff, nearly jolted both from behind their cover.
Edie turned to Ingrid and froze for a moment in utter, primordial fright. Lycanthropes were known to her as more than just legend, of course. There were even mythic whispers that they’d once inhabited Circe, had been driven off by the Sisterhood or the Theocracy or both. Stories of their millennia-old feud with the Immortals were nothing new, either, and known to have continued to rage across the stars.
But crouched there, with one of the beasts fully ensconced in its—her—fury, filled Edie with the loathing a herd animal must feel, knowing predators stalked the dark. The fetid stench of lathered fur and drooling maw struck like a physical thing. And Ingrid’s eyes held almost nothing human as they met hers.
“Is he done?” Edie managed to get out.
The were-woman growled back at her, blood and saliva oozing from pink fangs. Only the obvious frustration in the tone gave it any meaning.
A dart of plasma pinged off the pod next to Edie’s head, spalled off into the night. “We’ve got to go!” she hollered at Ingrid. “They’re surrounding us!”
The bestial eyes narrowed at her for an instant, the thinking part of the lycanthrope registering the reality. Ingrid lifted her maw to the sky and unleashed a howl that literally smote Edie with its force. Metal rang around her. Howls answered her. Then Ingrid was lurching up off the rear deck and dashing away to the left.
“Don’t wait for us!” Moff called ruefully after the werewolf and scampered after her off the tank.
Edie followed, reaching the sharply-sloped flank of the Behemoth and sliding down its side. She hit the road just as a stray bolt struck a crater from the pavement beside her, sprayed her debris and knocked her to her knees. She staggered up and forward with energy bolts writing death in the air about her, but none of it spelling out her doom. She reached the space between parked Vulgs where Moff waited and halted, turned back to the tank.
The Behemoth glowed from dozens of hits, streamers of fumes looping off in a puff of hot wind blowing up the road from behind it. None of them would impede it in the slightest, were its engines to fire up now. Smoke plumed from the gouged-open turret, though. From this haze emerged a dark form.
A tracery of energy blasts converged on the crown of the turret as the Wraith squirmed free. Sparks flew and embers clung to his now utterly-tattered cape. He turned to the blasts and answered with a three-round burst from his heavy pistol.
“Covering fire!” Edie hollered and leaned out from behind the Vulg to fire back down the road. She could see nothing; neither could Moff as he added his fire nor could any of the Hardcases or Furies.
But the volume of their response bought the Wraith an instant of reprieve. With the fluidity of a shadow shifting from the movement of a light, he slid down the side of the Behemoth and hit the battered pavement at a run. He was at Edie’s side a heartbeat later, already shoving at her and waving furiously.
“Go!” his mask speakers squalled with distortion. “Get out of here!”
Edie didn’t need further encouragement. Pushing Moff ahead of her, she broke into a sprint for the comforting dark of the woods. She could see nothing ahead, had no assurance of where she planted her feet as she ran. Maybe it was some instinct; maybe it was the damned Flux. But her careening course carried her through the trees and downhill.
A crash that was as much physical blow as ear-punishing sound, flung her the rest of the way down the slope. She glanced off a tree, slid, and settling in a pile of deadfall with a crunch and the bite of a broken-off branch poking into her ribs. But none of it registered over the ongoing roar. And sprawled on her back, she had a perfect view of tree tops buckling away from shockwave, some of them igniting before a shriveling glare that became a hellish mushroom cloud, swirling for the sky.
A black-gauntleted fist gripped her shoulder, pulled Edie upright. The glow of the explosion cut shafts of yellow-red light through the woods and one gleamed across half the Wraith’s masked face as he looked down at her.
“Reactor!” she barely heard his holler. “Set it to meltdown!”
That the chain-reaction could have easily gone off before they were clear—or that they’d likely just absorbed an unhealthy dose of radiation—didn’t seem to occur to him. He was pulling, pushing, cajoling her on.
And, struggling back to her feet, she had no desire to resist.
MABUSE VIEWED THE WORLD around her as if through a veil of pale silk, colors washed out and visions blurred. She could follow only motion and the faint flickers of auras of the living. The Flux weighed upon her the longer she remained beyond the veil of the material plane. It pulled her into the dark beneath like the fumbling hands of a drowning mortal.
Cannot stay here, she knew, feeling even her mind begin to dissolve, as she’d made her body do. Won’t have the energy to reform...won’t even have the will...
Hate became her tether. She pulled on it, hoisting herself up through the veil. She would find the Wraith there. She had to. The world began to color, became flashes of cyan and smears of fire. Shadows ran back and forth. Explosions trembled with enough violence to be felt in the Beyond.
She reconstituted in the midst of hell, stimuli of the material world crashing in upon her everything. The last quiver of her molecules coming together hurt like barbed wire dragged across raw nerves. But she was back.
Her reappearance startled a squad of Shock Troopers milling about the titanic blaze of what remained of the Behemoth. They spun to face her, then fell to their armored knees in a semi-circle, oblivious of the radiation-glazed crater at their backs, the cooling cherry-hued husk of metal in its center.
“My Lady!” the chevron-emblazoned leader of the Shock Troopers cried. “You live!”
Mabuse’s lips quirked at the not-entirely-accurate turn of phrase. “I endure,” she corrected, “and so must we all. Situation?”
“Confusion, My Lady,” the Trooper noncom replied without embellishment—like his fellows, he’d be conditioned beyond duplicity or excuse-making. “First and Second Companies have sustained heavy casualties.”
She scowled at the molten ruin of the Behemoth. “I can see that. Major Glaucus?”
“Trying to raise him now, Mistress.”
“Try again,” she ordered. “Piece together what command and control you can with whatever officers you can find.” She pointed into the woods to her left. “Reform the perimeter and send out patrols as soon as that’s done! The rebels are on the run!”
“Of course, My Lady!”
She spun away from him and marched towards the outline of her command tank, fifty meters up the road from the wrecked Behemoth. Smoke drifted from its turret and from the heat exchanger vents along its rear deck, stinking of death. She broke into a sprint, reached the Bludgeon in a handful of long strides.
The gunner, who looked like he’d been outside, urinating when the ambush struck, slumped against its rear skirt, a blaster burn in his chest plate. She leapt over him, sprang up onto the rear deck to mount the turret and looked down into the scorched, sprung hatch. Effluvium of hot gore boiled up into her face. She grimaced and ignored it, reached down into the fumes, past her commander’s chair, till she found the handle of her force sword and pulled it free.
“Where do you go, Mistress?” the leader of the Shock Troopers asked, trotting up to the tank obediently.
She leapt down from the deck and knelt at the fallen gunner’s side. Gingerly, she touched the side of his neck. No hint of lifeforce remaining. Withdrawing her palm with a scowl, she looked up at the waiting Shock Trooper, considering. But, no. There’s no time; no matter how much the Hunger demands.
“They’re still out there,” she replied at last, igniting the plasma source to the force blade. With it crackling in her fist, she stalked towards the forest’s edge. “I go to hunt.”
Chapter 13
THE BLUE-GREEN CURVE of Circe flattened beneath Callisto’s Slayer as he levelled off over it and cruised for the quartet of metallic glints, hovering in its glow. Vengeful became obvious in their midst, with its long, graceful lines.
“Slayer One-One,” he called into his helm mic, “coming in.”
“We have you, Commander,” the usual commlink orderly replied. “Queue up your fighters for docking.”
“Understood.” Callisto switched channels. “The worst-damaged, line-up in front, First Squadron. That means you, Kreeve.”
“I feel all warm and loved, Commander.”
Callisto smirked. “I’ll bet you do. And I want you reporting to sickbay as soon as you’ve got your Slayer down.”
“Yes, mother.”
Callisto’s smirk blossomed to a full smile and chortles crackled across the tactical network as the rest of the squad registered their mirth. “Whatever.” He cleared his throat. “It’s not a vacation, First Squadron; get down, get repairs and rearmed, and yourselves some replenishment, and then we’re back at it!”
Hungry growls and acknowledgements answered in his earbud.
A blat from the long-range scanner at his elbow gave him a start. Glancing at it, Callisto frowned. First Squadron was still pretty far out from the fleet, coming on at an oblique angle, and with a better view of surrounding space. And Callisto’s sensors were reading a contact hurtling for Circe orbit at a course forty-five degrees off his nose to port. No engine signature, he read, frown deepening. Natural phenomenon?
“Commander Callisto,” the commlink orderly called from Vengeful, “I have Admiral Everlid for you.”
He shook his head impatiently. “Vengeful, are you reading an inbound at four-eight-point-eight, just above the elliptic plane?”
“What’s that?” A hologram of Everlid on his bridge materialized before Callisto, the Admiral folding his arms behind his back.
“Dom,” Callisto replied, forgetting formality as his unease deepened. “Where is the near-space patrol screen?”
The Admiral reddened at the breach of decorum but began to answer, “Fourth Squadron is out past—”
Callisto’s sensor computer squalled in alarm as the newly-arrived contact went crimson with a suddenly-lighting reactor signature. A schematic popped up beside it, sketching out the details of a painfully familiar silhouette.
“Shit!” Callisto cried and reflexively veered his Slayer out of its approach vector. “Mangler coming in!” Another alarm warbled as light motes disgorged from the newcomer’s flanks. “Already launching fighters!”
“This is Slayer Four-One,” a new voice squawked over the tactical network. “We’ve got hostiles!” That would be Cagney, leading the Fourth Squadron. “Moving to engage! We’ll try to hold ‘em. But we need help soonest!”
On Callisto’s scanner display, blue dots streaked for the Mangler and its coterie of launching Orloks. But the Fourth had been strung out, watching all angles, particularly those approaches they’d expecting the force out of Bahamut to emerge from. Now they strained their engines to recombine against a force already outnumbering them six-to-one.
The only group concentrated enough to strike a heavy blow was Callisto’s. “First Squadron, re-from on me! Let’s go!”
“Looks like vacation’s gonna wait, eh, DC?”
Callisto didn’t smile at the quip as he poured power into the thrusters.
“They must have gone with a long antimatter burn,” Everild’s hologram was saying. “Then killed main power and let momentum carry them down-system.” His eyes sought Callisto’s through the image. “Are you picking up any more?”
“Just the one,” Callisto replied through gritting teeth.
“Their approach vector isn’t consistent with arrival from Bahamut,” Everild continued, voice beginning to hoarsen with fear. “Must have been a long-range patrol or maneuvers or something else.” Someone said something to the Admiral off-screen and he turned and listened for a moment, nodding. “We need time to break orbit and maneuver, Dee.”
Callisto’s lips pressed into a tight line. “Slayers are on the job, Admiral!”
First Squadron formed up on his flanks as he shot out from Circe for the open blackness of space. At the bare edge of visual range, he began to pick up cyan scrawls of blaster fire and orange-red globes of explosions. The long-range scanner filled in the details of a desperate dogfight spilling into the path of the oncoming Mangler and its horde of starfighters.
Cagney was keeping away from the heavy cruiser’s firepower and focusing on the Orloks. But for the first ninety seconds, it was just her and a single flight of Slayers against six squadrons. Four of these simple streaked on past her. The remaining two swirled in and in another thirty seconds, both Cagney’s wing mates were gone and she was looping frantically to break clear of the cloud of foes. The arrival of the rest of the Fourth barely improved the odds.
Callisto’s gaze went to the squadrons that had skirted the dogfight and now sailed across the emptiness for Vengeful and her escorts. Grimly, he touched the hologram. “Those are ours,” he told First Squadron, pushing the control stick to starboard to carry his starfighter into the path of the Orloks.
Silence answered him, but the others followed. They all hated it; but losing Vengeful to a fighter strike meant losing the war. Cagney was on her own.
One of Vengeful’s consorts, the light cruiser, Restoration, was tearing up out of orbit on the glowing Cherenkov-blue fury of her thrusters, cutting across the Orloks’ path and blocking that approach to the still-vulnerable battlecruiser. That simplified Callisto’s task a little. And the Orloks reacted, splitting with two squadrons to mob Restoration and the rest angling straight for Callisto’s First.
The Mangler was still coming on, slowing as its thrusters reversed power to arrest its plunge towards Circe, but not so much that it didn’t hurtle past the dogfights around Cagney and her survivors. Its target was obviously Vengeful and it intended to get into broadside range. Starfighters caught between them would be swept away like dust in a cyclone. But the aged battlecruiser was still straining to maneuver, its huge mass like a great whale of space, lumbering to turn.
Callisto had to buy her time, with whatever he had.
