Warp Wraith, page 5
Pushing down the simmer of his blood, Vondrak said, “Send omni-directional.”
“We’re being jammed, Lord,” Vilan replied. “We’ll require a boosted tachyon pulse to break through and we need a general fix on a recipient in order to—”
“Damn it!” Vondrak screamed with a fresh rush of his fury. “Damn it all!” He shook his fists at the advisors, who did their best not to shrink before him—though a few did, certainly. “I’m surrounding by idiocy, here, idiocy!”
He spun away from them, wringing his hands together, rather than letting them fasten around another mortal’s neck. He’d run out of advisors willing to serve him if indulged the Hunger too recklessly. Slowly, he mastered his rage and his voice. “Tachyon pulse,” he ordered hoarsely. “Target Bahamut. Ruthven will respond and, if nothing else, pass it on to his pet, Sestus.”
“Even with a pulse,” Vilan answered quaveringly, “a response could be hours, getting back to us.”
“Do you have a better idea?” Vondrak snapped, whirling back to him. A ping was sounding from the hologram and red icons were materializing at several points on the map. The racket started a pinprick of headache in his skull. “What in the Nine Hells is that?!?”
Konrad stepped forward to the table and set his hands upon it, shoulders sagging with exasperation. “The so-called Freedom Brigades are rising,” he replied, “north of the Magvar Mountains, sire.”
“I’m sure that’s no coincidence,” Vondrak snorted, shooting Vilan an accusatory look. Pirates, indeed.
“Elements have seized the nearest passes here,” Konrad pointed to other icons, “here, and here, at Reyes.”
Vondrak stiffened, real fright icing his blood veins now. “Kaizynn was at Reyes, wasn’t he?” He looked around at his advisors. “Checking on rumors of Witch activities in the uplands.”
Konrad’s lips nearly vanished. “We have lost contact in the last hour, Lord.”
Kaizynn was one of Vondrak’s own Get. He’d not sensed him across the Flux in some time. While he would trust mortals to the administrative and lesser tasks of his government, truly sensitive assignments could only go to one of the Kindred. Vondrak let himself calm and taste the Flux with his mind for a moment, seeking the vibration of his Childe. But nothing.
“Confirm that,” Vondrak demanded, shaken. “And alert Lady Mabuse immediately. We’ll want her armor moving.” He put a hand to his face, rubbed nervously at his jaw. “Cutting the passes,” he mused out loud. “Why?”
“To muster the Brigades in strength on the plains to the north,” Konrad replied. “We have no aerospace assets and no major ground formations there, just garrisons. It may be that the Warp Wraith’s Revenants plan a landing there, too. Kyth’s readings suggested heavy transports, lingering back behind the capital ships.”
“Nonsense.” Vondrak waved dismissively. “They’d be picked off in orbit from the ground, from Malvik.” His eye went to the holographic map and the icon of the station in question, perched atop the mountains north of the plains, winking feebly. Sudden anxiety gripped Vondrak and he glared at Konrad. “Are we in contact with Malvik?” he demanded. The advisors looked back forth among each other impotently. “Someone better find the hell out!”
“Establishing link now, sire,” Konrad replied, touching a key on the tabletop control panel. Silence followed, broken after a moment by a blat.
“Well?!?!?”
Konrad’s throat bobbed. “No contact, Lord.”
“Try again!”
The Legionnaire stabbed the key with terror-driven ferocity. Again, silence followed. Again, the dreaded blat.
Konrad looked up at his lord like a man expecting an executioner’s axe.
“No contact.”
“EVERYONE, HOLD ON!” Ingrid hollered into the cargo bay of the Scorpiod.
Malik didn’t bother, even as the Revenant assault team behind him in the hold clattered to grip handholds. The Flux flowed through him unimpeded, granting him balance none of the others—all Clan Fury killers and all possessing their kind’s preternatural abilities—could match. He merely fingered the force sword sheathed in a baldric over his right shoulder to ensure its tightness, then checked the charge in the heavy blaster pistol in his left hand.
The deck jolted beneath them all and a thump passed through the hull. Someone dropped and cursed. Someone else laughed, invited more cursing.
“Changed my mind,” one of the Furies quipped, “I wanna get off!”
Another jolt shook the whole assault shuttle and Malik knew that would be ground fire outside the hull. The bawl of a klaxon and the flashing of warning lights washed away any anxieties he might have had. A moment later, the Scorpiod’s underside landing ramp cracked and the icy howl of a Circe night sky drowned out all other sensation.
Now Malik did wobble. The panorama opening up before him overwhelmed even his Flux-enhanced senses.
The Scorpiod descended through a snow-starred night toward a mountaintop facility. The installation, itself had the appearance of an old-style observatory, save with far more massive proportions and a monstrous blaster dish in place of a telescope lens. Perched atop a great shelf of ice-sheathed cliff, multiple landing platforms extended from three of its four sides like petals unfurled from a metallic blossom. The shuttle hurtled down for the closest of these.
Plasma streaks ravaged the night, leaving vapor trails that slapped instantly back together into the holes they’d gouged through the air. Thunderclaps buffeted the Scorpiod. Blaster turrets studding the upper dome of the facility spun to face towards it, adding their own streams of fire, hosing after its speeding form.
Malik gripped the hydraulic pylon of the opening ramp as a blaster bolt glanced off its armored underside. The whole shuttle whirred with the sound of machinery in motion as its lander legs began to unfurl. A glance through the wailing, flashing night showed him swarms of Scorpiods to either flank, descending with them, their own legs extending spider-like as maneuvering thrusters brought them squalling down.
Blaster fire converged on the shuttle to starboard. A hellish flash struck Malik before the shockwave did, nearly wrenching his grip free. The stricken shuttle erupted from within, spewing hellfire and splintering lander-legs out in a deceptively graceful shower of debris. His eye caught fluttering shapes of bodies, still squirming as they plummeting, and he had to look away.
That’s no death for warriors, he thought grimly. Gods of Fenreir, hold them a place at your Infinite Table.
The Scorpiod crackled and shook around him, stunning the prayer from his mind. Side-mounted blasters opened up on the anti-air turrets, speckling the dome in daisy-chains of impact. A hiss-crash overwhelmed even that racket as a bar of yellow-white destruction shafted from the shuttle’s overhead cannon. Where it touched, one of the turrets blistered apart in powdering stone and super-heated gasses.
More lances of sun-like death stabbed down as the other Scopriods added their “stings”. Scars of fire carved across the dome. Another turret flashed apart and slid in glowing rubble down the curved side. But energy bolts still spanged off Malik’s shuttle. Armored figures were spilling from within the station onto the platforms, rifles raised skyward.
A blaster streak squalled past Malik’s ear and ricocheted around the inside of the hold to howls of pain and fury. That’s it, dammit! Glowering over his shoulder, he roared, “The Flux is with us!” and flung himself over the edge of the ramp.
He hung, suspending against the night sky. Adrenaline and the moment-by-moment foresight of the Flux combined to slow seconds to eternities. The pocked landing platform seemed as though it would never reach him. The Shock Troopers pointing and trying to bring their weapons upon him moved in hopeless slow-motion. He could see his own shadow, silhouetted by blaster flash against the ferrocrete—his unfurled cape giving him the illusion of a winged beast, descending for the kill.
Just that, in fact.
He landed and folded instantly forward into a tumble. Energy blast heat prickled over his back. He came up again, aiming his blaster pistol with both hands, knowing without seeing, as the Flux filled mind and soul, that his first foe lay to the left.
The Shock Trooper there took his first shot at point blank, thrown backwards as the blaster bolt punched through his chest plate. Spinning to his right, Malik found the second Trooper he’d rolled between turning desperately to bring his rifle to bear. He gave him no chance, putting an energy jolt squarely through the center of his visored facemask.
A near-miss scooped ferrocrete from the landing pad near Malik’s right foot. He lifted it to launch into a charge. The Flux pinched in his nerves; warnings he’d long-since learned to obey without thought. He juked left, then right, then left again as blaster fire clawed for him. He snapped off a shot one-handed to his right, cut down a Trooper whose body tumbled off the platform and into the mountainside chasm below.
But Malik still had seventy meters to go to the nearest entrance, and more Shock Troopers were pouring out. The elite soldiery of the Theocracy were hardly inspired thinkers or tacticians. But broken to the yoke of worshiping their Immortal masters, they’d fight fanatically and without fear. And there were a lot of them.
One could get lucky, even against the Warp Wraith.
A flurry of blaster bolts from inbound Scorpiods chopped into them as their weapons trained on Malik. They crumpled before the storm, one or two managing to return fire before energy streaks turned their armor into slag. Survivors fell back to the entrance. One was fidgeting at the control panel there.
“The door!” came a scream from Malik’s flank. “Don’t let them close the door!”
Ingrid’s long-legged strides brought her up alongside Malik as he charged the holdouts at the entrance. Blaster fire swelled around the pair. The Furies were on the platform, now, spilling across it, firing as they came.
A Shock Trooper caught one of their shots in the back as he ducked through the door and fell, blocking it open. His comrades inside struggled to pull the lifeless form through. One remained poised at the opening, a hand at an internal control, the other firing a blaster wildly.
Ingrid took the Trooper’s helmeted head off with a blast to the neck. The decapitated body dropped, but the door was already closing.
With a burst of Flux-speed, Malik sped across the last few meters, right hand whisking up to his shoulder. The force sword sang from its sheath. A twitch of the thumb at its handle triggered the plasma-cell battery and energy coursed up the crystalline blade’s length. Malik thrust it out ahead of him, the snarling cyan point stabbing for the gap still open between the sliding door and its frame.
Armored panel crunched shut. A buzzsaw screech filled the air as the energized blade, caught now in the gap, fluoresced and fed upon metal. Sparks showering out around the wedged sword, biting Malik’s exposed skin. The seam between door and frame went cherry red from the heat, began to sag and liquify.
“Grenade!” Malik hollered to Ingrid.
But she didn’t respond, had slammed into the wall beside the door and appeared to be convulsing. Through senses other than his eyes, Malik saw the surge of Flux through muscles and bones that seemed to shift and flow. Her limbs crooked and fingers elongated, dropping her blaster. A deep growl rose from her throat as her eyes took on a terrible green glow.
Berserk, Malik knew. Damn it. He glanced over his shoulder, saw the same frenzy taking a hold of the Furies rushing to join them. Not yet! But reasoning, trying to stop them, was futile at this point—deadly, even. He met the gaze of an older Fenreir, not yet fully surrendered to the effect and jabbed a thumb at the door.
“Grenade, dammit!”
The grizzled Fury nodded and pulled an oblate explosive from his belt—concussion type. He met Malik’s gaze, nodded again.
Wrenching back and forth with his force blade, Malik carved a molten wound from the door and its frame. Slag sloughed off, pooled hot and sizzling near his foot. The chain of pops he’d waited for came at last—the failure of the door’s magna-motors. Sparks crackled around the crease of the frame and Malik felt resistance fail. Working his fingers into the gap, he shot the grenade-armed Fury one last look, then pulled.
The door gave way with a screech. Blaster fire ripped out through the opening. A Fury caught in the throes of his berserk took one of the bolts in the chest and flopped to the ferrocrete. But the one with the grenade lunged in, shoving Ingrid back and tossing his explosive through.
Malik flinched away. Bone-jarring concussion followed, sending a wedge of flash and force shafting out into the night through the gap. Furies tumbled away from it. Malik stumbled halfway down to his backside from the jolt, knew any Trooper caught in the confined space of the corridor beyond would be pulped by the blast.
Ingrid unleashed an utterly inhuman howl, pierced the ringing of Malik’s ears. The loveliness of her face was gone, cheekbones and jaw and brow transmogrified into bestial horror. Mouth spread impossibly wide with the call, displaying fangs glistening with tags of saliva. Her mane of hair shook loose, seemed to billow and spread. Hair puffed out along the back of her hands, whose fingers now ended in claws centimeters long.
The other Furies answered her call and Malik’s guts soured in genuine awe. Even hardened by the Flux and further hardened by having seen this many times, it still shook him. But he knew further hesitation would cost them and he wrenched back on the door, tearing it wide open.
“Go-go-go!!!”
What had been Ingrid led her Furies through with a warbling, feral chorus. The pack of them surged by Malik and he felt no shame in letting them. In this state, they’d barely be able to tell friend from foe. He saw the Fury who’d been struck by the blaster bolt hurtle past him, trailing smoke from the still-glowing wound.
Horrific racket erupted from the corridor past the doorway. Blaster fire raged for a second, then cut out. Screams and howls and the slam of bodies against walls followed. The cacophony of slaughter rose to a gruesome crescendo before abruptly moving on.
And Malik found himself alone on the landing pad. His Scorpiod, piloted now by Skraar, had withdrawn and was circling the installation, pecking away at what remained of its defenses with its side blasters. Another shuttle was coming in with a whine of its engines, settling upon its spidery, metal legs as more Furies spilled down its ramp. He waved to these as they charged across the pad, and forced himself to duck into the smoke and slag-stink beyond the door.
The corridor beyond was an abattoir. Malik rushed down it, ignoring the tackiness of gore under his boots, the crunch of things when he didn’t bother to pick his steps over bodies carefully. Stark white walls were painted in fans of garish red. Shock Trooper armor had been cracked by claws that left flaps of metal peeled back from glistening orange ruin.
Malik ignored it all, focused, instead on the clamor of battle spreading to other parts of the installation as Ingrid and her kin rampaged through it. The Furies had lost all control. He knew; drawn by slaughter, they’d completely abandoned the plan.
With the map of the installation committed to his memory, he knew to take a right when he reached the t-section at the end of the corridor. Damage and bodies showed that Ingrid and her berserkers had gone left. He paused, felt through the Flux for any sense of the station’s garrison, any hint that they were flanking the storming party by looping around from the opposite curve of the corridor that traced a circumference around the anti-orbital core.
Nothing.
He lurched right, not waiting for the Furies entering the structure behind him. The sights and scents of carnage, or the pheromonal release of their kin on the hunt might trigger a berserk from them, as well. Baseline human Revenants would be coming in behind them, wouldn’t be susceptible. By Malik couldn’t wait.
Moving with speed and silence no living being on Circe could match, he whisked halfway around the corridor’s length, encountering nothing. He knew that was false. He’d begun to sense more than just nothingness; a sort so deep, so profound, so dark it could not be natural. Only one thing could create such a void in the Flux.
An inward hatch appeared at his left, sealed, with control plates flashing warnings that all the passages to the installation core had locked automatically at the attack. He rammed the point of his force sword straight into one, wrenched it clear in a spume of sparks, then slashed its length along the right seal of the door. Holstering his blaster pistol, he reached into the still-hot gouge and ripped the now-sprung hatch open.
Flux twinged warnings between his temples and he pivoted away from the opening as blaster fire spewed through it. Pulling out his blaster again, he knew hadn’t gotten a good look. But he didn’t need one. The Flux had already shown the way.
Lunging around the corner, Malik triggered his blaster without looking. Bolts sprayed across the gap of the station’s core, narrowly missing the glowing shaft of raw plasma coursing up from the reactor to the firing lens above. They slammed into a Shock Trooper firing from the opposite side, flung him backwards into a bulkhead. They walked leftwards, splintering a handrail before cutting into a second Trooper.
More Trooper fire slashed past his head from the right, but Malik hadn’t stopped, had leapt, planted a foot on the rail before him, then pushed off. Energy bolts spanged off durasteel around him as he hung in midair, then plunged, feet-first into the core. The shimmering cyan of the plasma shaft thrummed dangerously close, prickling across flesh and aching in his bones.
But the Flux hadn’t led him astray. He landed on both feet and folded at the knees to absorb the rest of the impact. He crouched with the splash of his cloak draped about him near the bottom of the cylindrical chamber. Before him, a pair of black-uniformed Theocracy technicians spun at his arrival.
Between them, attached by conduits to the grated floor, blinked an analog timer, its holographic digits already counting down.
Darkness swelled behind Malik. The void in the Flux reached out for him like a flood of icy water. Within that, gleamed fangs and death.
