Grendel Unit 2: Ignition Sequence (8 page)

Frank watched the Buddha finish filling up their mugs, then
lean forward and spit something yellow and thick from the bottom of his throat straight into the white foam of Hill's beer. The Buddha plunked the beers down in front of them and said, "You boys need anything else, just let me know."

Hill
picked up his mug of beer and took a long, deep drink. He lifted his face from the glass and said, "You know what this tastes like, Frank?"

Frank shook his head silently.

"It tastes like the victory of civilization."

Frank watched the lieutenant lift the mug and drain it down to the suds, then slam it back down on the bar and say, "That was good."
Hill eyed Frank's drink, still sitting on the bar, untouched. "What's the matter, Frank? Scared of sludgesucker beer?"

A few heads turned at the word, and Frank immediately looked away, trying to pretend that he wasn't with H
ill. "Let's just find your friend and get the hell out of here," he whispered.

Hill
's response was louder than he realized. His voice rose above the clustered conversations of the others at the bar and drew even more attention to them as he said, "Are you afraid of these people? Or, whatever the hell they are?" He picked up Frank's beer and gulped half of it down, then smiled stupidly at the dancers cavorting on the stage beneath them. He waved his arms in the air in vulgar, grunting imitation, and laughed at his own wit. "These are the noble savages of our time, Frank, and it's our duty to bring the glories of civilization to them, whether they know they want it not."

At least twenty aliens were staring directly at Hill now with open animosity, but he didn't seem to notice.
"Are you really as God damned insane as you sound?" Frank hissed. 

"Excuse me?"
Hill sputtered.

Frank opened his mouth to speak, but his voice pinched in his throat like the words had turned sideways and become lodged there at the sight of
three menacing figures coming up behind Hill. They looked human, except for their piercing red eyes and sharp-pointed ears. The female standing on the far left was busily picking her long, spiked metal fangs with long, spiked metal fingernails. Her shockingly orange hair was pulled into wicked spikes that stuck out a foot from her head and looked sharp enough to impale someone on.

There were two males next to the woman
. The first was a large, muscular behemoth with a metal jaw that looked like it had been built out of antique transport scraps. Standing at the front of the trio was the horned one.

The horned one was tall and
thin and sickly pale, with two sharp metal horns bolted into his forehead like an ancient devil. He sneered at Hill and said, "You in the wrong place, fleshbag."

Modders,
Frank thought.

Former Homo sapiens that had modified their bodies with so many illegal implants and cybernetics that they were no longer able to be registered as human in the Unification census books. Modders were almost always mercenaries, or smugglers, and if they were on a planet like Iscariot-Four, they were probably both.

Hill was still looking at Frank when the horned one spoke from behind him and he smirked with drunken indulgence as he turned around. He put his hands on his hips, making sure the modders saw he was carrying a pistol, and puffed out his chest, putting his shirt's Unification insignia on full display. "Take it somewhere else, buddy," Hill said. "Just be glad we're not here for you."

"No?" the horned one said.
"What you here for, then?"

"
We're on official business, so just move along," Hill said, doing his best to maintain his air of authority. He was like a lion tamer holding nothing but a chair and a whip in a circus ring, and the lions had suddenly stopped backing up and were now starting to circle dangerously close. Hill raised his voice and said, "Move along, because you don't want me in your life, I guarantee it."

The female snorted with laughter and said, "I'm bored already. Let's take him."

"Take him here?" the horned one said, his glowing red eyes widening with delight.

Frank slid his hand down to his waistband, fingers crawling inside of his pants to touch the hard plastic grip of the gun stuffed in his shorts. As long as
Hill stood still, nobody would see him pull it out.
I'm not going to start a firefight in here,
he told himself.
I'm just going to get us the hell out of here and back on the ship.

"
All right, listen," Hill said quickly. "Our business is done here, and we're leaving. I can see you're all fine, upstanding citizens and there's no need to cause you any trouble."

The horned one
's face twisted in confusion at Hill's words and he said, "You ain't supposed to be here, fool. This place off limits to fleshbags with badges. You leavin', that's for real, you just not leavin' like you think."

A cold bead of sweat trickled down the side of Frank's face as he got enough of the pistol's grip between his fingers to start pulling it up, when he felt the cold barrel of a
nother gun press against the side of his face. Frank let go of the pistol in his pants and turned slightly to see a large, darkly-robed alien standing beside him, shaking its head and wagging his finger.

"What
you doin' back there, fleshbag?" the horned one said, coming around Hill's side, glaring at Frank. "You tryin' to do us? He tryin' to
do
us."

The rest of the modders laughed
and Hill shouted, "All right, that's enough! We are Unification officers on official business and if you−"

T
he female was a blur of motion as her arm flashed forward and her claws slashed through the air. Hill looked down in amazement as the silvery metal tips sliced him across the chest and arm, tearing through his shirt and skin like tissue paper. Blood sprayed the stacks of bright, glittering bottles behind the bar, dripping crimson blood into the swirling multi-colored lights.

Hill looked
down in stunned horror at the deep gashes open in his body, and his mouth fell open but nothing came out except sputtering disbelief.

The horned one
grabbed the gun and holster at Hill's hip and tore them loose with one ferocious rip. He tossed the gun over the bar and called out to the Buddha, "Hold this for me. I'm gonna keep it as a trophy." He smiled at the alien holding Frank hostage and said, "You down to kill some fleshbags?"

The alien nodded
.

T
he horned modder glared at Frank, "You try to run, I'll rip off your kneecaps with my teeth." When Frank nodded that he understood, the horned one pushed the big dope with the metal jaw and said, "Go watch the front."

Hill was about to faint, but the female grabbed him by the throat and kept him upright, dragging him away from the bar and into the crowd.
Frank looked down at the smear of blood on the floor from Hill and felt the gun tap him on the side of the face, telling him to move too.

There were dozens of aliens at the bar as Frank walked past, keeping his hands up, hoping one of them had the decency to call for help. None of them even bothered to look up
from their drinks. The music was still blaring and the dance floor was still filled with twirling, twitching figures that had no idea two people were about to be murdered.

The f
emale modder shoved the back door of the club open, letting the murky light of the rear alley way into the club enough for Frank to get a better view of the alien walking him to his death. It was as tall as he was, but so heavily robed that it looked like a walking pile of rags. It wore a metal mask with narrow eye slits that was painted with a gruesome design. It could have been a hundred different aliens from a hundred different systems, but it didn't matter. It was the reason Frank was going to die.

"You messed up our deal," the horned one said as he held the door open for Frank to come out. "
My friend here come a long way to buy our Phennies and you two show up, makin' us look bad."

Frank looked back at the alien holding the gun to his head and said, "I'm sorry
. We weren't here for you or your Phennies. We were just looking for a friend of ours."

The horned one grabbed Frank by the throat and yanked him through the doorway with terrifying speed and tossed him effortlessly into the alley. Frank crashed into
Hill and the two men fell onto the dirty ground. Frank lifted his face in time to see Hill raise his hands and say, "Don't kill us! It's not worth it! We have a ship! We have weapons. We are worth more to you alive, I promise."

"
Oh, believe that we gon' find your ship," the horned one snarled. "We don' need you for that though."

"Shoot him in the knees," the female said. "I want to hear him scream."

The male reached around his back and his arm swung around holding the nastiest pistol Frank had ever seen. He smiled cruelly as he aimed the gun at Hill's left knee and Hill screamed like a terrified child, shrieking with fear, until Frank was forced to close his eyes to try and shut out the sight of the horned one shooting.

There was a loud bark of pistol fire that echoed against the bricks with a deafening boom, followed by a long string of high-pitched cries by
Hill. Frank felt something hit the ground hard in front of him, landing with a wet splat on the asphalt, but when he opened his eyes, he saw only the horned one sprawled out in front of him. Half the modder's head was caved in from being shot at point-blank range and his body was still twitching in the throes of death.

Frank looked up, stupefied, to see
his alien captor turn and point his pistol at the female. His voice was muffled beneath the heavy mask when he said, "You so much as blink and you're dead, cyborg."

She
stared down at her partner in wide-eyed wonder, and in one swift movement, spun on her black spiked heels and took off running. She was nothing but a blur in the alleyway, moving so inhumanly fast that even when the rag-covered figure fired at her twice, the bullets zipped past her, narrowly missing.

"God damn it!" the alien shouted as he reached up and wrenched his mask off of his face. He
turned and threw it down at Hill, hitting the lieutenant square in the chest. "You stupid son of a bitch! What the hell are you doing here?"

Frank and
Hill both looked up in amazement at the sweaty, red-faced Vic Cojo standing draped in his alien costume, and said nothing.

The alley door behind him popped open with
the Buddha holding Hill's gun in his tiny hands, shouting, "What the hell is happening out here?" He looked down at the modder's dead body and gasped, then started to raise the gun to shoot.

Vic turned around and fired two rounds directly into the fat little alien's chest and sprayed the doorway with fine, red mist. As the door swung back on the body, Vic looked at Frank and said, "
Don't just sit there, get your pistol ready while I take this stupid rig off."

"Y-yes, sir," Frank stammered.

Vic struggled to slide his left arm out of the large, cumbersome suit, when the club's rear door slammed open again. Without looking, Vic raised the gun and fired, blasting a hole through the face of the big modder, hitting him right in the metal jaw. There was a loud
ding!
like someone just won a prize at a carnival and the modder collapsed over top of the Buddha, his bright, silvery blood spilling down across the entranceway, more like engine synthoil than actual blood.

Vic
hurried out of the rest of his suit and looked down in disgust at the bodies and Lieutenant Hill, who still had not moved. "Get up," he snapped. "More are going to be here any second."

7. Kill At Will

Frank lifted Lieutenant Hill's chin to better inspect the gashes sliced across his chest, guessing they were an inch deep. The flaps of Hill's filleted skin were like drooping open pieces of beef. From the corner of his eyes, he saw Vic plant one foot on the side of the Buddha's small head and step up onto the large modder's back that was blocking the entrance. Vic had his gun raised as he checked the inside of the club for threats, but everyone was busy racing the other way. They were crashing into and over one another, a hundred aliens of varying shapes and sizes fighting to get through one modest exit.

Vic grunted
as he climbed back down and raised his weapon to cover the mouth of the alleyway. There was over one hundred feet of concrete and brick between the back entrance to the club and the street, with no doors or stairwells.

The modders were coming.

They are coming in force and they are coming in fast, Vic thought. If they catch us in that alleyway, it's going to be a short fight. He glanced back down at Frank and saw the medic screwing around with his bag and said, "What the hell are you doing? We have to move!"

Frank's fingers were trembling as he scanned the compartments of
the bag, searching for the right pouch. "H-he's in shock from the injuries and any movement is going to cause him to bleed out more. I have to stem the bleeding," Frank stammered.

Vic snatched Frank by the collar of his shirt and twisted it, forcing the medic to look up at him, "If you don't get him on his feet and move, we're all dead
anyway!"

Frank was almost too terrified to move, but somehow, from a very tiny place in the pit of his stomach he said, "Then you go, sir, because I'm not leaving this man behind."

Vic's eyes narrowed on Frank, as if he were about to drag him by the collar like a disobedient dog. Instead, there was something about the seriousness of Frank's face that made him let go and say, "You have five seconds to patch him up. Make it count."

Frank dove back into his bag and said, "Got it! Cauterizing powder." He popped the cap off a jar of silvery powder that looked like crystallized ash and said, "Can you hold him up, sir? He's not going to like this very much."

Vic grabbed the Lieutenant by the shoulders and forced him upright. Hill's head flopped down against his chest and his eyes were now half-lidded. He was moaning something nonsensical and spit bubbles blew out of his lips like a sputtering infant.

"Hurry up," Vic
grunted, trying to keep his eyes focused on the alleyway. "Any second, now, we're going to be up to our necks in leather jackets and fangs. They'll eat us, you know," Vic said, looking down at Frank. "I mean that. They will hold us down and eat us. Do you want to be eaten alive?"

"No, sir," Frank whispered hoarsely. He grabbed a handful of the cauterizing powder and slung it across the
lieutenant's chest. The result was immediate. The powder smoked gray and sizzled like frying bacon on Hill's chest, making his head shoot up as he screamed in agony.

Vic bore down
to keep him in place, and Frank nervously shook out another handful of powder and tossed it across Hill's stomach.

It stunk like burnt meat as the powder flashed and sparked deep inside of
Hill's open wounds, sealing them from within. Tears streamed down Hill's face as he held up his hands and begged, "Please, please stop. Don't do that again."

Frank bent down and
peered at the wounds quickly, "I think you're all right for now. Try not to move around too much or they'll break open again."

A cluster of powerful-sounding engines growled to life from far behind Frank
, so lo
ud and sudden
that they made him stop and look up at Vic with wide eyes. Vic's lips pressed together grimly as he let go of Hill and bent down to grab the dead modder's gun laying nearby. He raised both guns and stood up, aiming them downrange at the dozens of hoverbikes flying into the alley.

They gunned their engines as they came to a stop, dozens of bikers all snarling and showing him their sharp fangs and glowing red eyes.

Vic planted his foot against the body of the horned one and, while keeping his pistols raised,
rolled it over with his boot until the body was turned sideways, making it perpendicular to the alley. He stepped over the body, and glanced down at Frank, whispering, "Grab that little bastard and the other, bigger bastard and drag them over here. I need a line of bastards going head to toe, from one wall to the next."

Frank
ducked low as he scurried over to the doorway and grabbed hold of the heavy modder with the metal jaw. He grunted as he heaved the body, trying to unseat it from the Buddha. "Help me," he hissed at Hill.

There were
dozens of laser sight dots covering Vic like fluorescent measles. Some were bigger than others. The dots from the handguns and assault rifles were the size of small coins and the ones from the anti-personnel cannons mounted to the front of the hoverbikes were the size of fists. He looked down at the dots and smiled and said, "All right, listen up, you second-hand bolt-on piles of scrap metal. Every single one of you is under arrest. But lucky for you, I'm willing to negotiate."

The modders
snorted in laughter and got ready to fire, but from the back of their ranks, a female shouted, "Do not shoot them! The first one of you who shoots will answer to me!"

There was a bullet hole in the center of one of her bright orange spikes from where Vic had tried to gun her down, and she jabbed the air toward him with her sharpened claws and spat, "You ain't negotiating
nothin', fleshbag! You and them are all dead! Those two behind you, they gonna die in bad agony, but after you watch that, I got something real special planned for you. I'm gonna skin you alive like a −"

Two gunshots rang out from Vic's pistols on either side of her
and she turned to see the bikers standing nearest her slump forward and slide off their bikes, dead.

"Wait!" Vic shouted, shaking his head apologetically. "Wait, wait, sorry. You said,
not
to shoot, right? I couldn't hear you from back here."

She screeched in outrage, spitting curses at him from the mouth of
alleyway, and Vic glanced down to check Frank's progress. He'd gotten both bodies out of the entryway and placed them on the ground in the right positions, forming a line of corpses that stretched from one wall of the alley to the other.

"You dare defy me!"
the female screamed.

Vic's gun fired again
and another modder dropped. "Whoops!" he called out.

She lifted her head and roared, "
Bring them to me!" The horde of bikers gunned their engines and took off flying toward Vic, darting around the female with expert precision and closing fast.

"Give me that
cauterizing powder!" Vic shouted.

Frank
reached for the jar in his bag and said, "This? Why?"

Vic fired
with the pistol in his left hand until it went empty, throwing a barrage of bullets down the alley and hitting whatever he could. The bikers swerved out of the way to avoid being hit and smacked into one another. Vic threw the gun on the ground and grabbed the jar from Frank, quickly dumping its contents onto the three corpses.

"What the hell are you doing?" Frank
cried. "That's all I have!"

Vic pushed Frank out of the way and looked up at the bikers coming toward him. They were close enough that when they grinned he saw the strings of
black saliva stretching from their fangs. Just before they were on top of him, he aimed his pistol at the nearest bike's fuel tank and fired, sending a flood of dark fuel spraying out on the other bikes and ground.

Vic lowered the pistol and fired into the center of the horned
modder's back, putting a bullet directly into a pile of cauterizing powder.

T
he air flashed with flame and instantly ignited the fuel on the bike as it flew over the bodies, setting off a massive explosion of hoverbikes and modders and scorched pieces of leather jackets that sprinkled down onto the remaining members like black rain.

Inside the club, Vic slammed the heavy locking bolt across the rear entrance and shouted,
"Go! Go! Go!" at Frank and Lieutenant Hill to get them moving toward the front. "Get Buehl on comms and tell him we need immediate extraction!"

Frank leapt over an overturned table and glared at
Hill, saying, "Well? Do you want to explain it to him, Lieutenant?"

Hill ignored him as he stumbled through the dark club, clutching his chest and groaning that he felt like his insides were going to come spilling out.

Vic came running up behind them both and stopped suddenly, "Oh, you have got to be kidding me. You idiots don't even have comms?"

"Ask him!" Frank pointed accusatorily at
Hill. "I said to bring them!"

A loud c
rash rang out from the back of the club, shattering the frame around the rear entrance, and all three of them stopped and ducked down. There was another crash after it, and the steel door buckled inwards, followed by the repeated strikes of multiple boots, smashing it open enough for the modders to begin squeezing through.

"
Stay down and stay quiet," Vic whispered.

The club was
dark and filled with swirling gasses, but they could make out the figures checking behind and around the bar, beginning their search. "Get your gun out," Vic whispered to Frank. "If they get too close, kill as many as you can before you put a bullet in your temple."

"Okay," Frank whispered, nodding quickly. "Wait, what?" 

Vic crept
to the front door and pressed himself flat against the wall, using the tips of his fingers to pry the door open just an inch and make sure no one was waiting for them outside of it. Vic breathed out slowly with relief. They hadn't sent anyone around front and the street was clear. "Come on," he said, waving for the others.

Lieutenant
Hill elbowed his way through the door first and vanished around the side. Frank had his gun raised as he went through, but he stayed close, reaching back to hold onto Vic and make sure he came out. Vic looked back at him and said, "What are you doing?"

Frank pushed the doors shut behind him and said,
"Making sure you don't do anything stupid like sacrificing yourself so we have a chance to escape. We either all get out together or not at all."

Vic grunted,
"If you're the one with the job of keeping me from doing something stupid, we're all in deep trouble." He looked back at Hill, who was leaning against the wall, sheets of sweat pouring off of his face like a rain spout. "We need a way to get to the ship. Those bolt-ons are going to realize we're not in the club soon enough and come busting through that door." 

"
We can commandeer a transport," Frank said, nodding at the cars flying past them on the road.

"They're too high up," Vic said. "We'll never get one to land
. Anyway, they'll run a human over if he tries to flag them down, just for the hell of it. We need a different vehicle."

Both Frank and Vic turned at the same time to look
down the alleyway. It was piled with dozens of hoverbikes, each of their engines tricked out and capable of incredibly fast speeds. Just the kind they needed to make a quick escape. Vic started to move toward the alley when Frank grabbed him and said, "Wait a second. You stay here. I've got this."

Vic smiled
condescendingly as he moved to pull Frank's hand off and said, "It's okay, rookie, don't worry. I'll be coming right back."

Frank knocked his hand away and said,
"You listen to me, you pompous bastard. I have been waiting years to get on this unit and it's all your damn fault! So far, it's been nothing but an absolute nightmare, thank you very much! Now, you are going to sit here and you are going to watch Lieutenant Hill and you are going to wait for me to go get us a bike, because I. Have. Got. This."

"Fine," Vic said
with a shrug. "If it means that much to you, go ahead and get yourself killed."

"Maybe I will," Frank said as he slid along the wall toward the side of the building.

"I'll be right here waiting when you start screaming for help."

"You'll be waiting until hell freezes over then," Frank called back. He turned and stuck his head once into the alleyway, and then he disappeared.

Vic sat there, with his gun ready, holding his breath. He was certain he'd hear a volley of gunshots, or a scream of terror, at any second, but there was nothing. He looked back at Hill, who was now slumped over on his knees, staring mutely at the ground. Cars continued to zip past overhead, spewing coolant and synthoil across the road below like dirty rainwater. Vic heard something squeaking in the alleyway, the noise getting louder as whatever it was got closer to the edge.

His eyes widened at the sight of Frank Kelly
pushing a massive hoverbike out of the alleyway, carefully walking the thing as he kept glancing over his shoulder, making sure no one caught sight of him. The bike had a long, extended front end made of glittering chrome and high handlebars that raised over the rider's head, and best of all, there was a chariot seat in the back, big enough for two. Frank laughed triumphantly as he struggled to turn the handlebars down and turn, forcing the heavy bike to go left. "I told you I had this," he grunted. "Come on."