Overload Flux (29 page)

Unfortunately, the flitter was still airborne, though sagging toward the back. The wide-array beam sheared off the tops of some trees.

Luka scrambled frantically for the manual feed mechanism to load another round, then re-aimed for the cockpit and fired again, bracing himself this time so he stayed upright. The round pierced the front and spun the flitter around like a wobbling top. The wide-array beam sliced up into the sky and then down into the building as the flitter broke apart and the pieces tumbled into the clearing and nearby undergrowth.

Luka bent to pick up the dropped hand-beamer. Suddenly he saw a flash, followed by an earsplitting
whump
, and the shockwave of a massive explosion slammed into him, knocking him off his feet and onto his left shoulder. Dust and burning debris stung his exposed skin as he curled into a protective ball.

He’d have liked to stay there until everything quieted down, but Mairwen was counting on him to slag the ship-killer. Telling the eye-watering pain in his shoulder to get in line behind the screaming pain in his thigh, he crawled back to the big gun, found the hand-beamer, and used it to thoroughly destroy the target controls of the big gun. Even if he hadn’t gotten its power, the ship-killer would now be useless.

As the dust cleared, Luka saw that the whole north end of the building was obliterated, with only rubble remaining at the base. Whatever they’d stored in that part of the building had gone off like a supernova.

The only sound came from the ringing in his ears. He knew he needed to crawl to safety, but he didn’t know where that would be.

From far away, he heard someone calling his name. He looked around, then realized the voice was coming from the earwire still attached to his jaw. He tried to speak, but inhaled a cloud of dust and had to cough it out first. Finally he was able to croak, “This is Luka. I’m okay, but I can’t hear
sjitt
.”

Jerzi’s voice was loud enough to hear this time. “
Same here. Eve’s in the ship, I think. Have you seen Mairwen?
”

“No,” said Luka, as a new surge of adrenalin spiked through him. He needed to find her. He pulled himself to his feet and limped to what was left of the storage bay, hand-beamer at the ready. Inside, he found the body of the merc who’d had the heatseeker, with a knife impaled in his throat. Luka saw it was one of Mairwen’s and pulled it out. He used the merc’s uniform to wipe the blood off, then slid the blade in the back of his belt.

He stumbled through the rubble and found more bodies and another of Mairwen’s knives, but not her. The walls had collapsed, so to go further, he had to leave the building and approach it from the outside. He found what was left of two other bloody bodies, but they were wearing merc uniforms.

He was blackly amused that his wild reconstruction talent was meekly silent in a war zone, and planned to tell Mairwen about it. If she was still alive.

CHAPTER 20

* Planet: Insche 255C * GDAT 3237.044 *

M
airwen awoke in hot, humid, pitch-black darkness. Pain seeped into her awareness, but it meant she was alive, so she took it as a good sign. She was able to ignore most of the pain except for her head, which ached abominably. She was lying on her side, knees bent, and felt pressure above her shoulder and hip.

She cautiously opened her senses. Her hearing was impaired by multi-threaded high-pitched tones that signified temporary damage. At least she hoped it was temporary. As much as she’d once resented the senses that made her irreversibly different, she’d grown to embrace them if it meant keeping herself and Luka alive. She’d like to continue doing that in the future, assuming they had a future.

She smelled dirt, a mix of plants, plascrete dust, various unknown chemicals, metal, and her own scent, ripe with sweat and blood, some of which wasn’t her own. She tried moving her shoulder and hip and found she could without shifting whatever was on top of her, which smelled metallic. She had no idea how long she’d been there. She struggled to regain her sense of time.

Last she remembered, the flitter’s beamer was arcing down toward the building. She’d calculated she had only a few thousand milliseconds before it sliced into the corner where the negligent merc squad had stored their thermobarics, and a few more thousand milliseconds before the beam’s energy ignited the whole stack. She’d taken a running leap off the building’s roof into the shrubs and rolled when she hit the ground to channel her momentum. She’d just come up running when the shockwave threw her forward, out of control, and... nothing.

She concluded she’d been hit in the head, and that it was likely she was buried under debris. She’d been lucky, and hoped Luka, madman that he was to manually shoot down a flitter with a ship-killer, had shared her luck. Jerzi and Haberville had been farther away, so perhaps they escaped relatively unscathed, at least enough so that they could see to Luka and find her.

With some painful maneuvering, she got her left arm free enough so she could touch her face and neck, trying to see if the earwire had survived the impact. She couldn’t reach it and had no room to turn her head, so she excavated the dirt under her face, which stirred up enough dust to make her sneeze, causing sharp pain in her cracked ribs and pounding in her head. After all that, all she found was abraded and bloody skin along her jaw where the wire used to be.

She rested, breathing as shallowly as she could until the dust settled. Even with that bit of exertion, the heat was oppressive. She was in a poor position to get any leverage to move whatever was on top of her. With some painful twisting and maneuvering, she managed to get her last remaining knife out of her right ankle sheath. They’d been good knives. She’d miss them.

Just as she was considering where to dig and where to put the dirt she’d have to move, she thought she heard voices. It was hard to tell with the constant ringing, but she cut off her awareness of it and tried to listen in the between tones.

She thought she heard her name called, and it alarmed her that she couldn’t tell if it was Luka’s voice calling. Reversing the knife in her hand, she tried pounding the pommel into the metal above her three times, then waiting five seconds and repeating. She could hardly hear it, but the painful vibration in her hand convinced her she was making all the noise she could.

Time was still slippery, and she’d lost track of the number of repetitions she’d pounded by the time the metal was lifted off her. She was blinded by the sunlight. Her eyes started to water when she heard Luka’s voice asking where she was hurt, then calling for Jerzi. She felt rather than saw him kneel beside her.

“Head hurts… hearing loss,” she managed to croak. When the involuntary tears subsided and she could finally see again, she was relieved that Luka looked more or less intact, and Jerzi the same, though he sported an incipient black eye and his chest was coated in wet grime. She smelled Luka’s unique scent and something more.

“You’re bleeding,” she said, her voice sounding like gravel.

“So are you,” he said with a small, worried smile, gently smoothing her hair back from her face. “Can you sit up?”

When she nodded, he took the knife from her hand and helped her up, then because she insisted, helped her get to her feet.

As near as she could tell, she’d been covered by a piece of the flitter, which had protected her from the thermobaric fireball. Although the side of her head and neck felt wet, she didn’t feel too bad until she turned her head too fast. Then dizziness caused her to tip sideways and almost take Luka down with her.

“
Taktu það rólega
… easy,” said Luka, holding the side of her hip and pulling her close to him for support.

For once, she was content to stand with him awhile, letting his solid strength soothe the worries and panic she’d been trying not to think about. Somehow they were both still alive. Again.

“The mercs?” she asked Jerzi, who was hovering anxiously in front of her. The thick grime on his armor and clothes looked like a mixture of mud and soot. His railgun was strapped across his back, and his pocket had at least one ammo pack sticking out.

“Dead, or as good as. The building fell down while we were looking for you.” His voice sounded nasal, and his nose looked crooked, like it might have been broken. “The light-drive ship took one beamer shot and was hit by some debris. Eve’s in there now. She’ll have to tell us if it’ll fly.”

She looked up to Luka, moving slowly this time. “She needs personal security.”

Luka nodded, but didn’t take his eyes off her. “Jerzi, go find Eve. The high oxygen hasn’t been easy on her. I’ll help Mairwen.” He tightened his arm around her hips.

Jerzi took off at a half run. Mairwen was glad he was young and resilient, and wished to hell she didn’t feel like she was a hundred and fifty years old. The sun position looked unchanged, so she’d likely been unconscious for only a minute or two, and she guessed it had taken them ten minutes to find and unearth her from her resting place. She didn’t feel very rested.

As they walked, she saw Jerzi hadn’t exaggerated about the building. Only the southern wall was left standing, and it looked none too steady. Luka, muttering to himself in what she presumed was Icelandic, remained determinedly at her side as they made their way toward the ship as fast as they could through the debris, body parts, and burned plascrete.

Twice he made her slow down to purposefully hyperventilate, telling her it was to keep oxygen flowing to her brain, which he was worried had been injured. He was favoring his right leg, which was matted with blood, dirt, and soot, and he winced every time he moved his left shoulder. At least the beamer wounds on her left arm and ribs had been instantly cauterized, although they hurt almost as much as her head and neck now that she was moving. She’d hate to think how much worse they’d be if the flexin armor hadn’t taken some of the damage before failing. The flechette projectile hole through her lower left calf was hardly worth noticing by comparison, though the blood from it made her sock and boot sticky.

The ship looked none the worse for wear, despite the shiny mark where the beamer had raked its hull. She and Luka had just made it up the long ramp and past the wide airlock into the cargo area when the shipcomm sparked to life with a synth voice announcement in standard English: “
Attention. Incoming communication. Attention. Incoming communication.
”

“
Andskotinn
,” said Luka vehemently. She was getting quite an education in Icelandic cursing.

Haberville’s voice boomed through the shipcomm. “
I set the navcomp to autoreply, but it won’t fool anyone once they get a visual on what’s left of the base. Jerzi, strap in. Luka, get the ramp retracted and seal the door so we can launch.
”

Luka left Mairwen’s side go to look for the control panel. He found it, then swore at the agonizingly slow wakeup sequence.

If the ramp moved that slowly, they’d never make it. She looked for the emergency release and finally found it on the floor. She dropped to her knees, knowing dizziness would overwhelm her if she tried bending over. She fumbled with the safeties on the handle, then pulled it up hard. The ramp dropped suddenly, and she let the handle fall back into place. The airlock closed so slowly, she thought she’d unthinkingly dropped into tracker mode, but the heave of Luka’s chest and her own heart rate told her she was still in realtime. She let out the breath she’d been holding when the airlock indicators finally showed a complete seal.

Haberville’s calm but acerbic voice came over the shipcomm. “
Incoming seven minutes out, launch in one. Strap in if you can, because a high-speed lift will make this gods-cursed bus handle like a pregnant cow.
”

Mairwen tried to stand, but her dizziness made it almost impossible. She dropped into half-tracker mode and got to her feet. Pain messages exploded from her head, side, ribs, and leg, but she’d expected it and paid no attention. They couldn’t stay on the cargo level because any unsecured supplies or equipment could crush them like bugs.

“We need jump seats.” She grabbed Luka’s arm and pulled him toward the upward ramp.

She squinted at the curving ramp floor to narrow her visual focus and ran up it, nearly overshooting when she arrived at the landing. He caught her and pulled her toward the interior of what looked like a common area. She looked around frantically and finally pointed.

“There!”

She and Luka hobbled together toward the row of jump seats against the wall. He pulled down two seats and practically slung her into one, then waited to see that she was strapping herself into the webbing before sitting and doing the same for himself. The ship vibrated deeply under her feet and thighs. She leaned back and let time come up to normal speed.

The chair’s headrest wasn’t particularly comfortable, but it would keep her immobile and save her from whiplash or spinal injury, neither of which would improve her condition. The vibrations were just shy of earsplitting, so she cut off her awareness of all sounds, even the ringing, and turned her head slightly so she could look at Luka. He was pale and exhausted, and he was covered in grime and caked blood, especially his right thigh. At least he didn’t smell like fresh blood any more.

He smiled a little when he caught her eye and said something she couldn’t hear. Probably telling her she looked like hell, which, considering how she felt, was shameless flattery. She gave him a small smile in return, then faced forward and flattened herself into the jump seat.

The ride was bone jarring. Even with the gravity compensators, it felt like Haberville was evading airborne weapons fire, and possibly ground-based, too, if one of the other installations on the continent had managed to get ship-killers online. Or maybe it was just because their ship was fat-assed and wobbled like a drunken sailor. She hoped Haberville’s skills would continue to keep them safe and that the other merc squads were as inept as the one they’d already encountered.

Finally the vibrations began to diminish. The jolting settled down to the intensity of a mild thrill-ride, then tapered to nothing and normal ship gravity.