The Jack's Story (BRIGAND Book 2) (7 page)

"Cruase," Trand looked directly at Trig, "You know what to do."

The Belter took a half-step step towards Trig and I let go of her, dropping my right foot back and shifting my weight forward slightly. Combat stance. Trand would see it and hopefully concentrate on me.

"You’ll be the first one down." I offered the warning like it was a pint of ale.

The Belter hesitated in mid stride and Trand laughed.

"Roy," Trand said in a patronizing tone, "Do you have any idea what you’ve got here?"

The game was up, but I wasn’t quite ready to quit playing.

"Like I said, just a slag." I used the same neutral tone, conveying an unspoken offer of truce. Stop now and we can all walk away. Even with his army of bug bots and his weird little Belter, Trand knew he’d pay a price . It didn’t matter if I had a weapon, I’d still exact payment. I motioned Trig behind me. Time could be bought with blood. No matter how fast or strong they were, I’d hold them long enough for her to escape. She’d make it to the ship. To safety.

Except Trig had an altogether different plan in mind. Silently, she stepped up beside me, arms loose, her supple body flexed and ready. In her hands were two small, gleaming knives – scalpels maybe. For a second time, I found myself marveling at her ability to hide things.

Trand’s mouth opened slightly. His good eye fixed on Trig with a mixture of lust and wariness. "We can share the bounty. The slag... long as she's not dead, they're happy. They just want her biologicals."

Trig’s eyes narrowed. Just the slightest change, but I could read it. So could Trand. She was coming. Coming with those wicked little blades.

Two things happened at once. The Belter suddenly shimmered, faintly, like some weird variation of the somashells the Irezi use on the surface of Mars. And Trig disappeared. Well, not disappeared exactly. I was looking right at her and there was this tiny moment, like a single frame from a vid, where it looked like she was stepping around a corner. A corner that wasn’t there. And then she was gone, leaving a faint ‘thwwp’ sound behind her. Without knowing why, I knew something terrible had just happened. That I needed to act. So I did the only thing I could think of... I threw my gun at the Belter.

Pretty good shot too. I caught him high on the forehead, above his left eye. Loaded, that particular model weighs exactly 1.9KG. Moving at 38 meters per second, it delivered enough energy to snap his head back and drop him. The shimmer disappeared.

And Trig came back.

There was a sizzling pop and suddenly there she was, crashing into me as if she’d fallen from a couple of stories up. If there’d been time, the expression on her face would have made me laugh. Her eyes were wide with confusion, her lips parted slightly as if she’d started to speak and then realized she had no idea what to say. She hit me in the chest and we went down spinning in a tangle of arms and legs.

But we both had training. Without any conscious thought, we sorted ourselves as we fell. We rolled and came up balanced on the balls of our feet. I couldn’t help but crack a ferocious grin, thinking,
Not bad little girl. Not bad at all.
In a low voice I said, "Don’t jump. The Belter’s doing something to the pockets."

And then all hell broke loose.

The little spider bots flooded toward us from every direction. Individually, they weren’t much – a four centimeter wide carbon mesh body with six locomotors and two extensibles. But there were dozens of them.

I saw two of the little machines launch themselves at Trig from one of the workbenches. She caught the first one with a perfectly executed snap kick that crushed it in mid arc, but the other one clamped onto her extended leg before she could recover and jammed its extensibles into her thigh, just above her knee. I could hear the staccato snapping of an electric arc and Trig yelped involuntarily as her quadriceps clenched into a tetanic spasm.

If I’d been impressed before, now I was amazed. She dropped onto her other knee and rolled, grabbing the bot, yanking it off of her leg and then throwing it backhand – directly at me. Except it wasn’t me she was aiming for. It was the bot I hadn’t even seen yet, the one about to hit me from the right. Trig found her target and the two machines exploded in a shower of broken carbon fiber a few centimeters from my head.
Fear me before anyfuckingthing, bitches. I got a Wraith on my side. You got...

Trand.

Marines know how to fight. Trand might have been out of the Corps for a while and he might never have been a Technician, but the motherfucker was big and he was fast. Way faster than I’d have guessed.

He charged into me, going for a grapple. With five centimeters and twenty kilos on me, we both knew he’d have the advantage in a contact fight. I rolled, twisting just ahead of his grip so that he never quite got purchase and then bounced to my feet in a low, forward-weighted stance. I wanted the hitting power.

Trand tried for another grapple. His long arms, bare to the shoulder and covered in tats, outreached me by a couple of centimeters. I threw a couple of jabs, but it was obvious I wouldn’t be able to do much damage from outside his reach. I’d have to close.

I popped another jab and shifted my weight as if I was going for a big right. I knew he’d see it coming. I didn’t know if he’d spot the ruse. I started the punch, but then continued to push my weight forward, going for his right arm, grabbing it with both hands as I levered my shoulder into his clavicle. I stepped inside with my right leg, hooking it behind his ankle. Just about as old-school as it gets, but maybe that’s why he didn’t anticipate the move. In a blink, he was toppling backward with the weight of my body carrying him to the floor.

Trand landed hard on his back, with my knee under his elbow and my elbow in his throat. I threw my not inconsiderable mass into both – which should have crushed his larynx and broken his arm. Instead, Trand laughed, "Nice try, my friend."

Oh shit. He’d gone artificial.

Trand sat up, carrying my weight as if I were a child. Human abs, no matter how developed, simply didn’t have the leverage to push a hundred kilos like that.

"We don’t need to do this, Jack." I said, deliberately using the epithet that, for Marines, was a badge of defiance, of a comradeship that nobody outside the Corps could begin to understand. "I have a hold full of stuff that’s worth a fortune out here. We walk, that cargo’s yours."

Trand didn’t respond verbally. Instead, he lit up a private channel and fed me part of a file, direct to my cuts. I saw a little girl in a gray skinsuit with the mark of St. Nicolo on the left breast. I saw the order to retrieve a renegade Wraith. I saw a bounty, worth ten times what my ship carried – including the ship itself.

I saw my death. I saw far worse for Trig.

Trand lunged to his feet and pushed past me like a G-Ball bounder making a goal rush. He slammed his huge shoulder into my face as he went by, knocking me into a pile of denuded bot frames. My head exploded in white light and I could feel something trail down my upper lip. Something warm and wet. I tried to stand, but my arms and legs weren’t getting the message and I lay helpless, watching Trand close on Trig through a darkening blur.

She was turned away from him, focused on finishing off the last of the little spider bots. Trig heard him coming and, without augments, he’d never have gotten to her. But by the time she started her turn, he was already scooping her into a brutal hug that huffed the air out of her lungs. He pivoted, swinging her like a toy, crushing her to him, planting his back against the wall.

"Give it up, Marine." His grin was a monstrosity of unfiltered savagery. "They’ll find you eventually, but you’re not my concern. Go and enjoy whatever time you have left. I have more important things to do than fight you."

Stunned by the ferocity of his assault and pinned in the vice of his arms, Trig still managed to get one hand free long enough to stab one of her knives up and behind her. It was a blind shot, but she struck true, catching him low in the right side of his throat where the carotid should have been close to the surface. The scalpel jutted from his neck and blood flowed from the lips of the wound, but the bright crimson jet that should have drained his life away in seconds simply never materialized. Not just skeletal augments then. Trand had gone full-body. He wasn’t even human any more.

Trand chuckled harshly, "I can see why you like this one. So much better when they put up a fight." He grabbed her free arm by the wrist and twisted hard. I couldn’t hear the snap, but Trig’s forearm gave way at a sickening angle and she screamed. He lifted her by her broken limb and I saw her eyes open wide in shock as she sucked uncontrollably at the air. Then her head fell forward, dark hair obscuring all but her chin. Unconscious.

I gritted my teeth and strained at my body. My hands twitched, but I still couldn’t muster enough control to wipe my bloody nose, much less stand. My voice was a thick mumble. Still, I tried to sound stronger than I felt. "Trand, just let her go. You know as well as anyone how fucked up the Confed is these days."

Trand barked a short, choppy laugh. "Fucked up for sure. But they’re going to give me more cads than I can ever spend. And, to be honest,
Jack
," He spat the word contemptuously. "I’m tempted just to keep her for myself. You ever see anything like
this
?"

Holding her aloft by her tortured arm, he released her torso, letting her dangle limply half a meter above the floor.

He held out his left hand for a moment, as if admiring his manicure and then, with inhuman speed, snakelike extensibles emerged from each of his fingertips, writhing and questing as if possessed of their own intent. Each tendril sported a tiny, mouthlike gripper that gnashed and snapped, reinforcing the illusion of a nest of coiling reptiles. With a tenderness that made my guts clench in revulsion, he gently laid his open palm on Trig’s abdomen.

"Ah... so soft," he sighed. His extensibles paused for a second and then grabbed and thrashed. They tore at her with blinding speed, shredding her clothes as if they were vapor. Little cuts and nicks appeared, trailing thin tracks of dark blood over her white skin. I could see bruises already  forming on the ribs of her left side. Two, maybe three broken.

First her torso, then her hips and her legs, Trand roamed his hand over her body, stroking, touching, stripping until nothing remained but her boots and the bit of her sleeve trapped under the fingers of his right hand. Her magnificent body hung limp, trailing blood from dozens of little wounds, while he turned her one way and then the other, admiring his work.

"You know, I think I’ll plot a low energy orbit when I head in-system. Couple of months and she’ll be begging me to keep her. What do you say, Roy? Think she can learn how to please a real man by the time we get to Marajo?" His hideous snake hand slid over her breasts, letting the extensibles snatch and tug at her nipples until they were abraded and raw, then moved down over her belly and between her legs. He cupped her pubic mound and lifted, pulling her back against him, grinding her buttocks into his groin.

Through a blur of helpless fury, I saw Nanette – her naked body ripped and ruined while her life leaked into her bed – the scene the little Morg had conjured for me. He had shown me the unflinching cruelty of the people I’d served. The loss, the betrayal, the horror all flew together into a single point in my skull, the black hole of my rage.

Clumsily, blood running over my lips and down my chin, I struggled to my knees and bellowed, "NO!"

And then I stopped. Someone else had screamed at precisely the same time.

"The Trand must not do this."

The Belter. He stood facing Trand, his too-big head tilted slightly to one side, extensibles waved vaguely from mounts just below his collarbones. A gash, ringed by a blue welt, adorned his forehead. "This one has a glow – not like any other. The Trand must not destroy such a thing. The Trand will not."

Trand laughed that strange, hacking laugh. "Shut the fuck up Cruase. I own your contract. Without me, you wouldn’t even have air to breathe. Go build your little bots and leave the man stuff to the men." He lifted Trig higher, tipping his head forward.

I pushed with everything I had and staggered to my feet. He’d kill me. But he wouldn’t touch Trig again before I was dead.

Trand leaned down and clamped his teeth into Trig’s left shoulder, the top of the trapezius. He bit down like a starving animal consuming its prey, jerking his head up with a flap of her flesh in his teeth. Blood covered his chin and flowed down her chest. With the desperation of the damned, I lunged awkwardly toward them, but the Belter was faster.

He rushed forward and snaked his extensibles into Trand’s arms, the harsh ticking of electrical shocks almost obscured by his exultant roar of, "NO! She must live."

Trand dropped Trig, letting her fold into a tangle of white limbs at his feet. He stepped over her slowly, eyes fixed on the Belter, hands extended. The Belter simply stood and stared at him, not seeming to grasp the danger he was in. Trand grabbed him by the head. He was actually going to do it. He was going to rip off the Belter’s head.

I toppled toward Trand, knowing all of us were doomed. But, until nerves ceased firing and muscles stopped contracting, I wasn’t going to stop.

Trand gripped the Belter’s oversized head and lifted. The Belter squeaked as his feet left the floor and I was sure his narrow neck would give way at any moment. But then he reached out with his extensibles again. This time, one of them grappled the scalpel sticking out of Trand’s neck. The other shot directly into his face, into his mouth. Trand made a coughing sound and arched his back as if every muscle in his body had clenched simultaneously. The Belter slipped from his grasp and fell clumsily at his feet. My opening...

Willing my limbs into motion, I grabbed Trand by the throat and hauled him backwards, slamming him down on my knee. If it had been me taking that fall, the impact would have crushed my C2 and C3 vertebrae, severing my spine and killing me instantly. Trand, not so much. He was stunned all right, but that wouldn’t last. He was going to get up again. And then he would kill us.