Xantoverse Shadowkill (7 page)

“Weapon aficionados of all creeds and persuasions, let me introduce Napier Industries ‘new flagship pistol, the Gilmour Signature Mark II, aka, The Terror Hawk.”

More claps and cheers went up as Maximum Saul went into the drivel of technical specs, playing up every slight change to the caliber and firing rate, getting the gun nuts hard with numbers that were ultimately meaningless. The only one that mattered was the retail price. And ninety-nine percent of the scumbags in this hall would never be able to afford it.

Still, there were other ways.

“We’re in,” Tai said, whispering to her. “Let’s go.”

Kina kept watch on the crowd as Tai opened the door and slipped inside. Moving backwards, she too shifted around the door and stepped into the dark access tunnel of Napier Industries’ warehouse unit. She shut the door slowly, closing off the applause and Saul’s exaggerations.

Tai grabbed her arm and led her through a maze of dark corridors. She wanted to take the mask and ill-fitting robe off, but she couldn’t be sure if they weren’t being watched. “Where the hell is she?” Kina said when they rounded into what must have been the twentieth passage.

“Fulfillment, just over here.”

Tai pointed to an open door. Light spilled out from inside. They approached slowly, their backs to the wall. Tai peaked round the door and then waved for Kina to join him. Once inside, Tai took of his mask. Kina followed suit and wiped the sweat from her face.

The room made her mouth drop open. Ten meters square, the space had racking units running along each wall, every shelf crammed with boxes of weapons. Sitting on a stool, hunched over a desk, a frail human figure organized order chits.

“Be with you in a second, Tairon,” she said with a croaky voice as she continued to stamp chits from one pile and checking off something on a piece of slate with chalk. “Close the door.”

Kina stepped back and did as she was asked. It was so rare to see a human as old as this. Life expectancy on
Haven
rarely got beyond the fifty standard years.

“Sarod, I, just wanted to thank you for agreeing to see us and help us out,” Kina said approaching the old woman’s desk.

Sarod looked up at her. Her right eye was a mess of scarred flesh, while her left was distended and cloudy. A black iris seemed to swim to the surface through a milky gloom as she focused on Kina. “No dear,” Sarod’s dry, whispering voice said. “It’s you who are here to help me.”

Kina flashed a look at Tai. What the hell was this about? She was supposed to supply Tai and Kina with some of Napier’s more exclusive, non-catalogue weaponry. Tai shrugged at her and wore an expression she had come to know all too well: the expression of dropping her into something she couldn’t back out from.

“I don’t understand,” Kina said.

“The weapons are there,” Sarod said, pointing to a box set aside on a shelf on the left wall. Her wrists extended beyond her blue kronac-cotton coat. So small and frail it looked like it would snap under the barest of touches. Her white hair was so thin, it almost appeared as if it were translucent over her mottled scalp. “But you need to do something for me.”

“Of course,” Kina said.

Nothing happened in Haven without a deal. Kina was already reaching for her trade-stamp inside her robe, when Sarod grabbed her forearm with a weak grip. “No,” she croaked, “no deal. Off the record, sweet girl. A courtesy.”

Turning to Tai, Sarod nodded to the box of weapons. “Take them, and leave us.”

“You got it, Sar, and thanks again. I’ll owe your family.”

“I have no family,” Sarod said, “but you already knew that, Tairon. Don’t take me for a fool. I’m too long in the tooth for that.”

Chastened, Tai simply nodded, lifted the two-meter long box off the shelf, and left the room, closing the door behind him.

“Now, young Kina, it’s time for you to pay.”

Just typical of Tai to let Kina pick up the bill. “Um, this is tricky,” Kina said. “I’m like… totally skint right now, I thought Tai…”

“Not credits.”

“Then what? I don’t understand.”

Sarod blinked. Her lid stuck for a moment making it look like she was having a seizure, but it soon opened freely, the iris wide and sharp. “Here.” Sarod handed Kina a piece of black slate the size of her palm. On the surface, scrawled in chalk with shaky script was a contract.

“Consider this payment,” Sarod said.

“Are you sure?”

“It’s right there in black and white, my sweet girl. I’m
too
long in the tooth.”

Kina’s heart rate increased beyond her calm state. This was no time for Wraith lessons. The pitiful woman just stared up at Kina with that terrible eye, waiting. “Don’t make me beg,” she said. “Give an old girl some respect.”

Kina reached inside her robe and pulled out a dagger with one hand. She held Sarod’s with the other. Sarod’s skin felt reptilian with its thin dryness. Despite what she had asked, Sarod’s hand did not shake as much as Kina’s.

“Thank you,” Sarod said. A single tear welled up and dripped, catching in the wrinkles around her cheek. “Thank you.” She let go of Kina’s hand, sat back, and closed her eye with a serene smile on her face.

CHAPTER 6

The elevator stopped
at minus-ninety-eight.

At just two levels before absolute bottom—or top, depending on which way you wanted to look at it and which way the gravplates were set to work—they arrived at Dock Five. Long since abandoned because a Selestion warship had crashed into it hundreds of standard years ago. Damaged it beyond economical repair, the dock had become a ghost-level.

With nothing worth salvaging, and unable to be used for actual docking, the ghost-level received fewer visitors than any other on the station, which made it the perfect place for Dzagnev and Lanat to set their trap.

Removing the services of an operator to do the job themselves, Kina and Tai had removed their Cult of Azam disguise on the way down. No point in hiding the fact now. It was obvious this was going to be a straight up fight to the death.

“Are you ready for this?” Tai said. “You look a bit shaken up.”

“Yes, I’m ready. I’m only shaken up because of the spot you dropped me in with Sarod. At first I couldn’t do it. You should have seen her, Tai. So frail and yet so strong. I hate you for making me have to go through that.”

The look of Sarod’s face as Kina plunged the knife through her chest with barely any resistance from the paperlike skin and brittle bones would haunt her for years. The woman was utterly blissful as her life ebbed out of her in calm, slow pulses.

“She wanted it,” Tai said. “And we got the weapons. A good deal.”

“But it was her look, Tai… that
look
.”

It wasn’t the act of killing her that bothered, Kina. That ultimately was Sarod’s choice, but it was the fact that she looked so happy about it. Someone of that age, so much older than the average should want as much time as possible, because the alternative could only mean…

“She chose death over the suffering of living in this damned place, Tai. The relief on her face was so pure. Had she suffered so much for so long, that this was the only thing that could bring her that level of peace?”

“It’s the way it is. Can’t change it, Ki.
Haven
has its own life and we’re just here along for the ride for as long as we can survive.”

“Surviving takes its toll,” Kina added. “And Sarod’s toll got too expensive. When will it get too expensive for us?” Kina checked her daggers, an involuntary reaction to her line of thinking.

“Maybe it’ll be today,” Tai said, his voice echoing off the metal walls of the elevator car. “Maybe it won’t. All I know, is right now, I’m choosing life. And one way or another, we’ll either adapt or perish. But I’d rather adapt with you by my side, girl.” Tai bent down and unclasped the lid from the weapon’s case.

Inside laid a veritable arsenal of cutting-edge Napier firearms.

“What do you want? You get the first two picks,” Tai said, smiling.

Kina bent down and inspected what Sarod had saved for them.

Unfortunately, there were no shiny new Terror Hawks in there, but there was the next best thing: a Shadowkill Piercer. This was a signature model from a now ex-Napier engineer codenamed Shadowkill on account of his own stellar assassination record. It featured an expanded thirty-round mag loaded with balorium-tipped shells that would pierce through even the best nanoweave carapace armor.

Very handy for dealing with Dzagnev. She had rarely seen him out of his carapace armor. She lifted out the Piercer and shoulder holster it came with. She slipped four extra mags into the slots on the strap.

“Great choice,” Tai said. “I knew SK back in the day. Saw him shoot one of those in zero G like a boss.”

“Lets hope I do its heritage proud.”

Additionally, she took three stun grenades and a thermo-charge ball. Designed to be thrown like a stone, they exploded on impact with enough power to melt a human skeleton in the resulting eruption of super-heated plasma. She placed it, along with the stuns, in pouches on her belt.

“That’s enough for me,” she said. “I still want to be able to move easily.” She shifted her body and arms around to make sure she had completely free movement. It was bulkier than she liked to be, but she couldn’t risk confronting the Wraiths with just her daggers at hand.

It was obvious they knew Kina and Tai were coming so she had to prepare accordingly. Linus and Evangeline wouldn’t have come after them like they did unless it was on instruction. Linus wouldn’t be so easily broken, but it didn’t matter now.

This was the game.

Kina knew it, Tai knew it, and the Wraiths knew it. The latter had engineered the situation so that Kina and Tai had to come in to their territory, giving them the advantage. At least down here, there’d be no collateral damage to deal with or worrying about some opportunistic frecker to jump them while in the middle of a firefight.

Kina knew the odds were firmly stacked in the Wraiths’ favor—this whole scenario had been engineered from the start—she should have realized that when they stopped the test and allowed Reaper to go.

They should have just killed her there and then.

“That’s their mistake,” Kina said aloud.

“Huh? What’s that?” Tai replied. He rummaged through the weapon’s case trying to decide between the Kraken Snipe Ten auto-rifle or the Sweeper XK VI: a wide-bore belt-feed shotgun system.

“The mistake—they should have killed me when they had the chance in the engineering plant. Instead they decided to play a game, prove they were elite. I think all this time alone in
Haven
has sent them a little mad. Or at least more mad than when they first got stuck in Hollow Space.”

Tai took the remaining three grenades and two thermo-charges, clipping them to his waist belt. “Every one in Hollow Space is mad—otherwise we’d all do a Sarod and end this crazy existence. I can’t decide. What do you think? Distance and accuracy of the Kraken, or the destructive power of the Sweeper? I want something to compliment my Dorian and Napier revolvers.”

“I’d dump the revolvers and take both.”

“See, crazy,” Tai said, giving her a grin from his crouched position over the gun case. “These revolvers are like extensions of my arms. Learned to draw ‘em before I could walk.”

“Bullshit.”

“Yeah, but near enough. I ain’t losing the pistols, Ki.”

“Fine, we’ve got thermo-charges for blast damage, go with the Kraken—the Wraiths will be skulking in the shadows at distance anyway, you’ll benefit from the IR scope. That model’s balanced with phelentech crytsal dynamos for accuracy.”

“I love it when you talk dirty to me. The Kraken it is then.” Tai slung the carbine rifle over his shoulder and strapped three mags to his right leg before locking up the case and hiding it behind a loose panel in the elevator car.

On their way down, Kina had pulled the gear mechanism attached to the gravplate switching system, meaning the elevator couldn’t be called back up. It’d remain stationary until they got back.

If they got back.

“Ready?” Kina said.

Tai pulled his famed pistols and nodded his head. “Does solan shit smell like ass-fried eggs?”

“Remember what I said—take no chances. You see one of them, empty everything you’ve got until they’re in many, unmoving, pieces. It might be an elaborate game to them, but I ain’t in the mood for playtime.”

“Got it. Grab your goggles and let’s go spring this trap and find out what awaits us on the other side.” Tai opened the car doors and they both stepped out onto the dark, abandoned dock.

***

“The ship’s gravplates are still working,” Kina whispered as they stepped through the ragged breach of the Selestion. That was one fewer thing to worry about. Combat in zero-G wasn’t her idea of a fun time.

The pointed snout of the once-grand warship resembled the angry maw of a vul as fangs of steel surrounded an aperture that led into the bridge section. Tai took point and stepped in the gloom. With her night-vision goggles on, she swept to the left, covering with her Piercer while Tai covered the right with the Kraken. Her heart pounded and she willed it to be calm, to treat this like any other hulk crawl. They’d been on hundreds of them over the years. It was just another day at the office.

Check the corners, look for areas of cover, keep your ears, eyes and nose open to hints of movement and presence. She’d been through the routine, she was skilled, she had to trust herself. Tai moved quickly between the ruined seats of the bridge.

Huge screens on either side were cracked and shattered, the glass reflecting nothing.

Tai turned and waved her forward as he stood to the right of a bulkhead that led to the officers quarters. Kina slid in to the left side and took a peak through the open hatch. A narrow corridor stretched for fifty meters through the center of the ship—dozens of cabins branched off either side.

No movement, no scents, nothing.

It didn’t surprise her; she expected this. The Selestion was large for a warship being a kilometer long and a quarter deep. If the Wraiths were anywhere, it’d be further in. They’d want to corner them so they couldn’t escape back out through the bridge.