Critical Strike (The Critical Series Book 3) (23 page)

“You say that again, you little fucker, and I’ll show you barbaric. We saved your worthless life! You dare insult my people and me again and you’ll be the one we find with its guts ripped. You understand that, don’t you?”

Vingo’s body went limp, his pale face seemed to grow even paler behind the slightly shadowed visor. Layla thought about stopping Charlie, but frankly she found the whole novelty of being on an alien planet had worn off and she cared not if Vingo lived or died. It wasn’t as if he’d helped them much anyway.

Charlie struck Vingo again, his gauntlet clanging against the suit uselessly. He stood up, throwing the knife into a tree with an explosion of fury. It struck the branch with a twanging noise.

“Who are you throwing knives at, old man?” A voice spoke from the shadow of the tree, amplified by external speakers.

“Denver!” Layla said.

***

Not for the first time, Layla regretted the necessity of wearing the bulky suit. She wanted nothing more than to shed her metal exoskeleton and grab Denver, sink herself into him and relish in his breathing, live body.

She shook her head as they all sat around a fire deep within an outcrop beneath a tree. The roots snaked down the sides of the dirt cave, holding the walls together, providing a small space for the four of them to huddle in around the fire.

She smiled, staring at him from across the fire. “How do you do it, Den?” she asked. “When I think you’re gone, here you are, living like bloody Tarzan as though it were the most natural thing in the world? And,” she added, nodding to the skertch corpse on the bank outside of the cave, “how the hell did you catch that thing without being dragged away?”

Denver blushed behind his visor and looked down at his hands before meeting her eyes again and shrugging. “I wanted to stay alive to find you guys,” he said, still talking over the external speakers due to his broken comm. Vingo was busy in the back of the cave, trying to fix the small module.

It was good for him to be out of the way. With the way Charlie acted, she didn’t doubt that things could boil over again and Vingo would soon join the dead skertch on the Jackson’s list of tredeyan kills.

“I’m proud of you, son,” Charlie said. “For coming for me, for surviving. I couldn’t have done this trip without you.”

“I don’t want to give up so easily,” Denver said. “There must be a way off this damned rock.”

Layla heard Vingo mutter something under his breath, the words muffled and incoherent over the comms. She assumed he was still bitter about Charlie’s attack and let him get on with his task. He had, to his credit, showed them how to prepare the fruit he had picked.

The small apple-like fruits were surprisingly good when roasted, having a kind of cinnamon taste. Layla could already feel some energy coming back to her exhausted body as she fed another piece through the feeding hatch—a small airlock system built into the helmets that allowed solid food to pass through.

The other option, Vingo had suggested, was to pulp them and put them into the suit’s liquidized food delivery system, but after a few days of that she wanted to experience solid food again.

“I’ve learned one thing while you guys were away,” Denver said. “Skertch tastes like utter crap.” He laughed, lifting the mood.

“It’s also venomous to humans,” Vingo said casually, still sitting with his back to them in the darkened shadows of the cave. “You’re lucky you didn’t start cutting into its venom sacs further into its body.”

“Good to know,” Denver said. “Though that might have been something to have told us before you took us for that little joyride over the water.”

“I’m sorry,” Vingo said.

For the first time, Layla sensed he did actually mean it, and not just in reference to the skertch info. The alien shuffled around to face them. Charlie tensed and reached his hand down to his hip where his knife was held.

Vingo saw the movement and stopped, but held out his hand toward Denver, who sat with his back to the side of the cave. “Your comm module,” Vingo said. “Fixed. Just had some loose connections… from the impact.”

Denver took it and plugged it back into the socket on the rear of his helmet. He switched over to internal comms, turning off the speakers.

“Can you all here me?” he asked.

A chorus of ‘yes’ replied.

“Good,” Charlie said. “At least we can talk without attracting god knows what other freakish animal is lurking out there.”

“There’s nothing else here,” Vingo said. “Not until the sun sets. We’re safe for now. Though the bleens might visit soon.”

“And what are they,” Charlie said. “Fifty-limbed, hook-mouthed bat dragons?”

Vingo blinked his dark eyes, only visible in the darkness due to their glossy surface reflecting the flames of the campfire. “They eat dead things. Will come for the skertch. Harmless to us.”

“Easy now, Vingo, that’s two pieces of good news you’ve given us,” Charlie said. “Whether it’s the truth is a different matter, right? Is honesty a concept with your species?”

“Yes,” Vingo said. “But it’s not linear, not binary like you humans perceive it. Truth to us holds many different aspects, some of which are more useful than others for a given moment.”

“Sounds like a whole lot of bullshit to me,” Denver said. “Hagellan was right what he said about your kind; you’re all politicians. We used to have people like you in our society too before your croatoan pals came and killed them all.”

“That’s the best thing the croatoans ever did,” Charlie said. “First the corrupt spineless politicians, then the lawyers, and after that celebrities, then everyone else. As much as I hate the croatoans, it was difficult to argue against their logic.”

Layla winced. Her parents had been involved in politics and she knew they weren’t all bad, but now wasn’t exactly the time to start a philosophical argument.

“So what now?” she said. “Now we’re all in one piece, have food and water, what’s next? My suit says that if I breathe normally, I’ve got about a single Tredeyan day before I suffocate to death.”

“Same here,” Charlie said, “though a little shorter.”

“Three-quarters of a day here until my filter’s done,” Denver added.

All three looked to Vingo.

“Well, traitor? What now, eh?” Charlie prompted. “Your people are dead, your ride off this fucking awful rock is destroyed, and the scion are taking over if the cessation of fire is what I think it is. We’re going to suffocate to death shortly, so you’ll no longer have bodyguards and meat shields to protect you. Tell me, what’s your plan B. I’m sure your kind can work something else out, right?”

“It is,” Vingo said. “We’re prized throughout the varied galactic factions for our problem-solving skills and ability to plan.”

“That sounds just peachy,” Layla said. “Perhaps you could enlighten us on your next course of action—one that preferably includes us, as you do kind of owe us.”

“I know,” Vingo said, slumping further into the shadows. He sounded tired, dejected. For the tiniest moment Layla felt sorry for him. It must have been hard to find his people killed and his ship destroyed. But like the croatoans, it was difficult to have full sympathy for a race that used humans as nothing more than disposable tools and resources—even if humans had been doing that to themselves for centuries.

The alien went still, his head slightly cocked.

A low keening voice came over the intercom.

“What is it?” Denver asked.

After a long, quiet pause, Vingo said, “The final warning signal… they’re dead… they’re all dead. The scion have taken the command center. We’re defeated. It’s… all over.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

Mike rushed through the workshop to join Mai. He dumped the burned-out parts of the weapon onto the workbench. Aimee and Ryan were on his heels and entered the room before he even had time to settle.

“I need a progress report,” she said. “Augustus’ troops are coming onto our flank; they’ve already broken through the woods.”

“Don’t you think we’re working as fast as we can? And I don’t know if you noticed, or cared, but I lost a friend today!”

Mai dropped her head and whispered something before lifting her head to look at Mike. She had tears in hers. “It’s our fault Gib’s dead,” Mai said with a soft voice.

“No, it wasn’t,” Mike said, rounding on Aimee and jabbing a finger at her with his good arm. “It’s yours. You push and push and push, not caring about how difficult this task is, how little time we had. If you just got off our backs and let us work, we could have figured it out.”

Ryan stepped forward between Mike and Aimee. But Mike just leaned back against the workbench. It was just his anger at his own failure and of losing Gib that came out with his accusations.

Aimee’s face was glistening with sweat. He knew she didn’t have it easy either, being the one at the top. The people of Unity looked to her for direction and right now things were going as wrong as they possibly could.

“I’m sorry,” Mike finally said, bringing the volume of his voice down. He rubbed his face with his hand. “I tried, I really did. I wanted the weapon to work as much as you did, but we just didn’t have enough time to test—”

“And you still don’t,” Aimee said, raising her eyebrows and giving an expression of beseeching hope. “But we do need you, we need your device to work… and as soon as possible. I’m not sure how long we can hold them off.”

A scared young woman, one of the Maria clones, entered the chamber. “Aimee, they’re at the woods; what do we do? The troops are waiting for your orders. The long rangers are preparing to keep the bikes at bay and our own riders are heading out to pick them off at the edges, but they’ll swarm us.”

Aimee’s eye twitched as she clutched her fist and shook her head. “I should have killed that bastard when I had the chance,” she muttered, then to the clone, “Tell the defense team to prepare to engage. We need to bog them down, buy some time.”

The clone’s face paled as she understood the implication.

Mike felt the pressure increase on his shoulders and Mai gasped at Aimee’s orders. It would mean that human and croatoans alike would die to buy them time. The longer they took, the more would perish.

“This isn’t fair,” Mike said. “You can’t put their deaths on us!”

“He’s right,” Mai added. “You can’t send those poor people out there to get slaughtered. What if we can’t fix the weapon? Then what?”

Aimee composed herself, her face growing hard and cold. “Then we all die. We need that weapon and as fast as possible. And yes, people will die all the time you’re figuring it out, but that’s the way it’s got to be. If you want Unity to stand, then you need to get it working. You know we don’t have the numbers or the weapons to hold on. Now let’s not waste any time. Get to work.”

Before Mike had a chance to say anything else, Aimee, along with Ryan and the clone, left the chamber, Aimee’s words still echoing around the space.

Mai leaned forward on the workbench and grabbed the burned-out device. She picked up a pair of pliers with her hand that visibly shook. Mike sat next to her and sorted through the pile of spares and parts strewn about the place.

“We can do it,” Mike said, reaching out to grip his soul mate by the shoulder.

“I… don’t think I…”

“There must be a way,” he said. “Let’s replace the transformer and see where I went wrong.”

“We,” Mai said. “It’s always we. Help me with this,” Mai said, prizing the burned fragments of the transformer from the chassis. “Ignore everything else, my love. It’s just you and me in our workshop, working together. We can do this.”

For the next fifteen minutes, in a tense silence before the storm, they worked together as a team, rebuilding the device. Along the way, Mike had spotted a few errors from before and fixed them. They were simple and he doubted they were the cause of the malfunction.

The part Gib was working on wasn’t grounded properly in the circuit, causing a potentially dangerous feedback loop. That error had been compounded by his own mistake of not matching the transformer and the transmitter’s power.

Mai soldered in some components to equalize the distribution. Mike also decided to use a transmitter from a different radio system, one that handled a wider range of frequencies. He hoped that by going wider, and including a component to sweep across the range, that they’d cover all their bases. It meant lower power overall, and it was a safer bet it would work. But the cost would be less range.

Aimee staggered into the cavern, her face pinched and tight with stress.

“We need that thing now!”

“We’re going as fast as we can,” Mike said.

“It’s not fast enough, dammit!”

Mike noticed the sweat from Mai’s forehead drip to the workbench and her hands now shaking violently. “Leave us to it,” Mike snapped.

“No,” Aimee replied, stepping toward the workbench. “I can’t leave without it. Tell me, what’s the issue, when will it be ready?”

Mai’s hand suddenly became still and she dropped the device to the bench’s surface. She clutched her chest and looked round at Mike with wide eyes full of fear. She struggled to take a breath as she stood up from her stool. She reached out a hand to Mike, but her body tensed and she collapsed before Mike could reach for her.

Mai hit the ground, her right hand clutching her left arm, her face taking on a gray pallor.

Mike pushed Aimee out of the way, kicked the stool across the workshop and fell to Mai’s side.

“Mai!” he screamed.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

Charlie sat with his back against the smooth dirt wall of the makeshift shelter beneath the overhanging tree. The river snaked down the yellow grass valley to a shimmering light blue lake. A rock formation towered over the opposite end, surrounded by undulating hills with clusters of small metallic buildings on each.

Vingo sat to Charlie’s right. He gazed toward the small settlements and fiddled with his arm-pad. Denver and Layla lay flat on their backs behind them, catching up with some well-deserved rest.

Charlie’s limbs ached and he felt every inch his age. He sipped water from his refilled system and waited for the mashed root he slipped inside the container to take effect. Within a minute his extremities tingled and the lactic-acid pain in his limbs eased.