Great fic so far.
High praise, coming from a Falcon!
A real Frankenstein mech.
Really good fic so far. :thumbsup:
Thanks mate, been fun writing this one.
* * *
“Give me your wrist,” he said to Phoebe, drawing his combat knife.
He felt for her in the darkness, laid the blade against her skin, under the bondcord. And cut it, with a quick upward flick. “There,” he said. “You are no longer my prisoner.”
“So?” Uncertain, hesitant.
“So go to your friends.” He planted a foot against the small of her back, and sent her shocked, stumbling, blinking, sprawling from their hiding place, out into the road.
The men froze at the sudden sound, some dropping into a crouch, others bringing up their rifles. There was a moment of confusion as they spotted her, with her battered, mismatched armor.
“
Tiray na! Suiz tomo!” Phoebe shouted, on her knees amid the rubble, holding her hands high. “
Ehlyana teki laddan, an Marian mairkure. Ehlyaveh ma trappay, may sui-zayshappay delooi.”
“
Vzet tomo? Compri.” The commander of the ’Mech waved towards the building, a great sweeping arm motion. “
Le mairkure. Mitsukay-leh. Jivoo jooay, ankore.”
The six soldiers trotted cautiously forward, submachineguns at the ready, flowing around Phoebe where she crouched, as the
Ostscout followed slowly behind, blade held upright once again. Once it was past, Phoebe scrambled to her feet, and bolted for the far side of the road, leaped over the power cables and threw herself down again behind a silver ground car, dotted with round black bullet holes like flies on a decaying corpse.
She waited, unmoving.
From the building where she’d hidden with Furey came the echoing eagle-screech of gyroslug gunfire. She listened, counting. Five. Five shots. Now there was the chatter of a submachinegun. A quiet moment, two, three, only the sound of her heartbeat in her eardrums. Screech. That was six. They’d be dead now, she felt sure, all six would be dead. The submachinegun had fallen silent.
“
Ta t’chay le? Oi! Ta t’chay le? Kotaryon!”
Phoebe risked peaking around the front bumper of the car.
The commander in the
Ostscout was still visible from the waist up, yelling, bending forwards toward the building, waving a stubby black pistol in the air. The ’Mech took a step towards the building, then another, blade swinging menacingly now, describing a figure eight in the air.
A shadow detached from the building’s third floor, and dropped on the commander, cutting short his orders with a startled scream. Something flashed up there, cold and bright, Phoebe saw, as the shadow—Furey—enfolded the man from behind, raised the flashing light, and brought it stabbing down into the man’s chest and throat, like a piston, over and over again.
The ’Mech twisted violently right, left, like a dog trying to escape its collar, trying to shake the shadow. The rag doll of the dead commander flopped from the cupola, then fell, shaken free. Furey, however, clung to the top.
The ’Mech staggered away from the building, a step or two, then rightened, and began to run. Furey still clinging to the head, the bouncing run jarring one hand free, leaving only one hand holding on. It was running, still running, straight towards Phoebe. It would go past her in seconds. Let it go, she told herself, let it go and take the mad petri-dish man with it. But then. Cutter was a murderer, and petri-boy had spared her life.
She dashed into the middle of the road, grabbed one of the wormlike black cables, plastic insulation still rain slick in her hands, grabbed it, tucked it under her armpit, and hauled. Hauled and ran back towards the car. Hauled until a length, a few meters, was about waist height across the road. Ankle height on a BattleMech.
The
Ostscout’s leg caught on the cable, stumbling just for a brief second before the it was yanked from Phoebe’s hands by the force of impact and she was sent sprawling in the dust, but slowing enough, enough for Furey to get a grip on the top of the cupola with one hand, the commander’s autopistol in the other.
Furey stuck his head and shoulders down through the hole, into the cockpit, right behind the pilot, and pressed the gun against the back of the man’s neck. “Stop,” Furey said.
The man froze, bringing the ’Mech to a juddering halt.
“Up. Out.”
Furey crawled backwards out of the cupola, keeping the pistol trained on the pilot, watched as the man extracted his hands from sensor gloves controlling the two arms, grabbed the sides of the cupola rim and slowly haul himself out of the cockpit. He was young, Furey could see, maybe still a teenager even, smooth-shaven, drenched in sweat that ran in rivers down the side of his face. Furey aimed the pistol right between the man’s eyes.
“You are my prisoner,” Furey told the pilot. The man nodded, jerkily. “I could kill you quite easily, just as you killed those people.” No reaction, other than wide-eyed terror. “How does it feel?”
The man—the boy, he corrected himself—said nothing, going almost cross-eyed looking at the muzzle of the gun.
“I asked you a question,” Furey repeated softly. “How. Does. It. Feel?”
“I’m scared,” the boy squeaked.
“And?”
“And nothing!” he cried. “Just scared, okay? Scared. Really scared. I’ll give you anything, please, anything. Only please don’t kill me.”
“You have learned your lesson?”
“Yeah, yes, okay, oh Unity, okay. Lesson learned. I won’t never do it again.”
“Good.” Furey took his finger from the trigger, and let the pistol point upwards. “Warriors must pit themselves against warriors, my boy, otherwise they are nothing but bandits, stra—hmm, parasites, animals, fit only for slaughter. Do you understand?”
“Yeah, sure, I unnerstand, whatever you say.” The kid nodded jerkily. “You gonna let me go?”
Furey smiled, and sighed. “Of course not, animal.” The pistol swept down, halted a centimeter before the kid’s right eye, and fired.
The head rocked back, skull blown out, carrying the whole body with it, toppling off the ’Mech and tumbling six meters to the ground, where it landed with a wet, pathetic thump. Furey stood on top of the Ostcout, looking down at it, disgusted.
These people had hunted his family, killed his brothers and sisters, his uncles and aunts, even as they allowed cancers like this to fester in their hearts.
He caught sight of Phoebe, pushing herself back to her feet, beating the dust from her knees. Well, the cancer from some of their hearts, he allowed.
“
Ta mair. You could’ve told me, you
ayspez divash,” she said accusingly. “What you were thinking? I could’ve helped.”
“My apologies. I was not sure where your loyalties lay. You did help me, though.” Furey looked down at her. “Why?”
She shrugged a little. “Because it was Cutter,” she said. “Didn’t you never do anything just ‘cause it’s the right thing to do?”
He pursed his lips in thought a moment. Victory had always made its own morality, he felt, which meant there was no objective ‘right’ thing to do. He suspected this was true for the Spheroids as much as his own people, that what was ‘right’ was little more than a list of things one was inclined to do in any event, provided one was strong enough to overrule any objections. Altruism, though? “No.”
“Now there’s a surprise,” she said. “
Ayspez dicoshon. You could’ve told me.”
“I freed you,” Furey told her, stifling his irritation. He peered down into the fetid darkness of the cockpit, trying to make out its controls. “You can go, if you like.” Offhand, not looking at her.
“What, like, a 10-minute head start and then you begin hunting me?”
He looked back down at Phoebe, frowning. “What an odd suggestion.”
“It’s traditional out here.”
“Ah, well, tradition got me where I am today.” Returning his attention to the cockpit.
She snorted, a startled sound, laughing in spite of herself. “Right. Can see why you’d be against it then.” A brief pause. “You gonna throw down the ladder or what? I know there’s seating for two up there.”
“You would join me?”
“Not like I got anywhere better to be,” she said. “Least you seem half-human. Which is more’n most can say. But next time, tell me when you’re planning on somethin’ stupid like that, ‘kay?”
“I will keep it in mind.” Furey found the rolled-up ladder, attached to the underside of the rim of the cupola. He untied it, threw the end over the side and let gravity unwind it clattering down. Watched her slowly clamber up, reached out a hand and helped her up the last little bit.
She stood for a moment, body close to his, hands on his chest. “Don’t take this the wrong way but,” she said, and planted a kiss on his lips. “Just the adrenaline talking. Don’t get any ideas. You know—”
“Yes, yes, sausage confetti. I remember.”
“Good. Let’s get going.”