“Do you take the meds or is it encoded?”
“I choose not to.” Vel responded, “I prefer to get back to nature, wherever I might find it and let the process happen naturally. Every fifty years or so, give or take a few hard fights in between.”
“Are you just being coy about your age? You've never struck me as vain.”
“A long time ago, I chose to stop measuring my life by meaningless numbers.”
“Well, I suppose that saves you a whole lot of mathin'.”
“Sure does,” Vel told her. He reached a hand out and gently caught Aariel's shoulder, delicately spinning her around. Her face flushed red. “This door, kid.”
For a few long moments Aariel stood in stunned silence, simply staring at the project Vel had been working on for the past few months. Finally, she asked, “How in the bloody hell is it doing that?”
“Think of it as a molecularly unstable super-diamond.” Vel told her. He reached out, grabbing the handle of a weapon that was hovering in its display, shifting shape from sword to axe and all other manner of melee weapons. “I've got 150 presets in it. The handle is an ultra dense rubber compound housing the controls, so certain unexpected electrical surges won't affect it one bit.”
“How sharp can you make it?” Aariel asked, surprised by the sudden anger that was overcoming her. Aaric's death was still so fresh.
“It'll cut through just about anything with minimal effort,” Vel told her as he shifted the weapon into a traditional longsword and swung it in a perfect arc. “Lelantos, simulated core sample please. There are about two dozen, by the way.”
“Fuck me...” She gasped as Vel split the miniaturized core of a planet in two. The nanotubes quickly reassembled themselves and returned to a resting position in the stasis field.
“If slicing through the equivalent of a small planet's core turns you on, then I feel like I should be seriously worried about you.”
“Alright Lelantos, have that second flea in orbit behind the asteroid debris as soon as we open weapons on his work site.”
“Affirmative, sir.”
“Remember Aariel, precision shots,” Vel said, knowing she probably wouldnt listen. “We aren't trying to kill him. We just want him to take the bait.”
“My hands are feeling extra slippery today. Must have caught a touch of the Bolenza Slime Bug,” Aariel replied, glaring at Vel. He laughed. She glared more intensely. Eventually she gave up, he didn't give a damn if she needed this or not. It was his ship, his rules. Fuck him and his ship. Well maybe not the ship, Lelantos was pretty bitchin'.
“I feel compelled to remind you that we can not phase without Rosie's authorization.”
Ok, fuck the ship too. Stupid robo-asshole.
“Hard drop out of orbit, don't tear that flea up in atmo, but get it to my beacon as soon as the first takes off or you two will be stuck dealing with this fucker by yourself.”
“So you want Lelantos to blow the second flea and maroon you long enough for me to flay this son of a bitch?” Aariel said, not entirely joking. Her brother deserved revenge. She should be the one to pull the trigger, not Vel. What did it mean to him anyway? He was a glorified bounty hunter, he'd probably killed thousands of dirtbags before. This one was hers, whether he liked it or not.
“Not exactly. Don't do anything stupid and get yourself killed. This thing can match me in raw strength,” Vel told her, sensing she would try to anyway. He didn't need to be able to read her to know that though.
“Alright kid, weapons free,” Vel whispered into his comm once the flea set down a few clicks from the worksite and the mark's ship. “Remember, no casaulties. He's to be brought in alive.”
Aariel didn't respond, but Vel knew she had commenced firing within a moment or two. He stepped out of the flea and watched as the orbital bombardment came blazing through the atmosphere. The mark had picked up the Flea as it set down, Vel made sure of that. He didn't bother turning on the camo or dampeners.
Vel watched the explosions for a few moments, waiting until he was satisfied that no escape pods were launched. He put on his helmet, which he only wore when he absolutely had to and sped off into the jungle. This planet was already dying before their target had arrived. A recent impact had layered the sky with thick, choking dust. Even under a young sun, the sky was a hazy red. A pilot had to rely on instruments alone to navigate or he'd end up flattened against a cliff before he realized it was there.
“Alright Lelantos, bait is in position,” Vel pressed a few buttons on his palm display as he ran, activating the suit's stealth capabilities. “Three clicks to rendezvous site. Send the flea down as soon as he hits orbit. Commence full radio silence. No response from any systems unless ordered by myself or your pilot.”
“Affirmative,” Lelantos chirped and the comm went dead. The Flea would now be on manual controls only. By the time mark realized that Lelantos had a central AI, he would be in the bowels of the mainship itself and it would be far too late to escape.
All these dead trees. It's a damn shame. Vel thought he had even spied massive bones of some long dead animal as he was shimmying up a tree to get a view of the Flea taking off.
Vel was beginning to think Aariel had fragged the son of a bitch when he finally saw the afterburners of the ship cutting a hole in the smoke. His ride back would arrive any moment. The flea would drop out of orbit and into the haze, out of site thanks to the smoke and undetectable by the other Flea.
“Fuck,” Vel groaned as he watched the other Flea tilt off course and plow a hole through the canopy more than five clicks away. Something had collided with it as it left the holding position. The mark would have a good ten minutes longer than he had anticipated. In that amount of time, there was no telling what heavoc he could wreak.
Vel dropped from the tree and sprinted toward the crash site. Even as fast as Vel was, the distance felt like a hundred parsecs. He couldn't let another mistake cost him another pilot.
“By the gods...” Vel gasped when he reached the Flea. She had a massive hole in the right rear thruster. The damage couldn't have happened in the debris, Lelantos would have compensated long before hitting atmo. Could she really have done this? Is she even capable of....
Vel couldn't worry about that now, he needed to take that thruster offline manually and hobble back to the main ship before the mark tore through the first set of security doors.
Aariel smiled as she fired one extra shot, finishing off the bombardment. Now all she had to do was wait. Before long she watched as a crippled flea struggled into the planet's grasp and another burst through the thick layer of sediment.
The anticipation was killing her. She tried to pass the minutes by double checking all of her weapons. She looked over the mark's anatomy for the twenty seventh time. Tripedal with multiple long tentacle like arms and hudreds of electrified quills covering the torso. It used a form of sonar based on pulses in the electrical current of the air to detect prey. The eyes were crude, blind to anything more than a few meters away. He wasn't really a he. The species was asexual, but rarely reproduced. They were too aggressive, even toward their own kind. Aariel wanted its head on a pike, but there really wasn't enough of a neck to properly decapitate the damn thing.
So lost in though was Aariel that she didn't even realize the first Flea had docked. It was only the airlock alarm that alerted her to the mark's presence.
“Lelantos, ready all combat droids. Position them in the main corridor, out of sight. We'll draw him in and let them kick the shit out of the bastard for a while, then drag him up here.”
“I'm sorry, but that plan conflicts with my instructions from Vel,” Lelantos replied.
“Don't fuck with me. You know something hit his Flea. He may be stranded until we can safely get another shuttle down to him.”
“This plan has a very low rate of success.”
“Then you better try really fucking hard. Do it. Now.”
The main corridor was long and dark. Many anatomy jokes
had been made about it. The corridor ran the length of Lelantos, from the stern to crunchdeck to bow. She was made that way to absorb and recoil energy. That's how Lelantos had shattered a massive asteroid, as if it were a cube of ice using a ball pin hammer. It was hardcore.
That ugly sonnuvabitch was making his way to Aariel. The stupid ass kid had fucked up everything. Hadn't she? What else could have made that kind of hole? Only a stray ricochet from a failed jump, Lelantos would have told him. Of fucking course that wasn't it. That was ridiculous. This bastard wasn't smart enough to make a planet based jump. He was monosyllabic for fuck's sake. Without his interpreter, this cocksucker couldn't utter so much as a whimper for help. The interpreter had always been Vel's first target.
No chance. No pity. No room for resistance.
He would die without the ability to even apologize. Not that an apology would help anyone. Vel's closest friend in 10,000 years had died at his hands. The sister of his companion had just tried to kill him. Hadn't she?
Fuck it. There was no time to think about it now. Vel had 3.1 km of corridor to stalk this whore's whelp and he was already a kilometer behind.
Vel slid his finger down the shaft of his new weapon. Slowly, silently it reshaped into a vicious rapier. Not straight at all, but with jagged edges running the length. He felt only a sexual anticipation from his mark. Vel had died in his mind. The mark would ravage this ship soon enough.
Without a word Vel leapt out of the shadows and drove the jagged rapier through his gut. A hundred electrified bristles exploded from the mark's skin, but Vel was gone. The target's organ's were serrated and torn assunder due to the angle of the blade. It was not a wound easily fixed. None of the quills struck home. Vel was gone. Long fucking gone. He had become something more.Giving into his rage. Vel had ascended to something deadlier. He had become something else. Something... Untouchable.
The Final Flight of the Phaseship Lelantos: Part 3
“Tingles, doesn't it?” Vel whispered, letting the echo carry through the monstrous corridor.
The mark bellowed and shot another hundred or so quills in all directions. Each missing.
“This ship is part of me,” Vel laughed. “I can feel someone take a breath through an airshaft, even when they're 5 kilos away.”
The target spun wildly, frantically searching for the Hunter. It was so discombogulated that the creature hadn't even noticed Vel was now standing just a meter away, with ulaks in his hands.
“You'll only ever find me if I allow it,” Vel growled, slashing the bladed knuckles across its torso, then spinning and lopping off two of the creature's many arms.
The mark screeched, desperately clawing, biting, and shooting quills. Vel was gone. He had melted back into the hull.
“Coward!” The mark rasped, the word came slowly in a sickening guttural voice, via its interpreter.
“Run,” Vel whispered into its ear as he lopped off three more limbs. The alien's electric discharge was utterly useless with the weapons Vel had made. The inserts in his boots and leg armoring absorbed any shock that the weapons didn't disperse.
And run it did. The mark tore through the corridor heading toward the crunch deck. The very place he'd fatally wounded Aaric. He dies there. On the spot my brother fell, Vel had vowed.
Jumping deftly from the railings and girders, Vel lobbed spear after spear into the bastard's back. They were little more than tips until thrown with just the right power. The shafts expanded midair, just before each dug into the scum's hide.
Somersaulting thirty meters ahead, Vel landed softly, swinging the ulaks up once more. This time he took the creature's last arm and a sizeable portion of its lower jaw. Vel bounced off the railing and landed behind it before the mark could react. He slammed each spear ferociously, sinking them deeper into its hide.
This time Vel lingered too long, perhaps he was overconfident. Three bristles burst into his chest. It was enough to knock the hunter on his ass, but the creature did not turn. It ran. Straight ahead, straight to Aariel.
The surge of the bristles was nothing Vel couldn't handle. His skin was hard, they barely penetrated. Vel swiped the ulak down, angrily lopping the bristles off. He would extract the points later.
A faint vibration began to radiate outward from the crunch deck. The mark wouldn't have noticed, even though he was a mere two hundred meters from the door. Vel knew though. Aariel had snapped and unless he got out of this corridor, he'd soon be dead along with the mark.
Leaping to the girders Vel pushed himself harder than he ever had in his nearly endless existence. Long lived though he was, Vel knew he could still die. Just like the rest of his kind had, so very long ago.
Vel overtook the mark and leapt feet first into the crunch deck. He didn't need to look, he knew exactly where the molecular distabilizer would be set up.
Aariel screamed in rage as she saw the Mark, ready to blast him and the entire back half of the ship into oblivion.
She was not fast enough though. Humans had always been so damned slow. Instead she found Vel's knee connect with her right shoulder, shattering the collar bone and her upper arm, along with a few ribs. The cannon fell idly to the ground. The humming gradually fading. Aariel flew through the air, slamming into the back of a chair.
“Vel,” she gasped with something between shock and terror in her eyes. He saw himself reflected in them. His face contorted with rage.
Three strides away. It leapt. Vel saw that reflected in her eyes as well, he didn't need to though. The subtle shifts in the air, the stench of the blood filling his nose, the thundering of its massive frame shaking the grating told him more than enough.
Vel shifted slightly to the side, swung an arm out, caught the mark by its disgusting fucking face and slammed it head first into the ground at Aariel's feet. It's skull was fractured, breath raspy and labored, and it had all but bled out, yet it was still alive.
“You're remarkably hard to kill,” Vel said, yanking each and every remaining quill from its body. “Then again, you're kind is quite adaptable, isn't that right? Fucking parasite.”
“The containment cell is ready, sir.” Lelantos said. “Aariel is not going to be happy that you manually over-rode her control of the bots.”
“Aariel is unconscious,” Vel replied. “Again.”
“Yes, that does seem to happen quite often.”
“Have one of the droids cauterize this fuck-knobs missing limbs,” Vel ordered. “He doesn't get to die that easy. I'm going to make this last a very long time.”
“Affirmative, sir.” Lelantos replied as a droid finally moved from the position Vel had ordered them to stand guard. “As for Aariel?”
“Let's wake her up,” Vel growled. He placed his hand on her broken shoulder and squeezed.
“Sir, was that necessary?” Lelantos asked as Aariel shrieked in agony.
“You tell me!” Vel shot back. “What the fuck happened to my flea?”
“Sir...”
“Not you, tincan!” Vel barked. “Her. The only reason you're still alive after risking my life and my ship is because I loved your brother. So you've got one fucking chance to answer me or I swear to whichever pathetic god you worship, that I will end you in a manner befitting the scum in that containment cell.”
“Vel...” Aariel whispered, barely conscious and in shock, “It... I...”
Her eyes widened and she gasped before passing out again.
“All she does is sleep.” Vel laughed. Suddenly he wasn't angry anymore. He was afraid. Terrified of the reflection he caught in her eyes as she slipped back under.
“Nyarrggh, nyarrgghh, nyargh, looks like I kill more boy of yours.” The mark chuckled from its cell.
“Your voice seems to have improved after I lopped off part of your jaw,” Vel said. He slammed his fist into the wall of the containment cell. The mark stumbled backward, unaware that the forcefield was impenetrable.
“Now, I kill you too,” It gurgled, “No time f
or jump!”
“Lelantos, give me the planetary readings. NOW!” Vel yelled, turning to his console. “Have that medidroid tend to Aariel. Rebuild those bones and quick.”
“Affirmative,” Lelantos replied as a thousand readings sprang to life on the displays. “Sir, the abnormalities are not coming solely from the planet. Its parent star seems unstable.”
“Unstable how? How the fuck did we miss that when we arrived?”
“Data logs indicate this is a new development.”
“It takes us all Hoon-ter,” the mark gloated.
“Lelantos, drop shield.” Vel ordered, then leapt across the bridge and drove his fist so hard into the mark's face that it bent the metal behind them. “Put them back on. We don't have time for that fuck to run his mouth.”
“Analyzing scenarios, sir.”