Bloody Knuckles (And Other Tales) Page 10

  I glance back towards the pass, and the hills they should be coming over soon. “Keep an eye on the little ones when you get here.” A last line of defense. I don’t speak the words, but everyone knows the drill. The elders always stay behind.

  The settlement is all we have. There are eight of us who can wear the suits, and three more suits in storage, but Malik and Eiphan are still too small to wear them. Perhaps next summer. The two newborns are years away from using one, and Penti and Illith are gone for another week, trading for supplies and gathering information from the other settlement north of us on the Yetthi River.

  Lightning streaks across the sky again, and I repeat my prayer to gods I don’t believe in that the storm is just a storm. This far out, the only Specters who make it past the border settlements are the strongest ones, powerful enough to push past the scattered resistance, or those who have been pulled through a random rift, such as the one that will come now. To face two at once…. I push the thought out of my mind as the thunder rumbles past. We can hear it coming up the path, the distant sound of trees breaking and boulders cracking under the weight of some terrible force.

  It doesn’t wait for Marshall and Riean. I hear Clare mutter something over the channel, and the entire area is lit with a bolt of energy that streaks down from her position, finger-wide and bright blue, almost white. I hear Laina’s gasp over the channel, and even Stefan inhales deeply.

  Something massive is standing on the path below, where it converges with the valley that leads to our stream. Clare’s bolt of energy impacts against a shield that crackles with the force, dissipating the energy in a glow that envelopes the Specter. It is easily ten meters tall, a darkened shape that resembles nothing I have ever seen or heard of before in my entire life. There must be dozens of them joined together to create a projection this massive. It roars as the energy is soaked into its shield, a sound that pierces through the night and causes the children to begin crying inside the tents. The Specter raises its head towards the sky as it howls, revealing row upon row of teeth, each one easily as large as one of Stefan’s arms. It is hunched over like an animal on all fours, but as it finishes howling it stands, suddenly pulsing with a deep red glow that envelopes its entire body.

  I feel fear for the first time in years.

  Stefan is already halfway down the slope, his armored scales shimmering, reflecting that dull, red glow. Clare is firing rapidly, each shot hitting the creature in the center of its chest, but its shields are powerful. Each one of her blasts is simply absorbed into the throbbing red field which covers it. I transfer energy to my own shields, and extend a portion of my suit into my right hand. A blade shimmers into existence in my grip, three feet of nanosteel, strong enough to hopefully get past the shield that is reflecting Clare’s energy blasts. I take several deep breaths and begin to run.

  I am halfway down the slope when I feel the tingle of energy crackling over the entire surface of my suit. The twins have given us a protective barrier to shield against quantum blasts. I can see Stefan ahead of me, a lumbering mass of armored scales and energy flashes, and beyond him the Specter. It is moving uphill now, crushing trees with every stride, picking up speed. Another blast of energy paints its head with momentary blue-white light, and the Specter stumbles slightly, roaring with anger, or perhaps pain. It shakes its head as the energy dissipates through its shield, and then Stefan is there.

  I am still a hundred meters out when they meet, but I can feel the impact as I run. The sound is not unlike a bomb detonating, and the aftershock catches me mid-stride. I stumble, miss a step, and come crashing to the ground hard enough that the wind is knocked out of me. I hear Stefan roaring obscenities at the top of his voice, loud enough that I don’t need to use the comm to hear him. I shake my head, clear the mist, and spend a moment catching my breath. I peer towards the battle, but I can only see debris flying through the air, portions of trees and boulders the size of my head, surrounded by that dull red glow. I can feel physical blows landing, reverberating in the very earth itself, and I push myself to my feet. Clare’s energy blasts are still raining down on her target, and there is a visible aura of energy connecting back towards the twins, an arc of green that is crackling as it twists through the air, a rope of energy at least as thick as a man. I gather my momentum and push myself into the maelstrom.

  Pain. My suit is literally screaming at me as I push through the outer edge. Whatever this Specter is, it is using some form of quantum barrier that extends beyond the shield protecting its essence and giving it physical form, creating a whirling field of debris and energy. The nanobytes in my suit are racing, trying to keep the thing intact, and the familiar tingle that I feel when they are moving is replaced by sandpaper coursing through my veins. I gasp, transfer every spare ounce of energy into my legs, and I leap as hard as I can. A hailstorm of pebbles, shreds of wood, leaves, dirt rail against my shield. Something rips through, piercing my suit and the skin of my right thigh, drawing a line of fire across my buttock and thigh. There is a moment when time seems to stand still, when my body is suspended in the air, the debris that is surrounding the center of the storm hovering. I know it is the quantum effect, that I am between dimensions, caught in a fold of space, but I marvel despite the carnage, despite the fear that is causing my heart to race. For a moment, I am one with the universe, and I can see the quantum fields, shimmering like the northern lights. I try and bring my eyes into focus on the colors, but the nanobytes in my suit are too busy repairing the damage to my thigh, weaving flesh and repairing the hole in the suit itself.

  Time spins forward. I fall the last three meters, landing hard on my left side. The fire has left my veins, and I can feel the burn as the suit works to repair the damage to my thigh and itself. I am surrounded by energy, a crackling, whirling hurricane of quantum distortions. In the center stands the Specter. It has Stefan in one of its massive fists, and is raining blows down upon him with the other, at the same time jutting its head forward and biting with those teeth. Stefan’s scales fend off the teeth, but I can tell the blows are doing physical damage from the roars of pain every time one lands. The green rope of energy connecting to the twins is attached to Stefan; they are doing everything in their power to boost his shields. I take a moment to assess the situation, and I transfer every single nanobyte in my suit into speed. Armor will do me no good; I don’t have the proper defenses to fend off any attacks from this creature, and if one of those flying boulders or trees hits me, I am dead, regardless of how much armor energy I transfer. I do not have Stefan’s defensive capabilities. My only chance for survival is to be as swift as the wind, untouchable.

  The feeling is not unlike the quantum field effect, although time does not slow down. Rather, I am simply faster than anything else. To anyone watching I would appear as nothing more than a blurred outline moving from one place to another, but to me, I am moving normally. It is everything else which is slowed. A person can dodge bullets if they have enough speed essences pulled from Specters. My father could. I am wearing his suit. One day, when I have connected with the suit to the same level he had, I will.

  I run towards them as fast as I can. My right foot touches a boulder, launches me into midair. There is a tree thicker than my body, whirling through the air. I use it as a platform, landing on the trunk and pushing off towards the Specter, the tree pushed backwards out of its orbit by the force of my jump. I arc high above the beast, and as I fall I raise my sword above my head and bring it down with the force of every fiber in my being. Something tears in my shoulder, and three feet of nanosteel saws through the crackling energy field surrounding the Specter, cleaving through the top of its shoulder, working its way downwards. My body dangles from the blade, connected to it through my suit. The crackling energy from the Specter’s shield meshes with my own suit, and the shields create a vertigo effect so powerful that it is nearly blinding in its intensity.

  I fight the urge to vomit. I see red, nothing but red, and my arm is on fire. I feel some
thing slipping, and then my sword is through. The Specter howls in pain as its arm falls to the ground, severed from its body, streams of energy spewing forth along with blood, all the colors of the spectrum at the same time. I ignore the pain in my shoulder and arm and push off the Specter’s thigh with my legs, leaping sideways towards a chunk of rock that is spinning through the air, large enough to call a slab. The sky is lit with blue-white light as Clare fires off another burst, and the Specter releases Stefan from its grip as it staggers back towards the new threat. Me.

  My feet connect with the slab of rock and I turn, just in time to see the Specter’s remaining arm reaching for me, six-inch nails protruding from its fingers. It is moving slowly, far too slowly to catch me, and I launch myself from the rock towards its other shoulder, swinging my blade at its hand as I leap, severing one of its fingers. The Specter howls in rage. Below me, I see Stefan gathering himself from the ground, debris bouncing off his armored scales as he shrugs his shoulders and rushes towards the Specter’s back. I reach out with my right foot to land on the Specter’s right shoulder, when suddenly the creature is no longer there. I am falling, with nothing between me and the ground but open air. I feel a surge in the quantum fields and the Specter blinks back into existence, only now it is moving at lightning speed to match my own, its remaining hand reaching for me. I brace myself for impact when something tugs at me from above. I am surrounded by a green thread of crackling energy that pulls me back, just out of reach of the claws that swipe through where I was just a nanosecond earlier.

  Stefan does not wait. There is another repercussion as though a bomb has gone off, and I twist in the green thread to see the Specter falling towards the ground, energy spilling from its open wounds in a swirling mass of colors that crackle with energy. I shout for the twins to release me, and the green energy thread pushes me downwards, releasing me several meters above the fallen creature. Stefan’s armored form is trapped beneath its legs, struggling to rise. Clare’s energy bursts continue to rain down, pummeling the Specter’s shields. The twins have turned their attention now to the Specter, and I can see a field of energy pushing the creature downwards as they focus all of their attention on keeping it locked in place..

  I land on the creature’s back, the muscles of its body taut with tension as it tries to push back against the twin’s field of energy spreading across its entire body like a web. It writhes beneath my feet, making it hard to stand. I plunge my sword. There is resistance, like cutting through a bone, but the blade pierces through its shields and its skin, streams of energy spouting from the wound. Stefan is there suddenly, his hands grasping at the creature’s throat, tearing literal chunks from its flesh. Together we work, swiftly, severing the creature’s final ties to life. The howls of pain from beneath us reverberate through the forest, but we are alone in the mountains. We chose this place for a reason.

  The cries grow weaker, and with each wound the creature’s struggling becomes less. The maelstrom around us finally collapses, and we can literally feel the creature go limp beneath us as Stefan rips a final chunk from its throat. I take a deep breath, wincing at the pain in my shoulder. Stefan looks at me. We are bathed in light, not only from the twins, but also from the energy of the Specter itself, pooling outwards from its body and streaming towards our suits, attracted to the quantum essences already within. We step off the body, dropping to the ground. I let the sword go, the nanobytes collecting in my suit. I can feel them at work within my shoulder, repairing the tear to the muscles. The damage is bad enough it will take a few days to heal, but nothing permanent.

  There is a moment during the transition when you literally feel as though you are standing on the brink of a cliff, with nothing but empty space below you. It is a feeling of absolute nothingness, where the only things in existence are you and the Specter. It is in that moment, on the brink of the cliff, that you must push back your fear and embrace the energy of the Specter. I do not completely understand the technical aspects of it, but the nanobytes in our suits are programmed to access the quantum field and take the essence of a fallen Specter into the suit. When you are there, it feels like a rush of warmth flooding your body, a crackling of energy that has every hair on your body standing straight on end, and you can literally see the essence of the Specter dwindling as you take its energy into your own suit, until nothing is left but a hollow shell.

  The full change is upon Stefan. I hear Clare inhale sharply over the comm as she watches. His body begins to glow with a strange light that I cannot describe, and the scales which are covering his body begin to ripple as his shoulders suddenly surge, expanding. He throws back his head and howls, and his form begins to change before our very eyes as the Specter beneath him shrivels away and disappears. There is a bright flash of light that causes me to shield my gaze, and what is left standing is something I have never seen before. It looks almost like a wolf, but it is covered in armored scales and bristling with spikes along its back that crackle with a purple energy. It is easily large enough to carry two full-grown men upon its back. It turns its head to look back upon itself, and Stefan’s voice fills the comm.

  “Holy shit.”

  It is a statement filled with such solemnity and awe that I cannot help but burst into laughter despite the weariness plaguing me, despite the burning sensation in my shoulder and thigh. He has made the change for the first time. I can only imagine what he must be feeling right now, and my heart is filled with joy. No lives lost tonight, not like last time. We have grown stronger.

  I turn to head back up the path to the camp, and I pause as something wet splashes against my face. I turn my face to the sky as the rain begins to fall. It looks like my prayers were answered.

  Richter: A Bounty Hunter’s Tale

  By T.W. Anderson

  Ahhh, Jeffrey Donnivan. This was the first story I wrote for this character, and I immedietely fell in love with working on him. The primary inspiration was every Roger Zelazny novel I’ve ever read, and before I was even halfway through with the story I knew I was going to be working with him many times over in the future.

  This story was written sometime around late 2008; I don’t remember exactly when. There are drafts for at least half a dozen Donnivan stories out there, and I can’t wait to sink my teeth into the first novel for this character.

  My stomach had stopped complaining nearly two hours ago, which meant Barry was even further behind schedule than usual. I was on my third cup of coffee and sixth cigarette when he finally came through the door, his large frame draped by a snow-covered jacket that hung to his knees. As he threw back his hood I noticed he’d grown his hair out since the last time we’d seen each other. It was unkempt and his sandy beard had him looking like those pictures you can find on pre-Scattering humans, specifically the northern ones. Scandinavian, I think they were called. I motioned him over as his eyes scanned the tavern, and he grinned as he made his way to the table.

  “Nasty weather outside,” he said as he scooted into the booth.

  “Not as nasty as the news I have.”

  His face turned serious. “I was hoping your vid was a joke on old times.” He sighed and slid into a more relaxed position. “You’re sure it’s Ferdalis?”

  I nodded. When your life was on the line, it was rather difficult to make mistakes in regards to the seriousness of the matter.

  His shoulders sagged. “You do realize there are more profitable employers out there, right? Ones that aren’t itching to put a blaster shot between your shoulders?”

  “I need your help, Barry.”

  “Damn it, Donnivan.”

  “I’m serious, Barry. The Eriook episode? I think this is the aftermath we were worried about back then.”

  “Come on, Jeff. That was almost fifteen years ago. Surely you don’t think that after all this time—”

  I cut him off. “I don’t have to think. I saw it. It’s real.”

  A small disc suddenly rose from the center of the table with a small whoosh of air,
two cups of coffee in its center. I gave one to Barry, took the other, placed my empty one on the disc, watched it disappear back into the table. I took a sip and flicked the game switch on the side of the table. The top went transparent, revealing the holo game selections within. “Cribbage?” Barry nodded and I picked the appropriate symbol. The cards were dealt and the game began.

  Three rounds went by before either one of us spoke.

  “You saw it.” He meant it as a question but it was more of a statement. He raised his eyes from the table and fixed them on me again. “Are you sure you weren’t hallucinating? You’ve been known to indulge from time to time.”

  “I wasn’t indulging,” I replied dryly. “I was sitting at a table enjoying lunch on one of those terraces overlooking the Ghouland River in Trupare, on Dunair. Have you been?”

  He nodded.

  I filled him in on the details. It had been a glorious morning, and I had been enjoying an early lunch before heading back to the hangar to deal with customs on my way out. Renée had already dealt with most of the paperwork herself, but I still had to sign off on a couple of packages before the greedy bastards would be satisfied. Still, a man has to eat, and I can’t begrudge a little padding of the pockets here and there, considering more often than not it saves me the hassle of dealing with questions that don’t need answering.

  Of particular interest that morning, aside from the food, was the spectacular redhead sunning herself on the terrace below along the banks of the river. She enjoyed being watched, because she kept turning to look up at me and several others who were just as captivated, a slow smile on her face each time she arched her back and curved that long neck of hers around to check the raptness of her audience. I didn’t mind the competition; beauty is meant to be admired.