I stepped over to the door, noting the blast had removed some of the floor. Parts of Mutes coated everything else; it looked like it had been spray painted with some grisly formula a gothic lover would get at Home Depot. I avoided the still smoldering hole in the floor and looked for anything coming our way. Chaplin was beside me doing the same. Stirrix thankfully was next.
“Drababan,” was all I could say to her. I think I must have yelled it several decibels louder than necessary because she placed a large hand to her head.
She got the meaning along with the survivors and we were on the move back the way we had come. Each step I regained some of my former self. By the time we got back to the area Dee was in, I was pretty much good to go, except for the hearing and the blood leaking from my nose and ears.
“Dee!”
“Michael, it is indeed good to see you on this plane.”
“Can’t hear much!” I told him, although I could see his mouth moving. He repeated his words at a louder volume.
“Gonna blow the door! Get back!”
“I do not think that wise!”
“Yeah, me neither.” I was already tearing my newest rifle down and reversing the discharge. He had pulled back from the door and I would imagine was telling those with him to seek cover.
I was holding the rifle wondering why it wasn’t working when Dee came back to the hole.
“Run, you fool!”
That, I heard. Whatever pitch the rifle was humming at was completely lost to me. I dropped the rifle and hauled ass away and down an offshoot. Chaplin was smiling as he picked me up and ran further and faster. We were both airborne as the concussion rippled through the ship. Luckily we were far enough away that I didn’t suffer the same damage as I had previously. Most likely my brain would have just leaked through my nose if that had been the case. The part of the ship we were now in was encased in a fog of smoke that made seeing past your fingertips impossible. Coupled with my deafness, that made for an eerie feeling. I felt like I was in The Fog and the monsters that would come out here were easily as bad as anything Hollywood could dream up.
Faintly I could hear the Genos talking. Didn’t matter, I couldn’t understand them anyway. Chaplin at some point had put me down…not sure when that happened. He lightly pushed me to my knee, and what I could see of the Genos around me showed that they were on one knee as well. Those who had weapons had them pointed outwards. Until the dust settled, moving was not a good idea. The cover was our protection for the moment. I felt slight vibrations in my legs and thought something was running. Or more like some things and it was getting closer. Wisdom dictated it was Dee but I wasn’t sure. Even if I went out to greet him chances were I’d get trampled like a Black Friday shopper trying to get a television for cheap. There was more conversation and no firing so odds were increasing it was Dee.
“Michael, I have seen you look better!” Dee was nearly in my face. He’d startled the hell out of me.
“Yeah, I’ve felt better, although it is good to see you.”
“What now?”
“Do you really believe that I’ve thought this out past this moment?”
“No, I did not. It is nice to hope from time to time.”
Faintly I heard garbled talking over the intercom. It could have been because this area of the ship was in serious need of repair or my damaged eardrums. In the end, it didn’t much matter. Alarm spread throughout the Genos around me. I looked to Dee.
“The Progerian Command has authorized the murder of the Genogerians held captive in their housing area.”
Stirrix was getting ready to bolt and go help.
“It’s a trap, Dee.”
“You know that, I know that. They all know that, Michael. What else would you have them do?” I shrugged. “These are their kinsmen.”
“Can we get to the bridge? Seems to me they want to pull our focus away from there.”
Dee thought about it for a moment. “I do not believe Stirrix will wish to stray from the course of action she is discussing.”
“She’s so willing to die?”
“To save the others? Yes. You do not truly understand the gift you have given them. Just the small taste of freedom that has slipped past their lips is the sweetest of ambrosia. You have been free most of your life…how did it taste when you were off the Julipion the first time?”
“You’re going to make a damn fine lawyer someday. Fine, first we free the Genos then we storm the bridge.”
“Excellent,” Dee replied.
The high-pitched whining in my ears was slowly fading. My equilibrium, which had been sketchy, was also returning. I’d stopped, stumbling into Dee’s legs a good fifty feet previous. I think at first he thought I was playing with him as I kept falling into him. But then once he noticed I was also bouncing off the wall with as much frequency, he stopped shoving me away and just kind of set me straight. We had only a couple of dozen Genos, most of them unarmed. Chaplin had given me his weapon after I’d blown up my last one. He’d thrust it into my hands, nearly breaking them as he did so. He’d grunted in satisfaction when I finally was able to shake the pain out of my fingers and grip the rifle correctly.
“New friend?” Dee had asked.
“I sure do know how to pick them.”
“That is wonderful sarcasm, Michael. Because now you are implying that I am a less than desirable companion.”
“I’m not implying.”
“Even more! You are a master at your craft!”
“Funny, how we can create our own realities. Does Stirrix have a plan that doesn’t involve us all getting killed?”
“Of course she does, she is not you,” Dee said in hushed tones as we approached the Geno housing area.
“How is this whole scenario even remotely possible?” My statement was met with a disapproving stare from Stirrix.
“She wishes you to be quiet,” Dee translated unnecessarily.
“I got that.”
Stirrix now looked like she was going to rip my lips off. I put my hands up in a placating manner, whatever the gesture translated to in Geno-speak seemed to take the focus off of me, or it could have been the Devastators coming. Looking back that was more likely the cause.
It was their armor that saved us, as strange as that sounds. The helmets they were wearing wrapped nearly around their entire faces, destroying a large portion of their peripheral vision. A column of them passed us by on a hallway that angled away from ours. I thought that crap only happened in movies. How many times had I seen that exact thing? I always cried, “bullshit”. It would have just taken one soldier to turn his head over his left shoulder and there we would be, like a herd of deer caught under a huge spotlight. We were frozen, we dared not move. We looked like a picture, stuck in time like that.
There was humor there, maybe not at that very moment, but when I had a chance to think back on this I would remember seeing Dee, mouth open about to tell me to be quiet, one hand coming up with an admonishing finger. His left leg hovered above the ground. He swayed with the movement of the ship. When the Mutes had passed so had the immediate danger. There was a collective sigh of relief, well at least from me. The sight of the Mutes seemed to infuriate the Genos. It was a death squad dispatched to kill their friends and for some unknown reason they were taking that pretty personally.
I knew the hallway we were supposed to take because the Mutes had just gone down it. Stirrix had other plans. Good for her, I could only wonder how she did it. She brought us to a door. This was it, time for another round. I wasn’t quite sure which one; I’d been sort of out of it when the cute girl holding the round card had strutted around. Always miss the good stuff.
When the door opened up and there were no immediate shots I had a surge of hope. Or more likely it was the flood of dread leaving me. Both were welcome feelings. It was a closet and a utility one at that. Apparently ships across the galaxies needed to have their decks swabbed. This one was automated but still needed to be serviced, new water put in a
nd old water taken out. Unless the bucket doubled as a bomb I didn’t see the sense in why we were all trying to stuff ourselves inside. And speaking of bombs I was getting pretty sick of the damn things. What I couldn’t see from the forest of Genos was the door on the far side. I only noticed it because of the light that was now spilling in from it.
“It’s a bathroom,” I mumbled, and then it dawned on me why once again we weren’t being fired upon. The Mutes didn’t guard this area because they didn’t know about it. Why would they? Service closets were below their station. At least some of them were definitely going to pay for their transgression. There was some whispering, which is sort of difficult for an eight-foot croc but they were pulling it off well enough. The huddle began to disband.
“What gives?” I asked Dee.
“Genogerians with rifles will run through the door, killing the closest Devastators and then the unarmed ones will run out to collect their weapons.”
“I should probably go first, since I’m the shortest.”
“Stirrix does not wish for you to go at all.”
I was about to unleash some expletives on her when I looked to Dee. “You lying sack of shit. Besides you, I’m easily the best shot here. She wouldn’t let that kind of asset sit on the sideline. She’s one tough croc.”
“Michael, we’ve been through this. Calling us crocodiles is like us calling you apes.”
“You do it all the time.”
“This is true.”
“I’ll go through first.”
“As you wish,” Dee replied, but he looked pissed about it.
The door was wide enough for a couple of humans, definitely not Genos. This was going to be dicey for a little while. Oh, who the hell was I kidding? This was going to be dicey the entire time. Stirrix looked down at me as I pushed my way to the front. Dee was so close on my back he could have been my shadow—a very large, heavy, green shadow. Chaplin grunted and I was happy that his noise was now louder than the screeching in my ears. Odds were though all the progress that my hearing had made was about to go to the wayside as soon as the bathroom door slid open.
“Poztrinic?” Stirrix asked.
“She wants to know if you’re ready?”
“No. Open the fucking door.”
“Sarcasm?”
“I wish.”
Stirrix hit something on the side of the wall, the door slid open quietly. Shit, it could have sounded like it was grating on glass, my heart was hammering so hard I could hear nothing else except the slamming of blood in my temples. What I took in was absorbed in a fraction of a second. The barracks was much like the mess hall had been, only more. There were more Genos huddled in a mass, a bunch of Devastators were guarding them and dozens more dead Genos blanketing the floor.
I came out directly broadside to the event and fired into the mass of Devastators nearest to me, about twenty feet away. Fish in a barrel without water would have been harder to hit. Dee was firing directly over my shoulder. The savagery with which we were hitting them was repelling them at first, especially as more and more armed Genos came out behind us. Dee and I moved to the left, staying close to the wall. This also gave us better firing angles on the Mutes as they regrouped and began to fire back. Two Genos never made it clear of the bathroom door as they were cut down.
Their weapons were immediately picked up and rejoined back into the fray. The Mutes were too bunched up to be able to direct their full firepower in our direction. I heard Dee yell out. I turned to see that a round had singed his side, the smell of chicken dominating. My mouth watered of its own volition. I had to remember to apologize later for that Pavlovian dog response. As I was turning back, I noticed Chaplin had jumped over the fallen Genos and was sprinting headlong towards the Mutes with nothing more than a nasty snarl and I would imagine a series of grunts.
“Geno with a death wish? I thought only humans did that.” I started lining up shots on the Mutes that had taken note of him and were trying to stop his progress. A bolt nailed him in the shoulder. He hardly flinched as the molten beam traveled through him.
“Dee, gotta help Chaplin!” I quickly pointed.
Dee fired in that direction. We killed the first line of Mutes on that side so by the time Chaplin arrived, the Devastator soldier he ran into had no clue he was coming. Chaplin grabbed for the weapon and had nearly wrestled it away before the more powerful Devastator pushed him clear. As Chaplin went sprawling to the floor, I hit the Mute with two quick rounds, one in almost the same spot Chaplin had been hit, with the other hitting his mouth. For a brief second he looked like a fire breathing dragon as the flame lit him up. Sure, a dragon that spewed blue fire but the effect was still pretty cool. Chaplin scrabbled to grab the rifle. He was going to have to be on his own for a minute as we were under increasing fire.
“Garvund!” It sounded like Stirrix.
Whatever message she had been trying to deliver worked its magic as the huddled Genos broke apart and began attacking the Devastators’ exposed side and flank. It was a good thing too; we’d lost half our number by this time. Another Geno died as he was coming to our position. He must have been a primary target because he was shot three times before his body could make it to the floor. With the captured Genos joining in the cause, we now had the numbers. But the Mutes were bigger and a lot better armed. The Genos had a cause, though, and that had to count for something, right? The Mutes were merely mercenaries but the problem was that they liked to fight. That was their primary and possibly sole purpose in life.
I had to switch from rapid firing to precision as the Genos closed in on the Mutes. Initially, it wouldn’t have mattered as Genos were being torn apart in the melee. Body parts spun in the air as they were ripped free of their moorings. Had they been humans I would have had to pause to quell the rising gorge, even as it was, it was brutal. Genos were screaming in rage and pain. The Mutes were merciless; they shared genes but not compassion. If they had so little compunction with their own kind, people were in a world of trouble. The room looked like a damn disco club from the late seventies with the red and blue streaks flying around. The chaos had initially been widespread but now it was pairing down to small groups fighting as is often the case in hand-to-hand combat.
Why I’d felt bad for the Genos was a mystery. They were just as ruthless as their cousins. When the opportunity struck they would bludgeon the Mutes to death with heavy handed blows using anything they could grab, blood misting in the air like a heavy rain. Brain matter clung to walls where it was flung. The carnage was gruesome. I could tell Dee was chomping at the bit to get into the mix but he was reluctant to leave my side. I was in just as much danger of arbitrarily getting trampled as I was shot. More than once he had shoved combatants away, as well as placing a well-aimed shot if the chance was there. Even with the superior numbers we were getting our asses handed to us. Gun versus bare hands, there really isn’t that much of a competition.
The Mutes looked absolutely pissed off that their charges would dare raise a hand against them. They turned with such a savage fury on the prisoners we were all but forgotten for a moment. This battle was going to go down to the last man standing and the ground I found myself on was shaky at best. The Genos looked like they wanted to break and run and they may have, but there was nowhere to go. It was forward into the teeth of the enemy or backwards to the wall to be shot like condemned men. The Genos were inflicting damage but not at a sustainable rate and once the Mutes turned their attention back on us, it’d be over. Our dozen or so guns weren’t going to do shit. If I thought Dee or Stirrix would go for a tactical retreat I would have suggested it. Funny, when I woke up this morning I did not think it would be a good day to die.
I began to ponder just how long it would take to convert my rifle to a bomb. Would I be able to do it while getting shot at? If we did not make it, I could not allow the Mutes to make it either. And then I felt it, that telltale sign of something heavy moving quickly. The floor shook like cheap bleacher seats at a high school ch
ampionship football game. You know the kind, the cold metal ones that freeze your ass off. More Mutes were coming. Yea though I walk through the stupid valley of death...more rifle fire broke from across the room. Heavenly bolts of blue radiated out from the doorway as human and Genogerian coalition troops quickly fanned out from the opening. The Mutes were now surrounded on three sides, although they didn’t seem to mind all that much. They didn’t run and they certainly didn’t give up. If anything they fought harder.
The Mutes had been pushed against the far wall and I did not have a shot that I could take. The unarmed Genos were pushing the attack, unleashing centuries of pent up repression on their oppressor’s puppets. We were winning now, though I still didn’t feel confident enough to leave my relative place of safety. I didn’t want to be that guy that ends up as a footnote in history. “Michael Talbot was the last combatant to die in the Human-Progerian war”. I always felt bad for those poor bastards, especially the ones that die AFTER a cease-fire was reached. War generally seemed purposeless to me anyway and a death at that point just highlighted the uselessness of it all. Another wasted life.
A short three round alarm came through the sound system. I figured the Progerians had found out how this battle was proceeding and were getting ready to muster up whatever defense they could.
“Proximity alarm,” Dee told me.
“Paul?”
“Possibly.”
Cheers erupted as the last of the Mutes was being drawn and quartered. There were two Genos on each appendage, including the unfortunate brute’s head. They grunted as they all pulled away simultaneously, the tearing and rending of flesh, bone, cartilage and tendon was about all I could handle for the day.