Berserker (Messenger Book 2) Read online

  “I've got bad news,” he said.

  “How could the situation get any worse?” Vic replied.

  “It's Pierson,” Cena said. “We fought him.”

  For a second, Vic's mind refused to process this statement. Then he exclaimed, “You what?”

  “He was with the attack party,” Tinubu said. “There's no way he didn't recognize us. We were right up in his grill. But that didn't stop him.”

  Vic put his good hand to his head to steady himself. “Good god. Did he say anything?”

  “Not a damn thing,” Tinubu shook his head. “What about the others? How come you've only got Young with you?”

  “Janice was abducted,” Vic said. “According to Young.”

  “Wait a minute,” Cena said. “Abducted? As in, they took her prisoner?”

  “What else would it mean?”

  “Then that's two coincidences,” Tinubu said. “Pierson in the attack party, and the target was Janice. To my mind, that leads to only one conclusion.”

  “The Xenolists,” Vic agreed.

  “What about the rest?” Cena asked. “Old Cyclops, and our welcoming party. Private Katar and what's his name, that liquored up sergeant?”

  “Katar is dead,” Vic said. “I found Regalado grieving over his body further up the hill. Hector is still unaccounted for.”

  “Not anymore, he ain't,” a gravelly voice grunted from behind.

  Everyone turned to see Hector limp out of the bushes, covered in wounds from head to foot. He had tied a tourniquet around a bloodied leg; one arm hung limply at his side with a bloody bandage; and blood trickled from his grinning mouth.

  “What in Light's name happened to you?” Cena exclaimed.

  “I got into a fistfight with an exosuit,” Hector replied. “I lost.”

  “You what?” Tinubu said.

  “I punched that sucker's lights out.” Hector held up a set of bloodied knuckles. “But then it shook me off and punted me like an overinflated football, and that was all she wrote.”

  “You look like you're falling apart,” Cena said. “Are you gonna make it?”

  “Well.” Hector collapsed against a large tree trunk. “I took a few 30 millimeter slugs. Luckily they were just grazes; direct hit from a gun like that woulda ripped my leg clean off. Still tore me up pretty bad, but I managed to stop the bleeding by tying it off and dumping in a crapload of coagulant. Fucker broke my arm when it kicked me, but that ain't no great thing seeing as how a lesser man would have pretty much exploded. Oh, and,” he coughed and spat up a gob of blood, “I seem to have some internal bleeding.”

  “Blinding Light, Cyclops.” Cena knelt next to the injured giant. “This goes way beyond what first aid can deal with. You need serious medical attention.”

  Hector shrugged. “There's a rescue chopper on the way, ain't there?”

  “But it's not going to get here until tomorrow,” Tinubu said.

  “Good enough,” Hector said. “I can hold out that long. I'm tough.”

  “You're insane is what you are,” Cena said. “What on earth would possess you to go hand to hand with an exosuit, you blazing lunatic?”

  “Well, I was a bit frustrated when no one would give me a weapon, and I got riled up once the shooting started.” Hector grinned. “Battle rage, and all that. You know how it is.”

  The others stared at him in disbelief.

  “So what was that I overheard about the enemy abducting our little model?” Hector said. “Why the hell would anybody deploy a special forces team just to capture Blondie? I know she's a foxy little number, but come on.”

  Vic exchanged looks with Cena and Tinubu. He turned back to address Hector when a sharp voice rang out from behind him.

  “Everyone freeze. Hands where I can see them.”

  Everyone turned to see a young man in a pilot suit emerge from behind a patch of shrubs, pointing a handgun at them. He had approached in complete silence. Vic recognized the markings on his pilot suit as those of T.U. Spacy. Then he spotted the augment's emblem on the young man's chest and his stomach lurched.

  “Spacy?” Tinubu exclaimed. “Are you kidding me?”

  Upon getting a clear look at the refugees' faces, the Spacy pilot's eyes flickered in surprise and he dropped his aim a few centimeters. “I can't believe it,” he said.

  “What can't you believe?” Tinubu said. “That after getting our asses kicked by a bunch of crazed cultists, we have the bad luck to run into a Spacy jock out here in the middle of nowhere? Join the club, kid.”

  “That's not what I mean.” The augment lowered his aim still further. “You're SLIC soldiers. Ekwueme Tinubu, Cena Northwood, and Vic Shown, right?”

  This time it was their turn to register surprise. “How do you—” Tinubu started.

  “Listen to me,” the augment said. “This may not be easy for you to believe, but while you've been out of contact, SLIC and Spacy formed an alliance. Your forces have devised a plan to evacuate part of the population into emergency shelters to counter the Messenger pandemic, and we've agreed to help. I'm Lieutenant Omega. I was sent on a search and rescue mission to locate the three of you.”

  The refugees exchanged looks of disbelief. While they were stunned into silence, Omega holstered his sidearm and a second pilot, an elegant young Eastern woman, emerged from the brush. She was holding in custody a dark, angry-looking man who was even better groomed than she was. Like his captor, he wore the suit of an exosuit pilot, but the markings were unfamiliar to Vic.

  “It seems you were under attack by an unknown force,” Omega said. “It's too bad we didn't arrive sooner, or we could have destroyed them before they attacked you. This is my partner, Ensign Alpha; and this is a prisoner we captured. He's refused to give his name or affiliation.”

  “Well, we can help you with that, Lieutenant,” Tinubu said. “He's with the Xenolists.”

  Omega frowned. “Xenolists?”

  “I guess your intel is a little outdated, huh?” Tinubu said. “They're a new organization that cropped up after we kicked the Union off Chalice. They're a group of—”

  A gunshot cut him off in mid-sentence. Alpha let out a gurgling cry and fell. Everyone scattered and dove for cover as a second and third shot cracked, sending plumes of dirt and moss flying. The Xenolist prisoner tried to make a run for it, but Vic swept his legs, then pounced on top of him. Although Vic had a broken arm, the prisoner's hands were tied behind his back. Vic's one arm beat the prisoner's none, so he was able to restrain him in short order.

  Keeping his head low while he kept the prisoner pressed into the ground, Vic glanced in the direction of the augments. Omega had dropped next to his partner to inspect her wound. Alpha was coughing and spewing blood everywhere.

  “She was shot through the throat,” Omega said in a panic. “My god, she's choking on her own blood.”

  Alpha opened and closed her mouth in a vain effort to speak. Finally, she wrapped her arms around Omega's neck, pulled her face up next to his, and whispered something in his ear. Then her grip weakened and she fell into his lap, coughing and sputtering.

  Omega stared in horror at his dying partner, then his expression hardened into fury. He thrust a finger at the refugees, shouted, “Treat her,” then drew his sidearm and ran off, fading into the brush.

  “Oh, great.” Cena grabbed her backpack, ran to Alpha's side, and began pouring out medical supplies. “What the hell am I supposed to do about a throat shot? OK, first apply some clotter. But she's bleeding internally; that's not gonna do shit! Got to turn her head sideways before the blood builds up so bad she can't breathe. Blazing Light, this isn't working. What am I supposed to do?”

  “I don't know,” Tinubu shouted back. “It's a damned throat shot; there's nothing you can do! She's dead!”

  Cena continued her futile attempts at first aid, growing more panicked by the second. As she worked, there came the crack of several more shots in quick succession.

  “Who the fuck is shooting?” Young
shouted.

  “That sounds like an NL-19,” Cena exclaimed. “It's got to be Regalado.”

  “Dammit,” Tinubu snarled. He shouted at the top of his lungs, “Regalado, this is Captain Tinubu. Stand down! You are firing on friendlies!”

  Three more shots rang out, sharper sounding and with a shorter echo than the previous ones. Silence descended on the forest except for Alpha's gurgled, choking breaths, which were growing weaker by the moment.

  Then came the sound of approaching footsteps. Omega appeared, holding a body slung across his back in a fireman's carry. He dumped the corpse of Sergeant Regalado, with three bullet wounds in his heart, onto the ground and turned to Cena, who met his steely gaze through wide eyes.

  “There's nothing I can do,” she cried. “I've tried to help her, but—”

  Omega pushed Cena out of the way and knelt next to Alpha, who by this time had passed out from her injury. With his back still turned to the refugees, Omega asked, “You got any more shooters lurking around in these woods?”

  “That was it,” Tinubu replied. “Regalado probably saw you and assumed the Xenolists had come back. He thought he was helping us. He wasn't trying to—”

  “I know,” Omega cut him off. “Mistakes happen in war.” Still without turning around, he said, “We've got a transport chopper back at the L.Z. We can provide you with lodgings until you can be returned to your people.”

  “We've got a rescue chopper on the way,” Tinubu said. “It will be here tomorrow.”

  “Will you be all right on your own?”

  “Provided there are no more uninvited guests, yes.”

  “Then as far as I'm concerned, my mission is over.” Omega picked up Alpha's limp body and started down the hill. “I'm returning to base.”

  “What about the prisoner?” Tinubu asked.

  “You can have him. I don't care.”

  They watched Omega disappear into the brush, then Vic hauled the prisoner to his feet and joined his comrades in a huddle. He saw that the prisoner was smirking and could not stop himself from smacking him across the face. The prisoner glared at Vic in hatred, but remained silent.

  “God,” Tinubu said. “Pierson is fighting for the Xenolists. They captured Janice for who knows what purposes. We lost Regalado and Katar. We formed an alliance with Spacy only to end up killing one of their augments. Regalado didn't need to die, and neither did she. All because of a stupid mistake. How did this happen?”

  “War is nothing but pointless tragedy,” Vic said. “Until peace is restored to Chalice, scenes like this will repeat over and over again across the entire world.”

  *

  Alpha was not quite dead yet when Omega picked her up, but he knew it would not be long. Bearing out his expectations, the last vestiges of life left her unconscious body by the time he was halfway down the hill. Feng Song was no more.

  Back at the L.Z., Omega placed Alpha's body gently on the ground, then climbed in her exosuit and programmed its autopilot. Once he was finished inputting the route, he picked up her body again, placed it inside the cockpit, and strapped it in. He would see to it that she was brought back to base so she could be given proper honors.

  As he stared at Alpha's body, her once elegant face now caked with blood, Omega remembered her final words. The words she had spent her last bit of strength to whisper to him as she suffocated on her own blood:

  “When this was over, I wanted to show you a peaceful world.”

  Omega shook his head. “I knew you were too good to be out here in the meat grinder,” he whispered. “Why did you do it, Feng? What you told me is just a dream. There is no peace in this world. The only peace to be had is in the place where you've gone.”

  He had done a poor job of following his own advice. Even though he knew Alpha had probably been shot as the result of a mistake, he had exacted swift revenge by eliminating her killer. And it had accomplished exactly nothing. Alpha was still gone, and now thanks to Omega the war had pointlessly claimed another life.

  Omega leaned inside the cockpit. “My real name,” he said. “It's Henrik Ivanec. I was raised by a mafia group in eastern Airopa. It's not as bad as it sounds. They were no angels; they were an organized crime gang, but they took care of their own. I wasn't treated badly. One day, though, the P.S.A. staged a raid, broke up the mob, and captured those of us they didn't kill.

  “From there it gets a little hazy. My memory tells me that the Union put me through a rehabilitation program and that I earned my way into Spacy officer school through good behavior and exceptional performance on the aptitude tests. I excelled in the academy and now here I am, repaying my debt by fighting Thera's enemies.”

  He took a deep breath. “But I think that's a lie. Why would they put an untested rookie like me on the front lines of the most critical operation in Union history? Because I got good scores in the simulator? Bullshit. They sent me here because I was already the best combat veteran in the whole damn fleet. It's not just our physical enhancements that make augments such effective soldiers. They pit us against each other in mortal combat so that only the very best live to see graduation. Then they replace our memories with something more sanitized to circumvent the morale problems and public backlash that would arise if we knew the truth.

  “It's all speculation on my part, but it fits. That's why combat is second nature to me, why I know no fear even when I'm surrounded by enemies hellbent on killing me. My hands were already stained with rivers of blood before I ever set eyes on Chalice. Not that I can do anything about it. Our programming forbids us from rebelling against our masters.

  “But what about you?” he continued. “You were badly shaken by your early encounters with combat on Chalice. You're a talented pilot, but it always seemed like you had to strain yourself to keep it together in the rigors of battle. So why didn't you show signs of being a hardened killer, like I am?

  “Well, remember what you told me just before we set out on this mission? About how you used your family's influence to force your way into the augmentation program. Making the scum of society kill each other and covering it up is one thing, but subjecting a daughter of the fabled Song dynasty to such brutality would strain the resources of even the Union's well oiled propaganda machine. Besides, how would they explain it if you got killed during training?

  “So they cut the live combat out of your program. All the enhancements, none of the bloodshed. Your family's influence got you assigned to the operation despite your rookie status, and your unmatched compatibility with the Blossom's finicky control system probably helped as well. That's my theory, anyway. You could have verified that last part for me, but I guess now I'll never know for sure.”

  After a long pause, Omega went on, speaking with uncharacteristic gentleness. “I've come to realize something,” he said. “Now that it's too late. I'd thought everything that was human inside me was dead, but I was wrong. There was still some small part of it left in me, and you were bringing it out. But now that you're gone, there's nothing left to sustain my last shred of humanity. This isn't just a valediction for you. It's also for the man named Henrik Ivanec. With him gone, all that remains is Omega, a killing machine that longs for the day it can join you in death.

  “Goodbye, Feng Song.”

  Omega closed the canopy and turned away. As he looked up at his own exosuit, all traces of tenderness vanished from his expression. Now his eyes were as cold and artificial as the robotic face of the exosuit staring back at him. All that remained was to fulfill the premonition that had haunted him from the moment he had laid eyes on Chalice.

  Nineteenth Escalation

  All I can see is the darkness

  Janice did not know how long she had been curled up inside the pitch black, metallic womb of the exosuit. She had no indication of what was going on outside save for the rising and falling hum of the vehicle's engine and the inertial forces of its movements. She knew only that she had been frightened and miserable for a long time when at last the exosuit's
movements stopped and a white crack appeared in the canopy.

  She squinted against the blinding light as the canopy came fully open, letting in the odors of oil and metal mixed with sweat. Gradually, her eyes adjusted to the light and she perceived the utilitarian features of a concrete hangar. A dark silhouette stood just outside the cockpit, staring through the open canopy.

  “A pleasure to meet you, Janice Runner,” said a commanding voice. “There's no need to be frightened. We have no intention of hurting you.”

  The shadow's features slowly swam into view. It was a man, tall and fit, wearing a black pilot suit and an armored vest with a pair of bullet holes in it. He looked to be in his thirties; and he had the blond hair, light colored eyes, and classically handsome features of Thera's old Western stock—not unlike Janice herself, although his face was marred by several ugly bruises.

  “Who are you?” she asked in a frightened whimper.

  The man bowed. “I am Captain Pierson Cutter, leader of the Xenolists' First Knights. I represent an organization dedicated to bringing out the full potential of humanity.”

  Janice felt the now familiar transition from fear to anger building in her mind. “You say you have no intention of hurting me,” she seethed. “But what about my friends? You tried to kill them, for no reason!”

  “I regret that unfortunate episode,” Pierson said with a pained expression. “But it was not for no reason. I would have preferred to take you into custody peacefully, but it was your friends who fired the first shots.”

  “Who wouldn't fire with a band of armed lunatics chasing them?” Janice exclaimed.

  “I see that your companions are not the only ones who are quick to rash judgments,” Pierson said. “But perhaps that fiery temper is part of what makes you special.”

  “What do you mean, special?” Janice demanded. “Why would you risk your lives to capture me?”

  Before she had finished asking her question, realization began to dawn within her mind. Her fear and exhaustion had made her slow to remember the tale from her companions and put two and two together.