The last human had managed to climb onto one of thecargo containers. The empty metal cargo shells sat in a long, interconnected row. They were about one and a half times Rykal’s height, and they were arranged on metal tracks.
This human had a larger weapon, some kind of tubular launcher thing that he hefted over one shoulder. “I can see you, fucker,” he yelled, his Universal clipped and awkward. A tiny red light flashed, and Rykal found himself the target of a missile. “Take this!”
“Oh, comeon,” he groaned. Instinctively, his hand found its way to one of his throwing knives, and before he could think twice, the thing had flown out of his hand, hurled in the direction of the human. Rykal turned and tried to dodge, but the missile had some kind of tracking feature, and he couldn’t lose it.
So he did the only thing he could.
He crouched down into a ball as the missile hit him, knocking him to the ground. It exploded in a storm of fire and heat. Rykal’s armor held firm, protecting him from the brunt of the blast, but some of the heat still managed to seep through, searing his skin.
Rykal swore. It had been a while since he’d been caught in a firestorm like this. He’d forgotten how much this shit could hurt.
As the fire died down, Rykal picked himself up, groaning as pain shot through his body. His skin felt as if it had been stretched taut and dipped into the boiling lava pits of Keldork. Every nerve ending was seared. The missile’s fire hadn’t killed him, but a small amount of its heat had penetrated through the flexible layer of his armor, superficially burning his skin.
His exo-armor was impervious to most things. It could resist fire and plasma and bolt-weapons, so whatever this human had just thrown at him must have been powerful stuff.
Still, all he’d come away with were superficial burns. A nuisance, nothing more. Rykal grunted in pain as he rose to his full height, listening carefully for any signs of life.
Silence.
There were no more attackers. Groaning, he recalled the majority of his nanites into his body, wincing as they passed through cell and fiber and membrane.
It hurt like a bitch.
But he needed to heal. The nano-particles would get to work now, repairing his damaged skin. It would be quick.
Goddess knew he was a freak, a supreme aberration. They all were.
Naked apart from the thin straps that held his weapons in place, he jumped and grabbed hold of the top of one of the cargo containers, grunting with pain and exertion. His skin was covered with rapidly healing blisters, and every movement was excruciating.
Rykal hauled himself to the top, landing on the roof in a crouching position.
The human was a few steps away from him, flat on his back.
Dead.
Rykal’s knife had hit him square between the eyes, splitting his green-lensed goggles in two.
Sighing, Rykal limped over to where the human lay and retrieved his throwing knife. The goggles fell away, revealing a pale face dotted with small brown specks of pigment. A bush of reddish colored hair covered the human’s jawline and cheeks. Dark red blood trickled from a slit-shaped hole between the human’s eyebrows, forming a stark line across his pale skin.
Humans grew hair on their faces, and their blood smelled like the dry, metallic earth of some of the red-dust planets they’d visited. They were such strange creatures.
He hadn’t meant to kill this one, but his hand had moved of its own volition. Certain things were hard-wired into him, such as the need to kill everyone and everything that posed a threat to him.
Arin would probably be annoyed.
But then this guy shouldn’t have fired a Kaiin-cursed missile at him in the first place.
Rykal flicked the blood off his throwing knife and placed it in a small sheath close to his chest. Without the rest of his armor, the remaining structures holding his weapons in place appeared strange. The nano-structures depended so much on his ability to hold perfect visualizations of prototypes in his mind, even in the face of overwhelming pain.
The Empire had made him into somethingother, even as they had taken everything else away from him. They’d stolen his memories and fractured his identity. They’d tried to take away his free will too, but that hadn’t exactly gone to plan.
Rykal shook his head. There were six unconscious humans and one dead one in the cargo hold, and he had to figure out what to do with them. He looked at the dead human and made a decision.
It wouldn’t be pretty, but he needed to make an example of the humans who had tried to ambush him, so others wouldn’t try and follow their lead. General Tarak had always said that fear could be more effective than the sharpest Callidum blade.
Rykal made a face and drew his long dagger, the one he used for stabbing and filleting and close-quarters bladework.
It wouldn’t be pretty, but he knew what he had to do. Arin would freak out when she heard, but he would just have to explain to her later that things weren’t always as bad as they seemed.
