Blackjack Dead or Alive (The Blackjack Series Book 3) (39 page)

“Like you care, man,” Silverback said finally.

“We’re in this together, big guy,” Epic said.

“This is stupid,” he said. “We’re not getting out of here. Better to let this shit fall and end it quick.”

I took the metal buckle from Silverback’s baldric, freeing it with a sharp tug that split the leather. It was huge, but rather simple, a generic belt buckle similar to what you’d find in a store. Turning it in my fingers, the steel felt thick, with small ridges limning the surfaces. The metal was supple enough to work with, strong enough to take a pounding. Probably not the pounding I had in mind, but maybe enough.

“If you want to end it quick,” I said, feeling a wide smile cracking my face. “Then do it back over there.” I gestured to the small corner where I had found him.

“You figured it out,” Epic said.

“I figured it out.”

*              *              *              *

As I worked, I thought of how Haha had outsmarted me.

His software would have poured over all my work and discovered the drone system fast. Most of them were small, no bigger than a few inches – designed to work as a swarm to build almost anything. While I was busy fighting my doppelganger, and the rest of his team, Haha taken control and attacked the support structures of the castle using the drone swarm, leaving the place vulnerable. It would have been easy for him to write a new code and task them to damage the supports enough to weaken them. Like a colony of termites chewing away the foundations of a house. Enough support beams failed from higher up, the rest of the job was left to gravity.

Tweezing the buckle’s loop between my fingers, I felt the metal compress. Using one hand as a vice, I used the other to snap the whole buckle in two, purging my mind of worry and doubt. The swivel and prong fell away, bereft of a frame to hold them, leaving me with a pair of metal brackets, each the length of my hand. I thought about straightening them out for a second, but a wider surface area would be better, using my thumb to flatten the top edges as thin as I could make them. Much like Silverback’s huge swords, which would also have come in handy, I didn’t need them sharp, just edged.

The only problem now was making a device that would function. I knew what I needed to build, how it would work, but getting the job done with what little I had was another matter altogether. Engineering doesn’t work that way. When you build things, there are inevitable errors that made you start again, sometimes going all the way back to the drawing board. The problem now was that I was limited in supplies. I scavenged everything I could find, but lacked material to build new parts or solder metal together. I had to design something, and put it together from the junk I had in front of me, and I had to do it on the first try.

The first thing I had to do was modulate the thrust on the boots. I didn’t need a full burn, and it would kill us, but small continuous pulses would provide the vibrations I needed. Ironically, that meant breaking the only piece of equipment that had endured all of my travails. Pulling the sole off my boot, I found the thrust toggle, a plate large enough to fit comfortably enough under my first and second toes. I stripped them down with raw force, until all that remained was the toggle and the cables and wires leading to the thrust units.

Calibrating the amount of energy fed to the thrusters was something I needed equipment for, and almost impossible to do manually. I settled for using the discarded prong from the belt the physically manipulate the trigger mechanism until I got the vibrating thrum I was looking for. It would still be hot, but the reduced thrust output would not burn the precious oxygen away as quickly.

I replicated the process with the other thrust unit with similar success, the result a pair of vibro units. The heat would be extreme; the exposed wires would need insulation, as would my hands. I found Silverback’s leather strap, but there was no way it would hold for more than a few seconds. My fingers brushed against the slice Stygian Black had torn in Superdynamic’s suit, and I smiled.

Tearing the suit in strips, I wrapped the braided wires and larger cables thick, lining them all between the toggle and thrust nozzle, then secured my makeshift blades to the whole thing. They would be the focal point of the vibrations, cutting into the rock as they vibrated. Power wouldn’t be a problem, hell, there was too much, which would be the actual problem. The toggle mechanism hadn’t been working right before I repurposed it, and I had no way to regulate the raw force of the things when I engaged the power supply.

Energy wasn’t the only problem; the wires would be exposed in the mass vibrations and come in contact with each other. It was all taking time, and Silverback was growing more and more frustrated with me, and slowly succumbing to his massive wounds. His face was caked with drying blood, and it was clear from all his shifting that he had injured his back and hips in the fight with Epic, or in the subsequent crashing of the mountain. He said he was fine when sasked, but I knew we were working on borrowed time.

Finally, I said the hell with it, looping the makeshift diggers onto my hand, wrapping them over my knuckles the way fighters do before a bout. The blades faced outward, capping the thrust nozzles, which would provide the vibrations. Using what was left of the suit, I lashed the cables to my arms and the toggles to my palms so that I could depress them by making a fist. By the time I finished, my hands were thick with padding, ready to work.

“How you doing big guy?” I asked and they both answered a curt, “Fine!”

“Think that will work?” Epic said, once I was done, shifting past him to the spot Silverback had indicated.

“In theory,” I said, engaging the device. It started slowly, giving me a second to tie down the wires on the other one, before the vibrations really started to get violent.

I tried to say something clever, “Either it will work, or you’ll see me burst like a ripe tomato,” but after the first vowel, it became clear that something was wrong.

Without a power regulator, the full-bore energy of the plasma cells surged through my arms, down the cables, lancing across my skin like lasers tearing at my flesh. I screamed in pain, trying to dig at the cables, but both arms were shaking so fast, so hard that I couldn’t control myself. I let go of the toggles, but they the vibration didn’t stop.

The pain lanced through my arms, as if I had put them into a grinder. I fell to my knees, crying and shaking, fighting the urge to vomit, and unable to stop the pain. Doubling over, my head slammed into the wall, and my arms lifted on their own accord, oscillating so fast they were a blur. I tried to flex my fists, knock loose whatever was stuck, but my body was in no place to obey commands.

Behind me, I could hear yelling, though I couldn’t understand anything from the violent vibrations cursing through my body. I had overcharged the device, and now it was going to tear me apart. The thrust toggles shook apart in my hands, but the power continued to flow unabated. I opened my eyes and saw how aggressive my full body convulsions were, unable to focus on a single point in the wall.

“Focus,” a word entered my consciousness, shouted by Epic behind me, and I tried to, I really did, but instead of helping me, the sudden change of attention allowed the shaking to spread through my body. My legs twitched and I toppled forward, face first into the wall, my hands unable to check my momentum. I flailed to either side, so violently that I felt my fingers were about to tear off my hand.

I tried making a fist, concentrating on my right hand first, focusing on the hand that had broken against the walls of Retcon’s fortress. I felt a tickle deep within, the dancing of the bones against the scar tissue deep within the hand, and acting as if I was trying to scratch it, I saw my fingers coil, my hand form in to a fist.

With the experience of how to do it burning in my mind, I could do it with my left as well, but without the focus of the scar tissue, it was impossible.

“Fuck!” I roared and threw a punch at the wall with my left hand. I felt my fingers bend back in pain, and as I howled in agony, I had the feeling I needed to replicate my right fist with my left hand. The pain was enough that even a dislocated pinky finger came along for the ride.

Then I looked down at the wall, where I had punched it, and saw an almost perfect sphere carved out of the rock, glassy and hot to the touch. The terrible vibrations had liquefied the rock at the cost of a small wisp of dust and smoke.

I strained against the vibrations, bringing both fists in front of me, and feeling the rattling of my teeth, fighting a tickling surge through my spinal cord, I forced my arms forward into the wall.

And it gave.

The pain shot through my elbows and shoulders, racking my back muscles like a thousand cramps all at once, but I gritted my teeth and angled myself forward, muscling my way to safety. Blind, I based my movement on raw forward momentum, caring little if I was going in a straight line. It hurt too much to care.

For a second my mind drifted from the ongoing pain to Epic and Silverback’s plight as I tore the tunnel out of that mini cave. They would have to find a way to move to the opening I had made while remaining in control of the mass of rocks above them.

Their problem.

I trudged onward, ignoring the smell of burning flesh and hair, of raw melted ores, caustic and suffocating fumes that assaulted me. The blades melted away almost instantly, my temporary gloves started peeling away roughly fifteen feet later, bare knuckles rasping against hard rock at high oscillation, ripping a hole out of nothingness. I was crouched low; to make sure the hole was traversable, tall enough for me to cross.

I figured Epic would have a harder time making it through, and Silverback might just be fucked. Frankly, I didn’t care, as the pain spreading through my arms and body were overwhelming me, and taxing me faster than I was able to bear. I thought of pausing, but there was no way to stop the devices short of disconnecting the plasma cells, and with how hard it was to control my arms, it would be near impossible. I’d have to reach down and rip a cable with my teeth, but that would leave me alone in the dark needing to repair the device to continue.

No, I had to endure, coughing as nothing entering my lungs was fresh air, the vibrations worse than even Alacrity’s excruciating attack. The world shook with me as I pressed forward, my hands starting to burn under the friction. The force of the vibrating fists was ripping the wall apart with ease, pulverizing the rock and turning the walls of the tunnel I was making into smooth polished stone. The one benefit the guys would have following me was they wouldn’t have to worry about the tunnel falling down on them. The melted walls should hold long enough for them to follow.

Thousands of tiny shards of rocks spraying onto my face and neck, ripping into my eyelids, lips and cheeks. I lowered my head and powered on, trying to turn my onward momentum somewhat upwards in order to rise faster to the edge of the rock pile. I couldn’t just drive on without care. I was going to succumb to the device at some point, the vibrations wearing me down to nothing. I had to focus, to aim myself, and keep pressing my fists forward, pounding hard against the walls, feeling the rock melting under my blows, or sloughing off down to the new floor I was tearing from the mountain.

Then I felt a pop and a violent jolt shoot up my arm from my elbow. My shoulder was dislocated. I screamed and tried to cradle my injured arm, but the device kept me propped forward, unable to bend my arms, and the violence of it all didn’t allow me to vocalize other than a thrumming din, that backfired into the pits of my ears.

I yelled and cried, but still managed to thrust myself onward with greater purpose. My arm was going to fall apart, dismembered by the horrible device I had built, and I knew I couldn’t make it out with one hand. Despite my effort, I felt my forward momentum fall off. The pain was too taxing.

Then something came up from behind me, massive and bulky. At first, I felt a pair of hands touch me gingerly, then shoot back with a horrible scream. I wanted to turn but my body was committed, unable to do anything other than jut, fists forward.

I felt another vestigial touch, then a full body pressing against me, the screams of the person behind me echoing through the tunnel. It had to be Epic, having reached me, using his strength to push me along. I was the drill bit, and he was the strong arm pressing against the hard rock, but something by the shrieking timbre of his screams, the vibrations were killing him too.

I dared to open my eyes, and understood how wrong I was.

My arms and chest glowed as brightly as a star and my body was swathed in flames. I couldn’t turn my head, but now I knew what was hurting Epic. He was pressing his arms and chest against me, and I was on fire.

I closed my eyes fast, fighting against the horror, the realization that I was burning alive, and concentrated on moving ahead. With Epic providing his considerable strength, my momentum grew, so fast we began to test the power of the device, and more rock exploded off the walls in crusty, melted shale, leaving thicker piles of rocks in our wake.

Epic was desperate, pushing harder and harder. I didn’t know how much longer he could weather the experience of grabbing onto an immolating man. I felt a jolt ahead, and tried to stop for a moment, fighting Epic’s shoving, but he drove me forward, and a second later we crashed through a hard wall of rock. I tumbled down a concave incline, as if someone had used an ice cream scoop on the mountain, and saw that the whole area was on fire. A heavy wind whipped against me, the flames billowing in their death throes as they snuffed out, but the machine was still going. I bit through the cables on my injured arm, my teeth rattling in their sockets as sparks scored my tongue. The device shut off, though my arm still vibrated as I reached across and disengaged the other.