Star Brigade: The Supremacy (SB3) (64 page)

V’Korram went limp, allowing the mini-black hole to drag him closer. “NO!” Khrome screamed.

At the last instant, V’Korram reached out and clawed into cracked earth, catching Tyris by the waist with his other arm—barely. That bought Khrome time to zip over a tight cluster of cone geysers, dodging their hot spurts, to reach them.

V’Korram and Tyris were too close, scarcely hanging on. The Kintarian tried pulling forward with one arm, but couldn’t overcome the singularity’s vacuum. His claws slipped further…

The Thulican zoomed over the rim wall with a wide berth between himself and the singularity, just as V’Korram’s strength failed him. For a heartbeat, Khrome’s world froze.

>>Current Velocity: Mach 13.10 and climbing…

>>Warning: Current speed unsupported for normal functions.

V’Korram flailed; Tyris was limp as a rag doll. The Brigadiers were sucked toward the singularity’s gaping maw…

…as Khrome swooped in low and blasted up with cargo.

>>Current Velocity: Mach 1.3 and decelerating…

“Need to work on that grip of yours, Jakadda!” Khrome quipped, but felt sick with relief. The short-lived pull of the singularity had actually kept Khrome from ramming his teammates.

V’Korram gawked at the Thulican. “Khrome?” he snarled in disbelief.

“You’re…alive!” Tyris whispered in identical surprise.

“Of course I am, icicle.” Khrome eyed his best friend in confusion. “All this geyser heat’s affected your brain.”
Keep it light, offhand
, he told himself.

“Get ready to tuck and roll. I’m bashing that two-bit fanatic into next year!”

Khrome dove low, dropping off V’Korram and Tyris behind jutting spiked rocks without pause, barreling straight for Ghuj’aega.

>>Current Velocity: Mach 3.7 and climbing…

Ghuj’aega spread his hands and slammed them back together.

Khrome felt the air crackle; an energy spike registered in a pop-up window on the bottom of his vision.

>>Warning: Exotic-energy release imminent!

“Uh-oh!” He glanced upward…  Black lightning, forking down
.

“Can’t…hold on…much…longer,” Khal gasped. He was beyond spent, and slipping closer to the singularity despite his efforts to stay telekinetically anchored. And the singularity’s pull had no mercy or fatigue.

Marguliese clung to Khal, facing the other direction. The Ttaunz interceptors floating above peppered Ghuj’aega with brilliant photonic bursts, all which passed through him. Not an encouraging sight. The Ghebrekh banged his hands together again, and Khal heard a fresh crackle of lightning behind him.

“Those ships… Can’t you control…them again…to move?” Khal whispered. Even as torrents of water pounded them, her body had no warmth.

The Cybernarr shook her head. “The exotic energy from Ghuj’aega interferes with— Khromulus.” Khal turned to see the Cybernarr’s sapphire-blue eyes wide with shock.

The reminder of his dead teammate left an acid taste in Khal’s mouth. “What…does Khrome…have—”

The Cybernarr regained her impassive poise. “About-face, Vertex.
Now
.” Not a request, a demand.

His legs quivered with burning fatigue as Khal did as ordered. A swirl of nauseating, silent color flooded his vision, nearly making Khal vomit. But the earthborn managed to turn around without succumbing to the black hole’s pull. Khal gasped to catch his breath and saw a silvery comet hurtling for them from behind the singularity. He recognized him on sight, as well as a crackling mass of black lightning just over his returned teammate.

“Khrome? How?” Delirious from surprise and pain, Khal turned to Marguliese to confirm.

But the Cybernarr had honed in on Ghuj’aega, raising her silvery arm, which shifted shape as if made of liquid metal. A heartbeat later, the business end of a modified tube-shaped cannon had replaced her entire forearm. Khal looked on in awe. What
couldn’t
Marguliese do?

“Found his spatial frequency.” Marguliese aimed—and fired, the weapon’s kick nearly knocking Khal off balance and closer to the spiraling black hole…

Two blazing green flashes issued forth from Marguliese’s makeshift cannon, striking Ghuj’aega’s gaping chest wound and forehead. The latter blast snapped his head back with a pained cry. And the black lightning cluster dissipated.

Right on cue, Khrome was a silver blur racing in sideways, ramming Ghuj’aega. The impact was a bomb detonation of force, exploding the rim wall behind Ghuj’aega into sprays of pebbles and mud. Khrome pulled up and righted himself in midair, landing with authority.

No way Ghuj’aega survived that,
Khal surmised.

With the Ghebrekh terrorist down, the black hole shrank and winked out of existence. Water, rock debris, and Ghebrekh corpses about to be sucked into its maw hung for an instant, then dropped with a collective
thud
. With nothing pulling Khal’s exhausted body, he and Marguliese collapsed in an ungainly heap. He lay on his back, fatigue bleeding through every inch of his body, even his eyeballs.
But I’m alive.

Khal turned his head, wincing as he did. There stood that squat wall of metallic muscle, Khrome, with steam curling off his head and shoulders.

Khal didn’t think he’d ever be so happy to see him again—until now. He noticed how quiet everything had gotten as the Ttaunz ships stopped firing.

Khrome glanced over his shoulder. “Target down. Thanks for the setup.”

“Think nothing of it,” Marguliese replied, her voice fading…

Khal must have blacked out for a moment, as the next thing he knew, Khrome and Marguliese were in the midst of a new conversation.

“We can broach the subject once the remnants of our group have gathered,” Marguliese said. Her mechanized voice sounded startlingly close. “
Vertex
.” The Cybernarr spoke his codename with whiplash sharpness. He looked up at her face…that ridiculous, stupidly perfect face. She was crouching over him in that black sleeveless catsuit, wet and stringy red curtains of hair spilling down her neck and shoulders.

“Heeey Marguliese,” he cooed as her face came into focus. “You alright?”

“Unharmed,” Marguliese replied as her metal arm shifted back to a normal limb. “Yourself?”

Khal did a quick self-physical check. Everything ached, but nothing felt broken. “Ten fingers and ten toes. So I’m good.” He grabbed for something firm to pull up into a seated position.

“That can be modified swiftly if your hands remain on my behind,” Marguliese added curtly.

Khal jerked his hands off the Cybernarr’s perfectly formed butt. Marguliese pursed her lips and rose, pulling Khal up by the collar. Marguliese tossed her unbound hair back and studied him with a knife-like glare. She had half an inch or so on him. Khal’s heart froze.
Did she suspect what I almost did?

Then she gave Khal a terse nod, a wordless “Thank you.” The telekinetic was surprised how much this pleased him. Looking up, Khal saw Herope’s cherry glow saturating the skies again. It felt like that battle with the Ghebrekh had gone for half a day. But according to his wristcom’s chronometer, less than half an orv had passed.

Zojje, Taorr, and Mhir’ujiid emerged from behind their massive boulder cover, each properly stunned. “That just…happened?” Taorr gaped about the wreckage.

“Yes,” Marguliese answered flatly, despite his question’s rhetorical nature.

Khrome snorted. “You okay?” he asked Taorr and the others.

As the civilians confirmed their well-being, Tyris approached through the dense fog with the massive V’Korram trailing behind him. The heat had nearly melted down Tyris’s spiky countenance. He appeared so much slimmer and less menacing to Khal without all those sharpened icicles jutting off him. V’Korram stopped to pull something out of his lower abdomen—flinty shrapnel of some kind. The Kintarian tossed the piece aside with a brief grimace and kept walking.
That’s one tough bastard
, Khal noted respectfully.

The whole time, he had one eye on the remaining Ttaunz air raiders high above the scene.

“They are discussing whether or not to take Ghuj’aega’s body by force without reinforcements,” Marguliese whispered in his ear, confirming Khal’s suspicions of the ships’ internal discussions.

“Fiyan?” Tyris called into his wristcom.

“Fiyan here…” the Nnaxan replied, no energy behind her words. “We lost Vaas to the singularity.”

“No!” Mhir’ujiid cried. Her neon-green mohawk was plastered to her squashed face.

Khal staggered, finding the rim wall as support.
Not another one.

“I saw him get sucked in as I was flying in,” Khrome confirmed. Sadness washed away his noseless features. “I wasn’t close enough to reach him.”

“Meet us at the rim wall’s southern edge, Sergeant,” Tyris said, unable to hide his sorrow.

“Copy that,” Fiyan replied, ending the call. Khal would never forget how lifeless she sounded.

“I am so sorry,” Taorr apologized to the group. “I should have done more—”

Tyris cut him off with a terse hand swipe. “Don’t apologize for your father’s mistakes.”

Khrome moved closer to survey his handiwork, but continued glancing about for something or someone. Khal winced, already knowing whom.
Captain Nwosu and Liliana, gone?
The reality weighed heavily on his shoulders. He opened his mouth to tell Khrome what had happened, but still didn’t know how to verbalize it.

Before anyone could speak, Khrome’s scan fell upon Ghuj’aega’s remains. “Oh, come ON!” he howled. For a nanoclic, Khal thought the Thulican would stamp his foot in indignation.

“What?” V’Korram raced to the scene, daggers drawn. The rest of Star Brigade joined Khrome by the gaping hole of the rim wall where Ghuj’aega’s body lay. The Ghebrekh terrorist was splayed in gruesome attitudes half-buried under shit-brown mud and rubble. At first glance, his body was a pancaked corpse.
Mission accomplished.

Then Khal, Tyris, V’Korram, and Marguliese saw what had set Khrome off. Mhir’ujiid peeked over the Thulican’s hulking shoulder and backed away at comical speeds.

Maybe it was the shallow up-and-down heaving of his mangled torso, or the twitching of mangled appendages slowly knitting back together. For Khal, the tipoff was how Ghuj’aega’s violet eyes raked over his enemies with rejuvenated hatred.

Zojje scanned the Ghebrekh’s ruined carcass telepathically. His nod confirmed Star Brigade’s fears.

“Ghuj’aega still lives,” the Kudoban announced in calm, tripled tones, “and is healing quickly.”

Marguliese lifted her metallic arm silently, shifting it into a rifle-like weapon—and her weapon barked four times. Two pencil-thin bursts pierced Ghuj’aega’s chest, another bursting through his right eye. The last shot blew a hole through his forehead.

Taorr and Zojje jumped. Mhir’ujiid didn’t, nor did any of the Star Brigadiers.

Blood oozed from the Ghebrekh’s new wounds in thick black rivulets. Ghuj’aega stopped breathing. His one good eye dulled, losing its violet glow. Ghuj’aega looked dead.

Not ten nanoclics later, the holes began shrinking and Ghuj’aega’s chest commenced its rise and fall from breathing. The Ghebrekh terrorist blinked both glowing eyes, opening his mangled jaw with an appalling noise that must have been laughter. V’Korram yipped in shock. Khal went wide-eyed.

Marguliese cocked her head to one side. “This is unexpected.”

“
This
is a
problem
.” Khrome gritted his teeth. “Now he has unkillability?”

Tyris frowned at him. “‘Unkillability’ isn’t a word.”

“Says who?” Khrome bit back.

“Says me, ‘genius,’” the Tanoeen countered with air quotes.

Their back-and-forth banter, so normal, didn’t faze Khrome. But Tyris stared at his best friend thoughtfully. Khal, taking in a solid appraisal of the Tanoeen, knew he needed out of this climate. His crystalline body, dripping in oozing puddles, could only withstand so much.

“Glad you’re not dead,” Tyris murmured.

“I didn’t DIE!” Khrome snapped. “And where are Reign and Crescendo?”

Ghuj’aega let out another hacking excuse for a laugh, stronger now as he continued healing.

“Gone,” Khal answered, and slumped against the rim wall. His muscles were sluggish. Even thinking sent throbs of pain through his jaw. “Cortes got sucked into…the singularity. Nwosu jumped after her.”

“By the Twin Spheres!” Khrome rubbed at the back of his head. “That…sounds like something our fearless leader would do.”

A bright yellow flash interrupted his thoughts, Marguliese’s double-bladed saber blazing into existence. “I will attempt decapitation and dismemberment.” The energy weapon glinted off the Cybernarr’s golden visage as she marched into the rim wall’s hole.

“She’s determined,” Zojje noted, watching her.

“That’s our girl,” Khal replied uneasily.
Sam thought I could kill THAT?
He shuddered, realizing how thoroughly his superior’s down south had messed with his head up
north
.

Hovering overhead, the hum of the Ttaunz interceptors’ weapons drew everyone’s attention. “See that?” Khal nodded at the two ships’ weapon banks reigniting with a bright gold burn.

Tyris looked less than concerned. “And?”

Khrome grinned. “We can take ‘em.”

“Let’s not,” Khal objected, lurching to his feet.

Taorr pushed forward to take charge. “Mhir’ujiid, Zojje, get behind Star Brigade,” he ordered. The young Ttaunz mustered all his poise and authority. “Please. Star Brigade has a standing kill-order on—”

“I don’t care what their mission is!” barked one Ttaunz from the lead interceptor. “Star Brigade. Relinquish the target now!”

There was a feral roar as V’Korram broke into a mad dash, bounding toward the interceptor ships. To roar at them?
Or lunge at them
, Khal realized, horrified.

Tyris uttered a command and Marguliese shut off her energy blade. In a heartbeat, she had darted off, overtaking V’Korram with startlingly quick strides and hauling him back by the scruff of his neck.

Fiyan backpedaled behind them, keeping her repeater trained on the interceptors. Khrome glowered at Khal for his minimal involvement.