At The Hands Of Madness by Kevin Holton

Author:Kevin Holton [Holton, Kevin]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Severed Press
Published: 2018-01-29T22:00:00+00:00

Chapter 9

The morning rays didn’t have to try hard to wake me. I’d spent the night restless, first unable to sleep, not yet unwinding from all the day’s chaos, then unable to stay sleeping. My dreams were full of vicious little things that scraped and clawed their way across the earth in pursuit of their queen. Silver shadows slaughtered what they could reach, moving a little too fast for me to catch their shape, just the blur of their outline. I had no company to back me up. Only me and my gun, aim and fire, breathe and bang, until the last one fell. Then the ground shook. A thousand scuttling nightmares too horrible to remember upon waking overwhelmed me, dragging me back to their lair.

I rose drenched in sweat, emerging from the confines of sleep into a world baked red from the morning sun. In older days, people said, Red sky at morning, sailors take warning. We weren’t sailors, but the coloration still made me uneasy. I’d seen enough blood in the past few days without a crimson sky bearing down on us.

Stumbling blearily, eyes half-shut, body demanding sleep while my mind rebelled against the possibility of more nightmares, I made my way to the coffee tent. It was my only option, really. Artificial adrenaline, mainlining caffeine, knowing in my gut that if yesterday was bad, today was going to be worse. When I entered, the coffee pots all steamed noisily, one actively brewing, with several other pots sitting by waiting for someone to drink them.

“Rough night?” Lisa entered the tent from behind me. She looked worse off than I did, but far more prepared. Heavy bags under her eyes and a slight droop to her posture suggested sleepiness, but in this red dawn, the steel of her bionic arm looked painted by the blood of her enemies, her height and muscle tone a constant reminder of her history as a war hero. Her blaster had been modified, and now bore a design, a patchwork creation from a space-age future our species might never see. It seemed a more elegant version of Steve’s kinetic cannon.

“Barely slept. You look like you didn’t sleep at all though.” I grabbed a mug. She already had one dangling from the fingers of her one hand.

“Didn’t. Had work to do.” Her tone was too resolute to acknowledge fatigue.

“Work you’d like to talk about?”

She smirked, a You know me too well face. If there’s one thing Lisa liked more than doing well on the battlefield or watching out for her fellows, it was talking about all the weaponry magic she’d been up to. “Akila and Allessandra got me thinking. If Medraka’s blood allows the sensors to match its frequency and detect when it’ll arrive, then it should also align our weapons to bypass its shield.”

It was a really, really good idea. A pang of envy rang in my chest for having not thought of it myself. Topping off her coffee, I said, “Think it’ll work?”

“I hope so,” she said, taking a long swig, despite it still steaming.

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