The No Quarter Collection: Volume Two by Aeryn Rudel

Author:Aeryn Rudel [Rudel, Aeryn]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

—Aeryn Rudel

SWAMPED

BY AERYN RUDEL

Lieutenant Berik Havlan aimed his hand cannon at the charging gatorman, centering its sights on the scaly creature’s head. He drew in a deep breath and summoned his will, relying on his budding warcaster talents to steady his hand, sharpen his eyesight, and make almost imperceptible adjustments in his aim. He could feel the subtle shift of the wind and even the minute tremor in the tiny muscles in his index finger as it tensed around the trigger. This supernatural awareness would add lethal accuracy to his shot.

Berik squeezed the trigger. The stubby weapon unleashed a deafening report and disgorged a short plume of blue smoke. The advancing gatorman’s head snapped back as Berik’s shot slammed into its skull. Blood, scales, and brain matter splashed into the swamp, and the gatorman collapsed, its limbs churning the murky water as it jerked out its death throes.

Unassailed for the moment, Berik returned his focus to the Lancer thirty feet away. The warjack had been battling a second gatorman before Berik had been forced to pull his attention away. The Lancer had its back to Berik, blocking his view of the gatorman it was fighting, so he reached out to the ’jack’s cortex. As his mind filled with the Lancer’s primitive “thoughts,” he experienced the disconcerting sensation of viewing the world through two sets of eyes: his and the Lancer’s. An instant after making contact with the warjack, Berik realized the battle was over. The Lancer had skewered the gatorman with its war spear and was holding the impaled corpse aloft like some kind of macabre banner.

Berik holstered his hand cannon and waded toward the Lancer through the waist-deep marsh. Standing over nine feet tall, the Lancer was one of the smaller warjacks in the Cygnaran arsenal but also one of the most advanced. Its primary armaments were a simple fifteen-foot spear of hardened steel and a large shield bolstered with galvanic energy. However, the Lancer also boasted an arc node, a sophisticated piece of technology that allowed its warcaster to channel spells through the warjack. Twin stacks jutted from the Lancer’s armored back, belching black smoke into the balmy marsh air.

The Lancer’s head swiveled toward Berik on oiled hinges as he approached, and for a moment he saw himself through its eyes: a weathered man of nearly forty in mud-spattered warcaster’s armor splashing through a mire of brackish water. He felt the warjack’s satisfaction through their link as it swung its spear in a crisp overhand slash, dislodging the impaled gatorman corpse from the weapon and flinging its limp carcass across the marsh. At least it felt like the warjack’s satisfaction, but Berik wondered if it was just his own relief reflected back at him through the link he shared with the Lancer. He closed his eyes and shook his head, severing the connection between the ’jack’s cortex and his own mind. Because he was still a journeyman warcaster, his skill was often unpredictable, and sometimes he had trouble defining the boundaries between his mind and the mechanikal brains of the warjacks he commanded.

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