Inherited War 1: Retribution (20 page)

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“
I still have no idea how I even knew that thing was there waiting across the street and until I felt the heat of its having been there I almost doubted myself.  I know Sky had to think I was crazy until she felt the spot it had been waiting at.  Something that sneaky was scary, not to mention it went thirty feet straight up a smooth wall with no help.  Hopefully it’s just some curious local trying to figure out what I am and not someone bent on killing me.”

Two hours and a couple of sore feet later they finally stumbled onto the right bar.  It wasn’t the Majors fault that his map was wrong, it was whoever decided to build the building right in the middle of a major intersection we needed to get through.  They had to back track and try a couple of different walkways before they were able to get around the new construction.  Even once they made it around they had to find a different way to link up with the right street since the whole areas path system had been changed.  The whole adventure took them an hour more than it should have to get to their final destination.  Here they were, finally, standing outside the Happy Rylioan’s Stick Bar.  Cole could figure out why the Rylioan was so happy.  If the creature on the bright neon looking sign was a Rylioan, then the word stick got mistranslated or meant something else in Rylioan because the creature on the sign had to have the biggest phallic Cole had ever seen, clutched in all four of its hands and was wearing a smile to match.  “I have a bad feeling about this place.”  Cole muttered under his breath.

“That’s nothing
, you should see a Rylioan that’s lived a half a century,” Sky said to Cole.

“Man
, I’m gonna need to get a bigger ship after this if I’m gonna feel manly again.  Well, I hope he’s at least as short as his sign suggests or I am going to be pissed.”  Cole stomped off to the front door of the establishment. 

For the second time today Cole stumbled into a fight that wasn’t even his.  This time he was caught totally unprepared.  He stepped through the door first and was instantly assailed by the worst noise he had ever heard before
. Before he could react, a very large, very solid object flew into his face.  It hit with such force that even Coles new physical prowess couldn’t keep him from losing consciousness.  He collapsed to the floor in a heap.  His nanites went to work immediately though, fixing the concussion and repairing the break in his nose.  It only took his nanites a few seconds to repair the damage enough that Cole began to regain consciousness.   He felt rough hands trying to haul him back to his feet.

“Damn
, sorry Sir, I was aiming at the window not the door.  The little sucker was squirming around too much though, he threw off my aim.”  Cole realized that the hands holding him were about twice the size of his own.  He opened his eyes to a sight that he would remember till his dying day.  The monster that had apologized to him was grabbing another creature up off the floor.  The other creature was apparently the thing that had crashed into his face a moment ago.  The other being was just as big as Cole was and looked to weigh about the same.  The mound of muscles that had helped Cole to stand up, picked up the other being with one hand, lifted him over his head and threw him out the window.  The window was some sort of power field because it didn’t break, it acted more like the air pressure shield they had been target practicing through on the ship.  Cole turned his head to look for Sky, she was looking at the brute with a dawning recognition.  Cole was about to turn back and confront the creature when he started to realize he was getting information from his nanites.  They were reporting all the damage he had sustained and were giving him an estimation on completion of repairs.  That was a very handy thing to have he thought to himself.  He would have to ask Hal about it later.  He brought his rapidly returning focus to bear on the creature that had assaulted him.  He opened his mouth to accost the creature when the obvious model for the front sign walked in from a back room yelling.

“Damn it
Jeth, how many times have I told you not to throw them out the window.  I told you, if you hit someone again I was going to fire you.  I know better brutes than you who want this job.”  The little Rylioan snarled as he walked out into the main seating area.  “Who the hell are you two?  Wait, we don’t see many Nixians down here.  What do you want?  I don’t know nothing and if you try to take me, Jeth here will tear your arms off.”

“Boss
they are just customers, I accidently hit the man when Sod wiggled as I threw him.  I swear, it was an accident and he was coming in the door, not the window, so it don’t count.”  Cole was surprised the giant, Jeth, was acting so meek towards the Rylioan.  “I think they was just coming in for a drink is all.”

The Rylioan looked Cole and Sky up and down.  “Okay
, you can stay if you buy something to drink and if you get any funny ideas, Jeth here will take care of you.”  That said, he turned and stomped back into the back room. 

“Jeth is it?”  Cole asked.  Cole stared at the monster again as he nodded yes to Cole’s question.  Jeth
would have put any Earth bodybuilder to shame.  He was about seven feet tall give or take an inch and Cole guessed a good five hundred pounds of solid muscle.  He had a smashed in looking face and not a single hair on his head.  His skin was slightly blue but it was hard to tell in the bad light of the bar.  Cole also noticed he had no ears and deep set eyes.  All he was wearing was a loin cloth and sandals.  When he got to the sandals he did a quick count, yup only two really big toes on each foot.  The hands were normal though, four fingers and a thumb on each.

“
Jeth, we are just here to meet someone, not cause any problems.  We will order something if that’s what your boss wants.”  The brute nodded as Cole and Sky moved to the bar.  They picked a spot that gave them a view of almost the entire place.  They sat down and punched their orders into the bars console.  They both ordered water.  “So the Major said that the contact would know when we got here right?”  Cole said in a low voice to Sky.

“Yes
, he said they would make themselves known to us and that they had a permanent watch on the bar.  We just need to wait a bit for them to show up.  The fight may have made them nervous so we just need to sit tight.”  She picked up her glass and held it up to the light, peering at it intently before setting it back on the counter.  Cole never even bothered to look at his.  He could smell the funk coming off his glass.

“You look like you recognized our large friend over there, care to enlighten me?
”

She
figured they had time for a quick lesson, so jumped right into the topic.  “He is from the Twin Worlds.  No one knows what they actually call their planet anymore because everyone refers to it as the Twin Worlds.  Both species are called Twin Worlders even though they are radically different.  He is from the larger of the two worlds.  They are generally considered to be gentle giants in most instances but when enraged, can be almost unstoppable.  They, along with their counterparts from the second world, were once allies of the Pure Humans.  They suffered greatly at the hands of the Roche until the Nixa and some others came to their rescue.  The Pures lost control of the Twin Worlds late in the war. When they heard about the atrocities being committed on both planets, they decided to make us abandon supporting them before it was too late for us as well.  Since we were no longer supporting the Pures, we turned our attention to our other allies and aided them in defending their home worlds.  The Twin Worlds are a very unique place in the entire galaxy for one very specific reason.  For every life on one world, there is a life on the other world linked by an ancient bond.  No one knows how it happened, but once the two beings who share the bond meet, they are rebound and never separate.  They claim it’s the souls reuniting after the sun has split them.  The planets are on opposite sides of the sun and they never knew the other existed until the Pures introduced them.  The two peoples have been inseparable ever since.  When the Esii drove the Pures out of the Twin World system, they butchered the bigger of the two peoples because they feared them more.  Many of the other worlds inhabitant’s went mad seeing their bond mates killed.  We massed our fleets and drove the Esii and Roche from the system, but the Twin Worlders where never the same.  They all make a pilgrimage on their twenty-first birthday to the bonding grounds, where if their bond mates are still alive they bond and never separate again.”  She lowered her voice to a whisper for the next part.  “That makes this odd because if they don’t bond they don’t leave their planet and this Worlder, Jeth appears to be alone.  I have never heard of one leaving his planet before without his or her bond mate.”

Cole turned to look at Jeth.  Jeth ignored him.  “Keep your eye out then
, he has got to be close and I don’t want another surprise literally hitting me in the face.”  At that moment the doors to the bar opened and a dozen Thrashodons walked into the bar.  “Oh shit,” Cole muttered as he stood up to meet the angry stares of the new comers.

“Save me his heart boys the rest is yours
,” the Thrashodon in the middle said.  The rest pulled their guns and opened fire.  Cole and Sky were peppered with solid kinetic ammunition that forced them back into and over the bar. They were both thankful for their armor, but even their armor could only stand up to a certain amount of punishment before it failed and rounds started getting through. 

Their face and head covers automatically extended over their heads and a H
eads Up Display blinked to life on Cole’s visor.  He hadn’t expected that.  He drew his plasma pistol and a crosshair bloomed to life in his visor.  The Thrashodons were busy turning the bar into Swiss cheese and not really aiming.  Cole poked his hand high enough over the bar to allow him to spray plasma back and forth without exposing him to incoming fire.  It wasn’t effective at killing the Thrashodons but it did disperse them and make them take cover, giving Cole and Sky a quick respite from the incoming fire.  It didn’t last long though, once they all got behind cover they all picked up their rate of fire.  The battery power monitor for his gun in Cole’s HUD was rapidly approaching zero.  Sky had followed his lead and was pouring fire around the edge of the bar blindly.  Cole’s battery power hit empty just as the building shook with a violent tremor.  An explosion sounded somewhere above them.  A second later another explosion and tremor, this time closer above their heads. All firing stopped in the bar as everyone looked for overhead cover as a rapid series of explosions worked their way down the building until the ceiling over their heads disintegrated in a shower of sparks and dust.  The close proximity of the explosion left the Thrashodon’s stunned on the floor, but the suits protected Sky and Cole and left them fully functional.  Cole’s visor automatically started cycling though different visual spectrums until it settled on thermal vision.  The Thrashodons reptilian nature made them somewhat cooler than the surroundings and easy to spot as Cole got to his feet dragging Sky with him.

Cole started to take aim at the nearest downed Thrashodon when small dark forms started to fall through the now open ceiling into the chaos below.  “Shit
,” Cole swore again.  It was the other little guys from the hanger.  It looked like both groups were here for a little revenge on Cole.  Cole reversed his upward momentum and pulled Sky back to the ground behind the limited safety of the shredded bar.  “We are in trouble,” He said over the comm.  “We need to get out of here and into the open.  If we stay in this building they are going to eventually get lucky and focus enough fire on us to penetrate the suits.”  He reloaded and passed his plasma pistol to Sky.  “It’s fully charged.  Stay down but let loose with a steady spray for a second to buy me some time.”  Sky took the offered gun without a word and started to fire over the top of the bar.

Cole started doing a mental inventory of everything he had brought.  His hand reacted before his brain
, and jammed itself into his duster’s pocket.  He pulled out a small cylindrical device.  He grasped it at both ends and twisted each hand in the opposite direction.  Suddenly a timer popped into his HUD.  It began counting down from five.  Cole stood up and turned toward the middle of the room.  He took it all in a glance.  There had to be about twenty of the little melty aliens on the ground now, in hand to hand combat with the remaining ten Thrashodons.  The counter was at two when Cole found the most densely populated area of the room and threw the cylinder.  He dropped back down behind the bar grabbing Sky as he did and getting as close to the floor as he could.

A sudden blast from the direction Cole had thrown the grenade kicked up and hurled debris around the room.  There were a
fair number of body parts making up that debris but not enough, unfortunately.  As Cole got to his feet, again risking getting shot at, he saw that all he had done was to even things up between the two groups.  “Shit,” Cole swore again.  He just stood there watching the general melee going on in the bar, trying to think of any way to get them out when the wall directly behind them exploded outward.  Cole staggered forward into the bar.  Now what, he thought to himself as he began to turn around.  At that point the long muscled arms of the bouncer, Jeth, snaked out picking up Cole and then Sky with ease.

“Hold still little man.”  The giant said as he held Cole and Sky to his chest.  He turned putting his back to the bar and charged.  Five-hundred
pounds of muscle and bone going full steam destroyed what little was left of the bar.  He kept going, picking up speed in his reverse charge.  He slammed through a struggling group of fighters either smashing them flat or knocking them out of his way.  Cole saw the look of outrage on the remaining Thrashodons faces as they saw their prey getting away.  Then the brute hit the door.  It didn’t stand a chance, it exploded out and went sailing across the street to smash into the far wall.