44

THE CLOTHES WERE SLIGHTLY baggy, but not overly so. The shoes had been a problem, but since Ransom had worn combat boots anyway, she just kept her own footwear. Her old shirt had become the fabric Hunter had used to bind the girl's chest to help hide her true identity and a sharp hunting knife owned by Grieve had made short work of Ransom's hair.

What had once been a mass of red curls was now short and boyish and, if Hunter allowed herself to admit it, far more even and stylish than any of them had expected.

She held out a small mirror for Ransom to see her new look and the girl smiled at her reflection.

"I should have cut my hair a long time ago," she said. "This looks really good. Maybe you should open a salon when this is all over?"

"Maybe," said Hunter.

Presenting her to the rest of the group, they were suitably impressed—even more so when they watched how she'd changed her walk. All of it combined with her uncanny ability to mimic the late Prince's voice made even the most skeptical among them feel that the plan had a solid chance of working.

It was still a reckless plan with so many potential pitfalls, but the truth was they didn't have anything better. The people needed a symbol and with a symbol not presenting itself, they needed to manufacture one. Lie to the people for their own benefit. Governments had been employing that technique for centuries, even when nothing terribly important was on the line—who could possibly blame Hunter for trying it when there was so much at stake?

As the group set out, the others gave Ransom and Hobson a wide berth as the soldier gave the pretend Prince information on the background of the boy she would be replacing, information she could use to improve her mimicry.

Hunter found Grieve, mostly concealed by bushes, calling for a halt. She silently passed along the hand signal for the others to stop and take cover and she and Hobson were up with Grieve in a flash.

"What do you see?" asked Hobson.

"There," said the old soldier, pointing through a stand of trees to where the remains of a burned out village stood.

On the far side of the ruined village stood the now-familiar tumorous, purple-tinged mass that was a stage one processing plant for the ril-galas. The structure in which their human victims were herded, executed and skinned before being sent off to the larger plants for rendering. It looked like a scab on the landscape, standing between the village and the coast. Going around it would cost them travel time, but...

Grieve, looking through his binoculars, made a low growling sound in his throat.

"Bastards," he said, then handed the glasses roughly to Hunter.

It took her a moment to focus them properly and another to find what Grieve had been seeing.

Four ril-galas foot soldiers. At least two stalkers.

And a group of around thirty humans, sitting sullenly in a makeshift pen, under guard.

As she watched, two of the ril-galas forced ten of the prisoners to stand and marched them into the structure.

"We can stop this," she said, handing the binoculars to Hobson, who looked and swore under his breath.

"We certainly have to try," he said.

Hunter waived the rest of the group forward and explained the situation. They all took turns viewing the situation.

"There's only eight of us left," said Wiggins. "How much of a chance do we stand?"

"Does it matter?" asked Hunter.

"What does that mean? Of course it matters."

"I think what she means," said Hutch. "Is if we just walk away to save our own skins, are we really any better than those shits who tried to sell us out?"

The question was met with silence and several members of the group staring at their shoes.

"I was an anarchist," he said. "Before all this happened—that's what I was. I made car bombs. Pipe bombs. Honestly thought I still was an anarchist up until the other day, when I saw what real anarchy does to people. Turns them on each other. Makes them sell out their species to save their own hides. Now I don't know what the fuck I believe."

He paused, popped the magazine out of his shotgun and began replenishing its shells from the pouch on his belt.

"Except that I'm not letting these alien twats get away with turning those folks into meat."

"So we're just going to run into a ril-galas base and what? Start shooting?"

"Stay here if you're scared."

"That's enough, both of you," said Ransom, quietly but firmly. "I agree with Hutch, we can't just walk away from this."

"I have no intention of doing so," said Hunter. "Those of you who don't want to be part of this, you'll need to find a path around. We will, hopefully, see you back at Edinburgh Castle."

Hunter was relieved that in the end, only Wiggins and Fairbairn left. Her preference would have been to have all members of the group involved, but she could accept losing two—it was better than the alternative. Though Pradesh seemed to be equal parts furious and embarrassed that her long-time partner Fairbairn would leave at such a time.

Grieve and Ransom were the forward scouts as usual, though at first Hunter had been hesitant to put Ransom out there. She was, for all intents and purposes, now the heir to the throne of Britain and they had invested quite a bit in the charade. However, having their best scouts in play would increase the odds of their survival, so Hunter had relented. They had split into two groups: one led by Corporal Hobson, with Grieve acting as scout and sniper; one led by Hunter, with Ransom as scout and quasi-sniper with her bow.

Darting forward at the sound of one of Ransom's eerily accurate birdcalls, Hunter took cover behind a four foot tall section of blackened brick wall. A sign, twisted and equally blackened, lay on the ground by her feet. It was advertising some kind of twelve year old whiskey and she briefly wondered if it was the brand that Radko liked.

"Two foot soldiers just came out," said Hutch as he slid in beside her, his shotgun at the ready. "Not sure if it’s the same two we saw go in or if there are more inside."

Nodding, Hunter double-checked her ammunition situation. It was the same as it had been when she'd last checked, thirty seconds prior. Bringing the 33A1 rifle to her shoulder, she peeked around the edge of the wall. From their position, she could just see the edge of the pen and a handful of people sitting on the grass within, and part of one of the alien guards.

"No sign of the stalkers from this side," she said quietly.

There had been no sign of the stalkers since Hunter and her group had begun their slow creep toward the plant and the fact was gnawing at her. It didn't make sense for the stalkers, the most nimble ril-galas they'd seen to date, to stay inside the plant, so she had to assume they were out on patrol. The question was where?

"I can see Grieve up ahead," said Hutch, pointing toward the far side of town.

She could see him too, carefully picking his way through the rubble. And she saw him signal the all-clear to his half of the group just as Ransom popped up at her side.

"The stalkers are moving around, all through the town," said Ransom. "Like a search grid."

"Do they know we're here?"

Ransom shook her head.

"I saw them go through their captives, like they were doing a count. I think someone made a run for it when the ril-galas weren't looking."

"Good for them," said Hutch.

"Potentially good for us, too," said Hunter. "With the stalkers drawn away, it could make our job significantly easier."

"What about you?" said Hutch, turning to Hunter. "You said you could feel these things."

"Not always. Right now, the panic and terror of those people... it's drowning out everything."

She saw Grieve slowly getting into firing position. His first shot—and ideally, first kill—was to be their signal to attack. Rifle pressed firmly to her shoulder, Hunter rocked on the balls of her feet and rested her shoulder against the wall, only a few inches from the corner. She was ready to pounce and she knew from the silence behind her, Hutch was as well. She heard the slight swish as Ransom drew an arrow from her quiver and Hunter realised that this was probably the last time for a while that Ransom would be herself and not the Prince. If they succeeded in rescuing the prisoners here, this is where the act would begin.

The shot rang out.

One of the ril-galas foot soldiers fell.

Hunter swung out from behind the wall and fired a burst from her assault rifle and Hutch stood up, firing a pair of booming shots from his shotgun.

Gunfire sounded from across the town as Hobson's group opened fire.

Loping out of a ruined church, claws outstretched, a stalker launched itself toward Hutch, but there was a soft twang of a bowstring and the creature was suddenly skidding across the ground, one of Ransom's arrows protruding from its chest.

Ducking back behind the ruined wall, Hunter gritted her teeth as bolts from ril-galas cannons hammered into the broken pavement to her right, fragments showering over her. As she swung out to return fire, her eyes widened. The foot soldier was less than a metre in front of her. Too close to use its arm cannons as anything but a blunt instrument, the creature swung, catching Hunter under the chin and sending her sailing through the air.

She landed, heavily, nearly four metres away, brick fragments biting into her back and no breath in her lungs. She rolled onto her side, gasping without taking in any air. Spat out a mouthful of blood. Saw her attacker approaching, saw its arm cannons begin to glow.

Rifle. Her rifle.

Gone. She'd dropped it when the thing had hit her. Fumbling with her sidearm, she watched the ril-galas soldier point both gun pods directly at her head. She saw the air distort around their barrels—the telltale sign they were about to fire.

It was okay, she decided. This was fine. She had decided who she was.

She was Hunter, and she was very happy to have found Hunter. Hunter had saved Quon Li Chen, probably even more than Radko had.

And then, suddenly, there was something between her and the ril-galas.

"Not on my watch," said Hutch, punctuating the statement with three quick blasts from his shotgun.

The alien hit the ground, a puff of dust and crushed mortar briefly obscuring it from view while Hutch helped Hunter to her feet.

"You okay?"

"I'm fine," she said, spitting another gobbet of blood onto the ground.

The others had already begun closing in on the plant, and Hunter—scooping up her lost, and thankfully undamaged, rifle—followed Hutch to take up position with them.

Two more foot soldiers had come charging out from the plant, but Hobson was well-positioned to take out the first with a double-tap and Hutch, using his powerful shotgun to carve chunks off the other, had it down and dead within seconds.

Ransom, already in character as Arthur, was making her way through the prisoners. A word of encouragement here, a pat on the shoulder there. Letting them know this was real, that they really were now safe. Or as safe as any of them could be in the circumstances. The reality was slow to sink in and as Hunter saw it slowly dawn on people, it almost made her smile.

Almost, but not quite.

"We have to go in," she said, turning toward the plant.

Hutch and Hobson, who were standing with her, both turned in the same direction.

"There may still be some survivors in there," Hobson said, nodding, then popping a fresh magazine into his rifle.

They let Hobson take point, being the only one of the three actually trained in close-quarters combat. Despite the vile exterior, the interior of the plant seemed almost utilitarian and straightforward. Hallways, doors, but little else. It reminded Hunter of the Nightwatch labs on the night she'd escaped. It was quiet and there seemed little security—after all, who would be crazy enough to try to get inside a place like that? The quasi-peaceful feeling didn't last long.

"There's something up ahead," she whispered. "Not human."

Hobson nodded, the barrel of his rifle never wavering, and Hutch took up better positioning to the left and behind the Corporal. Whatever was ahead of them, one if not both would have shots. Hunter hung back slightly, ready to step in if either faltered, but more than willing to let the two of them, the more experienced firearms users, handle it if possible.

Hobson saw it first and swore, immediately opening fire. A second later, Hutch did the same. By the time Hunter caught site of the enemy, it was already dead, twitching on the floor in a puddle of fluids. Hutch fired another shot into its chest for good measure.

"The fuck is this thing?" he asked.

No one had an answer. If Hunter had to describe it, she'd say it looked like a smaller ril-galas stalker had been cut off at the waist and grafted onto the body of an absurdly large tick and covered in armour. A ril-galas centaur tick. Its semi-translucent abdomen was partially engorged, sticking out from under a dorsal shield. There appeared to be something solid within the abdomen and when Hobson shone his light on it, all three took a step backward.

It showed the shadowy form of a partially-digested human arm.

There was a scuttling sound down the hallway to their left.

"Hunter...," said Hutch, nervousness evident in his voice. "Are you sensing any humans alive in this place?"

Closing her eyes, she reached out, opened her mind like she rarely did. She quickly filtered out Hutch and Hobson and she found other minds. She flinched and her eyes snapped open.

"Yes," she said, a shiver running up her spine. "But not in a state where they'd prefer rescue over death."

The scuttling was now to their right as well. The ticks were trying to surround them.

"We should go," she said quietly. "And quickly."

"Yeah, I agree one hundred per... cent..."

Hutch faltered, his jaw clenching as they all realised at the same moment that the scuttling they'd just heard was directly above them.

Hunter looked up into the eyes of a ril-galas centick, its six legs somehow allowing it to hang from the ceiling above. She tried to raise her rifle, but the thing lashed out with one clawed hand and knocked her 33A1 bouncing and skidding down the corridor. As the creature reached out for her, she heard a boom and its head dissolved in a cloud and with a second boom its torso caved in. It fell to the ground, knocking Hunter over and then Hutch hauled her to her feet, the barrel of his shotgun still smoking.

She looked toward her rifle, but she could see the shadow of another tick down the corridor, so instead she drew her pistol.

"Wait," said Hutch, unslinging his backpack.

"Wait? We don't have time to wait, Hutchings," said Hobson.

"We have time to blow the shit out of this place," Hutch said, pulling out his bomb-making materials. "I'm not leaving here with it still standing. Just keep them off me for sixty seconds."

Raising her pistol, Hunter stood back-to-back with Hobson, each covering one of the two corridors that fed into theirs. She knew from experience that Hutch could assemble an explosive device with remarkable speed, but she still wished they had more people with them, more guns to point at the enemy.

Hobson's rifle barked twice and it was all Hunter could do not to turn around and look, but she kept her eyes on her corridor. Scuttling. A shadow.

An arachnoid leg.

A shoulder and... a torso.

She fired four shots in rapid succession, one catching the thing in the shoulder, the other three slamming square into its chest. It occurred to her that these tick things might not keep their 'pilot'—the real ril-galas—in the same place as the others, but they had neither the time nor the opportunity to check. They just needed to put enough bullets into them to make the question irrelevant.

As her target fell, she heard Hobson fire again and again heard scuttling from further down the corridor.

"Hutch...?"

"Almost, Hunter. Almost."

She was about to respond when she felt the wave of his emotions a second before she heard his voice.

"Fuck!"

"What?" asked Hobson, both startled and worried. "What is it, what's wrong?"

"I've got enough teramite here to turn this place into a dust cloud," said Hutch. "But my detonator is damaged. I can't trigger the explosion."

He paused.

"At least not remotely."

"Explain," said Hunter, not taking her eyes off the corridor. There was another shadow there. No, two shadows.

Three.

"Teramite is unstable. I can detonate it with a powerful enough impact. Like a shotgun blast."

"Does your shotgun have enough range to detonate the explosives without taking us with it?"

"Nope."

"What about Grieve's sniper rifle?" asked Hobson.

"We're in a maze of corridors," said Hunter, adjusting her grip on the pistol. "There's no way to do this from a safe distance, is there Hutch?"

"No. There's not."

"All right then," she said, feeling remarkably calm. "Hutch, take my position. Give me the shotgun. I'll bring this place down once you're both clear."

Again, she knew the response before it was said aloud.

"No," said Hutch. "You got us this far, you need to take us the rest of the way. This is where I get off the crazy train."

Hobson tried to say something, but Hutch cut him off.

"This isn't a debate," he said calmly, almost kindly. Almost. Hutch was still Hutch, after all. "I've done some bad shit in my life and I've done some good shit. Most of the good shit has been since these assholes came to Earth and I'm not proud of that fact. Of the fact that it took this to make me into something I could be proud of. So fuck these aliens. I'm going out, but they're coming with me. I can stop this place right here from taking any more lives and all I have to do is die. Not a bad trade."

The feeling struck close to home for Hunter and she felt a lump in her throat.

Hutch was a pain in the ass and they had only seen eye to eye about a third of time, but they had managed to forge a mutual respect and work together for the common good. It was more than many people could say and it was all one could ask for in the times they faced. It had saved many lives, many times over, including their own.

Except for today.

Not trusting herself to speak, Hunter simply nodded and extended her hand to Hutch.

He understood. He said nothing as he shook her hand, just nodded and smiled slightly.

Then Hunter raised her gun toward the corridor again and unclipped one of the flash-bang grenades from her vest.

"On three," said Hobson, his own grenade in hand. "One. Two. Three."

They lobbed their flash-bangs down opposite corridors, fired two quick bursts after them then ran toward the exit. They heard the grenades go off and they heard the squeal of the ril-galas ticks as the grenades blinded and deafened them and then they were outside in the shining sun, stumbling as their eyes adjusted.

"Back!" yelled Hobson. "Everyone back!"

Hunter heard the boom of Hutch's shotgun and then the louder, near-deafening boom of the teramite detonating and then she was flying forward, carried on a concussion wave of hot air as the plant erupted in flames. Landing heavily on her chest, the wind forced from her lungs again, Hunter rolled over to see the mushroom cloud rising from the burning skeleton that was once the tumorous blight of the ril-galas rendering plant. It was gone now, nothing but flame and debris, and so was everything that had been inside it.

Including Hutchings.

Hunter realised she didn't know the man's first name. Or even if Hutchings was his real name.

Pushing herself up to her knees, she sucked in air and tried to get her breathing under control. She could hear voices, but they were indistinct and nonsensical until she heard one right in front of her.

"Hunter," said Ransom-Arthur. "Are you all right? Where's Hutch?"

"He stayed." It was all she could say.

Hands grabbed her under the arms and helped her to her feet—Hobson, who had recovered much more quickly than she had. Turning back to Ransom, Hunter was about to tell her—tell everyone—about Hutch's sacrifice when suddenly a large black blur hammered into Ransom's back, knocking her to the ground.

A ril-galas tick stood over her, raising its claw for the killing blow and Hunter reacted. She didn't think, she didn't plan, she just reacted.

All of her hate, all of her anger, all of her pure, unadulterated rage at the universe, from her time as a test subject of Nightwatch to how she was treated by the Rangers on the Vimy Ridge to her loathing of those humans who would sell out their own species. Her fresh pain at the loss of Hutch. And of course, her abhorrence of the ril-galas themselves. All of it was fired like a missile directly into the alien's mind and it staggered backward as if shot and then collapsed to the ground, twitching, until someone lunged forward and put four bullets into it.

Hunter dropped to her knees again and fell forward, catching herself with one hand while the other cradled her pounding head.

She watched as if in slow motion as a drop of blood splattered on the dirt beside her thumb. And then another. And a third and fourth.

There was sound inside her like rushing water and all she could smell was the coppery scent of her own blood. Through her left eye, the world seemed almost greyscale and a hollow itch formed at the base of her skull.

She'd broken something inside herself, she knew.

Looking up, she saw Ransom rushing to her side and the girl helped her to her feet.

She was broken, but she'd saved Ransom.

Long live the King.