The Devils Do (Chaos of the Covenant Book 3) Read online

  “Sam’s always been a little paranoid.”

  The woman returned a minute later, an older Terran trailing behind her. His face changed when he saw Benhil.

  “You,” he said, suddenly afraid.

  “Hey, Sam,” Benhil said, producing his sidearm from beneath his coat and pointing it at Sam.

  “Jester?” Abbey said.

  “Joker, please,” Sam said, putting his hands up. “Don’t.”

  “Shut the frag up,” Benhil said, getting angry. “What the hell do I care? You sold me out, you piece of shit. You told the Republic what I was doing.”

  “I. I didn’t. I swear.”

  “Bullshit.”

  Benhil took a few steps forward, getting closer to Sam. The guard moved to draw her weapon. He shifted his sidearm to her.

  “No!” Sam cried, throwing himself in front of her. “Joker, I swear I didn’t.”

  “Jester, what the frag?” Abbey said.

  “Queenie, this asshole is the one who got me sent to Hell. He told the Republic where I was going. I know he did.”

  “Do you have proof?” Abbey asked.

  “Yeah. They showed me the message he sent when they sent me to trial. They used it to convict me. It wasn’t enough that I paid him to send some equipment over to Tamaroon, he wanted to get me busted so that he could keep my money and the goods.”

  Sam froze when he heard that. He put his hands up higher. “Fine. I did it. Are you fragging happy? Just don’t hurt my wife.”

  “What kind of monster do you think I am?” Benhil said. “I don’t hurt innocents.”

  “Is this why we came to Machina Four?” Abbey said, getting angry herself. “So you could shake down the asshole who got you busted?”

  “I figured it was as good a place as any. It didn’t hurt that I could take care of some unfinished business.”

  “Olus told me why you were in Hell. You got arrested because you were helping equip the Outworlders on Tamaroon. That’s treason.”

  “The Republic didn’t need to be on Tamaroon. They were using them for fragging target practice. My brother was there, damn it. I was trying to get them portable shelters, to give them a chance to hide until it was over.” His head whipped toward Abbey. “But they don’t put that shit in the reports, do they? They don’t give a shit about reasons.”

  “No, and right now I don’t either. Put the fragging gun down. You aren’t shooting anyone.”

  “I spent the last four years in Hell, Queenie. Because of this shit. He keeps his mouth shut, nobody ever knows about Tamaroon. It’s easy for you to be cool about Hell, you only spent what? Three weeks there?”

  “Six,” Abbey said.

  Benhil laughed. “He deserves to die.”

  “No, he-“

  Benhil pulled the trigger.

  Abbey threw her hand out, feeling the Gift flowing within her. The bullet changed direction, hitting the side of the factory and skipping away. She put out her other hand, sending Benhil back and to the ground.

  She was seething. Furious. She walked over to Benhil, standing over him. She pushed down with her hand, and he began to choke, his neck compressed beneath the Gift.

  “We came here to get supplies. The Brimstone isn’t your personal fragging transport. This is a war, damn it. Whether it looks like one yet or not, it is. And it’s one we don’t win without a fragging miracle or two. And it’s one we don’t win if my team is going to treat it like a fragging game. I don’t need this shit, Jester. I don’t need more complications.”

  “Uh, Queenie,” Gant said.

  “What?” Abbey said, looking back at him.

  He drew back in shock. “You’re attracting the wrong kind of attention.” He pointed to the side of the factory. The delivery bay doors were open, and a group of workers had come out.

  “You should have let him shoot me,” Sam said. He was standing again and smiling. “Flappy lips detonate starships, you know.”

  His form began to change. So did the woman’s. They were Goreshin. Children of the Covenant. So were the workers.

  Abbey let go of Benhil, shifting her attention their way. “Of all the damn places on all the damn planets in all the damn galaxy.”

  “Can’t take you anywhere,” Benhil said between gulping breaths of air.

  10

  Sam was close to them. Too close. He pounced towards Abbey, claws slashing in a downward cross that would have ripped her chest wide open if they had connected. She bounced back on the strength of her hidden softsuit, her baggy shirt torn in half but otherwise unscathed, the Gift churning inside of her at the ambush.

  Sam barely paused, coming at her again, ready for a second try.

  His head snapped back as Benhil opened fire, the rounds hitting him square in the face and going right through. He toppled to the ground.

  Abbey found one of the Uin in her tightpack, taking it out and flicking her wrist, extending the weapon. She heard hisses as the other Goreshin began charging from across the tract, coming their way. She heard a second hiss when Jequn brought her own blades to hand, bouncing quickly from her position and charging Sam’s wife. The woman growled in a mix of anger and fear, caught off-guard by the sudden presence of an Ophanim. She backed away defensively, hoping to buy time until the reinforcements arrived.

  Abbey hopped toward Sam, raising the Uin to bring it down in a swift, clean slash across the back of his neck. He jerked suddenly, coming up and toward her, forcing her to spin away as he slashed at her once more.

  “Why don’t you stay down?” Benhil said.

  Sam spun his way, preparing to charge. Benhil tried to shoot him a second time, but he slipped from side to side, impossibly fast, covering the distance to the soldier in a split-second.

  Abbey was right behind him. She dove, grabbing his foot and pulling, yanking his legs out from under him. They fell to the ground together, with Sam scrambling to regain himself as she ran the Uin across his back. He froze for a moment; his spine separated, his legs suddenly not working.

  “That’s right, die,” Benhil said, shooting him again.

  Abbey pulled herself forward, neatly slicing off his head. Then she stood up, facing Benhil. “This is your fault,” she said, before springing away.

  She threw herself toward the larger mass of creatures, eight in total that were nearly on top of them. She noticed Gant out of the corner of her eye, a knife in his grip, spinning lithely as he leaped into one of the Goreshin. He somersaulted in the air to avoid its claws, hitting its chest with the blade and vaulting back off, landing behind a second and stabbing it in the back of the head.

  “Jequn,” he barked, dropping off the creature as the Ophanim turned, vaulting back and slicing the creature’s head off. Gant rolled beneath an attack and grabbed his blade from it, sidestepping a falling claw and slicing into his attacker’s forearm.

  Abbey waded into the group, spreading the fingers on her left hand, feeling the Gift pooling there, extending from her fingertips to create claws of her own. She used the flat part of the Uin to block an attack, knocking the Goreshin off-balance and raking its face with her claws, tearing its eyes. She spun around behind it, sweeping the Uin through the neck on the other side and removing it from the fight.

  Bullets followed, fired from both Jequn and Benhil, the shots targeting the heads of the creatures, the damage pausing them for a few seconds each time while they healed. Abbey charged one of the stricken Children, her blade cutting it apart. She rounded on another, squaring off against it, face to face.

  “What are you?” the Goreshin asked, looking at her with fear in its eyes.

  “The Queen,” Abbey replied.

  The Gift was throbbing inside her, regenerated and replenished by all of the food bars she had eaten. She put her hand out, slamming the Gift into the creature, the power bringing it to its knees despite its resistance. She brought the Uin violently around and through its neck.

  “Is that all of them?” She heard Benhil say behind her.


  She spun on him again. He dropped his gun and put his hands up. “Whoa. Queenie.”

  “You son of a bitch,” Abbey said, still enraged. “You stupid son of a bitch. Give me one reason not to kill you right now.”

  “Queenie,” Gant said.

  “I’m sorry,” Benhil said. “Shit. Queenie, I’m sorry. I made a mistake. A stupid mistake.”

  Abbey moved closer. Her head was pounding, her forehead throbbing from the anger. She wanted to rip his head off with her bare hands. She wanted to -

  She stopped herself. That wasn’t her. She stared at Benhil, taking a few breaths. She looked around. They were alone in front of the factory, surrounded by dead Nephilim.

  “How was I supposed to know he was one of Thraven’s?” Benhil continued. “There’s no way to know. No way to tell.”

  “Shut up,” Abbey snapped.

  He did.

  “Security had to have heard the gunshots,” she said a moment later, beginning to calm somewhat.

  “What security?” Benhil asked. “I told you, Queenie.”

  “What about the fat Skink at the top of the ravine?”

  He shook his head. “Gilliam? The only thing he controls or cares about is the ride down. This is a mess we can clean up.”

  Abbey flicked her wrist, closing the Uin. She put it back in the tightpack. Then she grabbed her torn shirt, pulling it the rest of the way off. She checked her softsuit. At least it had avoided any new holes.

  “I like what this means less than what it was,” she said. “Children of the Covenant here means there could be Children anywhere.”

  “Or everywhere,” Gant agreed.

  “And we can’t spot them ahead of time.”

  “Now you see why the Seraphim lost,” Jequn said. “There weren’t as many of them back then. Nowhere near as many.”

  “How the frag are we supposed to fight this?” Benhil said.

  “One at a time if we have to,” Abbey replied. She looked at the door to the factory. “No security? Then at least this isn’t a total loss. Jequn, I want you and Jester to look around and see if there’s anything we can use.” She looked at Benhil again. “We can’t risk that Thraven knows we’re here. Not now. We have to bug out early thanks to you. No time for repairs.”

  “What about the life support?” Gant said.

  “We’d better hope the backup system doesn’t break,” Abbey replied. “Move it, Rejects. And be careful. We don’t know if there are more of them hiding inside.”

  “Roger,” Benhil said. Jequn nodded.

  Abbey watched them enter the facility. Gant came to stand behind her.

  “Where’d you learn to fight like that?” she asked.

  “Why does everybody forget that I’m a trained soldier?” he replied.

  “Normal trained soldiers can’t fight like that.”

  “I picked up a few lessons over the years. It happens.”

  Abbey looked down at him, raising her eyebrow.

  “What? It does. Besides, do you think Captain Mann only wanted me for my cute face?” He laughed. “You need to watch yourself, Queenie. When you were fighting, your eyes turned dark red, and I swear I saw ridges along your softsuit, maybe from under your skin. I think the more you use the Gift, the faster you’re going to lose it. You’re getting more angry more easily. You looked like you were half a second from cutting Jester’s idiot head off. Not that he wouldn’t have deserved it.”

  “I know. I can feel it.” She shook her head. “But I can’t ignore the power. Not when my team needs me. Not when the stakes are so high.”

  “You were a badass before you had the Gift. You don’t need to use it as a crutch. Just remember that.”

  She nodded. “You’re right. Thanks, Gant.”

  “Anytime.” He looked back toward the factory. “Why did you send Jester and Cherub in there alone?”

  “Cherub?”

  “She’s a Seraph, right?”

  “Or a descendent of one. So she says.”

  “She needs a nickname if she’s going to be a Reject.”

  “At the pace we’re collecting strays, I don’t know if we’ll be able to keep up.”

  He laughed again. “Building our own army. I can live with that.”

  “I sent them off alone so we could go check out their network. Sam knew who I was, which means he’s got a link to Thraven. I’m hoping we can use it to track down the Nova.”

  “The ship you were on when you got arrested? Why?”

  “General Kett wants us to deal with Kell ourselves, before he’ll commit his forces to this. Do you know what I say to that?”

  “Frag that?” Gant guessed.

  “Exactly. The upside of Jester’s screw-up is that we just found some extra time. If possible, I want to locate the mainframe, finish cracking it, and find out where Kett is hiding. Then I want to go pay him a visit and make him be part of this damn war.”

  11

  Abbey and Gant made their way through the factory. They moved in the opposite direction from Benhil and Jequn, angling away from the heavy machinery and the warehouse beyond, and toward the administrative offices tucked in the back corner.

  The factory itself was warm and damp and poorly lit, and it smelled like the Children of the Covenant didn’t believe in using modern toilets. There was a strong ammonia scent in the air, matched with a permeating stench that reminded Abbey of raw sewage. There was no reason for the place to smell so rank, but it did.

  “In here, Queenie,” Gant said, pointing to a room at the end of a corridor.

  Abbey joined him there a moment later. The room had a stack of computers in the corner, and a filthy terminal in the center. There were greasy handprints on the controls, an indication that the station had been used relatively recently. Abbey put her own hand on it, activating it.

  It was locked. That wasn’t much of a surprise.

  “This would be easier with a helmet,” she said, opening a tightpack and removing an interrupt disc. She placed it on the terminal, waiting a few seconds for the data flow to stabilize. Then she withdrew a hidden cable from the softsuit, reaching over and connecting it to the disc.

  “What is that?” Gant asked.

  “The interrupt gives me middleware access to the source layer,” she replied. “The cable links the suit’s SOC to the middleware. From there, I can use the onboard software Ruby downloaded for me to brute force the security lock and get root level control of the system.”

  “Learn something new every day.”

  “This is going to take a few minutes. Keep an eye out for Jequn. I don’t want her to know what we’re planning until it’s too late for her to do anything about it.”

  “You don’t think she would approve?”

  “Of us crashing Kett’s party? No.”

  Gant retreated from the room. Abbey watched the projection. She could see a single execution line at the bottom of it. The software entered passwords so quickly it was only showing every ten thousandth or so attempt. She was sure the terminal had a lockout on it, but their classified software didn’t give a shit about lockouts. It bypassed that part of the system, letting them enter as many codes as possible as quickly as possible. There were other ways to get into systems like this, of course, and it was always a matter of finding the right balance between time and effort.

  She smiled when the terminal unlocked. Nice and easy. She liked it that way.

  Of course, this was only the first step. She needed access to whatever network Thraven was using to pass messages. The Milnet, the public Galnet, the Outworld’s Syncsys, the Darknet, or something proprietary?

  She could have tracked the Nova from the Brimstone’s Milnet, but it wasn’t the best choice, which is why she had asked Benhil about finding an informant. Any backdoors she knew about in the system were monitored to ensure they didn’t get used against them, and would trigger a backscan the moment they were tripped. That would help the HSOC pinpoint the origin of the vector and lead them right to Machina F
our. While she was sure Thraven would discover what had happened here within a few days, that was still a lot better than within a few minutes.

  She navigated through the system, her actions slowed by the need to use the projected interface instead of a direct command line. Within a few minutes she had located the network configuration, uncovering the link keys and smiling. Syncsys. She should have guessed.

  She opened a path to the softsuit’s SOC, checking the signatures on her packages. The latest exploit she had stored was three days old. That was a long time by network security standards, and it meant she might wind up getting backscanned regardless. But only if the Outworlders had discovered the vulnerability. Since the system was more highly distributed among the planets in the Governance, this sort of thing usually took longer to patch and monitor.

  There was no decision to be made. She had to use what was available. She executed the network hack from the SOC, watching the commands run across the bottom of the projection.

  “Queenie,” Gant said, reappearing in the doorway behind her. “They’re on their way back. Jester looks excited about something.”

  “Cut them off, find out what they’ve got. I need more time.”

  “Roger.”

  Abbey turned back to the projection. Her hands moved in a blur at the base of the terminal, entering commands as quickly as she could. She needed to find out what had happened to the mainframe she had captured on Gradin. She knew it had been on the Nova, but was it still there?

  She needed reports, messages from someone on the Nova to someone in Thraven’s cabal. Who? She had no idea. Unless.

  She froze, thinking about it for a minute while she stared at the screen. The mainframe wouldn’t be on the Nova. Everything they had taken on Gradin would have been confiscated by the Republic Military Police as evidence. The hardware should have been taken out of play. Except Thraven had a finger on the MPs, and he had access to the mainframe.

  Mr. Davis.

  The son of a bitch who had sent her to Hell, and looked so damn smug doing it. He was the link between the Nova, the mainframe, Thraven, and her. He was the asshole she was looking for. But was his name really Davis?