Chapter 14
We raced across the dusty plain toward Rayne’s village and the sounds of the screams. The village was built near a group of trees that actually had leaves on them, so I assumed that there was some kind of access to clean water nearby. It made sense that they had built the village there if they had a steady water supply and the soil was fertile enough for plants to actually survive there, but it probably meant that others would try to steal anything and everything from the village.
I looked left and right as we ran, and it seemed like the desert-like, misty, flat ground went on forever. I could see no end to the field off to the left, thanks to the yellow fog that stretched into the distance, and to the right I could just make out a hill somewhere in the distance. But other than that, the village seemed to be the only inhabited space for miles.
We kicked up dust as we ran, and the crusted top layer of mud cracked under our feet as though we were running on thin ice. The wind had picked up across the plain, and I squinted my eyes as dust threatened my sight. Rayne’s hood was pulled off by the gusts, but she didn’t bother to pull it back up. Instead, she locked her sights on the village and threw herself across the land in its direction, while her cape billowed out behind her. She ran as though she was leading troops into battle, and I wondered what thoughts were running through her head as she sprinted toward her home.
“Did you say bandits?” I asked.
“Yes,” she replied without looking at me.
“Is that a common thing here?” I asked.
“Of course,” she panted. “Some people fight to survive, and some people steal what we fight for.”
“So, this has happened before?” I asked.
“More times than I can count,” she said.
“Is it always the same people?” I asked.
“No,” she said. “They come from all over. Most of the time, they’re just passing through, see our village, and think it’ll be an easy target.”
“You’d think people would come together in an environment like this when it’s so hard to get by,” I said.
“You have a very unrealistic expectation of people’s morals,” she replied, and I noticed then how much sadness and distrust in her fellow Wilderns she had behind her eyes.
I sighed at how dog eat dog her world was, and it became even more apparent once we started to get closer to the village. The fence was clearly designed to keep people out rather than keep livestock in, and it featured rusted pieces of metal that had been screwed onto thick, wooden posts that had been sunk several feet into the ground. It surrounded the entire village, and it looked like there was only one way in.
“Just one gate?” I asked when Rayne slowed to a walk.
“There’s also a small gate at the back,” Rayne whispered as we crept up to the fence and stopped to gather ourselves. “That’s probably the way the bandits came in. They would have come in trucks, and I didn’t see any parked at the front.”
She took off her rucksack, reached inside it, and pulled out more ammunition, which she loaded into her gun. I drew my own gun as well and set it to Electro-Launch, and then I nodded to her that I was ready.
We could still hear screams and shouts coming from inside the fence, and they seemed to have intensified, which was worrying. I could also hear things being smashed or thrown about, and I realized that some of the bandits had already begun to ransack the place. I could smell fertilizer, cooked meat, and burning wood. I heard an animal bark, though I didn’t know what sort of animals they had on this planet, so I couldn’t have been certain if it was a dog or some life form that was the Wildern equivalent of one.
“Will, I am detecting fifty-five people inside the village,” Francine informed me.
“Francine says there are fifty-five people inside,” I whispered to Rayne.
“Well, there are forty people in my village, including the children,” she said. “So, that leaves fifteen bandits.”
“Shit,” I said as a surge of concern for the safety of the kids entered my mind. “Do they always travel in groups that big?”
“No,” she said. “This is the most I’ve ever been up against.”
“Okay,” I replied. “Well, it’s your village, so what’s the plan?”
“We go in the front, where they’re less likely to be,” she said. “We try to take them out one by one while they ransack the place.”
“Divide and conquer,” I said. “I like it.”
“If something goes wrong, one of us makes a diversion while the other keeps going, and if in doubt, we get the people out,” Rayne said.
“Of course,” I replied. “Their lives are the priority.”
“Yes,” she said, and her green eyes met mine with such a serious look in them that I couldn’t look away. “Because these bandits don’t care who you are or how old someone is. They’ll kill anyone who gets in their way.”
Her eyes flicked slightly away from my face, and within the span of a second, I could see her reliving whatever horrifying, traumatizing encounters she had experienced with bandits like these in the past.
“We’ll save your people,” I said as I placed my hand on her shoulder. “I promise.”
She nodded, and her eyes hardened again. She gestured to me to follow her, and we began to tiptoe along the fence toward the front gate.
I looked back toward the ship as we crept around the perimeter of the village, and I could just see the top of it beyond the clump of trees. But it could have just been another building, so I was hoping that the bandits wouldn’t pay any attention to it. Besides, they wouldn’t be able to get past the shields even if they did.
I turned back to the task at hand. We had almost reached the front gate. I heard birds squawking inside the village, the sound of people running, and the cries of the people in the village as they pleaded with the bandits to leave them alone. I grimaced at the sound, but pressed on until we were right beside the gate. It was wide open, which meant we wouldn’t make any noise when we slipped through it into the village.
Rayne poked her head around the end of the fence to see if the coast was clear. She looked around for a moment, and then she turned back to me and nodded. I gave her a thumbs up, which made her smile for a moment, and then she disappeared through the opening of the gate. I followed closely after her, and we snuck as quietly and quickly into the village as we could.
We kept to the fence and skirted around the outside toward the back of the closest house at the edge of town, which would provide us with some cover. We stayed low and moved fast, but, as we moved in, I was able to get a good look at the place that Rayne called home.
The ground was dry, just like everywhere else on this planet, but it was a different color and texture than the rest of the land outside the village walls. It was a darker brown color and looked more like the soil that I was used to back home, rather than the rocky, gray, clay-like stuff that coated Wildern for the most part. Animal pens were dotted around the outside of the village and contained various types of livestock that looked somewhat familiar, yet slightly different from what we had on Earth.
It was sort of like an alien parody of a farm. They had a chicken coop that contained some large birds that I realized were just chickens but around twice the size of the ones I was used to. They clucked and ran around their pen, apparently riled up by the sounds of fighting. There was also a pen filled with an animal that looked kind of like a combination of a sheep and a goat, only its wool was patchy and the horns on its head looked sharp. There were also a few cow-like creatures, some pigs that looked underfed, and one animal in its own cage that I had no idea what it was.
The houses themselves were all handmade with whatever the villagers had been able to get their hands on. The best way to describe them was like patchwork, where sheets of metal were nailed to pieces of wood to form walls with criss-crossed branches converted into roofs. Sheets of tarp rustled in the wind, and occasionally, a few tiles had been used to cover up any holes. The houses were small and modest, and they were closely packed together. Wooden shutters covered the windows, and most of the front doors hung open, presumably where the bandits had entered to root through the villagers’ belongings.
The main pathway from the gate ran through the center of the village, and was wide enough for a vehicle to drive along. It bent around to the left, so I wasn’t able to see along its entire length, but there were a few handcrafted benches along both sides.
I spotted something lying in the middle of the road a little further on, and it took me a moment to realize it was a toy. My stomach dropped, but I told myself that the child was probably safe. There was no small body crumpled nearby, and no bloodstain on the surrounding ground. A new wave of determination flooded through my veins, though, and I made the decision that I wouldn’t rest until I got rid of the bandits for good.
Rayne led me toward the backyard of the closest house to us. There was only a low picket fence around the yard, so we stepped over it and then snuck up to the back windows of the house. The shutters were open, which meant we could see through the glassless windows into the home. We poked our head above the windowsill and peeked into the back room, which was a simple bedroom with one large bed on one side of it, and one smaller cot on the other side where I assumed their child slept. For a moment, it was entirely quiet, but then I heard footsteps on the wooden floor from the hall, and a moment later, the bedroom door was thrown open.
Rayne and I ducked down so that we wouldn’t be seen, and I looked over at her. She slowly edged back up to the window and had a look at who was inside, and then she ducked back down again.
“Bandit?” I mouthed to her.
She nodded with a murderous look on her face. Suddenly, she raised her gun toward the window and was about to shoot, but I laid my hand firmly on her arm and brought her back down to a crouch. She looked at me questioningly, and I put a hand up to my ear to insinuate that if she shot him it would be loud and would draw attention to us. She looked annoyed for a moment, and then she nodded because she knew I was right. She put her gun in her waistband and drew her knife, but I was already on the case.
I stood up to look through the window, just as the bandit turned and saw me. The ugly brute gawked at me for a moment, and then he pulled out a gun and aimed it at me with a snarl on his lips. Before he could pull the trigger, I fired my own gun, which was nearly silent.
The silver ball hit him right in the middle of his chest. He grunted when it hit him, and a moment later he stiffened and fell back onto the bed, which cushioned his fall and made the whole encounter swift and silent.
I crouched back down and turned to Rayne, who looked very pleased with me.
“I want one,” she whispered as she glanced at the gun, and then we both moved on to the next house.
We hopped over the fence, ran in a squat to the window, and peered inside. We couldn’t see any movement, and the house was quiet. We waited a few moments, just to be sure, and then we moved on to the third house.
The windows on the next house were open, and so was the back door. I could see a narrow hallway that ran from the back door, through the middle of the home, and all the way to the front door at the other end. We crouched down by one of the back windows, and a moment later, we heard footsteps moving through the home.
I poked my head up above the windowsill to see if anyone was in the back room, but the sound of the footsteps seemed to be coming from one of the front rooms instead.
“Wait here,” I whispered as I walked over to the backdoor.
I tiptoed up the back steps and entered the home. I silently prayed that none of the floorboards would creak under my weight and then moved over to the edge of the hall, where the boards would have been stepped on less and were supported by foundations.
For a moment, all I could hear was my breathing and the rustle of the tarpaulin on the roof. I checked the two rooms at the back of the house, and then crept a little further down the hall.
“The person is in the room on the right at the end of the hall,” Francine said.
I nodded and crept as quietly as I could to the room at the end, just beside the front door. It was darker at this end of the house since the shutters had been closed. But as I got closer, I could hear someone rummaging through drawers and muttering to themselves.
I pressed the neckline of my suit, the headpiece grew over my face, and then I stepped into the room. I was sure I hadn’t alerted the person to my presence, but as soon as I rounded the doorway, I found myself face to face with the bandit, who had his gun aimed right at my head. While the bullet wouldn’t have killed me if he fired it, I knew for a fact that it would alert the others that Rayne and I were here, and it would also hurt like a bitch from this range.
The bandit had a scraggly beard, a bald head, and wore dirty, sweat-stained clothes. He stunk, too. Apparently, hygiene wasn’t a priority with these people. He also looked confused as he took in my own apparel, but he recovered before I could close the distance between us.
“Into the room,” he barked as he stepped out of my reach.
I sighed and did as he said. I walked calmly into what was clearly the dining room. There was a table with a few rickety chairs around it and a small cabinet with mismatched plates. Someone with some real talent had even painted a small mural on one of the walls of what Wildern must have looked like before the attack.
We still had our guns trained on one another, but I needed to either kill him or disarm him before he could fire the weapon. The sound of the shot would draw the attention of the other bandits, and while they might just assume that their fellow thief was dealing with a reluctant victim, I couldn’t be sure that someone wouldn’t come to investigate.
So I walked into the room until I was opposite the doorway I had come through, with the bandit in between me and the way out.
“Drop your gun,” he said.
“Drop yours,” I replied.
“Drop your gun, or I’ll shoot!” he shouted loudly.
I winced because his shout was loud enough to be heard outside the house. I debated whether or not to drop my gun, until I saw Rayne appear in the doorway behind the bandit’s back. She moved stealthily, almost cat-like, and smirked at me when I saw her.
“Fine,” I said to the bandit as I placed my gun on the floor.
“Are you alone?” the bandit asked.
“Nope,” Rayne said.
The bandit spun around, surprised by Rayne’s sudden appearance, which gave me time to pick my gun back up off the floor. In the meantime, he raised his gun at her, but Rayne had already lashed out with her foot before he could pull the trigger and booted him in the stomach, which sent him stumbling back into the room. He fell onto the floor on his back at my feet, but he had already begun to aim his gun up at me from the ground, so I quickly fired a shot at his head, and a moment later, he lay still.
“Thanks,” I said.
“Three-two to me,” she chuckled.
“We should move,” I said. “Someone might’ve heard him shout.”
Rayne nodded, and we turned to leave when we heard the shouting from the center of town surge much louder than before. I ran to the front window and opened the shutters so I could see what was going on. From this house, I could just about see the center of the village if I looked all the way to the left.
The center of the village had been set up like a town square, and it looked like most of the stores were there as well. The citizens of the village were gathered in a group in the middle of the square while several of the bandits waved their weapons at the locals. A few adults hurled insults at the invaders, but most of the people looked scared. There were children there as well, and I noticed that the adults had at least pushed them all into the middle of the circle.
There were a couple of piles of loot as well, and even as I watched, one fat and grizzled man came out of one of the stores and dropped several cans of food onto one of the piles. Another bandit made some comment that made the food thief laugh, and that’s when things turned really ugly.
A young man, maybe twenty years old, started to shout at the bandits. He cursed at them and told them to get out of his village, and at first, the bandits just laughed. But then the kid tried to throw a punch at one of the bandits, and the bandits quickly turned mean. Two of the bandits started to pummel the boy, and when he tried to run, the other bandits caught him and threw him back into the impromptu ring.
“Fuck this,” I said as I moved away from the front window and marched out into the hallway.
“What are you doing?” Rayne asked. “Divide and conquer, remember?”
“They’re gonna kill that boy, Rayne,” I said. “I’m going. You keep going through the houses and take out as many as you can. I’ll… distract them.”
“Fine,” she said as she pulled out two knives. “But don’t die, please.”
“You, too,” I replied.
She smiled at me, and then she hurried out of the backdoor, while I threw the front door open and ran out to the street. There was no point in hiding from them anymore. In fact, I wanted them to see me and to know that I was coming.
I charged toward the town square, but everyone was so focused on the fight that no one noticed me coming. I was close enough now that I could see that the kid had a bad cut above his left eye and blood pouring from his nose. He caught a jab to the gut just as I arrived at the edge of the crowd, and I winced as the young man doubled over.
But the bandits weren’t satisfied. The kid wasn’t even fighting anymore, but two of the invaders held him up so the rest could take turns beating the living daylights out of the youngster.
“Hey!” I shouted as I stepped into the square with my gun raised at the two brutes holding the boy.
When they saw me, they grabbed the boy, who was almost unconscious, and held him up in front of them like a human shield.
“You wanna fight someone?” I shouted. “Leave the kid alone and fight me.”
I saw one of the bandits that was guarding the villagers turn his gun on me, but another big guy beside him who had an eyepatch over one eye shook his head and moved his gun away from me. He wanted to see how this played out.
I marched over to the two men. The boy they were holding looked gratefully up at me, though he had to squint to see through the blood pouring down one side of his face. His knees kept giving way beneath him, but the bandits kept him upright.
“You alright, kid?” I asked.
He nodded, but he was clearly not alright. Still, the fact he could hear and understand my question was a good sign that the punches hadn’t caused too much damage inside his head, even if they had on the outside.
“You know what?” I said. “I’ll even make it a fair fight.”
I put my gun down on the ground beside me and took a step away from it.
The whole village had gone quiet now, as they waited to see what would happen. The bandits looked at one another for a moment, and then they slowly turned back to me with grins on their faces. Their blackened teeth were on show now, and I shuddered at the complete lack of self-care.
The bigger one dragged the boy over to the villagers and chucked him in their direction. He landed with a thud on the ground, and one of the other villagers knelt down beside him.
That just left me and the two goons for now, so I raised my fists and slipped into my ready stance.
The smaller one came at me first. He aimed a punch right at my head, but I ducked under it and returned the favor. My fist clipped his ear, but to be fair to him, he was quick.
Then the big guy took his turn. He charged at me like a rhinoceros and clattered into me, but I had planted my feet and was ready for the impact. With the extra strength that my suit provided me, I was able to absorb most of his force and threw him off me, much to his surprise. For such a big guy, he had expected me to crumble under his strength, but now he knew what kind of opponent he was really up against. He had underestimated me once, but it wouldn’t happen again.
“Behind you,” Francine said.
I ducked as a fist swung over my head from behind me, and I jabbed my elbow back as I crouched and planted it firmly into the smaller guy’s stomach. He wretched and took a few steps back, which let me stand back up straight again.
“Thanks, Frankie,” I said.
“For the record, I think this was a bad idea,” the AI said.
“Noted,” I replied.
Then, both of them ran at me at once. I blocked punches from both sides, struck out with a sidekick at the bigger guy, and then hit the smaller guy with an uppercut, which sent him flying about three yards back. He hit the ground and lay still, and blood poured out of his mouth onto the ground.
I turned back to the big guy and saw that he had picked up my gun and had aimed it at me. He gave me a cruel smile and then pulled the trigger.
I crossed my arms and tapped my foot on the ground patronizingly. No shot came from the gun. The bandit looked down at it, hurriedly checked that the safety was off, and then tried to fire it again, but still, nothing happened.
I chuckled and walked over to him. He kept the gun pointed at me the whole time and kept pulling the trigger, but to no avail. I only stopped when the gun was less than a few inches from my heart. Then, I clamped both hands onto the gun and twisted it out of the brute’s hands, which were still covered with the boy’s blood. I pulled the trigger, and he went down, dead.
I turned back to the smaller guy, but he was out cold and wouldn’t be waking up for a long time, if at all.
The sound of a slow clap rang out from behind me. I turned to see the man with the eyepatch step toward me while he applauded, and I took in the deep scar that ran from his forehead, under the patch, and down his cheek. He had a thick mustache and thin, cruel lips as well, and he was easily as large as the big guy I’d just taken down. But this one seemed to have some brainpower underneath his skull, which was probably why he was the leader.
I pressed the neckline of my suit, and the headpiece retracted to reveal my face underneath. The bandit smirked at me, but I could see the eagerness that was there, too. He wanted the tech I possessed, and I could already see him planning his own planetary conquest.
“Very impressive,” he said as he came to stand opposite me in the square.
“Thanks,” I replied. “Do you want a turn?”
“I think you’ve proven your point,” he said as he eyed the two bandits in the dirt.
I quickly scanned the courtyard and counted the other bandits. There were eleven here, not including the two guys on the ground, which meant that this was probably the rest of their crew as well as all of the villagers. The villagers, at least, looked at me with confusion and relief, and I noticed that everyone, bandits included, had bright green eyes like Rayne’s.
“You’re not from around here, are you?” the leader asked as he looked into my eyes.
“Neither are you,” I replied. “And by the look of it, you’re not very welcome, either.”
“I’m used to it,” he said.
“Clearly,” I replied. “Stealing from innocent people and beating up kids. How honorable.”
“I never said anything about honor,” he snorted. “Honor gets you killed on Wildern. You gotta do what you gotta do to survive.”
“But that’s not what you do, is it?” I said. “You could hunt for yourselves, scavenge for materials, but instead, you steal from other people.”
“It makes my life easier,” he said with a smug smile that made me sick. “And it’s a lot more fun.”
I shook my head and raised my gun at him.
“I wouldn’t, if I was you,” he said. “Or my guys will just kill everyone here. And I think you know that they don’t care who they put bullets in.”
I looked around at the villagers, and I knew he was right. His posse would shoot half the population before I took them down, and I couldn’t risk their lives. I sighed and lowered my gun. This time, I couldn’t use brute force. I had to be clever in how I went about this, and I needed to come up with a way to get the bandits out of the village without any innocent blood being spilled.
I turned to my left as I heard a commotion start up beside me. A moment later, Rayne emerged from the crowd with her gun raised at the bandit leader. She still had her rucksack on her back, but she looked ready to shoot.
“Rayne, don’t,” I said.
She kept her eyes locked on the bandit leader as she arrived beside me. Her finger hovered over the trigger.
“They’ll kill everyone if you shoot,” I said.
She held the gun for a moment longer, and then she let out an angry growl and lowered it.
“On the ground,” the leader demanded. “Both of you.”
Rayne and I sighed and put our guns on the ground. The leader walked over to us confidently and examined both of us closely. Then, he yanked the rucksack off Rayne’s back. She began to protest, but then he glanced at his armed crew, and she furiously closed her mouth.
He tipped out the bag onto the ground and had a look through her haul. It was obvious that he was impressed by what she had found, and he selected a few pieces of technology that she had taken from the power plant and then stood back up. Rayne scowled at him as she folded her arms over her chest.
“Now, where did you get these?” he asked.
Rayne spat at him, and he snarled at her.
But, the question had given me an idea about how to get the bandits out of the village.
“A nuclear power plant not too far from here,” I said. “It’s got tons of stuff like that, as well as uranium and some other chemicals that you could probably get a good price for off-world, if you have the right contacts.”
“You mean the nuclear plant off that way?” the bandit asked and pointed in the direction of the plant.
“Yes,” I said.
Rayne looked at me with a questioning expression, but said nothing.
“I know that place,” he said. “Never been inside, though.”
“It’s got tons of supplies,” I said. “It’s practically untouched. We were only there for a short time, but as you can see, there’s plenty of good stuff there. And it’s not far at all.”
“About a day’s walk,” Rayne added.
“We ain’t walkin’,” the bandit said. “We got trucks.”
“Well, even better,” I said with a smile. “Seriously, the haul you’d get from that place is better than any village you might come across.”
“What about the mutants?” he asked. “I’m not stupid. I know about them.”
“We killed them all,” I lied, although between us, we had killed a substantial number of the things and trapped even more.
“Liar,” the leader snapped.
“We did,” Rayne said. “You saw what Will can do just now, what his gun can do. He took them all down. They didn’t stand a chance.”
The bandit considered what we had both said, and it did look like we had convinced him that we’d killed the creatures in the depths of the plant. However, he still seemed unsure of whether to trust my word or not.
“Well, there’s one thing all this talk has made me think,” he said, and suddenly, he drew a knife out of his belt and held the blade up to my neck. “Why don’t I just kill you both and take your stuff instead?”