Chapter 137: Chapter 132

The front doors slid open, and my captor hopped down from the cabin with a heavy, metal clank. “You are not my superior, Rova,” Garthrust retorted.

Rova hissed angrily and rose up higher on her tail. “Oh but I am, orc! This fighting force obeys my will! Not yours! I’m issuing a general command not to follow your orders anymore, the courtesy extended to you by Dearth has been over-stepped.”

My door opened and Rova’s head whipped around to stare at me, her vibrant eyes narrowing when I smiled at her.

Her tongue flicked out and back in, and she grimaced. “And you brought him here?!” she shrieked. The gathered mercenaries shifted uncomfortably and looked anywhere but at the orc and Nah’gh they worked for.

Garthrust raised a hand and clamped it shut, the oversized metal fingers clicking in the Nah’ghs face. Her eyes widened and she reared back, her barbed tail raised above her head, weaving back and forth mildly.

“Shut your mouth, Rova. There are morties to be made here, allow me to use your holding cells, and I will share the take, as is right and profitable for us both,” the orc growled.

Rova’s eyes narrowed and whipped between me and Garthrust. She hesitated a moment, before turning to her guards. “Secure the prisoner,” she snapped. The Nah’gh woman turned and slithered to a nearby secure door, which pinged before opening for her.

A sizable mordren approached the vehicle and leaned his upper half inside. With a beefy arm, he unlatched my seat restraints and then leaned back out. “Are you going to make me drag you?” the mordren rumbled.

“I’m thinking,” I said. The mordren ducked to glare at me and I stood, raising my arms defensively. I exited the vehicle, manacled hands before me, and took in my surroundings as the mordren changed my cuffs, one wrist at a time.

Behind the mordren were dozens of Dearth mercenaries, of varying races. Plenty of human faces stood in the crowd among hobb, orc, and Nah’gh. None of them seemed happy to be there, and at least one of them was glaring at me with open hatred. I’d killed lots of their buddies. When I tested my new cuffs, there was no give in the joints.

I flashed the gathered crowd a toothy smile, making sure it didn’t reach my eyes as I walked into the giant building’s basement. The structure was built with mordrens in mind. High ceilings and broad hallways were the norm, sterile matte black broken by doors, windows, and decorated with corporate posters and safety lighting.

We walked past an armory that caught my attention, and I leaned to look with eyebrows raised. The mordren hit me from behind, hard, with something long and broad. It felt like he bashed me with a tree trunk.

I turned to glare at him, and his tail lashed out again, slamming into me and pressing me to the wall. The humanoid reptile leaned in close over his tail and growled in my face, showing off impressive metal capped teeth.

“You are not a tourist, human. Walk. Or I rip your limbs off.”

“Good luck with that,” I quipped back.

He dropped me, and reared back with a huge, clawed hand. I stood and glared up at him, daring the blow to fall.

Garthrust appeared at the mordren’s side and intervened. “Get him to holding, quickly. No delays.”

“Yeah, he needs my mortblock,” I said, smiling.

“Shut up!” Garthrust hissed.

He reached back and I saw his hand clearly for the first time. It was metal, entirely. Composed of three thick metal fingers, his new hand folded perfectly to form a solid slab of metal. Exposed pistons deployed with a sharp hiss, and the power-fist connected with my cheek.

Dazzling white stars exploded in my vision, and I crumpled. Tendrils squirmed in my chest toward my head as I fell into the mordren’s waiting arms. He carried me down to my holding cell, not even flinching as brain matter was ejected from my turbine. I awoke fully as the door slammed closed. This time, the starfish suit hadn’t even rendered me unconscious. Guess I didn’t need that part of my brain to at least partially function.

The cell was made from a much shinier version of the building-block material the rest of the star port had been built from, like chromed steel mixed with plastic. Still, it held up when I pressed against it. The only hope I had for escape now was my atomic breaker gauntlets.

“It’s designed to hold people like you,” Garthrust crowed. He’d been watching me and appeared happy to explain my predicament. “Even if you had two strength shots, you’d be unable to bash your way out.” The orc stepped up to my door. His body had been mangled, plain metal replacing the parts I had broken. Jagged metal teeth showed in his mouth, coupling with two jutting tusks to emulate the lines his old jaw housed, if only just. He clenched the heavy, metal fist at his side. “Can’t punch your way out of this one.”

“Wanna bet?” I asked, a tiny smile in the corner of my mouth.

Garthrust narrowed his eyes and glared at me, metal jaw clamped shut. “Wargshit. If you could, you’d have broken those cuffs by now and attacked me.”

I sighed and shook my head sadly. “So little trust.”

Rova entered the room. She slithered up to the door and glanced at her mordren guard. “Is he secure?”

The mordren shrugged. He was significantly bulkier than Drusk, and his scales looked harder, stronger. “I couldn’t break out of those restraints.”

“Then I doubt he can either, thank you Breach. You may go,” the Nah’gh woman said.

Breach nodded, glared at me, and left the room.

Garthrust pressed a button, and the room came alive. Blue and green light emitted from the ceiling of my cell in grids and ran across me along with everything else in the spartan cell.

“Look!” Garthrust hissed. He stood over a console lifted from the floor and pointed, as Rova slid into place behind him.

Her yellow eyes narrowed, and she pressed the same button. Light scanned me in grids again, and I chuckled as she drew in a quick inhalation.

“Now you see it,” Garthrust crowed. “Our defeat here has not been my fault, we faced a relic.” The orc grit his metal teeth and glared at me across the panel.

Rova hissed and crossed her arms. “Oh a relic,” she mocked. “Every wounded mercenary claims they faced a relic, a simple scan failure is no evidence of a relic.”

“This is no simple scan!” Garthrust replied. “This is the best scanning system the church offers.”

Rova stared at the orc, her lips pursed as she stared at me over his shoulder. I smiled at her and stretched my cuffed arms up and over my head.

“Hey, can you guys grab me a drink or something? Tea, coffee, lemonade . . . tequila would be nice. Any old thing really. Getting parched in here.”

“Ignore him, he talks endlessly,” Garthrust rumbled. He pressed another button on the console and robotic arms extended from the wall at my side. “Watch, Rova,” he said.

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One thin, metal arm shot out and gripped my finger. It clenched down and cut deeply into the tissue, tearing through muscle and veins as it severed my finger from my hand, leaving only a tip of the starfish suit’s metal. I roared at the sudden pain, but the suit sent its painkiller rushing through me an instant later.

Tendrils erupted from my arm, sliding out from beneath the thin metal plates. One of them wrapped around the machine arm extending from the wall and sawed it neatly off, as others got to work undoing its damage.

Metal fell to the floor as the arm was surgically dissembled by my suit. Then it got to work restringing my ligature and closing the gap between my veins with careful blasts of flesh-foam. Finally, a thin laser seared the area closed and I raised the finger to show them both, and the cameras I had no doubt were everywhere.

“The device our men have been reporting, that’s ruined your reputation entirely, you now claim is a relic,” Rova said, eyes slit. “Suspicious, Garthrust, I don’t know if the Wizard will buy it.”

“That manipulator arm was made of graphened titanium, Rova. His suit snapped it like a hobb!” Garthrust insisted.

She glanced between Garthrust, the screen, and me.

“How does it work?” Rova asked me. She was interested now, ignoring Garthrust again.

“Come on in and I’ll show you,” I said, with a wink. Rova was genuinely cute, and while I was completely happy with Molls, I hoped that flirting with the new Nah’gh would enrage her into a stupid mistake.

Her yellow eyes widened, and she flicked out her tongue. Her body rose in height, and her tiny horns glinted in the overhead lighting. “Answer me, human, and I may send you to Storage, instead of our incinerator.”

I raised my arms above me, pushing out the muscles in my chest and armpits as I leaned on the doorway and made strong eye contact with Rova. “Ask me again, in here, and I’ll answer you honestly.”

Rova slithered up to the door and stared at me, face to face. She flickered her tongue out and in, grimacing at the scent.

“You stink of her,” she eventually said. “Why would I respond to the advances of one clearly enslaved to a conda sex doll?”

“See, I told you they were together,” Garthrust said, still staring at the console in front of him.

“We weren’t then, you green-skinned dolt. If anything, you drove her into my arms,” I said, over Rova’s shoulder. I dropped my gaze to her and smiled. “And you should ask the conda, she’ll give you a few reasons to respond to my advances.”

I winked again and blew Rova a small kiss.

Her tail rose and the blade tip came to rest on her shoulder, just inside her jacket’s shoulder pads. As I watched it, the bone tip rose and wavered, before surging forward.

Blackness engulfed me.

I awoke a few seconds later, strapped down on the metal slab of bed in my cell. The suit tendril that had just replaced my eye, and the chunk of brain behind it, finished lasering my new cornea in place and retracted.

The straps across my chest were broad, and thick. They extended from the wall to the lip of the bed, not touching me, but effectively keeping me from moving.

“See?” Rova said, from over Garthrust’s shoulder. “You merely lack the creativity to use one of these cells correctly.”

“Yes, fine, you bested me. Do you see though? As I said, it does not let him die.” Garthrust pointed a green skinned finger at me, and I groaned. “The relic ensures he cannot be killed.”

“Sure I can. You guys just haven’t figured out how yet,” I said. My hands were still restrained by the cuffs, and I wondered if I could just injure myself on them to get the suit to intervene. It seemed to go on the attack if something stopped it from its function.

Rova interrupted me by entering my cell. Her tail barb whipped through the air and sunk into several of my vital organs. She stabbed me in the heart, liver, both lungs, and even my throat.

Then she stood with her arms crossed and watched the suit repair all the damage. Bits of shredded organ erupted from the turbine, and my cartoon starfish chose that moment to appear.

It was behind Rova, on Garthrusts console, gyrating its hips directly in the orc’s face. “Charge getting depleted, user. Keep an eye on that!” It danced a few more moves before vanishing with a flourish, and I gurgled while the suit repaired my trachea.

“What about limbs?” Rova muttered. Her tail barb rose over her shoulder and waved gently side to side. “Can’t we remove his limbs to get at the underside of the suit?”

Garthrust narrowed his eyes and stuck out his metal chin. Rova glanced back at him and sighed.

“Cell. Provide me with a broad-bream plasma cutter,” she said. A panel in the ceiling slid open and a thin metal arm extended to offer her a hand-held tool with a shining metal nozzle. I closed my eyes and grit my teeth, waiting to ride the rush of painkiller.

She took the device and fiddled with a few settings before bringing it to life with a crackle of sound and heat. My left foot incinerated.

I was glad for the effective nature of the tool, it crisped my flesh and bones to ash in seconds, the pain was surprisingly minimal, and I managed to keep my pain quiet, only groaning behind my sealed lips instead of screaming.

New body parts erupted from the suit in a cloud of activity. Arms wielding bits of bone and lengths of specially molded ligature got to work slapping them in place while flesh foam and lasers filled the air.

Rova watched it all with open fascination. “Our scanners can learn nothing from this? Even when it opens?”

Garthrust shook his head. “No, we can read nothing. It presents as a void, even consuming the measuring beam.”

“What happens if I burn away his entire body?” asked Rova, in a light tone. Her head was cocked to the side, and she was staring down at me, genuinely curious.

“The suit rebuilds me,” I answered. “But I don’t know what will happen to you, if you try. The suit responds to any threat direct enough, that may be enough to cause it to rip you apart like it did your fancy room.

I glanced at the chunk of wall still missing its severed parts.

Rova glanced at me, then slithered backwards out of the room. “Cell,” she said, “kill the prisoner.”

The wall at my side exploded into movement and I blacked out.

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