Chapter 76: Chapter 72

Moll’s scales were vibrant yellow. “C-control?” she whispered. One hand raised to her throat, and her scales swirled with bright pinks intruding into the yellow. The Nah’gh woman pulled away from Tollya and slithered easily to the trunk of the car.

It popped open at a touch from her, and she began digging through it. Within a moment, she raised a pen-shaped item from it and drove the point into her own neck. A small hiss erupted from the object, and her body visibly relaxed. All the color drained from her scales, and she used the side of the car to move back to the open backdoor.

Tollya moved aside for her, and Molls slid inside. One coil of her tail remained when she tried to close to the door, and I winced when I heard her yelp from inside. The section of tail slid hurriedly inside, and the door closed again.

“Check on her, please?” I pointed, and Tollya immediately turned and moved around to the front seat, getting in.

I turned back to Garthrust. When I checked him, he was breathing, but didn’t appear to be coming around. I hauled him up by the back of his neck and moved to the entrance of my house.

I dropped him, bleeding, on the floor next to Cube’s emplacement and reached in to pick up the poor creature. It had shrieked until it heard me beating Garthrust, and then it got silent. When I walked in, it was shaking in a pool of liquid metal from its base.

“It’s okay little guy, I’m here.”

“NO TOUCH!” it screamed, the instant my fingers made contact.

I jumped and pulled my arms back.

“STAY NEAR!” Cube demanded. I took a breath. That much I could do.

I slumped to the floor, leaning my back against one of the thick legs of Cube’s emplacement. Garthrust breathed raggedly on the floor at my side, and I stared out my open door at the Arizona night sky. It was still purple, with a rind of orange. Stars were beginning to twinkle from the deeper portions of purple.

“Beautiful,” I whispered. The helmet helped me keep it to myself, but really, I was past the point of caring. I found myself seeking out beauty to quiet the horror and brace myself for more.

Tollya had said whatever Garthrust had been recording, he sent. Once I beat the ‘control’ answer out of him, I realized he’d already done everything he meant to do. His message was sent, along with video evidence. Likely to the church, but also to Dearth. Once we officially lost church protection, I expected a full scale attack within hours.

I looked down at the bleeding orc at my side. He was facedown on my tile, each breath an agonizing labor.

“What, exactly, is the point of keeping you alive, Valued Garthrust?” He stirred as I spoke and started dragging himself slowly away with his arms.

“You’ll be in Storage by morning…” the bloody orc groaned. His mouth was mangled, but the words still formed well enough to be understood.

“Oh don’t make it weird. Not a serious question anyway, I know the consequences. The financial repercussions you spoke of. I’m just not entirely sure I care. Might be worth it to end you for what you did to her.” Before he could respond further, I thumped him once on the back and stood.

The orc squealed in brief agony before slumping back to unconsciousness. A final notification popped up, explaining that one million morties had been removed from my account for assaulting an insurance policy holder. That was eleven hits total, my final million spent. I was broke again. If Garthrust died from my beating, I was on the hook for a cool billion morties I had no way to pay.

Rayna’s conversation with me about Drusk the mordren popped into my head, and I suddenly wondered if Dearth would be willing to pay for Garthrust’s return.

I pulled my phone out of my pocket and called Rayna.

She answered, but I could see she was also helping Ordo get Zach loaded in the golf cart and she seemed annoyed that I was calling her.

“Hey, sorry, I know you’re busy. Just need to work this next part right so Dearth doesn’t start shooting right away. We might be able to take them, but I’d feel better about it if we had a lot more armed hobbs first,” I told her.

She frowned and shook her head. “Work next part? What’s your plan?”

“That’s why I need your help. I need you to contact your gate guards and have them tell Dearth we will allow their medics to come and get two of their injured, once a ransom is worked out between our affiliates.”

The hobb on the other end smiled and nodded. “Got it boss.” She hung up and I turned to look at Garthrust again.

I bent over to pick him up and Cube suddenly shrieked, “NO MOVE!” directly into my face.

I stopped and held perfectly still, my helmet level with the little block of living metal. As I watched, its mouth opened, and the grinders parted to allow a tongue to pass between them. The tongue looked like liquid metal and flowed with gentle movement from the tip back down into the mouth.

It was long, snaking across the space between us to lick Garthrust’s gore from my helmet.

I stared in silence, as the liquid metal tongue scraped the blood and viscera from my viewscreen, before scooping it back into the creature's mouth. The tongue deposited the physical material onto the grinders as it slid past them, and when Cube closed its mouth, the grinders activated, producing a purr of contentment.

“Okay, thank you Cube.” I hadn’t noticed the gore on my helmet, even though I had been looking past it since the scuffle. It was best at that time to ignore the implications of Cube eating orc bits and sauce, I was busy. But I definitely noticed it and tucked that tidbit of information away for later.

With a quick shake of my head, I stooped and picked up Garthrust, cradling him in my arms and moving to the doorway. Cube turned in my direction but didn’t scream again.

Tollya was standing by Molls’ car, and I jerked my head to indicate she should approach.

“Hey, can you keep an eye on Cube for me? It doesn’t like to be left alone, so just hang out in this room with it. Him? I feel like he might be him, if such a construct applies to Cubes. Anyway, I’ll be back soon,” I said.

Tollya nodded and stepped in to inspect Cube. I carried Garthrust out and down the road, turning to walk toward the main gate. He was a full sized Orkreshi male and weighed at least two-hundred and fifty pounds. I was aware of his weight, it just didn’t bother me to carry it. The patches were definitely increasing my general strength.

The sheer ease with which I had beaten him into submission was proof of that too. That first hook to the gut had been brutal. I held back the power blow effect, but not my new raw physical strength. The hit had nearly lifted him off his feet.

I was met by hobbs, before I got much further than my own driveway. They arrived to escort myself and what was left of Garthrust to the main gate. Once we arrived, I set the unconscious orc down gently on a nearby table and checked his pulse and breathing.

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In spite of several broken ribs, a badly shattered hand and wrist, and a smashed jaw, he appeared to be breathing okay, and his pulse was still strong. Orcs are tough. I shrugged and turned back to the gate, where a small group from Dearth was being let through.

Rayna and Ordo arrived behind us, escorting Zach in the golf cart. His arms were no longer tied, and when the golf cart slid to a stop in the dirt beside me, he groaned in pain and clutched at metal bars connecting the roof to the body of the vehicle.

“Oh good, Zach.” I approached the vehicle and prepared myself for another of his tirades.

The man's eyes widened in anger when I spoke, but then he saw who I had been carrying, and he went pale. He stayed silent, surprising me.

“Wow, that’s good. That’s exactly what I was about to suggest you do, just keep doing that,” I said.

He looked up at me and narrowed his eyes, but I continued, “just stay silent and you might survive to make it back to your people. If you blow this hand-off, you die first. Ordo, you got that?”

The hobb was seated behind Zach. He nodded, produced a sidearm, and racked the slide to chamber a round.

Zach paled further.

Another group of hobbs approached, from the gate this time. They were escorting a small group of Dearth Conglomerate mercs, who were escorting a pair of medics with hovering stretchers. Both medics were humans who were clearly not from my earth, but the majority of the guards were orcs and hobbs.

As I turned to address the new crowd, I saw Darclau hop up onto the perch he preferred, at the top of his new fence. I nodded at him and started walking toward the medics.

“Ten million for the orc. One for the human,” I said, my helmet gleaming in the fading light. “Better hurry,” I gestured to Garthrust to emphasize my point. His hand had compound fractures jutting from both the palm, and the back of his knuckles. Greenish blood oozed from his ears and eyes, indicating a cranial fracture of some sort, and his nose had been reduced to a shapeless mound of bleeding flesh.

An orc guard stopped in front of me. “What happened?” he demanded. His armor was finer than his compatriots, and he carried a sleek looking sidearm I couldn’t identify.

I stepped up in front of the orc and leaned to peer at the medics behind him. Neither of them moved to help me, so I looked back to the orc.

“He fell down some stairs,” I said. Then I turned and indicated Zach, still in the golf cart. “Him too, same stairs.”

The lie fell out of me easily, and I could see that the guards were confused enough by it to contain their instinctual reaction. The guard frowned, stared at me with open suspicion, and then moved out of my way.

I calmly gestured to one of the humans. The medic immediately produced a hand-held tool and began waving it over Garthrust’s chest like a wand.

“Massive internal injuries, multiple broken bones,” he droned into the back of his hand. It had a band around the wrist that appeared to contain his recording, or communications device. “He needs surgery right away, we’ll have to get him back to base immediately if we’re going to save his life.”

One of the orc guards leaned to look at the medic. “Orgaki norchu wagh’ei ‘site-b’?”

My ears perked at that, and the orc who had stopped me stepped over to cuff his subordinate.

“Shut your mouth, fool,” the commanding officer barked in English.

Then he stepped away to make a phone call, producing a small plastic phone and dealing with the bald head before he was connected to someone in Dearth. All I could see was a pink face, and what looked like a human head.

The orc muttered a few words, then nodded. He nodded a few more times before disconnecting the device and putting it back in a pocket on his armor. The orc turned back to me, and nodded once, a grim look on his face. My account filled with eleven million morties, and I stepped back to allow their medics access to the fallen orc.

They hurriedly loaded Garthrust and Zach onto the hovering sleds and began marching back to the front gate. Darclau circled far overhead, highlighted in my helmet. I noticed he was wearing something on his head, it made one of his eyes glow green when he looked directly at me.

The procession moved through the camp with very little trust on either side. My hobbs maintained a formation around the outside of their entire group, weapons trained. They did the same from the inside. The medics set the pace, and we all walked to the exit.

My new gates swung wide to let us all out, and our hobbs broke formation at the front to allow the Dearth mercenaries to exit. Zach glared at me over the shoulder of the human medic pushing him as they left, but he wisely kept his mouth shut.

I noticed the hover-tank had its main barrel aimed at our gate this time, but everyone simply piled into their vehicles and left. The injuries had definitely thrown off some kind of game plan. All of the vehicles did a U-turn on the road in front of the gates and headed off the long way around the forest into Prescott. A militia pick-up truck led the entire procession.

We closed the gates, and I watched Darclau soar after them. Ordo shook his head and turned to me. “The orc say ‘what about the strike on site b?”

“Thank you Ordo, I was hoping someone would translate that for me.” I sighed and shook my head. I wasn’t positive, but ‘site-b’ sounded like Sundew Valley Foods to me. I was suddenly glad to have delayed them, just in case.

I pulled out my phone and hurriedly sent a text to Lee. “Heads up. Death mentioned a pending strike on someplace called ‘site b’ and I’m worried it might be you guys, since we appear to be site a.”

The older man did not respond, but I did get a notification that he saw my message, so I nodded and went back about my day.

Dearth had just paid me to beat their representative half to death, and that brightened my day considerably. It had cost me eleven million to beat Garthrust down, and I had hoped that by keeping my ransom request low, it would trick them into accepting it right away. These guys were idiots, and if I could continue to leverage that idiocy just right, I could actually beat them.

All it would take was a dash of shocking violence to accomplish it.

 

 

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