“Open fire,” commanded the West Watcher Sergeant behind him. “He's changing sides!”
As he jumped off the subway platform he felt three shots strike him in the back. The first two didn't pierce his armour but the third found a weakened chink where gunfire had already weakened the protective suit under the plating and unbelievable pain filled his entire body. The sheer amount of blood that flowed out of his chest and over his back as he lay over a maglev track, out of sight from the soldiers that would kill him as a traitor, was absolutely astonishing.
He couldn't breathe. He twitched and struggled as his throat filled with blood, even his efforts to cough it clear failed as the remnants of his ruined diaphragm struggled to work, only adding to the endless depths of pain and suffering. His vision was first obscured by white spots for long moments before he couldn't see entirely. The world faded as he struggled to stand, to gasp for air and when one hand went to his back, to check the extent of his injury only to find a great gaping hole hope was lost. Losing conciousness scant seconds later was no small mercy.
Iloona was dubious about inspecting the West Keeper soldier, but she wasn't one to argue with her husband. Well, not in front of his rebels, anyway. The service and maintenance storage area they had claimed had become a short term home. Her, her eldest daughter and the two nurses had reserved a corner for treating the wounded and it was lucky for Alaka that there was a patch of floor free.
They laid him face down in front of her and she turned a bright light clipped to her shoulder on. The man was well muscled, in excellent general condition, but his armour had been badly damaged in several places and shot through in one spot. Just by an initial glance she could tell there were massive internal injuries. The damage done to the organs in his upper torso was devastating. “They shot him in the back?” she asked as she took a disposable wipe from the pouch on her hip and wiped the blood away from the four centimetre wide entry wound.
“He was surrendering to us,” Alaka said quietly. “Almost made it too.”
“Has that ever happened before?”
“No. Never.”
Iloona paused a moment and rested her hand beside the wound. Something was happening inside the corpse. With a flick of her wrist she opened a scanner and brought it to over the body. Her eyes widened in shock at what she saw; “This man's being rebuilt from the inside!”
“What?” Alaka placed a hand firmly on her shoulder and drew her away, putting himself and the old assault rifle he used as a sidearm between her and the body. Several other rebels drew a myriad of personal weaponry and followed his example.
“His heart's not beating, there's no harm in observing.” Iloona objected quietly.
“This could be some kind of trap, can you scan him for explosives?”
“There's nothing of the kind and he's unarmed.”
“We don't know that for sure, he could have knives for fingers for all we know.”
“Tsk, paranoid,” Iloona shook her head. She extended her arm out around Alaka so she could see what was happening from behind him and gasped at what her medical scanner told her. “His lungs, heart and everything else are almost completely regenerated. There's some kind of materializer suite inside him, inside his skeleton maybe. Still no weaponry or explosives.”
“Could he actually be alive?”
“Well, the same technology is keeping his brain in a suspended state so there's no cell death but no neural activity either.”
“So he's brain dead.”
“Right now, maybe not for long. This is amazing,” she whispered. The scanner displayed a pattern of electrification surge across the man's skeletal structure for a moment then he came to life, gasping and turning over.
“Don't move!” Alaka shouted, brandishing his assault rifle in one big armoured hand. The other ragtag soldiers were just as vigilant, making for fifteen barrels pointed at the surrendered West Keeper in all.
“Okay, I'm just going to take off my helmet,” said the man through hurried breaths. He slowly pulled the oval helm from his head and took a long breath of stale air as though glad to be free of its confines. “I'm not a Keeper. I killed one of their people and took their uniform so I could get closer to the fighting and switch sides. That magcycle outside was the distraction I needed to cross the line.”
“Why should I believe you?” Alaka asked, eyeing a resistance fighter to his right who glared at the prisoner with sheer, bare hatred.
“My name is Jacob Valance, I'm the Captain of the Triton and I came here to pick up a couple friends of mine, Jason Everin and Terry McPatrick. Most people call him Oz.”
“I can't believe it. I've always wondered what I'd do if I ever saw you,” said the dark haired fellow to Alaka's right through clenched teeth.
“What's up Vernen? You know him?” Alaka asked.
“He hunted down and killed my brother.”
“I've hunted a lot of people, but I haven't cashed in many death marks. Who was your brother?”
“His name was Barry, Barry Vernen.”
Jake nodded, regarding the man seriously. “I remember. I took his bounty, captured him on Tega Five and delivered him to the Jalara Commonwealth. He was wanted for fraud and murder.”
“They executed him!”
“I'm sorry you lost your brother but I didn't kill him.” was all Jake said, raising his hands and looking the man in the eye.
“Just as good as! I should blast you apart and see if you grow back just so I can do it again!”
Alaka put a hand on Vernen's rifle, forcing it down and away from Jacob. “It sounds to me like he was doing his job, and if your brother was guilty he got what he deserved.”
“He was out of Jalara territory! They had no jurisdiction where he was taken.”
“Did he do what he was accused of?” Alaka asked flatly.
Vernen slung his scratched and dented rifle and stalked away without saying a word, his worn boots clicking across the hard floor.
“That happens. Glad I retired from bounty hunting,” Jake said quietly.
“He's a hothead, self serving. I reattached one of his fingers after a firefight and he didn't so much as say thank you,” Iloona complained as she stepped around her husband and offered a hand to help Jake up.
He took it and was surprised at her strength as she firmly pulled him onto his feet. “Thank you. I understand if your people don't trust me to start, but I'm really here to help,” Jake reassured as he reached into the deep utility pocket on his thigh and retrieved his command and control unit. “I captured a command code transmission chip from one of the Regent Galactic Lieutenants. I was able to install it in my arm unit and tap into their communications.”
“We've been trying to monitor that ourselves. A few minutes ago they re-encrypted the whole system.”
A female voice called; “Fire in the hole!” into the long room and a second later everything rocked with the concussion of a massive explosion nearby. Only a little dust rolled in through the narrow door leading into the large maintenance room.
“You have good timing. We were minutes away from collapsing the tunnel,” The fur covering Alaka's long jaws split in a wide smile.
“Well, here's hoping my luck keeps getting better,” Jake replied as he looked at his command unit. It was true, the command frequencies were re-encrypted and his display only presented a data gate request that said; “The only poem we memorize and recite as children.” He raised his eyebrow and thought for a moment.
“What is it?” Iloona asked, scanning him from head to toe with a sweep of her small medical computer.