Shorter Disclaimer –"Yu-Gi-Oh!" and all related characters, events, and concepts belong to Takahashi Kazuki and any other related owners/distributors/producers. "Rifts: Role-Playing Game," "Nightspawn/Nightbane: Role-Playing Game," and all related characters, events, and concepts belong to Palladium Books Publishing and related entities. I get no monetary benefit from this. My benefit is the enjoyment of dealing with beloved characters.
"Between the Shadows"
by DragonDancer5150
Chapter 9 – Into the Hornets' Nest
"Poor bastard's soooo screwed."
Hank Hutchison did not even bother suppressing a grin at the low mutter from his special ops agent behind him, now that their contact had turned his back to return to his own men. He looked down at the signed form in his grip, smile fading even as he thought he should be relieved to have the cargo off his and his company's hands . . . but found he was not. "Seńor Hector Alano Cesaro Ibarra" read the all-too tidy signature. Ibarra, you better follow our instructions to the letter, or you'll find out just how screwed you really are. Hank shook his head. It was no longer his problem, but Gambit was right. If that thing was allowed to wake from its drug-induced stupor . . .
They had been assured by Commander Bleidd way back in Tolkeen that the mystic control box on the cryogenic cargo crate was infallible, that some hot-shot techno-mage – Kaito, Maito, Schmaito? Eh, whatever – had built it himself shortly after the beast's capture. No doubt the walking carpet of a Wolven had no idea what he had been ordered to deliver to Hank's company. Hank and his men would not have known, either, had not an altercation outside of Chillicothe caused stray gunfire to destroy the cryogenic control box. They later got out of Bleidd – across a secured, narrow-band radio communication – that the psionic horror that had started attacking both parties with an indiscriminate vengeance had taken an extreme exception to being captured to begin with back at Demon's Gate. Bleidd had suggested what spells to use to subdue the monster until they could get to El Dorado and purchase strong enough and lasting enough drugs to sedate it for the rest of its journey. Hank was thankful for his ley line walker Benjamin, or he would have lost his entire company.
"Hank."
Hank turned at the voice, his eyes finding the other's alien gaze – blood-red where the eyes should have been white, with irises so black they blended with the pupils. The shock of mint green in the bangs of otherwise snow-white hair had always intrigued – and amused – him. "Yeah, Gambit?"
Gambit – his name was Azhar, but no one called him that – nodded back over his shoulder in half-feigned incredulous shock. "I think Fuzzy's developed an unnatural affection for a certain part of the new hover tank's anatomy."
"What?" Hank glanced up at the tank behind him but, as he was standing at the ass-end of the thing, he could not see much. He started around the vehicle.
"If he gets overexcited up there, I'm not cleanin' it up."
Jack snickered. "Just s'long as he don't decide ta get drunk up there . . . "
Hank stifled a groan at his crackerjack pilot, not wanting to follow that line of thought. Fenris drunk was . . . amusing but messy more often than not.
"Hey, whaddya get if you let Fuzzy get tanked while he's on the tank?" laughed Billy, the group's wilderness scout. "Puddles or puppies! Ha! Either way, it's gonna be ugly."
Scraps, the mechanical and electrical whiz who maintained all of the company's non-magical vehicles and equipment, shook his head. "Either way," he echoed, "you're gonna play wet nurse if that happens. Sorry, I ain't paid enough to scrub that kinda crap outta stuff." He gave Hank a wink, a tanned and scarred finger poking Billy in the chest, then he high-fived his friend, Gambit.
With a groan, Hank followed his men around to the front of their new acquisition, a Carnivore Mark I light hover tank. It had been part – okay, most – of their pay for delivering the cargo, and a much-needed addition to their ever-changing inventory of vehicles. He was completely unsurprised to spot Fenris already checking out the particle beam cannon jutting from the main turret. He did have to admit to some disconcerted worry that his comrade was actually straddling the thing, stroking it in quite the manly manner.
"Nuthin' like proving you're the Alpha male, especially with a BFG like this."
Big Fucking Gun. Hank rolled his eyes. Yep, leave it to the timber-wolf-based former CS Dog Boy to take an immediate liking – and lay claim – to the vehicle's main armament. After all, he was Hank's primary heavy artillery specialist, among other things. When it came to shooting the big guns, there was no one better. "Just don't mark our new toy, a'right? I don't need dog piss leaking into the crew compartment."
"What? Just because you're not equipped with the proper mechanics to handle this baby doesn't mean I'm not."
Hank refrained from shaking his head. It would only encourage him. He had known Fenris too long to be overly concerned, to be honest. He and Gambit were among the longest-standing members of his present company.
And the only ones who knew the truth of the company's position. Hank's Hornets were not quite as freelance as Hank let the men believe, but were in fact affiliated secretly with the powerful and elusive Garai Alliance, a conglomerate of mercenary companies and black market dealers. As much as he hated it, he had not been given a choice when an agent of one Lord Anghrist Nidhug had approached him, saying they had become too successful to be allowed to continue operating in Garai Alliance-controlled territory, which was the whole damn continent if Hank understood the fine-print-between-the-lines. They could agree to serve the Garai Alliance as "jobs" – which really meant "orders" – were presented and give over a portion of their earnings, or they could face extermination. Hank had heard the stories of the true power of the Garai Alliance. He did not know how much to believe them but was not about to risk his men's lives to find out.
At that, Hank did shake his head, dispelling those troublesome thoughts and refocusing on the task at hand. His men were tired, hungry, and more than ready for some R&R – and he knew just the place. An hour's ride from here, on the edge of the Sierra Madre Mountains, was Dante's Inferno, a surprisingly prosperous if rough and notorious town in the middle of the Mexican desert. Whoever had named the town certainly had gotten the "inferno" part right, though Hank had always wondered who or what a "dohn-tayz" was. Oh, well. It didn't matter. There was one place he knew of that was perfect for beating the heat, if it was still there.
"Hornets, listen up! Fenris, gi'down off the damned cannon. Saddle up and move 'em out, people. We're headed to Yurkie's Hole."
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"Ah, c'mon. We're this close. We gotta stop by Corona. I'm tellin' ya, you'll love my ma's cooking. And she'll love havin' everyone. An' I mean everyone. Ma's used to cookin' for a whole ranchful of people – you know that."
Hank pulled a breath. "Scraps, we're not 'this close'. Corona is still another day and a half from here – and in the wrong direction."
"That's what you said last time," Gambit reminded him, shaking a fork at him.
"Man, put that down before you hurt somebody!" Fenris's throaty laugh belied the command.
Hank, Fenris, Gambit and Scraps sat at a booth along the back wall of Yurkie's Hole, an old but sturdy bar the men had discovered one of the times they were down here about two years ago – dark, smoky, rowdy, itching for a fight. For himself, Hank was hoping for a quiet evening of cold beer and decent food that had not been cooked over a campfire, but knew his prospects of an uneventful stay looked bleaker and bleaker as the noise at the card game in the near corner got louder and louder, the argument threatening to turn violent. Hank stood. "I'll be back."
Gambit frowned up at him. "Where you going?"
"To the john." Hank jabbed a thumb at the card table. "While I still can." He had already put down a full meal and three beers, and he did not feel like having to "hold it" if a fight did break out.
By the time Hank meandered his way back toward his booth, the cards were fluttering upward, caught in the air current of the ceiling fan, and raining back down like confetti in a wide pattern as the players upturned the table in their attempts to reach each other. Hank still would have stayed out of the fight, but he was just sliding into his seat next to Fenris when he heard the sharp crack of a gunshot and caught out of the corner of his eye as Gambit jerked back in his seat. He looked up to a bullet hole and a blood splatter on the wall next to Scrap's head, the operator himself only still upright by the support of Gambit's fist buried in his shirt, the younger man not fast enough to pull his buddy back out of the stray bullet's path along with himself. After an instant of shock, Gambit's eyes flared with wrath, and a red haze overtook Hank. They had killed one of his men! And with a firearm! "All firearms stop here. Period." read a sign over a barrel by the door. The rest of the bar seemed to freeze, but Hornets all around the room surged to their feet as they realized what had just happened. Hank pulled a knife – blades were up close and personal and therefore allowed. Fenris did not need a knife. His silver-capped fangs and claws, for dealing with supernatural foes, could tear through damned near any flesh. Gambit paused only long enough to close his friend's eyes and lay him carefully on the ground, then threw himself alongside his teammates at the other group. The Hornets took care of their own, no matter what.
Hank had taken down no less than the gunman and two of his lackeys single-handedly when a grip on his shoulder from behind spun him around. On reflex, he obliged, shifting to grapple the young man in turn and flip him onto his back on a table. One hand buried in the guy's shirt, the other fist holding the knife high, Hank was ready to chalk up "Lackey Number Three" when astonished recognition sparked in one wide, dark brown eye under shaggy bangs of gold, the left socket hidden behind a mirror-reflective eye patch.
"Hanky?"
"J- . . . J-jon-Jon?"
"Hank, behind you!"
Hank spun at Fenris's bark, pulling the blond back up straight behind him, barely registering when the guy took an instinctive back-to-back stance with him. For just an instant, Hank was thirteen again, back home in Watercrest, working his way out of yet another scrape down on the docks, his best friend from who-knew-when watching his back, and he Jonathan's.
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Fenris pulled himself free of the tangle on the floor into which he had tripped trying to get to his brother-in-arms, only to find that Hank needed no other back up. Fenris had never seen Hank fall into a rhythm with someone so fast before – nor trust someone so completely in such a short time, and his sharp lupine hearing had caught the names they exchanged. Hm . . . old friends, it would seem.
And . . . that was an interesting move. Fenris winced as an opponent went down at a dirty move from the blond.
By the time the fighting died down, Hank, his new buddy, and a handful of other Hornets were the only ones left standing who had not pulled out at first opportunity. The moans of the surviving wounded permeated the air along with the reek of beer and blood, and Fenris could only shake his head. All right, time to get everyone back to camp for the night. Wordlessly, he followed Gambit back over to their table – and to their friend's body.
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Hank stood a moment longer, assessing the situation and taking a silent headcount of his men. He had left five with the vehicles, the ones who lost the casting of lots. They had not grumbled too much, as it guaranteed them dibs on the next R&R. Gambit and Fenris were gathering up Scraps' body – no man was left behind, no matter what – while Angel pulled a wounded Tinder to his feet. Hank was just glad the pyrokinetic had not burned the whole place down. Benjamin and Jack were similarly injured, while Hank remembered watching Billy and Eddie head upstairs with some of the local lovelies. Just then, both half-dressed SOBs came stumbling down the steps, "ready" as best as they could manage to help their buddies in the fight. Taking in the sight, they moved at a gesture from Hank to help Angel with the wounded.
Finally, he turned. "Jonathan? What in the – !" But the blond was beginning to slink away in the opposite direction. Hank grabbed him. "Oh, no, you don't! Where do you think you're going?"
"Nh-huh, it's Cool J these days. And . . . ah . . . " Hank watched Jonathan's eye dart around the room as he tugged off the decorated jacket that had made Hank believe he was with the group that killed Scraps. Underneath, he wore a simple long-sleeved shirt over cargo pants and boots, both hands hidden in gloves. "Let's get outta here, 'kay?"
Hank set a hand to the back of "Cool J's" shoulder and shoved, hollering, "Hornets, close ranks!" The company circled up in an instant, centering around their leader, helping to obscure the guy with him from any who might be looking. Thus, they made it out of the building.
Having heard the commotion and then seeing their comrades exiting the bar, the five outside already had prepped the vehicles for departure, but Jonathan balked. "Hang on! Where're we goin'? I can't just leave town . . . "
Hank frowned. "You were looking to get away from someone a minute ago, like you got a bounty hunter on your ass or someth-" He stopped. "Pops is here, too, isn't he?"
The other hesitated, then, "Yep."
"Where?"
At a word, the company was on the move, no questions asked.
Author's Note: Please be sure to check my bio page for any updates, etc. Thanks!
