Chapter 14: Retaliation
The dream was vivid, a heat-haze of pleasure that felt more real than memory. Fred floated in that warm, dark space behind his eyelids, sensations pulling him deeper. Trixie’s mouth, wet and impossibly tight, moving on him. The soft sounds. The gentle pressure of her hand. It was bliss, a perfect escape from the weight of stone and duty. He arched his back, a low groan building in his chest as the tension coiled, tighter, tighter—
He began to surface. The rational part of his brain, the part that catalogued gear ratios and blast patterns, flickered on. This is a dream. But the feeling didn’t stop. The warmth, the suction, the rhythmic motion—they continued, concrete and undeniable. Confusion cut through the pleasure like a cold knife.
He cracked an eye open.
Grey morning light filtered through the circular window, painting the room in soft, sober shades. The blanket was a lumpy mountain over his lap. And it was moving.
He held his breath, every muscle locked. Slowly, he lifted the blanket’s edge.
Trixie was there. Nested in the warm dark, her vibrant hair a messy spill across his thighs. Her eyes were closed, long lashes fanned against her cheeks. Her lips, those clever, sharp lips he’d kissed a hundred times, were stretched around him, her cheeks hollowed with effort. One of her hands worked his shaft with a tentative, learning rhythm. The other cupped him gently, her fingers cool against his skin.
She was… terrible. Inexperienced. Her technique was all over the place, too much teeth one second, not enough pressure the next. But the sheer, staggering fact of it—of her, choosing to be here, doing this—blew every circuit in his head. It wasn’t pornographic. It was intensely, vulnerably human. And it was the most erotic thing he’d ever experienced.
He let the blanket fall, shutting out the light, enclosing them again in their private world. He didn’t know what to do. Putting his hands on her head felt wrong, presumptuous. So he laced his fingers behind his neck, staring up at the bottom of her bunk, his heart hammering against his ribs.
She adjusted, her nose brushing his skin. And then, with a determined little shift of her shoulders, she took him deeper. All the way. Her throat opened around him, a silken, convulsive heat that drew a shattered gasp from his lips. His hips bucked, a purely instinctive reflex he couldn’t suppress.
It was too much. The surprise, the tenderness, the raw physical reality of it. The coiling tension snapped.
He came, a white-hot current tearing through him. His back arched off the mattress, a choked, silent cry locked behind his clenched teeth. Wave after wave, until he was spent, collapsing back into the sheets, trembling.
The motion under the blanket stopped. For a long moment, there was only the sound of his own ragged breathing and the distant drip of water from somewhere in the cavern. Then, a soft, shuffling movement. The blanket was pulled down.
Trixie’s face appeared, flushed a deep, beautiful pink. She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, her expression a complex mix of shyness, triumph, and acute self-consciousness. She didn’t say anything. She just looked at him, her green eyes searching his.
Fred reached for her, his hands clumsy. He pulled her up, guiding her to lie beside him, her back against his chest. He wrapped his arms around her, holding her tight, nuzzling into the junction of her neck and shoulder. He could feel her heart racing against his forearm.
“Morning,” he finally whispered, his voice rough.
She let out a shaky little laugh that was mostly air. “Hey.”
“What was…” He trailed off, not knowing how to ask.
She was quiet for a beat. “You were talking in your sleep. Last night. After the… after everything with Blakk. You sounded… sad.” She paused. “I just wanted you to wake up to something good.”
The simplicity of it undid him. He tightened his hold, kissing her shoulder. “It was good. It was… hell, Trix. It was amazing.”
“I didn’t really know what I was doing,” she mumbled into the pillow.
“Didn’t matter.” And it truly didn’t. He felt stripped clean, vulnerable in a way combat never made him. “Thank you.”
They lay there, tangled together, as the room grew brighter. The events of the previous day—the duel, the confession with Eli, the weight of the identical blasters—settled around them, but softer now, cushioned by this new, fragile intimacy.
Eventually, the practical world intruded. The smell of sizzling synth-bacon and the low rumble of Kord’s voice singing off-key drifted down the hall. Trixie sighed, a contented sound. “We should get up. Kord’s cooking. It’s a rare event.”
“Five more minutes,” Fred murmured, breathing in the scent of her hair—shampoo and sleep and her.
It was seven minutes before they disentangled themselves. Fred pulled on a pair of worn jeans and a grease-stained grey tank. Trixie slipped into a loose sweater and soft shorts. As they stepped into the hallway, she reached out and took his hand, lacing her fingers through his. The gesture was small, but it felt like a seismic shift.
The main room was a scene of controlled chaos. Kord, an apron tied comically around his broad chest, was flipping pancakes on a griddle plugged into a geothermal vent. Pronto was attempting to levitate a spoon with sheer “mental prowess” and failing spectacularly. Eli was at the central console, scrolling through data feeds, a half-eaten pancake forgotten on the plate beside him. Burpy was perched on the monitor, chirping anxiously.
“There you two are!” Kord boomed. “Sleeping the day away, eh? Fuel up. Big day of repairs.” He slid two plates piled high with food onto the counter.
Fred’s stomach growled, but his attention was on Eli. The younger Shane’s posture was tense, his focus absolute. Voltage, perched on Fred’s shoulder, buzzed a low, curious note.
“What’s up?” Fred asked, grabbing his plate and moving to lean against the console.
Eli didn’t look up. “Quiet Lawn comms traffic. It’s… dead silent.”
“A moment of peace, perhaps?” Pronto suggested, finally giving up on the spoon. “The calm after Pronto’s storm?”
“It’s not calm,” Trixie said, sliding into her chair and pulling up a secondary screen. Her analyst’s mask was back on, but she flashed Fred a quick, private look. “It’s a blackout. All standard channels are just empty carrier waves. That’s not natural. That’s a jam.”
“Or a sweep,” Eli said quietly. He tapped a key, pulling up a grainy, enhanced image from a perimeter sensor. It showed the misty edges of the fungal forest at the base of their mountain. For a second, Fred saw nothing. Then movement—a slow, deliberate glint of polished metal between the giant caps.
“Scavenger party?” Kord asked, wiping his hands on his apron.
“Scavengers don’t move in a staggered line. And they don’t have matching armor,” Trixie replied, zooming in. The resolution pixelated, but the silhouette was clear: hulking, humanoid, with the distinct bulky shoulders and sensor-dome heads of Blakk’s enforcer drones. Mecha-Moles. But these were different, sleeker. New models.
“He’s not licking his wounds,” Fred said, his voice flat. The pleasant haze of the morning evaporated, replaced by the sharp, familiar sting of adrenaline. “He’s probing. Seeing if we’re home. Testing the fences.”
Eli finally looked at him, and the same realization was in his eyes. Mercy had been given. It had been mistaken for weakness. “They’re methodical. Searching grid by grid. They’ll find the heat signatures, the energy leaks… it’s only a matter of hours.”
A grim silence settled over the room, broken only by the sizzle of the griddle. The hideout, their sanctuary, felt suddenly transparent, fragile.
Fred took a last, deliberate bite of his pancake, chewed, and swallowed. He set his plate down with a soft click.
“Alright,” he said, rolling his shoulders. The left-handed duelist was back, his eyes already calculating angles, ranges, fallback points. “Then we don’t let them finish their search. We move the fence.” He looked at Eli. “You said we swing harder back. So we swing first. While they’re still in the trees.”
A slow, fierce grin spread across Eli’s face. It wasn’t optimism. It was resolve. “Kord, lock it down. Pronto, I need every backdoor tunnel route you’ve ever bragged about. Trixie, full spectrum scan—find their command node.”
The gang exploded into motion. Kord began slamming reinforced shutters over the windows. Pronto dove for a pile of moldy maps. Trixie’s fingers flew across her keyboard.
Fred walked to the weapon rack. He picked up his blaster, the red and gold metal cool in his hand. He ran his thumb over the Shane ‘S’ engraved near the trigger. Today, it wouldn’t be holstered. Today, the code would be written in different terms.
He looked over at Trixie. She met his gaze, gave him a single, sharp nod, and then went back to her screens. No fear. Just work to be done.
Voltage buzzed, a crackle of eager energy against Fred’s neck. Fred smiled, a thin, hard expression.
“Let’s go spoil their morning.”
The heavy vault-style door sealed behind them with a final, muffled thump, muting Kord’s last shouted warning about patching up any holes they made. The outside air was cooler, thick with the loamy scent of giant fungi and the distant, electric tang of a passing spore storm. The narrow path leading down from their perched hideout was barely more than a suggestion in the moss.
Fred adjusted the strap of his blaster across his hip, the weight a familiar comfort. Voltage peeked out from the collar of his jacket, his tiny body vibrating with a steady, ready hum. Beside him, Eli walked with a loose, easy gait, but Fred could see the alert tension in the way his eyes constantly scanned the dripping forest canopy above the path.
“Quiet out here,” Eli said, his voice conversational.
“Too quiet,” Fred replied, his own boots crunching softly on the gravelly track. “Like the whole cavern’s holding its breath.”
They walked in silence for a minute, the only sounds their footsteps and the distant drip-drip of water. The normal chirps and clicks of the cavern’s smaller fauna were absent. It was just them and the road.
“So,” Eli said, glancing over. His tone was carefully neutral, bordering on casual. “You and Trixie. That’s a thing now?”
Fred felt a flush of warmth that had nothing to do with the ambient humidity. He replayed the morning in a flash: the dark under the blanket, the shocking intimacy, her shy confession afterward. It was a secret he carried, a glowing coal in his chest.
He thought for a moment, choosing his words. “We’re… figuring it out,” he said finally, the admission feeling both incredibly heavy and incredibly light. “But yeah. I think we will be. A thing.”
Eli didn’t respond immediately. He just nodded, looking ahead at the bend in the path. Then he slung a solid arm around Fred’s shoulders, giving him a brief, hard squeeze. “Good,” he said, and the word was simple and full. “That’s real good, man. She’s… she’s family. You know? Like a sister. Long as she’s happy, I’m happy.”
The sincerity in Eli’s voice, devoid of any leftover rivalry or hesitation, settled something deep in Fred. He nodded, a knot he hadn’t fully acknowledged loosening in his gut. “She is. Happy, I mean.”
Eli’s grin was quick and genuine. “Then don’t screw it up.” He dropped his arm as the path widened, his demeanor shifting back to the mission. Their target clearing was just ahead, visible through a final screen of towering, phosphorescent reeds.
They moved the last few yards in tactical silence, parting the reeds with careful hands.
The clearing was a bowl of soft, grey moss, roughly fifty yards across. And the drones were there, just as the sensors had shown. Five of them. They stood in a staggered, overlapping formation that covered every angle of approach, their polished black carapaces drinking in the faint light. Each one held a bulky, utilitarian blaster locked in a mechanical grip.
Fred didn’t need to see the ammunition to know. Only one thing went in barrels that thick. Ghoul slugs.
With a silent nod to Eli, they split apart. Fred went left, Eli right, each of them using the natural curve of the clearing and the fat, bulbous stems of giant puffballs for cover. They moved low and fast, their own blasters now in hand, thumbs resting on the activation switches.
They spotted the leader at the same time.
He wasn’t a drone. He stood at the center of the staggered formation, a still point in the mechanical symmetry. He was tall, maybe taller than Kord, but lean where the troll was broad. His skin was a pallid, washed-out grey, like stone that had never seen the sun, jet-black hair pulled into a severe ponytail. His fingers ended not in nails, but in sharp, polished black claws that looked grown, not grafted. A black tactical vest covered his torso, and on his hip rested a blaster that was an ugly, brutal piece of work—lime-green housing, red accents, all sharp angles and visible power cells.
It was a gun designed for one job: delivery of pure corruption.
Eli caught Fred’s eye from across the clearing. A slight nod. Now.
They both stepped from cover at the same instant, blasters raised and leveled at the man’s center mass. The drone bodies didn’t twitch, but a low-power whine filled the air as their weapon systems came online.
“Hands where we can see them,” Fred called out, his voice ringing flat in the mossy space.
The man slowly raised his empty hands, palms out. The gesture wasn’t fearful. It was theatrical. A faint, unpleasant smile touched his lips.
“Who are you?” Fred demanded, taking a step forward. Voltage buzzed a warning against his neck.
The man’s chuckle was a dry, rasping sound. “Me? I am the welcome committee. You can call me El Diablos Nacho.” His red eyes, pupils slitted like a deep-cavern predator, flicked between the two of them. “Dr. Blakk sends his regards. And a question. Why are you still here?”
In Fred’s ear, the comms piece crackled to life with Kord’s voice, tight with urgency. “Fred, Eli, disengage. Fall back now. Scanners just lit up—that’s Blakk’s right-hand man. Do not engage. Wait for backup.”
Fred’s eyes met Eli’s. He saw his own decision reflected there. Back-up meant leading this to their home. Waiting meant letting this thing set the terms.
They ignored the warning. Together, they took another synchronized step forward, closing the distance.
“You’re outnumbered and out-slung,” Eli stated, his aim unwavering. “Tell your toys to power down. Surrender. Now.”
Nacho’s smile widened, revealing sharp, grey teeth. “Out-slung?” he rasped. “Let’s see.”
His movement was a blur. The raised hands dropped. The lime-green blaster was in his grip, not aimed, but pointed in a general arc between them. There was no pomp, no dramatic shout. Just a cruel, economic contraction of his finger on the trigger.
A compressed-air thwump echoed in the clearing.
A slug, dark as a bruise and trailing tendrils of oily smoke, shot from the barrel. It wasn’t aimed at Fred’s body. It was aimed at the ground directly at his feet, a tactical splash shot.
Fred jerked back, but he was a half-second too slow. The slug hit the moss and detonated in a silent, spreading wave of decay.
The effect was instantaneous and vile. The lush grey moss blackened and shriveled, curling into ash. The corruption bloomed outward, and the leading edge of it washed over Fred’s right boot.
A pain, cold and invasive as liquid nitrogen, shot up his leg. It wasn’t the burn of a Frostcrawler’s touch. This was a hungry, draining cold that sucked the vitality from his cells. He gasped, stumbling back, his vision swimming with jagged black spots.
The duel was on. The drones whirred into motion, their blasters rising with mechanical precision. Eli shouted his name. But all Fred could feel was the deep, spreading numbness crawling up his calf, and the searing, righteous fury in Nacho’s crimson eyes.