Closer Than Touch
Zodiac Forces

Excerpt

Deia melded the angles of his body into a dark corner of the warehouse, a joint of crates beyond the limp reach of a single dangling florescent. He took a slow breath through his nose, letting sensations from the gemini suit untangle in his brain.

He could feel the sharp weight of metal in Mordekai’s hands as if he held the gun himself. The other man’s breath was unsteady and his heart was simply racing. Deia let himself take another calm breath, unwilling to follow into that panicky state of mind. Mordekai wasn’t cut for this. He was able enough in workouts or drill, but the field? Deia should have pressed harder for reassignment. Again.

Deia let the stillness of the crates seep into him, slid his broad shoulders with less than a whisper to the edge of the box, and glanced around. His HUD offered no more sign of anyone then there had been a moment before. He padded across the smooth cement floor, carefully balancing speed and stealth. It wouldn’t do to announce himself early but time was moving with or without him. The suit’s ridged feet gave him perfect traction. Its smooth latex-silk, so embedded with tech, hugged his angles as no lover could. Mordekai, current occupant of his suit’s twin, came close, but only because he’d made it through enough training to survive the kind of mental split the suit required. Deia hadn’t taken a lover in years.

He circled closer to the light, a distant point at the far end of the warehouse. So far things were going nicely according to plan, but no amount of prep ever survived first contact with the enemy. It was simply a matter of time.

Deia flowed forward like the inexorable tide. He felt Mordekai take a hand off his gun to shape a signal with this fingers. <Bay clear. Green.> Deia tapped his left thumb to his ring finger once to acknowledge. This kind of in and out theft shouldn’t require one of them to be stuck as a lookout but trying to patch an aries transmission through corrugated metal was an exercise in futility. No aries on com meant one had to stay behind. Deia wasn’t entirely upset it had to be Mordekai.

The space around him echoed suddenly. Deia flashed out of the isle and between a turn of crates. He pressed two fingers of his right hand together. <Contact.> The echo of sound resolved itself into a chair scraping back along the floor, a man stretching, a groan, lips smacking. The night watch. Deia prowled up his stack of crates, the catsuit echoing Mordekai’s quick heartbeat back at him. He leaned out over the edge and spotted the guard below, rubbing hands over his face. A long rifle hung from a shoulder harness. A handgun rested on the opposite hip. Deia felt his plan wavering. This guy was carrying far more firepower then they had expected. <Outgunned,> he touched to Mordekai.

Deia refused to allow Mordekai’s sudden tension into his muscles. He flexed his fingers and dropped from the crate. He landed precisely inside the man’s guard with a muffled thump. Deia slapped his hand on the guard’s and pressed his considerable strength against his mouth, muffling the man with his own hand and leaning him into the crates behind. He pressed his thumb into the thick jugular beside the windpipe and instantly felt the quick pulse of blood as if it were his own. He closed the vein with his thumb and began a mental count. A blood pressure reading spiked into his HUD. Deia brought his knee up hard against the guard’s pistol, scraping the hand there off the gun and against the crate behind. Noisier than he liked but nothing for it, now. It was a simple matter of seconds for unconsciousness to slump the body he held.

Deia kept his finger in the vein for an additional count of three. He had no desire to kill this one but the guard needed to be out of the picture. Satisfied, Deia stripped both rifle and pistol from the man, stowed them in the closest crate he could pry open, and left him strewn in the isle of boxes. <Green.> He crept toward the light.

Jittery touch passed from Mordekai, <Contact. Bay not clear. Vehicle.>

Shit. They were early. Deia sprinted toward the light. The catsuit kept his footfalls muffled by design, hopefully the incoming truck would cover the rest of his noise.

<Second vehicle.>

Deia’s Intel was falling apart at the seams. Typical. He touched to Mordekai, <Abort?>

The negative came back quickly, then, <Doubletime.>

Deia vaulted up a crate and ran along the top of the row. He could see his target, a low crate under the florescent. A man sat on it, facing away from Deia in low conversation on a walky. His HUD offered distance and depth measurements. Deia lunged into open space, feet first. The guard never saw him coming. The walky squawked as it bounced away, Deia rolled to his feet, drew the gun from his back in the same motion, and shot twice.

<Made you. Incoming. Four.>

Yeah, no kidding he was made. Deia wrenched the top of the crate away and threw piles of packing fluff on the floor. He dug out a sealed box and blew the front panel clean. It was blank. Touchtech, not a turn dial. Fuck.

Deia took the whole firebox and hauled his ass up the closest tower of crates away from the bay where his silhouette was least likely to show. Footsteps crowded the air. He set the box down quietly and stretched out flat on his stomach. The florescent projected its light mostly downward, he was in shadow but only just.

The footsteps resolved themselves into four men armed to the teeth. They scrambled through the open crate, cursing at one another. Mordekai touched to him, <Bay clear.> The man’s heart was still pounding, though.

<Visual. Four.> Deia confirmed. His HUD noted guns, knives, extra magazines. they were packing an awful lot of firepower for a simple pickup.

<Approaching.>

<Negative.>

<Can assist.>

<Negative. Package is secure. Fall back.>

A partial touch, like the start of a message, then through the gemini suit Deia felt Mordekai’s gun leap up and the surprise made them both react. A fifth man. Deia’s tension released to prep for a fight but Mordekai pulled the trigger. The shots echoed in the space and his hands tensed at the recoil. Screams. Deia let his breath slowly trickle out his nose. The four men at the crate whirled at the sounds.

<Incoming. Four.> Deia touched, though he wondered if Mordekai even felt it with the iron grip he had on his piece. The gun fired again and the screaming stopped. Deia remained still atop his crates. <Abort!> he touched. He felt Mordekai running, the impact of cement through his feet made him wince. Even in this the man was inefficient. It would be handy to have an aries on the com right now.

The sounds of pursuit trailed toward the bay. Deia rolled himself and the firebox off the other side of his crate tower. He landed hard, the extra weight of the box pulled him weirdly out of balance. He made for the back of the warehouse patiently, quietly. Mordekai’s distraction was useful, if not idiotic.

Deia was nearly at the back door when he felt Mordekai’s mayday through his fingers. It drew him up short, one hand on the door. He looked back across the crates toward the spot he knew the other man to be: as if he could see through the masses of wood and stuffing and watch the chase with his own eyes. Mordekai rounded a corner of crates, Deia could feel it in the angle of pressure on his feet, and came up short. Gunshots.