Without speaking with the Free Brothers, he never would have known the method to suppress his Helices to the extent that the sensors could not pick him up, as long as he did not move too quickly.
Without the Ranthas, he would never have learned about the Vampire’s Veil, which did not let any electronics without a soul register his visage or presence. He was now completely off the grid unless he wanted to be on it.
Without the Briggs, he would not now have a Sword that would be burning through his enemies.
Without the Markspace providing so many places to meet the enemies of the Land and put them down, Inferno would not be the Weapon it was now.
And without Cat and her sisters, well...
-Are you thinking about me again?- she promptly /purred to him, big green eyes, dark hair, that sultry voice, and all those furry tails filling his mind.
There were many, many other benefits to losing that damn suit, and the Ranthas had been happy to show him a whole lot of them... and make sure that he could show any woman he cared to a great deal of them too. Night Rose Ranks were as deadly as Ripping Life, in their own way.
-I was... not, but now I most certainly am,- he /answered, unable to stop a mental grin. It would have been a complete waste of his Matrix and hers to be lovers, so Cat had simply gone out and located two complementary Psions for them both.
Both knockdown attractive women, both her Marked, and all three of them there for him.
For the hundredth time, the words ‘Favored Sons of the Land’ floated through his head. Life simply could not be so good. Just having that rock-solid, infinitely deep, awesomely vital presence right there in his head to lean on whenever there was stress pounding at his temples, and the screaming duty and need of the Land became so hard to bear...
In her arms, there was only silence. And ticklish tails. Lots of silky furry, just for him.
He was not at all used to working with a bonded Psion, of course, and Kitten simply adjusted to whatever his preferences were... which didn’t mean Cat wasn’t making sure Kitten was capable in all sorts of areas that her cute little dimples seemed to make impossible...
Sheba was the social manipulative sort, considering the rest of the world things to play with... except for other Marked, and especially Cat and Kitten, who she brooked no insults to at all. As for him, he was once merely terrifying, but knowing that she was working directly for an Assassin who had broken free from the Emperor and become TRULY dangerous... well, a woman like her simply couldn’t resist him at all.
Yes, that horrible sense of betrayal and loss didn’t feel nearly as bad as it had all those months ago.
And, yes, he’d found that all of his new Brothers were pretty much being treated the same way. Even the Shadowknives had their Colbys around to keep them company.
Life hadn’t gotten any easier with the Hags around, of course. As a matter of fact, it usually got a whole lot harder, and very quick, and wow, the fact they could deal with it, and start catching up to these killing machines on sexy legs, made their hell-and-damnation lives a lot more bearable.
Their... unique viewpoints on all-encompassing violence didn’t hurt, either.
-Tch,- she /replied, giving him a mental chuck on the head. -No movement from the place yet?-
-Has the message come through the astropath station here?- he /wondered. They had tracked the scattered messages through the systems and its hard-wired pathing all the way through nine different message jumps and drops to this system, which was way out in the middle of very safe nowhere, a little jewel in the void forgotten to all but the wealthy whose private playpen it was.
Those sensors alone meant this was the place, but there barely seemed to be anyone around. Only the most passive of probes had been used on the place, as they were absolutely sure active scans would set off something violent.
-I’m reading a surge of electronic activity from down low. The lower levels are lighting up. Perhaps they are getting ready to go somewhere?- Kitten /spoke up from where she was monitoring the sensor grid they’d set up around this place. The concealed lower levels and the hangar built into the side of the mountain nearby had not escaped them.
-Flight plans are being filed through the defense systems,- Sheba /broke in from where she was monitoring the government traffic. -Confirm message arrival two minutes ago.-
-Excellent. Cat, you want to come along and greet these people with me?-
-Fanatic child murderers are just the sort of people I want to meet at least once in their lives,- she /replied calmly, and the bloodthirst ready to explode through beneath it sent his heart pumping.
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There was killing for the Emperor, there was killing for the Land, and then there was killing because it was so very fucking much the right thing to do to total bastard shitheads who needed to die in the worst way.
He began to move, feeling Cat shifting on the opposite side of the complex, and closing in with, well, murderous speed. Their systems wouldn’t see her, just as they weren’t seeing him as he bounded forwards, Diamond Vajra Mark IV making him faster and smoother than he had ever been, heading for the nearest live guard to remove, a quick entry through the laen windows that could shake off autofire, and then following after whoever was going down, while Cat swept the upper floors with Trembling thoroughness and haste.
He would be going down into the darkness lighting up ahead of him, and she would be going into the light behind him and making it dark.
----------
They were very skilled, or his masters would not have employed them. But they were not Voids, and they were certainly not Void Brothers, which were everything an Assassin dreamed of being.
He took out the cyborg first, running along the walls and ceiling out of nowhere, plunging his blades into the cyberized killer and ripping away what remained of his life.
His Helices spun out, the psion there shrieked as his power was stolen from him at breathtaking speed. Frank dumped the whole amount into a Deep Crystal throwing star and flicked it back at him.
The man only had time to gape as it hit, and the star violently dumped that psionic power out as rotating, cutting blades of force. The psion was sliced into wafer-thin strips from the point of impact, and then blown apart, spraying blood and flesh everywhere in an explosion of crimson.
The shooter there found himself instantly covered in blood and unable to see out of either cybereyes or normal ones. He had his guns in his hands flicker-fast and was shooting in every direction with arcs of fire covering all the predicted approach points with devastating thoroughness.
Gun-Fu was used by people with advanced predictive abilities; just calculating arcs and points of attack didn’t work at all, as it was likewise simple to counter-calculate and ignore those points. Only by truly shooting at where someone would be using foresight, ‘insight bonuses’, was Gun-Fu truly effective.
He was now Beyond Law and Chaos. Forsaken were largely invisible to such forces, and now he was beyond being influenced by them, too. This blinded man had no way to get lucky and hit him.
Inferno flicked out, solid flame in physical form, and removed both the gunman’s hands just as they crossed to change positions. 18d6 of Cut Life fled him as he lost his hands, and he shuddered and died, his time having come.
The Cleave became a burning point of light, and the panicking tech guy, a deadly needler clawed to his hand, caught it right in his chest, burning through his stylish leather jacket. His tech-kit clattered to the ground as his life was severed out the wound in his chest. His eyes rolled, and he went sprawling back against the bloody wall.
The woman in psi-grade power armor jumped over in front of him, a dark red mindblade flashing into being automatically. She realized her error almost instantly, as his Helices reached out and tore the hardened psionic blade apart like the raw energy it was, and the feedback actually flared in her eyes for a second.
She looked down, and found Inferno buried to its hilt in her chest, having melted right through the protection of her psi-armor. It was busily turning her body cavity to ash, and she could only jerk and quiver as black smoke boiled busily out of her mouth and nose. A few seconds later, her eyeballs exploded from the heat, as Frank shrank Inferno down and then back out, letting her charred corpse fall.
The middle-aged man with flat grey eyes stared at him as if he were regarding the lowest form of vermin possible.
“A traitor to the Mountain,” he stated with obvious contempt and loathing. “Who are you?”
Frank flicked his burning sword, only a line of fire, and the man gasped, clutched at his leg, and fell sideways as it was burned right through by the Shard instantly.
“The words of a traitor to the Land are kind to me at the end,” he replied to the headmaster, never stopping moving, staying out of arcs of fire from the forearm-mounted dart launchers, the burning light of the Harlique Ring he was wearing, the monofilament-launching belt buckle, and the other tricks typical of Mountain instructors.
Inferno moved with preternatural speed, beyond anything a mere Assassin could unleash. His retraining had been very thorough, he had Leveled – gods, had he Leveled! – and his natural capabilities were now far beyond anything a crippled Assassin could bring to bear, let alone this Mentat who enslaved the Favored Sons of the Land.
“Do you think you’ve won? As soon as I die – gkk!” his words were interrupted as Inferno smoothly severed his head from his shoulders, burning and searing the wound cleanly. Gaping, the man’s head dropped from his shoulders.
Frank knelt next to him, and the disk hit the ground next to the staring head, snapping out to full size. He grabbed the greying hair of the Mentat, slammed the head down on the Disk, and psi-tech hissed and sprang to life. A crystal containment bubble was instantly woven into existence around the living head, while countless wires drove upwards into the flesh and brain of the helpless man. He couldn’t unleash his power while a Helice bound him, and now the Braincase was draining any reserves he had, using his own power to charge it as it filled up with preservative gelatin that would keep him alive while the Braincase handled life support.
Frank had no words for the man at all. Questioning such people was not his mandate, but he had access to people, oh did he now, who were very good at questioning on all the levels. Mind-reaming a Mentat was a dicey proposition, but the fact was that it had been proven that memory was also an organic and physical function, as many a cerebrovore had been happy to verify over the millennia.
There was a Rantha named Quincy whose Talent was Brain Surgeon. She had dutifully streamlined a Braincase that could go right up into someone’s skull, drain out all their psionic power to power itself, and then start disassembling its brain, the memories there, and start collating them for later examination.
Oh, and incidentally removing any sensors, brainbombs, psychic seals, and similar things, although he’d already leeched the explosive power behind the Seal in this man’s head.
They were literally going to go into this guy’s skull and take everything from him. Unless he had command of his own physiology and could literally liquefy his brain via pure willpower, as some of the Ranthas had shown him how to do, all his secrets were going to be given up in fairly short order, and they were going to learn everything he knew.
In the meantime, this facility, where word of all the Voids and Vortices born on this side of the galaxy came, was theirs.