Apex by Aer-ki Jyr

bait, others didn’t, having seen him and the threat he posed. The golden-­armored Cres pulled a small knobby sphere from his hip and sidearmed it towards the group as several lachar blasts hit his extremities. His armor’s shields held firm and he changed direction in a flash, dashing toward the nearest truck for cover.
    The grenade exploded in the midst of the merc horde, killing and/or scattering the lot of them. Marren appeared over top of the truck briefly, firing six more three-­round bursts, then disappeared behind a stack of crates.
    More mercs emerged from their hiding places on the trucks, some of which barely made it out of their crates before they were shot down. The Cres moved with such speed and superior reflexes that they were hard to track, even in the open, with many of the mercs’ shots missing wide or over their heads. The armored soldiers showed considerably more flexibility and agility than any other known race, and they were using it to dodge most of the mercs’ fire . . . or so it seemed. Half of their missed shots were due to slight telepathic nudges, with the rest due to their impressive mobility.
    Back in the long line of transports more merc crates were being opened, safely clear from the firefight. The Great Death Head had deployed a full company of infantry, 120 strong. The Cres could sense their numbers and made a point of making them believe they faced a significant force themselves. Phantom images were continually being driven into their minds, appearing and disappearing behind cover to bolster the illusion.
    Meanwhile, as Marren, Ivara, and Lornas engaged the enemy on the ground, Ella had climbed up on top of the crate stacks and was leaping the four-­meter gaps between them in rhythm. She had yet to fire a shot, and with all the commotion around them had been able to keep those with lines of sight on her from taking notice.
    When she approached one of the unloading trucks she chucked a pair of grenades into two of the opening crates, taking out eight mercs with each. She leapt down onto the flatbed and policed the bodies, shooting two survivors and glancing up at the driver at the top of the tower. His mind was clouded in fear and she could sense that he was a noncombatant. Satisfied that he was unarmed, she jumped across crate tops and onto the next flatbed, firing at the soldiers already coming out.
    From the mercs’ point of view there were six Cres on the ground firing at them, making her the seventh. Most chose the ones on the ground to shoot at, decreasing the number of shots coming her way. Those that did shoot at her she killed first, quickly leaping across the gap and onto their flatbed. She stepped over the edge of one crate and dropped down between three of the mercs, kicking one off the transport before any of them could react.
    The other two she grabbed quickly, one by the throat, the other by the arm. Using her considerable strength, she pinned the one to the flatbed’s deck by the throat and rotated her body until it was on top of his, pulling the arm and body of the other one across her and adding a strong kick to the motion. That chucked him off as well, tossing the merc up in a high rainbow-­like arc through the air and out over the drop-­off to the ground below.
    Ella grabbed the pinned man’s own weapon and shot him in the head twice to make sure she got through his helmet, then leapt up off him and shot the one she’d just thrown off as she cart-­wheeled through the air, landing on the ground a moment before his torso did. Another shot to the head ensured that he was down as well.
    Letting the other one go for the moment, Ella ran off a different direction, creating as much chaos and confusion as possible and adding more telepathic misdirection to the battle as she moved through, up, and over the trucks and crates almost randomly.
    I NSIDE THE SHIP Orrona waited, guarding their cargo. She wanted to be in the fight,