He threw up his hand and stopped. Miis paused as well, signaling the guard on his right. Fieo cocked his head.
Gesturing toward the tree, I put my hand on it again. Once again, nothing happened. Fieo frowned and approached the tree to his right carefully. He put his hand against it, and it didn’t glow either. His voice was a faint, whispering hum as he ordered the other guards to test the sampanga. None of them lit up.
“They’re all fake,” Fieo said. “Something is going on out here!”
We advanced even slower, testing with each step for traps or hidden warning systems. Suddenly, between one step and the next, the entire landscape around us changed. We went from lush jungle-like foliage to bare ground surrounding a mesh fence. Miis’ shot took out the gaping man staring at us.
The human man. His body hit the edge of the white building behind the fence and then slid down, leaving a crimson smear of blood on the wall.
“What the…?” Fieo looked at me. “How did you know we’d find this?”
“I had no idea this building was here! I swear. Seral rescued us from cells on a scientific ship, remember?” The sting of his suspicion made my chest ache, but I tried not to blame him.
Fieo gestured everyone to move forward. The element of surprise may or may not have been on our side, depending on their surveillance and perimeter defenses. A quick move from a guard with a cutting device, and we were hurrying through a gap in the fence. A sharp edge caught my suit along my ribs. The fabric went hard, constricting me slightly, and the metal scraped off the protective surface.
Miis grabbed the guard he’d shot and tugged him down flat. I went over and began checking his uniform. HAU was emblazoned on the breast of his blouse.
“Shit.” Human Advancement United was a league of human-owned planets that made up the Central Council. Their goal was to conquer and rule, and they slaughtered any who opposed them.
They’d signed my pay chit for most of my adult life.
Grunting, I flipped the guy over. He had a scar at the base of his neck that glowed a dull red under the skin.
“We gotta get in there or get out of here, now!” I pulled my second pistol and began sweeping the area.
“Why?” Fieo asked.
“See that light? He’s a chipped bio-engineered soldier. That chip registers vital signs, and when he went down, an alarm would have gone off with his handler. It’s sensitive enough to trip even if the guard were unconscious instead of killed. Someone knows we’re here, or at least that something happened. They’ll be looking for him soon.”
The wall in front of us was sealed from the inside, the outline of the door on this side visible, but there was no handle or lock to force open.
“That works to our advantage, then.” Fieo quickly dispersed the guards around the corners of the building. He and I stood beside the door for several breathless seconds.
“—fucking backward planet killed another bio-gen!”
The door slipped open, a gun tip leading the way. I grabbed the door and yanked it open the rest of the way, then Fieo attacked the man with the gun, pulling the barrel of his weapon down so it shot harmlessly into the dirt when the soldier fired.
I leapt past the struggling pair, grabbing the second soldier by the straps of his uniform vest. I slammed a knee up sharply as I jerked his head down. The blow to his chin hurt my leg but not as much as it hurt him. His eyes rolled back in his head, and the soldier stumbled and fell. He flopped around, his hands twitching violently.
“Fieo, strike under the chin!” These were bio-engineered soldiers, and like all weapons, they had a weakness.
Sweeping a leg under the soldier, Fieo took him down without letting go of his weapon. I took careful aim and kicked the human in the soft part of his jaw just under his chin. He went loose and began convulsing.
We let the body of the second soldier hold the door open. Fieo signaled the other guards, and we began our assault of the human base hidden in the middle of the Caeorleian jungle.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
“What now?” Fieo’s quiet hum barely reached me. We were stuck at an intersection in the long hallway. Just around the corner were guards sitting at a desk. From what little we could make out as they debated reporting in, they weren’t bio-gens. These were the handlers.
I concentrated on just humming my answer, using the subsonic vibrations of Caeorleian speech. “I can take them out safely. Do you trust me?” I couldn’t take the time to explain the change in my ability to Fieo in the middle of the mission. I waited for his decision, holding my breath.
He nodded. I exhaled, almost audibly. I stiffened against the wall, but the humans must not have heard me. It took only a quick second to remember exactly how I felt in the Vlrsessium’s ship in space, fanning my anger and fear when Yaseke had been in danger. He still was, along with the two youngest additions to our family, the only surviving blood kin he had left, other than the murdering bastard I planned to find and kill in this hidden base. Buphet had to be hiding here, it was the only place he could be.
Fear made my heart thump in my chest, and rage tinged my world red. I snarled, exposing my fangs. I was a soldier, a killer. These men had to die—they deserved to—and I was the harbinger of their end. But this time I wasn’t the attacker. I was a protector now.
I stepped around the corner and captured the gaze of the soldier facing me. His eyes widened as he stared at me. A split second was all it took as I captured his mind, feeling his confusion and awakening alarm. That was an emotion I could work with.
Alarm became fear, fear became terror, terror became so huge, so consuming that his heart couldn’t keep up. A signal from his brain sent a massive jolt through his body and fried that beating muscle. Death tinged his world black, and I retreated before I could be trapped in the dying electrical pulses in the recesses of his brain.
Bright red blood oozed from the soldier’s nose as he crumpled to the table, his head hitting it with a dull thud. His eyes stayed open, a look of consuming fear glazing them into empty pits.
“What the hells, Maeteen?” His partner jumped up and shook his shoulder. “Maeteen!” He felt the guy’s neck, checking for a pulse. “What did this fucking planet do to you?”
He was already afraid, this newest soldier, when he looked up and saw me. I could feel it, the disgust and horror as blood dripped out of his friend’s nose to puddle on the table. What kind of a soldier was that, afraid of his station?
The kind that slumped dead next to his partner within a second.
I blinked at the sudden cessation of the blinding fear, my heart pounding a rapid tattoo in my chest. I was still angry, though.
What kind of a monster had those doctors made me into?
A quick check of the guards’ alcove showed they were indeed the bio-engineered soldiers’ monitors. I could see the vital stats of several more soldiers holding steady, but unfortunately the screens gave us no indication of the whereabouts of the others. We did, at least, learn there were only five more of them.
Plus Buphet and whoever else was here and in charge who weren’t chipped.
There wasn’t time to worry about that, though. I waved Fieo and the guard forward. After making a quick plan, we split up. Four guards went down the hall to the left, and Fieo and I led three others down the right. Our guess was that the guards had been on that side of the hall for a reason, and we were likely to encounter more in this direction if whatever was hidden here needed to be protected.
Fieo clearly had questions for me, but I shook my head when his gaze went from the handlers to me. “Later,” I hummed.
He gave a single nod, but I knew the second-in-command of the Toleral’s guards wouldn’t forget. Seral would get a full accounting of everything that happened during the attack, and I’d have to answer for the things I’d done.
The next guard we encountered came out of a door in the middle of the hall. A single gasp was all he made before Miis tackled him. They fought hard, grappling on the ground
. We were attempting not to use our pulse weapons inside; the discharge could too easily set off alarms and give all of us away if the entire building was monitored.
That didn’t stop me from drawing my weapon and smacking the bio-soldier on the back of the head when he flipped Miis onto his back and started choking him. The muscle-bound man slumped on top of the slim guard, who let out a rasping hum, coughing as he dragged in air.
“About time. Get him off me!” Miis said. The bio-gen had to be heavy with all his extra mods.
“Should have your suit up,” Fieo told him. The guard had his neckpiece and hood puddled around his shoulders. The protective black fabric couldn’t help him if he wasn’t wearing it.
We pulled the soldier off Miis and dumped him back into the small room he’d come out of, onto the bunk he’d been sleeping in, by the rumpled look of it. A living soldier, even a bio-gen with their limited mental capabilities, might know something we could use. Fieo secured him with some cord he produced from a pouch, tying his arms and legs behind him and attaching them to a loop around his neck. It’d pull tight if the man struggled too much, strangling him.
Effective, and likely lethal if we didn’t come back for the hapless man. I admired Fieo’s ruthless ingenuity.
“These are personal quarters.” Fieo glanced at the five doors lining one side of the hall and the door at the end. “We need to check them all.”
“I’ll do it.” My ability would be the best way to silence the soldiers if there were more. None of the rooms had a lock outside the door, just a simple push-button entry system. The guards with us spread out on either side of the doors. Two opened into empty bunks before a third revealed a sleeping bio-gen, who stiffened and sat up alertly as soon as the panel swished open.
He was unafraid, just as he was engineered to be. But rage—rage filled him, and I could work with that. My anger was a deep well inside me. It was nothing to allow it to overflow and spill into the soldier. I watched as a vein in his forehead pulsed, growing larger, and then exploded. He fell backward onto his bunk without ever uttering a sound.
I panted, struggling with the anger still coursing through me. It wasn’t like the fear, which shut off as soon as the monitors had died. Fear didn’t drive me, but my rage did. Killing the bio-gen had taken less time than it took to tamp down on my emotions so I could be sure not to harm any of the Caeorleians with me. I couldn’t risk latching on to the guards who were angry at the desecration of our planet from the violation of humans setting up a base on Caeorleia.
Obviously Buphet was complicit in much more than killing off his family.
The other rooms were empty. Five rooms, two bunks in each. We’d only taken out six men so far. There was no telling if there were enough soldiers to fill each bunk, or if there were more or less—or if the guards who’d gone in the other direction had found more personal quarters. No audible alarm had been raised yet, so we proceeded cautiously to the last door.
My head pounded with each beat of my heart. Only my determination to find that bastard once and for all kept me on course for that last door. Vibrations behind us sent the guards into an alert formation. I kept my gaze on the door, but Fieo and one of the guards turned to face our rear. The others faced forward with me. A quick glance over my shoulder was all I could spare.
“It’s us.” Thankfully the sounds turned out to be the other guards who had split and gone down the other end of the hall. A quick debrief—the other hall ended in an empty conference room—and once again we were facing that last door.
We were still going for stealth, in case this facility looked larger than it was, but the guards each palmed a weapon just in case. It was hard to hear through the whooshing in my ears from my heart’s pounding. This could be it. Opening this door could end all the uncertainty and strain on Yaseke and me. He’d be safe and so would the children. I squared my shoulders and let out a long breath.
“Now!” I hummed.
I shoved the door open. Seated at the center of the room, at a stark white table with a vid-projected model of the Toleral’s residence, were several humans. Buphet wasn’t seated with them, like I would’ve expected. He was against the wall, clothed in a bio-gen’s uniform, standing rigidly at attention.
And on his knees beside the white-haired general at the head of the table was someone I didn’t expect.
Another experiment. One I knew from my past well before I ever met with any doctors.
The humans weren’t surprised for long. I went low as three bio-gens rushed from their guard positions. The surprise attack favored us, and they reacted seconds too late as energy pulses lanced across the room, the familiar stench of burned flesh filling my nostrils. I was caught, lost in the solid white voids of the other experiment’s eyes, and barely reacted beyond ducking to one side. They were completely expressionless. I couldn’t sense any emotions in him. Nothing. He was empty as his eyes.
I shook my head when movement distracted me. The rat bastard that let these humans on Caeorleia was using the confusion to try to slink away. Not going to happen.
I roared when his hand hit a door in the back of the room. The sound vibrated the room, my rage a palpable power filling the room. His yellow eyes widened as he stared at me. He jerked the door open and darted through it.
“No!” I raced across the room. One soldier sent a shot my way, but it glanced off my suit, leaving me mostly unharmed, though electricity danced across my arm, making it spasm. I lost my pistol, but I was not going to stop for lack of a weapon.
A smart man would have ambushed me when I darted through the door, so I shoved the door open and rolled in low. Buphet was not smart. He sprinted for a vehicle parked in the center of the large open bay; the roof was already peeling open.
A shuttle.
Buphet was not going to escape the planet and the consequences of his actions. He was already at the shuttle, frantically pounding on the access panel. I raced toward him. His back was to me, but he knew I was there. He screamed as he stabbed at the buttons on the panel.
The door to the shuttle opened, and Buphet was almost inside when I threw myself after him. I went for his knees, wrapping my arms around them. We slammed into the metallic floor. My suit went hard, and I heard a crack. Buphet screamed so loud the vibrations actually hurt my ears as well as my shypsoid bone.
Blue blood dripped onto the floor from the jagged gash in his arm. The bone was sticking through his forearm in a compound fracture from the impact of our fall. I grunted, unable to catch my breath fully, as I flipped him over.
Rage at seeing his eyes, so like Yaseke’s and yet so different, narrowed my field of vision as I began punching him. He cringed away from me, but I pinned him to the floor with my body. My fists thudded against his face, the impact dulled through the suit gloves. Blue blood sprayed everywhere when I hit his nose, smashing it to a pulpy mess.
I was screaming obscenities at him, barely aware when he went limp under me. Then a large body smashed into me. I turned, ready to fight, to kill again, but the hands on my face were gentle, and the voice calling my name was a soft hum that penetrated my screaming.
“Dade. Stop. Dade.” Fieo rolled off me when I slumped against the floor. My arms fell limp at my sides, my muscles aching with a dull fire.
“I could have hurt you. You shouldn’t have—”
“I trust you.”
I closed my eyes. Silence fell inside the small shuttle, broken only by our harsh breaths and a strange bubbling.
My throat felt raw when I tried to swallow. “Is he dead?” I opened my eyes. Fieo was sitting next to me, one arm shoved against the wall to hold himself up. “Is the bastard finally fucking gone?”
Fieo flicked his gaze past me. His eyes widened. “No.”
I growled, and he lunged for me, pinning me to the floor. I barely managed to still my instincts to throw him off and disable him.
“No, Dade! We need him. We need to know what was going on here. We cannot lose the chance. He is no threat
to you and yours.”
He had to die. I’d sworn to Yaseke I’d kill him. Breaking my promise would be unacceptable. My jaw clenched.
“He’s no threat to you physically, but we have to know why he was killing his family, how the humans came here, and what they were planning at this base. The rest are dead, other than the quiet one. Use your head, Dade.”
Acid churned in my stomach, burning my chest and throat as my gorge rose at allowing this man to live. I turned my head and looked at the old man lying on the ground, his face a mess of blue blood, his chest barely rising and falling. Those eyes, too like my tziu’s, were shut, the flesh swelling around them grotesquely.
Maybe he’d die on his own before the doctors could arrive. “I won’t kill him.” I ground out the words through clenched teeth. “But he doesn’t leave my sight, either.”
One of my arms hung limp at my side, but I only needed one hand.
Fieo searched my eyes and then nodded once. He drew his spare weapon and held it out to me.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
“What did you do to yourself?” Yaseke asked as he rushed into the medical wing. Dade shook his head where he was leaning against the wall.
“I’m fine, I swear.” Of course Dade didn’t mention the pain in his arm or the broken knuckles he’d sustained chasing Buphet. Yaseke only knew about them because Miis had commed Larede to bring a portable bio net for Dade. “He’s in there. They’re healing him right now,” Dade snarled.
“You’re bleeding!” Yaseke picked up one of Dade’s hands, staring at the blue blood that had dried a dark cobalt and still glistened in the wide splits in the skin over his sharp knuckles. He didn’t mention how the fingers in his grip trembled. Dade wouldn’t appreciate any comment on how weak he looked.
“It’s nothing.” Dade barely glanced down at his hands before going back to staring at the tan door across the hall.
Yaseke reached up and cupped Dade’s face between his hands, making him look away from the door. “It is not nothing, isit. Let Larede look at you.”
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