by R Coots
“In the Fleet, if you kill, you are strong.” The man hauled her around so she could look at the room behind her. The groaning, bleeding bodies of a good twenty or so men lay scattered between them at the dais. “OutFleet woman, you are very strong.”
She hiccupped, choked, and doubled over laughing.
> Chapter Twenty
Syrus
- - - test group has improved on the last one by nearly twenty-three percent. However, the problem of the mood swings remains. They’re too unstable. We’re still cleaning bits of Garcia out of - - -
-audio recordings, New Hopks College of Medicine
Syrus clamped his arm around the blood-slicked thighs of the girl he was carrying and snarled under his breath. Her anger raged around him like a wild animal, sinking hooks in his arm and shoulder and tearing at his veins. Her physical claws raked at his back, caught in his hair, and pulled his clothes in all the wrong directions. He’d already taken an elbow to the back of the head and had one ear nearly pulled free of his skull. He’d thumped and scraped her against every wall and corner he could manage in retaliation, and still she fought.
Bitch. As if he didn’t have enough problems on this Campaign. Now she’d had to wake up and ruin the one political event he’d tried to suffer through since—he blew out a breath. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d done the meet-and-greet bullshit. Probably when they’d given him the fucking armor in the first place.
At least none of the new techs had gotten killed. They’d all been smart enough to clear out. There were a lot of fresh widows on board tonight, but that was nothing new. They’d either be claimed by new husbands or end up down in crew bunks soon enough. Oona’s problem, not his. So long as one of them got him some concrete data on this system and did it soon, he didn’t care who was married and who wasn’t.
No, his problems came in the form of lunatic women who shouldn’t have even been able to walk straight after spending hundreds of years in cryo and then weeks in an infirmary bed. Never mind fighting like demons. Where the hell had that come from anyway? They were supposed to be fucking concubines. Operative word there being fucking.
He looked over at the other one, stumbling along behind him. Iira had taken hold of her as soon as they’d gotten clear of the banquet hall and was all but dragging her down the hall by her elbow. She kept on giggling. Tears leaked down her cheeks as she gasped for breath and lost her balance and hiccupped and was hauled to her feet, then repeated the process a dozen times over.
Syrus shook his head, got caught in the back of the skull by some bony bit of the she-demon he had slung over his shoulder, and decided enough was enough. His rooms weren’t far, but he didn’t want them destroyed either.
“Here.” He palmed open a small conference room and went inside. The shriek and near loss of his captive told him that he’d forgotten to duck down far enough and nearly scraped her off on the frame. He caught her before she could land on her head, flipped her upright, and tossed her on the table that floated in the center of the room.
She came up snarling and spitting, feet and fists flying. Syrus let the feet connect so he could get close, her emotions hitting him harder than her body could. She was running out of power. He ducked inside her guard and caught a wrist in each hand. “Calm the fuck down,” he snarled into her red face. “Gonna get yourself killed, you know that?”
“Why isn’t she dead already? You soft outFleet piece of hydro scum. Is this how all the Empire treats its women? Indulging them? Allowing displays of temper? First one and now the other! I think you are trying to get everyone on the ship killed. Is that it? Is that why you came to this Fleet and assassinated your way to the Helm? So you could halt the Invasion?”
Syrus stared at Kizen. He should have known the man would follow them. How had he not noticed him?
The sense in the man’s words hit him. Syrus let go of the girl’s arms and clamped a hand over her face instead. Turning so he could face the man fully, he said, “You want to bitch about me wearing the Helm, you talk to him.” He pointed at Quinn, who’d slipped into the room behind the other warlord and was talking quietly with Oona. “I came to the Fleet looking to kill Brander.”
He leaned forward and glared at the other man. “Now. If you have something to contribute besides ‘kill everyone in sight,’ I’m all ears. But if you can’t remember that the base tenet of the Fleet is Strength Over All, then maybe you should go work on your strength of will. On your own ship. I’m sure your second would like to go over the next push with you, now that we’ve rearranged our troops.”
Kizen’s face turned the darkest shade of purple Syrus had seen this side of a beet, and his eyes nearly bulged out of his head. One of these days the man was going to fall over of an aneurysm and they’d have a hell of a time figuring out who got to replace him. His hands wrapped around the knife hilts on his belt. For a moment, Syrus thought he’d actually try something.
The girl on the table behind him finally decided she’d had enough of trying to get his hand off her face and started aiming her kicks instead. Two solid hits to the ribcage were enough to get Syrus’s attention, though not enough to injure or wind him. Snarling, he dragged her forward, fingers still clamped over her jaw. “You kick me again,” he told her, “and I’m going to find new ways to hurt your sousi. Got me?”
She froze.
“Now sit still, you little bitch. I’ll get to you in a minute.”
She glared at him, nostrils flaring as she sucked in air. Her rage made his entire arm feel like someone was mainlining hot coals through his veins. He gritted his teeth and glared back at her.
Finally, she crossed her arms and slumped in place. The fire didn’t dim, but it was as good as he was going to get. “Oona,” he called over his shoulder. “Warlord Kizen is going to be heading back to the Ataorl Banso. Get that started, would you? Then get the new techs working on parsing the data. Might as well get some work done while someone’s sorting out the living quarters.”
“Milord.” Her disapproval was like ice. If he could have gotten away with it, Syrus would have grabbed hold of her with his rage-burned hand, to see if her skin would give him any relief. “Milord Kizen, if you would follow me?”
Miracle of miracles, Kizen went. Grumbling and cursing, but at least he went. Two people out of his hair now. Holding up one finger to warn the girl on the table, Syrus took his hand off her face. Slowly, in case he needed to flatten her again. One step. Two. She stayed put, eyes flickering between him and her sousi behind him.
“You can let her go, Iira,” he said quietly.
Jossa blew past him, aiming for the redhead. As she brushed against him, frantic worry and relief sizzled in his mouth like carbonated water and mint. Sharp and cool all at the same time. She wasn’t quite as beat up as the other sai, but she’d taken her share of hits and lost most of her clothing in the fight. It was hard to tell on her darker skin, but he figured she’d be covered in bruises before a couple days had past.
“Go get your kit,” he told Iira. “Might as well patch them up in here.”
She murmured, bowed, and went. Leaving him with two women hugging the life out of each other and Quinn, who still hadn’t said a word one way or another.
“Well,” Syrus said when the other man didn’t speak up. “Say it. I should have left them where I found them.”
“Perhaps.” His second stepped up next to him, but even this close, he was unreadable. “But as you said to Warlord Kizen, Strength Over All. It is what allows us to absorb outFleet men as our warriors. It’s what enables those grafted in to the fighting force to survive at all. It is what drives us. These two . . .” He gestured at the women in front of them. “They are not average women, are they?”
“You mean, for the Empire? Or for sai?”
Quinn looked at him from under the rim of his helmet.
Syrus snorted. “Average women don’t wind up in long-term cryo on empty planets. There are women who fight. You don’t notice them so muc
h on Campaign because they aren’t where you usually find women. They don’t hide in locked rooms and they don’t cower. They either take their families and run, or they join the guerilla strikes the local resistance starts after our first push. Very few make it into the prisoner population. “Ones who’re left—” He shrugged. “They figure out what’s coming and shove dick-eating mechanicals up their own cunts. Or bombs.” He frowned at Iira. “What was that thing that woman had inside her?”
“Not all are suitable,” Quinn said before his wife could answer. His voice was quiet, emotionless. “Even for the Breeder ships.”
Well, that was one way of putting it.
There was a pause as Syrus watched Jossa go over her sousi’s injuries like a mother with a child. The girl, or young woman, took it like a child too. Swatting at hands, pulling her feet away. Hissing when cuts were poked at. “What was the damage?” he asked.
“Oona is still making a tally. It appears she tore the locks in your rooms apart and overrode the programming. All the guards between your quarters and the banquet hall are dead. At least thirty within the room itself.” Quinn took a breath and uncertainty threaded its way to the surface. “If I may, milord?”
Syrus looked at him.
“You touched them. They did not light up.”
He frowned at his second. Why did the man have to notice so much? Syrus was just about to ask him that when he was interrupted by a coughing, guttural noise he’d only heard a few times in his life.
He swung around. The second woman, Delfi, was speaking. But it wasn’t Imperial. Or Kuchen. Or even one of the hundreds of pidgin languages the Edge worlds used. No. This was full-blown He’la. The language of the Foreseers.
Fucking hell, just what he needed.
Then he saw what Jossa was doing. “What the fuck,” he snarled, lunging forward to pull her hands off the flares of her crown before she could yank on them any harder. “The hell you think you’re doing, woman? You’ll kill yourself and you know it.” Touching her was like touching a live wire. Pure panic burned through his nerves. Syrus gritted his teeth against the urge to scream in frustration. Claustrophobia closed in around him, and his skull suddenly felt six sizes too small. If he didn’t get the top of it off somehow, he was going to fail and die and then they’d all be lost because—
The monster rose inside him. The monster that he knew, beyond all doubt, was his. Emotions he’d never had words for, but he knew them as well as he knew his soul. Black and twisted, burning like acid and drowning like water. Aimed at everything and everyone who tried to make him what he wasn’t. He grabbed it, gave it the fear for its fuel and snarled as it flowed up through his veins and out through his skin. Someone cried out in the distance, but he was too pissed to care why. He just wanted the fucking noise to stop. They all needed to shut up and leave him alone, fuck it all. Why couldn’t they leave him alone?
The caustic mix running through his veins overflowed, sizzling out along his nervous system. He felt his mouth stretching in a roar—the monster’s roar, teeth bared. If they wouldn’t give him some peace and quiet, he’d have to make them. Once they were all dead, it would all go away. He’d wake up in another puddle of blood and finally, finally, be alone in his head.
“Milord?”
His punch would have hit Quinn in the face, if the man hadn’t dodged. Fast bastard. Syrus snarled and balled up the other fist, then frowned. Why couldn’t he use that hand? What was in the way? And why did he hear screaming when he tried?
He looked. He was holding someone’s arm. Slim. Darker brown than his. Female. Oh.
He dropped Jossa, who curled over her wrist and whimpered quietly. Shaking out his hand, he looked back at Quinn. “What do you nee—”
Something hammered him from the side. Ribs and face. And it kept hitting him. The guttural shrieking identified his attacker as the other foundling. She’d used up most of her energy breaking into the banquet, so the blows didn’t carry much force. The corona of her rage just added to the toxic mix still boiling through his veins. He only had to take five or six hits to the head before he could duck through her guard and plant a fist in her jaw. Quinn caught her before she landed, but she was already out, limp in the man’s arms.
“Milord? Do I need to go prep the medunits?” Iira was standing in the doorway, questions on her face and the low-need med kit in her hands.
Syrus looked from the unconscious and bloody young woman his second was lying on the table to the other one crouched on the floor, cradling her wrist. He sighed and rubbed at the bridge of his nose. The comedown off this high would hit soon, and he could already feel the cold creep of its sewer sludge along his skin. “Just do what you can for that one,” he said, waving at Delfi.
Iira bowed her head and moved over to set up shop next to her husband. Syrus dropped down on his haunches next to Jossa. “Hey.”
She didn’t look up, still muttering to herself, too quiet for him to make out. Grumbling, he hooked a finger under her chin and dragged her face around to his. “Look at me you fucking bitch.”
If she realized what she was fighting against, she didn’t show it. Jossa’s eyes went past him, to where Iira was working on the other woman. “I need it off. Please take it off. I need it off. I don’t know what’s coming. I know what was said, but I don’t know what’s coming.” She clutched at his hand. Panic shot through his nerves, making his heart stutter. “Please!” Her voice was hoarse. “I need it off! I need to know! I don’t know! Please!”
Tears streamed down her face. She was chewing her lip bloody. Grief mixed with regret and self-hatred turned his hand numb, but climbed no further. He was still too close to Frenzy for her emotions to make much of a dent in his.
He shook himself free and she all but fell over. Growling, he caught her and set her back upright. She fell again. Syrus growled and dragged her to her knees. Stupid bitch. Blind, dumb, crazy bitch. So lost in her panic she didn’t see the obvious hitting her over the head.
“Listen to me,” he rasped when he finally got her face pointed in his direction. Her eyes were wild, and he knew she wasn’t seeing him at all. Her hands kept trying to reach for the crown, but his grip was keeping her from managing it. “Jossa, listen!” Her head jerked back and forth as he shook her.
She hiccupped and clung to his shirt. “Please,” she whispered. “Need it off. Take it off. Can’t under—” She hiccupped again. “Please!”
Behind him, Delfi moaned and muttered in He’la. Jossa nearly climbed over the top of him before Syrus could hook an arm around her waist and pin her to the table. Fuck it all, how was he supposed to get her to calm down if they kept setting each other off?
“Oloteoj duparodivek tukavaf kamek,” he snarled in High Imperial. “Fucking bitch, open your eyes and look! It doesn’t matter if you get that thing off. See?”
She went still. Syrus didn’t care if it was because he’d used Imperial on her, or if she’d actually gotten a good look at her sousi. The numbness in his arm eased. Settled into something different.
Syrus didn’t try to figure out what it was. This might be his only chance to get through to her. “She’s crowned too,” he growled in her ear. “Remember? Can’t make predictions if her sai is cut off.”
Something beeped behind him. Oona’s voice cut in over a speaker. “Milord? Iira said you’d be here.”
Leaving the stunned woman in a heap on the floor, he stood and went over to the comm unit. “Let me have it then.”
“Milord, the techs have found a second Barbican in the system. It’s not showing up on our scans.”
> Chapter Twenty-One
Syrus
Gravity. No matter how we fight it. No matter what we build to negate it. It will not leave us alone.
-spacer proverb
Syrus frowned and leaned forward. The map of the system was a mess of projected orbits, markers for known satellites of the sun, and recorded flight paths. The latter, traced in purple, burst out from the planet below the Edde Be
lo in a crazy corona. The trails led all over the system, almost completely at random. Almost.
Something yellow and faint flickered to life near the bottom of the y-axis. Purple crossed it here and there. But the amorphous blob of light was large enough to be visible under the projected trails.
The door to the hall slid open. Kizen came back in, followed by the tech who’d been taking him back to his shuttle. Her lip was split and bleeding. She bowed and escaped as soon as Kizen’s attention snagged on the wall. The warlord breathed a curse in Fleet that Syrus’s translator couldn’t parse. He got the gist of it though.
“Zoom in on the point,” Syrus told the invisible tech as he leaned in for a closer look. “And replay traffic from the time we took the trading post. Twenty-four, thirty.”
She obeyed. The yellow light grew larger and the edges of the system faded and shifted onto the ceiling and floor, then wrapped around the other walls of the room. The days since the Fleet’s first attack on the system sped by, compressed into thirty-second increments. The purple lines grew and twined and snarled. Syrus settled his weight on his heels. “I fucking hate being right.”
“Milord?” Quinn nearly made his warlord jump in place. Syrus bit down on a snarl and looked at his second, who traced a finger over one particular line leading from the planet the Fleet was parked over. It looped twice, ducked behind a moon of the third planet, and vanished into the asteroid belt between planets six and seven.
“There’s nothing there,” Kizen growled on Syrus’s other side. He had his nose nearly stuck to the point where the yellow light flickered, as if he could make the outline of a satellite appear just by glaring it into existence. Even the emotions he gave off were all aimed at the wall. For once, Syrus didn’t feel like the man was trying to personally roast him alive.
“Give me the gravity readings,” Syrus told the tech. He knew what they’d show, but conjecture and insider knowledge weren’t going to work on Kizen. He needed cold facts.
