by R Coots
Syrus couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen the man without a helmet of some sort. In battle or shipside, he never took it off. That he wasn’t wearing clothes didn’t matter. It was the lack of helmet that made him look naked.
Quinn’s close-cropped white-blond hair was clotted with blood. His eyes were focused on something in the middle distance, and there was a rapid tic in his jaw. Those were the only outward signs of the one-man supernova he’d carried into the room. How the man hadn’t self-combusted was a mystery.
The cage wrapped around his torso didn’t have anything to do with it. Glimmers of electricity sparked along the copper-colored bands of metal that followed the line of the man’s ribs around his torso. Their ends hooked into his sternum on the front of his body, down into the bone itself. On the backside, they attached to a framework hooked into his vertebrae.
The whole mess looked like a psychotic jeweler had decided to start working on people instead of gems. A soldier standing behind him had a silplat lead in one hand. It had an activation button and a voltage meter, and that was it. You didn’t need much else to electrocute a man whenever he got out of line.
Of course, whatever moron thought sticking the second-in-command of Kuchen Fleet Turan in a torture cage was a good idea obviously didn’t know the first thing about the man. The things were designed to keep Imperials in check, not to tame Fleet soldiers. Any minute now, Quinn would decide he didn’t really mind the tickling in his nerve endings.
New plan. Get out of this room before Quinn lost his shit. When normal Fleet men went into Frenzy, people ended up pulped messes on the deck. When this man finally broke, there’d probably be body parts flying. Syrus had dealt with plenty enraged Fleet soldiers and come out battered, but alive. Right now, he was just some highborn’s piece of art waiting to happen. And so were the girls.
Which was probably Kizen’s plan all along, now that he thought about it. The only question was how the bastard had managed this in the first place.
Two more people appeared in the doorway, nudged in by the muzzles of the soldiers behind them. Iira and Oona, naked bodies a mosaic of bruises in all stages of healing. Quinn lurched in their direction, face twisting into a mask of pain and animal savagery. A Numb would have been able to feel the surge of animal lust that came off the man, followed by an even bigger pulse of rage. Quinn watched the women as they limped past him, all the brains of a berserker bull showing in his eyes.
“Get the fuck over here.” Kizen grabbed Iira by the arm before she’d made it more than a foot past her husband. He hauled her over to the wall and shoved her down. Quinn snarled and jerked against the collar around his throat.
Most Imperials died before they ever got past the lowest level of current in the cage. Fleet people might be strong and heal fast, but even for them, resetting the heart wasn’t the same as taking a bullet. However many volts the soldiers had the thing set for, they barely fazed the man trapped in it. Once the current was gone, he came down off his tiptoes and braced his feet, glaring as Kizen set the moorings further down the wall and shackled Oona in place.
“Did you know,” Kizen said in a conversational tone, “that the Imperial medunits aren’t portable?” He grinned down at Oona as he took a handful of her breast and squeezed. Syrus watched her face. He couldn’t tell what Oona was feeling through the morass of blind fury Quinn emanated, but damned if the woman wasn’t keeping her face completely still.
About the time Syrus started imagining the damage Kizen must be doing, Oona gave in. “You can’t decouple them from the base.” Her voice was rasping, but that could have been a side effect of having had her windpipe nearly crushed. At least he guessed that was what had happened, if the marks on her neck were anything to go by. “All the saline and sanguine solutions are plumbed in. Along with most of the common drugs.”
“Exactly! Their portable units are for shit. Not near capable of keeping up with what’s about to happen here. You know what that means, don’t you milord?”
Syrus raised an eyebrow at Kizen. Whatever he was planning, he’d get around to telling them all soon. Man couldn’t keep his mouth shut to save his life.
First chance he got, he’d rip the swaggering bastard’s jaw off and beat him to death with it.
“Of course he does,” Kizen said, when the silence had stretched on just a little too long. “He knows how this works. He’s supervised a Breaking or two, hasn’t he? Watched outFleet men scream for their families when they go into the medunits. And scream louder when the cunts come out, all shiny new and ready for the next round of fun with the rank and file.” The warlord left Oona and came over to stand in front of Syrus. “You are a very good spy. Milord. Stealing the Helm for yourself. Taking advantage of our beliefs; the very things that sent us out to the stars to begin with. Following all the old rules and customs as if you weren’t here to fly us all into a trap. But you know, you didn’t have to hide what you were . . .” He grinned again.
Syrus imagined those white teeth scattered all over the deck, and lost a bit of time. His shields were starting to fail again. He’d known they would eventually. Quinn’s arrival had weakened them more. He just had to hold on a little longer. Had to keep the anger in the room from mixing with the molten pit at the center of his being. Just a little longer.
A fist hammering its way into his gut fixed his attention problems.
“I said, your second’s been playing you for a fool.” Kizen grabbed a fistful of hair and yanked Syrus’s head around so he could look at the battered man being tethered to the wall. “Your second has had your whole record in his private files now for months. Military, personal. Everything. He’s been stripping it out of the Imperial networks since you first set foot on the Belo. He knew exactly who you were. And what you are.”
Panic. For all of a heartbeat, Syrus thought it might actually be true. It would mean Quinn had been working behind his back, saving stuff he’d thought the Fleet had flattened. He’d thought it was idiotic at the time, the way they threw away so much intel.
Then he snorted at his own stupidity. What did it matter now—what they thought they knew? He was either going to die here, or he was going to break the seal holding the shackles to the wall and kill every motherfucking bastard in this place. This wasn’t blackmail. Or leverage for something else. It was just an empty threat.
Either Kizen didn’t care or didn’t realize he might have used that little revelation for something better. He had his stage; and like every two-credit actor from here to the first migration, he was playing to the only audience he thought mattered. Himself.
“There are some interesting gaps, though.” A smile split Kizen’s face in half. There was nothing like sanity in his eyes. All Syrus could feel now was the oily slickness of the man’s pride. “None of the techs could break the encryptions. Same with the ones he caught and brought in from the Campaigns. No matter what punishments he delivered for failure. Wonder why that is. How high up in the Empire does this little operation of yours go?
“You realize that now that we have this base, we’ll be able to decrypt everything we’ve ever had on the Empire.” Kizen ran a thumb down Syrus’s jaw, then cupped the other side. His other fingers rested on the marks of rank on either side of his prisoner’s neck.
Syrus clenched his teeth on a snarl, telling himself that giving this man any more ammunition would just drag things out longer. At some point, he had to let go. And take the feeling of drowning in raw sewage with him.
Kizen didn’t notice Syrus’s reaction. Or maybe he assumed it was for some other reason. The crazed smile stretched wider. “Thank you, by the way, for breaking this place open. But you must have known we’d find out, yes?” He leaned in to whisper in Syrus’s ear, bringing with him all the smug certainty and righteous anger of a man who'd had finally won his game against the universe. “Enjoy the show, milord. You tried to save the bitches, but they’re going first.
“And if—which is a very big if, as you know. If the me
n leave enough of them for the medunits to put back together, well. Guess we’ll just have to see how effective the Imperial models are, won’t we?”
He stepped back. Syrus forced himself not to twitch away as Kizen ran his armored hands down his neck once more before finally leaving him alone in his own skin. Though not with his own emotions. Not with everything going on in the room. At least the bastard wasn’t touching him anymore. One more second with the feeling of crawling worms under his skin and he probably would have vomited for the first time since . . . Well, he couldn’t remember the last time that hadn’t involved nearly a kegger of brew. A long time.
“Now, I plan to make a preliminary test of the units’ capabilities. The poor excuse for a thank-gift you had sent to me. What was her name?”
Syrus managed a shrug. “Never kept track.”
“Really now?” Kizen looked over at Jossa and Delfi sitting huddled up against the wall. “Pity. I think I will appreciate her much more than you ever did. She doesn’t mind the bruises at all. Begs for them, as a matter of fact.
“In the meantime, I’ll leave you to entertain yourselves.” He clapped Syrus on the shoulder, brushed past the soldiers setting the tethers on Quinn’s legs, and was gone.
>Chapter Thirty-Two
Jossa
What I propose is that the two subjects also balance each other emotionally. One focused on reality and one, as they say, with her head in the clouds. Stable and Unstable, if you will.
-“Behavioral Patterns of the Psychically Mind-Linked” Professor Rusithe, New Hopks College of Medicine
Jossa inched herself into a tighter ball and tried to decide if the results would be worth the effort of moving her wrist in its shackle. Probably not. No slack in the tether, no reason to rub her skin raw trying.
Del was quiet in Jossa’s mind, her attention off somewhere else. A quick skim of her sister’s surface was all Jossa could manage before having to withdraw, stomach roiling. Her sousi was tracking the warlord back through the halls.
Jossa wrenched her mind away before the slime of the man could wrap her in its grip, but escape was a near thing. Stupid, stupid, stupid. Don’t go chasing poison. Should be keeping the shields up!
Shields. Hah! If there’d been six of her, she wouldn’t have enough strength to block everything going on in the base around them. Ancestors, it was a miracle the people in this room hadn’t incinerated her on the cellular level.
Jossa dropped her forehead to her knees and tried to breathe. It was hard. So hard. Superheated air scorched her lungs and dried her sinuses so quickly that each breath was a new form of torture. Vague images coalesced from the heat shimmers in her mind’s eye. Glimpses of Warlord Kizen. Of his soldiers overrunning Oona’s bridge. Of an alley, the dirt that surfaced it churned to bloody mud. Delfi was angry. Iira and the other woman were twin coals of fury. Syrus teetered on the edge of some sort of berserker state.
And his second? Well, that man had passed beyond berserker and into full insanity long before the Fleet had brought him in the room. If the rest of the Fleet soldiers had anger at their core, central to their very being; this man was akin to some of the things she’d learned about in philosophy class. The perfect embodiment of rage, in the light of which all other manifestations of the emotion were reduced to shadow. What was the word her teachers had used? Platonic?
She hoped the tethers keeping him in place held. She didn’t think he’d kill anyone quickly if he got free.
Syrus waited a full minute to speak after Kizen had left. His voice rasped and growled. “So, what the hell happened to taking over the system and letting me get the keys?”
Jossa kept her head down and pretended she hadn’t heard. Del was still off in the base somewhere, watching the other warlord’s mind as he gloated to himself. There must not have been much shielding built into this place, for her to be able to manage it so easily.
“Any minute now, they’re going to come in here and get the show started. Talk, dammit.”
That brought Jossa’s head up. She yanked at her connection to Delfi. Del twitched and shoved an image through the bond—Mivi strapped to the table of a medunit—and went back to what she was doing.
Syrus wasn’t looking at his second. He was looking at Iira and the woman tethered a few feet further down the wall.
Start the show? Oh.
Oh.
Delfi yanked her out of the pit before the sticky tentacles of horror could drag her any further than the edge of despair. ::Stop that,:: Del snarled as she drove a stake through Jossa’s psyche and into her own. Jossa winced, but didn’t fight her. The more solidly she was anchored to Del, the less chance she’d lose control and infect them all. ::And pay attention,:: Del snarled.
“He went back to his ship. Sent word that he was rearranging the troops for another push into the caves.” Iira shifted and hissed in pain. “Quinn also requested a meeting with Kizen’s second, to examine the details of the plan.”
“And to see how he managed to let his warlord get so out of control?”
Iira started in surprise. Jossa hissed at the sudden change in the emotional temperature, then cringed as the anger returned, stronger for the slight relief she’d felt.
“What, think I didn’t realize? Think I didn’t know the minute I stepped too far out of line, he’d find a Challenger for the Helm who could take me?” Syrus snarled. Actually snarled. “Give me some credit, woman.”
Jossa cried out as a flurry of information hit her brain. Chagrin, for all the times Iira had spoken to her warlord as a child. Anger, for having been caught. Jossa hung from the shackles, gasping. The others didn’t seem to have noticed. Jossa threw up as many shields as she could manage, praying they’d hold. They started to erode as soon as she put them up.
At the far end of the room, the second growled and pulled against his tethers. They gave, just a little. Jossa’s imagination fed her the heart-stopping image of what could be done by a man who might be stronger than the artificial grav generators holding him to the wall. But technology won. He snapped back, head bouncing off the metal paneling with a low thud.
Another layer of shields crumbled under the fresh surge of anger. Her resolve pulled against the mental stake keeping her anchored in Del’s mind.
::Del!::
::Just hold still already. You with the panic. Them with the arguing. Only so much I can—:: Delfi’s voice was strained.
::Del, if you don’t help me right now, I swear.::
Grumbling, her sister reached. A trickle of fear siphoned over to Del’s side of the bond. Jossa took the scraps of peace that streamed towards her and fused them into place over her shields, patching the weak spots. Please hold, she prayed. Please don’t let anyone get any angrier.
The conversation had moved on while Jossa was distracted. “Something was wrong a great deal longer than that,” the captain of the Fleet ship snapped at Iira. “No Trueborn Son of Kuch would have made another wait before meeting face to face. Should have—”
“Oona!” Iira leaned forward, hissing something in Fleet under her breath. Jossa couldn’t make it out. Either because she couldn’t hear; or because her translator hadn’t had time to assimilate the words it needed to make sense of something so muffled.
“Ahlih pahricho ohdeh ch kashezs yaheks ahjzs nihba?”
Jossa looked over at Delfi, who was staring at the ceiling. She couldn’t feel anything but frustration in the bond. But then this was Del. Whatever other feelings she had, she kept them down where Jossa couldn’t see them.
That was good. This may not be the first hopeless situation they’d ever been in, but it had been a long time since they’d had to manage one entirely without backup. Or hope of rescue. Or anyone really, working from the outside. The fewer distractions they had, the better. That included the distractions they themselves created.
Jossa snorted. Rui would have charged in here, Denz covering for him like some giant out of legend, and gotten her free, even if it meant he had to do it
with two broken arms and stumps for legs. And he would have called her six kinds of idiot for ever getting caught like this in the first place. Then he would have grumped about how she always ended up naked in these situations and how much it cost to replace her clothes.
None of that was the point right now, but still. It hurt to imagine, knowing it wouldn’t happen.
“Joss,” Syrus growled, just as tears filled her eyes. “Tell me what she’s saying. You two.” He glared at Iira and Oona. “Quit gossiping and finish explaining why your husband’s walked himself out into space without a suit.”
Jossa blinked, opened her mouth to snap at the warlord, and felt her outer shields crumble to ash as the second beat her to the mark. She clawed at the bond, scrambling for the peace of mind to slap up more defenses. They toppled almost as fast as she built them. Del groaned and leaned her weight on the stake holding their minds together as the metaphysical anchor threatened to rip free.
“Fucking piece of lying—” The translator chirped and squeaked as it tried to keep up with the second. His words were slurred and garbled by his gritted teeth. But it was the veins popping out on his forehead, and the way every muscle in his body had gone rigid, that had Jossa truly worried. The soldiers had left the electric cage wrapped around him. It popped and hummed as he thrashed. His pale skin was striped with contact burns. She could smell the cooking flesh from across the room. He didn’t notice.
Syrus did, though. From the look on his face, the proportionate increase in the second’s injuries to the lack of attention the man paid them wasn’t a good sign.
“Why are you the only one still wearing clothes?” Jossa said, praying the translation of Delfi’s words would be enough of a distraction.
Every head turned in her direction. For a moment, even the second’s rage eased slightly, shifting over to the slip slide of curiosity. Jossa pulled her knees up to her chest. “It’s what Delfi said.” More or less.
