Horus clasped it and nodded, regarding Hep with a respect he had long withheld, the respect due a fellow captain. Once Hep released him, Horus took Delphyne by the arm with all the delicacy of a deckhand hauling cargo.
“If you drag me along, I will stab you in the heel.”
Horus smiled at her. He looped her arm around his neck and made to pick her up.
“If you attempt to carry me, I will stab you in the neck.”
Horus sighed, and his smile fell away. “Then how in the black hell would you like to be escorted, your majesty?”
She slapped him on the back and gestured for him to kneel. When he did, she climbed on his back.
“So I’m a donkey now?”
“Yes,” Delphyne said. “Now get along, jackass.”
Mao and Hep watched until Horus and Delphyne disappeared around a corner. Then they turned and ran to the lift at the rear of the medical wing, the one through which the soldier had dragged Elias. Hep swiped the card across the glass surface of the reader and watched the light flash green. The numbers counted down as the lift descended toward them. Each tick on the display sent a cascading wave of heat through Hep’s body. He drew his sword and squeezed the grip tight. He thought of the sister blade, sheathed somewhere on the hip of his friend, his once-brother, Wilco. He wanted Wilco beside him then, to feel that sense of protection that once accompanied his presence.
The lift doors opened. The inside walls and floor were splattered with blood. Mao and Hep stepped inside. They said nothing as the doors closed.
10
The view from the bridge of the Fair Wind was one of chaos. A sight that would normally have set spiders crawling through Ayala’s mind. Before the change, before the Void took root in her, she abhorred disorder, a trait that made her a natural fit for the rigidity of military service. Even after, chaos was the antithesis of everything the Void was and strived for.
But chaos was only on the surface. A mask. Underneath, Ayala saw the design, the intricate web that she had woven around all these hapless players. And she was about to catch her fly.
Syndicate soldiers crashed into Navy sailors, spraying the air and floor with blood. Each side as ruthless and terrified as the other. They threw themselves into battle with the sole purpose of surviving that battle. They had no motivation beyond base instinct, no ideology. They willingly swallowed their own tails but fought against choking on them.
Ayala watched as they choked. As they became fodder.
“The skies are getting crowded out here,” a gruff voice said over comms. “What’s the status inside?”
“Proceeding accordingly, Mr. Melbourne,” Ayala said. She reminded herself to sound like the woman others believed her to be. She cleared her throat. “On plan.”
“We won’t last much longer out here. Fighters keep pouring out of Central like angry bees.”
“Begin the fallback procedures,” Ayala commanded. “It won’t be much longer now.” She imagined the relief wash over Melbourne. She watched the monitor as the syndicate fleet regrouped. The starfighters clustered together, a tactic that allowed them all to sync their exit jump and travel in unison, thus increasing their speed. The destroyers fell back and formed a protective barrier around them. There they would wait until the troop escorts arrived, having delivered the knife to the heart of the United Systems that was the death of Maria Tirseer.
Ayala depressed a yellow button on the comm panel, opening a channel to the fighters in the hangar bay. “Press forward. We need to push the enemy out of the hangar bay.” She watched with some delight as the syndicate soldiers surged. They gained no ground but crashed like a wave on the rocks. Both sides fell, more bodies piling up. More raw material. More clay for her to mold.
The monitor flashed red. The Navy ships were regrouping, re-strategizing their approach given the sudden change. They spread out—a smart move given that clustering made them a bigger target for the destroyers’ cannons. Against a fleet of starfighters, without the protection of their own, the destroyers would be picked apart. Provided they lingered long enough.
“What’s the holdup in there?” Melbourne said, his voice growing frantic. “The Navy is mounting a counterattack. The destroyers won’t last two minutes under that fire.”
“Hold firm,” Ayala said. “We’re loading into the transports now. Mission accomplished.”
“Good riddance,” Melbourne said. He sounded reinvigorated by the news.
Ayala closed the channel with the fleet and reactivated the one to the ground troops. “Hold strong. The fleet outside is giving their all to buy us the time we need. Don’t make their efforts a waste.”
Bodies fell. Ships split apart. Ayala smiled.
11
Trapper Mayne leapt over the massive form of Kurda as she fell to the floor. He twirled his staff. A blue energy pulsed through it, allowing him to deflect the barrage of blaster fire. To an extent. Several shots made it through. One narrowly missed striking Shankar in the face.
“Scooch a bit to your left, eh?” Shankar said.
Wilco dropped to check Kurda’s wound. The shot had hit her in the shoulder. The skin was already black and smelled like barbecue. It felt like an odd cordiality, the blaster fire being hot enough that it seared the wound shut and prevented excessive bleeding.
“I’m fine,” Kurda grunted. “Get moving.” She shoved Wilco away and cursed as she stood.
“You heard her,” Wilco said. “We need out of this kill-box.”
“On three,” Trapper said. When he counted down to one, he struck the end of his staff on the floor. A burst of blinding light came from the weapon, providing them the cover they needed to exit the lift. They dove behind the first cover they saw, splitting their unit apart.
“This was a lovely idea,” Shankar said. “I propose we leave now.”
“Anyone have eyes on the shooters?” Wilco said, ignoring Shankar.
“Mounted auto-turrets,” Trapper yelled over the continued shooting. “Two on the ceiling. And at least twelve sailors posted behind them.”
The sailors weren’t firing. They were there to pick off those lucky enough to survive the turrets. At this rate, it didn’t look like any of them would be so lucky.
“They’re motion-activated,” Wilco said. “Once they get a target, they’ll follow it. But they can only follow one target at a time.”
“A distraction,” Trapper said. “Like in Ex Mahone.” He exchanged a knowing look with Kurda. They both readied to move.
“Wait, you all say that as if I should know what it means,” Shankar said. “I wasn’t in Ex Mahone. What happened in Ex Mahone?”
Trapper darted out from his cover, twirling his staff. Both turrets locked onto him. He deflected several shots before he made it a half-dozen paces. Wilco sprinted from his cover the instant the turrets moved. He leaped and with both feet dropkicked Shankar from his place of safety into the wide open. One of the two turrets wheeled around the lock onto this new target, the other keeping trained on Trapper. Kurda hefted her hammer with her good arm and hurled it at one turret. Wilco drew his sidearm and fired at the other. One turret exploded in a burst of sparks and mangled metal. The other came crashing to the ground, its casing smashed by Kurda’s hammer.
They took no time to celebrate, however, as the room erupted in blaster fire from the twelve waiting sailors.
Shankar scrambled back behind cover, pointing a knife to Wilco’s throat. “Thanks for that. Maybe next time, I gut you and leave you to the wolves.”
Wilco swatted the knife away. “You can worry about that next time. This time, I need you to kill some people. I heard you were quite impressive with those officers earlier.”
A spark shone in Shankar’s dark eyes. “I was, wasn’t I.”
Wilco signaled Trapper. The monk crossed the open space, deftly dodging the enemy fire. “You two sort this out,” Wilco said. “We’ll buy you some time.” He ran to Kurda’s side.
“We dying here?” she said.
“Don�
�t be such a defeatist. I have this well in hand.”
After a moment of consultation, Trapper counted down on his hand. When he closed his fist, Wilco opened fire. Kurda, with all her size, moved with surprising speed. She ran forward, charging straight at the line of Navy sailors. Her ferocity rattled the sailors so much, they hesitated in their attack, allowing her to reach her target: the downed turret. She hoisted the turret, screaming as her wound opened under the strain. Using the manual trigger, she rained fire on the enemy.
Trapper and Shankar disappeared from Wilco’s periphery, moving like shadows to do what shadows did. Wilco moved to Kurda’s side, seeing the massive gun getting lower to the ground with each second. He used his shoulder to bolster her, acting as a tripod to support the weight of the gun. The vibrations shook him until he felt like he might crumble. The turret finally sputtered its last spark and refused to fire. It landed with a dull thud as Wilco and Kurda dropped it and dove for cover.
Time stretched abnormally, seconds seeming like hours before twisting back on themselves and become like quick lightning flashes. Wilco eyed the growing bloodstain on Kurda’s shirt with increasing worry.
“You holding up?”
She grunted. “Always.” Her face grew paler with each breath, but no pain showed on her face. She was a master of stoicism.
“Don’t go passing out on me. I can’t carry you.” He meant it as a joke. Whether she took it as such, he didn’t know. Her expression was unchanging.
“I’m no burden.” The words were heavy with something Wilco couldn’t identify. It felt like nostalgia or an echo of something screaming from the past. It was a sentiment he knew well, but, coming from Kurda, sounded foreign. She was never a burden, nor did she ever seem burdened, even though her past was as rife with torment as any.
The moment lingered. Wilco felt like he should say something. He never thought of himself as their captain, as they were mostly without a ship, but he was the one that brought them together, was considered the leader, and he knew what was expected of leaders.
He said nothing.
The sailors regrouped. Through the intermittent flashes of muzzle fire, Wilco spied their uniforms. Each wore a black uniform with a red insignia embroidered on their lapels. Black ops. Tirseer’s special forces. The most highly-trained soldiers in any branch of the Protectorate, and wholly dedicated to Tirseer. They weren’t sniveling officers, commissioned straight out of the academy, pissing their pants at the sound of blaster fire.
His gut pinched. Shankar and Trapper were about to run headfirst into a brick wall. He tried to stand, but Kurda pulled him back down. “They’re going to tear Trapper apart. He has no idea what he’s walking into.”
“He always knows what he’s walking into.”
Wilco tried to pull free from her iron grip to no effect. “I order you to let me go.”
She laughed.
“Those are black ops. If Shankar and Trapper drop in on them, they might take out a few in the first breath, but they’ll get cut down in the next.”
She yanked him back down. “He always knows what he’s doing.”
A ceiling panel dropped to the floor behind the line of enemy soldiers. Shankar and Trapper dropped out of the sky in the next moment. Shankar plunged his daggers into a soldier’s back as he fell. Trapper landed with the grace of a cat. He thrust the tip of his staff into the throat of a soldier then spun it in a protective whirl.
The smile on Shankar’s face faded fast, as did the surprise of their attack. The black ops team turned their guns on Shankar and Trapper Mayne. Wilco had no doubt the fear on Trapper’s face was the monk’s and not anyone else’s. He stood at the wrong end of a firing squad.
Kurda’s iron grip on Wilco’s arm released. He took it as permission to charge the sailors. It was, but it was not being granted to him. Kurda was no longer at her side. She had stepped out from the safety of cover and walked across the open, hammer clutched tightly in her hand. The collective memory of the black ops squad recalled the threat from just moments ago, and, despite their unflappable demeanor, they hesitated as before.
As she walked toward them, she pushed her sleeves up to reveal dense collages of tattoos on both arms. She stopped twenty yards from the special squad and dropped her hammer, which landed with a thud on its head. She drew a small dagger from a sheath with one hand while gripping one of her braids with the other. With one swift motion, she cut the braid off. Then she did the same to the other. She held them a moment, like they were a sacred thing, then threw them at the feet of her enemy.
They were like the first snowfall, a sudden blanket that absorbed the sound in the room, covering them all in a warm silence. Kurda broke it with a scream. The sound of a wild animal, a last howl of a dying wolf, defying death as it crumbled under its own weight. The most fearsome howl of its life. Kurda hurled her hammer. It flew through the air like a star until it smashed into the face of a black operative, making his head nonexistent.
Kurda followed the hammer as though she meant to retrieve it. For a second, Wilco believed she would. Until the operatives regained their senses. The first several shots hit her in the arms. She pressed through the barrage as if it were only a stiff wind. A shot pierced her side. She screamed. Another hit her in the gut. Still, she pressed on.
Trapper froze, his eyes locked on Kurda. Shankar stuck his knife in the throat of the nearest operative, clearing the way for them to run, which he did, leaving Trapper to the mercy of the spectacle.
A shot to Kurda’s chest knocked her back a half-step. She swayed but forced herself to fall forward. She grabbed the throat of an operative. Frantic, he squeezed the trigger and put two shots in her gut before she crushed his windpipe.
She dropped to her knees. The operatives dared not take their blasters off her. An unarmed woman, shot through a dozen times, she still filled them with fear. She looked at Trapper, still standing behind the line of operatives, staring at her, filling with every emotion in the room. She said nothing, not wanting to draw attention to the fool who refused to take advantage of the opportunity she’d bought him. Though Wilco doubted she was clearheaded enough to hate in that moment.
Wilco was, however. He hated them all. Every operative. Shankar for running like a coward. Trapper for not running. Kurda for giving herself over, for giving up. Himself for watching. All that hate came out in throat-shredding scream.
The operatives turned their attention to Wilco. Kurda spoke as black blood filled her mouth. “Go.”
Trapper nodded, vision broken with tears. He ran.
Once he was gone, Kurda allowed herself to die.
The Void raged inside Wilco. It wanted to take over, to kill everyone, and he wanted to let it. His veins turned black as fire coursed through them. His head pounded like there was something inside trying to break free.
Nine black ops soldiers moved on his position. Wilco didn’t consider the odds of surviving a nine-to-one assault. He didn’t care. He stood to face them, sword raised high, dagger in his hand.
A surge of blaster fire came from behind him, peppering the operatives, taking one down and sending the rest scrambling for cover. Mao and Hep soon stood at his side.
12
It felt like standing in a museum. Hep observed a scene, expertly and chaotically painted on a canvas that hung on the wall. He tilted his head and saw the scene as one thing, tilted the other way and saw it as something else. An outsider watching it unfold.
His brain could not comprehend what he saw when the lift doors opened. Like falling into a frozen lake. The body went into shock, a sudden and violent input of information. Wilco shouldn’t be here. His friend shouldn’t be dead on the floor. Hep shouldn’t be fighting at his side.
As Hep reached Wilco’s side, he felt a familiar surge of protectiveness. Hep blunted Wilco’s chaotic impulses where Wilco honed Hep’s cautious edge. He grabbed Wilco’s shoulder and pulled him down behind a half-wall. Wilco only then seemed to notice that he wasn’t alone, and who
his company was.
“What the hell are you doing here?” Hep said. He wasn’t surprised that Wilco’s swagger was gone, that he didn’t respond with the typical bravado. He was surprised by the rage radiating from him, like a tangible force, a hot punch in the chest.
Wilco didn’t respond. He vaulted over the half-wall and the enemy. Maybe he figured Hep and Mao would provide suppressing fire. Maybe he didn’t care.
“Don’t!” Mao yelled when Hep followed Wilco.
The two charged ahead, shoulder to shoulder, like both imagined doing again one day. Neither reveled in the moment. They charged ahead as recklessly as ever, charging into trouble and hoping to come out alive on the other side.
The operatives sensed an opportunity. They spread out, meaning to wrap around Hep and Wilco as the two ran toward them. They would flank the two and put them down. But in the chaos, the operatives seemed to forget about the others. Trapper and Shankar dropped out of the sky. Mao steadied himself and his blaster rifle and opened fire. The enemy’s short-lived, coordinated effort fell apart in the face of this haphazard and desperate attempt to stay alive.
Hep cut two men down. Trapper and Shankar dropped a few more. Mao sniped several. Wilco stabbed his sword through the gut of one and lifted him off the ground. He seemed less concerned with survival than inflicting pain. An operative charged at his back. Wilco spun and caught the man by his face. What skin shone on Wilco’s arm, a few inches of wrist, glowed with a brilliant blue light. It pulsed, like a living thing inside him was trying to get out. The energy cascaded out of his hand into the operative.
The man screamed, but his cries quickly died as he turned to ash, burned from the inside out.
The black operatives were dead.
Wilco dropped to his knees beside Kurda. Blood still spilled from her mouth. He looked like a child beside her. “That was a stupid thing to do.”
Hep half-expected her to answer. Even in death, she was imposing, like death might not hold her. Wilco drew his fingers over her eyes, closing them. When he stood, Trapper Mayne took his place.
The Deep Black Space Opera Boxed Set Page 64
