As Lilly and her companions reached the doorway, Bechet’s head appeared around the doorjamb. Before she could stop herself, an unabashed grin spread across her sweaty face. She’d never been so happy to see that scoundrel’s mug.
Bechet guided Milo into the building, quickly followed by Davis. But Lilly lingered outside, still worried about her newest deputy.
“Sheriff, get your ass in here,” the pirate shouted.
“Brand?!” Lilly cried once more, facing the wall of vibrant smoke behind her.
Bechet gripped her left shoulder and tried to pull her backwards, but she resisted fiercely.
“No, let me go,” she cried as she wrenched herself free.
Several blasts hit the outer wall of the building, on both sides of the open doorway. Lilly returned fire in the shooters’ direction. A loud yelp of agony rang out. She’d hit one of Darkbur’s men.
The pirate grasped one of her arms again, this time with a stronger, viselike grip, and swung her inside with such force she lost her balance. Toppling forward, she braced herself for a hard, painful impact and landed instead on something slightly more pliable: Remy Bechet.
He’d apparently fallen on his back in a dimly illumined reception area, and she lay sprawled ungracefully on top of him, her right hand splayed on his chest, her left hand pressing against the worn carpet beside his chiseled jaw, still clutching her blaster.
Behind her, the door slammed shut, and a barrage of blasts pummeled its outer surface. Some penetrated the door itself while others seemed to rock the entire building. Milo and Davis darted past her, into an adjacent room.
Lilly shuddered, and Bechet’s hand tightened around her right hip.
She tore her gaze away from Bechet’s darkening eyes and gingerly peeled his hand off her body. “Brand’s still out there,” she growled, rolling off him and leaping to her feet.
She marched toward the door, ignoring the gunfire aimed in her direction, grappling for a plan to rescue her stubborn deputy.
“Uh, we gotta move,” Bechet said, grasping her hand and tugging her across the room.
She wanted to resist, but another stray blast convinced her otherwise. Once Bechet managed to pull her into the inner room and slam that door shut as well, she swung around to face him. Something about him looked off.
Well, more off than usual.
Her gaze traveled down his right arm, and her vision doubled. Bechet had two right hands. No, wait—he was holding a severed hand!
“What the hell’s that?” she shrieked.
Bechet grinned and turned the artificial palm upward, revealing a set of strange fingerprints. “Our key to the safe.”
She blinked, but before she could think of a response, he turned and bolted toward Jacer—and yet another open doorway.
“Guard that door,” Bechet called, flapping the prosthetic hand at the flimsy barrier between the reception area and what resembled a mad scientist’s workshop.
The pirate dashed past the stony-faced aflin and into the next room.
Milo sidled up to her. “What the hell was that?”
“Must need it to get into the nano storage,” Lilly mused.
She turned to secure the door behind her and spotted Davis pacing frantically across her path. Guessing the reason for his agitation, she approached him cautiously.
“Where’s Brand?” he demanded.
Lilly cocked her head toward the door.
Davis’s eyes filled with terror. “She’s… still out there? But—”
“Maybe she headed for another way inside,” Milo suggested.
“I’m not sure there is another way inside,” Lilly lamented.
Davis flung open the door and bounded into the reception area, but at the same moment, another volley of blasts pelted the front entrance. He ducked instinctively, clenching his fists.
“If that damn room had a window,” Milo growled, peering around the doorframe and scanning the hole-peppered front wall, “we could hold them off a bit longer.” Sighing, he retreated toward Lilly. “But as it stands, our best bet is to stay in here.”
No more than a minute or two would likely pass before Darkbur ordered his men to storm the building. The only thing delaying them was their complete lack of vision inside the hazy courtyard, but that hadn’t made them any less dangerous.
“Dammit, Davis,” Lilly hissed. “I’m worried about her, too, but we can’t look for her now. We need to guard this door and give Bechet and Dreyla the time they need to free the meds.”
Davis glanced back at her, his eyes radiating worry, anger, and frustration. Though Lilly shared his emotions, she steadfastly refused to indulge them. An entire planet counted on this mission.
Chapter 3
REMY
Remy dashed toward Dreyla, holding Dr. Sanger’s prosthetic hand aloft.
She shrank against the glass door of the refrigerated storage room. “What the hell? You cut his hand off? Jesus, Remy!”
He tossed the appendage toward her. Shrieking, she caught the hand and juggled it in her own. It took a moment for her face to relax, realization dawning on her.
“Oh,” she said, inspecting the artificial palm.
“The fingerprints on it should match those on the scanner,” he explained.
Dreyla nodded. She placed the hand, palm side down, onto the scanner. The display whirred quietly as a red line moved up and down the strange fingerprints. After a few seconds, the screen emitted a neon-green glow, and perhaps a second after that, the seal around the door released, a soft, satisfying hiss emanating from it as it slowly opened.
Dreyla wrenched the door fully open and gestured toward the nans. “Ta-da,” she sang.
Remy immediately stepped inside the storage room, made a beeline for the nearest crate, and opened the lid.
“Jackpot,” he breathed.
Until this moment, he hadn’t let himself fully believe the meds were here. No matter the universe, it always seemed to pull a fast one just when you thought you’d achieved something of worth. But here lay several stacked rows of little white packages, emblazoned with an official black-and-blue logo, and there sat fourteen other crates just like this one.
“So,” Dreyla said, snagging his attention again.
He shut the lid and turned toward her, his eyebrow arched in anticipation.
“How are we getting out of here?” she asked, her expectant gaze fixed on his face.
Jacer’s tall, slender frame appeared behind her. “Yeah. We probably should have thought this out a bit better.”
Remy grinned. “Lady Ris, are you and your ladies outside?”
“Yes, Captain,” came the head monk’s immediate, ever-serene response via the comms. “We are in place.”
“Great.” He turned to his companions. “OK, start carrying the crates to the back wall of the examination room.” He nodded toward the doctor’s office.
Dreyla’s frown morphed into a half-smirk. As usual, she grasped his crazy-ass plan.
She removed another roll of mesh from her satchel. “Want me to put a hole in the back wall?” she asked sweetly.
“Not yet,” Remy replied. “It’s a busy street. We don’t know who else might be out there, even at this hour. Just set it up for now and start carting the boxes over to that spot.”
Dreyla nodded and slipped the mesh back into her bag. Jacer, meanwhile, holstered his gun, stepped into the cooler, and lifted one of the crates.
While the two of them got to work, Remy sprinted through the storage room and into the doctor’s office, where Milo, Sheriff Greyson, and Deputy Davis huddled near the doorway leading into the reception area, their firearms at the ready.
“What the hell?” Remy shouted. “I told you to secure that door.”
“Brand’s still out there,” Davis whined. “What if she comes through the front?”
“That sucks,” Remy said, “but sorry to say, we don’t have time to wait for her. We need to hold this position just long enough to move the meds out
.”
The sheriff caught his gaze. Far from looking ecstatic over his drug-busting prowess, she eyed him incredulously. “Move them out? How?” She cocked her head toward the front entrance, which was still getting slammed with nerve-rattling blasts.
Remy shook his head then crept past them, headed toward the receptionist’s massive desk. “Help me turn this thing on its side so we can use it for cover.”
Milo stepped beside him, and together, the two of them pivoted the desk onto its side and slid it across the carpet, providing cover for the inner doorway.
“Thanks, Milo,” Remy said. “Now, go help Jacer and Dreyla move the crates to our exit point.”
With a curt nod, the dworg trotted back into the doctor’s office.
Lilly and Davis lingered in the open doorway, dodging a few wayward blasts.
“And you two idiots,” Remy said, smirking, “get your asses down here with me. You’re liable to get shot if you stay there.”
Just as the sheriff and the deputy complied, Remy heard a series of thuds in the stairwell. Carefully, he leaned from behind the overturned desk, his blaster aimed at the door leading to the stairs.
Dr. Sanger burst into the reception area, his short, stocky body stuffed into a ridiculous vest and a pair of raggedy boxer shorts. Despite the cacophony of shouts and blasts in the courtyard, he remained near the front entrance, his face still aflame with anger and embarrassment, his hair sticking out in haphazard tufts. And that… alternative hand… still attached to his right wrist.
“You scum,” Dr. Sanger snarled. “You’ll pay for this. Wait until Mr. Darkbur gets his hands on you.”
“I’d rather his hands than yours,” Remy said wryly.
Davis peered above the desk. “Is—is that a dick on his hand?”
Ignoring him, the doctor twisted toward the front door, his left hand reaching for the handle.
“Don’t even think about it,” Remy warned.
The doctor shot him an obstinate glare over his shoulder, then slammed down on the handle. He hadn’t even opened the door all the way before a barrage of blasts hit him in the face and torso. He was so riddled with bolts of plasma energy that his body almost vanished into a bloody mist.
“Holy crap,” Lilly muttered beside Remy, her arms raised upward to shield her face from the nasty spray.
Remy unleashed a round of blasts through the open doorway, and his two cohorts followed suit. Two of Darkbur’s men took fatal shots to the head as they attempted to rush inside, then someone else tossed a smoke grenade through the front entrance. Immediately, the room filled with a thick gray haze. Unable to discern the enemy, Remy continued firing at the doorway. With any luck, he’d hit anyone foolish enough to cross the threshold.
“Davis, move back,” Lilly shouted above the din. “Help the others transfer the crates.”
Nodding, Davis crawled into the examination room, while Remy and Sheriff Greyson hunkered behind the desk and maintained a stalwart defense.
When Remy noticed his and the sheriff’s plasma blasts ricocheting off some unseen barrier, he tossed his blaster aside and drew his trusty Colt again.
“Someone’s put up a shield,” Sheriff Greyson said, holstering her gun. She laid a restraining hand on his forearm. “It’s no use, Captain.”
He almost protested, but he knew she was right.
Sometimes, you gotta flee to fight another day.
Before he could agree with her, however, he heard Dreyla’s voice over the comms.
“Captain, we’re ready to go!”
“Burn it, Drey!” he yelled.
Then, with his hand on the small of the sheriff’s back, he crouched low and pushed her firmly through the inner doorway. For once, she didn’t protest.
Shielding himself behind the doorframe, he removed a plasma grenade from his satchel, tossed it toward the front entrance, and slammed the inner door shut.
Following the subsequent eruption in the reception area, the walls and the foundation of the three-story building quaked. Seconds later, Remy heard muffled screams of pain from the other side of the door.
Then, one booming, belligerent voice rose above the commotion.
“Go around,” Darkbur ordered. “They’re trying to escape out the back!”
Chapter 4
DREYLA
Dreyla stood guard beside the open hole in the rear wall of the building, her arm muscles tensed as she gripped her plasma blaster. Bolstered by her successful rooftop breach, she’d taken little time to create their escape route with her custom-designed mesh, but now, she felt anxious again. She longed to help Milo, Jacer, and Davis, who were alternately stepping in and out of the hole, transferring the crates of nano-biotics from the doctor’s lair to the monks’ waiting hovercrafts.
She peered around the nearest edge of the sizable hole. The planet’s sun had started to rise a few minutes ago, and the streetlights had automatically turned off. When she’d first activated the mesh and disintegrated part of the wall, she’d noticed a plethora of pedestrians on both sidewalks of the street behind the Butcher’s Place. Bane seemed to sport heavy foot traffic at all hours, day or night, and even with the loud-ass commotion in the courtyard of Gono Darkbur’s property, the street had teemed with humans, aflins, dworgs, and other unclassified passersby. Once Darkbur’s men had circled around the building, though, and a firefight had ensued beyond the borders of the crime lord’s property, the street had cleared faster than you could say showdown.
Remy walked toward her, frowning. “They’re gonna hit us on the street.”
“They already are, Cap.” She cocked her head toward the scene outside.
At that exact moment, plasma blasts shot past the hole in both directions, clearly demonstrating her point.
Remy’s frown deepened.
Jacer stepped back inside the doctor’s office to grab another crate. Spotting Remy and Dreyla, he said, “Lady Ris and her people are trying to hold off Darkbur’s men, but there’s just too many of them.”
Grimacing, Remy glanced at the closed door leading to the reception area. “At least no one will be coming through there… for a while anyway.”
He turned back to Jacer, who had remained standing near the open hole with a crate balanced on his forearms, as if waiting for new instructions.
“I tossed a plasma grenade that likely took out a few of them,” Remy said.
“That explains the minor earthquake I felt,” Jacer remarked.
Remy smirked. “But it won’t take them long to figure out we’re not defending the front anymore. So, just finish stowing the crates. We need to get outta here now.”
Davis ducked back inside to grab another container. “You’re telling me. It’s getting pretty dicey out there.” He lifted a crate, then paused. “And we still have to find Brand.”
No one replied to his statement, not with reassurances or protests.
Dreyla’s gaze shifted from her companions to the street outside. The large explosion Remy had set off in the reception area might have killed a few of Darkbur’s men, and some of them had surely died from various bullets and blasts. How many of their enemies Remy, Lilly, and the others had eliminated, she had no idea. But from the looks of the mayhem in the street, Gono Darkbur wasn’t running out of bad guys anytime soon.
Davis and Jacer, each carrying a crate, edged toward the hole, but before they could make their dangerous dash to the hovercrafts, a harried Milo darted inside, ducking several plasma blasts.
“Holy Yerdua,” the dworg shouted, “it’s sheer madness out there!”
Lilly, meanwhile, emerged from the cooler, where she’d presumably been surveying the shelves for any missed crates, and wove her way toward the rear wall. Her face was pinched with concern. She’d obviously heard their comments via her comms earpiece.
“What should we do?”
Remy turned to the sheriff. “A couple of us need to finish hauling out the crates, while the rest provide some cover for them.”
H
e stepped toward the hole, grabbed the seared edge, and stuck his head outside. Before Dreyla could yell at him for being an impulsive idiot, he retracted his head and gave her a long, hard stare, his jaws clenched tightly. He was obviously sizing up the danger level, as he always did when she was involved. She wanted to tell him not to bother—that she could handle anything he could—but the words wouldn’t budge from her throat.
No matter what option Remy took, the danger level had hit the stratosphere. People on both sides of the battle were shooting haphazardly in every direction. The one advantage in their favor was that Lady Ris and her fellow monks had parked their three hovercrafts between two large transport vehicles, providing limited cover from shooters on either end of the street. Unfortunately, blasts were also coming from above them, indicating that some of Darkbur’s men had taken elevated positions in the hotel or perhaps even on the roof of the rear building.
Dreyla certainly didn’t need Remy to tell her any of this. She’d worked out the angles and the odds all on her own, leading to one inevitable conclusion: they were royally screwed.
“Stay here,” he said. “Keep a count on the crates. We need them all.”
She opened her mouth to object when another twangy blast shot past the open hole in the wall, followed by a female scream of anguish. Dreyla’s heart thumped as she instinctively peered outside.
Oh, no!
One of Darkbur’s gunmen had apparently blown off the arm of one of Lady Ris’s fellow monks. The afflicted woman bent forward, clutching her bloody shoulder, a dark stain rapidly spreading across her diaphanous robe. Two of the other ladies, jabbering urgently, dragged her to the nearest hovercraft.
It unsettled Dreyla to witness such a horrendous injury befall such an incredible woman. Since visiting the monastery in Trame, she had pictured all the Ladies of Morbious as perfect, impervious, immortal beings that inhabited a celestial dimension where only good things happened, but as it turned out, they were just as vulnerable—and mortal—as anyone else.
Remy’s eyes darkened. “OK, that’s it. We can’t delay. Milo, Jacer, finish loading the rest of the crates. Davis, Lilly, and I will try to keep the bastards busy.” He turned to Dreyla. “You hang back and shoot anyone not on our side.”
The Sky Is Crying Page 2
