Ears ringing, Fitz struggled up fighting a wave of vertigo. How much more of this could the little girl inside her take? Before, she’d always fought for herself, her mission. Now there was someone depending on her, a life more important than her own. A new life that had to survive.
“Up, everyone. We may have only seconds to make it to that door before the creature does.”
An angular shadow eclipsed the light, destroying their hopes. The bug had reached the ground floor landing and stood between them and freedom. Nowhere to go now but farther down, down into the dead zone of the suppression field.
“Move,” she yelled, herding them back. “All the way to the cell area. We’ll make our stand there.” She snapped off a few shots, then turned and raced after the others.
A cave is a grave. A cave is a grave.
The litany ran through her mind as she rushed downward. A flicker of her inhead was all the warning she received before her augs powered down. She felt like she’d run face first into a wall and fell to her knees. Ari dragged her back up, supporting her as they both ran.
“No power anyplace else in the whole damn building, but down here. Typical DIS,” the Emperor said. “Must be an auxiliary energy source somewhere. Think we could find it and shut it down?”
“Knowing Tritico, it won’t be close. He couldn’t risk the prisoners getting to it.” Fitz glanced over her shoulder, found the Destroyer only a few meters behind them. “Besides, I don’t think we’re going to have time for a look around.”
They followed the others through the first open door they found, and into a room a duplicate of the one where she’d met Von Drager—same Spartan décor and vulgar graffiti, same bleak cell beyond the wide window. Fitz skidded to a stop and threw her weight against the heavy metal door, but the creature crashed into it, knocking her back. Without her augs, she couldn’t hope to match the bug in strength or speed.
She retreated to the center of the room, dragging Ari with her. A check of the ammo counter on the slug thrower showed the magazine almost empty, but there was no time to reload. She pulled the sword from over her shoulder.
“Can you use this thing, Bartonelli?”
“You betcha, Chima.” The sergeant caught the sword and rotated it in a tight figure eight.
“Give me something,” Ari said.
“No. Get into the cell.”
“I’m not cowering in there while you die for me.”
“Dying for you is our job. Now get in there. Pike, if she doesn’t go, drag her.”
The lieutenant put down the cat and reached for Ari’s arm, but her cold glare stopped him. The panic in his face reflected his fear at being caught between the wills of his commanding officer and his Emperor.
Jumper hurried to Faydra’s limp form and pulled her into a back corner. He sat protectively next to her, his plexisteel claws tapping against the floor. His telepathy suppressed, he could only growl, but his willingness to defend his mate showed in his bristling fur and dilated pupils.
The creature staggered through the door, wavering on its feet. A pink ichor oozed from dozens of wounds, but the single green eye remained fixed on Ari.
Snatching up a metal chair, the Emperor took her place in the line of defenders next to Fitz. “Save your breath, Colonel,” she said. “You don’t think any of us are getting out of here alive, do you?” She rolled her shoulders. “Besides, I was fighting Tzraka before any of you were born.”
The creature attacked, going straight for Ari, its bladed arms slashing down in savage overhand attacks. Ari blocked the blows with the chair, but each strike sheared off pieces of metal. Fitz, picking her targets carefully, fired single shots to conserve her ammunition, but nothing seemed to have an effect on the creature. Driven by hatred and pain, and its single-minded need to destroy its prey, the thing refused to die until it had completed its mission.
Fitz ducked back as a blade sliced past her, smashed into the chair Ari brandished, and jammed in the metal. The creature jerked back, pulling the woman off balance. The other blade swung in from the right. Bartonelli lunged, trying to get her sword in position to parry the blow, but wasn’t fast enough. The edge of the blade caught Ari at the base of the thumb and sliced diagonally across her palm, and shearing off all but her little finger.
Ari screamed.
___________
Without cyber-systems running, Wolf felt little disoriented when he slammed back into his body. He had time to see Jan’s eyes widen before he put two slugs between them. He hadn’t even thought about it, only a reflex.
His old friend had known who he faced in that last second, known their battle of wills had ended, and he had lost.
Odd that he felt no pleasure now, no sense of satisfaction that it was over, or that he’d won their decades long conflict. The woman he loved would never again have to worry about a shot from the darkness, or face one of Jan’s assassins. Their unborn child would never know that smiling boogieman. He should have felt relief, if nothing else.
And yet all he felt was sadness, all he remembered were the good times. Glasses of vilaprim shared, the time they snuck a pair of neubeasts into the astrogation lab. They’d laughed for hours over that. He’d liked his friend’s toothy smile then.
“I’m sorry, Jan.”
In the hallway, part of the ceiling collapsed in a shower of sparks. If he wanted to live to see Fitz again, to watch that little girl of theirs grow up, he had to get out of here, and fast. He slammed his spike back in, swaying as he brought all his systems up in an electronic rush.
Did we win? asked Cypher. He noticed the crumpled body at their feet. Ah, I guess we did. Is he dead?
Flames licked up the walls, turning the hall into an inferno. Thick black smoke boiled across the ceiling, lowering with every second.
“If not now, he will be in a couple of seconds, and so will we if we don’t get out of here.”
Yeah, but how?
Wolf pointed toward the end of the hall. “That hatch to the roof is the only way I know. Do you have a better idea?”
No. Can we survive going through that?
“Only one way to find out.”
He backed up for a running start, and launched into hyperkinetic speed. He was running flat out by the time he reached the doorway, and plunged into the fiery maelstrom.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Ari let out an inhuman howl, a mixture of pain and horror that chilled Fitz to her soul. Bile burned her throat at the memory of Nick Costos’ death. She’d failed him, and hadn’t been able to save Ari either—her liege, her friend. Nothing remained but revenge.
The creature rolled onto its back, its legs twitching against its abdomen like a crushed spider as though it had played out its destiny, killed its target, and now it could give in to its pain and die. Not good enough for Fitz; she needed to kill it. She screamed, jammed the barrel of the slug thrower into that single, all-too-human green eye, and held the firing stud down until the weapon clicked on empty. The Destroyer would not rise again.
Bartonelli and Pike fought to hold Ari down. Angry red streaks boiled up her arm, already to her elbow, as the Tzraka poison claimed her body.
“Would there be time to do something?” Fitz had asked Ski the night this madness began.
If she was quick enough.
“Get her up,” she yelled. “Hold her arm out.”
“What?” Confusion washed across the sergeant’s dark face.
“Just do it.” Fitz snatched up the sword Bartonelli had dropped.
The sergeant’s eyes widened as she realized what Fitz planned, and pulled Ari to her feet, tightening her grip on the woman’s arm. Without augmentations, this would take all of Fitz’s strength. She brought the blade down below the shoulder, a dozen centimeters above the elbow, well ahead of the red tracks. The sound of steel severing bone made her stomach lurch. Ari gave a single shrill wail, then went silent, unconscious.
“We need to stop the bleeding. I don’t know how quickly the symbion
t can handle a wound this severe.” Fitz pulled a med kit from her belt and opened it. Bartonelli snatched the tourniquet, applying it with an efficiency learned from years on battlefields. Fitz emptied the entire can of wound-seal on the stub. From here, it was in the symbiont’s hands.
Bartonelli felt for a pulse. “She’s alive. Barely.”
Fitz brushed a strand of hair from Ari’s face and laid her palm against the cool, sweaty skin. “I don’t hear the symbiont singing.” She met the sergeant’s troubled gaze.
“What does that mean?” asked Bartonelli.
“I’m not the right one to ask. I don’t know much more about this thing than you do. Hopefully she’s in a symbiont-induced coma. We need to get her to Doc Ski, and quickly.”
Fitz noticed the confusion in Pike’s eyes. Apparently Bartonelli hadn’t shared any information about her newfound invulnerability with him, but now wasn’t the time. Later, he’d need to be brought in on this. And offered his chance. She didn’t want to lose another good officer because of her inaction.
Pike pulled the unconscious woman up, draping her good arm over his shoulder, and Fitz took the other side. Bartonelli followed, carrying Faydra. As they sidled around the dead creature into the hallway, Jumper stopped to hiss and rake his plexisteel claws across the Destroyer’s chitinous face.
“Sergeant, find some way to secure the door,” Fitz said. “I don’t want anyone in here until Security has had a chance to sift through that creature’s DNA cell by cell. We need to know exactly how they made it, just in case we find ourselves facing one of these things again.”
They struggled back toward the surface. Fitz’s inhead flickered, then came back up, along with a jumble of comm traffic. Her augs returned last, allowing her to shift most of Ari’s dead weight off Pike and onto her.
“Bast’s whiskers, I don’t know how regular cats can stand it. I have to be able to talk all the time.” Jumper’s telepathy functioned once again.
“Yeah, we noticed,” said Bartonelli.
“Well, and you can just kiss my fuzzy little rump.”
An explosive release of tension made the merc’s answering laughter sound too loud in the empty stairwell.
Spears of light appeared ahead, lancing through the darkness. Fitz pulled Pike to a stop, her hand dropping to the grip of the slug thrower, then remembered she hadn’t reloaded it. “Who’s there?” she yelled.
“Fire and rescue.” The answer echoed down the shaft.
“We need a stretcher and a medevac flyer with a stasis box.”
“Ready and waiting, ma’am,” the voice replied, drawing closer. “Your ship informed us you might have casualties.”
The medics relieved them of their burden, stopping only long enough to ensure no one else needed their attention, then hustled the wounded woman up the stairs. By the time Fitz exited the lobby, Ari was on the stretcher, a medic tucking a thermal blanket up under her chin. The young man looked up, startled. “This is the—”
“It’s not who you think it is,” Fitz interrupted. She didn’t want the rumor of another assassination attempt spreading around the city just yet.
The EMT eyed her battered SpecOps armor and swallowed. “Yes, ma’am. I’ll log her in as unidentified victim.”
Bartonelli placed Faydra on the blanket next to Ari, and Jumper leaped up beside his mate, resting his head on the pale cat’s flank. Worry colored his mind voice. “Hang in there, Sweet Paws. I know a good vet; he’ll fix you right up.”
Fitz hoped Faydra wouldn’t wake up with plexisteel claws. She wiped her hands across her face, and they came away smeared with dirt and blood.
“Pike, stay with her. She goes straight into a stasis box, then to Doc Ski. No place else, understood?”
He nodded, and followed the medics to the waiting medevac flyer.
“Sorry we couldn’t get here sooner,” the remaining med-tech said. “It’s been one of those crazy mornings. Half the Warren is on fire.”
Fitz turned to look. Black smoke roiled above the old slum to the south, and she had no doubt that, beneath that cloud, Wolf was at the center of the conflagration.
___________
The sun glared scarlet through a brown sky as tankers drifted above the charred skeleton of the warehouse, sides swollen with flame retardant. A wall collapsed, sending up a tongue of flame amid a shower of sparks. The aircraft converged on it, drenching the hotspot with chemical foam and knocking down the flare-up before moving on to search for another.
As shadows crept across the ground, Fitz and Bartonelli watched and waited, standing behind the barricades erected to contain the residents of the Warren, who huddled together to hear if their homes survived. Fitz hailed a firefighter hurrying past. At first he ignored her, then noticed the black SpecOps armor and Imperial Security insignia.
“Sorry, ma’am, I’ve only got a few seconds. What did you need?”
“Have you found any bodies in the warehouse?”
He looked away, lips thinning. “Yes, ma’am, we’ve found a few. A couple of them looked to be your people. Augies.”
Fitz felt like she’d been kicked in the chest. “How many?”
He shook his head. “Can’t tell yet. It’s a mess in there, could be days before we sift through the debris and know what we’ve got. That’s about all I can tell you now.”
“I understand. Just have your supervisor see that a complete report gets to Imperial Security as soon as possible.”
“It’s not him, Chima,” Bartonelli said as the firefighter rushed away. “You said that Tritico had some of his augies in there.”
“How can you be so sure?”
“I know Wolf. Served with him for almost a decade. I’ve seen the man walk out of situations that no one else could have survived.”
“I know he’s nearly indestructible,” Fitz said. “But only nearly. Not totally.”
“He’s as capable as they come, and smart, plus he has two big reasons to come out of this alive—you, and that little girl in your belly. You need to have faith.” Bartonelli enveloped her in a hug.
Fitz couldn’t hold back the tears. “If he’s wounded, he’ll hole up someplace and let the symbiont heal him, but it hurts me to think of him alone and in pain. Silly, isn’t it? There’s no one better able to take care of himself, and still I worry myself sick about him.”
Bartonelli pulled back. “I don’t know about you, but I could use some chow and a long, hot shower. When Wolf gets back, you don’t want to greet him smelling like you rolled in a dead gerbat, do you, Chima?”
Fitz wiped her cheeks, smearing tears into the grime on her face. “What does that name mean?”
“Chima? It’s trader talk for girlfriend, best bud. What did you think?”
“When we first met, I wasn’t sure you liked me, so I thought maybe it meant dumb ass.”
The sergeant chuckled. “Believe me, if I wanted to call you a dumb ass, you’d know you’d been called a dumb ass.”
Leaning on each other, they stumbled the two blocks to the overgrown empty lot where they’d left Lizzy, the closest spot the shuttle could put down in the narrow streets of the Warren. A wisp of melody drifted across Fitz’s thoughts, blending with the song far back in her mind, then disappeared. She pulled Bartonelli to a halt.
“Did you hear that?”
Confusion flickered across the sergeant’s face. “What?”
Perhaps she hadn’t carried the symbiont long enough to be attuned to its ethereal chorus.
“There’s another Lazzinair nearby.” Fitz turned in a slow circle, scanning the darkened doorways and broken windows. At first she thought the dark shape at the entrance to the alley was one of the innumerable pieces of trash that blew around the slum, but her thermal vision registered it as warm-blooded, alive.
Wolf raised his head and dragged himself up, hanging onto the wall.
She blurred across the space to reach him, skidding to a stop close enough to reach out and touch him, but she didn’t dare. He
looked like only the wall at his back kept him on his feet, like the barest brush of her fingertips would drive him back down. The fire had burned away his eyebrows and what remained of his hair. Blackened skin peeled from his face, revealing new pink tissue beneath. His smile might have been ghoulish, but to her it was the most beautiful sight in the known universe. He was alive.
Going up on her toes, she placed her lips against his, soft as a snowflake settling on his mouth, but that was enough to bring her world to a shattering stop. She could stay like this forever, touching him, listening to their songs blend together into a concerto of celebration and love.
Hand shaking, he tangled his fingers in her hair and guided her head to his shoulder. His voice sounded harsh and painful, hardly above a whisper. “Are you all right? Is she?”
She slipped her arms around him and nodded.
“She’s going to be tough, just like her mother,” he rasped.
Fitz looked up into those blue eyes, felt the tension finally flow out of her. “And good-looking like her father.”
“Not so much right now.” His chuckles started him coughing, but when it passed he asked, “Ari and Jumper?”
“At the hospital. She and Faydra were injured, but I think they’ll both be fine.”
Wolf kissed her again, this time with all the heat the first kiss had lacked, and she returned it with her own hungry intensity. He lifted his mouth, leaving her lips warm from the heat of his kiss. “That’s enough,” he said. “You’re enjoying this far too bloody much.”
“And after I got us out of that warehouse in one piece?” Cypher asked. “Bringing you back alive should at least earn me a kiss.”
“I said you could ask her for a kiss. Not help yourself.”
Fitz pulled back in confusion, studying his face. There was that roguish glint in his eyes that she’d seen before. “Cypher?” she asked. “You’re still there?”
“We’ve reached a kind of reconciliation,” said Wolf.
“He means, I saved our collective butt in that inferno and he’s too hard-headed to say thank you. How about another kiss instead, Gray Eyes?”
Cypher (The Dragon's Bidding Book 2) Page 30
