The lookout had his back to her. Then Sela realized he was busy taking a leak. Silently, she crept up the embankment and stood behind him. He turned, preoccupied with clasp on his trousers. His eyes widened with surprise. Before he could utter a sound, she punched him in the throat. He practically fell onto the knife as it caught him low and to the right. She sank with him to the sun-cooked weeds and knelt over him.
Quickly she scanned her surroundings. The area was as damaged by ordinance as she recalled. Occasional clumps of higher brush dotted the field. The off-worlders visiting Tasemar would very likely remain sparse now that there was no longer Regime support.
Sixty meters away, the Cass lounged on its haunches, the only ship to grace this section of the field. It was a bit too much of a coincidence for her taste.
Satisfied that she had not been detected, Sela did a quick search of the unsuccessful sentry. He looked like a Trelgin half-breed, but he bore the facial tattoos of a Zenti clan. Other than the unreliable-looking scattergun he had cradled, she found two smaller blades that were nothing in comparison to the tactical knife she already owned. She easily snapped their blades off against a rock and tossed the pieces over her shoulder.
He was just what he seemed: a low-rent merc. For a moment, she considered creeping back to the top of the bank to signal for Erelah to come up, but decided against it. Until she knew the location of his compatriots, Jon’s sister was safer in the tunnel.
Sprawling on her stomach, she watched the field. Motion caught her eye. On the far side of the Cass, another figure paced back and forth. This one was smaller, more compact. A female merc, she decided.
Proximity would be vital to use the scattergun. Sela cracked the weapon’s rusted breach open. The shells had corroded contacts. Firing the weapon would result in a misfire that could easily take out a finger or three.
Sela sighed resignedly and tossed the useless weapon into the thick brush.
Damn it all.
It did not change the situation; she still had surprise as an asset. If she kept the ship between herself and the female merc, she could approach unseen. But there was a big if that hinged on the other merc maintaining her predictable pattern of pacing.
Watching, waiting, Sela saw her window and set out at a sprint.
Mere strides away, the female merc turned, placing a hand to her ear. Sela knew the familiar motion for what it was: she was listening to a transmission in her earpiece. The merc looked directly at her. Eyes wide, she brought her sidearm up. Her shot was off target, but not by much. Sela felt the round whistle past her left ear, and renewed her forward charge before the woman could adjust her aim.
She sidestepped the sweep of Sela’s knife. But Sela was able to capture the merc’s wrist and keep the sidearm trained to the ground. The woman was petite in comparison, but that was where any perceived vulnerability ended. Well-trained muscles strained beneath Sela’s grip. So much for low-rent mercs with no training; this one was a ringer.
They grappled. The gun thudded onto the dirt. Sela brought the knife up, driving for her neck. The merc’s free arm came up to block.
Twisting, Sela brought her greater weight to the right. But the grip she held on Sela’s wrist twisted and the knife tumbled. Sela countered with a punch to the merc’s throat. The women backed away from each other, winded.
Sela feinted, left and then right. The merc matched her, a wild sneer growing on her face. Silver metal decorated her artificially sharpened canines.
“Come on, breeder,” she purred with another wicked flash of silver fangs. “Love the ancient combat training.”
“Ancient? Just how old do you think I am?”
Fangs attacked. Her right arm came out wide, a strike meant for Sela’s face. She blocked and drove her palm up, connecting. It made it easier for Sela to pull her off balance and drive a knee into her unguarded stomach. Her opponent crumpled and slid down Sela’s leg.
Slipping behind her, Sela wedged her arm around the merc’s neck. The woman was powerless now yet her fingernails drew red gouges into Sela’s forearm. It was like wrestling an angry scythe cat.
“Shh. Shh,” Sela growled. “Just one twist and no more you.”
Fang’s attempted to throw an elbow. Sela allowed the swing and captured the woman’s wrist to pin it high against her upper back. There was a corresponding meaty pop from somewhere deep in Fang’s shoulder followed by a painful bellow.
“Where’s Jon?”
“Screw you, old crone.” The merc raged.
Sela pulled the wrist higher. “Sorry. My hearing’s going in my old age.”
“On your piece of crap ship.”
“How many with him?”
Her struggles renewed. Sela had to admire her tenacity.
“Answer!”
Erelah had said three. If one was on the ship that would account for all of them. But Sela was not about to put that much stock in Erelah’s strange ability.
“Just me, Commander.” A new voice. Male.
Sela looked up.
At the top of the Cassandra’s gangway stood a Zenti male. Instead of the usual black facial tattoos, heavy red ink decorated his shaven head in a chunky geometric pattern. It marked him as a jin-ji, a clan leader. For this one to take up the company of non-Zenti mercs meant he had been ousted from his clan.
Watch out for the red one.
Despite the damning heat, a cold tickle ran down between her shoulder blades.
To the Red Zenti’s left stood Veradin, his hands bound before him and the muzzle of a compression rifle against his neck. Dried blood crusted along Jon’s upper lip. To her captain’s credit, it seemed Red was sporting several bruises of his own.
Sela’s gaze met Jon’s briefly. The question was plain in his expression: Erelah?
She canted her head subtly in the direction of the ravine. There. Safe.
His shoulders sagged imperceptibly with relief.
“Well now,” Red observed with artificial glee. “Here is an interesting scenario.”
Fangs writhed within Sela’s grip. She turned the merc’s body in front of her as a shield for now. Sela had to hope that their partnership meant something. However, one did not become jin-ji, even an ousted one, by playing nice with others.
“Let Veradin go,” Sela commanded, squeezing her arm tighter around the female’s throat for emphasis.
“Come on, Rutil,” Fangs called. “The bitch broke my nose!”
“Quiet, pet.”
“Yes. Shut up.” Sela yanked on her captured arm for emphasis.
“Where’s Hellard?” Rutil peered out over the field.
“Which one was that?”
The Zenti stiffened. His eyes narrowed.
“You have me,” Jon said. “Just let Tyron go. I’m worth three times as much, split two ways now.”
The rifle’s report registered a half a second after she felt the hot spray of bone and blood along her face and neck. Fangs sagged against Sela’s body, lifeless. A new red hole had appeared in the center of her former hostage’s head.
“No split now,” Rutil observed.
Sela glanced longingly at Fang’s discarded sidearm, a tantalizing distance away in the dirt.
“Eh!” Rutil called, admonishing. He clucked his tongue. “You ain’t that fast.”
Sela scowled at him. He was probably right.
“Now, you come on in out of the hot,” Rutil ordered. “We take a seat and wait to collect.”
Fantastic. The fool had already activated a beacon, as Erelah said. Except to his ultimate surprise it would not be a simple Regime fugitive reclamation squadron. He would be greeted with the gleaming metal brutality of Ravstar. His reward was less likely currency than a gory death.
Sela folded her arms. “No.”
Rutil looked to Jon as if for moral support. “No?”
“I’m not going anywhere.” Her brain tumbled through possible scenarios, each less likely to have a good outcome.
“I’m not toying with y
ou.” Rutil swiveled the rifle between Jon and Sela, deciding on a target.
“Good. Neither am I.” In fact, she was surprised he had not shot her yet.
All she could do was buy time. For what, she didn’t know. Something told her to hold her ground. Something was about to happen. She just needed to wait. A sudden chill crawled over her shoulders. It was the same sensation as when Erelah had touched her in the cave.
“Ty, quit screwing around.” Jon feigned irritation, but his expression was uncertain. What are you doing?
“Don’t tell me what to do,” she shot back
It took little effort to sound annoyed. It was hot as Sceelah and her patience had evaporated under the boiling twin suns.
“Not that you ever listened anyway.”
“As if you’ve ever had anything intelligent to say!”
“Both of you, shut it!” Rutil yelled. His rifle wavered.
Now! Sela dove forward. Her motion attracted Rutil’s attention. He drew aim on her. Jon rammed a shoulder into him. A round zinged off the ground near her right foot just as she snatched Fang’s weapon from the dirt.
Rutil collided with the gangway’s railing, but he kept a grip on the rifle. Jon grabbed its muzzle. Another wild shot hissed past Sela. As she reached the foot of the ramp, she drew aim on Rutil. He swung the butt around to connect with Jon’s jaw. Her captain staggered back, dazed. And the Zenti’s rifle was once again trained on her.
Rutil and Sela stood face to face, mere footsteps away from each other on the gangway, both with sights to kill on the other.
Rutil drew in breath to speak. “Listen here—”
There was a single pop. The Zenti fell back into the hatchway of the Cass. A slick red puddle began to spread beneath him on the deck. Astonished, Sela looked down at the hole the size of a child’s fist in the center of his sternum. He writhed in an attempt to breathe, then lay still.
Jon and Sela regarded each other over the body and turned to the end of the gangway.
Erelah lowered the A6.
“There’s no time for this,” she said, exhaling a shaky breath. She climbed the ramp and stepped over the bounty hunter’s body.
“Tristic is coming.”
38
Sela slumped gracelessly into the grav bench beside Jon. She was a bundle of throbbing ribs and aching muscles. With heavy arms, she pulled the nav interface down.
“This doesn’t change anything,” she said.
“I understand,” he said, eyes forward on the viewer.
She regarded his profile in the strange electric silence that stretched between them. Suddenly she felt so weary of fighting that noisome ache in her chest. It sapped her energy, a wasteful burden.
Remaining at the temple with Lineao would have only brought more mercs even if, miraculously, Tristic decided not to lay waste to the entire planetary system as she sought out Erelah.
“We get clear at the next flex point. And then anywhere… anywhere you want to go,” Jon offered, still focused on the interface. That particular angry-muscle stood out on his jaw. It was plain he was avoiding looking at her. She found she could not blame him. He had told her he loved her. No one had ever said that to her. And she rewarded that by declaring her intent to leave.
Guiltily, Sela sank further into the bench and rested her head against the torn cushion. The curling of light in the conduit was the only illumination from the forward viewer as the Cass plowed on in its familiar uncertain rhythm.
“The Storm King,” she said quietly, watching the undulating light pattern of the conduit. “That’s where I’d go.”
Jon’s forehead wrinkled. He turned. “You can’t be serious.”
“Everything made sense there.”
Realistically, Sela knew that returning was impossible. It was foolish to even fantasize about it. But it held the comfort of the familiar and predictable. The Storm King’s world made sense. Her niche there had been plain. Her duties were clear.
Yet she also knew that she could not for a moment squeeze back into that place. It would be two sizes too small and its view of the Known Worlds too narrow. It was an impossibility, even if her honor were miraculously restored and she were no longer considered renegade.
“I know,” Jon whispered.
Cautiously, as if fearful he might frighten her away, he shifted in his seat. His hand rested atop hers on the arm of the bench. She did not shrink away.
It still hurt, the untidy mass of emotions wedged beneath her ribs. She had wounded him, yet he still cared, and for some inexplicable reason, still tried. No doubt there were more hurts on the horizon for them. More things to overshadow the last and make these seem common and petty by comparison.
Later. I’ll think about it later.
Her eyelids grew heavy as she watched the nearly hypnotic light show within the surrounding conduit on the viewer. She understood the phenomenon in vague terms. The splendorous curtain was simply the light of stars pinioned to normal space when viewed through the veil of the vessel’s present course in the conduit.
There had been few spaces to watch it on a carrier like the Storm King, and not many of her comrades would have wasted the time to witness it. It was stuff for techs or, at best, a fleeting distraction. Well before her promotion to commander, when Jonvenlish Veradin was still a life-upending storm on the horizon, Valen had smuggled scorch rum back onship. They had stolen into a forward section of the Storm King and lounged against crates, laughing at their own brazen action as they watched the dancing lights of the conduits from the slender portal.
Sela drifted into the less-solid realm between memory and dreams, head tucked into her chest. Exhaustion claimed her.
It was the vicious buck of the deck that jarred her awake. A metal purring mingled with a new protesting whine from the Cass’s engines.
Hard stop.
She righted herself on the bench, realizing that she had been resting against Jon’s shoulder.
As she watched the viewers the tapestry of conduit lights evaporated, to be replaced by the stagnant star field of normal space.
Jon cursed under his breath. “Lost the mains. Very lucky we were near a flex point.”
Very lucky, indeed. The violent forces of popping lose from a conduit without a flex point could snap a vessel into tiny pieces.
Sela blinked away sleep and pulled down the interface from its perch on the mounted arm. The navsys screen was still up where she had left. What she saw there was less than ideal.
“Dead FP,” she muttered, taking in their coordinates. Although there was a naturally-occurring flex point, there was nothing of value nearby: no ports, no trading stations. Not even a meteor belt with modestly useful ores for processing. It was a good place to hide. But not the best place to be a distressed ship. Sela doubted that any official Regime nav charts would have even bothered to include this dead FP. Considering the chart’s source, it would be exactly the sort of place used by Phex’s customary level of clientele.
“Maybe we were too close to the horizon when we passed a flex point?” Sela ventured.
Jon shook his head. “Unless the guidance is off calibration, I don’t see how. And it doesn’t explain the shut down.”
The Cass was essentially adrift. A quick glance told her that they were working off battery reserves, which was why they still had atmo and a-grav.
“Pull up a diagnostic,” Jon ordered. He unbuckled his harness and climbed over the back of the grav bench. “I’ll check on Erelah on my way to the engineering loft.”
Sela nodded distractedly, her attention riveted to the charts. A quiet, unsettled sensation grew. For a second, she thought of the strange dream with Atilio seated beside her, thumbing through nav charts.
Something about the display danced on the edge of memory. Frustrating, unfocused. If there was one thing Sela could always rely on, it was a faultless memory. She thumbed out of the navsys with the intent of looking for what passed for a diagnostic program on this bucket. A series of unfamilia
r commands caught her eye, followed by the red-bordered screen with captions in Commonspeak.
Command lock out.
The unsettled sensation blossomed into an electric jolt.
“Jon!” she shouted, slapping the vox line open.
She scrambled over the bench, headed to the engineering loft.
“It’s not the engines,” she called.
Ignoring the ladder, she jumped down to the common passage and nearly collided with his back. He continued to face the corridor, unmoving, hands out at his sides.
“The ship was programmed to dump us out here,” Sela continued, confusion mounting. “We’re locked out.”
Dressed in the same baggy flight suit in which they had found her, Erelah stood at the opposite end of the corridor with the plasma rifle trained on them.
“You’ve done this.”
“I did,” said Erelah. “You left me no choice.”
---
The look of betrayal on Tyron’s face was as Erelah had expected, but on Jon, it was nearly enough to crush her heart. In that moment she nearly lost her nerve.
This is how it must be. Better to have him live in hurt and anguish than have him die, either of them.
There was no time for second-guessing.
They were well clear of Tasemar. Their course would have drawn Tristic here. Right where she had intended.
When Erelah had found the dead FP node on the Cassandra’s nav charts; it was perfect. She needed a large sector of uninhabited space. The fewer innocents to impact, the better. It was as if Miri herself had answered her prayers.
Of course, Tyron’s rage would be astronomical when she realized Erelah had essentially sight-jacked her while she slept to input the new coordinates. She had little choice. The soldier was nearly impossible for Erelah to influence while conscious. At least she had tried to disguise it as a pleasant dream for Tyron. There were few pleasant things in the soldier’s memory. It was pretty dark in there.
The seconds were ticking away. And there was still so much to do. By now Tristic would have detected the new course. Erelah had been as careful as she could be. In tiny sips, she had allowed the images to seep through that soft scar within her mind. It was easy to picture some gruesome black animal at the other side of that delicate membrane, hungrily lapping at the fissures and trying to claw its way back in. She counted on Tristic being so bent on her designs, so set on Erelah’s recapture, that reasoning would not lead her to question this new destination.
Allies and Enemies: Fallen Page 29
