She arched an eyebrow. “That’s all?”
He shrugged. “More or less. This is the first time in two years where I really have the chance to do nothing whatsoever.”
Fara brushed back the stripe of blue in her black hair and smiled coyly up at him. “Well, would you like some company?”
Victor cocked his head to the side and looked Fara up and down. He always thought of her as attractive, with her black hair, thin frame, and her large black eyes. And it had been so long since…
“Sure,” he said, smiling. “Why not?”
***
Sunlight crept through the shades as Victor woke from a dreamless sleep. He sat up and stretched his arms.
He felt…good. He was more than a little astonished by that, as well as feeling a bit guilty. Were the passage of two years and one night of sex enough to make him feel better about the death of his family and the loss of his world?
Probably not. His brain was just swimming in endorphins left from the night before. He sighed and turned to look at the woman lying to his left.
Fara rested on her side, naked, facing toward Victor, giving him a full view of her lithe body in the morning light.
He couldn’t help but compare her to his dead wife. Gina had been a classic beauty. Olive skin, brown hair, tall, with a curvy, well-proportioned figure. Fara, on the other hand, was an exotic beauty, with her single blue stripe running through her black hair, pale skin, and petite figure.
He couldn’t tell which he found more appealing, and that made him feel even guiltier.
He reached out with his right hand, his black hand, as he called it, and gently touched Fara, running the tips of his fingers over her smooth skin.
The prosthetic was remarkably sensitive and dexterous, and proved to be especially useful during the previous night’s activities.
Fara stirred at his touch but did not wake up. She was a deep sleeper, which surprised Victor, given their line of work, although he envied her the ability to switch off so completely.
He let her sleep. Swinging his legs over the side of the bed, Victor headed to the bathroom of the luxury suite.
The bathroom alone was twice the size of his cabin on the Alexander, with a large ceramic bathtub and a separate shower stall.
After relieving himself, he elected to use the shower. He hit the button and a spray of luxuriously warm water came pouring out. He wasn’t sure what algorithms governed the temperature settings, but whoever wrote them must have been a genius of the first order.
Victor was luxuriating in the shower for he-didn’t-know-how-long when the glass door to the shower stall opened, revealing Fara in her naked beauty.
“Room in there for me?” she asked.
Victor smiled. “Of course.”
***
After their decadently long shared shower, Victor and Fara got dressed and went to one of the restaurants in the hotel’s lobby for breakfast.
Victor had on a green shirt and dark brown pants while Fara wore a cream-colored jacket over a white blouse and black pants.
Victor had chosen the particular pants he wore because they had deep pockets, deep enough to carry his variblade. The weapon wouldn't set off any of the resort's weapon scanners. An inactive variblade was just a hunk of solid metal to all but the most thorough scans.
The ban against carrying weapons was about the only mark he had against the resort. After years as a mercenary, not carrying a weapon left him feeling profoundly vulnerable. Not that he expected much trouble in a five-star luxury resort, with its well-paid and theoretically competent security staff.
Still, if he could sneak in a weapon, he would.
“How’re your eggs, Blackhand?” Fara said, adding a bit of mischief to her voice when she used his new nickname.
“Don’t tell me that you’re also calling me that now,” Victor said.
Fara tapped Victor’s prosthetic hand with her finger. “You have to admit, it kind of fits.”
Victor looked at his artificial hand and flexed its fingers. “Granted, but ‘Blackhand’ makes me sound like I’m some kind of action hero.”
“You did fight off a pirate boarding party by yourself,” Fara said.
Victor sighed. “Point taken.” He picked up his fork to take another bite.
“Victor?” Fara said, her voice carrying a note of concern.
He put down his fork. “What is it?”
“New arrivals, in suits,” Fara said.
“What about them?” Victor asked.
“They’re staring rather intently toward us,” she said.
Victor turned and saw five men and one woman standing in the waiting area. They all wore full business attire. He would have just dismissed them as people here on a meeting. But when he locked eyes with the closest one, a man Victor’s instincts told him was the leader, he saw a glint of recognition in his face. For a moment, Victor thought the leader was one of Holace Quill’s agents come to interrupt his vacation with a new assignment.
Victor quickly reversed his assumption when the “agent” said, “That’s him,” and pulled out a pistol, along with his three companions. People around them screamed.
“Oh, shit!” Victor said, diving for the floor.
Bullets impacted the table he had been sitting at.
“Victor!” Fara yelled, from the floor beside him. “Kitchen exit, this way!”
Victor nodded and pulled his variblade from his pocket. Without armor, he had little chance fighting with a sword against people with guns, but it was better than nothing.
He crawled behind Fara the two-meter distance to the kitchen door. He could hear the footsteps approaching as he did, but no further gunfire came after the initial burst. The fact they weren’t shooting wildly suggested they were trained.
“We’ll have to dash the rest of the way,” Fara said.
Victor nodded. “Let’s do it.”
Victor and Fara got up at the same time and ran for the kitchen door, keeping their heads low.
The pops of pistol fire erupted behind him just as Fara hit the door. Bullets smacked into the door over his head as he followed her in.
As soon as they got inside the kitchen, Victor overturned a shelf in front of the door, causing the pots, pans, and utensils to clatter on the floor in a metallic cacophony. It was only a token barricade, but hopefully enough of one to give Victor and Fara time to escape.
“Victor,” Fara said, her voice fearful.
He turned to see her leaning against the wall, her hands covering her abdomen, drenched in blood.
“Oh, God! Fara!” Victor rushed to her side and examined her.
“I think I got hit in the back as we ran in,” she said, sagging down. Looking at her back, he could see the small entry wound just above her right hip.
A clatter of pots and pans caused Victor to whip around, seeing the door bash against his improvised barricade. With each hit, the door opened just a bit more.
He turned back to Fara. “Can you walk?”
Despite the obvious pain, she rolled her eyes. “Sure, why not?” She reached out, and Victor picked her up with his left arm.
Holding Fara up, Victor walked toward the exit. Just as he reached the door, two armed men burst in. They wore the same attire as the other shooters.
Hissing, Victor swung upward, forming the variblade’s morphmetal into a longsword midswing, taking off both hands of the first man at the forearms.
While the initial man contemplated his sudden double amputation, Victor circled his variblade in the air and slashed through the head of the second man. The man dropped to the floor with shock on his diagonally bisected face.
The first man still stared at the stumps where his hands had been when Victor stabbed him through the chest. Victor felt the blade punch through the body armor the man wore under his suit.
Just then, the kitchen door burst open and two more assassins, a man and the woman, rushed in.
Victor ducked down, using the metal kitchen isla
nd between them for cover as they opened fire, knocking utensils off.
“Their guns, get their guns!” Fara said.
Victor let go of Fara and grabbed the severed hand on the floor clutching a pistol. He pulled the gun from the limp fingers and handed it to Fara.
“Charming,” she said, wrinkling her nose as she gripped the gun in her right hand. Her eyes went wide. “Get down!”
Victor ducked, and Fara leaned over his back to fire three shots, dropping the female assassin.
Just then, the male assassin appeared on the other side of the island.
Victor formed his variblade into a hatchet and threw it, catching the male assassin in the chest. The man dropped his weapon and tumbled to the floor.
“There’s still at least two more,” Fara said, her breath fast and shallow.
Victor grabbed a fallen pistol and placed it in his pocket. “The police can’t be too far away. We’ll wait here until they arrive.”
“Good, because I don’t think I can stand up again,” Fara said.
Victor touched Fara’s carotid artery. Her heart was beating rapidly, and her skin was cool to the touch. “You’re going into shock.”
“So that’s what this feeling is,” she said.
Victor peeked his head over the island and scanned around, seeing a first aid kit on the wall. He ducked back down and said, “Cover the door. I’ll grab a first aid kit.”
“You got it,” she said.
He rose and ran for the kit, almost tripping on the blood left by the dead assassins. He ran back and found Fara with her eyes closed.
“No, no, no!” he said, checking her pulse. Still beating but weaker. Not much blood seeped from her wound, but she could be bleeding internally for all Victor knew. He broke open the first aid kit.
The supplies inside appeared to be geared toward likely injuries one would suffer in a kitchen, rather than a traumatic gunshot wound. He found a small oxygen tank with attached face mask and a canister of antiseptic wound sealant, along with epinephrine injectors.
He strapped the oxygen mask to Fara’s face and turned it to maximum. He then sprayed wound sealant over the entry and exit wounds in her midsection. For a moment, he considered using the epinephrine injectors but decided against it, remembering they weren’t used for treating blood loss.
Sirens could be heard approaching. Victor sighed in relief; help was on the way.
Just then the kitchen doors opened again. He looked up to see what he hoped were the last two assassins walk in. They must have been guarding the front entrance while Victor and Fara killed their friends. Why didn’t they just run at the sound of the sirens?
The assassins turned to fire at Victor, forcing him to duck behind the island. Whoever these guys were, they seemed more concerned with killing him than with surviving.
He didn’t waste time dwelling on the implications. Instead he popped up and fired three shots before ducking back down. He would only have to hold them off for a few more seconds before the police arrived.
He blind-fired a couple shots over the kitchen island, but all that seemed to do was encourage the assassins to shoot more.
More kitchen appliances and utensils, along with the odd half-prepared meal, fell around Victor as the fire kept up.
He grabbed Fara’s pistol—she wasn’t in a state to use it—and held a weapon in either hand.
“This is a really bad idea,” he said and then got up and fired both pistols, squeezing their triggers as fast as he could, not bothering with aiming.
One of the assassins was out in the open, moving to flank Victor. He sent a barrage of bullets his way, dropping him.
After a sharp pain in his shoulder, his right arm went limp to his side, the gun still clutched in his artificial hand.
He pivoted and fired with his left hand at the last assassin. The assassin’s head snapped back as a bullet hit his face, and he fell. Victor lowered his weapon and tried to sigh in relief. Instead he coughed up blood.
Looking down, he saw two red holes with blood blossoming around them in his green shirt. One in his abdomen, the other in the right side of his chest, near the scar where Lucille had stabbed him years before.
I knew this was a bad idea, he thought, slumping to his knees as the sirens grew louder.
When his vision darkened, he could hear boots pounding the floor in the restaurant. He just hoped they were medics.
***
When Victor woke up, he first noticed the rhythmic beeping to his right. He opened his eyes and squinted as his sight came back into focus. Following the beeping, he saw it came from a nearby heart monitor, the line on the screen peaking in time with his heartbeat.
He then noticed someone standing in the room with him. It was Captain Harlan Quill.
“Welcome back, Captain Blackhand,” he said.
“Fara?”
“She’s alive and resting. Thanks to you, I might add. The doctors were most complimentary on the first aid you gave her,” Harlan said.
Victor relaxed a bit. “Who were they?”
“Your attackers? It looks like they came from Mohawk,” Harlan said.
“Mohawk? Why would they try to kill me?” Victor asked.
“You did destroy a pirate base in their territory a couple years back, along with otherwise making yourself a nuisance to any Mohawk-based pirate ever since,” Harlan said.
“Good point. But how do you know they’re from Mohawk?” Victor asked.
“Their falsified credentials were traced back there. And analysis of their equipment indicates they came from Mohawker factories,” Harlan said.
“Seems rather sloppy to me,” Victor said.
“I’ve never known them to be anything other than sloppy,” Harlan said.
“What I want to know is how they got their guns smuggled in,” Victor said.
“We’ll deal with that too. But they made an even bigger mistake this time. They tried to assassinate a friend of my father’s on our homeworld.”
Victor arched an eyebrow. “And what is your father doing about that?”
Harlan shrugged. “Flying back from Tabor as soon as he gets the news. I think by the time you're out of this hospital, Mustang and the Free Worlds’ Alliance will be at war with the Kingdom of Mohawk.”
Part III
Guardian
Three Years Later
Chapter 15
“Have I told you this plan is crazy?” Fara asked from the pilot’s console.
“Only every day since I proposed it,” Victor said, sitting in the captain’s seat in the center of the Alexander’s bridge.
“Well, now that we’re actually executing your plan, the craziness of it has not diminished in the slightest,” Fara said.
Victor shrugged. Just because a plan was crazy didn’t mean it wouldn’t work. The Alliance needed a way to quickly break the Mohawker blockades around the jump points leading into their home system.
Through the hull cameras, Victor could see the dimly lit interior of the hollowed-out asteroid, and the thirty frigates, destroyers, and cruisers clutching its walls like a colony of nesting bats.
The asteroid had been mined out centuries ago, leaving a vast empty chamber connected to the surface by a single shaft that had been widened by Alliance engineers to allow starships to enter.
Not visible were the jump drives embedded in the rock. They would enable the asteroid to jump to the Mohawk system, and right into the hopefully stunned faces of the Mohawker fleet.
A chime on his comm got his attention. It was a message from the Waynesburg.
“Good morning, Captain Quill. What may I do for you?” Victor asked.
“You’re awfully relaxed for someone about to go on a suicide mission,” Harlan said.
Victor grunted with amusement. “I’m simply confident this will plan will work. There’s no way the Mohawkers will see this coming.”
“No, I doubt they could. Is your ship ready, Captain?” Harlan asked.
“As rea
dy as she’ll ever be, thanks to the refit your father gave her,” Victor said.
“A reward for the years of good service,” Harlan said, “Since every other ship reports ready, I think I’ll send word to the tugs to get this rock moving.”
“Roger that, Harlan. I’ll see you on the other side,” Victor said. “Drinks on me when this is done.”
“I’ll hold you to that, so don’t get yourself killed, Victor,” Harlan said before closing the connection.
Victor settled back in his seat, trying not to fidget with anticipation. He was about to extract a final justice from Quintus Marsh for killing his brother.
Marsh was a distant second to Magnus Lacano on Victor’s list, but the Lysandran emperor’s time would come. It was just a matter of dealing with this particular problem first.
King Marsh had always been the Kingdom of Mohawk’s greatest weakness. It was more from fear of him that his forces fought the Alliance. Taking him out would end the war. Or at least that’s how Victor had explained it to the high councilor. He couldn’t exactly claim to being objective.
“We’re moving,” Fara said.
Outside, a fleet of tugs pushed against the asteroid with millions of tons of thrust, adding barely centimeters per second to its velocity.
By far the greatest challenge had been simply moving the rock to the jump point, and, even then, the tugs needed to fire their drives constantly to keep the thing in position.
Once the asteroid gained enough momentum to carry itself into the jump point, the tugs detached and flew away to join the massive fleet of Alliance warships loitering nearby.
Victor busied himself, checking the seals on his armored combat suit and the clasp that held his variblade to his thigh.
He repeated the procedure several times until Fara announced, “One minute to jump.”
Victor hit the intercom. “If you haven’t already done so, it’s time for everyone to put on your helmets.” He then closed the visor of his combat suit’s helmet and powered up the display.
Slowly the asteroid drifted into the jump point until its bulk filled the point’s imaginary volume. A flash appeared on the exterior monitors; then a slight shifting of the stars signaled their arrival inside the Mohawk system. All around the asteroid, the largest minefield Victor had ever seen went active.
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