"Uncle Mike wants us to save him for the interrogators. Plus, we got an urgent distress call from a small colony at the edge of slaver space. They've got a nest of those snakes they want us to clean out for them."
Regan grunted in such a perfect, scaled down imitation of Stone that Mea had to hold her breath to keep from laughing. The girl went back to her solemn perusal of the slaver and then said in a thoughtful tone, “You know, it's my birthday tomorrow."
"I know, baby."
"I'll be twelve."
"Warren made a cake, and we've got a couple presents for you. Not much time to shop lately, but—"
"Mom, I don't need presents,” Regan interrupted in an impatient voice. Lifting her chin, she met her mother's eyes with grim intensity. “You know what I want for my birthday,” she said quietly. Then she spun on her heel and headed for the door.
"Regan...” Mea called after her, but the girl paid her no heed, stepping out of the cargo bay.
With a sigh, Mea turned to gaze in at the frozen slaver, pressing her lips together as an unexpected surge of resentful fury flushed through her skin. But she couldn't blame them alone. “You bastards and I, we've ruined my daughter's life,” she whispered.
But had they? Was Regan so broken? Was she any different from Mea herself at that age, determined to fight back and thirsty for revenge? Had her own life, a hunter's life, been such a ruin?
With a feral snarl at the slaver, she whirled and marched towards the door, racing away from such thoughts. She couldn't bear to think of her daughter in danger's path every day of her life, faced with the worst that society had to offer. She wouldn't allow it.
* * * * *
"What are you doing?” Regan asked with a note of alarm, as Mea gently pushed her into her quarters.
"I'm locking you in this time, so you won't follow us. It's for your own protection, little girl,” Mea answered sternly.
Regan propped hands on hips and gave her mother a disgusted look. “Shit, Mom, it's my birthday! You can't do this."
Mea blinked at her daughter in surprise. “Did you just say ‘shit'?"
A crease of uncertainty crossed the girl's brow and her arms slipped back to her sides, as she responded in a hesitant voice, “Yeah..."
"Weird,” Mea murmured with a shake of her head, backing out of the room and colliding with Stone's bulk.
"What's weird?” he asked, slipping an arm around her waist.
"She just said ‘shit.’”
"So?"
"It sounded strange, is all,” Mea muttered with vague discomfort.
"Let's hear it, kid,” Stone said over her head to Regan.
The girl raised her brows, shifted from one foot to the other, and then said in a small voice, “Shit?"
"See, that's why,” Stone rumbled with a nod. “No guts behind it. Just needs practice."
"Hmm, you're probably right,” Mea responded, as Regan looked from one to the other with her mouth open.
"Still lockin’ her ass in?” Stone asked in her ear.
"Yup.” Mea hit the door control, smiling at her daughter's wail of frustration as the door slid closed between them.
"Mom!"
"Be good,” she called through the metal. “We'll be home soon."
Regan's voice was muffled, but still audible, and Mea lifted her eyebrows, cocking her head at Stone.
"Practice,” he murmured, a grin tugging at the corners of his mouth.
* * * * *
"There's a dozen at least,” the woman wheezed, staring at them anxiously. She had some gray in her hair, but was still too young to sound like she did. The air filters were going bad, and most of the colonists huddling around them sounded as if their lungs were full of silt.
"Maybe more,” a man added, before hacking up a wad of phlegm and spitting it into a dark corner.
The air smelled of unwashed people and chemicals. The lights were dim and flickered constantly, proving that the air filters weren't the only things going bad out here. Eyes peered out at them from the darkness of the empty storehouse, roughly a hundred colonists, poor families who didn't have enough credit to buy their way back to civilization and safety.
Mea schooled her expression into bland attentiveness, determined not to show her disgust and pity. They didn't need that from her—what they needed, first and foremost, was an exterminator. These people had enough problems without slavers moving in and using them for sport. They'd been capturing the colonists, one by one. None ever returned.
Mea was familiar with the games that slavers liked to play. These people standing around her might be dirty and dismal, but they were the lucky ones. She would make sure that they stayed lucky.
"It's all right,” she murmured. “We can take care of them."
"But,” the woman wheezed, looking from her to Stone, “there's only two of you."
"We're enough,” Stone growled.
"Just stay out of sight until we say it's safe,” Mea added in a gentle voice.
The woman's face crinkled with worry, but she nodded and backed away from them. The rest of the colonists followed, drifting by the hunters like chaff on their way to the underground storerooms, where they'd sought refuge from the slavers.
Mea turned to Stone, arrested by the harsh expression on his face and the grim light in his eyes, as he watched the last of them slip into the darkness. “Bay?"
He twitched and glanced down at her, his expression shifting into a faint, rueful grimace. “Bad memories,” he murmured with a shake of his head.
"They look familiar?” she asked in a neutral tone.
"All victims look alike,” he said without apparent emotion and turned away.
She turned with him, brushing her shoulder against his arm as they headed for the exit. “But not all have to stay victims,” she murmured, catching his eye with a hint of a gentle smile. “Shall we go hunting?"
"You gonna let me kill the bastards?"
"Tempting,” she muttered, looking down at her wrists where the slaver manacles had abused her flesh. That memory, plus the look on Regan's face as she'd watched the frozen slaver, shadowed her heart. “Very tempting. But we've got these for a reason,” she said, flashing the paralytic dart rings on the base of her fingers. “Of course, when the darts run out,” she added with a grim twist of her lips, “we'll use any means necessary."
There were two main domes to the colony, one in use and the other in the middle of construction. The residents had obviously planned on expanding at one time, but those hopes were long gone, along with those who could flee the expanding slaver threat. On their approach to the colony, they'd seen the slaver ship docked at one of the airlocks to the occupied dome, and had opted to slip in from the opposite side, settling the Starfire in the shadow of the dome under construction.
If the slavers were aware of their arrival, they gave no sign. According to the colonists, they'd settled in the hydroponics facility, making themselves comfortable by looting what they wanted from the abandoned homes around it. They knew as well as the colonists did that there was safety in a pack, in not isolating themselves from their own kind. They might have better firepower and more experience than the colonists, but one lone slaver wouldn't stand long against a mob of angry parents.
Mea and Stone moved towards the hydroponics building, staying in the shadows and out of direct line of sight with the facility. They heard their first scout long before seeing him. He was rummaging in a small, gutted little building, its blacked walls and rotted roof telling of a fate written in fire. The slaver seemed oblivious to their approach, his sidearm in its holster and no other weapons visible.
Mea held up a hand to Stone, and he nodded, settling outside to watch for others while she crept up on the slaver. His cry of surprise as her knife appeared at his throat was choked off when she pressed the edge against his skin.
"Hi,” she murmured in his ear, as she divested him of his weapon and forced him with slow precision to his knees. “Find what you needed here?"
"The tooth fairy,” she said dryly. “How many of you are there?"
He said something uncooperative—a mistake. She set about making him more forthcoming. A few minutes later, she rejoined Stone, shaking the blood off of her knife.
"Seventeen more,” she whispered. “There's a loose perimeter around the building."
He nodded, and they slipped through the shadows towards the facility. When it came into sight, they separated, going for the slaver's perimeter guard first. Surprise was their best advantage, and they meant to hold it as long as possible. Mea found one slaver pissing against the wall with his back to the town. They had grown too confident and careless, she thought with an inner sneer of disgust. He never saw her coming, slumping to the ground in a puddle of his own urine.
Two more were throwing themselves a mini-party at one entrance to the facility, their loud laughter and ribald comments covering any noise she might have made on approach. Both dropped mid-laugh, eyes wide with shock as paralysis consumed their muscles—including their vocal cords. No alarm was raised.
Swift as darkness, she moved around the building, searching for more guards. She found her mate on the other side, and he held up three fingers. “Same,” she mouthed, before they moved into the facility to close on their prey.
The greenhouses took up most of the building, racks of hanging plants rising several stories high with catwalks between them, the moist and oxygen-rich atmosphere a pleasant change from the dome's air. Only a third of the greenhouses were being used, the others an empty testimony to the colonist's hope for expansion.
A group of slavers could be heard in one greenhouse, but Mea and Stone searched the surrounding offices and labs first for stragglers. They found a quartet playing sex games in one room that they'd turned into a sleeping area. The hunters’ interruption came as quite a shock, and they put up little resistance, though they weren't as quiet as the guards. But still, there was no alarm raised.
The rest of the surrounding rooms turned up empty, so Mea and Stone focused on the group in the empty greenhouse. All of the greenhouses had connections, airlock-like hallways that kept the atmosphere inside the greenhouse stable. But for the empty ones, the doors were left open, and the racks were stacked in neat rows, awaiting resurrection. The sounds from the slaver party echoed through the emptiness, and Mea and Stone had no trouble pinpointing their location.
Slinking through the rows of racks in the next greenhouse over, they were surprised to find the entrance to the slavers’ greenhouse guarded. There were two of them, and they were in a cleared area, with no catwalks directly overhead. There would be no sneaking up on them, but they seemed distracted. Both had weapons drawn, and they were arguing in low voices, their gestures agitated.
Mea couldn't hear what they said, but she suspected that they might be wondering why they couldn't contact any of the other slavers. Pressing into the shadow of one stack, she turned to Stone and raised her eyebrows.
He shrugged and whispered, “If we shoot ‘em, the others will come runnin'."
"They've been alerted,” she hissed back. “No frontal assault will work at this distance. Even if they can't shoot for shit, they've still got a good chance of taking us down."
"What then?"
She gave him a grim smile. “Ever been fishing?” Lifting her knife, she flicked the flat of the blade against the rack behind her. The metal responded with a loud, reverberant ring.
Stone grinned and slipped from her side, deeper into the stacks.
"Shh! What was that?” a slaver said clearly.
In the silence that followed, there was another sing of metal on metal off to Mea's left. She smiled and waited.
They took the bait. “Come on. Let's check it out."
"Could be the racks settlin'."
"Let's just make sure."
Unfortunately, they didn't separate like she'd hoped they would, and they didn't brave the areas between the stacks, sticking with the wider, more open main path. They still made easy prey, but one managed to cry out and discharge his weapon before the hunters silenced him.
The slaver group's response was much faster than Mea had expected, catching the two hunters out in the open. There were five of them, weapons drawn and trained on the hunters as they pressed closer, their cries of warning echoing around the greenhouse.
Mea straightened and turned to face them, lifting her hands in the air in a gesture of surrender. Stone did the same with a quirk of his lips. The group wouldn't be able to resist a pair of hunters to play with, so Mea had no serious concerns about their welfare. The slavers’ health would be in question, though, as soon as they came close enough.
They never made it that far.
"Don't move!” a high, firm voice rang out over them.
Mea's heart leapt to her throat, before diving straight to her toes. Lifting her head, she scanned the catwalk above with a faint hope that her ears were lying to her. They weren't.
Regan was positioned in the middle of a catwalk up to their right in a small crouch with the gleam of a rifle resting against the rail and targeting the five slavers.
Mea caught movement out of the corner of her eye and snapped her head down to see one slaver raising his gun. “Aa!” she snarled at him. “Don't be stupid! Can't you see what she's aiming at you?"
"I've got an itchy trigger finger, too,” the girl announced in a casual tone.
The slaver hesitated, looking from the girl to Mea with clear indecision.
Mea sighed, pretending her heart wasn't pounding and her ears weren't ringing with fear and fury. “Are you completely brainless?
That's a rapid fire pulse rifle she's got up there. It's not a precision weapon, but it will mow the lot of you down before you can blink twice, and she wouldn't even have to aim."
"Better put the guns down, fellas,” Regan stated. “Those are my parents you're threatening, and I'm a little unhappy about that. Might lose control, you know."
Stone threw back his head and laughed, the low, deep sound rumbling through the room like thunder. Mea watched him, nonplussed. She'd never heard him laugh so freely before.
"What the hell have you been teaching her?” she hissed at him, interrupting his amusement.
He turned gleaming dark eyes on her and said with a grin, “Survival."
The slavers were lowering their weapons to the floor, their movements cautious and their eyes trained on the rifle above them. Mea had to admit, her daughter had chosen her position well—the catwalk provided the advantage of high ground and easy exit, its position off to the side giving the girl a clean shot at the group, her parents well clear of her range. She was making herself a small target while still allowing for a quick getaway—crouching instead of lying flat. And she had the rifle braced on the rail to offset any tremors she might have from holding the heavy thing.
She was acting like a hunter.
"Back up ten paces and lie down face first,” the girl ordered, gun never wavering from the five slavers.
As they complied, Mea muttered under her breath, staring with a sense of helpless terror up at her daughter, “If there are any more of them..."
"She'll see ‘em comin'. Sooner we wrap ‘em up, the sooner we get her down,” Stone responded, his tone not even a little concerned.
"You tie them. I'm going up to get her,” Mea snapped.
"All right,” he said in a bland tone, shooting her a hooded glance before moving towards the reclined slavers.
She knew what that look meant. Pressing her lips together, she headed for the stairs and commanded, “Stay put, Regan!” as she slipped her sidearm out of its holster for the first time. She wasn't going to feel comfortable until they were all safely back on the ship. No telling when her heart would stop rattling along at light speed, though.
When she reached her daughter, the girl was still surveying the situation below, but her rifle was turned away n
ow that her father was in the line of fire. She shot her mother a quick glance, then scanned both ends of the catwalk and the surrounding structures before rising to her feet. Like a damned hunter.
Mea ground her teeth. “I am going to beat you until you can't walk for a week,” she announced in a low, strained voice.
"Mom, I couldn't let them take you,” Regan said, not looking up at Mea. She was cradling the rifle in the crook of one arm, and Mea noticed that the barrel was quivering. The girl was shaking from reaction.
Slipping an arm around her shoulders, Mea turned her towards the exit and murmured, “They weren't going to take us."
Regan stopped, pulling out of her mother's hold and staring up at her with wide, dark eyes. “It looked like it! You know I can't let that happen again, Mom. I just can't. I need to know what to do. I need to be a hunter."
Staring down into the dark pools of her daughter's eyes, Mea felt her heart tearing with pain and indecision. How could she do it? How could she put her daughter in harm's way? How could she train her baby girl to be a ruthless killer?
"Mom, I'm safer by your side,” Regan whispered, moving closer.
"Not out here you're not,” Mea muttered, but the idea did have merit. If they couldn't keep her from following, the next best thing would be to have her where they could protect her—between them.
Regan hefted the gun, looking up at her mother through thick lashes. “I didn't do too bad, did I?"
Something clenched in Mea's chest like a fiery knot, before easing in slow degrees as she stared down at her daughter. Hell, the damage was already done. At least she could control what happened next, minimizing the risks.
With an aching sigh, she ran a hand through her daughter's hair and then slipped her arm over her thin shoulders again, guiding her down the catwalk. “Not bad at all, baby. You're going to make a hell of a hunter."
"You mean it?” Regan asked on a gasp, eyes lit with delight.
"Like I could stop it,” Mea retorted, sending her an acerbic look. “By the way, how did you get out of your room?"
Looking abashed, Regan dropped her chin. “Warren tried to feed me,” she mumbled.
A Far Cry Page 2
