The Breakers Series: Books 1-3

by Edward W. Robertson

  "Oh shit," Mauser said.

  He dived up on the steps, oblivious to the shots blasting over him, grabbed the metal ball, and flung it back inside. Someone yanked Raina down. The ball exploded an instant later. Mauser rolled off the steps in a storm of shrapnel and hot air.

  He landed in the grass, limbs flopping. Raina stared. Inside, men screamed and coughed, the noise strangled by the ringing in her ears. Her troops emerged from their crouches, dazed. The world stood still. Waiting to see who would take it.

  Raina launched up the steps and ran inside.

  Smoke screened the entry of a grand foyer. A couple bodies lay facedown, bleeding on the rugs. A huge, Y-shaped staircase dominated the back wall; a figure ran along its landing and Raina fired through the smoke, laser crackling on the particles hanging in the air. The others followed her in, breaking left and right of the scorched doorway, firing on anything that moved.

  Raina ran through the smoke to the left leg of the steps. There were only three men at its top and as they aimed at Raina, Bryson hammered them with shots. Bullets banged past Raina's head, gouging the floor. Her troops barraged the enemy and all three guards crumpled to the landing.

  The invaders swarmed up the staircase. It commanded the foyer as well as the doors along the walls of the second floor. Another door stood open in the back wall of the ground floor. At the center of the landing, a separate staircase climbed to the upper floors, enclosed and much smaller than the one they stood on.

  A couple of her people were missing. She pointed to half the remainder and gestured at the landing and its view of the first two floors.

  "Cover the area. The rest of you come with me to cover the stairs." She glanced up at the ceiling. "Don't shoot the women. My mother's here."

  "Your mother?" Vince said. Several others gave her puzzled looks.

  "Go!"

  They fanned out, kneeling to take aim at doorways and stairs. Raina ran up the enclosed stairwell. Carl, Bryson, and five others followed. Lanterns hung at each landing, illuminating stone walls and thin carpet. Two of her troops posted up at the door to the third floor. She ran up two more bends of the switchback staircase. At the fourth floor landing, the door banged open and a man bowled right into Raina. She flew to the floor.

  She knew the man. Holsen. He was one of the two men who had assaulted her mother while her dad held Raina tight on the dock. He leveled a pistol at her face.

  Carl dived forward, gun forgotten, and slammed his knuckles into Holsen's forearm. The pistol flew from the man's hand and banged into the wall. He swung a left backhand at Carl's jaw, but Carl moved like the son of the wind, slapping Holsen's arm with his right hand, his left forearm, then his right hand again. The rain of blows arrested Holsen's movement and staggered him to his right, turning his back to Carl. Carl drove his left palm into the back of Holsen's head. The man staggered, head snapping forward. Carl pistoned his heel into the back of Holsen's knee. While the enemy was still falling, Carl slammed a right hook into his temple. Holsen hit the ground hard.

  A gun went off behind Raina, rocking Holsen's body. He writhed and groaned. She planted a foot on each side of his ribs and drove the tanto straight into his back. Its diamond-hard point slipped through his ribs and thunked into the wood below his body. He jerked. His last breath whispered from his lungs.

  Raina dislodged the blade and wiped it on Holsen's back. She left one woman to cover the door to the fourth floor, then continued with Carl and Bryson to the fifth and final story.

  "Cover the hallway," she told Bryson. He nodded and knelt beside the door, bracing his rifle against his knee.

  She jogged onto the rich rug of the uppermost floor. Gunfire exploded downstairs. It had been less than five minutes since the guard had blown his whistle and woken the others. The defenders had had no time to organize and Raina's people had swept in like a scythe. She should have done this long ago—but the others would never have followed. Until the Slaughter of the Dunemarket, they hadn't lost enough to be mad enough to follow a teen girl to war.

  She strode down the hall to the elegant double doors set in the middle of the wall. At once, she knew how Karslaw must have felt at every phase of his campaign to take the mainland. The power of it tasted as sweet and thick as nectar. The lesson of people was that they weren't the same as animals. An animal acted because of its fear; people froze from it. If you came at them with all your fury, they would stand in shock while you cut them down. That was what Karslaw had done to the city. And that was what she would do to him.

  Silently, she moved to the doors. The handles were locked. She cut through one with the laser. The inner knob clinked to the ground. Carl pressed himself to the other door. She threw hers open and Carl spun inside.

  A gun roared. Carl grunted, blood splattering from his shoulder, and collapsed. Raina charged inside.

  Her mother stood across the room holding both hands on a pistol. Karslaw emerged from a door to her left, empty-handed. A laser hung from a holster on a padded red chair by the window.

  Her mom gaped. "Raina?"

  Raina's hand shook on the laser. "Mom!"

  "What's going on here? Are you involved in the attack?"

  "I'm here to rescue you."

  "Oh honey." Her mother's eyes grew bright. "We need to talk. But first, I need you to put down the gun."

  Raina's hand trembled. The gun tumbled from her grasp and fell to the floor.

  36

  He turned around and ran for the medieval wing of the armory. Whatever their problem was upstairs, they weren't going to solve it with axes. They'd want guns. Lasers. He ran into the back room, hid behind two barrels of arrows, clicked off his flashlight, and produced his laser pistols.

  Men jogged down the stairs, feet gritting on the cement.

  "What the fuck?" a woman said from down the hall, voice carrying down the blank stone walls.

  "What?" a man replied.

  "What, what? Notice anything missing?"

  "Wait, what? Is this the right room?"

  "You think we put up all these shelves for fun?"

  "Maybe he moved them," the man said, sounding unconvinced.

  The woman laughed. "Without telling us? That's a hell of a way to run a fortress."

  "Well, I don't see them."

  The woman muttered something Walt couldn't catch. "Just go check the other rooms."

  "Why me?"

  "Because I'm going to go ask Karslaw. Want to switch jobs?"

  "I'll check the other rooms."

  One set of footsteps went back up the stairs. The other strolled down the hallway toward Walt, entered one of the other rooms, and was quiet for a few seconds. The man returned to the hall and tried another room. After a minute, the beam of a flashlight cut through the doorway of the medieval weaponry. It hit the wall behind Walt, tracked slowly past the barrels of arrows, and reached the other wall where axes hung from hooks.

  "What the hell," the man said. Walt tensed his legs. The light withdrew. So did the footsteps. Walt eased back against the barrel.

  A minute later, more footsteps hustled down the stairs.

  "He says they're right here," the woman said.

  "Well, he's wrong," said the man. "I checked."

  "Every room?"

  "No, I got tired and took a nap instead. Yes, every fucking room."

  She sighed loudly. "This is twelve kinds of fucked up. We're under attack out there. We lit the roof-signal, but it'll be half an hour before Avalon sends reinforcements. Karslaw's barely awake. We need guns and we need them now."

  "So we get the rifles," the man said, sounding insulted. "They'll still kill people, won't they?"

  "Right. Yeah. Come on."

  Guns clattered against each other as if they were being dropped in a sack. The pair ran upstairs. The crack of gunshots filtered down to the subbasement. Under attack? Walt was suddenly deeply confused. He had assumed Lorna had somehow gotten out of the duct tape and ran to alert Karslaw about Walt. Could be Ness had dec
ided to punish the wicked after all, although you'd figure an armada of alien barbarians was the sort of thing the two people searching for the lasers might have mentioned.

  Whatever the case, an attack was only bad news for Karslaw. For Walt, it was an opportunity.

  He'd already dithered too long to move. The troops would need more than a couple sacks of rifles. He didn't have to wait more than a minute before the pair ran back down the steps. They were breathing hard and they weren't talking this time. Bad sign for the home team. Walt moved to the doorway. As soon as pair thundered back up the steps, he jogged into the hall and took the stairs up to the primary basement.

  A man carrying a box exited one of the side rooms and blinked at Walt. Walt shot him in the chest. There was nothing he could do about the stink of burnt skin, but he dragged the body into the room the man had emerged from, shoving him rudely between burlap bags of grain.

  Shooting him wasn't the smartest thing Walt had ever done. It cut back on his options quite a bit. That was the problem with running around with a gun in your hand. It just made it so easy to shoot people. Someone insults your mother? Blam, dead. A potentially hostile stranger stumbles out of a doorway? Shoot first and hide the body later. In a way, it was too bad the aliens hadn't blown up all the guns along with the jets and tanks and destroyers.

  An explosion burst somewhere upstairs. Walt had enough experience with such things to recognize it wasn't an especially large one, but if he needed another sign that it was time to leave, that would be it. He headed for the stairs. Someone had lit the lantern on the landing and the stairwell looked empty. He made his way up to the ground floor. Candles and lamps blazed from the throne room, glinting from the windows and paintings framed on the walls. He looked both ways, then stepped into the lavish room.

  "Walt?" A man goggled at him from the front door. Gunfire boomed behind it. Walt knew the man. He was the one he'd fought when the aliens attacked the beach. "I thought you left."

  "Is that what Karslaw told you?" Walt said.

  "He said you went to fight monsters up north. That you thought we'd moved beyond the need for your help, but we should be forever grateful."

  "How good of him to say." He shot the man in the head. "Then you didn't see that coming at all."

  He didn't feel too great about that, either—he probably could have waved goodbye and taken the tunnel to the surface without any problems—but he couldn't afford any witnesses. Anyway, the man might have thought to conscript him. That would have been awkward. He thought about sticking around to take advantage of the chaos and kill a few more assholes, but this wasn't his fight. Anyway, he was already working toward a much grander revenge.

  One that would do a little good in the world, too. Or undue a wrong. One that, technically speaking, had been his fault in the first place. But by his math, it was all the same in the end.

  More shots banged from upstairs. He ran to the door to the tunnel, entered, and closed the door behind him. He flipped on his flashlight. He ran down the tunnel all the way to the short stairs up to the trapdoor to the outside world.

  Uphill from the tunnel exit, lasers flashed up to the keep's windows like a silent and monochrome Fourth of July. After all the traveling, scheming, fighting, and betrayal, it felt anticlimactic to walk away from a party like that, but in the end, that's exactly what he did.

  With a bag of lasers on his back and another in his arms.

  The ocean was nearest on the north side. He headed that way, weighed down by the weapons, heading perpendicular from the road skirting the castle and, when the buildings fell behind him in the hills, reckoning by the North Star. The breeze did nothing to wick the sweat away from his clothes and skin. It was a miserable, humid slog, and when he finally climbed down to the rocky shore, waves thundering against the land's edge, he resolved to carry a single bag next time, even if it meant extra trips. He deposited the bags behind a clump of shrubs, laid an X of stones above the tideline to mark the spot, and headed back.

  In the hour since he'd last seen it, the castle had gone quiet. No lasers lashed from the darkness. Candles and lanterns showed in the windows, and he heard murmurs from behind the wooden walls, but there was no sign of sentries. He slung a pillowcase over his shoulder with a grunt and walked back to the north. After a bit of searching, he found the first deposit and left the new bag alongside the other two.

  The moon dropped, taking its scant light with it. On his third trip to the coast, he wandered off course, coming to a stop above a crescent-shaped bay. He'd seen it exploring the island with Lorna. He was too far west.

  But there was something white against the black water. A sail. On the beach, someone had even left him a rowboat. He ditched the bag under another bush and ran back to the castle for the final load. Torches burned from outside the palace gates. Walt didn't stick around to learn why. He stole up the last bag of lasers and half-walked, half-jogged north yet again, found the bags he'd stored a few hundred yards to the east, loaded them all into the rowboat, and paddled out to sea, keeping one eye on the dark sailboat anchored in the bay.

  A quarter mile away from the island, he pulled in the oars, braced himself against the side of the dingy, and emptied the bags into the sea. Each laser splashed and sunk into the darkness. After a moment, the bubbles ceased. The waves slopped on as untroubled as ever.

  Finished, he watched Catalina for more fireworks while he caught his breath. But the show was over. He still had no idea who had attacked or who came out of it the victor.

  It didn't matter. He was done with the place. He turned his back and paddled slowly for the mainland, tossed on the swells, pulled off-course by the currents, but always moving, one stroke after another, until the miles became nothing at all.

  37

  Her mother smiled and lowered her pistol. "There. That's good. Let's talk."

  Karslaw grinned, teeth bright in the forest of his beard. "I'm not surprised she led this little attack. She's like her mother. Smart. Bold. Willing to take the advantage."

  Raina gripped her tanto. "I'm adopted."

  Karslaw's grin froze. They stared, reading each other's eyes, the soul within. He lunged for the laser on the chair. Raina sprung forward, knife out. Her mother shouted. Karslaw leapt back.

  "Control your daughter, woman!"

  "Raina!"

  Raina didn't know what black magic Karslaw was using to confuse her mother. But she knew that killing him would end it. She pulled out her second knife and jabbed at Karslaw. He jumped back again, light on his feet for such a big man. With a scowl, he grabbed a candlestick from the shelf beneath the window and brandished it.

  "Raina!" To the side, her mother raised the pistol. "Please!"

  "He killed my father!" Raina said. "Your husband!"

  "Jim's a good man." Her eyes darted between Raina and Karslaw. "That was a mistake. He thought Will was planning to attack him."

  "All I've ever wanted is peace." Karslaw lowered the candlestick a fraction of an inch. "Call off your warriors. Let us come to the table together and find a way for mine and yours to live as one people."

  Raina's hand shook on the tanto. A tear squeezed from her eye. She hadn't felt so alone since the plague claimed her first family and she hid in the apartment until the world grew silent and the bodies smelled too bad to stand and she walked out into the end of all things.

  "Then shoot me," Raina said to her mom. "You've already lost your husband. A daughter isn't so much more to bear."

  Her mom cocked her head to the side. "Raina, I don't like what you're saying."

  "You'll live, Mom. And you will be stronger for it."

  She smiled, because it seemed fit to smile, and stabbed at Karslaw's guts.

  He stepped back, clubbing at her blade with the candlestick. Metal clanged. His hairy forearm extended between them. One of the first things Carl had taught her was a concept known as "Defanging the Snake." You take away a snake's teeth, and it can no longer hurt you. A man's limbs were his fangs; if
he tries to strike you, then you must take those fangs away.

  She slashed the tanto at his forearm. He was every bit as quick as a snake and he yanked back his arm at the first flicker of movement. The tip of the knife caught his skin, parting it like a zipper. He made a face and fell back.

  Her mom shook the gun. "Raina, you put down those knives!"

  "Shut up."

  "You are a disrespectful thing," Karslaw said, expression as dark as the night beyond the windows. "But like all things, you can be broken."

  He jabbed the candlestick at her throat. She sidestepped, rolling her hands through a wheel of strikes. The knife in her right hand parried the candlestick off course. The tanto in her left flicked across the back of his hand. She struck again with her right, flaying the back of his forearm. She began a fourth attack, meaning to slash across the tendons and veins inside his elbow. His left fist hooked over her arms and slammed into her jaw.

  She flew sideways, skidding into the rug. He reached for the laser. Her mother yelped and he started, glancing at her face. Raina still saw stars, but she had no time to wait for her head to clear. Like Carl taught her, she launched herself at his middle, the least-mobile part of any person's body. Karslaw bashed down her incoming knife, so she plunged it into his foot instead.

  He threw back his head and roared. He staggered back, pulling the knife from her right hand. She swung the tanto into his shin. It clicked against bone. He swung the candlestick down at her head. She dodged to the side, catching it on the shoulder. The force made her sit down. Pain blared through her body. He cocked the stick for another blow.

  A gun went off behind her. Karslaw glanced at his own middle, as if expecting to see blood, but the bullet had hit the wall behind him.

  "Stop this!" her mother yelled.

  Raina speared the tanto at Karslaw's groin. He cried out, turning his hips. The knife's point bit into his thigh. He reached for her arm. With her open hand, she chopped the blade of her hand into his wrist. Her tanto followed right behind her hand. It cleaved off three of his fingers at an angle. Blood spurted from the stumps of his knuckles. She slammed her rising palm into his elbow, knocking his arm straight up, and slashed backhand across his stomach.