by Jean Johnson
Twisting around, Ia sat up with a wrench of awkward effort. With her arms bound behind her back, her balance wasn’t the best, but she managed. She craned her neck, looking in the approximate direction of that voice. “First of all . . . I’m not frustrated, gentlemeioas. A little disappointed to find out that Darroll was so willing to sell me out, but not frustrated.”
The K’katta chittered briefly. The neutral-male voice of his translator box stated equally briefly, “It speaks.”
“And I can also sing and dance,” Ia quipped. “But not right now.” She glanced down at her bonds and smiled slightly. “It seems I’m a little tied up with other things at the moment. Now, as for being a sergeant, your information is out of date. I’ve been field-promoted to Lieutenant. After all, you successfully wiped out everyone superior to me in my Company. Somebody had to take charge, and that somebody was me. I suppose I ought to thank you for my promotion, come to think of it.”
“You’re welcome,” the second female stated sardonically.
“A pity that promotsssion will nnnot lasst lonng,” the Tlassian female hissed.
Ia dipped her head, acknowledging the Tlassian’s point. “War always carries the risk of not making it back. Unfortunately, this applies to all of you as well as to me. Your second error, you see, was declaring war on the Space Force Marines.”
Her eyes were beginning to adjust to the shadows beyond the pool of light gleaming over the table. She could pinpoint who among the Lyebariko snickered at that, and who snorted or scoffed.
“Your third error,” she stated flatly, cutting through their mirth and disbelief, “was in thinking my efforts here were futile. While we are still alone, just the nine of you and I . . .” She paused while a few of them jerked slightly in their seats, startled that she knew their exact count, despite the twenty seats ringing the table. “I will give you fair warning. I know this session is being recorded for posterity’s sake, so I know the rest of the Library will end up hearing it as well:
“Beware the Blood of Mary. Get in my path again, and you will go down. This warning stands for three hundred years, guaranteed . . . and for a thousand more,” she added, ignoring the scoffing noises that snorted from a couple of the shadowed crimelords surrounding her. “Interfere with my war plans, meioas, and in the end the Jack of All Trades will burn your Library to the ground. Beware the Blood of Mary. You have been warned.”
On the side of the room opposite the entrance she herself had been dragged through, a new door opened. Through it came several bipedal figures, carrying in a total of fifteen bound, gagged, and blindfolded Humans, males and females alike. Their arrival cut off any reply the Lyebariko members would have made at that moment. The door shut for a moment, then opened a moment later. Someone pushed a scarlet-enameled tool cart into the chamber, then the door slid shut and darkness descended once more.
“Time to have some fun,” Siddhartha quipped. “Anyone interested in joining me as I torture my way through our little toys?”
Ia thought it was ironic his parents had named him after the historical, first Buddha. This Siddhartha was not a man of peace, and he definitely didn’t intend to alleviate anyone’s suffering tonight. A few of the others accepted, and a few demurred. The rest remained quiet.
“Come get this one,” he ordered, raising his voice to the figures lurking in the near-darkness. “Then chain all of them to the walls, so that we may begin.”
Bodies moved, padding across the floor. Two burly, neck-hooded Tlassians leaned over the table, grabbed Ia by the feet, and slid her off the surface. They worked so smoothly and efficiently, hooking their sharp-nailed fingers into her plexi bindings, she didn’t even crack her head on the polished edge, let alone gain a scratch. Between one breath and the next, she was hauled off to join the other soldiers bound and waiting in the darkness.
CHAPTER 20
How difficult was it to escape the situation at Zubeneschamali? Compared to some situations I’ve been in, not all that difficult, really. Not in terms of danger, by my standards. But complicated, yes. It was definitely complicated at points.
~Ia
Mindful of the Gatsugi watching her being carried into the darkness, Ia focused. Doing this at a distance wasn’t easy, but absolutely necessary. Gatsugi had large, dark eyes which absorbed not only the visible spectrum most aliens saw, but also partway into the infrared. So it was absolutely necessary to blind the crimelord Black Eyes.
The trick of it was to ignite the very air right in front of his face, hard, hot, and fast.
“—Iiiiiiihh! Iiiiiiihh! Iiiiiiihhhh!” Flesh slapped flesh as the alien smacked at least one set of hands over his singed face—which only increased his screams, not the smartest thing anyone should have done to a serious burn wound like that.
Still, his scream was her cue. Sucking in energy from the crysium bracelet circling her right wrist, she reshaped it even as she flexed her muscles, snapping the plexities supposedly holding her in place. Twisting as she dropped, she landed on her toes and free hand, absorbing the impact of her fall with a soft slap hidden beneath the shrieks of the blinded alien.
Thrusting upright as the cables pattered to the floor around her, Ia whipped herself and her reformed sword through first one Tlassian neck, then the other. Launching out of her spin, she attacked the next nearest set of guards, tapping into the timestreams so that she didn’t miss. Her blade whistled through the air. Bodies thumped to the floor behind her. Metal tingchinged as she slashed up, then down, severing the bindings holding 1st Sergeant Likkety’s wrists and ankles together.
“What the hell is going on in here?” she heard Siddhartha demand. It was too late; Ia was already hacking her way through the third pair of guards. Behind her, she knew Likkety was scrabbling to rip the blindfold from his face and remove the gag from his mouth, and cut through Buck Sergeant Lok’tor’s bindings with another chime of crysium versus steel.
“Lllightsss!” Sllaish demanded, hissing the command harshly.
Snapping her eyes shut, she squeezed them against the explosion of brightness and spun into the fourth set of guards, the ones holding Lieutenant Nguyen. Not to cut them, but to shove the Humans back from their captive. This time, she cut his bonds first, then slashed the thin, frail-seeming blade through both men’s torsos. Grabbing one by the upper arm, she finished the move by giving herself an extra spin, hurtling the dying man’s upper half at the hastily drawn weapon being aimed her way by the nearest Solarican crimelord.
She did so with a scream, an impromptu war cry. “India Alphaaaa!”
Snatching up the next body part, she flung it at the Choyan pulling out her own holdout pistol without even looking and sprinted to the next guard on her list. A dodge behind him shielded her from the weapons being drawn by the other Lyebariko employees; she cracked her hilt up into his nose, stunning him and staggering him back, hands instinctively going to his bleeding face. He gasped in the next second, shot in the back by one of his fellow guards, robbing her of her cover. It had been just long enough, however, to cut the bindings on the next sergeant, and shove the guard over the kneeling man, knocking him into his partner.
“Ia?” Likkety gasped, his blindfold tossed aside and his brown eyes blinking, adjusting to the light flooding the chamber.
“Hoo-rah!” Ferrar yelled, thrusting upright and to the side. Bound as he was, the sudden surge from his kneeling position battered aside his captors. The others followed suit, staggering on bound-together ankles, but doing their best to knock over the guards trying to aim at her.
Her own eyes had finally adjusted, allowing her to snatch at the falling guard’s arm. Her blade slashed up through his armpit. Blood splattered everywhere, adding to the mess on her clothes, the gore on the floor, but her impromptu missile struck Siddhartha in the face, sending his laser shot wild. Whipping the blade back down, tapped into the timestreams, she smacked the blade into a laser shot from one of the guards. He was body-checked in the next moment by Nguyen, who punched the ot
her Human in the throat and wrested the gun from his grip.
Her blade hadn’t caught all of the beam. A thin slice of over-clocked yellow streaked across her side, scorching through her clothes. It was nothing like the laser cannon shot she had once taken, though; it hurt, but it didn’t slow her down. Other weapons fired, as the men and women she had freed so far wrestled with their captors and confiscated weapons.
The Lyebariko members were taking refuge behind the chairs on the far side of the table, and firing back. Likkety screamed hoarsely, taking a shot in his back. She knew he wouldn’t die and thus ignored it, cutting through another set of guards, another set of chains, and another.
Ferrar was now free, and those still bound had scraped their blindfolds off their eyes, allowing them to see and thus fight. Blakely had her bound legs wrapped around the throat of a knocked-over guard, choking him between her knees, her wrists still caught behind her back. The most athletic of the sergeants, Vin, was hopping around, head-butting everyone not on his side. Somehow, he was keeping his feet, making her want to laugh. Unfortunately, the rest of their situation wasn’t a laughing matter.
Their luck wasn’t going to hold. Beheading the next guard, Ia snatched the gun from his hand, spun, and fired. The yellow-hot beam speared into the back of one Lyebariko member fleeing through the door she had been brought through. Ia turned and cut through more flesh and steel, then whirled back as three more crimelords fled. This time the bolt smacked into the control panel. The machinery spit sparks and smoke, and the door hissed shut, sealing the remainder in the room.
Carrying through her spin, she fired at the other door—and was struck from behind. Not on her gun arm, which fired steadily, destroying that entrance’s control panel as well, but on the elbow of her sword hand. The blow hit her on the nerve, numbing her fingers and fumbling her grip. Ia snatched at the blade as it fell, barely catching the hilt as she was yanked backwards.
The Tlassian’s other arm hooked around her chest and shoulder, bending her over with a hrrruk-hrrruk sound. Abruptly she had a bigger worry on her hands. Dropping blade and gun, she wrenched herself around, twisting into his chest. Hooking her left arm between his legs, she heaved the moment he spat, lifting him too high. Acidic venom spewed past her shoulder. She wrenched muscles in the move, for he was larger and muscular, but the venom missed.
Thank you, Grandmaster, for teaching me to recognize that sound! The fervent thought was all she could spare, though. Tossing him to the floor, she spun back and dove for her sword—and slipped on the blood coating the floor. Oofing at the impact, Ia slapped her hand down on the blade anyway—and hissed as one of the remaining guards grabbed the hilt, cutting up into her fingers. He laughed and tensed to thrust, but it was too late.
A shift of energy, a flow of force, and everything was reversed. Suddenly, he was holding the now slightly cloudy, pink gold blade in his abruptly bloodied hand, and she had the hilt. Thrusting and slashing up even as he blinked in shock, Ia scrambled to her feet, cutting through him from gut to shoulder. Spinning to find her next target, she stumbled and slipped, dropping to one knee.
She didn’t have to attack, though; Sergeant Vin hopped over to her side, distracting the next guard long enough for Ferrar to kidney-punch the other man, then reach up and break his neck just as the Human reached for the still-bound Marine to do the same. Grabbing Vin by the arm, she spun him around and snapped her blade through his wrist shackles, then whacked through his leg chains, setting him free. Sergeant Gilvers, still bound, was taking a beating from two of the guards, so she shoved Vin in his direction and moved to release the next captive.
Those who were already free had managed to disable most of the other guards. Two more of the Lyebariko were dead. Unfortunately, with most of the guards down, there wasn’t enough confusion and milling of bodies for the remaining three Lyebariko to hesitate about firing. Her fellow Marines were using the lumps of bodies on the floor as best they could for their own cover, since they didn’t have the chairs the Lyebariko did.
Except, Ferrar and Nguyen didn’t crouch for long; instead, they grabbed one of the dead guards and spun the body around in tandem by his heels. They let go, flinging it at the table and its cluster of chairs. That not only broke the crimelords’ line of fire, it smacked apart their cover. Injured though he was, Likkety opened fire, dropping the Choya female with a cry. Someone else picked up a severed head and threw that as well, disrupting Siddhartha’s aim.
Blood was everywhere, a sea of metallic-scented crimson. For once, she wasn’t the only one coated in the stuff. Even Siddhartha, crouching once again behind a pair of chairs, was splattered and soaked in spots. A bang, bang, bang on the door the others had been brought through disrupted the battle. Siddhartha shouted as the Marines paused, looking around for the newest threat.
“Ha! Here come my reinforcements! You’re going down! No one gets in our way!”
Ferrar shot at Siddhartha’s feet with a projectile pistol, sending the crimelord scuttling back, dragging his chair with him.
“We’re the Marines!” he retorted, shout echoing through the hall. “You picked the wrong fight! Eyah?”
“Hoo-rah!”
Someone else threw another body part from the side, disrupting Siddhartha’s next shot. Shaking off her unsettled fascination with the scene, Ia scrambled across the bloodied floor, reaching Blakely. The other woman was down, but merely to take cover behind the lump of the guard she had strangled into unconsciousness. Dragging her over and snapping through her chains, Ia hurried on to the next sergeant in need of his freedom.
The door to her right started to glow along its edge. Ferrar fired two more shots at the retreating Siddhartha, then tossed aside his weapon and cast around for another one. Ia dipped into the timestreams again, and bared her teeth in a frustrated hiss. The probabilities had shifted to the lower scale while she wasn’t looking; the soldiers coming as their reinforcements were bogged down. Someone needed to stop what was about to break through that back door, but they also needed every single Marine free.
“Captain!” she shouted, and heaved her sword at him, throwing it just low enough that it landed with a tang and skittered, chiming, through the blood at his feet. “Deadly sharp!”
He dove for it with a roll of his eyes. “I did notice, Sergeant!”
She didn’t bother to reply. Dodging through the body-parts being flung at the crimelord by the others, she reached the door just as armored hands shoved it open. Catching the black and white canister in her left hand, Ia dropped it to her right and flung it back low, between the mechsuited legs of the Lyebariko’s private army. The sonic grenade went off, scattering static energy over the quartet of crimeworld soldiers in the corridor.
She ducked and grabbed the edge of the door despite the lingering, burning heat. Breath hissing in pain, Ia hauled the overheated edge into the mechsuited guard’s forearm and the holdout gun popping up out of the armor plating. It bent with a crunch, not designed to take a sideways blow like that, and the arm retreated. She shoved the door the rest of the way shut, hoping the guard beyond wouldn’t be able to get his much larger servo-fingers into the gap where he had burned out the locking mechanism.
Something was wrong. Ferrar wasn’t moving. Struggling to keep the door braced shut, her muscles versus the mechsuit’s servos, Ia yelled at him. “Captain!”
He was still on his knees, staring at the peach-hued blade in his hands. A blink and a twitch startled both of them—his arm flicked the blade between him and Siddhartha’s laser shot, who was trying to take advantage of Ferrar’s stationary stance. Stunned, Ia blinked, unsure of what she was seeing.
Ferrar blinked, then whirled and flung the blade back at her. “Blakely, Vin, get the last ones free! Nguyen, Lok’tor, get that table over! Everyone, behind it and retreat to the far wall! Ia, rearguard!”
Lunging forward, Ia caught the sword by the curved strips serving as the swept-style knuckle guards. Flipping it around, she snapped her fingers ar
ound the hilt and whirled back in time to slice off the muzzle of the mechsuit-sized laser rifle being aimed her way. The blade clanged with the blow, jolting her hands; unlike flesh, ceristeel was a lot harder to cut through.
There was no way she was going to be able to cut open a mechsuit like a man. Ia quickly changed tactics, switching from slashing to stabbing. That, she could do. Dodging the swipe of the armor guard’s arms, she put her full weight behind her thrust. The tip punctured with a chiming rasp, and the man inside twitched, stabbed through his ribs.
“What the hell is this furniture made out of?” she heard Vin exclaim. “Why isn’t he going down?”
Not quite the right angle, dammit. Foot planted on his thigh, she shoved as she pulled back, scraping the blade free. That meant she tumbled onto her back, but Ia was ready for it.
“Don’t argue, Vin!” Lok’tor shouted back. “Not when it’s giving your asteroid cover, too!”
She grinned and launched herself back at the doorway, thrusting hard, but with better accuracy this time. This time, the tip of her blade penetrated the mechsuit’s power pack. The suit didn’t even spark; all of that power drained straight into the blade, and from the blade, into her. She flushed some of it through her biokinetic gift to her injuries, healing them, but the rest swirled into a giddy sense of euphoria. Giddy enough, she found herself staring right at the easiest, quickest way to cheat.
All she had to do was block this entrance just enough to keep the Lyebariko’s reinforcements from getting through in the next ten minutes. And all she had to do, to do that . . . was pyrokinetically ignite every explosive and power pack being carried by the remaining three mechsuited guards, and the lightly armored but heavily armed sentients lurking behind them.
She had enough energy for it right now, too.
