by Ann Aguirre
That might be easier said than done, but she moved toward the other side of the footbridge. Jael strolled after her, and she turned with a quirk of one brow. “You don’t think I can find salvage on my own?”
“It’s better with company, love. Plus, I’m a professional, you know.”
“You mean because you gave up being a merc to work salvage?”
“Who says you don’t listen?”
“Not you.” She flashed him half a smile as she strode into the offices. Hairline cracks threaded the glastique that had once shielded the managerial portion of the station from the industrial part. The lights were almost entirely broken, shards of glass crunching underfoot like the discarded husks of long-dead insects. A foul smell permeated the room—blood, sweat, urine, and dust. She climbed across an overturned desk and reached a hand back to help Jael. He took it with a bemused expression.
It’s like he doesn’t believe in . . . this, whatever it is. But it’s not going away.
“You think we’ll find anything in here?”
She was dubious. Rope was something they’d most likely find in the repair bays, but that was too long a trek. There was no way she and Jael would be back before the patrol arrived. “Maybe not rope, but something similar. Cables or cords we can loop together?”
“Sounds like a plan.”
Dred rummaged while Jael did the same across the way. She tried to be quiet, but the broken furniture made it tough. Occasionally, Jael swore softly as he ran into obstacles; she gave him a hand in pulling the junk out of the doorway. After scrutinizing each piece, she sorted them into piles: broken and worthless versus Ike might be able to do something with this gizmo.
Jael tilted his head. “Always thinking ahead, hey?”
“Can’t do otherwise, can I, pretty lad?” But her tone was soft, making an endearment of what had first been mockery.
“Hurry up!” Brahm shouted. “Tam says we’ve got ten minutes to put this together.”
* * *
THE trap was finished.
Based on what Brahm had told him about patrol routes, Tam had picked the perfect place to set it up. The station was divided, and the industrial side was separated from cleaner, corporate offices by a footbridge that connected the two hemispheres, and it was a long drop to the repair bays below. Mungo had laid claim to the offices, but once he trashed them, he evidently decided they were too small to be worthy of his empire, so he’d moved on, leaving the rooms reeking of blood, feces, and urine. That miasma didn’t improve after festering, either. So now nobody came through there.
But the mercs don’t know that. Now Tam just needed to bait them. Everyone else knew to stay out of sight until the squad committed.
The armor felt heavy; he wasn’t used to it. Hopefully, if the mercs noticed any damage from a distance, they’d assume it came from the firefight that killed their mate. Up close, it wouldn’t pass inspection, but Ike had patched it together enough that when the merc unit spotted a fallen comrade on the walkway, they’d investigate. Since this trap relied on muscle and not hidden wires, the mercs could inspect the area before approaching; it didn’t matter if they came in slow and cautious, only that they made the approach. Tam glanced up at the other five perched on the level above. Without Ali’s strength, this wouldn’t work, though Jael seemed to be holding up his end.
Timing is everything.
Without further delay, he dropped facedown on the walkway, facing the direction Brahm said the patrols walked. He didn’t need to do anything; the others would handle it, but nerves pulled him tight. If their timing was off, if the mercs rolled him over before his team struck, then he’d take a laser blast to the face, and it was lights out. But the mercs would all recognize Dred, and Martine was too small to be credible as a merc—Tam himself was borderline—while Brahm and Ali were out for obvious reasons. Jael had the misfortune to be on Vost’s radar due to multiple encounters with his drone cams, so he was likely on the Most Wanted list alongside Dred.
Since it had taken quite a while to get the apparatus in place, he didn’t lie there long. Some distance off, he picked up the muffled clomp of enemy boots. It wasn’t loud compared to other machine noises echoing on station, and he actually felt their steps more than heard them. Beneath his cheek, the metal vibrated as the mercs stepped out onto the walkway, but he was careful not to move. They halted; Tam wasn’t sure how close they were.
He tried to regulate his breathing; holding it would only result in a perceptible swelling of his chest when he lost the battle with his reflexes. His skin twitched, a psychological reaction to being studied. Tam suddenly had an awful itch in the center of his back, but he resisted the impulse.
At any moment, they could see through the ruse and shoot me.
“Who is that?” a merc asked.
“Not sure. But Vost’s gonna be pissed. If a squad lost a man and didn’t report it, didn’t take the body with them—”
“The team leader will end up spaced.”
“That could be fun,” another merc said. “I hope it was Alvarez. I hate that asshole.”
“I warned you when you first signed on, man. He cheats when he’s playing Charm.”
The first merc laughed. “So do I.”
“Apparently, he’s better at it.”
This didn’t sound like a top-notch squad to Tam, but evidently their boss agreed. A thump sounded, as if he’d hit someone to shut the man up. “Stow it, both of you. We have to call this in.”
“I’m glad that’s your job.” That was the merc who cheated at cards.
A new voice spoke. “Wait, do you see anything? Vost will want to know which way the mooks went. Scan the area for life signs.”
Tam tensed. He hadn’t counted on the mercs being this smart or cautious. The machine beeped.
“Shit, he’s still alive. Let’s get him back to the medibot.”
The others must be out of range.
Relief left him limp as care for their wounded mate drove the mercs forward, forgetting their initial caution. They were close enough that he could smell them—hints of sweat and gun oil—when a loud clang resonated as his team dropped the boom. The massive girder swung from the level above, suspended on tension wires, and it swept through the mercs like they were made of marzipan. Tam held still, feeling the breeze of the thing as it flew over him.
One merc sailed over the side and screamed all the way down. The others were luckier; they fell backward, but a couple of rifles went bouncing down. Dammit. The armor might be all right, but those weapons might be broken. But maybe Ike can fix them. Tam bounded to his feet and raced for the other side of the bridge. The mercs were already recovering, firing wildly, but before they refined their aim, Jael and Dred unloaded. They laid down cover fire, so he made it to where Ali and Brahm were waiting in case this turned into a hand-to-hand fight.
“You make good bait,” Ali said.
Tam shook his head. “I was hoping we’d kill more of them outright.”
Brahm spread his clawed hands in an open gesture. “I’m happy with one. And the others are hurting. The beam cracked their crunchy coating.”
“That is good news,” Tam said as they moved to meet up with the others. “Maybe we can take some more of them, now that we’ve softened them up.”
He crouched, taking cover from the barrage of laser fire coming in hard on his six.
“They’re not following,” Ali reported.
“Vost’s reaming their ass,” Jael said, coming around the corner. Nobody asked how he could hear the conversation; they just listened as he repeated what was being said on the other side of the bridge.
“It’s not over yet,” Dred muttered. “We still have to beat them to the bottom and retrieve the gear.”
* * *
VOST was nearly dozing from staring so long at the drone cams when his comm crackled. “Commander, it�
��s a soup sandwich out here. I’m a man down.”
He froze, then counted to ten, but it didn’t staunch the rage throbbing in his head. Anytime a unit encountered the convicts—and he wasn’t personally in charge—it immediately went to shit. This was the most chaotic op he’d ever run. Too much space, too few grunts, and the inmates they had locked up in here were not just murderers and madmen. They’re fragging smart, smarter than these idiots.
“What happened?”
Delta leader went over the scenario concisely, but it didn’t do anything for Vost’s blood pressure. “You actually fell for the injured-ally trick?”
“We scanned to see if it was an ambush,” the other man protested. “There were no life signs apart from the man on the bridge. In our armor.”
“They stole some of our gear, genius. And the scanner has a range of forty-five meters. It’s a tool, not meant to replace independent thought.”
“Orders, sir? They killed Higgins. Or least, he fell and is presumed dead.”
“Get your ass to the bottom and get his body. Before those scavengers strip him of armor and weapons. I guess it hadn’t occurred to you that’s the plan?”
“We’re pretty beat-up, sir. Trevino’s armor has a fracture across the chest, and a bunch of us have broken ribs. That thing hit us fragging hard.”
He swallowed a curse. It wasn’t his imagination. The men were losing their will to run around this massive station, chasing rats into holes where they disappeared, only to be blown up the next time they turned around. This is the kind of mission that could cost you everything, he thought. But for reasons deeper and greater than pride, he couldn’t withdraw.
“My unit’s en route. Get back to base camp and put the medibot on those injuries. I need you up to speed as soon as possible. And stop losing your equipment, assholes. There’s a limit to what we have for replacements.”
“Copy that, sir.”
They shouldn’t be able to kill us. We’re better prepared and battle-tested.
In a normal engagement, his men destroyed the enemy, but Vost knew a pang of unease. Most of their jobs were easy, unexpected strikes on the unsuspecting. Maybe he didn’t have an accurate picture of the unit’s capabilities. They’d never been tested in a situation like this one. The enemy kept surprising him, time and again, and not in good ways. Problem was, they fought like clever animals, not trained soldiers. Now he thought he had their measure. My mistake; I judged them by what Mr. Suit and Tie said. Won’t happen again.
He stomped into the server room, where his men were bunked down with thermal blankets and polymer bedding. Vost slammed a palm against the wall, and shouted, “Wakey, wakey, it’s time to do some business.”
They were dumb enough to protest, and he wished he had time to work on company discipline, but he had a mess to clean up first. Plus, he reminded himself it was impossible to expect military-grade performance from a bunch of self-taught fighters who had never served. They were mercs, not soldiers. The difference might cost him this station.
Not happening. He shoved the thought down with ferocious determination. The men sobered up fast when he said, “Higgins is DOA. We’re on a body-retrieving run.”
“We can’t let those animals eat him,” a merc named Frankel said.
That was actually the least of Vost’s worries. The cannibals died without much trouble. It was that other nest, the one he couldn’t scout with drone cams, spearheading the attacks that cost him men and equipment. But if it made the rest feel more willing to work, he could pretend this was a mercy mission and not damage control.
So he ran with that assumption, painting a gruesome picture. “We’re racing these convicts to the repair bay. If they get there first, they take Higgins, use him as a trophy, cook him, and put his head on a spike. Are we gonna let that happen?”
“No, sir!” his men shouted.
It would be better if all his squad leaders had the ability to keep their men on task or the judgment to be wary. While he wouldn’t have shot the man on the bridge on sight, he would’ve called for a medibot and sent it in to wake the soldier up, then he’d have demanded name and call number before letting him off the ground. Any deviation would’ve resulted in a laser blast. Still, it was too late to change the outcome. Now he had to make sure those Mary-forsaken mooks didn’t benefit from this.
“What’s our strategy?” Frankel asked.
“That’s need to know, but if things work the way I’ve planned, we’ll beat them there by a wide margin, giving us time to lay a trap of our own. How do you feel about payback?”
“That’s my second favorite kind of pay, sir!” That came from Kinsey, a bit of a smart-ass, but he kept the men laughing during the rough patches, so Vost didn’t curb him.
“Moving out, double time!” He set a grueling pace toward the cargo lifts.
Vost had been tinkering with them for a while, but parts had been stolen, and it took time to locate replacements on this wreck of a station. Plus, there were security protocols to override. If he could use station defenses, things would be a lot easier, but something had gone wrong with the subroutines, and the codes his employers had given him no longer worked. The inmates had stripped so many parts from the mainframe that the defenses that were still functional were running off pocket nodes, each with random overrides, changing every sixty seconds. While he worked on the control panel, his men paced and talked shit behind him. They didn’t need to remind him that every moment’s delay could cost them a critical victory, but luckily, he didn’t choke under pressure. Twenty minutes later, the doors slid open, and cheers rang out.
He fixed a hard look on his men. “Let’s do this. We retrieve Higgins’s body, protect his gear at all costs. And we get the bastards who ended him. Are you with me?”
The answering outcry nearly deafened him.
16
Fish in a Barrel
The mood was grim and quiet.
Brahm didn’t insist on silence because the mercs knew where they were headed, but nobody had the breath to speak. They had been running steadily downward for the better part of an hour; even maintenance drones didn’t make it to this part of the ship. Another of Ali’s shortcuts had taken them past some defenses that would’ve netted them some impressive resources, but Jael understood why the aliens had kept these caches to themselves. Other territories had reckoned them confined to the Warren when the truth was, they’d had supplies stashed all over the station.
Jael leapt the last few rungs and scrambled out of the way so the others could follow. He peered down with incredulity. “We’re only halfway?”
“Do I need to remind you of the station’s size?” Tam asked.
“That’d be great,” he answered with a sharp grin. “Do you think you could sketch me the schematics while you’re at it?”
“Internal conflict won’t solve anything,” Ali cut in.
Dred nodded. “We’ll take a short break, catch our breaths, and rest up. That should put us in prime condition to finish the run.”
The Rodeisian female didn’t look winded to Jael, but she propped herself against the wall near Brahm, her eyes dropping half-shut. Her ears swiveled independently, doubtless listening for pursuit. While the mercs were the primary threat, that didn’t mean Mungo or Silence’s people couldn’t crash the party.
“I’m sorry for your loss,” Brahm said softly to Ali.
Jael didn’t mean to eavesdrop. The aliens were speaking softly enough that he gathered their words weren’t meant for him. He exchanged a look with Dred that told him she shared his discomfort. Sorry, love. There’s no way to shut it off that I’ve found.
“You fought bravely,” she said. “I know you tried your best to save him. You’ve been a good friend to us.”
“No more than you both were to me on New Terra.”
Ali choked out a laugh. “You see how well that ended. Ins
tead of smuggling you to safety, we all got caught.”
“It’s a cesspool, no mistake,” the Ithtorian said. “But you make it bearable.”
Jael had never heard friendship proclaimed like that. In his experience, such words were kept under lock and key. You didn’t tell people they were important because they might see it as a weakness to exploit. Better still, you didn’t let people get close.
Ali’s chin drooped. “I don’t expect to get out of this alive, but I hope you make it, Brahm. You deserve better from life than you’ve gotten.”
It was tough as hell to work with a Bug. After turns imprisoned on Ithiss-Tor, he hated them and himself, too. Once, he might’ve only loathed that he’d failed to kill Charis Il-Wan, as Ramona Jax had paid him to do, but now regret burned inside him like the sun. What would my life be like if I’d turned her down? I probably wouldn’t be in Perdition. I might still be traveling with—
No point in such thoughts. He distantly recalled vowing vengeance on those who had seen through his bullshit and left him to rot in prison. Now, if he managed to escape, he wouldn’t waste his time or energy hunting them to settle old scores. I blamed them, but truth is, I turned first. I played my cards, and I lost. The admission didn’t come easy to him, but a certain comfort came with it. It’s over, then. There’s only Perdition now. And Dred.
The Ithtorian made a chittering sound deep in his throat, a noise Jael associated with profound disagreement, the kind that defied words. “A deviant like me? This is precisely the end my father predicted.”
At that, her head swung up, and she touched the Ithtorian’s claw. “That’s not true, my friend. Love is love.”
“Everyone ready to move?” Dred asked.
“Shit,” Martine said, skipping past the lot of them to peer over the railing. “Is the lift . . . moving?”
“That’s the cargo elevator,” Ali said. “We tried to get it working. And failed.”
Dred swore in low and virulent tones. But before Jael could decide how dire their predicament was, the mechanism holding the box shuddered and gave in a cascade of orange sparks. Brahm let out a trill that Jael recognized as laughter from his time incarcerated on the Ithtorian homeworld.
