Allies and Enemies: Exiles, Book 3

by Amy J. Murphy

  Forty ketz plasma rifle. Scattergun. A4 pulse gun. Tyron cataloged the weapons, took in the only exit, the positions of the men. It was essentially a kill box with her and Amos at its center.

  “What is this?” Tyron asked. “Amos?”

  The two men released her. She was able to stand under her own power, but her knees still felt hollow, weak.

  Amos held up a hand, a motion meant to silence a subordinate. His attention tuned to the badly burned man that sat behind the makeshift desk. “Don’t think you need an introduction.”

  “So…it’s true. Ya found the little vulta.” The voice that came out of that burned face was ragged, fitting the appearance of its owner. “Tyron the one that burned me. Turned my boys ’gainst me.”

  Tyron felt her nerves pinch with ice. All the eyes of the room were on her. All of them burned with malefic intent. Something hard settled into her stomach. The blast door rumbled closed at their backs. It felt like a snare had been sprung.

  “I didn’t lie. Now, it’s your turn. We had a deal, Mr. Koenii.”

  “What deal?” Tyron shifted her weight, trying to take in all the angles of approach at once. This did not go unnoticed by the men in the room. They drew their weapons.

  Koenii’s face pulled into a rictus that served as a grin. He chuckled, a moist sound of diseased lungs. “Really did give her brain box a stir, didn’t they?”

  “If you ask me, a change for the better,” Amos responded. His voice raised in pitch. He twitched his shoulders. He seemed to be growing anxious.

  She was some sort of bargaining chip. The rage of betrayal heated her veins. Her hands curled into fists.

  “Only one way to improve on that still. Burn her, boss. Way she burned you.” This endorsement came from the man dressed in a synth leather smock, standing at Koenii’s elbow. He toyed with the hilt of an ancient combat blade fastened at his waist.

  Tyron had been judged for something, found guilty. It was plain they knew her from the time Before. Something important had happened. Something she’d done or was being held accountable for regardless.

  “What about the other one…her little crester mucker? Veradin?” asked Smock.

  Veradin. She clutched at the name. Tasted it, desperate for a clue, a spark, something. Nothing. She looked at Amos to judge his reaction.

  “Someone must have broken up the set,” Amos said. “Still, you have her. Just give me what’s due. Passage off this hunk of rock.”

  “Now why would I do that, skew-freak?” Koenii asked.

  “Because we had a deal.” Amos’s trembling voice drove up an octave. Under different circumstances, it would be satisfying to see him twist.

  “Occurs to me that intel on the whereabouts of Ephid’s pretty-dressing little bitch-boy would fetch a handy price,” Smock said.

  “Honey, I’m lots of things, but a bitch-boy, I’m not.” Amos planted his hands on his hips.

  Tyron took another quick assessment. The position of the armed men and the heavy nature of the door would make escape improbable. With no weapon, she might as well be naked. The only saving grace (although she was reluctant to call it that) was that the intent of her new captors was to keep her temporarily alive for some hellish retribution of which they judged her deserving.

  Sweet Amos was not an advantage here. He lacked any discernible combat skills. And judging from his demeanor, he was likely to break down into panic at any moment. He’d become a drowning man and would take her down in the process.

  Koenii made a vague motion. From the opposite corners at Sela’s back, the two men approached. The one on the left had a withered arm, folded against his chest like a bird with an injured wing. His other hand held a sawed-off scattergun. Not known for accuracy, but lethal at such close range. Three steps closer now. The one on the right seemed as scrawny as the rest but held the rifle. The charge light was amber, winking uncertainly like a dying star.

  They were on her now: the rifleman placing a hand on her shoulder, the scattergun now pressed against her flank.

  “Just a minute!” Amos threw his carefully manicured hands up. “We had a—”

  His head disappeared in a blossom of blue synthetic hair and blood. Warmth spattered Tyron’s cheek. The noise was like a bottled thunderclap in the confined space. Tyron stepped back, turning at the waist. Used her left hand to snap the scattergun down. It folded at the breech, allowing the spent shells to pop free and roll to the floor. She twisted it from the surprised man’s hand, slamming the butt up in a vicious jaw-cracking arc. She ducked; the shot from the plasma rifle missed her by inches. There was a guttural cry from another corner of the room as it found its mark. Steeling against the spike of pain in her healing leg, she lashed out with a kick to the rifleman’s sternum. He collided with the man controlling the door, the look on both their faces more surprised than menacing. They landed together in a heap. She snatched up the discarded rifle, drawing sights up on Koenii as she fell to one knee. It was the song of carefully honed reflex that traveled through her limbs and commanded each move with a delicious precision.

  Koenii was drenched in blood that was not his. Smock had taken the stray round to the neck, falling aside to land on his boss, partially trapping him against his chair. Koenii grunted, a panicked animal sound, his remaining eye wide and darting in his face. Deciding he was not going anywhere soon, she swung the rifle around to check the rest of the room. Rifleman lay on his side, clutching his injured ribs. The doorman appeared out cold. She cleared the space, claiming the pulse gun from the doorman, and delivered another kick to Rifleman’s head. Satisfied they were all disabled, she stalked back to Koenii.

  He’d drawn a knife from the folds of his clothes. She trained the rifle’s sight on him. He dropped the knife, hands upraised.

  “Talk.”

  He wheezed. “’Bout what? How you poisoned my boys against me? You and all your high and mighty Volunteer stories. That muck about Decca.”

  “You know me,” she said. “Who’s the crester you were talking about?”

  The mouth pulled into a weird shape that she realized was a smile. His chuckle was wet and ugly, but he said nothing.

  “You said a name: Veradin.” She leveled the rifle on him. “Who is he?”

  He canted his head, the remaining eye appraising her face, settling on the healing wound on her left temple.

  “Poisoncry tech.” Koenii tsked with false sympathy. “Good luck with that, girl.”

  She primed the next round. He flinched. She watched him wordlessly, aware of the groaning and shifting of the men that had collided in the doorway. They were far from fully incapacitated. Using the muzzle of the rifle, she rolled the henchman’s body out of the way, freeing Koenii.

  She jerked the rifle, directing him to the blast door. “Open it.”

  He was slow to move, his left side a withered mass of scars. He leaned heavily against the overseer’s console until they reached the keylock set into the door’s frame. “Open it!” Koenii’s good hand trembled over the keypad. An angry beep sounded. Wrong sequence. He restarted and, what felt like an eternity later, the door rumbled open on its rickety track.

  On the opposite side stood the red-haired girl from the street, surrounded by a sea of what Tyron could only term children. Perhaps eight in total, the oldest clearly the girl, who took up some sort of point position. They were shabbily dressed and covered in grime. All were armed: heavy spanners, lengths of chain-wrapped pipe; two had spears that might have been museum pieces. The girl held a heavy plasma rifle that probably weighed half as much as she did, judging from her stance.

  “Tyron.” The girl pulled herself up, puffing her chest out. “We’re here to rescue you.”

  Koenii made choking, scoffing sound as if he’d just made an unpleasant but confusing discovery. He took a step back, colliding with Tyron. She shoved him off her. He fell to his knees to look up into the spear points lofted by two boys and held his hands up in a half-hearted surrender. He, like Tyron, was likely tr
ying to judge how deeply that hard look in their young faces went. How much of a danger were they?

  “Rescue me?” she said, raising an eyebrow in assessment. There must be some adult with them. Some minder that functioned as their kennel master. She stepped into the hall. No one else was in the narrow stairwell. She looked back at the motley cluster. “You?”

  Under her attention, they pulled themselves up like cadets under inspection. Their postures were imperfect, but a good approximation at attention. There was an eagerness in their expressions that bordered on worship.

  “Bix weren’t lying.” A boy of perhaps ten or eleven with the thin frame and bearing of a Fleet tech looked Tyron over, astonishment plain in his face. “Really is a Volunteer.”

  “’Course I ain’t lyin’,” the red-haired girl said. She was likely in her late teens, but compared to the others she was adult sized, a giant. She lowered the rifle and stepped up, a grin decorating her grime-coated face. “She’s come back.”

  “What about this one?” one of the boys asked, prodding Koenii in his sternum with a spear.

  “Let’s show ’em not to muck with Tyron!” The bellow came from a slender boy with white-blonde hair. The face was angelic, but his tone nothing of the sort. “Teach him good.”

  This was met with hoots of agreement. Tyron rubbed a hand over her face, blew out a weary breath. “No one’s mucking with anyone.” She pushed the spear-bearers back and stood in front of the kneeling Koenii.

  She jerked her chin at the door panel to her right. “Nice door. Magnetic dead-seal, isn’t it? Used to put these on heavy-gunner ships for munitions storage. Once they seal, you can’t open them without a functional interface. Can’t even cut through them.”

  Koenii nodded stiffly, his remaining eye dancing between her and the children at her back. “Yes,” he stammered, plainly confused. “Cost me a pretty piece—”

  “Don’t care,” she said, reaching for the door’s handhold. She planted a kick to his sternum. It was just enough force to sending him sprawling back into the chamber. With her free hand, she ushered the gaggle of children to back into the stairwell.

  Tyron tugged the door. Momentum took over, and door glided on its wheels. Realization hit Koenii. He lunged up clumsily at the narrowing doorway. Too late, it thudded closed in his face.

  Tyron snatched one of the heavy spanners from the girl on her left, ignoring the child’s bark of protest. It took three heavy strikes to the keylock interface before it crumpled to the dirt floor in a shower of sparks.

  Muffled howls of anger sounded from Koenii’s side.

  She handed the spanner back to a now awestruck girl. They were all watching her with refreshed intensity.

  The hair on the back of Tyron’s neck stood on end. Their ardent stares made her want to twitch. She sidestepped, lofting the rifle as she wove through the cluster of small bodies. She gained the first step. The children rustled in her wake.

  She turned. “What.”

  “But we come for you, Commander.” It was desperate, plaintive.

  Commander? When did I become a commander?

  “There’s some mistake.” Watching their expectant faces, she uttered words that somehow felt like a lie. “I have to get back to my unit.”

  This evoked a sea of whispers. Some of them repeated the word unit, emulating her accent. The looked at each other, then back to Bix, their presumed leader. There was a wisdom to the girl that spoke of a hardscrabble life, difficult lessons learned. She eyed Sela up and down.

  “Won’t last long up there.” She pointed with her chin at the surface. “Not with no help. You needin’ clothes, hard rations, a place to bunk. We got all that, if’n you stay.”

  Tyron assessed her own bare feet, the paper clothes. The children seemed well fed. Despite the dirt and worn-out clothes, they were by far better suited for the external environment than she at the moment. She exhaled, hating to acknowledge that the girl had a point.

  Then she shouldered the rifle. “Fine. Lead on.”

  Sixty-Five

  The Golden Crane was a troop transport nearly a quarter the size of the Storm King. It was the first ship he’d been on in years that was not a cast-off or reconditioned monstrosity. To Jon, it seemed cramped, and the layout made little sense—surprising for a guild renowned in the Reaches for their ship-building skills. And after a very brief introduction to the XO, Jon knew that nothing by way of an orientation was about to happen. Considering he did not have a good exterior view of the vessel before it left Nirro for Hadelia, he had a hard time remembering where the levels met. He often found himself stepping off the level-risers at the wrong corridors, earning more narrow stares from the few crew and officers that bothered to notice him. Hunger had driven him from hiding in the modest closet they’d given him for a bunkroom.

  The commissary was communal, and the crew’s comportment was rigid, nearly funereal, with none of the competing voices and casual postures that he would have expected for such a place. He’d come late in the sleep cycle, hoping to find it relatively deserted. No such luck. He took one step inside the space and felt all eyes on him from the few dozen souls inhabiting it at this hour. There was a lull in the ambient mutter of conversation. Even if they were far too polite to get caught staring, he could feel it all the same. In an atavistic flourish, the officers segregated against the far wall all seemed to have their own personal valets, clad in Ironvale house colors, moving between the tables.

  This is ridiculous. Just go eat.

  It was something Sela would say. He scoffed at himself and settled into a chair at a deserted table near the door. Two servers swished by without so much as looking in his direction.

  “We don’t get too many non-guildsworn officers. You’re something of a novelty.”

  Jon looked up just as a thick-bodied woman stood over him. The roundness of her features made her look too young to have the rank indicated on her collar, but there was a presence to her that suggested she was used to a certain amount of leverage, respect. Then he spotted the house sigil affixed over the sleeve of her fatigues: Hirano.

  “Am I?” Jon replied with a shrug.

  He did not think his outright exclusion by the Ironvale personnel onboard would bother him as much as it had. After all, this was temporary. Something to be tolerated until he reached Hadelia. But it did bother him. Part of him missed the basic comradery, even if a great many of the officers he’d befriended on the Storm King were self-absorbed glory whores. It was another living soul to talk to, at least.

  “Sergeant Dai Hirano.” The woman—a gunnery sergeant, if he interpreted her insignia correctly—performed a casual bow and slid onto the bench opposite him.

  Jon imitated her gesture. “Jonvenlish Veradin.” Then, as an afterthought, he added the generic and puzzling title he’d been given with his contract. “Special Information Officer.”

  Like a tour of the ship, no one had bothered with an explanation. So far, he got the impression that his rank was hollow, with no real gravitas. It suited him just fine.

  “I know.” She grinned. It seemed genuine. Dai possessed an air of avidness that made him think of a rapt student. It belied the careful casualness she was trying to project.

  “Half of the rumors say you’re a Poisoncry spy.” She leaned forward, planting her elbows on the table. It was a move that flew in the face of the rigid manners on display in the surrounding tables.

  “And the other half?” Jon asked, with a look around the room. The activity of the other diners seemed to return to normal, but he still got the sense of eyes on him. This was prime entertainment and fodder for gossip.

  Dai smirked. “They say you’re a former Regime captain from Origin. That your sister is under the protection of my grandfather. And that you specifically petitioned to be allowed to join our mission to Hadelia.”

  “Half of that is right,” Jon replied. “I’d make a horrible spy.”

  She chortled at this. Then she caught sight of someone in the room b
ehind Jon’s back and waved them down. A gold-clad server appeared to take her order and, graciously, Jon’s as well when Dai pointed out that Jon was a guest of Hirano and should have been served. The young man darted away with an air of embarrassment and exasperation. Before long, the table was piled with steaming bowls of sprout noodles, protein cakes and a platter of steamed greens Jon did not recognize.

  “So, Special Information Officer Veradin. Why Hadelia?” she asked, leaning over her bowl. “It’s an armpit. You could be back in my grandfather’s villa, suckling at the teat of Ironvale’s elite with the rest of those muckers.”

  “I know.” Jon slurped his noodles. “I’ve been to Hadelia before. Could ask the same of you.” He pointed at her with his utensil. “This seems like muck work for a lady of your station.”

  She raised an eyebrow at the word lady. “I asked to go. Grandfather would have scythe cats if he knew.” She shrugged as if defiance of the head of one’s house and government were a trivial matter. He imagined it was something that she did often, this defiance. After all, a person of her station was unlikely to been relegated to something like the rank of gunnery sergeant, unless it was by choice. “And I notice you didn’t answer my question.”

  Jon reached for one of the cakes and pulled it apart, if just for something to do, to stall. He regarded Dai’s gaze. There was an eagerness there. An energy that he remembered, a thirst. The same thirst for adventure and excitement that had drawn him off Argo and destroyed Uncle. All the while he’d told himself it was to regain the glory of his Kindred, revoke the dishonor. But it was more selfish than that. That’s what he saw in Dai.

  “What if I said I’m looking for someone?” Jon said, holding her gaze as he chewed. “And that a ghost told me to go there to find her?”