And yet, all too obviously, it was. Because the Xerans were doing it.
Blocking another flashing knife attack from Marcin, Galar felt his blood turn to ice. Unless he did something now, he and his agents were headed right for slaughter.
Black sparks flashed in front of Jess’s eyes as she fought to draw in a breath. She grabbed the Marcin-bot’s thick wrist in both hands, trying to relieve the vicious pressure on her throat. “Let go . . . of . . . me!”
Red eyes didn’t even flicker. “No.”
“Stop it!” She swung a desperate foot at the thing’s belly, but it didn’t even flinch.
“No.”
If this was some kind of test, it felt entirely too damned real. Her head was swimming, her vision graying around the edges. “What the hell . . . are you trying to do?”
“I am killing you.” Its voice was utterly calm.
It had lifted her until her toes no longer touched the ground. She raised both legs and slammed them into the bot’s chest with every ounce of her failing strength, but its grip didn’t loosen.
Fuck, Jess realized blearily, it’s Marcin. He must have programmed it to kill me! Sucking in a desperate breath, she wheezed, “Outpost! Help! Help . . . me!”
There was no response. No sirens, no sound of feet running to the rescue, no nothing.
Something was wrong. Oh, holy God, she thought, staring with bulging eyes into the Marcin-bot’s merciless face. He got to the main computer too. The Outpost has been hacked. And I’m screwed.
Had Dyami even asked for Wulf at all, or was that just a diversion to draw her big protector away?
Jess tried to kick the combot again, but she couldn’t even lift her legs. Weak. Too damned weak.
The black spots dancing before her eyes were getting thicker, the light dimmer. She could no longer even see the combot’s face, could barely even feel the thick fingers squeezing tighter and tighter around her neck. Choking her so brutally, so slowly, spinning out her suffering instead of just snapping her neck.
An image suddenly bloomed before her eyes. Galar, splattered with blood, fighting Marcin, their blades ringing against each other. His eyes burned with riaat—and something else: a black and awful grief.
Even as he struggled with the big battleborg, another Xeran charged him from behind, lifting a sword that chimed like a silver bell.
The cowardly fuck was going to kill Galar.
Even half-suffocated as she was, a wave of fury rose in Jess, cutting through the ice of approaching death. “No,” she wheezed. “Dammit . . . no!”
12
Even as Jessica’s body went limp in the Marcin-bot’s grip, the bubble of heat and rage expanded in her chest, burning hotter, brighter. Building into a flare of energy that exploded out of her in a single searing flash.
The hand around her neck simply disappeared.
Jessica hit the ground on her back. The fingers clamped around her throat were gone, but her chest felt frozen, muscles paralyzed. Her grayed vision began to go completely black.
Suffocating . . .
Abruptly her diaphragm spasmed into action, and she sucked in a breath of blessedly cool air. Rolling onto her side, she gagged weakly and concentrated on dragging air in and out of her abused, burning throat.
Where the fuck was the combot? It seemed to have disappea—
No, wait, she thought foggily. Is that a hand? Struggling to focus her eyes, she saw there was indeed an arm lying on the floor inches from her nose. Looking around, she saw— thank you, God—no blood. However, some kind of oily blue substance covered the walls, the floor, and Jess herself, and there were several . . . parts lying here and there. Some of which looked entirely too human.
The door slid open. “What the Seven Hells?”
Jess looked up to find Wulf rushing across the room toward her, an expression of horrified amazement on his broad, handsome face. “About time you got here,” she told him, and vomited on his boots.
The bastards had murdered Jiri and Ando.
No, Galar thought, parrying Marcin’s strike at his head. He’d gotten them killed. He’d prepared for everything but swords that could slice through combat armor like a cleaver through a boiled egg.
And if he didn’t pull his head out of his ass now, he was going to lose the rest of his team too. Even as he drove a riaat-propelled fist into Marcin’s face, his sensors reported the desperate battle going on around him.
Bear Eso, Peter Brannon, Ivar, Dona, Riane, and Frieka were trying to fight off five Xerans armed with those impossible blades. One of the swordsmen plunged at Bear, who instinctively tried to parry with his big Bowie-like blade.
The sword cut the knife in two. Only Bear’s instinctive backward jerk saved his hand from being sliced off at the wrist. The big man retreated just short of a run as the swordsman stalked him.
“You’ve lost,” Marcin hissed to Galar, his vicious grin bright. “I’m going to take your head and win a place in the cohort! And the skulls of all your precious Enforcers will decorate our trophy cabinets. . . .”
“You haven’t won yet, you bastard,” Galar snarled, ducking the kick the other aimed at his chest.
Attack from behind! his comp shrilled. A sensor image flashed through his brain—one of the Xer swordsmen, pivoting suddenly away from Riane and Frieka, bringing his sword around in a hard diagonal slash aimed right at Galar’s back.
Galar dropped to one knee. Blood spurted across his visor. He looked up.
Marcin stared down at his own torso, an expression of stunned horror visible on his face. The Xeran’s blade was lodged in his right hip. It had entered through his left shoulder.
He toppled. In two separate pieces.
Galar snarled, uncoiling from his kneeling position, driving his blade straight up at the man who’d tried to stab him from behind. It pierced the underside of the Xeran’s jaw in the one place not protected by helmet and body armor. The swordsman made a gurgling noise as the knife pierced his brain.
Galar wheeled as his second opponent toppled. He grabbed the sword from the man’s hand before it even hit the ground.
“Seven Hells,” Frieka gasped. “Remind me not to piss you off.”
“Out of the way!” Galar growled, and charged between the wolf and Riane.
Bear Eso was backpedaling from the flashing blade of a short, muscular Xeran grimly intent on killing him. Galar stepped between them and parried. The two swords chimed together like bells, an oddly pure sound.
Retrieve our dead and prepare to jump, he sent over the command com channel that linked the Enforcers’ comps. I’m not leaving these bastards any trophies.
“Get your hands off that sword!” the Xeran snarled, outrage in his voice. “You’re not worthy to touch it!” He lunged.
This time, Galar’s parry was a fraction too slow. Though it knocked the Xeran’s sword off-line, the big blade still slid right through Galar’s right hip. He felt it grate on bone.
Bear Eso’s big hand closed around his shoulder and jerked him back. His stolen sword fell from his hand. The Xeran swooped after it.
Galar reeled away. They had to jump. Now. Before they lost anybody else. He spotted something round and dark and snatched it up.
Jiri’s helmet. Which wasn’t empty. Teeth clenched against the pain, he looked around. Peter Brannon had Ando Cadell’s body in a fireman’s carry, while Ivar cradled the rest of Jiri. Riane, Frieka, and Dona were covering their retreat.
“Jump!” Galar bellowed, and hit the button on his belt.
Grimly, he limped into the infirmary after the two body tubes and three regenerators. Eso had taken an ugly gut wound, and one of the Xerans’ blades had caught Dona in the chest, narrowly missing her heart.
Galar still cradled Jiri’s helmeted head in his hands, though he could have put it into the body tube with the rest of her. Her death was his responsibility, after all. He’d failed her. Failed all of them. It had been his duty to lead them safely, but the Xerans had outmaneuvered him
. His culpability scoured his consciousness with a pain that dwarfed the sword wound in his hip.
“Galar.” Chogan met them in the doorway of the ward. Compassion gleamed in her eyes as she held out her hands. “Give her to me, Master Enforcer. I’ll take care of her.”
Feeling numb, he handed her the helmeted head. She took it tenderly and carried it after the float tubes.
He looked down at his own body. He was covered in blood—Jiri’s, Ando’s, his own, Marcin’s, and probably that of the Xeran he’d killed.
He did wish he could have held on to that damn sword long enough to get it analyzed and reverse engineered. Which was no doubt why the Xeran had been so intent on getting it away from him.
Galar rubbed his aching, bloody side. He should probably clean off all this gore. Before or after he gave Dyami his report?
“Galar?” He turned to meet Dyami’s appalled gaze as the big Warlord stepped through the ward’s double doors. “What the hell happened, Master Enforcer?”
“I underestimated them,” Galar told him baldly. “They had some kind of new sword that sliced right through body armor.” He shook his head in weary defeat. “There were only five of them, plus Marcin, but we couldn’t do anything against those swords. We lost Jiri and Ando Cadell. Dona and Eso are in regen, but my comp says they’re not badly hurt.”
Dyami studied him in the penetrating way Galar associated with a sensor scan. “Why in the hell aren’t you in regen with them?”
“I’m not that bad.”
“The hell you’re not.” Dyami grabbed him by the shoulder and steered him into the ward. “I need a regen tube here!”
Galar gritted his teeth as an unwary step sent pain lancing through him. “I need to finish making my report.”
“Report later. Regen now.” Dyami’s tone did not brook argument.
“Galar!” Jessica burst through the wall of one of the ward’s privacy bubbles. Her expression turned to outright terror as she registered the blood glistening on his armored body. “You’re hurt!”
“It’s not as bad as it looks.”
“Yeah, right,” Dyami growled. “Medtech!”
Galar ignored him, frowning as a question surfaced in his bleary mind. “What are you doing in the infirmary, Jess?”
“She damned near got killed by that fucking combot, that’s what.” Wulf stepped from the privacy bubble after her. “She just got out of regen. Jess, go lie down. Chogan hasn’t finished the scans.”
“Scans?” Galar pulled away from the medtech who was trying to hustle him toward the regenerator she’d just guided over. “For what?”
“Double-checking some odd readings.” Wulf frowned, his gaze shifting uneasily toward Jessica. “I’ll explain later.”
Jess ignored him, instead moving closer to Galar as she examined him anxiously. “You’re pale as milk. Where are you hit? You’re covered in so much blood. . . .”
He started to touch her shoulder, then hesitated as he registered the darkening crimson covering his fingers. He dropped his hand. “Most of it isn’t mine.”
“Too much of it is,” the medtech said, a frown on her pretty face. “Get in the regenerator please, Master Enforcer. ”
“Go on, Galar.” Jess caught his upper arm, ignoring the blood that coated it as she turned him toward the tube. “I’m worried about you.”
Even as weary and dispirited as he was, he felt warmed at the concern he could see in her eyes. He managed a smile for her as the medtech popped the tube lid. “All right.”
Jess rose on her toes and pressed a warm kiss to his bloody cheek. “Thank you.”
As he pivoted painfully to climb into the tube, his gaze caught Dyami’s face. Galar frowned, registering the unease in the big man’s eyes as he watched Jessica.
What had Jess done to worry Dyami?
Jess lay on the privacy bubble’s bed, staring glumly at the ceiling. She badly wanted to get up and find Galar to make sure he was okay, but she knew Wulf had no intention of letting her leave.
“Is he still in regen?” she asked abruptly. And if he is, what does that say about how badly he’s hurt?
“No, he’s out,” Wulf said tonelessly. He was watching her with an intensity that made her feel more than a little uneasy. He’d said he was staying with her to protect against another murder attempt. Given what had happened with the combot, she certainly couldn’t argue with that. So why did she have the chilling feeling he was acting less like a bodyguard and more like a prison guard?
“How are the other agents?” She bounced her foot restlessly.
“Why do you want to know?”
Jess lifted her head to stare at him, startled by his suspicious tone. “Because they got hurt trying to make sure I wouldn’t get killed. Some of them gave their lives trying to make sure I wouldn’t get killed. Why would you think I wouldn’t care?”
“I definitely agree you should.” But his skeptical gaze seemed to suggest that he doubted she did.
Stung, she sat up and swung her legs over the side of the bed to glare at him. “What’s your problem? Or have you forgotten I almost died in that gym?” While you were off chasing wild geese.
As Jess had suspected, whoever hacked the combot had faked the call from Dyami to draw Wulf away.
She frowned. Wulf had seemed so apologetic and worried when he’d found her after the attack. Yet his manner had grown steadily more chill since then. Why? What was going on that she didn’t know about? Did it have anything to do with all the medical scans Chogan had been conducting?
“What did happen in that gym, Jessica?” His eyes were cool, watchful.
She gave serious thought to throwing the bedside vendser at him. “Exactly what I said happened. Exactly what the recording says happened. You saw the trid, Wulf. That combot came within two seconds of crushing my windpipe.”
“Until you used some kind of mental powers to blow it apart.”
Jess ground her teeth at the skepticism in his voice. “Well, something sure as hell blew it up.”
“Yeah, something did.”
“You saying I’m lying?”
“Are you?” The voice was deep, velvety, and devastating.
Jess turned as Galar stepped into the bubble. He’d cleaned the blood off, and he looked fit and handsome in his dark blue uniform. She gave him a sunny smile, too relieved to worry about his odd question. “You look as if you’re feeling better.”
“Somewhat.”
Jess frowned, a chill sliding over her. He was studying her with the same wary expression Wulf was. As if she were a stranger, as if they’d never touched, never kissed, never made such sweet, overwhelming love.
Chief Enforcer Dyami entered behind him, just as narrow-eyed and skeptical.
Jessica’s heart began to pound, her stomach lacing itself into an icy knot. “What’s going on?”
“Did you think we wouldn’t notice?” Galar’s tone was emotionless, but hell burned in his eyes. They were literally glowing, a coal-red shimmer threading across his irises.
“Notice what? What the fuck is going on? I’m the one who almost died!”
“Jiri and Cadell did die.” The red blazed even brighter as his icy expression cracked into a snarl of fury. “What did you tell the Xerans, Jess?”
Jess blinked at him. “Tell the . . . ? The Xerans are trying to kill me! Why would I talk to them? Hell, how would I talk to them?”
“That is the question.” Dyami lifted a dark brow. “You don’t have a communication implant, and no courier ’bots have come to you. You haven’t used the com unit that we’ve been able to determine, and we’ve got trids of every move you’ve made since you arrived.”
“You’ve had me under surveillance?” She stared at him in shocked outrage.
“Actually, no. The Outpost records everything that goes on here, though we usually can’t access that information without a legal reason.”
“So why did it do nothing when that combot was strangling the life out of me?” She
knotted her hands into fists. “I screamed for help, dammit!”
“I know.” His expression didn’t change. “We discovered the hacker altered the Outpost’s programming to keep it from sending agents to your rescue.”
“Are you suggesting I hacked it? Some kind of elaborate suicide attempt, perhaps?” She curled her lip at him in sarcastic fury.
“Or,” Galar said distantly, “some kind of attempt to make us believe you’re a helpless target of assassins.”
Jess fisted both hands in her hair and pulled in sheer frustration. “Why in the hell do you think that? I’m from the twenty-first century, dammit. I wouldn’t know how to hack a computer in my own time, much less in this one!” She pointed a shaking hand at the bedside console. “I barely know how to program that vendser!”
“No? Yet you’ve got Xeran genetic material in your cells. Particularly your brain.” Galar walked over to a sensor console at the foot of Jess’s bed and waved a hand over the device. A trid image of a human brain appeared, rotating slowly. “This is the first scan Chogan did of you right after you arrived. Everything is just what we’d expect in a twenty-first-century human.” He gestured again, and a second image appeared beside the first, showing a sprawling area of bright blue in the frontal cortex. “This is the scan Chogan just made.” He pointed at the blue area. “Neurons in this part of the brain show signs of profound mutation, with an accompanying explosion in synaptic growth—new connections between the cells.”
Jessica stared at the scan, her stomach going icy. “Is it . . . cancer?”
Galar’s blond brows lifted. “Cancer?”
She licked suddenly dry lips and managed a nod. “That looks like something that could kill me.”
His expression seemed to soften for a moment before it hardened again. “It’s not cancer, Jess. And even if it was, it probably wouldn’t kill you. Cancer is rarely fatal in the twenty-third century. Not as long as it’s detected in time, anyway.”
She breathed out, slumping. “Oh, man. Good.” Then she frowned. “So if it’s not some kind of cancer, what is it?”
“Chogan believes it has something to do with the Xeran DNA in the mutated cells.”
Warrior Page 17
