by Kate Rudolph
“The Detyen Legion,” both Brax and Doryan said at the same time. They shared a look before turning their gazes to her in eerie unison. And then Doryan looked back at Brax.
“You are not with the Legion. You’re no soldier.” From someone else it might have been an accusation, but there wasn’t enough emotion in Doryan’s words for it to be anything other than a fact.
“As fascinating as this all is, we need to move.” A plan was forming in Vita’s mind and there weren’t many other options. The girl was half-feral and would probably run at the first opportunity, especially if Vita gave her a weapon. But Doryan seemed steady enough. Maybe she could trust the girl to stay with him. “We’ve come to take out the data stores of the man who bought you. Will you help us?”
“We’re not just getting out of here?” Manda demanded.
She could save two people, but it would be at the cost of dozens, hundreds, maybe thousands more if they didn’t finish this mission. “In fifteen minutes we’ll be on our way off the planet,” Vita promised. “I’ve got a ship that will hold us all. No one will ever own you again.”
She pulled her spare blaster out of her holster and handed it over to Doryan. “Are you with us?”
The Detyen took the blaster with a nod. “Yes.”
Chapter Seventeen
IF BRAX HAD BEEN NERVOUS before, it was nothing compared to the feeling of the four of them stalking through the building on a search for their target. He didn’t trust Doryan, he couldn’t. He’d heard plenty of stories about the soulless, even if he’d thought they were only legends at first, tales of monsters told to scare children. Men and women willing to sacrifice their emotions and their hearts to cling to a few more years and avoid the Denya Price. Deke had brought stories back from his meetings, telling Brax, Shayn, and Naomi that the rumors were true. The Detyen Legion had created soulless warriors in their desperate attempt to hunt down the people who had destroyed Detya.
And those soulless couldn’t be trusted. Something went wrong with them and sometimes they got violent, brutal. They had to be put down.
The Legion confirmed nothing, but the whisper network was as loud as a shout among the people who wanted to know, and Deke had been determined to find out everything he could about their people. What Deke knew, Brax knew. And if they weren’t in such dire need of the help, he would have told Vita they should have just left Doryan, or maybe untied him and told him to get on his way. Even if he was a monster he didn’t deserve to be enslaved.
The device Ygreen had given him weighed heavy in his pocket, and he hoped they found the data room soon.
His wish was granted.
The place had been practically barren, with only a few people moving around and none of them paying any attention, but suddenly they turned a corner and were swarmed. Three guards began yelling, pointing blasters and demanding that they get down on their knees and surrender.
Doryan lifted his weapon and took each of them down with three shots, all to the eyes, leaving blistering holes and corpses behind. Blasters weren’t supposed to be deadly, but a soldier would know how to use them in the most effective way, and a soulless would think nothing of taking three lives in a blink.
But Doryan’s cold efficiency was nothing to Manda’s rage. She pushed past them and stood over one of the fallen guards and pulled her leg back before giving his body a kick hard enough to roll him a few centimeters to the side. She kept kicking and cursing, tears trailing down her eyes until Doryan stepped up and put a hand on her shoulder. He looked over at them, his face still completely blank. “This one was particularly harsh.”
Brax shivered. He didn’t need details to know that horrors had been done to these two, and perhaps he would reserve judgment when Doryan meted out punishment.
“Move,” Vita commanded. “And drag them out of sight. We don’t want to invite company.”
The bodies were heavier than Brax expected, but they got them hidden behind the security desk in a few minutes. Were there more where they came from? Probably. But there was no way to know. If he and Vita had time to scout, maybe they wouldn’t be running blind. But it would come at the sacrifice of Manda and Doryan, and Vita wouldn’t be able to live with herself if she damned two people to slavery when she could have saved them. Not that Brax would feel any better.
The lock on the door wasn’t much of an issue once Vita kicked it in, and then they were in the server room. It should have been more impressive. Brax expected rows and rows of blinking lights and wires, a maze of data springing from box to box. Instead there was a terminal and several long, dark cabinets that must have been where the backups were stored.
Now it was his time to get to work.
“Cover the door,” he heard Vita tell Doryan, but he was already turning his mind to the task at hand.
He had no special knowledge when it came to computers, but a wire was a wire, and from Ygreen’s instructions, once Brax managed to get physical access to the hard drive, the device would do the rest of the work.
The problem was getting to the hard drive. Roski’s system didn’t have any convenient ports or plugs. It was a standard security feature to try and prevent exactly what he was trying to do. But Brax had tools and steady hands. He removed the cover on the terminal and exposed the wires he’d been expecting. They were all black and ran from unlabeled plug to unlabeled plug. If he didn’t patch into the right one, this whole thing would be useless.
So Brax got to stripping the wires and testing them against the device that Ygreen had given them.
He distantly heard a commotion but pushed it out of his mind. Vita and Doryan would handle it. He was too busy to distrust the warrior for the moment.
Ygreen’s device beeped when it came into contact with one of the wires and Brax let out a breath. One step closer to hacking in.
And this time he did hear the blaster shot.
“Incoming,” Doryan called from the entrance.
Vita’s arm landed on his shoulder and she squeezed. “Get this done, and if we get separated, we meet back at the ship. Got it?”
They hadn’t talked about splitting up, but now there was no time to argue. Brax nodded and didn’t even look to see his denya go. If he lost his concentration for a minute he was going to have to start all over and they didn’t have time for that.
Splicing the wires made him feel like he was back on Honora Station, and he tried to pretend that what he was hearing in the background were just the standard sounds that a person heard on a space station, but it was hard to pretend when blasters made such distinctive noises and burned flesh assaulted his nose.
The light on Ygreen’s device turned blue and that meant he was in.
Seven minutes.
Brax finally took a breath and checked the time on his watch. It had taken more than four minutes to break into the system, and the tech team responsible for monitoring Roski’s data had to be aware that something was wrong. But as long as they didn’t get to the data store, they wouldn’t be able to stop the destruction.
Vita rushed back in to check on him and a bright swath of her red hair had fallen in her face. She swiped it back behind her ear and left a smudge of dirt along her cheek. When she got close, Brax reached up and wiped it away. He wanted to kiss her, but the clock was ticking and he could still hear sounds of a struggle in the distance.
“Where are we?” she asked.
“Six and a half minutes to go.” Every second dragged by and time seemed to slow.
Vita cursed, but she didn’t tell him to hurry up; there wasn’t anything he could do now but wait.
“Doryan took out two more guards, but backup has to be on the way. And we suspect they’ve locked down the building. Local law enforcement is probably on the way. We won’t be able to go out the front door.” And escape plans hadn’t really been discussed. If they survived today, they were going to have to discuss their heist planning procedures.
“We’ve got six minutes to figure that out,” he said. And this time he did kiss her,
sinking all of his emotion into it. He wanted to tell her he loved her, that they had their whole lives to look forward to, but it felt like an admission that they weren’t making it out. And Brax was making it out with his denya at his side. He hadn’t found her only to lose her in a handful of days.
“Vita!” Manda called from the door.
Vita touched her forehead to his and backed away. “Tell me when you’re done.”
Brax watched his mate walk away and then checked his watch again. Still more than five minutes to go.
IF VITA WERE RELYING on old-fashioned bullets, she would have run out a long time ago. One reason to be thankful for a blaster. But unless she could get the guards in the eyes, they would only be stunned or perhaps knocked unconscious. Blasters were designed to be non-lethal. They still hurt like a motherfucker, though, and she didn’t want to get hit.
Doryan laid down fire like he’d been born with a blaster in his hand. Behind them Manda was rocking back and forth behind the place she’d taken cover. Vita wanted to send her back to Brax, but she was afraid the girl would try to run away. She wasn’t going to tie her up, but it was still a little tempting to think about.
That was in the three seconds she had time to think about anything except returning fire.
But the blaster shots stopped and she let herself breathe for a moment. The place seemed to be spawning guards from every corner, and she wished she had some idea of how many they had to fight.
They hadn’t bought enough time. She’d set a timer and there were still minutes left. Minutes that felt like hours. She’d known the target Ygreen had given them would be hard to meet, but she hadn’t expected it to be this hard.
If it weren’t for Doryan, they’d probably be dead. She was a good shot, but there was only so much one person could do. And he was like some sort of machine designed to wreak havoc on their enemies. Was he a cyborg? Was that why he seemed so... broken? If they survived she was going to ask.
When.
She couldn’t think in ifs. Ifs got a person killed.
When they survived and were all crammed into her too small ship, then she’d ask.
There.
“How’s your power pack?” she asked. Blasters could fire thousands of shots, usually over the course of hours, before they needed to be recharged, but they could overheat under constant use.
“Within acceptable parameters,” Doryan responded.
Yeah, robot.
“You don’t happen to know an alternative escape route, do you?” He might have been tied up in the middle of the building, but he seemed just the kind of guy who was able to map a place while blindfolded or unconscious.
“We cannot leave on foot,” he said.
“No shit.” They’d be cut down the second they opened the door.
“We were brought in through the back,” Manda piped up. “There was a long hallway that led us inside. We barely saw the sky.”
“A dock? Directly into the building?” Made sense. No one wanted to give prisoners or slaves an extra chance to escape.
Manda nodded.
“What are the chances there’s a vehicle docked now?” Vita shook her head before anyone could answer. “Too slim to count on.”
“True,” Doryan agreed. “But it is our best hope at escape. There may be more vehicles in the lot out back, and if we distract our pursuers, it will buy us time.”
At the mention of time, Vita’s watch beeped. That was seven minutes. And, as if he’d been summoned, Brax popped his head carefully out the door. “It’s done. Are we running?”
“Not yet.” They needed a distraction. Something big enough that it would make the security forces pause. “Can you make a bomb?”
“A bomb?” Brax’s eyes shot up. “I fix things, not break them.”
“I can,” said Doryan, and somehow Vita wasn’t surprised.
“Here?” she asked. It would take care of anything that Ygreen’s program had missed, and they couldn’t afford to move around more.
Doryan glanced at his blaster and seemed to consider something before nodding. “This will do. You three make for the exit. You’ll know when to make your break for it. When you see me, give me the cover I need and I’ll follow.”
Would he? There was something in his expression Vita couldn’t read, something else, other than his complete lack of emotion.
“No!” Manda threw herself at him, her voice pained. “You need to come with us!”
He blinked down at the girl and his eyes didn’t exactly soften, but Vita could almost read him in that moment, could almost believe he wasn’t a weird pseudo-robot. “This is not a suicide mission, little one. I will follow as best I can. But this gives you your best hope for survival.”
“What about you?” She clearly didn’t believe him, and there had to be more to the story. But they really didn’t have time.
“Trust me,” he said.
Manda sucked in a ragged breath. And then she turned to Vita and Brax. “Okay. Let’s go.”
Vita spared Doryan another look and tried to imbue confidence in her posture. It wasn’t simple. One man alone against countless guards didn’t have much of a chance, especially when the blast was going to bring them all coming his way. “We’ll wait as long as we can,” she said.
And he nodded, getting her meaning. They wouldn’t be waiting forever. “Go. I’ll find you.”
They went.
Manda led the way, as she was the only one who could remember the path. For someone who’d been tied up for days at least she had the energy to sprint, and Vita had to tell her to slow down. They had to be able to breathe when they got out. She had to be able to shoot.
The guards must have been regrouping, or they were all focusing on the data room and Doryan. It was a small blessing, and it only took them two minutes to get to the dock. As expected, it opened up into empty space, but the vehicles in the lot weren’t far. She didn’t dare stick her head out and give away their position, but she looked over their choice and immediately dismissed anything that wouldn’t comfortably fit four people. She had her doubts about Doryan making it back, but she wasn’t giving up on him until she had to.
Then she dismissed anything that looked like it couldn’t take a shot from a blaster.
That left them with a few options, and she settled on the vehicle closest to them. It was still a dozen or so meters away across open tarmac, and if there were snipers on the roof they were done for.
She pointed at their target. “When I say, head for there and don’t look back. Then take cover.”
Manda was grimly determined, but Brax looked ready to lose his nerve. He handled this all so well that it was difficult to remember at times that he wasn’t built for this life. He’d led a peaceful existence where he never had to think of blasters and slaves and death. But he’d come here for her. And she was going to make sure he got out of this. She kissed him quick. She hadn’t kissed him enough and they had to survive, if only so she could make up for the loss.
Her ears popped and then the building rocked around them.
“Go!” she yelled.
They went.
And Vita didn’t even feel the shot as the world faded around her and everything went black.
Chapter Eighteen
BRAX SKIDDED TO A HALT beside their target vehicle and made space for Manda to do the same.
Where was Vita?
A blast pounded through his chest, and for a moment he thought he’d been hit, but he was completely shielded. Unless there were shooters on the perimeter of the building. But as he sucked in a ragged breath, the pain dissipated. He clutched at the front of his shirt just to be sure, but everything was fine.
Where was Vita?
He would have stood straight up to look if Manda hadn’t latched onto his arm and kept him down. She looked at him like he was crazy for moving, but Brax didn’t have time to explain. His mate was supposed to be with them and she wasn’t. He took a breath and eased toward the side of the vehicle to g
et a better look. What he saw made bile rise in his throat, and he wished he’d actually been hit.
Because Vita had.
She lay on the black pavement, her red hair garish in the bright light of Jaaxis’ sun. For a terrible moment he thought she might be d—gone, but he could feel the bond just as strong as ever reaching from his soul to hers. She was hurt, but she was still there with him. He just had to get to her.
He wanted to run, but a glint of light on the roof caught his eye and he forced himself to move carefully. He couldn’t tell for certain if there was someone up high, but he was no use to his denya if he ended up shot too.
He darted between vehicles, trusting that Manda would stay in place long enough for him to grab Vita before they escaped. He could have used the soulless warrior at a time like this. Then again, there was no telling what Doryan would say they should do. Brax reached the final vehicle in the row and was only a few meters closer to Vita than he had been. But if he didn’t run for her now, she’d be stuck.
He heard a groan and almost laughed with relief as she twitched and then rolled to her side. The shot had taken her down, but she wasn’t out.
She opened her eyes and looked straight at him. Brax leaned forward, ready to move, but she shook her head slightly.
No? Did she really want him to hold? He tried to convey the question with a look, but she just shook her head again. And then he heard boots tromping out. He had to lean to the side to see the four security guards coming her way. Two carried a stretcher and the other two had wicked looking blasters that looked ready to kill.
He had a screwdriver and the determination to get to his mate.
He’d be dead in seconds if he went to her.
But how could he do anything but try?
Vita closed her eyes and went limp as the guards got close and Brax was ready to move anyway. Before he could stand up, hands clamped on his shoulder and claws nicked at his skin. “Move now and she’s dead,” Doryan said in his infuriatingly calm voice.
