Adamanta Complete Season 3 (Adamanta Seasons)

by T. Y. Carew

  He leaned in closer, his breath hot against her upper lip. Matt drew in a deep lungful of air and reached up to cup his cheeks, loving the rough feel of his skin under hers.

  “You love me?” Matt asked. It was little more than a whisper.

  Xander's lips pursed into a small, exhausted smile, and he dipped his head down towards hers. His lips were chapped and warm and soft against hers, and he was gentle, so gentle as her hands slid around the back of his head, pulling him tighter, loving him right back. When he broke contact, she breathed the words back to him, and they kissed again and again, need and want fighting vainly against the knowledge that this day was not done.

  When they pulled away, that same faint smile on his lips and a pleased one on hers, she held out her hand. “Whatever this is,” she said quietly, “we go together.”

  “Always,” he said.

  Matt's smile broke, and she started snickering. “Always?”

  Xander raised an eyebrow. “You're one to talk. We go together?”

  “Shush. It was romantic. You were just corny.”

  The base shuddered. Structural damage from a few bursts of laser fire wouldn't affect it much, but sustained fighting like they were doing must have put stress on the self-repairing walls. Matt glanced up as a pipe groaned. When her gaze fell back down, Xander squeezed her hand and let go. The humor gone, they walked towards the next door, both somehow knowing before they got there it would slide open of its own accord, welcoming them to whatever lay beyond.

  Chapter 7

  Everyone who served aboard the Exemplar in that room was injured or dead, and Beltine corpses littered the ground. This had been a Pyrrhic victory, but Xander wasn't entirely sure who the winner was. A few civilians and guardsmen from the Exemplar moaned or cried out for help, but there weren't many. A Kyraos crawled towards Matt, feebly reaching out for one last bit of violence before Xander ended it with a single shot from his pistol. Nearly out of extra clips, he drew an Adamanta knife and held it loosely on his other side.

  The room was unlike any other they'd been in so far. No machinery worked, no controls filled the room. There was a simple throne-like chair and a solitary flat surface in a corner that might have been a bed. Even the doors looked different, stronger and thicker. It was remarkable in its featurelessness even by Beltine standards.

  Against one wall, a big man sat upright. He bore a couple of wounds from the battle, but of anyone in the room, he seemed like the least injured. Xander started to rush for him, but a blood-spattered body in the middle of the room pushed herself onto her hands, staring at the Dairos in front of her. Her gaze rose up to Matt, and Xander swallowed hard. Cardew's face and jumpsuit were caked in blood, leaving her eyes and her teeth gleaming against the gore. She started giggling at Matt's approach, and Xander fought an urge to shoot her right there.

  “I know you,” Cardew said, and giggled harder.

  “We know you too, you—” Xander said.

  “She's been saying that ever since that thing attacked. The Anassos.” The big man sitting against the wall pushed himself to his feet using the barrel of his rifle to balance himself. He'd been gut-shot, but the wound didn't look too terrible. Winged, maybe. A hip wound looked marginally worse, but overall, this man had been either extraordinarily talented or lucky. Both, probably. “Never seen anything like it. It just stared at her, and bam, there went the lights.”

  Spittle fell from Cardew's mouth, and her head tilted forward. “I know you. I know you. I know you.”

  “Out of ammo. Give me a gun and I'll shut her up,” the big man said.

  “That's not happening,” Xander snapped. “She's our prisoner now and she'll see a trial for her actions here.”

  “Whatever,” the big man said, and started hobbling towards the exit. “I'm getting out of here before that thing comes back.”

  “We killed it,” Matt said, kneeling down to help Dr. Cardew to her feet. The doctor obliged without a struggle, and Matt tied her hands behind her back. “Few rooms back the way we came.”

  The man whirled as fast as he could on his makeshift crutch. “Wait, what do you mean, back the way you came? How long ago?”

  With a sinking feeling in his gut, Xander said, “Maybe... forty minutes? Big one, had a missing arm?”

  “Oh no. No, no, no,” the big man muttered. He turned back towards the exit and hobbled faster.

  Xander started after him. “Hey, wait a minute—”

  “It’s here,” Matt warned, turning towards the room's other closed door. The colonel limped to join her. She drew a pair of Adamanta blades, he readied his laser pistol and his knife.

  Cardew shouted, “I know you, I know you, I know you, I know you!” and the door slid open.

  ***

  A second Anassos on board the refinery should have shocked Matt, but it didn't. She'd known, somewhere in the back of her mind, as Xander had, that this fight wasn't finished. They drew closer together on instinct as the creature drew up to its full height. This thing, this gaunt facsimile of an Anassos, was half the size of its fallen companion. Where its glittering black eyes should have been was instead a strip of carapace. Even blind, it didn't have any trouble seeking out its prey.

  The pain, still dully thumping in Matt's head, exploded. She struggled not to fall even as Xander stumbled forward and dropped to his knees, his weapons clattering to the floor. Behind Matt somewhere, Cardew knelt, giggling or whimpering—Matt wasn't sure and couldn't afford to care. Her blades rose in the air and she tried to press the advantage before it was too late.

  It fought her even as its disinterested booming voice roared in her head. The words were unintelligible, something Beltine and alien to her mind, but they evoked images—hatred, mostly, of humans and Lentarin and a dozen other races. Hatred too of its kin, a bizarre fleeting feeling of wanting to tear apart every Dairos and Kyraos left on that ship to pieces. Above all else in the creature's mind, Matt felt a savage, soul-blazing joy at the death of its brethren and having finally been freed and unleashed. She met that joy with her own ferocity, her own hatred of the Beltine for what they'd done to her, her family, her friends, the countless people she'd fought beside.

  The blades did not move an inch between them. If ever Matt had been equally matched, it was by this horrific monster, this psionic thing bathed in rage and insanity.

  It must have sensed this, too, because its head cocked and Matt could feel its attention drifting around the room, giving her a painful few inches with the Adamanta blades as it sought out another weapon. It refused to let go of her mind, dragging her focus along with it as it tried to rouse one of the direly wounded Kyraos or Dairos. A few managed to stagger to their feet and advance towards the defiant pair of humans at the center of the room.

  Xander heaved out a breath, a name, hers, and crawled forward to cradle the laser pistol. Slowly, agonizingly, he twisted on his side and raised the pistol as the Dairos neared. His hands shook too hard to fire with any degree of accuracy, but they were too close to miss after a couple of shots, and he brought one down before the other fell on him, its spiked knuckles punching into the soft meat of his calf. He screamed, and Matt reached for him, unable to make so much as a peep as the Dairos clawed its way up Xander's body, sinking its knuckles into more flesh as it went for something vital.

  The blades. The creature expected her to try and shove them towards it, but what if she did the exact opposite? Matt licked her lips. She had to try. Instead of fighting to push the blades, she yanked them backwards, and the Anassos's attention jerked back to her as the weapons hurtled towards the Dairos and the Kyraos. It couldn't fight the sudden reversal of the weapons fast enough, and they embedded themselves in their marks. The Dairos atop Xander was hit so hard the creature skidded three feet before stopping.

  Xander was safe for the moment, but Matt didn't have the strength to force the blades back towards the Anassos. She struggled weakly to grab an Adamanta knife from her belt, but her fingers didn't want to work and she
could barely grasp it. Sensing its victory was at hand, the Anassos probed her mind again, drawing up more memories, more painful images. Her parents swinging her as a child. Drew sharing a beer with her after her breakup with Simon. Standing with the twins on the lip of a massive waterfall moments before they all took turns jumping in. It settled on the kiss between her and Xander, delighted in it. Matt tried to yank her mind away from the memory, to protect it, to protect them, but the Anassos had already seen, and it knew how to hurt her beyond all other pain it could possibly do to her.

  “It wants in,” Xander moaned. “I can't... Mattie, I can't fight it...”

  “Hold on,” Matt pleaded with him.

  “C-can't...” he repeated, and then his voice was gone, his mouth twisting with the pain of what he must be enduring. He scratched at his skull, fingernails digging in hard enough to draw blood, and slowly twisted to a sitting position, his knife in hand. The light in his eyes was still there. Xander pleaded with her silently as the blade he held turned towards his own chest, aiming at his heart. The Anassos was right. Watching Xander sink that knife home would break Matt like no other wound she'd suffered yet.

  She grabbed at the blade in his hands with her mind, but pulling it was useless. The Anassos had a firm grip on Xander, but it was loosening its control over her. She let the mental fight go, let the Anassos think it had won, and it laughed and laughed until she dove for Xander. The Anassos made Xander plunge the knife down, but it was too late. Matt was there already, sliding between her love and his hand. Hot fire lanced down her back, and any control she'd had against the Anassos was gone, lost the moment she opened her mind.

  ***

  Xander dropped the knife, his fingers slick with Matt's blood. “No, Matt, no,” he moaned, grabbing her under the arms as she collapsed. He cradled her all the way to the floor. Everything in his mind had gone haywire, as though he were a passenger in an out-of-control car.

  “Run,” she whispered in his ear, her fingers slowly dancing towards the knife.

  “No. No,” Xander repeated, brushing the hair out of her eyes, knowing the Anassos would be coming soon, wondering if he'd feel the blade before it plunged into him. At least they'd go together. That was okay.

  “It's... going to make me kill... you,” she said, her voice cracked and raw. “Doesn't want to kill me. Wants to break me.”

  “Then let it be you,” Xander said, and kissed Matt gently as her eyes rolled up. She hiccupped out air, her back convulsing as she tried to fight. The knife pressed against his side, her small fingers clutched tight around its hilt. “It's okay, Matt. It's okay. I know you and your heart. That thing doesn't. I do.”

  Her eyes stopped fluttering and she went still. Xander thought that was it, that the blade would slide into something soft, and there would be pain, but pain ended. He tried to smile for her as Matt sucked in a breath.

  “Move!” she shouted, and she was shoving him backwards, sending him sprawling. In a flash, she was on her feet, knife still in hand, and she hurtled it, not with her mind, but with pure, simple human strength. Had the blade missed its target, turned a hair too slow, too fast, it would have clattered harmlessly off the Anassos's carapace. But it didn't. Luck and skill alike made sure that blade found a new home right in the creature's hip. It shouted, more out of shock than real pain, and Matt was there, yanking the blade out and jamming it back in, over and over and over again. The Anassos clawed at her face, but momentum and speed were on Matt's side and the woman called Adamanta on over a dozen worlds killed the mad Beltine, stopping only when Xander Finlay grabbed her from behind, kissing her neck as she shouted her fear and her fury wordlessly into the ruins of the station.

  Chapter 8

  The big man was a room and a half away from Xander, Matt, and the handful of other survivors, hobbling down a hallway on his rifle, grimacing with every step. He turned and raised an eyebrow. “You won.”

  “We won,” Xander agreed grimly.

  The man's grin was sallow and devoid of humor. “Then I turn myself in. Just get me out of this hell.”

  They cuffed him, but allowed him the rifle after Xander checked it to make sure it really didn't have any ammo. Whoever he was, he walked side-by-side with Cardew, who looked only straight forward without any sign that she was thinking anything. The Anassos had released its grip on Xander and Matt, but the damage it had wreaked on the doctor wasn't wearing off.

  Another two rooms away, Simon sat with a badly injured woman and a flabby man against a wall. At their footsteps, Simon wearily raised a laser pistol in their direction, but lowered it quickly when he saw who it was. His jumpsuit had been scorched in several places by laser fire, his nose broken, and dried blood flaked away from his fingers. In short, he looked nothing like the immaculate playboy they knew.

  Without preamble or a hello, Simon stood up, tears rolling slowly down his face as he shuffled towards them. Xander thought for a moment he meant to embrace Matt, a move that rankled him, but Simon passed between the pair and pressed the barrel of his gun to the big man's head.

  “Simon, no—” Matt shouted, but it was too late, and a moment later, another body joined the rest of the dead on the station.

  Simon turned and held out the gun grip first towards Matt. She took it, gaping as the man she once cared for swiped away the tears from his face with his palms like a child. “He was my bodyguard, but he worked for Cardew. He... he killed Sally.” His tears stopped and he cleared his throat. “I'll stand trial. I'll do whatever I have to do. But he needed to die and it had to be me that did it.”

  Xander, completely taken aback, said, “I... we'll figure this out aboard the Exemplar.”

  Simon nodded, and along with the man he'd been sitting with, helped lift the woman—Lieutenant Avery Lawson, he said—back to an upright position. Xander volunteered to help them, but the two seemed adamant that the injured woman was their charge, and they supported her right up until the point when Drew and Trey along with the Exemplar's doctor rushed to them with a stretcher.

  On board the massive ship, Tyra was focused on helping a row of severely wounded in a makeshift ward in the bunks. Despite the sling cradling her arm, she took in the bandages around Xander's leg and abdomen and the huge gauze bandage wrapped around Matt's chest and back and clucked like a mother hen. That didn't stop her from embracing—gingerly—both of them. The Lentarin led them to the galley.

  “The prisoners are all in here,” Tyra said, kicking the door behind her. “Anyone that wasn't on Simon's SOS video, all locked up. I expected them to riot or try to take command again, but they're done. Fight's gone out of them.”

  “Too much bloodshed,” Matt said hollowly. Tyra nodded.

  They rejoined Trey and Drew on the bridge along with what remained of the ship's command who were able to stand. There weren't many. Xander looked around and grimaced.

  “We're going to be taking command of the Exemplar,” he said to the group. “Trey, you'll have command. Drew, you're to act as his second.”

  “The prisoners?” Trey said, not bothering to hide his glee from his sister. The two had a long-running rivalry as to who was the better pilot, and any perceived one-upsmanship was ammo for months, possibly years.

  “Lock them in their quarters. If you need the manpower, they're to be escorted to and from their duties under guard. Drew, you're in charge of that.”

  “Got it, boss.”

  Tyra looked more than a little angry at all this. “I can help with the wounded. I should be on board here.”

  Xander gave her injured arm a long, appraising look. “No. You haven't even tended to yourself yet. When we drop out of FTL to adjust course, we'll dock with the Exemplar, but I'm not allowing it until you've had rack time.”

  “You know, Xander,” Trey said, his grin now turned on his colonel, “Matt might be a big help on board here if we need to keep an eye on the prisoners.”

  “Not a chance,” Matt said, glancing meaningfully at Xander. He grinned and started to
speak, but she cut in before him, glaring at Trey. “And when we're back in FTL, if any of you contact us for anything short of someone's murder in the first twelve hours, I've thought of some really clever things to do with Adamanta and toilets.”

  Drew winced. “I'll keep the comms chatter to a minimum.”

  Before Matt, Tyra, and Xander departed the Exemplar, they stopped by Simon's room. He wasn't there, but they found him in the medical bay, strapped in next to the sleeping Lieutenant Lawrence. His nose had yet to be tended to at his own insistence. So long as there were other wounded on board, even among Cardew’s people, he didn’t want to be treated. He held the lieutenant’s hand absently, staring at nothing at all. Matt pulled up a chair and sat next to him, while Xander and Trey took up positions around the bed.

  “Doc's got her sedated,” Simon said dully. “She'll lose the leg all the way up to her hip. Because of me and my idiocy.”

  “Simon...” Matt said.

  He smiled bitterly. “I notice you didn't try to tell me I wasn't being stupid.”

  “No,” she said bluntly. “I didn't. Some part of you had to know what you were getting into with Dr. Cardew. There's some self-destructive streak in you, some part of you that desperately wants to take shortcuts even when you don't have to. And that part of you made the wrong call bringing her into this.”

  “I know,” he said, a degree of petulance entering his voice.

  Undeterred, she continued. “But there's another part of you, I think, that really does want to do the right thing. And that part saved this woman. Saved a lot of these people, from what I heard. Hold onto that, Simon. You can do so much good, if you'd just fight for it.”

  He stared down at the lieutenant. “What'll happen to me?”

  Xander spoke up, keeping his voice quiet for the sake of the wounded. “For the short term, you'll stay aboard the Exemplar. No one here knows her better. You'll assist at the helm, and when you're not on duty, you'll be escorted here or to your room. As for what happens on Netera, it will be up to the people in charge.”