“Chief?” Cole asked. “Any reason I need to stay?”
Cole’s question sent a chill across Bharat’s skin. In addition to the pain-nullification protocol they’d both received before they left for Ceto, they also had one more option built into their PBAs. If Bharat and Cole confirmed there was no help coming, that all that awaited them was a brutal interrogation followed by a brutal execution, they had one other option.
They had the option to die.
“Let’s stay put a little longer,” Bharat said. His wife and son were still back on Phorcys, under the watchful eyes of Senator Tarack’s murderous thugs. “Let’s see what happens.”
“Sure,” Cole said. “Why not.”
What happened, twenty minutes later, was a scuffle from the next cell over and Cole cursing. Bharat pulled himself up despite his aching body, pounding on the wall of his cell with one clenched fist. It hurt.
“Hey! Stop! What are you doing?” The words tumbled from his mouth.
The wet impacts of flesh on flesh echoed through the grate, as well as gurgles and coughs. Bharat imagined punches, knees, elbows, and kicks. Those fuckers were beating Cole senseless in there, and there was absolutely nothing he could do to help.
More boots sounded in the hallway outside. Bharat had just enough time to shove his canine deep into his palm before the door flew open. He launched himself toward the open door just in time to see a stunner, raised. He woke sitting in a chair facing the end of a large warehouse, looking at a concrete wall.
It seemed his next interrogation was about to begin. Really? Hadn’t they asked enough questions already?
Spotlights lit four posts and the concrete wall behind them. A battered and bloody Jaxon Cole was tied to one of those four posts. Five masked Truthers stood between Cole and him, and each held a bolt-action rifle at the ready.
Bharat maintained his poker face as he looked his old friend over, but he wanted to howl with rage. Cole was a mess: teeth missing, one eye swollen shut, dark hair bloody with some of it ripped out. Apparently, the Truthers had stopped caring so much about making their victims look undamaged as they gave confessions. Bharat imagined he didn’t look much better.
“Chief Bharat Dhillon.” The Commander stood beside him with hands clasped behind his back, almost in striking distance. “Your operative, one Jaxon Cole, has been found guilty by a military tribunal of participating in war crimes against the rightful government of Ceto.”
Here we go, thought Bharat.
“Like you, Jaxon Cole unlawfully imprisoned and murdered civilians. Like you, he assassinated politicians who opposed the Supremacy’s interests. Like you, he supported your people’s unjust occupation of Ceto for ten years.”
Bharat and Cole’s tormentor wore a simple gray uniform that obviously hadn’t been issued by Ceto Security Division, but the metal pips glistening on his stiff collar looked very real. This man had served in Ceto’s military at one point, though obviously he wasn’t doing that now. The thick-rimmed glasses above his gray moustache glistened dangerously in the lights.
This was a man who tortured civilians for a living.
Cole said nothing. Bharat said nothing. It was all too obvious what was going to happen now, but Bharat took comfort in knowing that neither he nor Cole would give this asshole any sort of confession. A dull ache revealed that the tooth Bharat had buried in his bloodied palm was still there. That would have hurt a lot more without pain nullification.
“The fate of your operative is in your hands,” the Commander said, hands clasped behind his back. “If you answer my questions honestly, I will execute your operative by firing squad.”
Bharat dug the canine out of his palm with bloody fingernails, hoping the ropes securing his hands behind the chair would hide the motion. He almost dropped his tooth. He didn’t.
“Wait.” Bharat feigned confusion, hoping to buy time to escape. “If I answer your questions, you will execute this man?” He sawed subtly at the rope, hoping no one would notice.
“Correct,” the Commander said.
“And this incentivizes me how, exactly?” Bharat could feel the ropes binding his wrists loosen. He could feel his artificial canine finding purchase and cutting away.
“I am giving your operative a chance to die quickly and without undue pain,” the Commander said. “You would like him to die without undue pain, wouldn’t you? Even Advanced, callous as you may be, care for your own kind.”
“You might as well shoot me now!” Cole shouted from his post. “I’m not telling you fuckers anything!”
Cole was playing for time as well, trying to draw the Commander’s attention away from Bharat. He was trying to give them both a chance. Bharat felt the rope fray.
“The alternative,” the Commander said, “is for my people to beat your operative to death with rusty pipes. The pain he will experience before he expires will be considerable.”
“And you call yourself a soldier.” Bharat kept working on his rope. “You’re just a brute leading other brutes.” Would insults keep him talking, or should he plead instead?
“Last chance,” the Commander said. “Confess your crimes. Name your commanding officers and the Advanced politicians who ordered you to commit atrocities. Demonstrate remorse, and I offer your operative a quick death.”
The rope loosened even more. Bharat had underestimated these natural-born, but many natural-born also underestimated just how strong a trained Advanced commando actually was. He could take any of them in an honest fight, yet ...
He counted seven armed soldiers besides the Commander in plain sight. He could kill three if he moved fast, but the other four? Not possible. So was he ready to die? And if he died, would Senator Tarack let his wife and son go?
She might. If Senator Tarack no longer needed dominion over Nadia’s and Gray’s lives to keep Bharat loyal, she just might. Bharat wasn’t happy about dying, but at this point, he saw no possibilities that didn’t end that way. All he could do now was take as many of these assholes with him as he could.
“I think, perhaps, Cole said it best.” Bharat forced a grim smile. “Perhaps you should go fuck yourself.”
The Commander snapped his fingers and pointed out at the posts. “Get the pipes.” He looked away in disgust, as did the others, who’d all turned on Cole.
This was it. This was the end of the mission. Time to d—
“Excuse me!” a calm woman’s voice boomed. “Is Captain Esparza here?”
Everyone, including Bharat, startled at the sound. For a moment, Bharat felt certain the speaker was Advanced. She had the distinguished accent he was used to hearing on Phorcys, and projected an elegance that was refreshing.
A tall, slim figure with a voice bigger than she was stood now before a side door leading into the warehouse, squinting, with one hand raised high. A spotlight — probably controlled by one of the Commander’s soldiers — shined right in her face. Even if she wasn’t actually Advanced, she could easily pass.
The gorgeous intruder wore a shiny flight jacket, a pressed button-down shirt, and tight jeans tucked into gleaming combat boots. Her dyed platinum-blond curls gleamed in the glare, and a civilian pistol rode her hip.
“Who let you in here?” the Commander demanded.
“Just to be clear,” the woman answered, standing her ground amidst guns and spotlights, “this is the current hideout of Commander Graham Esparza, is it not?”
So “the Commander” was actually Graham Esparza. Bharat would not regret dying to kill Graham Esparza. Esparza had cut off a good man’s toes, yet ... what was this woman doing?
“The fuck is going on?” one of the shadow soldiers said.
Torn between action and restraint, Bharat surveyed the soldiers and their commander. He didn’t snap his frayed bonds, not yet. This woman’s appearance changed the combat equation.
“Could we speak without this light in my face?” The woman pursed her lips. “It’s rather rude.”
No one turned the spotlight o
ff.
Esparza’s own hand went to the pistol at his hip as he took two steps toward the woman. The farther he walked away, the harder it would be to reach him and snap his neck before his soldiers reacted. Bharat’s hands clenched behind his back.
“Identify yourself at once,” Commander Graham Esparza said, “or this will be the shortest negotiation in which either of us has ever participated.”
The woman offered a truly fetching smile. “If you lovely people know anything about Star’s Landing, you’d know me as the Golden Widow.” Her smile grew into a rather self-satisfied smirk. “I’m here to make you obscenely rich.”
Bharat stiffened. The Golden Widow had arrived, which meant he was this close to retrieving Senator Tarack’s stolen disc. All he had to do now was kill Captain Esparza, and seven of his soldiers spaced widely around this warehouse, without a gun or knife or anything but the loose canine clutched in his palm. Then all he had to do was cross an entire warehouse and get to the Golden Widow before she sprinted out that door into hostile territory she knew, and he didn’t know at all.
So he wasn’t close to Tarack’s disc at all, really.
“How do we know you’re actually who you say?” Esparza’s hand rested on the butt of his pistol, and his soldiers still had a mess of guns pointed at her. “No one knows what the Widow looks like. If it is you, why reveal yourself to me?”
“I felt it best to open negotiations with a gesture of trust,” the Widow said. “Now, please! Turn off your spotlight, gentlemen, and let’s negotiate like civilized people.”
A quiet snap marked the ropes tumbling off Bharat’s previously bound hands. Shit! He’d cut too far, too fast, or the Truthers had used really shitty rope. He needed to let this play out, but as soon as anyone noticed the rope was off ...
Esparza gestured to someone. The spotlight on the Golden Widow finally went out, and even in the dusk that remained, Bharat could see soldiers advancing on her from all sides.
To Bharat’s right, two Truthers stood close together in murmured conversation. There was an unclaimed rifle on the table behind them. Perhaps out of habit, the man idly glanced Bharat’s way. Then he took another, much longer look.
Bharat hurled himself out of the chair and kicked the man’s knee sideways. Seven. No choice now but to fight.
The Truther howled and collapsed as Bharat snatched the rifle off the table and fired it point-blank at the other nearby Truther. He splashed her brains across the warehouse even as her hand dropped to the pistol at her hip. Six. Nice of these idiots to keep their weapons loaded.
Bharat dived over the table, slammed into the edge on his way down, and took it down sideways with him, creating concealment. He imagined the familiar click-click-slam of the rifle’s bolt as he loaded the new round. He didn’t actually hear anything, because bolt-action Patriot rifles were fucking loud.
Two holes blasted through the table just above his prone body. Two shots, which meant two soldiers reloading. Bharat popped up and shot one prowling Truther in the chest. Five. The dead Truther’s partner finished reloading and took aim.
The Golden Widow shot that woman in the back of her head. Four. Then the Widow dived for cover behind the nearest biocrete pillar, but the Commander didn’t try to shoot her or Bharat. Commander Graham Esparza pulled his pistol and spun on Jaxon Cole, one eye closing as his other sighted in.
Time slowed as Bharat took aim. As the Commander’s finger pressed the pistol’s trigger. Bharat’s rifle bucked at the same time the Commander’s pistol boomed. The Commander dropped.
Three.
A big man hurled himself over the table, the same man whose knee Bharat had just kicked out. Shit, four again! The man sputtered with rage and pain and also, idiotically, provided the perfect human shield against the other three Truthers. A single snap of Bharat’s flattened hand crushed his windpipe. Three.
Bharat spotted his prospective killer in the distance far too late, a man who had sprinted away from the table and come around to get a clear shot. That man had a clear shot. Bharat realized then he wasn’t ready to die, but who was?
A bright red wound blossomed in the Truther’s forehead.
Two! Bharat scrambled away from the table in the darkness, staying low, as another sniper round echoed through the warehouse, and another. One. Zero. Shit!
A sniper had just joined the gunfight, and the rifle he was using must be of a rather large caliber, given he was firing through the warehouse’s biocrete walls. The flimsy table beside Bharat now offered about as much cover as a paper bag.
“Move!” someone shouted. The Golden Widow dashed right past Bharat, toward the far door of the warehouse. “Now, Bharat!” She seemed unconcerned by the sniper, which suggested that sniper was working for her. Also, she knew his name?
The Golden Widow slid to a halt by a closed warehouse door and jiggled the latch. How could she know his name? Bharat ejected the spent cartridge, noticed the empty chamber, and discarded the spent rifle as he rose.
His trained gaze swept the warehouse and counted eight dead Truthers, including the Commander. The Commander and ...
“Jax!” Bharat dashed for Jaxon Cole. Cole slumped now against his post, bleeding quietly. “How bad is it?”
Cole didn’t answer, but given the placement of the wound, Bharat easily answered his own question. Commander Esparza had made certain to shoot Cole before he died. Had he simply wanted to keep Cole from talking, or did Esparza hate the Advanced so much that he wanted to make sure Cole died first?
This wound would be fatal on Ceto, without Advanced drugs and a trained medic. Bharat wanted to cut Cole down and provide what comfort he could. Instead, he asked the only question that mattered, calmly and clearly, of his dying friend.
“Is that the woman who stole our disc?”
Cole nodded. “I fucked up. I’m ... sorry ...”
He didn’t finish. He didn’t speak. Jaxon Cole would speak no more. Bharat turned away, fists trembling, just in time to see the Golden Widow stalking back his way.
A frustrated frown marred her otherwise gorgeous face, and her dyed curls bounced as she approached. She still held her pistol, but it wasn’t pointed his way, which felt like a mistake.
No, it wasn’t that. Bharat’s eyes rose to the small frosted windows atop the warehouse walls. Outside, his instincts whispered, watching everything on Wi-Vi.
The Widow’s sniper was still outside, seeing through walls, with a bead on Bharat and the ability to put a bullet anywhere they liked. Bharat could take the Golden Widow, but it would cost his life ... and it was no longer necessary for him to die.
“What are you waiting for?” the Widow demanded, her previous auditory elegance now colored by annoyance. “I’m truly sorry about your friend, but we must leave at once.”
Bharat glared at her callous disregard for what had been a good man’s life. “I had to check on him.”
The Widow glared right back. “And I thought,” she said, with a gesture at the carnage, “that you’d offer me the courtesy of making a deal before you started dropping bodies.”
Bharat wasn’t quite sure how to respond to her seemingly genuine frustration. “What deal?”
“Buying your freedom, you densely packed ...” The Widow paused and stared past the flipped table. “Where’s Esparza?”
Bharat turned to glare at the body of the gray-haired imbecile with the wire-rimmed glasses, the man Bharat had shot after Esparza shot Cole in the chest. Seven corpses filled the warehouse, besides Cole’s, but “the Commander” was no longer among them. Commander Graham Esparza was gone.
Bharat blinked. “How did he survive?”
“Because he was wearing body armor?” the Widow asked, in a way that wasn’t actually asking at all. “And because Truthers always dig an escape tunnel beneath their safe houses?”
Bharat kicked the table aside. “We’re going after him.”
“Stop!” The Widow grabbed his shoulder, and Bharat resisted the urge to flip her on h
er head. Her sniper was watching.
“You think I don’t wish Esparza dead?” the Widow asked. “That waste of human flesh knows my face, now, and he has an army of zealots ready to hunt me down. Yet he’d never have slipped into his secret passage if he’d not booby-trapped it behind him.”
The Widow was right. More importantly, she was speaking to him as if trying to convince him, which made absolutely no sense after she’d stolen Tarack’s disc and gotten Cole killed. Why hadn’t she shot him yet? Why hadn’t her sniper?
Bharat slipped out of the Widow’s grip and turned on her, keeping his hands where she could see them. “What do you want?”
“What do I ...” She blinked like he’d just insulted her teeth. “This was your plan, Bharat!”
A tingle of dread arced up Bharat’s spine. “What?”
“Right, the restoration phrase. I’d all but forgotten in the excitement.” The Widow straightened. “Turkey chlorine diction.”
Bharat’s body stiffened like he’d been physically shocked. Hidden partitions inside his PBA unlocked. Secrets unfurled like flower petals in the garden outside his and Nadia’s modest home, plans and backup plans and contingencies.
“Oh.” Everything that hadn’t worked as he’d expected bubbled up inside him a demoralizing flood. “Oh, shit.” He really had fucked this up, hadn’t he?
“Yes,” Fatima Blaize agreed. “An excellent summary of recent events. Now where, exactly, is Jan?”
Bharat very much wished he knew.
07: Encore
Dressed like down-on-their-luck prospectors, Jan and Emiko slunk past the Truther warehouse on the far side of the street, hands in the pockets of worn jackets. Each shiftily surveyed their surroundings. The lone male guard standing by the warehouse looked them over and looked right past, as he’d look past any rabble strolling by in the middle of the night.
Supremacy's Outlaw: A Space Opera Thriller Series (Insurgency Saga Book 3) Page 10