“Including the Emperor?” Theo didn’t like the way Karl was looking at Cierra. He took a slight step in front of her, trying to draw away the other man’s focus. “You know he’ll find out soon, if he doesn’t already know. I’m sure he has a few ideas about what you’re up to. How could he not with his fleet guarding every approach to planet’s surface?”
Anger flamed to life in Karl’s eyes. “I’ve had enough of this talk. Take them all to the main conference center in the dome. Post a guard near them, and don’t let any of them out of your sight!” A group of guards moved forward in response to his order.
Karl turned, and stormed off in a different direction than the one they were pushed in. Theo realized it did him no good to put up any resistance. Even if he managed to take out the monks who were moving them, there were plenty more to take their place. Theo weighed his options, and decided to conserve his energy. The team reluctantly handed over their weapons. The Yasta monks took one look at Cherish’s metal arms, and separated her from the others. They made sure to march her close to the rear of the group, surrounded by four, capable guards.
Four
Tension was high as the team was shoved into a large meeting room at the center of the dome complex. “Sit down, and stay down.” One of the guards pointed his laser at them.
“What are you going to do, kill us?” Theo stared the man down. “I don’t think your boss would like that too much.”
“Brother Karl may want you alive for now, but that doesn’t mean you have to be in one piece.” The guard smiled to reveal teeth that had been filed to sharp points.
Theo decided not to press his luck. If he bided his time, a better opportunity might arise. Instead, he switched his attention to their surroundings. The walls were translucent. He could see the silhouettes of the Yasta monks outside. With Karl gone, their attentive poses returned to a more relaxed slouch.
He wondered if the Yasta understood anything about Cherish. He had looked to her for assurance a few times, but there wasn’t much she could do. Even if she used the infintium blades mounted in her metal arms, the others would be killed. Cherish kept her eyes on the ground. A few times, he thought he saw her lips move, as if she were whispering a prayer.
What worried him more than anything else was the bomb. The monks didn’t seem to know it was in place. The timer was running down to zero, whether they were off the planet or not. When it detonated, there was a good possibility the blast range would include the dome complex they presently occupied. They had planned to do as much damage to the mining site as possible, but none of them had planned on becoming part of the debris the blast left behind.
Theo assumed the traitor in their midst had tipped off Karl. Someone knew they were headed toward the mine. All Karl had to do was sit back, and spring the trap at the right moment. So what if he lost a few recruits? The Yasta would find more. There was no shortage of planets where people barely survived. The empire was full of places where a chance to eat every day and carry a sword beat a lifetime of eking out a living from the hard soil. Theo had known the uncertainty of that life. It wasn’t hard to see why so many young men joined the Yasta or the local militias.
At least the Yasta hadn’t tied them together. They were able to sit in the middle of the floor, and try to come up with a plan. The five of them didn’t need to talk to each other. Theo could tell by the way Makram and Cherish looked at each other that they were trying to find a way out of this mess. A lot of good it would do them, since the hovercraft were gone. They’d need to contact Hubard to get him to land the cargo ship close to the mine, and even that would be dangerous. If they timed it wrong, the whole ship could get caught in the blast.
The door to the conference room burst open to reveal Karl, flanked by two novice Yasta monks. The men with him looked to be no more than nineteen. It was the right age for a Yasta recruit who wanted to get the hell off his backwater planet and make a name for himself. Theo looked at them, and couldn’t help but imagine what his own sons would have looked like at that age. He averted his eyes. He couldn’t live in the past. He had to focus.
Karl cracked his neck and knuckles. “We haven’t been able to locate the ship that brought you here. I don’t have time to dig that information out by the usual method, so I will ask you once, and only once, where is your ship?” He walked over to Makram and glared down at the sitting form of the Carbonari commander.
Makram looked up at Karl, and smiled in return. “I’ll tell you.” Something about his voice gave Theo a bad feeling about the exchange.
“Well? I’m waiting.”
“There’s just one thing.” Makram lowered his voice so that Karl automatically leaned closer.
“What?”
“Screw you.” Makram spat at their captor. A glob of spit slid down Karl’s cheek.
A heavy boot launched forward, and knock Makram from a sitting position to being prone on the ground. Karl’s face was red with rage. The team watched in disgust as Karl kicked their commander across the floor. The two Yasta novices looked on, their guns never wavering.
“I told you.” Karl punctuated his words with more brutal kicks into Makram’s ribs and spleen. “I don’t have time for nonsense. Now you tell me where that forsaken ship is, or I will stomp the life out of you!” He stopped to rest momentarily. His breathing was labored.
With his face covered in blood, Makram looked up from the floor at Karl. “You’re cute when you’re mad. Anyone ever tell you that?”
“You think I’m kidding?” Karl yelled, and picked Makram up from the floor with one hand. He tossed Makram across the room. One step at a time, he closed the distance until he was looming over Makram again. He placed his boot on top of Makram’s face. “You thought that huge pile of metal was just there for the taking? I knew when and where you’d enter the atmosphere of this disgusting planet! I knew it all, pretty boy! There isn’t a thing that your idiot masters do that I don’t know about!” Karl started delivering kicks again. Theo could hear each impact make a sickening, crunching sound.
Once again, Karl stopped to catch his breath. Theo couldn’t believe it, but Makram sat there and smiled back. The commander was tougher than Theo had given him credit for. Karl turned to the busted figure of Makram, and reeled back for one more kick. Suddenly, he stopped. He turned, and looked at the novice monks with him.
“You two! Take him out to the nearest airlock, and toss his useless ass outside.” He turned back to Makram. “You’ll begin to choke in thirty seconds. In five minutes, you’ll beg for me to kill you. Then, we’ll see if you’re ready to talk.”
“That’s against the Pollux Conventions on the treatment of enemy prisoners.” A deep, but confident voice spoke up.
“Who said that?” Karl whipped around to face the prisoners on the floor. One of them stood up.
“I did.” Hojae held his head high. The four-armed Josti faced him with determination.
“Take this battlefield lawyer with him, too!” Karl looked at Hojae in disgust. One of the Yasta novices walked over to Hojae, and gestured at the door with a gun. A few seconds later, the two novices left with Makram, and Hojae between them.
Taking advantage of the distraction, Cherish had managed to get in touch with Hubard on the cargo ship. The first thing she did when they were captured was to transmit a silent distress signal that told him two things: the bomb was set with the timer running, and they had been captured. Hubard stayed in touch with her, and monitored the situation. His in ability to do much left him feeling useless.
Hubard maintained contact with her through a frequency on she could hear. “You still have another thirty minutes. There is always the possibility that the Yasta have found it, but I wouldn’t factor that into what you have to do. Do you have any weapons they haven’t removed?”
Cherish returned a message to him along the same frequency. “The blades inside my arms, but I can’t use them right away. They’ll know I have them, and if those get confiscated, we won’t have anything.
”
“Your arms detach, don’t they? I thought we selected that upgrade.”
“Yes, they do, but I don’t want to take them off unless I have to. I’d have a tough time fighting with just my feet.”
“Then hang tight until you see an opportunity to use the blades. I’ll keep you posted on the time.” The frequency fell silent again.
Theo felt guilty there was nothing he could do. Karl had the laser pointed at them, and wouldn’t hesitate to use it. Playing hero and saving everyone looked good on the entertainment videos, but such things seldom worked out in real life. He fretted over what to do. Theo looked over at Karl, and ground his teeth. With no weapons at his disposal, he could try a few wrestling moves, but those would be stupid to attempt against a mountain of a man who held a laser.
Cherish thought of a compromise. If she only detached one arm, she could wield it as a sword with the remaining arm. Fighting one-handed wasn’t her preference, but she’d done before. When the arm came loose, she could spring the blade out of the wrist compartment, and use it as a bastard sword. It would be a little ungainly, but it would give her enough range to gut Karl the moment he stepped in her strike zone.
Reluctantly, Hubard delivered some troubling news. “I’m debating whether or not we should leave. It doesn’t sound good on your end. That bomb will go off in another twenty minutes. I’ll wait as long as I can, but I can’t hold out much longer. We’ve completed our primary objective. If I wait too long, we may not make it off the surface. The earlier detonations may have already drawn unwanted attention from the emperor’s fleet. That, plus the impending blast makes for terrible odds, but I don’t have to tell you that.”
Hubard was right. Cherish had already done the math herself. There was a good possibility that none of the infiltration team was going to make it back alive. “Do what you need to do. You have the others to think about. Keep me posted on how much time we have left.” Cherish moved an attachment loose from her right arm, and felt the sensation leave it.
There was a sudden buzz at Karl’s belt, and he picked up a communicator. “What? Are you serious? That’s impossible! I’ll be out to check on it in five seconds!” Karl shoved the communicator back in his belt.
He spun around to face the prisoners. “Don’t you get any ideas!” he told them. “I have plans for every one of you! I’ll be right back, and then we’ll discuss the location of the ship that dropped you off. Don’t deny it was how you got here, I picked it up when it made orbit.” Karl thundered out the door and slammed it behind him. Through the translucent walls, they could see the outside guards move out of the way to allow him past.
“Fifteen minutes,” Hubard told her over the transmission.
“Wonderful,” Cherish sent back, “Karl just left. He was pissed over a comm call. I hope Makram and Hojae got loose before he tossed them out of the airlock. If they didn’t, they’re already dead.”
“So, who do you think the spy happens to be?” Theo whispered to the group. “I’ve wondered about it. I’m sure all of you have, too.”
“Spy? What do you mean spy?” Cierra looked at him as if his brain had been fried.
“There has to be a traitor in our midst. How else would the Yasta know we were on our way here? Someone is feeding them information about what goes on inside the Carbonari. It’s the only thing that really makes sense. They know so much about what we were doing. Someone is slipping the Yasta information.”
“Even if that is true, I don’t think it’s anyone here with us,” Cherish said.
“Ten minutes.” Hubard’s message kept Cherish informed on the distance of his ship.
Theo looked over the rest of the group, studying them intently. “I think it could be any one of us, but there’s no way to tell unless we have a way to get out of here.”
The door flew open, to reveal the two Yasta novices. Between them was the beaten form of Makram. They tossed him to the floor, and walked back out through the same door. A trickle of blood ran down the corner of his mouth. He was wheezing, and his breaths were ragged.
“Are you alright?” Cierra rushed to Makram’s side. Unsure of what to do, she brushed his hair away from his forehead.
“I’m fine.” Makram offered them a weak smile, as he managed to prop himself up on his elbow. “He changed his mind at the last minute, and had them bring me back.” A cough wracked his chest. Fresh blood bubbled up in his mouth.
Theo walked over, and knelt beside Makram and Cierra. “What happened to Hojae?”
“He got loose. I think that might be why they brought me back. Hojae was almost to the airlock with me. All of the sudden, he tossed me to one side, and ran down the passageway. One guard went after Hojae, and the other one stayed on me. He held me there until Karl showed up. He ordered the guard to bring me back here.”
“Maybe Hojae got away.” Cherish offered up a slim hope.
“Hell of a lot of good it will do him.” They all knew why. They were living on borrowed time.
“Two minutes.” Hubard chimed on Cherish’s frequency. She turned, and looked at the others. Everyone in the room knew what that look meant. The clock had almost run down.
The doors flew open again. This time, Karl was by himself. He held a laser in one hand, and a lasana blade in the other. “Your Josti friend took off, but we’ll have him soon enough. I see your buddy Makram is still sucking air. I almost had him tossed outside. Since you’re still alive, why don’t we revisit my favorite topic of the day. Where is your ship?”
“I’d rather die than tell you.”
“Well, lucky for you, you’ll probably get that chance soon enough.” Karl paused for a second. Something caught his attention. He walked over to Theo, and stared at him. “I thought you looked familiar. You’re that little punk from back on Carristoux. You got all queasy over the way I carved up those thugs. So, you’re with these clowns, huh? Did they make you a full brother yet? Kissed the goat, have you?” Karl snickered, as he looked them over. “Not only that, but you’re the bunch that spent some time in those disgusting tree houses on Sirsette. You’ll be happy to know, that I had the pleasure of letting the Empire know the location of your little shelter on that planet.”
Makram sat up, suddenly alert. His eyes were wide with fear. “What are you talking about?”
“The Emperor knew about that bunch of tree huggers for a long time. Your little trip gave him the excuse he needed to bypass the local government and burn the forest from orbit. You like that? Our glorious Emperor destroyed the tree people down there before they became a bigger threat. Think I’m bad? There are forces out there a lot worse than me.”
“Watch your mouth, asshole,” Makram snapped at him. He glared over his bruises at Karl.
“Who are you to tell me what to do?” Karl screamed at Makram. Karl raised his blade up in the air.
As Karl raised the sword, Theo saw the blade’s mate dangling from his belt. It was at the right angle to grab. He could reach out and take it. Theo felt his palms begin to sweat. He would only have one chance. If he missed, Karl wouldn’t hesitate to end him.
“One chop, pretty boy,” Karl yelled. “One slice with this, and you’re big career ends. Maybe I’ll test this one out on your ugly face. I don’t think this blade has tasted blood yet.”
“You’re a badass, aren’t you?” Theo sneered loud enough for Karl to hear him. “I’ll bet you slice up unarmed women on your days off, don’t you?” He stood up, and dared Karl to come for him. Theo kept himself from glancing at the second blade. He couldn’t afford to give himself away.
“Kid has a little something. You want to play, puppy? Here, I’ll give you a turn.” In one swift motion, Karl pulled the spare sword out of his scabbard. He tossed it to Theo.
Theo was surprised. He hadn’t been expecting that, but somehow, he was still able to catch the sword from the other side of the room. If nothing else, at least he’d go down fighting. Theo tried to remember everything that Hojae had taught him. There was no ar
mor now, no teacher to take it easy on him. It was do or die.
“This is going to make my day.” Karl chuckled sadistically, as he walked towards Theo.
“Five seconds.” Hubard’s message came through to Cherish. “I’m not leaving. Keep your line open.”
“Thanks.” Cherish’s body tensed with anticipation. She quickly reattached her arm, There wouldn’t be much need for her plan since the detonation was so close now. Cherish crouched low to the floor, signaling to the others what was about to happen.
Makram caught her, eye and slammed himself into the floor. Karl stopped, and gave him a strange look. From the corner of Theo’s eye, he saw Cierra press herself into the floor. That was when it clicked in his head. Eyes wide, he dropped to the ground as well.
The walls and ceiling ceased to exist, from waist height up. Metal, carbon, and glass showered the group. Theo watched as Karl was thrown over him and back out of the door. All he saw after that was the roiling yellow-orange cloud from the explosion. He threw his arms over his head. His ears were ringing from the concussive blast.
When Theo came to again, Cherish was snapping his helmet over his head. He heard the hiss of the pressure seal, and looked up at her. Tiny dots flickered across his vision.
“Are you okay, Theo?” Cherish trailed one metal finger back and forth in front of his vision to make sure he could still focus properly. “You were only out a few minutes. The local atmosphere hasn’t leaked into this part of the dome yet. It won’t take long, though.”
Theo looked up and saw the red emergency lights somewhere out of focus, above them. “I’m alright. What about everyone else?” A sharp pain throbbed in his head.
“They’re good.” Cherish was still studying him, a look of quiet concern on her face. “Everyone was on the ground when the bomb went off except for Karl and the guards.”
The Relissarium Wars Omnibus Page 18