To the Victor

by R Coots

  “You’re a fucking piece of work, you know that?”

  Syrus.

  She quit trying to tear herself free and dangled, clutching at his hand where it tangled in her hair. Doing her best to take as much of her own weight as she could.

  “Couldn’t hold it together just a little longer, could you? Come on, woman, get your feet under you and run!”

  Del was still on the deck, babbling about flies and carrion. If Jossa didn’t speak soon, she was going to vomit. If she waited too long, there’d be blood with the bile.

  Something struck the ship behind her. Sparks flew. Something else whined through the air right after it. The warlord cursed and dropped her. She landed badly, an ankle twisting under her on impact. Before she could figure out who was firing or from where, he’d grabbed her by the arm and pulled her along behind him.

  “Del!” Jossa managed to reach out and get a fistful of Delfi’s shirt before Syrus dragged her too far. Then she wrapped her legs around her sister’s torso for good measure. Not the best. Probably the most awkward way to attempt a rescue. But leaving Del out there was unacceptable.

  She caught a glimpse of the kemvate’s body past the wild tangle of Delfi’s hair. He was down, a gaping hole in his chest. None of his men were visible, but the streaks of weapons fire coloring the air put them behind the next ship over.

  She didn’t get a chance to see who they were aiming at. Syrus pulled hard on her arm. Jossa screamed in pain as he levered her around the open ship’s hatch, but kept her hold on Delfi.

  “The flies and the carrion. Is it dead? It will be soon. Maggots, maggots, maggots!”

  “The fuck is she talking about?” Syrus started flipping up the seats built into the hull of the ship they’d just exited, hunting for Ancestors knew what in the storage compartments underneath.

  Finally. “The thing I told you was coming,” Jossa gasped. “They’re here. We’re all going to die.”

  He froze and looked at her, a string of low-impact grenades in one hand and a medium-spread haze gun in the other. Some corner of her brain noticed that basic weapon design hadn’t changed in three hundred years. Another corner wondered if the old designs had been repurposed. A bolt hit the bulkhead near Syrus’s shoulder and fizzled, showering him with sparks. He ignored it. “What did you just say?”

  Jossa lost the battle with her stomach and retched. The ration bars the soldiers had given her on the flight in tasted so much worse coming back up. At least they matched the color of the warlord’s pants.

  That was when the long, shrill wail of a biohazard alarm went off outside the ship. A greenish haze curled around the edge of the hatch. Out in the hangar, people started to scream.

  Syrus cursed and lunged for the controls. “Hold your breath!”

  She didn’t get a chance to obey. Neither did Delfi. They were too busy being sick as the ramp retracted and the hatch closed, and the warlord sat there, cursing the Fleet in more languages than she’d ever heard of..

  >Chapter Thirty-One

  Syrus

  The practice of using a wife and children to demoralize a man is older than our recorded history. On occasion, it has been known to work on soldiers of the Fleet as well. But not often enough to justify the time it takes.

  -Tactics of Demoralization, Fleet Officer Training Manual

  By the time Syrus had managed to convince the two women not to stab him in the back when he went to open the outer hatch, the Fleet had its soldiers sweeping the hangar outside. He’d been watching them on the monitors up in the bridge as the troop transports dropped their loads just inside the grav shield that separated the vacuum of space from breathable atmosphere.

  The air outside the little patrol ship was still faintly green. Bodies lay scattered around the deck of the hangar, military and civilian alike. Anyone who hadn’t been shot had gone down in a puddle of vomit and liquefied lung tissue. The Fleet soldiers wore breathers for the first sweeps of the base around them. Syrus wished he could shoot them all. But that meant firing up the engine. Which just meant the men outside would call in a vacuum jockey to blow the ship to bits.

  Go outside, get caught, find whoever was in charge and feed them their own teeth? Or go up in a ball of shrapnel and flame because the Fleet figured out someone was in here and decided not to take any chances?

  That was the logic he used on the women. Or tried to. What actually happened was every time he went for the button that would open up the hatch, Delfi snarled something in He’la and pointed a gun at him that would spread his cooking innards over the entire forward bulkhead. Why the fuck had he taken his eyes off her anyway? Should have known she’d dig another weapon out from under the seats.

  “Look,” he told her, as calmly and quietly as he could manage. “We stay here, air’s gonna run out. We go out there, we got a better chance of living.”

  She coughed and spat her words at him. Frustration popped and sizzled off her like water drops in hot oil. Syrus bit down on a growl and looked at Jossa. She had a spacer’s blade in one hand and a grenade in the other, and she didn’t look at all sure of whose side she should be on. If he’d been any sort of Projective, he could have tried to ease her over to his way of thinking. “Well?” he asked. “What’d she call me this time?”

  “I like living, thank you,” she replied as she eased forward and leaned through the hatch to the bridge. Syrus growled and started to get up. If she touched the ignition—

  But she came back just as he was reaching out to grab her arm. The look she gave him was half nerves, half anger. She was lucky they were in this fucked-up situation, or he might not have let it slide.

  Fuck. He was losing it again. Get away from those Fleet bastards for a couple days and he forgot what it was like to put up with their constant emotional hammering. Forgot how to keep himself from giving in to it.

  Focus, you dumb bastard.

  He caught a flicker of movement on a screen over Jossa’s shoulder. Another ship was landing, right in the center of the hangar. Syrus frowned as he tried to make out the markings on the hull. It was too small to have made the same trip he’d just botched. Ship-to-ship transport then, probably from a carrier in orbit around this base. But which ship did it answer to?

  The outer hull of the ship melted open and erased the need to read the ship’s designation. No one else on the Fleet wore armor that ornate. Or with a thorned serpent gilded in silver wrapped around the helm.

  And behind him came a woman. Limping and in rags, golden hair a snarled mess around her face. She was barefoot, and from the rust-colored spatters covering the lower half of her legs, she had been for a while now.

  “Fucking hell,” he snarled, and grabbed Jossa. She yelped and zapped him with a shot of adrenaline-laced fear. Delfi yelled when he punched the button for the doors of their own ship, but Syrus pulled Jossa around so she was between himself and mad Foreseer. Delfi spat again, Jossa tried twist around to stab him, and Syrus shook her hard enough he heard her teeth rattle. “Shut the fuck up,” he told them.

  Reaching out with his free hand, he yanked the gun out of Delfi’s grip and tossed it on one of the passenger seats behind him. She lunged for it and he caught her around the waist. Frustrated rage seared his skin, but he hung on.

  Some fifty odd pulse rifles turned in his direction as he stalked down the ramp, dragging the women along with him.

  “Kizen,” he roared across the hangar. “The fuck you think you’re doing?” He didn’t want to think about why one of his own women was standing here. Standing there, like a whipped dog. Where the fuck was Quinn? The fuck had happened to the plan?

  Kizen looked up from whatever the woman had given him. He was too far away for Syrus to get a read on his body language. One hand came up, and he keyed the comms built into his helmet. In front of Syrus, the soldiers went rigid. Then a letten stepped forward. “This way,” he barked in Fleet. “Sir.”

  There was a sea of contempt in that word. An ocean of it, like mucus coming off the
men surrounding them. Syrus looked at them. So that was it, then?

  For a second, he actually considered attacking. Going down fighting instead of letting himself be led off like livestock to slaughter. He’d take a few with him. Kizen wouldn’t have anyone to gloat over in the end.

  Delfi muttered under her breath as she tried to wiggle free of his grip. Jossa shushed her, but didn’t move. She hung at the end of his other arm, her fear etching his nerve endings.

  His imaginary conscience wasn’t impressed with that plan. Sure, he could take on his own men turned traitors. He could die in a rain of pulse bolts. The women on either side of him would have an extra thirty seconds to curse his name before the soldiers turned on them, too. And what, exactly, would that gain anyone?

  Not a fucking thing. Not even answers. And right now, if he had the chance to cut someone’s throat to get a few, he’d do it and laugh. How the fuck had he gotten fucked up the ass like this?

  So you buy some time, his conscience whispered. Just buy some time, keep your shields up, and work out how you’ll get free.

  Syrus didn’t bother trying to shove the thought back down its hole. Instead, he eased the two women around so they were standing next to him, and then raised his head to meet the blank face of Kizen’s helm across the hangar. “All right,” he said once he’d added a few more layers to his mental shields. “Get this over with.”

  »»««

  It looked like Kizen had it all planned out. Probably from the minute Syrus had told him what he was going to do about the base. Instead of getting shot, or beaten, or marched down to a brig, Syrus and the women were escorted out of the hangar, through a maze of corridors, and into a conference room. Jossa didn’t put up much of a fight, stumbling along like a drunk again. Delfi held her up on one side and spat He’la at anyone and everyone who came in reach as she blasted Syrus with her fury. The slimy mucus feel of the soldiers around him didn’t do anything to help.

  Every breath was a struggle. He made the walk to their makeshift prison mainly by clinging to that quiet voice in his head. Buy some time. Don’t lose your shit and turn this place into a bloodbath. Don’t give yourself away and suffocate on thin air and emotions.

  The monster that lived in him crept out to do battle with his conscience. He shoved them both back down, hammered the lid on tight again, and focused on putting one foot in front of the other.

  Focus, fuck you.

  That’s the spirit, something in him replied.

  He didn’t answer. They’d made it.

  Someone had come in advance of their group and unbolted the table and all the seats in a conference room, clearing it for use. The fact that the lock on the door was the easiest thing to crack this side of an old-fashioned metal-and-wood affair didn’t matter. The search the guards made of their bodies stopped just short of cavities and radiated exams.

  The women were stripped and shackled with grav cuffs. None of the anchors holding them to the wall were anywhere near the panel access points. No picking any locks. No getting to the wiring inside the walls.

  Where the women were forced into sitting positions, Syrus was left standing. They’d also given him an extra set of cuffs around his ankles.

  Even if he’d gotten a chance to speak, he wouldn’t have told the sousi pair what that meant. The two would probably stop sitting there and emanating and actually start trying to get free, and he’d lose any chance he might have at keeping some sort of lid on the situation. The last thing he needed was those two dropping out of orbit and infecting whatever Fleet soldiers might be around with their emotions. Armor or not, the men would feel something. And after the first time, they’d know where it was coming from.

  His men. He’d stopped keeping track of how long he’d been with these people, bleeding and nearly dying next to them. At least a couple of standard years. Maybe more. The minute his back was turned, they’d flipped on him. Hadn’t even given him a chance to get the job done.

  Morons. Whoever had programmed those drone-sats had fucked up the shields on the little bastards. Probably Kizen’s people. His knew better than to let the enemy know they were being attacked. Instead, they’d let themselves be detected and the fucking security on the base had clamped down tighter than a virgin during her first lay. They’d turned what should have been a fairly simple crack-and-grab job into something exponentially worse. The key codes would be impossible to get to now.

  Well, Syrus thought, at least he could die knowing the Fleet had run themselves into the metaphorical wall. Now they’d have to reverse course through the Barbicans. Or else sit in this system and get pounded to pieces by the Imperial Armada. Hopefully Kizen liked radiation and extreme gravity, because that was on the menu too.

  Syrus decided he really should have been making someone pay him for all those big words over the years. Then he could have taken the money and hidden in some backwater Border system instead of running around known space with a pack of psychotic necrophiliacs. Gotten a farm in walking distance of a forest, hunted when he felt like killing something. Had some peace for Ris—

  He hauled his mind back to the present. The girls were coming out of their daze, testing the limits of their tethers and making the obvious conclusion. When things finally started happening, they’d be shit out of luck. Trapped.

  He craned his neck around to get a look at the moorings on his own cuffs. The air around the cuffs shimmered and sizzled, a side effect of not having any slack in the tether. He squinted. Had they? They had. He checked the other side. Same. Looked around the room and did the math. It wouldn’t have worked for Jossa, even if she’d been standing. She didn’t have the freakish strength that came from being Savage. Even if he did get loose, he couldn’t pull the same trick on her tethers. Not with where they were anchored. Same went for Delfi.

  Assuming they weren’t already dead by the time he broke the tether.

  Here he was thinking of a rescue again. He checked his mind for quiet little voices telling him what to do and came up dry. Perfect. There had to be something wrong with him on the cellular level. Those two were pissy, annoying, and over-emotional in every sense of the word. He’d done his good deed for the day, keeping them from being beaten to a pulp on the hangar deck. Not even fucking Jossa was worth risking his life for a second go round. Even if he did get hard remembering it.

  “Zhuzhuch nehkch kasheyj ihihnaks ehvah ohli neh.”

  He blinked and looked over at Delfi. Whatever she’d just said, the jagged spikes of disgust and scorn coming off her were clear. He followed the line of her eyes and realized she was glaring at his erection.

  “What, you think I need some help with something? Feel free.”

  “There really is something wrong with you.” He couldn’t tell if Jossa was putting a good face on her fear or not. If she was trying to act like it wasn’t messing with her head, she wasn’t doing a very good job. Hopefully she’d get a handle on herself before the next stage of this little drama went into action. It was a safe bet that she hadn’t put all the pieces of her situation together yet. When she did, well. He wasn’t putting money on the fact that she was the stable half of her sousi pairing. Not anymore.

  “What? I’m here. Tied up. Two naked women in the same room. Give me a variable noose around my neck and I won’t even need you. I can get myself off.” His dick twitched and he shoved those thoughts down. He wanted to mess with their heads and distract them, not actually work himself up. Besides, taking care of himself without the feedback from someone else was like flying a ship with a half-crippled navigational computer. Possible, but not all that fun.

  Delfi spat something insulting, probably about his lineage, and went back to trying to look at her cuffs. Jossa thumped her head against the wall. “Why didn’t you just take the ship? We were in it! We could have—”

  “I told you, we would have died. If they didn’t get us in the hangar, they would have gotten us leaving the base. He’s probably got half the Fleet in orbit around this place.” If n
ot the whole Fleet. Where was Quinn in all this anyway? Bastard had said he was loyal. Hell, he’d acted loyal for nearly three years now. Had he just been waiting?

  “And we’re not going to die now?” She looked downright indignant. Well, he was pretty pissed himself. Except he wasn’t about to be gang raped like they were.

  “Not dead yet, are we?” They would be soon. Unless he managed to get loose without bringing the whole base down on his head.

  That hail of pulse bolts was looking better by the second.

  Delfi coughed out something under her breath. He didn’t catch all of it, but Jossa went rigid, her attention fixed on the door. He frowned, trying to figure out what had made her start sucking in all that fear. It was almost like she was trying to turn it into something else and build a shield out of it.

  He felt the smug confidence a heartbeat before the door slid open, mixed with anger so strong it could only mean one person. Kizen stepped into the room. There was some shifting around in the corridor outside the room, and Syrus wondered if the woman from his quarters was out there. It wouldn’t surprise him. Bastard didn’t have an original idea in his head. Probably thought that pulling the same stunt as Syrus had with Jossa would prove some sort of point.

  But when he saw who was shuffling through the doorway, Syrus nearly lost his mind to fury. Quinn? Quinn was the one who betrayed him? Quinn, who’d put the fucking Helm on him in the first place?

  A low growl started in his throat. The monster inside lunged at the end of its chain, and he felt the familiar burn start in his veins.

  Then he saw the way his second was holding himself. One arm hanging loose at his side. A bruise purpled his face from jaw to temple. Blood trickled down the other side of his forehead from an already healing gash. His bare forehead, with the line across it from where his helm always sat.