Deuces Wild Boxed Set: Books 1-4: Beyond the Frontiers, Rampage, Labyrinth, Birthright

by Ell Leigh Clarke

  She turned to look down the other side the hall, and just as she finished talking, she very nearly squealed in surprise as one of her boots slid out from under her like a rollerblade on a waxed floor. She landed on the floor, doing an impromptu split.

  You didn’t see that!

  Of course not. That was perfectly normal.

  Nickie glowered at thin air as she picked herself up, and she looked down to see what she had stepped in. She froze when she saw what it was.

  It was blood, spattered around the hall as if it had been sprayed in an arc all the way up one of the walls and onto the ceiling. Slowly, her eyes traced the trail on the floor back to a body slumped against the wall. The throat had been torn out so aggressively that Nickie could see the neckbones.

  There were two more colonists slumped against the wall farther down, one with a hole through the chest and the other with a laser blast through the head. Even farther down the hall, there was one more body, looking thoroughly ravaged, as if it had been set upon by wild dogs.

  No question about the smell, then.

  A door at the end was open. Even from here she could see the flood of half-congealed blood that had flowed out into the hall. Instinctively she didn’t want to see what was beyond the door, but she knew she had to look.

  One by one, the drones began to find similar evidence, finding more and more bodies in the remotest sections of the outpost. It was as if the colonists had been trying to run, only to be chased deeper into the halls where they were massacred.

  Nickie picked her way along the hall, stepping over bodies and around pools of blood. By the time she reached the open door, her grip on her gun and her knife were so tight that her fingers were starting to hurt.

  She entered the room gun-first.

  There was only a single body in the room. The throat had been torn out just as violently as the last one, but that wasn’t the worst of it. The worst was the fact that it was hanging from the wall, nailed in place by a mining spike through the chest. It was like a banner to announce who had been there.

  Between the laser injuries and the claw marks, Nickie knew exactly who had been there. She would always be able to recognize Skaine handiwork.

  She backed out of the room, her nostrils flaring against the smell of blood and her breathing coming faster. She was angry enough that she wanted to rip the entire outpost down at that moment, but it wouldn’t help her. She clamped her mouth shut and sucked in a deep breath through her nose, before breathing it out again—in, two, three, out, two, three.

  Nickie.

  Meredith interrupted her thoughts before they could go down even darker paths.

  I’ve found records of a sealed fire door that is normally not supposed to be sealed. It’s roughly twenty stories below-ground.

  Nickie took another deep breath and sighed it out, loosening her hold on her weapons as she did.

  Some of the colonists. They must have managed to flee into the mines.

  She was already on the move, following the map that Meredith brought up on her HUD. She broke into a run after a few paces, and she reached the lift down into the mine in what felt like a few heartbeats.

  Not that it actually meant much. The lift doors opened, but the lift was nowhere to be seen. She could see the lift cable, but when she stretched over and caught it, it swayed far too much for both ends to still be attached. She recalled her drones and put them back in her pouch.

  Nickie backed up a pace and searched the area until she found a post long enough to brace the lift doors open, then caught the cable again, gripped it tightly in both hands, and jumped.

  She dropped through the shaft like a stone, as if she weren’t even holding the cable. She kicked her legs out so the soles of her boots met one wall, and she slammed her shoulder against the adjacent wall. She leaned into the corner, and she swore she could smell the soles of her boots starting to smoke as she tried to slow herself. Her jacket had to be in tatters.

  When at last the cable snapped taut, Nickie had slowed herself down enough that she didn’t wind up with a case of whiplash, even if she nearly bashed her head against the wall. Still braced into the corner like an awkward spider, she gave the cable a wary tug to make sure it wasn’t going to try anymore funny business. When it remained tight, she began to shinny her way down the cable to the bottom.

  It seemed like hours had passed before she saw a crooked, shapeless lump at the bottom. She cringed when she realized that the only thing it could be was the crashed lift. She let go of the cable and dropped the last several yards, landing on top of it with a metallic bang.

  Think the Skaines cut the cable?

  Most likely. We already know dirty tactics are not beyond them.

  Nickie grunted but otherwise didn’t reply.

  There were half a dozen bodies still in the lift when Nickie pried the emergency hatch open and dropped in. She stepped over them carefully.

  Surprisingly low fatality rate for a fall like that.

  The observation felt cold and clinical as she made it.

  In all likelihood, not all of the colonists came down at once. They would not have fit.

  Somehow that only made it seem all the more depressing, and Nickie was quick to pry the lift doors open and step through.

  The mines themselves weren’t much better. There were emergency lights scattered every few yards through the larger tunnels, but the auxiliary shafts were pitch-black.

  Nickie reached for her belt.

  Switch the drones to audio mode, she told Meredith.

  She made the decision and sent the three drones ahead of her, jogging carefully in their wake.

  Meredith didn’t reply, but Nickie could abruptly hear the creaks of the mineshaft settling ahead of her, and a grid suddenly blanketed her vision, shaping itself to the environment ahead of her. Even without any details, she at least had the rough shape of the landscape, and she would hear anything coming.

  She didn’t talk with Meredith on the way, focusing instead on keeping a steady pace with single-minded intent. Once her eyes adjusted she could just barely see the shine of her drones, and she followed them as closely as she could. They seemed to know where they were going.

  At least until she was forced to grind to a halt when she realized the shaft ahead of her was blocked. From floor to ceiling, there was scarcely any space to pass.

  “How would they have even gotten through here?” Nickie wondered aloud.

  They likely got through before it was blocked. I suspect weaker points throughout the tunnels were destabilized when the lift hit the ground.

  Nickie hummed in acknowledgment and went to investigate the blockage. The rock and dirt and remnants of scaffolding groaned ominously as she ran a hand over them, and she backed up a pace.

  While you can theoretically fit through the gap in the blockage, there is a high likelihood that you will be crushed trying to climb through when the debris shifts.

  Not if I don’t actually touch it.

  Nickie backed up several yards, using the grid over her vision to line herself up before she burst into a sprint. At the last instant she leapt, hands stretched out in front of her. Straight as an arrow, she threw herself through the gap in the blockage, before arcing toward the ground. She landed hands-first and somersaulted, finally coming to a halt on all fours.

  “I haven’t been flattened,” she observed after a few seconds, sounding slightly mystified by that fact. She levered herself to her feet and dusted herself off.

  She didn’t waste much time relishing in her victory, though. Her drones buzzed at one of her shoulders, so she waved them ahead and kept following them.

  It seemed as if she jogged for half an eternity before anything changed, and she ground to a halt when she saw it at last.

  There was a great dully-silver door ahead, battered and enormous. It looked big enough to hold up all of the mines on its own. It was only barely visible, the top and sides of it lit by flickering emergency lights. Nickie broke into a sprin
t as soon as she saw it, running halfway up a wall at one point to leap over a piece of abandoned mining equipment.

  This door is typically unsealed, Meredith offered as confirmation once Nickie was standing in front of the door.

  Shall I attempt to connect with Keen’s communicator?

  In answer, Nickie pulled her communicator out and stared at it expectantly. It clicked with static for a few seconds until, at last, “—llo? Is an— there? Th— Keen of— kis Outpost. Who— out there?”

  So far underground, it was a miracle their communicators were working at all. Nickie clutched hers in both hands, knuckles going pale with the force of her hold.

  “Keen? It’s Nickie. Just hold tight. We’re getting you all out of there.”

  Rebus Quadrant, Themis Colony

  I can access the door control protocols, but I will still need you to manually fry the control box on the wall. Shall I let Grim know he’ll need to bring you the necessary tools?

  It took Nickie a moment to respond since she was staring at the massive door. Keen was saying something to her through her communicator, and he sounded shocked—too shocked to even be relieved or happy—but she couldn’t make out most of the words through the static.

  Nickie.

  She jolted back to the present, spine straightening.

  Yeah. Let him know. I’ll…see if I can do anything while I wait.

  She turned her attention back to her communicator and edged closer to the door. As she approached, the static cleared slightly. By the time she was nearly pressed flat to the door’s almost-invisible seam, she could finally make out most of Keen’s words.

  “Nic—? Nickie, are—still there?”

  The signal still wasn’t perfect.

  “Still here,” she assured him. “Grim needs to bring me some equipment to open the door. How many of you are in there? And—“ She took a breath, held it for a second, and let it out. “What happened?”

  Keen was quiet for a moment. Nickie wasn’t sure if it was because the signal weakened or not until he started speaking again.

  “The Skaines ca— back,” he answered, confirming what Nickie already suspected. “W—weren’t ready. They ripped thr— outpost like tissue paper. I don’t think th— happy about last time. S—pposed to be a secur—ty signal to open this— gain, but we haven’t been ab— get it to connect.”

  Another gift from the Skaines, most likely.

  He fell silent for a moment, and Nickie’s grip on her communicator tightened. Finally, Keen admitted, “There aren’— ven a hundred in here. Maybe eighty-five.”

  Nickie stared straight ahead, eyes wide but unseeing as she tried to make that number compute.

  Maybe eighty-five, but probably less.

  Finally, voice flat and nearly robotic, she replied, “I need to focus on getting this door open.” She terminated the call and put her communicator away.

  Nickie cast around wildly, unsure just how soundproofed the door was, then she spotted some long-abandoned scaffolding against the side of the corridor. She rounded upon it, then punched and kicked it. Venting her frustration, she didn’t stop until it was only scrap metal.

  She stood panting heavily through her teeth, looking back at the metal door she couldn’t get through.

  There wasn’t much else she could do but wait for the tools she needed.

  Grim eventually loped up behind her with a toolkit in hand. It had taken time, but much less than Nickie had expected it to. She whirled to face him when she heard him approach, and as she stared at him dully, he brandished the kit.

  She grabbed it from him. “How did you get through so fast?” she asked, rifling through the kit for the tools she needed.

  “Meredith told me about the obstacle course,” he answered. “So I brought backup.” He jerked a thumb over his shoulder to point behind him. When Nickie peered around him, she could see two of the house bots clustered around a jackhammer. And when she actually took a good look at him, it was apparent he was wearing a climbing harness and a backpack.

  “Huh.”

  Nickie shook her head briefly to get her attention back on the current crisis. Tools in hand, she turned toward the door controls and set to work prying the casing open and snipping the appropriate wires once its innards had been bared.

  Grim jumped back in surprise when the control panel sparked. The door shuddered, split, and stiffly began to slide open.

  The bunker smelled once the doors were open, but nowhere near as bad as Nickie had expected. Of course, that wasn’t really surprising, in retrospect. It had been designed to hold the entire population of the colony in an emergency. There were so few of them that they’d had enough space to partition off a corner to use as a bathroom, and they still weren’t cramped.

  They looked haggard, like a breeze might blow them over or send them into a panic. They stared, bewildered, at the open doorway like they weren’t sure what they were supposed to do.

  Then Keen emerged, pushing his way past everyone else with Adelaide and Raynard on his heels.

  Nickie knew she should say something to him, but he looked like a man whose world had fallen apart at his feet. Adelaide and Raynard looked haunted in a manner that Nickie knew would never go away.

  She could feel her control on her temper fraying, so she turned on her heel, putting her back to the bunker before that could happen.

  “I’ll take the lead to make sure there’s nothing in the mines,” she told Grim, and she motioned for her drones. They started orbiting him like moons. “You hang back with the colonists. Make sure all of them make it out of the bunker, and none of them fall behind. They’ll let me know if there’s a crisis.” She flapped a hand at one of the drones as it circled past.

  “Okay, but— Nickie!”

  Without giving Grim time to say anything, Nickie sprinted back into the mines, leaving him to shout after her ineffectually.

  Nickie kept running with a single-minded focus. It wasn’t until she was passing what was left of the blockage that Meredith finally broke the uneasy silence.

  Are you all right?

  Nickie ground to a halt, going from sprinting to standing still so abruptly that she nearly gave herself whiplash.

  Fine.

  Nickie.

  The Skaines came back. They did all this because of what I did last time.

  She whirled, slamming one fist into what remained of the blockage. It trembled and creaked, and a few stones and clods of dirt tumbled down to the ground. She broke back into a run, but Meredith didn’t let the topic drop.

  Would you have preferred to have left them to their fate? You know what the Skaines had planned for them.

  Nickie snorted, scoffing as she ran.

  How does that suddenly mean this isn’t my fault?

  When Nickie emerged from the mines and returned to the airfield, Bradley and Lefty were unloading the weapons from the Granddaughter’s cargo hold. If she squinted, she could see Durq cautiously peering out of the hold, mostly hidden behind the corner of the opening as the bots trundled up and down the gangplank.

  She watched them quietly for a moment, standing framed in the entrance to the main shaft. Still watching them, she started to make her way back toward the ship, her mind still processing what she’d seen. What the colonists had been through. How those poor souls had died.

  She felt nauseated as she walked.

  When she arrived at the ship, she sat down on the gangplank and then toppled over backward, folding an arm under her head at the last second to cushion her landing.

  Durq leaned slightly farther out of his hiding spot. It looked like he wanted to say something. Nickie wasn’t sure what her face was doing just then, but he took one look at her expression and very visibly changed his mind. He shrank back into his hiding spot for a moment before scurrying back onto the ship entirely.

  Slowly, Nickie sat up again, watching as the two bots worked. She supposed she could have gotten up to help them, but it wasn’t as if they could get ove
rworked. Instead, she stayed where she was, seated on the side of the gangplank. Eventually, she swung her legs over the side and dangled them toward the ground.

  She tensed when Brandy and Lucky emerged from the mine alone, but a quick glance at the drones’ footage showed that Grim and the colonists were still in the tunnels. Bots didn’t need to worry about pacing or getting tired, after all.

  Brandy and Lucky joined the other two bots, but she still didn’t join in. She wasn’t tired. Not quite, at least. She had been through days that had seemed eight times as long. Other than a tricky jump, she hadn’t even done much that day, at least compared to previous events.

  She wasn’t tired, but she felt drained. Like she weighed a thousand pounds, each pound pulling her down toward the ground.

  She looked up slowly when the first of the colonists came out of the shaft. Knowing that she would be alerted if anything went wrong, she hauled herself to her feet and made her way up the gangplank and onto the ship before any of them could spot her.

  Considering everything she had caused and how she had practically run away from them earlier, she didn’t quite want to speak with any of them yet.

  As Nickie disappeared deeper into the ship the colonists kept trickling out of the mine, slow and befuddled like a horde of benign zombies. Grim was the last to step out, just a few paces behind Keen. The two of them kept everyone moving.

  No one quite knew what they were supposed to do just then, so they did the only thing they really could. Those that were able—those who hadn’t been too badly injured in the attack or addled by the stay underground—shuffled over to where the bots were depositing the weapons. They took a moment to peer at them, deciding what they were and where they were supposed to go before they began picking them up and moving them off of the airfield.

  No one said it, but the idea loomed over them all the same; if another Skaine ship showed up on the horizon, none of them wanted to have weaponry just sitting out in the open, ripe for the taking.