Grim watched from just outside the mouth of the main shaft for a few minutes, eyes searching the entirety of the airfield before he decided that Nickie wasn’t there. Finally, he pulled his communicator out.
“Meredith? Did Nickie make it out of the mines?”
“She’s fine,” the EI assured him. “She’s back on the ship. She needs a moment. Her involvement in this has her rather unsettled.”
“Right. Thanks.”
Knowing Meredith didn’t expect or need a proper sign-off, Grim ended the call. He watched the ship for a moment before he sighed out a slow breath, put his communicator away, and jogged off to see how he could help the colonists.
Chapter 3
Nickie
As half of what remained of the colonists decided what to do with the weapons, the other half of them slowly made their way back inside. Some of them were injured, and others were just too mentally and emotionally spent to do anything else. A few were simply making sure nothing went wrong. The injured leaned on the able-bodied all the way back into the main hall.
With Keen still out on the airfield, Adelaide and Raynard were the main escorts back into the outpost.
Reluctantly, Raynard shuffled into the center of the foyer to address the group. “Do we have any volunteers among the uninjured to help clean up?” he asked. He didn’t need to specify what they were cleaning up. It was clear from the pinched expression on his face and the tight quiver to his voice that he meant the bodies of their friends and family members that had been left in the corridors.
“If you would prefer to stay here or head back out to the airfield, we understand,” Adelaide added. “This…isn’t the sort of thing we would force anyone to do.”
After some mumbling and shuffling about, they wound up with ten volunteers.
It wasn’t until they all split off into different hallways that Adelaide finally covered her face with both hands and bent over double. Her breath shuddered out irregularly as she fought the urge to start crying that had been sitting in her chest ever since the Skaines had returned. It took several moments, but she gradually managed to get her breathing back under control. Finally, she steeled her spine and straightened back up, closing her hands into fists at her sides to get them to stop shaking.
Raynard looped an arm around her shoulders, gave her a comforting squeeze, and pressed a kiss to the side of her head before they both started walking.
Although they both gasped in horror when they came upon the first scene of carnage and Adelaide couldn’t quite stop an agonized sob from ripping out of her chest, they didn’t let it stop them as they started taking down names and lining up bodies.
It wasn’t until they came to a certain closet that they wavered. Raynard stepped in first and froze when he saw the grisly sight in front of him. He cast about for a moment, grabbed the first bin he saw, and evacuated the contents of his stomach into it.
Concerned, Adelaide went to follow him into the closet. Watching her shadow, Raynard bit out raggedly, “Don’t.” He extended his arm to stop her.
He spat into the bin and stumbled back from it, eyes on the cleanest wall. “Trust me, just—stay out there.”
But none of them could afford to bury their heads in the sand. After only a few minutes to catch his breath and steel his nerves, Raynard turned toward the gory display, set his shoulders grimly, and wrapped his hands around the mining spike to heave it out of the wall.
Rebus Quadrant, Aboard the Penitent Granddaughter, Nickie’s Quarters
Nickie’s quarters weren’t especially big. She hadn’t really minded in the past, but it became very apparent that they were pretty small when she was pacing back and forth. She could really only get in a few good strides before she had to turn and go the other way.
Maybe she could knock out a wall and take over the quarters next door. It wasn’t like she had to worry about taking someone else’s room; only three of the cabins were occupied.
She was doing a very bad job of keeping herself distracted if she was thinking about redecorating. With a long groan, she fell back onto her bed, arms splayed out to her sides and her feet on the floor as she stared at the ceiling.
Meredith—
I’ve already told you, if I find anything unexpected on any of the outpost’s security feeds, I will let you know.
Nickie groaned again and lifted a hand to drag it down her face, then flung it toward the ceiling. Her holoball appeared, and she twirled it in a circle, watching the lights shift. It did nothing to distract her, and after a moment it vanished. She let her arm fall back to the bed.
She knew what she wanted to do, but it felt too much like trying to reward herself for a horrible situation.
She thought about what Grim would say to her if he knew what direction her thoughts were spiraling in. He would probably smack her upside the head and tell her to stop being ridiculous. It seemed like a very Grim thing to do.
She took a breath and heaved it out in a deep, blustering sigh, then sat up so she could lean back against the wall behind the bed. With a determined set to her jaw, she shoved her conflicted feelings into a box for the time being.
All right, Meredith. Let’s see that diary entry. I might as well keep myself busy.
Of course.
The text appeared in Nickie’s vision a moment later.
“Ninety-seven years ago now…” she mused with a low, impressed whistle. “I bet she hasn’t slowed down at all since then.” She couldn’t help but grin as she decided, “I’ll keep kicking ass for at least another two hundred. Can’t let her upstage me.”
With a contented sigh she settled in to start reading, drawing her knees toward her chest and folding her arms on top of them. She rested her chin on top of her arms as she got comfortable.
Chapter 4
Tabitha
Planet Flex
Tabitha’s footsteps were almost entirely silent as she made her way across the roof. To anyone without augmented hearing, they were entirely silent. Her coat caught the wind and revealed tight black pants and a fitted black top with a deep V-neck.
She looked down at her chest as she walked and smiled smugly.
Ryu came to her side, so quietly that even her hearing hadn’t detected him. Tabitha hopped, then looked down again.
“Oooh, that was a good bounce.”
“What are you doing?” Ryu asked, skeptically eyeing her.
“I’m Rangering.”
He blinked at her, eyes narrowing. “And what is that? Is there some aspect of this job I am not aware of? Does Barnabas do similar things?”
Tabitha was very much enjoying the way she swayed as she swaggered across the roof. With her coat blowing back, anyone who was watching could see an absolutely curvy body in these clothes. The fact that no one was watching—that was the point of going across the roof at night silently, of course—didn’t mean she couldn’t feel good about how she looked.
As important as it was to look good, the mental image of Barnabas crossing this same roof with that swagger was just too much. Tabitha clapped a hand over her mouth to keep from snickering loudly and slammed a fist into her thigh as her whole body shook with laughter.
“Oh, my God.” She gasped.
Ryu put his hands on his hips. “He does not. When Barnabas goes somewhere, he just goes. He doesn’t worry about how he looks—”
“Stop, stop!” Her ribs were going to break if she kept laughing like this, but it was just too good not to.
Ryu rolled his eyes. “Kemosabe, pay attention!”
“I am trying to pay attention!” Tabitha wheezed. “You asked if Barnabas walks like this. Now I can’t help but picture Barnabas in these pants.”
Ryu stopped talking. He looked horrified, as if he knew what was coming and didn’t want to hear any of it.
“Swaying his hips,” Tabitha squeaked. She was trying not to laugh so loudly that the people in the buildings below could hear them, but she was having real trouble with that. “In high-heeled boots.�
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“Kemosabe, please don’t.” Ryu sounded panicked, his eyes looking everywhere trying to figure out a way to fix this problem.
“Coat blowing back in the wind to show his ass…” There were tears of laughter streaming down Tabitha’s face, and her chest felt like it was going to burst.
“I don’t want to hear this.” Ryu had sunk his face into his hands.
“IN A V-NECK!” Tabitha finished. She doubled over. “Oh, God, it hurts. It hurts so much. Oh God, please make the pain stop!”
“Now you are destroying my will to live,” Ryu snapped, annoyed, “shall we get back to—”
She looked up at him, asking with an entirely too straight a face to go with the glint of humor in her eyes, “Do you think his tits bounce like mine?”
“OH, MY GOD.” The vampire hissed like he was going to hurl. “Centuries,” he muttered as he surveyed the rooftops. “I spent centuries fighting with honor, upholding and protecting the things I loved. I swore myself to an Empress without equal. I serve one of her highest generals.” He glared at Tabitha. “And I am repaid with Barnabas and breasts.”
“Those centuries weren’t any fun,” Tabitha told him confidently. She straightened and loosed the remaining few giggles, then wiped her eyes. “Ah, that was wonderful. I’ll have to tell Barnabas about it the next time I see him.”
“Please give me advance warning so I can be anywhere but where you two are talking.” Ryu had an idea how Barnabas would respond to the image of him sashaying across a roof in tight leather pants. The only thing Ryu wasn’t sure of was whether Ranger One’s response would include nukes or just his lips pressed in a firm line.
“Oh, no.” Tabitha smirked and slinked back across the roof. She swayed her hips and her shoulders as she walked.
His voice floated on the wind behind her, silent. “What are you doing? Why are you walking that way?”
“It’s called ‘sex appeal,’ Ryu.”
“Are you sure?”
Tabitha turned and glared at him. “You want to do five hundred push-ups right now? Because you’re going to if you keep sassing me.”
“I do not ‘sass.’” Ryu scanned the alien city again with an expression of deep sadness. “Centuries,” he repeated. “Centuries.”
“Yeah, yeah, keep being all—” Tabitha waved a hand at him. “Anyway, you have to be there when I tell Barnabas because it was your idea.”
“It was not my idea!” The last thing Ryu wanted was for Barnabas to hear that Ryu had devised that mental image.
He would be so dead.
And then Hirotoshi would kill him again when he heard the story.
“You did, though,” Tabitha argued. “You said, and I quote, ‘Does Barnabas walk like that?’”
“No! No. I said, ‘Is there some aspect of the job I am not aware of? Does Barnabas do similar things?’ That is entirely different.”
“You meant, does Barnabas show off his ass like I do? Which he doesn’t, because his isn’t as nice as mine.”
“They are two completely different… You know I simply wondered, does he let meaningless things distract him from his duty? I think you and I both know he does not.”
“He and his friends spend hours trying to find new ways to cheat at chess,” Tabitha stated in a tone of deep disgust. “If that’s not meaningless, I don’t know what is. Anyway, you definitely asked while I—”
Ryu sighed, then questioned why he was about to say what he was going to say. The result was a foregone conclusion. However, he needed to try. His voice was urgent, a whisper. “Watch where you’re stepping, Kemosabe!”
“Don’t interrupt me!” she hissed back. “You asked while I was being all sexy, so any reasonable person would think that was what you meant.”
Ryu rolled his eyes. He knew he wasn’t going to persuade Tabitha on this score. When she had an idea, she could argue about it forever.
“Please do watch where you’re stepping, though,” he tried a second time.
The roofs in this city appeared to have been built by a madman. They overlapped and dropped off sharply, sometimes so ornate that one building would completely overshadow another. There were little carved statues everywhere, which were of course completely invisible from any street view of the buildings, and the slant was difficult even for ankles that were perfectly engineered.
Tabitha waved a hand airily. She strutted along a tiny ornamental fence as if it were a catwalk.
“Also, may I remind you that the Flexxent are multigender?”
“The Flexxent?” Tabitha looked at him with a confused frown.
“Yes, the Flexxent. The people who run this planet. Did you read any of the information Achronyx printed for you?”
Ranger Tabitha never reads my reports, Achronyx interjected mournfully.
“I read!” Tabitha asserted. “You just go on and on with all those…” She waved a hand again.
“Facts?” Ryu finished delicately.
Tabitha lifted her nose in the air. “I don’t have to stand here and take this. Anyway, so what if they are multigender?” She frowned. “Wait, does that mean it’s easy for them to have sex with themselves? Because if so, I just want to say I’m jealous.”
Ryu gave her another horrified look.
Why had he volunteered for this mission again? Hirotoshi had just assumed he would go, and then Ryu had gotten some harebrained idea and said he should go instead.
Right now, he was having trouble remembering why.
Oh, right. He’d said that Hirotoshi got to have all the fun. If this was what Hirotoshi had been putting up with, Ryu was sorry he’d volunteered. Then he remembered the other man’s small smile and his eyes narrowed.
Hirotoshi had known just what Ryu was getting himself into, and he’d let him do it.
Bastard.
“Ryu, does it mean they can just have sex with themselves? Like—” Tabitha made a gesture that was both confusing and far, far too easily understood.
“No.” Ryu’s head hurt. “No, it means they have multiple genders, not necessarily that they have sex with themselves.”
“Not necessarily?”
“I mean, it’s technically possible, but I really don’t think—”
“Oh, I bet they do. They totally do. Achronyx, back me up.”
I’d prefer not to get involved in this one.
“Useless,” Tabitha muttered. She stalked ahead, throwing insults over her shoulder at Ryu, Achronyx, the Flexxent, and just for good measure, Barnabas. She bet Barnabas’d had something to do with this. He was stuffy. Achronyx was stuffy.
It all fit.
Ryu followed her as her whispers trailed off. The next time he looked up, she had disappeared.
“Kemosabe?” he whispered, looking around. Had she left to start the mission without him? Shit.
Worse, had she run off to ask a Flexxent if they ever had sex with themselves?
To his relief, he caught the sound of her annoyed voice filtering up from—
The ground.
Ryu jumped while pulling a switch on his harness. He drifted to the ground as an annoyed, “Sonofabitch!” echoed through the alley. He arrived to find Tabitha lounging elegantly in a pile of garbage.
Or, at least, as elegantly as possible amidst food scraps and unidentifiable goo.
“Are you going to get up?” he asked doubtfully.
“I just set my leg.” She inspected her nails. “It’s healing.”
“You fell off the roof.”
She didn’t look at him. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Because you weren’t watching where you were going.”
“You aren’t listening.”
Ryu looked up, “That’s at least three floors.”
“I’ll have you know,” Tabitha declared haughtily, pointing up, “that I did a fantastic 3 1/4 reverse non-tucked flip.”
One eye raised, he asked. “You landed on the leg wrong?”
As if pried from her lips, Tabitha final
ly spit out “Yes!”
Ryu waited a moment before asking the inevitable. “Why couldn’t you just say that?”
“Because a girl has to remain a little mysterious.” Tabitha stood up and hobbled toward the mouth of the alley. “And none of this would have happened if you hadn’t distracted me by talking about aliens screwing themselves.”
“I didn’t talk about that!”
“You brought it up.” She looked up and down the street. “Achronyx, is it that way?”
Yes, Ranger Tabitha, but I feel I should tell you that—
“Excellent.”
Ranger Tabitha—
“Not now, Achronyx.”
You really should—
“Shut up, Achronyx.” Tabitha hobbled slightly for a few more steps, then shook her shoulders out and started back into her catwalk strut. “Much better. That hurt like a bitch. Now that we’re down here, shall we go with Option Two?”
“What’s Option Two?” Ryu asked her.
“The front door.”
Yud Skrow Lounge, City of Karkat
Two large aliens with flat-topped heads and what looked to be either extremely complicated ears or multiple sets of ears were posted at the entrance to the building.
Tabitha sauntered to the door, nose lifted as she reached for the handle. The large aliens, however, closed ranks and glared down at her. One of them barked something in a gravelly voice, and the other pointed at a sign on the wall. It was white with black lettering, illuminated by a series of flashing lights in bright colors.
“They apparently want people to read that,” Ryu remarked.
“I wonder what it says?” Tabitha squinted at it. “Nope, no clue.” She shook her head. “Going in.”
The aliens clearly had other ideas. They scowled even more fiercely as Tabitha tried to push her way past them. One of them snapped at her again.
“I can’t read that!” Tabitha shot back.
They stood their ground, and one of them said something to the other, still speaking their own language.
Deuces Wild Boxed Set: Books 1-4: Beyond the Frontiers, Rampage, Labyrinth, Birthright Page 23