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

by Ell Leigh Clarke

  “I’m sorry, I didn’t quite hear that.”

  He was going to die. Why had he gone in today? He could have stayed home in bed, and Lore wouldn’t have been able to talk him into going out to take this job. That would have been so much better.

  “I said I’m sorry,” Rino blurted.

  “Hmph. That’s a bad fucking excuse. You two don’t get it at all. There are steps to Justice. You think there was any Justice in this hit getting taken out on me?”

  Rino and Lore looked at each other and burst out laughing.

  Tabitha stood up and scratched her head. “What did I say that was funny?” she asked Ryu.

  “You know, I’m not actually sure?”

  “It’s just the idea of Justice,” Rino gasped.

  “In Karkat!” Lore finished. The two of them were alternating between holding their bruised faces and shrieking with laughter.

  “Especially with BSG!” Rino added.

  “On Karkat,” Lore repeated, and the two of them laughed even harder…until they looked up and saw Tabitha staring at them, tapping her finger on her arm.

  “Not. A funny. Joke.” She narrowed her eyes. “I grew up in a place where all the cops were corrupt, you know that? Where they only served the rich. Where they thought it was funny if someone asked for justice. I was just a scared little kid. I didn’t have anything.”

  Both Flexxent were silent and kept staring at her.

  “You know what the problem with those scared little kids is?” Tabitha cocked her head to the side. “Most of the time, they never make it out of the slums. That’s true. But the ones who do are dangerous as hell.”

  Her eyes narrowed. “Like me.”

  Her hand shot out, and she grabbed Lore by the collar. The female Flexxent gasped for air as Tabitha slammed her against the side of the nearest building.

  “I don’t like you,” Tabitha snarled. “You’re part of the government. You’re here to preserve law and order—to help citizens—and you decided that instead, you’d try to get in good with the bastards who are just putting hits out on people. You know why I’m here?”

  Lore tried to say something, but she couldn’t talk with Tabitha’s hand against her throat. She shook her head, looking panicked.

  “I’m here to track down someone who’s stealing supplies and getting settlers killed because they don’t have the food and the buildings they need. Since I got here, I’ve run into nothing but roadblocks, which are being thrown up by the people who should be helping me.”

  She stopped and stared into Lore’s face. Lore stared back. Spots were dancing in front of her eyes. It was really impressive how scary a tiny human could be.

  “So before I burn every single mansion in this city to the ground and hand over everyone’s money to the poor, why don’t you start trying to convince me that the government has a single fucking shred of decency left?” Tabitha suggested.

  “We could do that anyway,” Ryu suggested.

  “Believe me, I’m strongly considering it.”

  “You know who doesn’t like things like that?”

  “Kenet Aljun’ra?”

  “No. Your prospective date.”

  Tabitha gave Ryu a look. “Yeah, but he’s hot.”

  “You know, Bethany Anne doesn’t do that kind of stuff. Neither does Barnabas.”

  “That you know of.” With a sniff, Tabitha turned back to Lore and waited.

  “I know Kenet has a private building in the middle of the compound,” Rino suggested finally. “They say it has tunnels coming out.”

  “That would track,” Ryu said. “It was how Benet got out of the club, after all.”

  “Good point. Anything else?”

  “Well, I understand his guards are all pretty complacent.” She wiped some blood off of her face. “He’s the biggest thing in town, so no one ever messes with him. They know they couldn’t take him on, with so many allies. But I don’t suppose that matters to you.”

  Tabitha nodded. “You’re right. It doesn’t. Now get out of my sight, both of you, and hope I don’t decide you need more Justice.”

  They started walking off, and she called after them, “One more thing!”

  Both of them stopped, looking like they wanted nothing more than to keep walking.

  “I’ll be doing spot checks,” Tabitha said. “Coming back here to find out from the citizens whether anything has changed.”

  The two looked at each other before Lore spoke. “But we’re just two people—”

  Rino spoke up, “The rest of the police force—”

  “You’d better hope you can turn it all around,” Tabitha warned, unimpressed. She narrowed her eyes at them, and they turned and worked their pace up to a jog.

  “I hate to interrupt,” Achronyx cut in, “but I believe I’ve found Grule.”

  “Good,” Tabitha exclaimed savagely. “I feel like punching something right now. Hard.”

  Chapter 15

  Tabitha

  Grule had flown the hovercraft to the abandoned building with his hands shaking. That human should not have stood up again.

  What if the other one was alive too?

  There was no way. Still, he wasn’t going to be stupid about this. He was going to hide and figure out what the situation was, and then make sure both of them were dead. Then he was going to collect the bounty and probably retire from his life as a hitman, because this job had scared the crap out of him.

  Flexxent were big, and they were hard to kill. Frankly, Grule had never considered that any of his marks could kill him. Lots of species thought they were clever or whatever the hell they told themselves, but when push came to shove…

  Smart didn’t help when someone shot you in the face. Or pounded your chest cavity flat.

  Grule had now met a species who didn’t stay down when he hit them, and he wasn’t about to stick around and find out just how much they could take.

  He was going to wait, and then throw so much at them that they could not possibly survive it.

  He took the tunnels under the abandoned building and emerged in another part of town entirely. Karkat was all jumbled so that it was hard to tell good neighborhoods from bad.

  There was the gated community, of course, which housed most of the wildly wealthy, but other than that, you could find good and bad streets, and even good and bad sides of the street. Sometimes there were mansions on the top floors of buildings that were otherwise run down. Just built right on top and accessible only by hovercraft while the streets below remained the same.

  He didn’t expect his marks to be able to find him here, even if they came looking. The thought made him shiver, though.

  He headed for one of his safe houses. He didn’t have to look where he was going. People on the street took one look at his armor and his weapons and got the hell out of his way.

  That was how it should be. The strongest ruled. The others—the weak ones—fell in line.

  He was still annoyed when he punched open the door of the building and started climbing the winding ramps that led up into the darkness. His safe house was on the eighth floor and was stocked with more weapons. He’d chosen this one specifically because of the explosives he had stored here.

  A lot of people could take a punch, but no one could take a bomb to the face and stay upright. That was his philosophy. Reassured, he trudged up the stairs and pressed his hand against the biolock.

  He stepped into the darkness, closed the door behind him, and was confronted by two red pairs of eyes, staring at him from the darkness.

  Grule screamed. It was not a particularly impressive scream—of rage, for instance, or any sort of berserker charge. It was a high-pitched scream like a baby Flexxent might emit. There was a moment of pure, absolute terror.

  From the darkness, he heard laughter.

  “Ryu scared you when he got up, didn’t he?” Tabitha asked. She found Grule’s scream deeply amusing.

  And satisfying.

  For one thing, she had never h
eard that pitch come out of even babies before. She had pre-emptively ended the careers of quite a few would-be rapists, and none of them had screamed like that when she grabbed and squeezed.

  Out of something the size of a Flexxent, that scream was nothing short of hilarious.

  She took a small globe out of her pocket and flicked a switch on the bottom before throwing it up in the air, where it adhered to the ceiling.

  “There. Now you can see us.”

  “We could see him just fine,” Ryu complained. “I don’t see why we’re throwing away that advantage.”

  “It’s sportsmanlike.”

  Ryu looked at her. “He tried to kill you, I think the boat has already sailed on that one.”

  “You are so negative sometimes.”

  Grule didn’t wait to see how their mock argument would play out. He pulled out two pistols and shot both of them repeatedly, screaming at the top of his lungs as he did so.

  About halfway through the clips, he was bowled over backward.

  “See?” Ryu asked as he wrenched one of the guns out of Grule’s hands and started beating him over the head with it.

  Dazed, Grule could only watch as the gun kept coming down, bouncing off his forehead. There was a burst of pain in his hand, and he screamed again. The woman had stomped on it and taken his other gun.

  “All right, for fuck’s sake Ryu, stop playing whack-a-mole,” Tabitha admonished him.

  “I’m just impressed at this point. I’ve never seen someone take so many hits and still be conscious.”

  Grule yelled and grabbed Ryu’s collar, pulling him close to punch him with his now-free hand. Ryu’s head snapped back, and blood came out of his nose in a fountain—for about a moment, until it miraculously clotted on its own.

  What sort of animal had blood that clotted that fast? It would be a walking embolism factory.

  “Nanites,” Ryu mumbled thickly, sounding very pleased at Grule’s expression. “You have no idea what you’re up against, do you?”

  “Ah, ah, ah, no K-word,” Tabitha warned.

  “I know the rules!”

  Grule flipped a switch on his harness, and several mechs came to life around the room.

  She looked around, “Ahhh…Monkey balls!” Tabitha swore. She took a running leap and jumped onto one of them, wrestling with its head to wrench it off. She succeeded, but it was able to target its arm gun at Ryu anyway. “Ryu! Dodgeball time!”

  “I preferred whack-a-mole!” He dove for cover behind another mech which tried to swivel around to look behind itself and proceeded to get riddled with bullets by the one Tabitha was riding.

  Tabitha managed to pull the arms off the mech this time, figuring she might as well sever the piece with the weapon. The mech kept swiveling as though it was dispensing bullets, but the guns were gone.

  “Take their arms!” she called.

  “On it!” Ryu ripped an arm off the bullet-riddled mech in front of him and threw it at Grule. It hit the Flexxent in the back of the head, and he yelped. “He’s trying to escape!”

  “You take care of the mechs, and I’ll follow him! Oy, jackass—come back here!” Tabitha yelled as she wrenched the door open and followed Grule down the hallway. “We have unfinished business! You wanted to kill me, remember?”

  He ran down the ramp, picking up speed as he went. He didn't intend to let her catch him.

  “The other one said they were the Ranger!”

  “He lied! It’s allowed when you’re talking to a hitman! Even Barnabas does it!” She boosted her speed. “Come back here! I am not done with you!”

  Grule burst out onto the street and looked around himself desperately. Where could he go? Neither direction was particularly good or bad.

  Tabitha solved the dilemma by tackling him at high speed. People screamed and scattered as she threw him to the ground face-first and picked his torso up to slam it repeatedly into the dirt.

  “You!” She grabbed a leg and flung him up and over, slamming him down.

  “Are!” she kicked his ribs, hoping the cracking she heard were his ribs, and not his protective armor as he rolled over.

  She jumped up, the apogee of her jump a bit over fifteen feet in the air. Coming down, she angled her knees into his back. “A Fucktard!” she hissed when he coughed up blood after his scream of pain.

  “I don’t like people who try to kill me,” she told him at high volume. “You shot me with some gigantic fucking gun, which fucking hurt. My fucking tits may never be the same, and if you ruin those, hoooo boy, are you going to hear it! My tits are Helen of fucking Troy! Any human man would go to war for them!”

  Ryu, emerging onto the street with his arms full of severed mech gun arms, shook his head at this.

  “It was just a job!” Grule choked out, “Not personal!”

  Tabitha flipped him over, hauled him upright, and punched him seven times in the face. She stepped out of the way as he fell heavily, face-first.

  “I don’t care if it was just a job,” she told his senseless body. She nudged him with her boot. “Wake up, fucker. Pay attention.”

  Grule groaned.

  She kneeled down by his head, speaking conversationally as those in the street watched the puny human. “You don’t get to complain if the people you try to kill don’t like it,” Tabitha informed him. “And by the way? You can go to any of your little hide-outs, and you’ll find there aren’t any weapons in them anymore. Enjoy your empty rooms, bastard.”

  She spat on him and adjusted her coat before heading back toward Ryu.

  “You look ridiculous carrying all those mech arms. And your face is covered in blood.”

  “You have a gigantic hole in the back of your jacket, a soot-ring on the front of your shirt, and you’re covered in dirt.”

  “Fuck. No time to change before dealing with Kenet?”

  “I don’t think so.” Ryu set off down the street. “This way.”

  Grumbling, Tabitha put her hair back into a new ponytail and followed him.

  Kenet Aljun’ra’s complex was located in the heart of Karkat’s gated community. Broad avenues lined with flowering plants and trees wound through the district, and giant mansions hid behind high walls with ornamental spikes along the top. Every building dripped opulence. The amount that had been spent on windows, flourishes on the roofs, statuary, and gardens was staggering.

  The amount spent on armed guards and automated security measures was even higher.

  Instead of making their presence known by patrolling the streets openly, guards observed the district from secure bunkers. Their cameras were embedded in the walls, statues, and trees of the district. That way, everything could be secure while also appearing to be serene and quiet.

  With so many cameras on closed circuits, so many booby traps and trip wires, and so many armed guards, the residents likely believed that no one could sneak in.

  They were very, very mistaken.

  “I think I ripped my pants,” Tabitha complained as she tumbled sideways over a wall and landed with a thump in the middle of a flowering bush. She craned to check her back. “Ugh. Right over my badonkadonk, too.” She stood up, brushed herself off, and gave another look at the ripped cloth. “On second thought, I like that. Just a glimpse. Let’s definitely go past Dev’s place on the way back.”

  Ryu, who was also brushing himself off, paused at this comment but decided not to say anything.

  “I am doing this for the good of the Empire,” Tabitha informed him as they snuck across the lawn. It had been child’s play for Achronyx to disable the security feeds along the various streets, and they were now in Kenet’s compound.

  “You’re going on dates for the good of the Empire?” Ryu knew that her explanation was going to be ridiculous, but damned if he didn’t want to hear it anyway. Tabitha had always been able to brighten the worst of the dark days. Even back on Earth when she was flashing her tits, thinking all of them were gay.

  “Yes. My bodaciousness will win us allies wh
o can be won in no other way.”

  “You realize that this particular ally—” he started to say.

  Don’t tell her! Achronyx warned privately. I want to see her face when she finds out he never has sex with anyone, and definitely not with humans.

  What if she actually pulls it off, though? Ryu asked the EI reasonably.

  Achronyx paused in shocked silence.

  “What about this particular ally?” Tabitha asked Ryu. She pulled out her climbing gloves as they approached the wall of the main house, and began to climb. “These are good. Much better than taking the chance of ripping a nail.”

  “You and your nails.” Ryu climbed up the old-fashioned way, finding minuscule holds and swinging himself up the wall.

  “If you had nails worth protecting you’d feel the same way about them. How can I hope to explain?” Tabitha sniffed. “Achronyx, where do we go from here?”

  “It is impossible to get to Kenet’s office from the roof. You will have to go through the hallway, which is patrolled by soldiers, and fight your way there.”

  “It’s impossible? Nothing is impossible. You’ve seen me—”

  “It is impossible to do so without attracting attention that will compromise the mission. So many reinforcements will arrive from various guard stations both in the compound and the district that it is highly unlikely you will be able to complete your mission before needing to escape.”

  “Oh. Why didn’t you say so the first time?” Tabitha headed for a skylight. “All right, boys, prepare for one badass chica.” She gave Ryu a look. “Maybe my butt will distract them.”

  “I don’t think— Fine. Yes. Maybe it will.” Ryu decided that agreement was the better part of valor in this case.

  “Achronyx, you’ve turned off all of the alarms, right?”

  “Yes, Ranger Tabitha. They will be unable to call for backup.”

  “Good. GERONIMOOOOOO!” Tabitha took a running leap and punched her way down through the skylight in a hail of falling glass, landing in a hallway with four shocked-looking guards.