Planetary Parlay

by Cameron Cooper

  Constantine scowled at everyone and didn’t even try to keep up a polite conversation. He answered when asked a question, his tone gruff.

  Jai seated me on his right, and I knew it was to further upset Isuma and Constantine, opposite him, as it was moral support for me.

  I saw Rayhel, further along the table, raise a brow at me. I lifted my wine glass at him and took a sip.

  He seemed to find that amusing.

  The twin files of Drigu came through the back door, carrying their trays with the first course upon them and streamed down both sides of the table. The Drigu were well practiced at placing each plate upon the table at nearly the same time, and in almost perfect silence.

  “I’m starving,” I said to Jai.

  “I do not think there is an instrument sensitive enough to measure how shocked I am at that,” Jai replied.

  I laughed. Isuma gave a soft titter, while Constantine grunted.

  Behind us, a tray clattered. Someone screamed. Another gave out a cry, something in Terran, their voice strained.

  The air whistled by my left ear. An arm came down between me and Jai.

  Jai grunted and blood gushed upon the table, turning the tablecloth jewel red.

  The Drigu between me and Jai hauled with his arm, pulling the knife he’d buried in Jai’s chest up and across.

  More screaming.

  I leapt to my feet, the knife in my hand, and reached for the Drigu. I gripped his hair and yanked him away from Jai, as Jai slumped in the chair and fell forward onto the table, as if he had fallen asleep.

  The Drigu twisted in my grip, tearing out clumps of his hair. He held his hands out toward Constantine, who was slowly rising to his own feet. The gesture was imploring. He babbled again, and I heard a word, one of the few I knew of Terran, because in Common, we didn’t have a word that had the same meaning.

  Master.

  This was Constantine’s slave.

  I cut his throat. Not because I wanted retribution, but because it was the only thing to do. The blood jetted, as carotid blood had a tendency to do, but I was beyond feeling anything at that moment.

  More chairs toppled. Terrans were running from the room, screaming. So were Drigu. Plates crashed and more trays hit the floor with wet ringing sounds.

  Isuma turned to Constantine. Her face was working with fury. She had a weapon in her hand I didn’t recognize except to know that it was lethal. “You fool,” she raged, which her translator faithfully interpreted. “Do you know what you have done?” And she plunged the thing into Constantine’s corpulent belly.

  He jerked, every vein in his head expanding suddenly. “No…no…” His voice bubbled and blood gushed from his mouth as he dropped to the ground.

  “Danny!” Dalton shouted. “Exit strategy!”

  That got my brain operating. Emotions were on hold and that was fine by me. I whirled. “Lyssa! Bug out!”

  Twenty-seven minutes! Lyssa called back.

  “No, no. Wait. Wait!’ It was Common, spoken with a heavy accent.

  I turned to look back down the table. Juliyana, still in casual fatigues, had her knife to Rayhel’s throat, his hair in her other hand. He held up his hands. “Me. Go with you!”

  I spared two seconds to touch Jai’s shoulder. I closed his eyes.

  Then I ran down the table to where Rayhel struggled in Juliyana’s grip and babbling. “Don’t kill him,” I cried. “Slate! Come here!”

  “I am here, Danny,” Slate said, from right behind me.

  “What is he saying?”

  Slate interpreted.

  “You need me. You can use me as a hostage. I can get you through the barricade. No one else can. Take me with you.”

  “They have a barricade,” Eliot Byrne said, sounding disgusted. “Of course they do.”

  I looked at Juliyana. “Can you handle him?”

  “Oh, yeah,” she said, her voice deadly.

  “Good. Bring him with us.”

  She pushed Rayhel back on his feet, put her knife away and took out the smaller shriver she’d put in her pocket earlier in the day. She brandished it at him, and he raised his hands.

  From outside the Assembly hall, I could hear screaming. Shouts. Worse, the sound of Terran weapons fire.

  What in the stars was going on out there?

  I filled my lungs. “Everyone, listen up. We’re getting out of here. We’ve got a seven kilometer hike ahead of us and we cannot risk going back to our suite for anything. From the sound of it, everything is break down out there. So we run in what we’re wearing, and we run through whatever is in our way. Stay close. If you’ve got weapons, bring them out and keep them ready. Any questions?”

  Through the Assembly room doors, I heard people screaming and a low belly growl I recognized. The doors were flung open and a pitch black parawolf barreled through, whining.

  “Marlow, catch Coal! Quickly!” I shouted.

  Marlow was not so deep into his misery that he couldn’t hear me. He threw himself upon the streaking parawolf and bought him to a halt only because Marlow outweighed him.

  The doors slammed open again, and the other four wolves streaked through, their hackles up, their teeth bared.

  “Vara! Here!” I called.

  Dalton, Sauli and Lyth each drew their wolves over to their side and calmed them down.

  Coal whimpered and struggled while Marlow whispered in his ear. The parawolf quieted. But he did not stop trembling. Marlow wrapped his arms around Coal and buried his face in Coal’s fur and grew still.

  I looked for Keskemeti and beckoned. He came over to me immediately, his expression grave.

  “I want you to do one thing tonight, and it is the last thing I’ll ever ask of you.”

  “What is it?”

  I nodded at Marlow and Coal. “You get those two to the ship, no matter what it takes. Marlow’s not thinking. You think for all of you. Got it?”

  Keskemeti licked his lips. “I will,” he said quietly and moved down the table toward Marlow.

  “Lyssa?”

  “Here.” She used the microphone in my implant so I could hear her as I did everyone else. It didn’t matter if anyone near me caught a hint of her voice, now.

  “Blow everyone’s pad, if they don’t have it with them. Everything electrical in our rooms, too. Everything in the crates, all the screen emitters, the lot. If you set fire to the place, I don’t care. I don’t want a single electronic trace left for the Terrans to dissect after we’re gone.”

  “On it.”

  Sauli came up to me, carrying a shriver. Dalton, beside him, had the long knife he usually kept tucked in his boot.

  To Sauli, I said, “Where did you get…never mind.” To Dalton, I said, “Separate them into squads, military-trained leader for each. They’ll get tired at the end and stumble. Everyone watches out for everyone else. We don’t leave anyone behind.”

  Dalton whirled and moved back among the others. To each person he gave a number and pointed. They quickly sorted themselves out into groups of five each. Four squads. Sauli, Eliot Byrne, Calpurnia and Dalton as leaders. Juliyana would have her hands full, watching Rayhel.

  “Look who’s in your squad,” I told them. “Watch out for them. Constantly check that you’re all together. Got it?”

  Nods.

  I moved up to the doors. Juliyana tossed me the stunner she had been using that afternoon. I swapped the knife to my left hand and kept the stunner in my right. “Ready?” I called, my hand on the door.

  “Ready!” everyone called back.

  I glanced behind them, at Jai’s still figure.

  Then I pushed open the doors and ran into the night, the four squads behind me and Vara at my side.

  —31—

  Our run through the night was a nightmare I don’t ever want to repeat.

  I headed north, away from the drawbridge and the island where the shuttles were kept, because I knew the drawbridge would be held against us. It was a bottleneck.

  As we silent
ly jogged through trees, with Lyssa guiding us, we heard weapons fire all around us. Each barrage made us flinch and dodge sideways, even though it was well out of range, and not meant for us. Our path was illuminated by burning trees, and our progress partially hidden by the smoke billowing across the island.

  The first live fire that came anywhere near us cut across my path, bringing me to a halt.

  “Go,” I urged Vara.

  She ran toward the thick cluster of bushes where the fireballs had erupted from, her belly low, and disappeared around it. I heard a scream and Vara’s snarl.

  The Terran had been firing at something that wasn’t us. “Darb, Venni!” I pointed to the left, where the Terran had been aiming.

  The two parawolves streaked passed me, directed by their owners, and in a neat pincer movement, swept around the clump of trees. More screaming, more wolfen growls and the wet chomping sound of teeth on flesh.

  I moved forward, the stunner up.

  “Hero,” I called.

  Hero, a white streak in the night, came up along side me.

  “Scout ahead,” I told her. Lyth would enforce the command.

  She shot ahead, completely silent.

  We came level with the bushes where the Terran had been hiding. His face was ripped off. Vara waited, her muzzle red. She cocked her head, waiting for the next order.

  “Scout ahead,” I told her.

  She turned and raced into the night.

  I looked down at the Terran. He wore the blue black armor.

  “Same over there,” Dalton said, coming up alongside me. “Soldiers firing at soldiers? What’s going on?”

  Peter Kole came up to us. “It’s not soldiers against soldiers. It’s family against family. You saw the start of it. The Drigu who…who killed Jai was of the Constantina. The Florina killed the Constantine for directing the Drigu and upsetting Terran plans to do whatever the hell they had planned for us. I’d suggest you ask Rayhel to confirm that, but I don’t trust a word he utters.”

  “Civil war…” I murmured. “It’ll do as a working theory for now.”

  “I sent Darb ahead, too,” Dalton said, as I looked around.

  I nodded. “Let’s keep going.” I lifted my voice. “This might get tricky, people. Watch your backs, your flanks, and each other.”

  Lyssa spoke in my ear. “You need to head three degrees farther right to reach the road before you hit the inland sea.”

  I changed my direction.

  “Yeah, that’ll do it,” she said after thirty seconds.

  We met our first patrol two minutes later. I fired off the stunner and dropped one, and dived to my right. “Down!” I screamed, as the other Terrans opened fire.

  Vara! I shouted mentally.

  The four of them came from a separate direction each and brought down a Terran by leaping against their backs or chests and biting into their necks. None of the patrol wore their helmets, but I suspected that from now on, they would be.

  I leapt to my feet and fired at the still standing Terrans. I heard Sauli’s shriver cough. Juliyana was conserving her charge.

  I waved everyone on. “Can you spot any clumps of Terrans for us?” I asked Lyssa as I ran.

  “Too much smoke, the flames blind my scanners when I look at anything else.”

  I mentally shrugged and kept running. I could hear Dalton right behind me. Everyone else was strung out in a long file.

  Vara leapt out of the dark and galloped toward me, her paws digging into the dirt. She leapt and knocked me sideways, as a Terran fireball bulleted through the air where I had been standing.

  More parawolf growls and human cries.

  Vara licked my face and leapt away again. Normally I appreciate her physical approval, but she had been tearing face off not so long ago. I wiped my face off and got to my feet. Then I used the knife to shred a meter off the bottom of the gown and threw it away. Now my lower legs were bare except for my evening slippers, which had flat heels.

  I looked around. Dalton had been taking a nose count as I worked on the hem of the gown. He gave me a thumbs up.

  I jogged off once more and thirty seconds later, we broke out into the road that ran down the east coast of the island. I turned to everyone and waved them closer. “We need to run for a while, as fast as we can. The road is a bottleneck, ahead, where the inland sea comes nearly all the way over. We have to use the road to get a bit further north, where the land spreads out once more. Okay?”

  Everyone was breathing hard. Keskemeti, I saw with approval, was standing beside Marlow and Coal. No one voiced a protest.

  I turned and began to run at a speed that wasn’t a flat-out sprint, but it was faster than a jog. I figured we’d have to maintain this pace for just over three-quarters of a kilometer.

  “Lyssa?” There were no trees along this stretch of the road to burn and ruin her view of the terrain below her. Just salt water to either side. The water on the right washed against the beach in steady waves, each wave luminous from the light of the moon. A breeze was pushing in off the ocean, which cooled my sweaty skin.

  “I think there might be a barricade ahead of you,” Lyssa said.

  I slowed down. “Can you get a better image?” I waved everyone back and dropped to a walk.

  “Working on it.”

  Ahead, I heard growling, the low, belly-deep snarling that raised the hairs on the back of my neck. I signaled a full halt to Dalton and moved cautiously ahead. Smoke swirled in front of me, so I took a step at a time, peering ahead. The smoke made my eyes water.

  Then I saw Hero ahead of me. She was on her belly, her hackles raised, as she snarled at a row of Muradar soldiers ahead of her. They were strung out across the road, their weapons raised, but they weren’t firing, because she was down on her belly and not moving.

  I froze inside the smoke, my pulse spiking.

  Out of the dark behind the soldiers came the other three, silent and deadly. They leapt upon the soldiers, bringing them face down onto the sealed road. Then they shoved their snouts into the narrow space between helmet and backplate, reaching for the vulnerable neck exposed beneath the helmet.

  Hero took out the fourth and I picked off the two remaining soldiers, aiming for their necks.

  How long would it take before word passed, and they sealed up their suits properly, with the neck dams in place?

  “Scout ahead,” I told the wolves and they raced away into the smoke.

  “Dalton, let’s go!” I called back and waited for everyone to loom out of the smoke, all running hard.

  I turned and leapt over the line of soldiers and ran, myself.

  The weapons fire lay behind us. I couldn’t hear any movement ahead of us but didn’t lower my guard. Perhaps the fighting was all concentrated around the palace? Or…no, if a civil war was beginning, then there would be a battle to take control of the shuttles and the landing field, too. The fighting would naturally flow south, and we were heading north.

  “Lyssa, status!” I bellowed as I ran.

  “Five minutes away.”

  “Any sign you’ve been seen?”

  “Nothing, Danny. Veer left, twenty degrees. You’re nearly there.”

  Ahead, I saw more bodies, these without armor. The wolves had already dealt with them.

  I by-passed two more sets of bodies, all lying still.

  “Stop!” Lyssa called.

  I halted. Everyone bunched up behind me, all bellowing and wheezing. I was breathing hard, myself.

  Ahead of us, the smoke whisked away as though a giant had blown it sideways. I saw white beach sand dotted with forlorn weeds. Then the sand picked up and began to whip at us.

  I threw up my arm, shielding my face, and turned away. Vara pressed up against me, whining, and I bent and shielded her face against my belly. I could see through the spitting, stinging sand that the other wolves were cringing against their owners, too.

  Then the sand dropped abruptly.

  “Open up a leaf, Lyssa,” I cried, running
forward.

  The drop ship, still in stealth mode, opened up a single leaf on the side and lowered it down as a ramp. I stood on the end and waved everyone forward. “Hurry!” Someone would surely notice us climbing into the drop ship—the stealth tech couldn’t hide the interior.

  When Juliyana reached the ramp, I raised the stunner at Rayhel.

  He threw up his hands again. “You need me,” he cried. “There’s a barricade up there, that you don’t know about.”

  “So you say. I think I’d rather take my chances. Then I wouldn’t have to watch my back while you’re on my ship.”

  “I’ve burned bridges,” Rayhel said, his tone earnest. “I can’t go back.”

  “Danny,” Dalton said urgently.

  Time was ticking. I shook my head.

  “They killed the woman I loved,” Rayhel ground out. “They shamed my family. Use me for leverage or do not. Throw me in a cell if you want…just take me with you.”

  I glanced at the ruby jewel embedded in his wrist. “You’d leave everyone behind?”

  “No one I care about remains for me to leave behind.”

  I growled. There was no time to sort out the dilemma. “Get on,” I told him. I looked at Slate. “Do you want to come, too? I need someone to tell me what the hell he’s saying.”

  “Really?” Joy made his words lilt.

  I jerked my head up the ramp. Slate jogged onto the ramp, his metal feet tapping, and leapt onto the ship with a little hop.

  I stepped up behind him and the drop ship sealed up behind me. Lyssa took off before the doors were properly shut, and streaked upward at a sharp angle, making our teeth rattle and inertia to drag at us, as we headed for the Lythion, and the showdown that waited for us up there.

  —32—

  We connected with the Lythion, and I was never so glad to see the battered and scraped interior of the freight bay as I was right then. I didn’t even care that we were crossing over from the drop ship using the molecular barrier bridge that I despised. I pulled myself over—no gravity boots—and into the Lythion’s gravity. If Lyssa had been there right then, I would have hugged her until her nanobots popped.