by Gini Koch
“Oh,” Willem said, sounding embarrassed. “Apologies.” They backed off.
I looked around. We weren’t the only couple having that “this may be good-bye” chat. Animal Planet seemed to catch on, too, and apparently only Wrolph was mateless on this journey. “I hate these people.”
“Me too, baby.” Martini wrapped his arms around me. “Promise me you’ll stay out of it.”
“Jeff, I can’t promise that, and you know it. They’re gunning for me, under the laws of this ritual. I know I’ll be getting involved.”
“You’ll have to get through your honor guard first, and they seem dedicated, thankfully.”
I leaned my head against his chest. “They’ll be gunning for you, too, you know.”
“I know. I’m used to it.”
“You know, in all the movies and TV shows, the happy couple always loses a member either right before or right after they get married.” I hated where my mind went during times of trouble.
Martini picked me up, and I wrapped myself around him. “It’ll be fine, baby. I promise. They’ve thrown worse at us, and we’ve been fine.”
I knew this was a blatant lie and that Martini knew it was a lie as well. I chose not to mention it. We held each other tightly for far too short a time. Then he kissed me deeply. Like every kiss of his, it was fabulous and arousing, and I didn’t want to stop. The fear that it could be the last kiss of his I’d ever have didn’t make it better, though—it made it bittersweet.
We probably wouldn’t have stopped, but suddenly there was wind and a roaring. We broke apart a bit and looked in the sky. A ship worthy of an Imperial Battle Cruiser from Star Wars appeared out of nowhere, hovering over us. Three shuttles disengaged from it, circled us, then flew off. I could tell they’d gone to land on the three peaks chosen for their little game of Interplanetary Risk. The battle cruiser rose up, disappearing as it did so. I assumed it was still there, merely cloaked again.
Martini set me down. “Be good, be careful, and stay in the back. Run if you have to. Get through the gate if you can. And remember that, no matter what happens, I love you, and I always will.”
He ran away from me at hyperspeed before I could say anything. But it didn’t matter—my superempath knew how much I loved him.
A whole lot of people appeared in front of us. More than we had. I spotted the power players—in the back, like a lot of ours were.
Gregory’s voice rang out. “Let the Ritual of Worth begin!”
CHAPTER 50
MOIRA JUMPED OUT IN FRONT and started for us. To my horror, and Martini and Chuckie’s obvious shock, Christopher did the same. They headed straight for each other.
A variety of people from the other side charged out as well. “They’re all Amazons,” Serene called. “They look like humans, but they’re not.”
Animal Planet surrounded me, but I had a good view of what was going on anyway.
Our side was using a lot of guns, mostly semiautomatics. The problem was, the Amazons could take a lot of punishment. “How many bullets will it take to down one of your people?” I asked Queen Renata.
“Many. We are . . . enhanced.”
“No kidding.” Martini was barking orders, and our team was fanning out. Kyrellis leaped over a clutch of others and headed straight for him, but he wasn’t looking in her direction. “Jeff, look out!”
He turned just in time, and they were at it. This time I could tell she wasn’t holding back. He wasn’t, either, and he’d picked up a lot from their last fight, because he was dodging her strikes better.
“We need to help them.”
“We need to stay back,” Felicia said. “As your mate requested.”
I looked at the last place I’d seen Christopher. Now there were three of him, all fighting with Moira, but I had a feeling they were all hitting the real one. “Serene, who’s the real Christopher?”
“The one on the left!” Reader and Tim heard her, and they both ran toward this clutch of bodies. “Now on the right! No, don’t, that’s him!” Serene lost it and ran at hyperspeed. She hit into Christopher and tackled him.
Reader and Tim hit the fake Christophers, hard, and they shifted to look like what I’d expected them to be—the two guys from THEhotel. Nice to be right, hoped Tim and Reader would really hurt them. Human versus A-C was an uneven fight, but my guys had been working with A-Cs for a long time and were doing pretty well.
The rest of the guys who were supposed to be guarding Serene were over there now, and that brawl became hard to follow.
Not a lot of gunshots any more, not just from this group but all of our side seemed to have stopped shooting. It made sense—everyone was too jumbled up to shoot without a real risk of hitting our own side. The fight was now the oldfashioned kind—hand-to-hand, edged weapons, blunt instruments, completely brutal.
Gower ran to me and shoved in. “Kitty, take my hand!” I did and felt a power flow I’d experienced once before. I felt someone hold me up, saw Queen Renata grab Gower and hold him upright, then it stopped.
“Paul, are you okay?”
“Yes,” he said slowly. “It can’t last, but it’s necessary. ACE knows what Jeff doesn’t.”
I nodded. “It’s all about being strong enough to marry in, right?”
“Pretty much.” He squeezed my hand. “You’ll do fine. I have to go help Jeff.” Then he disappeared. I saw him slam into Kyrellis just before she could stab a long, glowing stick into Martini.
“What the hell is she using?”
Martini rolled away just in time. Since I was wearing his jacket, I could see him clearly because of his shirt. This meant, of course, that others could see him clearly, too.
“A battle staff,” Queen Renata answered.
Martini was on his feet; he and Gower were trying to get around the staff, but Kyrellis was good with it, and they weren’t having a lot of luck.
“Why do the ends glow?”
“They are supercharged and cause more damage.”
An end hit Gower, and I heard him shout. He wasn’t down or out, but I knew he was hurt.
“Wow, did George Lucas spend time with you guys?”
“I don’t follow you.”
“Few ever do, Renata. Got any more of those puppies lying about?”
“Yes, I brought some with me, in case we faced resistance.”
“Where they at?”
“In Neeraj’s ship.”
“Iguanodon, can you get stuff out of your ship without leaving the field of battle here?”
“Yes, but why? Our instructions are to stay back and guard you.”
“And the eight of you, all primed for serious butt-kicking, you’re alright with that? You’re good to, you know, fly across space to come here and hang in the back and watch the battle but have nothing to do with the outcome?”
There was a lot of shifting of paws and swishing of tails.
“I have four dogs and three cats, and while they don’t walk upright or talk or anything, they’d all be in it if they were here. And did I mention that iguanas and Komodo dragons can be really nasty?”
More paw shifting and tail swishing, with a little muttering added in.
Chuckie and Alexander were engaged with Lenore and Gregory. It was sort of even, or would have been if there hadn’t been three extra Amazons helping the other side. Only Moira and Kyrellis had the staffs.
“Why don’t the grunts have the battle staff?”
“It has to be earned.”
“I’m a brown belt in kung fu. And I’ve been staff trained.” Okay, sort of a lie. Not on the staff trained, on the belt level. I hadn’t tested for brown yet. Because I kept missing the test for end-of-the-world crap. But I was ready, my sifu said so. Well, he’d said I was ready to learn if I was really up to brown standards, but I took that to mean I was ready for black and just needed to hurry it up.
“I don’t know—” Queen Renata was interrupted by a bunch of battle staffs dropping to the ground in front of us.
I grabbed a battle staff, and so did she. “Jareen, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.”
She gave me the Iguanodon smile. “Neeraj never wants to let me do anything, either. Because I always end up saving him.”
“Ain’t it the truth, soul sister? But you have to love them anyway. Especially when they’re totally hot.”
“You can tell Neeraj is hot?” she asked, sounding surprised.
I shrugged. “He said you were the queen of hotness on your planet. Didn’t figure he was barking, therefore, by your standards.”
Queen Renata showed me how to activate the battle staff. It was easy. It felt like any other staff, but seemed weighted like a javelin. No worries, my sadistic track coaches had wanted everyone to know how to do every single track and field event, so in case someone was sick, one of the rest of us could cover. The less said about my pole-vaulting the better, but I hadn’t been awful at javelin.
Our side was getting pummeled. I saw two of my flyboys down, Joe and Walker. I also saw Lorraine kicking butt while protecting them. “Can one of you hyperspeed a battle staff to the three A-C girls on our side?” I felt someone go past me and looked around. Wrolph and three battle staffs were missing. Lorraine started spinning something. Claudia next, then Serene.
Wrolph was back. “The second female needs help.” He meant Claudia, I assumed, because she was surrounded. Wrolph didn’t wait for anyone to comment, he disappeared again, and reappeared next to her.
“So, guys? You gonna let Wrolph have all the fun and the glory?”
“Our side is not doing well,” Willem admitted as more Amazons appeared.
“Our side’s about to lose. This is where, in chess, the queen comes in.”
“The queen also comes in when you’re about to win.” Felicia pointed. Uma was there with the new contingent of warrior women, and she was swinging something that looked remarkably like a battle ax. She was also glowing.
“Three guesses where the Free Women’s PPB net is currently being housed, and the first two don’t count.”
The others around me all nodded. “It’s time to fight,” Queen Renata said. “To avenge the ills done to our people and to save the lives of our new friends.”
They took off, with a lot of snarling, hissing, yowling, and banshee screaming. Only Jareen and I were still standing there.
“I’ll stick with you,” she said. “At least for a while.”
“Works for me, girlfriend.” I pulled my iPod out of my purse while I took my shoes off. “Not being rude, just need some tunes.” I took Poofikins out and put it into the pocket of Martini’s jacket. Reality told me my purse had to stay here and hold down the fort by itself.
“I understand. Same here. Our players are a little different, but the effect is the same.” She fiddled with something, and I heard faint, odd sounds.
I tuned my iPod to my new Fight Songs mix. Ironically enough, ‘We Want the Airwaves’ by the Ramones was song number one. “All ready?”
“Yes.”
“Then, Jareen? Let’s go show these interstellar assholes how Naked Apes and Iguanodons do things out here in the wild, wild West.”
CHAPTER 51
WE TOOK OFF. I was a hurdler with a perfect four-step and she was a Giant Lizard, but we were in complete sync with each other.
We hit the people around Chuckie and Alexander first. I should have had more trouble with the staff than I was. This dawned on me when I sliced off an Amazon’s head right before she could break Chuckie’s back.
“Thanks,” he gasped. “What the hell are you doing?”
“Kicking butt and taking names. You know, routine.” I slammed the staff into another Amazon’s stomach. It went through her. Jareen lopped her head off and finished off the third Amazon. I had to figure ACE was helping me, and I decided if there was ever a time to let the superconsciousness give you a major assist, it was now.
Lenore and Gregory took off, running toward Uma. Alexander looked awful. “Chuckie, you have to get him out of the battle, and you have to stay with him and protect him.”
“What?”
I grabbed his lapel. “Think! No ruler on Alpha Four means complete destabilization of that solar system. Guess what planet will lose?”
“Ours, got it.” He grabbed me and held me. “Be careful.”
“I will. Get to some sort of defensible point. I’m sure we’re going to have more wounded. I’ll send them to you. Protect them—and yourself,” I felt compelled to add. I was noting a little too much willingness to take the bullets from Chuckie, and I liked that attitude from him only slightly more than I liked it from Martini.
He nodded, grabbed Alexander, and went back to where I’d been with the Animal Planet folks. I had a bishop and a rook out, and from what I could tell, half of my pawns.
“We need to clear out the extra pawns,” Jareen said.
I had to agree. There were a lot of them. “I’m open to ideas.”
She cocked her head at me. “Even if they’re crazy?”
“I’m the queen of the crazy ideas, babe.”
“Good. Stand back and be ready.” She stepped away from me then started twirling her battle staff over her head. “Do what I’m doing!”
I did. It was like a funky baton. It was also speeding up. A lot. We spun for what seemed like forever but reality said was only about thirty seconds. I noted that the extra Amazons were bearing down on us. All of them.
“Throw it toward them . . . now!” Jareen shouted.
We both did. It was really impressive. The staffs spun like dervishes but with a clear intent to maim if not kill. At least, Jareen’s was. Mine was sort of flying straight but without a clear goal.
“Aim it!” Jareen snapped. I looked over; she was moving her hands around as if she were doing some funky fake kung fu move. I did the same, and suddenly my staff was also actually doing its job.
“Do I want to know how this is working?”
“Tell you when we have the time. I can’t keep this up forever.”
I had to figure that beings that could create spatiotemporal warps and move big ships on their own could also affect a couple of space-aged javelins. The battle staffs were slicing through Amazonian necks as if they were made of butter and the staffs were hot knives. I’d have been grossed out if I hadn’t known exactly what said Amazons were going to do to my people if we didn’t decapitate them.
The staffs flew back to us; we spun them again, and did the whole weird thing again. And again. The Amazons tried to shift their locations, but the staffs went where we wanted them to. They were close to impossible to avoid in this manner, for which I was thankful—I didn’t credit myself with enough skill to thrust and parry effectively from a distance. I just kept on doing whatever Jareen was doing until we’d lowered the number of extra Amazons down to very, very few.
Those few broke off and headed for other melees while our staffs sailed back to us again, nice as you please. “These are wicked cool boomerangs.”
“Yes, but they only work like that for crowd control. We have to use them like true battle staffs now, we’ll be in too close.”
Jareen and I headed for the dog pile that had Reader and Christopher in it. It was the next closest, and the rest of the Animal Planet folks had gone to support Lorraine and Claudia, except Neeraj, who was with Martini and Gower. The three of them weren’t making a dent in Kyrellis.
Sadly, the group we went to wasn’t doing much better against Moira and her assistants. “Yo, freak chick! Why don’t you fight someone your own sex?”
She spun toward me and smiled widely. “My mate says we should keep you.”
“Good luck with that.” I ran toward her, flipped in midair and landed with my feet on her chest. She fell back, and I somersaulted over her to land on my feet. Yeah, ACE was definitely spott
ing me.
This didn’t slow Moira down much, but it got her away from everyone else. I saw Jareen start kicking random Amazonian butt and the others manage to regroup. Tim was hurt, and so was Christopher. “James, get them out of here! Go to Chuckie.”
Serene was still up and fighting. Maybe the battle staffs responded well to women, not just Jareen and the Amazons, because she was a lot better with it than I’d have expected. Reader and Kevin started to get the others moving. Brian was down, and Serene was standing over him, keeping an Amazonian pawn and the two image-changing A-Cs at bay.
Moira charged me. I planted the staff and used it to let me slam both feet into her stomach. She flew back, still away from the others, which was what I wanted.
Jareen finished off the spares, then leaped over to Serene. She sliced the Amazon down the middle, then she and Serene each took one of the A-Cs. They shifted to look like me. Serene gave a snort of disgust and stabbed hers through the heart. Jareen grabbed the one she was fighting by the head and gave it a vicious twist. The A-C went down. I was glad he didn’t look like me any more, since he was lying on his front but his face was staring at me. For certain it was the guy who’d held the door for me at THEhotel. The one Serene had killed was indeed the other one. Good. Flirting was not an issue. Fake flirting really pissed me off.
Serene and Jareen each grabbed an arm and dragged Brian back. I had no idea where Tito was.
Moira was on me again, and now it was just the two of us. There was a variety of staff-to-staff slamming that didn’t do much other than make my arms feel like they were jolting out of their sockets. The staff spinning had been a lot more fun and much easier on the limbs.
“You will enjoy being with me and my mate.” She spun and tried to kick my legs out.
I jumped and landed safely. “I doubt it. I like men. Big, strong, manly men. In fact, I like their hands all over me. And their other parts inside me.”
She was young and easy to bait. “You disgust me!” She charged, I sidestepped and hit her in the stomach with the side of the staff. Knocked the wind out of her, but she grabbed my staff and wrenched it out of my hands, which knocked me back and down. Now she had two, and she was good with them. Moira grinned. “Get ready to die.”