I'd been lucky. It could have been worse. Much worse.
Tok tended to my wound, using a sonic suture to close the wound. He applied a little salve to it when he was finished.
“You shouldn't even have a scar once it finishes healing, General.”
“Thank you, Tok,” I replied. “Were you wounded?”
He shook his head. “No, I was fortunate to avoid the shrapnel.”
I nodded. “That's good,” I replied. “I'm glad you were unhurt.”
“Thank you, General.”
The transport glided along at a quick pace. After the bombing, all of the factory workers had scattered. And because so many of my men had been killed in the blast, there wasn't much I could do to stop them. I'd called for reinforcements and now it was time to take the gloves off.
I'd underestimated the scraps. I thought they had neither the spine nor the fortitude to actually be part of this burgeoning insurgency. I'd clearly been wrong about that. I would have to send a team to investigate the bombing at the factory later, but I had a feeling that the explosives used to kill my men would prove to be the same that were used in the Kinray bombings.
I didn't like being wrong about something like that. I didn't like that at all. But there was nothing I could do about that now. All that was left to do was take the fight to those who'd killed my men.
“We're at the village proper,” Tok reported.
“Very well,” I replied. “Make sure the troops receive their instructions as well as the list of targets. Let's move out.”
“Yes, sir.”
I turned to the ramp as it descended while Tok relayed all of the information to the visors in the helmets of the men. I wanted this operation to be swift and smooth. And any resistance was going to be met with brutal force.
I was done playing around.
By the time I'd made my way down the ramp, my men were already fanned out and were kicking in doors. If I couldn't get the insurgents themselves, I was going to take their families. Perhaps then, they'd see the gravity of the situation and turn themselves in – unless they wanted to see their loved ones hang.
“You can't do this,” an older man screamed as he was being hauled toward me. “You can't do this. I have rights. You can't do this.”
The two guards dropped him to his knees in front of me. He looked at me with wide eyes, his eye markings glowing bright with his anxiety.
“Please, I have rights,” he said. “You can't do this to me. You can't do this to any of us.”
I gave him a dry, rueful laugh. “You and those here in your village are scraps,” I said. “You have no rights. I can do anything I wish to any of you. And there is nobody that is going to speak up for you.”
The sound of women crying and children shouting filled the air. It was a cacophony that was making my head ache and I wanted to be out of there was quickly as I could. I hated being among such squalor. It just somehow made me feel unclean myself. I was looking forward to being done there so I could return home and take a scalding hot shower to get the stink of these scraps off of me.
The man looked at me and I could see the hatred burning in his eyes.
“Your son is named Tryn, is it not?” I asked.
His eyes grew wide. “What do you want with my boy? He's done nothing.”
“That's actually not true, I'm afraid,” I said. “Your son was involved in a bombing at the factory not half an hour ago. A bombing that killed many of my men.”
He shook his head. “Impossible. My boy wouldn't be involved with anything like –”
“Furthermore,” I interrupted the older man, “your son is involved with an insurgency responsible for a series of bombings in Kinray.”
“No, not poss –”
“Where is your son?” I demanded.
“He's not here.”
I leaned down, closer to the man's face. “Where is he?”
He shook his head. “I don't know. Please. I don't know.”
I stood up again and sighed. I watched as my men loaded the targeted family members into transports and slammed the doors shut, awaiting my word.
I looked back at the man on the ground. “One more time,” I said. “Where is your son?”
He looked back at me and I could see the fear mixed with the hatred in his eyes. “I do not know where he is.”
I sighed. “And if you did know,” I asked. “Would you tell me?”
“No,” he answered without hesitation.
“I thought not.”
I pulled the gun from the holster on my belt, put the barrel against his forehead, and pulled the trigger. The laser burned straight through the man's head in the blink of an eye, leaving a smoking hole in the front, and a blast of blue blood and dark matter behind him. The man's lifeless body slumped backward, his eyes wide open and fixed on the sky above.
“Load up the rest of the scraps,” I said. “And get them out of here.”
“Right away.”
When the scraps had all been loaded, I climbed back into my own transport and ordered the driver to head back for Kinray. The insurgents would come for their families. And when they did, we would be ready. I would not underestimate them again.
Chapter Nine
Byr
We got to the edge of the village in time to see Gravus' transports lifting off and heading back to Kinray. When they'd gone, we stepped out of the forest and into the village. All around us, people were huddled together, sobbing uncontrollably.
I was shell-shocked. Gravus' men had taken a lot of people out of our village. They'd hurt quite a few more. All around me, I saw the pain in people's faces. Saw the blood smeared on their clothing and running down their faces. They'd been beaten badly by a group of thugs.
I felt horribly selfish, but in the face of so much agony and loss, all I could think of was my own family. I knew my mother wasn't well enough to survive a beating like some of these people had taken. Gynta and Hopa? They were too young and frail to have survived.
I felt nauseous just thinking about what I was going to find when I got home.
“Forgive me, Tryn,” I said. “I need to go see to my mother and siblings.”
He nodded, seemingly numbed by everything we were seeing. I squeeze his shoulder and forced him to look me in the eye.
“Go see to your family, Tryn,” I said. “Go to them.”
He nodded again, seeming to snap back to the present. “Right,” he said.
“I'll meet you back out here soon,” I told him. “And we'll figure out what to do next.”
He gave me a tight smile and a short nod. I turned and sprinted off for my home, my heart thundering and my every nerve ending feeling like it was on fire. I reached my house and slammed my way through the front door.
“Mother?” I called. “Gynta? Hopa?”
I was met with nothing but silence. I looked around the main room and saw the signs of a struggle. The table had been overturned. The fire was out and the pot hanging over it had been dumped out on the floor. Chairs had been broken. Dishes had been smashed. It looked like everything had been gone through and tossed on the floor.
With a growing sense of dread over what I might find, I made my way back to my mother's room. As I pushed the door open, I tried to steel myself, expecting to see the worst. What I found though, was an empty bed. Everything in my mother's room had been ransacked, of course, but she was not there.
While that, in and of itself was a relief, I was still filled with trepidation. I moved down the hallway to the kids' room and pushed the door open.
“Gynta?” I said softly. “Hopa? Are you two in there?”
Silence. The curtain over the window kept out most of the light and cast the room in murky shadow. But even without natural light flooding the room, I could see that it had been torn to pieces. And that my siblings were not there.
Feeling my gorge rising, I ran outside and fell to my hands and knees, throwing up all over the ground. Tears rolled down my face and I sobbed un
abashedly for some long moments. Eventually, I came back to myself. I scrubbed the tears from my cheeks and stood up.
Though the worst of my nausea had passed, my legs still felt weak. Rubbery. As I moved, I felt like I was walking through a dream state, my head hazy and unfocused. Stepping around to the front of the house, I saw that many of the people in my village looked the same way.
“They took 'em, Byr,” said Lyn, an older woman who lived nearby as I passed her house.
I stopped and looked at her. A cut had been opened on her cheek and dark blue blood stained her white shirt. Tears rolled down her face and her eyes were red and puffy.
“Where were they taken?” I asked numbly.
“To the camps, I assume,” she said, her voice weak.
“Did you see my mother? The kids?” I asked. “Were they taken?”
Lyn nodded miserably. “Yeah, them too,” she said. “Your mother was having some trouble. They were a little rough with her.”
I felt sick all over again and the anger in the pit of my belly grew darker, more urgent.
“Somebody needs to see about that wound on your cheek, Lyn.”
She nodded and I walked on, taking in the destruction that had been wrought in my village. Up ahead, I saw Tryn. He was knelt down in the middle of the road, his back to me. I saw his shoulders heaving and knew that he was sobbing.
Running to him, I dropped down onto my knees. He was cradling his father's head in his lap, the tears streaming down his face. His father was dead, a hole in his forehead, and from what I could tell, an even larger one in the back. His sightless eyes were fixed on the sky in that permanently frozen look of death we'd all come to know too well.
Tryn looked at me, his face etched deep with agony. “They killed him, Byr,” he wailed. “They killed him.”
Tears welled in my own eyes as I looked at the pain in my friend's face. I reached down and closed his father's eyes.
“They will pay for this Tryn,” I said, my voice barely more than a whisper. “They're all going to pay for this.”
I knelt in the mud alongside my friend and his dead father, my mind a chaotic swirl of thought and emotion. Where was my family? How would I get them back? What could I do to right these wrongs?
I had no answers, but my face burned with anger and hatred. I vowed to myself that I would free my mother and the kids. I vowed that I would make Gravus pay for what he'd done – to my family, to my village, and to Tryn.
I didn't know how I was going to do it, but I would do it.
Chapter Ten
Hatare
My head start hadn't been much, but I'd made the most of it. Rather than travel on foot, I'd decided to liberate a hover bike from my father's garage. He had more than a dozen for his soldiers, he wasn't going to miss one.
I knew though, that he would be able to track the bike, so I knew I couldn't take it too far. Just far enough to allow me to put some distance between me and my father's house. Plus, I figured that if I ditched the bike and doubled back, it might take them a little longer to figure out where I'd gone.
And I'd ended up on the outskirts of Kinray. The place I'd heard talked about in the most derogatory terms by my parents and their friends. It was the villages on the fringes, the place where the people they called scraps lived.
I wandered into what looked like a bustling marketplace. There were what looked like hundreds of people milling about. The smell of cooking meats and other foods saturated the air, as thick as the voices of the vendors hawking their wares.
If there was any place I could lose myself – and anybody pursuing me – it looked like this place.
I adjusted my cloak and pulled the hood down lower over my face. I didn't think I'd be recognized this far out from Kinray, but I wasn't going to take any chances.
“Roasted meats, miss? They're delicious, come try them,” an older man with stark white hair and black eye markings asked me.
He was standing far closer than I was comfortable with, so I took a step back and shook my head.
“N – No,” I said. “No, thank you though.”
“Are you sure? A little thing like you looks like you need to eat something.”
“I'm sure. Thank you.”
I moved quickly past him and blended in with the crowd. I'd been in the marketplace in Kinray and it was nothing like this. It didn't have the hustle and bustle. It didn't have the frenetic energy. The Kinray market was quiet, soft music played, and it had a very staid, subdued atmosphere. But this place – this place seemed alive. And I couldn't help but feel my own excitement and energy rising in response.
My stomach growled, reminding me that it had been a while since I'd last eaten. But I knew I needed to be conservative with my money. I'd taken everything I'd managed to save up on my own, and had liberated some currency from my father's private safe – a safe he didn't think anybody knew about. I had a decent amount of money on me, but I knew I was going to have to make it last.
Besides, the last thing I wanted to do here was pull out a large wad of currency. If I'd been thinking about it, I would have broken it up and hidden it before I ever entered the marketplace. But there was nothing I could do about that now. I would deal with it when I had some time.
My first – and only – priority at the moment was finding somebody with a ship that could get me off-world.
I passed a stall where they were serving a dark liquid in tall glasses. I'd never been allowed to drink at home, but now that I was a free woman, I thought I might indulge. Why not? I rummaged around in my pocket for some coins and came out with a few.
“How much for one of those –” I didn't know what it was called, so I pointed.
The man inside the stall smiled at me. He was large, had skin that carried a pale green hue and hair that was turquoise. He had a kindly face – a grandfatherly type face.
“You old enough to be drinking, young lady?” he asked me.
I leaned closer to him. “Today is my eighteenth birth year,” I said. “So, yes.”
He smiled wide at me and leaned closer, as if understanding I didn't want to be overheard. “Well then, happy birth year to you – what's your name?”
“Vur,” I said. “My name is Vur.”
“Well, happy birth year to you, Vur,” he said.
I smiled. “Thank you. So, how much is a glass of – that?”
He poured a glass – smaller than the ones in front of the men at the bar, I noticed – of the liquid and set it before me. “This here is the finest Ozol you're gonna find in all of Unduth.”
“That sounds – wonderful,” I said. “How much?”
“This one's on the house, young Vur,” he said. “Call it a birth year present.”
I gave him a small smile. “Thank you, sir,” I said. “That's very kind.”
I raised my glass to him and took a drink – and immediately wished I hadn't. It was bitter and burned my throat as it went down. But there was a flavor to it that – once you got past the bitterness and burning – was actually quite delicious. But it took some effort to get past that bitterness.
I lowered the glass and coughed, feeling tears building up as I squeezed my eyes shut.
“First glass, huh?” the man asked.
I nodded, unable to form words at the moment. Eventually, the burning eased and I was able to open my eyes again. The man was looking at me, an amused expression on his face.
He leaned over again and looked around as if to make sure we weren't overheard. “You're from Kinray, aren't you?” he asked.
I felt my heart lurch and my blood run cold. Was I that obvious?
“W – Why would you ask me that?”
He smiled. “Because you don't seem like one of the scraps,” he replied. “You've got manners. And a gentle way about you that's not common.”
“Y – You know those people call you – that name?”
He laughed, a loud, booming sound. “Of course we do,” he said. “We wear it like a badge of honor, truth
be told. It reminds us that we're not like them.”
I nodded. “Nor am I.”
“Is that why you're runnin'?” he asked. “Instead of packin' up to go to the Academy? Because you're different?”
I lowered my eyes and felt a sliver of fear stab through me. I was obviously not blending in anywhere near as well as I'd hoped. In fact, I apparently stood out like a bright light in the darkness. My hand trembled and I could feel the fear building up inside of me.
“Hey, don't worry,” the man said. “We don't judge anybody out here. You're safe out here.”
I shook my head. “I fear that I'm not safe.”
He cocked his head. “What do you mean?”
“I mean that I ran away just before my birth year celebration,” I said. “I'm quite sure my father will be sending his guard to find me.”
He nodded and smirked at me. “Yeah, those wealthy folks certainly enjoy their traditions, don't they?”
I nodded and smiled. I couldn't believe I was telling this man – a complete stranger to me – all of this. In the back of my mind, I knew that I was endangering myself, but something told me that I could trust this man. And I trusted my instincts. I believed him when he said that nobody would judge me out here. That I would be safe – at least, as long as my father's guard didn't find me.
But I knew it was only a matter of time before they did.
“I don't subscribe to those traditions,” I said. “I consider it no better than slavery. I won't be forced to live that life or be a proper Unduthian woman.”
His smile was warm and genuine. “It's nice to know we out here aren't the only ones who despise them for their arrogance – and their traditions.”
“Perhaps you can help me with something?”
“If I can, sure.”
“I need to find a way off-world,” I said. “I'm looking for a pilot with a ship that can get me to Optorio.”
He stood up and scratched his chin, thinking about it for a moment. “Yeah, I might know somebody, actually. Of course, I dunno if they're gonna be clearing shuttles to fly out. Not after the bombing today.”
“Bombing?”
He nodded. “Yeah, at the factory. Killed a bunch of government soldiers. Needless to say, the government folk aren't all that thrilled with us scraps at the moment.”
Mated to a Bear (Legends of Black Salmon Falls Book 3) Page 57