by C. Gockel
Sela resumed their pace, feeling her way in the dim. The chem light did little to dispel the darkness. The downward slope underfoot evened out.
She surprised herself when she said, “I told you once if you’re anything like Jon, you have strength…somewhere. It’s the reason you made it this far.”
It was a bricky move she made with the merc, after all. Even though she was hard-pressed to understand how Erelah had thought that was going to work out for her.
“Tristic threatened to kill Jon if I did not comply.”
“I spent a great deal of my career keeping Jon alive too.”
They moved on in silence for a few more yards. Then, Erelah said, “You must give him a second chance, Tyron. Together you are so much stronger.”
“No.” Sela halted. The girl collided with her back. “You and I are not having this conversation. I’m getting you to the Cass, and that’s the end.”
Erelah placed her hand on Sela’s shoulder. “But you still care about him. I saw—”
“Don’t touch me,” she growled, shrugging her hand off.
“It doesn’t work like that.”
“Don’t care,” Sela sing-songed, mimicking Erelah’s arched accent. She renewed her speed. How long was this tunnel anyway?
“When I touch someone for the first time, their bare skin, I can see things about them,” Erelah said. “There’s no order to it. It’s as if I become them for a moment. But if I touch them again, it’s much less powerful. Over time it all starts to fade, like a static discharge.”
Erelah’s tone turned introspective. “I don’t think Tristic had planned this. It’s more like a side effect. Brother Liri said that it was dormant in me. Something changed when—”
“Oh. Do stop talking,” she groaned, exasperated. The thought of such an ability made her insides squirm. “I really don’t want to know this.”
The tunnel ended abruptly. Sela’s hands met rough stone and soil. She thrust the light forward, tracing the wall. There was a sharp turn to the right. Cautiously, Sela stepped around. The quality of the air changed. It smelled fresher, dryer. This had to be it.
The sound of running water echoed. A dim light gradually grew. The roof of the passage seemed to receed. She was able to stand, though her hair brushed the ceiling. The muscles in her lower back relaxed with gratitude.
With the tunnel opening only a few strides away, Sela turned, holding a silencing hand up to Erelah. The girl froze, eyes wide beneath the cowl of the robe.
Just beyond the tunnel’s mouth flowed the small river that Lineao had described. It was barely more than an energetic stream of murky brown water. Sliding along the wall, she ventured a glance outside. A steep embankment towered directly above them. Across the water, the other bank rose in a gentler slope. It could disguise an approach to the landing field up top. There were no signs of another living soul.
This was too easy.
She withdrew into the tunnel and regarded Erelah. Then, sighing unhappily, she held out the A6 to her. She recoiled from the weapon as if Sela were holding a poisonous sand dragon for her to pet.
When she did not move to take it, she took hold of the girl’s wrist and shoved the weapon into her grip. “I am going to want that back, Veradin.”
Sela frowned in the imagined direction of the landing field, thinking. That quiet voice that had served her all her life told her that a trap probably awaited them at the ship.
“They’ll keep Jon alive. And they don’t know that Ravstar is actually looking for me. That’s an advantage for us,” said Erelah.
She nodded. The bounty for him alive was triple that for a dead Jonvenlish Veradin. The Regime was non-specific when it came to the Volunteers turned deserters. Of their unlikely trio of fugitives, only Erelah was not technically hunted. She was, after all, nowhere , according to the information they had gleaned from the coms array. Tristic could not dare issue a warrant directly for her without raising considerable suspicions.
Ironically, the most sought after by Tristic was the safest.
“You know how to use it?” She jerked her chin at the A6 that Erelah now held like a dead mouse. Thankfully, she’d at least kept its muzzle trained on the ground.
Erelah shifted her grip on the weapon. Her strange green eyes stared into the middle distance between them. Sela felt pins and needles stir along the back of her neck.
The girl’s words came out like a rote recitation any driller would be pleased to hear from a booter:
“Simple single action firing mechanism. Forty metz round with less than .048 recharge. Range 347 meters with adjustable drift. Recoil-free action. It’s now at a three-quarter charge.”
“I think you got it.” A chill danced across Sela’s shoulders. She suppressed a shudder.
She plucked that from my brain.
Erelah released a pent-up breath. “It’s really dark in there.”
She scowled. “You done?”
Erelah winced, then nodded. “Sorry.”
“And when this is all over, we’re going to have a nice long chat about privacy.”
With that, Sela scanned the river and the bank beyond. Still clear. She shed the empty thigh holster and loose-fitting duster. They would slow her down. She noticed Erelah remove her heavy hooded robe. Yet where Sela simply let the stolen garment drop to the ground, the girl reverently folded hers on a pile of rocks.
Sela rolled her eyes.
Her only weapon now was the tactical knife. Sela switched the blade from hand to hand, getting a feel for it as she visualized her approach across the shallow river, up the embankment. The landing field would offer no cover. She would lose all vantage there. Best to move quickly. Her hope was that the mercs knew nothing of the tunnel and thus were not covering it. She was counting on them to be slow, with poor training.
Her hope and her luck had not been on speaking terms lately, however.
“Three others. You’re certain?” Sela asked.
“That’s what I saw,” Erelah replied, biting her lip.
Sela gave instructions as she resized the A6’s holster to fit around Erelah’s narrow hips: “Watch me. Once I get across, wait for me to get to the top of the bank. Look for my signal once it’s clear. Then you start across.”
“I understand.”
Finally, she slipped the chain bearing Valen and Atilio’s idents from her neck. She had strung the Seeker’s tracer there too. The A6 was useless without it. She coiled the chain into the girl’s palm.
“If I don’t return in thirty minutes, take the tunnel back to the temple and find Lineao. Make sure no one else sees you.”
“You’ll come back,” Erelah said, matter-of-factly. “They made you for things like this.”
Sela met her green-eyed gaze.
“Watch out for the red one,” Erelah said.
With a troubled frown, Sela sprinted out of the tunnel to cross the river.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
The lookout had his back to her. Sela realized he was busy taking a leak. Silently, she crept up the embankment and stood behind him. He turned, preoccupied with the clasp on his trousers. His eyes widened with surprise. Before he could utter a sound, she punched him in the throat. He practically fell onto the knife as it caught him low and to the right. She sank with him to the sun-cooked weeds and knelt over him.
She checked her surroundings. The area was as damaged by ordnance as she recalled. Occasional clumps of higher brush dotted the field. The off-worlders visiting Tasemar would very likely remain sparse now that there was no longer Regime support.
Sixty meters away, the Cass lounged on its haunches, the only ship to grace this section of the field. It was a bit too much of a coincidence for her taste.
Satisfied that she had not been detected, Sela did a quick search of the unsuccessful sentry. He looked like a Trelgin half-breed, but he bore the facial tattoos of a Zenti clan. Other than the unreliable-looking scattergun, she found two smaller blades that were nothing in comparison to the ta
ctical knife she already owned. She easily snapped their blades off against a rock and tossed the pieces over her shoulder.
He was just what he seemed: a low-rent merc. She considered creeping back to the top of the bank to signal for Erelah to come up but decided against it. Until she knew the location of the merc’s cohorts, Jon’s sister was safer in the tunnel.
Sprawling on her stomach, she watched the field. Motion caught her eye. On the far side of the Cass, another figure paced back and forth. This one was smaller, more compact. A female merc, she decided.
Proximity would be vital to use the scattergun. Sela cracked the weapon’s rusted breach open. The shells had corroded contacts. Firing the weapon would result in a misfire that could easily take out a finger or three.
Sela sighed resignedly and tossed the useless weapon into the thick brush.
Damn it all.
It did not change the situation; she still had surprise as an asset. If she kept the ship between herself and the female merc, she could approach unseen. There was a big if that hinged on the other merc maintaining her predictable pattern of pacing.
Watching, waiting, Sela saw her window and set out at a sprint.
Mere strides away, the female merc turned, placing a hand to her ear. Sela knew the familiar motion for what it was: she was listening to a transmission in her earpiece. The merc looked directly at her. Eyes wide, she brought her sidearm up. Her shot was off target, but not by much. Sela felt the round whistle past her left ear and renewed her forward charge before the woman could adjust her aim.
She sidestepped the sweep of Sela’s knife. But Sela was able to capture the merc’s wrist and keep the sidearm trained to the ground. The woman was petite in comparison, but that was where any perceived vulnerability ended. Well-trained muscles strained beneath Sela’s grip. So much for low-rent mercs with no training; this one was a ringer.
They grappled. The gun thudded onto the dirt. Sela brought the knife up, driving for her neck. The merc’s free arm came up to block.
Twisting, Sela brought her greater weight to the right. But the grip she held on Sela’s wrist twisted and the knife tumbled. Sela countered with a punch to the merc’s throat. The women backed away from each other, winded.
Sela feinted, left and then right. The merc matched her, a wild sneer growing on her face. Silver metal decorated her artificially sharpened canines.
“Come on, breeder,” she purred, silver fangs flashing. “Love the ancient combat training.”
“Ancient? Just how old do you think I am?”
Fangs attacked. Her right arm came out wide, a strike meant for her face. Sela blocked and drove her palm up, connecting. It made it easier for Sela to pull her off balance and drive a knee into her unguarded stomach. The merc crumpled.
Slipping behind her, Sela wedged her arm around her neck. The woman was powerless now yet her fingernails drew red gouges into Sela’s forearm. It was like wrestling an angry scythe cat.
“Easy,” she growled. “Just one twist and no more you.”
Fangs attempted to throw an elbow. Sela allowed the swing and captured the woman’s wrist to pin it high against her upper back. There was a corresponding meaty pop from deep within Fangs’ shoulder. She gave a painful bellow.
“Where’s Jon?”
“Screw you, old crone,” the merc raged.
She pulled the wrist higher. “Sorry. My hearing’s going in my old age.”
“On your piece-of-crap ship.”
“How many with him?”
Her struggles renewed. Sela had to admire her tenacity.
“Answer!”
Erelah had said three. If one was on the ship that would account for all of them. Sela was not about to put that much stock in the girl’s strange ability.
“Just me, Commander.” A new voice. Male.
Sela looked up.
At the top of the Cassandra’s gangway stood a Zenti. Instead of the usual black facial tattoos, heavy red ink decorated his shaven head in a chunky geometric pattern. It marked him as a jin-ji , a clan leader. For him to take up the company of non-Zenti mercs, meant he had been ousted from his clan.
Watch out for the red one.
Despite the damning heat, a cold trickle ran down between her shoulder blades.
To the Red Zenti’s left stood Veradin, his hands bound before him and the muzzle of a compression rifle against his neck. Dried blood crusted along Jon’s upper lip. To her captain’s credit, it seemed Red was sporting several bruises of his own.
Sela’s gaze met Jon’s briefly. The question was plain in his expression: Erelah?
She canted her head subtly in the direction of the ravine. There . Safe .
His shoulders sagged imperceptibly with relief.
“Well now,” Red observed with artificial glee. “Here is an interesting scenario.”
Fangs writhed within Sela’s grip. She turned the merc’s body in front of her as a shield for now. Sela had to hope that their partnership meant something. However, one did not become jin-ji , even an ousted one, by playing nice with others.
“Let Veradin go,” Sela commanded, squeezing her arm tighter around the female’s throat for emphasis.
“Come on, Rutil,” Fangs called. “The bitch broke my nose!”
“Quiet, pet.”
“Yes. Shut up.” Sela yanked on her captured arm for emphasis.
“Where’s Hellard?” Rutil peered out over the field.
“Which one was that?”
The Zenti stiffened. His eyes narrowed.
“You have me,” Jon said. “Just let Tyron go. I’m worth three times as much, split two ways now.”
The rifle’s report registered a half-second after she felt the hot spray of bone and blood along her face and neck. Fangs sagged against Sela’s body, lifeless. A new red hole had appeared in the center of her former hostage’s head.
“No split now,” Rutil observed.
She glanced at Fang’s discarded sidearm, a tantalizing distance away in the dirt.
“Eh!” Rutil called, admonishing. He clucked his tongue. “You ain’t that fast.”
Sela scowled at him. He was probably right.
“Now, you come on in out of the hot,” he ordered. “We take a seat and wait to collect.”
Fantastic. The fool had already activated a beacon, as Erelah said. Except to his ultimate surprise, it would not be a simple Regime fugitive reclamation squadron. He would be greeted with the gleaming metal brutality of Ravstar. His reward was less likely currency than a gory death.
She folded her arms. “No.”
Rutil looked to Jon as if for moral support. “No?”
“I’m not going anywhere.” Her brain tumbled through possible scenarios, each less likely to have a good outcome.
“I’m not toying with you.” He swiveled the rifle between Jon and Sela, deciding on a target.
“Good. Neither am I.” In fact, she was surprised he had not shot her yet.
All she could do was buy time. For what, she didn’t know. Something told her to hold her ground. Something was about to happen. She just needed to wait . A sudden chill crawled over her shoulders. It was the same sensation as when Erelah had touched her in the cave.
“Ty, quit screwing around.” Jon feigned irritation, but his expression was uncertain. What are you doing?
“Don’t tell me what to do,” she shot back. Her annoyance was genuine. It was hot as Sceelah, and her patience had evaporated under the boiling twin suns.
“Not that you ever listened anyway.”
“As if you’ve ever had anything intelligent to say!”
“Both of you, shut it!” Rutil yelled. His rifle wavered.
Now! Sela dove forward. Her motion attracted Rutil’s attention. He drew aim on her. Jon rammed a shoulder into him. A round zinged off the ground near her right foot just as she snatched Fang’s weapon from the dirt.
Rutil collided with the gangway’s railing, but he kept a grip on the rifle. Jon grabbed its
muzzle. Another wild shot hissed past Sela. As she reached the foot of the ramp, she drew aim on Rutil. He swung the butt around to connect with Jon’s jaw. He staggered back, dazed.
The rifle was once again trained on her. Sela and the merc squared off, mere footsteps away from each other on the gangway, both with sights to kill.
Rutil drew in breath to speak. “Listen here—”
There was a single pop. The Zenti fell back into the hatchway of the Cass. A slick red puddle oozed beneath him along the deck. Astonished, Sela looked down at the hole the size of a child’s fist in the center of his sternum. He writhed in an attempt to breathe, then lay still.
Jon and Sela regarded each other over the body and turned to the end of the gangway.
Erelah lowered the A6.
“There’s no time for this,” she said, exhaling a shaky breath. She climbed the ramp and stepped over the bounty hunter’s body. “Tristic is coming. I can feel it.”
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Sela collapsed into the grav bench beside Jon. She was a bundle of throbbing ribs and aching muscles. With heavy arms, she pulled the nav interface into position before her.
“This doesn’t change anything,” she said, tapping through the charting protocols.
“I understand,” Jon said. He kept his eyes forward, concentrating on the velo feeds.
She studied his profile in the strange electric silence that stretched between them. Suddenly she felt so weary of fighting that noisome ache in her chest. It sapped her energy, a wasteful burden.
Remaining at the temple with Lineao would have only brought more mercs even if, miraculously, Tristic decided not to lay waste to the entire planetary system as she sought out Erelah.
“We get clear at the next flex point. And then anywhere…anywhere you want to go,” Jon offered. That particular angry-muscle stood out on his jaw. He was avoiding looking at her. She found she could not blame him. He had told her he loved her. No one had ever said that to her. She rewarded that by declaring her intent to leave.