“Gargh!” August growled in pain, already spinning across the floor to scrabble away from the next attack.
Which didn’t come.
Anders would usually have followed that move up with a solid knee to the chest, or by slamming his forearm in the man’s neck. Neither would have killed him, but it would have incapacitated him and allowed Anders to apply magnet-lock cuffs, if he had them, and take him into custody, if he was anywhere near a security drone.
Right now, however, Anders did not have and was nowhere near any of those things. And he didn’t even want to incapacitate him. He wanted to buy himself some time.
I have to buy Dalia and the others some time. Anders jogged back and forth on the balls of his feet, not letting his body cool down as he watched August rise slowly to his feet. There was a frown of confusion on his face.
“Why didn’t you finish it?” August muttered under his breath as he cracked his shoulders once more. The guard didn’t settle back into a fighting posture this time. If anything, he looked angry for the first time this fight.
Anders said nothing but kept bobbing back and forth. Every second I waste is better for the others, he thought, even though his ribcage, his back, and his chest were already screaming in agony from being thrown about the Meat Grinder in space, and then falling twenty feet from a gantry, and then getting beaten by this man in front of him.
To be honest, Anders wasn’t even certain for how much longer he could hold out against this man.
“Are you trying to show me up?” August scowled.
Once again, Anders said nothing and waited for his opponent to come to him.
“ANSWER ME!” August suddenly bellowed, taking a step forward, his hands balling into fists.
That’s it, Anders thought. Get angry. Make mistakes. Make it easier for me to run rings around you.
Anders was busy thinking this thought as something hit him across his shoulders, and it was something heavy enough to send him crashing to the floor. It felt like he had been stomped on by the entire ship, and he gasped in agony as he tried to get his arms and hands to move.
I’m not paralyzed. His legs and shoulders flexed as he spat out the pooling blood in his mouth from his cheeks. But it hurts like hell… There was a buzzing noise in Anders’s ears that pounded in time with the angry blood in his veins, but he realized that it wasn’t just his exhausted body. The sound started to clear and resolve itself into the roars of the Night Raiders, a few in apparent dismay at this turn the fight had taken, but the vast majority were baying for his blood.
“Kill! Kill! Kill!” Anders heard them shout as he managed to flop himself over onto his back—which only spasmed with more awakened pain.
What hit me? He blinked and shook his head to see a shape resolving itself above him. It was Gerhardt, the Night Raider leader, and he was still holding the giant metal mallet, which he had clearly just struck Anders across the back with.
Surely, that has to count as a foul, a small, sane part of Anders’s mind thought. But then again, it didn’t particularly look as though the crowd cared that much about the rules or gentlemanly combat.
“That’s right, you lot!” Gerhardt was shouting to his audience, always talking first to his audience and second to the contestants. “This policeman wasn’t playing fair, was he? You heard me ask them both the sacred questions, right at the start? Are you prepared to kill without mercy? No hesitation!”
The leader of the raiders finally looked back at Anders. “You’re still a policeman, no matter what Challenge or crime you’ve been involved in. And this is what we do to Golden Throne policemen around here.” He raised the mallet and stepped back, for Anders to hear a scraping sound.
Gerhardt had given August the time he needed to pick up one of the still-smoldering blades. It had lost its bright orange and yellow glow and the rise of steam from its surface. Now, it had taken on an ugly black color, all apart from its top, which still glowed a dulled cherry red.
Anders saw August stalk toward him, trailing this cherry-red sword tip across the metal. Anders was frozen in pain as he saw sparks spilling from the reddened edge of the blade, and the hiss as it slid through a slick of blood on the floor. My blood, Anders realized with a sense of horror.
August flicked his blade up in a practiced killing move, whirling it over his shoulder in a windmill.
Anders rolled.
The ex-officer rolled toward his opponent, barging into his leg with his forearms and driving August backwards. The guard’s back foot hit a spray of Anders’s blood on the floor and to started to slide. Once again, August had over-stretched himself. He had thrown all his power into the swing, intending to separate Anders’s head from his shoulders in one scorching strike.
Anders was already bouncing to his feet as the man’s arm—and sword—fell toward his shoulder.
He didn’t even think. He spun and grabbed the sword from August’s over-weighted grip. He continued his turn, changing his grip as he pushed August back, and swiped the blade across his attacker’s neck in a searing blow. The senior fighter of the Night Raiders gave a small gurgling sound, then fell back with a heavy, wet thud.
He had done it. He had won the deathmatch challenge of the Night Raiders’ Death Palace.
But did I buy enough time for the others? Are they alive? Anders was gasping as he still held the blooded and steaming sword in his hands, frozen in that final moment of terrible victory.
There was silence from the watchful faces of the raiders in front of him, and Anders could tell they were deciding whether he really had won. Whether he deserved to win.
Luckily for them, none of the Night Raiders had to make that decision, because Gerhardt howled from behind Anders.
“You scum sucker! You want a real fight now, huh? No games?” Anders swiveled on his exhausted feet to see the leader of the Night Raiders, armed with his two-handed mallet of metal and a face twisted in fury, closing on him.
20
Console
“We have to stop it,” Dalia said, feeling anxiety start to rise in her throat. She wasn’t the sort of Ilythian to give in to emotion, but now—with Jake the human battery radiating taut and horrible feelings, and with the device just on the other side of the door—she thought that the situation warranted it.
“Yes, okay, um…” Patch nodded, his face serious behind his helmet.
But he looks worried, Dalia could see. Nervous. She watched as he checked his laser pistol in his hands, making sure that it had charge.
“You can disable it?” she asked.
Patch looked up at her as if her words had caught him off guard. He had clearly been thinking terrible things about the battle ahead.
He’s not ready, Dalia thought steadily, stepping back to assess their situation with an agent’s eye.
What’s the mission? Stop the transmitter. Turn it back into a jammer. Get it back to civilized space, somewhere safe where they could operate it without the throne disrupting their plans.
And, of course, the one goal that underwrote all of Dalia’s feelings: Save Anders.
“Dear stars,” Dalia cursed under her breath. It was a lot to ask. The only place that she knew where she could vouch for a small amount of safety would be Ilythian space. If they could get the recalibrated jammer back to her home sector, then the council could operate it from there. She knew that she would be allowed in of course, but if she arrived in a throne vessel with throne personnel then she knew she would have some explaining to do.
That wasn’t the part that she was most concerned about, though. Their only available escape craft was the Nova, operated by the throne intelligence Moriarty, and from what Anders had said just earlier, it was limping. Unable even to jump.
We’ll never make it across throne space, through the middle of a war, to safe harbor.
So, what did that mean? Dalia’s mind flashed. What would she have done a few cycles ago, as an agent? She would have worked undercover, secured contacts among the Voiders or the
Proxima Republic to get to the throne garden worlds like Terevesin, who, despite being human members of the Golden Throne, had always been friends of the Ilythian people. Once there, she would find a way to sneak across the front lines.
But there’s too many of us. Too noticeable. Dalia hissed, cat-like, through her teeth.
“Don’t look for unhealthy signs in the heavens,” she murmured an old Ilythian adage.
“I beg your pardon?” Patch blinked several times as he looked up at her. He had been checking and rechecking his laser pistol. “I, uh, I was sure that I picked up some spare energy cartridges somewhere,” he said distractedly, patting the modular containment pods of his suit.
“It’s nothing.” Dalia took a breath and came to a decision. Patch McGuire, as resourceful and optimistic as he was, had no military training. Neither did Jake, who was barely managing to hold it together at all.
Five Night Raider guards on the far side, she told herself. She had fought worse odds before. But always alone, and always with enough time and preparation to make sure that she had the upper hand.
And not having to protect two humans at the same time or having to fight her way out against the possibility of hundreds after it was done, back to a limping ship that might not even be able to outrun the shadow-craft.
But sometimes, you don’t have any good choices left. Dalia sighed.
“Okay. You can disable the transmitter? And turn it back into a jammer?” Dalia asked the Voider.
“Yes, well, I can’t say until I see what they’ve done to it, but yes, I’m sure,” Patch said.
“Good. Then here is what we are going to do.”
Dalia outlined the only plan that made any sense.
It was a terrible plan. Even the highly-trained Agent Dalia had to admit that. But what option do I have? She nodded to Patch that she was ready, drawing both pistols and preparing in a crouch by the transmitter door.
“They were easy to hack…” she heard Patch murmur, and then, “Sorry, I’m not helping, am I?” She heard him take a deep breath.
“Release in three…”
Remember your training, Agent, she told herself.
“Two…”
The Ilythian’s face contorted into a fierce snarl.
“And go!”
There was a slight chime from the door, and the lights above the porthole flashed a welcoming green before there was a hiss as the door started to slide into the wall.
Dalia’s body twitched forward, before bringing herself to a halt. The stars-be-damned door is moving too slow! It didn’t matter how easy it was for the young Void engineer to hack, this door was a part of some sort of enhanced security measures, clearly. Whatever had originally been on the inside of it had meant to be protected at all costs.
The door moved inch by stuttering inch to a third of the way open, and Dalia could clearly see inside as the nearest Night Raiders were already turning and raising their heads, confused at the sudden interruption. The Ilythian agent saw the man’s heavy features morph into surprise at the sight of an alien inside a human encounter suit with two laser pistols pointed in his direction.
His hand moved to his belt.
Dalia shot him.
The slow-moving bulkhead door had reached the halfway mark with a screech, and it was enough. Dalia threw herself into a sideways lunge into the room, her chest banging against the frame as she skipped over the door sill.
But she was in.
The raider she had shot fell toward his control desk and rebounded off it. He had only been wearing partial armor in here, and both of Dalia’s shots had found vital organs. She was good like that. She rolled across the floor, coming up into a slide as the first of the angry human shouts started.
One down, Dalia had a moment to think as she found the next Night Raider, already moving from behind his control desk near the first and unslinging his gun.
“We’re under att—” he had managed to say as Dalia gave him both barrels of her pistols as well. Just like the first, he was flung backward, but not against his control panel. Instead, he fell into the nest of large, metal fabric pipes at the back of the room.
Two down. Dalia was already leaping forward in a combat roll toward the nearest control panel as the first shot was fired, scorching the floor where she had been. She slammed her back to the podium-style control column and checked the readouts of her pistols. Both were still a healthy green but had lost a chunk of their operating power. She had set them to maximum burn before entering, knowing that it would deplete the battery quickly but also that she needed to inflict the most damage as quickly as possible.
The control column behind her erupted in sparks and showered fragments of crystal-glass and wires over her head and back toward the door.
Was that a second shooter? Dalia flicked her wrist out to fire a couple of shots over her right shoulder before darting her head to her left.
Two raiders visible, she logged with an agent’s skill inside her mind. Each one was behind their control consoles, now with their laser blasters already out and waiting to take potshots at her.
Y’creel! she swore. The last thing she needed was to be pinned down. And there was still one more Night Raider behind her somewhere, but where?
Not my finest entrance. The Ilythian growled as the control console behind her shoulders shuddered and erupted with sparks once again.
21
In Front of the Hungry Crowds
“Yargh!” Gerhardt whirled the large metal mallet toward Anders in a wide arc. It looked like a heavy steel pipe, but one on which shards and fragments of metal plate had been welded to one end, creating a spiked effect, while the other end was a rough block of metal. It was this heavier edge that he had used to thump the bell, and the sharper end that he apparently wanted to use to flay Anders’s skin from his bones.
Anders leapt back, surprised at the rush of adrenaline that coursed through his system. He had been near-exhausted just a heartbeat before, but now he was alive with electric energy.
The man knew, of course, that it was a fake energy. It wasn’t the sustained strength of a well-rested, well-fed, and properly limbered-up body. He knew the difference. This was the chemical jag of adrenaline and cortisol that would give him a few minutes of speed and confidence at most.
Best use it, then. Anders lunged forward in a straight stab, aiming for the man’s shoulder. If he could get him to drop the mallet, then this fight would be over much quicker.
Clang! But Gerhardt appeared to be in almost the exact opposite condition to Anders. The man spun the metal bar from its center as if it were a quarterstaff, easily batting Anders’s burning sword out of the way before lunging forward with his own ‘stab’ of the pointier, jagged end.
Frack it! Anders managed to turn his hip just in time as the nest of jagged plates scored past him and—
“Ach!”
Gerhardt had hooked the weapon back toward him, and even though this returning blow had little force, it was heavy enough that when it scraped along Anders’s abdomen and chest, it drew spraying droplets of blood.
Anders gasped and stumbled back, putting meters between them.
“That’s right, policeman, you get it now,” Gerhardt was crowing loudly, victoriously. “This isn’t throne space. There aren’t any security drones gonna come save you. No Throne Marines going to parachute in here. There’s just us!” He earned a howl of savage delight from the crowd.
Anders’s blade dipped to the floor as blood flowed down his chest. He was beat. He knew it. He wouldn’t be able to stand much more of this.
And then what will happen to Dalia, Patch, and Jake? he thought in alarm. Was this really what it came down to?
Have they escaped already? Have they been captured? Anders started to sidle around his opponent as Gerhardt did the same, both men crouching forward ever-so-slightly as they looked for an opening.
No, Anders didn’t think that his friends and crewmates had been captured. Or even noticed…yet. Surel
y, the news of an infiltration would cause someone to send a message to Gerhardt. Especially when the infiltration was by an Ilythian, of all people!
So that meant that they had either already escaped or were still on the mission.
Which means that I have to keep going. Anders steeled himself, grasping his sword in both hands.
22
Transmitter Room
Pinned down. Taking fire from both sides. None of this was a good position by anyone’s standards, let alone a highly tactical Ilythian agent.
Dalia spared a glance toward the door, which had lost its impetus at about three-quarters open before jamming. If she took her mind off the bursts of plasma fire and the grunts and snarls of her opponents, then Dalia’s sensitive ears could still hear the door humming and screeching as it tried to continue its operation.
And there, she saw the brief face of Patch as it appeared around the edge to see how bad of a situation she was in. Her superior Ilythian eyesight saw the human’s eyes widen in shock at the sight.
I know. This sucks. She was forced to agree with the man’s assessment. Dalia was only glad that she couldn’t see her situation from her friend’s perspective. Have I failed? She was thinking as she saw Patch come to a decision.
“Hold on,” she heard him say over their suit-to-suit communication. “I’m going to give you ground cover.”
The term is covering fire, she almost corrected him, but she didn’t have a chance as the Voider swung himself out—he didn’t even stand side-on!—to fire his laser pistol at the raiders.
Y’creel! Dalia swore as she took her chance, leaping from her console and over the pipes as she heard the angry voices of the Night Raiders.
“There’s another one!”
“Head down!”
They hadn’t realized that the man firing at them was about as skilled as the average civilian, Dalia thought as she skidded around one side of the transmitter, hiding herself from at least one raider’s view before popping back out to track—
Night Raiders Page 11