Righteous Fury (To Protect and Service Book 2)

by Tracy St. John

  Screaming with laughter, Kimi dove into yet another onslaught of adversaries determined to kill her.

  When she’d dispatched that group, she looked down the corridor in the direction they’d come from. There was no sign of Laaruu, Daagiis, or Vendeen. Just more of the brown-uniformed crew, about half a dozen aliens trotting—in one case, flying on batlike wings—toward her and Raven.

  “The guys haven’t put in an appearance yet.” Raven also paused, unconcerned with the opponents coming in their direction. The women had been unstoppable thus far.

  “Should we go back?”

  Concern lighting her expression, Raven joined Kimi in stomping the latest arrivals before answering. “Fuck. I hate getting separated from Vendeen. Hanos would do anything to get his hands on him. But he told me to make for the shuttle bay, secure it, and grab a prisoner for questioning. If Hanos is there—damn it.” Indecision lasted only a moment more before Raven squared her shoulders and faced the route to the bay. “You can go back for Laaruu. I’m going to follow orders.”

  Kimi hesitated for an instant before making her choice. “Laaruu’s proven more than once he’s a big boy. Badass as you are, I’m not letting you go on alone.”

  On they went, meeting mayhem and kicking ass. The sounds of fighting increased as they went, indicating they closed in on their objective.

  “It’s just ahead. Now it gets interesting,” Raven confirmed.

  Ripping themselves a path through the combatants blocking the entrance to the bay, Kimi and Raven entered the vast space. Almost at once, Kimi saw Tum, Hanos’s righthand bastard, tossing defenders like broken dolls. A number of bloody combatants, their brown or black uniforms torn, swirled in a violent ballet of battle between the women and Tum.

  “Raven! That’s Tum, Hanos’s buddy. He’s the guy we want!”

  They waded in through vast amounts of pooling blood, beating aside those who got in their path. They fought amongst the ships docked in the bay; the fine Consolidated shuttles, various unfamiliar vessels that must have belonged to Hanos’s invading party, and dozens of glittering Paatiin craft.

  Wait. There are no Paatiin out here fighting. Where the fuck are Laaruu’s people?

  On the heels of Kimi’s sudden realization, she and Raven broke through to within a few feet of Tum. He suddenly stopped throttling the Gilothean crewman he’d been in the midst of killing, pushing the fellow aside to face the women. He laughed, his glee booming over the clash of battle.

  As if it had been a signal, all violence abruptly ceased. Defending crew and invaders alike quit beating the shit out of each other, turning toward Kimi and Raven. They drew in, circling them.

  Raven’s lip curled in a snarl. “Fuck. It’s a trap.”

  Tum smirked. “Congratulations. You’re not such a stupid cunt after all.”

  “Where are the Paatiin?” Kimi demanded, her stomach heavy with fear for Laaruu’s men.

  “Out there.” Tum jerked his thumb toward the opening that displayed empty space beyond. “When we signaled we were ready to board, the bay crew alerted the Paatiin. Then our spies walked out, opened the airlock, and cleaned the face-changing vermin out of the ship as they charged out of their vessels. As for you, pretties…well, we’ll let Hanos deal with you.”

  Kimi didn’t get the chance to set for an attack. She never felt the blow that blacked out Tum’s leer.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Instead of slipping into consciousness by degrees, Kimi came awake all at once. Maybe it had something to do with her programming. No matter; she was blinded whether her eyes were open or shut.

  She blinked at the dazzling light overhead, a brutal spotlight that insisted she move out of its glare. When she tried to roll aside, she discovered she was strapped down. Pulling at the thick white bands holding her prisoner, wriggling with all she had, allowed no escape.

  She wasn’t merely strapped down, but strapped wide open. Her legs ached from how far apart they were spread in stirrups that bound her feet and ankles. She was on a metal table, more along the lines of an autopsy table than the padded exam table she’d have expected in a gynecologist’s office.

  This isn’t a Pap smear, babe. Get with it and get out of whatever fresh hell Hanos has set up for you.

  Her vision was adjusting, and she peered around. At least she could move her head. As she did so, she noted sobbing and muttering, as if people offered prayers at a funeral.

  A funeral would have been a much nicer place to be. Even if it were her own.

  On either side, more metal tables stretched as far as her limited mobility allowed her to see. Between her splayed legs, she spotted another row. Each had a nude woman strapped down as she was. Some were crying. Some, like those on either side of Kimi, didn’t move. Intravenous bags hung from poles attached to their metal tables. All were battered with hectic bruises and cuts, some horrifically so.

  The stench of sweat, shit, blood, and piss blanketed the air. The smells of torment and fear. Kimi’s fists clenched where they were pinned to her sides by her bonds. The chamber reeked of hopelessness and death. Her gorge rose along with her fury. Someone had gone out of their way to hurt these women.

  Hanos. Worse still, there was no sign of Raven.

  “Raven? Are you here?”

  Only sobs and groans answered her call.

  A very pregnant woman appeared to Kimi’s right, trundling a cart covered with IV bags. She was almost angelic in appearance, what with her unmarked skin and clothing. Ignoring Kimi, the brunette approached the blank-eyed female strapped next to her and set about changing the IV drip.

  “Hey. Where am I?” Kimi demanded.

  The woman didn’t answer. She finished exchanging the empty IV for a full bag and pressed fingers to the insensible woman’s wrist, taking her pulse.

  Kimi tried again. “Come on, I’m a federal agent back on Earth. I was sent to rescue those abducted to this place. Talk to me.”

  The nurse turned her head. She regarded Kimi with eyes almost as blank as those belonging to the poor soul she ministered to. “I’d say your mission failed.”

  “Not if you let me loose. Come on, help me out here.”

  “And end up like you?” The brunette dropped her patient’s arm, letting it thud to the table. She shoved her cart around Kimi’s bed, heading for the other oblivious patient.

  “They’re breeding you, aren’t they? Don’t you want out of here? Help me and I’ll help you, I swear.” Kimi worried at the robotic movements of the nurse.

  “It’s not worth the risk.” Dead, hopeless voice.

  Trying to stir some semblance of life out of her lone visible hope, Kimi switched to her second concern. “There was another woman with me. Another agent. Where is she?”

  “You’re the only one they brought in this room. She might be in another.”

  “Son of a bitch, there are more of these rooms on board? Not to mention multiple slave ships. I should have figured. This is different, though. We’re here to be bred, aren’t we?”

  The woman sighed, as if Kimi’s questions tired her. Or irritated her. At least she didn’t act quite so remote. “This chamber is for the failed breeders.”

  “Failed?”

  “The females who can’t have children…or those Hanos decides needs to be taught a permanent lesson.” She finished changing her ward’s IV and stared at the blank countenance. “If he sentences you to suffer as much as possible, he lets you live like this. You get some care and sustenance for as long as you can last. If he wants you to die quickly, then you lay there and suffer until nothing’s left.”

  Kimi glanced at her surroundings. Almost all the women she could see had IV bags hanging at their beds. Only three, including her, weren’t hooked up. She was slated for the Death Express, and not because Hanos regarded her with any mercy.

  Though the situation was undeniably grim and her programs weren’t finding a solution to her predicament, a nasty grin pulled at her lips. “Hanos is scared enough of me to kil
l me fast, huh? I love it when a bastard blinks.”

  Preggers gave her a startled look. She seemed ready to say something when the shouts of men came from somewhere beyond the door. She hurriedly shoved her cart, leaving Kimi’s vicinity.

  “No, wait! Damn it, let me loose! Let me help you!” Kimi jerked at her straps, finding no give.

  The woman took off to the other end of the room though, waddling as fast as her rotund figure would allow.

  On the opposite end of the chamber, a group of half a dozen Gilotheans marched in, laughing and conversing amongst themselves. They eyed the prisoners, three going straight toward their apparent favorites.

  The man in the lead, a sneering white-haired brute, moved between one woman’s legs. “Hello, pet. Miss me?” He yanked open his fly as the prisoner sobbed and pulled in vain at her straps.

  Another slapped a blank-eyed woman in greeting. The third to choose simply stepped up to his victim. He spit on his exposed cock and began rutting, not bothering to look at his victim’s streaming face. His focus was directed solely on their joined sexes.

  The remaining three wandered down the aisle, sizing up their prospects. The pregnant nurse had returned. She toddled up the row opposite Kimi’s, still trading out IVs as if nothing was happening. However, her route put her in the path of the strolling Gilotheans. A scarred brute shoved her aside, propelling her toward Kimi’s table. She banged against Kimi’s leg.

  Kimi snarled at the brief flash of pain. She snarled at the horrific sounds of forced sex. She snarled at the attendant too, for not letting her loose when she had the chance.

  The nurse didn’t bother to glance at Kimi’s expression. Instead, she checked her leg restraints, ensuring they were secure. She moved up to check the rest of Kimi’s bonds, though her brief contact couldn’t have possibly done anything to affect them.

  She moved so that her ample girth hid what she did from the Gilotheans. She pressed something cold and hard against Kimi’s palm. At the same instant, she twisted a lever, and Kimi felt the straps on her arms and torso loosen.

  Preggers hurried off without a word, shrinking past the soldiers milling in Kimi’s direction. She disappeared through the doors they’d entered from, leaving her cart behind.

  Kimi rotated her arm to peer at what the nurse had given her, keeping an eye on the approaching Gilotheans. Her breath caught to see the thick metal handle of what her program informed her was a Gilothean fighting knife. She pressed the button at the bottom, and a huge blade snicked out, the gleaming metal hidden along the underside of her forearm.

  She was armed. Her programs seized on the information, formulating a strategy. The cold of the blade gave warmth to her heart.

  The leader of the approaching men noticed Kimi. His eyes lit with an icy gleam. “Look at what we have here. I spy fresh meat.”

  They hurried over, the speaker wedging himself between her legs. The other two were forced to crowd at her side. They looked voracious, as if they’d take bites out of her.

  “She’s tagged black. Anything and everything!” The Gilothean nearest to her arm—and the knife—rubbed his hands together.

  Kimi’s programs were flying a mile a minute, each tallying its likelihood of success, especially given that her legs were still bound.

  Asshole One squeezed and slapped her thighs. “Look at these legs! A mile long and pale as snow. I can’t wait to bruise ‘em, put a little color on her.”

  He dies first. However, Kimi’s program chose another target as the perfect opening tactic clicked in place.

  She almost laughed with glee at what was about to happen. She had to cover the chortle by squealing instead, pretending terror. The soldiers laughed, a sound foul with intent.

  The bastard between her legs promised, “You’re about to yell a lot louder than that, Leggy.”

  Asshole Three, a slavering brute missing a few teeth, promised, “Not if she’s choking, she won’t.” He showed her his thick, scarred fingers and mimed squeezing an invisible neck while pumping his hips.

  They laughed more raucously than ever, though Asshole Two elbowed his companion. “You’ll go last, then. I’m emptying my cock in some sweet, tight ass before you finish the bitch. I prefer ‘em warm and wriggling and crying.”

  “And bleeding.” Asshole One leered. “There’ll be plenty of cum and blood to make her slippery for you when I’m done.”

  “You enjoy blood, huh? I’ll give you blood.”

  As she spoke, Kimi’s arms flashed too quickly for sight to follow, the glint of the knife a streak of steel. The pig on her right spouted a scarlet geyser from his throat a full second before he stopped smirking. The knife arced, slashing across the next man’s belly, slicing through his black shirt, flesh, and innards.

  None of them had begun to react when she sat up and leaned forward. In a single fluid motion, she slashed the belly of the man between her legs, arcing the blade up to catch him just below the sternum. She stroked down, opening him down to the groin. The knife unzipped his abdomen like a jacket so that his intestines spilled out.

  The first Gilothean was just hitting the floor, his eyes rolling over white, when she cut the strap off her ankle. His pals were jibbering in stunned horror. The second victim dropped to his knees as he held his bloody stomach, and the third staggered backward, pulling at his ropey guts. He was trying to repack them in his body.

  Kimi freed her other leg. Still in motion, not having paused for an instant since cutting the initial assaulter’s throat, she sprang to the cold metal floor. She grabbed a gun from Intestine’s belt, a blocky, brutish weapon that shot miniature explosives.

  She raced down the aisle, heading for the others who’d been busy raping. They hadn’t had the chance to react to the attack on their fellow shitheads, and were only just stepping from the metal tables, fumbling for their pistols. Kimi was on them within a breath. At such close range, she had no fear of hitting the hull of the ship and blowing the room out into space.

  She executed them in rapid succession, firing into each head, point-blank between the eyes, cutting off their cries. They dropped, only the last having grabbed his weapon—but not in time to use it.

  Kimi doubted she had long to capitalize on her escape. Yet as those women who possessed their senses clamored for freedom, she knew she couldn’t bear to leave them strapped down, waiting for the next man to hurt them.

  She flew about the area, cutting restraining straps loose. As she did so, the pregnant nurse cautiously peered in. Her jaw dropped at the sight of Kimi releasing the women and the Gilotheans lying dead.

  Kimi called to her. “Come on, Toots. Be a part of the revolution. Grab a weapon while you’re at it, in case more of these bastards show up.”

  “You pulled it off. I didn’t think you could. When I hurt the blasts—” Preggers ventured in. Then, in a flurry of excitement, she set to work helping Kimi free the remaining captives, rubbing their limbs to life. Some had been strapped down for a week.

  “No one lasts much beyond that, even those who are sentenced to be kept alive in order to suffer,” she explained before urging her patient on. “Come on, massage the muscles and get your circulation going. I have to free the rest.”

  Even those who showed no signs of conscious understanding were unstrapped. No one attempted to rouse them from wherever their sanity had fled. Guilt raised its ugly head, but Kimi had to concentrate on the problems she had a chance of solving.

  “Any chance my clothes are lying around somewhere?”

  Preggers ran to the door on the opposite side of the room the Gilotheans had entered from. The chamber beyond was small and full of shelves. She returned with Kimi’s camosuit and other articles of clothing.

  Kimi shoved herself in her suit and checked to make sure it was operational. When the women cried out at her disappearing act, she made herself visible again, satisfied.

  “Okay. Talk to me, gals. I want Hanos, but I’ll settle for taking command of this ship.”

  “
We’re not on a ship. We’re in some sort of town.” A woman trying to make her arms work struggled to put on a pair of tan slacks.

  “The Maihen Colony in the Cidfec System?” Hanos’s supposed lair. Kimi fairly drooled at the idea of finding the bastard.

  “That sounds right,” Preggers confirmed, checking with the others, who nodded.

  “Fine. Any idea of how big it is?”

  “This compound is the only place we’ve seen. Actually, this wing of the compound is the only place we’ve seen.”

  “Ever seen a nasty piece of business named Hanos? Or his lackey, Tum?”

  “The big guy and his favorite goon.” A dark-haired woman with sharp features actually bared her teeth. “They’ve wandered in from time to time. Especially in the baby mill, to ‘try out’ the new captures.”

  “They might be close. Maybe even staying on the grounds.” That suited Kimi fine, as did the guns she confiscated from her fallen enemies. She chose a weapon that fit her hand best, checked its ammo, and claimed it for her own. “Since I don’t have a hull breach to worry about, I plan to shove this gun up their asses and pull the trigger. How’s that sound?”

  The women nodded. Most wore stunned expressions, as if they hadn’t quite wrapped their heads around being freed. Bared Teeth, who was stretching and moving to get her blood flowing, had a sharklike countenance. She eyed the guns, practically salivating. Kimi thought she might have an ally primed for action. Unfortunately, she didn’t relish the idea of the women’s blood on her conscience. They had most certainly not been outfitted with fighting programs.

  Too bad. She could have used the help.

  “I also want to find my bestie, who’s probably in that other place you told me about. She’s a law enforcement officer, and a tougher bitch than me. Point me in the right direction.”

  Preggers said, “The other death fuck room is down the hall. As for Hanos, he has stayed here lately. I don’t know where he is now, but his private apartments are somewhere are beyond the nursery.”