The Sky Is Crying Read online

  Remy, Lilly, and Davis checked their weapons and then dispersed into the street, zigzagging through the plasma blasts and searching for ideal shooting spots. With stalwart expressions, Milo and Jacer stepped outside with the tenth and eleventh crates and bolted toward the hovercrafts. The uninjured monks, meanwhile, struggled to defend their position. Dreyla felt torn between wanting to help speed up the loading process and obey her father’s command to stay put.

  “Arrgh,” Jacer keened in his high-pitched voice.

  The aflin, who had just deposited his latest crate, sank to the sidewalk beside one of the hovercrafts. A blast had seemingly caught his left hip. Milo hastened to help him to his feet, then partially covered by the monks’ gunfire, both staggered down the sidewalk, through the busted wall, and toward the exam table in the middle of the cluttered room.

  Dreyla abandoned her post and raced to Jacer’s side. “Are you alright?”

  The aflin’s wound oozed a strange greenish color of blood that made the injury look more gruesome than it likely was. Jacer leaned against the table, grimacing in pain, but closer scrutiny indicated the wound was little more than a graze.

  “I’ll be OK,” Jacer said, waving her and Milo away.

  The dworg turned to grab another crate, the aflin straightened up and followed suit, and Dreyla resumed her post. As she kept watch, the men lugged two more heavy containers—numbers twelve and thirteen—out into the melee, apparently ignoring the injuries they’d already sustained and luckily immune to the blasts shooting past their heads. Davis, Lilly, and Remy, meanwhile, continued to assist the monks in keeping the gunmen at bay.

  Left alone again, Dreyla hunkered beside the hole, just inside the room, and tried to find an ideal position. One that allowed her to shoot any enemies on the sidewalk and still conceal herself behind the wall—thus being useful and adhering to Remy’s order to stay safe. From where she crouched, she spied a trio of Darkbur’s men headed toward the hovercrafts, so she aimed her pistol, pulled the trigger, and… missed.

  Crap.

  Yeah, she’d never been proficient with handguns. She would have brought her trusty plasma crossbow instead, but Remy had thought it would draw too much attention—back when the plan had been to slip in and out like an unseen wind.

  Ha! As if that’s ever the case with us.

  Now, she wished she hadn’t listened to him. What did drawing undue attention matter anymore? Hell, even shooting one of Remy’s old-time gunpowder guns would be easier than this stupid blaster.

  Despite the high-tech nature of the blasters, the old-fashioned firearms—cowboy guns, Tosh called them—were actually faster, more accurate shots in the right hands. But that wasn’t why Remy preferred them. They were simply part of his fixation with ancient artifacts. His Colt .45 wasn’t even a proper gunpowder weapon. She’d had to fabricate special bullets for him. But it still fired as well as it had two hundred years ago.

  Or so Remy claims.

  The aflin and the dworg darted back in and out so quickly that Dreyla only caught a glimpse of Milo’s new injury—on his right shoulder. Before she could even consider worrying, she heard a ruckus in the reception area. Apparently, some of Darkbur’s men had noted the stillness on that side of the closed door and decided to breach their hidey-hole from behind.

  Dammit!

  All the crates were gone. It was time for her to go, but she wasn’t sure where. Between the haphazard plasma blasts and the irritating haze from a few grenades, she found it difficult to see much from her position. Hands shaking, she lifted the blaster again, squinted through the hole in the wall, and fired at a nebulous figure lurking under a streetlamp. Unfortunately, the shot sailed way over the gunman’s head.

  Shit!

  Well, if Remy could indulge his nostalgic whims about guns, then next time, she would bring her damn crossbow.

  If there even was a next time.

  Chapter 5

  REMY

  This situation felt like déjà vu of the worst kind. Remy gazed toward the middle hovercraft, where the stricken monk still bled profusely, and his stomach swirled. The woman struggled to constrain her cries of agony as Bellia and Lady Ris wrapped bandages around the shoulder area and dabbed her face with cloths. Overcome with frenzied concern, they had switched to some other language he’d never heard before.

  The poor woman had lost her entire right arm, just like Commander Shaw had… only in Shaw’s case, it had been an act of desperation on Remy’s part. An effort to save his daughter from an unacceptable demise. But these assholes—Gono Darkbur’s goons—were willing to maim and kill as many people as necessary, just to reclaim the drugs they’d stolen from everyone on the planet. They were the most heinous scum imaginable, on par with Larker Max.

  Remy didn’t make a habit of letting people steal back what he’d rightfully stolen, especially when the loot in question had been originally stolen from others.

  What a confusing mess. A whole lotta stealing going on.

  One thing was certain, though: he and his companions were doing the right thing—for a lot of innocent and, yes, some not-so-innocent people on Vox. Remy didn’t usually stick his neck out for anyone other than the Jay’s crew, whom he considered family, but this situation had pissed him off enough to relax his principles.

  Someone grabbed his elbow and yanked him into the gap between the nearest hovercraft and one of the humongous transport vehicles that bookended the trio of monk-driven vessels, just as a half-dozen shots whizzed by, narrowly missing his nose. In the light of the rising sun, he could easily make out his rescuer.

  “Are you crazy?” Sheriff Greyson yelled into his face, her eyes flashing with fury. “Is that your problem?”

  He winked at her. “Maybe just a wee bit.”

  Her glare only intensified. Apparently, she wasn’t in a laughing mood. Her black hair was a tangled mess, and her right cheek bore a streak of blood. Given the strength and energy she radiated, Remy suspected it was someone else’s. He glanced downward as she checked her weapons. She had abandoned her plasma rifle and was now sporting two pistols, aiming to shoot double-handed.

  Yeah, he knew the real reason he was fighting this particular fight.

  She caught his eye again with her fiery gaze. “We need to get the hell out of here!”

  “No kidding.”

  He risked a look around the transport vehicle and glanced down the sidewalk. Half a dozen men rapidly advanced toward the hovercrafts. They needed to halt these assholes, but unfortunately, most of their people had shifted their focus to repelling the attack from the street and the rooftops. Not the sidewalk.

  Remy turned back to the sheriff and reached into one of her jacket pockets.

  “What the hell are—” she began.

  “Relax.”

  He pulled out the plasma wall cube, activated it, and hurled it down the sidewalk. The cube tumbled past Darkbur’s property and came to a halt several yards beyond the transport vehicle.

  Remy met the sheriff’s gaze as the countdown began.

  “That was the only one I had, you pickpocket,” she said.

  “Yeah. Sorry.”

  “Sure hope you know what you’re doing.”

  “Always.”

  She rolled her eyes, in a manner that would’ve made Dreyla proud.

  Remy peered around the hovercraft and spotted Davis peeking out from beside the other transport vehicle. Taking the hint, the deputy activated his own grenade and tossed it toward the opposite end of the sidewalk.

  Any second now, Remy’s cube would form a barrier not far from the lead vehicle.

  Ah, there it is.

  The shimmering, white-hot plasma wall shot up and out, temporarily halting the gunmen charging toward them. The goons only had enough room between the edge of the plasma wall and Darkbur’s property to enter the fray in single file. Milo and two of the monks easily took down the men.

  Davis, unfortunately, had thrown his grenade too far to the left, where it bounced agai
nst Darkbur’s building. The one Dreyla still hid inside.

  Remy and Lilly winced at each other.

  “That’s not good,” Lilly said.

  “Nope, not good,” Remy agreed.

  He slid his arm around her waist and pulled her toward him. Instead of shaking him off, as in the recent past, she huddled beside him.

  When, after several tense seconds, Davis’s grenade finally ignited, the unleashed plasma wall sliced into the building, which promptly burst into flames. The other end of the wall luckily hit one of Darkbur’s men, burning the side of his face. Shouting in pain, he rolled to the ground but still managed to raise his pistol.

  By the time he squeezed the trigger, Remy knew Davis was a dead man. The deputy, who still stood on the sidewalk, staring, dumbfounded, at the fire he’d started, took a shot straight to the chest. He slumped to the ground, motionless.

  “Nooooo!” the sheriff screamed.

  She broke away from Remy and started to rise, but he pulled her back to safety just as a barrage of blasts exploded from both ends of the sidewalk. Instinctively, they each scurried backward and fell against Jacer, who, unbeknownst to them, had slipped into the space between vehicles. He’d been hit again, this time in the forearm. After noting the injury, Remy opened his mouth to say something, but the aflin simply shook his head, as if warding off any inquiries.

  “Crates are all loaded,” he said. “Ready to go.”

  “Wonderful,” Remy replied. “Now, we just need to survive the battle long enough to escape.”

  He stood cautiously, assisted the teary-eyed sheriff to her feet as well, and then glanced back at the man sporting the gruesomely charred face, the one who’d killed Deputy Davis. As the man turned his gun toward the burning building, Remy traced his line of sight and spotted a shell-shocked Dreyla crouching on the other side of the breached wall. Clearly upset over Davis’s murder and perhaps rattled by the rapidly-spreading fire, she didn’t realize how vulnerable she was.

  “Drey!” Remy hollered. “Drey, no!”

  As he watched helplessly from his hiding spot, an arm reached from behind her and yanked her farther into the building, just as the man’s blasts shot through the hole.

  Remy sighed with relief.

  With cold, clear tunnel vision, Remy leapt onto the sidewalk and sprinted toward the hole. Something hard knocked him off his path, making him stagger backward. It was Milo, barreling past him—or, rather, through him—to reach the scarred man who’d shot Davis.

  Before the man, who towered over Milo, had a chance to defend himself, the dworg picked him up and, with a roar, slammed him against the sidewalk. Even with the din of shouting, gunfire, explosions, and raging flames all around him, Remy could swear he heard the man’s skull and backbone crack under the pressure. When Milo seemed satisfied, he stumbled past the corpse and scooped up Davis’s body, gamely taking another shot to his side as if it were a mere mosquito bite.

  Quickly-spreading flames now engulfed much of Darkbur’s building, formerly home to the twisted Dr. Sanger. Remy’s focus yo-yoed between the smoke-filled hole where Drey had disappeared and the sheriff, still standing between the vehicles, both guns cocked.

  This was it. Their time was up.

  Chapter 6

  DREYLA

  After stumbling backward—and watching in horror as several plasma blasts darted into the room and pierced a cabinet full of miscellaneous tools—Dreyla instinctively turned to see who’d pulled her away from the outer wall.

  What the hell?

  Not believing her own eyes, she did a double take. But she’d been right the first time.

  Backlit by the open doorway of the burning reception area, and surrounded by a slew of the mad doctor’s assorted body parts, stood Commander Tara Shaw—in all her svelte, black-suited, bionic-bitchin’ glory.

  “You should be more careful, little one,” Shaw said, her green eyes alight with mischief.

  Dreyla gazed speechlessly into the woman’s porcelain face, her delicate features slightly marred by fresh scratches and bruises.

  “But… you want to kill us,” she blubbered.

  “No.” With her menacing cyborg arm, Shaw motioned to a spot beyond Dreyla. “Just him.”

  Dreyla followed her piercing gaze toward the hole, where Remy crouched on the sidewalk, staring at his longtime enemy.

  “Like a bad penny, Shaw,” Remy said, resting his Colt on his thigh, “you always seem to turn up.”

  Dreyla’s mind raced, trying to think of a way to diffuse the situation. As she turned back to Shaw, though, she froze. The woman had raised her pistol in the captain’s direction, a twisted smile on her lips.

  Dreyla shifted her gaze back to Remy, mentally begging him to dive out of the way, but he merely lifted a forefinger, gestured to something behind her, and smiled.

  Shaw whirled around, but before she could shift her gun and switch targets, the butt of a rifle hit her square in the forehead. She swayed for a moment, then collapsed at Dreyla’s feet, her pistol slipping from her grasp.

  Gasping, Dreyla looked up from the prone commander. With merciless eyes, the beefy, square-jawed assailant who’d knocked out Shaw flipped his rifle around and aimed the dangerous end downward, directly at Dreyla’s face. Apparently, he didn’t mind sparing Shaw’s life—likely because they worked for the same boss—but he had no intention of doing the same for Dreyla.

  Before the gunman could squeeze the trigger, though, two bullets hit him in the left temple, spraying blood and brain matter out the other side of his head. His rifle clattered to the floor, and the dead man slumped heavily beside the unconscious commander.

  Whoa, that was close. Too close.

  With her blood still pounding in her ears, Dreyla pivoted toward the hole. Remy still crouched there, his favorite gun held aloft. When his eyes met his daughter’s, he exhaled heavily and lowered his shoulders. Dreyla sighed, too, having momentarily forgotten how to breathe.

  “Remy… Dreyla,” Lady Ris said via the comms, her tone more breathless than usual. “Everyone is aboard. It is time to go.”

  “Get your ass out here,” he growled at Dreyla. “We’re leaving!”

  He didn’t have to tell her twice. The fire had already found its way into the doctor’s former office, incinerating everything in its path and making a mockery of the overhead sprinklers, which only managed to spray a pathetic mist of useless water. The pinkish-gray smoke billowing toward the ceiling was probably highly toxic, and it smelled terrible. Like burning rubber, seared flesh, and pungent chemicals all blended together.

  Dreyla sprang toward the outer wall, grabbing her and Remy’s satchels along the way. A series of explosions throughout the structure made the inner walls tremble and crack. The building wasn’t long for this particular world, and neither was anyone trapped inside.

  Well, shit.

  Halting at the open hole in the wall, she ignored Remy’s extended hand and glanced backward at the two bodies behind her. As her gaze drifted from the dead man to the unconscious commander, she sighed.

  “Dammit, Drey,” she muttered.

  Without further hesitation, she darted past the exam table, grabbed Shaw’s arms, and dragged her through the hole and onto the sidewalk. Luckily, the woman didn’t weigh much more than Dreyla did.

  Additional eruptions sounded from inside the building, and the heat of the engulfing fire roasted Dreyla’s skin. So, with her last ounces of energy, she lugged the commander into the street, where it was slightly cooler. As she finally released Shaw’s arms, she looked up and met the captain’s uncomprehending eyes. Although he’d been quick enough to step aside as Dreyla pulled Shaw out of harm’s way, he certainly didn’t seem pleased.

  “What the hell are you doing?” he asked.

  “She saved my life,” Dreyla reasoned, although she couldn’t really justify what she’d done, even to herself. “Said she only wanted to kill you.” She shrugged. “I mean, I’m not happy about that, but still, it seemed wrong to
leave her behind.”

  Remy said nothing for a long moment, then shrugged, too. “Fair enough. But she’s not coming with us.”

  He grasped Dreyla’s arm and nearly dragged her toward the trio of waiting hovercrafts, where their crewmates were still firing at Darkbur’s men. The temporary plasma walls had disappeared, but the furnace created by the collapsing building had helped to keep some of the bad guys preoccupied. It would only take a few well-aimed plasma blasts, though, to overwhelm the good guys and restore Darkbur’s diabolical control of the planet.

  Remy and Dreyla reached the nearest hovercraft. Lady Ris and Sheriff Lilly sat in the vehicle, putting up an admirable fight, alternately ducking from plasma blasts and firing their own pistols at the goons clustered at both ends of the street. But their shots merely bounced off their formidable body armor.

  Remy took aim with his Colt and ripped a hole through the armored chest of one of the men, who crumpled to the ground. The dead man’s fellow assassins hesitated just long enough for Dreyla and Remy to scramble inside the hovercraft.

  Yay, for old-fashioned technology! And my special bullets.

  Then, amid the roar of flames and a spray of plasma blasts, Remy took the wheel, guided the hovercraft into the street, and steered them away from the terrifying scene. Crouching in the passenger seat, Dreyla turned to watch the mayhem behind her. Lilly and Lady Ris were still shooting, trying to provide cover for the other two open-topped hovercrafts, which had successfully escaped as well.

  Dreyla’s gaze shifted to the left, where the fire now engulfed the rear building—truly a lost cause. Worse, a few flames had hopped to the adjacent hotel, where they licked the lower floors. She wouldn’t feel guilty if Gono Darkbur lost his property, but she hoped the hotel guests and bar patrons had had the good sense to flee.

  “Get down,” Remy urged her, pressing his palm on the crown of her head.