Cutthroat Read online

  “I don’t like it either. But I like being alive more,” he said, and began the slow, horrifying work of slaughtering the Dairos. All of them moved swiftly. It was a task they were accustomed to.

  Five bodies in, Trey asked the question on his mind. “Drew. Why aren’t they attacking?”

  “Best guess? They’re distracted by Cardew’s attack.”

  “Maybe not,” Xander said, grimacing as he pulled his knife free from another fallen Dairos. He’d stopped using his mind to push the Adamanta. Trey and the rest of the crew knew it taxed him too hard. “These Dairos aren’t armed, and look at their carapaces. They’re thinner, lighter. These are worker ants to the rest of their troops. Sure, maybe they could take us down in force, but if I had to guess, the Kyraos have already written them off. Might as well keep them working.”

  Matt stumbled, and Drew rushed over to help her upright. She waved him away, grimacing. “You’re close, Xander. But that’s not all of it. That Anassos is whispering to me again. And it’s… I don’t know if laughing’s the right word. It’s pushing the idea of laughter at me. It knows what laughter is. It knows… it knows how much this is sickening my soul.”

  “Great,” Drew said weakly. “Awesome. Two thumbs up. I get first dibs on punching Simon in his favorite fun bits.”

  “I think that honor goes to Matt,” Trey said, plunging his knife into another Dairos.

  “We’ll all go at the same time,” Matt muttered, rubbing her forehead.

  ***

  “Where are you, Matt?” Simon muttered to himself. Three Dairos and a hulking behemoth of a Kyraos tore down a long corridor. Cardew, Simon, and their half of the Exemplar’s team were two or three doors starboard of where they’d split from the others, through one more refinery-warehouse and another long corridor identical to this one. He supposed the Beltine probably weren’t much into visual aesthetics.

  The Dairos hit the shields of the guards in front hard, rocking them back and sending one man sprawling. The same poor man who’d lost three of his fingers earlier to laser fire now marched forward, yelling incoherently as he lifted the pistol in his good hand, firing, firing, firing. Two of the Dairos went down before the big Kyraos lifted his laser rifle calmly and blew a hole through the man’s chest. This time, he hadn’t been so lucky. Simon closed his eyes and whimpered involuntarily.

  Kingston grunted, coming truly awake maybe for the first time since Simon hired him. His rifle rose to his shoulder, and he fired two quick shots, bringing down the remaining Dairos before flicking the end of his barrel in the direction of the Kyraos. The Beltine beat him to the first shot, winging the big man with a blast of laser across his hip. Kingston flinched but barely even shifted to acknowledge the shot. Three blasts in quick succession hit the Kyraos, the first in its shoulder, the second in its neck, killing it, and the third in its guts as it fell.

  Grimacing, Kingston glanced down at his hip. The laser fire had only scorched the meat. He’d live. Too bad, Simon thought.

  Lieutenant Lawrence stormed forward and started to kneel to pick up the fallen man’s clip out of his laser pistol, but one of the guards grabbed her by the hair and jerked her back upright.

  “Not yet,” Cardew said absently. “We could all still probably make it back to the Exemplar. I’m not desperate enough to risk you vaporizing my brain.” She tapped away at her personal device and asked, “Ramos? Still with us?”

  After a moment, the voice crackled on her device. The interference was starting to play hell with their devices the farther and farther they got from each other. “I’m here. Got some …eavy …stance.” Got some heavy resistance, Simon thought. “… o sign of …nassos.” No sign of the Anassos.

  “What about Xander’s people?”

  “…omms from somewh… earby.” Comms from somewhere nearby?

  “Kill them if you see them. They’re expendable.”

  Simon sucked in a breath. No, no, no. Whatever anger he felt towards Matt about the way she’d ended things with him, he wasn’t going to let that happen. He rushed forward past Kingston and grabbed Cardew’s personal device from her. The big man started forward, reaching to grab him, but Simon twisted away, quickly opening up the comms to everyone within range of the device. “Matt! They’re coming for—”

  Kingston’s second grab at him didn’t miss, and Simon was spun right into a massive right fist. His nose wasn’t so much crushed as pulped, and he hit the floor staring wide-eyed at the ceiling, all the breath gone as the pain washed over him.

  “Never did like you much,” Kingston muttered. Lieutenant Lawrence rushed him, but Kingston turned, his rifle in his free arm coming down to her chest. “Don’t.”

  “I’d listen,” Dr. Cardew said as one of her people handed her back her device. “That is a very big gun.”

  Another prisoner, this one a Lentarin techie, helped Simon to his feet as blood gushed down his face. He stepped forward on rubber legs and reached a hand out to Lieutenant Lawrence. “It’s okay,” he said, but through the blood streaming down his lips and the broken nose, it sounded like he had a cold. “Okay,” he repeated.

  She nodded tentatively, raised her hands, palms out, and stepped backwards. “Let me at least clean him up,” she said to Dr. Cardew.

  “All right, you have three minutes. Let’s check our clips, people, and prepare for the next breach.”

  Avery pulled Simon away. One of the civilians had been tasked with carrying a medkit, and she searched through it for a swatch of cloth. As he tilted his head back, she jammed the cloth up in there, wincing when he gasped in pain. “Sorry. It’s the best I can do for now.”

  Simon’s chin dropped back down, and he laid a hand on her shoulder. “You did plenty.”

  “Yes, I did,” she murmured, and stepped in close. For a moment, he thought the lieutenant meant to kiss him, but instead she slipped something out from the long sleeve of her jumpsuit. A clip. “From your bodyguard’s belt,” Lawrence whispered so quietly he could barely hear her. “I was a bit of a… ah… free spirit when I was a teen. Learned to take a few things without people knowing it.”

  Simon glanced over her shoulder at Kingston, who glared in their general direction. His attention shifted back to Lieutenant Lawrence and he couldn’t help a smile. “Save it. When there’s confusion—”

  “Time’s up,” Dr. Cardew called back over her shoulder. She raised her own gun and faced the next bulkhead door. “Everybody ready?”

  ***

  “…att… coming… you.”

  The message made Mattie jump. Her hand rose to her heart, and she glanced at the others. “That’s not good.”

  “Maybe he got loose,” Drew offered glumly, staring back at the bodies of the Dairos.

  “Maybe, maybe not,” Xander said, his laser pistol held loosely at his hip. “But I think the message was clear.”

  “They’re coming,” Matt said.

  Xander nodded, his lips pressed into thin lines. “Beltine, Cardew, doesn’t matter. This is about to get ugly. Trey, the charge ready?”

  The Lentarin checked the explosive one more time, grimaced, and nodded. It was the first of several they'd need to set around the facility. Kelton had planned for this contingency with input from Drew and Trey. Blowing a few key structural points should, in theory, weaken the refinery to the point where the structure imploded in on itself. They’d placed the first as inconspicuously as possible under one of the bodies. The bug belts had stopped working sometime in the last ten minutes. None of them knew why.

  Something banged on the other side of the bulkhead door. Mattie readied one of her zappers and gripped an Adamanta sword in one hand. Trey rejoined them, readying his own pistol and Adamanta dagger as the others all checked their gear one last time.

  “All right,” Drew said, “I’ll set the breaching char—”

  A cog on the bulkhead door whirled around, and the door slid open sideways, disappearing into a crevice in the wall. Smoke rolled through, black and viscous, so thick
they could barely see. Laser fire pelted the walls around the door, and a beam scraped across Tyra’s arm. She screamed and her pistol clattered to the floor as her fingers worked uselessly on that hand.

  “Sister!” Trey roared, and knocked her to the floor. Closest to the door, Drew dove sideways, accidentally colliding with Xander and sending them both crashing down. Only Matt was left standing, and she reacted purely by instinct, throwing her zapper as hard as she could right into the face of the Dairos beyond, its gun leveled at her head. Its finger moved towards the trigger but her mind was faster and the zapper burst to life. True to its name, it shot a highly concentrated burst of electricity into the Dairos, hitting not just the Beltine but its two closest brethren as well.

  “Grenade!” Xander shouted at her, and she saw it in his hand, a flashbang, and she dove too, hitting the ground and coming up facing away from the door as Xander tossed the device inside the next room. The boom rattled her spine, but her colonel had trained her well and she was on her feet again in another moment, the sword leaving her hand and flying through the door. She paid no mind to Tyra wailing in agony on the floor, or Trey covering his sister, firing wildly into a mass of Beltine beyond. Matt saw enemies, and she did what came naturally.

  The Adamanta blade found a new home in a Dairos skull, nearly cleaving it down to its mandible mouth. She jerked the blade back up and fanned it outwards, severing the next one’s arm at its elbow despite the heavy carapace exoskeleton. Matt drew two more blades and concentrated, thrusting them at a wave of Dairos. The three blades did not dance. They cut. Matt wielded them with impunity, without a care as to how much this might be taxing her, and she roared as two of the blades jammed deep into a Dairos; guts and chest, chopping and dropping the Beltine as its laser rifle fired uselessly into the floor.

  A Kyraos stormed through their ranks, protected by four of its underlings, and she made that her next target, but before her blades could find the creature, another zapper flew through the door, this one bobbing and weaving uncertainly, not controlled with nearly her mastery. She glanced aside at Xander, who held a hand out like that might help him guide the device. It crackled to life, dropping the Kyraos and one of the Dairos, and Matt grinned at him, the full fury of the battle taking over now.

  Drew rose to his knees, pistol gripped between his hands, his aim controlled and true. For once it seemed that Trey and Drew’s roles were reversed. Trey was usually the steady gunner, a reliably great shot, and Drew tended towards excitability and over-leading. But now he tracked each target, his gun only firing with each exhalation of breath while Trey was still firing wildly into the quickly thinning ocean of Beltine bodies. Xander had to jerk Drew back away from the door as the tech reloaded.

  “Cover,” the colonel shouted. “Let’s get her to cover.”

  Trey snarled at Drew when he came close, his hand never leaving his sister’s arm. “Help me!” Drew shouted in his ear, and it finally broke Trey’s spell. He glanced from his sister to Drew, and snapped to his feet, grabbing Tyra under her shoulder while Drew got her good side.

  “I can do it,” Tyra snapped at them both, and lunged away from them to collapse behind one of the conveyor belts. “My gun!” she shouted.

  Matt, still working the blades through the Beltine, drew a dagger and it floated down towards the pistol. Like a golfer trying to sink a distant putt, she whacked the butt of the gun with the hilt of the blade, sending it skittering across the floor towards Tyra. The dagger rose up and flew straight into the chest of the next Dairos who dared step in front of the door.

  Tyra snatched up the gun in her good hand. The few Dairos left got a taste of her revenge when she brought two of them down with smoking holes in their chests. More bangs, this time coming from neither side but somewhere deeper within the facility. Two of the four remaining Dairos stiffened and dropped their guns. They both began to march forward mechanically, paying no heed to their brethren still firing at the intruders. The Kyraos controlling them must have been killed or gravely wounded.

  Xander slipped around the door, pistol raised, and fired three fast shots. One only nicked a Dairos, but the other two shots found their mark and the Dairos fell flat on its back. The final Beltine in that room fired at Xander, but a moment later, the gun fell to the floor, its clawed hand still wrapped around the grip. Mattie’s sword zipped back and then up through its gut. She twisted the blade and the Dairos fell bonelessly.

  Another bang, another scream. Silence.

  Xander reloaded and wiped the sweat from his brow. Matt figured it was probably more from the Adamanta control than the actual firefight. Even just in training the weapons vexed him. In a full-fledged combat situation, she knew the Adamanta exhausted him.

  “Everyone good? Tyra, can you keep fighting?” Xander asked.

  “Until they sing the dirge for me, Colonel,” she grunted.

  “She means yes,” Trey said.

  “Trey, see to her arm. Everybody else, reload and get ready. We’re still in the thick of it.”

  “Just heal the worst of it, brother,” Tyra said. At Trey's hesitation, she shook her head. “The damage has been done and there may be others who need our skills soon. Best to focus on what we can do.”

  “Cool heads, people. We got really lucky that time,” Drew said as Trey cut away the singed material on his sister's jumpsuit and focused on healing her with their odd Lentarin gift. “I can’t believe I’m the one having to warn you guys about that.”

  “He’s right,” Xander said. “Every one of us except Drew made ourselves a target. We need—”

  We. Know. You.

  The words pressed in at Matt's skull, and she dropped her blades, grimacing. Xander rushed to her, but she didn’t hear him, only the voice in her skull. Memories, images flashed through her mind. Some were confused and jumbled, but soon her mind began to seize on certain ones.

  There she was, on her parents’ station, lifting the Adamanta for the first time. Meeting Xander and the crew of the Contessa sometime later. Signing her parents’ names on the memorial wall in her condo. Stabbing them with Adamanta blades as they cried her name.

  Fighting to save Xander from the Anassos aboard the Excelsior. Falling onto his lap. His confession of how she made him hopeful for the future. His corpse underneath her foot as she kissed Simon.

  Drew, dead, thanks to her severing his spacewalk umbilical cord and overriding the doors so he couldn’t get back in the ship. Tyra and Trey lost in an explosion she’d set off when she jury-rigged the Contessa. Kelton face-down at his desk, one eye still twitching from the poisons she’d slipped into his drink, the hive ships dropping from orbit out his grand windows, a thousand Dairos fighters disengaging to rain hellfire upon billions.

  We know you.

  Xander grabbed her shoulder, and she snapped out of it. Matt blew out air she didn’t even realize she’d been holding in.

  “Hey. Hey!” he shouted at her. “You okay?”

  Weakly, she nodded. “The Anassos. It’s coming.”

  Chapter 6

  “Where is this thing?” Dr. Cardew muttered. She was glued to her personal device even as the latest battle wore down around her. They’d been forced on a zig-zag pattern away from the edge of the honeycomb structure, passing somewhere near its middle if Simon had to guess. Two more of the guards and three of the civilians were gone now. At least their deaths were sudden. One of their wounded—Royce Payton, the same man who’d given Simon his personal device to send out the SOS—kept moaning over and over again anytime he was moved. Gut shot. They’d sealed the wound, but given the ugly coloration of his skin, he’d already gone septic. Maybe if they could have gotten him on board the Exemplar, the doc in the holding area could have done something, but he might as well have been on Netera. They had no chance of getting to him in time to stop the inevitable.

  As if he’d read Simon’s mind, Kingston finished off a protein bar, tossed the wrapper aside, unslung his rifle, and stepped over to the wounded man. Without
preamble, he put the barrel to Payton’s head and fired. Only a couple muffled screams greeted this. Most everyone was screamed out by that point, the horror settled deep into their bones.

  Cardew shook her head, still studying her screen. “Shame. He was a bright one.”

  Beside Simon, Lieutenant Lawrence murmured, “Five of them left.”

  She was right. There were still plenty of civilians and crew members left who hadn’t turned traitor, but only a handful of Cardew’s people remained. Her, Kingston, two guards, the nav officer. That was it. That couldn’t be right, though. In the last room, there had been more, hadn’t there? He glanced backwards. No, the math was right. No one else was there.

  “Next firefight,” he whispered. “Take Cardew out first, then him.” There was no need to qualify who “him” was. It was clear who was the number two here.

  Kingston turned, an eyebrow cocked. “You know what’s funny, Doc?”

  “What’s that?” Cardew asked, not seeming to care much.

  “A few years back, I took a bullet for a politician. It scraped along the side of my head, really messed up my ear. It’s the sort of reason why Simon hired me in the first place. Bulletproof, I think he said in our interview session.”

  “Hurry this up, Kingston,” she said.

  “I only mention it because it’s the sort of thing you’d think he’d remember, seeing as how he was so certain he knew the names and faces of everyone on board. Attention to detail, that’s my boss’s specialty. So you’d think…” The rifle fired, and Lawrence crumbled, screaming as she clutched at her kneecap. “…he’d remember I had a bionic implant in there. Better hearing than most.”

  Simon charged him, eyes wild. “You son of a—” The punch connected before he realized he’d thrown it, but it didn’t faze Kingston. The burly ex-bodyguard dropped his rifle and grabbed Simon around the throat. First Kingston dragged him back towards the lieutenant and kicked the trembling gun in her hand away from her. Then he hefted his former boss straight up in the air, his fingers tightening so hard around his windpipe that Simon felt something pop.