Cutthroat Read online

  “Be grateful I didn’t kill her like I did Sally,” Kingston growled into his face. The world stopped for Simon, and he stared down at the man, numbness spreading through his heart. For once in his life, Kingston’s eyes truly lit up with good cheer. “You didn’t put it together, did you? For a smart guy, you are just amazingly blind. Who’d you send to look for her? Who talked to the police? Who has a girlfriend with one heck of a riverside apartment? Wish I'd killed her sooner. She was the one who blabbed about you and Cardew to the military. That's why they were right on us.”

  Simon hurked, his vision starting to go black. He tried to kick Kingston, tried to wriggle free, but it was useless. Cardew finally looked up from her screen, glanced back over her shoulder, and started to speak, but whatever she was going to say was lost when the door to the next room opened. Kingston dropped Simon, and he scrambled backwards away from the giant man, trying to get to Avery if for no other reason than she was the one friendly person he could cling to in their last moments together.

  Even as Cardew’s men scattered, throwing gas grenades and firing into a wave of Kyraos and Dairos, Evelyn grinned widely at the creature in their midst. “Oh, there you are,” she said, and clapped.

  ***

  The crew of the Contessa stepped gingerly among the bodies of the Dairos. A few still twitched, so they knelt to finish them off wordlessly. The room finally cleared, they took cover and aimed their weapons at the next bulkhead-styled door. Matt sent an Adamanta eye towards it, but it didn’t open the way the other one had. Drew crept up on it from the side, tensed and ready to run if it flew open. It didn’t. Xander nodded at him, and Drew holstered his pistol to dig out the breach charges.

  “You okay, Matt?” Xander asked her.

  “It’s… telepathic,” she muttered. “Not like what you described, the mind spike thing. This is like it's... it's talking to me. And it's pulling images from my head, memories, thoughts, nightmares. All of it. It's like... it's like it's searching for something.”

  “Military secrets? Our Adamanta mines?”

  Matt shrugged. “I don't know, maybe. But it doesn't feel like it. This is way more personal than that. You don't hear it?” Everyone shook their heads.

  “All right, Xander, we're ready,” Drew said. He stepped away carefully from the door and ran to rejoin them behind a massive table flipped over on its side. Detonator in one hand and pistol in the other, he glanced at the colonel for the go-ahead.

  “Three... two...” Xander fell silent, lifted a fist, and gestured down at the door. Drew detonated the charges.

  The door blew open into the anarchy of a firefight, though this one had been resolved and the victors clear—barely. A dozen bodies littered the floor, mostly human, some Dairos, and one Kyraos stared up, the glittering black eyes focused on nothing at all. In the corner, huddled behind a pair of storage tanks, were three of the Exemplar's people, two in jumpsuits and a thuggish-looking man in a security uniform. The guy in the guard's uniform whirled on them, laser pistol in hand. Before he could fire, before he could even get off a warning shot, one of the civilians behind him drove forward and hit him with a tackle hard enough to make spittle fly out of his mouth. His pistol fired, narrowly missing Tyra.

  “Why am I the target today?” she bellowed. “Put down your gun, you idiot!”

  “Do as she says,” Trey hissed. “I'm the only one who gets to murder my sister.”

  The guard, still trying to aim, never saw the Adamanta blade drop from above, but he certainly felt it when the hilt cracked him over the skull, dropping him to the floor. The civilian, arms still wrapped around him tight, went down with him, and began rising up to drop a knee over and over into the man's ribs.

  “Bastard!” he screamed again and again until Drew ran forward to pull him off the cowering guard. He tried to shove Drew away, but his rage broke in one great sob of despair. “Mia, they forced Mia in here first and now she's dead, she's dead, they're dead.”

  The other civilian, a gray-haired woman with a few cuts and bruises, nodded grimly. Trey dug out a pair of plastic restraining cuffs from one of his many pockets, and Xander held a gun on the guard while the Lentarin wrapped them around his wrists. Drew, a practiced peacekeeper, tried to maintain a calm demeanor. “I need someone to tell me what happened here. Short and sweet version.”

  The woman stepped forward, swiping at the grime and sweat on her forehead. “My name is Reilly, sir. Captain Ramos, he and Cardew split up to find the Anassos. They want to capture it.” She took a quick deep breath and let it out in a shaky laugh. “They're insane if they think they can take it alive.”

  “No argument there,” Drew said sympathetically. “Where are Ramos and Cardew now?”

  “We were just separated from Ramos. He went through that one there—” she gestured at one of three doors identical to the one they'd just burst through. “Still has some civilians left with him. Vitaly wouldn't go on any further. He and Mia... well...” She smiled bitterly. “And I was too slow for Ramos's liking. Old injury. He told Davis here to take us back to the ship, but that was just for show in front of the others. He was just about to kill us and make it look like the Beltine did it. Cardew and Ramos, they don't have too many people on their side, so they're trying to keep things together.”

  “And Cardew? Where's Cardew?”

  “Give me your personal device.” Drew handed it over after unlocking it, and the woman tapped through a few screens to get to a drawing app. Quickly, she made a rough approximation of the Beltine refinery. “Here's where we are. That's the door you just came through. Back this way...” she drew a jagged series of interconnecting lines, interspersed with X's. “...is where we were separated. The Exemplar is right there, too. They went through this door. Comms chatter with their group cut out entirely about half an hour ago.”

  “Any more civilians along the way?”

  She nodded. “A few wounded. The Exemplar's a big ship. She needs a lot of crew. Cardew and Ramos know this.”

  “Simon Dantos,” Xander said. “Do you know if he's still alive?”

  “No clue. Sorry. He was when we got separated.”

  Xander rubbed his jaw. “Okay. Okay. Thank you.” He knelt next to the sobbing man, and gently said, “Sir. I need you to go with my people. They're going to help you back to your ship.”

  “Won't leave her,” Vitaly moaned.

  “Xander, we need to go,” Drew said, and Matt shot him a dark, angry glare.

  “I know how you feel,” Xander said, ignoring the tech. Every minute counted so he didn't have time to be delicate or dance around it. The inevitable reprisal from Kelton when he heard would have to take a backseat to saving this man. “That woman, Matilda Adair... I love her.” He expected some kind of murmurs or gasps from the crew, but all they did, apart from Matt, was look anywhere but at him or Vitaly. Matt stepped forward gingerly, and her fingers squeezed his shoulder. “I don't have the time or the words to tell you what it is she makes me feel, except that she does. And if something happened to her, I'd want to stay with her too. But Vitaly, sometimes what we want for ourselves isn't what our loved ones would want for us.”

  “I'd want him to keep fighting,” Matt said.

  “I'm a chef. I don't fight. I don't matter. She mattered.”

  The other civilian hefted a laser pistol, checked it uncertainly, and held it loosely by her side, barrel pointing down at the ground. “That's not true, Vitaly. You mattered. Or else Mia wouldn't have loved you. And believe me, that woman loved you.”

  “Fighting doesn't just mean killing. Matt helped me remember that,” Xander said. “It's about understanding why mankind deserves to exist in the first place. It's about finding some goodness in the world and giving that to others. You want to fight? Remember Mia. Remember the goodness she gave you, and pass it on to someone else. But you can't do that if you die here.”

  A distant, hollow boom shook the walls of the room. Xander glanced up, then back at Vitaly. “Our time is up. I'm
not going to force you to leave her. But for her sake, I hope you keep fighting, Vitaly.”

  He stood, and wrapped an arm around Matt for a brief moment, despite the rest of the crew right there. “Trey, Tyra, I want you to take the route Reilly detailed back to the Exemplar. Round up the wounded and as many civilians as you can. Drew, Matt, you're with me. We're going to hunt down Ramos first, then Cardew. Priority is still the safety of the civilians. Drew, when we have them separated, escort them back to the Exemplar and aid Trey and Tyra where they need it. Matt, judging from what Reilly showed us, we should be able to intersect where Cardew is heading. We save Simon and the rest, plant the last of our charges, and we get our asses back to the Contessa. Let me get a 'yes, sir.'”

  Every single one of them said smartly, “Yes, boss!”

  He shook his head and sighed. “Close enough. Let's move, people.”

  Xander, Matt, and Drew hustled towards the door leading in Ramos's direction. Xander glanced back once over his shoulder. Reilly offered her hand to Vitaly, and the snuffling man actually took it and stood up. Good for him, Xander thought, privately glad his lie about being able to leave Matt behind stuck in the civilian's mind.

  ***

  Simon snatched up one of the security shields. The top-of-the-line resin coating had nearly been destroyed already by laser fire, but it would have to do. He planted it in front of Lieutenant Lawrence and grabbed her under the armpits as a stray beam nearly parted his hair. Her eyes fluttered open.

  “Just let me sleep,” she croaked.

  He shushed her. Most the civilians they'd come in with had taken up arms and were fighting with Cardew and Kingston against the Beltine, but one of them, a mildly pudgy man with a shock of neon purple hair, cowered behind a trough of some kind, perhaps used to feed the Dairos. Simon whistled for him as one of the guards took down a Kyraos, whooping before his heart was vaporized by laser fire.

  Simon recognized the purple-haired man as one of the ship's analysts, there to help with the supposed mining studies. Tom, he thought, then just as he was about to shout the man's name, a snatch of something one of the crew said came to him—“Thomas, he likes to be called Thomas because he thinks it makes him more important.” Simon had snickered about that, but now the man was all-important, and he'd call him Sir Thomas the Magnificent if it meant the man would help him.

  “Thomas,” he shouted.

  The analyst glanced over, sweat washing down his forehead. “Oh God, oh God, oh God, oh God...”

  “Over here, quick. We can get out of here. While they're distracted.”

  The man glanced between the Beltine and Simon, and frantically nodded. In a move that would have made Simon bust a gut laughing just a few hours ago, Thomas rolled—literally rolled—along the floor, whimpering the whole way until he slapped against the shield and darted behind it as best he could. Together they lifted Avery under the shoulders and dragged her towards the exit.

  Errant laser fire sought them out, but both sides of the fight were too engaged to bother with a few escaping civilians. Simon stopped only to grab up the laser pistol Lieutenant Lawrence had almost used to free themselves. He stuffed it into his belt and helped Thomas the rest of the way back into the hallway.

  Screams, loud ones, followed them. The muscles in Lawrence's face worked, and she opened her eyes again. “Don't need... to drag me,” she muttered.

  “I'm not going to just leave you,” Simon said.

  Lawrence arched an eyebrow and coughed out a chuckle. “And I don't want you... to. I've got one big... hazard pay check... coming.”

  Simon laughed, an unexpected sound that seemed almost sacrilegious among the death and carnage. Something boomed behind them, and Lawrence pointed upwards. “Lift me.”

  They obliged, but it wasn't easy. Thomas shifted too much of her weight and she screamed as the foot on her bad leg scraped along the floor. Her eyelids drooped and Simon snapped, “No. Stay with us. We can't do this if you're unconscious.”

  Her throat worked and her head fell forward. Simon thought the lieutenant was out, but slowly her chin bobbed up and down. “I'll have to hobble—”

  Something roared behind them. Two Dairos, the thin, hard-scrabble kind they'd seen scattered around the facility, sprinted out of the last refinery room. One branded a laser rifle, the other a long hunk of metal—the Beltine equivalent of rebar, Simon's mind whispered analytically even as he fought to try to grab at his gun.

  Lawrence, despite her pain, was faster, and snatched the pistol from his belt. As the Dairos raised their weapons and skittered towards their prey, she aimed, her arm still draped around Thomas's shoulder as the two men held her upright. Her first shot was wild, the second only grazing the one holding the rebar. The other Dairos's finger neared the trigger, but the third shot took him in what passed for a Beltine groin. It didn't stop the creature, but it did punish its aim, and the Dairos's first short burst fired harmlessly at the ground. Now with a better idea where the gun was pointed, Lawrence fired again, and this time she took the same Dairos in the chest. It stumbled backwards, shoving the barrel of the gun towards its partner, and crumbled, down and out.

  The other Dairos ignored its companion's fall and charged them, the rebar already coming down. Thomas shrieked and let go of Lieutenant Lawrence to cover his head and duck instinctively. It was a damn good thing, too, because the steel striking his back might have caved in his skull. It still drove the man to the ground, but Lawrence twisted and shot the Beltine in its neck. The rebar clattered to the floor as the Beltine toppled sideways.

  “You okay?” Simon asked Thomas.

  “That is the dumbest question I've ever been asked,” the man howled, holding his back as he rose unsteadily to his feet. “No, I'm not okay.”

  “Can you help, then?” Simon snapped.

  Thomas nodded, brushed away tears rolling from the corners of his eyes, and hefted Avery up again. With her hopping on her good leg and holding up her bad one as gingerly as she could manage, they made faster progress, but not by much. Somewhere close by was more gunfire, more booming. Liquid seeped from cracked, squirming worm-like pipes in the ceiling, and Simon had little doubt they were fighting time now as well as the Beltine and Cardew. He wondered numbly which one would kill him. Survival wasn't even a hope.

  ***

  “Hold the line!” someone bellowed ahead, and Xander held up a fist. Stop. To Matt, he gestured ahead, and she nodded, understanding without having to be told. From a pouch came one of her Adamanta eyes. She focused and sent it flying as Drew brought up the sensor array on his arm-mounted personal device.

  Down a long corridor splattered with blood and gore as well as a few bodies, human and Beltine, the sensor array whirred. A breached door lay warped on the floor of what looked like some kind of command room, full of rounded monitors and strange techno-organic control devices that resembled tall trackballs, old Earth tech still used by some pilots. A man in a finer jumpsuit than the others with a field of bars across his breast fired over the top of a metal crate. His blind shots didn't strike any of the nearly two-dozen Dairos and Kyraos on the other side of the room, but he was at least giving the Kyraos something to think about. His companions looked on the verge of collapse, and fired just as indiscriminately as Captain Ramos. A few Beltine were hit here and there, but purely by accident. As Matt snapped the sensor array around the room to get a better angle on the enemy, four of the Dairos charged forward as one, guns up. They were doomed to fall, but that wasn't the point. The concentrated fire from the crew of the Exemplar focused on them, and they didn't watch for the obvious flanking maneuver. These people, by and large, had no military experience.

  One of the Kyraos, a hulking Elite, broke to the left behind a trio of Dairos. Ramos shouted for his people to watch the corners, but they were too focused on bringing down the four Dairos charging the guts of the room. Ramos himself leaned out, his rifle finding one of the Kyraos' protectors, then a second. But by then the Kyraos was firing too, and Ra
mos fell. His little part in the mutiny was done, his eyes staring lifelessly across the room.

  What was left of the Exemplar's crew panicked and ran. They flooded the door and some were chopped down from the rear by Beltine who had nothing but a clear shot on their backsides. Xander darted through them, seeking cover beside the door, and his people followed him, ignored by the screaming civilians and guards. That same Kyraos charged the door, not having seen the newcomers yet, along with a dozen of the remaining Dairos. Matt dropped the sensor, no longer needing it that close to the action, and instead drew her blades. As Xander and Drew fired into the Beltine, she hurtled her weapons at the Kyraos. It had just enough time to cock its head like a curious dog before they found their mark in its chest and neck. Some of the Dairos stopped, but the majority took cover on the opposite side of the same crates and equipment the Exemplar's crew had just been using. Matt hadn't been pushing herself too hard yet, but now she whirled her blades as fast as she could among them, trying to cut them down before they could kill or injure any more of the civilians.

  Between a Dairos and an already-wounded Kyraos, the door on the far end of the room slid open and more Dairos stormed through, followed by something towering over the other Beltine. Beside Matt, Xander visibly blanched, and Drew swore as he unloaded a full clip into the Dairos swarming the room. Matt barely noticed. Her attention was solely on the grotesque creature in front of her. This one had been wounded sometime in the distant past, one of its arms missing and several scorch scars across its abdomen.

  “Adamanta,” the Anassos growled, its mandibles spreading wide in a facsimile of a human grin.

  For a response, Matt tried to shove her blades towards the thing, but the Anassos was fighting her for control now, and what few inches she managed to wrest from the thing made her head swell like an overripe cantaloupe. She reached for the wall to support herself as Xander and Drew fired into the Dairos ranks. Some of the guards must have regained their composure because several more bursts of laser fire joined their own, pouring into the room. The Dairos didn't seek cover this time, crowding the entrance to the hallway, falling as they tried to break the Exemplar's last bit of resistance.