Their guns spark in their hands, then go inert. No electronic firing mechanisms, no computer-aided targeting. But since they specialize in hand-to-hand, they don’t seem overly troubled. Firing in pairs, we take out ten before they cross the yard. And then they’re on us, thirty to twelve.
I vault into a fighting crouch, discarding my gun. Knife and shock-stick in hand, I brace for the charge. Adrenaline pounds through me like a second pulse in my ears. Vel is nearby; so is March. They’ve flanked me to keep the bigger centurions from surrounding me. I appreciate that, even as I swing into the fight.
The shock-stick hums in my hand, but it’s not going to be sufficient. I can’t kill them on my own. Fortunately, Vel’s hand-knives are sharp enough to tear chunks out of their armor, and he’s strong enough to knock them the hell away from me. I want to help, but I don’t mean to be stupid about it. So I defend as best I can, a distraction if not an ass-kicker of men in armor.
I wait for opportunities. When March cracks a centurion’s helmet off, I slip into the opening and lay my shock-stick upside his head. When he drops in convulsions, I take a knee, ducking a blow aimed at my head, and cut his throat. There’s a centurion running at me while the melee rages, and I wheel low, taking his legs out from under him. What I know about combat amounts to making my size and speed work for me. When he hits the ground, he loses sight of me because helmets limit your peripheral vision. I jam my knife into the gap between armor and helmet. Twist, and the sharp stink of copper scents the air.
Another down.
Xirol cries out. He’s got three on him, and he’s La’heng, not a former merc or a bounty hunter. I hurdle a corpse without thinking. Then another. The SpecForce Pyro tries to help him, but his control isn’t the best, and he sometimes cooks things he isn’t trying to, so he doesn’t dare light everything up, or we might all go boom.
Xirol’s uniform is already bloodstained when I get there. He falls, but I can’t tell how badly he’s injured. The three elite turn on me, thinking I’m more of a threat than I am. Just out of range, I stop and beckon them on. Come on, you bastards. Leave him alone. Through the visors, I can see they’re amused at my challenge. Compared to three hardened veterans, I look laughable, wearing Mishani’s pretty face with her doe eyes.
“I think I’ll keep this one,” the first growls. “For a little while at least.”
“Until you break her,” another laughs.
The Pyro lays down a line of fire between us. I cut a glance at him, half-impressed, half-worried. Like Sasha, his face is clammy-pale, and sickness swirls in his eyes. Mary, I’m glad I have the grimspace gene. It would suck to be Psi.
“Come get me,” I yell, backing off.
As long as I get them away from Xirol, it’ll be—
Deliberately, the biggest one turns, grabs his knife, and jabs it into Xirol’s chest. I scream because the flames are now my enemy. If he wasn’t dead before, he is now, and I want to kill these bastards with my bare hands, to peel their skin from their muscles, and break their bones. It was such an evil, calculated cruelty.
Part of me says, It’s no different than what you do with your knife, finishing those you drop with the shock-stick, but I don’t want to think about all the ways I’m like these centurions. They are the enemy. They are the monsters. They have to be, or I can’t do what I must. By the time the centurions skirt the flames, Vel and March are beside me again.
Working together, we kill them. I play my part with mechanical confidence. Thrust, parry, retreat, block, dodge, see the opening—destroy. Around us, the battle rages, but I can’t hear the cries anymore. I’m lost in my own head, where the sobs sound louder than a ship engine, rising and falling like the sea.
CHAPTER 48
“Are you certain?” Loras asks hoarsely, a few days later.
I can’t move. Can’t breathe. Can’t think. March rubs my back, as we all listen for the crackle of the comm. We’re parked at the edge of range, so the connection’s tetchy at best. Then it comes.
“Affirmative. They brought the whole mountain down.”
The base is gone. Damn the fragging Imperials. They have MOs, too, but unlike us, they don’t hesitate to use them.
“How did they find it?” Zeeka asks.
“It must have been Bannie,” Loras says heavily. “They broke her.”
Which is precisely why the cells run as they do, independently, so the only thing members can betray is the location of the base. And now it’s gone. I can’t get my head around it. I rub my temples.
We abandoned the Imperial shuttle a few days back, filling our own cache with the stolen weapons. The MO can be transported on our stealth craft or deployed from here. Loras’s grim expression indicates he favors immediate retaliation.
Farah puts a hand on his arm. “Take a day. Reflect. Decide if this is the best strategy or if it’s revenge.”
He nods curtly.
“How many did we lose?” I ask.
There was the skeleton crew, of course, and anybody who might’ve been on layover for R&R, gear, or training protocols. Constance. Constance is always there. Oh, Mary. Maybe it’s stupid to cry because by other people’s standards, she wasn’t a real person. To me? To me, she was. Tears well up, and I knuckle them away, not wanting to distract the others. Zhan, too, was permanently assigned to base. I remember how committed he was to the cause, how passionately he cared about freeing the La’hengrin.
Vel spreads his claws in an impossible to know gesture. “There is no way to determine how many were inside at the time of the attack.”
“Pull up the bounce,” Loras orders. “Local news should be covering this. This is a huge Imperial victory.”