“Martine,” he yelled.
“Over here!”
The men who’d fled from the common room had her cornered in a storeroom. Son of a bitch. Martine crouched behind stacks of supplies; the fact that she had a laser pistol kept them from rushing. Jael breathed in the lightning cordite zing from her weapon and the char of flesh. Two bodies on the ground. Eleven left. Here we go, lucky thirteen.
She shot one in the head at point-blank range. His flesh sizzled and burned, puckering into a black sore in which his mouth was a soft pink hole. The man screamed and clawed at his melting eyes, giving Jael the chance to break his neck. Blood fountained from his nose and hit her faceplate in a messy gush. Martine swiped a gloved hand across her helmet as Jael backed up for a running start and launched himself into the mix.
He swept the legs out from under one and immediately dropped on him, jabbing an elbow into his neck. As the enemy wheezed for breath, Jael rolled forward and snapped his arm. The pain incapacitated him, and Martine finished him with a shot to the chest. He couldn’t see her expression, but she gleefully opened fire around him. The men couldn’t get past him to touch her, and he let her use his body as a blockade. Jael took out two more in quick succession, leaving the others to scatter. Martine shot another one in the back as he was running away.
“Glad you could join me,” she said, hurdling the crates she’d used as cover.
“Dred wants us posted outside the garden.”
“Makes sense.”
She cocked her head, probably listening to the distant rat-a-tat-tat of the Peacemaker. It fired intermittently, likely clearing the common room as enemies ventured in to check on its ammo status. Dred didn’t need to worry as long as it was functioning properly. With time and laser rifles, the mercs had taken out Mungo’s units, but the Queensland rioters weren’t so well equipped.
“Let’s go,” he said.
From the click of her boots, Martine was with him. The fighting had already reached the hallway leading to the garden. There were bodies everywhere, and until they attacked, Jael had no way to be sure which side they were on. Ahead, ten Queenslanders scuffled, slashing at each other with jagged blades.
“Coming through,” Martine shouted.
He wouldn’t have given warning, but a few of the men—too few—acknowledged her words with a jerk of their chins. “We have to help them.”
Seven others whirled to face the woman, who whipped out her laser pistol. “You want some? Come on then, bitches.”
She fired two quick shots, dropping opponents on either side of the scrum. From the light on her battery pack, she didn’t have too many more shots, but the traitors didn’t know that. The men who had been defending took the chance to stab a few more, neat kidney shots that would leave their targets dead in minutes. Now the odds were downright favorable.
Jael launched a kick at the nearest traitor, snapping his knee back, and when the man dropped, he finished with a blow to the temple. He had the strength to fight efficiently, and he used it. That kill flowed right into the next; he broke that ass**le’s neck cleanly. There was one man left, and one of the defenders cut his throat in a wet slice. His blood jetted onto the wall, slowing as he toppled and died. The wet rasps of breath ceased.
“You came just in time,” a man said. “They were on their way to the garden.”
“There will be more,” Martine predicted.
Jael nodded. “We have orders to hold this ground. Want to help out?”
“Why not? It pisses me off when they f**k with my dinner,” a big guy muttered.
“This way, then.”
He rounded the corner and came up on a scene that chilled him. Vix and Zediah were defending outside the doors, while the enemy shouted, “Take the garden. If we control the food, we own Queensland.”
At this point, Jael had no idea if this was about the merc pardons or if it was a coup within a riot, fueled by silent Lecass supporters. Fifteen more men surrounded them, and while his five could thin them out, it wouldn’t be fast enough. Still, he ran toward the mob as Zediah took a blade in the gut, opening him up like a fish. Still, the kid didn’t drop; he was defending Vix with a shaky blade. They stabbed him two more times before he went down, then they sliced her from throat to thigh. She felt for Zediah with a blood-smeared hand, and his fingers twined with hers in one last convulsive movement.
In a few more steps, these bastards would have possession of the hydroponics bay. With an enraged snarl, he threw himself at the lot of them. Jael took multiple stabs and slashes, but he ignored the pain as he had learned from a lifetime of doing just that. He didn’t a need a weapon to end them. Their bones popped and cracked in the rush of his fury. Separated from him, Martine fired with caution; she didn’t know about his regenerative abilities. The other Queenslanders waded in to mop up the ones who were still twitching when he moved on.
Jael was barely breathing hard when the last one fell. His shirt already had so much blood on it that the others couldn’t tell how much belonged to him. Martine narrowed her eyes, but the superficial wounds had already closed. The deeper ones would take longer, but none were serious enough to bother him.
She plucked at the rent fabric on his shoulder. “I guess you got lucky, huh?”
He flashed a smile even as his gaze settled on Vix and Zediah, their hands intertwined even in death. “Always do. It’s other people that need to watch out around me.”
Yep. Lucky as hell. Now he didn’t have to worry about what Zediah knew. Or keeping secrets from Dred.
“Is that a threat?” she asked softly.
“No, just a shitty reality.”
She nodded. “Poor bastards. If only we’d been a little faster.”
While their deaths solved a personal problem for Jael, Zediah and Vix had known the most about running the hydroponics garden. Ike might’ve known a bit about it, but he was gone, too. That left Jael, who’d spent fewer than ten hours tending the plants before the pair went full psycho on him. If the garden stops producing, we’ll run out of food. After that, there was only Mungo’s solution—cannibalizing the populace either directly or indirectly. But that was a distant concern, not something to worry about while they were still putting out fires and tallying the dead.
“How long are we supposed to hold here?” Martine asked.
“Until Dred or Tam comes to advise us of the all clear.”
She nodded. “I wouldn’t trust anyone else.”