Sabine
The pulse pistol hummed with lethal energy, its charge indicator glowing the violent green that meant maximum setting. At this range, it wouldn't just kill. It would vaporize everything from the shoulders up. No healing from that, even with Vinduthi physiology.
Qeth's hand trembled, making the targeting laser dance across my chest, my throat, my face. Each time it crossed my eyes, the world went red for an instant.
“You destroyed everything!”
His voice cracked like a teenager's, jumping octaves. The sensory filaments along his temples had gone rigid, standing straight out from his skull like accusing fingers. One of them was bleeding. Dark copper blood that looked almost black in the emergency lighting.
“My empire! My algorithms! My mind!”
Through the windows behind him, I could see the first signs of chaos.
Ships that shouldn't be here were forcing their way into docking bays.
The Torelli family's distinctive black cruisers.
A Nakamura syndicate war vessel. Three unmarked frigates that probably belonged to the Frost Collective.
My device hadn't just revealed Qeth's crimes.
It had sent out an invitation to a feeding frenzy.
“You can't fix what's broken, Qeth.”
My voice came out steadier than I felt. Five years of dealer training. Never show fear, never show weakness, never let them see you care about the outcome.
“The algorithms were always going to fail without Varrick. You built your empire on stolen code that was never meant to work without him.”
“LIES!”
The pistol's whine increased pitch. He was squeezing the trigger, just not quite enough to fire. Yet.
“The algorithms are perfect! They're mine! I improved them! I made them better!”
“You made them dependent on neural enhancers that are eating your brain.” I took a step forward, and felt Varrick's hand tighten on mine. Not stopping me, but ready to move. “How many doses a day now? Four? Five? How long before your neural tissue completely liquifies?”
His free hand went to his pocket, fumbling for an enhancer. Twenty-one minutes until his next scheduled dose. I'd been counting since he walked in.
“You know what I think?”
Another step. The targeting laser settled on my forehead, trembling in a small circle that probably looked like a third eye.
“I think part of you, the part that's still brilliant under all that madness, knew this would happen. Knew the enhancers would destroy you. Knew the algorithms would fail. That's why you leaked the Regalia's location.”
“No... no, I'm in control. I've always been in control!”
“You haven't been in control for months.” Another step. Close enough now that I could see myself reflected in his copper eyes. Multiplied and distorted by his tears. “Maybe years. Do you even remember the people you've killed? Can you name them?”
Something flickered across his face. Confusion. Fear. For a moment, his eyes almost focused.
“Do you remember my sister?”
The words came out before I could stop them. Five years of buried rage breaking through the dealer's mask.
“Vonni Reeves. Twenty-three. Brown hair that she wore in braids. Studied xenobiology before she got sick. Loved terrible romance novels and expensive coffee. Died of Rigellan fever five years ago, despite the five hundred thousand credits I paid for treatment that didn't work.”
His gun hand wavered. The targeting laser drifted down to my chest.
“She was nobody special. Just another human whose life got sold to pay impossible debts. The legitimate creditors sold my debt to predators, and they sold it to you. You bought my life for the price of a mid-tier shuttle.”
I laughed, and it was ugly sound, full of broken glass and old pain.
“For three years, I've watched you deteriorate. Watched the enhancers eat your mind one synapse at a time. Counted every tremor, every missed dose, every moment of confusion. You're not an emperor anymore, Qeth. You're just a sick old man who forgot he was already dead.”
“I'LL KILL YOU!”
He pulled the trigger.
Time dilated the way it does when death comes calling. I saw his finger complete the squeeze. Saw the pistol's energy chamber flare. Saw Varrick moving, faster than physics should allow, putting his body between me and obliteration.
The pulse caught him in the shoulder.
The impact spun him back into me, and we both went down. The smell of burned flesh and ozone filled the air. Bronze blood. So much blood. Soaking through my coveralls, hot and metallic.
“No, no, no.”
My hands went to the wound, trying to stop the hemorrhaging. The pulse had torn through muscle, shattered his shoulder blade, scored bone deep enough to see white. His blood was everywhere. On my hands, my clothes, pooling on the floor in patterns that looked almost like his traceries.
“Worth it,” he gritted out through clenched teeth.
Even dying, and he was dying, I could see it in how his color was fading, the green traceries standing out starkly against graying skin, how his eyes were losing focus, he managed to cup my face with his good hand. His thumb traced my cheekbone, leaving a smear of his own blood.
“You're worth everything.”
“Don't you dare die on me. Not now. Not after everything.”
Heavy footsteps in the doorway. Measured. Deliberate.
Krave stood there, all seven feet of scaled Mondian muscle, yellow eyes taking in the scene with professional assessment. His gaze tracked from Qeth with the smoking pistol, to Varrick bleeding out in my arms, to the screens still displaying every crime his employer had ever committed.
“Enough.”
One word, delivered in a bass rumble that vibrated through the floor.
Qeth spun toward him, the pistol swinging wildly.
“Krave! Perfect! Kill them! Kill all the betrayers! Start with... no, wait, secure the algorithms! The patterns are screaming!”
“The only betrayer here is you.”
Krave moved into the room with the measured pace of an executioner who had all the time in the world. His scales rippled with each step, green-black in the emergency lighting.
“You killed my brother.”
Qeth's face went through a series of expressions. Confusion, calculation, dismissal.
“I've killed lots of people. Be more specific.”
“Torren. Six days ago.” Krave's voice had dropped to frequencies that made my bones ache. “He took a stylus from maintenance. A single stylus worth maybe two credits. You had him executed for theft.”
“Torren was stealing! The algorithms said... the patterns showed...”
“Torren was my brother.”
The words carried weight that had nothing to do with volume. Krave kept moving forward, and Qeth kept backing up, the pistol wavering between targets.
“Different department. Different surname. You never knew. Never bothered to know. Just another execution to feed your paranoia. Another death to make you feel in control.”
“You're all against me! All of you! But I'm smarter! I'm...”
He raised the pistol toward Krave's head.
The Mondian moved faster than something his size should be able to. His clawed hand closed around Qeth's throat, lifting the smaller Nexian off the ground like he weighed nothing. The pistol clattered to the floor, unfired.
“Six days,” Krave said quietly. “I've been waiting six days to do this.”
“Wait...” Qeth's voice came out as a wheeze. “The Conclave... they'll... you need me to...”
“The Conclave's already here. They've written you off. Everyone has.”
The crack of Qeth's neck breaking was almost anticlimactic. A small sound, like stepping on a dry branch. Then silence.
Krave dropped the body without ceremony, then turned to us. His yellow eyes assessed Varrick's wound with the expertise of someone who'd seen plenty of battlefield injuries.
“He'll live. Vinduthi are harder to kill than most people realize. But you need to move. The station's going into lockdown in eight minutes. After that, nothing gets in or out until the Conclave sorts through the corpses.”
“Why?” I had to ask. “Why help us?”
“Because chaos serves no one. Because fifty beings on this station are just trying to survive, and they don't deserve to die in a corporate war. Because my brother would have helped you if he could.”
He moved toward the door, then paused.
“Dock Level 5. Bay 7. Your ship. I've cleared you a path, but it won't stay clear long. The Torelli family's already executing Qeth's lieutenants on Level 6. The Nakamura are claiming the casino floors. Go now, or become collateral damage.”
He left, and I turned back to Varrick. The wound was already starting to knit at the edges. Vinduthi physiology was remarkable. But he'd lost so much blood. His skin had gone pale gray, almost white in places.
“Can you stand?”
“Do I have a choice?” He managed what might have been a smile if his face hadn't been twisted with pain. “Though you might need to do most of the navigating.”
I pulled his good arm over my shoulders, taking as much of his weight as I could. He was heavier than he looked. Dense muscle and bone. But adrenaline gave me strength I didn't know I had. We stumbled toward the door, leaving Qeth's corpse behind in his office of screens showing his crimes.
The corridor outside was chaos. Guards ran past without giving us a second look.
They had bigger problems. Through the windows, I could see pulse fire lighting up Level 8.
A ship had crashed into Level 12's observation deck.
The station wasn't exploding. It was being methodically carved up by people who'd been waiting years for this opportunity.
We made it to the service elevator I'd mapped two years ago. As the doors closed, Varrick sagged against me, his body burning with fever as his system fought to heal itself. His good hand found my waist, fingers spreading possessively, and I felt him trembling. Not from pain, but from restraint.
“Almost lost you,” he muttered against my hair, his breath hot on my scalp. “When he pointed that gun, when I thought...”
“You didn't. We're both here. We're getting out.”
“The fangs are...” He groaned, and I felt them press against my neck, not breaking skin but marking intention. “Being this close to you, injured, your scent mixed with my blood. Everything in me wants to bite. Needs to bite.”
“Later,” I promised, even as my body responded to the press of his fangs, heat pooling low despite everything. “When we're safe. When you're healed. When you can do it right.”
“You deserve...”
“I deserve choice. And I choose you. But not here. Not covered in blood in a service elevator while the station burns.”
The elevator descended through levels of increasing chaos. Level 15: staff quarters being looted. Level 12: fires spreading through the restaurants. Level 10: the casino floors turned into a war zone between rival families claiming territory.
Level 5. The docking level.
The doors opened to reveal hell.
Ships were trying to leave simultaneously, creating a deadly traffic jam in the launch bays. Those who couldn't reach their vessels were trying to steal others. Pulse fire created a deadly light show. Bodies littered the deck. Some dead, some pretending, all obstacles.
Bay 7 was three hundred meters away.
The Silver Hand sat there, looking impossibly far across the battlefield.
“We go from cover to cover,” Varrick said, his mind still working despite the blood loss. “Stay low. Move fast. Don't stop for anything.”
I squeezed his hand, and instead of answering, I kissed him. Hard, fast, tasting blood and desperation and promise.
“Always,” he said against my mouth when I pulled back.
Then we ran into hell, the Regalia in my hand, his blood still wet on my skin, the station dying around us. But we were alive. We were free.
And in seven minutes, we'd be gone.