Chapter 26
Chapter
Twenty-Six
You never can tell with the weather
The smart comment had been unwise. As a mercenary, those kinds of comments could unsettle adversaries and expose their weaknesses, but I should have been more circumspect.
Even with that mask covering his face, I could tell Morra’s patience was wearing thin.
“Amusing,” he said. “For a man holding a child and nothing else.”
I said nothing. I thought about putting Aila down and telling her to run for the shuttle. If she could get there without being stopped, she could seal herself inside, but with Morra’s people still out in the forest, I wouldn’t risk it.
No. She stayed with me.
I had just settled that when boots sounded on the path from the north. I turned.
Morra’s ground team was coming back. Ten, twelve of them in the same black uniforms, walking without urgency. The leader stopped a few meters from Morra and pulled his face mask up.
“Sir. We’ve covered the full grid. No life-forms detected. Scanners are reading clean. No indication anyone has moved through those woods recently.”
Morra went still. “Run it again.”
“I ran it twice.”
I held Aila close and took in what I was hearing. If the villagers weren’t in the forest and they weren’t in the village and the boats were burned, then they weren’t anywhere these scanners were going to find them.
Others came. In the night. The big question was: who?
The math was there but I couldn’t finish the equation. Fifty-seven armed personnel scanning the forest and finding nothing. I had no idea where Maive was. That settled over me cold and heavy, and I stood in the center of a burning village with a child in my arms and answers for exactly no one.
Morra reached down to his thigh holster. He drew the weapon slowly, as if he had all the time in the universe. He walked toward us and stopped close enough that I could see my own reflection in his face mask.
“One more time.” He raised the barrel until it pointed at the center of my chest. “Where are they?”
Aila’s arms tightened around my neck.
“They were supposed to be in this village.” I kept my voice flat and even as genuine worry curled under my ribs. “I am just as curious as you are. That is the truth.”
“That’s not an answer I can use.”
“It’s the only one I have.”
He looked at Aila, then back at me. “You noted earlier about the discharge radius of a blaster.” He tilted the barrel slightly. “It’s still a valid observation.”
I shifted Aila and turned so my body was more between her and the weapon, as much as I could manage. It wasn’t enough. At this range and angle, it wouldn’t matter. I pulled Aila close and closed my eyes.
The light went out.
Not like that, thankfully. Between one moment and the next, the village dropped into full shadow. I opened my eyes. Morra’s weapon hand had lowered slightly. He was looking up.
I looked up.
A warship hung directly overhead, hovering between us and the sun.
Dark-hulled, enormous, and close enough that I could discern the make and model.
It was a Deadnight XI battleship. My first thought was more Rivonok forces arriving.
My second thought arrived when I glanced down at Morra’s ground team.
They were not preparing to receive reinforcements. They were breaking for cover in every direction. Morra pivoted in a full circle, shouting at them to hold position. Nobody held anything.
I set Aila on her feet.
“The shuttle,” I said. “South clearing. Run.”
Delightful child, she ran.
Morra was still shouting when I hit him. One punch, full weight behind it, at the hinge of the jaw. He dropped. I pulled his weapon before he finished falling and snatched up mine, which I’d placed on the ground. I came up with one in each hand.
I took a quick look south. Aila had reached the clearing and was hauling herself up through the open hatch with both arms. I hit the remote seal on my wrist comm. The locks engaged, sealing her inside, safe from Morra’s scattering forces.
With that worry aside, I crouched beside Morra. He was on the ground, working on figuring out which way was up.
“Current situation,” I said. “You don’t know where my people are, and I don’t know whose ship that is.” I glanced up at the warship, which hadn’t moved. “So, I’d just stay down there if I were you.”
Morra muttered something unintelligible, but stayed where he was.
The warship lowered a landing shuttle from its belly. It dropped fast and set down dead center in the square. The ramp came down. The entrance was packed wall-to-wall with armored figures.
Guild mercenaries.
I recognized the gear before I recognized anything else. My stomach dropped.
This was the one contingency I hadn’t run.
The guild had decided the junver syrup operation was worth direct action after all.
They hadn’t come to help. They’d come to take.
I had traded one armed force for another, I didn’t know where Maive and the others were, and I had a bad feeling the guild did.
And I was the one who drew them here. Me and my foolish emotional attachments.
My ribs felt like they were going to squeeze the life out of both my hearts.
A voice came from inside the shuttle. A female voice. A familiar female voice.
“Move. I said move.” An exasperated sigh. “Out of my way, right now.”
The mercenaries at the top of the ramp parted, yielding to the orders of a woman who burst through the wall of armor, muscle, and enough weaponry to take out a city.
The mercenaries watched her as her gaze swung around until it landed on me.
Then, she let out a little cry and ran toward me, which I knew she’d consider undignified under any other circumstance.
For my part, I stood there looking like a vacant room, not quite believing my own eyes.
I had a weapon in each hand, which I’d fully expected to use, and no idea what had triggered the fresh reality switch I’d just found myself in.
Perhaps we’d gone through a dimensional transference field.
Any number of possibilities seemed likely until she slammed into me and I felt her arms come around me.
I wrapped her in mine, breathing in her sea and bread scent, with both weapons still in my hands, because I still had no flecking idea what was going on.
She pulled back, cupped my face in both hands and looked at me directly. Her brows knitted as she took stock, checking for injuries. “Are you hurt?”
“No.” My voice came out like a croak. “Are you—?” Real, was how I would have finished that if she hadn’t waved me off.
“I’m fine. Is Aila with you?”
“Yes.” Finally, a question I could answer. “She’s safe in my shuttle.”
Her body sagged. “Thank the stars. She’s the only one unaccounted for.
” Then, she turned to the mercenaries who’d assembled behind her and gestured to Morra as if he were an overturned rubbish bin.
“Don’t stand there. Seize that man.” Ambassador Yeaven Morra had made it to sitting but was still blinking. “And find the others who ran.”
Two mercenaries stepped up and heaved Morra to his feet. The rest fanned out into the village.
I squinted at her. “What is happening right now?”
She started to answer. Boots on the ramp cut her off.
I looked past her as a mercenary came down toward us, helmet under one arm, grinning before he reached the bottom.
I knew that face. Younger than most of the others.
Green and reckless. Mouthy. The last time I’d seen him, he’d made a dig at my age.
He’d had plenty to say on my last day at the guild, and he looked prepared to have plenty to say now.
“You,” I said darkly. “I’m surprised you’re still alive.”
He laughed. “Could say the same about you, old man. But here we both are.”