Chapter 26
TWENTY-SIX
“They know their surveillance system is compromised,” Arcanthus said over the commlink.
Drakkal made a final adjustment to his earpiece and grunted his acknowledgment before returning his hand to the foregrip of his auto-blaster.
Urgand had tended to the worst of Drakkal’s wounds, but it had been impatience and rage that chased away his pain, leaving room for little inside him beyond that persistent heat and his thundering heartbeat.
He was in a large, dimly lit access tunnel deep below the Gilded Sector with one shoulder against the wall, standing just to the right of a wide blast door.
Urgand and Thargen were positioned to the left of the door, and Sekk’thi was at Drakkal’s back with her eyes and weapon trained on the large bay door a few meters away. Both entries were closed.
“Cren, you three in position?” Drakkal asked.
“Yeah,” Kiloq replied through the commlink. “Initiating attack in three…two…one…”
Blaster fire crackled across the comms.
“All right. Security team’s taking the bait, already shifting guards to the main entrance,” Arcanthus said.
“Good. Get this door open,” Drakkal grumbled. Shay and Leah were somewhere beyond this entrance, within a few hundred meters of him, but he couldn’t smell them out here. It was maddening to know they were so close and yet so completely separated from him.
“Two on the other side,” said Arc. “When you breach, they’ll be ahead and to your right.”
Drakkal’s holocom flashed on, projecting a small screen that showed a high-angle view of the garage’s interior, presumably from above the bay door.
A pair of guards flanked the wide interior doorway at the far side of the garage.
One of them had his head bowed slightly and a finger up to his ear—he was likely listening to something over his commlink.
Thargen’s grin widened. “Haven’t had this kind of fun in a while.”
“Focus,” said Urgand, who was standing behind Thargen.
Drakkal rolled his shoulder and settled the butt of his auto-blaster against it. “We’re all focused.”
“Those fuckers took my friend and my niece,” Thargen said, fire sparking in his eyes. “They get to meet the real me today.”
Perhaps at most other times in most other situations, Drakkal would’ve been hesitant to release real Thargen on anyone. But he had no qualms about it here and now. Fuck this place, fuck Murgen Foltham, and fuck the people who willingly worked for him.
“Kraasz ka’val, Arcanthus, if you don’t open this door now…”
The keypad on the doorframe flashed, and the blast door slid upward with a faint whirring of unseen machinery. Drakkal lifted his auto-blaster and hurried through, turning the weapon immediately toward the far doorway. Thargen and Urgand’s boots sounded on the floor behind him.
One of the security guards had time enough to look toward the open blast door, eyes wide, before Drakkal fired. The auto-blaster sprayed hot plasma bolts at the guards, joined an instant later by bursts from the two vorgals accompanying him.
Both guards went down within a second, each with at least half a dozen smoking holes in his body.
“Getting a map onto your holocoms,” Arcanthus said. “I’ll do my best to keep enemy positions updated on it, but I’m working with an uncooperative system here.”
Though Arcanthus was the most skilled fighter in their bunch—and very likely the strongest, thanks to his cybernetic limbs and reinforced body—this was one of those situations during which he was best used outside of combat.
Drakkal trusted Arc with his life, but Arcanthus’s skills as a hacker were far more valuable now.
Only Arc could compromise the manor’s entire security system, turn it against the occupants, and ensure that no communications left the premises.
Arcanthus had complained, but he’d ultimately agreed to stay in the armored vehicle they’d parked in the tunnels outside—especially because it meant keeping Samantha, who’d refused to be left behind at home, close.
She could watch Arc’s back while he worked, and he’d watch out for everyone going inside.
Drakkal’s holocom screen, which had automatically rotated around his wrist to remain visible when he’d raised his weapon, changed again to display a two-dimensional map of Murgen Foltham’s zoo.
“Just get me to Shay and Leah,” Drakkal said.
Two flashing dots appeared along the edges of the map.
“Leah’s in some sort of examination room. Shay’s being moved on a transport cart. I think they’re both unconscious,” Arc said.
Drakkal’s heart sped as he advanced across the garage—the same garage Vanya had taken him from less than two hours ago. The soft clicking of claws on the floor behind him meant Sekk’thi had moved up to join them.
“Who’s closest?” Drakkal asked when he reached the entry at which the now-dead guards had been posted.
“Shay. She’s being moved toward you,” Arcanthus replied.
It wasn’t a choice Drakkal had wanted to make, and the weight of the decision was almost crushing.
What if he picked wrong? He knew Murgen wouldn’t kill the terrans, but what if Drakkal made a mistake, and his choice placed one of his terrans in more danger?
If he took too long going for Leah and Shay was harmed because of it…
Shay would want me to go for Leah first…but if Shay is closest…
No. Can’t do that now, Drakkal. No time to go back and forth on this decision.
“Only one way forward for now, anyway,” Arcanthus said, “and it’s going to take you right past a whole mess of guards.”
“Hope they’re better than these two,” Thargen muttered, kicking one of the bodies.
Drakkal pressed onward through the entryway, flanked by his companions.
“Odd tastes on the air,” Sekk’thi whispered. “Alien tastes.”
“Foltham has all manner of creatures down here,” Drakkal said, moving with his auto-blaster raised and ready. He smelled all of it, and those clashing scents almost overpowered the only fragrances that mattered to him, the two scents that were so similar and yet so unique—Shay’s and Leah’s.
Fury roiled in his gut. The scents of his mate and cub didn’t belong in this place—never had and never would. But thanks to Murgen and Vanya, here they were.
“Turn right where the corridor splits in two. There’ll be two doors on the left”—the projected map zoomed out as Arcanthus spoke to display what he was talking about— “that lead into a damned barracks, Drak.”
Drakkal clenched his jaw and asked through his teeth, “How many?”
“Ten,” Arcanthus replied.
“Twelve,” Samantha corrected, her voice soft over the commlinks. “There’s two back there, Arc.”
Drakkal could almost imagine Sam leaning over Arc’s shoulder to point at the screen they were looking at.
It only made him long even more to have his Shay back.
His heart ached for those simple, peaceful moments, for those tastes of a life like he might not have deserved but would damned well reclaim.
He’d never believed he could love anyone as wholly and fiercely as he loved Shay and Leah.
He stuck to the corner when he reached the end of the corridor, peering cautiously into the perpendicular hallway. The doors Arcanthus had indicated were visible on the left, both closed.
“They’re suiting up now,” Arc said. “Probably mobilizing to help fight the cren upstairs.”
“Going to be a nasty fight,” Urgand said, “but we can’t just leave them at our backs.”
“At least they’re vulnerable now,” Drakkal growled. “Urgand, Sekk’thi, take the first door. Thargen, on me.”
Drakkal rounded the corner and resumed his advance, splitting his attention between the closed doors and the far end of the corridor.
The map updated, displaying twelve red dots in the large room to the left.
Drakkal flattened himself against the wall beside the far door and glanced back to see Urgand and Sekk’thi already in position.
He nodded to them, briefly met Thargen’s wild gaze, and slapped the door control button.
The door hissed open, sliding aside into the wall.
Drakkal charged through the opening with Thargen immediately behind him.
Startled shouts filled the air as several guards—some of whom were only partially dressed—snapped their gazes toward the intruders.
Shay and Leah’s faces flitted through Drakkal’s mind’s eye, followed by the faces of some of the other beings he’d seen imprisoned down here during the tour Foltham had given him.
All enslaved, all having been robbed of their freedom, just like Drakkal and Arcanthus long ago.
Just like countless people throughout the entirety of time and space.
And all these guards were complicit in that by working here, by working for Murgen Foltham.
Drakkal opened fire. Thargen’s auto-blaster joined in, adding its own thumping whines to the cacophony as it filled the air with sizzling blue-white plasma bolts.
Chaos ensued, exasperated by the crimson haze that had settled over Drakkal’s vision. Several of the sturdy beds lining the walls were toppled over to provide the guards makeshift cover, and plasma bolts—return fire from their foes—darted back toward Drakkal and Thargen.
“Check your fire,” Urgand called through the commlink. “Nasty crossfire in here.”
A plasma bolt struck Drakkal’s combat armor and dissipated, producing a faint burst of warmth that was nothing compared to the fires blazing inside him.
He released the trigger of his auto-blaster—acknowledging somewhere in the back of his mind the danger it posed to his companions—and charged forward.
He didn’t know how many of his enemies were dead or wounded, nor did he care.
He’d fight so long as there were foes still moving.