Silver Tongued Devils (11 page)

Na’varr kneed him in the gut, doubling
him over. He followed up with a fist across the man’s cheek,
slamming him down to the ground.

“I do believe that’s enough,” Deadgate
mining Foreman Shawn Yates bellowed.

Generators rumbled to life and bright
lights flickered. Na’varr blocked his gaze, waiting for a surprise
attack. The floodlights illuminated a blood-strewn fighting ring
and the double barrel bone grinder aimed at his bare
chest.

Fuck. Me.
“Brom.” He spoke quietly without moving his lips,
hoping the fight hadn’t knocked his earpiece out.

“I see it, captain.” His second in
command was supposed to be in the mining foreman’s office with
Raesa while she hijacked the information they needed on a missing
shipment.

Na’varr’s gaze never left the rifle.
Those monsters were designed to suppress miners with gate sickness
through three layers of reinforced space gear. One shot would be
enough to shatter his ribcage. If it didn’t kill him outright. He
dragged in slow breaths while his heart hammered.

Two lackeys ran into the ring and
dragged away the unconscious fighter.

“What’s this Foreman Yates? I thought
we had a deal,” Na’varr shouted. The plan—as idiotic as it
sounded—was to get himself pounded on for a few rounds by one of
the miners for entertainment and then they’d move onto business. It
was unusual, sure, but there weren’t a whole lot of ways to amuse
the crowds out here in the ass-end of habitable space.

His eyes adjusted to the light enough
to make out the hulk of muscle and machine that pieced together the
foreman. His upper body was huge, insanely so, and the bones of the
man were likely made up of some reinforced metal alloy. He was
strapped into a suit miners used to excavate rock. One arm of the
machine had clawed pincers used to crush Kerite ore. The other was
a fully functioning four-fingered metal hand that allowed gripping
and hauling.

Na’varr doubted the foreman was
preparing for a mining operation.

The huge piece of machinery was fully
enclosed for air supply, but there was no mistaking the
bloodthirsty grin through the clear face shield.

Na’varr stared down the steel-eyed
foreman with a grim outlook on how this was going to go down. His
breaths came in agonizing slow drags. Even with Brom’s constant
sparring practice, no full human could go against a cyborg like the
one he’d faced a moment ago without pain and more than a few
bruises.

“Deal? You just killed one of my crew,
pirate.” The foreman was kidding, right?

Na’varr’s smile remained plastered on
his face. Gunfire echoed behind him, where they’d drug off his
opponent. The crowd murmured and shifted in obvious discomfort.
Yates was fucking insane.

“The bastard had him shot.” Raesa’s
tone held shock.

Helpless rage burned a hole in his
chest. This was the shit he wanted to keep her from.

“Calm yourself, Raesa,” Brom’s voice
soothed from his earpiece.

“I am calm,” she muttered. “Just give
me a minute to bypass this shitty security.”

“We might not have that minute, gang.”
Na’varr waited for the crowd to calm. “Brom, be ready to get her
out of there.”

“Hate to burst your bubble, captain,
but the tiger is currently taking a stroll on the
rooftops.”

Anxiety mixed with immediate fear for
Raesa’s well-being. The thought of her being hurt ate at him. Brom
was a tiger-mix, a genetic hybrid of human and feline DNA with
years of combat experience. He was supposed to be at their lover’s
side. What the hell was he doing?

“I’ve got eyes on target. He won’t
make the shot.” No emotion tinged Brom’s words. Eyes on target
meant the hybrid was in a sniping position.

He didn’t care about himself, only
getting the woman he’d fallen in love with to safety. Raesa was
vulnerable because they strayed from their roles in the
job.

“Na’varr, he knew the deal was going
south before the fight started. This was our contingency plan, just
in case,” Raesa said softly.

The captain shoved away emotions. He
needed to keep focus. If anything happened to Raesa, he wasn’t sure
his friendship with Brom would survive it. Living without her
wasn’t going to happen. A sense of calm overtook him. If Brom said
he had the bastard in his sights, he wouldn’t miss.

Na’varr was torn between telling Brom
to get his tail back to Raesa and letting him remain at his
position, but the foreman took that moment to move. Things were
about to get a lot more difficult. He’d have to trust his people to
get back safely. Then, he’d kick their asses for going against his
orders.

***

“If I make the shot, all hell will
break loose, so tell me you’ve found out where our package is,
little thief,” Brom said.

Raesa sucked in an unsteady breath.
“Peace of sweet apple pie, lover.” She bypassed another crappy
firewall and dug deeper. Fourteen tons of Calrite Ten, an ore used
to power battle cruisers was missing. The last stop was Deadgate
Mine, an inhabitable planet except for the dome and the giant ore
rig. Thanks to pirates like Raesa and her lovers, they shut the
jump gate down thirteen years ago. Deadgate stuck as a
name.

Despite the danger, or maybe because
of it, her adrenaline rush was higher, sharper than ever. They were
in the information business. Reacquisition of information,
actually. Her gaze strayed out the window of the mining foreman’s
office to the isolation ring. Harsh lights bathed Na’varr’s broad
shoulders, highlighting the stark bruises forming on his pale
skin.

Both of her men-the ones she loved
beyond reason-were out there in the line of fire, waiting for her
to do the damn job. They needed her.

A painful twist in her gut accompanied
the worry that they were out of time. Her attention darted back to
the terminal. Numbers passed by her gaze until they blurred. “I
have to download all of it.” She ran a cable from her wrist unit to
the terminal and got to work, downloading the data and software as
quickly as the antiquated machine would allow.

“Make it fast.” Brom’s tone was tight
and quiet, and she wondered how close to the enemy he’d
moved.

“Crewmates of the Crimson Star,” a
loud voice boomed over the speakers. “You have five minutes to show
yourselves or we see if a piss pot prince’s blood splats red just
like the rest of us.”

“Nice visual, asshole,” Raesa
muttered, trying yet failing to keep that terrifying imagery out of
her mind.

A low growl came over her earpiece and
she smirked. Brom was showing his feral side.

Despite her urge to glance in
Na’varr’s direction, her attention remained steady on the screen.
It flashed and code poured out, flowing on the monitor like mana
from heaven. She ran her fingers over the Isis collar at her
throat, a comfort habit she had recently noticed. “Got
it.”

“Time?” Brom was still
calm.

Did anything ruffle him on a
job?

She checked the timepiece on her wrist
unit. “I need five.” A warning flashed on the screen and she
cursed, bypassing the security check before it could alarm. “Make
that ten.”

“Did you get that, Na’varr?” Brom
asked.

“Loud and clear.” Neither men sounded
happy about it, but neither was she.

Her chest tightened. They needed her
to be on top of her game. Failure would get them killed. “Come on,
baby,” she muttered.

Another alarm flashed and she dove
into the code, ignoring everything else but finishing the mission
so they could get the hell away from Deadgate in one
piece.

***

“Can you hold out for ten minutes?”
Brom’s question came over the earpiece.

Raesa had what they came for. If she
needed time, Na’varr would give it to them. “Yes.” He kept his
voice low and his expression neutral. Nothing was going right
tonight.

Na’varr’s entire body hurt. Twelve
rounds in the ring against the miner strung out on Adranol, a drug
only metal-heads could take and survive, had taken its toll on his
body.

Between the bulky cyborg foreman who
stood in the giant metal exoskeleton suit with arms and metal
pincers that could crush him and the big ass rifle aimed at his
chest, he was screwed. He doubted there were allies among the
miners. They had a healthy appreciation for life, their own,
especially.

“Looks like your lackeys left you,
Na’varr. I guess you’re not the rebel leader genius they said you
were.”

A cold rage built in his chest. So his
uncle and cousin were sending out word. The question was did they
know he was here? Or was this a random occurrence on the fringes of
space? Na’varr tried for charm. “Rebel leader? Your contact has
been watching too many space vids. I’m just a businessman trying to
get by.”

“I always hated that self-righteous
smirk on your face.”

“How did it turn out like this, Shawn?
We’ve done business together for years.”

Shawn Yates cracked a smile, the one
he usually reserved for killing a man who cheated him in cards. The
foreman stepped forward and the clunky machine he wore like a
second skin creaked and groaned with the movement. “You’ve been
holding out on me. Imagine my surprise when I found out my good
buddy wasn’t the asshole captain of a mercenary ship, but, instead,
is a royal fucking prince.”

“A prince without a throne has nothing
but his pride. And I’m still the captain of a mercenary ship.”
Na’varr kept his smile firmly in place. His sweat-soaked body had
developed a chill from the frigid drop in temperature. It would
make things rough if his muscles cramped during the
escape.

Brom’s voice echoed in his ear. “You
have two possible exit points.” The statement soothed Na’varr’s
nerves-they could get out of this alive.

He didn’t know what made the hybrid go
for a sniper position, but for a brief instant, he was really glad
he had.

His second in command kept speaking,
“The first is on your six. There’s a crowd, though, which means I
can’t cover you.”

Na’varr knew the horde behind him was
hostile enough to make that the last resort.

“The second is at your nine. Machinery
makes a good shot difficult, but the giant can’t chase you into the
smaller spaces.”

Foreman Shawn Yates had been born
tall. Reinforced metal alloy in his bones ensured his survival in
the dangerous and high casualty field of remote mining. Dropping
you on a rock weeks away from civilization meant you had to survive
by any means necessary.

Unfortunately that meant they lived by
their own rules. Like forcing guests to battle it out for their
depraved amusement. Killing one of your workers was a new twist,
though.

“How are we going to do this?” Na’varr
raised his voice so the foreman could hear him. “I mean, you say I
killed your man and you, what? Detain me?”

“That was just the warm-up. You know
we do things a little different out here in Deadgate.”

The miners were more machine than men
by the time most of these bastards hit twenty years. Yates had been
in charge of this mining operation for at least twice that. Rumor
had it that the secret to his longevity was a full organ
replacement regiment.

He watched the foreman, waiting for
the cyborg to make his move. Brom wouldn’t act until he was forced
to.

Even though Yates turned to the crowd,
the rifle pointed at his chest didn’t waiver. “Miner brothers and
sisters.” He paused for dramatic effect. “I promised you a helluva
fight tonight, didn’t I?”

Cheers roared around him. Fierce,
bloodthirsty, and fucking annoying. If Brom or Raesa spoke, he’d
miss it over the clamor.

“Are you ready to see the color of
royal blood?”

The decibel level rose and Na’varr’s
skin crawled with the need to disappear from their crazed
gazes.

Instead, he straightened his spine. If
he could direct their focus to something else, he might have a
chance. Time to bedazzle with bullshit. He smirked and held up his
hands. “I tried to be nice about this, foreman.”

The sound of the crowd stuttered and
several insults were thrown his way. He waited with a neutral,
I-don’t-give-a-shit expression on his face. They grew quiet enough
for him to be heard.

“What the hell are you doing?” Brom’s
voice cut through his earpiece, but he ignored it.

“It’s going to get loud,” he murmured
into his mic. To the crowd, he said,

“People of Deadgate, I came here
tonight to tell you that the Andovian Republic has set its sights
on your operation. They’ve moved into your sector and have begun
drilling on asteroid four-nine-two.”

The foreman’s gaze narrowed to slits.
His focus didn’t waver. The cyborg was a territorial bastard, and
nothing pissed him off more than finding claim jumpers in his
mining operation.

“That’s bullshit!” A yell from his
right was seconded by two or three others.