The Seek (9 page)

Kyn took it all in for only a second before she swept around low, snaking the prod against the legs of both the remaining two men. They squealed as the thing burned their flesh, putting them momentarily off guard. Then Kyn sprang up, and landed gracefully on the shoulders of the rat, driving him to the floor with her weight and twisting his neck brutally once he was down, millimetres from finishing him. His fingers twitched in the neck lock. She wanted to. She very badly wanted to snap this pointless neck. She willed herself not to. It would only make cleaning this mess up afterwards that much harder. Instead she compressed a point near his temple, very hard, and felt him grow slack in her arms.

Meanwhile, the dark man’s hands descended on her neck, clawing at her and ripping her mask from her face. His moves were so amateur she was sure this one was never an Avenger. She twisted one finger away from her skin, and used it to propel the man up and the down onto his knees before she broke it cleanly with an audible snap.

Then she stood, robbed of the usual rush of battle because of their smallness and dirtiness. As the two men with the worst injuries howled, and the other slept, she addressed them very calmly. ‘I’m taking her. Try to stop me and I’ll kill you all.’

‘You.’ The ex-Avenger spat the word at her, and his tattooed face and ruined eye lent him the aspect of some mythical creature. The part of Kyn that would always be an eleven-year-old girl, watching the end of the world, quailed. But the Avenger in her didn’t. The Avenger in her wanted to kick him to death, because she knew what he was saying. He was saying he knew her.

He went on. ‘You call yourself an Avenger.’

Kyn ripped the vibro from her neck. It was pointless now they had seen her face. ‘Well I can sure as shit see why you don’t call yourself one,’ Kyn retorted. ‘And why you lost the arm. Were you always that pathetic, or did you get sloppy in retirement?’

The man growled in the back of his throat and Kyn motioned him over to the other using the prod. She quickly untied Mirren and the girl sagged against her for a second before she returned to standing straight, making no attempt to hide her nakedness through her ruined clothes. Then she turned back to the men. ‘This is how this is going to go down. We are going to walk out of here now, very slowly and calmly.’ She stopped for a second and flicked a look at Mirren. ‘But first you’ — She gestured at the smallest man, the rat, who was returning to consciousness — ‘you are going to give my friend here your shirt.’

He sniffed miserably as he gently shook his inured neck. ‘I’ll get you, you stupid cunt,’ he whispered.

‘I’m so scared,’ Kyn said, realising she sounded a little like a kid, but not caring. ‘A word of advice, genius,’ she said, pushing Mirren gently in the middle of her back to encourage her to move towards the door. ‘Mention this to anyone…’ She paused to eyeball them all and enunciate very clearly so she could be sure they understood. ‘Mention me to anyone — ‘ She stabbed herself in the chest with a finger as she emphasised the ‘me.’ ‘Or her.’ She gestured to Mirren. ‘And I will find you. I will hunt you and I will kill you. I will make today look like we were just courting.’ She grinned. The three men were glaring mutinously at her. ‘And just so you know’ — She stomped her lethal black boot hard near their cowering faces, and felt them cringe back from her as she did — ‘I won’t need very much reason to do it. Because I’ll enjoy it.’

She held out her hand to the rat, who made a show of trying to remove his shirt. He passed it over without meeting her eyes, and she handed it to Mirren.

She made to push through the big silver door, but something else occurred to her as she took one last sweep of the little room. ‘Oh, and this playroom? It ends tonight. I hear about you taking any more little girls back here…’ She thought for a moment. ‘…or anywhere else…’ She noticed the ex-Avengers good eye was shut, so she poked him hard with her boot. ‘Do it, and I’ll find out. And I’ll ruin you.’ She prodded the other two for good measure. ‘We clear?’

The three men grunted.

Kyn crouched down to make sure she had their eyes. ‘I said,
are we clear
?’ Her voice was low and slow, a tone that suggested even a person of extremely low intelligence could get it. And that she considered they were.

‘Clear,’ the rat rasped, his bare chest concave and his eyes watery.

‘Clear,’ the big dark man barked.

The ex-Avenger said nothing, and Kyn remembered him picking Mirren up and taking her down the corridor to this. Kyn reached down and grasped his hair, snapping his head backwards to the point where he would start to see stars. ‘You?’ Her voice was dangerous, released from its vibro prison.

‘Clear,’ the ex-Avenger muttered, his single eye mutinous.

Kyn pushed Mirren out the door.

This time Kyn had no trouble sleeping. The training, the sleeplessness, the fight, the scene afterwards with Mirren — it was all more than even her Herculean capacity for insomnia could withstand. Her body touched the syntton bedding; her eyes flicked to the red numbers on the wall, and she registered that she had just five hours until she needed to meet with Jedro; and she dissolved into a sleep so dead and dreamless she wondered afterwards why she didn’t go kick some ass as part of her night-time routine every day.

Who am I kidding? I kick ass for a living
.

Fifteen minutes before her appointed meet, her wrist-comms beeped commandingly. She rolled in the twisted bedding, her body on high alert as she glanced at the comms. Her alarm.

Holy shit, she’d slept for five hours.

Like her Mama used to say: there’s a first time for everything. She sat up in the bunk and lifted her feet to the ground, sitting there for a moment, replaying the night’s events before heading for the shower.

Nine minutes later she was in full Avenger red and standing before her commanding officer and his offsider, General Yeo.

Jedro was grim. ‘We need the sixty-eighters to reinforce Sector Five now.’

Kyn felt her stomach clench in protest. ‘We have two more weeks,’ she said. ‘And they aren’t ready.’

Yeo spoke, his voice as low as ever, Kyn straining to hear each carefully enunciated word. ‘Then you’ll have to get them ready in transit,’ he said. ‘It will be a few days.’ The General’s face was impossible to read, as ever. His beautiful brown eyes should have been eloquent; Kyn had never seen eyes quite like them. But he had learned to school himself very well. Kyn knew a little of his history, and she understood why. Yeo had fought some of the hardest early battles of New Earth.

Kyn frowned. ‘We’ll stop at Earth Four en route?’

Jedro spoke, quiet and slow. ‘It’s gone.’

‘Gone?’
Like, gone?

Yeo took over, his sweet baritone reaching for calm. ‘There was a bad fight. In Sectors Three and Four. Tyverian warlords. Mother Earth Four is gone, and all of her people.’

It was happening. Kyn’s skin felt itchy and her breath was short as she tried to compute what they were telling her. Ten thousand people, gone. Her brain struggled to catch up with the math. Was that five per cent of those that were left? Kyn worked hard to keep her breath under control, to keep the back spots from her vision. It was like before; they would all be taken out. It was the beginning of the end.

‘Now don’t look like that,’ Jedro said, still grim but trying to lighten his tone. ‘It seems to have been a one-off. It’s not a pogrom.’

Kyn considered her next words carefully. ‘But we know they resent us, they know what we are.’ What we are: pirates; scavengers; thieves.

Jedro nodded. ‘But they also need us.’ He cleared his throat. ‘Up to a point. It’s not a pogrom. It’s just…’

‘Just?’ What the fuck was it then?

‘Local housekeeping,’ Jedro said finally, running his hands over his eyes. ‘The Tyverians sending a signal.’

Kyn’s mind raced. ‘Why don’t we just pull out of Sector Five? If things are so bad down there?’

Yeo took over again, stalking over to the crystalair and tapping it gently, watching as maps of the territories swept across in front of him. He extended a long and beautiful brown finger to halt it when it hit the mark. ‘We think It might be there,’ he said, even more quietly than usual.

‘It?’ Like,
it
it? Kyn felt like a goldfish, her mouth open, so much to take in.

‘Perhaps,’ Jedro agreed, nodding. ‘But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. The Explorers we have there are as important as the Avengers. Probably more. They are the ones who’ll give us the answers. But the reality is, Kyn, we can’t give it up, not yet. The losses are heavy, but if it’s what we think it might be…’

‘We don’t have a choice,’ Kyn finished for him.

‘No,’ Jedro agreed, coming to stand closer to her, right in front of her. And that’s when Kyn knew it was going to get bad.

‘What are they saying now?’ She didn’t need to explain. Jedro and Yeo both knew what she meant. But would they tell her, would they answer her truthfully?

The two men exchanged looks, Jedro’s little rooster face concentrated and wary, Yeo’s unblinking and apparently unconcerned.

Yeo was the one to answer. ‘Perhaps six months,’ he said. ‘If we continue the raids at the current rate. A little more if we escalate.’

‘And the negotiations?’

Yeo sighed. ‘We don’t have a good track record,’ he said. ‘No-one seems terribly keen on accepting us as settlers, or even as refugees. And, truthfully…’ He paused, and because Kyn understood this was how he worked, how he thought, she tried very hard to stay still and stay listening. And, most importantly, not to bark at him to hurry the hell up. Finally he continued. ‘Truthfully, I’m not sure it would work. Earthlings are not so good at sharing.’ He smiled a little then, and because of his usual impassivity it was like a broad grin from anyone else. ‘Even New Earthlings. Maybe especially us.’

Jedro grunted. ‘And where would we go?’ He sounded bitter and tired. ‘What, we’re gonna go live among the ice vamps? Or the head-hunters?’

‘We need a home,’ Kyn agreed.

The three warriors were silent for a moment. Then Kyn cleared her throat. ‘So we need to reinforce Sector Five. With my virgins.’

Yeo spread his hands open, palms up. ‘Not virgins anymore,’ he said.

She nodded, trying not to think about Pyten. ‘And we leave…?’

‘Tomorrow,’ Jedro confirmed.

Tomorrow. Those just-blooded boys. Going from a swift raid to full combat, with none of the usual build-up and bloodings in between. Having just lost their friend and comrade. She saw their faces, flashing swift and clear across her mind’s eye. And for some reason, Kendis’ face especially. The fierce boy whose friend had died beside him. His face hung there as sharp and clear as if he were standing beside her. The thought stabbed hard into her brain; the thought she had been trying to chase away since it happened.

Would it have happened? Would it have happened if I had been there with them?

Kyn knew, she knew because she had always been told, and she knew because it made sense, that there were good reasons why the Magisters and the Primos were separate. It was hard enough to replace a leader, almost impossible to replace a Magister. And as they needed more and more recruits every day, the Magisters were critical. Their quality and insights were the key to keeping the Avengers alive. Kyn got it, but still the thoughts would not leave her alone.

Yentir was good, one of the best, but would it have happened if she had been there? Would Pyten have died? And what about the others, from her last class — Yvo, Hendax and Tyven? Would they have died too? She was a good Magister. She had no false modesty; there was no room for it now. Jedro was right, she was possibly the best. But she was an even better warrior, and leader. When she went out, every last soul was under her personal protection. It didn’t always save them, but plenty of times it did.

And then there was one of those moments, when something comes to you, and it’s so stomach-churningly clear that you know it’s right. Jedro had tried to talk to her, the other day, about changing it up. About doing something different, and he had seen the girl as the key to that. But he was wrong. They had six months, give or take. This was no time to conserve resources for some unknown future. This was it. Do or die. She needed to be there, and she needed to help make it happen. It would not happen without their best. And, thinking about those other boys whom she had trained so well, she knew it must be bad, in Sector Five, and her newbies would never survive it.

Not without her.

She nodded. ‘I’m going to ask you for two things,’ she said.

‘Uh-oh.’ Jedro’s tone was light, but his eyes were watchful. He had that look on his face he sometimes got when he played poker with Kyn. That ‘I’m about to get screwed and I’m not entirely sure what I can do about it’ look.

‘I’m going to lead them,’ Kyn said, hoping if she said it loud and clear and decisively enough there would be no opposition.
Yeah, right
.

‘No,’ Jedro said, drawing himself up to his full height and coming close to and level with Kyn. They were almost exactly the same height, and, in Magister boots, their eyes met at level. ‘No way, Captain. That is not how we do it. And you know it.’

Kyn sighed to herself. She was only Captain when he was reminding her of rank. But six months. There was no time for rank.

‘These are my terms,’ she said. ‘I go, I lead them, or I leave.’

Yeo drew level with Jedro. ‘Leave, Captain? Where would you go?’

Kyn knew enough about the universe to know there were plenty of places to go, with the right skills and the right resources. Plenty of places for one person to go. Not so many for two hundred thousand. ‘You’d never know,’ she said.

Jedro grunted. ‘It’s against the code.’ He began to pace a little, in front of her. ‘You don’t choose, you know that. You are chosen. You don’t choose when you come, and you don’t choose when you go. You belong to New Earth. You are an Avenger.’

Kyn shrugged. ‘I was never so much for the groupy-groupy thing.’

Yeo sighed, holding his palms up in that gesture again. ‘You would be outlaw. There would be a bounty. A rich bounty. Any person, any creature in the universe, could hunt you down for it.’