Warrior (22 page)

She lowered her leg and gave the Enforcer a questioning look. “What?”

The big man rolled his eyes. “It's Chief Enforcer Dyami. He's just called me to the main auditorium, where he's got the backup team.”

Alarmed, Jess asked, “Is there a problem? Are they going to have to Jump?”

“I don't think so.” Wulf scratched his chin, looking troubled. “He said I might as well let you two keep sparring.” Turning to the combot, he added, “Keep an eye on her while I'm gone. Dyami said this won't take long.”

“Affirmative,” the combot said, no inflection in its voice at all, though it still sounded far too much like Marcin.

Panting, Jess braced her hands on her knees and watched as Wulf strode from the room, leaving her alone with the Marcin-bot. She wondered if the thing would let her take a break. Probably not, given the Enforcer's orders.

“Okay,” she sighed. “Let's try that kick again.” Drawing her leg up, she prepared to drive her foot into the Marcin-bot's rock-hard abdomen.

Before she could
launch the kick, the combot blurred into motion. Powerful fingers clamped around her throat to dig cruelly into the skin. She gagged and tried to knock its hand away, but it only tightened its grip.

“Hey!” she wheezed in outrage. “That's not the move we're supposed to practice!”

“I know.” The Marcin-bot's red eyes didn't even flicker. Spots began to dance before her gaze as its fingers tightened on her windpipe, lifting her agonizingly onto her toes.

“Stop!” she hissed, barely able to force the words past its strangling grip. “Can't . . . breathe!”

“That,” it said, “is the idea.”

Galar bared his
teeth and waited as Marcin raced toward him, lethal determination in narrowed red eyes. As he ran, the battleborg brandished a Xer Sevik, one of the long, lethally sharp knives the bastards favored. He wore full temporal armor, which meant the shard pistol Galar carried would be useless.

Galar drew his own blade, a Vardonese machete the length of his forearm. Tossing the weapon in his palm, he contemplated the bastard's armor. To get a blade through the supple, tough material, he'd have to batter it long enough to break down its molecular cohesion with repeated impacts. Which meant this was going to be a long, hard fight.

Which was just fine with Galar. He was in the mood for a brawl. He roared his battle cry and stepped into Marcin's charge.

They met in a jarring clash of steel, knife ringing on knife, the impact sending them spinning apart again like a pair of dancers. Galar whirled back toward Marcin, lips peeled away from his teeth,
riaat
singing its lethal song in his blood. He swung the machete at the Xeran's throat, but Marcin jerked clear, then struck like a snake. The deadly point of the Xer Sevik scraped across Galar's chest, glancing harmlessly off the armor's slick blue scales.

Galar retaliated with a short, brutal punch that snapped the Xeran's head backward and sent him stumbling. Galar lunged, ramming his machete into the off-balance Warrior's belly with such force, Marcin's feet left the ground. Only his armor saved him from being gutted.

The Xeran hit the ground on his back, flipped like an acrobat, and swung out in a furious kick. His armored boot slammed into the side of Galar's helmet, sending him spinning to the gritty pavement.

Though stunned—Damn, but the cyborg bastard could kick—Galar still managed to turn his fall into a roll. He skidded to a stop on his back to see Marcin falling toward him like a rock. The Xeran landed astride his chest, slamming the air from his lungs as he prepared to drive his Sevik into the underside of Galar's jaw. Fighting to drag in a breath, the Warlord slammed his wrist against Marcin's, knocking the blade away.

Undeterred, the Xeran rammed his armored left fist into Galar's helmet, once, twice, again. The tough visor creaked and crackled, threatening to shatter under the cyborg's inhuman strength.

“Get . . .
off
!” Galar grabbed Marcin by one horn and flipped him off over his head. The Xeran hit the ground with a grunt. Galar twisted around, still maintaining his grip on that jutting horn, and tried to grab its twin with his free hand, planning to break the Xeran's neck. Marcin swung his knife and jammed its point into a nerve bundle in Galar's forearm. The blade didn't break through the armor, but his arm went numb to the shoulder. He lost his grip and Marcin tore free.

Both men scrambled to their feet, breath heaving, thoroughly pissed now and ready to do some killing. Out of the corner of one eye, Galar saw Jiri and Ando Cadell watching, their own blades drawn as they waited for an opening to join the fight. Galar waved his left hand at them in an
I don't need help!
gesture as he and Marcin circled.

Unease flickered through his mind. Where the hell was Marcin's Xeran backup? The bastards should have sprung their trap by now. Galar's remaining Enforcer teams were still maintaining position, camouflaged and invisible, waiting for Marcin's nasty little friends to make their move.

“You seem distracted.” Marcin bared his teeth. “Waiting for something?”

Galar gave him a vicious grin. “Just getting a little bored.” He lunged, his knife scraping against the Xeran's Sevik with a metallic ring.

But before Galar could make another attack, a chilling, ululating howl shattered the night. Even Marcin jerked his head around at the sound.

The howling man appeared in Xeran Temporal armor, melting out of the night at Jiri's back like a ghost in black scales. She whirled, instinctively bringing up her blade even as her husband leaped to block the attack.

They were both too late.

Still howling, the Xeran swung the sword he held in both hands. Jiri's head spun away, helmet and all, blood flying in a fine crimson spray.

“Jiri! Nooooo!” Ando's scream of despair and rage was the chilling distillation of a soul's death. He lunged for the Xeran, knife raised.

Coolly, the man pivoted and slashed, taking the Enforcer's knife hand off at the wrist. Ando screamed again as he fell back, gripping the stump with his remaining hand. The Xeran's next thrust drove right through the center of his chest, penetrating armor and rib cage alike as though they were warm butter.

The agent was dead before he even hit the ground.

Shit! Shit, shit, shit!
Galar blocked Marcin's slash at his own head by sheer reflex, backpedaling furiously.
Enforcers!
He sent the broadcast ringing out over their shared com channel.
Agents down!

The others were already appearing, dropping their camouflage fields with roared battle cries. Even as they closed on the Xeran and his impossible sword, four more enemy warriors materialized out of the surrounding night. Their swords made a strange, high-pitched ringing sound, chilling and alien, as they raced toward the Enforcers.

What the fuck were those things? How did they cut through full Temporal armor as if it were rice paper? It wasn't even possible.

And yet, all too obviously, it was. Because the Xerans were doing it.

Blocking another flashing knife attack from Marcin, Galar felt his blood turn to ice. Unless he did something now, he and his agents were headed right for slaughter.

Black sparks flashed
in front of Jess's eyes as she fought to draw in a breath. She grabbed the Marcin-bot's thick wrist in both hands, trying to relieve the vicious pressure on her throat. “Let go . . . of . . . me!”

Red eyes didn't even flicker. “No.”

“Stop it!” She swung a desperate foot at the thing's belly, but it didn't even flinch.

“No.”

If this was some kind of test, it felt entirely too damned real. Her head was swimming, her vision graying around the edges. “What the hell . . . are you trying to do?”

“I am killing you.” Its voice was utterly calm.

It had lifted her until her toes no longer touched the ground. She raised both legs and slammed them into the bot's chest with every ounce of her failing strength, but its grip didn't loosen.

Fuck,
Jess realized blearily,
it's Marcin. He must have programmed it to kill me!
Sucking in a desperate breath, she wheezed, “Outpost! Help! Help . . . me!”

There was no response. No sirens, no sound of feet running to the rescue, no nothing.

Something was wrong.
Oh, holy God,
she thought, staring with bulging eyes into the Marcin-bot's merciless face.
He got to the main computer too. The Outpost has been hacked. And I'm screwed.

Had Dyami even asked for Wulf at all, or was that just a diversion to draw her big protector away?

Jess tried to kick the combot again, but she couldn't even lift her legs. Weak. Too damned weak.

The black spots dancing before her eyes were getting thicker, the light dimmer. She could no longer even see the combot's face, could barely even feel the thick fingers squeezing tighter and tighter around her neck. Choking her so brutally, so slowly, spinning out her suffering instead of just snapping her neck.

An image suddenly bloomed before her eyes. Galar, splattered with blood, fighting Marcin, their blades ringing against each other. His eyes burned with
riaat
—and something else: a black and awful grief.

Even as he struggled with the big battleborg, another Xeran charged him from behind, lifting a sword that chimed like a silver bell.

Even half-suffocated as she was, a wave of fury rose in Jess, cutting through the ice of approaching death. “No,” she wheezed.
“Dammit . . . no!”

12

Even as Jessica's body went limp in the Marcin-bot's
grip, the bubble of heat and rage expanded in her chest, burning hotter, brighter. Building into a flare of energy that exploded out of her in a single searing flash.

The hand around her neck simply disappeared.

Jessica hit the ground on her back. The fingers clamped around her throat were gone, but her chest felt frozen, muscles paralyzed. Her grayed vision began to go completely black.

Abruptly her diaphragm spasmed into action, and she sucked in a breath of blessedly cool air. Rolling onto her side, she gagged weakly and concentrated on dragging air in and out of her abused, burning throat.

Where the fuck was the combot? It seemed to have disappea—

No, wait,
she thought foggily.
Is that a hand?
Struggling to focus her eyes, she saw there was indeed an arm lying on the floor inches from her nose. Looking around, she saw— thank you, God—no blood. However, some kind of oily blue substance covered the walls, the floor, and Jess herself, and there were several . . . parts lying here and there. Some of which looked entirely too human.

The door slid open. “What the Seven Hells?”

Jess looked up to find Wulf rushing across the room toward her, an expression of horrified amazement on his broad, handsome face. “About time you got here,” she told him, and vomited on his boots.

The bastards had
murdered Jiri and Ando.

No,
Galar thought, parrying Marcin's strike at his head.
He'd
gotten them killed. He'd prepared for everything but swords that could slice through combat armor like a cleaver through a boiled egg.

And if he didn't pull his head out of his ass now, he was going to lose the rest of his team too. Even as he drove a
riaat
-propelled fist into Marcin's face, his sensors reported the desperate battle going on around him.

Bear Eso, Peter Brannon, Ivar, Dona, Riane, and Frieka were trying to fight off five Xerans armed with those impossible blades. One of the swordsmen plunged at Bear, who instinctively tried to parry with his big Bowie-like blade.

The sword cut the knife in two. Only Bear's instinctive backward jerk saved his hand from being sliced off at the wrist. The big man retreated just short of a run as the swordsman stalked him.

“You've lost,” Marcin hissed to Galar, his vicious grin bright. “I'm going to take your head and win a place in the cohort! And the skulls of all your precious Enforcers will decorate our trophy cabinets. . . .”

“You haven't won yet, you bastard,” Galar snarled, ducking the kick the other aimed at his chest.

Attack from behind!
his comp shrilled. A sensor image flashed through his brain—one of the Xer swordsmen, pivoting suddenly away from Riane and Frieka, bringing his sword around in a hard diagonal slash aimed right at Galar's back.

Galar dropped to one knee. Blood spurted across his visor. He looked up.

Marcin stared down at his own torso, an expression of stunned horror visible on his face. The Xeran's blade was lodged in his right hip. It had entered through his left shoulder.

He toppled. In two separate pieces.

Galar snarled, uncoiling from his kneeling position, driving his blade straight up at the man who'd tried to stab him from behind. It pierced the underside of the Xeran's jaw in the one place not protected by helmet and body armor. The swordsman made a gurgling noise as the knife pierced his brain.

Galar wheeled as his second opponent toppled. He grabbed the sword from the man's hand before it even hit the ground.

“Seven Hells,” Frieka gasped. “Remind me not to piss you off.”

“Out of the way!” Galar growled, and charged between the wolf and Riane.

Bear Eso was backpedaling from the flashing blade of a short, muscular Xeran grimly intent on killing him. Galar stepped between them and parried. The two swords chimed together like bells, an oddly pure sound.