The faintest of footfalls came from the back of the smithy. Leonidas eased inside, putting his back to the wall. Data scrolled down the side of the glastica display of his faceplate, not interrupting his line of sight as it informed him that gas had been detected in the space. No kidding.
The same Open sign that had allowed Leonidas to see before was enough to glimpse the smith’s body still on the floor near the counter, but there were too many crates and too much equipment in the way to see Alisa or whoever was making noise in the back. It might be she. But he was certain they weren’t alone. He imagined the policewoman’s body in an aisle somewhere while a powerful bounty hunter stalked Alisa, prepared to kill her for daring to intrude.
As he strode silently along the wall, Leonidas listened for sounds of distress—sounds of any kind at all. But the footfalls had halted.
The armor made his shoulders even broader than usual, so he had to pick his route carefully past machinery and tools. He did not want to bump or scrape against anything, nor knock anything over. Combat armor wasn’t made for stealth, but he could step carefully, keeping his footfalls silent.
A gun cracked, black powder igniting. Alisa’s Etcher. An instant later, a second weapon loosed a sizzling bolt of energy, the orange beam blasting out of the darkness at the rear of the building. It slammed into and
through
the wall it struck. Hand cannon.
Knowing Alisa didn’t have such a weapon, Leonidas gave up stealth and sprang in the direction where the bolt had originated. He leaped over a fifteen-foot-high vat, hardly worrying if he landed on the ground or on something else.
As he dropped onto a stack of crates, he spotted Alisa and another woman. Alisa was charging, trying to bowl her opponent over before the hand cannon could fire again. Her foe leaped to the side while launching a kick. With surprising reflexes, Alisa reacted, dodging while grabbing the leg from the air. The other woman did something Leonidas couldn’t see from his position, and they both tumbled to the ground, grappling with each other.
He crouched to spring over another stack of crates and to their aisle, but noticed something out of the corner of his eye and paused. A man lay on his back on the floor by the furnace. He wasn’t moving. The face and blond hair were familiar. It
was
Sergeant Lancer. And he’d been shot in the chest with that hand cannon. He lay there bleeding, unable to even lift a hand to staunch the flow of blood.
The sound of a thump pulled Leonidas’s attention back to the women. He jumped twenty feet to land in the aisle beside them. The woman—it was the one they had dismissed as a police officer earlier—had gained the advantage, rolling atop Alisa, her hand cannon clenched and ready to use.
She glanced toward Leonidas as he landed and shifted her aim. He reacted too quickly for her. He surged forward, grabbing her by the back of the uniform and hoisting her into the air. His knuckles brushed against something hard and skin-tight beneath her clothing—fitted body armor. It wasn’t as tough as his combat armor, but it would deflect bullets and energy bolts from most hand weapons.
Furious about Sergeant Lancer, Leonidas hurled her across the room. Let the armor deflect
that
.
The woman hurtled toward a wall and should have crashed shoulder-first, but she twisted in the air with impressive agility. The soles of her feet struck the wall as she crouched deep to absorb the impact, and she sprang off before gravity dropped her to the ground. She landed lightly on her feet like a cat. A cat with a thief’s set of impact boots.
“You’re no police officer,” Leonidas said, only pausing long enough to make sure Alisa wasn’t gravely injured—she lifted her head and made a rude gesture toward their foe. Then he strode toward the woman.
“And
you’re
the cyborg I’m after.” She flicked a dismissive hand in Lancer’s direction. “Why don’t you take off your helmet and breathe deeply for me, Colonel?”
“Who are you?”
She grinned, not showing any sign of fear as he strode closer. “Someone who would love an extra two hundred thousand tindarks.”
Instead of lifting her big hand cannon again, she flung a black ball at him, a fluidwrap. Leonidas fired one of the miniature blazers built into his armor. A beam of energy struck the ball just as it started to unfurl. The net never reached him, instead bursting into a tangled mess in the air.
Leonidas leaped toward the wall to avoid it and jumped off at an angle that took him straight toward her. She was already moving, dropping a pellet that exploded in smoke at her feet. As Leonidas landed, she dove to the side, rolling behind the furnace. He lost sight of her, the chemical-laced smoke interfering with his helmet’s cameras and sensors as well as his eyes. Static burst across his helmet display.
It didn’t matter. He anticipated her path, his ears telling him what his eyes could not. She was quiet, but not quiet enough. Her sleeve caught against the edge of the furnace, and he leaped, powerful legs taking him through the air faster than she could run. He landed behind her as she came out of the smoke, and grabbed her with both hands. Furious with the woman—the damned bounty hunter—for mistaking Lancer for him, Leonidas wrapped his hand around her neck even as she kicked backward, trying to fight him. He squeezed once, and bone snapped. She thrashed a few more times, then fell limp in his grip.
“The threat is gone,” Leonidas said for Alisa’s sake.
A soft groan came from the aisle behind him.
“Good.” Alisa came into view as she staggered to her feet, grasping her ribs. “I nearly had her defeated, but a little help never hurts. Besides, I was holding back because I thought she really was a police—” She caught sight of the woman hanging from Leonidas’s hand, and her humor evaporated, her face growing grim.
Leonidas did not respond. He dropped the woman and ran around the building, turning on all of the vent fans and opening the doors. As soon as he finished, he raced to Sergeant Lancer’s side. His old comrade’s eyes were open, his face scrunched with pain. He didn’t seem to be able to turn his neck or move his hands yet, but his eyes were a window to his agony.
When Leonidas knelt beside him, Lancer smoothed his features, trying to hide the pain. His fingers twitched, as if in a salute. Saluting was the last thing he should be worrying about now. The hole in his chest was like a crater—that damned woman hadn’t hesitated to fire, probably shooting him point blank as soon as the gas froze him in place. All he had been doing was coming to pick up his armor. He’d had no chance of defending himself.
Leonidas knew a fatal wound when he saw one, but he whispered, “Hospital,” and a map with a flashing blip rose on his helmet’s interior display. It was on the far side of the station from here. Leonidas growled and slipped his arms under Lancer’s body, prepared to lift him up and carry him there.
Lancer winced and shook his head. “Too late for that, sir,” he whispered, sadness and regret replacing the pain in his eyes. “Wasn’t… alert. Didn’t expect trouble here. Should have. Trouble everywhere. Not a good time… to be a cyborg.” That regret seemed to deepen, as if he was talking about far more than his death, far more than this night.
“I know,” Leonidas said, his voice thick. He was aware of all the blood on the floor, the blood still flowing from that wound. His sergeant was right. It was too late. Even if he sprinted to the hospital, they wouldn’t make it in time. “I’m sorry, Sergeant. Todd,” he corrected, remembering the man’s first name from the personnel reports, even if he’d never used it. “She was after me, not you.”
“Ah.” Lancer’s brows rose slightly. A mystery solved? “After she shot me… said I wasn’t the… right one.” His gaze flicked toward a hover pallet floating near the wall. The woman must have intended to roll Leonidas onto it to take him in. She’d just shot Lancer because—for no good reason, damn it. “Makes sense,” Lancer added.
“Because I’m an ass that everyone wants to kill?” Leonidas asked, trying to smile, to make Lancer forget about his impending death, at least for a moment. He eased one of his hands out from under him and pulled off his helmet. To hells with the gas—he wanted his sergeant to see his eyes, not just the reflection of his own pained expression in the faceplate.
“Because you’re
important
.” Lancer managed the grin that Leonidas couldn’t.
Leonidas snorted. “Hardly that. It’s because the Alliance thinks I know where someone is, someone I haven’t seen in six months.” His throat closed up again, refusing to let him speak further. It was just as well. Lancer didn’t need to know that his death had been for absolutely nothing. That the Alliance wanted Leonidas for information that was six months out of date and growing staler by the day.
“Sir?” Lancer whispered, his voice barely audible now. His fingers twitched again. “Will you—” He broke off and coughed, blood dripping from his mouth. His eyes closed, and Leonidas feared that was the end.
Leonidas clasped his hand. “What is it, Todd?”
His eyes did not open again, but Lancer’s fingers wrapped around Leonidas’s hand weakly. “Let my mother know I’m—let her know… what happened. Only make it sound heroic. At least… respectable.”
Leonidas tried to swallow down the lump in his throat. “I will.”
“Thank you, sir.” Lancer managed another faint smile before taking his last breath, before dying in Leonidas’s arms.
After a moment, Leonidas eased back, resting his man on the floor. He rose and stepped away, anger and frustration replacing his sorrow. He punched the wall, his armored fist knocking straight through it. He might have destroyed the whole place, but when he turned, thinking of kicking that hover pallet into pieces, he glimpsed Alisa standing near the front counter. She had risked herself to fight the bounty hunter, and none of his anger was for her, but he eyed her warily, anticipating some inappropriate display of humor.
“I think I understand now,” she said quietly.
“What?”
“Why you don’t laugh.” She looked toward Lancer’s body, then back to him, moisture glistening in her eyes. “Do you want me to wait outside?”
He groped for an answer. Did he? He needed to take care of the body, arrange to send Lancer home for a proper funeral if he could, and he still needed to find someone to fix his armor. This wasn’t her mission. She’d just come along for a coffee.
Alisa walked over to him, eyeing
him
a little warily, then reached up and put her arms around his shoulders and leaned against his chest, not seeming to care that he was wearing his armor and covered in blood. He returned the hug, figuring he must look like he needed it. Maybe he did.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
“Thank you.”
She reached up, resting her hand against the back of his head, fingers lightly touching his hair. He’d never thought of himself as someone who needed comforting—he would go forward, dealing with the realities of being a soldier, as he always had—but he found himself appreciating having someone close. Having someone care. It almost startled him to realize that she did, considering what he was and especially considering he had pointed a gun at her chest the first time they met. She probably cared about a lot of things and just didn’t let it show. Usually.
Alisa stepped back, resting the palm of her hand on his cheek before letting go. “I’ll wait outside.”
She looked over her shoulder at him, holding his gaze as she walked out the door. As he stood in the dark smithy, it slowly dawned on him that she had come along for reasons that had very little to do with coffee. He doubted he should encourage that, and didn’t know how he felt about it, but he admitted that at least for now, it was good not to be alone.
THE END
Available in June 2016: Fallen Empire, Book 3:
Starseer
s