Ambasadora (Book 1 of Ambasadora) (43 page)

She was within a meter of the
storage room door when a hand snatched her by the shoulder and flipped her to
the floor backward. Sara rolled to her feet and kicked the cender out of Faya’s
hand. A bone mender chimed from her other arm as Faya used it to smash one of
Sara’s cenders into the wall. Sara fired the other one. The shot grazed Faya’s
shoulder, but she wrestled the weapon out of Sara’s hand before she could do
more damage.

Sara plowed her head into Faya’s
solar plexus and knocked her down. Faya kicked Sara in the chest with the heel
of her boot. Pain surged through newly bruised ribs, the sharpness in sickening
contrast to the dull, constant pain in her abdomen. Faya regained her feet and
locked her arms around Sara’s head and shoulders from behind. Sara jabbed her
thumb back into Faya’s left eye. She cried out and loosened her grip. Sara
twisted out of her hold and tackled Faya to the ground. Jamming her elbow into
Faya’s throat, Sara pushed away, but not before grabbing a fistful of
pink-streaked hair. She slammed Faya’s face into the floor and ripped out the
pink streak by its roots. Sara went right back for another section of Faya’s
hair and dragged her to the storage room door.

When Faya bit Sara’s leg, she
kicked her in the teeth. She trapped Faya’s arm between her legs and accessed
Faya’s reporter. The lock mechanism lit green. Sara pulled Faya to her feet and
shoved her into the room first, in case another surprise might be waiting
inside.

There were no sounds, no words,
when Sara saw Sean’s body. She was paralyzed. The bile in her stomach rose from
the stench of chemicals and blood and torture. Sean was slumped over on the floor,
his hands bound behind him, blood streaking his head and bare chest, soaking
the waistband of his pants and pooling on the floor around him. Ugly bruises
covered his fair skin in deep purple blooms.

David stormed inside with the
troopers. She threw Faya at him and ran to Sean.

Seeing him broken like that made
her sick. She noticed how his leg from the knee down rested at an unnatural
angle. Then, she saw his missing fingers and how his wrist dangled from his
arm. She couldn’t imagine she’d ever looked this bad. Her hands shook as she
reached for his arm. She had to know for certain. His skin felt chilled under
her touch.

“Sean.”

She leaned closer, afraid to look
at his face, afraid to see how Faya might have butchered his handsome features.
A small movement from his chest, as though he were taking a shallow breath,
sent a shiver of hope up her spine. “Sean? Can you hear me?”

He groaned, a small, wheezy,
pathetic sound that sent her into a sob because it meant he was alive, but that
he had suffered horribly at Faya’s hand. Discarded at his side lay her weapons
of choice—syringes of hallucinatory drugs and the triton knife he had taken
from Ariel at the Underground.

Sara picked up the knife. Bright
red dripped over blackened flakes of dried blood, Sean’s blood. She flew to
where David still held Faya back. She screamed and kicked at Sara and struggled
against David like a deranged animal. Sara pulled Faya’s head back to expose
her throat.

“Sara—”

Her look silenced David.
“Just hold her.”

It was her fight, her past
.

“I want you to know this
isn’t because of what you did to me,” Sara said, staring into Faya’s eyes.
“It’s because of what you did to him.” She slid the knife across
Faya’s throat. It split as easily as Sara’s skin had so many times from the
blade cuffs. Sara watched Faya’s head flop with each gush of blood until the
contractor’s blue eyes stared into the Otherside.

David let her body drop to the
ground.

A moan from Sean drew Sara’s
attention. Lyra and Markus had Sean sitting up against the wall. Sara shoved
Lyra away from him and kneeled in front of him.

His right eye had swollen shut,
and the surrounding skin shined black and purple, all the way down to his
broken nose. Crusting rivulets of blood matted his hair and painted his cheeks,
and his lips were split and cracked. She cradled his head and begged him to
come back to her, even just a small part of him.

An explosion from the floor above
dimmed the lights and shook the room. They choked on dust that fell from the
ancient structure.

“What was that?” David
asked.

“Not from us,” Lyra
said. “Unless some of our troopers found a supply of rocket launchers
hidden in that warehouse.”

“Not likely,” David
said. “If the contractors had rocket launchers, they would have used them
when we were most vulnerable, on the catwalk.”

“Then, someone else has
joined the party. We need to go now,” Lyra said. “The fragger’s
sliding pretty badly. We don’t have time for him to pull out of it…if he even
can.”

“Sean, we’re getting you out
of here,” Sara said as Lyra picked the lock on his restraints with her
knife.

No response. Dizziness slammed
into her, maybe because the pain in her belly was almost unbearable, maybe
because she might have come all this way and still not get Sean back.

David lifted Sean onto his
shoulders, pinning Sean’s arm and his bad leg against his chest with one hand.
In the other he brandished a cender.

“We’re on the bottom floor,
right?” Lyra asked Sara. “All we have to do is get back into the
canyon and onto our boards—”

“This level is actually
below ground,” Sara said. “We need to go up four floors to exit out
onto the canyon floor.”

Lyra shot David a concerned look.
“Can you do the stairs carrying him?”

“It’d be better for both of
us if we could take the elevator.”

Sara refused to think about the
difficulties they faced trying to transport Sean by swivel board back to the
slot canyon. She would drag Sean out of Palomin if she had to. First, they had
to make it out of here.

A second blast shook loose tiles
from the ceiling. With an electrical hiss the lights began to oscillate and
strobe. Ozone wafted through the room. Explosions and voices came from upper
levels through new holes in the structure.

“If there’s an elevator
left,” Sara said.

The strobing lights showed their
exit in slow motion. Lyra led them down the hallway; Sara followed David,
helping Tamasine sweep. She leveled her cenders, ready to take out anyone who
might be following them.

The muscles in her abdomen
contracted so hard, she doubled over, riding through wave after wave of
nauseating blackness.

“What’s wrong with
you?” Tamasine asked, her personality less hard-edged than Lyra’s, more
like David’s and Geir’s.

Sara forced herself upright.
“Nothing.”

They waited for Lyra’s “all
clear” before rounding the corner. As they waited in front of the silver
elevator doors, Sara was mesmerized by their reflections flickering in and out
with the strobing lights. They looked like battle-worn ghosts returning from
the Otherside.

When the lit display showed the
elevator descending to their floor, the group took up posts to either side of
the doors. At the chime announcing the elevator’s arrival, Lyra and Markus
readied themselves.

The doors opened.

Swinging around, cenders first,
Lyra yelled, “Clear.”

They boarded. Sara rubbed a hand
over Sean’s back. There was a whirring sound and a feeling of inertia as the
number display counted up from sublevel four.

Another distant explosion rippled
above them. The elevator jerked and the lights went out. Dim emergency lighting
popped on in one corner.

“How far did we make
it?” Sara asked.

“The display is out,”
Lyra said.

The main lights popped on again
and the elevator dropped. This time Sara’s stomach floated.

The number display flashed, all
the floors lit.

Sara jammed a fist against the
emergency halt button. The elevator lurched and stopped.

“Looks like we’re at
sublevel three,” David said. “Not much progress.”

Lyra and the female trooper pried
the doors apart. “We’re between floors.”

A narrow opening greeted them at
eye level. The larger opening went to the floor below. Sara stuck her head out
and looked up at the wall of the elevator shaft. “There’s a big two
painted on the wall above us.”

“We’ll take the stairs up
the last couple of levels,” Lyra said.

“I hope we can squeeze
through that.” David eyed the bottom space.

Lyra slipped through first,
followed by Tamasine. Markus had a harder time squeezing his chest and
shoulders through. Sara dropped down next and waited for David to maneuver Sean
through the opening with Markus’ help. David managed to slide through with only
minimal scrapes and scratches.

Lyra and Tamasine checked the
stairwell. “Clear.”

Sara brushed sweat-soaked hair
from her forehead and swallowed back her rising nausea. She was losing the
battle against her pain. It took concentration just to remain upright. Pushing
off the wall, she ascended the steps on Lyra’s heels. Sara once again relied on
her pain for focus, like she had during her imprisonment here.

If nothing else, the pain meant
she was still alive.

Finally.

David’s neck and shoulders burned
under Sean’s weight. He was heavier than he looked. Once Sean was well enough,
David wouldn’t let him forget how big a pain in the ass he was for making them
come all the way to Palomin for him. But, the joke landed flat, even in David’s
head because he wasn’t sure Sean was going to survive. It made him sad because,
despite Sean’s moodiness and arrogance, David appreciated his spirit, his drive
to be self-sufficient, and his unguided passion. Sean would have made a good
fleet officer. David smiled, knowing Sean probably would have punched him in
the mouth for such blasphemy.

The massive white doors that
opened to Palomin’s canyon floor loomed twenty meters away. A fresh coat of
silt deposited by the flash flood covered the floor. The smell of mud reminded
David of the slot canyon and just how far away that escape route was now. He
slipped, but managed to catch his balance, even with Sean’s weight making him
top-heavy. Sara didn’t fair as well. She hit hard on her shoulder and didn’t
get up right away. Tamasine helped her to her feet, and after a few words
between them that David couldn’t hear, Sara continued toward the door with
cautious steps and a hand wrapped around her belly.

He had never seen combat take
such a toll on a person so quickly, then again Sara was no warrior. She looked
like she’d aged twenty years since this morning. Her ashen complexion and
bleary eyes reminded him of a private on his first commission who’d taken a low
level cender blast to the gut. The severe internal injuries weren’t enough to
kill him right away, so he suffered greatly until finally succumbing to the
pain. Maybe Sara had been injured during her fight with Faya.

He liked how Tamasine had taken
to watching over Sara. Lyra could take a lesson in leadership from the younger
woman.

Standing at the door controls,
Lyra said, “Ready?”

Tamasine and Markus took up
position on either side of the doorway. On Lyra’s command, they each kicked a
door open.

Windblown grit washed into the
room on a sound wave of dissonant music. The lyrics screamed death to the
Embassy, and called for Sovereign Simon to be castrated. Refrains of
Kill
the castes
echoed from a hodge-podge of ships—space transports, cruisers,
sanitation vessels, an old medical frigate. They all vented fragger boarders
out of their bellies, thousands of them that surfed through the air around a
few huge Embassy transports.

David’s whole team stood
dumbfounded in the cap-shadowed doorway. The thick scent of ozone mixed with
the smell of canyon mud.

“What the…?” Lyra
stepped back.

Heavy weapons fire pelted
Palomin. Soft metal surfaces melted in the inferno. Cascading booms caused rock
columns to fall from canyon walls. Light strobed through smoke just before
bone-softening thunder wracked David’s body. The cleansing light of revolution
had descended into this part of the world. The contractors countered with
grenade launchers and heavy static guns mounted in the back of rim transports,
but they were outnumbered three to one.

Plasma bombs ate through the old
buildings and glassed the canyon walls. Energy waves rippled through the sand.
Prop wash blew dust and ash into their faces. It was impossible to shield their
eyes from the energy that erupted all around.

Combatants on both sides yelled
orders through speakers, trying to be heard over the blaring music. Waves of
mismatched fragger surfers shot through the air dodging contractor fire. Every
so often one would fall straight to the ground as a lucky contractor hit his
mark.

“We won’t make it through
that,” Lyra said.

“There’s another slot canyon
behind us,” David said.

“With no transport waiting
at the top,” Lyra said.

“Once we make it topside, we
can do a rim skim and circumnavigate all this.” David had doubts about how
well he’d be able to maneuver along the inside of the canyon rim with Sean on
his back, but would deal with that when the time came.

“Agreed,” Sara said.
“Sean won’t last much longer.”

David wasn’t sure she would
either.

The team worked its way around
the base of the building they’d just fought their way through. Sara could tell
David grew weary from carrying Sean. She couldn’t imagine that strain,
considering she could barely place one foot in front of the other in her
current condition.

“Everybody down!” Lyra
jumped back against the wall. Sara pulled her cenders.

A transport filled with
contractors rolled toward their small group. Though they didn’t have one of the
large mounted static guns, the half dozen contractors in the open air bed fired
their cenders.