Darkside Blues: SciFi Alien Romance (Dark Planet Warriors Book 4.5) (3 page)

The knife lodged in the shooter’s neck with a sickening thunk.

The tall man doubled back to Zyara’s side. “You a medic of some sort?”

“I am,” she replied, trying to keep her voice even. “She needs fluid replacement. She’s lost too much blood.” Out of the corner of her eye, she could see Arin, Sera, and Jia standing at the edge of the fray. Rykal, Kalan, and Xalikian had appeared alongside them, and the two First Division soldiers wasted no time. They started to head towards her, smashing through their opponents.

Ordinary Humans were no match for a pair of elite Kordolian warriors. They hadn’t even drawn out their armor.

“Can you get her out of here?” Zyara asked. “Where’s the nearest medical facility?”

The Human gangster, or whatever he was, glanced at her, his expression becoming distant. She saw a silver comm device in his ear and realized he must be communicating with someone. “Boss’ll be here soon, with backup,” he said. “I’ll try and get a first-aid kit from one of the vehicles. Should be a tube of Coag-Gel in there somewhere.”

The young Human’s eyes had closed, and her breathing was becoming shallow. Zyara kept her fingers on girl’s pulse, feeling strangely helpless.

In her medical facility onboard the Korolian warship
Silence
, she would have had no problem stabilizing the Human. But here in the middle of Darkside, she was without equipment and surrounded by warring Humans. With her thoughts fogged by that infernal alcohol, she wasn’t able to do much more than apply pressure.

Still, that simple act could save this Human’s life.

Confusion and disorder reigned as the fight raged around her. Zyara tried to block out the interference and focus on her patient. She had done it so many times before on the battlefield, but now, her concentration was shot.

She caught sight of Rykal and Kalan heading towards her, literally throwing their attackers out of the way. “What do you think you’re doing, Zyara? We need to retreat, now.” Kalan swatted a bolt-gun out of a Human’s hand and decked him as he advanced on Zyara. “This isn’t our fight.”

Zyara glanced down at the girl. Her lips were turning a pale shade of blue, and from her limited experience with treating Humans, Zyara knew that was an ominous sign. “I can’t leave her,” she yelled. “She’s critical.”

Kalan responded with a short, sharp shake of his head. He was about to open his mouth to say something when Zyara growled. “Don’t you dare interfere, soldier.”

This frail Human girl was her patient now, and no-one got between Zyara and her patients.

As Kalan and Rykal neared, a gleaming black shape blocked their path. It was a sleek, hovering vehicle. The machine floated close to the ground, its powerful thrusters emitting a low hum. It was an impressive craft, and its wicked lines spoke of speed and grace. Powerful engines whipped up the air around them, creating a swirling vortex of noise and wind.

Zyara blinked. Where in Kaiin’s hells had that come from?

The doors slid upwards, and Zyara looked into a pair of eyes so dark they were almost black.

“You’re the medic?” The driver’s low voice cut through the noise. He leaned across to speak to her. Beside him sat another man in a dark suit. A nasty looking scar ran across the left side of his face, and in his hands was a very big gun. He had the look of an enforcer.

“Yes,” Zyara replied, wondering how he knew.

“Get in. There’s a medical kit in the back seat. If you keep her alive, I’ll give you anything you want.”

Zyara glared at the Human coldly. “I don’t need anything in exchange for my services.” She was a medic, not some common street merchant. Preservation of innocent lives was her duty. “You need to hurry up, Human. She needs a transfusion.”

What the girl really needed was urgent life-saving surgery.

The driver nodded at his companion and the big man slid out, leaving his gun on the seat. He lifted the wounded girl into his thick arms. Despite his size, his movements were surprisingly gentle.

Zyara went with him, not once taking her hands off the girl’s wound as the Human lifted her into the back seat of the hover-car.

Just as the driver had said, there was a metal case on the seat. The medical kit.

Zyara slid in beside the girl as the big Human moved to the front of the vehicle, resuming his place in the passenger seat.
 

The driver turned to face her, his dark eyes flashing with some unfathomable, seething emotion as he took in the girl’s injuries. Cold anger rolled off him. He pinned Zyara with his intense gaze. “Save her, Kordolian. If she dies, we all die.”

“Then tell your man there to open the case and give me something to stop the bleeding,” Zyara snapped, urgency and irritation making her voice harsh. “Surely there’s a Human equivalent of fibrogel; something you can apply to induce clotting?”

The driver turned to his subordinate and said something in a strange-sounding Human language. The big man leaned over and started rummaging through the case.

“I’m going to get us out of here,” the driver informed them. “It might get a little rough.”

Zyara grunted as she took a black tube of gel-type stuff from the enforcer’s hand, half-ignoring the driver. Right now, her attention was captured by more pressing matters.

“It’s Coag-Gel,” he told her. “Should hold her injury together until we get her to the facility.”

“Do you have any blood replacement compounds?”

“Wait a minute-”

“Make it quick, Human.”

As the driver activated some mechanism that made the doors slide down, the big Human fumbled through the kit, carefully reading the labels of the medical supplies. Eventually, he passed her a bag of clear liquid and what looked like some kind of venous insertion kit. “It’s Universal Haema,” he said. “Artificial blood for emergencies. I think this is the IV kit.”

It was the most rudimentary equipment, but she would make it work. She had to.

This Human child was slipping away.

Others were being wounded and killed out there, but Zyara was battle-hardened enough to tell the difference between soldiers and innocents. These gangsters were soldiers, and they would have known what they were getting into from the start.

Warriors died. That was what they signed up for.

But the girl had no role in this gruesome tableau.

Even though she’d become somewhat immune to the many faces of death, Zyara couldn’t stand by and watch a child die, even if that child was Human.

She had the power to save a life.

As the driver started to pull away, an armored hand slapped onto the front windshield, cracking the clear surface and causing the vehicle to stop.

Kalan and Rykal stood in front of them, blocking their escape route. They had both drawn out their obsidian exo-armor, and it covered every inch of their skin beneath their loose Kordolian robes. The virulent nano-particles that flowed in their bloodstream could be called upon at will and had turned them into the deadliest of fighters; living weapons. The soldiers of the First Division had often been referred to as supreme aberrations amongst Kythia’s medical community.

Out of thousands, they were the only ones who had survived the brutal medical trials.

Zyara was supremely loyal to her comrades, but right now, they were the in the way.

A plasma gun had appeared in Kalan’s hand. He was pointing it at the driver’s face.

“Get out of the way,” the Human snarled in frustration, as he revved the thrusters. Fury tightened his jaw and the hard angles of his face held barely restrained tension. Even though there were two fully armored Kordolian warriors staring him down, he didn’t flinch.

Zyara had to respect that. “Open your door,” she ordered, as she broke the tube of Coag-Gel and smeared it across the girl’s wound. Bright red Human blood coated her hands. The makeshift pad she’d fashioned from her blouse was soaked. She fiddled with the venous access kit. It wasn’t an automated one, so she’d have to find a decent vein herself.

“I’m not going to-”

“I need to talk to them. Just do it!” Zyara was beyond impatient. They were running out of time.
 

The dark-haired driver looked at her and made some sort of split-second decision. The doors went up.

Zyara slipped a tourniquet around the girl’s arm and searched for a vein. The Human’s blood vessels were flat. She cursed viciously in Kordolian.

“Kalan, Rykal, get out of the way,” she shouted, not once looking up from her work. “I swear, if this Human dies on me because of your stalling, I’ll kill you both.”

She found a reasonably sized vein in the crook of the girl’s arm. The alcoholic fog was gone, replaced with crystalline focus. She fumbled with the venous insertion device, trying to figure out how it worked. She pressed a button and a needle flicked out. She slid the needle into the vein with delicate precision. Its clear display chamber turned red, filling with blood. It was in.

“We’ll burn in Kaiin’s hells before we let anything happen to you,” Rykal yelled. “Leave the Humans, medic.”

Zyara ignored him as she fumbled with the small valves and attachments
 
connected to the IV. Upon insertion, it had released a kind of adhesive gel that held it firmly against the skin. A thin line ran from it, and she ran her fingers down the line, trying to figure out how to connect it to the bag.

There.

There was a small port on the bag. She attached the line to it and it clicked into place. A valve opened, and clear liquid started to run down the line.
 

Zyara breathed a sigh of relief and started to squeeze the bag with both hands, pushing fluid into the Human’s body as quickly as possible. It was only then that she permitted herself to look up, meeting the grim faces of her comrades.

“I’ll be fine,” she said, allowing desperation to creep into her voice. “Let us through.” She locked eyes with the driver. “You need to convince them you won’t let anything happen to me.”

Amidst the chaos, he managed to look affronted. “Nothing’s going to happen while I’m with you,” he said. Zyara wondered how he could sound so sure of himself at a time like this. She squeezed the bag of fluid tighter, willing it into the girl. The Human had lost so much blood. She was teetering on the edge of life and death.

The driver’s elegant features drew together in a frown as he turned back to the two Kordolian males. “This isn’t your fight,” he said in accentless Universal, his voice low and controlled, “and I understand you only want to protect your medic, but I need her right now.
 
Melia needs her. It may not matter one iota to you Kordolians, but if the kid dies, Darkside goes up in flames. I am begging you now. Please, let us pass.”

For some reason, Zyara got the impression this man wasn’t used to begging.

Something complicated was happening here, but Zyara didn’t have time to think about it. “For the last fucking time,” she yelled in Kordolian, “get out of the way. Kalan, put that gun down.”

At first, the two big warriors didn’t respond. Zyara shot them a dark look.

Then, slowly, they relented, stepping back as the hover-car edged forward.

“The boss is gonna kill us when he finds out,” Zyara heard Rykal mutter, as Kalan shook his head.

“I have a comm, you know,” Zyara retorted, as they prepared to take off. “Follow me if you want. Call me in the morning. And tell the General that all those phases I spent training in the sim-chamber weren’t for nothing.”

She squeezed the rest of the fluid out of the bag and sighed. Males. They could be overly dramatic at times, especially if they happened to be Kordolian. The First Division in particular reminded her of the Ancestors. In the old tales, were always depicted as fierce and savagely protective.

Zyara looked down at her small patient, pressing her fingers against the fluttering pulse in her neck. It was a little stronger now, a little steadier. The fluid replacement was doing her good, and the Coag-Gel seemed to have stopped the bleeding.

She looked across and saw that the burly enforcer had another bag of the stuff ready to go.

For a Human, especially one who wasn’t medically trained, he wasn’t doing too badly.

“We’re off,” the driver said in an even voice, as the doors slid closed and the hover-car drifted upwards, its engines roaring, leaving the two Kordolian warriors in its wake.

Zyara had no doubt they would find a way to follow them.

She clipped the IV line to the second bag of Universal Haema and hoped for the best as they shot off into the night sky.

Kai was furious.

Someone had deviated from the plan. He wasn’t sure whether it was extreme stupidity or incredible treachery, but someone had decided to divert the convoy through the fucking Glory Strip at the busiest hour of the night.

In this crowded, chaotic, dangerous place, they’d been ambushed by soldiers of a rival clan, the
Jinkai
.

And now, the very person the convoy had been transporting lay in the back seat of his car, bleeding to death.

The Boss’s thirteen-year old daughter, Melia, had been stabbed.

If not for the Kordolian medic, who had appeared in the midst of battle like some kind of silver angel of mercy, Melia would probably be dead right now.

Cold fury ripped through him at the thought. Whoever was responsible for this would be punished by his hand.

He tore through the narrow streets of Lower Darkside, not caring that the pedestrians below were ducking for cover as the hover-car swept over them.

The Lamborghini
Vortex
was a rare beast, and driving it demanded absolute concentration and catlike reflexes. Master Vadim, the supreme Boss of their organization and the father of their clan, had gifted it to him when he’d ascended to the position of
Sandama
, the third lieutenant.

Hover-cars were extremely rare on the streets of Darkside. They were exorbitantly expensive, and as a result they were seldom seen in the grey zones of Earth.

But for a busy
Sandama
like Kai, who needed to be everywhere at once, the vehicle was a godsend.