Enemy Games (43 page)

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Authors: Marcella Burnard

BOOK: Enemy Games

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Pressure built in her head.

Jay showed him what she’d done.

The first popper string fired.
Blam. Blamblamblam
. Screams sounded from below.

The drone peeled east, away from the troop, as the next four strings blew.

Figures scrambled out onto the nest plain, and sprinted for their ships, dodging nests as they went.

The drone zipped sideways to watch.

Something flashed.

An innocuous-sounding pop reached Jayleia’s ear over the music of the drone’s wings and she realized what had happened.

The lead runner had passed within six meters of one of her modified traps.

He threw himself to one side, trying to avoid the detonation, too late. His comrades, fleeing on his heels, plowed into him from behind.

What looked like a fine spray of dark powder exploded into the air before settling to the ground. Wind currents carried it in whorls and eddies, something Jayleia hadn’t calculated for.

The lead runner had suffered concussion injury and sprawled, dazed, in the webbing. His squad members shouted, then finally picked him up and ran.

Straight through the cloud of spice tree toxin.

Nothing happened.

Jayleia cursed. Now or never. Once the squad reached the ships, her chance to pick off the soldiers diminished.

“Drop me on them,” she said.

Refusal. The drone clicked. It resolved as a request for patience. He dropped a meter and slid sideways, keeping the limping squad in view.

They dropped their stunned friend.

At first, she thought he’d recovered and demanded to be put on his feet. The screaming started.

One by one, the squad of eight fell into the webbing, thrashing, rolling, and shrieking in agony.

Blanching, Jayleia gathered the toxin had taken effect. But what effect?

The drone slipped upwind of the downed miners and hovered closer.

Huge, angry, red blisters covered the soldiers’ faces. Where the toxin had touched clothing and armor, it had burned through and attacked the exposed skin beneath.

An attractively scented, powerful acid? Jayleia blanched. What the Three Hells did those spice trees eat?

When the first blisters began bursting and the soldiers’ screams dwindled to wet, gargling noises, nausea surged within her.

Her companion spun and flew her directly into the wind. It cleared the dizziness and settled her.

This was war. She hadn’t started it, but by all Twelve Gods, she’d end it.

They circled the queen’s mound.

The guard trumpeted a challenge.

“There!” Jayleia shouted as movement on the plain caught her eye.

The Chekydran-hiin.

Wave after wave.

Her resolve faltered.

Where was the
Sen Ekir
?

The drone flushed another squad of twelve UMOPG soldiers advancing on the young queen’s nest. They’d eluded Jay’s traps and the margin for error was dwindling.

She drew her knees up again, rummaged in her nearly empty pack, and pulled out five more poppers.

Pressure built in her head.

She showed him her intent. Exultation flushed her. Hers? Or his? Did it matter?

He agreed.

Two Chekydran-ki soldiers sprang from false nest chambers as the first wave of miners crept over them. The Ki grabbed two miners apiece, one in each tentacle and began using them as clubs on their companions.

Jay activated the popper fuses all at once.

The drone darted straight at the second wave of UMOPG soldiers, standing in mute horror as the Chekydran decimated their companions.

Jay dropped the toys at their feet.

Staring at the mess that remained of their fellows, faced with an enormous, oncoming Chekydran, the squad panicked and fled when the poppers fired in unison. They scattered.

Jayleia picked the two who’d fled together.

The drone swooped in and dropped her on their heads.

Almost.

Warned by the sound of his wings and by the increase in air pressure, the two men flung themselves to the ground.

She landed a scant half a meter ahead of them and tumbled to one side to evade potential gunfire.

They did shoot, just not at her.

It gave her plenty of time to bound in, disable one man with a lethal blow to the head, flip over his body, and land on the second trooper’s gun hand.

He bellowed, and yanked backward to his knees, leaving his weapon and his trigger finger beneath her boot. Gnashing his teeth, he swung at her.

An alarm shrilled inside her head, nearly blinding her. She dropped.

The deafening, crystalline noise of wings, the beat of wind against her back, and the dull sound of an overripe stripe fruit impacting a solid object rolled over her. She rose on one elbow and peeked at the man whose weapon she’d taken.

He still knelt in the webbing, but his head and the upper quarter of his torso were missing. The corpse wavered and fell, spraying her with blood.

Jayleia managed to get her knees under her before she threw up. She was eternally grateful she’d opted not to wear her mask.

The queen’s consort lit beside her.

More screams reached her ears and she assumed the Chekydran-ki soldiers were mopping up the stragglers.

After a few moments of gasping and wiping the sweat from her forehead, she climbed to her feet, fished a hydration packet from her equipment belt, rinsed out her mouth, then forced herself to drink what remained of the doctored water.

It helped.

“More attackers?” she asked, tottering to the drone.

He hummed.

She nodded. “Take me to the queens then. They won’t give up. And we still have the Chekydran-hiin to fend off.”

His antenna drooped.

She nodded. They were both tired.

“The enemy doesn’t care,” she said.

He whistled agreement, hooked her under the arms, and took off.

They didn’t have far to fly.

She spotted the group of ten leaving the cover of their ships as the drone circled the queen’s mound.

He lit atop the web sheltering his mate and set Jayleia on her feet.

She shed her pack. Empty though it was, it had thrown her off in the last fight. She couldn’t afford the distraction. Had the drone not intervened, the last miner might have landed his blow.

The standing guard trilled in greeting and in exultation.

Two more UMOPG squads had been cut down. One Chekydran-ki soldier had given her life protecting her queens.

The loss cut, but without the preparations Jay and the Ki had made, far more of the fighters would have perished.

“Jayleia Durante!”

She started. After a day spent learning to hear and understand the people she’d pledged to protect, a humanoid voice sounded odd to her. Still. A part of her insisted that she should recognize the voice.

“This is Guild Mistress Kannoi! We know you’re colluding with the Chekydran,” the woman called.

The guild mistress? What would drag her so far away from Silver City? Unless Jayleia’s quarantine flag had turned the political tide on station against the woman.

“Surrender to custody and you will not be harmed!”

Jayleia blinked. Surrender? Not be harmed? She grinned and turned her back.

“IntCom and a ship full of Ykktyryk mercenaries have your ships, your companions, and your mate,” the woman yelled.

Shock jolted the smile from Jayleia’s face. Fear ate at her.

“Damen,” she breathed, stripping a glove from her hand and reaching for the drone.

Refusal.

She gaped in disbelief.

He called out an order.

A soldier lifted off and raced away to assess the situation, skimming low to the ground to avoid being seen by Kannoi’s party.

Jayleia nodded in understanding. Talking to her drained the queen’s consort. It made sense to conserve resources, regardless of how little she liked it.

Too bad she couldn’t recruit the Chekydran-hiin to fight the United Mining and Ore Processing Guild Army.

“Surrender! Or I tell those bloodthirsty reptiles to start shooting!” the guild mistress bellowed.

“You want me dead!” Jayleia countered. “Why pretend?”

“On the contrary, my dear!” Kannoi returned. “I am being offered an exorbitant amount of credit to deliver you to IntCom alive. Maybe not whole. But alive.”

“Baxt’k,” Jayleia muttered.

The Chekydran-ki soldiers bugled in concert.

Jayleia’s heart rate climbed and she stared at the drone. Anguish rang the blood from her head. Her knees gave way.

It was true.

Mercenaries had the
Sen Ekir
and the
Kawl Fergus
.

She had a choice. One she’d never wanted. She could protect the Chekydran-ki or she could save her friends.

Ironic.

She choked on a broken laugh as moisture burned her eyes. How often she’d railed about not being offered options. She’d counted choice a luxury, one the people she’d loved most had dangled just out of her reach.

The Chekydran-ki soldier circled high above the mound, the song of her flight a gorgeous soundtrack to the siege shattering Jayleia’s heart.

She closed her eyes and dropped her chin to her chest, knowing what choice she had to make. Despair wrapped tight bands of pain around her chest.

“I’m sorry, Damen,” she whispered. “Dr. Idylle. Raj. Pietre. If the Chekydran-ki live, they will stop the war. They have so much to give our kind.

“I have to become my parents. I have to choose to sacrifice you without even pretending to ask your permission.”

Something soft and feathery trailed through the moisture tracking her face. Antenna. The tendril jerked and stiffened. Another antenna joined the first. Then another. And another.

What did her grief taste or feel like to the Chekydran that so many of them came to sample it?

“Time . . .” Kannoi began, shouting.

“Baxt’k you!” Jayleia shrieked.

She opened her eyes.

Soldiers and the drone backpedaled, peeling damp antennae from her face.

They hummed and trilled a clumsy cascade of sound that rendered as embarrassment.

Why?

Their vocalizations dwindled to a mutter as Jayleia studied them. They seemed—unsettled. She looked at the drone.

His presence in her head grew heavier and she understood.

They’d never seen tears, but in tasting them, they’d recognized an emotion analogous to their own experience of loss. Of grief.

She climbed to her feet, shoving torment to one side, and glared around the plain. The Temple taught that everyone lost loved ones. When a Swovjiti warrior lost a loved one, she honored the fallen by taking four enemy lives for each loved one she could name.

The sixteen lives Kannoi owed her wouldn’t be enough. Ever.

“Get these soldiers back on guard!”

The drone chortled and Jayleia realized the soldier he’d sent to scout the
Sen Ekir
hadn’t returned to her post. He touched her bare hand.

She gasped. The bands of sorrow around her ribcage loosened slightly. Her loved ones were still alive.

The drone straightened, warbling a battle cry.

Jay dove for her glove, pulled it on. Cursing, she slid down the side of the mound, rounded the Chekydran defensive line, and crouched behind a nest cap.

Jay spotted the guild mistress and her troop. Her muscle-bound bodyguards stood out. Jayleia tracked Kannoi’s position by their movements. They flanked her. The seven other soldiers formed a loose semicircle around the trio, ready to close ranks at a moment’s notice.

They’d stopped short of another pair of concealed Chekydran-ki soldiers.

Jayleia chewed her bottom lip, considering showing herself to see if she couldn’t bait the group into the trap.

Then she heard the sound of wings. The missing Ki soldier flew high overhead.

She drove straight for Kannoi.

Jayleia shouted, jumped to her feet, and broke into a run.

The UMOPG personnel opened fire.

CHAPTER 40

S
WINGING and dodging, the soldier shrilled a battle cry. She banked hard.

The dull color of the soldier’s carapace flashed and changed color in the light coming through the blue and gray clouds. Her flight was a dance, an expression of devotion that couldn’t last.

The fire laser bolt seared her thorax.

She screamed.

Jayleia screamed with her and stumbled to a horrified halt.

Another shot hit. Then another.

The soldier spiraled up above the formation of humanoid soldiers, burbling a death song.

The final shot tore through her wings. She tumbled out of the sky.

The guild mistress screamed. The men shouted and the formation of UMOPG personnel broke apart.