The Terran Privateer (26 page)

James turned an apologetic gaze on his boyfriend, who shrugged and smiled.

“I’ll be a lot more use there than getting in the middle of a firefight,” Kurzman reminded him. “Besides, the Captain needs someone on the bridge with the backbone to fire into this bucket of bolts if the Crew gets stroppy.” He gestured. “Go!”

One quickly stolen kiss later, the commander of
Tornado
’s ground forces obeyed.

The rendezvous waypoint Annette had set led her new collection of armed people deep into a section of Tortuga she hadn’t seen before. Ki!Tana was surprisingly familiar with
everywhere
in the station and led them confidently through and around the various corridors and twists that led into the temporary warehousing district.

“What’s your ETA, James?” she asked Wellesley, checking to see if the collection of comms had moved. They hadn’t, but that didn’t mean that the units were still on her people.

“We got held up and this place is a maze,” the Major admitted over the comms. “I can’t be sure, but I’m guessing at least ten more minutes.”

Tornado
’s Captain looked around her companions. Six Rekiki in body armor and carrying submachine guns; two Special Space Service troopers in body armor but only carrying sidearms; herself, unarmored but with a sidearm; and Ki!Tana, who she’d
never
seen wear armor of any kind and had produced a submachine gun from within her tentacles.

Ten minutes would more than double her strength. Thirty would have two entire troops of the Special Space Service, thirty elite soldiers, backing her up.

“I’m not even sure they’re still here now,” she admitted to Wellesley. “I can’t wait. We have to move.”

There was a pregnant pause, then he sighed.

“Listen to Sergeant Lin,” he told her. “Wei Lin has seen more close quarters combat than anyone else in my company. That’s why she’s your bodyguard.”

“Understood,” Annette said flatly. “My unit is set to encrypted beacon. Follow me in.”

“Will comply. Good luck.”

Nodding even though she knew Wellesley couldn’t see her, she drew her sidearm and checked the load. She hadn’t fired that many shots, but she switched to her spare magazine anyway. Better safe than sorry.

“We’re going in,” she told the people with her. “Sergeant Lin.” She gestured to her bodyguard. “You’re in charge; you make the calls. But we’re going in and we’re going in
now
.”

“Then we go,” the SSS Sergeant said calmly. “Captain, you’re in the back. Tellaki, you’re on point with me. Let’s move.”

#

There was almost no one in the open spaces in the warehousing district—people would presumably only come there when loading or offloading a ship—and the handful of beings that they did encounter rapidly cleared out of the way of an armed party on a clear warpath.

The beacons on the communicators led them off the main thoroughfare into a dingier, clearly less well-maintained section of the district, and finally to a loading dock door that wouldn’t have looked out of place on Earth.

“Can we open this?” Annette asked Ki!Tana as they approached it.

“Of course.”

“Everyone move back to cover her,” Lin ordered as the big A!Tol removed her communicator’s paper-like display and started checking into the door’s software. “If they’re smart, they’re waiting for us.”

“They are smart,” Tellaki replied as he gestured for his people to obey. “They were not expecting others to intervene; they see great value in your people as stock and will protect them.”

“Why
us
?” Annette asked.

“Because you are new and exotic, and there are many wealthy Kanzi who will pay well for new and exotic slaves,” the Rekiki said simply.

“Slaves
still
don’t make sense to me,” she noted.

“In this case, it is about power and sex,” Tellaki said. “The Kanzi believe all bipeds but them were created to serve them. There is a section of their population—with many members in their leadership—that…”

“Takes that in a very specific way,” Annette concluded. “I’m starting to
really
dislike them.”

“You are hardly alone,” Ki!Tana replied. “The A!Tol Imperium are their deadly enemies, and slavers caught inside Imperial borders are sentenced to death if it can be proven.” She fluttered her manipulator tentacles toward the door. “I am ready. Shall we?”

“Go,” Wei Lin snapped.

The big docking door smoothly opened, sliding up into the roof without even a whisper of a sound. The space on the other side was smaller than Annette had expected, barely thirty meters wide and forty deep, and filled with crates and containers. An upper catwalk linked into a suspended second floor and two sets of stairs.

Two Kanzi guarded the visible entrance to the second floor. Another six were working amongst the containers, checking numbers against a sheet of electronic flimsy. All of them looked up as the door opened—and went for weapons.

The two guards were carrying rifles, probably slugthrowers but potentially plasma weapons. Annette quickly classed them as the key threat and opened fire at them.

By the time her bullets slammed into the catwalk next to the closer guard, both of them were already going down. Wei Lin and the other SSS trooper had made the same assessment as Annette—and acted faster and more effectively.

Annette hung back, trying to take stock of the situation and failing as the two troopers moved through the door. Their Rekiki backup had put down half of the Kanzi on the ground, but the remainder had managed to take cover and acquire their own weapons.

Bullets cracked into the wall next to Annette and she dove forward for cover of her own. Leaving the Kanzi on the ground to the SSS troopers who were rapidly outflanking their position, she focused on the door the two more heavily armed aliens had been guarding.

“With you, Captain,” Tellaki told her, clearly recognizing her intent. She glanced back to nod at him and then charged the stairs with two of the Rekiki right on her heels.

Part of her mind noticed the last Kanzi on the ground throwing up its blue-furred arms in surrender as she charged up the stairs, but her priority was her crew—and the locator beacons said the communicators were in the second-floor office.

She hit the door hard, throwing it open into the Kanzi behind it. He was thrown off-balance, but unlike any of the others they’d encountered so far today, this one had managed to put on
part
of a suit of powered armor. His head and legs were uncovered, but the breastplate, arms and gauntlets wrapped around his torso to protect him.

An armored forearm slammed back into the door, crashing it shut behind Annette.

“Who the hell are you?” the armored Kanzi demanded.

“I’m the queen bitch whose crew you kidnapped,” Annette snapped, ramming her pistol into his face. His armored gauntlet grabbed the weapon in time to interpose his palm in front of the barrel, catching the bullet with an audible grunt as she fired.

“The Crew will kill you for this,” he told her. “Attacking a warehouse without sanction? Whatever you wanted, your only chance of living through this is to surrender.” Somehow, the leer got across the species body-language barrier easily. “You’ll be valuable enough to keep alive, after all.”

“I’ll deal with them later,” she said sweetly, flicking the pistol from slug to rocket rounds and firing again. He caught the bullet again, bared sharpened teeth at her, and then blinked in surprise when the rocket engine fired.

It didn’t throw him off much—just enough for Annette to pump four more rounds into his unarmored head.

#

Moments later, the door came apart as Tellaki hit it with every ounce of force a four-hundred-kilo crocodile equivalent in full body armor could muster. He careened into the room, his submachine gun covering every corner of the utilitarian office until it came to rest level with the gory mess that
had
been a Kanzi.

“Honored Captain, are you all right?” he demanded.

Taking a deep breath and looking around the room, Annette nodded. Realizing that the Rekiki was unlikely to be able to read the gesture, she swallowed hard before speaking.

“I’m fine,” she told him. “The communicators are…there.” Following the image on her communicator, she pointed at an assembly of storage cabinets. “Shit. Search the rest of the warehouse for our people.”

Stepping over the blue-furred corpse, Annette ripped open the cabinet. A plastic bin on the bottom shelf spilled over when she grabbed it, scattering the scroll-like communication devices her people had been issued across the floor.

The utilitarian office she stood in wouldn’t have been out of place in any warehousing district on Earth. Four plain metal desks with roll-up monitors designed to interface with portable computing devices. A small food counter with what would have been a coffee machine on Earth. An entire wall of storage cabinets, two exits back into the warehouse—and two doors leading into other sections of the suspended second floor.

“Do you hear anything?” she asked Tellaki, gesturing toward the doors.

“No.”

“Right.” Annette paused, eyeing the doors. Presumably, if there were more Kanzi, they’d have emerged by now. If her people weren’t in the cargo containers on the main floor of the warehouse, they were up here—or had been moved already.

“The Crew will likely be on their way,” the Rekiki told her. “We are short of time.”

“Right,” she repeated. Picking a door at random, she shoved open the one closest to the entrance she’d come in. Instead of a set of offices or a bathroom, she found a small airlock-esque room—with an armory of unfamiliar weapons.

“What are these?” she asked, gesturing.

“Stunners and shock prods,” Tellaki replied instantly. “This has to be their holding area. It will be soundproofed—there may be more Kanzi inside who haven’t heard anything. I will go first.”

Stepping back to cover him, Annette gestured for him to go ahead. The crocodilian alien stepped up to the inner door, bracing himself on all four legs and then slammed a hand onto the panel next to the door. It whirred for a moment and then slid apart on smooth magnetic bearings.

“Fuck you!” a female voice bellowed. “Fuck you all and the fucking horses you fucking rode in on!”

An unfamiliar sound buzzed through the air and Tellaki winced, lurching back as the air around him shimmered like a warm day.

Before whatever weapon was being used managed to cause actual damage, Annette charged into the open space next to the Rekiki.

“Stand down!” she snapped.

Thankfully, the naked young woman holding the stunner had seen Annette and jerked the weapon away.

“Captain!”

It took Annette a moment to place her: she was Sarah Amita, one of the engineering specialists who’d been assigned to Lieutenant Mosi’s prize crew. She’d ordered that prize crew to take one of the first shore leaves as a reward for their hard work.

That was a decision she was starting to regret as she took in the full scene inside the holding cell. All of her missing crew were present—including the nonhumans, thankfully—but the humans had been stripped naked. All of them but Amita and Mosi were locked away in cages that covered the walls of the room. The single Kanzi in the room was
also
naked—and dead.

Very dead, his eyes bulging out of his skull and Mosi’s hands still locked around his throat. The black officer’s naked body was covered in stab wounds where the Kanzi had repeatedly attacked her to try and save his own life.

“She’s still alive, Captain,” the young specialist standing over her officer said desperately. “We’ve got to help her!”

Annette looked at the young woman. She’d killed her attacker—and from the Kanzi’s state of undress,
his
intentions were disturbingly obvious—but Mosi had already passed out from loss of blood.

“Tellaki. You have some kind of medkit, right?” she asked desperately.

The alien had already starting unstrapping various supplies from within his armor but didn’t step past Annette as he met the survivors’ gaze.

“I do not have antibiotics or painkillers for your species,” he said quietly. “But I can bandage her wounds if you will let me.”

Amita trained the stunner on him, but then Mosi shifted, her hands finally releasing the Kanzi’s neck as more blood leaked from her. The young specialist nodded sharply, allowing the big alien to approach Mosi with his bandages.

“Ma’am,” Wei Lin said quietly from the door. “My god…”

“Sergeant—help Tellaki,” Annette ordered as soon as she realized her guard was there. “Have his people break ours out. Their uniforms have to be around here somewhere.”

“I’ll help her,” Lin promised as she crossed the room. “We’ll get it sorted. But you’re needed—the Crew are here.”

All Annette wanted to do was tear the entire station apart, bolt by bolt and rivet and rivet, and destroy every goddamned alien who’d ever crossed her path. She wanted to pull up her communicator and order Kurzman to fire up the proton beams and rip the station to pieces.

Instead, she nodded and stepped back, letting the Sergeant get to work while she stepped out into the main warehouse to see how bad the situation had become.

#

The Rekiki who had rejoined her crew were forming a rough blockade across the entrance, resolutely barring entry to the warehouse to the squad of power-armored Crew soldiers. All of
these
soldiers, Annette noted as she approached the standoff, were Laian. None of their recruits from other races; these were born and bred Crew.