WARP world (67 page)

His head lolled toward her, eyes open but vacant. Bloody froth bubbled from his lips as he wheezed for air.

Ama placed a hand on Seg’s forehead.
No. I won’t lose you
. She took a deep breath, stood and let loose with another yell for help.

A hand grasped her shoulder. “He’s done for,” the man shouted.

Ama swallowed, looked down at Seg, then to the prison that held her father. “Go back into the skyship,” she ordered the Kenda beside her. “Tell the pilot we need an auto-med for the Theorist. An
auto-med
.” She repeated the word slowly so the man could understand.

“Man’s dead. I got battles to fight out here, spawner. You go play nurse if you want,” he answered, the muscles of his face moving like taut cords, then stood as if to leave.

Ama jumped to her feet and blocked his path. “That wasn’t a request,” she yanked the seft from his hands, and stabbed a finger toward the gunship. “GO!”

With a dark glare, the man trotted off. Ama took one last look at Seg, afraid to admit the truth, then ran as fast as she could, on her wounded leg, to the eastmost cell block of the Secat.

The doors to the prison ward were open. In fact, there were prisoners spilling out into the courtyard. Some taking revenge on their captors, some merely walking as free men and women for the first time, faces and hands raised to the sky, tears coursing down their cheeks.

Inside, the chaos continued. Fires burned, groups of prisoners rushed guards who fought back as best they could with bangers and blades. As she dodged through the crowd, Ama scanned the faces for her father.

There was a long line of identical cells, built from stone on three sides, metal bars on the fourth. Each was dark, the only light came from lanterns along the corridor, with nothing but a covering of straw on the ground and a bucket in one corner. Room enough for a man to sleep and take a few paces, and not much more.

At one cell, she stopped at the sight of a greying head, the figure of a man hunched in the corner.

“Fa?” she grasped the bars of the open cell, but the man raised his face, eyes a dark brown instead of blue, and she resumed her search. She called out over the din, but no answers came.

It wasn’t until she passed another long row of cells that she heard the sound. Faint. Not the booming voice she had grown up with, but her father’s voice nonetheless.

“Ama, leave here…”

“Fa!”

A brawl between two prisoners blocked her path. “Move!” she cried, directing them with the point of the blade until they moved aside. Then the voice Ama was following went suddenly silent, which sped her legs. At a run now, she skidded around the corner, leaping over a pile of bodies as she did.

Even in rags, gaunt and dirty, she would recognize her father. As she also would forever recognize the man who held him at knife point.

“Let him go,” she ordered, hand clenching her seft, stomach twisting.

Dagga took one look at Ama, then jabbed the blade into Odrell’s stomach, shoved him back and let him fall to the floor.

“Came to make sure the job was done. Don’t like to leave my business unfinished,” he told her as he turned away from Odrell, inside the dark, stone cell.

Ama sprinted to the cell door but stopped just inside the room, one hand clinging to a metal bar. Dagga stood between her and her father, blood dripped from the tip of his blade.

“You won’t get out of the Secat alive,” she said, meeting his eyes.

Dagga spat at his feet, “Only rats run.”

“I’m not running, Dagga,” she said, and stepped further inside, seft raised.

“Good.” He snapped his wrist, slinging blood from the blade across the room.

Ama reached behind her and slammed the cell door shut. Dagga was dead, no matter what happened here, he would never make it out of the prison. But she had earned the right to kill him, and she would. Or die trying.

Their bodies snaked from side to side, each waiting for the other to take the first strike.

She lunged forward, with an awkward jab. Dagga sidestepped the seft with ease and slashed his blade across Ama’s forearm.

With a grunt, she backed away, dipped to one side and swung the blade in an upward arc. The handle connected with the stone wall behind her, knocking her off target. The tip caught the top of Dagga’s thigh but barely scratched through his trousers.

Dagga charged and Ama scrabbled backwards as she raised the handle of the seft to protect herself. As fast as she moved, she took another slash, this time across her thigh, before she drove him back.

Behind Dagga, Odrell let out a long groan. Ama’s eyes flicked to her father, curled on the stone floor, blood pooled around him, soaking into the straw. A childhood memory flashed across her eyes, the day they had learned of her mother’s death, the suffering that etched itself into her father’s face, as he fell to his knees. Suffering she had eased but never erased.

Ama’s eyes shifted back to Dagga. She couldn’t win. Dagga’s skill with his blade was legendary, far beyond her own with the seft. And she was hampered by the close quarters.
He’s just playing with me.

“Come on water rat,” Dagga taunted, “I got a few more Kalders to finish off today.”

Fighters don’t win wars, thinkers do.

Seg’s voice came to her.

There are two philosophies central to our success, even against opponents of equal or greater technology. One, we know exactly what we want before we go in, and we do not deviate from the objective–with the full knowledge that some sacrifice will be required. Two—and this is established as our most effective weapon—surprise. Catch your enemy off guard, even for a second and you gain the upper hand.

Her eyes darted to her shoulder, to the wound so recently healed. Heart beating the inside of her chest, she raised her seft and, with a primal cry, tossed it through the bars of the cell door.

Dagga blinked and paused in his advance. His confusion only lasted for a moment before he sprung forward, blade arcing upward through the air.

Teeth clenched and bared, Ama lunged forward to intercept the path of Dagga’s slice. She twisted her body, even as her brain screamed at her to pull away, grabbed his wrist and impaled her shoulder on the blade. The cell was already hot, from the fires burning through the building, but the sweat that poured from her body wasn’t from the heat. Less than a second, that’s all she had. And, in it, she forced herself back using her right hand to push Dagga away before she lifted it to the knife.

She grasped the hilt and pulled the thick blade out with a howl that echoed through every corner of the prison.

“Surprise,” she muttered, and charged at him, blood cascading from her shoulder.

Dagga twisted away and dropped to one knee to reach for the backup blade in his boot. As the stolen blade sank into his throat he fell backward, his arm slashed out and cut a thin ribbon across Ama’s midriff. Whatever final words he may have had for her died with the air whistling around the blade impaled in his throat, as his body thrashed and spasmed.

When she was sure Dagga was dead, Ama fell to her knees at her father’s side. “Fa, I’m going to get help,” she assured him, as she panted for breath, one hand clutching his tattered prison uniform. “I’m going…”

She stood, the room tilted, she raised a hand to staunch the blood from her shoulder and stumbled sideways. Dagga’s knife dropped from her hand.

“Easy, little Captain,” Viren’s voice reached her over the creak of the cell door opening. He held out a hand to steady her, then directed her to Brin, who stood behind him. “Prow, a hand if you please?” Together the two men lifted Odrell up and carried him out of the cell.

Supported by her cousin, Ama kept as close to her father as she could, grasping his limp hand in hers as they pushed their way through the dust and smoke clogged passageways of the prison. Odrell’s head lolled to one side and he whispered Ama’s name.

“You’ll be alright, Fa. You’ll be alright…” she repeated, while tears cut muddy streams down her face.

As the group stepped outside into the light, it was immediately clear that the battle was at an end. The Kenda were finishing off the last few guards, herding the freed prisoners and collecting their wounded and dead. Ama’s head turned to where she had left Seg–where he lay still, on his back, face pointed up to the sun.

Her lips trembled as she pressed them together. But as she limped closer, sitting next to Seg, she saw Fismar, the wiry man she had ordered back to the gunship, and a Kenda who looked like a child playing soldier in his father’s clothes. There was an auto-med sleeve around Seg’s arm and, from the gestures; she could tell the soldier was instructing the wide-eyed boy and his less awestruck companion in its use.

At that moment, Fismar raised his eyes to the approaching group and caught Ama’s hopeful gaze.

“Luckiest son of the Storm I ever met.” He shook his head. “He’s gonna live, thanks to Tirnich and Wyan here.” He nodded to the boy and older man respectively. “You don’t have to stand watch, the machine, the magic’s doing the work now,” he explained to Tirnich, the boy. “Wyan, fix this other unit on the chop-job there, like I showed you.” He jerked his head toward Odrell and passed Wyan another auto-med unit.

“What happened?” Ama asked, still clinging to her father’s hand as she spoke to Fismar. “Why didn’t Shan shoot back at the skyship?”

“Blind. Airship didn’t register on the d-scan and the perimeter wall blocked the thermals. Took a nasty bump to the head in the first blast, knocked her out. Ended up half-choked on her harness. Good thing you sent Wyan in there or we’d be walking out of this place, which,” he glanced down to his lower body, now dead weight, “some of us might have had some trouble with. Speaking of…” Fismar looked around the courtyard of the prison, then shifted around with a grunt, “we’ve got this, but we gotta get everyone loaded on quick, before more show up. I don’t know the Theorist’s plans—”

“I do,” Brin said. “We return to where we came from.”

“Good. Shan says, pushing it, we can get about eighty onto the rider. We lost somewhere around fifteen in the mess, so get anybody you like on there. Now.”

“Of course,” Brin answered. “Tirnich, give Ama a hand,” he ordered the boy, then gave a set of sharp whistles to summon his men as he walked away.

Ama let the boy offer his shoulder, then squeezed her father’s hand as Wyan wrapped an auto-med sleeve around his arm. “It’s not magic, Fa” she said, “but it will save you.” She kissed his hand and turned to see Geras and Thuy running to where she stood. Their eyes darted between their sister and their father, unsure of which was most in need of assistance.

“Help get Fa on the skyship, we have to hurry before any more Shasir show up,” she said, to clear the matter.

“Where’s Dagga, and Corrus?” Thuy asked, eyes burning with revenge at the sight of his wounded kin.

“Dead,” Ama said, the word easing her pain for a passing second.
I hope
, she thought, as her eyes moved to the crashed skyship.

“Well, at least there’s still plenty more cloud sniffers left to kill,” Thuy said, wiping a smear of blood from his face with the back of his hand. “Blood for water!” he whooped, and thrust his seft in the air as he did a jumping half-turn, then jogged after the men carrying Odrell back to the gunship.

A knot formed in Ama’s stomach as she watched her brother’s jubilant departure. She turned her attention back to Fismar, who had summoned a group of Kenda to help carry him and Seg to the ship as well.

Fismar had been in bad shape before all this. Now she could see new wounds and his legs were both useless. Even with the auto-med, he was in better shape than any man had a right to be.

“You lot fight half-good,” Fismar conceded as the men lifted him up. “Now let’s get on the rider and go.”

Seg groaned and rolled to his side, as the men started to lift him, his fingers questing for the auto-med cuff.

“Keep him from pulling that off!” Fismar shouted. “Damn things sting.”

Limping along beside the men who carried Seg, Ama looked forward to fixing on her own auto-med. “Always have to outdo me, don’t you, crazy drexla?” Ama said to Seg, then raised her head to survey the scene one last time.

Smoke billowed from every corner of the Secat. Flames licked from windows and doors. Bodies of guards, dead and wounded, littered the rubble-strewn ground–their bangers noticeably absent. The skyship hung broken on the north wall, it’s guts and false majesty exposed. Men were climbing the ramp into the gunship, some in the ragged uniforms of prisoners, as Brin looked on. Those who weren’t boarding the ship were filing out the gates of the prison. To freedom.

“I didn’t fail, did I?” Seg whispered, startling Ama out of the observation. His eyes darted around before focusing on her.

Ama opened her mouth to reply, her voice faltered, and instead she touched her hand to her heart, then her forehead. “No, you didn’t,” she said, and kissed his forehead, which tasted of dust and sweat.

The inside of the gunship was packed full of bodies but they made what room they could for her and Seg. The engines came to life with a loud and satisfying roar, as the ramp closed.

“Strap in back there,” Shan’s voice came over the comm. “Never know what’s gonna happen next on this kargin’ world.”