Her smile was part satisfaction and a whole lot of amusement. “I’m right, aren’t I? You did come here on the Praetor. We must have crossed paths in one of its hallways at one point…” She turned around, casually walking backward, and offered me a hand to shake. “Camilla Hernandez. Nice to meet you.” I scoffed. Nice to meet me? Was she crazy? I was about as far from nice as one could get, but then, clearly, so was her mate, and she was crazy enough to takehimon.
“Maybe,” I agreed, then realized that Flack was staring too. I was always close-lipped about my past, but for the right price that bastard would trade just about anything, information included. He was drinking this whole convo up like it was Christmas morning and Santa had come early. Then again, what did it hurt anyway? There was nothingabout my past that would really surprise any of the guys on theVarakartoom. They were mercenaries with as many—well, perhaps notasmany—disreputable acts shaping their history as I had.
“I was assigned to the Praetor to make sure nobody made a fuss about the human barter in stasis,” I ended up admitting. I eyed Camilla and smirked. “Nobodies like you.” She opened her mouth, probably to tell me I’d failed at my task because she was still here. Not just that, the Kertinal Empire had taken control of the Praetor and freed its cargo of UAR “livestock.” “Except the Praetor’s captain didn’t like having me around, and he betrayed my ass the moment he lined up a buyer.” I swatted a hand toward the skies. “Batok. So yes, I was the human your friends rescued from that mining planet. And yes, we probably crossed paths on the ship once or twice.”
She blinked, as if I’d caught her by surprise. “Would you have done it?” she asked. I pretended I didn’t know what she was asking, and also pretended the fierce frown she pulled out did not remind me of Ysa. “Would you have killed a nobody like me so the UAR could sell off the humans in stasis like cattle?” Her dark eyes were polite, curious. I was pretty sure she expected me to say no, because she was clearly used to dealing with males of moral integrity.
My eyes flicked from her to her male. The Elrohirian had given up pretending he wasn’t waiting for me to attack like a rabid dog. His hands held two long, silver knives; his scowl was so angry it would have made a man with more heart than me back up in an instant. He wasn’t the only one watching, waiting for the answer. So was Flack, so were Ysa’s boys, and so was the Ferai beast, with baredfangs, that one. The only one who seemed oblivious was theVagabond’s tracker. He was hunched low to the ground, peering at tracks before altering our course. I didn’t kid myself into thinking he wasn’t ready to strike with the axe on his back in defense of his crewmate.
“Yes,” I said, deadpan, as I turned my gaze back on Camilla. “I would have killed you in a heartbeat.” It was the truth, and while I did feel the faintest pang of guilt over admitting that, it didn’t change a thing. I’d been a numb killing machine even then, and the only difference between then and now was that I wouldn’t—because I knew Ysa wouldn’t want me to. Right or wrong, I was so far removed from it that following a mission was my way through life. The UAR’s missions, the Shadow Unit’s missions, and now Asmoded’s missions. Following Ysa’s heart was the only way I knew I wasn’t truly evil, but it was close. Without either of them, I could very well be exactly like this Eric we were hunting right now. Ysa didn’t believe that, but I knew it was true.
“Well, at least he’s honest, right?” Flack said, joking to ease the tension that filled the air. “We are not here to hunt my compassless crewmale, though. So let’s all stay focused on the true goal.” Flack didn’t need to try to smooth things over on my account, but I didn’t comment, just fell back into step at the rear of the group. She asked, I answered, it was as simple as that. Except it wasn’t, because if that had been Ysa, would I have been that truthful? Or would I have felt ashamed to admit it?
Chapter 18
Thatcher
We ran into trouble two hours later, after we’d swept the site of that explosion three times and followed multiple tracks into the forest near the military base. Fierce, theVagabond’s tracker, had insisted we were following the freshest set, but even after we’d gone deep into the woods, we found no sign of either escaped gladiator. Just the supposed footsteps in the dirt and a scent the tracker insisted was there. I believed him, because he was bonded to the Ferai beast, and a tracker like that made no mistakes. I just had a feeling my gladiator counterpart had found some way to trick the senses of the hunter.
“What do our aerial scouts say?” I demanded of Flack when we appeared to be circling back toward the town. There was this niggling feeling that we were being sent on awild goose chase—tricked while the pair somehow escaped. I did not want that; I wanted the mission to be over and the bounty ours. I wanted a good fight, and then to get back to theVarakartoomso I could drag my Ysa back to bed. I had not had nearly enough of a chance at that, and I did not believe it would last; I’d mess it up, so I needed to stock up on memories to sustain me.
“No sign of a ship escaping, no sign of them at all. Neither Raukesh, Sunder, nor Mitnick has been successful in locating them,” Flack answered after only a brief glance at his comm device, on which he’d clearly been getting updates. He did not question Fierce and the Ferai beast, though; instead, he said, “Our captains have agreed to one more hour of searching before we switch to plan B.”Ah, I liked plan B. It usually involved blowing things up, but in this case, I did not think that would help. The pair had proven too effective at hiding and escaping from the authorities. I would not believe we had killed them until I actually saw their dead bodies. I also did not think another hour would be long enough to find them by tracking them. It wouldn’t be enough if they were chasing me.
I had not counted on the Pretorian’s bloodlust, though, but given the deadly chaos they’d already created, I should have. Too tempted by a small party he thought was inferior to his skills, he decided to lay a trap for us. Too bad for him that the presence of his nanobots called to mine. I sensed him well before we got into hearing range, and I knew it was the Pretorian by virtue of his hiding spot alone. In the trees. A Pretorian, with their four arms, was a tree-dweller by nature, and he was an idiot for defaulting to basic, instinctive behavior.
“There,” I said, pointing. “Our theory appears correct. The Pretorian has become nanobot-enhanced too.” I ignored Thorin’s muttered, “Like it’s an infectious disease.” Pinpointing his location on the map Flack projected with a rough finger, I aimed precisely rather than vaguely at the trees up ahead. “He thinks to ambush us, but I can sense him.”
“Won’t that mean he can sense you the same way you can sense him?” Camilla asked. I cocked my head and considered that, but his heartbeat remained steady and his position unchanged. I did not believe he was aware of me. “He might be too new at it. The change could be recent; it could be how they managed to escape in the first place. He also might have nanobots, but he doesn’t have a processor in his head.” They wouldn’t have taken the proper precautions against a male they thought had no nanobots. It would have been their edge and could explain why they remained loyal to one another.
Flack nodded, and then he reported the situation. Awaiting orders and then sitting on our thumbs while backup arrived sucked. I was anxious to get moving, eager to pit myself against this man. Would I be just as strong as he was, or would he be stronger because he was also an alien at his core? Four arms didn’t make a difference between Ivo and me. I was faster, better than him, stronger. I also knew I would have struggled to keep up before the Shadow Unit had done its alterations on me.
Fights were like that all the time. Waiting, waiting, and then suddenly everything exploded. We were given the go-ahead to change our vague wandering to a route that would take us past the Pretorian lying in ambush up in the trees. That felt like action, but it took painstakingminutes of acting normal until we were beneath him. Playing bait was also not my strong suit. My skin prickled, my muscles ached from keeping myself in check, and my senses screamed at me about the coming danger.
The Pretorian was silent as he attacked; there was not even a rustle of the trees, a creaking of branches. One moment I sensed him somewhere above us, the next he was in our midst. Claws out on his upper hands, while his lower set wielded a high-tech flamethrower that burst fire into our midst. I caught the brunt of those flames, but though my armor heated, it held. After that, it was chaos. My mind became a blur, my body acting on instinct, often before I’d even registered the threat. Our group converged on the attacking Pretorian, and our backup closed in. We weren’t trying to capture this bastard alive; the Rummicaron bounty on him had not specified the state he needed to be in.
It wasn’t until I’d pinned the four-armed bastard to the dry forest ground, my boot on his throat, that I realized the other one had joined the fight. Unlike his alien companion, the human ex-soldier liked picking at us with his guns and knives, attacking one by one when he thought someone was vulnerable. It was a very good tactic, one I would have employed myself against a force as large as ours. While my party and I had been occupied with the Pretorian and his flamethrower, he’d downed several males and separated our group from our backup.
The Pretorian snarled, bucking beneath my boot, but he was not so tough with two gladiators, a Sune in hybrid-form, and a Ferai beast hanging off him. The gladiator tracker gave me a sharp nod, as if to say, go, but I still glanced at Flack first. “Yes, go help the others. We’ve got this one,” he snarledthrough sharp fangs. Then he lowered his head, and blood sprayed as he tore into the bucking Pretorian like his skin was tissue paper.
When I jogged away, the former gladiator screamed, but the sound cut off. It was the first sign he’d given that he’d been in pain, and from the sound of it, also the last. Good. That meant one half of the bounty was ours, and we were that much closer to finishing our current job. Normally, I got anxious between jobs, but now I had plans for how to fill that time. Fantastic plans involving Ysa and her colorful fairy-tale bed.
I found Asmoded first. He was lying low against a patch of dark forest ground, almost entirely camouflaged by his black scales, armor, and the hints of green that flecked him. I had nearly stepped onto his hand when he lunged, then at the last moment halted his attack. “Thatcher,” he snarled, teeth bared, still on the verge of a killing strike he barely restrained. His tail was partially caught in a trap of metal teeth and jagged glass shards—an improvised construction that had proven highly effective all the same.
It became obvious then that the pair of escaped gladiators we were hunting had expected us to find them. They had laid a second sort of ambush for us, the Pretorian serving as a distraction. Asmoded hissed when I circled him, “Go help the others. That bastard is giving us a hard time.” Leaning in, my gloved hands folded around the metal that trapped him, and with a growl, I yanked it apart. He whipped his tail free, blood spurting from several holes in the thick muscle.
“Where’s Sin?” I asked. That man, a Son of Ragnar, was probably capable of wiping the floor with the bastard, and he wasn’t here even though our best men werestruggling. I barely waited for the answer as I made my way toward the sounds of fighting in the distance. When had they gotten so far away from us and the Pretorian? I could have sworn they’d been much closer when the fighting first started.
“Sin’s guarding the camp, but Eoin should be there,” Asmoded called after me. He was moving slowly, and he was definitely injured. The way that trap had sprung, I could tell he’d struggled to pull himself free, even with all the strength at his disposal.
I knew who he was talking about: Eoin, the Terafin gladiator with exceptional skills. His metallurgist abilities gave him armor similar to Sin’s, and a similar, uncanny ability to heal. The male who had been instrumental in my rescue from the torture the Crimelord Batok had inflicted on me—first in search of answers about the UAR, and when I hadn’t given those, simply to punish.
Asmoded didn’t want me to wait for him, and I didn’t plan to anyway. It was the human I was after now; he’d tied me up with his buddy, and I couldn’t help but suspect that had been on purpose. He’d pegged me as the true threat, and he hadn’t minded sacrificing his partner in crime to test that. Alone and working in secret, he’d managed to use traps and laser fire to pick off more of us than just the captain. I found the engineer, Da’vi, working to staunch a heavy wound on Raukesh—an armor-piercing kind of injury that had broken straight through the Tarkan’s stony skin.
Aramon was out cold but breathing, with his twin, Solear, a growling, shaking guard. In the distance, I saw Dravion working on another injured mercenary while a Sune with three tails stood guard over him. I could not tell who it was, but I recognized the standard-issue boots. They waved me on, and I rushed forward to catch up to the fighting.
Reaching a clearing moments later, I circled through the underbrush and quickly appraised the situation. Yeah, Eoin was there all right. I could see it in the damage done to the trees and the furrows dragged through the mud. He’d managed to drag the human from his perch up above before he’d run out of metals to fuel his attacks. My crewmates had taken cover behind trees and were laying down fire that prevented the former soldier from escaping. He clashed with Ziame, the massive green-scaled beast harrying him through the trees, forcing him into the laser fire that whizzed around their heads.
It took me only one moment to appraise the situation. It looked like they had everything under control; how could so many skilled men I’d fought and trained with be outmatched by one individual? But I saw it. This Eric, he moved with a little too much confidence for a man nearly getting his head bitten off by a massive dragon-bull cross of an alien. It was not him trapped; he was laying a trap of his own. It sprang just as I shouted a warning, pushing my body to rush into the clearing.
