“Can they call for reinforcements?” I whisper.

Loras shakes his head. “I cut the comm connection. I doubt any of them know how to repair it.”

“Nice,” Xirol murmurs. “They can’t call for help without calling someone to help them call for help.”

Despite the grave situation, I grin. My muscles tense as I hear the low voices below us talking, beyond my hearing range, though. I turn to Zeeka. “Can you make it out?”

Z silences me with a gloved hand on his mouth and everyone else falls quiet. Our weapons are cool now, but the centurions below have something else planned. They’re not running up the stairs one or two at a time; that would be idiotic. Too bad only two of them failed the test. We still have eighteen down there to kill.

“What do you mean the comms are down?” the legate screams. “My aircar’s a smoldering pile. We can’t call out? Someone get me out of here! I’m too important to—”

Then there’s a thud, followed by a thump, like somebody hit him. Are centurions allowed to do that? What the hell is going on? I wonder if we stumbled into an internal coup.

“Something is not right,” Vel says.

The rest of us nod. Doesn’t change our mandate, however. We still have to kill everyone in the house, then blow it up. I hope Vel can convince everyone that Legate Flavius survived the attack. Tiana will help sell the story; that’s the best way she can serve the resistance, I realize. Keep doing her job, lending credence to Vel’s disguise.

Zeeka leans in. “I know what they’re planning. Take cover!”

That’s the only warning we get before a centurion aims a heat-sensing smart grenade at us. I scramble; the Smartie won’t go off until it locks onto a large heat source. It won’t sit still long enough for anyone to disarm it—if it gets that close, it blows. In that way, it’s like a mobile proximity mine.

A few of my squad-mates fall in behind me, and I slam the door. Other slams echo nearby. I hope everybody’s safe. The centurions haven’t solved their problem. They can’t get to us with the grenade in play. They can only hope it will soften us up.

Then an explosion rocks the whole upper story. Shit. No, no, no. The door I’m hiding behind smokes. From my position, I can’t reach the handle, but Loras can. For the first time I notice who’s with me: Xirol, Loras, and Zeeka. Anyone else might be dead. Vel might be. Somewhere ahead of me—on the other side of the door—a woman screams, and then the sound dwindles into broken sobbing.

“The stairwell’s open. Go, go, go!” the deep voice commands.

“They’re coming,” I say, pulling myself together through sheer will.

As they press, they fire, keeping us from taking up our former positions for best defense of the high ground. Laser strikes bombard the area, all light and heat, burning an already damaged floor. The smoke in the air stings my eyes, but if I lower my helmet visor, I’ll lose some peripheral vision. In close quarters like this, outnumbered, I can’t afford to be less than my best.

I draw my gun and ease forward. Though I know Loras is just as worried, he whips out his weapon and kicks the door wide. The centurions respond with a barrage of shots until I see light through the thick synth flooring. Using it for cover, Loras stays low and shoots as the enemy breaches the top of the stairs. Zeeka and Xirol follow suit, but our concentration isn’t tight enough to keep them from pushing.

Behind me, down the hall, Farah kneels with her back to the battle. It’s a total breach of training, but I can’t blame her…because she’s cradling her brother’s head in her hands. Oh, Timmon. His blood stains her armor, her arms, and she rubs her cheek against his, her eyes wild with grief. We have to protect her until she comes back to her right mind.

Where’s Vel? I wonder desperately.

The centurions don’t give a shit about those we’ve lost, however. They’ve lost brothers tonight, too. If Mary’s willing, I’ll kill more. I injure one who falls back, but it’s not a fatal shot. His armor sizzles, and it must burn like hell, but he’s a professional. The centurion levels his gun on me, and I slide forward. His shot hits where I used to be, but now I’m out of cover. They all train their pistols on me, which was exactly what I hoped they’d do. That gives the others a few seconds to recover. Instead of freezing, I keep rolling, past the broken banister, then I fall. On the way down, they hit me twice; one shot burns through to my arm. The pain’s excruciating in the first few seconds, then it’s like the nerves are cauterized, so I can’t feel the damage. That might be typical, or maybe I can thank my nanites.

I hit the ground with a thunk. The armor takes some of the impact, though I think I might’ve broken a rib. Sharp, stabbing agony lances through me as I push upright to stare at a pale, ferret-faced man. His sharp features match the legate’s voice, and he seems groggy as hell, like he can’t figure out who I am or what he’s doing on the floor next to me. He also has a deep bruise forming on his jaw from where his own men knocked him out.

Before he can shout, I crack him across the face with my good arm. He sways, then falls over. I shouldn’t hesitate. He needs to die. Whether he has a family or a wife who loves him, it doesn’t matter. He’s the enemy. Yet I fumble my knife for a few seconds, then I sink it into his subclavian artery for a clean kill.

Overhead, combat continues. More smoke and laser fire. I don’t know how my squad’s faring, but I’m not out of the action; a little fall won’t stop me from kicking some more ass. True, I can’t fight with my left hand, and I think I dislocated my shoulder, but I can still work the right side. Good enough.

I whip my shock-stick out because my laser pistol requires a steadiness I can’t bring to bear. Between my fear of who died in the explosion, reaction to killing a helpless man, even if he’s an asshole, and my injuries, I’m as likely to take out my comrades with friendly fire. I should be able to create some confusion behind the lines, though.

Moving gingerly, I creep up the staircase, mostly empty now. They’re fighting in the hallway, in the bedrooms, but they left a sentry at the top of the stairs. Because of the noise, he doesn’t hear me coming, so I whack him on the back of the neck. The neural shock does the work, so he falls into convulsions. It feels like a stab wound in my side when I bend to cut his throat, ending the spasms.

Sparks pop before my eyes when I straighten. Okay, maybe I hurt myself more in the fall than I realized. But I just have to push through the pain. The nanites will fix me up. Unlike most people, I don’t need a doctor unless I’ve lost body parts or major organs. This quality makes me special…and creepy.

The dizziness increases. All right, so maybe I overestimated what I have in reserve. I’m not strong enough to fight, but I can still help. I get my gun like I’m not trembling too much to aim it. Farther down the hall, I see a couple of centurions hunkered down, exchanging fire with my squad.

I shout, “Assholes! Can’t you kill somebody even when they’re half-dead?”

Reflexively, they wheel and switch targets.

Someone yells, “Get down, Jax!”

I pitch sideways, not a dodge so much as a fall, but at least this time I land on my good side. Still, impact hurts like a bitch, and I close my eyes, fighting hard not to pass out. I really need not to get up for a minute. If those centurions have their way, I never will. There’s no coming back from a missing head, even with nanites.

Hm. Maybe I need to sign a DNR order. Or would that be a Do Not Grow a New Head order? I might be hurt worse than I realized.

Laser fire spatters the ground perilously close to my face, close enough that I breathe in ashes from the seared wood, but the two centurions drop. Distracted, they make easier targets for my squad, however many of them are left.

I close my eyes just for a few seconds. I’ll fight on in a minute.

CHAPTER 33

I wake to movement.

There’s a fire in the sky behind me, darkness ahead. I shift to see who’s carrying me and gaze up at Vel through blurry eyes. A stone I didn’t realize I held drops away.

“I would appreciate it if you did not frighten me again in that fashion.” He’s speaking Ithtorian.

Which means he wants privacy, or he’s so upset that he forgot to ask his vocalizer to kick in. Either way, the others can’t follow this conversation; nor do I want them to. My relationship with Vel is more intimate than what I share with the rest of the squad.

I exhale, testing my side. Can’t tell if it hurts as much as it did earlier. Speak Ithtorian, I tell my chip. “Sorry. I was worried about you, too, you know.”

“I did not offer myself as a sacrifice when I could barely stand,” he bites out.

Shaking my head, my vision clears enough for me to count the figures moving ahead of us. Six. Not eight. We lost two.

“Who?” I demand hoarsely.

I’ve become friends with Farah and Bannie. I like Xirol, too. Please don’t let it be Zeeka. And we need Loras—

“Eller,” he replies. “And Timmon.”

Relief suffuses me, followed immediately by contrition, because Eller was a good man; I remember how he said it would get worse before it got better, and it seems those were prophetic words. Timmon was Farah’s twin. Recollection swamps my foggy brain. In my mind’s eye, I see Farah out of her mind with anguish, Timmon’s head in her hands.

I should be ashamed for being glad, even for a second, that we lost them instead of someone who’s important to me. As I’ve learned—and it was hard—I’m not the center of the universe.

Guilt silences me.

I sense his fierce rage; I don’t remember when Vel was this angry at me, if ever. His faceplate is open, so I touch the hinge of his mandible. Few know that it offers pleasurable contact, a hint of familiarity.

He pulls my hand away, clicking sharply, “You will not charm me, Sirantha. Nor will you soften my censure.”

Stung, I chatter back, “I was comforting you.”

“Call it what you will. You will not stroke away my wrath.” Strong word, but it fits what he’s feeling.

I want to get down; he shouldn’t have to haul me around when he’s so furious, but I’d only slow us, and we’ve lost enough already. Now that Vel isn’t talking, I hear quiet, hitching gasps from Farah. She’s choking back her tears, so she doesn’t make everyone else uncomfortable. I wish she could sob her heart out, but that luxury has to wait.

Then I notice a small figure beside Loras, no armor. No shoes. In this weather, she must be freezing. “Tiana’s with us?”

“Yes.” One word, and he sounds like he’d rather chew glass than talk to me.

How do I fix this?

“I didn’t mean to be a sacrifice. I was just trying to help.”

“Do you have any notion how I felt, Sirantha?” He continues without letting me guess, not that I was going to. “When the grenade went off, and you were not with me, I feared the worst. And then…you fell. Twice, I lost hope.”

“Then the next time you saw me, I was yelling at the centurions like an idiot.” I try a smile. “But in my defense, this isn’t the first time. Remember the Silverfish?”