Cypher (The Dragon's Bidding Book 2) Read online

Fitz linked into building security and pulled up the floorplan, viewing it on her inhead display. Now she understood her partner’s unease. “We’re not near the Assembly Hall; this is the far side of the complex.”

  “That’s what I feared, and our two escorts haven’t left. They’re standing behind us, blocking any retreat.” He pitched his voice low, staying off the comm to prevent the Praetorians picking up their conversation.

  Fitz fought the urge to turn and confront the pair behind her, but instead scanned the other two. A sense of wrongness rippled down her spine. “I recognize the taller one. He’s an augie. The Praetorian Guard won’t recruit from SpecOps.”

  The internecine rivalry between the Imperial Guard and Special Operations had been long-standing and vitriolic. Fitz eased her hand closer to the slug thrower on her hip. “I’m betting all four of them could be augies.” Her combat systems lit up, feeding her scenarios and probabilities, and targeting reticles flashed on her inhead display.

  “And we walked right into their trap.” Wolf’s ploy to keep their conversation secret had failed; the augies’ enhanced hearing would have picked up their whispers as easily as if they’d been shouting.

  Fitz rolled her shoulders. “You grab Ari and stash her under that desk, then take the two at the back.” Her weapon blurred from its holster at the same time as all four of their attackers launched into hyperkinetic speed.

  Cyan bolts of energy crisscrossed the room. Behind her, Wolf’s slug thrower thundered. Glass shattered. Ashcraft and his two guards blocked a clear shot at her attackers, forcing her to jink to the right, but the augies ignored her, concentrating their fire on the old Emperor. The marines hadn’t pulled their pistols clear of their holsters before they were cut down. A wild shot burned past the now-collapsing trio, catching Fitz in the side. Her battlesuit absorbed the energy, dispersing it, but a flash of heat made it through the armor to scald her skin.

  The closer of the two augies charged her. She stitched a line of slugs up his chest, hoping to find a seam, a weakness, anything. Each hit must have felt like a hammer blow, but he didn’t acknowledge them. As he plowed into her, Fitz grabbed his shoulders and fell back, letting momentum and her boot in his midsection carry him up and over. She rolled to her feet, bringing her pistol around, but her opponent wouldn’t be getting up. A red puddle formed beneath him; one of the slugs had found a way through his armor.

  A bolt of energy struck her back, then a second and a third, overwhelming her battlesuit’s ability to ablate the heat. Composites boiled, peeling back. Her armorcloth undersuit fused to her skin. She could smell her flesh burning. Responding to her brain’s spike of endorphins, her onboard pharmacopeia dumped painkillers into her bloodstream, along with a double hit of the elixir that supplied the symbiont with the glucose and protein it needed to repair her wounds.

  The second augie leaped over the tangle of bodies and backhanded her into the wall. A side table splintered behind her, the edge driving into her burned back. Her vision dimmed. She slid to the floor as her opponent pounded her. Augies weren’t above using weapons, but most preferred to do their wet work in close and personal with fists and feet and knives.

  Fitz rolled into a ball to protect her head, but a savage kick made it through her defenses and spider-web cracked her face shield. She’d managed to hang on to the slug thrower and tried to bring it up, but the augie ground her hand beneath his foot, wrenched the weapon from her grip, and flung it across the room.

  He dragged her up by her combat harness and pinned her against the wall with a hand around her throat. If he landed a blow on her, she’d be out of the fight and unable to protect Ari. Fitz fished behind her back, seized the handle of her vibroblade and pulled it free, igniting it.

  An illegal modification of a shipyard worker’s cutting tool, the v-blade could slice through six centimeters of hull plating, so Praetorian armor presented no problem. Fitz jammed the v-blade into his belly and ripped upward, opening armor and muscle like a baked crustacean dinner.

  Across the room, the remaining two augies doubled up on Wolf. Fitz knew from experience that with his outdated augmentations he could hold his own against one augie, but two out-classed him. A florid-faced augie had his arm around Wolf’s throat, choking him while his partner pounded him.

  Shouts sounded in the hallway, and fists hammered on the door. Reinforcements. But for which side?

  Ari charged into the fray, wielding a vase like a club. Fitz grabbed her jacket and pulled her back, then shoved her none too gently away. “Stay out of this.”

  She pulled the Acton from her shoulder holster, thumbed the power setting down to stun as she vaulted onto the closest augie’s back, then jammed the barrel under his chin and stroked the firing stud. He folded up like wet cardboard, dragging her down with him.

  At least she’d have one alive to question when this mess finished—assuming the stun beam hadn’t scrambled his brain.

  As she struggled up, the remaining augie hurled Wolf at her and together they collapsed into a tangle of limbs. Fitz tensed at the flash of light on a blade as the augie blurred into motion, but he didn’t come after them. He paused only long enough to slit his stunned colleague’s throat, then kicked open the door and bulled through the knot of Praetorian Guards trying to force their way inside.

  “Stop him,” yelled Fitz. “Lock down the building. I want him alive.”

  Not one of the guardsmen moved to follow the fugitive, and Fitz noticed their weapons were pointed in her direction. A tall man with captain’s bars on his collar faced her, eyes cold and jaw stubborn. His gaze swept the room, taking in the three bodies in Praetorian armor. She could well imagine his thoughts.

  “I don’t take orders from no damn wirehead,” he said.

  Fitz bit back her anger until she had time to draw a calming breath. His name tag read Weiland, and a query of her newly acquired personnel files showed a Captain Shabuoth Weiland had recently been posted as the commander of the palace’s detachment of Praetorian Guards.

  Great. They were probably going to be butting heads on a daily basis.

  “Well, Captain, you’d better get used to it, because as soon as Ransahov becomes Emperor, I’m going to be her Chief of Security. As I see it, that makes me your boss. So if you want to continue wearing that pretty white armor, you will obey my orders. And you can start by getting a med-team down here with a couple of stasis boxes. There might still be someone alive in this mess, and I want some answers. Starting with how four strangers—four augie strangers—waltzed in here and set up an ambush, and none of your people noticed.”

  She started to turn away, but stopped. “And one more thing, Captain. If I ever hear you call me a wirehead again, you’ll be lucky to get a job cleaning toilets in a mag-lev station.”

  Fitz pulled off her helmet and raked her fingers through sweaty hair as she joined Wolf. He leaned against the wall, trying to catch his breath.

  “I see imperial politics haven’t changed,” he said. “Still a blood sport.” He removed his own helmet, then pulled a small med-case from his pocket and fumbled it open.

  “Here, let me do that.” She took the case from him and extracted two ampules of the elixir and injected him.

  “Just some broken ribs. I’ve had worse. What about you?”

  The post-battle adrenaline left her trembling, and her stomach felt knotted around glass shards. “I feel…” She rolled her shoulders and flexed her back. “A little sore, but I just took several pulse bolts to the back. I should be on my way to the med-bay, but I feel fine.”

  His smile widened. “The first time you walk away from a fight that you really shouldn’t have survived can be quite an experience. Not that you ever get used to it or take it for granted, but the memory of that first time sticks with you. It marks you as some…thing different.”

  Fitz tucked the med-case back into his pocket. “As much as you depend on that stuff to keep you functioning, you might want to consider having an onboard pharmacopeia impla
nted. And while you’re in the tank, why not have all your augmentations brought up to date? I read the specs on the newest updates when they repaired the damage I sustained on Baldark, and they’re pretty slick.”

  “You mean become augmented?”

  “Technically you already are an augie; just a pathetic one. Don’t you want to be faster and stronger than I am?”

  “Perhaps I like you being the stronger, more assertive one. Particularly in bed.”

  Fitz snorted. “I might not always be around to save your butt. Just think about having the updates done, would you?” She grinned, amused at turning the tables on his incessant need to protect her.

  “I’ll think about it, but Ari plans to keep me busy making nice with the leaders of those three worlds Ashcraft grabbed. She has some elaborate plan for war reparations to try to make them like us again. She’ll learn—nobody likes the Empire, except our money when we’re trading and our warships when they’re threatened by the Landers Federation.” He pushed a strand of sweaty hair off his face. “And I want to get back to Rainbow and check out the damage Ishtok Base sustained from that imperial attack.”

  Fitz understood his need to get back and see what remained of his previous life. Wolf had lost his mercenary base, his home, and a few of his friends when the Empire attacked the Midworld Alliance.

  “The Founder’s Day celebrations start soon, and the Fleet always stands down for that, so I doubt she’ll have you out showing the imperial colors until after the holidays. That’s a week—ten entire days—you can take off. A few of them in the tank to get the augmentations done, then we can spend the rest of the holidays alone, just the two of us.”

  “Does that mean I get to miss out on all the balls and speeches and fancy dinners where I have to wear a bloody uncomfortable dress uniform and shake hands with a pack of idiots I’d rather punch in the face?”

  Fitz snickered. “We’ll see. Will you do it, please?”

  “We’ll see,” he parroted back to her.

  Ari approached, handing over the weapons they’d dropped in the struggle. “I don’t think anyone’ll be needing that stasis box,” she said. “From the looks of Ashcraft, those augies were serious about silencing him.”

  Fitz checked the ammunition counter before holstering the slug thrower. “Yeah, they went after him first; must have been worried we’d get some names, contacts and numbered bank accounts out of him, but I don’t know. His mind was pretty far gone.”

  “Do you think your old buddy Tritico is behind this?” Ari asked Wolf.

  “Assassination is Jan’s favorite strategy for dealing with inconvenient information leaks.”

  Fitz lowered her voice to keep the guardsmen from overhearing her remarks. “Then why not just have a sniper take him out? Why come after us, too? Tritico has to know his chances of killing any of us is practically non-existent.”

  “That doesn’t mean he wouldn’t try, he… Bloody hell.” Wolf straightened. “What if he only wanted to delay us?”

  Ari’s eyes widened. “So he could get to the Assembly Hall first and declare his claim to the throne.”

  In the two and a half centuries of the Late Scyran Empire, there had rarely been two simultaneous claimants to power, but on each occasion the senate had split its allegiance between them, resulting in a long and bloody civil war.

  “Captain, we need an escort to the Assembly Hall. Now,” Fitz called to the Praetorian’s commander.

  When Weiland didn’t jump to comply, Ari turned on him. “You heard her, Captain. I suggest you obey. She’s only slightly less intolerant of insubordination than I am.”

  The guardsman hustled his people into a formation and led the trio back down the art-lined corridor to a set of ornate double doors bearing the imperial seal.

  “You’re sure this is the right place and not another trap?” Wolf asked, the question earning him a scowl from the Praetorian captain.

  Fitz checked the structure’s map on her inhead display. “This is it.”

  Ari straightened her jacket, brushed her hair back, and nodded. The guards pulled open the doors, and they stepped through into the great oval hall. A wave of noise swept over them; the muttering of countless voices, the shifting of a thousand impatient bodies. At the sight of the tall, red-haired woman, the crowd stilled, sound fading as if every person there held their breath.

  The Dragon Throne dominated the far side of the room, surmounted by the golden likeness of a bull quolla, hood flared and fangs bared, poised to gobble up any pretender to the seat of power. To the right sat the military contingent, Maks Kiernan at the fore. The last remaining member of Ashcraft’s Triumvirate, today he wore his red uniform for the final time. The domestic Triumvir’s position on the left remained noticeably vacant. The woman who’d held that post had been caught trying to abscond with a sizable portion of the office’s budget, and if she watched today’s proceedings at all, it was from a high security detention cell.

  An assemblage of appointed or elected representatives from every star system, world, protectorate, and orbital habitat in the Empire sat behind the dais, here to pledge their allegiance to the new Emperor. In the gallery at the rear of the hall, packed shoulder to shoulder, were the glitterati—aristos, businesspeople, and entertainers who had bought or bribed their way into the decade’s most prestigious political function.

  Fitz commed Wolf. “Tritico’s not here.”

  He scanned the room for several seconds before replying. “Jan’s here. Somewhere. I’m bloody sure of that. He may not be ready to make his move yet, but he’s patient. And sneaky. He reminds me of a marquat, a nasty, poisonous lizard that hides in Rainbow’s sugarcane fields.”

  “Afraid of a little reptile?”

  “No, but I don’t like getting bit on the butt.”

  They followed Ari out onto the main floor, which glittered with a mosaic star map of the Empire. A cloud of camera-droids descended on them, buzzing on their repulsor fields. One focused in on Fitz, so close she saw the reflection of her cracked visor in its lens. It flitted around her and Wolf as if assessing the damage on their armor, then sailed away to join its companions clustered around Ari. Apparently battered SpecOps agents were not as newsworthy as a new Emperor.

  The party halted at the foot of the dais. Maks Kiernan’s smile broadened, and Fitz noticed him mouth the words, You did good, Kiddo. Unconsciously, her spine straightened; she raised her chin. A warm flush of pride spread through her body.

  The chamberlain banged his staff against the floor, his voice a velvet basso profondo. “Who comes before this Assembly to lay claim to the Dragon Throne?”

  Fitz, Wolf, and the Praetorian escort dropped to one knee, heads bowed. The hall’s acoustics and the camera-droids carried Ari’s voice to every corner of the gallery, and to all the people of the planet and beyond. The words were formal, the phraseology as old as the Empire.

  “I am Arianne Katerina Deva-Lorza Ransahov, and I lay claim to the Dragon Throne and demand an Oath of Fealty from all members of this chamber. Are there any to gainsay me?”

  The hall remained silent.

  “Do you accept me as your liege-lord?”

  The crowd surged to their feet, shouting their approval, the hall vibrating with their chants of Ari, Ari, Ari.

  Ari Ransahov stepped up to take her seat beneath the Dragon’s jaws, and her place in history.

  Along with Wolf, Fitz rose and turned to stand at parade rest facing the throng, hands locked behind her back. Savoring the moment, she was surprised to find tears welling up. Over the past few weeks her mission had seemed impossible at times, but she’d clung to the dream of finding a hero to save her empire. And she’d succeeded. Along with Wolf’s help, of course. She felt her lips curve into a smile.

  The time had come to move on to her new mission: keeping a head-strong ruler safe and on the right track to rebuilding a crippled government. She blinked the moisture from her eyes and scanned the audience, looking for any threat, any anomaly.
<
br />   She found one.

  At the railing of the highest balcony, a man stood motionless, watching, with arms folded across his chest. Amid a crowd that cheered and waved scraps of purple cloth to honor their new Emperor, that stillness marked him as a threat. She zoomed in on his face, found him studying the tableau on the dais. He smiled, directly at her, it seemed, and the malice in his gaze prickled across her skin.

  “Wolf,” she called on her comm, but before he could answer, Janos Tritico turned and faded into the crowd.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Running silent on her repulsors, the Elizabeth Angstrom II eased westward following the Arkus-Indos River, her underside clearing the sluggish, brown flow by scant centimeters. The rainforest canopy arched above the waterway, forming a living tunnel that scraped and splintered against her upper fuselage, threatening to amputate her communications whiskers and dishes.

  “Are you certain a vessel my size can make it through this?” Lizzy, the ship’s computer, asked Fitz. “If those branches get any lower, I’ll have to become a submarine.”

  “The shuttle racer I talked to swore he made it through here in a Lister Firecat. It’s not much smaller than you. Granted, that was dry season, and the water level was lower,” Another proximity warning shrilled. “A warship is a lot tougher than a racing shuttle, so I figured you could force your way through.”

  “It’s not your paint job that’s getting scratched.” With her new Chimera-class attack shuttle hull, Lizzy had become more conscious of her appearance. “If your pilot friend had a functioning vessel, why not fly to his destination at altitude? It’s simpler than blundering through this muddy wasteland.”

  “It’s a sport. They race down rivers or through canyons to prove who’s the fastest.”

  “Sounds like a good way to get yourself killed. And destroy a perfectly good ship.”

  “Hold up here,” Fitz instructed the ship. “The vegetation thins out ahead. Our target is half a klick away.”

  Her extra scrutiny of the Warren’s alleys and tenements had paid off. Intelligence picked up the trail of two augies, former Department of Internal Security assassins. When they’d broken cover, they’d headed south to an abandoned lodge here in the Kristavaar rainforest.