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

  She’d had the site under surveillance for several days when a man fitting Janos Tritico’s description arrived in a PS-5 courier ship, evidently the one he’d used to escape from Baldark. Her satellite feed confirmed the vessel still sat on the lodge’s landing pad, between a military cargo hauler and an atmospheric shuttle.

  Fitz glanced at the empty seat next to her. Wolf would have insisted on being here to capture Tritico—if he’d known, but she’d made a point of not revealing her plans yesterday when she kissed him goodbye before he went into the cyber-tank. He would have used it as an opportunity to postpone his augmentation upgrades. Again. Tomorrow night, when he awoke from the anesthetic, he’d find his old friend Jan ensconced in a high security cell awaiting trial.

  Alone in the darkened control room, Fitz watched the tactical feeds while the mission clock in the corner of her inhead display counted down. A rambling structure, built in a style a century out of date, sat at the edge of the river, trees pressing close on the remaining three sides. Red icons representing three squads of Special Forces converged on it, moving through the predawn darkness. She and her party would be the final arm of the trap to snap shut.

  The counter hit zero, flashing a message across her inhead that the SpecFor troops would be in position now, awaiting her signal to launch their assault. At her mental prompt, the console display transferred to her inhead.

  “Let’s go, Lizzy. Take out those ships and put us down on the beach.” Fitz felt the thrusters kick in as she stood and shouldered a pulse rifle. Her knees felt stiff and achy from sitting curled up in the seat so long. She injected a hit of painkiller from her onboard pharmacopeia, and headed aft.

  On the landing pad below, the three ships disappeared in an eruption of flame and whirling shards, the go sign for Major Baltasar to launch his offensive. Since Lizzy’s brain box had been removed from the old wrecked freighter and transferred into the shuttle, her personality had taken on a decidedly bloodthirsty slant.

  The ship flared hard and settled on the sand in front of the building.

  Fitz checked the ammo counter on the slug thrower. With Wolf in the tank, she carried his pistol on this mission. She’d grown fond of the antiquated weapon’s stopping power. When he wanted it back, she’d have to track down the original specs and have a copy made.

  “All ashore who’s going ashore,” the ship announced as she opened the airlock and dropped the ramp.

  Wolf might not be here for this morning’s mission, but his proxy was, in the form of Sergeant Bartonelli. Doubly suspicious of the Praetorian Guard after the attack at Ransahov’s coronation, he’d hired his own security team, comprised entirely of Gold Dragons mercenaries. While he underwent the implantation surgeries, he’d assigned the diminutive NCO to keep an eye on Fitz.

  For most of the trip, the mercenary had appeared to be snoozing, her chin against her chest, but as Fitz reached to shake the sergeant’s shoulder, her head snapped up. She scrambled to her feet, shouldering her heavy weapon—an over-under pulse rifle with an EM launcher for kinetic rounds. Her mismatched armor sported a Gold Dragons emblem on the plastron, and vivid green curls peeked from beneath a helmet painted to resemble a grinning skull.

  The only Normal of Fitz’s four-member team, she had the most combat experience, but then a mercenary like Bartonelli could hardly be considered your run of the mill Normal. The other three, although augies, didn’t have enough combat time between them to warrant a single battle ribbon, but she trusted them. So far, they were the only three to go through her vetting process and be reinstated since the reassessment of the augie program began.

  Even before the start of Ari Ransahov’s reign, lobbying to outlaw combat augmentations had been intense. The general population, and then the newsies, had taken up the cause, pressuring the Emperor to end the program. Only Fitz had voiced a dissenting opinion, pointing out that a properly staffed and administered program was worth maintaining. As a reward for her candor, Ari dumped the job of reorganizing CyberOps, rooting out all the bad eggs and establishing a small and tightly controlled organization, into Fitz’s lap—as an adjunct to her already hectic schedule as Head of Imperial Security.

  At first she planned to quietly recall all augies and pull their spikes to deactivate their augmentations until they could be certified for service, but after the newsies leaked the story, augies scattered like gerbats when the lights flash on. Sixty-five remained unaccounted for, sixty-five potential superhuman killers loose in the Empire, and all she had to do was track them down and neutralize the threat—by any means necessary.

  Fitz paused at the hatch. “Sergeant, stay with the ship, and make sure no one gets out this way.” If she got Bartonelli killed, Wolf would be rightfully pissed at her.

  “Begging your pardon, Chima, but your bossy little ship is quite capable of doing that on her own, and my orders were to stick with you, no matter what.”

  Fitz clenched her jaw. “We’re going in hard and fast. You won’t be able to keep up, and when things get hairy, I can’t take the time to look out for you.”

  Shouldn’t have said that to the merc.

  “No need to fret ’bout me, Chima. I got my friend here to watch over me.” The sergeant slapped a fresh power pack into the rifle and ducked through the hatch.

  The merc had taken to calling her Chima. Fitz wandered what it meant; no doubt dumb ass from the looks Bartonelli gave her.

  “Don’t worry, I’ll keep an eye on her.” Lieutenant Braylin Pike winked and followed the sergeant out. In his black SpecOps armor, the young man resembled a schoolboy playing dress-up. He was Fitz’s compiler, an analyst, and not combat tested. Only a year out of the academy, he hadn’t been an augie long enough to be corrupted by Tritico’s DIS, and had been the first to come in and surrender his spike after the recall.

  And he seemed to have a crush on Bartonelli.

  “Cover our backs, Lizzy.” Fitz herded her remaining two troopers out and followed them down the ramp.

  Captain Nickolai Costos had graduated from the academy two years ahead of Fitz and spent most of his career there as an instructor. Nearing the end of his service, that’s where he belonged, behind a desk. But she had to use what resources she could scrape together. The overweight, balding man had jumped at the chance to participate in a field op one last time before TKS sidelined him permanently. At the other end of the career scale, Becky Chin was still technically a cadet. Green and scared, she tried to hide it with tough talk and too-loud laughter. Fitz saw a lot of her younger self in Chin, and thought she’d make an excellent SpecOps agent—if she managed to survive her baptism of firepower.

  Fitz hit hyperkinetic speed and sprinted past Bartonelli. Weapons fire erupted out of the building and from a laser emplacement on the roof, aimed primarily at the SpecFor troops closing on the other three sides. They would keep their targets pinned down and contained, while she went inside with her people.

  Intelligence speculated that Tritico had several augies with him and an undetermined number of Normal troopers. The latter she could discount; they wouldn’t have the reflexes to hit an augie moving flat out in the half light, as the bolts kicking up sand around her proved.

  A shot pranged off her armor, briefly staggering her.

  Or they could get lucky.

  Fitz zig-zagged more creatively.

  She reached the terrace and vaulted over its low wall, taking up a position to one side of a set of ornate double doors. Costos covered the other side, breathing hard despite his augmentations. Fitz jumped out and drove the butt of her rifle against the door. The shock of the blow rattled up her arms, and she reeled back. They must have replaced the old glass panes with armorglass. Bartonelli appeared next to her, sooner than expected, and bumped her aside. With her pulse rifle on full auto, she walked the blasts up the door and down in a broad X pattern, following it up with a round from the EM launcher. Exploding clouds of armorglass shards and pieces of molding clattered and bounced across the marble floor of the em
pty dining room beyond.

  “That’s how it’s done, Chima,” the sergeant said.

  Yep, if connotation was any indication, Chima definitely meant dumb ass.

  Braylin Pike tossed a small object through the shattered doorway. The canister bounced and slid across the floor, coming to rest against the far wall and did…nothing.

  “Uh… is that all it’s supposed to do?” Pike asked.

  Fitz checked her inhead display. Still functioning. “You have your augs?”

  He nodded, tapping the side of his helmet. “But these are supposed to shield our spikes. Only the bad guys will get burned.”

  Cyber-tech’s newest toy, the EMP grenade, used the same principle as the remote she’d faced on Baldark: frying the circuitry on any exposed spike. Doctor Joachim DeWitt, the head of CyberOps, had assured her they’d be protected by the shielding in their helmets. He had that part right, but had the device shut down the other augies they were about to take on?

  Weapons fire erupted at the front of the lodge. That would be Major Baltasar’s diversion, hopefully keeping the majority of their opponents too busy to deal with the incursion from the rear.

  Fitz signaled the others to follow, and eased into the empty dining room, glass gritting under her boots while each footstep echoed off the barren marble floor. She fought the urge to sneeze, spawned by the stench of decades of rot and neglect. The space retained little of its previous opulence, its wall coverings water-stained, and woodwork riddled by insects. Exits on either side led to the service areas and kitchens, and at the front she noticed a pair of stained glass doors, one standing open. With hand signals, she directed Costos and Chin to check out what lay beyond that, then gestured for Bartonelli to watch the entrance they’d just blasted through. The twist of the sergeant’s lips suggested what she thought of the order, but she stayed to guard their backs. Fitz took the left, while Pike hugged the wall on the right.

  Weapon at the ready, she entered a corridor wide enough for service carts to pass. The faint but identifiable aroma of neubeast steak and eggs drifted from the door at the end, not old and decayed, but fresh enough to make her stomach churn. She slid along the wall until she could peer into the kitchen. The room had been stripped of its appliances, but a portable processor sat on the counter, jury-rigged to a power outlet. A thermal scan revealed no human-sized heat sources, only a pair of plates cooling on the table amid a puddle of spilled coffee from an interrupted breakfast.

  Where were they?

  A shout echoed from the dining room, followed by gunfire. She charged back down the corridor, sliding to a stop at the exit for a quick assessment. Pike was down, crabbing backward across the marble. As she shifted her perspective into HK, the blur stalking him resolved into a ginger-haired man pumping shots into the lieutenant’s chest. Fitz recognized the shooter from the attack at Dragonhalle.

  The augie pulled a combat knife and slashed for the gap between Pike’s helmet and plastron. Fitz brought her slug thrower to bear on the attacker, but Bartonelli moved in front of her, seeming to drift in slow motion.

  The sergeant loosed a burst from her pulse rifle, time distortion shifting the weapon’s bark down to a series of deep coughs. One of the bolts caught the augie on the shoulder, spinning him around and slowing him long enough for Bartonelli to get a clear shot. She took it. The force of the blow slammed him back into the wall, a dark stain blooming on his chest. He slid to the floor, leaving a red smear on the once elegant wall covering.

  Fitz’s consciousness shifted back into the normal flow of time as the diminutive merc offered Pike a hand and pulled him to his feet. He hunched forward, massaging his chest and coughing.

  “Damn, that hurts,” he managed between gasps.

  “It’ll hurt worse tomorrow.” Bartonelli punched his shoulder. “But at least you’ll get a tomorrow.”

  “Thanks, Bart. I owe you.”

  “No, thank you for keeping such a good eye on me.” The merc winked as she popped out her rifle’s power pack and checked the charge. She pocketed the cell and slapped in a fresh one.

  Sixty-four augies to go.

  Fitz crouched by the body of the ginger-haired man. “Ian Chorickus. My files say he was fond of using that knife, and he’s reputed to be Tritico’s chief enforcer.”

  “And his new bodyguard,” Pike said. “If he’s here, you can bet his boss isn’t far away.”

  A scream chopped off with the buzz of a pistol.

  “Came from that hall.” Pike nodded toward the body. “Same place he came from.”

  “Let’s see what our friend’s been up to.” Fitz rose and commed Costos. “You and Chin hold that door and don’t let anyone past. Keep an eye out for Major Baltasar. Sergeant Bartonelli…”

  Behind her helmet’s faceplate, the merc’s scowl showed entirely too many teeth for Fitz’s liking.

  “…you’re with us.”

  “Good call, Chima.”

  A series of exits led off the hall. They had to clear each opening as they leap-frogged their way toward the source of weapons fire and breaking glass. At the end of the hall, Fitz stepped into a medical bay, and slaughter. A weapon in each hand, a man methodically stalked the screaming med-techs, kicking over tables and desks to drive them from cover. He moved with a jerky stop-start motion that wasn’t quite hyperkinetic, but too quick to be a Normal. A woman broke from cover and ran for the door at the rear of the room. He put a single shot into her back, then kicked an overturned table aside, targeting the white-coated man behind it. The tech pleaded, sobbing.

  Fitz leveled the slug thrower at the augie. “Put the gun down.”

  The shooter blurred around, a needler in his right hand spat, and tiny projectiles whined past Fitz’s helmet and snicked into the wall.

  The slug thrower barked twice.

  Sixty-three augies.

  The tech uncoiled and lurched to his feet. His curly hair and dark eyes prodded a memory of their hyperkinetic flight through the underground imperial base, dragging the feckless doctor.

  “Von Drager?” she asked. Or should she call him August Lazzinair—the man who introduced the symbiont to humanity; their Doctor Frankenstein, as it were.

  He studied her for several heartbeats. “Oh, I remember you…you’re Youngblood’s woman friend. The last time I saw you…”

  Fitz interrupted. “Where’s Tritico?”

  “Left a couple of hours ago. In a big hurry.” Logan Von Drager wrung his hands as he looked at the carnage around him. “He left his augies to, ah…clean up the loose ends. Apparently that included me.”

  Fitz cursed under her breath. Tritico was one step ahead of her, as if he knew her plans. She’d been careful to limit the number of people aware of this raid, and had thought they all could be trusted. Obviously not.

  She bent to roll the augie’s body over, and the needler dropped from his fingers. Odd that he’d tried to kill Von Drager with what normally wasn’t a lethal weapon. Needlers were usually for delivering a knock-out drug. Unless he planned on taking the doctor with him. She reached to pick it up.

  “Be careful with that,” Von Drager said.

  “Thank you for the warning, Doctor, but I know how to handle a weapon.”

  “Not one like this.”

  Puzzled by his reaction, Fitz picked up the pistol. Von Drager reached out a hand to stop her, but as she flipped open the cylinder, he snatched his fingers back and retreated several steps. She examined the canister of close-packed black darts. The doctor seemed ready to crawl out of his skin. What had him so spooked? Were they poisoned? It might be worth hanging onto and checking it out when they returned to Striefbourne City, so they’d know what they were up against.

  “Pike, a set of tangle ties for our new guest.” She gestured toward Von Drager.

  “Wait! They held me prisoner here and tried to kill me. You rescued me. Go ask Youngblood, he knows I’ve been trying to get away from Tritico since Baldark. He can vouch for me.” He looked around. “Where is You
ngblood?”

  “He’s indisposed. Don’t worry, you’ll get the opportunity to talk to him later. Now let’s go.”

  On the way out of the med-bay, Fitz stopped to examine a dart embedded in the wall.

  “Don’t touch that.” Von Drager’s panicked words stilled her hand. She narrowed her eyes as she followed him out.

  The explosions and weapons fire from the front of the lodge had quieted by the time they returned to the dining room. Major Baltasar strode through the stained glass doors.

  “Colonel FitzWarren, my people are mopping up now. Most of the combatants surrendered, but a few made a run for it. We’re out chasing them down now.” His lips twisted as if he’d bitten into a rotten fruit. “These guys were Special Forces. I even knew a couple of them. Not that long ago, I’d have been proud to have any one of them guarding my back.” He shook his head. “This is a nasty business.”

  And Fitz feared that as long as Tritico was on the loose, it would only get worse. “I understand, Major. Your people did an exemplary job, as usual.”

  “You’ll have my after-action report on your computer in the morning.”

  “Chima, you better come take a look at this,” Bartonelli called. She stood across the room by the pool of blood—the empty pool of blood.

  Fitz contacted Costos on her comm. “Did you move the dead augie’s body?”

  “No, ma’am. We stayed out in the lobby, like you ordered.”

  Fitz knelt by the red puddle, reading the signs. A bloody hand print on the wall, smears from a person struggling to rise and the trail of red footprints leading across the floor. Once she would have dismissed her conclusion as impossible, but now she knew better. She thought-clicked on her comm again. “Lizzy, did you see anyone leave through the back?”

  “No, Colonel, but shortly after your party reached the building, I experienced a disruption to my systems. It cleared up only a few moments ago.”