Rath's Gambit (The Janus Group Book 2) (19 page)

“Mind giving me a hand?” Rath asked. “I need to get my friend home, he’s in a bad way.” He tapped Beauceron’s phone against a payment scanner at the table, sending the bouncer a fifty dollar tip.

“Sure,” the bouncer said. They hefted Beauceron up, each passing an arm around their shoulders, and half-dragged, half-carried him to the front entrance. Rath pulled Beauceron’s phone back out and used it to summon his air car.

It was a short flight to Beauceron’s apartment, where Rath parked the car, then triggered an EMP grenade before getting out. He dragged Beauceron up to his apartment, stopping twice to rest. Beauceron’s holophone and unconscious fingerprint allowed him inside, where he quickly shut the door behind him, before a second EMP grenade ran out. Finally, he set Beauceron down on the bathroom floor, laying the detective’s head carefully on a rolled-up towel. He made three trips to the kitchen, grabbing a variety of different food items and stacking them in the bathtub, before taking a pillow and blanket off of Beauceron’s bed.

“That ought to keep you comfortable for a couple weeks,” he told Beauceron’s unconscious form. “I’ll be back before you know it.”

He scribbled the words
DO NOT TOUCH – motion sensitive bomb on outside of door
, on the inside of the bathroom door, then added
Bomb deactivates in two weeks
, and after a second of contemplation:
Sorry.
Rath shut the door and then flipped open his Forge, waiting while it built a multi-purpose grenade. As he waited, he bought himself a ticket to New Liberia on Beauceron’s phone. Then he attached the grenade to the door’s outer surface, setting it to
Stun
and activating the motion sensor and timer functions. He left Beauceron’s phone on a side table by the living room couch, and set off one more EMP grenade before leaving the apartment. 

18

Paisen stepped into the room and grimaced. It looked like a kindergarten classroom, with faded, soot-streaked posters of the alphabet and numbers tacked up around the walls. Molding corpses huddled beneath the tables in the room, in a futile attempt to seek shelter from the bombs. Paisen gave the tables a wide berth, and concentrated her search on the cabinets and shelves lining the walls. She found a number of toys with electronic circuitry, and dumped them into the trash bag she was carrying. Finished, she left hurriedly, and found Grip back in the main hallway, prying lockers open with a crowbar and then tossing their contents onto the floor.

“That’s the fourth one,” he told her, when he saw her.

“The fourth what?”

He grunted as he strained to wrench another locker door off its hinges. “Unh. The fourth scrap-hauling team that’s been attacked by Warriors this week. They’re looking for you.”

The locker spilled open, and a musty backpack fell onto the floor. Paisen stooped and unzipped it, finding an old datascroll inside. She slipped the device into her trash bag.

“Let them look,” she said.

Grip shook his head and set the crowbar down. “I need a drink of water. You want anything from the sled?”

“No,” Paisen said. “I’m going to check the classrooms on this side of the hall.”

She spent ten minutes sorting through a music room, stacking the metal instruments into a large plastic tub, but when she dragged the tub back out into the hall, Grip had not returned. On instinct, she set the tub down and cranked up her audio implants. It was entirely quiet.
Should have heard him moving around outside,
she thought, frowning and taking hold of the knife in her belt. She traced Grip’s path back to the building’s lobby, but before stepping out of the corridor, she stopped, sniffing as a gust of wind blew in through the building’s shattered windows.

Body odor. Grip’s … and several others.

Paisen grimaced and made her way back down the corridor to the roof access panel she had seen earlier. Standing on a chair, she slid the panel back, then hauled herself up onto the building’s roof, flattening herself against the flat tarmac. Her radiation badge buzzed gently, warning her that the roof was mildly contaminated. She ignored it. The roof was edged with a low wall that hid the street from view, so she crawled to the side of the building, and slowly pushed herself up off the roof, tilting her head so that her left eye was the first thing to crest the wall.

In the school’s driveway, Grip was kneeling with his hands behind his head next to the hoversled. A Warrior armed with an auto-pistol stood behind Grip. Paisen saw another Warrior seated on the sled, holding a sledgehammer. Two other Warriors stood covering the entrance to the school, both armed with compound hunting bows, but only the one with the auto-pistol bore the red tattoo on his cheek – a bird’s skull, this time. She lowered herself back down, and crawled to the other side of the roof. She saw no one at first, but when she raised herself higher, she spotted a fifth gang member just below her, covering the back of the school. He looked to be holding a mace of some kind. Paisen shifted several feet forward, then silently levered herself up on top of the wall, before dropping off. She rolled as she landed, letting her momentum carry her into the back of the Warrior’s legs. He toppled backwards with a cry of alarm, but Paisen straddled his chest a split second after he landed, pinning his mace under one boot, knife to his neck.

“Drop it,” she ordered.

She walked him around the side of the building, knife still pressed at his throat, using him for cover. The two bowmen drew their arrows back as soon as they saw her, but the tattooed man with the pistol merely smiled.

“Well, now,” he chuckled. “You’re as feisty as advertised. We’re going to enjoy this.”

Paisen pushed her hostage forward, forcing both of them closer to the group by the hoversled.

“Are you proposing a prisoner swap?” the bird-skull Warrior asked. He indicated Grip with his pistol. “This piece of shit, in exchange for my man, there?”

Paisen shook her head. “No, you can keep him.” Grip’s eyes went wide with shock and alarm. “I’m taking this one with me as a hostage,” Paisen continued. “Drop your weapons, and I’ll let him go when I get back to the compound.”

The Warrior lifted an eyebrow. “Is that so? Betraying a friend to save your own skin, eh? Your survival instinct is admirable. But I’m afraid I happily betray my friends, too.” He lifted the pistol, and casually shot Paisen’s hostage in the chest. The man stumbled forward, groaning and coughing up blood. “He was a lousy fighter, anyway. Now drop the knife.”

Paisen glanced at the two bowmen, judging distances and angles. At last, she flicked the knife into the ground at her feet, and raised her hands in surrender. The bowmen covered her while the Warrior on the sled placed her in metal handcuffs. They cuffed Grip, too, and dumped both of them onto the bed of the hoversled.

“Let’s head back to base, boys,” the bird-skull Warrior said. The hoversled fell in behind him, and the group set off across the city.

* * *

From the looks of the church, the Warriors had spent considerable time and effort fortifying the ancient stone building that served as their base of operations. Sitting in the hoversled’s cargo bed, Paisen saw a deep moat, bricked-up windows with small weapons ports, and a serpentine of razor wire leading to the church’s main entrance, to force would-be attackers to double back multiple times as they approached the thick wooden doors. A guard holding a rifle greeted them from the church’s bell tower. The sled stopped, and the tattooed Warrior cut the cords around Paisen and Grip’s ankles, allowing them to climb off the sled. The heavy doors swung slowly open, and they followed the Warriors up the marble steps and into the church.

Inside, little of the original church remained. Broken pews had been stacked for firewood along outer walls, doubling as fire steps for defenders to stand on in order to access the firing ports in the windows. At the head of the church, the great stone altar served as a map table, and seven Warriors stood around it, deep in discussion. The rest of the church’s floor space was taken up with a field kitchen, and a dozen gang members sat talking and eating at tables and chairs scattered around the room. Paisen guessed that the gang slept in the crypt underground. None of the people seated around the floor bore tattoos, but all of the men by the altar had them.

The Warrior with the bird skull tattoo took Paisen by the elbow and guided her down the central aisle of the church. “Yo!” he shouted. “Where’s Wingar?”

“Out hunting,” one of the men by the altar replied.

“Well, radio her to come on back in. I got what she’s looking for.”

At that announcement, the men turned from the map table to examine Paisen as she approached. The oldest of them, his stubbled hair greying at the temples, stepped forward. He wore a pistol belt and a tactical vest with a radio on it. The pistol was an antique, Paisen saw – a revolver with an ornamental handle. The red skull on his cheek was unique, too: it was some kind of large predator that she didn’t recognize, and it bore a crown.

“Prisoner Potfin,” the man said, looking her over. “Five years, breaking and entering. An R&D facility, if my sources are correct.”

“You must be the king of the dead animals,” Paisen replied, nodding at his tattoo.

He laughed, but his eyes were hard, and icy cold. “Mm. I’m Mats. Where did you serve?”

“All over,” Paisen said.

“Special operations?” Mats asked.

“More of a freelancer,” Paisen corrected. “But if you’re hiring, I’m interested.”

Mats cocked his head to one side. “Your audition was impressive. But I’m afraid reputation is everything in these parts, and you’ve sullied ours. So you’re going to be an example – a warning, if you will. A reminder of what the Warriors do to their enemies.”

He stepped closer to her and leaned in, taking a deep breath as if sampling the bouquet on a newly-poured glass of wine. Mats turned to the other Warriors. “Fresh meat.” He smiled. “Never get tired of it.”

They laughed, and Paisen smiled, too. Mats frowned at her. “You’re not scared?” he asked.

“I can be, if that’s what turns you on,” she told him.

Mats’ laughter was genuine this time. “I like you. You’re a survivor, like me. But we’re still going to break you for what you did. I’m going to go first, then each of my men are going to have a turn. And I look forward to seeing what Wingar’s got planned for you.”

“Are we talking about rape or torture, here?” Paisen asked lightly. “I just want to be clear.”

Mats slapped her hard across the face, then fixed her with a harsh glare. “It’s going to hurt,” he continued, as a trickle of blood ran down from the corner of Paisen’s mouth. “But we’re not going to kill you. And then weeks from now, when you’re just a shambling, incoherent shell of a human being, I’m going to parade you back into the compound, so that all your inmate friends can see what happens when you fuck with the Warriors.”

The Warrior holding Paisen’s arm pushed her to the ground, and she felt Mats drag her back to the altar, throwing her so that she slid for the last few feet and then slammed hard into the stone. Next he yanked her arms up and slipped a link of the chain between her wrists over an iron hook mounted on the front of the altar. The chain caught on the hook, pinning her arms up over her head. Mats pulled her feet out straight, stretching her flat on the ground, then methodically stripped her from the waist down, before cutting off her shirt. On the floor below, the gang members stood at their tables and pushed forward, clustering in a group below the altar for a better view. Paisen saw one of them grab his crotch, grinning in anticipation. One of the tattooed Warriors by the altar took a swig from a bottle of liquor, and then passed it to his friend. Grip was kneeling in front of the Warrior who had captured Paisen, eyes closed, shaking in fear.

Mats stood over Paisen for a minute, eyeing her naked body. Then he slipped off his gun belt, and let it fall to the floor by their feet. 

19

Inside the abandoned cabin, Rath checked the chains one last time, ensuring they were firmly attached to the wall. On the floor nearby, the two prison staffers sat close together, watching him warily as he completed his final checks. The woman flinched when he came close, but he merely tested the chains where they were attached to her wrist cuffs, doing the same for the man. Rath studied the man closely, adding his face to the others he had collected in his memory. Then he set the box on the floor next to them and removed their gags.

“You have food and water for two weeks,” he told them. “It’s not going to be comfortable, but you’ll live.” He held up the electronic box. “This box is programmed to open at the end of one week. It contains a key to your handcuffs. So at that point you’ll be able to get out of here. You need to head south,” he pointed behind them. “That way, understand?”

The man nodded.

“Okay, we’re about half a day’s walk from the nearest settlement. There are no large predators on New Liberia, so just take some food and water, and walk south until you hit the road. Take a left on the road, and you’ll reach the town in under an hour.”

“What are we supposed to tell people?” the woman asked.

“Tell them whatever you want,” Rath told her. “I don’t care. I’d probably tell them you were kidnapped, since that’s what happened.”

“You won’t come back for us, or something like that, if we tell them about you?” the man persisted.

Rath laughed. “No. I’ll be long gone, fingers crossed.” He stood and hefted his Forge onto one shoulder, then showed the man a set of car keys. “But I’m stealing your truck. Sorry.”

The penal colony was less than an hour’s drive away, so Rath had plenty of time to adjust his appearance, matching the features of the man he had kidnapped. He was careful to stay within the speed limit, though he saw few other cars on the road, and certainly no Territorial law enforcement. At the facility’s gate, he flashed the man’s badge and smiled at the security guard, who waved him through. He parked, picked the coffee mug out of the vehicle’s cup holder, and walked up to the brick building, his feet crunching across the gravel lot. The man’s desk was right where he had told Rath it would be; Rath sat down, booted up the computer, and accessed the prisoner database.