Taming the Wildcat (Sargosian Chronicles) (8 page)

Jerking hard on the controls, she sent her bird into a sharp dive to avoid the large sections breaking away from the main ship. Sweeping a glance over the starscape, she found the source of the torpedoes.

A medium-sized destroyer, a Cutlass class—heavily modified--hovered at the edge of an asteroid belt. Tucked out of sight, it blended in with the larger chunks of space rock. It had been an ambush from the start.

“This is King, Talons squawk to let me know who is still out there.” Holding her breath, she prayed both to her God and even the Lady, the Goddess the Sargosians worshipped, that someone would answer her. She couldn’t be the last pilot left.

“Please, I can’t be the only one…” she whispered into the crackling silence.

Zeroing in on a bandit to her portside, she executed a barrel roll that shoved her into the side of the cockpit. Coming in on the pirate’s high-right side, she opened fire with her lasers, raking across the ship’s hull from stem to stern. It must have taken damage earlier from another fighter, because it had no shields left. Her shots sliced the hull with surgical precision in a diagonal line.

Ignoring the destruction she’d just wrought, and the life she’d just ended, she turned her burning eyes to look for her next target. Three more met similar ends as she worked her way toward the bigger ship.

“King? Good God, girl, you’re still alive?”

Peters’ voice broke through the red haze in her vision.
He was still alive!
Avoiding a line of laser fire aimed at her, she answered, “Peters? Of course I’m still alive, you jackass. Did you see the ship hiding in the rocks?”

“Yeah, sweet cheeks, I saw it. Please tell me you aren’t thinking what I think you’re thinking?” His voice sounded tired, as if he’d been to hell and back out here.

“Yeah, well you know me. If we stay behin—”

She didn’t get a chance to finish her sentence. Something slammed into her side. Hard. Her head rocked violently on her neck, smashing her temple into the canopy. Stars appeared in her vision, but she shook her head to clear it.

“Summer! Watch your four o’clock, chica,” Peters hollered through her earpiece.

Without seeing where she was going, she jerked back on the yoke and pushed forward on the thruster with all of her strength. Her insides rearranged themselves with the sheer force of the maneuver. While not as bad as it would have been if she had pulled the move in atmosphere, planet-side, it still hurt. A lot. She fought to stay conscious, the wound at her temple thudding as if a vicious gremlin pounded it with a mallet.

She completed the roll, her vision clearing as she rolled back level. Below her, right in her sights, was the bandit. She grinned, a feral expression. Pulling the trigger on a laser would have been fine if she had more room, but she didn’t. She didn’t have the distance. Stabbing her thumb down, she launched a mini-torpedo at close range and blew the thing to kingdom come. The backwash rocked her Eagle in its flight path. This close, there was nothing left of her enemy. Passing through the vapors, she looked up to thank Peters for the warning.

“Thanks, Peters. I owe you for that one, mi amigo.” She heard the relief in her voice.

He moved in next to her bird again, ready to join her in her crazy run at the Cutlass. “Yeah, yeah… I’ll add it to your tab,” came his smartass reply.

“Bite me, Peters. I have no tab with you.” She opened her mouth to make another comment, but she didn’t get the chance. As she watched, he simply disappeared in a flash of red light. The Cutlass had hit him with a full torpedo.

“
Kevin!
”

She automatically took evasive action, her body and instincts taking over as she screamed at the top of her lungs. She screamed so hard her throat burned and her voice cracked. Caution thrown to the wind, she hit the asteroid field at full speed, weaving between the giant space rocks as if they were merely a slalom course back home.

“You fucking bastards!”

Even though she knew they couldn’t hear her, she screamed at the enemy as she bore down on them. Tears streamed down her cheeks unchecked.

She came at the Cutlass like death from above, blasting their shield generators on each side of the bridge with deadly accuracy before peeling off again to disappear into the asteroid field. Hit and run. Fire and hide. Taking those out would remove the shield grid protecting the control center of the destroyer. Leaving a thick section of transparent aluminum between the captain and crew of the pirate ship and cold, hard space. She grinned, the expression humorless. She had two mini-torpedoes and a fully charged laser array. She could ride all the way in on a charge of fire and destruction.

They were all gone. There was no ship to defend. No friends to protect. Just her and the soul-stealing need for vengeance. Low on solid-state ammunition to fire, she’d use the fighter itself as the final deadly torpedo.

A final act, the least she could do to avenge them. There were too many pirates. She couldn’t win this. Not one against many. She would die like the rest. At least this way, she’d take the Cutlass and its senior crew out.

Lining up for her kamikaze run, she hit the thrusters and let out a battle cry that would have done a Valkyrie proud. Her heart seized in her chest. These were the last moments of her life. Pain filled her, stealing her breath.

She stared at the Cutlass in her sights, and a small voice in the back of her mind screamed at her. Screamed she hadn’t lost everything, that there was more in her life than her career. She gasped, Roz’s face foremost in her mind. It was said before one died their entire life flashed before their eyes. It didn’t. Instead, she saw a mix of memories and things that could be. Frozen, she saw Roz as he had been that last morning they’d been together. They lay on his bunk, skin against skin, just staring at each other. She’d memorized every single detail of his face and body. Looking into his eyes that morning, she had seen her future.

Like then, it now played out in her mind in incredible detail. She saw how her life could and should have been. Waking up next to him every morning for the rest of her life. Kissing him goodnight after they’d fulfilled their passions. Cooking for him. Building a home together from scratch. Introducing him to her family and them welcoming him in typical King fashion. Boy, that would have been interesting, for them to find out he could easily best all of them without breaking a sweat.

Perhaps some of the sweetest things she saw came from imagining how Roz would look the day she would tell him she carried his child. She could imagine the tender look on his face as she finally presented him with a daughter or son. With her luck, she’d probably have twins, since they ran in her family. She didn’t care, she wanted to give him everything.

Three days with him and she’d seen her future. She’d seen it when she looked in his eyes that morning, and she saw it now. It all flashed before her again, crushing her with the intensity of what she felt for him.

She slammed back to full awareness and the present with a gut-wrenching jolt. She could almost feel his arms around her and smell his warm skin. She remembered the way he’d plunge his fingers into her hair to kiss her.

This time, she noticed the tears streaming down her face. She sobbed uncontrollably. She couldn’t do it. She couldn’t go through with a suicide run. She couldn’t take the risk of never seeing him again. She loved him too much to give up her life like this.

Laser fire and torpedoes came at her so fast they were blurring. Of course, it could have been her tears, but she doubted it.

Spinning away, she aimed for clear space. She didn’t care where she ended up, just as long as she got out of this hellhole. She entered coordinates into her flight computer and hit the button. She did a blind jump, and left all the death and destruction behind her.

* * *

In the foothills of a planet in the ass-end of beyond, the name of which none of the Wildcats knew or really cared about, Roz looked around his men.

“Everyone got that?” he asked, swiping his hand over the dirt at his feet. He’d constructed a crude map of the terrain they were about to traverse. Looking about the small group, he received grim-faced looks in return.

Geared up for war, it hardly seemed possible that these lethal-looking warriors were the same ones he’d seen less than a week ago, falling over themselves to please a tiny human woman. Naked to the waist, they wore tactical rigs over camo-covered skin. The dark tattoos across their arms were artistically smudged with green and black, as were their faces. Each carried enough weaponry to arm a small Fleet marine squad.

They weren’t anything as nice as Fleet marines. They were Wildcats, and they were paid to kick ass.

“No questions, good.”

Straightening, he checked his rifle. He had a full charge and three other power packs in reserve. His backup weapon wasn’t energy but projectile. A nasty piece of kit from back home.

“Right, when we make contact, I expect nothing less than gratuitous violence from the lot of you. Just because we're on the Fleet’s payroll doesn't mean we need to give them the warm and fuzzies. Keep your fire groups tight, get in and kick their fucking teeth out in close quarters. Or you’ll be facing me tomorrow in the practice ring, understand?”

The response was immediate, if quiet.

“Yes, Lead!”

“Good, move out in two.”

He turned, trusting them all to cut the crap and do their weapons check before he signaled for them to clear out. As he did, Jei frowned, touching his earpiece. The section radio op, he was the only one in contact with their ship, hidden above them in orbit.

Roz paused. He knew Jei, and that look on his face didn’t bode well. Slinging his rifle, he checked his secondary weapon and shoved it back in its holster.

“Okay. Let me have it,” he ordered, looking directly at his unusually quiet second-in-command.

* * *

Dead. Jei’s words echoed in his head and slammed through his body like a hammer against an anvil. Pain was his world. It roared through him, starting at the empty place in the middle of his chest where his heart used to be and radiating outward.

She was gone. Summer was dead.

Her ship had been destroyed half a day ago. She’d been gone a whole twelve hours and he hadn’t known. He’d slept as the woman he loved…the only woman he’d ever loved, or would love…had been killed. Slaughtered by pirates as they attacked her ship. The Tipton was lost with all hands, including the fighter squadron.

He sucked in a breath as a fresh wave of pain washed through him. Tears coursed unheeded down his cheeks. Why was he even still alive? Why did his pathetic heart still beat? There wasn’t any point. Not anymore.

Not without her.

Dimly, he was aware of moving and his brain switching off. He reacted, or at least his body did, as he’d been trained to. As nearly a decade on the frontline had taught him to. The chatter-chatter of a firefight surrounded him as they made contact with the enemy.

Hatred and agony surged through him. His lips twisted bitterly as he lifted his rifle and picked his targets. With lethal precision, he cut the enemy down, feeling nothing as bodies hit the deck. He felt nothing but pain. No empathy, no joy, no concern for his own safety.

There was just pain, and nothingness. Killing.

The ultimate warrior, he was the product of generations of breeding for war. He’d wanted to follow in his parent’s footsteps and become the legendary warrior his father was… He’d wanted to have people talk about him with the same awe.

He’d done it, molded a bunch of clan-less warriors into the most respected mercenary unit in the galaxy. He’d carved himself a reputation from the bodies of his enemies and written his name in their blood right there in Sargosian history.

He was Roz, born to warriors and disowned man. The Wildcat no one could tame.

Right now, he’d have traded all of that for just five more minutes with the woman he loved. Hell, he’d have settled for seconds…just long enough to see her one last time, to hear her laugh, or hold her in his arms.

His rifle stopped firing. He pulled the trigger again, but the click-click-click of an empty power cell greeted his ears. Swiping a hand down, he discovered all his power cells were gone.

“Incoming. Close quarters,” Jei’s voice bellowed, lost somewhere in the smoke and fire to his left.

Roz grinned as he drew the heavy combat knife from across his back. For an instant, he saw her face in his mind, tears streaming down her cheeks and pain in her eyes as she reached for him. Needed him. And he hadn’t been there.

“Don’t worry, baby. I’m on my way.”

The fight was bloody and brutal. After generations of trench warfare, the Wildcats excelled at close quarters combat. And none were better than the Ninth Twelfth Wildcats and their blond leader. Madness and cold fury seeped into his very bones. He moved, cutting down the enemy left and right. Anyone who strayed into his path was fair game. They stood no chance. He felt no fear, or remorse as his blade flashed in the sunlight, until it was coated scarlet with blood to match the layer over his skin.

Then there were no more enemies, but there was also no pain. Roz stood in the center of a pile of bodies, chest heaving. There was no pain, as long as he focused on the killing, there was no more pain.

“Boss?” Jei ventured, stepping into his line of sight with his hands carefully raised. “It’s done. It’s over.”

Roz turned toward him and felt nothing.

“It’ll only be over when I’m dead.”

“Oxygen levels down to five percent. Critical level. At this rate, remaining oxygen will be depleted in three hours.”

Exhaustion beat at her. She had shut down all non-essential systems on her fighter to conserve power for the life support system. Her wild jump had managed to get her away from the remaining pirates, but had dropped her in the arse-end of beyond. Without a navigation reference, she had no idea where she’d ended up, or what direction to head in, to hit a space lane. With zero fuel, she couldn’t afford to wander. Even half a click might put her too far in the wrong direction. That’s if anyone were even looking for her.