Chapter 8

eight

. . .

Thaumas

I knew the bounty hunter would come for us. It was only a matter of time.

Kat and I were the juiciest prizes in this sector - a half-feral weapons savant and his equally lethal human mate. The Obsidian Syndicate had placed a king's ransom on both our heads, preferably detached from our cooling corpses.

So, it didn't surprise me when I caught the ozone stink of a cloaked ion drive skimming past the Crimson Claw's sensor array. Enraged, yes. Struck with a bolt of ice-cold dread, absolutely.

But not surprised. Never that.

I slapped the intruder alert on my command console, a harsh klaxon blaring through the gunmetal corridors. "All hands, stand to! Hostile contact imminent! This is not a drill!"

Kat burst onto the bridge in a riot of sleep-mussed golden hair and bared teeth, a pulse-rifle already braced against one coltish shoulder.

"How many?" she demanded, green eyes hard as agates in her fine-boned face. "What's our defensive capability looking like?"

I bared my fangs in a wild grin, twin plasma-casters whining to killing potency on either side of my captain's chair. "Just one ship, but it's a fast little fucker. Probably a modded ZX-109 Torrent with a cloaking rig."

I raised my voice over the rising cacophony of boots thundering on deck plates and energy weapons spooling to full capacitance. "All guns, stand ready! Blast that son of a bitch out of my sky the second you have a clear shot!"

Kat slotted into place at the gunnery console beside me, all lethal grace and murderous intent. "Aye aye, Cap'n," she purred, a bloodthirsty little smile playing about her lips. "Let's send this scaly bastard screaming back to hell."

I flashed her a fierce, adoring grin. Ishtar's frozen cunt, but she was magnificent like this - a falcon about to stoop on her prey, all savage beauty and implacable purpose.

The love of my life. My mate.

And the Seven helps the poor stupid bastard that thought to take her from me.

The Torrent flashed into view off of our starboard engine housing, a sleek black dart bristling with illegal weaponry. Its nose art snarled at us, a grinning neon skull wreathed in chrome flames - the calling card of Zarath's pet murderers.

"Steady," I growled into my headset mic, talons flexing on the yoke as I jinked and juked to keep our broadside angled AWAY from that fuck-off big plasma cannon. "Not yet, not yet."

The Torrent swerved, trying to line up a killing salvo. The instant before it could fire, I slammed the Claw into a screaming one-eighty and opened up with every fucking gun we had.

Kat was right there with me, her pulse-rifle chattering like a demon as she walked streams of super heated metal across the Torrent's nose and scanner array. A savage howl of triumph as she found an unshielded viewport and drilled the gunner behind it.

"Yeah baby!" she crowed, fairly vibrating with feral glee. "Suck brimstone and iridium, shit-eater!"

All across the Claw, gun crews and rifle hands whooped and snarled their approval as they poured kilotons of fire into the wildly jinking Torrent. Armor splintered and peeled away under the onslaught, whole decks open to the shrieking void as we chewed into bulkhead and bone alike.

But the Torrent was fast, far faster and more maneuverable than a ship its size had any right to be. It shrieked and spun like a Litharan ghost-bat, always seeming to wriggle just out of prime firing solution before our gunners could zero its vitals.

I swore sulfurously as a deft corkscrew sent a storm of pulse-bolts skittering off our forward shields. "Kroxing hell, what does it take to swat this mosquito?!"

A feral snarl from Kat as she bucked and twisted in her gunnery couch, the Torrent firmly in her sights. "The pilot, Thaumas! We need to take out the spirits-fucking pilot!"

Her hands flew over her console as she routed every spare joule of power from secondary systems into her gun's capacitors. "Keep us steady! I'm gonna drill that soul sucking son of a slime-mold right between his beady fucking eyes!"

"With pleasure," I gritted out, wrenching the yoke hard to port to keep the Torrent square in Kat's killbox. Proximity alarms shrieked as I threaded us through a writhing snarl of the bastard's own engine wash, the heat-bloom searing our shields to paper thinness.

But I didn't flinch. Didn't falter for a single screaming second. My whole world narrowed to the snarling dart-shape weaving and spiraling across our bow, to the diamond-hard focus of the gunner beside me as she poured a lake of fire into the void-chilled black.

"C'mon," Kat breathed, sweat pearling her brow as she rode her gun's bucking thunder. "C'mon, you scaly fuck, hold still, just for a second."

The Torrent jinked right. Jinked left. Tried to swoop down and away, thrusters incandescent against the star shot void.

"Fuck yeah!" she roared, slamming a fist against her console as the Torrent went pinwheeling away in a spume of crystallized gore and sparking circuitry. "Nail in the fucking coffin, bitch!"

I answered her feral whoop with one of my own, a raptor's scream of savage joy and vicious pride. "That's my girl!" I crowed, laying on the speed to run down our wounded prey. "Ishtar weeps for the perfection of your aim, beloved!"

She flashed me a fierce, flushed grin, green eyes snapping with unholy glee. "What can I say? I had a good teacher."

Her teeth glinted, tongue darting out to wet kiss-swollen lips. "A big, strong, ruthless motherfucker who taught me to put the fear of me into anything dumb enough to cross my sights."

I shuddered, my plates going tight at the blatant hunger in her voice. Ishtar, what this woman did to me.

But there was no time to explore that spark to kindling. We still have a job to do, a message to send.

And I intended to make it a red one.

"All hands, stand by to board!" I barked into my headset, angling us up and over the gut shot Torrent's wildly spinning bulk. "Marines to the boarding tubes! I want hunter-killer teams on every deck, purging any Syndicate filth still twitching!"

I hauled us around to match velocity with the stricken ship, our belly mere meters from its sparking, shuddering hull. "Kat, Raza, with me! We're going hunting for the head of this snake."

"Aye aye, Cap!" came the bloodthirsty chorus. My finest killers, the ones I trusted at my back above all others.

Family. Flock.

And if any of Zarath's scum laid so much as a finger on them, I'd flay the flesh from their bones and send them screaming to the Seven Hells myself.

The Torrent's corridors were a charnel house, choked with smoke and gore. Emergency klaxons warbled and shrieked, the few intact glow panels painting the carnage in stuttering, blood-red light.

I looped through the abattoir at the head of a wedge of heavily armed killers, Raza and Kat flanking me with teeth bared and weapons hot. We flowed from compartment to compartment like a tide of furious shadow, pulse-rifles and flechette launchers reaping a devil's bounty with every hammering salvo.

Most of Zarath's goons were already dead, bled out or spaced in the initial onslaught. Those few who still clung to life quickly realized the folly of resistance, throwing down their arms and pleading for a quarter that would never come.

Raza cut them down with contemptuous ease, his flechette gun buzzing like a hornet's nest as it chugged a kilo of razor darts into exposed flesh. He laughed as he killed, bellowing a saw-edged cackle that raised every feather on my spine.

Kat was a dancer, a duelist as she scythed down the hapless bastards unlucky enough to stumble into her gun sights. The pulse-rifle at her shoulder served as an extension of her will, an avalanche of fire and fury that left naught but smoking meat in its wake.

I had seen nothing so terrifyingly beautiful in all my long centuries. My mate, my match, a Valkyrie of blood and starlight, culling the unworthy with a smile like a scimitar on her lips.

Soon. Soon I would lay her down in our bower and worship every inch of her battle-flushed skin, paint her cunny with my tongue until she screamed my name to the uncaring stars.

But first, we had a bounty to collect. And if I knew the snake-fucking coward that owned this ship.

"Bridge, dead ahead!" Raza called, kicking a twitching body off his talons as he lopped towards the armored hatch. "I'm reading one life sign, but it's thready. Whoever's in there is leaking like a kroxing sieve."

"Probably our illustrious bounty hunter," I said grimly, flanking the portal with Kat at my eight o'clock. "Caught a gut full of shrapnel when Kat made his viewscreen one with the void. Poor bastard."

"Don't waste your pity," Kat spat, slapping a fresh power cell into her rifle. "Fucker was slavering at the chance to drag us to Zarath in chains. Would have done WORSE than kill us if he'd had his way."

"Too kroxing right," Raza growled, fangs bared as he cued up his suit's cutting torch. "Cock sucking piece of shit deserves to die slow for the grief he's caused. For the insult he's dealt our pride."

"Then let's give him what he deserves," I snarled, the old blood-heat rising in my veins like a crimson tide. "Cut this milk-drinking whoreson out of his hidey-hole and feed him his own entrails."

"With pleasure," Kat and Raza chorused, eyes alight with matching ferocity. My strong right hands, my devils and dark angels alike.

And if this waste of skin had dared to threaten what was mine.

Raza thumbed his torch to shrieking life, the white-hot blade sinking into the hatch's locking mechanism like a talon into flesh. The metal bubbled and ran, glowing cherry-red as the torch chewed through failsafe and blast shield alike.

With a tortured groan, the barrier crumpled inward and revealed a scene straight out of a nightmare.

The bounty hunter slumped on his command couch, his horned head lolling on a neck half-severed by a hail of shrapnel. Yellowish blood leaked from a dozen deep rents in his mottled hide, his breath rattling wetly in his shredded throat.

But his eyes were flat and pitiless as a serpent's in his ruined face fixed unerringly on Kat.

"There you are," he rasped, bubbles of bile frothing at his lipless mouth. "The little bird-fucker, and her feathered boy toy."

A bloody rictus of a grin, needle fangs bared in mocking triumph. "Did you really think, you could escape your fate? Outrun the eyes of Zarath Himself?"

Kat snarled, her rifle snapping up to fill her shoulder. "Zarath can choke on a bag of diseased dicks, you soulless fuck! He's never laying a hand or harpoon on me or mine ever again!"

"Poor little girl," the hunter wheezed, a fresh gout of gore splattering his chest with each word. "So naive, so arrogant in your delusions."

His eyes flashed, feverish with more than just pain. "You're already his sweetling. Bought and paid for the day he burned your world to ash. The day he culled you from your mewling, shit-smeared herd."

"Shut up!" Kat screamed, her finger whitening on the trigger. "Shut your fucking mouth, you psychotic son of a syphilitic whore!"

But the hunter only laughed, a wet, gargling rattle that sent ice water trickling down my spine. "He'll never stop, little bird. Never rest until he has his prize back in gilded chains."

His eyes flicked to me, alight with cruel amusement. "And as for you, Sir Knight, he has special plans for the beast that dared to steal his favorite toy."

I saw red. Heard the rush of my pulse in my ears like a drumbeat of damnation. My talons flexed, every atom of my being screaming for this whoreson's blood.

But before I could lunge, before I could so much as snarl my fury. Kat put three pulsing holes in the bastard's face.

"Fuck. You." she spat, her whole body vibrating like a plucked wire. "Fuck you, fuck Zarath, and fuck every crawling, slime-sucking thing that's ever thought to lay claim to me."

She drilled the corpse again, blowing gobbets of bone and brain across the smoke-choked bridge. "I am done being a pawn in this sick game. Done letting maggot-ridden assholes like you dictate my fate."

She drew in a shuddering breath, the light of a thousand murdered stars in her eyes. "When I meet Zarath again - and I will, mark my fucking words - it will be as a free woman. As a fucking Valkyrie, born of blood and void."

Her lips peeled back from her teeth in a feral slash of a smile. "And I will feed him his own cock and laugh as he chokes on it."

"Kroxing hail awls," Raza crowed, pumping a fist in the air. "Now that's the Kat Mayberry I know and love! Fierce as a Luxian hellcat and twice as mean!"

I couldn't speak. Could barely breathe through the storm of emotions clawing at my throat. Pride, love, rage, hunger, all tangled up in a snarled knot beneath my breastbone.

My mate. My goddess.

Ishtar, how I adored her.

I took a shaky step towards her, talons flexing with the need to touch. To feel her living warmth against me, an anchor against the blood-soaked madness seething behind my eyes.

"Kat," I rasped, my voice a stranger's in my ears. "Love, I, that was."

But before I could choke out another word, a hair-raising shriek split the air. A shriek of rending metal and sparking circuitry, underlaid by the telltale whump of a hull breach.

I froze, my blood icing in my veins. That sound, I knew that sound.

"FEK!" Raza spat, his eyes wild in his scaled face. "The drive core! It's going critical!"

Kat whirled to face him, her own face a mask of dawning horror. "What? How?! We scuttled the engines when we boarded!"

"The power surge from the bridge!" Raza snarled, already backing towards the ruined hatch. "Must have triggered a cascade failure in the containment fields!"

His fangs flashed, sharp and feral, in the strobing emergency lights. "We need to get off this fucking ship, right the fuck now! Before the core blows and takes half the sector with it!"

"Ishtar," I breathed, raw panic clawing at my guts. My eyes locked with Kat's, a thousand unspoken horrors flickering between us in that single, gut-wrenching instant.

Then we were running, flying towards the promise of safety beyond the crumpling hatch. Raza led the way, his flechette gun spitting death at anything foolish enough to stumble into our path.

I was a half-step behind, my plasma-casters whining with barely restrained menace. But the bulk of my attention, the lion's share of my focus locked on the lithe form pounding at my eight o'clock.

Kat ran like the wind, like the wrath of an avenging goddess. Her pulse-rifle sang its skirling war-cry, mowing down the last dregs of Zarath's goons, too stupid or suicidal to flee the doomed ship.

We were a storm, a maelstrom of fire and fury as we carved a path back to the life-pods. Bulkheads shattered and bodies burst under our onslaught, a charnel house of our own making.

But even as the kill-joy sang in my veins, even as the bitter copper of spent munitions coated my tongue...a sick dread churned in my guts.

The containment klaxons were shrill as banshees in my ears, underlaid by the rising whump of matter/antimatter annihilation. The deck bucked and heaved beneath our boots, the Torrent shaking itself apart in its death-throes.

We would not make it. Ishtar help me. I didn't think we were going to make it.

Kat must have sensed my despair, the clawing certainty of our impending doom. She risked a glance over her shoulder, green eyes wide and wild in her gore-spattered face.

"Thaumas!" she screamed, her voice cracking with strain. "How long?!"

I shook my head, helpless, hating myself for the defeat etched in every line of me. "Two minutes!" I roared back, the words tasting like ashes on my tongue. "Maybe less!"

Her face crumpled, a spasm of animal grief contorting her lovely features. But then, quick as a blown kiss, it hardened into a mask of pure, adamantine resolve.

"Then we make it count," she snarled, pivoting on her heel to face the oncoming tide of maddened scum. Her rifle sang as she poured fire into the frothing horde, a Valkyrie astride the bones of the universe.

My heart swelled, pride, and love and aching despair mingling into a heady draught. My magnificent mate, my bright-burning star.

I would die at her side. And count it a privilege.

With a scream that shook the dying ship to its bones, I charged towards the enemy, Raza a half-step behind. We crashed into the gibbering mass of Syndicate filth like a meteor into a mirrored pond, scattering them like seeds on the wind.

Talons flashed and pulse-bolts seared as we laid into the bastards with wild abandon. I was a thresher, a reaper in their midst, painting the bulkheads with steaming gore.

Dimly, over the clamor of combat and the shrilling containment alarms, I heard Kat screaming my name. Screaming for me to fall back, to regroup in her position.

But I was a million miles away, lost in the red haze of my own killing fury. This was where I belonged, in the thick of blood and agony, reaving a toll of flesh for the sins of soulless men.

I would kill and kill and kill until my last breath rattled in my shredded lungs. I would make a monument of Zarath's servants, a gory altar to lay at my mate's feet.

And if I died, if I burned to ash in the crucible of my rage.

So be it. I would die as I had lived - a warrior, a griffin, meting out justice at the edge of a blade. They pulled back as we pushed forth, blades first. Blood, cries, and mostly them injured. They retreated, leaving us gasping for breath. My head shook. "It's not over yet. A breather for us, a break."