Lapis wished her scarf was not so dirty, but she refused to put it anywhere near her mouth and nose, so suffered the harsh wind taking her warm breath and freezing her face. Patch rubbed the cold-induced tears from his eye and scrunched up his face as he peered at the black aircraft below, his patch lights racing from the center to the edges in straight lines.
She slipped her hand from her glove and shoved her bangs further under her hood, then re-donned it to readjust the leafless bush branches that helped hide them from the enemy. Not that they believed the mercs would notice them lying prone on a night-concealed cliffside so far above them, but caution was prudent.
She gazed through the seefars at the large mine entrance, where numerous red tridents milled about, doing nothing but poking, prodding, and managing loot. The opening had sliding doors, though one had not completely entered its slot; a giant dent kept it outside. The bully-boys had forced entry, and she wondered how they even knew about it. True, maybe a scouting expedition told them about a humongous clearing the size of the extinct royal palace complex in the Stone Streets. That made a certain amount of sense because why fly two dozen vessels to the location without a landing space, but who did the scouting, and what prompted their interest in the defunct Abastion mine in the first place?
Butchered remains of overgrowth piled to the sides proved that nature once hid the doors, and no doubt the khentauree had encouraged the natural concealment. Large holes in the dull metal arch hinted they had removed the décor, so as not to attract unwanted attention. She imagined an ostentatious sign to greet visitors, Kez’s large and smiling face plastered on it, hovering over flags and some kind of statuary, like the displays at temples in Jiy. She lowered the seefars and glanced at Patch.
“Do you think Hoyt’s men made it this far, to see this entrance?”
Patch lifted a shoulder in a half-shrug. “I’m not certain. They were up here for a few days, so maybe?”
“Well, why bring all that if you didn’t have a place to land?” She swept her hand to the clustered black metal Swifts and larger transports that sat in the clearing. Each one had red flares sunk into the surrounding snow, with tech lights on tripods that lit the doors and cargo bays, though the paths between held deep shadows. “They had to have known about this clearing, and who, besides Caardinva’s people, has been up here scouting? Just the shanks and that Beryl agent.” She looked at Tuft. “Did you notice anyone else up here?”
The two khentauree knelt behind them, arms crossed, a serious air surrounding them as they studied the enemy. She had worried about the snow and cold slowing them down, but Chiddle told her that they would need to be exposed to the elements for several days before sponoil flowed slow enough to interfere with their movement. After all, the first of their kind were machines of war, and they would prove limited in scope, if a single snowfall could derail them.
As if ice and cold could derail Tuft. She tamped down on her sarcasm; she managed two curt replies to the khentauree before he became silent and only communicated with Chiddle through their interior devices. Patch’s warning glare did not have an effect; he had not been frozen in a room as she had, and she saw no reason to extend pleasantries.
“No,” he said after a lengthy pause, in a buzz-free monotone. “But the Cloisters belong to Luveth and Dreamer, and I would not know if they discovered interlopers.”
Patch rolled onto his side, elbow stuck in the snow to prop him up, and regarded them with his no-nonsense chaser air. “So the shanks return to town, tell Hoyt of their adventures, and then Dentherion ships fly in.”
“How can you tell they’re Dentherion ships?” Lapis asked. She did not see much difference in them, compared to the ones Caardinva fled with at Ambercaast.
“They have empire military identification numbers. Since Jhor didn’t recognize the red trident logo, they’re either a secret branch or they’re mercs in the pay of a rich corporation or council member like Requet, who can buy older military models and not bother rubbing the identifiers off.”
“Jhor would recognize them?” Tuft asked, crackles in his tone. Lapis bristled for the absent man; who was he, to act suspicious when his own actions proved harmful?
“He worked as a modder for the Dentherion army,” Brander said as he continued to peer through his seefars. “That experience led him to Ambercaast and the khentauree there. He saw the harm the Dentherion military heaped upon ex-members by removing mods. He wanted to find a way to help those maimed and cast aside, and he thought if he discovered info about khentauree, he could come up with solutions for those people that would work within the confines of empire law.”
“Why do they maim their people?”
“They don’t want ex-miitary to have access to battle mods when they return to civilian life,” Patch told him. “Those aren’t ubiquitous; they’re only given to elite forces and the most promising combatants because it takes years to properly train in their use. Because of that, the Lords’ Council sees them as a danger when they go back home, so the law requires removal of what made them efficient soldiers.” He tapped his patch. “Military doctors remove the implanted mods, and it leaves them without eyes, without hearing, without arms and legs. Sometimes removing the mods kills the person, and Dentheria doesn’t care, doesn’t pay out to the grieving families because technically, those people no longer worked for the empire.”
“You are ex-military?”
“No. But I have an illegal mod.” He huffed. “All tech is illegal in the hands of anyone not designated by the empire. That’s how the puppet kings keep control—they have tech, the populaces don’t. Doesn’t stop rebels or the underground from using it, but it’s hard to find and expensive because of that.”
“I don’t see any foreign objects within the bodies below,” Tuft said.
“Neither do I,” Chiddle confirmed. “And their fight is over what gold thing they bring to the exit.”
Lapis smooshed the freezing seefars to her eyes and winced until they heated. While some mercs loaded riches into the bays, many had congregated at the exit, and from their body language, they appeared to scream at one another. Grim disgust filled her; she suspected they had not found what they came for, met with unexpected resistance, and decided to vacate before they lost more men. To compensate for their losses, they nipped the luxury, and everyone wanted their fair share. She could see a greedy merc boss carting off everything they could carry, smug at the extra wealth, without giving the peons a single, gold-plated whatnot. And those peons would not appreciate the slight.
“The khentauree say they are near the exit, but they do not move.” Tuft swiveled his head to the growing clash. “The red tridents don’t think they understand Lydissian. They don’t think Rin does, either. They speak of zapchains and confinements. They plan to take them as cargo.”
“What language do they think Rin speaks?” Patch asked.
“Meergeven. They think the blue deer speak Meergeven too, and do not question them, just threaten with their weapons.”
Of course they thought that about Rin, because the Meergevenis scientists handed him over. Hate for Reyanne punched through her carefully constructed calm, and Lapis shoved it back down. Her tense grip on the seefars caused them to shake, and she lowered them, fighting for emotional stillness. Patch settled his hand across her left shoulder, squeezing gently.
Why had she not taken Jhor’s words more seriously? Hate mingled with her thick, suffocating sense of failure, and the need to make the woman suffer what she so callously gave threatened to turn her mind to mush.
Brander planted his pack in the snow, his movement catching her attention. She buried her ill-will as he dug through a side pocket; the future held her revenge, not the present. He withdrew a metal box wealthy merchants used to store their smoking sticks, and popped it open. Inside, in a neat row, rested lockpicks. “I brought these,” he murmured. He touched two that had thick, blue rubber handles, a sign they were of Dentherion make. “The Jiy underground call them candysticks, because they always open something sweet. I can use them to short-circuit zapchains. They should work on any tech cuffs, too.”
Patch quirked a smile. “Hopefully they dump them off and leave them sit.”
Shouts echoed to them. Lapis eyed the exit with the seefars; the mercs punched each other, hard enough to send their opponents into the trampled snow. It grew into a brawl, then halted as the group escorting Rin, the khentauree, and the blue deer mercs exited. The lead pointed his finger at the squabblers, his face a brilliant red, and spit flew from his lips as he shouted at them.
A merc prodded Rin with the tip of his tech weapon to get his feet going. She recognized his blank stare before his raised elbows blocked his face from view. The men thought him ignorant; he bided his time, and when he struck, they would regret not taking him more seriously as they gasped their last breath. Making him clasp his hands behind his head would not prevent his violence. The khentauree followed, their hands confined by thin twine, heads bowed, looking as unthreatening as possible. The blue deer walked with stiff anger, and perhaps a tinge of pain; their bindings looked tight.
The group split, mechanical beings one way, the humans another. Rin and the mercs disappeared behind a cargo vessel while the khentauree stopped, and the tridents replaced the twine with sparking tubes.
“I lost contact,” Tuft said, agitated.
“Zapchains interfere with mods, so I’m betting they think they’ll keep khentauree subdued,” Patch said.
A fury-drenched scream rose to them. An underling rushed and punched the leader. He went down, the act crushing the fake civility that kept the mercs from tearing each other apart.
“What an awesome distraction,” Patch laughed with guttural loathing. “Let’s go.”
