Page 34 of Fifth (Intergalactic Warriors #5)
“What if we don’t make it to after?” The question clawed its way up before she could stop it. She hated giving voice to her fear, hated how small it made her, but the thought of him collapsing was worse.
“Then I will not need a med unit.” His attempt at levity startled her, afleeting crack in his usual iron tone.
For an instant it almost made her want to laugh, though the sound stuck hard in her throat, fighting with tears.
“But we will make it. Iwill carry you if I must.” His certainty pressed into her like iron, steadying even as it threatened to smother, and she was struck by the sharp ache of wanting to believe him completely.
“I can run.” She needed him to believe it, needed to prove she wasn’t just a burden he dragged through fire andwire.
“I know,” he said softly. “You have.” The gentleness in his tone caught her off guard, leaving her both steadied and raw, wishing she could trust that promise as much as he seemedto.
“What now?”
“We move,” he said, and she heard the word inside her bones.
The world narrowed to motion, heat, and the certainty of his hand.
The last ten yards to the ravine might as well have been a mile.
They reached it and fell together down the leaf-slick slope, sliding to the bottom in a tangle of limbs and dirt.
She rolled and fumbled for the pistol Locus had shoved into her hands when they fled the sniper’s nest in the barn, acold heft, both alien and necessary.
Locus rose with a broken branch he wielded like aclub.
“Run,” he said. “Now.”
They ran.
They broke through the last stand of trees. The fence cut the world ahead, more razor wire bright as fishhooks. The same sluice of rock waited. Dawn caught the wire and turned it to knives. Hunters spread wide, arguing about angles and who’d get the grab if the quarry bolted.
“Now,” Locus said.
He put his shoulder to the sagging wire and shoved. Barbs bit. He held it without a sound. “Slide.”
She slid. Stone kissed her cheek, then spit her out on the other side. She turned and reached back, hands catching his forearms as he forced through. The wire tore fresh lines across his back. He dropped beside her in a controlledfall.
Floodlights flared. Hunters surged, shouting, each claiming the prize. Rough hands seized Hannah’s arms, yanking her upright. Others slammed Locus to his knees. She kicked and struggled, but there were toomany.
Voices snarled—”Mine—caught—saw ‘em first—pay up—”
Locus’s voice cut through, cold and absolute. “Day has come. We are outside the gate and inside the encampment. By your law, we win.”
They roared back, fists and rifles raised, disputes turning vicious. The headman stood on his platform, arms lifted for quiet, grin strained, voice drowned by fury. Coins scattered. Arguments snapped into fights.
Locus’s words carried over them, unshaken. “The sun has risen. We passed your gate. The trial is over.”
The camp dissolved into riot, guards fighting gamblers, hunters clawing at hunters for prize and coin. In the middle of it, Hannah and Locus stood bloodied, breathless, unbroken, survivors by right, no matter what the mob decided.
The headman slammed a hand on the railing, shouting something she couldn’t hear. Three rifles swung toward Locus. Aman behind Hannah yanked her hair back to bare her throat, snarling about the bonus.
“Touch her,” Locus said, rising through the hands on him like a storm, “and I will end you all.”
The sun lifted over the trees and lit his eyes. Amethyst flared to wildfire.
Everything stopped for a single beat—the pause before the world broke.
Then a shot cracked from beyond the floodlights.
The headman flinched.
Sparks burst from the loudspeaker horn, metal shrieking as it spun on its bracket.
The crowd ducked. That moment of flinch was all Hannah needed.
She slammed her heel into the instep of the man fisting her hair and tore free.
Locus surged up through the hands on him like the ground itself was throwing him.
Arifle butt swung. He caught the stock in one palm, twisted, and sent the owner into another man so hard both wentdown.
“Stand down!” a hunter screamed. “He is mine—”
“He is mine!” another bellowed, shoving forward.
The perimeter trucks gunned engines, floodlights slewing. Men shouted over each other. Someone fired wild. The shot struck a drum stacked beside the generator. Fuel gouted in a silver sheet toward the nearest oil-drumfire.
“Locus,” Hannah rasped.
“I see it.” His voice was iron. “Get low.”
The spill touched flame and took. Fire raced, climbing the drum in a roar. Men stumbled back, cursing and kicking sparks. Asecond shot snapped. Another drum bled. The ground lit with veins offire.
“By your law,” Locus called, voice carrying like a clarion through panic, “the trial is ended. Call them back.”
The headman yanked the ruined loudspeaker toward his mouth, spit flying. “No one quits! Bring them—”
The loudspeaker gave a final sputter and died in his hands, coughing static as sparks snapped through the wires.
Hannah couldn’t tell if it was a bullet or the fire cutting power to the generator.
And she didn’t care. Dropping to one knee, she steadied herself the way Locus had taught her: aim low, eyes open, breathe.
She squeezed the trigger. The nearest floodlight exploded in a shower of glass, darkness flooding the gap.
Another hunter fired wild at the sound, his bullet striking the leg of the light mast. Metal groaned in protest.
The mast toppled like a tree, cables whipping sparks as it came down. It smashed across the headman’s platform, crushing two guards beneath twisted steel. Chaos erupted. Gamblers scattered. Hunters lunged. Skinners rattled and hissed in their cages as stray rounds ripped across plywood fronts.
The first cage latch blew under a stray bullet.
The Skinners spilled out in a clatter of legs and shell, mandibles scissoring.
Men whooped, then screamed when the insectoids went for them.
Another latch popped. Ahandler jabbed with a pole.
The creature dragged him closer, serrated mouthparts clacking. Panic beat theair.
The headman stumbled across the ruined platform, grabbing for balance, one hand still white-knuckled on a gold-topped cane. He went for the pistol at his belt. Locus vaulted the rail, clearing it easily. Aguard rose. Locus struck once and the man went boneless.
Hannah shoved through the crush, pistol low the way he’d shown. Ahunter barreled at her, grin promising things she’d burn the world to stop. She pressed the pistol to his knee and pulled the trigger. He folded, screaming. She kept moving.
The generator took fire and blew. The concussion slapped her breath away. Heat rolled over the yard. Floodlights died in a chain. Darkness bucked and surged. In the ruin of light and flame, Locus found the headman.
He didn’t seize his throat. He didn’t break him outright. He wrenched the gun hand until the pistol fell. Then he set the headman on his knees at the tilted lip of the platform, eye toeye.
“Call them back,” Locussaid.
Sweat ran down the headman’s face, cutting pale paths through soot. “You think you can come in here and—”
“Call them back,” Locus repeated, softer. It raised the hairs on Hannah’s arms more than a shout.
“You’ve already lost,” the headman spat. “I’ve got money on every—”
“You have nothing. Not now.” Locus’s tone never shifted. He lifted his chin toward the yard where Skinners tore handlers, where trucks fishtailed in fire, where hunters clawed each other faster than sense. “Call them back.”
The headman’s gaze skittered, then came back mean. “Kill the girl,” he screamed. “I want the—”
Hannah shot the headman’s cane. The gold head burst and wood split. She didn’t know she’d moved until the report faded. Locus looked at her over the man’s shoulder, and some thread ran hot between them that had nothing to do with guns orlaws.
“Last time,” Locus said.
The headman tried for a smile and found none. “Boys—”
“Enough,” Locus said, and pulled.
He dragged the man across the slanted deck to the rail and pinned him with one forearm. With the other hand he wrenched the platform’s release lever—an old hinge refitted with cheap steel. Bolts sheared and the front half of the stage dropped like a trapdoor.
The headman went with it, legs catching in the fallen mast, his body slamming against the twisted steel. Ascream tore loose, then stopped as the weight pinned him hard. The platform groaned and settled, and the yard went very quiet in the way only shock can bring.
A single Skinner clicked and hissed as it skittered across the fallen mast and tested the headman’s shiny boots with its mandibles. Hannah held her breath without meaning to. Locus let the silence sit for the length of a heartbeat and then spoke, not to the headman, but to theyard.
“The trial is finished,” he said. “Lay down your weapons.”
Some men ran, tripping over each other in their haste to escape. Others flung their weapons down and dropped to their knees, hands raised high, eyes wide and white withfear.
Sirens rose faint and far beyond the preserve, local, not planetary. The fire had lit the sky. The law that’d slept through purchased nights was waking to a blaze that couldn’t be ignored. Men who’d once swaggered began to scatter like roaches when the kitchen light comeson.
The headman was still pinned where the platform had dropped, gasping shallow breaths.
His eyes rolled, finding them. He tried to speak, but before another word left his lips, one of the freed Skinners skittered across the mast. With a swift strike it ended him, silent and sure.
The crowd fell still, the suddenness of it cutting deeper than any threat.
Locus and Hannah wasted no time. He hurled the weapons of the fallen into the fire.
She ripped the power cables from the last floodlight.
Together they smashed open the headman’s ledger box and flung credit chits into the mud.
Flames licked the scattered pieces, names and bets exposed to every eye, burning away the illusion of safety.
Gasps turned to curses as the truth spread through themob.
The last fight guttered out. Skinners slipped to the fence and vanished into scrub. Men who had strutted now scattered, fear making them small.
Locus touched his wrist and connected with Sixth. “Headman dead. Take down his men and release Hannah’s brothers. Transporting up.”
For a brief moment, Hannah and Locus stood side by side on the ruined platform, surveying the yard in silence. The fire painted everything in ruin and ash. Then, the air shimmered around them, and they were transportedaway.