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The three remaining charged Fal’ran, but he held his ground and kept firing. One dropped from ten paces away. One from five. The third, with a look of terror recognizable on her alien face, peeled off and tried to run, but Bar’in dropped her with a round through the plate on the back of her neck.
“Thank fuck!” Bar’in’s muzzle disappeared from the roof. A handful of seconds later, he, Tar, and Sazahk stumbled out of the broken doorway. Fal’ran swept his gun around the open area, too keyed up and full of visions of Patrick with a Soldier’s pincers around his throat, to be relieved.
“Fal’ran?” An energy burn streaked across one of Sazahk’s high cheekbones. But other than that, he looked unharmed. “Fal’ran!”
“Hey, Fal’ran.” Bar’in grabbed his shoulder and shook him.
Fal’ran dragged his eyes to Bar’in, shaking and shivering, his gun rattling in his hand. “He…We need…” To leave. Patrick had told them to leave. To escape. But he couldn’t…
Bar’in whipped his head back and forth. He grabbed Fal’ran’s other shoulder and shook him again, eyes wide and nostrils flaring. “Where’s Patrick?”
Chapter Nineteen
“Patrick Smith. Battalion Four. Squad M.”
Burning, sizzling pain dripped down the exposed side of Patrick’s torso, rolling over his ribs and searing a path down to his hip bone.
The glass-tipped bullet in front of his eyes waved back and forth, and the hissing female voice asked again in near-perfect Universal. “What. Is in. This. Bullet?”
“Patrick Smith.” Patrick clenched his jaw as the Soldier on his right let another drop of acid fall from his mandibles and slide down Patrick’s bare side. “Battalion Four.” The pain slid over his hip bone and down the outside of his thigh, eating into his skin and burning away his hair. “Squad M.”
He hadn’t gone down easy. He’d always preferred a gatlung over a gun, and he’d stabbed and sliced between the armor plates of his attackers with vicious proficiency. He hadn’t counted how many fell under his serrated blade. He hadn’t cared. He’d only cared about drawing as many of them away from his team as possible.
He’d only cared about giving Fal’ran a chance.
Fal’ran.
Patrick clung to a vision of blazing burnt-orange eyes and a memory of huge hands holding his face as a fresh drop of agony spilled onto his collarbone.
“Tell us what is in the bullet, Patrick Smith, Battalion Four, Squad M.” The Insect interrogating him, a woman, if Patrick judged correctly, had especially huge eyes and especially long antennae. She lifted those long antennae from her head and bent them toward him.
Patrick said nothing. He’d never endured torture before, but he’d trained for it.
He hadn’t expected them to capture him alive. He’d expected them to overwhelm, crush, and dissolve him in acid. They had overwhelmed him, but clearly, they’d decided to do the dissolving in acid part slowly.
He didn’t remember the blow that had taken him out down on Qesha. He’d woken to the searing pain of acid dripping down his bare back, and found himself stark naked, standing, with his arms tied above his head. A Soldier stood on his right, taking too much pleasure in the proceedings if the chittering of his massive mandibles was anything to go by. A different sort of Insect stood in front of him, waving the bullet around and demanding answers.
Behind her, Patrick counted a dozen of the normal Insects, milling about and working at a control station but mostly watching him be tortured. They kept brushing their antennae over each other and over one woman in particular who stood with her arms crossed and her mandibles gnashing.
The only other thing Patrick knew for sure was that they were on a ship. No doubt about it. It wasn’t like any ship Patrick had seen before—it had no windows or view ports, and the walls and control panels were rounded and organic—but he recognized the shake and lurch of a ship exiting an atmosphere.
Where they were going, Patrick couldn’t guess, but they were leaving Qesha. He hoped that meant his team was safe, and not that they were dead.
The Soldier on Patrick’s right let out a stream of hisses and clicks that the translator still hidden away in Patrick’s ear translated with a robotic, qeshian-toned voice. “Stop asking questions. Just tear the answer out.”
“That might not work on his kind,” the woman hissed back, but she dropped the bullet to her side. As she leaned closer, Patrick saw that small, vicious hooks tipped each fiber of her feathered antennae.
“Well, find out.” The Soldier brought his face so close to Patrick’s his hot breath puffed over Patrick’s cheek and closed his mandibles around Patrick’s throat. Patrick steeled his jaw, fighting against the pain of acid flowing down his neck.
“This better not hurt me,” The Interrogator clicked at the Soldier. In a rush, she grabbed Patrick’s face with her antennae and hooked the barbs into his skin.
The scream ripped from Patrick’s throat. Pressure bore down on his mind with a blinding trauma that eclipsed the burn of the acid. Digging, digging, pushing, scratching.
Patrick thrashed, not feeling the cut of the mandibles against his skin but feeling with piercing clarity the hooks that refused to be torn off. He couldn’t let her in. He couldn’t let her see the empire’s secrets buried in his mind. She dug through his thoughts, a foreign presence in his mind, ripping and tearing.
He had to protect himself. He had to protect his mind. He reached for the cool nothingness that protected him from prying klah’eel noses.
Patrick Smith. Battalion Four. Squad M.
