“Pause,” she told Ike, low. “Let’s bring our people home.” If he didn’t stop the Peacemaker, the rounds would annihilate the Queenslanders, too. Then she yelled, “Jael, push, push now! But stay low.”
In the confusion, the rest of her team slammed past the mercs. They brought weapons to bear and before she could tell Ike that their people were clear—to get the guns going again—the first soldier shot him full in the chest. The remote bounced out of his hand and she dove for it in reflex, even as horror and disbelief overwhelmed her. He’s the only one who didn’t belong here. The only one who should’ve made it. Rage filled her in a towering wave. If her own people hadn’t been so close, she would’ve opened her brain and let a tsunami of bloodlust drown them.
You’re lucky, ass**les. Today you don’t pull each other apart with your bare hands.
With shaking hands, she took up the remote and activated the Peacemaker. Its broad back provided cover fire in retreat, even as Jael knelt to lift Ike’s body. Everyone was stunned, silent, as they moved away from the mercs. Vost was yelling something at his men, but they didn’t want to fight a Peacemaker. Dred didn’t blame them even as she hoped to see their bodies fall, just as Ike had.
He came out to save us. And he died.
It was just so impossible, so awful, that she couldn’t look directly at Jael. The old man’s silver head lolled against his shoulder. Her ears rang from the roar of the Shredder, and as she turned, a grenade landed at her feet. Jael was fast enough to boot it back and the explosion rocked the corridor behind them. Smoke and cursing filled the air, so she keyed the follow command for the Peacemaker and let its huge back cover their escape.
“That shouldn’t have happened,” Tam said quietly.
“No talking until we cross the border.” Her voice was stern because it had to be.
If she spoke of Ike right now, she’d crumble, and the others would see that the Dread Queen was a myth of other people’s making. They would glimpse her feet of clay, and maybe they’d stop following her orders. With the mercs coming in hard, Mungo on the warpath, and Silence wanting to cut her throat and drink her blood, she couldn’t afford to show weakness even if each step hurt as if she had spikes embedded in her heels. With each breath, she inhaled a dead man’s fear, a dead man’s sweat, until she wanted to tear off the helmet and cast it aside and just scream until her throat bled.
She kept it locked down.
The sentries stood, looking worried, as the Peacemaker knocked down the east barricade. Wordlessly, she escorted her crew past, stepping over the wreckage as if the mission had been a success. Jael came last, with Ike cradled against his chest. The old man’s chest was a black hole, the shirt fused to his skin in a charred pucker.
“I can rebuild the junk wall,” Ali said.
The Rodeisian female seemed to carry the weight of the sacrifice on her broad, furred shoulders, and she must be of the opinion that she needed to give something back. But nothing could ever be enough. Dred just nodded as the Ithtorian set to work beside Ali. She trusted them enough to see the job done properly and continued on to the common room, with Tam and Martine flanking her.
The Queenslanders cheered when they noticed her decked out in full merc armor, even more when Martine and Tam lofted the rifles they had recovered. But the crowd fell silent when Jael stepped forward and laid Ike on a table. He leaned down and touched his brow to the old man’s, a quiet moment that probably meant things she didn’t understand. Then Jael straightened and closed Ike’s eyes for good.
With the last of her self-control, Dred pulled off her helmet. She hoped she was wearing her Dread Queen face, not revealing all the pain and sorrow she felt at the loss of the only good man inside Perdition. There were so many things she wanted to say—and so few would fit the image she wore like a crown of thorns.
“How many among you did Ike help?” She paced among the men.
A rumble of affirmative answers swept the room. Their faces were shocked. Ike wasn’t one you imagined would die in battle, defending the territory. And in truth, it had been more of an execution.
Congratulations, Vost. You gunned down an old man.
She went on, “The question is, what’re we going to do about this?”
“Take the fight to them!” all of Queensland shouted.
Easier said than done.
But she gave away none of her fear, none of her reservations. She didn’t mention the grenades or the big guns. The Dread Queen took over, preaching blood and retribution. She spoke in ringing tones until the men were calling her name over and over. It didn’t bring Ike back, but it drove the shock and horror out of their faces, replacing it with righteous anger. Perdition might be a hellhole, but she’d carved out a place, and she would defend it with her last breath.
There is nothing more ferocious than men defending their homes, Commander. I hope you’re ready. As Martine would say, it’s about to get bloody up in here.
20
Death and Remembrance
“That . . .” Jael squinted at the man who was struggling for words. He couldn’t recall the lunk’s name, but he suspected he was one of Grigor’s leftovers. They tended to be hulking, though nothing to compare with Einar or Cook. Still, he had hefty arms and hairy shoulders, a fact he seemed proud of.
“What?” he finally prompted.
“You’d never have seen something like that where I came from. Grigor used to have us fight each other for a place at his table, a chance to eat decent food.”
“To the death?”
The other man nodded. All around them, men were singing rowdy drinking songs in honor of Ike, though truthfully, his demise was just an excuse to bust out the still, and that roused a bleak, deep rage in Jael that he couldn’t explain. So bloody unlikely that I’d meet a decent man in here, but there you are. And he died for us.
“Never anything but.” The other man had a deep voice, gravelly, and beetling black brows that met over a hooked nose.
Ugly sod.
“Sounds pretty hellish.”
“You get used to anything.” The man wore a thoughtful expression. “Under the Great Bear, you’d never witness anything like what that geezer did for you lot, either.”
“Let me guess—he thought it was weakness to stick your neck out.”
“More or less.”
“It’s not like that here,” Jael said, trying to ignore the three men at the table who were slamming their fists on the table to punctuate the raucous noise they called music.