of the Warbreed Cabal is etched on her brow—three crossed blades, just like Kal’s. There’s a stripe of black paint running from temple to temple, right across her eyes. Her lips are painted black too, and there’s a cord of what might be severed thumbs strung around her neck. And as she smiles, I note she’s filed her canines into points.
I’ve seen armor like hers before. On the news feeds of the Orion Incursion. The surprise attack where Dad was killed. She’s one of the renegade cabal of militants who started the Syldrathi civil war.
Unbroken.
“Spirits of the Void … ,” Kal breathes, looking at her.
Ty looks at him sidelong. “Kal?”
I can feel the sudden tension radiating off our Tank in waves. Every muscle flexed, hands clenching into fists. His voice drops to absolute zero.
“All of you, listen to me carefully,” he says. “Do not let her get close to you.”
The young woman is still gliding nearer, cutting through the crowd like a knife. Kal reaches out to Auri beside him, presses her back.
“Get behind me, Aurora.”
She blinks. “Kal, what’s—”
“Be’shmai.” He meets her mismatched eyes with his. “Please.”
“It is true, then.”
I turn back to the Unbroken woman. She’s stopped about ten meters away, looking at Kal with her lip curled. She’s speaking in Syldrathi, but language studies were one of the few subjects at the academy I was good at, so surprise, honey, I speak it too. One hand is propped at her hip, contempt twisting that beautiful face into something ugly and awful.
“When the adepts you thrashed in that bar brawl on the World Ship told me the tale, I could scarce believe it,” she tells Kal. “I cut their throats to silence their lies. But I should have known you were capable of sinking to any depth. Any shame.” Violet eyes flicker to Aurora. “Enough even to name a human beloved.”
Kal’s hand slips to the disruptor under his jacket.
“What do you want, Saedii?” he asks.
Hmm. They’re on a first-name basis. Interesting …
Madam Badass lowers her chin and smiles with pointed teeth.
“You know what I want, Kaliis,” she replies.
The Opha May’s crew is emerging from the ship behind us now, arms loaded with luggage, frowning in confusion at the scene in front of them. Tyler whispers a warning, and I catch glimpses of six more Unbroken fanning out in the crowd. I spot another two on the warehouse roof opposite our landing pad. They all have black armor, long silver hair, beautiful, battle-scarred faces. Warbreed glyfs on their brows and smiles on their lips and hate in those big, pretty eyes.
But as dangerous as this crew might look, these docks are way too busy for them to start any real trouble. I don’t know who these pixies are, but whatever’s going on here, I’ve had about enough of it. Time to put this uniform to work again and get the hells off this station before the real trouble arrives.
“You will refrain from coming any closer,” I say in Syldrathi, putting on my Voice of Authority again. “These individuals are in the custody of the GIA, and—”
“You are no more an officer of the Global Intelligence Agency than I am, human,” the woman sneers, her eyes never leaving Kal. “Now still your tongue before I cut it out of your head.”
“We need to go,” Kal murmurs, glancing at Tyler. “Now.”
Ty nods in agreement, eyes still on Madam Badass.
“Everybody get aboard.”
We start backing toward the Opha May’s loading ramp. The Unbroken woman tilts her head. And with zero foreplay, not even so much as a goodbye kiss, one of her chums up on the warehouse fires a damn pulse rocket at us.
It looks like a bolt of luminous green, trailing a wisp of thin smoke. Hissing as it comes. Auri shouts a warning and throws up her hands, and I see a flare of brief white light from her right eye. For a second the air around us crackles with tension, greasy and warm. But as the pulse rocket goes skimming right over our heads, I realize it’s not aimed at us.
Gruber and his crew scatter as Tyler roars at the top of his lungs.
“Everybody down!”
Kal throws himself on top of Aurora; the rest of us hit the deck as the rocket sails right through the open bay doors of my newly commandeered escape plan. The explosion rips through the Opha May’s insides and blooms out her exhaust ports. Shrapnel whizzes past my head, skims off the nanoweave armor on my back.