a pile driver with a satisfying crack. But another foe forced her onto her stomach and wrestled her arms behind her back. Without the use of her legs, she couldn’t get any leverage to fight her foes or even jump to her feet.
“What are they?” one of her sisters shouted.
Finally, the crushers had removed themselves from the wall and formed into their deadly bipedal forms. Half of them joined Bjarke in battling the pirates. Half of them ran toward Qin’s sisters.
Qin had a fleeting hope that she would be saved, but then hands grabbed her helmet again, wrenching it around with such power that it snapped out of its lock. The hands tore it away, and she heard it clunk into one of the approaching crushers.
Asger was being driven farther away from her with two of her sisters battling him at once. Qin caught him glancing at her, his face a mix of anguish and fury, but he couldn’t reach her.
A hand with a stunner appeared, and Qin flung herself sideways, rolling into two sets of legs. If she could hold out a few more seconds, her sisters would be too busy fighting the crushers to worry about her.
But the stunner tracked her and fired. A flash of white-blue scorched her retinas, and she lost consciousness.
26
Yas treated Rache’s astroshaman prisoners, trying to smile often and make them feel at ease, but they put him ill-at-ease. The three women had blatant cybernetic upgrades including alterations to their faces, ports in their arms, and chips under the skin on all of their fingertips. They did not speak, at least not out loud or to him, neither answering nor acknowledging his questions. They rarely looked at each other or anyone, instead staring at walls or computer consoles.
He assumed they were speaking chip-to-chip to each other, which almost everyone did, but there was something unhuman about them, more so than with the mercenaries who had cybernetic upgrades. Maybe because the mercenaries only tried to make themselves faster and stronger. They rarely added ports for wiring themselves directly into mainframes.
The astroshamans’ injuries were minor, and Yas was relieved to release them to the custody of a couple of sergeants who would take them to the brig. And he hoped eventually back to their ship. He had nothing against these astroshamans and would prefer not to have them gunning for him simply because he was Rache’s doctor.
As they departed, Rache walked into sickbay. They glared at him on the way out, but the sergeants shoved them along.
“They’ll be returned to their ship shortly,” Rache told Yas. “The gate has been reopened and doesn’t seem in danger of closing again. I am curious how it was done and undone. As far as I know, High Shaman Moonrazor was responsible, but she never came to the area. Amergin did detect some encrypted data transmissions being beamed at the gate. It’s disturbing to think that she has the technology to wave her fingers and disable any of the gates in the system whenever she wishes.”
“Perhaps not a good person to make an enemy of,” Yas observed, though Rache had done precisely that, irking the astroshaman leader twice. Would that come back to haunt him? Would all those on the ship with Rache be caught in the explosion when it did?
“Perhaps a good person to kill,” Rache said bluntly.
“Your problem-solving methods are strange.”
“No, they’re practical. Amoral and illegal but practical.” Rache looked around sickbay. “Pack up, Doctor. We’re heading to System Lion to complete my mission.”
“And what after that?” Yas asked as Rache turned back toward the exit.
Rache paused. “If we survive, we’ll carry on and look for more work.”
If they survived? Yas couldn’t remember him ever saying that.
“That’ll be more difficult as the slydar detectors become more widely available, won’t it?” Yas didn’t give voice to the rumor that Rache’s own clone brother was making more of those slydar detectors now. He didn’t want to suggest Casmir was another enemy who should suffer Rache’s practical problem-solving methods.
“It will.” Rache turned his masked face toward Yas. “What’s your point?”
“Maybe you should consider retirement.”
“This isn’t a job you retire from.”
“You just keep doing it until you get killed?”
“What else would I do, Doctor?” Rache asked softly. “War and battle is what I was taught and trained for since childhood. It’s all I know.”
“Assume another identity, ask Scholar Sato on a date, and fly off to another system to get a gig as a defense contractor. Maybe Tiamat Station would have a