Home Front (Star Kingdom #7) - Lindsay Buroker Page 0,129

into his skull. The legs stopped twitching, and the pirate soon lay still.

Weapons fire blasted off Asger’s armor, and there wasn’t time to feel satisfaction over taking out one of Qin’s tormentors. He yanked his pertundo free and spun to face the next threat.

The battle wasn’t over, but the crushers had successfully driven the warrior women back. The path to Qin’s unconscious form grew clear, save for one of her sisters, kneeling over her with that damn stunner.

Asger growled and rushed at her. “Get away from her!”

He fired at the woman’s chest and faceplate, and she leaped to her feet. She started to raise the stunner but saw he wore his full armor and switched to a rifle.

“What does a Kingdom knight care for one of our kind?” she snarled, firing at him.

Alerts lit up on his faceplate display, warning him of hits that would threaten his armor’s integrity. He fired back, hardly caring. He could take as much as she could.

“She’s my Qin. And she came to help you, you ungrateful snots.” Aware of the crushers plowing into the other women, breaking up their back-to-back formation and hurling them about the hold, Asger focused on this one enemy. He fired and pushed her back until he stood above Qin, making sure nobody would step on her unprotected head or—worse—shoot her by accident.

Surprisingly, the woman stopped firing. Qin’s exact face peered at him, save for a green bow dangling from a clump of hair beside her cheek. She glanced around the hold.

The pirates who’d come aboard had all fallen, and her sisters were losing to the crushers. They lacked the experience that Asger and Qin had with the sturdy killing machines—if they’d expected them, they would have brought explosives. That was the only thing Asger had ever seen knock them to pieces, however temporarily.

“We’re not ungrateful,” the woman with the bow said. “We didn’t want to do this, but we had no choice.”

“No? You’re the only ones in this hold now. You’re fighting for them voluntarily. You betrayed Qin voluntarily.” Asger struggled to get his rage under control. He’d made it through to Qin and was protecting her, and his side had gained the advantage, at least in here.

He expected the woman to say she had no choice or to say that Qin had betrayed them by leaving.

Instead, she asked, “You care about her? A knight from the Kingdom? We are—” she kept hold of her rifle, kept it pointed at him, but she jerked one hand down her body, “—freaks. That is what your people say.” Her voice lowered. “That is what many people say.”

One of the women roared, and a crusher went flying over Asger’s head to slam into a stack of shipping containers. The fight wasn’t over yet.

He couldn’t believe the one he faced was bringing this up now, but maybe it was worth responding to her. If she stopped fighting, would the others? If she was like Qin—his Qin—she might genuinely care about the answer, care about being regarded as a freak by the outside universe.

“I’ve known Qin—Qin Liangyu Three—for months, and we’ve fought together many times,” Asger said. “She’s not a freak. She’s a loyal friend.” Friend? More than that, but he wasn’t going to bring up his love life with strangers, even strangers that knew Qin and looked just like her. “Put down your weapons and surrender, and come with us, with Qin. I promise you’ll have a place with us.”

“In the Kingdom?” the woman asked skeptically.

“Wherever you want to go. Qin works for a bounty hunter on the Stellar Dragon. You must have learned about her ship if you were planning this trap.” Asger couldn’t keep the sneer off his lips or the snarl out of his voice. “They’ll have a place for you. And if you do come to the Kingdom, you can stay at my father’s castle. We’ll sic the guard alligators in the moat on anyone who gives you a hard time about visiting.”

“You have a castle?” She sounded wistful, as if she’d forgotten they were in the middle of a battle.

“Seven!” one of the other ones yelled. She was pinned against the wall by two crushers, the chest plate of her armor torn off. “What are you doing?”

“Nothing!” The woman Asger faced put both hands back on her rifle and pointed it at his chest. “They’ll come after us if we leave, if they believe we’ve betrayed them. That’s why we’re here now. They wouldn’t let even one of