Home Front (Star Kingdom #7) - Lindsay Buroker Page 0,151

have pretended to be one of them—an ally rather than an enemy—and run past the pirates as if she belonged there. But Bonita had purchased her new armor, armor without the taint of slavery and a hundred past battles where Qin had fought her morals to obey her masters, and she wore it now proudly. She was her own person, and she intended to stay that way.

Clanks came from a side corridor ahead. Footfalls ringing out on the deck. Several sets of them.

A group of crushers? Pirates avoiding the crushers?

“Slow down,” Mouser whispered. “I think that’s—”

A group of four armored men rounded the corner and pointed rifles at them. Qin had her Brockinger in hand and would have fired before any of them could, but she recognized the man in back, for he stared right at her through his faceplate. Gray hair, gray mustache, cold gray eyes.

Captain Framer, one of the five Drucker brothers, one of the men who’d paid for her to be made in a scientist’s laboratory twenty years earlier. One of the first men to come down and take sexual pleasure on his wares after Qin and the others had arrived.

Hatred roiled through her, but the conditioning they’d instilled in her over the years rooted her feet to the deck and froze her finger on the trigger of her gun.

If you hurt any of us, you will be punished… If you hurt any of us, you will be punished…

“Why aren’t you two fighting?” the lieutenant at Framer’s side demanded. “They’re taking the bridge.”

The captain’s eyes narrowed. “That’s the escaped slave. Get her!”

Mouser lunged forward.

Framer hit a control fob on the wrist of his armor, and Mouser bent forward, her weapon falling from her fingers with a clatter. She gasped and grabbed her helmet with both hands.

Qin recovered from her shock and the barrage of memories. She roared in anger and charged the men. She wanted to get to Framer, since he was the one with the controller that was hurting Mouser, but the three others were in front of him. They fired at her armor, and alerts flashed on her helmet display. She jumped and fired over one man’s head, the explosive round of her Brockinger clipping the captain in the shoulder and exploding.

In the confined space, the shockwave rocked into the others, and they tottered off balance. Qin experienced it too, but she recovered more quickly. Almost on top of the pirates, she tackled them instead of reloading, rage and years of pent-up frustration giving her extra speed and strength. She hurled the pirates against the bulkheads and pounded them into each other. A piece of one man’s armor snapped, and he screamed as she dislocated his shoulder.

A kick flew in from the side and knocked her Brockinger out of her hand. Qin barely noticed. She grabbed the nearest pirate and mashed him against the bulkhead, faceplate cracking as it struck like a boulder dropped from a mountaintop.

“Get her off me!” he screamed.

She smashed his faceplate against the wall again, then threw him toward the captain. Framer’s armor was dented and covered in soot from her explosive, and his arm hung limply at his side, but he was still on his feet and still armed. He twisted, sidestepping the human projectile coming at him.

The lieutenant grabbed Qin from behind and gripped her helmet, trying to pull it off. She threw an elbow backward, catching him in the armored chest. He grunted, but didn’t let go, instead wrapping an arm around her neck. She’d knocked two of the pirates down, but she couldn’t get the leverage she needed to escape this one’s vise-like grip.

Captain Framer had backed away and pulled out a Brockinger of his own. “Throw her this way, and then get back,” he snarled to his man.

“I thought we wanted to recapture her.” The lieutenant twisted, forcing her to face Framer.

“The doc’ll put her back together and we can keep using her. After she’s properly punished for running away.”

Qin roared and tried to twist free, but the lieutenant had cybernetic upgrades as well as his armor and was far stronger than the average man. Framer sneered and raised his weapon toward her eyes. What would there be left to put back together if an explosive detonated in her face?

She jerked her head back, smashing her helmet into the lieutenant’s faceplate. He staggered, and this time, she managed to twist in his grip so that her chest wasn’t toward the captain. But she feared it wouldn’t