Kill by Numbers: In the Wake of the Templars Book Two (36 page)

Now Gavin Sloane was just one more corpse in the army of corpses on Raena’s conscience. As selfish and misguided as Gavin had been, he had given her the tools to make it right in the end.

She went to get a tarp from Vezali’s stores, then brought it back to her cabin. She lifted Gavin’s body and set it carefully in the middle of the tarp, tucked in the edges around him, and bundled him up. Then she carried him back to the cell where she had been staying.

It was quick to gather her few things and return them to her cabin. Then she placed Gavin’s corpse on the cell’s bunk, secured him with the restraints, and left the room. Once the door was locked behind her, she rerouted the room’s life support. It should refrigerate him effectively until they knew whether they’d need to turn over his body for evidence of the Messiah drug’s return to the galaxy.

Outrider didn’t make himself difficult to meet. Still, Raena didn’t like the warren of buildings through which they walked on Verwoest. There were too many shadows, too many alleys, too many nooks in which someone could hide. If she had been traveling through this neighborhood alone, she would have drawn her pistol.

Kavanaugh had point, while she and Mykah hung back. Somewhere behind them walked Haoun, Coni, and the journalist Mellix. Since they couldn’t pass for human, they were pretending to be unaware of the first trio. Since he was the fastest, Mykah was supposed to run away at the first sign of trouble and bring the law if he could.

“We’re here,” Kavanaugh said softly.

The door looked as decrepit as everything else around them. There was nothing special about it, except for the scarred palm lock installed outside. Kavanaugh put his hand on the lock and let it ID him.

After the door ground open, a voice said, “Come in, Mr. Kavanaugh.” The room inside was as shadowy as the one in which Raena had first seen the Messiah drug, all those decades ago. This one did not yet reek of unwashed bodies, but Raena was certain that would come in time, if Outrider had his way.

“Show me your payment first,” Outrider said from somewhere in the room.

Mykah put the case on the floor and nudged it open. A pile of Templar artifacts glimmered in the dim light.

“Tell me again how you found me,” Outrider said, not moving from wherever he stood. Raena wondered if he was really in the room with them, or if it was a speaker.

“I worked for Gavin Sloane,” Kavanaugh said. “I led the team he’d hired to open the Templar tombs. We rediscovered the Messiah drug in one. I didn’t know what it was, but Sloane did.”

“How is old Sloane?”

“Dead.” Kavanaugh managed to say it coldly, without a hint of the fury Raena knew he felt.

“Did he get what he wanted?”

“In the end, yes. That’s why we’re here.”

Shadows shifted in the back of the room, but not clearly enough that Raena could make out a target.

“The media said the tombs were looted by the Thallians.”

Raena was glad she’d persuaded Mykah to shave his beard to distinguish himself from the man in the documentaries.

“The Thallians were there, too, after Sloane packed us up and we left,” Kavanaugh said. “Some of their men died there.”

“Did you set the booby trap on the Templar Master’s tomb?”

“I did,” Raena said. She wore Revan Thallian’s coat, which hid the fact that her boot heels were so tall, and a wide-brimmed hat of Coni’s that shadowed her face. “I’m also the one who released the video of the Thallians on the ground there. No evidence remains to connect Sloane to the tombs any more.”

The shadow moved a little closer. It moved strangely, reminding Raena again of a spider, sidling forward, halting. “Your voice is familiar,” Outrider said.

“Don’t know how that can be.”

Someone darted in from the side, snatching at her hat. Raena heard him coming a half second before he touched her. She turned toward the sound and grabbed the outstretched wrist.

She heard Mykah and Kavanaugh moving behind her, going separate directions. She spun inside her assailant’s reach. He was stronger than she expected and she couldn’t get him off balance.

He knocked the hat from her head with his free hand. Their eyes locked. He was still a puffy, slightly overweight human with thinning red hair and bloodshot eyes.

“You haven’t changed a bit,” Raena said.

“Nor have you.”

She got the stone knife out of her sleeve sheath, into her free hand, and stabbed it hard into his arm as he brought the pistol up from his thigh holster. He didn’t drop the gun, so she twisted the blade, sawing its jagged edge against what she thought was bone.

Shots were exchanged behind her, but Outrider didn’t flinch. Raena couldn’t afford to either. She exerted all her strength to keep his gun pointed away from Kavanaugh and Mykah.

“Stun doesn’t work,” Kavanaugh said grimly. “That was point-blank.”

“I’m okay,” Mykah said, but he didn’t sound it. He obviously hadn’t gotten out like he had been supposed to. Raena wondered if they had been locked in, if this had been a trap from the start.

Outrider tangled his foot between Raena’s. She used his shift in balance to kick up hard over her shoulder. Her boot heel took out one of his eyes. That revealed what she should have suspected as soon as she realized he hadn’t aged: Outrider wasn’t human. Something writhed inside his skull, mechanical worms crawling over each other in a hypnotic clockwork motion.

“He’s an android,” Raena said. She spun sideways, flinging herself into a flip that launched her away from his grasp. He still had the gun, though, and that was a problem. She drew her own Stinger and dropped into a crouch.

He helpfully shot at her from his new position. Raena nudged her pistol out of stun with her thumb—the motion was second nature—and fired at the android’s gun, rather than at his body. As she’d expected, the gun was less well shielded. It exploded, raining burning plasma everywhere.

She shut her eyes tight, but the flash and the resultant fire still burned bright inside her eyelids. She rolled sideways, and aimed blind at the place where the android had been.

And then the fight stopped being a sequence of events that followed logically in her mind. Kavanaugh fired off wildly from behind some kind of cover, which allowed Raena to see there were two sources of fire coming back his way. She launched herself at the nearest one, nothing like a plan in her head.

In the end, they collected pieces of all three Outrider androids, enough to prove that Outrider had not been human—or at least that he wasn’t any longer. The pieces kept reaching out for one another, trying to reassemble themselves into one working copy. Raena made sure Mellix got some good footage of that. No one doubted it was Templar tech.

She sorted out the best of the Outrider heads and wrapped it and one hand—separately—in some of her Viridian slave cloth. As she’d hoped, the pieces went quiescent once they no longer sensed each other directly.

Mykah had been shot, but he would live. Luckily, Kavanaugh had plenty of experience dealing with battlefield wounds and got him stabilized enough that Coni could get him safely to the hospital.

Haoun searched the rest of the building and located one crate full of the Messiah drug. The others were nowhere to be found. Raena hoped that they could be hunted down using Gavin’s trackers, but feared that they would find the crates separated and moving away from one another. How many Outriders could there be?

Raena pulled out a brick of Messiah and cut a slab off with her knife. She wrapped it in more of the slave cloth and handed it to Mellix. Without a vaporizer or dosage information, it was mostly harmless. Besides, Mellix—not being human—couldn’t get high off it himself.

She and Kavanaugh gathered as many of the Outrider pieces as they could and threw them into the crate of Messiah, burying each piece deep into the packets of the drug. When she felt confident they had collected up all the biggest bits, she pulled the thermeon from a pocket in her coat.

“Have you recorded everything you need?” she asked Mellix.

“I think so.”

“Good. Go out to the street now.” She nodded for Kavanaugh to go along and keep the journalist safe. After they left, she triggered the timer on the thermeon, pitched it into the crate, and sprinted for the door.

The resultant explosion brought the building down in the most satisfying way.

Raena was watching the building burn when Mellix swung the camera from the inferno toward her. “Why are you doing this?”

“Messiah was a trap set for humans by the Templar. That seems like reason enough.” Raena turned away from him and started to walk.

“Hey, I would like your company,” Mellix called after her.

She stopped and waited for him to catch up. “I will only speak off the record,” Raena said, not looking at him. “By the way, it’s not safe for you to walk around with that camera on the street. Too much of a temptation.”

“Oh, right. Thanks.” He disassembled the camera quickly, tucking its pieces into his tunic pockets.

Once they’d started to walk again, Mellix said, “Will Mykah be okay?”

She nodded toward Kavanaugh. “Both of us have survived worse. He’ll be fine.”

“He was my student,” Mellix said, “one of my favorites. You can teach technique, but you can’t teach passion. Mykah was one of the few who saw things wrong in the galaxy and wanted to have a hand in changing them. It didn’t make him a good candidate for a standard news job, but he seems to have found his calling.”

“He’s been a good friend,” Raena said. “It’s been an honor and a pleasure to travel with him and his crew.”

“Aren’t you part of the
Veracity’s
crew?”

She hadn’t really thought about it, but she supposed it was true. “I’ve served on ships before, but the
Veracity
is the first place I’ve ever felt I’ve belonged. I feel more at home there than I have ever been anywhere else.”

Mellix’s next question took her by surprise. “Would you say you’re fascinated by history, righting historical wrongs?”

“I would say that I’m finished digging through history.” Raena paused, surprised by a sudden rush of emotion. It had been a long time since she’d felt free to look forward, instead of reacting to her past. “It’s the future that interests me now.”

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The first draft of this novel was written during Nanowrimo 2013. Of all my many attempts at finishing 50,000 words of fiction over the course of the annual National Novel Writing Month, this book (then called
No More Heroes—
now the title of Book Three in this series) was the first time I succeeded. Hurray for Nanowrimo and the hundreds of thousands of novelists it supports and inspires each year!

Thanks again to Martha Allard and Mason Jones, who held my hand and cheered me on as this book expanded from a rough Nanowrimo draft to the novel you hold in your hands. Their encouragement and careful eyes were a huge help. Any errors that remain are my own.

Thanks to Brian, Paul, and Kelly, fellow members of The Chowder Society, who were there with the
Star Wars
links when I needed my love for this genre to be re-invigorated.

Thanks also to Susan Holtzer and SG Browne, who read the first chapter cold when I was having a crisis. You said exactly what I needed to hear when I needed to hear it.

A special shout-out to Nick and the crew of San Francisco’s Mercury Cafe, where I have spent many hours reading, writing, and editing. A good cafe is a blessing.

Finally, thanks to my champion, editor Jeremy Lassen, who believed I could write a trilogy and is helping me prove it. His questions and thoughtful reading helped flesh this book out to its current dimensions.

Thanks also to Jason Katzman and Cory Allyn, my knights at Skyhorse, for again being patient with my questions.

On to Book Three!