Page 12 of Triplets for the Barbarians

Still too many.

Fear grips me by the throat, getting tighter and tighter, but I can’t hesitate. I can’t slow down. I take them out, one by one. But it’s still not enough. A tall man with a long braided beard and a bloody look in his eyes comes for me, his sharp knife out, the blade reflecting the suns’ glare right into my face. I’m temporarily blinded.

It’s all he needs.

He’s got me, and I’m wrestling with a man too big for me to handle on my own. He punches me in the head, a mean right hook that rattles my brain and makes my jaw hurt. I hear Yossul snarling as he trains his weapon on the guy.

“Duck!” a man shouts. “Kreeks, duck!”

I do as I’m told and wriggle out of the Sky Tribe mercenary’s hold long enough for a laser beam to burn right through him. The scuffle thickens and turns to chaos as the remaining soldiers feverishly look around and as Yossul and Fadai manage to retrieve their weapons so they can kill them.

Everything happens so fast that I barely register the third party riding a buggy into the middle of this dusty storm.

“Lemuel!” Yossul says.

My heart jumps as I get away from the corpse of my last assailant and jump to my feet, desperate to get this over with. We’ve got four fuckers left to deal with, but they’re highly trained and determined to take my men out. Lemuel points his gun at one of them and fires a shot.

The buggy comes to a screeching halt, and one of the mercenaries turns around.

“Watch out!” Fadai shouts.

Lemuel tries to fight fire with fire, yet the Sky Tribe mercenary quickly shoots him. The laser beam hits Lemuel in the stomach, and the smell of burnt flesh seeps into the very air we’re raggedly trying to breathe.

“No…” I manage as Fadai kills the mercenary before he turns toward him again.

Two left.

I roar with volcanic rage and grab one of the weapons discarded on the ground just as a marauder comes for me. I raise the gun and fire at will. Perhaps too many shots, but he’s toast. It gives Yossul the split second he needs to kill the other guy.

I’m panting, my calf still burning from the other night, my bruises hurting with a vengeance, but I manage to pull away from this debacle and look around. It’s only a matter of time before reinforcements arrive. That’s not the worst part, however. Lemuel is on the ground, barely able to keep his eyes open.

Fadai, Yossul, and I rush to his side. I try to do something, my hands trembling from the overflow of adrenaline. There’s not much I can do, though. The laser shot went through, and it got major organs on its way out. Lemuel’s red skin quickly fades to a deathly pink as he struggles to look up at the Kreek brothers.

“I’m sorry,” he says, his voice barely a whisper. “I had no idea they had a line on me.”

“What the hell happened?” Yossul asks him.

Our time is running out, but Lemuel has information we need. Fadai grabs him by the shoulders and vigorously shakes him back into consciousness for this last moment. “Lemuel, talk to us. Where are the starships? Where did they move them?”

“I didn’t want to write it in a message,” Lemuel manages. “I worried that it… might get intercepted.”

“We know. Where are they?” Yossul asks.

I look around again. We need to be out of here in the next minute, tops, otherwise the enemy will catch up. I can already hear more buggies coming from Sapphire City.

“I saw them mobilizing at the outside barracks,” Lemuel says, his breathing heavy. “I was on my way to meet you. I was careful, I swear…”

“Lemuel! Focus, man! The starship!” Yossul insists.

He’d be way more sympathetic if there weren’t so much at stake. We can’t leave this place empty-handed, not after everything we’ve been through. We all know it. Even Lemuel knows it. The sadness in his crimson eyes breaks my heart, but with his dying breath, he gives us something.

“Pearl City,” he says. “One of them is in Pearl City.”

“In Pearl City? There’s no area big enough there to hold a hangar that big,” Yossul replies. “Where’s the other one?”

But Lemuel is gone.

“We have to get out of here,” I murmur, trying to get over what just happened.

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