Page 60 of Fifth
“You’ve already lost,” the headman spat. “I’ve got money on every—”
“You have nothing. Not now.” Locus’s tone never shifted. He lifted his chin toward the yard where Skinners tore handlers, where trucks fishtailed in fire, where hunters clawed each other faster than sense. “Call them back.”
The headman’s gaze skittered, then came back mean. “Kill the girl,” he screamed. “I want the—”
Hannah shot the headman’s cane. The gold head burst and wood split. She didn’t know she’d moved until the report faded. Locus looked at her over the man’s shoulder, and some thread ran hot between them that had nothing to do with guns orlaws.
“Last time,” Locus said.
The headman tried for a smile and found none. “Boys—”
“Enough,” Locus said, and pulled.
He dragged the man across the slanted deck to the rail and pinned him with one forearm. With the other hand he wrenched the platform’s release lever—an old hinge refitted with cheap steel. Bolts sheared and the front half of the stage dropped like a trapdoor.
The headman went with it, legs catching in the fallen mast, his body slamming against the twisted steel. Ascream tore loose, then stopped as the weight pinned him hard. The platform groaned and settled, and the yard went very quiet in the way only shock can bring.
A single Skinner clicked and hissed as it skittered across the fallen mast and tested the headman’s shiny boots with its mandibles. Hannah held her breath without meaning to. Locus let the silence sit for the length of a heartbeat and then spoke, not to the headman, but to theyard.
“The trial is finished,” he said. “Lay down your weapons.”
Some men ran, tripping over each other in their haste to escape. Others flung their weapons down and dropped to their knees, hands raised high, eyes wide and white withfear.
Sirens rose faint and far beyond the preserve, local, not planetary. The fire had lit the sky. The law that’d slept through purchased nights was waking to a blaze that couldn’t be ignored. Men who’d once swaggered began to scatter like roaches when the kitchen light comeson.
The headman was still pinned where the platform had dropped, gasping shallow breaths. His eyes rolled, finding them. He tried to speak, but before another word left his lips, one of the freed Skinners skittered across the mast. With a swift strike it ended him, silent and sure. The crowd fell still, the suddenness of it cutting deeper than any threat.
Locus and Hannah wasted no time. He hurled the weapons of the fallen into the fire. She ripped the power cables from the last floodlight. Together they smashed open the headman’s ledger box and flung credit chits into the mud. Flames licked the scattered pieces, names and bets exposed to every eye, burning away the illusion of safety. Gasps turned to curses as the truth spread through themob.
The last fight guttered out. Skinners slipped to the fence and vanished into scrub. Men who had strutted now scattered, fear making them small.
Locus touched his wrist and connected with Sixth. “Headman dead. Take down his men and release Hannah’s brothers. Transporting up.”
For a brief moment, Hannah and Locus stood side by side on the ruined platform, surveying the yard in silence. The fire painted everything in ruin and ash. Then, the air shimmered around them, and they were transportedaway.
Chapter 18
“DO YOUmean to tell me, we could’ve beamed us out of the preserve at any point last night?”
“Transported, affirmative. If your life was threatened, I would have done so. But I did not wish to put your parents and brothers at risk. Or the other humans who live near them. We were giving Sixth time to get that end of things under control.”
“Okay, fair enough,” she said grudgingly. “Do my parents know I’m safe?”
“Affirmative.”
“And Emmy?”
“We will discuss that later. Let me finish taking care of our medical needs.”
Locus didn’t move while the scanner hummed. Light slid over his skin in clinical bands, mapping torn muscle and surface lacerations, collecting cellular debris with a soft statichiss.
Across from him, Hannah lay in the parallel cradle, lashes stuck together with saline, hair damp from the decontamination mist. The med-suite of his ship breathed in quiet cycles—air scrubbers purring, auto-sutures whispering as they sealed small rents along her thigh and shoulder and back.
She watched the ceiling at first, then flicked her gaze to him. She tried to smile and couldn’t quite get there. It didn’t matter. She was alive. She washere.
The cradle screens painted readouts in Vettian glyphs. He translated them without thinking, the way other people breathed. Pulse, saturation, cortisol. Areduction in inflammatory markers. The cicatrix pattern along his spine was old and uninterested in new data. Hers spiked with the story of the night, then began to slopedown.
A line of information appeared where there had been none a breath before. It glowed quiet and certain.
