Crusade For Vengeance (Dark Vengeance Book 2) (47 page)

Julianna knew she would be able to manage that feat and she guessed the Spartans would as well.  Carter was practically half their size and, although the same height as Julianna, she would be easily described as slender.  Then she remembered the alleyway next to the Green Man in Zeus and her cousin, who was not a small man, being held off the ground by this woman.  With one hand.

Along with idolising her cousin, Julianna grew up with stories about Carter, about Battleborn.  Now she had met her and seen her in action, she didn’t know what to make of her.  Carter was brusque with Troll and Barney, two of the people who came to rescue her and then taken them all careening off on this errand.  The way she captured the Commandant and killed the guard was quick and clean, but so was Briseis.  What was it about this woman that inspired the legend of Battleborn?  How could she be so strong with her physique?  There were a lot of questions Julianna wanted answered.  Right now, it included, why they captured the Commandant.

The room was right where Carter said it would be and she waved Troll forward to deal with the lock.

“Careful, Troll,” Julianna said.  “Watch for those energy grenades.”

“Really, Julianna?” Troll replied.  “I hadn’t considered that.  It has been a whole three hours since Beaumont lost her arm.”

“Don’t blame me if you’re left with only using a pistol for the rest of your life.”  Julianna shot back.

“What energy grenades?”  Cheimon asked.

“We were clearing rooms parallel to the main corridor,” Troll answered without looking up from working on the door lock.

“The guards tried some sort of layered defence,” Julianna didn’t want Troll distracted and took over the story.  “They fitted every door lock with an energy grenade.  If you tried to go into it, you’d lose an arm.  I lost two of my people to the first one.”

“Well, this time they haven’t,” Troll reported as the door opened and the lights came on inside.

“Briseis, stay out here with the rest and keep an eye out,” Carter ordered.  “I won’t be long.”

“I’m coming with you,” Julianna told the woman.  Carter turned and looked at her with the coldest eyes she had ever seen.  Julianna wanted to take a step back and do as Carter ordered, but she made herself stand her ground, meeting that icy gaze.

The moment stretched out, no one moving, until finally Carter gave a short nod and strode inside without another word.  Swallowing heavily and breathing a deep sigh of relief, despite herself, Julianna followed her in.  She saw Briseis organising the rest into a loose formation in the intersection around the door, before it slid shut.

The room was obviously a nexus maintenance point for the lifts and tunnels.  There were several work tables and chairs, with parts and equipment lining the walls.  Carter picked up a chair and placed it in the centre of the room, dropping the Commandant into it.  He stirred slightly, showing signs he was beginning to come round.  Carter stepped back, handed her rifle to Julianna and waited.  Julianna leaned up against the wall next to the door and watched for what Carter was going to do next.

The Commandant looked up.  His eyes were bleary as he took in the room around him.  He took a few seconds to study Julianna and then focused on Carter, who stood right in front of him.  Julianna was impressed.  He was obviously not a stupid man.  Despite being captured and knocked unconscious, he recognised the main danger was Carter.  He gave himself a few extra seconds to get himself together, before acknowledging her.  In all likelihood, the Rock trained for situations like this.

“Who are you people?”

“My name is Valerie Carter.”

His eyes danced across Carter’s armour before going back to meet her eyes.  “You’re one of my prisoners.  Why did they give you the armour?  Are you the reason my prison has been attacked?”

“I was.  The rest doesn’t matter,” Carter said in that cold voice of hers.

“It very much does to me.  Captain Percival says we were attacked by a Devil unit called Shadow Company.  What do you have to do with them?  Were you sent here to infiltrate the Rock, to pave the way for this attack, and discredit the Polledo family?”

Julianna raised her eyebrows at his question.  With the Company here, he thought it was all part of some elaborate plot and her mind raced.  For the Privileged Families of the Pantheon, that would be the only explanation.  With the Spectre and a Legion Commando Devil Company leading the attack, the Rebellion would be one of the last they would think responsible.  None of the inter-Family plots and squabbles her father told her about were anything like this.  The Families preferred less bloody forms of confrontations in their ongoing power struggles, but it wasn’t beyond the realms of possibility.

She wanted to say something to Carter, to try and get her to steer Commandant Polledo in the right direction.  It was possible they could leave here and keep the Rebellion out of it.  The Pantheon leadership would not want to admit publicly, they lost a top secret stealth prototype or one of their most successful units.  Billy may wish for it to be known otherwise, it proved the Rebellion were a forced to be reckoned with.  There were some very good reasons for keeping quiet, though, and it would be Billy’s decision.  Julianna wanted to make sure he would have the opportunity to choose.

Julianna opened her mouth, but she didn’t know what to say.  How could she warn Carter without tipping off the Commandant?  He had proved his intellect and unless she did it right, he would realise he was being played.  Carter took it out of her hands.

“Hanna, kill the cameras in here,” the other woman said over their com.  It was only audible to them and not the Commandant.

“Done,” was the immediate response.

“What did Cestari say about me?” Carter asked the Commandant.

“I’m not playing your game anymore, Carter.  If he wants me dead, get it over with.  Do not waste both of our time.”

Carter leaned forward almost casually.  She took hold of the Commandant’s left hand in her right.  “Arrgghh.  Stop it.  You’re going to break my hand!” he shouted.

Julianna watched the blood drain from his face.  He reached desperately with his right grabbing hold of the top of Carter’s hand, pulling at it.  He might as well have been trying to move a permacrete post, for all the good he did.  Carter didn’t even try to stop him.  It was only when he started punching her, she grabbed his wrist and held him back.

All the while she didn’t let go.  There seemed to be no tension in her body and the Commandant screamed louder and louder, his cries reverberating off the walls.  Julianna knew her armour would effectively double her strength, but the Commandant’s Enviro suit was designed to deal with the harsh conditions caused by a catastrophic failure of a ship’s hull,  including being hit by flying debris or collapsing structures.  The Company’s FPB armour would be capable of crushing the hand of a man in an Enviro suit, not the MP armour Carter was wearing.

Julianna jumped involuntarily as she heard the crack of the Commandant’s glove.  His scream rose in pitch and was swiftly followed by the snapping and popping of his bones grinding together.  Carter let go and leaned back.  The Commandant hunched over his pulverised hand, still screaming.  Slowly he quietened.  The suit registered his injury and automatically injected him with painkillers.

“Now, answer my question,” Carter told him with no more emotion than she used earlier.  There was no sign in her voice she had just crushed a man’s hand.  If he survived his time in this room, the Privileged doctors would need to replace that hand with a cloned one.  The damage Carter had done could not be fixed easily.

“Why? You’re just going to kill me!”

“Yes I am.  I’ll just have to do the other hand first.”

The Commandant threw all his weight back in the chair.  Frantically trying to get away.  The chair toppled over and he rolled to one side, scrabbling to his knees.  There was no escape.  She didn’t even have to use any of the extra speed Julianna saw earlier.  He was on his knees, the uninjured hand holding him up, the other cradled to his chest.  She simply reached down and grabbed the hand on the floor and pulled it up to her waist.  The Commandant dropped face down onto the floor with a cry.

Carter wrapped her hand around his slowly, almost lovingly.

“Don’t, please don’t!” he shouted.

“Tell me.”

“Nothing.  There was nothing about you.  Only to put you in general population, isolate you, only I can talk to you!”

“Anything else?”

He slumped down, all the fight having been taken from him.

“They warned me.  The warned me and I didn’t listen.  They said you were dangerous.”

“Yes, I am.”  The move was so swift, Julianna almost thought she imagined it.  Carter drew the Pulse pistol at her waist and shot the Commandant through his visor, right between the eyes.

“Shit!” Julianna jerked upright in shock and surprise.

Carter turned and took her rifle from Julianna’s unresisting hand.  “He doesn’t know anything.”

“About what?  You didn’t ask him any questions!”

“I asked him what I needed to know.”  Carter opened the door and stepped through.  Julianna was frustrated by the response, but all she could do was follow her out.

“Alright, everyone,” Carter said.  “We’re done.  Let’s get back, they should have swapped the cells around by now and released the men.  Hopefully your Lochagos will be among those in our Wing, Briseis.  I’m sure he will have a lot of questions and it’ll be easier if you’re there to answer them.”

“We all have many questions, friend Valerie,” Briseis replied.  “It is not the time, while still at risk to ask them.  They will come later and my sisters assembling in the bay will be there to greet him.”

“Wouldn’t they have taken the first opportunity to get off this Rock?”  Troll asked.  “I know I certainly would have.  I can’t believe I’m still here as it is.”

“No, we are Spartans and we are Wild Eagle Lochas.  We do not leave any of our brothers and sisters in danger.”

“What did Carter mean by your Lochagos?”  Julianna asked as they all moved off down the corridor, towards the wing’s landing bay.  Carter took point and went so far forward, it looked like she was deliberately putting distance between herself and the rest of them.  If Julianna couldn’t get any answers out of Carter, then she could find all she could about the Spartans.  Before meeting them over an hour ago, she had never heard of Sparta before.

“Lochagos Kydoimos is our Captain.”

“Of your ship?”

“No, that is Trierarch Otrera.  She commanded our ship before it was lost.  A Lochagos is the commander of our Lochas.  What you would call a mercenary company.”

While they made their way back through the tunnels, Briseis continued her explanation of her Planet and culture.  Billy and the other leaders of the Rebellion may well have heard of them, but Julianna hadn’t.  If they could convince the Spartans to join them in fighting the Pantheon, it would be a major bonus for the Rebellion.  From what Briseis was saying, with the destruction of their ship by the Legion, the Wild Eagles needed a ride home and in the meantime they would be powerful allies.

When they arrived in the bay, it was packed with people, mostly men in the bright yellow jump suits Julianna was getting so used to.  The engineers managed to get the main doors to work and they were closed, both shuttles absent.  With the doors shut, the temperature had risen to a slightly chilly eighteen degrees.  Julianna smiled at the thought of how much of the Rock’s power was being used to achieve that.

The Militia platoon at the tunnel entrance greeted them, and when Carter didn’t respond, Julianna stepped in to smooth things over.  It wasn’t looking good, the person they were hoping to use to ignite the Legion and lead them, was doing a good job of alienating everyone who met her for the first time.

After she smoothed over the ruffled feathers of the Rebel fighter picked to lead that platoon, Julianna found only Troll and Barney had stayed behind.

“Where did they all go?” she asked Troll.

The tall redhead pointed over in the direction of the bay’s control room.

“Carter went off that way.  It looks like it’s where Saito has First Platoon stashed.”  With their armour so low on power, Shadow Company stepped back into acting as the tactical reserve.  They were effectively standing around doing nothing, their suits powered down to standby.  Should the guards decide to stage a counter attack or the prisoners do something monumentally stupid, like try to take over the shuttles, then they would be ready to step in.

“The Spartans have gone to meet up with their people.”  Troll swung her arm round to point over to the opposite corner, but Julianna didn’t need that to tell her where they were.  The men were as proportionally tall to the women in Spartan society, as they were in the rest of humanity.  They all stood almost head and shoulders above everyone else.  All of the men had the same shaved heads with the top knot, as Briseis, and were bare chested, displaying their tattoos.  Although they could be naked for all Julianna could tell.  She couldn’t see their bottom half through the crowd.

“Shall we go over and introduce ourselves?”  Troll asked with more than a hint of a leer in her voice.

“Later, I think we should join Carter,” Julianna told her wryly.  “We’re still officially part of First Platoon, even with Alpha team back with them and Carter taking charge.  No one has relieved us.  Besides, I don’t think Barney is as keen at ogling big, muscular men as you are.”