They came at us in a half-circle, seven men in black ship’s uniforms with blue trim. Different sizes, different skin tones, all with close-cropped hair and tight clothing.
Excellent for close-in fighting. That should have been a warning, but I’d been lulled into complacency by my memories and my admiration of the wards. I still didn’t want to believe that we’d get mugged in a trade fleet ship’s cargo bay. Some things the trade fleets took very seriously, and violence to paying customers was just beneath violence to themselves.
“Yes?” I said, as the half-circle closed around us, pinning us against the engine enclosure.
None of the men spoke.
A slow dread started to crawl up the nape of my neck, my subconscious picking up on signals my mind didn’t want to hear. I shifted, putting myself in front of Maia, pushing her back against the steel enclosure. Hao matched my stance on Maia’s left side.
“Can we help you?” I said, but the seven didn’t reply.
There’s a dance you go through in a fight, a strut where the combatants work themselves up to violence, throwing insults, shoves, curses. You don’t walk up to someone and punch them.
These people did.
The first to reach us swung a weighted pouch at me underhand. I was so surprised I didn’t even block it.
It should have crushed my jaw. Instead, it bounced against my wards with such force that I felt a ward shatter.
My reply was a foot to the man’s groin, which he blocked with a thigh. Then someone barreled into me from the side, and there was a brawl.
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My wards gave us an advantage. Their numbers and skill gave them an advantage. I screamed, punched, was crushed beneath two men while a third kicked me repeatedly in the armor plate over my kidneys.
I kept screaming, Hao bellowing beside me, the men cursing.
More wards shattered. I tried conjuring a tread of force, to up-tune one of my offensive wards, but the punches and kicks made me slip, losing the thread, losing my stockman, losing blood as a punch connected with my lips.
My wards were failing. These people wanted to kill us.
In desperation, I twisted, getting my hip sideways against the steel deck plates and ripping a leg free. I used it to smash a boot into the side of the man sitting on my other leg. He fell away, and I tried kneeing the man sitting on my chest, but he grabbed my hair and slammed my head into the deck.
Someone stomped my thigh, sending a wave of numbness through my leg, and another cold spike of a ward shattering through my mind.
Sirens blared. Lights flashed. People yelled, arms grabbing at us, dragging the men off me.
I shook my head, my vision blurry, my mouth tasting of iron and copper and warm wetness.
Hao stood, her crowbar dripping gore, two men down at her feet, a third crawling away, Maia next to her, a short dagger in her hand.
A wall of dark green uniforms around us, helmeted heads, riot shields pressing us inward as the men who’d attacked us were slammed to the ground and cuffed.
I started babbling, tried to rise, and three green-clad Raist marines in riot gear bashed me down with their shields. The cold of a pair of reinforced polymer cuffs yanked tight around my wrists. Pressure around my legs. I was trussed up like a sack in a cargo crate, tossed unceremoniously into the flat bed of a troop transport, my bare head slamming against the steel, Hao landing next to me.
At least Maia got to walk up the side, and sit in a steel chair bolted to the flatbed.
One of the Raist marines clicked a long leash to Hao’s cuffs, securing her to a steel shackle embedded in the bed of the transport. I didn’t get the same treatment.
Not dangerous enough. I should have been insulted, but all I felt was a numbness and a general hurt all over, my mouth bleeding on the steel, my head still foggy and ringing from being slammed into the deck.
When the transport started moving, I didn’t even ask where we were going. I was fighting with a sense that I was missing something.
