Mutineer's Moon

But Colin was unhurt, and long hours spent working out against Dahak’s training remotes took command. He hit on his outspread hands and somersaulted back at Anshar while the mutineer gawked at him in disbelief. Then his boots slammed into Anshar’s chest, battering the energy gun from his grip.

Both men rolled back upright, but Anshar was hurt—badly hurt—and Colin forgot Dahak, the Imperium, even his need for a prisoner. He ignored the dropped energy gun. He wanted nothing between Anshar and his own bare hands, and Anshar paled and writhed away as he saw the dark, terrible death in Colin’s eyes.

Fury crashed through Colin MacIntyre—cold, cruel fury—and one hand caught a flailing arm and jerked his victim close. An alloy—reinforced knee, driven with all the power of his enhanced muscles, smashed into the wound Sean’s bullet had torn, and a savage smile twisted his lips at Anshar’s less than human sound of agony.

He shifted his grip, wrenching the arm he held high, and reinforced cartilage and bone tore and splintered with a ghastly ripping sound. Anshar shrieked again, but the sound was not enough to satisfy Colin. He slammed his enemy to the floor. His knee crashed down between Anshar’s shoulders, and he released the arm he held. Both hands darted down, cupping the mutineer’s chin, and his mighty back tensed, driven by the biotechnic miracles of the Fourth Imperium and the terrible power of hate. There was a moment of titanic stress and one last gurgling scream, and then Anshar’s spine snapped with a flat, explosive crack.

Chapter Nine

Colin held his grip, feeling the life flow out of his victim in the steady collapse of Anshar’s implants, and the killer in his soul was sick with triumph … and angry that it was over.

He opened his hands at last, and Anshar’s face struck the floor with a meaty smack. Colin rose, scrubbing his hands on his jeans, and his eyes were empty, as if part of himself had died with his brother.

He turned away, smelling wood smoke, plaster dust, and the stench of ruptured bodies. He could not look at Cal’s slaughtered family, but neither, though he would have sold his soul to do it, could he take his eyes from Sean.

He knelt in the spreading pool of his brother’s blood. The energy gun had mangled Sean hideously, but the very horror meant death had come quickly, and he tried to tell himself Sean had not suffered as his ripped and torn flesh said he had.

Their long-dead mother’s eyes looked up at him. There was no life in them, but an echo of Sean’s outrage remained. He’d known, Colin thought sadly, known he was a dead man from the instant Anshar began to raise his own weapon, yet he’d stood his ground. Just as he always had. And, just as he always had, he had protected his younger brother.

Colin closed those eyes with gentle fingers, and unashamed tears streaked his cheeks. One fell, a diamond glinting in the light from the study, to his brother’s face, and the sight touched something inside him. It was like a farewell, fraying the grip of the grief that kept him kneeling there, and he reached to pick up Girru’s energy gun.

“Freeze,” a cold voice said behind him.

Colin froze, but this time he recognized the voice. It spoke English with a soft, Southern accent, and his jaw clenched. Not just Cal; everyone he’d thought he knew, believed he could trust, had betrayed him. Everyone but Sean.

“Drop it.” He let the energy gun thump back to the floor. “Inside.”

He stepped back into the study and turned slowly, his eyes flinty as they rested on the tall, black-skinned woman in the doorway. She wore the uniform of the United States Air Force with a lieutenant colonel’s oak leaves, but the weapon slung from her shoulder had never been made on Earth. The over-sized, snub-nosed pistol was a grav gun, and its drum magazine held two hundred three-millimeter darts. Their muzzle velocity would be over five thousand meters per second, and they were formed of a chemical explosive denser than uranium that exploded after penetrating. From where he stood, he could see the three-headed dragon etched into the receiver.

The muzzle never wavered from his navel, but the colonel’s eyes swept the room, and her face twisted. The black forefinger on the trigger tightened and he tensed his belly muscles uselessly, but she didn’t fire. Her brown eyes lingered for a long moment on Frances and Anna Tudor’s mutilated bodies, then came back to him, filled with a bottomless hate he’d never seen in them.

“You bastard!“ Lieutenant Colonel Sandra Tillotson breathed.

“Me?” he said bitterly. “What about you, Sandy?”

His voice was like a blow. Her head jerked, and her eyes widened, their hatred buried in sudden disbelief as she saw him—him, not just another killer—for the first time.

“Colin?!” she gasped, and her reaction puzzled him. Surely the mutineers had known who they were trapping! But Sandy closed her mouth with an almost audible snap, her gaze flitting to the two dead bodies in the Fleet uniforms, and he could actually see the intensity of her thoughts, see a whole chain of realizations flickering over her face. And then, to his utter shock, she lowered her weapon.

His muscles tightened to leap across the intervening space and snatch it away. But she shook her head slowly, and her next words stopped him dead.

“Colin,” she whispered. “My God, Colin, what have you done?”

It was the last reaction he had expected, and his own eyes narrowed.

“I found them like this. Those two—” his head gestured at the uniformed bodies, hands motionless “— were waiting for me. They … killed Sean, too.”

Sandy jerked around to stare through the doorway, and her shoulders sagged as she finally recognized the savagely maimed body. When she turned back to Colin, her eyes were closed in grief and despair.

“Oh, Jesus,” she moaned. “Oh, dear, sweet Jesus. Not Sean, too.”

“Sandy, what the hell is going on here?” Colin demanded.

“No, you wouldn’t know,” she said softly, her mouth bitter.

“I don’t know anything! I thought I did, but—”

“Cal tripped his emergency signal,” Sandy said tonelessly, and looked at the dead scientist, as if impressing the hideous sight imperishably upon her mind. “I was closest, so I came as quick as I could.”

“You? Sandy—you’re in with Anu?”

“Of course not! Those two—Girru and Anshar—were two of his hit men.”

“Sandy, what are you talking about? If you’re not—”

Colin broke off again as his sensors tingled, and Sandy stiffened as she saw his face tighten.

“What is it?” she asked sharply.

“Those two bastards called in reinforcements,” Colin said tautly. “They’re coming. Don’t you feel them?”

“I’m a normal human, Colin. One of the ‘degenerates,’ “ Sandy said harshly. “But you aren’t, are you? Not anymore.”

“A norm—” He broke off. “Later,” he said tersely. “Right now, we’ve got at least twenty sets of combat armor closing in on us.”

“Shit,” Sandy breathed. Then she shook herself again. “If you’ve got yourself a bio-enhancement package, grab one of those energy guns!” She bared her teeth in an ugly smile. “That’ll surprise the bastards!”

Colin snatched up Anshar’s weapon. It had suffered no damage in their struggle and the charge indicator read ninety percent, and his fingers curled almost lovingly around the grips as he grasped Sandy’s meaning. No normal human could handle one of the heavy energy weapons. Even Sandy’s grav gun would be a problem for most Terra-born humans. For the Imperium, it was a sidearm; for Sandy, it was a shoulder-slung, two-handed weapon.

“How are they coming in and where are they?” Sandy demanded tersely.

“Twenty of them,” Colin repeated. “Closing in from the perimeter of a circle. About six klicks out and coming fast.”