The Syndicate (The Deep Black Book 7) by James David Victor

Author:James David Victor [Victor, James David]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Fairfield Publishing
Published: 2020-04-06T16:00:00+00:00

8

That final gasp of breath from a dying man. There were few sounds more pleasing. Among them were the song of metal being pulled from its sheathe. The hum as it returned.

The Fair Wind was among the first to enter the hangar bay, following only two of the syndicate’s troop transports. Though not first in arriving, they, Wilco, and the others were ready to be the first to disgorge and begin the campaign of annihilation. Ayala held them back.

“Let the others go,” she said.

“Fine by me,” Shankar said. He sat in the nearest chair and kicked his feet up on a terminal. “Only thing worse than dying in a syndicate cell is dying storming Central bloody Station.”

Wilco bristled at the instruction, but he did not disobey it. He watched through the viewport as the syndicate soldiers poured out of their ships and crashed into the ill-prepared but still formidable Central forces. An infinite minute passed as he watched both syndicate and Navy fall. The apparent folly in their waiting burned his cheeks beneath his mask. He felt Trapper Mayne’s hot stare on the back of his neck.

“They are getting cut down,” Trapper said. “If we suffer more losses here at the breach point, we won’t have enough manpower to hold the hangar bay, let alone spread through the station.”

Wilco bounced on his heels.

Trapper studied the main monitor. “The other transports are struggling to find a path through.” He looked from Wilco to Ayala, waiting, expecting one of them to give an order. When neither did, Trapper opened a comm channel to the syndicate fleet. “Destroyers, focus your attack on the gun batteries in the lower quadrant. Draw the fire away from the hangar bay. Starfighters, those troop transports need an escort. Clear a lane for them and keep the Navy off their back.”

Trapper closed the channel and looked incredulous from one supposed leader to the other. Wilco felt Trapper probing his emotions. Wilco channeled them, focused on the most powerful and grabbed it tight. His rage and bloodlust clouded everything. His vision turned red. And, finally, Ayala let him pass.

The gangplank lowered.

The metallic song rang loud in his ears as he pulled the black blade from its sheath. His feet beat a war drum symphony as he ran out of the ship. His sword sliced through sailor after sailor, spraying himself with blood, dropping lifeless bodies to the deck, his mind empty, until he reached the other side of the scrum. Then he stopped and listened to his heartbeat, the blood pounding in his ears, and the screaming emptiness in his gut. It urged him to turn around, to enter the fray again, like wading back into a warm bath.

He felt a hand on his shoulder, and that hand kept him facing forward. “The syndicate can hold the hangar,” Trapper said. “I suggest we continue on.”

Kurda’s heavy feet boomed on the deck as she walked past them both. “Let’s get going. I don’t like this place.”

She had ample reason to hate the Navy, though she rarely spoke of it.

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