“He’s babbling.” Frieka flicked a dismissive ear. “This is a waste of time, Chief. Crack his comp and make him tell the truth.”
Alerio gave the priest a cold glare. “Well? Do I crack you, or do you start talking on your own?”
“I am telling the truth, you stupid ’borg bastard. The cohorts held part of the god, and they refused to give him up,” the monk spat. “Ivar led the loyalists against them—I was stupid enough to follow him—and we killed them all. He took the pieces back, but when the Victor reformed from the ’borg’s body, he was mad.” His gaze shifted away, staring into the distance as if at some horrifying vision. “Mad and corrupted. He ordered the captive priests burned in Ponichi Capital Square, babbling about medieval Earth kings. So no, I don’t care to become a martyr for the Victor.”
Alerio was still trying to get more useful intelligence out of their captive when a voice spoke over the mission com channel. One Dona knew far too well.
“Missing your boy Galar, Dyami?” Ivar asked in a laughing purr that sent a chill down her spine. Everyone in the party simultaneously stiffened. “Want him back?”
She exchanged a look with Alerio. “What do you want, Ivar?” the chief demanded coldly.
“You know what I want. Otherwise you wouldn’t have brought Wyatt. Get the T’Lir and bring it to me. Alone. No Nick. No Jessica. No Dona. No fucking backup whatsoever. Or Jessica gets to bury her Warlord.”
Alerio’s handsome face looked as if it had been cast in plastium. “Where am I supposed to take it?”
Ivar rattled off a string of coordinates. “That’s your first stop. There’ll be others. I’ll give you the next one when you get there. On foot. If I get so much as a whiff of anybody other than you, I’ll send Jess poor Galar’s head in a box. We don’t want that, do we?”
“No.”
“Of course not. Not with you being such a ‘hero’ and all. You have fifteen minutes. Just possible if you haul ass. Otherwise . . .”
“I’ll be there.”
“Of course you will.” Ivar’s tone lost its edge of mocking humor. “And don’t think you can fool me with a fake. I’ll know, and Galar will get a whole lot shorter. By a head. Maybe part of his neck, too, but definitely by a head.”
Com link broken, Dona’s neurocomp told her.
She swallowed, fighting a cold wave of panic that filled her throat with greasy nausea.
Alerio turned to Nick. “I need the T’Lir.”
The Sela Guardian looked at him for a long, silent moment.
“Nick . . .” Jessica stared at him, desperation putting a tremor in her voice. “He’s not bluffing. We both know that.”
“No, he’s not bluffing.” Nick pulled the silver band off his biceps and handed it to Alerio.
Accepting it, the chief met his gaze. “Whatever Terje’s got in mind, I’m not going to let him get away with it.”
“If you can stop him.”
“I’ll stop him.”
“Alerio . . .” Dona had to stop and lick lips gone painfully dry. Her heart pounded so hard, she could barely hear herself speak. “You can’t do this. Ivar hates you. He’s going to kill you.”
“He’s going to try.” Alerio turned away. “But he will definitely kill Galar if I don’t. And I’ve lost all the agents I mean to lose today.”
Ivar watched the black speck that was Alerio Dyami run toward the fortress the Victor had created in the heart of the Arizona desert. It wasn’t a very big fortress, true. It didn’t need to be, with only twenty-four priests alive to man it. But it still resembled a medieval castle, complete with towering stone walls and battlements.
The Victor is insane. Obsessed with medieval kings and crazy as a Soji Dragon in season. The thought zipped through his mind before he had time to suppress it.
Pain! Agony raced across his skin as though he’d been sprayed with acid. His knees buckled, and he cried out before he could clamp his lips together.
I am not mad, the Victor growled from Ivar’s feet.
For once, he hadn’t assumed his towering golden form. Instead, he wore what Ivar now knew to be his true appearance: that of a roiling black amoeba, glistening in the throbbing sunlight and heavily shielded from the Warlord’s sensors.
I. Am. Not. Mad. Say it!
“Of course you’re not mad,” Ivar wheezed. It took everything he had to remain on his feet, but he didn’t dare fall in front of the Victor. He had an ugly feeling the thing would eat him. “I meant no offense!”
See that you remember it. I still know your every thought.
“Yes, I know!” Gods help me.
I am your only god now, cyborg. With one last flaming wave of pain, the Victor ceased the torture. Ivar sagged against the battlements, acutely aware of the two warrior priests watching him with stony contempt. The bastards hated his guts.
Almost as much as I hate Dyami.
Glancing over the battlements, the battleborg blinked in surprise. The Warlord was damned fast; Dyami had almost reached the castle in the short time Ivar had been . . . preoccupied. Though he’d been going full-out in the blistering heat for over an hour, he still ran with the smooth, relentless power of a combot.
Those Vardonese bastards knew their nanotech and genetic engineering. Ivar wasn’t sure even he would have been able to survive a trek like that without collapsing from heatstroke. Any ordinary human would have dropped dead almost an hour ago. Which of course was the whole point: to run Dyami so hard, the Enforcers didn’t have a chance to follow.
Too, all that exercise should have eaten into even the Warlord’s impressive physical reserves. He would still put up a fight—he wasn’t even in riaat yet—but he wouldn’t be able to resist long before his body finally gave out.
The fucking idiot. The chief must know he was a dead man. Must realize the Xerans had no intention of surrendering Galar and every intention of killing Dyami himself once he turned over the T’Lir.
Ivar shot a sullen look over one shoulder. The blond Warlord lay on his back, spread-eagled in anti-grav fetters that held him immobile. The knife wound he’d suffered had finally stopped bleeding, thanks more to his neurocomp than any treatment the Xerans had given him. Even so, Galar was only half-conscious. The concussion he’d suffered during the coach crash had taken a heavy toll.
He was lucky to be breathing at all. He’d be dead by now if Ivar’d had his way. Arvid had always been almost as big a pain in Ivar’s ass as Dyami himself.
Another vicious blast of pain. I told you, I will bend the Warlord to my will. Dyami, and that one down there.
They’re Warlords. The thought flashed through Ivar’s mind before he could stop it. They don’t bend, and they’ll gut you if you try . . . A blast of pain brought tears to his eyes. Frantically, he toed the line. “But it will do them no good, Great One,” he wheezed. “You’ll blow out their minds like a match.” Like hell.
This time the thought zipped past too quickly for the Victor to catch it. Mollified, the oily bastard stopped inflicting that crippling pain. Too bad I can’t do that all the time. Luckily the Victor didn’t catch that either.