“Thanks,” he said, flashing her the standby charming smile. “I have no fragging idea what they’re doing here, but they’re not on our roster of asses to kick today. Understood?”
“No alien bashing today!” the men called back in unison.
He laughed because they were fairly cooperative for thugs and lowlifes. “Then why are you still standing here? For Queensland!”
27
Shut It Down
Dred had fifty men at her back. That wouldn’t be so worrisome if she felt 100 percent, but she was still weak from the damage she’d taken in the challenge. Many Queenslanders regarded her with awe, as they’d seen the severity of her wounds when she staggered out of the hall. For her to be back on her feet so soon? It seemed supernatural.
And it was, except she didn’t deserve the credit. For obvious reasons, the miracle must remain between Jael and her; it would cause trouble for him if anyone discovered the healing properties of his blood. So Dred added it to the short list of secrets she’d die to keep. Tam was ecstatic, as the men were convinced she was half a step shy of immortality.
Ahead, she spied the first checkpoint. They hadn’t hit the automated defenses that Abaddon was rumored to possess yet, but if Tam’s intel was accurate, she could expect them deeper into Priest’s territory. Dred led the charge, as the zealots had no missile weapons. She took one out with a blow to the skull—and with the weight of her chains around her fist, she cracked it. The guard hit the ground as Queenslanders tore into the other three. In a close quarters fight, with so many bodies around, she couldn’t use her chains like she usually did, but numbers also meant she did less actual killing.
“Form up!” she called, to discourage mutilation.
While she had done her best to unify Artan’s dregs, they were still criminals, and discipline wasn’t their strong suit. A few of them grumbled and stomped the corpses as they went past, but they fell in behind her, two by two. With such superior numbers, they rolled through the next two checkpoints, but the noise of battle couldn’t be concealed.
Zealots streamed down the hall toward them. They were moving so fast, Dred couldn’t get a head count to see how many they faced, but they definitely belonged to Priest. The facial scars he carved on his loyal servants were unmistakable. Dammit, we’re bottlenecked. She’d hoped to push farther before reinforcements rolled out. In a mob like this, it would be tough to avoid being knifed by her own men.
On the plus side, there was no room for fancy fighting. Around her, men grappled and punched. She caught an elbow and lashed out with a wrapped fist. The blow rocked the fanatic, and she pushed forward. Dred found room for a tight kick though not a high one. Still, a blow to the ankle was more effective than one usually suspected. Her target staggered back into two others. Their feet tangled and two of them went down.
Her men didn’t hesitate. They ringed the fallen and kicked them until it was certain they weren’t getting up. The corridor stank of blood and sweat until she couldn’t breathe through her nose. Cries and snarls of pain added to the cacophony until it reminded her of the prison riots on New Terra. Breathe. You didn’t do this.
Her focus wavered, but the Queenslanders were ferocious enough to compensate for her halfhearted swings. At this point, it was all she could do to push forward. Now and then she swung at a zealot who turned on her, but mostly, she shoved a path through the melee. Dred stepped out on the other side and realized she had the numbers advantage.
“Finish them,” she shouted.
Outside the mob, she could breathe a little easier, and she waded in on the fringes. Her head felt dizzy and sick, but she couldn’t show weakness, even if she had been dying five days ago. Weakness didn’t keep a leader in power, and she’d gladly die before giving up what she’d stolen with Tam and Einar’s help. She’d tried life as chattel. There would never be an encore.
Loathing overcame her, and Dred fought hard, living up to her rep as the Dread Queen. By the time the fight ended, ten of her men were on the ground, unmoving, but the enemy was dead, every last one of them.
She knelt beside casualties, hoping to recognize their faces. In some cases, they were so battered, she needed help from her squad to ID them. Once the names had been scratched on a scrap of paper, she tucked it into the top of her boot. At her nod, the men fell in again, grimmer this time. Maybe the march on Abaddon had started out glorious, but death had a way of killing the mood.
“We’ll come back for their bodies,” she promised. “I won’t leave them here. I’ll go with Einar to the chutes myself.”
“We know,” a thin man said quietly.
“The next part will be tricky if Priest has turrets and Peacemakers.”
“How are we supposed to get past them?” a convict asked.
I have no fragging idea.
Without Jael and Einar, she didn’t see a lot of them surviving. But this wasn’t the time to tell them they had been given a suicide run. Damn Silence anyway. These men might be the dregs of the galaxy, but they listened when Dred spoke.
She hardened herself to their fate, and answered, “I have a plan.” And then, surprisingly, she did; it came to her like a burst of light. “See Priest’s corpses on the ground? Grab one. If you can, pick a meat shield that’s bigger than you.”
“Genius,” one of the men breathed.
“If you’re too big to hide or there aren’t any bodies left, then hang back. The rest of us will push forward and find a way to deactivate the turrets from the other side. There should be a manual override.”
The Peacemakers would be another issue entirely. It had nearly killed them to deal with one on the way to the salvage bay; maybe Priest spread that story to discourage incursions. She hadn’t gotten confirmation or denial from Tam, as even the spymaster couldn’t penetrate that deep inside enemy lines.
Twenty-five Queenslanders found corpses to shield their bodies; the rest followed at a safe distance. Dred hadn’t recovered sufficient fortitude to follow her own advice, so she stepped to the back—and remembered Wills’s prediction, not so long ago. Chaos comes. The dead will walk. He’ll cost you everything. Well, the bone-reader was two for three because the corpses were shuffling forward, as promised. But so far, Jael had saved her, not ruined Queensland. Dred knew better than to discount the visions entirely, however.
At the next corner, a turret slammed the floor, saturating the whole area. Her men pressed forward cautiously, testing to see if their meat shields would stand up to the onslaught. Four more went down, but a small, thin convict stumbled forward. The body he’d chosen was almost more than he could lift, and Dred watched his arms straining. He let the corpse fall as he passed the turret’s target field.