Rygel had told them during their vigil in the Med-quarter's waiting area that Stoma had revealed that Hyril had a safe house somewhere in the Hynerian wilderness, far from the population centers. The safe house was provided to Hyril by the government of Nebari Prime, using several false fronts to purchase it. The Dominar smiled as he told them that the information had only cost Stoma three broken fingers. It seemed the Captain was much better at inflicting pain on others then suffering with it himself. Berret linked the Wraith's AI with the Hyneria Central Information Computer and fed in the information. Tracing the data-trail he soon had a location for the safe house. He took the Wraith into low orbit above the coordinates. The wings extended, the scanning surfaces on their undersides soon began to transmit information to the Operations station. Berret activated the holo-imager and the picture of a single level building surrounded by woodland area appeared. A lone air schooner was parked in front of the building. Switching the scans over to another spectrum, he found that there were an additional three levels to the house below ground and a parabolic communication disk hidden further up into the woods. Keying into the next spectrum Berret found that the building was inhabited by eleven life forms... all Nebari.
"Wraith, where is that communication disk transmitting to?" he asked the AI
"The disk is data linked to a Nebari Hostship in a parking orbit over the planet. No transmissions currently active at this time," said the machine voice.
"Prepare to disrupted the link on my command," Berret ordered.
"Ready to execute protocol on command," came the machine's reply.
Berret returned to the pilot's seat and plunged the Wraith in a steep dive toward the planet.
"Get my bags aboard the Schooner immediately!" Hyril ordered his frumpy new Valet "We are leaving Hyneria within the arn!"
"Right away, Abettor Hyril," replied the man, pausing to fumble with straightening his wrinkled house jacket before picking up the luggage.
"Sometime this day, you frelling idiot!" snapped Hyril as he slapped the man in the back of his head.
"Y-y-yes... of course, A-Abettor. Right away," the man stuttered, bending to pick up the baggage.
"Frelling Goddess! Where did they ever find me such a stupid fopooter? I really cannot wait until my regular Valet returns from sick leave," complained the Nebari Official. He turned his attention to the Nebari soldier in the room with them, "Trooper Foram... has the safe house been secured and has the Hostship been notified to expect our arrival?" he asked. The trooper came almost to ridged attention.
"The men have been deployed and the ship has been alerted, Abettor," he reported.
"Good!" said Hyril, "I certainly hope your men are better trained and prepared then those frell-ups of Stoma's were."
Hyril silently cursed the Captain. The mission frelled up, he was certainly dead or captured. Hyril planned to be off the planet well before the Hynerian authorities showed up to take him into custody. The though of spending any time in an alien prison sent a shiver up the man's spine. And prison was where he was sure he was headed after attacking the royal palace, diplomat or no diplomat. As far as he was concerned, Ambassador Lerris could take the blame all for himself and grace the inside of a Hynerian jail.
The Wraith set down in front of the Schooner in a cloud of dust and flying debris kicked up by the angled engines. Berret checked his two Pulse pistols one last time before sliding them into his thigh holsters.
"Wraith, jam communications," he ordered as he hit the switch for the rapid deployment hatch in the craft's belly.
"Acknowledged," said the AI. "Four life form readings converging on a forward vector and closing," the artificial intelligence went on to report.
Berret pulled the hood of his cloak up over his head to help camouflage him in the dim light of the wilderness. He dropped through the hatch and landed silently on the ground next to one of the rear landing gear. The AI was closing the hatch after him when the four Nebari troopers ran up to the Wraith. They were pointing their Pulse rifles at the dark glass of the cockpit canopy and trying to distinguish if there was anyone aboard when Berret walked out from under the ship and shot all four before they realized he was there. Both Pulse pistols still smoking; he walked between their prone bodies toward the building. One man issued a moan as the Shrike stepped near him. Without stopping or looking at the wounded man, Berret shot him again once in the chest as he passed, not feeling a hint of sympathy for any of the men who would have taken his wife and children from him if they had been able.
Berret arrived at the door to the building and found it to be armored and locked tight. There were no other openings visible to the Shrike, even though logic told him there had to be at least one other escape route. The Shrike did not have time to search for the hidden exit. Instead he set one of his pulse pistols to overload and jammed it under the handle and latch of the door. Moving off to one side he waited for the few microts it took the almost fully charged weapon's force chamber to build up and explode. The makeshift bomb didn't do too much damage to the armored door itself, but the door jam and wall were quite effectively blown apart in the blast, leaving the dented door to swing freely open. Berret quickly rushed inside, using the sudden explosion and settling dust to cover his entrance. As he cleared the doorway a pulse bolt slammed into the wall behind him. Through the thinning dust cloud he could make out two Nebari soldiers barricaded behind an over-turned desk. They had failed to give themselves enough room to easily raise and lower their Pulse rifles and the desk was interfering with them being able to shoot at him. Berret further threw them off by hitting the floor and rolling forward toward them instead of to the side toward cover. He thumbed the power selector on his remaining pistol up to full and pressed the trigger as it lined up with the desktop. The weapon rapidly spat bolt after bolt, chewing up the Nebari's cover until the desk was reduced to splinters. The stream of fire continued on to chop one of the men behind the desk almost in two. Berret swung the muzzle to cover the second Nebari and one of the first bolts glanced off his rifle stock and sent the man recoiling backwards before the over-heated weapon seized up and stopped firing.
Without pause, Berret jumped to his feet and leaped over the remains of the desk as the second man attempted to regain his feet. Using the jammed pistol, Berret savagely bludgeoned the trooper until he stopped moving. Dropping the useless bloody weapon, he moved off down the hallway they had been protecting. Six down and five to go thought the Shrike, keeping a mental score card. A quick search showed him that all the rooms off that hallway were empty. The last doorway revealed a stairwell heading down into the lower levels. Berret slowly started to creep down the staircase and was almost at the next level when the door opened and a bookish looking Nebari carrying a satchel stuffed with film sheets and data-disks stepped out onto the staircase landing with him. Berret caught the surprised man by the front of his shirt with one armored covered hand and slammed him bodily into the wall of the stairwell. He drew his other arm back and the serrated blades snapped out ready to draw blood. The Nebari was obviously not a soldier, or Hyril... but the Shrike was not going to take the chance of leaving anybody alive behind him. The man was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time... dren happens he thought to himself. He had an odd thought that the man looked vaguely familiar under his clerk-like appearance. He was just about to thrust the blades forward when the man dropped the satchel to throw up his arms and yelled,
"BERRET! HOLD!"
The Shrike paused in mid-strike at the use of the name that even his crewmates so rarely used now. Tightening his grip on the man's shirt, he asked in a vicious hiss,
"How do you know my name, Nebari?" Berret spat the name "Nebari" like it was a curse.
The man's feigned look of terror fell away along with the clerk-like masquerade. Even under the ex-assassin's strong hold the man seemed to suddenly stand taller. The fear on his face was replaced by a very familiar grin.
"Why wouldn't I know my own sister's bond-mate?" he said.
Berret wasn't so easily buying the man's story. He slammed him against the wall again for good measure.
"Don't play games with me, Nebari. I'm really not in the frelling mood. You can't possibly expect me to believe for a microt that you're my wife's brother... and if you were, seeing that he is the cause of this whole mess in a round about way. I wouldn't be real happy to see him about now."
"I'm not... I don't care about when you're in the mood for sex... I do, ...and we'll have to talk about the last question some time later," replied the man, his offhand sense of humor so much like Chiana's.
"Look here," he said and produced a holo-disk seemingly from thin air. The images appeared and rapidly cycled through a series. Most where of a young smiling Chiana and a younger version of the man he held before him. Seeing them side-by-side he couldn't doubt they were siblings anymore then he could doubt Jalen and Chulee. Berret eased his hold on the Nebari man and he gave the Shrike his Chiana-like smile again. Releasing him totally, he asked the man he'd never met, "What are you doing here, Nerri?"
Nerri bent to retrieve some film sheets that had fallen loose from the bag in Berret's assault.
"I have Chiana's file flagged on Nebari Prime so that if anyone should request to see it, it will send an alert out to me. She's remained well hidden these last few cycles with that group of yours. I was hoping they'd never find her, but Hyril somehow found her here and we didn't manage to arrive here until late last night. It was too late to do anything about the assault on your living quarters by the time we found out about it. Was anyone hurt or killed in the attack?" he asked.
"Our son, Jalen, your nephew.... was seriously wounded. We don't know if he will survive," answered the Shrike. Nerri swore and slammed his fist into the wall.
"I'm sorry, Berret. How is Chiana taking it?"
"She's a strong woman, but it's never easy for anyone to face the possibly of losing a child," Berret said, his tone growing colder. To him it seemed the man had asked the questions with little more feeling then one would when inquiring about the weather.
"That's why you're here then, for revenge... to kill Hyril," Nerri said as more statement than question.
"I'm here to kill any Nebari I see, but especially... Hyril," answered the Shrike coolly. "I get like that when somebody tries to hurt my children."
"Jared, they call you Jared now, don't they? I hope you don't think I'm unfeeling for my sister and you, or about what they've done to my nephew, but these documents are important to the Resistance. I would go with you to exact vengeance, but I have to see that these make it out of here and into the right hands. I replaced Hyril's normal Valet so I could get inside and get them out. Millions of Nebari lives and their freedom depend on it."
"I see, hiding in plain sight inside your enemy's camp... how ingenuous," said the Shrike.
Nerri started to smile until with a hard glare, the Shrike's voice turned even colder with pent-up rage,
"So you didn't even try to come to your sister's aid or warn us. You left us... her family, to live or die on our own for frelling film disks?"
"But the Resistance..." began Nerri.
"Frell the Resistance, Nerri!" snapped Berret, pushing closer to crowd the man.
"I don't care about your Resistance... let all the Nebari die. I care only about Chiana and my children. I don't want your help; the only thing I want to know from you is... where is Hyril at this microt."
"He's down on the lowest level... with the three remaining troopers," Nerri replied with a swallow, not knowing now where he stood with his sister's bond-mate.
"The only reason I don't leave you here dead with the rest is because you are Chiana's brother... and if I find out you let this happen to get those documents, that you used us as pawns in your game. You will be a dead man," warned Berret.
"Now, go outside to the Wraith scout ship that's sitting by the air schooner and wait for me to return. Do not try to leave in the schooner, the Wraith has orders to destroy any craft approaching or leaving the area."
Berret started to continue down the staircase, "And we 'will' talk about this at a later time."
"Jared!" Nerri called one last time to his back.
Without looking behind him, Berret said, "Not - Another - Word, Nerri!"
Trooper Foram rushed into the room. "We are under attack, Abettor!" he cried.
"No frelling dren!" shouted Hyril in return. "I thought all that gun fire was normal! Imbecile! How many men in the attacking force?" he asked the trooper next.
"Unknown... there is a Peacekeeper scout craft in front of the building," the trooper reported
"Peacekeepers! It can't be them here. You must be mistaken," Hyril said.
"I am sure of it, Abettor. It is a light surveillance scout ship used by the Peacekeepers," confirmed the soldier. "They have already penetrated the building's perimeter and I believe they are between us and the escape tunnel," he continued.
"Frell! How many of the men are left to defend this office?" Hyril asked.
"Three... including myself. We have lost contact with all the others."
"Pull back into the reception room and hold position there," the Nebari official ordered.
Not having any other choice, the trooper left to carry out the orders to make their last stand.
Berret had reached the last landing above the final floor of the safe house just as the bottom door creaked open a few hentas and somebody put in eye to the crack. Berret froze in place hoping the shadows would hide him from view from below. The door opened further and the Nebari soldier stuck his head out for a better view of the stairwell. Below Berret and at the bottom left side of the staircase was a short walkway with an alcove and storage closet. Berret eased a power pack clip from one of his gun belts and placed it on the floor near the edge of the landing. Waiting for the trooper to step further away from the door, the Shrike removed a metal disk from another pouch at his belt. Pressing the center of the object, four blades slid out and locked, giving the disk a star-like shape. The Nebari took the step outside the door that the ex-assassin was waiting for and Berret nudged the power pack over the side with the toe of his boot.
The clip hit the floor by the closet door with a metallic clack. The Nebari froze in place for a microt and then raised his rifle and started to creep stalkingly toward the alcove. Berret squeezed the center of the disk in his hand again and stepped out onto the open landing. His hand snapped downward and the disk left it, whirling through the air to bury itself in the breastplate of the Nebari man's battle armor. The trooper stepped back at the sudden slight impacted and stared down at the bladed object sticking out of his armor. Looking back to where it had come from, he saw Berret still standing in plain view on the landing, obviously unarmed without a Pulse gun as far as the trooper was concerned. He began to chuckle at the man who though he could attack a fully armed and armored soldier with such an ineffective weapon. He raised his weapon and the man still stood there not moving or even trying to get away. He had just settled the Pulse rifles sights on the figure when the disk started to beep. The disk beeped faster until it became a steady tone all within a microt or two. Dropping his rifle to let it hang by it's sling, he clawed at the object trying to dislodge it from his armor. Realizing in his last microts of life it was already too late as the disk exploded, blowing a fist size hole through the armor and his chest.
The Shrike watched dispassionately as the Nebari's body toppled over. The man's comm clicked on and a voice called for the troopers to retreat to the outer reception room and hold position. Berret went to the body and removed the comm in case it turned out to be useful later. He discarded the idea taking the Pulse rifle as it had become jammed with body parts from the Nebari and would take to long to clean it for use. The Shrike slipped through the door and began searching the remaining floor. He almost walked into the next trooper who was obviously looking for his comrade in the stairwell. The man was edgy and ready. His Pulse rifle already pointed ahead of him, he thrust it at the Shrike point blank and pulled the trigger. The bolt hit the ex-assassin dead center in the chest and threw him back several steps the way he had just come. Berret landed flat on his back and remained still. The excited Nebari kept the body covered as he keyed his comm,
"I just killed one! He's here in the clerk's office," he reported to his superior.
The voice on the other end said that he'd be there right away. The trooper keyed off his comm and cautiously approached the Shrike, poking the prone form with the muzzle of his rifle. When the body didn't respond, he moved in even closer to inspect his trophy.
"What the hezmana are you suppose to be?" he asked more to himself then the oddly garbed body as he moved the cloak's hood aside to see the man's face. The body's eyes blinked open in the next instant.
"Death," hissed a graveyard voice as twin blades rammed into his throat.
Foram arrived at the clerk's office to find the other trooper kneeling over a prone body on the floor.
"What do you have?" he asked for a report as he bent down beside the other soldier.
The man didn't answer him and annoyed, Foram grabbed the insubordinate trooper by the shoulder.
"I said, what the frell do you ha..." he started to say again but never finished because the other trooper fell over backward at his touch. The man was staring out of shocked eyes and had a pair of gapping holes in his throat. The second body surged up from the floor, one of its legs shooting out and sweeping Foram's legs out from under him. The Nebari crashed to the floor as the other body continued to rise in a swirl of black cloak. The black shape seemed to flow directly at him and the last thing he remembered seeing was the glint of flashing blades before everything went dark forever.
Berret stood upright as the blades retracted into his gauntlets. Sweeping aside his cloak he inspected his armor. His own chest plates had absorbed the pulse bolt and were now burnt brown in color instead of the dark bluish-black color of gunmetal. They would not withstand another hit from a pulse bolt until they had been realigned again. It didn't matter to Berret, if Nerri's information was corrected the only Nebari left was Hyril. He paused a few microts to prepare one last surprise for the Nebari Official and then turning; he left the room behind.
"Foram! Answer me, frell you!" Hyril shouted into the comm, as if shouting could make the device work better. None of the troopers answered his calls and his fear was mounting. He'd just slammed the comm back down on his desk when the door to his office opened a crack.
"Foram? Is that you?" he called again toward the doorway.
When no answer came back, he tried, "Who is it? Who's there?"
In reply there was a strange lopsided rolling sound. Something tumbled past the opened door and into his office. Hyril couldn't make out what the object was until it came to rest in the middle of the floor.
It was Foram's detached head.
Hyril screamed and dived back toward his desk, scrambling for the Pulse pistol he'd left lying there.
His hand had just closed around the grip when a cold familiar voice said,
"That won't do you any good."
Hyril spun around to see a black-cloaked form standing over Foram's disembodied head.
"What the frell!" Hyril cried raising the pistol toward the figure. The Shrike responded by kicking Foram's head up and into Hyril's face. The impacted from the detached head drove the Nebari backwards.
Before he could recover, Berret had crossed the room and twisted the Pulse pistol out of Hyril's grasp.
Berret pulled back the cloak's hood so the Nebari Abettor could see his face.
"You just couldn't leave well enough alone. You had to come after my family," growled the Shrike into the man's face.
Hyril bend backwards over his desk trying to put some distance between the angry killer and himself.
"It was ordered by Ambassador Lerris, himself," he said attempting to pass the blame. "I was just following the orders given to me by my superior."
Berret backhanded the man. "But you arranged it!" he accused.
The Nebari tried to work his way off the desk but Berret stayed on top of him, not giving him any room.
"We had to! If the Hynerians or anyone else discovered information out about certain projects it would have spelled disaster for the Nebari!" he offered as explanation.
"You mean the Contagion. The Dominar and his people have known about it for cycles!" Berret snapped. "We already knew what your government did to my bond-mate when she was younger. You've already done her enough harm, you should have just left her, and us in peace."
Hyril's face fell at the revelation that one of his government's darkest secrets wasn't so secret after all.
"You still haven't given me a good reason why you ordered my wife taken and our children killed... and why you were willing to kill the rest of our friends to accomplish the act," growled Berret.
"She was a carrier... she had to be recovered and silenced!" Hyril stammered. "The children are impure. They cannot be allowed to taint Nebari society. It is common practice to eliminate half-breeds when we discover them."
The words infuriated and distracted Berret enough that he didn't realize that the man had been slowly reaching for a hidden dagger in his belt, until the blade was swinging at his throat. Almost too late, Berret tucked his head back far enough that the dagger missed his throat but still sliced him along his jaw line. Using that opening, Hyril drew back a fist and punched the Shrike in the face, driving him backwards.
Alternately throwing punches, and swinging and stabbing with the blade, Hyril drove Berret into the middle of the room. Berret recovered enough to fend off the blade and most of the hand strikes. Unexpectedly Hyril dropped low and stabbed upward at the Shrike's chest. The dagger jammed itself between Berret's armor plates and managed to penetrate the ballistic cloth underneath. The point of the knife speared through flesh and glanced off one of the man's ribs. Berret cursed to himself for being both careless and now not knowing the extent of his wound. The Shrike twisted his body away from Hyril and with a change of luck for Berret, the dagger's thin blade snapped off in his armor, leaving Hyril without a weapon. Hyril stepped in and threw several more punches and kicks at Berret. However, this time Berret was ready for the attack. The Shrike slapped aside most of the blows and flowed inside the man's reach, landing several of his own strikes to Hyril's body. Rising upward, the last blow put an armored cased fist into Hyril's jaw. The Nebari stumbled backwards with the Shrike following him. Enraged now that this man meant to murder his children and take his wife... and may have yet in fact, succeeded in killing his son, Berret grabbed the Nebari by his belt and lifted the man upright clear of the floor and over his head.
"You murdering piece of frelling dren!" spat the Shrike as he slammed him up against the nearest wall.
"This is for my son, you bastard," Berret's voice breaking as he triggered the blades.
Hyril's eyes shot opened in painful shock as both sets of blades tore through his abdomen below his belt.
Berret released his hold and Hyril's own weight forced the edges to cut deeper into him. His thick belt parted as the blades cut through it and further up into his stomach.
"I told you... you'd die hard if you frelled with my family, you should have listened and left us alone," whispered the Shrike to the dying man before jerking the blades free of his body.
Hyril fell to the floor with a loud moan; still alive he tried to keep his internal organs from sliding out of the wounds in his belly. The blades snapped back into the gauntlets, and Berret watched the man for several microts, almost making himself sick at the extent of his own cruelty before saying,
"You've made me once again what I've tried to walk away from... resurrecting a part of me that I hoped my children would never see. That is the only thing your new Nebari order has given birth too."
He reached down and tore a necklace with a family crest from Hyril's neck. Berret turned from the gasping Official toward the office door. Before he reached it he turned back and said,
"It will be arns before you die. You don't deserve it, but if you can make it back to a population center... you might yet live. That is, if you can make it from here to transportation."
Berret turned his back on Hyril for the last time and walked out the door.
Nerri was waiting for him outside by the Wraith as he had been instructed. He rose up as Berret approached; not quite believing the man was still alive.
"Those stories I've heard about you must be true then, though I'd hardly thought to believe them," said Chiana's brother. Berret looked at Nerri with a silent haunted expression for a few microts.
Finally he tapped his comm. "Wraith," he said.
"On line, Shrike," came the mechanical voice.
"Destroy the Schooner," Berret commanded.
"Acknowledged," the AI responded instantly.
The missile bay door slid back and the rack dropped down. A spear shaped projectile shot out riding on a ball of fire and the Schooner cease to be in a flash and clap of Peacekeeper thunder.
"Believe only the bad ones," finally answered the Shrike bitterly.
"Wraith, where is that communication disk transmitting to?" he asked the AI
"The disk is data linked to a Nebari Hostship in a parking orbit over the planet. No transmissions currently active at this time," said the machine voice.
"Prepare to disrupted the link on my command," Berret ordered.
"Ready to execute protocol on command," came the machine's reply.
Berret returned to the pilot's seat and plunged the Wraith in a steep dive toward the planet.
"Get my bags aboard the Schooner immediately!" Hyril ordered his frumpy new Valet "We are leaving Hyneria within the arn!"
"Right away, Abettor Hyril," replied the man, pausing to fumble with straightening his wrinkled house jacket before picking up the luggage.
"Sometime this day, you frelling idiot!" snapped Hyril as he slapped the man in the back of his head.
"Y-y-yes... of course, A-Abettor. Right away," the man stuttered, bending to pick up the baggage.
"Frelling Goddess! Where did they ever find me such a stupid fopooter? I really cannot wait until my regular Valet returns from sick leave," complained the Nebari Official. He turned his attention to the Nebari soldier in the room with them, "Trooper Foram... has the safe house been secured and has the Hostship been notified to expect our arrival?" he asked. The trooper came almost to ridged attention.
"The men have been deployed and the ship has been alerted, Abettor," he reported.
"Good!" said Hyril, "I certainly hope your men are better trained and prepared then those frell-ups of Stoma's were."
Hyril silently cursed the Captain. The mission frelled up, he was certainly dead or captured. Hyril planned to be off the planet well before the Hynerian authorities showed up to take him into custody. The though of spending any time in an alien prison sent a shiver up the man's spine. And prison was where he was sure he was headed after attacking the royal palace, diplomat or no diplomat. As far as he was concerned, Ambassador Lerris could take the blame all for himself and grace the inside of a Hynerian jail.
The Wraith set down in front of the Schooner in a cloud of dust and flying debris kicked up by the angled engines. Berret checked his two Pulse pistols one last time before sliding them into his thigh holsters.
"Wraith, jam communications," he ordered as he hit the switch for the rapid deployment hatch in the craft's belly.
"Acknowledged," said the AI. "Four life form readings converging on a forward vector and closing," the artificial intelligence went on to report.
Berret pulled the hood of his cloak up over his head to help camouflage him in the dim light of the wilderness. He dropped through the hatch and landed silently on the ground next to one of the rear landing gear. The AI was closing the hatch after him when the four Nebari troopers ran up to the Wraith. They were pointing their Pulse rifles at the dark glass of the cockpit canopy and trying to distinguish if there was anyone aboard when Berret walked out from under the ship and shot all four before they realized he was there. Both Pulse pistols still smoking; he walked between their prone bodies toward the building. One man issued a moan as the Shrike stepped near him. Without stopping or looking at the wounded man, Berret shot him again once in the chest as he passed, not feeling a hint of sympathy for any of the men who would have taken his wife and children from him if they had been able.
Berret arrived at the door to the building and found it to be armored and locked tight. There were no other openings visible to the Shrike, even though logic told him there had to be at least one other escape route. The Shrike did not have time to search for the hidden exit. Instead he set one of his pulse pistols to overload and jammed it under the handle and latch of the door. Moving off to one side he waited for the few microts it took the almost fully charged weapon's force chamber to build up and explode. The makeshift bomb didn't do too much damage to the armored door itself, but the door jam and wall were quite effectively blown apart in the blast, leaving the dented door to swing freely open. Berret quickly rushed inside, using the sudden explosion and settling dust to cover his entrance. As he cleared the doorway a pulse bolt slammed into the wall behind him. Through the thinning dust cloud he could make out two Nebari soldiers barricaded behind an over-turned desk. They had failed to give themselves enough room to easily raise and lower their Pulse rifles and the desk was interfering with them being able to shoot at him. Berret further threw them off by hitting the floor and rolling forward toward them instead of to the side toward cover. He thumbed the power selector on his remaining pistol up to full and pressed the trigger as it lined up with the desktop. The weapon rapidly spat bolt after bolt, chewing up the Nebari's cover until the desk was reduced to splinters. The stream of fire continued on to chop one of the men behind the desk almost in two. Berret swung the muzzle to cover the second Nebari and one of the first bolts glanced off his rifle stock and sent the man recoiling backwards before the over-heated weapon seized up and stopped firing.
Without pause, Berret jumped to his feet and leaped over the remains of the desk as the second man attempted to regain his feet. Using the jammed pistol, Berret savagely bludgeoned the trooper until he stopped moving. Dropping the useless bloody weapon, he moved off down the hallway they had been protecting. Six down and five to go thought the Shrike, keeping a mental score card. A quick search showed him that all the rooms off that hallway were empty. The last doorway revealed a stairwell heading down into the lower levels. Berret slowly started to creep down the staircase and was almost at the next level when the door opened and a bookish looking Nebari carrying a satchel stuffed with film sheets and data-disks stepped out onto the staircase landing with him. Berret caught the surprised man by the front of his shirt with one armored covered hand and slammed him bodily into the wall of the stairwell. He drew his other arm back and the serrated blades snapped out ready to draw blood. The Nebari was obviously not a soldier, or Hyril... but the Shrike was not going to take the chance of leaving anybody alive behind him. The man was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time... dren happens he thought to himself. He had an odd thought that the man looked vaguely familiar under his clerk-like appearance. He was just about to thrust the blades forward when the man dropped the satchel to throw up his arms and yelled,
"BERRET! HOLD!"
The Shrike paused in mid-strike at the use of the name that even his crewmates so rarely used now. Tightening his grip on the man's shirt, he asked in a vicious hiss,
"How do you know my name, Nebari?" Berret spat the name "Nebari" like it was a curse.
The man's feigned look of terror fell away along with the clerk-like masquerade. Even under the ex-assassin's strong hold the man seemed to suddenly stand taller. The fear on his face was replaced by a very familiar grin.
"Why wouldn't I know my own sister's bond-mate?" he said.
Berret wasn't so easily buying the man's story. He slammed him against the wall again for good measure.
"Don't play games with me, Nebari. I'm really not in the frelling mood. You can't possibly expect me to believe for a microt that you're my wife's brother... and if you were, seeing that he is the cause of this whole mess in a round about way. I wouldn't be real happy to see him about now."
"I'm not... I don't care about when you're in the mood for sex... I do, ...and we'll have to talk about the last question some time later," replied the man, his offhand sense of humor so much like Chiana's.
"Look here," he said and produced a holo-disk seemingly from thin air. The images appeared and rapidly cycled through a series. Most where of a young smiling Chiana and a younger version of the man he held before him. Seeing them side-by-side he couldn't doubt they were siblings anymore then he could doubt Jalen and Chulee. Berret eased his hold on the Nebari man and he gave the Shrike his Chiana-like smile again. Releasing him totally, he asked the man he'd never met, "What are you doing here, Nerri?"
Nerri bent to retrieve some film sheets that had fallen loose from the bag in Berret's assault.
"I have Chiana's file flagged on Nebari Prime so that if anyone should request to see it, it will send an alert out to me. She's remained well hidden these last few cycles with that group of yours. I was hoping they'd never find her, but Hyril somehow found her here and we didn't manage to arrive here until late last night. It was too late to do anything about the assault on your living quarters by the time we found out about it. Was anyone hurt or killed in the attack?" he asked.
"Our son, Jalen, your nephew.... was seriously wounded. We don't know if he will survive," answered the Shrike. Nerri swore and slammed his fist into the wall.
"I'm sorry, Berret. How is Chiana taking it?"
"She's a strong woman, but it's never easy for anyone to face the possibly of losing a child," Berret said, his tone growing colder. To him it seemed the man had asked the questions with little more feeling then one would when inquiring about the weather.
"That's why you're here then, for revenge... to kill Hyril," Nerri said as more statement than question.
"I'm here to kill any Nebari I see, but especially... Hyril," answered the Shrike coolly. "I get like that when somebody tries to hurt my children."
"Jared, they call you Jared now, don't they? I hope you don't think I'm unfeeling for my sister and you, or about what they've done to my nephew, but these documents are important to the Resistance. I would go with you to exact vengeance, but I have to see that these make it out of here and into the right hands. I replaced Hyril's normal Valet so I could get inside and get them out. Millions of Nebari lives and their freedom depend on it."
"I see, hiding in plain sight inside your enemy's camp... how ingenuous," said the Shrike.
Nerri started to smile until with a hard glare, the Shrike's voice turned even colder with pent-up rage,
"So you didn't even try to come to your sister's aid or warn us. You left us... her family, to live or die on our own for frelling film disks?"
"But the Resistance..." began Nerri.
"Frell the Resistance, Nerri!" snapped Berret, pushing closer to crowd the man.
"I don't care about your Resistance... let all the Nebari die. I care only about Chiana and my children. I don't want your help; the only thing I want to know from you is... where is Hyril at this microt."
"He's down on the lowest level... with the three remaining troopers," Nerri replied with a swallow, not knowing now where he stood with his sister's bond-mate.
"The only reason I don't leave you here dead with the rest is because you are Chiana's brother... and if I find out you let this happen to get those documents, that you used us as pawns in your game. You will be a dead man," warned Berret.
"Now, go outside to the Wraith scout ship that's sitting by the air schooner and wait for me to return. Do not try to leave in the schooner, the Wraith has orders to destroy any craft approaching or leaving the area."
Berret started to continue down the staircase, "And we 'will' talk about this at a later time."
"Jared!" Nerri called one last time to his back.
Without looking behind him, Berret said, "Not - Another - Word, Nerri!"
Trooper Foram rushed into the room. "We are under attack, Abettor!" he cried.
"No frelling dren!" shouted Hyril in return. "I thought all that gun fire was normal! Imbecile! How many men in the attacking force?" he asked the trooper next.
"Unknown... there is a Peacekeeper scout craft in front of the building," the trooper reported
"Peacekeepers! It can't be them here. You must be mistaken," Hyril said.
"I am sure of it, Abettor. It is a light surveillance scout ship used by the Peacekeepers," confirmed the soldier. "They have already penetrated the building's perimeter and I believe they are between us and the escape tunnel," he continued.
"Frell! How many of the men are left to defend this office?" Hyril asked.
"Three... including myself. We have lost contact with all the others."
"Pull back into the reception room and hold position there," the Nebari official ordered.
Not having any other choice, the trooper left to carry out the orders to make their last stand.
Berret had reached the last landing above the final floor of the safe house just as the bottom door creaked open a few hentas and somebody put in eye to the crack. Berret froze in place hoping the shadows would hide him from view from below. The door opened further and the Nebari soldier stuck his head out for a better view of the stairwell. Below Berret and at the bottom left side of the staircase was a short walkway with an alcove and storage closet. Berret eased a power pack clip from one of his gun belts and placed it on the floor near the edge of the landing. Waiting for the trooper to step further away from the door, the Shrike removed a metal disk from another pouch at his belt. Pressing the center of the object, four blades slid out and locked, giving the disk a star-like shape. The Nebari took the step outside the door that the ex-assassin was waiting for and Berret nudged the power pack over the side with the toe of his boot.
The clip hit the floor by the closet door with a metallic clack. The Nebari froze in place for a microt and then raised his rifle and started to creep stalkingly toward the alcove. Berret squeezed the center of the disk in his hand again and stepped out onto the open landing. His hand snapped downward and the disk left it, whirling through the air to bury itself in the breastplate of the Nebari man's battle armor. The trooper stepped back at the sudden slight impacted and stared down at the bladed object sticking out of his armor. Looking back to where it had come from, he saw Berret still standing in plain view on the landing, obviously unarmed without a Pulse gun as far as the trooper was concerned. He began to chuckle at the man who though he could attack a fully armed and armored soldier with such an ineffective weapon. He raised his weapon and the man still stood there not moving or even trying to get away. He had just settled the Pulse rifles sights on the figure when the disk started to beep. The disk beeped faster until it became a steady tone all within a microt or two. Dropping his rifle to let it hang by it's sling, he clawed at the object trying to dislodge it from his armor. Realizing in his last microts of life it was already too late as the disk exploded, blowing a fist size hole through the armor and his chest.
The Shrike watched dispassionately as the Nebari's body toppled over. The man's comm clicked on and a voice called for the troopers to retreat to the outer reception room and hold position. Berret went to the body and removed the comm in case it turned out to be useful later. He discarded the idea taking the Pulse rifle as it had become jammed with body parts from the Nebari and would take to long to clean it for use. The Shrike slipped through the door and began searching the remaining floor. He almost walked into the next trooper who was obviously looking for his comrade in the stairwell. The man was edgy and ready. His Pulse rifle already pointed ahead of him, he thrust it at the Shrike point blank and pulled the trigger. The bolt hit the ex-assassin dead center in the chest and threw him back several steps the way he had just come. Berret landed flat on his back and remained still. The excited Nebari kept the body covered as he keyed his comm,
"I just killed one! He's here in the clerk's office," he reported to his superior.
The voice on the other end said that he'd be there right away. The trooper keyed off his comm and cautiously approached the Shrike, poking the prone form with the muzzle of his rifle. When the body didn't respond, he moved in even closer to inspect his trophy.
"What the hezmana are you suppose to be?" he asked more to himself then the oddly garbed body as he moved the cloak's hood aside to see the man's face. The body's eyes blinked open in the next instant.
"Death," hissed a graveyard voice as twin blades rammed into his throat.
Foram arrived at the clerk's office to find the other trooper kneeling over a prone body on the floor.
"What do you have?" he asked for a report as he bent down beside the other soldier.
The man didn't answer him and annoyed, Foram grabbed the insubordinate trooper by the shoulder.
"I said, what the frell do you ha..." he started to say again but never finished because the other trooper fell over backward at his touch. The man was staring out of shocked eyes and had a pair of gapping holes in his throat. The second body surged up from the floor, one of its legs shooting out and sweeping Foram's legs out from under him. The Nebari crashed to the floor as the other body continued to rise in a swirl of black cloak. The black shape seemed to flow directly at him and the last thing he remembered seeing was the glint of flashing blades before everything went dark forever.
Berret stood upright as the blades retracted into his gauntlets. Sweeping aside his cloak he inspected his armor. His own chest plates had absorbed the pulse bolt and were now burnt brown in color instead of the dark bluish-black color of gunmetal. They would not withstand another hit from a pulse bolt until they had been realigned again. It didn't matter to Berret, if Nerri's information was corrected the only Nebari left was Hyril. He paused a few microts to prepare one last surprise for the Nebari Official and then turning; he left the room behind.
"Foram! Answer me, frell you!" Hyril shouted into the comm, as if shouting could make the device work better. None of the troopers answered his calls and his fear was mounting. He'd just slammed the comm back down on his desk when the door to his office opened a crack.
"Foram? Is that you?" he called again toward the doorway.
When no answer came back, he tried, "Who is it? Who's there?"
In reply there was a strange lopsided rolling sound. Something tumbled past the opened door and into his office. Hyril couldn't make out what the object was until it came to rest in the middle of the floor.
It was Foram's detached head.
Hyril screamed and dived back toward his desk, scrambling for the Pulse pistol he'd left lying there.
His hand had just closed around the grip when a cold familiar voice said,
"That won't do you any good."
Hyril spun around to see a black-cloaked form standing over Foram's disembodied head.
"What the frell!" Hyril cried raising the pistol toward the figure. The Shrike responded by kicking Foram's head up and into Hyril's face. The impacted from the detached head drove the Nebari backwards.
Before he could recover, Berret had crossed the room and twisted the Pulse pistol out of Hyril's grasp.
Berret pulled back the cloak's hood so the Nebari Abettor could see his face.
"You just couldn't leave well enough alone. You had to come after my family," growled the Shrike into the man's face.
Hyril bend backwards over his desk trying to put some distance between the angry killer and himself.
"It was ordered by Ambassador Lerris, himself," he said attempting to pass the blame. "I was just following the orders given to me by my superior."
Berret backhanded the man. "But you arranged it!" he accused.
The Nebari tried to work his way off the desk but Berret stayed on top of him, not giving him any room.
"We had to! If the Hynerians or anyone else discovered information out about certain projects it would have spelled disaster for the Nebari!" he offered as explanation.
"You mean the Contagion. The Dominar and his people have known about it for cycles!" Berret snapped. "We already knew what your government did to my bond-mate when she was younger. You've already done her enough harm, you should have just left her, and us in peace."
Hyril's face fell at the revelation that one of his government's darkest secrets wasn't so secret after all.
"You still haven't given me a good reason why you ordered my wife taken and our children killed... and why you were willing to kill the rest of our friends to accomplish the act," growled Berret.
"She was a carrier... she had to be recovered and silenced!" Hyril stammered. "The children are impure. They cannot be allowed to taint Nebari society. It is common practice to eliminate half-breeds when we discover them."
The words infuriated and distracted Berret enough that he didn't realize that the man had been slowly reaching for a hidden dagger in his belt, until the blade was swinging at his throat. Almost too late, Berret tucked his head back far enough that the dagger missed his throat but still sliced him along his jaw line. Using that opening, Hyril drew back a fist and punched the Shrike in the face, driving him backwards.
Alternately throwing punches, and swinging and stabbing with the blade, Hyril drove Berret into the middle of the room. Berret recovered enough to fend off the blade and most of the hand strikes. Unexpectedly Hyril dropped low and stabbed upward at the Shrike's chest. The dagger jammed itself between Berret's armor plates and managed to penetrate the ballistic cloth underneath. The point of the knife speared through flesh and glanced off one of the man's ribs. Berret cursed to himself for being both careless and now not knowing the extent of his wound. The Shrike twisted his body away from Hyril and with a change of luck for Berret, the dagger's thin blade snapped off in his armor, leaving Hyril without a weapon. Hyril stepped in and threw several more punches and kicks at Berret. However, this time Berret was ready for the attack. The Shrike slapped aside most of the blows and flowed inside the man's reach, landing several of his own strikes to Hyril's body. Rising upward, the last blow put an armored cased fist into Hyril's jaw. The Nebari stumbled backwards with the Shrike following him. Enraged now that this man meant to murder his children and take his wife... and may have yet in fact, succeeded in killing his son, Berret grabbed the Nebari by his belt and lifted the man upright clear of the floor and over his head.
"You murdering piece of frelling dren!" spat the Shrike as he slammed him up against the nearest wall.
"This is for my son, you bastard," Berret's voice breaking as he triggered the blades.
Hyril's eyes shot opened in painful shock as both sets of blades tore through his abdomen below his belt.
Berret released his hold and Hyril's own weight forced the edges to cut deeper into him. His thick belt parted as the blades cut through it and further up into his stomach.
"I told you... you'd die hard if you frelled with my family, you should have listened and left us alone," whispered the Shrike to the dying man before jerking the blades free of his body.
Hyril fell to the floor with a loud moan; still alive he tried to keep his internal organs from sliding out of the wounds in his belly. The blades snapped back into the gauntlets, and Berret watched the man for several microts, almost making himself sick at the extent of his own cruelty before saying,
"You've made me once again what I've tried to walk away from... resurrecting a part of me that I hoped my children would never see. That is the only thing your new Nebari order has given birth too."
He reached down and tore a necklace with a family crest from Hyril's neck. Berret turned from the gasping Official toward the office door. Before he reached it he turned back and said,
"It will be arns before you die. You don't deserve it, but if you can make it back to a population center... you might yet live. That is, if you can make it from here to transportation."
Berret turned his back on Hyril for the last time and walked out the door.
Nerri was waiting for him outside by the Wraith as he had been instructed. He rose up as Berret approached; not quite believing the man was still alive.
"Those stories I've heard about you must be true then, though I'd hardly thought to believe them," said Chiana's brother. Berret looked at Nerri with a silent haunted expression for a few microts.
Finally he tapped his comm. "Wraith," he said.
"On line, Shrike," came the mechanical voice.
"Destroy the Schooner," Berret commanded.
"Acknowledged," the AI responded instantly.
The missile bay door slid back and the rack dropped down. A spear shaped projectile shot out riding on a ball of fire and the Schooner cease to be in a flash and clap of Peacekeeper thunder.
"Believe only the bad ones," finally answered the Shrike bitterly.