Double Sharpe Read online

  His face took on an expression that she struggled to read, balancing somewhere between pride and ruefulness. If it had been any other time, she might have asked, but she knew this wasn’t that time.

  Then he sighed, and led her by the hand to a large upturned crate. “I need to sit,” he said quietly. “I’m still feeling pretty rough.” He sat and she sat beside him. “It was a factory building, like they all are around here, but not a big one. Smaller than the building we’re in now, so I’m thinking maybe two or three entrances.”

  Raven listened intently, looking around the building they sat in and trying to make a mental image. “Is it a functional factory?”

  “I don’t think so,” he said, shaking his head. “At least, I never heard any machinery working. Axel hasn’t said anything about it. When he wakes up again, I can ask him.”

  “You should,” he said. “It will be important to know.”

  “Right,” he agreed with a distracted nod. “There didn’t seem to be many guards. There were a couple of guys when I was taken from that bar, although…that memory is kind of fuzzy right now, to be honest.” His brows knit as he rubbed his head. “I don’t recall seeing or hearing many others. I mean, it was one guy and one wolf. How many guards did they need? I’m not sure how many will be at the building or if they’ll be out looking for me.”

  “If they know anything about bounty hunters coming out of Halliwell then they’ll know about the bond between hunter and companion. They will likely guess that you’ll be coming for Axel and will try to trap you,” Raven pointed out.

  “Unfortunately true,” he agreed sadly, “but we have to try.”

  “I know,” she said quietly. “We have to try.”

  10

  Raven and Blake pulled their filter-masks on. Blake’s looked like it had been half run over by some sort of wheeled vehicle, but so long as it worked, looks were hardly important. Together, they slipped out of the building and back into the street. He was carrying the weapon off the mugger while she still had her own gun.

  “Be careful if you need to fire that,” he told her as they walked, trying to move quickly but not draw any undue attention to themselves. “That sort of energy weapon can light the air on fire if the ratio of particles is too high.”

  “That’s comforting,” she murmured. Suddenly, she was grateful that she hadn’t had a chance to take a shot at that guy.

  Speaking of her would-be mugger, he was still on the ground when they re-emerged. He could be unconscious, or he could be dead. She wasn’t going to stop to find out. She’d never taken kindly to having weapons pulled on her or having her stuff taken away. Maybe she was cold-hearted, but she had other things on her mind.

  Raven felt an urge to talk as they made their way along the street, but she told herself this wasn’t the best time. Plus, she wasn’t really sure what she wanted to talk about. It was something like an urge toward nervous chatter, even though that wasn’t usually a problem she had. This just felt…different.

  “Just ahead,” Blake said, cutting through her thoughts and study of their surroundings.

  They slowed and casually shifted toward the side of a building and then into an alley where they could watch for a little while. Raven studied everything she could see.

  “I don’t see any guards outside,” she said, brows knitting as she looked around for any.

  “I gather that most people don’t go outside unless they absolutely have to,” Blake replied, “and then not for any longer than they have to. They probably don’t think the outside needs to be guarded. Besides, it would look suspicious.”

  “Fair point,” she agreed.

  They stood and watched for several long minutes. As far as she could see, there was no one coming and going. There were a couple low windows, but they were shaded so she couldn’t see inside very well.

  “Is Axel awake yet?” she asked. He hadn’t responded to Blake when they’d first set out, but the wolf’s insights would be useful.

  Blake was silent for a moment, his eyes losing focus slightly as he turned inward and tried to contact his animal companion. She switched her own focus back and forth between him and the building, catching his dark brows knitting. He looked frustrated, and then concerned. She was about to ask when relief suddenly took over his expression.

  “He is now,” he said.

  “I’m glad,” she said, and she meant it. Although she hadn’t said as much to Blake, she had really been starting to worry that Axel was dead. Without Nyx to interface the neural chips’ for information, Blake wouldn’t know if Axel was alive or not. “What’s he saying?”

  “He’s hungry.”

  Raven stifled a laugh. “Sounds like Kyra. But not really useful.”

  Blake tilted his head slightly as he listened. “He says he’s in a cage with a metal lock, and he remembers being carried up a flight of stairs.”

  Looking back at the building, Raven tried to estimate the size. She didn’t think it was bigger than two stories, so that narrowed down his location to the second floor. If he was conscious enough to speak with Blake, then he wasn’t totally sedated. That meant they ran the risk of his making noise, so they would want to keep him away from windows.

  “Does he have any idea about how many people there may be inside the building?” she asked.

  “He says that he’s only seen two different people, but he thinks he may have heard one or two others outside who never come into the room he’s in,” Blake reported. “But I’ll have to say that he’s not always the best with distinguishing human voices.”

  “That’s got to be an animal thing,” she said idly. “Kyra isn’t either. But it’s safer to assume that he’s right and there’s at least four people in that building.”

  Blake nodded once. “Right…right. I only recall two or three myself, but I know there could have been others. There wasn’t a lot of noise while I was there, though, so I’m betting there aren’t many more than that.”

  She took a deep breath, but then regretted it. Even through the filter, she could pick up the smell when she did that. Blinking away the faint tearing of her eyes, she went on, “I don’t suppose either you or Axel noticed anything about weapons they were carrying?”

  Rubbing the bridge of his nose, he squeezed his eyes shut. She imagined he wasn’t feeling too great, after all he’d been through and being separated from Nyx and Axel like he’d been. She recognized the face he made when he was thinking and had to work at it.

  He made that face more often than he realized, and she didn’t plan to tell him.

  “I remember a lot of fists,” he finally said with a long, ragged sigh. “I think one of the bigger brutes had a gun like the one I’m carrying now, just nicer, but that was the only thing I noticed.”

  “What about Axel?” she asked. “Has he seen any guns? Or even any knives or other blades?”

  Another long pause. “He thinks he saw a couple of guns and a knife, but that’s as much as he knows. He can’t recognize different guns, so he doesn’t know if they were like yours or like the one I got off that guy.”

  She considered this. “So we don’t know if it’s a properly working weapon or one that’s going to set the air on fire?” Her eyes shifted over to him, their incredulity matching the dryness in her tone. She didn’t really like the lack of intel, but there wasn’t much to be done about it. The wolf would only recognize what it was he recognized.

  “Pretty much.”

  “So…it’s possibly four or more guards against the two of us. They are healthy, likely rested, and with a better knowledge of the lay of the land. They have weapons that may shoot us or immolate us, and we won’t know which until it happens. And we just have to get in, get upstairs, grab a hundred and fifty-pound wolf, and get out.” She snorted and shook her head. “No problem.”

  11

  There was only one door they could get to without drawing too much attention, or possibly being spotted through the sparse number of windows. Sadly, that door wa
s the front door.

  So, basically, their plan was crap, and it was the only one she could think of. They didn’t have time or resources to make anything better.

  “Are you sure you’re up for this?” Raven asked Blake as they stood in the alley, getting ready to run across the street. He was looking exhausted and definitely worse for wear. The shadows under his eyes seemed to have worsened just in the short time since she’d found him, or he found her. Either way, he looked awful.

  “There’s not a lot of choice, Rave,” he said, but he even sounded awful.

  “I could go in myself,” she suggested.

  He shook his head. “Axel is pretty heavy. I don’t think you can carry him and fight whoever tries to stop you on the way out.”

  With a shrug, she smirked a little, but he couldn’t see that from behind the mask. “I don’t know. I’m pretty tough.” She held her arms up, like she was flexing for a strongman contest.

  Blake laughed weakly and shook his head. “Yeah, you are that.”

  She felt like there was more to that than just their current situation, but she didn’t say anything about it. “You’re right, though. I guess we don’t have much of a choice. Just try not to get yourself killed, okay? It would make my hard work in trying to rescue you go all to waste.”

  “Ha, soul of compassion, you are,” he returned and she shrugged. “Alright. Let’s get going before I collapse in the street.”

  “My confidence is buoyed, thank you.”

  She moved forward first, looking down either side of the street before deciding that the way was indeed clear. Not seeing anyone, the pair hurried from their place in the alley to the building across the street. The windows remained shadowed and looked like they were covered with something. Raven had no idea if it was intentional or incidental, but it didn’t matter. The result was the same. She couldn’t see inside, and could only hope that it meant no one could see outside either.

  They reached the door and paused. Blake panted for a moment while Raven slowly, carefully tried the handle and mentally crossed her fingers that her head wasn’t about to get shot off.

  The handle turned, which told her that it wasn’t locked. A moment later, the door slid up into the wall. Being used to side-to-side doors, that surprised her, but it didn’t last for long. She had situated herself to the side, waiting to see if anyone shot at her, but she didn’t hear any weapons, or voices, or footsteps.

  Before they moved in, she stopped and looked at Blake. “Give me your gun,” she said.

  “What?” he asked, blinking.

  “I’m the one who’s going to be taking out guards, if you’re carrying Axel. My gun might set the building on fire.”

  “Oh. Right.” He handed it over.

  She kept it in her hand while she left the other one holstered. Peering through the doorway into the darkened corridor beyond, she still didn’t hear anything. Either there was no one there…or there were some very quiet, patient guards. Or maybe they were asleep. Really, almost anything was possible at this point.

  Raven stepped in first and took a better look down either side of the hallway before Blake followed her, taking the lead at that point since he had been inside the building before.

  Unlike the previous buildings she had been in, this one didn’t empty into a main room right away. It was probably the smarter layout, but she knew nothing about the natives of this planet.

  Blake led her through the building, but hesitantly. She didn’t know if he was nervous or having trouble remembering, but she didn’t ask. Instead, she focused on looking around every corner and down every hallway or open door. With every moment that passed without some sort of incident, her tension rose.

  Perhaps they were all out looking for Blake?

  “Staircase,” he whispered, gesturing at a set of grey metal stairs against the wall.

  She started to wonder why they used stairs instead of a lift, but then she remembered that this planet was classified against people like them being on it because of the “primitive” nature of the inhabitants.

  Slipping around him, she peered at the open space between them and the staircase and then up the stairs. Coming from the top, she saw a man walking down. It was, in fact, almost a relief. She considered just shooting him from where he was, but she wasn’t familiar with this alien weapon and she didn’t want to discover it would screw up the whole stealth thing.

  Without saying anything, she pointed and drew Blake’s attention to the guy. She watched his eyes recognize him and shudder, and she wondered if this was the guy who’d done the hard-hitting. It made her want to do some hard-hitting of her own, but she knew she had to wait for the right moment.

  “Stay here,” she whispered, sliding away from Blake. He made a sound like he wanted to argue, but stopped himself.

  Without taking her eyes off the guy coming down the stairs, she slid along the wall that brought her away from the first step and to under the open staircase. She was glad the guard sucked at his job because he wasn’t expecting trouble. He started down the stairs, looking at a data-pad in his hand.

  She positioned herself to get her hand into the gaps between the metal steps. When he was on the right step, she reached through and grabbed his pant leg.

  “Whoa!” he said, but that was it before he was falling head first down the last few steps. He landed with a hard thud. Raven took just a moment to look around and see if anyone else would respond to the sound. Just for an instant, though, before she was hurrying around the steps.

  He was disoriented but not unconscious, which was something she fixed when she grabbed the front of his jacket and rammed her fist into his face a couple of times.

  12

  Once she was assured that the guard wasn’t getting up again—although the rise and fall of his chest told her she hadn’t killed him—she gestured for Blake to hurry across to the stairs while she looked around for any more trouble. She didn’t see any, so the two of them began to climb upward.

  They moved as quickly as they could without causing noise, though the metal made a strange creak with their steps that she hadn’t noticed when the guard was walking down.

  “Axel is up here,” Blake whispered, somewhat unnecessarily since Raven figured this was where he was. “He says… He says someone is coming into the room. He thinks they’re going to drug him again.”

  “Crap,” Raven spat. She didn’t know how much sedation the poor animal’s body could take, or just how close to that line he already was.

  They picked up their pace, which also picked up their noise. By the creak of the final step, the tension was so strong in her body that she felt like her spine was vibrating. They reached the top of the landing and found they could go straight or take an immediate left, and Blake’s head swung from one to the other.

  Then, they heard a weak sounding bark coming from the left.

  “Axel!” Blake cried, turning and running headlong down the hallway, with Raven at his heels. She didn’t bother trying to tell him to stay quiet. She knew that once he felt like Axel’s trouble was more imminent, there would be no caution.

  The corridor was far longer than she would have expected, with several doors off to either side. They followed the noise until it stopped, and Raven feared the worst.

  “He’s going in and out of consciousness,” Blake panted. He stopped suddenly and she skidded to a stop to not run into him.

  Without the sound, they had to start looking into every room. They were getting near the end of the hallway, so there weren’t many choices yet. Many of the doors were locked, however, and they couldn’t get in. Raven considered trying to use one of the guns, or both, on a lock…but she couldn’t take the chance that it would do more harm than good.

  Not yet, at least. They weren’t that desperate yet.

  Then, the very last door opened and a human woman stepped out. She wasn’t looking at either of them, instead adjusting a bag hanging over her shoulder. They had to silence her before she saw them, but
Blake set upon her in a way that seemed to say he knew that was where Axel was and she had been the one to do something bad.

  Blake lunged at her. The woman let out a cry, but it was cut short when her head hit the wall. The two fell into a small heap as the dazed woman fought back against the weakened man. Raven might have found it morbidly comical in any other moment, but for this one, she jumped in and ripped Blake off her. She didn’t think, in his state, he was going to be very effective.

  He fought her at first but as she’d suspected, his strength was limited. He moved back and she grabbed the woman.

  “What are—” she began to say, until a backhand from Raven—using the hand with the gun in it—knocked the consciousness out of her and she slumped back against the wall, sliding down to the floor.

  “You’re too good at that,” Blake said, but he wasn’t even looking at her. Instead, he was turning to the door and opening it.

  She followed him.

  Immediately, they saw Axel laying in a cage that was a too small to be comfortable. He was half curled up, with shaggy dark grey fur sticking out of the bars of the cage. His chest was rising and falling, though his audible breathing sounded a little like a wheeze and Raven wondered how much more the animal could take.

  “Check her for a key,” Raven said, gesturing Blake to the unconscious woman while she hurried to the wolf. She knew Blake would be in a panic over him, while she would have a cooler head. She checked him over as best she could through the bars. His breathing sounded unhealthy, but it was steady, and she could feel his heart, although it felt fast.

  There were a few injuries visible from where she stood, and she felt anger rise.

  “What did they do to him?” she asked tightly.

  “That happened when they came to take him,” Blake said, sounding choked up. “He fought back.” He fumbled with the old-fashioned style but strange-looking keys as he searched for the right one for Axel’s cage.