Fated Blades (Kinsmen)

Twenty-two floors of building security, about a hundred private guards, and several automated turrets. All the standard toys of a successful kinsmen family ready to protect its territory.

Matias steered the aerial toward the tower. “Since you want to minimalize casualties, do you have a plan?”

“How good a pilot are you?”

The woman was insane.

Matias gently tilted the control stick, bringing the aerial down another sixty centimeters. He had positioned the craft slightly above the twenty-third floor of the Davenport building, with the rear of the aerial facing the building and tilted just a touch toward it. The gap between callosteel ribbons widened here to make the best of a spectacular city vista, and the rear cameras presented Matias with a great view of the solar glass window and Haider Davenport behind it, sprawled in his chair, his blond head leaning back on the headrest. The man was passed out.

“Give me another twenty centimeters,” Ramona murmured from the back.

He edged the aerial closer. A meter from the ribbon. This was as close as he dared to get. Another ten centimeters and the current circulating through the metal would short-circuit the aerial’s control system.

This was an idiotic plan. First, she would have to clear the empty air between the aerial and the ribbon, then fifteen centimeters of callosteel, then another fifty-centimeter gap to the solar glass, and then she would have to cut her way through a three-centimeter-thick glass pane, and she would have to be blindingly fast, or she would plummet to her death.

The screen in the dash showed Ramona backing up. She pressed herself against the partition separating the cabin from the cargo hold. Her eyes were focused and calm.

He could just not open the door.

Unfortunately, they had only three options. First, they could ask for a meeting. There was no guarantee the Davenports would agree, and knowing Haider, he would stall as long as he could to gather intel. They couldn’t afford to waste time.

Second, he could land on the roof, dodging the cannon fire. They could break in, kill their way down to Haider’s office, and get what they needed. That way meant Davenport guards would die defending their employers. He had decided long ago that he was the kind of man who didn’t start fights. He finished them, and he never stooped to unprovoked murder. Their ancestors were ruthless killers, but that was six generations ago. Now both he and Ramona were more kinsmen than secare, and the way she wanted to handle the Davenports confirmed what he’d already suspected. Ramona would execute her enemies without hesitation, yet given a choice, she preferred to avoid killing. Life was fragile and precious.

That only left option three, titled “Open the Cargo Door.” He hated option three.

There had to be some other way, some method that didn’t end with Ramona plunging to the ground two hundred meters below, every bone in her body broken. She was an enemy, but it was a truly horrible way to die. If she fell to her death while he was piloting the aerial, nobody would believe that he wasn’t complicit in her death. It would plunge their families into a war.

Ramona took a deep breath . . .

He thumbed the cargo door release. Wind tore into the aerial, but he was ready for it, and the craft barely trembled.

She sprinted, a streak of white, and dived, her arms raised above her head. Her seco blades tore out of her forearms, splaying out like two pieces of radiant red silk. For a fraction of a second, she looked like an angel in white, soaring on glowing bloodred wings, and then the seco field snapped into rigid blades, and she sliced through the solar window and dropped into the hole.

Chunks of amber glass rained down.

He activated the autopilot course he’d programed a few minutes ago, jumped out of his seat, sprinted to the cargo bay, and leaped across the gap. The ground yawned at him, far below, and then he landed on the luxurious Solean pine floor of Haider’s office.

Ramona stood with her back to the office door. A gash smoked lightly behind her—she’d cut the alarm wires running through the door, triggering a lockdown. Haider struck at her, a lethal whirlwind with a short sword gripped in each hand. The Davenport family produced offspring with enhanced speed and coordination, and Haider’s flurry of attacks was so fast Matias could barely follow it with his naked eye.

Ramona had reshaped her seco blades into circular shields, fifty centimeters wide, and glided away from Haider, parrying his furious strikes in a controlled frenzy. Her shields stretched and shifted with her will, creating an impenetrable barrier between her and her attacker.

Matias charged across the office.

Haider spun to him, alerted by his combat implant, slashing as he turned, but it was too late. Matias dropped under the strike and kicked, sweeping Haider’s legs from under him. Haider landed well, flexed, and sprang to his feet to find Matias’s right blade pointed at his neck. The tip stopped five centimeters short of Haider’s throat.