The God Mars Book Four: Live Blades by Michael Rizzo

with is spilling himself out
all over my boots (my sword has ripped his belly horribly open) but
he won’t stop fighting. His gun goes off right next to my head. I
remember I have a gun of my own, try to reach for it…
    The female prisoner surprises me then by lunging into
us, leaping and spinning herself. She hooks her bonds on my blade
where it’s sticking through her abuser, and saws herself free.
Drops. Grabs his machete. Chops his feet out from under him, then
repeats the move against a man who comes running to his aid. Then
she rolls for her still-bound companions.
    She doesn’t make it. One of the black suits opens up
with an automatic weapon, and cuts all of the other prisoners down
in one horrible burst.
    Now I hear screaming. Hers. Like an animal. She
throws the machete at the gunner, hits him in the face, staggers
him. He aims at her with his face split open. But then his head
comes apart.
    Three more black suits go down under surgical sniper
fire.
    In the very few seconds it takes all this to happen,
I lose the battle to stay on my feet, the hobbled interrogator
falling on top of me, vomiting blood on me. Still, he won’t stop
fighting. The black suits open fire back across the pit, grabbing
cover. But I’m only momentarily forgotten. I try to wrestle myself
free of the mostly-dead man on top of me, beating at his head and
neck as he refuses to quit as I see another black suit aiming his
weapon at me, trying for a shot that doesn’t hit his comrade. I
blindly thrash for my pistol, find it, jerk it free of its holster,
point it, fire. I aimed for center-of-mass, but only clip his
thigh, then his arm. He drops to his knee, lets go of his gun with
his wounded limb, points it with his good arm…
    …but then his head jerks. There’s a metal rod
sticking through his temple. He topples over like someone switched
him off.
    I turn and look. A blur of a cloak comes flying
roughly at me across the pit. I point my gun at it instinctively
before I realize it’s one of Abbas’ scouts, moving unbelievable
fast. I’m actually thankful when it ignores my threat, passes over
me, puts spikes into two more black suits before drawing dual
knives. The black suits try to shoot it, but it flies and flips—I
dumbly recognize what I’m seeing from the training files of the
original Guardian teams: This must be the Zauba’a Ghaddar.
    I also realize my cowl has fallen back during the
fight. My ETE helmet must have been recognized.
    I try to help the Ghaddar, still on my back with a
body half on top of me, shoot, miss. Miss again. Manage to hit one
of the black suits in the face (I think). I can barely hang on to
the pistol.
    Then the world explodes.
    The cave walls blow into us, stunning and filling the
already dim space with dust and smoke. Black suits tumble into the
pit. And over the ringing in my ears, I hear a familiar pop-woosh
sound. I drop back just as a spearhead flies over my chest. I see
the Ghaddar dodge another. Then black suits start dropping with the
long silver lance-heads stuck through them.
    Squat armored creatures are pouring into the cave,
having blasted side-tunnels all around us. There are scores of
them. And they’re between those of us on this side of the pit and
the exit.
    “ THIS WAY! THIS WAY!! ”
    I hear shouting above me. Look. In the vent I came
down through is a shape in a Nomad cloak, dropping a line from his
perch, popping rounds at the armored shapes. I’m not sure if he’s
shouting at me, the Ghaddar or the strange thin girl. I finish
kicking the body off of me (every movement tears like knives
through my torso), roll to my feet in time to sloppily knock one of
the armored suits off of the surviving prisoner, grab her and drag
her up. I look for the Ghaddar. She’s throwing herself into the
armored shapes, apparently able to find lethal access once she’s
grappling with them. Then she slings some kind of large rifle from
under her cloaks and starts picking off the armor that