STRAT by Tara Maya
BLURB
On his wedding day, Charlie's
bride is kidnapped. As he fights for his life and her freedom, he discovers an
ancient war helm with the power to control mechs. But if he uses it, he risks
losing himself... and becoming embroiled in a war that will soon span the
galaxy.
EXCERPT
Thirteen helmed Lords escorted
me out to the center of the caldera: twelve lords from the legation, and Lord
Ivess.
I knew Domany was right. They
were unlikely to keep their word; but if there was even a chance I could save
Sard from obliteration, I had to try.
We passed the frozen corpse of
the woman who had taken her father’s helm and avenged her family during the
jousts. All anyone had cared about her act of courage was that she had violated
a stifling thousand-year-old code of law. Now I was to share her fate, for the
same reason.
The legation offered Lord Ivess
the honor of removing the faceplate and breather. My hands were chained behind my back. They
forced me to kneel in the sulfur snow.
He leaned close to me, although
he did not need to be close to whisper to me over the link.
“You stole my daughter from me,
and that embarrassed me,” he hissed. “I will enjoy your death greatly. I’m not
going to take off your breather, though. A quick death would be too easy. I’m
going to remove everything but your breather. I’m going to let you die slowly,
and as you die, you can watch Tears-of-Gold die too.” He laughed. “Did you
really think we would spare Sard after you contaminated it with your thralls
who think they can be lords?”
“No,” I said. “I expected you to
lack all honor, having fought you before.”
He kicked me face forward onto
the ground. My jaw smashed painfully against my breather. He grabbed the back
of my kit and jerked me back up to my knees.
“Then why did you surrender
yourself to us? That was stupid.”
“I’m a Fredder,” I said. “I
guess stupid is just a bad habit.”
The other lords stood in a
semi-circle around us, a few meters away. They watched impassively as Ivess
dismantled my kit piece by piece, until he ripped away the last underlayer, and
left me naked in the bitterly frozen acid. As he’d promised, Ivess left on my
helm, the cursed Helm of Brin, trailing tubes to my discarded, but functional,
air pack, so I could still breath.
It felt as though I had been
dipped into fire. My skin sizzled and buckled. Every inch of my body below my
neck came alive with pain, raw unbearable pain. I screamed inside my mask.
Through my tears, I could see a huge army of mechs, the combined cavalcades of
the lords of the “peace legation,” advance toward Tears-of-Gold. They weren’t
going to just let it die of neglect, they were going to blast it straight to
hell themselves.
LINKS
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