“I ask the questions.” Valdus shoved the new arrival aside, his grip contracting around his ax. Familiar aggression flooding his veins as the call to kill or be killed urged him to just start swinging. To plow through as many as he could before they became a threat. Half would be dead within the next five metrals anyway. The rest? Gone within two lunar rotations. Only a rare few lasted longer than that down here.

“Any Resistance fighters?” He was likely wasting his breath, but it had to be done, especially while the shock of transport made the new arrivals more compliant.

“Familiarity with drones, Council technology, trackers?”

No answer.

No surprise. There weren’t many desirables on Dragath25. Fewer still with any skill besides raping and killing.

“Knowledge of weaponry making? Medicines and healing?” He plowed through the rows of kneeling figures, the stink of fear stinging his lungs, the chaos of crowded bodies making it difficult to get a handle on just how many Hollisworth and his guards had snatched from the surface this time.

“Four metrals and thirty nanosegments until incineration,” announced the Tribunal bot, its indifferent automated voice as annoying as ever.

“Another handful of useless chum.” He signaled to his second, Ryker. “Time to move out.” They’d entered the neutral zone for nothing. Wasted their short rest period for nothing.

He blinked away a wave of tiredness. After coming off a full shift, he was more than ready to grab some chow and some sleep—before the tracker in his blood forced him back to the mines again.

Some of his teammates were just starting their work rotation now.

Luck wouldn’t help them, but he sent it anyway.

“What about us?” The fool with Death branded on his back spoke up again.

“What about you?” He shoved past, confident his crew would alert him to any danger—and that he’d take care of it swiftly.

He wasn’t one for mercy.

Truthfully, he wasn’t one for much of anything anymore. Pleasure. Pain. Principles. They’d become useless distractions long ago.

All that mattered was keeping his remaining team alive so they’d be ready for escape when the time came.

He’d lost too many already.

“What’s beyond the doors?” This panicked whine came from a wide-shouldered guy with a soldier’s buzz cut near the front of the crowd. Blood ran from a gash over his eye and he’d clearly taken a few hits, but he still looked shinier than most of the other prisoners. Like he hadn’t been topside very long before he got sucked down here.

Too bad for him. The surface was paradise compared to below.

“The welcome committee.” His second-in-command, Ryker, always an inappropriate asshole, spoke before Valdus could, the long, thin scar snaking down his rib rippling as he moved. “Shuttle cruise director should be here any metral. Shuffle board and—”

“Joke later. Exit now.” Valdus shifted toward the soldier. “There’s no staying here. The bot isn’t lying. This transport hold will incinerate everything inside in exactly four metrals. But what’s waiting out there,” he shrugged, “isn’t pretty, either.”

“There’s…there’s been a mistake.” The soldier’s voice was a near shriek, his head whipping back and forth as he surveyed the other prisoners. “I’m not like them. I don’t belong down here. I…I was sent to this planet on a Council mission. I demand to see whoever’s in charge.”

Ryker’s twisted laugh echoed through the chamber. “Good luck. We’ve been demanding the same thing for two years.”

Valdus was in no mood. He had no love for Council lackeys, but a soldier was a soldier. “We’re inmates. Just like you.” Rumbles of surprise greeted his admission, but he no longer cared about keeping the new arrivals compliant. Shifting his ax, he yanked down the thick band around his bicep, the bold black prison numbers 591 stark against his skin. “We’re out to survive, just like you. One step away from dying, just like you.”

It was perhaps the one mercy he had left to give. Letting the new arrivals know they were on their own.

“Stay to your right,” he dropped his voice so only the soldier could hear, “and come out swinging. It isn’t much, but it’s your only shot.” He raised his hand to give his remaining men the signal to depart.

“Wait.” The soft, higher tones of a woman—something he hadn’t heard in a long time—sliced through the stifling heat. “My crewmate is telling the truth. We’re part of a humanitarian scientific mission. A crash stranded us topside. Our crew is looking for us. We could be of value. I…I know something about trackers. Take us with you. Please.”

He was spinning round, pickax raised, before she finished.