Kovac looked at me and nodded. “I’ll be back,” he said and made his way to the palettes.
“Okay, so what are our options?” I said.
Lopez swallowed, then grabbed a juice pouch and slurped for an extended moment before answering. “Once I reconfigure this damn kid’s data pad, I can hack the security system to the building and force all the external fire doors shut. Then we wait here for Peacekeepers to pass by, send them a distress signal, and have them escort us to HQ.”
She took another bite of cake and kept working on the sparkly data pad.
“And what if the Peacekeepers don’t pass by the store?” I asked, frowning.
Lopez answered. “I’m sure a soldier on a budget will need to stop by sooner or later for something.”
“Well, the deals are out of this world,” I said, quoting the Cosmart holovid commercial. Then I realized she was making fun of me. Walker, sometimes you can be such an idiot.
Kovac returned with several cases of individually-packaged junk food snacks and juice pouches in his arms.
I jumped up and grabbed one of the cases. “Twizzle Stix! No way!”
“Gross,” Lopez said.
I opened a package, poured the pale green, grainy sticks into my mouth, and savored the semi-sour fruity flavor for a moment before I tore open a few more packages and dumped them in my mouth. I hadn’t realized just how hungry I was. After devouring half a case of Twizzle Stix, I was feeling good. Really good. Like now I had enough energy to lasso a building or blast something from one end of the city to another.
I downed a couple of juice pouches, wiped off my mouth and asked, “Why wait around? Why not go to HQ ourselves?”
“We could,” Lopez answered. “If you wanted to haul my dead body across Proserpina until you finally make it to HQ and have to tell them why you let your most valuable crew member die.”
Kovac frowned. “You’re still hurt?”
“I’ll be fine.” Lopez reflexively touched her side.
“She’s mobile,” Rand said, “but her arrow wound hasn’t had a chance to fully heal.
We couldn’t afford to just wait around—not with all of those Dominion troopers and their colorfully freaky leaders we’d seen entering the city. If we waited around until someone came to rescue us, it might be too late for our intel to do any good.
“What if we secured her here and went to HQ ourselves?” I asked.
“No!” Lopez said loudly as she stomped her foot. “I’m not getting left behind!”
After a few seconds of silence, Rand responded quietly. “No need to raise your voice. We still haven’t ascertained where the Dominion troopers are patrolling.”
Then, out of nowhere, there was a clanging of metal on the ground behind us and something began to roll.
“Um,” Lopez drawled. “I think we’ve just found out.”
23
THERE COULD HAVE been worse things for us to see than a single Dominion trooper with a crossbow pointed at us—like, maybe a massive, horned creature of shadow and flame from the depths of the earth threatening to destroy our ragtag fellowship—but this was pretty bad.
I didn’t remember summoning the brassy tune that suddenly filled my mind, but it seemed to happen spontaneously now. Before I knew it, my glove was glowing purple, and the moment I thought of a blue fireball leaving my hand, the trooper became an off-white blur flying backward through the air.
He hit the broad side of a nearby shipping container with a loud clang. His helmet cracked in half on impact, and fell away as he slid down the container, leaving a red streak behind him until he lay in a heap on the floor.
I grabbed my crossbow and ran up to the trooper, ready to finish him off. I raised my weapon as I slowed to a walk.
“End of the line, pal,” I said.
There was a pained look on the trooper’s face. But his face wasn’t pale like the other troopers I’d seen. His skin was a deep reddish brown and his jet black hair was matted to his head—probably from the blood, which was running down the side of his neck.
“You . . . fool,” he struggled to say.
He coughed, spraying blood onto his off-white chest plate. He took a ragged breath, coughed again, and then opened his mouth to speak.
“I’m with the Resistance.”
My chest tightened. “Resistance?” I said.
I stared at the man in Dominion armor who I’d just blasted across the room and who now lay in a crumpled heap, his head bleeding. Soon Kovac, Rand, and Lopez were next to me with their weapons drawn.
The trooper wheezed, then said, “Yes—the Great Resistance . . . against the Dominion . . .”
He coughed, spewing more blood.
I dropped my crossbow and crouched down beside him. “Hold up,” I said. “Are you a Peacekeeper?”
The man looked confused. “I am a warrior . . . sworn to break . . . the Dominion’s grip . . . on—”
More coughing.
I looked up at my crew. “Kovac—get him something to drink. Rand—find a towel or something soft.”
The two ran off.
“I’m sorry,” I said, turning back to the man. “I thought—”
“No time. The Dominion . . . is approaching,” he said.
He pinched his eyes shut as he swallowed. “Grand Magus . . . his philosopher’s stone . . . more powerful than—”
The man was coughing so hard and losing so much blood that I was amazed he was still alive. Kovac returned with a bottle of something with sparkles suspended inside. I gave him a sharp look and he shrugged.
“No more pouches,” Kovac said.
I opened the cap and poured it into the man’s mouth. He drank greedily, then let out one big cough.
“Must stop Craniax before . . . he anchors the . . . gateway.”
“Where?” I asked. “Where is Craniax?”
The man rested his eyes for a moment, then opened them. “An office. A . . . press-dent?’”
His head was starting to roll in slow circles and the blood from the back of his head was now running onto his off-white shoulder plates. He was losing too much, too quickly.
“Stay with me,” I said, grabbing his hand. “How do we defeat Craniax? What’s his weakness?”
The man let out a few feeble coughs and started taking shallow breaths. Rand finally arrived with a stack of napkins, but I wasn’t sure if they’d do any good now. I slipped them as gently as I could behind the man’s head.
“Come on,” I said. “Stay with me. We need to know how to beat Craniax.”
His eyes wandered the room aimlessly until they found me and snapped into focus.
“The chosen one . . . bring balance . . . to the worlds . . .”
And with that, his head slumped forward and he was still.
Chosen one? Bringing balance to the worlds? This was sounding more and more like an all-out fantasy story.
I almost started crying. Almost. “I’m so sorry,” I said to the dead trooper. No, he wasn’t a trooper. He was a warrior. From the Resistance.
Kovac stepped next to me.
“You didn’t know,” he said.
Kovac put a thick hand on my shoulder, but I brushed it off and stood up.
“We need to move,” I said. “More troopers are on their way.”
Lopez shifted uncomfortably. “I don’t know if I can make it all the way to HQ. And I am not staying here alone.”
“You made that pretty clear a minute ago,” I said, looking down at the dead warrior. “But we’re not going to HQ. We’re going to the capitol.”
I walked back to our gear and started stuffing junk food packets into my cargo pockets. If we were going to make an assault on the capitol, I’d need all the energy I could get.
“Wait just a minute, soldier,” Rand said as he approached me. “Did I understand correctly that Craniax is at the president’s office? Inside the capitol building?”
“The capitol is less than a klick away,” I said. “HQ is at least three. Lope
z said herself that she couldn’t make it that far.”
Lopez was suddenly next to us, her hands on her hips. “Yeah, but that’s before anyone suggested attacking the Dominion’s ‘Grand Magus’—whatever that is.”
“There’s no guarantee we can make it to HQ,” I said.
I managed to squeeze another few packs of Twizzle Stix into my back pocket. “And even if we do, they’ll probably just sideline us—like Patel tried to do.”
I looked at each of my crew. “We have to take the fight to them. Storm the castle, kill the leader, free the planetoid. Maybe save the solar system. Who’s with me?”
Lopez looked away. Rand sat down on the long crate and rubbed at his mustache. But Kovac picked up his vibro-hammer and looked me in the eyes.
“I’m with you.”
Then, turning to the others, he said, “Walker is right.”
He pointed his hammer toward the man from the Resistance. “We’re warriors, too. We must fight.”
Rand looked over at the fallen warrior. He breathed in loudly through his nose, then exhaled. “I suppose if we’re going to die anyway, we may as well cause as much damage as we possibly can. I will accompany you.”
Lopez looked at the sparkly data pad now laying on the floor with a cracked screen. “Fine,” she said. “But I get to bring a magazine. And I can’t be running all over the place.”
I smiled. “Good. Now we just need a plan. How many rounds does everyone have?”
Rand checked his plasma gun and was about to answer, but he was quickly interrupted by a series of explosions from somewhere outside.
24
THE EXPLOSIONS OUTSIDE our makeshift base at Cosmart—best deals in the solar system—were getting closer. It looked like we’d need to come up with a plan on our way to the capitol, instead.
“Let’s move,” I said. “Take only what you need.”
I rushed to pick up the fallen Resistance warrior’s crossbow. Its handle had two stylized crosses underneath its small red gem. That would do nicely.
I looked over and saw Rand slip his duffel’s strap over his shoulder and extend the handle on his rolling crate. I shook my head.
“Sorry, Rand. No crate this time.”
“But—I can’t possibly function without all my equipment.”
“Would you rather ‘function,’ or live?” I asked.
He thought for a few seconds. “Live, I suppose.”
“Well, then,” I said. “You’ll have to live with whatever you’ve got in that duffel bag.”
Rand scowled. He dropped his bag onto the long crate and unzipped it violently in protest. Then he rummaged through his open crate and started tossing metal objects of all shapes and sizes into the bag, making loud clinking and clanking noises.
Another set of explosions sounded outside, even closer than the last ones.
“Make it quick, Rand!” I said. “We’re out of here in two minutes.”
Kovac was rifling through his discarded Dominion armor and pulled out a belt holster designed for a crossbow. He fastened it around his waist, over his light green fatigues, and then dropped his vibro-hammer into the holster. The hammer stuck out awkwardly, but it stayed. I wondered what a Dominion trooper would say about Kovac’s adjustment to their outfit.
Then I wondered what a Resistance warrior would say about the same thing. I looked over at the fallen warrior and felt a stab of guilt in my gut. I’d been responsible for the death of two good men—Hiller and this warrior. I was, in a sense, now fighting for Hiller, to honor his memory. But how could I honor this other warrior if I didn’t even know his name?
As the Resistance warrior lay slumped against the shipping container, his cape spread out behind him so that only the black lining showed, like two giant wings. Symbols of freedom.
That was it!
I ran over to my discarded Dominion armor and disconnected the cape. I flipped it over, so the red was on the inside, and fastened my black cape to the collar of my fatigues—not a perfect fit, but it would work.
“What the hell are you doing?” Lopez asked as she undid a button over her stomach and tucked one of the magazines into her fatigues.
“What the hell are you doing?” I answered.
She looked down at what she was doing, opened her mouth, but then closed it again and repositioned her magazine so it wouldn’t give her paper cuts.
Rand was still moving tools and other equipment back and forth between the bag and the crate.
Another explosion came. It was so close that the walls of the storage area rattled from the blast.
“Okay, time’s up, Rand,” I said. “Zip up the bag and let’s go.”
Rand took one last look inside the crate and pulled out a thin rectangular controller of some sort. He smiled. “I think I can buy us some time.”
“What’s that?” Lopez asked.
“It’s a control to the micro-spotlights I installed out back. I may have built in a self-destruct sequence when I was working on them last year.”
I slung my rod-sword sheath across my shoulder and over my cape. “Well, what are you waiting for?”
A devilish grin spread over Rand’s face. He shouldered his bag and the four of us rushed to the entrance to the loading dock. Moments later, we heard the unmistakable sound of Dominion armor plates clacking against each other just beyond where Kovac and I had come from.
I nodded at Rand and he cheerfully pushed the makeshift detonator button on his controller. There was a bright flash, immediately followed by several high-pitched explosions, and then a thick smoke filled the air.
“Now’s our chance,” I said and ran out of the Cosmart loading dock with the rest of my team close behind me.
We darted through a few back alleyways until we finally had to make our way down a major street. We were lucky—no Dominion soldiers were in sight. We ran for two blocks until we had to turn onto another road.
That’s when our luck ran out.
As we rounded the corner, we nearly collided with a phalanx of troopers. We were outnumbered at least five to one, and each of them was raising a crossbow.
Kovac, Rand, and Lopez all crouched behind me. In an act of desperation, I threw up my hands and pictured the force field Sinistra had used to protect her contraption. The brassy music came to my mind at once, like it was at attention, just waiting for orders.
By the time the quickest of the troopers had fired, I’d formed a transparent glowing purple sphere. But there was one small problem—the purple sphere only covered one of my hands.
I snapped the hand with a miniature purple force field in front of the arrow and sent it careening off into waste bin several meters away, where it exploded.
“Walker . . . ” Rand said, worried.
The comically-small force field wasn’t going to work. I needed something much larger. Like, giant crystal ball large.
And just like that, as soon as I thought of it, the small purple sphere surrounding my hand ballooned several times larger, surrounding my crew. The shimmering sphere met a wave of glowing red arrows and ricocheted off in several different directions.
I heard a collective sigh of relief from behind me.
“Well, I’ll be damned,” Rand said.
“This is unbelievable,” Kovac said as he cautiously stood.
“Can we fire yet?” Lopez yelled over the sound of more arrows colliding with the force field. “Or will we end up killing ourselves?”
I made sure to note that, apparently, I couldn’t just rip off the way someone—or something—else used their stones. The image animating the stone’s powers had to come from somewhere inside my own mind.
“Be my guest,” I yelled back.
I squinted my eyes—as if that was going to stop a ricocheting plasma slug from tearing through my eyeball—and waited for the shot. The pale blue slug passed clean through the field and took out the leg of the closest trooper.
More plasma weapons fired from behind me and took out another few before
they put up their arm shields and deflected the blasts. Damn—it was a stalemate.
“We need out of here,” I yelled behind me.
“Do you believe it’s possible for this protective field to accompany us?” Rand asked loudly.
“Only one way to find out,” I said. “That alley’s our best option. On three—one, two, three!”
My crew ran straight toward the alley. I ran backward with my arms out toward the attacking troopers and kept the music going, conducting it slightly with the ruby-stoned crossbow. The force field followed.
When we were only a few strides from entering the alley, I was suddenly jarred, like I’d just hit a brick wall. That’s because I had just hit a wall. Well, it was actually my force field that had hit the buildings’ walls. My crew ran through the field and into the alley, but I couldn’t go any farther with this force field still up.
“Go!” I yelled to my crew.
“What about you?” Kovac said.
I turned to face the troopers, who were advancing on me in several rows. The formation seemed vaguely familiar, and in a moment, I remembered where I’d seen something similar. The supply room, when Lopez interrupted my . . . rod testing.
I looked back at my crew and grinned. “Don’t worry about me,” I said loudly. “I’ll catch up to you in a bit.”
The troopers were only a few meters away now. I took a deep breath, let out a scream, and stepped toward them. They hesitated for just a moment, which was all I needed. I dropped the force field, thrust my hands out toward them, and yelled, “Force push!”
The first row of troopers flew backward into the row behind them and the one behind that, knocking them over like a stack of off-white dominoes.
“Yee-haw!” I yelled. I don’t know where that came from, but it seemed appropriate. I’d just made an honest-to-God space warrior move! In real life! I shot randomly into the heap of troopers in front of me and ran down the alley after my crew with my black cape fluttering behind me.
I didn’t have to go very far to catch up with them—they had stopped around the corner at the next intersection for Lopez to catch her breath. She tried to keep a straight face, but I could see her wincing. We couldn’t go on like this for much longer.
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