Gate Quest (Star Kingdom Book 5)

by Lindsay Buroker

  “I cannot leave you unprotected, Casmir Dabrowski,” Zee said.

  “I won’t need protection if you stop that fight.” Casmir patted his looming guardian on the arm. “I’m very close to accomplishing the mission. I just need a few more minutes over there working on that gate piece.”

  “You are my mission. I cannot leave you.”

  “I’ll hide behind Kelsey-Sato if someone starts shooting this way.”

  Zee looked down at the monkey-droid who only rose halfway up his leg and then back at Casmir. “She is not sufficiently large to use as cover.”

  “It was a joke. Please, Zee, go stop—”

  Someone screamed in fear, the cry echoing from the ice walls, and the noise was cut off abruptly. Casmir looked in time to see a decapitated head still inside of its helmet go bouncing across the floor. He winced, wishing he hadn’t looked. It was one of the mercenaries, and Asger had landed the killing blow with his wicked halberd. Rache was going to kill him.

  If they all didn’t kill each other.

  The vehicle blew up in a fiery explosion that hurled huge shards of metal across the chamber. Casmir gaped as pieces skidded all the way to the gate.

  The rest of the Kingdom men, with nothing to hide behind for cover, ran out to join Asger and Qin in close quarters.

  The rumble of a ship’s engine echoed down the hole from above. Casmir wished he had a way to ask those ships to wait a half hour before continuing—or to back off altogether. He was the reason they were here. He had to fix it.

  “The gate first,” he whispered.

  But Zee still gripped him, refusing to let him move back into the open. Held captive by his own bodyguard.

  “Zee, I order you to let me go, and go get those men I pointed out.” Casmir snapped off his instinct to add please. It had to be an order.

  Zee looked down at him, and for a moment, Casmir feared he wouldn’t obey. He hoped it was only in his imagination that Zee seemed stung by the cold treatment. Either way, Zee released him and charged out after the mercenaries.

  Casmir raced out from behind the stack, almost diving to get back to his work. He’d been so close. A few more minutes…

  An alert popped up on his contact—Rache requesting permission to message him. Casmir would have laughed if he hadn’t been so miserable and frazzled. Had they never spoken chip-to-chip before?

  He accepted the request.

  Moonrazor is heading your way, Rache said. Watch out. Chaplain and I have been hunting her, and we took out a bunch of her bodyguards, but she slipped away, and I think she’s circling back toward the gate chamber.

  Can you come back here and order your men to stop trying to kill the Kingdom troops that brought me help? Casmir worked as he talked, keeping his head low. More men were down, but that only made the remaining ones desperate. Energy bolts kept ricocheting off armor and going all over the place.

  What help? Rache didn’t answer the more pertinent question.

  Scholar Kelsey-Sato and another android professor.

  Kelsey-Sato? Kim’s mother?

  Yes. Realizing that might motivate Rache more than a desperate plea for peace, Casmir added, She would probably be grateful if her mother didn’t get filled with holes.

  Kim is there too?

  Yes.

  I’m coming.

  Rumbles sounded in the nearest tunnel before Casmir could repeat that all Rache needed to do was order his men to stop fighting.

  Casmir glanced up and spotted the headlights of a huge robot on studded metal wheels heading toward the chamber—heading right toward him. It was different from the others he’d seen, more tank than robot, with a large opaque dome on the top and rotating turrets mounted on all of its flat surfaces.

  “Look out,” Casmir shouted. “More robots are coming.”

  A shuttle-sized chunk of ice tumbled from the ceiling, crashing down in front of the approaching robot-tank. It shattered into a broken mound and blocked the tunnel exit. Casmir would have laughed at the timing and the placement, but the robot-tank started firing immediately, cutting the mound into pieces manageable enough to drive over.

  The software program Casmir had running, one he’d altered to understand the special operating system and language of the gate, found a digital ON/OFF switch deep inside the security system. Was that it? What he’d been looking for?

  With a quick command, he flicked it to off, then held his breath as a fresh batch of energy bolts flew around the chamber. Another great snap came from above, and ice ground as it shifted overhead.

  Wincing, and afraid the ceiling would come down any second, Casmir yanked out the scanner he’d modified to read the pseudo radiation. Had he successfully turned off the defenses? He held his breath, waiting for a reading to come back.

  The robot-tank finished cutting the blockage into pieces and crunched over the remains. It rumbled straight toward Casmir.

  He scrambled away from the gate piece. A tremor went through the floor under him, and something ground deep within it—was there more machinery down there?

  The robot-tank drove several feet, passing through the magnetic field, and stopped. The opaque dome started to lift.

  Casmir glanced around, looking for Zee. He imagined androids or cyborgs spewing out of the robot-tank and springing straight at him.

  “Zee!” Casmir wasn’t sure where he’d gone—boulders littered the floor and blocked most of his view of the battle. “I need help.”

  This was what he got for sending his bodyguard away.

  Only one person hopped out of the robot-tank, someone in green combat armor with a clear faceplate. Casmir squinted. It was a woman with short white hair. Moonrazor.

  She carried two rifles and strode toward Casmir. But she lifted her hands instead of the weapons and pointed at his homemade scanner.

  “What does that say?”

  Casmir risked glancing at it. The scan had completed. “It worked,” he blurted with relief. “The radiation is gone.”

  She kept walking toward him, as if she wanted to see for herself.

  Casmir, his relief short-lived, held his hands out. Should he run? She wasn’t aiming anything at him, but he worried this was a trap. Maybe she would snatch him, drag him into her tank, and take him off to hold hostage. As if someone would pay ransom money for him. She would be disappointed when he ended up dying before she could send a request.

  Moonrazor stopped in front of him and flipped up her faceplate. Yes, that was definitely the woman he’d seen in the holographic picture in the Osprey’s briefing room. She appeared much younger than the long career listed in her bio would have suggested.

  She peered at the scanner display. “Excellent.” She pointed at his tool satchel and the tools scattered around it. “Pick those up.”

  “Are we going somewhere?”

  Moonrazor looked up as another snap emanated from the ice above and more chunks rained down. One landed a foot away, making Casmir jump. There hadn’t even been an explosion. Maybe they’d passed the tipping point and the ice would inevitably come down on its own now. Soon.

  Casmir scrambled to put his tools away and sling his satchel over his shoulder. He spotted Kelsey-Sato and Beaumont watching from behind a stack, but he didn’t do anything to draw attention to them. Maybe Moonrazor hadn’t noticed them yet.

  “The tunnels are reinforced.” Moonrazor pointed toward the one she’d exited.

  Casmir took a few steps in that direction with her, more because he thought the robot-tank looked sturdy and good to hide under than because he wanted to go with her.

  They were halfway to it when a black-armored man came into sight, springing over the mounds of ice. A second larger man ran out of the tunnel after him.

  “Rache!” Casmir blurted.

  Moonrazor swore and grabbed Casmir. He struggled to pull away, but the Plague made him weak, even with his armor, and she had enhancements that would have made her a match for Zee. She easily spun him, not to grab his throat or threaten
him but so he faced her, his back toward Rache, who’d been in the process of raising a rifle. Thankfully, Rache didn’t fire.

  Casmir glimpsed Zee clambering over another pile of ice off to the side. He carried two writhing mercenaries over his shoulders, each peeled out of his armor. If Casmir could buy a few seconds…

  But hundreds of meters of ice chose that moment to fall. The frozen boulders tumbled around the gate and smashed the equipment the mercenaries had used to drill the first hole. Casmir gawked as the sky became visible far above, along with ships flying all around the now much larger hole. One of the Kingdom warships was among them, but there had to be dozens of different craft from who knew where.

  They were all jockeying for position and lowering high-tech grappling hooks or maglockers capable of lifting pieces of the gate from the pile.

  “Stop!” Moonrazor barked, pulling Casmir closer and raising her hand. She was looking at Rache, not the new skylight.

  Rache had been advancing, but Moonrazor showed him a tiny device in her grip. A weapon? It looked like a remote control for a detonator.

  Rache must not have known what it was, for he paused. His man started angling to circle around them, but the robot-tank started up, blocking his path as it headed toward Moonrazor and Casmir.

  Hell, she was going to kidnap him.

  “What are your orders, Casmir Dabrowski?” Zee called, dropping his captured men. “If I approach, she may harm you.”

  Casmir opened his mouth to tell him to risk it, but Moonrazor smirked and pressed a finger to his lips.

  “What are you doing?” he blurted.

  “Thanking you.” She smiled and kissed him soundly on the mouth, startling him so much that he almost missed her pressing the button on that tiny remote control.

  “Casmir!” Rache barked, rushing toward them. “Get away from her so I can shoot.”

  Ice cracked and the floor heaved. Moonrazor shoved Casmir hard, so that he tumbled backward. She’d meant for him to smash into Rache as she sprinted toward her robot-tank, maybe knocking both of them down, but Rache caught Casmir.

  The floor moved under their feet. It didn’t tremble, like it had before, but it moved sideways. What was happening?

  Moonrazor sprang into her robot-tank. Rache pointed his rifle over Casmir’s shoulder and fired, but his bolts bounced off her armor. The dome came down over the driving compartment, sealing Moonrazor inside, and it proved even more impervious to DEW-Tek bolts.

  Rache swore and backed toward the tunnel, pulling Casmir with him. Zee ran after them.

  Casmir wanted to struggle—he was tired of being pushed and pulled around—but nausea clenched his stomach again, and all he wanted was to collapse somewhere.

  “I am a damsel,” he groaned to himself.

  “Maybe getting some of my manly blood into you will help.” Rache had a hand clamped on his shoulder but was looking out on the chaos.

  “I don’t think it works that way.”

  “Try the gym too.”

  “Now you’re just picking on the sick man.”

  All other sounds of battle had stopped, save for a few mercenaries firing at the hooks and beams snatching up pieces of the gate. One managed to hit a chain, but whatever metal it was made from had no trouble deflecting the attack.

  As soon as Casmir and Rache—and Zee—reached the tunnel, a couple of mercenaries skidding into it for protection from the ice that continued to fall, the floor in the chamber finished sliding aside.

  Casmir stared in bewilderment. His first thought was that it was breaking apart because of all the weight that had fallen from above, but…

  “It’s a door,” he blurted.

  Massive sliding doors under the ice—and under the gate pieces. As they opened, the stacks that remained fell into water below. No, it wasn’t water. They thunked down instead of splashing down.

  Casmir rose on his tiptoes, trying to see. Was there another chamber down there?

  He almost laughed as the truth struck him. Not a chamber, a ship. Moonrazor had docked a ship down there. Something capable of maneuvering underwater as well as flying up into space? Had she known all along she might have to get away quickly with the gate pieces? And only been waiting until the security system was deactivated?

  Her robot-tank bounded over the ice and to the massive opening, then jumped through the great open doors. Someone fired half-heartedly at it before it disappeared, but the bolt was no more effective than Rache’s had been.

  Casmir shook his head as half of the gate pieces disappeared into Moonrazor’s hold and half disappeared upward into the holds of whatever ships had been able to find a position and snag at least one.

  “Did you orchestrate all this?” Rache waved at the last of the gate pieces flying upward.

  “Uh, can we say you did?” Casmir couldn’t imagine what report would eventually end up getting back to King Jager. As focused as he’d been on his task, he hadn’t missed the two Asgers facing off. Asger’s dad sounded like someone who would reveal… far too much when he reported in.

  Rache laughed. Casmir had heard it so seldom that it startled him.

  “I don’t care what you tell the king,” Rache said.

  “Thanks,” Casmir mumbled, though he doubted he had it in him to lie. Even if he was capable of it, he suspected there were too many eyes here for falsehoods to stand for long.

  The massive ice-covered doors slid shut.

  “Did you orchestrate that too?” Rache pointed at them. “That freakish cult leader kissed you. What the hell, Casmir?”

  “What, damsels can’t get kissed?”

  “Not by other damsels. Not in the Kingdom.”

  Casmir snorted. “We’re a long way from the Kingdom. And Moonrazor isn’t very damselly.”

  “See, that’s a good word, isn’t it?”

  Casmir slumped as a wave of weariness washed over him. His knees might have buckled if not for the support of his leg armor. He leaned against the wall as darkness crept into the edge of his vision.

  He swallowed, fear returning now that he had time for it. He worried he would pass out—and wouldn’t wake up again.

  “You all right?” Rache asked.

  He wanted to be tough and say a definitive yes. What came out was a worried, “I don’t think so.”

  Kim, Qin, and Asger appeared, climbing over the rubble.

  “Casmir?” Kim rushed toward him.

  Rache stepped back, letting them take over holding him upright. Kim shot him a dirty look.

  Was she still angry because Rache had taken Casmir out of the submarine? Or because Casmir had been willing to go? The hard look seemed to be for Rache, not Casmir, but maybe only because nobody glared at a dying man.

  Casmir had an abrupt fear that he would come between them. He didn’t want them to be a them, but if they were going to be… he didn’t want to get in the way. He searched for a way to get Kim to forgive Rache before he passed out.

  He patted Kim’s arm. “Rache helped me. He gave me his blood. It’s going to make me manly.”

  Kim’s expression grew more bewildered than forgiving.

  “You better get him up to your ship,” Rache said quietly. “He’s delirious.”

  Casmir moaned. “Does that mean I’m always going to be a damsel?”

  “We’ll take care of him.” Kim glanced back. “Asger, tell Ishii to get a shuttle down here.”

  “Please,” Casmir whispered.

  “What?” Kim asked.

  “You have to say please to people and robots. It’s a rule.” He looked over at Zee. “I’m sorry I didn’t say please before, Zee.”

  “I forgive you, Casmir Dabrowski.”

  “Thank you.”

  Kim squinted at him. “I’m not sure if you’re genuinely delirious, or you’re just being you.”

  “Yeah.” Casmir forced a smile, though he wasn’t sure it worked.

  He was aware of Beaumont and Kelsey-Sato walking up and was glad they hadn’t fallen into
Moonrazor’s hold when the doors opened. Elsewhere, the dead lay amid the icy rubble. Casmir’s last thought before the darkness took him was that it all could have been much easier—much less deadly—if everyone had agreed to share the gate from the beginning.

  24

  Kim paced outside of Casmir’s little room in sickbay until she was too tired to pace, and then she sat in a chair next to his bunk. Machines beeped softly behind him, and his eyes were closed. His face was pale, his skin blotchy with the telltale signs of the Plague rash. He’d been in and out of consciousness all evening after sleeping fitfully throughout the day cycle. It scared her that he hadn’t woken earlier when the nurse had come in to change his IV. A part of her wanted to shake him to make sure he still could be woken, but if it turned out he couldn’t, what then?

  She wiped her eyes for the hundredth time that day, relieved nobody was around to see, but sad that Casmir’s parents and long-time friends back home weren’t here to be with him. The Osprey continued to orbit Xolas Moon while Ishii’s men searched the mess down below, trying to find survivors from the other submarine teams. It would be days before they left and reached the gate, weeks before they reached Odin and home. Casmir would either be better by then… or he wouldn’t have made it.

  Kim closed her eyes, tears trickling down her cheeks, not wanting to contemplate that option.

  Earlier, she and Dr. Sikou had injected him with the antibodies from Rache’s blood. They had confirmed that he’d had the Great Plague at some previous date. The injection they’d given Casmir should help, but his immune system still had to have the strength to fight off the virus. After all he’d been through these past days—these past weeks—Kim was afraid to gamble on that.

  She wished they were flying to Tiamat Station instead of orbiting this stupid moon that she hoped she never saw again. At least there, he could have undergone the mitochondria treatment. Dr. Sikou had confirmed that the Osprey didn’t have the equipment for that. But Tiamat Station was three days away. Even with all the advancements to drive technology over the centuries, everything was still so far apart out here in space.