Renegade

by Justine Davis

  He looked at the tableau for a long, silent moment. Savoring it. He did not think he would ever get used to it, this kind of belonging. He’d always been taught—had had hammered into him—that the Coalition was the only group that mattered. That it was all you needed. That personal connections were not just unnecessary, they were detrimental; they were limitations. Bonds that held you back, and thanks to the glory of the Coalition you didn’t need them.

  But now he knew the truth. He needed those bonds, the kind these people had offered him. They were not limitations, they were freeing.

  You can soar higher and freer if you know where home is, and that you’ll always be welcome—and loved—there.

  Lana’s words rang in his mind, words spoken when he lay drained and content in her arms. She had taught him most of what he now knew about that word scorned by the Coalition. But a different kind of love had been not just demonstrated but given to him, freely, by others. In particular the two who had just spotted him.

  The twins leapt to their feet, and he saw another thing he knew he would never get used to, never take for granted: their simple joy at the sight of him. They ran, and he braced himself for the impact. They leaped, hit him simultaneously, and he swept an arm around each of them to hold them steady.

  “We have—”

  “Been waiting—”

  “For you.”

  It welled up in him anew, that strange feeling Lana had had to name for him. Love for your children is different. It is consuming, yet more joyous than nearly any­thing we are capable of.

  He had stared at her, caught by that one word more than any other. And she had laughed, that glorious, silvery sound that stroked that deeply hidden place inside him that only she had ever reached.

  Oh, yes, they are yours, Caze. They were the first, after all, to stake their claim on you.

  He looked up then, feeling her gaze on him. She was smiling with such pleasure as she watched them that for a moment he doubted he could contain the sensation inside him. In the beginning he had been unable to quite believe this wasn’t an illness of some kind; now he knew it was instead a growing, an expansion, an unfurling of things so long crippled.

  And more, the others, Eirlys, Brander, Kye, even Drake were looking at him with open welcome, smiling as well as he made his way toward them with his double burden that was not a burden at all. They had more than accepted him, they had welcomed him, and once their decision was made, they did not stint.

  Even young Kade, who sat now with Brander and Eirlys, who had taken him into their keeping, seemed to have forgiven him, although he suspected it was as much because Brander had told him he’d designed the rover than anything else. And he and Grim, who stood a few feet away, had reached an accord, once he understood the man’s true place in Lana’s heart, and hers in his.

  You have made my lady whole again. For that alone you would have my gratitude and my service, but you also have my respect, Caze Paledan.

  He approached the group of them now, drawing in a deep breath.

  “A moment,” he murmured to the twins. “I must talk to your brother.”

  Drake, who was closest, seemed to hear, for he looked up. Their eyes met, and he rose. The twins released him, although they promised they had much to show him today.

  “You needed to speak to me?” Drake asked.

  He hesitated. He wished he would never have to disrupt this kind of gathering, for it was all new and precious to him. But they were still at war, and sometimes . . .

  Reluctantly, he said, “I need to speak to the Raider.”

  THEY GATHERED IN Brander’s workshop, in the corner of the cave they used to house the rovers.

  “What exactly are you proposing?” Brander asked.

  “The Coalition does nothing quickly,” Caze began.

  “Except condemn its own,” Kye said dryly.

  Caze looked at the woman who held both the heart of the Raider and the most incredible skill in her slender hands.

  Your work is extraordinary,

  It must be, since it brought you to us.

  He smiled, as much for the recalled exchange as the truth of her words. “Contention valid.” He turned back to the matter at hand. “You already know the planium is shipped out monthly, aboard a cargo vessel.”

  “Just as we know the cost to the miners if the quota is not reached.” Eirlys this time, and he had no counter. For it was true, the standing order was that since they had to keep the miners alive, it was their families who would be punished if they, in the Coalition’s opinion, slacked in their production. “However,” she added, in a quieter tone, “we also know that since your arrival, that cost has not been collected.”

  “I merely instituted a different time period for the quota.”

  “Giving the miners time to make up any shortfall before their mates or children were harmed,” Drake said.

  He shrugged, but he met Drake’s steady gaze. “I often wondered why you never attempted a full-scale liberation of the miners.”

  Drake lifted an eyebrow. “And now?”

  “Now I know why. They were willing to stay in Coalition hands, to keep the rest of their people alive.”

  He felt rather than saw Lana smile. Drake nodded slowly. “You have learned much. We gave them the choice. We could—and would have—rescued them all, and damn the consequences, but they chose to stay. Until the balance tipped.”

  “And the Coalition found their own way to work the mines.”

  “Yes.”

  “It might please you to know,” Caze said with an upward quirk of one corner of his mouth, “that they are not even close, despite all their resources, to finding a way to see through your bedamned mist.”

  Drake grinned.

  “The matter at hand?” Brander suggested, using the very phrase Caze had thought moments ago.

  “Yes. The planium is loaded aboard the cargo ship, then scanned for any anomalies or devices with the ship’s detectors. Then it is taken directly to a production plant on the quadrant station.”

  “Where their High Command is stationed?” Drake asked.

  “Yes. Currently in the next sector.”

  “Too bedamned close,” Kye muttered.

  “Agreed,” Caze said.

  “Is that production plant big enough to process it all as it arrives?”

  Caze turned back to Brander, smiling inwardly as the man arrived at what would have been exactly his own first question. Caze recognized the tone that said his agile mind was already darting through the possibilities.

  “No. So it is held in a storeroom until needed, locked and guarded at all times.”

  “Where is this storeroom?” Brander asked.

  Caze looked at the man whose mind was so like his own, and held his gaze steadily. “It is,” he said, “precisely seven feet from the power core of the station.”

  Brander’s eyes widened. Caze could almost see his mind racing now. And saw the moment when Brander arrived at the same possibility he had reached.

  “That,” Brander said in an admiring tone, “is utterly insane. I’m proud of you.”

  Caze grinned, and heard Lana laugh. She had told him how delighted she was that they had grown to be the friends they always could have been, had Caze’s uniform not been between them.

  Then the questions came rapid fire.

  “How much does the room hold?”

  “It varies, but there is always a reserve of ten tons.”

  “Inspected again?”

  “Only visually, after the scan aboard ship.”

  “Held, or rotated through?”

  “Rotated through, replaced with the new shipments.”

  “How long?”

  “Minimum two weeks, maximum three months, average six weeks.”r />
  “Who moves it?”

  Caze had the wild thought that if his twin had survived, what they could have had might feel like this. And it mattered to him, greatly. Not only Brander’s razor-sharp mind, but how all the others fell silent and let him run. They truly knew what they had in this man. This man who would no doubt have been crushed by the Coalition for his out-of-the-ordinary thinking. As they had tried to crush him. And had succeeded, until he was freed by the flame-haired woman who stood silently watching.

  And finally he gave the answer that would nail it down. “Troopers who would not know raw planium if it fell upon them.”

  And suddenly Brander was grinning back at him. “Holy Eos.”

  “Pardon me for not keeping up, but what are you two thinking?” Drake asked, sounding a little wary.

  “You tell him,” Brander said. “It’s your idea.”

  “But he trusts you.”

  “If I did not trust you as well, you would not be here,” Drake pointed out.

  Caze drew in a deep breath. Then he turned to face the man who had bedeviled the Coalition for so long. “That rather than a long, slow sabotage that is tantamount to suicide, you commit to striking a blow that could change everything. In this quadrant at least. A blow for your freedom.”

  Something glinted in Drake’s eyes, and Caze knew it was the spirit of the Raider, rising to the idea of not just harrying or annoying, but truly striking back.

  “Explain. In detail,” the Raider ordered.

  And Caze counted it a personal triumph that he felt not the slightest qualm as he committed what would, if it worked, be counted as the worst treason the Coalition had ever seen.

  Chapter 62

  “IS IT POSSIBLE?” Caze asked.

  Brander looked at Iolana with a lifted brow. “I don’t know how long I could hold an illusion of such size,” she answered. “I am stronger than I was, but this is rather immense in scope.”

  “Stronger?” Brander asked.

  She felt herself color, and flicked a glance at Caze. He glanced at her in the same instant, and she saw a small, intimate smile curve the corners of his mouth.

  “Ah,” Brander said, as if in complete understanding. They both looked at him and he half shrugged, half grinned. “Eirlys has the same effect on my imagination.” Then, with another grin at Caze, he added, “Despite the fact that you have apparently gone insane.”

  “So it is not—”

  “Hold, there, I did not mean it couldn’t be done, just that I can’t see exactly how.”

  “Yet?” Caze suggested.

  Brander’s widening grin showed just how well these two had come to know each other in the weeks Caze had been here. “Exactly.”

  It was later, as they walked down the path from Brander’s workshop to her quarters that she reached up and cupped his face in her hands. “You are as remarkable as I always thought you were, Caze Paledan.”

  For a moment he was silent. Then she saw him swallow and he said, quietly, “And you are even more remarkable than I knew you were when I first saw your image. And all the times after that when, before I knew what the feeling was, I mourned that you were dead and I had never known you.”

  They were alone on the path, but she would not have cared if every Sentinel was watching. She leaned up and kissed him. She meant it only as thanks for what he had said but it quickly deepened, and the flame that was ever only banked roared to life.

  And then he pulled back, at the same time grasping her shoulders. He looked down at her intently. “I know it is important, this pledging of your peo­ple.”

  “It is the foundation of Ziem life,” she said, tilting her head to look at him curiously.

  “I have no knowledge of the tradition except from what I have read, and now observed with your son and daughter and their mates. It is . . . enviable. And daunting.”

  She smiled at him. “Exactly as it should be, and not to be taken lightly.”

  “Until death never is, is it? And is that not what the pledge is?”

  “Yes.” When he didn’t go on, she said his name softly. “Caze?”

  He hesitated, and in this man, that told her much about the import of his next words. “Could you . . . have you forgiven me that much? Enough to trust me with your life?”

  Her heart raced in her chest. She didn’t doubt he understood what he was asking; he was too intelligent not to know. “You wish to . . . pledge with me? Do not feel that is necessary, Caze.”

  “I wish you to be certain of . . . me. How I’ve changed. How my life was nothing before you, and everything now. And this tradition is the best way I can think of to show you. For I know what it means to you.”

  For a moment she just stared up at him, marveling at how the stern, tough major had become . . . almost a poet. “You have come a very, very long way, my heart.”

  “How could I not, with such a blazing torch to light my way?”

  Yes, his words were poetry to her ears.

  THE MAN WAS tireless, Caze thought. Yet again the Sentinels had embarked on a raid. It was part of the plan, and Drake had set the schedule himself, but it was still an exhausting pace. Today there were three groups plus the rovers, hitting four different places, all chosen by himself for maximum effect, distraction, and irritation.

  Brander, after several days—plus some singed hair and a few burn blisters that had required Lana’s skills—had determined the exact ratio needed of planium to quisalt. And then a week ago he’d left, dressed in rough, miner’s garb to join the group that had not hesitated an instant when presented with the plan.

  His mind flitted from that to that moment when the twins had turned up with a large bundle that turned out to be two stolen Coalition uniforms, that of a sergeant and an ordinary trooper. He had been torn between amazement and terror at what they had risked.

  How have you not locked them up since they could walk?

  He had asked Drake that with all sincerity, and been rewarded with a wry smile.

  Do not think it did not come to mind. But I have learned they will ever do their part, and so it is best to give them their task.

  Rather than have them choose their own? Eos forefend.

  I am glad to have you to share that particular worry.

  Drake’s words had been the spoken acknowledgment of his place with them, and Caze knew he would remember them forever.

  But now, now it was all down to timing, Caze thought as he paced the floor of the Raider’s map room. He went over it again in his head. They’d prioritized everything, worked down from the maximum they could hope for to the minimum that must be done. They were only at the beginning now. He was wound up to a pitch unlike anything he’d ever known even in the heat of battle. For never had more depended on this working. This was no striving for a tactical victory, with more Coalition glory the by-product. This was for his heart and soul.

  For his redemption.

  The rest of his life depended on this working. For only if this succeeded would he feel he had atoned, at least somewhat. Only then would he feel he had proven himself worthy of their acceptance. Of the love they’d given him.

  The only peace he found was in Lana’s arms, in the quiet warmth of the home she’d created in this unlikely place, the shelter of a fiery, living mountain.

  “It will work,” she told him into the darkness one night nearly a month after they’d set everything in motion.

  “You have Seen this?”

  She sighed. “I cannot tell if it is Sight, or wishing.”

  When it began to happen, two days later, it all came quickly. Caze first heard the rumble of the big cargo ship as it made the turn toward the landing zone. With it, he knew, would come the High Command troops to guard the shipment; they no longer trusted the occupying contingent. In fact, Caze wondered if a
ny of the men who had served under him had been left alive, after his betrayal. But he felt badly only for those who had had no choice.

  Shortly after the ship had landed, Eirlys came into the map room with one of her birds nestled in her hands. She looked at her brother. “Brander says it is ready.”

  Drake nodded. “Good, for Kade has just sent word the convoy is on its way.” He turned to Caze and his mother. “You are prepared?”

  For a split second he could not speak, for there was an aspect to their preparations the Raider did not know, an aspect they had explored in great depth just last night.

  I do not know quite how or why, but I take strength from our joining, Caze.

  And you must be very strong, when the time comes.

  Indeed, I must.

  The look she had given him then, teasing, tempting, alluring had driven him mad in an instant.

  I must do my duty, then.

  As you ever have. Only now your only duty is to yourself.

  And us.

  “Yes,” Lana answered for him, “we are . . . quite ready.”

  “Then we begin,” said the Raider.

  He and Lana changed quickly into the stolen uniforms. With her artist’s hand, Kye used whatever she had at hand to change how they looked. She concentrated on Caze’s face while Lana bound her hair—now, not to his liking, darkened to the muted brown he remembered from the bridge—up tightly.

  “It’s more likely you would be recognized, so I must be sure you look quite different,” Kye said as she worked.

  “I have some false scars you could borrow,” the Raider said, almost teasingly. Caze glanced at the man who had so bedeviled the Coalition while wearing those scars.

  “That,” he said as he held the man’s gaze, “is an honor I have not yet earned.”

  And suddenly he was Drake again, looking a bit taken aback. “I might argue that, had we the time.”

  “But we don’t,” Eirlys said.

  Caze knew she was anxious, for once again her beloved creatures would be pressed into service, causing what disorder they could as the convoy made its way back to the ship with their precious cargo. It still amazed him how they did her bidding, but he and Brander had put it to good use; by the time the convoy arrived back at the landing zone they would be feeling mightily harassed by flocks of pecking birds, uneasy from the unearthly howls of crea­tures with oddly striped tails, and impatient after waiting for the passage of a herd of huge animals with deadly horns, who could toss a man with a flick of their head and would attack if one of them was hurt. With luck—which these Sentinels seemed to always have at their back—by the time the convoy finally reached its destination they would be off schedule and scrambling to make it up, and just careless enough to allow the next step.