Something was still bugging Tris. “What does it actually do?” he asked. “I mean, you can build pretty much anything you want already, right?”
Kyra didn’t look at him, still entranced by the key. “Whoever owns this little scrap of metal can destroy the Ring completely with the push of a button. Make it self-destruct. Or they could wipe out all life on Esper, and start afresh with a nice clean planet… I didn’t get much time to browse the menus but I’ve got a feeling that’s not even the worst it can do.”
“Crap. Okay, so we need to destroy it, or hide it.”
“Drop it on the floor,” Lukas quipped. “It’ll be gone forever. Um, on a related note, can we continue this chat somewhere else? My eyes are watering.”
Tris wafted a hand in front of his nose. It made absolutely no difference; the air in the princess’ quarters could be politely described as ‘ripe’.
Issi looked surprised, then gazed around at the sea of trash, as though seeing it for the first time. “Yeah… I had some guys come in and clean now and then, but since I got back with Alek I’ve been trying to keep it quiet.”
“Can he come to the bridge with us?” Kyra asked. “We could put a bag over his head, like a prisoner.”
Issi scowled at her. “We don’t take prisoners! And certainly not like that. We’re not barbarians. Where the hell have you been living, Kyra?”
“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”
* * *
There was a cramped bathroom cubicle attached to Issi’s bedroom, and she convinced Alek to shower and change into a spare camo uniform from her closet. It looked ridiculous on him, but Tris couldn’t imagine any clothing that wouldn’t; Alek was tall and beanpole skinny, and slouched around with the grace of a drunken giraffe.
As they waited in the corridor for him to finish changing, Kyra and Issi leaned back against the wall, gossiping like the sisters they were.
“So, Vinni and Alek, eh! Who’d have thought. When Tarri told me who her father was, I’ve got to admit, I had a hard time picturing it. Do they get on okay?”
Issi pulled a face. “It’s disgusting. He’s obsessed with her, and I guess she finds that flattering? I dunno. She was always playing second-fiddle to Daysi when we grew up. But then every noble in the Dome was suddenly eyeing her up for power and position. It must have been quite nice to find someone who just liked her for herself.”
Kyra snorted. “He always did have the hots for her. He wasn’t shy about saying it, either.”
“You got that right.”
“What did mother say?”
“Crazy old bat said it was the best thing that ever happened to her. I think when she married father it was pre-arranged, though I guess they liked each other enough in the end. But still! She went on about her daughter ‘marrying for love’ so much it made me want to puke.”
Kyra gave her a sympathetic pat on the shoulder. “You’re wasted as a revolutionary,” she said. “You’d make such a good diplomat.”
They managed to reconvene on the bridge a short while later.
A helmet hid most of Alek’s features for the short walk through the ship, and mercifully the bridge itself was still empty from their last visit. It didn’t seem like there were many people living up here; Tris had heard several mentions of the Communes, and wondered if that’s where most of Issi’s soldiers spent their down time.
Kyra waited for the doors to shut and lock before starting. “Okay.” She ran a hand through her hair, which she’d left as a glorious rainbow. “Viktor has Princess Jennavaria. There’s no way we can leave her with him. I know that piece of shit; he will cut bits off her if he thinks it’ll help him get what he wants. He might even do it for fun. He’s a sick, twisted individual, who needs putting down permanently. But we can’t do that until we know where he is.”
Alek made a sound like a half-hearted raspberry. “We know where he is. I traced the signal.” He lifted the tablet he’d brought with him from the bedroom, as though it was proof.
For a second, Kyra looked like she was going to strangle him. She took a deep breath instead. “Okay,” she said, “Let’s try this again. Alek, please tell us everything you know about Viktor’s whereabouts.” Her words were clipped, but she did a passable impression of civility.
Alek responded rather well to it. “He’s here.” The main viewscreen lit up, and a map-view of the surrounding forest appeared on it. Blips glowed for Laugarren and Lehen, and a smaller one for the Harrespil’s location, roughly halfway between them. Further north, above Kyra’s city, a flashing dot was labelled Freedom.
“Not Viktor’s middle name, is it?” Lukas asked with a smile.
“It’s the name of the barge he’s taken control of. We built two of them; the other one’s called Liberty.”
Kyra’s eyes narrowed. “Wait. You’re telling me that Viktor is in control of the defence barges you guys put in orbit to protect Esper?”
“No,” Alek replied, heaping far more sarcasm on the word than was necessary, “he’s in control of one of them.” He paused. “Although we don’t know where the other one is, so it’s possible he has that one, too.”
Kyra clenched her fists, and Tris could sense her struggling for control. Something about Alek seemed to rub her up the wrong way. “Can you hack into that barge and make it self-destruct?”
“Absolutely not! My daughter is on it.”
“Can you hack into it after I take her off it?”
“Of course. But it’s different this time. Viktor’s smarter. He managed to override the barges with a code I’ve never seen before. It’s like a different language. It’s the same thing he’s using to block comms out of the city.”
Kyra cursed under her breath. “So he’s hired some new talent, then? A bunch of coders like you?”
Alek looked disgusted. “Pfft! There are no coders like me.”
Tris was trying not to laugh, now — hardly appropriate, under the circumstances, but Alek and Kyra were winding each other up like a comedy double act.
Rapidly approaching the end of her patience, Kyra was resorting to mime. She held a thumb up. “Viktor.” She put the next three fingers up. “His coders.” Then her pinkie went up. “Princess Jenna.” She clasped her pinkie in her other hand, and made as though she’d pulled it off. “I take her away.” Then she balled both fists and made jazz hands.
“Then can we self-destruct?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because there isn’t a self-destruct mechanism. Why would we build something like that?”
“Arrrgh!” Kyra stomped towards him. “In case some psychotic bastard like Viktor gets hold of it and turns it against us!”
Alek quailed, retreating behind Issi. “Wait!” he protested. “You can blow it up from the inside!”
Kyra held her mock-menacing pose. “How?”
“Plant a bomb! I know the layout. I can show you where.”
“Okay.” She spun on her heel, pacing back to the viewscreen. “See how easy that was? So, we know where we’re going. And we know that Viktor is expecting us.”
“You,” Lukas chipped in. “He’s expecting you.”
She gave him the eyebrow. “What, you’ve got a massage booked?”
Lukas didn’t rise to it. “What I mean is, he isn’t expecting us. Tris is pretty good with that stick of his. I’d say we could make a decent distraction. Your Highness?” he addressed Issi. “I see grav-belts on the walls. Do they work?”
Issi glanced around, then nodded. “They’re all throughout the ship. In case we need to evacuate in a hurry.”
“I thought so. Is there any chance we could borrow a few? Three ought to do it.”
“Of course. I’ve got weapons, too. We’ll visit the armoury and you can take your pick.”
“Can we take this ship?” Kyra asked. “That barge is a good distance away. We could do without hiking for a day just to get there.”
“The Harrespil?” Issi looked at her sister l
ike she was crazy. “It hasn’t flown in decades! Plus it’s anchored to the trees. I guess we could cut her free, but she’s a just a box. We built her as quick as we could, to ship the Ring-dwellers down to the surface, so we didn’t waste time on adding weapons or armour. Or shields. One good hit and Harrespil really will be a box full of dead people.”
Kyra tapped her foot, clearly waiting for something else.
Issi was thinking hard, twisting one blonde curl around her fingers. “Alright,” she said, with a pained expression. “If we’re going to see Viktor, we might as well travel in style. We can take my car.”
* * *
They made a short visit to the armoury, which really did boast an impressive array of weaponry. Almost all of it gleamed like new, racked up according to size with not a powerpack out of place. Tris wondered if anyone here had actually fired a shot in anger. The stand-off between the cities had a definite cold-war vibe, and none of the soldiers he’d encountered aboard Harrespil had the supremely-confident body language that most hardened killers adopted.
Evidently, he was not the only one having such thoughts. When Issi brandished a thick-barrelled rifle, Kyra gingerly prised it off her. “Not you,” she said. “You’re not coming.”
Issi’s reaction was full-on prima-donna. “WHAT? You can’t tell me I’m not going on my own operation! I run this place, not you. This is my revolution.”
Kyra regarded her coolly. “How many people have you killed, Issi?”
“Not as many as you,” Issi scoffed. “You’re still the high scorer in the family when it comes to that.”
Kyra wasn’t letting her off the hook that easily. “Issi. How many people have you killed?”
“Enough.”
“How many?”
The princess made an exasperated noise. “Well… this one time, I was fighting this big guy, and I smacked him right in the mouth…”
“So, none, am I right?”
She nodded glumly. “But I’ve got to start somewhere, you know?”
Kyra gave her sister’s arm a companionable squeeze. “You can start by staying here, and keeping the Master Key safe. We’ll be back as quick as we can. There might not even be a fight.”
Issi batted her hand away. “You’re going up against Viktor! And I’m just supposed to sit here on my ass? Why does he get to go?”
Tris looked up to find her royal finger aimed squarely at him.
“He’s like ten years old!,” Issi moaned. “Hey, boy — how many people have you killed?”
Tris chewed his lip. “Um, I’m not sure. I lost count. Maybe two or three… hundred? It depends if we’re including aliens and cyborg monsters. ”
“Oh.” Issi’s shoulders slumped. “Shit.”
Kyra replaced her hand. “It’s okay. We’re not all meant to be murderers. The first time I did it, it was because I had absolutely no choice.”
“And now that you do have a choice?”
Kyra gave her a rueful smile. “To be honest, I’ve kind of got a taste for it.”
They took armoured jackets to replace the gear they’d lost in Laugarren, though sadly there wasn’t anything that would go near Lukas. Kyra pulled a face at the ubiquitous green camo-pattern, but added a variety of grenades to its built-in magnetic clips.
With heavy assault rifles strapped around them and Lukas toting a backpack full of explosives, they trooped back through the ship to a cargo bay at the far end. Some of the people they passed bowed to Issi, and some stopped to throw up a salute. Others she merely nodded to, or offered a cheeky thumbs-up. Most of them stared openly at her unusual companions, particularly Alek in his very conspicuous helmet. These people were amateurs in the literal sense, Tris realised; he’d now been from one end of the ship to the other, and nothing he’d seen or heard indicated any kind of training regimen.
The cargo bay doors slid open, and the lights came on inside. Revealed were stacks of supply crates lining the walls — and an angular black silhouette the size of a battle tank. Chunky armour plates coated in some anti-reflective material seemed to drink the light that hit them. Gun turrets rode the chassis fore and aft, with slimline missile launchers deployed to either side. The low-slung passenger cabin could just be glimpsed through narrow slits of windows; it looked like the interior was decked out with couches and a minibar.
“There she is,” said Issi, sounding smug. “My car.”
Kyra took a few steps towards it. For the first time since arriving here, she seemed genuinely impressed. “How the hell did you…”
“We built four for the City Guard.” Issi had turned nonchalant all of a sudden. “I made the case that, as a VIP, I needed some protection of my own. The council had a lot on their plate at that point, and no-one really gave a crap either way. I had it upgraded with defensive countermeasures, comm-jammers, and enough armour to withstand a direct hit from a turbolaser. No shields, I’m afraid; the power supply is mostly devoted to keeping her in the air. She’s heavier than she looks.”
Kyra was already stroking a fingertip along the missile launcher, which looked like it would retract into the side of the vehicle. “Ooooh! I want one. Can you get me one? Please?”
Issi folded her arms. “Bring this one back in one piece — without a scratch — and we’ll talk.”
“Without a scratch? Come on Issi, it’s built for combat. It won’t look right unless it’s a bit weathered.”
Issi responded with what Tris was starting to consider the Loreak family eyebrow. “Same rule as clothes, sis. You break it, you bought it.”
Kyra delivered a hefty kick to the vehicles’ side armour. “Oh no! I left a mark. It’s damaged goods, now. I’ll take it off your hands at half price.”
“You can’t! You don’t have a chip, remember. You’re broke.”
Kyra pouted. “I saved this goddamn planet for free last time. This time, it’s gonna cost you.” She wandered around the front of the vehicle, peering inside its heavily-protected cockpit. “Yup. I’ll take one of these as payment, with all the bells and whistles…” she rapped a knuckle on the bodywork. “In hot pink. With sparkles.”
Lukas rubbed a hand over his face, and turned to Tris. “This is why we’re in charge of stealth,” he said.
TWENTY-THREE
The hover car streaked through the afternoon sunshine, high above the forests of Esper.
On board, Tris had joined Kyra at the controls. This was exactly the kind of vehicle he imagined himself piloting one day, as he hunted down evildoers across the galaxy. The only Warden he’d known for any length of time, Kreon, had simply commandeered anything he wanted. Tris wasn’t quite ready to try that out, but he was keeping his fingers crossed that Atalia had some kind of company car policy.
Kyra, however, told him not to get comfy. It wasn’t a long trip, despite the excessive altitude she’d climbed to — and he wouldn’t be staying for all of it.
She pushed the vehicle to its limits, reaching a height that would make it no more than a dot in the sky to observers on the ground. A sharp descent on the target would make them less vulnerable, she explained, than the more traditional approach of skimming the treetops. Although her theory was that Viktor wouldn’t actually blow them out of the sky until he had his hands on the Master Key.
Tris really, really hoped she was right about that.
The rest of their plan belonged to Lukas.
“We’ll drop in using the grav-belts,” he said, fastening one around his waist. It wasn’t the coolest looking gadget; more like a high-tech nappy, but apparently it would allow them to regulate their descent, drifting with the wind, and touch down atop Viktor’s stolen barge around the same time that Kyra went in through the front door. Or whatever passed for the front door on an orbital defence barge.
Alek informed them that the barge was designed to be automated, and as such didn’t have a whole lot of human-accessible space inside. A small suite of rooms existed for maintenance techs, in the event of a long-running repair job, but there was
nowhere to house and feed an army. Viktor could have made some upgrades of course, but the barges had only been offline for a week.
Tris levered himself out of the co-pilot’s seat, already missing its figure-hugging upholstery. This was a seriously nice ride… and if Kyra’s track record was anything to go by, there wouldn’t be much left of it the next time he saw it.
As Lukas fitted him with the grav-belt, he triple-checked the two parts of his staff that were magnetised to his thighs. He shouldered his rifle and looked at Alek. The coder was desperately keen to help them rescue his daughter, though Tris wasn’t sure he appreciated the risks involved. Alek could hack into the barge’s systems, something they were relying on to help them get inside undetected, and he also claimed to be able to find the princess’s location using his tablet. Whenever Tris looked at the screen it reminded him of The Matrix — an endlessly scrolling jumble of nonsense that, by some miracle, Alek could read.
“We’re five minutes out,” Kyra announced.
Alek reacted to that by unfastening his restraints and getting to his feet. “I’m prepared to take over as co-pilot, but you should know that I’m not comfortable trying to land this vehicle.”
“You won’t need to land it,” Kyra called back. “Issi would kill me if I left you at the controls.”
“Oh.” Alek sounded both mollified and perturbed at the same time. “But you brought three grav-belts with you.” He pointed to the last one, which Lukas was holding up to inspect. “Did you miscount?”
“Nope.” Lukas took a knee in front of Alek and fastened the third belt around him so efficiently that it was a second before he registered what was happening.
“What? Don’t be ridiculous. I can’t use one of these things! I haven’t got any training.”
“Neither has Tris,” Lukas pointed out. “You don’t see him complaining.” He continued fitting the belt, tugging it into position and adjusting controls inside a flip-down panel on the front. “Now don’t mess with these,” he cautioned, “I’m setting it up for your weight and the atmospheric pressure.”
Embers of Esper: A Sci Fi Adventure (Warden's Legacy Book 1) Page 18