Cataclysm: Rystar and the LASSOs Book Three

by Jack Archer

  He didn’t think his people would be that gullible.

  The Chief didn’t bother him again for a few days after that and Enzo found himself with a plethora of time on his hands. He practiced his programming, tried to break his way out of the air-gapped network (to no avail), and tried fitfully to break into his files again.

  He sat exhausted on his bed, weary from the solitude and from not taking a break from anything. When he closed his eyes, he saw the smoke and flames, and they shot back open to glare at his tablet again. Sitting on the edge of his bed, he turned to gaze out of the window and saw blackness, the cold penetrating the walls around him, and decided it was far too late to be awake.

  Before he could lay down, a knock came at his cell door, and he whipped his head up to face the intruder. A Horoth stood there in the dimness, their wings drawn up around them.

  “Na’gya?” Enzo whispered, half-standing from his bed and squinting. The face that turned to him was not Na’gya but another guard he had seen several times in the hallways.

  “Who?” they asked before shaking their head. “Nevermind. I am Makeer, one of the guards on the second floor. I believe you have seen me before.”

  “I have,” Enzo said with a nod, standing up and crossing his cell to stand in front of his door. Makeer hunched over, letting her wings create a barrier between them and the outside world as if to prevent eavesdropping. “What are you doing here.”

  “I have come to give you my aid,” Makeer replied, her eyes darting around furtively as she spoke. “I am one of the Bedanah in hiding on Yimesotwa. We have been tasked to give our aid to enemies of the Horoth.”

  “Bedanah…?” Enzo repeated, digging deep in his memory for a definition.

  “The Betrayers,” Makeer explained, shifting her weight. “We are the ones who would not join the Terrans and assist those who are at the mercy of the Horoths now.”

  “But you’re Horoth,” Enzo said, furrowing his brow.

  “We all do not have the same ideals,” she said, tilting her head. “The Bedanah emerged many, many years ago when the Terrans found us. Our planet split, those that went with the Terrans in their conquest and those that stayed behind. The Ascendants, the Unaton, were the ones that joined the Terrans to the stars. We Bedanah were said to betray the Horoths in their galactic mission, dragging us back down to the depths of Chantakor.”

  Enzo listened, enraptured by the tale. He had heard it somewhere before, but coming from a Horoth held more weight. Nodding, he flicked his eyes up to Makeer and sighed. “How do I know I can trust you?”

  “You do not,” Makeer replied, shaking her head. “But I will tell you this. I know the Wings reside at 6B92 Underground, and yet they have not been… rehabilitated.”

  Enzo raised an eyebrow at her and shrugged a shoulder. Sure, he couldn’t trust any Horoth right now, but Makeer seemed to be telling the truth, and she did know exactly where the Wings of Vengeance were holed up.

  “Alright,” Enzo said at last, “what is it you want me to do?”

  “Keep doing what you’re doing,” she replied. “Keep trying to crack your code. I cannot retrieve any information from our network, but what I can do is deliver it to your friends. Do you have any data you’d like to give them now?”

  “I haven’t been able to hook my tablet up to the network,” Enzo huffed, running a hand through his hair and glancing around, even though he knew there was no jack here. “So I have no information to give.”

  “Then give me a message to send to your friends,” Makeer said, “and I will let them know.”

  “Tell them to look closer at the Ritual bombing,” he said. “I know it’s vague and awful, but their interest can’t seem too suspicious.”

  “Good thinking,” Makeer said with a smile. “The Chief may be a monster, but he knows brains when he sees them.”

  “I just know where to find stuff,” Enzo said, shaking his head. “But thanks.”

  Makeer let their wings unfurl and stood up straight, taking a step back from the glass. “I will let your friends know and come back when I can.”

  Enzo nodded and stood back, watching as Makeer left and hating the solitude again. He stood there for a few moments before heading back down to his cot and laying on it, hands behind his head.

  Part of him wished he hadn’t confided in Makeer, the security-oriented part. Loose lips sink ships and all that. But weeks of solitary confinement and being forced to use his skills for evil had worn Enzo down into a husk, desperate for a bit of kind contact. Even if it did come in the form of those who were keeping him prisoner.

  He tried to fall asleep, his thoughts creeping to his room back on the Firehawk where Kyran would lay with him, though he hadn’t done so in a long time. Of Rystar scooting closer to him to watch him work and the smell of space dust on her clothes. Her soft lips the last time they were alone. He sighed, folding his arms over his eyes and groaning.

  It was going to be a long couple of weeks.

  Chapter Seven

  Rystar Umara: Jeraro Farms, Yimesotwa

  Rystar couldn’t stop the guilt from creeping into her chest as she laid there with Kyran, his arm stuck under her neck and cradling her body with his other. They were naked, as per the usual, the blankets wrapped in a tangle around them.

  “We should be doing something,” she murmured, playing with a lock of his hair. He turned his head to gaze at her, and she let her hand fall to rest on her side.

  “There’s not much to do, darlin’,” he muttered back, kissing her on the forehead.

  “It’s been weeks,” she said, huffing and rolling over onto her back. Kyran pulled his arm free and sat on the edge of the bed. “What if they’re doing awful things to him?”

  “You heard Ji’lan,” Kyran said as he stood up, “Tahi’s prison isn’t high security. He’s probably in solitary eating crappy food.”

  “You don’t seem too worried,” Rystar said, rolling back on her side to face him and putting her head in her hand.

  “I am worried,” he said in a low voice, heading to the window. “But I… well, it seems there’s a lot of things I should have told you early on.”

  “What is it now?” she scoffed, sitting up and holding the blanket over the top half of her body.

  “Enzo and I hooked when we first started flying together,” he sighed, picking at a leaf of Ephrem’s plant in the window. “It was once, and we decided it wasn’t for us. We’ve been very close ever since, just not in that sense.”

  Rystar didn’t even try to be mad and found she wasn’t at all. These new-age relationships were strange, but if they got rid of her jealousy and bad feelings towards those in it, she was all for it.

  “Have you two talked about it at all?” she asked, scooting towards the edge of the bed.

  “We did afterward,” he said, his shoulders slumping with relief. “But not since. There’s not really a need to. We’re friends. Always will be.”

  Rystar smiled, her thoughts wandering to Enzo, not for the first time. The chaste kiss he left her with, how she abandoned him at the base. Her heart filled with grief again, and she shook her head. “He kissed me, you know.”

  Even as she said it, guilt welled up, even though she knew what the protocol for these kinds of things was now. Kyran turned to her, eyes wide and grin plastered on his face. “Did he? I’m so proud.”

  “Of him?” Rystar said with a chuckle.

  Kyran nodded and sat on the edge of the bed next to Rystar, and took her hand. “Of both of you. It’s been so long since he branched out and made a connection with anyone else that isn’t on this ship.”

  “And me?” she pressed. Kyran kissed her on the forehead.

  “And you for breaking out of your human customs and falling for more than one person at once,” he said, grinning. A flush crept into her face, and she leaned into Kyran, resting her head on his shoulder. After a while, he spoke again. “How are things coming with Na’gya?”

  Rystar groaned, lifting her head
up. “Not well. Every time I feel like I have a chance to tell him, he goes all weird on me and hides. I can’t get him to open up. Maybe he doesn’t want me to open up.”

  Kyran hummed, putting his arm around her and pulling her close again. “Well, if that’s the case, sweetheart, he doesn’t know what he’s missing.”

  Rystar sniffed, turning her face to kiss Kyran’s bare shoulder and throwing the covers off of her, heading to the bathroom. “Have to get up now. Cobalt’s found another bounty for us to do today.”

  “When are you going to stop doing these bounties?” Kyran groaned, flopping back on the bed.

  “When we have enough money to make Enzo’s bail,” Rystar called from the bathroom. She brushed her teeth and ran a comb through her hair before slapping on some deodorant and exiting the bathroom, picking her clothes up off a chair and pulling them on.

  “Or we could take the Krimson Princess and bust him out, just like old times,” Kyran said with a grin, standing up and letting the blanket fall to the floor.

  Before Rystar could drool too badly, she sat down to pull on her socks and shoes and shook her head. “They’ll shoot us down before we get to the damn prison. Besides, you said it yourself. It’s probably not too bad in there for him. Just some garbage food and some solitary confinement. We’ll get him out in no time.”

  But Rystar’s mind wandered to Enzo stuck in a cell somewhere all alone because she couldn’t shoot fast enough, and her heart sank.

  “Don’t do that, princess,” Kyran said, making his way over to her as she stood up straight. He put his hands on her shoulders and rubbed her upper arms, kissing her gently before pulling away. “He’ll be fine. Enzo’s tougher than you think.”

  “I know, it’s just…” Rystar started, trailing off. She shrugged and lifted up onto her toes to press another kiss to Kyran’s bottom lip and crossed the room to the door. “We’ll get him out. Soon.”

  Kyran turned to her and nodded, a warm smile still on his face. She wanted to say it, she really did, but she hadn’t even fully admitted to herself just how much she loved him.

  Cobalt waited for her near the airlock, gun in hand, as he handed it to her.

  “Going to need it this time,” he muttered, shoving his own in the back of his jeans and throwing on his signature fur-lined coat as Rystar pulled her own leather one on. She took the gun from Cobalt, taking in his jasper eyes and clean-cut brown hair before ensuring the safety was on and sticking it in its holster.

  “Like the haircut,” she commented, waiting for the airlock to open and depressurize. Cobalt grunted, and she cast a side glance at him. The sides and back had been almost completely shaved down while the top remained long and flipped over to one side. His beard was scraggly, and he scratched at it before heading out of the airlock and down the causeway, Rystar close in his wake.

  She caught up to his side and matched his step. “So where are we heading today, Torlick?”

  “Jeraro,” he replied, taking them down the main corridor of Sluirossi towards the shuttles.

  “The farms?” she asked.

  “Yes,” he said.

  Brick. Fucking. Wall.

  “Where you from, Cobalt?” she asked as they approached the shuttles and entered the queue. The next one was half an hour away, so they settled on a bench to wait. Cobalt’s face flushed, and he leaned forward, elbows on his knees. “Come on, we’ve been flying together for a couple months now. I’d like to get to know you.”

  It seemed to pain Cobalt to talk, but eventually, he sat back, arms splayed out across the back of the bench, and sighed. “Braluria, like Kyran. Hometown Diaroch, few hours from Inebus.”

  Rystar’s eyes widened, happy to get more than three words out of the guy. She stayed silent, hoping he would go on, and he did.

  “Kyran found me in Inebus as a soldier,” he continued. “But the war was over. I had nothing to do.”

  “What war?” she blurted out, eager to know more about him.

  “Atrex War of Painger,” he explained, “almost 200 years ago. Fighting stopped, bad feelings lingered. Left the service and began bounty hunting. That’s how Kyran found me.”

  “Why did you go with him?” Rystar asked, and Cobalt shrugged, twisting his head to watch the shuttle pull into the station and begin to let its passengers off.

  “He promised me the stars,” Cobalt answered as they both left the bench and joined the queue for the shuttle. “And I’ve always wanted to see them.”

  Rystar smiled, remembering the first time she had seen the stars in her LASSO. Normally, she refrained from using the term ‘magical,’ but breaking the atmosphere and seeing deep space for the first time had been the most magical experience of her life. She would go with anyone if they could give her that again.

  They boarded the shuttle and sat together somewhere in the middle, staring out of the window as it pulled away from the station and into the snowstorm outside. It took nearly an hour for them to reach Jeraro Farms. During the ride, Rystar tried to find out as much about the bounty as she could.

  “Sustri man,” Cobalt muttered as they stood up when the shuttle stopped at the station for Jeraro Farms. “Seems he is plotting another bombing in the Underground district.”

  “Another?” Rystar said, remembering the bombing of the Ritual Center only several days prior.

  “He is supposed to have done the Ritual bombing as well,” Cobalt explained, exiting the shuttle and heading towards the main corridor. Jeraro was a smaller bubble than Sluirossi, but the farms extended many, many miles away from it, all under their own separate greenhouse. “He was last seen near Farm B52, just down there a mile.”

  He pointed, and Rystar groaned. The cushy, spaceship lifestyle had really done her in, and she no longer walked as much as she used to. A mile seemed like an eternity.

  They passed vendors and stalls selling fresh fruits and vegetables, some Terran, some Sustri, mostly Horoth. Cobalt eyed the Horoth stalls with distaste. “See more and more of these foods now that Horoths are taking over.”

  Rystar hummed, watching Cobalt shudder and walk on towards a large building with a sign out front that said Tallabont Ranch. Cobalt gestured to it and made a beeline for it. “This is where he is supposed to be now.”

  Opening the doors for them both, Rystar followed him into the building. Inside, the ceiling stretched upwards and curved, the walls panning out on either side of them. The metal made it that much colder and stable upon stable lined the walls, their inhabitants freezing. Rystar didn’t recognize very many animals and followed Cobalt down the center of the room through haystacks and giant feed towers.

  “Where is he supposed to be?” Rystar asked in a hushed whisper even though no one was around.

  “Around,” Cobalt hissed back, taking out his pistol and hunkering down behind a pallet of grains. He flicked his head somewhere to their left. “Head that way. It looks like there’s someone cleaning stalls up ahead.”

  With a nod, Rystar pulled her own gun out and turned the safety off, sneaking around stacks of hay and food to flank the man she now saw cleaning out a stable. She locked eyes with Cobalt across the way. He nodded, ducking out of cover and approaching the Sustri man with his gun trained.

  “Darniel Visili?” Cobalt grunted, and the Sustri jumped, spying Cobalt and whipping around immediately to run. Rystar popped out of cover and trained her gun on him from his other side, and he cursed, his eyes wide and chest heaving.

  “So tamyëm,” he pleaded, holding his hands up and speaking to Cobalt in his native tongue.

  “Sure, sure, you’re definitely innocent,” Cobalt grunted, stowing his gun away and taking out a pair of small handcuffs, approaching the frightened man and grabbing his hands.

  “They framed me,” he went on in English to Rystar as Cobalt spun him around and locked his hands behind his back, slapping the cuffs on and pushing him towards the front of the building. Rystar turned the safety on her gun again and stowed it, following them out.

&nb
sp; “Who framed you for what?” she asked, curious despite Cobalt’s disinterest.

  “I don’t know who,” he said, turning to her with pleading eyes. “But someone broke into my tablet and made it look like I was responsible for the Ritual Center bombings.”

  “Yeah, sure sounds like you’re innocent,” Rystar scoffed, rolling her eyes as they made it to the front doors and opened them. Cobalt pushed him along, but Darniel was insistent.

  “I mean it,” he continued.

  “Then why are you in hiding?” Rystar asked him.

  “Because I can’t prove otherwise,” he said, shrugging. “Whoever framed me used some program called Starshine, I don’t even know what the hell that is. I use Python, like everyone else.”

  Cobalt stopped in his tracks, and so did Rystar and Darniel, who fixed him with curious stares. “What program did you say?”

  “Starshine,” Darniel repeated. “It’s not even a real program, no one’s heard of it before, but none of my family believed me. I fled here before they could turn me in.”

  Cobalt bowed his head, folding his arms across his chest before turning to Rystar. She raised an eyebrow at him. “What’s going on?”

  He lowered his voice, keeping Darniel in his sights the entire time as he bent down and whispered in her ear. “Starshine is the program Enzo created.”

  Pulling away, he widened his eyes at her, and she gasped, looking back at Darniel. He scoffed, shifting his weight to another foot. “What the hell is going on?”

  “I think we believe you,” Rystar said, pushing him forward and motioning for them to get to the shuttles.

  “You do?” he said, twisting to face her.

  “Yeah, but we have to get you back to our ship as fast as we can,” Rystar muttered, pressing them into the queue and hoping another shuttle would be on their way soon. She turned to Cobalt and lowered her voice. “Where did you get this bounty from?”