Awakening Defiance: (The Saoirse Saga Book 2)

by Teagan Kearney

  He had already explained this to Kia, making her aware some were the traitors who’d betrayed the network he set up with her father. There were others higher up the food chain, but they would have to wait. He didn’t say it, but the implication was he would return and finish this business. Destiny was having a joke with these men, he told her, because now he could kill them with the empire’s blessings. Satellite information estimated about four hundred renegades were holed up in caves at a place in the desert, west of Sestris, called Luolia.

  “My father took Jared and me there once about eight years ago. He was helping Jared set up his trading business.” She told him what she remembered about the place. “There’s a range of low hills and the cave systems are accessed from openings in the gullies. Some of the caves are large and go deep under the hills. The locals say they extend almost fifty miles to Keidas, an oasis between Sestris and the caves.” She had a thought. “Did you ask my father to set Jared up as a trader so he could act as a messenger for you?”

  “No,” Rial replied. “Jared had already started trading, accidentally discovered what your father was doing, and begged to help. That decision was purely between the two of them.”

  She was relieved. The thought that he might have maneuvered her father and brother into cooperating with him had troubled her. She studied the red landscape below, recognizing a distinctive headland that jutted into the ocean some distance north of the former capital. “We’re approaching Sestris.”

  “Prepare yourself, Kia. I’ve been informed Sestris won’t be rebuilt in the foreseeable future, and settlement there is currently banned. It was headquarters of the rebel’s network, and the emperor dislikes rebels intensely.”

  As the fighter cleared the headland, Kia leaned forward shocked speechless in disbelief at what remained of the city where she’d been born and lived before the empire’s military might flexed its muscle in their direction. Gone were the bright white houses, purple isundu tree-lined avenues; gone were the parks, the marketplaces, the meeting houses, and the Electorate Hall—every building was flattened. Smooth glass-sided craters, one after another, stretched as far as she could see. A few crumbling walls remained here and there, but of the vibrant city she remembered, nothing was left. “The people?” she whispered. “What happened to them?”

  “You have practical experience of what happened to the young men and women—the mines or the military,” Rial answered. “The elderly were executed. Those men who weren’t killed and the women and children were dispersed among frontier planets as indentured servants.”

  A massacre of the helpless and the lives of thousands of innocents destroyed. She should be shocked, but she wasn’t. She was becoming inured to the horrors of war and merely added this casualty to the list of reasons the emperor should die. Slowly and painfully if she had her way. “Slaves?”

  “Yes. Kia. What is the wind like in the desert during this season?”

  They were leaving the ravaged skeleton of Sestris behind, and she pushed the images of her broken wasted city into the box at the back of her mind. She took a deep breath. “The winds are calm at this time of year,” she answered, “probably too calm.” She wouldn’t guarantee the same when she had the traitors in her phaserifle sights.

  Before long, the reddish humpbacked hills of Luolia appeared on the horizon.

  “Prepare for landing,” Rial ordered.

  The traitors had no fighter craft of their own, but they would be well dug in and, in spite of Rial’s force having greater firepower, were better acquainted with the terrain. They would have laid traps and detecting them would slow the advance. Huijata had organized uploading of the best map available of the underground cave system, but they had no idea how complete it was.

  One set of fighter planes peeled off and others followed as they descended. Four landed beside the Rial’s fighter, the other six separated into three groups of two and set down at the other main exits from the cave complex.

  “Nagavi.”

  The commander handed Rial a helmet.

  Kia’s heartbeat was already up, but she held the cold smooth phaserifle casually in her hands, having already checked its mechanism several times since Cheydii handed them out. These insurgents were the men who’d betrayed and caused her family’s deaths. Some of them must have sat at their table and eaten meals cooked by her mother. Would she recognize anyone? Ironically, getting her revenge meant she was fighting for the empire—her enemy—but hidden behind her helmet, nobody would recognize her. How many deaths would be laid at her feet today? All such thoughts fled as she strode down the ramp, and the desert heat blasted her for an instant before her suit’s cooling system kicked in.

  Leaving a few soldiers to guard the fighter planes, three dozen of Huijata’s regulars led the way into the caves, scanning the walls, ceiling, and ground for booby traps, buried vibration mines and anything else desperate renegades might come up with to surprise an invading army. Rial and the Chenjerai followed, halting as intermittent soft pffs echoed through the air as somebody found and deactivated an explosive device. Three hundred more soldiers tramped behind the Chenjerai.

  Kia marched into the gloomy entrance beside Rial, the soldiers fanning out as the passageway widened and making little noise as they advanced into a large cavern. The rest of the entrances were too distant to hear if the other forces had met any resistance, but Rial, Nagavi and the regulars’ commanders would receive updates. As they’d expected, they found no insurgents. As they would have done in their opponent’s place, they were waiting till the empire’s forces were deep within the cavern network and at their most vulnerable before they mounted an attack.

  When a major fork appeared, the troops halved, creating two groups. At each split, they repeated the division, and when a unit numbered twenty no more divisions were made. The deeper they went, the cooler and more stale the air became. Nothing but the occasional desert pacov seeking shelter to birth its young lived this deep below the earth.

  An hour later, having met no opposition yet, the Chenjerai traveled as a single group along a narrow low-ceilinged tunnel, their rifles’ tactical lights illuminating the impenetrable gloom. Nagavi fronted the team, with Rial and Kia next, while Cheydii and Annen brought up the rear and communicated with the other groups, three of whom had encountered and engaged small numbers of rebels.

  As the passageway widened, Kia felt the adrenaline flood her bloodstream. Emerging from here, they’d be a prime target for any snipers hidden in the dark. She followed Rial, sidling to the right and keeping her back to the wall, as the Chenjerai filtered in on both sides of the cavern. Annen’s warning sounded in her ear as he fired a small illumination bomb. The infoscreen gave little indication of the size of the space they’d entered, but as the bomb exploded, the screen protecting their sight, she could see they were in a large cavern. She also saw a line of small figures on a ledge on the far side of the cavern. The light faded as she dropped to a crouch and fired as small dots indicating weapons fire and faint body heat signatures sparked on her infoscreen. Her world narrowed to aim, fire, and picking off one and another and another, ducking lower when returning shots skimmed over her head, pinging off the rock behind. Whoever had her in their sights was uncomfortably accurate, and if she’d remained standing she would be dead or seriously wounded.

  Rial shuffled next to her. “Stay close to me,” he hissed. “The force field will cover you.”

  She sensed the protective shield shimmer over her. She remembered the previous occasion they’d been enclosed in the force field together. Fine when they were stationary, but if they were in a running battle…? “Sure, but isn’t this rather a desperate measure to get a hug?”

  His teeth gleamed in the dark as he grinned. “To win such a prize as yourself, there are no lengths I won’t go to.”

  She ignored his ribbing, preferring to aim and pick off another rebel before they vanished, melting into the gloom.

  “Nagavi?” Rial asked.

  “No in
juries. All accounted for.”

  “Good. Let’s go hunt.”

  They set off at a run down to the floor of the cavern and toward the ledge where the defectors had vanished.

  “Three exits,” Nagavi said. “Heat trails in all of them.”

  “Decoys and an ambush,” responded Rial. “We’re not splitting. Any difference in the heat levels?”

  “None.”

  Rial turned to Kia. “Choose.”

  “We should go left. According to Huijata’s map, it leads deeper into the underground system and offers greater chances of escape or hiding.”

  At Rial’s nod, Annen headed into the opening she’d chosen.

  The ambush, when it came, was brilliantly executed. One moment they had taken yet another left fork and were moving along at a steady pace, the next, a great crash and the ceiling above them caved in as fighters dropped amongst them and more burst from the disintegrating false walls on either side.

  Instantly the Chenjerai were choking from the dust, separated from each other, and facing an unknown number of attackers. In such a small space with visibility reduced, guns and crossbows were useless as you were as liable to shoot a friend as an enemy.

  Nagavi had hammered into them the necessity of putting emotion aside when fighting. Before and after the battle, yes, he’d said, but never during.

  Kia blew out a breath, pushed everything out of mind as her eyes flicked to her screen. She pulled two knives from their sheaths at her waist as she eyed the three men closing in on her; two were bigger, the third, shorter. She darted inside the nearest attacker’s arm, slashing her knife across his unprotected throat, scooting aside as he fell, grabbed the second man’s forearm as it swung toward her, and twisted it hard. He dropped his knife, and she stabbed him in the side, aiming for his liver, and shoved him into the first man as he doubled over. Twisting around and facing the third assailant, she ran at him, slammed his arm out of the way and jabbed rigid fingers in his eye. He collapsed to the ground screaming, and she opened his throat, watching the blood spurt. Three deaths for her father’s one. So far. A quick glance told her Rial was holding off four attackers with ease and didn’t need help. Spinning around, she saw an arm around Tamaiko’s throat as somebody pulled him backward. A second man dodged toward him, his arm slashing down toward Tamaiko’s side. Kia leaped on the attacker’s back and her blade slashed through his carotid as she rode him down.

  As she gained her feet, someone came at her from the front, kicking her legs out from underneath her, and she went down, a solid weight pinning her to the ground. She bucked her hips, but her attacker was too heavy to throw off and shoved her down, a crazy laugh bubbling from his lips. She brought her leg up, kneeing him hard, and he hollered in agony. She wrapped her arm around his, tucked it tight to her side under her shoulder, hooked her leg outside his, and in a flash rolled him over. Two sharp slices to the sides of his neck, he was dead. Two more traitors in payment for her father. All around her fighters grappled in the dust-filled passageway, the grunts, slaps, and groans of people fighting for their lives cutting through the chaos.

  What happened next might not have happened if she’d taken even a single second to stop and think. But she didn’t. When she spotted a tunnel on the other side of the collapsed ambush entrance next to where she stood, she acted on instinct. Dropping to the ground, she rolled sideways, out of the main passageway, and lay and listened for an instant. Freedom called. She responded.

  With her eyes flicking forward—the last thing she wanted to do was run slap bang into a rock wall and knock herself unconscious—and backward, checking for pursuit, she fled. She hadn’t mentioned to Rial that her father had made her and Jared memorize the underground systems. Most of the details were vague, but the most important instruction remained engraved in her memories of that day. Follow the left-hand fork every time, and eventually she would reach Keidas. If she reached Keidas, she could make her way south to her mother’s people, find shelter, and join the resistance from there. For a minute she stopped, uncertain if Rial screaming her name was real or imaginary, but the thought of escape spurred her on.

  She ran for as long as she could and was slumped with her back to the tunnel wall waiting for her heartbeat to slow and her lungs to stop gasping, when she felt the reverberations in the floor. Of course, between her helmet and the transponder, they’d be able to track her without difficulty. Determined to try and win her independence, she hauled herself to her feet and moved off, pushing herself harder. If Rial had been content to let her be a Chenjerai, none of this would have happened. She briefly thought of the vows she’d made and quashed the image of the Chenjerai laughing and joking last night. Her situation was different.

  One minute she was flying along a narrow passage, the next she was falling through the air, arms and legs flailing, her system jolting with shock as she smacked into freezing water and plunged deep underneath the surface. Without a second’s hesitation, she touched the back of her collar, heard the click, sucked in as deep a breath as she could, and lifted the helmet off, letting it go, and powered her legs hard to reach the surface.

  Emerging with a gasp, she shook her head to clear her blurred vision and stroked her way to the edge of the great underground body of water she’d clean forgotten about. She had run straight off the edge of the tunnel—and she’d been moving fast. As soon as her toes touched the bottom, she sagged with relief. Standing waist deep in the freezing water, she removed the smaller of her knives, and using her sense of touch, she found the hardness of the tracking device underneath the skin on her wrist. She dug the tip of the blade in, bit her lip hard to stop herself screaming, and twisted the knife, levering it under the implant until she could lift it free. She was in the water, which meant she wouldn’t leave a trail of blood. Chucking the transponder with all her strength, she listened for the distant plop as it hit the water, sawed off a strip from the leg of her uniform and bound her wrist, ignoring the stinging pain. Nothing else mattered. She was free.

  The equipment that had allowed her to get this far was the very thing which would lead Rial directly to her, but what had been straightforward when wearing her helmet might be near impossible without it. She didn’t care.

  She shuffled away from the lake with her hands outstretched until she hit the walls of the cavern. She shivered. This deep underground, the water added layers of dampness to the cold atmosphere, and her fingertips slid off patches of slimy moss. She could hear the booming thunder of water not far away. The passage she needed was near an underground waterfall. She caught the faint echo of voices. Whoever was tracking her—it had to be Nagavi—was moving faster than she’d hoped. A tremor ran through her, not from the cold, but because Rial’s words about the commander returned to haunt her. He can track anyone and anything from the minutest of clues. She walked quicker, her fingertips tapping the wall, refusing to panic, refusing to give up hope.

  Her right hand met air, groped at nothing, and she paused. This must be the route she wanted. The voices faded as she came closer to roar of the waterfall. A thin cold spray wetted her. Keeping her hand on the wall, she made her way cautiously down the rock-hewn steps, but she was going too slow and needed to put more distance between herself and her pursuers. She increased her speed, stumbled, slipped, lost her footing, her head, hands, elbows, spine and knees scraping on the hard edges of the steps as she plunged wildly, head over heels, down to the bottom. When her chaotic fall finally stopped, she stared, stunned, at the ring of colored stars dancing in front of her eyes, then passed out. She came to and slowly dragged her battered body away from the waterfall and over to the wall, knowing she was beaten and had lost the chance to escape. Tucking herself inside a small cranny, she hitched a sob, wrapped her arms around her ankles, rested her throbbing head on her aching sore knees, and waited for the inevitable.

  “She’s here.” Nagavi shone a light into the crevice.

  Kia tried to burrow deeper into the opening, cringing from the light’s sudd
en flash.

  Rial approached, caught hold of her wrist and pulled her carefully from her hiding place. He took the light from Nagavi and shone it over her, taking in the state of her clothes, noticing the scrapes on her arms and legs, the scrap of cloth wrapped around her wrist. She shivered and swayed as he felt her body, arms, and legs for broken bones, satisfied when he found none. He lifted the bandage, stared at the bloody mess she had made carving out the device and replaced it.

  “Can you walk?” His voice was clinical, almost indifferent.

  She nodded.

  Nagavi preceded them. Rial clasped her upper arm, not tight enough to hurt, but she wouldn’t be able to break his grip. Halfway up the stairs she stumbled and would have fallen if he hadn’t had hold of her. He picked her up and carried her in his arms. She opened her mouth to protest, closing it quick when he said, “Say anything and I’ll throw you over my shoulder.”

  She passed out at least twice and, on the final occasion, woke to find herself alone and lying in the medical unit on the fighter plane returning to Shihon. Already her bruises from falling down the steps were fading, thanks to the nanobots. In addition, a cell rejuvenation pad was attached to her wrist.

  Someone had removed her clothes and dressed her in a clean uniform. She hoped that had been Cheydii or Shaba. She dreaded facing the Chenjerai and sighed, closing her eyes. The dull gray cloud of failure soaked into every cell in her body.

  Rial had arranged a private transport, separate from the Chenjerai, from the spaceport to their residence. Nagavi drove, and she and Rial sat in the rear seat. Nobody spoke. She chanced a quick look at him. He was staring out of the window, his jaw clenched, a muscle twitching high in his cheek. As soon as they arrived, he took her up to their room. “Have a shower. I’ll have food sent up.” He left and locked the door.