Awakening Defiance: (The Saoirse Saga Book 2)

by Teagan Kearney

  Kia noticed the Chenjerai perk up and exchange animated looks.

  “After that the emperor requests I attend him at Tajriba.”

  Judging by the change of expression on everyone’s face, the second piece of news was unwanted. Maybe tonight she could worm information out of him about these places. Granted, tonight might be an optimistic estimation of when they’d have time to themselves as the unit was on full alert.

  “What’s the nearest star system?” someone asked.

  “Who do we think these guys are?” another voice threw in.

  “Nagavi?” Rial asked. “What’s your estimation of the situation?”

  “They were waiting for us. They knew when we were coming through the wormhole. No one but your father’s close advisers had that information. The question is, who’s making a bid for power this time?”

  “Someone aligned with the Gadno family, I suspect,” Shaba responded.

  Nagavi tapped the large vidscreen on the wall, bringing up a large star map. “Here’s where we are in the Urrun sector.” He touched a spot near the center of the vidscreen. “And here’s Ylväs Suq.” He pointed to the top left quadrant. “That’s a five-day journey, and here,” he indicated a small cluster not far from their location, “is the Kollut asteroid belt, less than twenty-two hours away. Miners stripped the asteroids of anything worthwhile long ago, but I think it would be an ideal place to hide the Kadaugan, and—”

  “Stage our own ambush,” Rial finished for him. “They won’t have anything that compares to our gokas.”

  Using the archives on their individual comunits, the Chenjerai brought up and studied detailed maps of every mine ever worked in the ancient asteroid belt, arguing the advantages and disadvantages of different avenues of attack.

  “Okay, that’s it,” Rial said after an hour of intense planning. “Nagavi, have Tamaiko set a course for the asteroid belt, check all our weapons systems, ready the gokas and set up a rota to cover essential duties. Inform me the instant our pursuers close in. I’m going to have a break—”

  A chorus of moans amid grins broke out.

  “Yeah, yeah, we know,” Toinen laughed. “You’ve been awake while we slept. You saved us from the big bad wormhole! Go on, get out of here!”

  “See how these Chenjerai mock me?” Rial glanced at Kia, smiled and nodded toward the door. “No respect for their betters whatsoever. Two hours,” he told the group, “and stay out of trouble.”

  “Do you want to shower?” he asked Kia as she preceded him into the cabin.

  “Sure.” A spaceship’s chemshower couldn’t compare with the hot water ones in his palace at Djem, but she would feel fresher. When she came out, she found he’d passed out on the bed. She looked down at him, wrapping her head around his declaration of love. Was it genuine? Maybe he couldn’t help trying to manipulate her?

  He lay on his back, his arms flung out in abandon, exposed and unguarded, his eyelashes a thick dusky curve on his cheeks. If she wanted to kill him, she could, but she no longer wanted to. They would take down the tyrant together. Abruptly possessed by a wave of sympathy for the young defiant Rial, whose father had brutally punished his son for his disobedience, she bent and kissed his forehead—the lightest of feather kisses. As she pulled back, his eyes opened, and she gazed into his green and gold flecked pupils.

  He smiled, closed his eyes, and slept.

  She lay down, exhaustion from staying awake through the wormhole and their dramatic exit making it hard to stay awake. She didn’t bother with the pillows. Somehow it didn’t seem to matter anymore.

  Kia sat in the gunner’s seat of the goka, with Rial piloting. She ran over everything she’d learned about the little craft. Their main weapon was the kinetic kill rods, and while regular gokas didn’t possess them, Rial had fitted the Kadaugan’s fleet with a small particle beam weapon in the nose of the fighter. Fired at specific strategic areas of an enemy craft, they could blow a hole big enough to drive the goka itself through. Their advantage was their agility. Their weakness was their size, as they were easy to destroy if they lost speed or maneuverability.

  She wore her helmet but with the small vidscreen deactivated. Both the goka’s viewscreen and targeting systems were accessed from the control panel. She blew out a breath. During her training, Nagavi said her simulations score was the highest recorded, but maintaining that calm detachment during a live confrontation was another matter. The next half hour would show how effective she really was.

  The Kadaugan hid deep in the warren of mines on the largest asteroid with most of its systems, except basic life support, shut down. The ship was too big a target for the guerrilla action they had planned.

  Eight gokas, with their pilots and gunners, were scattered at strategic positions waiting for their pursuers to arrive. The strategy was simple. Wait, encircle the targets, attack, destroy them, return to the Kadaugan and resume their journey. Executing the plan efficiently was dependent on timing and accuracy.

  The red dot on her screen showed the lead vessel entering what had previously been the main entryway into and out of the asteroid belt. The same route they’d used. As they had done, the vessels continued within the beacons marking the old approach. The mines had been stripped of their valuable ores long ago, but the defenses would last for eons. As the craft came within firing range, Kia tapped her weapons control panel. She could see Rial’s helmet silhouetted in front of her in the pilot’s section.

  Rial held up his hand, one finger upraised, and after what seemed to Kia an interminable silence, his second appeared. The gokas were cloaked and invisible to their opponents before they opened fire—and she observed the two red dots crawl past their position, advancing deeper into the belt. They had, of necessity, slowed down and that would make them easy targets.

  “Rial?”

  “What is it, Kia? Are you all right?”

  The words stuck a little in her throat. “I’m sorry. Sorry for the trouble I’ve caused you.” She tried not to imagine how smug her words would make him.

  He waited a few minutes before answering, his voice intense. “I would not have expected less from Madaxa Xefe’s daughter.”

  Her heart softened.

  “Besides, we have a lifetime for you to make it up to me.”

  “In your dreams,” she scoffed.

  “Yes, Kia, in my dreams indeed, but we’ll continue this conversation later. Are you ready?”

  No, she thought. “Absolutely,” she said, putting enough oomph into her words to sound as if she meant it.

  Rial slid the goka forward on a parallel route to the enemy ships. The other gokas showed on her screen as green dots, and she kept an eye on Shaba and Cheydii’s fighter doing the same as theirs on the other side of the entryway.

  Rial’s command would signal the opening salvo of the conflict; after that she was on her own. His job was to ensure they stayed out of the line of fire. Hers was to fire on and damage or destroy their adversaries.

  She heard Nagavi’s command in her mind. Check. She blew out a breath and calmed the frisson of exhilaration the upcoming fight had triggered. She needed to make instant assessments and act on them without hesitation. There was no place for emotions in the upcoming fight.

  The white alert button flashed, and she checked her target. Yes, exactly where she wanted it. Her hand hovered over the KKR’s firing button.

  “On three, two, one,” Rial commanded, his order transmitting to the other gokas. “Fire!”

  Starbursts bloomed in zigzag lines across the hulls of the enemy as kill rods from eight gokas spattered the vessels.

  “Tamaiko, send everyone internal specs of the ships,” Rial barked, as he flung the goka sideways.

  Kia cut out everything except the screen in front of her. Nothing mattered except the immediate task—finding her target and eliminating it. Her fingers danced across the controls setting the coordinates. She fired a round of KKRs, her concentration total as she relentlessly repeated the sequence, ignoring
the constant jerks as the fighter rolled, dived, and evaded incoming missiles. Using the spec Tamaiko had sent and noting where their opponent’s last missile had exited, she directed a pulse beam blast, watching in stunned amazement as the rear half of the ship exploded.

  Rial threw the goka backward, ignoring the thrust drive’s groans of protest, to avoid the debris flying toward them. Tiny sparks lit up her screen when men were sucked out into the vacuum of space as the shattered vessel shuddered, rolled, and went into a steep dive.

  “Withdraw! Withdraw!” Rial yelled, as the damaged ship, now completely out of control, nosedived toward one of the smaller asteroids. The small swarm of gokas retreated fast, darting for cover among the asteroids. The rock Rial had chosen was barely large enough to shelter them, but there were at least three more larger rocks between them and the collision blast.

  Kia gasped as an impressive multicolored firework display illuminated the asteroid belt before the darkness and silence of space returned.

  “One ship is destroyed,” Tamaiko informed Rial. “What is your next order?”

  “Wait.”

  They watched the surviving vessel retreat, navigating the passageway as fast as it could. They let it go.

  An hour later in the meeting room, after a thorough debrief, Rial raised a small plascup of sparkling wine. “To Kia! She took down a spaceship single-handedly on her first combat mission!”

  The room cheered, raised their drinks, and within seconds everybody was chanting, “Kia! Kia!”

  She looked around at the men and women of the Chenjerai, the highest trained team of fighters in the empire. She lifted her glass and drank, her eyes shining, her cheeks hot with a mixture of embarrassment and gratefulness at the attention as the warm glow of affection filled her heart.

  The celebration didn’t last long. Rial set a new course, and the Kadaugan was on its way within the hour.

  Kia couldn’t sleep. She tossed and turned as images of the battle replayed themselves in her mind; the tiny sparks that seconds before had been living humans, spilling out into space; the mad dash to avoid the detonating ship; the blackness of space lighting up as the vessel smashed into an asteroid and exploded.

  She tried every technique she’d learned from her srilao training and new ones she’d acquired since arriving in Xarunta. Nothing worked. What was more annoying was Rial slumbering like a babe. She should have asked, no, she should have insisted he go to the medunit. Things were changing too fast. The ground beneath her had dropped away, she was falling, and her defenses were crumbling. She hadn’t even bothered to reinstate the pillow barrier. What was wrong with her?

  Eventually, she picked her comunit off the floor where she’d dropped it the last time she had read. The screen lit up, and she found the passage where she left off. She might ask Rial to load some poetry for a change, as she was nearing the end of the long and violently bloody history of the Nadil-Kuradi Empire.

  “Can’t wind down?” Rial murmured in a sleep-heavy voice.

  “Is it that obvious?”

  “Touchy, too.“

  “Sorry.”

  “Don’t be. You’ve got PBAS. Post-battle activation syndrome.”

  “Tell me something I don’t know, but it’s nice to learn it has a name.”

  “How does it feel to be a mass-murdering monster?”

  Kia put the comunit down and faced Rial. “That’s not funny.” Yes, whoever had manned that ship had been doing their best to kill everyone on the Kadaugan, but that didn’t make her actions any easier to cope with.

  “No, but if you have a conscience, no matter the reason, taking a life will always bother you. Therefore, it’s a good thing.”

  “You don’t seem to have a problem.”

  “The early years were the hardest.”

  “Oh.” She couldn’t think of an answer to that statement. “Tell me about Tajriba. That might put me to sleep.” An odd look flickered across Rial’s face, but before she could analyze it, it had gone.

  “Tajriba is a planet my father annexed where he has established a laboratory to explore certain interests of his.”

  “The entire world? What interests?”

  “The few indigenous hominid species were exterminated because he wanted to conduct his experiments in secrecy. He has one interest; to extend his life. For decades the research has been directed into creating a viable clone whose blood accepts the nanobots. He’s convinced they are the key. His ultimate aim is to transfer his brain into a clone that has accepted the nanobots.”

  Kia’s eyes widened, and she stared at Rial in horror. “He’s trying to clone you?” she whispered.

  “Oh, that part he managed early on and, despite none surviving outside the laboratory environment, he hasn’t given up trying.”

  “That’s… that’s awful.”

  “It’s also another reason why he must never find out that your blood has adapted to the nanobots. At the time, I couldn’t have behaved differently, but I have no idea if I saved you or condemned you.”

  She shuddered, remembering Nagavi’s words, he spent his early years in a lab being prodded and tested.

  “I’m merely another tool, more valuable than most, that my father uses to further his unlimited ambition.”

  “Is there no way you can free yourself? Or rebel?” The Rial she knew was nothing if not resourceful.

  “It’s not for lack of trying. I have a unique implant, Kia. One implant inserted before I was six months old. The implant allows me total freedom except it’s encoded with a single command, obey Teyrn. I should be grateful his imagination is limited to conquer this planet or kill those people.” He gave a dry laugh. “The implant has to be regularly updated when the nanobots erode its effectiveness as they constantly work to eject it. Therefore, I am ordered to the lab for a checkup. The Emperor Teyrn, His Most Gracious and Powerful Conqueror of Worlds, will be there to supervise. I believe he has another experiment he wishes me to witness. Nothing would please him more than to eliminate the need for my existence.” He examined her, and one corner of his mouth quirked up. “Don’t be sad for me, sweet Kia,” he said, a crafty twinkle creeping into his eye. “I wouldn’t refuse the kindly offer of a hug to comfort me in my misery.”

  She didn’t understand why she felt sorry for him. He lived a sumptuous life of power and privilege—but those who should have loved and cherished him saw him as a science experiment to be done away with the second he served no further purpose. Impulsively, she twisted around and snuggled into his chest.

  He pulled her closer and buried his head in the crook of her neck.

  His breath was warm and his lips moved on her skin in a soft kiss. “Thank you, Kia.”

  She breathed in his clean fresh scent and sighed. “Remember this is a pity hug because I need to ensure my current standard of living doesn’t drop.” She felt his lips curve into a smile.

  “If charity is what you’re offering, I’ll take all I can get.”

  Chapter Thirteen: Ylväs Suq

  She woke the next morning, after a blissful night of undisturbed sleep, to find Rial dressed and crouching down by the bedside inches away as he studied her. She struggled back to wakefulness, wiping her mouth, hoping he hadn’t been watching her drool.

  “Here is the first offering to my angel.” He set a small box next to her pillow.

  Curiosity defeated lethargy, and she propped herself up on her elbow and examined his present. The box was petite and studded with bright colored jewels that refracted the light. She opened the box and gasped. Inside, resting on a ruby velvet cushion, sat her srilao medallion. “I thought… I meant to… Thank you, Rial.”

  “We made a deal. One hundred gifts, right?”

  She narrowed her eyes at him. “We did?” She didn’t recall accepting his deal, but she couldn’t recall refusing it either, and she felt fey this morning. Something had shifted yesterday, or the day before, or sometime in any of the previous days since her failed escape along with the realization
that while he might not want to let her go, he wouldn’t hurt her.

  “All I ask in return is a token of your acceptance for each. Is that manageable?”

  “That depends on what you regard as a token.”

  He gave an exaggerated sigh. “I guess that would be fair. I was hoping to start with the permanent removal of the pillows.”

  She lay back, holding the container up, turning it this way and that, watching the colors sparkle. “Are these gems valuable? And how come you have this? Is the Kadaugan packed full of presents waiting to be discovered?”

  “That is one of the few items I have that belonged to my mother and is of great personal value. I never knew her, but I imagine she was a free spirit like you.”

  “You’re going to be playing that poor little me role a lot, aren’t you?”

  “Why not? And if I’d realized you had such a soft spot, I’d have been working it from the beginning.”

  “Okay, I’ll give you a sign of my acceptance. Close your eyes.” Was she really going down this path? Her heart was charging ahead, looking neither left nor right, and dragging every sane part of her with it as it hurtled forward regardless of danger or the consequences. The game, if it ever was a game, of staving him off had somehow transformed into a serious contract, but a hundred gifts would give her time before he demanded anything more—wouldn’t it?

  He opened one eye. “Is this going to take long? Because my second contribution toward your happiness is fifteen hours away, and I’m eager to, you know, get this whole gift business over and done with.”

  “I said close your eyes.” She moved close, took hold of his chin and turned his face sideways, planting a loud kiss on his cheek.

  He opened his eyes, and the fierce longing in his expression had her shifting backward out of his reach.

  “You demand much patience from me, Kia. Be careful you don’t ask too much.”

  “Feast your eyes on the wonder of the universe that is the Ylväs Suq.” Nagavi waved a hand at the real-time screen.