For a moment, he almost laughed at the chaos that would have brought on, these two found strolling about inside the Coalition walls. But he also knew what would likely have happened.
“And you would likely be dead by now,” he said severely.
“They would kill children for exploring?” Lux asked with an aghast tone in her voice that Paledan thought was a bit exaggerated.
“My troops are on edge, and they would likely blast first and identify after.” If there was enough left of these little ones.
“They’re afraid of the Raider,” Nyx declared.
His brows lowered. His voice was harsh when he said, “Take care, boy. It would take only saying that to the wrong person and you would end as barely a spot in the dirt.”
Nyx paled slightly. But the girl was studying him intently.
“And you are not the wrong person?” she asked.
Formidable might not be a strong enough word, he thought. “I am not yet reduced to silencing children with a blaster.”
Lux’s gaze shifted to his hip, where that weapon was sheathed. “Do you always wear it?”
“And what business is that of yours?” he asked, genuinely curious to hear the answer.
“Because the old fat man never did,” the boy said.
It took more of an effort to stifle his laugh this time, at his decidedly apt description of Major Frall. After a moment he said, “If you do not have a weapon, you cannot be called upon to use it.”
An understanding beyond her years dawned in the girl’s eyes.
“I knew he was a coward,” Nyx said, showing he, too, had not missed the subtext. Both of them were very clever. “And he was afraid of the Raider.”
He suspected that was true. In fact, he suspected the boy’s first declaration was also true. This marauder had them all not just on edge but apprehensive. He was very, very effective. And he was unpredictable, striking at odd times and in odd places, so there was no way to prepare. When he did strike, it was pure precision, in and out quickly, using what was obviously an intimate knowledge of the region to his great advantage. And any predictions they had tried to make on where he would strike next had all been wrong. And thus all possible targets must be guarded, and there was not the manpower to do so.
That one man and a small force had brought the Coalition to this was ridiculous.
And, he admitted grudgingly, admirable.
That some would say such a thought was nearly seditious did not bother him. He admired a good fighting man who clearly inspired great loyalty and had a brilliant tactical mind, no matter where or how he came across him.
But that did not mean he would not hunt him to the death if he had to.
And he was already realizing it would very likely come to that.
“YOU DID WHAT?” Drake asked.
Lux rolled her eyes, since she had just carefully explained.
“Stop that,” Drake ordered. “I understood what you said, I am just having trouble believing you could be stupid enough to climb the wall around the Coalition compound in broad daylight!”
Brander smothered a smile as he watched. Never was he more thankful that it had not been he saddled with these two than in these moments. Which came all too often.
“He does have a point,” Nyx said, looking at his sister.
For an instant, Lux was silent as she met her twin’s gaze. Since Drake had often bemoaned the fact that her brain ran at ten times normal speed, Brander awaited with interest what the girl would say next.
“I suppose,” she said thoughtfully. Then she looked back at Drake. “We’re sorry. You’re right. We’ll avoid daylight from now on.”
Brander couldn’t help himself, he laughed out loud.
“You shut up,” Drake snapped at him before turning back to the twins. “Don’t you even think about sneaking out at night.”
“Oh, we won’t think,” Nyx said.
“We’ll just do,” Lux added sweetly.
Brander wasn’t sure what was digging at Drake more, the fear of them roaming about after dark, or that it had been his own words that had seemingly inspired them. And this on top of Eirlys having learned his secret. . . .
He tried not to think about it, that her life could now depend on her never doing anything that might even hint that she knew.
“You will not,” Drake said to the pair before him. “And I’ll have your word on it, both of you.”
Again, a look was exchanged between them. This did not bode well for Drake, Brander thought, again having to smother a smile.
“Maybe,” Nyx said.
“If you won’t punish us too much for exploring in the day,” Lux put in.
“And maybe cover for us a little if some trooper gets mad at us,” Nyx added.
“How about if I just promise to bury what’s left of you when they kill you?” Drake said flatly.
The twins looked shaken for a moment, and Brander had the sudden thought that perhaps they had believed their brother incapable of countering their mischief with his own. He could have told them differently. Had not he and Drake gotten into their own brand of trouble often enough, when they’d been the twins’ age?
But then Lux set her chin stubbornly, which spurred Nyx to do the same, and Brander knew it was over.
Drake sighed. “No more climbing the wall. No more skulking around the Coalition compound. And for Eos’s sake, no more taunting the Coalition commander! This is the second time you’ve come to his attention. A third could be fatal.”
“We didn’t taunt him,” Nyx said. “It was—”
“A conversation—”
“That’s all.”
Drake rolled his eyes this time, and the resemblance to Lux made Brander let loose a smile this time.
“And you stay home at night,” Drake finished with emphasis.
Lux looked thoughtful again. “Define ‘night’,” she said.
Drake set his own jaw then. And when he spoke, his voice was deadly calm. It was as close as Brander had ever seen him come to being the Raider in manner and tone inside these walls.
“If I say for you night is high noon, or around the clock, that’s what it is. Don’t make me do that.”
The duo abruptly surrendered, apparently realized they had pushed their luck to the limit. Or perhaps a bit beyond, he thought, as he saw Lux swallow as she lowered her gaze from her big brother’s face.
“Yes, Drake,” she said meekly, and Nyx echoed her.
“Upstairs. And stay there until your sister gets home. Then you will help her with preparing dinner, or anything else you can help her with.”
When the door closed behind them, Drake gave a slow, weary shake of his head.
“Better you,” Brander said. “I would have locked them up for good by now.”
“Don’t think I haven’t considered it,” Drake said dryly.
“I don’t understand him,” Brander said. “Paledan, I mean.”
“Nor do I. But I think it would not be wise for either of us to underestimate him.”
He left it at that. Any more discussion, even here in the storage room of the taproom, would be a breach of one of Drake’s most inviolate rules. Brander knew he lived with the constant worry that somehow his secret would be discovered, and he couldn’t say the fear wasn’t valid. The wrong word, or even a name, said in the hearing of the wrong person, could lead to disaster.
Once the twins were gone, Drake moved a large cask and reached into a cubbyhole hidden beneath. He took out something wrapped in a cloth, pulled it free, and set it on top of the cask.
Brander stared. “And just how did you get your hands on this?”
“It fell at my feet, actually,” Drake said. “But I need you to get it out of here. The last thing I need is the twins seein
g it.”
“Or one of the Coalition?” Brander suggested dryly.
“That as well.”
Brander stared down at the weapon. He’d never seen the likes of it before, and already his mind was breaking it down into components he recognized and those he did not. With his conscious mind distracted, his subconscious suddenly shouted an answer to his first question. His gaze shot back to Drake.
“The accident this morning,” he said slowly. “The aircab that hit a tree.”
Drake shrugged. “Our overlords are still not used to our conditions. And they can’t see two feet in our mist.”
“You were noticed, helping them out of the wreckage.”
Drake looked at him then, his face expressionless. “And I can imagine what names were used.”
“Nothing you haven’t heard before,” Brander said. Drake had chosen his path, and there was no use debating it at this point. And that most of the population of Zelos thought him a coward and a near-traitor, some even saying he was worse than Barcon simply because he was a Davorin who had let them down, was something he knew Drake knew. “And I suppose this just fell into your hands?”
“In a manner of speaking. Now will you get it out of here? I have to open in less than an hour.”
Brander shrugged, then picked up the weapon. It was heavier than it appeared, which gave him another facet to file away. “It will be interesting to see what it does.”
Drake didn’t look surprised. “Just don’t try it out in town, please?”
Brander grinned. “Me?”
Drake ignored that. “And when you take it apart, try to remember how to put it back together?”
Brander let out a snort. “As if I would not. See you later?”
“Yes. It’s Eirlys’s turn.”
Poor girl, Brander thought. Her nights watching the twins spared little time for anything else. So he set off up the mountain, choosing his route at random, his excuse of hunting for a fat, juicy brollet at the ready. But he safely skirted the trail guards, and set off around the base of The Sentinel.
When he was far enough—he hoped—from Zelos and any Coalition guards or patrols, he took out the new weapon. It took him a couple of tries to find the safeguard and release it, at which point a small light glowed green at the back end of the barrel. He looked around for a target. Settling on a large boulder some twenty feet away, he fired.
The boulder vanished.
Brander gaped. The big rock had simply turned to tiny pebbles and dust. And the only sound he heard was the faint sliding of the remnants down the slope. No blast, no report, just . . . silence.
“Damnation,” he breathed, still staring in disbelief. He shifted his gaze to the weapon in his hand. Saw the light on the back of the barrel, now glowing yellow. As he looked, it changed back to green. Ready again?
Okay, that was a rock. Let’s see what you do against something organic.
He shifted his aim to a small tree not far from where the boulder had been. And fired.
The tree vanished completely. He thought he might have seen a ripple, like the mirages he’d read about, and then it was gone. Not even a leaf was left to drift down to the dirt. He moved forward, slowly, warily. In the spot where the tree had been was a slight depression, as if the ground beneath the surface had collapsed somehow.
The roots, he realized. Not just the tree but its roots were gone, and the ground had settled into the void they’d left. Was that the ripple he’d seen, the destruction flowing downward through the tree?
And what in hades would this thing do to a living creature or person?
He sat on the destroyed boulder’s neighboring rock, pondering, until one of the ubiquitous, ever-adaptable but not too bright brollets he’d ostensibly been hunting wandered into the clearing. He hesitated, but knew it had to happen. He didn’t like killing for no reason, but there was definitely reason enough now.
Forgive me, Eirlys.
He fired.
The brollet didn’t make a sound, or even jump. It was just gone. And again, the weapon was utterly silent.
The possibilities of such silent slaughter were endless, varied, and terrifying. If the Coalition had these in mass production, this entire battle was going to change.
And Brander had little doubt who would be on the losing side.
Chapter 31
MORE CAREFUL THAN ever to avoid being followed, Brander made his way to the ruin. There were only a few of the Sentinels in the gathering room, and he merely nodded as he went straight to the Raider’s quarters, although the man was not there. He wanted the privacy. He commandeered two lanterns and placed them on a table, then went to get his box of tools and parts and other bits of various things that he had accumulated.
He barely remembered the days when, as a boy, he’d had shiny new kits to assemble, or models to build. Now that aspect of his mind was occupied trying to make scattered and sometimes battered fragments into a functioning whole. Or, in rare cases such as this one, taking apart something new and unknown and trying to figure out how it worked, with an eye to replicating it somehow.
That they had absolutely no equipment with which to do that was something he didn’t let stop him. Because they never knew what they might get hold of next.
He had the weapon mostly disassembled and was lost in studying the various pieces intently, a glimmering of how it worked beginning to form, when a voice jolted him out of his concentration.
“You’re getting too comfortable in here,” the Raider said.
Brander turned, scowled at the scarred, helmeted figure who had stepped into the room through the hidden tunnel entrance.
“You think I did not hear you coming?” He had, in fact, although he only realized it now. He just hadn’t reacted, still focused on his puzzle. He had become too comfortable here.
“Just because the Coalition has not yet realized we are here does not mean they never will.”
“Contention valid,” Brander said, conceding the obvious.
The Raider’s gaze shifted to the table. “Progress?”
“I’m getting the idea of how it works.” He straightened, turned to face his leader and friend. “Were there more of these?”
“I do not think so. It was boxed, by itself, and I think it was being carried by the highest rank aboard. There were no other boxes like it. Perhaps it is a prototype.”
Brander frowned. “Do you not think they will deduce who took it?”
The Raider shrugged. “There were many there, and some were grabbing other things that spilled out after the crash.”
Brander’s mouth quirked. “But only you grabbed the box that happened to contain this?”
“I told you. It fell at my feet. The box broke open. The men in the aircab were dazed, and too concerned about themselves to notice. And it was addressed to Paledan.” He studied Brander for a moment. “I gather it is functional?”
Brander let out an oath he didn’t often use. He saw it register, and the Raider frowned.
“This,” Brander said, all trace of amusement or banter gone, “changes everything.”
He explained his test firings, the rock, the tree, the brollet, and what had happened. How he had later tried various combinations of things, and how it only destroyed what it hit, leaving something next to it, even touching it, unharmed. Most of all, the silence with which it had all happened, and the absence of debris or residue afterward.
“It’s fairly short range, but it obliterates the target. Completely. You could take out an entire patrol one at a time, and if they were spread out enough, they would never know what hit them.”
“Silent?”
“Utterly. Not even a whisper except for the debris settling on the boulder and the tree.”
“And the brollet?”
“Gone as i
f it had never existed. Not even a tuft of fur left.” He grimaced. “Eirlys would be angry with me.”
“Eirlys,” the Raider said, “loves her creatures, but she understands the cost of war.”
Brander saw the furrow of his brow, knew he was thinking of the danger his little sister was now in, knowing his secret. He tried not to think of it himself.
“Just the same, I’ll keep this from her if you don’t mind.” He shook his head. “Just think of it. Not even a body left behind to betray your presence with this . . . obliterator.” He pointed to the largest piece of the weapon he’d taken apart. “I believe this is the energy coil. I can see how it’s powered, but I have no idea what it produces to have that effect. But the housing, the sights, the grip,” he added wryly, “are all, of course, planium.”
“We’ve indeed given them the weapons to destroy us,” the Raider said.
“And probably destroy a great many other places,” Brander agreed, feeling as grim as he’d ever felt. And as close to wondering if they should just give it up, and resign themselves to living under the Coalition yoke forever.
Or at least until the planium ran out. The Coalition would likely abandon Ziem at that point, as no longer useful. The only remaining question was, would they just leave, and leave whoever had survived until that point alive, or would they blow the planet to bits?
He didn’t realize what his expression must be until the Raider spoke. “Do not wander there, my friend.”
“It is hard not to.”
“It is harder,” the Raider said grimly, “to live under their boots. Believe me on this.”
Brander studied him for a moment, thinking of the impossibility of this man masquerading as the beaten, cowed, crushed Drake Davorin. For, despite the helmet and the mask, that was the true disguise.
“You walk the hardest path of any of us,” he said softly. “Doubled.”
“It’s nothing, compared to the sufferings of the people of Ziem.”
“It, and you, are everything to the people of Ziem.” Brander cut off the denial he knew was coming. “And because of that, no one would begrudge you any joy to be found amid all this grimness.”
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