by Dave Walsh
Trella, of course, didn’t work into these plans, she was supposed to be locked away on Cyngen awash in the shame of her newfound emotions. She had known that Trallex was disappointed in her and she could only imagine his surprise to discover her on the planet and he knew exactly what she was doing. Trella was a fugitive from Cyngen, after all, so he always had that cover to ask for her detainment. Her heart sank and she felt a swelling of frustration rising up in her, forcing her to start skipping comms aimlessly.
Something was going on—the local police band was calling it a public disturbance—the elite guards were in a panic to secure the emperor and his mother, but it was all terse, coded and obscure. She switched over to a local broadcast only for her heart to skip a beat and her stomach felt like it had jumped into her throat. A still of Alva’s face, sprayed in blood, pulseaxe in hand in front of a giant crowd was in the top corner of the feed, a broadcaster describing a chaotic scene unfolding out in front of the palace. The roar of engines and the clatter of gunfire and weapons clashing filled the air, accented by blood-curdling screams.
Another scan pulled up another newscast of the scene, this one playing a prerecorded scene. This time it was Alva approaching a guard in front of the palace, ignoring the Krigan horde and what looked like a group of modified transports, the guard standing by her, defiant, until Trella saw the telltale sign that Alva was going to slash with an overhead—her hips squared, shoulders swiveled and right foot planted back behind her. It was a beautiful, arcing blow that cut right through his helmet and left him a bloody heap on the ground. They were calling it an act of terror on the broadcast, which made Trella laugh to herself.
This wasn’t terror, this was what Alva had trained her whole life to do. That ax blow to the guard’s head would be the defining moment in her life, a lone act of defiance that would become iconic in the Andlios Republic. It would play on holoscanners for cycles to come, adorn posters and be dramatized in vids. The swell of emotion in Trella was what she could only describe as pride, knowing that she had been so vital in the growth of Alva from a scared girl to this strong image of a woman defying Freeman’s government.
The sound of the latch on the door snapped her back to the cell, the images in her visor dissipating and a crack of light coming through the door growing by the second, which made her visor quickly adjust to the new environment. A man in a pristine white tunic with a red cape draped over his shoulders stood in the doorway, a smirk on his face.
“Who would have thought you were this valuable, little bird?” He shook his head and chuckled.
“Excuse me?” she asked, genuinely curious as to what he was talking about, quickly scanning her databanks to find a match for the face.
“I never trusted that Trallex,” he said. “One day he was just here and Cronus decided that he was more valuable than his prime minister. But this? Ah yes, this is valuable.”
“Prime Minister Giger, I presume?”
“In the flesh.” He outstretched his hands, his knuckle rapping against the steel door, causing him to quickly recoil and suck on his knuckle quickly. “Gods damn it,” he snarled. “Yes, and you, well, Trallex wanted you incarcerated on sight because you were a Cyngen fugitive. I did some more digging, though, and the name Trella has come up through our intel on Alva Hedlund. In fact, it has come up numerous times.”
“I don’t assume to be the only Trella in the Andlios Republic, Prime Minister Giger.”
“Of course not, no,” he said. “But you were the Trella asking after Alva Hedlund. I can put two-and-two together, little bird.”
“I’m not sure I follow,” she said, starting to feel fear washing over her. The last thing she wanted was to possibly get in the way of Alva’s big day, but it seemed like Giger had a plan.
“You will.” His smile was crooked and unsettled her. “Don’t you worry, little bird.”
037. Forced Hand
Jace
There was an odd calm that permeated Jace’s being while he strapped the holster of his gun to his leg and then around his waist. He had never been one for the pulseaxe, but still took one and slung it over his shoulder; even if he simply used it as a rifle at a distance, it would be useful and probably intimidating considering how Krigar was exploding with violence. The last piece was a bandolier with plasma charges hanging off it that he slung over his other shoulder.
He felt like he was a walking armament as he sat on the table in the stronghold’s long hall and glared across the room at the holoprojection of the violence that had broken out in the palace square. Alva Hedlund, the object of Trella’s newly discovered emotions, was at the forefront, leading a group of armed Krigans and crazed Zarr’nids while the whole Republic simply watched it all unfold. This was their time, he knew that. His stomach was doing somersaults and he wasn’t sure what to feel anymore. He had never had to gear up for a battle before, he’d always just stumbled into a battle and done what he needed to do to survive. This wasn’t his battle, he knew that, but somehow he felt like it was his responsibility to see it all through, to do his part to bring some form of justice to their universe.
“You are really serious about this?” Katrijn was standing there, arms folded.
“Look, Katrijn, it’s now or never.” He sprung up to his feet, feeling all his armaments shifting and slamming into him. “We had a plan, yes, but this plan is fucked! O’Neil got snagged on day fucking one! Day one! Then Trella went off to find Alva and try to meld us all together and she got snagged. We’ve run out of options, Kat. Our little band went from five to three in a hurry. What’s next? Loren gets shot or captured, then it’s just you and me.”
“I know that things haven’t been going according to plan, but we have to be patient and…”
“Patience isn’t a virtue—in this case, it just isn’t.” He was doing his best to not come across as angry because the reality was that he was scared. “What’s next, Kat? I’m serious here. Loren goes off on some fool mission and he’s gone, then it’s just you and I. I can’t keep you safe here on Andlios and I’m not even sure I can get the Pequod off this rock, either. They’ll find out about you—then what? It’ll just be me. Then it’ll just be me again, alone, no purpose. All of this is for nothing. We had all agreed that we’d act when the time was right. The time is now or it's never.”
“So you are going to throw your life away because you are afraid of being alone?” Her question cut deep into him. “I thought we had something here.”
“I’m not throwing anything away, Kat.” He looked up at her. “I’m doing what needs to be done. I’m doing this for us, I’m doing this because we’ve come so far.”
“He’s not entirely wrong,” Loren was leaning against the frame of the doorway, biting into an apple. “I’ve had a few brief communications with the Old Man and he’s stuck there, he can’t get out without us.”
“So you are saying that we should just hit the streets and find a way into the palace?” She looked at Loren in disbelief.
“Nobody will be looking for us, we’ll just be three more faces in the uprising of our lifetime,” he shrugged, taking another careful bite of the apple.
“So our plan went from a carefully laid out one where we were to bide our time to just rushing in because some Cydonian plan is in play?” Katrijn looked defeated. “Men.”
“We were biding our time, Princess,” Loren said, inspecting his apple carefully, rotating it before he took another bite. “Were is the key word, though. We aren’t anymore. This is as good of a time as any for us to go.”
“See? I’m not crazy, Katrijn.” Jace was pacing in front of her, adjusting to the extra weight of the weapons. “We wanted to do this covertly and sneaking in while everyone is distracted seems as good of a time as ever.”
“Sure, of course.” She threw her hands up in frustration. “Let’s go in while the palace guards are on full alert! Brilliant plan!”
“Oh, we can avoid ‘em,” Loren mused. “Or at least take ‘em out. I’m not wor
ried about it.”
“So we are just going to march in and worm our way into the palace?”
“More or less,” Loren nodded, taking one last bite of his apple.
The streets were overflowing with chaos. Krigar police forces and Freeman’s elite guards were out in force, but the people of Krigar had flooded the streets, some with makeshift weapons, others with pulseaxes and more unarmed and simply watching it all unfold. It wasn’t difficult for the three of them to slip right into the chaos, descending into the sea of humanity that ebbed and flowed through the streets of Krigar. They were all tributaries feeding into the palace, so they rode the waves.
Jace could feel the energy of the crowd, the hostility and pent up frustration that was fueling their rebellion. He wasn’t alone in his loathing of Cronus Freeman, he understood that much. The people of the Andlios Republic had gone from Jonah Freeman’s best guess at how to rule while being as fair as possible to the exact opposite in his son, Cronus. Cronus was obsessed with power and abused it at every turn. These people, much like Jace, were victims of Cronus Freeman and were no longer going to sit idly by. They were hungry for blood and would not be satiated until he was removed from the throne.
“We’re approaching the palace,” Loren said over their comms. They were each wearing a comm unit due to the noise of the crowd and for when they were inside the palace, in case they were split up. “We break left and head toward the guard entrance. They’ll be too busy to notice and we should be able to slip right in.”
“Got it,” Jace felt his heart beating in his chest.
“Copy,” Katrijn’s voice crackled over the comm.
Jace kept his hand by the holster on his hip, his hand at the ready, prepared to pull his gun out and start blasting at any second. It felt like the crowd was a powder keg just waiting to explode and any little thing would push it over the edge and set it off. The closer they got, the more violence was surrounding them. His thumb hovered over the clip on the holster before he finally flicked the button that was securing it and took a grip of his gun. After a long time of feeling adrift and aimless, it felt like he had a direction, like he had a family of sorts. His mind was still swimming from the prior night with Katrijn, but there was a new resolve inside of him to do anything he could for her.
Loren had his own gun drawn and was holding it by his chest at the ready while Katrijn’s pulseaxe was still slung over her back, but he saw both of her knives in her hands, at the ready. Jace pulled his own gun out and held it close to him like Loren was. Even wearing all this gear and even getting in a few firefights, it still felt foreign to him to be fighting like this. In his mind he was still just the kind of awkward guy who kept his gun merely as a part of the decor, keeping it in plain sight to show that he meant business.
“Weapons free,” Loren’s voice crackled across the comm. “Just remember, we are clearing a path not racking up a body count.”
“Got it,” Jace said, not able to hear his own voice.
“Confirmed,” Katrijn said.
It was like a whirlwind when a shot from Loren’s gun cracked out, sending an unaware guard crashing down. Katrijn jumped into action, her blades swiftly dancing in her hands, the one in the right swinging up and catching a charging guard in the gap where his helmet met his armor, jabbing right into his neck, and the other slashed across his chest, sending him barreling back into the wave of guards behind him.
There was a large group of Krigans ahead of them, with pulseaxes firing and being swung with precision at the guards. Screams rose and fell like a cacophony of violence, blood staining the pristine limestone entrance to the palace. There were deranged looking transports surrounded by men and women in what looked like desert garb covered in blood screaming and slashing with their swords and firing off rounds from shotguns. Jace felt out of place in the middle of such a huge battle, but he did his best to stay alert. Katrijn’s knives kept gracefully moving from guard to guard while Loren moved with precision, only taking shots when he needed to.
Loren pulled Jace over toward him behind a makeshift barricade made from an overturned transport, and Katrijn crouched by them taking deep breaths, her knives dripping with blood. She wiped one of the blades on her boot, staying vigilant. Bodies continued to clash all around them, steel-on-steel and guns being fired with bad intentions.
“Well, this is going well,” Jace shouted, forgetting to use his comm.
“It’s a little hot, sure,” Loren kept calm but found himself shouting into the comm.
“How are we going to get past this? There are at least fifty of them between here and the guard entrance.” Katrijn wiped her other blade without relenting her grip.
“I…” Jace looked down, and it dawned on him that he had the perfect solution. “I think I’ve got it. Just stay down!”
“What?” Loren looked back at Jace while Jace reached down to his bandolier, snatching one of the plasma charges from it and pulling the safety pin out with his teeth. “Hey no, Jace! Wait!”
It was too late, Jace tossed it over the transport into a group of guards while Loren grabbed Katrijn’s head and pulled her down, Jace himself ducking. The boom still sent him reeling back, and it felt like all time had stopped for that brief moment. His ears began to buzz and ring while everyone around him had been sent back a few meters.
Katrijn
“What is wrong with you!” Katrijn was shouting, trying to counteract the buzzing in her ears.
“What?” Jace was clapping his hand over his ear.
“You fucking moron!” She pushed him.
“Hold up, hold up,” Loren was at the barricade, peaking around the side. “I think we’ve got a path, but we’ve gotta go now!”
“Let’s go then.” She picked herself up while Jace dusted himself off.
Loren lept from behind the transport and started running through the confused crowd, gun drawn but picking his shots. Katrijn looked at Jace, who was still getting his bearings. She had been near a plasma charge before and assumed that Loren had as well, and it was clear that Jace had no clue how much damage they could do. For a moment the whole scene melted away and she couldn’t help but laugh at how confused he looked.
“C’mon, dipshit,” she offered her hand to him. “We gotta go.”
“Yeah,” he said, embarrassed.
“Shit!” she shouted, seeing a guard charging for Jace. Katrijn lunged into action, pushing Jace over the transport and out of the way. The guard staggered from his downward swing with his pulseaxe, expecting to meet flesh but instead smashing into the ground. Katrijn flashed forward, her left fist coming up toward his throat in a feint only to deliver a blow with her right blade to his ribs. She felt him reel back in pain, but reach for his sidearm; her left hand swiped in front of his face to cause him to flinch and only to catch his throat on a backswing, a clean slice that went almost unnoticed at first, only for the guard to reach up to his neck seconds later.
Jace pulled himself up from behind the transport and in a flash took a shot that hit the guard in the shoulder and sent him to the ground. Katrijn was furious for a second, then saw the humor in it again. “You really are an idiot, Krios,” she shook her head.
“What?” he asked, incredulous. “I just saved you.”
“Will you two just get over here and help?” Loren’s voice came across their comms.
“Let’s go,” she nodded to Jace, hopping gracefully over the barricade.
The charge had done a lot of damage, there were many guards down and even some Krigans. Jace didn’t think before he threw it and he had probably hurt some they’d consider allies in this whole thing. It was a distraction though, she gave him that. The fighting continued, though, even with injuries and the downed guards. Jace was dodging between combatants while Katrijn held her knives out.
A body slammed into her, it was a Krigan warrior—a woman with fiery red hair and a huge pulseaxe in her hand. The woman turned and both of them stopped, time slowing down around them while they ins
pected each other curiously. Their eyes met and Katrijn felt the air jump from her lungs. It was Alva, she just knew it even without ever seeing her face before. The flow of time returned when a charging guard came into view, and Katrijn pushed Alva aside and lunged forward with her right blade, catching him with a slash across the chest that momentarily stopped his overhead blow, staggering him back.
In the blink of an eye, Katrijn saw Alva heft her ax over her head and in one fluid movement, her boot met his stomach, him dropping his own ax to the side and her blade came down on his neck. Katrijn felt the life escape from the guard while his body hit the ground. Alva gave her a slight nod, which Katrijn returned before Alva stepped on the man’s shoulder and dug her ax out from his neck.
“Katrijn,” Loren’s voice shook her back to reality. “Where the hell are you?”
“Fuck,” she muttered. “Hold on, I’m on my way.”
“Hurry,” he said. “There should be a clear path, they are distracted.”
The guards were trying to reform their lines but the Krigans and Zarr’nids were relentless in their assault. Katrijn heard a woman’s battle cry from behind, knowing that it was Alva. A part of her felt strange at finally encountering someone her father had held in such high regard and had mourned the loss of for so long. She clearly was alive and this whole day was about her and her bloody revenge.