Renegades

by Thomas Locke

  The groups operated in smooth tandem. It was like watching a ballet, only one where the dancers made up the steps as they moved.

  Logan wanted to live every moment. See it all. Devour the experience. Because here in the market of a forbidden realm, the hopes he had carried for a lifetime took on physical form.

  Gradually word spread among the merchants and the customers and the remaining Havoc militia. A change had come. Something was happening.

  Nicolette reported in, “A Havoc crew is holed up in a restaurant. They’ve sent everyone out. Cooks, staff—they’re milling about in the lane.”

  Vance said, “They know.”

  More likely, Logan thought, they merely suspected. “I’m on my way.”

  The restaurant was structured like a street-front café, only here there was no sky to enjoy. The pedestrian traffic had been rendered chaotic by the shop owner and all his staff milling about. Two avenues intersected directly in front of the awning. Chairs littered the eating area, several tables were overturned, and all the customers added their own clamor to the mix.

  Logan walked out of the alley where Sidra had brought him. The shops to either side had expanded their trays of merchandise until they blocked his ability to see what was going on. So he stepped over to where Nicolette stood surveying the restaurant.

  She greeted him with, “I’ve seen three different faces come and go before the window and the door. The owner there says six of them entered and ordered everyone to leave.”

  Vance had arrived by then, and he moved to Logan’s other side. “They’ve probably split their forces, in case we try the rear approach.”

  “We don’t have any choice,” Nicolette said. “Going in the front way blows our cover in front of a hundred witnesses. More.”

  Logan agreed with both of his officers and was about to give the order for a rear assault, when the Havoc crew proved them all wrong.

  Only later did he realize they had been waiting for Logan’s crew to approach. The four of them—the three officers plus Sidra—were completely different from everyone else. They did not mill about. They did not look distressed. They stood calmly and surveyed the scene with a hunter’s eye for the terrain. And the Havoc crew was ready.

  The three attackers piled out together, slamming through the restaurant door and spreading out and lifting their guns, so fast that Logan was caught completely by surprise. They held old-fashioned projectile weapons intended to frighten with noise. They fired and moved and fired, emptying their weapons in a matter of seconds. All of them taking aim at Logan, Vance, and Nicolette.

  Logan found himself surrounded by a sheet of shimmering air. He watched the shields around Nicolette and Vance vibrate with each bullet, like water struck by stones. Further out, people screamed and fled. By the restaurant, the three stood stock-still, their faces turning red, then blue.

  Logan yelled, “Let them breathe!”

  Nicolette called, “Teams two and three, take out the remaining three.”

  As her forces moved in, Logan turned to where Sidra stood. “You shielded me.”

  “All the time,” she replied, and pointed to his officers. “I wasn’t sure I could hold four inside my shield. Now I know.”

  Logan said, “I owe you.”

  “We all do,” Vance said.

  Sidra blushed. “We are drawing a crowd.”

  Logan nodded. “It’s time to go.”

  19

  The remaining Havoc crews vanished. The market returned to its frenetic din. If anything, the activity became more frenzied. Logan made several more sweeps with his teams, each revealing the same situation. Merchants and customers alike showed a sense of wonder and disbelief. He saw smiles, even heard laughter.

  The comm link supplied by Linux glowed. When Logan answered, his uncle demanded, “Are the reports I hear true?”

  “Our initial forays have been successful.” Logan leaned against the nearest wall. Even the sense of partial victory was enough to unleash a wave of exhaustion. “We’re not in the clear yet. Havoc is bound to retaliate.”

  “Of that I am absolutely certain.” Linux hesitated, then added, “It appears I may have underestimated you.”

  When Linux cut off, Logan asked Sidra, “Are you as tired as I am?”

  “Not until you asked.”

  They returned to the militia headquarters, where two-thirds of the teams were sacked out. Logan ate a hurried meal standing by the cooks, then asked Nicolette, “When is Loghir’s next sleep cycle?”

  She checked her readout. “Just under six hours.”

  “And battalion HQ?”

  A slightly longer pause, then she answered, “Day officially begins in five hours.”

  That did not leave Logan time enough for a proper rest, but it would have to do. He started toward an empty pallet and groaned his way down. “I have to report in. Wake me in four hours.”

  They left four scouting teams in the market, supervised by Nicolette. No ghost-walkers, just the military crew, with orders to stay well down. No heroics, no attempts to halt any Havoc team if they moved. Just keep an eye out. Report any change. Nothing more.

  Everyone else started moving prisoners.

  The plan was probably flawed in some way or another. Logan was too weary to make any improvements. He woke feeling more exhausted than when he lay down. The same fatigue was imprinted on many other faces.

  They did what Vance called “work by numbers.” Two prisoners had their wrists freed, and then one arm was bound to the other’s, right to left. Their outside arms were strapped tight to their sides. The ghost-walker then moved into place between them, gripped the bound arms, and stepped forward.

  Their destination was chosen for maximum impact. Once the prisoner transport was completed, Logan coded in the link to Linux. When the old man answered, Logan said, “I need you to make a call. Do you have a trusted contact in Loghir?”

  “Of course.”

  “Have him contact the head of their police. There is a hotel directly across the square from their headquarters.”

  “I have stayed there.”

  “We took five rooms on the top floor. They are now filled with Havoc’s forces.”

  20

  Sean went straight to Serena’s main hospital. Insgar, the founder of the Watchers’ Academy and his primary ally among the highest ranks, had been ill for almost a year. Sandrine, the doctor whom he and Dillon had met at the Cyrian train station, greeted him with the same somber news he had been hearing for months. Insgar slept. She was comfortable. Sandrine would alert him if she rose to full consciousness. Which had not happened since his last visit.

  Sean sat by her bedside for a time, missing her scolding voice and guidance more than he knew how to say. Now more than ever, he needed a wise friend.

  The next day Sean returned to the loft apartment near Raleigh’s main university. He arrived at well after midnight Eastern time. He and Dillon had stocked the place with frozen ready-made meals and veggie packs and long-life milk and juice. Until the crisis had unfolded, he and Dillon had spent months communicating by notes, arguing over whose turn it was to do chores.

  Sean microwaved a meal and carried it out onto his balcony. The summer night was balmy, and a breeze kept the insects at bay. He studied the stars that came and went beyond scuttling clouds and pondered the empty nights ahead.

  So many triumphs had begun in this place, so much sorrow. He could see a light in Carey’s kitchen and wondered if she was handling the breakup any better than Dillon. They were a perfect match in so many ways, and yet wrong in all the others.

  Which pretty much summed up Sean’s love life as well.

  He finished his meal, pushed his chair away from the table, leaned back, and asked the stars how he was going to survive the vacant hours. His life since he’d learned to transit had been a headlong rush into one roller-coaster thrill after another. Even his awful days at the awful Diplomatic school had been crushingly full.

  Everything that had co
me before—his empty home and now-divorced parents, the agonies of high school, the teenage boundaries that had ruled and limited his existence—all of that was gone now. Replaced by a realm containing a hundred and nineteen known worlds. Only now . . .

  Defeated by the future void, Sean rose from his chair and went inside. As he stretched out and turned off the light, his gaze repeatedly fell upon Dillon’s empty bed. His lonely frustrations blanketed him. He could not shake the sense that his life was over.

  He was three months shy of his twentieth birthday.

  21

  Dillon’s instruction as an interstellar spy consisted of one night’s language training and a fifteen-minute warning. Most of the cautionary period was spent trying to land a date. And failing.

  His transition from prisoner to secret agent was handled by Advocate Cylian and a senior Messenger. The Advocate booked him into quarters used by administrative types stationed on Serena for some temporary duty. Dillon had a very nice hotel suite with a mini kitchen, but it still felt like a barracks. He ate in the main hall and returned to his chambers, exhausted from the longest day of his life. Then he remembered to put on the language crown Cylian had left for him. At least that was familiar enough. He snapped it open, fitted it on so the communication jewel resided over the center of his forehead, and collapsed into bed.

  The next morning, Cylian escorted Dillon to her office and apartment. They transited into both several times, until she was certain he had them well established as emergency links.

  Cylian doubted very much that Dillon would survive, and told him so repeatedly.

  The senior Messenger who accompanied them was named Aldo. He was assigned as Dillon’s link to his new destination. Aldo clearly considered Dillon competition for Cylian’s attention, which was pretty amusing, since she showed them both the same frosty attitude. But Dillon only needed to smile in Cylian’s general direction for Aldo to get all red in the face. The guy was snotty, vain, and beanpole thin. He wore a tailored uniform with what appeared to be real gold buttons. His brown hair was a rat’s nest that probably required an hour in front of the mirror and a quart of wax to get just right.

  “All of this is a terrible mistake,” Cylian repeatedly told Dillon. “If I had my way, we’d take at least a few months and train you properly in all manners of tradecraft.”

  The word carried electric appeal. Tradecraft. He asked, “You’d like to play instructor?”

  She was an inch or so shorter than he was, and trim in a manner that only heightened her feminine curves. Her icy attitude was now spiced by fretful concern. “It’s such a shame you won’t live to study with anybody.”

  Aldo offered a sniff of derision. “At least this one is expendable.”

  The Advocate dismissed the guy with a single frigid glance. Then she caught sight of Dillon’s grin and narrowed her gaze even further. “Rightly or wrongly, my superiors believe your frontier-world upbringing has instilled an ability to adapt to the unknown and survive. I only wish I could agree with them.”

  “So what reward do I get for proving you wrong?”

  “Pay attention, please. We can’t supply you with false papers or even a decent reason for being there. The situation is too fluid, the planet too chaotic. All we have are rumors of a weapon capable of cutting through a warrior’s strongest shield.”

  That got his full attention. “Wait, you mean some humans have harnessed the aliens’ power of attack?”

  “We have no idea.”

  “Why would they even want to do that?”

  “Which precisely is the reason I have argued against your being inserted. We simply do not know enough.”

  “What do you know?”

  “Very little. And I am strictly forbidden to discuss the suspicions that have raised so many alarms.” She clearly disliked that intensely.

  Dillon, however, found things falling into place. “Makes sense.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “They don’t want me to go in with preconceived notions. Smart.”

  She cocked her head to one side, causing her raven hair to spill over one shoulder like a dark frost. “Which is precisely what my superiors have been saying.”

  “And they’re right.”

  She and the Messenger both scrutinized him now. Finally Cylian said, “Find this weapon, if it exists. Buy or steal one if you can. And get out.”

  “If I survive,” Dillon added for her.

  “You are headed into a merchant’s compound on a mining world. In truth, it is little more than a pirate stronghold. There is no recognized law, no order, not even a real government. Each territory is at war with all the others. Alliances are fluid and highly unstable.” Her voice grew increasingly strident. “I urge you to refuse this assignment.”

  “What would you think of me if I turned and ran?”

  Her gaze carried the force of an ink-dark laser. “I would think, ‘There goes a man who will breathe his way through another hour.’”

  22

  Dillon’s transit point was the eye of a hurricane.

  The Messenger brought them into the main room of what might have been a large storage hut. All the windows were barred and shuttered. Dillon crept over to the massive double doors and peered through a spyhole. He could see snatches of a broad patio covered by a striped awning. A few sheets of paper were scattered about the floor, along with some lengths of twine, a pair of overturned chairs, three lanterns, and a pile of boxes. Otherwise, nothing.

  He shifted to another window and saw bedlam on all sides, people running and screaming and the sounds of clashing metal. Dillon wondered at the absence of bombs or guns, but not for long, because there came a sound he had learned to recognize at the Academy. A brief, searing crackle was followed by the stench of a lightning strike, which meant someone was firing an energy weapon. The crowd only surged and screamed all the more.

  The Messenger had told Dillon very little about their destination. Their primary contact was a merchant in a disputed territory. The man dealt mainly in carpets but was also a conduit for black market goods. How the merchant had been contacted by the alliance, the Messenger had no idea.

  Aldo was typical of most Messengers. They were educated and cultured and utterly unaccustomed to danger. They loathed Dillon for the way he seemed to enjoy peril. What he felt really wasn’t enjoyment, however. Whenever faced with real hazards, Dillon simply came into his own.

  Aldo remained frozen in the position of his arrival. Then the energy weapon fired again, only this time it carved a hole through the wall beside the main doors. Another few inches to the left and the Messenger would have been headless. Dillon scrambled over and plucked the officer’s legs from under him. Aldo hit the stone floor hard.

  “Stay down.” Dillon waited long enough to ensure the man did not rise, then crawled back to the side window. He risked a glance, then shifted back to the spyhole. “The crowds are thinning. Looks like the assault is easing . . .”

  Dillon stopped in mid-sentence because a woman suddenly transited into the hut. She was scarcely more than a girl, a blonde-haired wispy thing. He thought she looked like a street waif, with pale eyes that showed neither surprise nor mercy. She carefully surveyed them and the room. In the hut’s meager light Dillon saw how she checked them for weapons, took in the Messenger’s gaudy attire, and then dismissed them as holding no threat. It was only after she vanished that Dillon realized her tan coverall was perhaps a uniform.

  From where he sprawled on the floor, Aldo gasped, “There are no transiters in this system!”

  Dillon had to laugh. The guy had finally offered him one bit of intel, and it was totally wrong. Dillon crawled over and crouched down beside the Messenger. One look into his terror-stricken gaze was enough to know he was a liability. “Okay, Aldo. Now’s the time you tell me why we’re here.”

  “She, the Advocate—”

  “Not here on this planet. This room. You said your contact was a merchant, right?”

  “Carpets,
yes. But he also dealt in intel.”

  “How did he make contact with the system?”

  “There was another Praetorian Guard.”

  The way he spoke left Dillon certain. “He’s dead, right? The guard.”

  “Vanished.”

  Which was the same thing, most likely. “Let me guess. Your group set the guard up here with a lot of gold, and he came buying intel, which this particular merchant offered to supply.”

  “How did you know?”

  Dillon didn’t bother responding. He assumed one of the merchant’s own group probably sold out the guardsman. All it would have taken in a lawless world was one word in the wrong ear about a lone guy walking around asking the wrong questions and carrying gold. The killers probably lined up down the street.

  Which meant the Advocate was probably right about his chances of survival.

  But there was nothing to be gained from telling this to the Messenger. Aldo was already scared enough.

  “Look around. Your contact must have known something was going down. The place is totally empty.” Dillon gripped the guy’s shoulder and heaved him to a seated position. “So maybe he’ll come back. But right now I need you to leave.”

  “I . . . What?”

  “Go. Head out. You got me here. Your job is done.”

  “I don’t . . . You’re staying?”

  Dillon thought the guy’s astonishment was almost comic. “Didn’t you hear Cylian? Somebody thinks this is important enough to risk my life.”

  Aldo looked ready to argue. Then the dusty air was rent by a high-pitched scream. He winced, then cried, “Come with me!”

  “Not on your life.” Which Dillon thought was good for another quick grin. “Have a good trip.”

  Aldo started to argue, then seemed to think better of it and vanished.

  Dillon crawled back to the window facing the main avenue. The hut was fronted by a broad display area that stretched out to meet the avenue. The streets he could see were almost empty now. He spotted a few furtive heads that appeared and then swiftly vanished. He suddenly realized he had a raging thirst, strong enough to tempt him to open the doors and go in search of a frosty mug.