Pay attention, she ordered herself. The only fraction you should be thinking about is the fraction off that would make this all be for nothing, our best chance wasted. She stared upward. Waited, barely breathing again. Pictured it in her mind. The transport approaching the mother ship, slowly, entering the launch bay. Clearing the entrance, entering the belly of the ship. Holding steady, her lethal cargo sitting harmlessly in the pilot’s seat. Until the program reached the last order she’d given it.
Roll.
The explosion was massive.
Chapter 52
ANY OTHER MAN would show some sign of fear at the thought of what was coming, Rina thought. Tark showed only satisfaction that his calculations had been correct. They had noticed the gap in the defenses where Tark had removed the cannon, and were heading that way.
“Tark!” Rayden’s whisper was nearly as loud as if he’d spoken normally, but since it wasn’t critical at the moment, they let it pass.
“What, Lieutenant?” He used the informal rank now as if it were official. Rayden smiled so widely at the title coming from his idol that Rina thought she might burst with emotion.
“The tree,” he said, pointing to the groundsweeper farther to the east that was tall enough to be visible above the buildings. “If I climbed it, I could see for miles. I could tell you their progress. At least until Dax gets here.”
Tark had called for Dax, asking him to flip on that invisibility shield and head out behind the advancing troops, cutting off any possible retreat.
“It looks a bit . . . spindly,” Rina said, eyeing the frail upper branches doubtfully.
“It would be if a grown-up tried,” Rayden said. “But I climb it all the time. It’s a good place to hide because nobody looks up. And the branches hide me anyway.”
“You,” Tark said then, “are a brilliant tactician in the making.”
“Then I can do it?” the boy asked, eagerness making his voice rise again.
“Wait until we reach it. If they aren’t here yet, then yes. If you understand your orders are to get down and away the moment they reach the perimeter.”
“Yes, sir!”
They proceeded, working their way from hiding place to hiding place, leaving others along the way, until they were in the shadow of the building closest to Rayden’s tree. The boy looked at Tark, who nodded. With a grin, he darted off.
“His parents would be proud,” she said softly. Ardek had told them they had died at Coalition hands some years ago.
“Any parent would be proud of a son like that,” he said.
Yours were not, she thought. And there is no excuse they could give that would make up for that.
But she said nothing of that to him.
“His grandfather is all he has left,” she said instead.
“Yes.”
“When he passes, Rayden will be alone.” Tark turned his head then. “Or,” she said softly, “we could see that he is not.”
She heard his sharp intake of breath. He looked at her, and she saw such wonder in his gaze she knew he was daring to for once look ahead. But then Rayden’s signal came, a low whistle sounding so like a whisperbird it was uncanny.
They moved forward, leaving one of the older women who had volunteered in the house that had hidden them. Then another, and another as they worked their way toward the edge of the city.
Tark had, of course, saved the most dangerous position, closest to the perimeter, for himself. He tried to leave Rina farther back, where it was marginally safer, but she refused.
“You’re not doing this alone,” she said.
“But—”
“You got your one. I let you go alone on that cellar run.”
There was a pause before he said in dry tones, “You neglected to mention you were going to decide things for me.”
“I’m not deciding for you. I’d be a fool to try. I’m deciding for me. And I’m not going to hang back and wait to learn if you’ve survived or not, ever again.”
“Rina—”
A new sound came, a warning, warbling yowl. From above and behind them.
“Unless there’s a tree-climbing bark-hound around, they’re in Rayden’s sight,” Rina said.
The directions he’d given had been clear: everyone was to hold in place until the people “fleeing” from the east passed, then join in. The people who began in the safest places would end in the riskiest, within range of the Coalition weapons.
Except for Tark, of course, who would keep himself between them all and those deadly guns and ruthless killers. Rina knew that, because she knew him. And when it came down to it, she wouldn’t have him be any other way.
The marching horde of armored Coalition troops cleared the trees and pushed toward the perimeter of the eastern quarter. The sun glinted off the silver metal of polished helmets.
Rina pulled the flare pistol from her belt, but waited, her eyes fastened not on the enemy, but on the man she loved. He watched, and she could almost see him processing, calculating the point at which they would be committed to the action, and the sight of fleeing citizens would lure them onward.
“Now,” he said.
She fired the pistol, not into the air where it would be seen by all, but horizontally toward the last building where they had left a volunteer, an old man who had said he had nothing left to lose. She had removed half of the propellant, so the green signal would stay low and drop sooner.
Seconds later the man hurried into the street and hastened away, a bundle of some sort wrapped in a cloth slung over his back, as if he were carrying his most precious possessions as he fled his home.
“Nice touch,” Tark said.
“They only needed someone to lead them,” she said.
They moved then, working their way back toward Rayden’s tree. They were armed with several weapons, Tark weighed down with as much ammunition for his long gun as he could carry, although she knew he knew that if he had to resort to that, the ruse had failed and the battle for Galatin would soon be over.
The process built. A second man joined the first, in the middle of the street. And then a woman from a house across the way. The timing was perfect, as they were clearly visible yet out of the range of Coalition hand weapons as the troops reached the perimeter, crossed it.
Tark and Rina kept moving, but stayed behind the exodus as it moved inward toward the center of the city. The street was filling now, and the troops were picking up speed. Perhaps seeing a nice batch of slaves to pick up, Rina thought. But they had not fired, yet.
“Who is manning the cannons?” she belatedly asked.
“Crim’s brother is on the southern position. Ardek is on the one we moved.”
The old man had clearly earned Tark’s trust on that cellar mission, she thought. She was grateful for that.
They were nearing Rayden’s tree when the first blast roared down the street, echoing off the buildings behind them. Rina ducked instinctively, although the troops were still out of range. Barely.
Another blast came; someone up ahead, turning to look, stumbled and fell. Rina held her breath until the man scrambled to his feet and kept going. Another blast, and another. One sent bits of the building they were passing flying.
“Cutting it a bit close there,” she said to Tark.
“Have to give them something they think they can hit,” he said with a reckless grin that nearly stopped her heart, it was so like the Tark of old. “Lure them on.”
She understood; if he could keep them focused on that they were less likely to think of other things. Like traps. But it still made her a bit nervous, dancing on the very edge of being within reach of their weapons. Especially when nothing they had except Tark’s long gun could penetrate armor from that distance. She was good enough at hand to hand, but preferred to avoid it with
armored troops at these odds, if she could.
In the moment they came even with it, the base of Rayden’s tree went up in flames like an oiled torch.
“Rayden!” She broke into a run, Tark at her heels. Somehow she knew the boy would wait for his hero, wouldn’t leave without him. Because she knew the feeling.
“I can’t see him,” she said. Maintaining silence was pointless now, so she yelled the boy’s name. The answer came, fear sounding in the young voice for the first time. And then she saw him, about halfway up, through the rising smoke. He must have been climbing down when the blast hit.
The flames were searing. They couldn’t get close enough to the trunk of the tree, and the fire was moving steadily upward. She tried to think of something, anything to do—
“Hold on,” Tark shouted as he slung his long gun off his shoulder. “Stay where you are, you’re going to have to ride it down!”
He raised the big weapon, aimed it at the flaming base of the tree. He fired a rapid burst. The tree creaked. He fired again. It began to lean, and Rina realized he was cutting the tree down from this side, controlling which way it would fall.
Rina glanced down the street. The Coalition force was advancing. A few seconds more, and they would be within range.
The tree shuddered, then gave and began a long arc downward. She could see Rayden clinging to the trunk above the fire. And she suddenly realized he was too close, that the flames would likely flare and engulf him when the tree hit.
Tark realized it in the same instant. Dropping the long gun, he ran forward, into the flames.
“Jump!” he shouted to the boy.
Rayden never hesitated. He flung himself out and down, into Tark’s arms. Tark staggered back under the force of it. He managed to control it enough to get clear of the flaming branches. He went to his knees but not down. Rayden quickly scrambled free and stood on his own.
The Coalition opened fire.
Rina lifted the long gun she had grabbed up when Tark dropped it. It was nearly as long as she was tall. And heavy. She barely managed to fire it toward the advancing line. She had the satisfaction of seeing them halt, but the recoil nearly knocked her down.
Tark regained his feet. Grabbed the weapon from her with an oath. Yanked her back out of the line of fire behind the next building.
“What in Hades did you think you were doing?”
“Shooting back?” she suggested, irked at his tone.
“You were right in their line of fire!”
“You were the one who was unarmed and in their line of fire!”
“You still shouldn’t have—”
“Why in Hades not?”
“Because I love you!”
Rina was ready to fire another retort, but his words took the wind right out of her. In that instant she realized the absurdity of it—here they were, massively outnumbered, under fire, and he chose this moment to say it.
“I swore I’d have those words from you face-to-face, Bright Tarkson, but bedamned you chose a fine moment.”
He was looking sheepish now.
“Seems appropriate, actually,” she said.
“It does,” he agreed.
“I love you, too.”
For a moment nothing less than awed wonder flashed in his deep blue gaze. “More fool you, you’ve made that clear.”
It was all the time they had for such things. He took up the long gun once more. Stepped out from the protected corner. Snapped it to his shoulder and fired a long burst. One of the armored men actually went down, two more stumbled. They dodged behind the corner of a building as the enemy returned fire. The ground shook with the explosions, and chunks of the buildings and even the street flew around them.
They dodged from building to building, pausing only to fire back as they worked their way up the street. He was making sure they kept following, she knew. They passed the treatment clinic that had been evacuated in the first wave. This was the building Rina knew was the goal. They had to get them past that. They kept moving, faster now, Tark firing back every few yards, luring them on. She added her own disrupter, more for show than anything, since they were beyond her range.
A hundred yards beyond the clinic Tark stopped. They took cover behind a pile of rubble from the first wave. He rose above the pile, facing back down the street. He fired again, and again. The blasts from the Coalition came nearer and nearer, one peppering them with stinging bits of rock.
The armored men passed the clinic.
“Got you,” Tark whispered.
He looked over his shoulder. The others were well out of range now, most of them running, as planned. They would head for cover now, their job done.
The Coalition was squarely in the cannon’s field of fire now.
But so were they.
“This way!” Rayden shouted. He dashed between two buildings. Tark grabbed Rina’s arm and propelled her into a run. A couple of blocks down, the boy cut to the right. Then left, then right again.
“There’s a shortcut,” he said as he zigzagged through the narrow back streets, “near the school.”
They followed. The boy never hesitated. He led them to a thick grove of trees.
“See?” he said. “This is the back end of the park.”
Rina swiftly called up an image of the map she had studied for so long. “Then we’re clear,” she said.
Tark nodded. She pulled the flare gun out again, this time loading it with a fully powered round. She fired it, upward this time, and the shell burst into a huge blossom of green flame.
The fusion cannons opened up before it had faded away.
The trap had been sprung.
Chapter 53
EVEN FROM THE ground, the explosion on the mother ship was clearly visible as a huge ball of flame and smoke. The massive ship careened sideways, and for a moment Shaina thought it might actually come down. She didn’t want that—who knew what or who it might take out. After a tense few moments it steadied, although it was listing now, severely.
The small band of fighters gathered around her, cheering, chanting “Silverbrake!” as the debris from the mother ship rained down around them. They had taken to that after she had led the entire force safely through the tunnel. The screen, oddly, was gone. Perhaps unneeded now that Mordred was dead. Or perhaps it somehow had known they needed access to save the Graymist’s beloved Arellia. In light of everything, it didn’t seem that odd a thought.
“You are indeed your father’s daughter,” one of them cried out. She felt a renewed surge of adrenaline. The way the once-uncertain fighters had rallied to her had been proof of their love and respect for her father. And the knowledge did not irk her now, as it might have just days ago. That was past now, vanished with the first firing of the flashbow.
But now they were cheering her, and she couldn’t deny it made her blood race even faster. She watched the big ship. Her stunt had crippled it, forced it to leave the rest of the fighters airborne and low on fuel as it retreated.
“That was brilliant!” Crim exclaimed. “Insane, but brilliant.”
Shaina gave the grizzled man a grin. “Not my idea. King Darian did it to them, years ago. And then my father, with one of their own fighters full of old liquid fuel. Neither one knew of the other.”
“They both did it? Each without knowing?”
She nodded. “I’ve heard the story so many times, it was my first thought.”
The mother ship was in the distance now, the fighters clinging to her skirts like frightened children. They would all be in disarray now, without the mother ship to guide them. If she’d learned nothing else in this battle, it was that the Coalition did not encourage independent thinking. It was why independent thinking, like the trick with the nitron torpedo, worked. Then, and now. It seemed very fitting.
; “In the future,” Crim said solemnly, “Arellia would do well to be as Trios, to remember rather than pretend this never happened.”
“Yes.”
“And thanks to Trios, we still have a future.”
“You will—”
She broke off suddenly as a tearing pain shot through her. It was so sharp it nearly doubled her over. So sharp she looked down at herself, expecting to see blood from some injury unnoticed until now. She found nothing.
It came again, weaker this time. And this time she knew.
Lyon.
Shaina ran, heedless of the danger, of the fact that she could barely breathe for the tightness in her chest. She took wild chances, leapt over deep gullies where she could have broken a leg or worse, dodged stiff branches and let others whip at her, risked a horrific fall on a narrow trail at the edge of a steep drop-off.
She encountered one of Tark’s scouts, who had just taken a position on high ground. Without ceremony she commandeered his airspeeder, telling him he could retrieve it at the pass. The nimble vehicle made short work of the rest of the trip.
It was oddly quiet—no sound of fighting. Dread built in her. Silence did not seem a good sign, not in a battle like this. Was it another lull, the Coalition troops demanding unconditional surrender? Or worse, was it over, was the wrenching pain and grim certainty of disaster not just for Lyon, but for all of them?
She cleared the last grove of trees. She saw the cluster of men, huddled, over a shape on the ground. Her entire body wanted to scream, but with the stubbornness that had gotten her into so much trouble over the years, she held it back. She threw herself off the speeder and ran toward them.
Kateri was there, and tried to stop her. She heard, as a distant buzz, the low voices of the gathered fighters.
“—seen anything like it.”
“That entire platoon, by himself.”
“And looked like the king himself doing it.”
Rebel Prince (The Coalition Rebellion Novels Book 3) Page 37