The sound of the wind came back to him, crashing against the side of his face, sending a poorly timed drum roll battering through his ears. The woman with the green eyes stood in front of him in her current form. In her sixties now, she looked as pure as she had in her forties. “Your mum understood where I was coming from. And she promised me she’d let me keep in touch with you two. After all, I wanted to be in the lives of my nephews as they grew up.”
Unable to reply, Seb’s head dropped. He looked at the glistening crystal ground, his warm tears turning cold against his face in the harsh wind.
Chapter 42
For a brief moment Reyes worried it might never happen, but as her sight gradually recovered, she slowed her breaths to bring her panic down. A tight pain in her chest, her body tense, she looked at Sparks standing over her. Tiny cuts covered the small Thrystian’s face like freckles. The spray from the crystal must have eaten into her as she fought Enigma’s guards. But the wounds looked to be superficial. Sore, but superficial. The same couldn’t be said for Enigma’s army. A glance around the room showed her that the place looked like the streets of Kajan, bodies and body parts scattered everywhere. When she nodded at her, Sparks nodded back and turned her attention to SA. Clearly going through the same adjustment, the yellow-skinned assassin rubbed her eyes as if it would bring her sight back quicker.
Because Sparks focused on SA, Reyes looked around the room again. The shock of it made her laugh, and she shook her head. When she spoke, her voice echoed in the near silent space. “You certainly did a number on this room.”
Sparks shrugged before she scratched her head while raising her eyebrows. “I needed to take drastic action. There were a lot of them.”
Other than the clear massacre of the army, Sparks had also demolished the place. The landing running around the first floor remained intact above them and nowhere else. The rest of it had been shattered and gathered on the floor in large piles of glistening rocks. It must have been what had caused the whooshing sounds.
“Sorry I blinded you both,” Sparks said, pulling Reyes’ attention back to her. “I had a hunch the flash bang would be effective in here and knew it would be the best chance of taking Enigma’s army down. But I couldn’t warn you about it. Especially as we can’t talk through SA at the moment. If I’d have told you to cover your eyes, they might have done the same.”
After watching SA nod, Reyes spoke for both of them. “It’s fine. You did what you had to. And it worked better than any other plan we had.”
“It was the best we had, right?” Sparks said.
Reyes smiled. “Right.”
Her computer still working, Sparks held it up for Reyes and SA to see. “The main control room isn’t far. We have six minutes to get in there and destroy their transmitter. I’d like to give you more time to recover, but we need to go.”
While Reyes nodded, SA got to her feet. Later than her to regain her sight, yet she seemed more ready to move off. Another laugh thrown back at her in the quiet room, she shook her head. “You’re a machine, SA.”
The usual warmth had left SA’s eyes. Steel belied her calm bioluminescence. Whatever it took, she’d make sure the next phase of Enigma’s plan didn’t get implemented. The next broadcast wouldn’t happen.
No time to waste, Reyes took Sparks’ hand when she offered it to her to help her up. She then tried to find strength in her weak legs as she set off after her two friends.
Powdered stalt crunched beneath Reyes’ every step, and she watched the floor to avoid the larger divots dug into it from the firefight. It slowed their progress, but better that than falling and breaking an ankle.
Every door now open again like when the guards had entered, Reyes watched Sparks and SA run out of one of the exits in the left wall. She followed them out a second later to find them both stopped in front of her and halted just short of clattering into them for a second time. When she looked where they were looking, she gasped. “Damn!”
Bruke sat on the other side of a thick window of stalt. It gave them a clear view of him strapped to a large chair with an Enigma guard standing in front of him. It held a saw in its hand. The blade of it had a coating of rust and blood.
When Bruke saw them, his eyes widened. Although his mouth stretched open, the thick window muted his scream. Whatever the guard had said to him, it must have been making good on its promise. It leaned over him with the saw and cut into his left thigh.
Before any of them could speak, Sparks opened fire on the window, screaming as she laid down a barrage of blasts against it. The transparent barrier took all her shots, a series of black marks to show for it, but nothing else.
After she’d swapped her gun for her computer, Sparks projected a red lined grid against the window. “Damn it. Whatever they’ve used to make this, it’ll take a cannon to destroy it.”
Although Sparks lifted her screen for them to see, Reyes couldn’t take her eyes from Bruke. A twist writhed through her insides to watch more blood coat the guard’s rusty saw. It put all its weight into each hacking cut. Veins stood out on Bruke’s neck from the effort of his scream.
“Reyes!”
It snapped her away from Bruke and onto Sparks.
“Focus! I’m going to get Bruke out of there. I can see the route to get to him. You and SA need to take down the transmitter without me. Okay?”
Another look at Bruke, Reyes watched his eyes roll and then his head fall limp as he passed out.
“Okay?” Sparks said again.
Her head spinning from what she’d seen, Reyes looked at SA, but she couldn’t focus. A million and one traumas from her time as a marine flooded back. The Faradis sat front and centre of those memories. She’d seen too much suffering on the faces of those she cared about. It took for her to shake her head to get the thoughts away. It wouldn’t help them now. “I’m sorry, my head’s a mess.” She turned to SA. “Can you remember the way?”
SA nodded, the same steely look in her eyes.
“Okay,” Reyes said.
Sparks took control again. “I’ll see you both outside when this is over. Good luck.”
Chapter 43
Not only did Seb have to deal with the burn of the tightly bound ropes on his wrists and ankles, but the base of his neck ached from where he hung his head. Yet he didn’t lift it, keeping it slumped as if it were too heavy to hold. While staring at the floor, the harsh wind continued to crash into him, bullying his limp frame. His throat ached, his nose ran, and his view of the world blurred through his tears.
The woman in front of Seb stepped forward, her long white robes covering what would be his view of her feet. A gentle touch with a warm hand, she placed two fingers beneath his chin and lifted it so he faced her. His aunty smiled at him, and for the first time, he saw the familial resemblance. He saw her love for him. Compassion in her green eyes, she spoke in a gentle voice. “Are you wondering why your dad pushed me away?”
Seb tried to speak, but it came out as a croak. He nodded instead.
While stroking his face, the soothing touch of her soft fingers making Seb push into it like a cat enjoying the affection, she said, “It’s because of now. This moment.”
The same sensation as before, the green-eyed woman showed Seb another memory.
Seb’s head spun to watch the woman in front of him and his mum. They were inside, but he couldn’t see where. Not that it mattered. “Just give him time,” his mum said to her.
The vision came to an abrupt end, forcing a gasp from Seb. Back on the roof of the palace, he blinked against his tears and the biting breeze. Although he opened his mouth, his aunt cut him off.
“Your mum was behind me with this,” she said. “She knew what needed to be done, and she tried to help your dad see it. But he refused. He couldn’t see clearly because of our upbringing. He said Mum and Dad always loved me more. And maybe they did, but that had nothing to do with what I was trying to say to him. What your mum was trying to say to him.”
Still n
othing to give, Seb simply stared at her. His hot grief leaked from his eyes.
“Your mum was amazing. She saw where I was coming from. She knew how we could stop the darkness spreading through the galaxy.”
The words crashed into Seb. The darkness in the galaxy. It had to be stopped, and he’d been the one prophesied to do it. It had to be the reason he’d found her. Then he thought about their battle on Aloo. Then all of the footage Sparks had shown him of the carnage in the galaxy. Of the massacre on Kajan. The dead bodies everywhere. “But you’ve killed thousands, if not more. You’re still killing them with the chaos you’ve let loose. You promote slavery.”
“We’re toppling regimes, Seb; we’re not killing.”
“You are killing.”
“Death is an unfortunate by-product of what we’re doing. We’re trying to change a tyrannical regime that sees most of the power in the galaxy held by just a few. It’s a dictatorship wearing democracy’s clothes. We have to bring down societies before we can show them a new way. It’s the only chance we have of making a change. Those in power have too much of a stranglehold.” She made a motion with her hands as if snapping an invisible twig. “We have to break that.”
Seb continued to cry as he looked at her.
“The darkness in the galaxy is inequality,” she said. “The light is justice. I can’t do this on my own. Your mum would be with me here now if she’d made it this far. I need you beside me, Seb, so we can take down the monopolies that control everything. You think you know what slavery is? Take a look at how they use the promise of credits in exchange for labour to keep people just above the poverty line. They make beings work their fingers and hooves to the bone just so they can eat for another week. Just so they don’t let their families starve. There’s enough resources to go around, so there’s no need for them to behave like that.”
“But you worked with the Countess.”
“I needed an army, and she could give it to me. I would have killed her if you hadn’t.”
A look from his bonds then back to the woman, Seb let her continue.
“I can see it in your eyes. You know why your mum was on my side. I hate that we have to break so many things to rebuild a better world, but change doesn’t come without a revolution kick-starting it.”
Seb watched his aunty pull a knife from her belt as she walked towards him. She slipped the blade beneath the ropes around his ankles and then the ones around his wrists. A sharp pull each time and the ropes fell away, relieving the pressure with a tingling rush of blood back into his feet and hands.
After Seb had toppled from the cross, his knees stinging from where they took the weight of his fall, his aunty helped him stand and wrapped him in a tight hug. She smelled of lavender. “I’m giving you this because your mum can’t. You still have family that love you, Seb.”
Broken by his sobbing, Seb lifted his arms and hugged her back.
Chapter 44
“I thought it would be harder to get here,” Reyes said, slightly out of breath from the run.
SA looked at her, unable to respond.
A window on their left gave them a view into the ballroom with the transmitter in the centre of it. It stood as a large metal antenna at least four metres tall. Take that down and they could get out of there. Reyes looked at the empty room it sat in. “And we’ve done it with time to spare.” She rested against a nearby wall. “Just let me get my breath back.”
They had to walk down a short corridor to access the ballroom. Two more doors between them and stopping Enigma. All of the others had opened automatically. Everything had been a little too easy. However, despite having to keep their guard raised, they didn’t yet have a good reason to stop. They couldn’t defend against a bad feeling. Until it became more tangible, they had to keep going.
One final deep inhale to fill her lungs, Reyes nodded at SA and walked towards the penultimate door. It opened with a whoosh, but before she could step through it, SA grabbed her left bicep in a hard grip and dragged her back. It forced Reyes to pull in a sharp breath, her anger spiking in reaction to the pain. It settled when she looked at her friend. First, SA wouldn’t hurt her unless she had a very good reason. Second, SA would kick her arse if it came to trading blows. Still irritable, she shrugged as she twisted from SA’s grip and said, “What?”
When SA pointed through the window, Reyes saw it. “Oh.”
Two doors at the other end of the large room where they hadn’t been a moment ago. Much like the long room Sparks had obliterated, the doors were invisible until they weren’t. A seemingly unending line of guards ran in through each one. They moved into the room and spread out, filling one end and holding their weapons at the ready. Although, it didn’t look like they’d seen Reyes and SA yet.
While watching them, Reyes let go of a long exhale. “It looks like we have a battle on our hands, then.”
A sharp shake of her head, SA pointed her own thumb at her chest.
It took all Reyes had to stop herself from laughing. “You think I’m going to let you in there on your own?”
A nod this time. It suggested Reyes didn’t have a choice.
“Why would I do that?”
At that moment, SA raised her right hand. She held the leveller in it. When Reyes saw she had the pin in her left, it took a second for her to find her words. Unable to take her eyes from the armed explosive, she finally said, “Oh my. When did you decide this was a suicide mission?”
Obviously SA didn’t reply.
“Surely there are other options.”
SA’s fine and crescent-shaped eyebrows lifted as she looked from Reyes to the guards rushing into the ballroom. The glint of crystal everywhere, Reyes had never seen a building so beautiful, and they were going to destroy it.
At least one hundred guards in the room now, more were still coming in. The two of them stood no chance if they wanted to fight them. But she couldn’t let SA die alone.
Just before Reyes could speak, SA did. “I need to do this on my own.”
It sent Reyes stumbling back a couple of steps. She’d never heard her talk before. Other than singing, she didn’t think any of the others had heard her voice either. “You … you can talk?”
SA stepped towards Reyes and stared into her eyes. With a pinch of her brow, she spoke. Her voice sounded like it belonged to an angel. “Please, let me do this. You can see we won’t survive. It makes more sense for one of us to die than it does for both of us. And either way, I’m going in there.”
“What about Seb?”
Tears filled her brilliant eyes before she looked at the ground. Drops fell from her face to the stalt below. “Believe me, I’ve thought about that. I love him more than any other being I’ve ever met, but I can’t be so selfish as to put my happiness before the fate of the galaxy.”
“You don’t have to.”
“Huh?”
“Let me do it.”
It took several shakes of SA’s head before she finally said, “No. This was my idea. I’d rather die myself than live with the guilt of sending you in there.”
Her head still spinning, Reyes tried to find an appropriate response. She looked from the grenade in SA’s hand back to her friend’s grief-buckled face. When SA took a slow step towards the room with the guards in it, the door to the small corridor opened again.
Reyes followed. “I can’t let you do this on your own.”
“Don’t be a fool, Reyes.” SA took another step away.
“We can find a way out. We can destroy the transmitter and survive this. Look at all of the other things we’ve made it through. Why not this?”
A slight sag to her frame, SA shook her head. “Look at it in there.”
Reyes looked to her left through the window again and watched more guards flood into the place. They hadn’t seen her or SA yet. When they did, it would be game over. But they were the Shadow Order. They always found a way. Besides, she’d lost too many people; she couldn’t lose any more.
Had
Reyes not been watching the guards, she would have seen it before it happened. Instead, it took for the whoosh of the automatic door closing for Reyes to look back at SA on the other side of it.
Reyes lunged for the sensor to open the door again, but before she could trigger it, SA shot the control panel on the other side, locking the door in place.
Steel in her eyes, SA stared through the small window at Reyes, her beautiful voice muffled because of the barrier between them. “You don’t have a choice now.”
While looking from SA to the guards, Reyes started to cry. “What are you doing?”
“I’m doing this on my own. Tell Seb I love him.” SA looked to her right. Enigma’s army came forward in a wave. Her voice quickened when she said, “Now go. Save yourself and get our friends off this cursed planet. They need you much more than I do right now. You’ll be more useful to them than you will dying in here.”
Despite remaining in front of the door in the hope it would somehow open, Reyes quickly gave up. A blurred view of her friend, she watched the yellow-skinned woman raise her grenade at the window to the ballroom. The guards needed to see what she’d come armed with. They slowed their charge towards her.
SA then pressed her palm against the small window separating them. Reyes pressed the other side, the touch of the glass cold.
“I’ll give you two minutes to get out of here,” SA said. “Any more than that and I’ll be pushing my luck.”
When SA pulled her hand away and made a shooing motion with it, Reyes nodded at her friend, blew her a kiss, turned around, and ran away from her. Tears ran down her face, and her weak legs barely carried her, but she had to get out of there. The others might need her. SA was right: there seemed little point in all of them dying.
Chapter 45
While Seb stood on the roof, holding his aunt, a deep sadness crashed into him. It forced him back a few steps. The contact of anyone would have been too much, especially her, a stranger. His hand covering his heart, he tried to ride out its now erratic beat. A feeling he’d never felt before. His head spun as he tried to make sense of it. Pain and suffering, it almost overwhelmed him. A drop more and he wouldn’t be able to hold it in his heart. His mind then separated from his body, leaving his physical form behind with her on the cold and blustery roof.
Prophecy: A Space Opera: Book Seven of The Shadow Order Page 14