Black Star Renegades

by Michael Moreci

  “I truly detest these jerks,” Kira said as she punched a fresh charge into her sidewinder.

  “Come on,” Cade said, leading them out of the dojo. Their first step was met with debris pouring down on them from above. Cade looked up with a sour grimace. “We’ll worry about dismantling the Praxis fleet once we’re out of here.”

  Cade and Kira hugged the side of the dojo as they pushed forward. Just ahead, covering the area between where they were and where they needed to be, Rai and ground troopers met the enemy gunners and sentries before they could reach any of the Well’s structures. While they appeared to be doing a good job of keeping them back, there was no telling what kind of numbers awaited in drop ships that might still be making their approach or what it would take, other than retrieving the Rokura, to make Praxis leave. But like Kira said, one step at a time. The problem was that Kira’s “step one” now included a trip through a veritable battlefield. Because there was no getting around it—the only way out was through. Gripping the Rokura, Cade hoped it was going to behave more like it did in the dojo and less like it did in the spire. It better, Cade thought, because he couldn’t stomach the idea of anyone else dying when, seemingly, this crazy weapon could’ve done something to stop it. But Cade felt something in the Rokura, and maybe he was crazy, but he got the impression that as repulsed as it was by being commanded by him, it loathed the idea of serving some other nobody even more. Cade was the devil the Rokura knew, and having won the battle of two evils, he was confident that the Rokura, at the very least, wasn’t going to try to kill him. It might even help him. On its own terms, of course, but Cade could live with that. He was about to turn to Kira and tell her to follow his—and the Rokura’s—lead, when she shoved him out of her way and fired off a single blast from her sidewinder. Cade turned in time to see a sentry, just coming up the stone pathway toward their position, take Kira’s blast directly to its chest and fall to the ground.

  “I know what you’re thinking, Cade, and yeah, there’s a lot of enemies between us and my ship. But that’s just a bonus, because we’re going to take out every single one that stands in our way. You got me?”

  Cade nodded and together they closed in on the battle. As they did, Cade’s attention became attuned to the screams he heard—screams that cut through the blaster fire and explosions. He tried to pinpoint the source of the agonized cries, but the battle, from a distance, was too chaotic. It wasn’t until he and Kira reached a raised platform just outside the bloody fray that he saw what was happening.

  Fatebreakers, four of them, cut a line straight through the battle, mowing down everyone—Rai and troopers alike—in their path.

  From the middle of the battlefield, one of them spotted Cade—their leader, Cade assumed, judging by the red Mohawk that ran down his helmet—and from his position in the middle of the battlefield, he pointed his shido directly at him.

  “We need to run,” Cade gasped.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  But there was nowhere to go.

  Cade turned and darted back the way they came, but he halted in his tracks after just a few steps. An Intruder rocketed overhead, unleashing a punishing assault on the dojo’s already brittle facade and rooftop. Slabs of the building’s exterior erupted and avalanched to the ground, obstructing the only path that could lead Cade and Kira back the way they came. Cade supposed they could dig their way through, but not before any one of the Fatebreakers got to them first.

  No, the only way to go was forward. Cade went to grab Kira’s hand to pull her along with him, but even she was frozen by what she was seeing.

  “Cade—what are those things?” Kira asked.

  “Oh, just some old friends of mine. They like to call themselves the Fatebreakers, apparently,” Cade said, feeling the leader’s eyes burning a hole through him. “They’re Ga Halle’s secret murder squad. One of them killed Tristan and tried his best to kill me as well.”

  “That … complicates things,” Kira replied.

  “Just a little.”

  “Okay,” Kira said, drawing a deep breath, and the situation, in. “What do we do?”

  They couldn’t just stand there, Cade knew that much. Ticus was being blasted to bits, and if the Well fell—if Cade fell—the most powerful weapon in the galaxy would be captured and delivered into the hands of a tyrant. So, Cade had to do something. He knew the things he couldn’t do: He couldn’t run, couldn’t hide, and he couldn’t even fathom fighting back. Taking on a lone Fatebreaker was one thing; taking on a group was something else entirely. Something like suicide. That left Cade with only one course of action: He had to turn the tables on his enemies. The Fatebreakers took Cade, and the Well, by surprise; now it was Cade’s turn to return the favor.

  “Look, I have an idea, but I’m going to need you to deny all of your instincts to make it work.”

  “Meaning what?” Kira said.

  “Meaning you’re going to run through that battle as fast as you can, and you’re not going to kill anybody. For real. No killing.”

  Kira eyed Cade skeptically. “And what are you going to do?” she scoffed.

  “What I always do,” Cade sighed. “Something stupid.”

  * * *

  Cade jumped into the fray alongside the Well ground troopers and his fellow Rai and, working as a collective unit, they overpowered Praxis’s ground-assault battery. The sentries were hardly a match, and even the gunners, with their AI armor, couldn’t withstand the Rais’ elite fighting skills. As Echoes took to the skies and repelled Intruders, the infrastructure of the Well—or what was left of it—got the defense it needed. Things seemed to be going well, except Cade knew what was really happening. Praxis didn’t care about crippling the Well or even winning this fight. All that mattered was getting the Fatebreakers in and giving them space to hunt down the Rokura. Everything else—the skirmishes happening on the ground and in the air—was just window dressing.

  Cade weaved through the battle. His goal wasn’t to dismantle drones or down gunners; he needed spectacle. He needed a distraction. Wasting as little time as possible, Cade navigated the fracas with his sights set on reaching the Fatebreakers. He dodged an overhead attack from a sentry’s quanta staff, then crushed its head with the Rokura. When a power gunner, armed with a compression pike, came charging at Cade, he unholstered his sidewinder, set it to maximum charge, and shot out a chunk of the ground. The gunner, unable to slow his momentum before he hit the hole in the ground, stumbled forward, and Cade sliced the Rokura right through him. Cade watched the gunner fall, and when he turned his attention forward again, he saw all the heads of those around him turning his way. By now, everyone from the Well and Praxis both knew who Cade was, or at least they thought they did. Catching the Paragon in action—and Cade had to admit, his contributions so far were pretty slick—was an attention-grabbing moment. This was exactly what he wanted, even if the second part of his plan—what needed to happen once he had all eyes on him—scared the crap out of him. But at least he was off to a promising start: The Paragon was here, so everyone make way.

  And make way they did. A lane cleared directly in front of Cade, and at the end of that lane his real adversaries awaited. Four Fatebreakers, covered by bloodstained black-and-gold armor, were no more than fifteen yards away, catching their breath as they readied themselves for a fight.

  Fury began to overwhelm fear. As Cade stared at his four enemies, all he could see was one: the monster that killed his brother. His first thought was to abandon his plan and turn the Rokura loose on all four Fatebreakers, forgetting about the consequences. With grim satisfaction, he’d watch them all obliterate from time and space, and he’d let the remaining Praxis forces flee with a poignant message to deliver to their leader: Do not mess with the Paragon. But Cade wasn’t eager about taking that kind of chance. Just because the Rokura might be willing to save his life didn’t mean it was ready to eradicate his enemies because he said so. If Cade banked on that happening and lost, and the Rokura was taken from him,
the consequences would be bad, to say the least. Twilight would fall on the galaxy, and maybe not just figuratively. Cade’s only recourse was to stick to his plan, even if, in terms of how crazy the plan was, it outpaced counting on the Rokura by only the slightest margin.

  With a saunter in his step, Cade strolled toward the Fatebreakers. He held the Rokura tightly in his right hand, hoping it didn’t do anything unexpected. The lead Fatebreaker wiped the blood off his shido and stepped forward to meet Cade. When they reached a few paces beyond striking distance, they stopped, and Cade began to wonder why this person wasn’t trembling at the sight of the Rokura. Instead of fear, he displayed reverence. The Fatebreaker bowed toward Cade, and the other three did the same.

  “Oh, good,” Cade said, feeling relieved. “You’re going to surrender.”

  “The bow was for the Rokura, not you, you shit,” the leader sneered, his words crackling like wood in a fire.

  “Nice mouth you have on you,” Cade replied, needing to keep the Fatebreaker at bay. “I don’t remember your friend—you know, the one I wiped out back on Quarry—being so crude. And speaking of your friend, which one of you wants to see him first?”

  The leader released an exasperated breath. He then removed his helmet and placed it on the ground next to him. Like the Fatebreaker Cade encountered before, this one too was an older man. He had thinning blond hair and soft wrinkles woven across his face. His soft blue eyes hinted at a man with more compassion than Cade assumed a brutal killer would possess, and that belied the viciousness of his words. “I’m going to say this once and only once, so please listen carefully: Deliver us the Rokura, or we will kill you, right here, right now. You will surely get to some of us, but not all. And those remaining will reduce your temple and bases to ash before plunging this planet into eternal darkness.”

  Cade nodded, acting like he was considering his enemy’s threat. “That’s an attractive offer, and very specific. I have a response for you, but I want to make sure you listen carefully. Are you ready?”

  With half a smile on his face, the leader nodded.

  “You’re gross, and nobody here is intimidated by a word that comes out of your gross mouth.”

  As if that was the answer he expected, the leader let out a disappointed sigh as he picked up his helmet and put it back on. “So be it,” he said and dropped into a fighting position, knees bent, shido directed forward. The other three Fatebreakers did the same and began to encroach on Cade. Had he not detected the sound of a whirring engine coming from just over the ridge, Cade would have assumed he was moments away from death. But this was just where the fun part began.

  “Your master is going to be disappointed,” Cade said, aiming the Rokura directly at the lead Fatebreaker, “because you’ve forced me to unleash my magic.”

  Now it was the leader’s turn to flinch. “Magic?” he asked, his voice conveying equal parts confusion and exasperation. “What are you even talking about?”

  “What am I talking about?” Cade asked as he raised his left hand and pantomimed a sidewinder’s dual blasters, using his pinkie and pointer fingers as barrels and his thumb as the trigger. “I’m talking about this.”

  Cade dropped his thumb and the exact moment he did, proton fire erupted through the mountain’s mist, directly at the Fatebreakers.

  The blasts sent them scrambling; one blast only narrowly missed one of its targets, landing so close it propelled a Fatebreaker ten feet in the air, spinning him hard into a pile of the Floating Temple’s rubble. Yet somehow, despite the assault coming from overhead, the lead Fatebreaker was undaunted, refusing to run for cover as the others had. He charged Cade, leaping off his feet and bringing his shido down on him. Cade, not expecting such determination, was caught off guard and barely moved in time to avoid the strike. He dove to his right, and by the time he turned back around, the leader was on him, swinging his shido directly at Cade’s head. Cade raised the Rokura in time to defend himself, but the Fatebreaker pushed him back, pressing their faces together.

  “You should have used the Rokura to obliterate everyone in your path. Why haven’t you?”

  Cade, grunting under the leader’s strength, rolled out from their locked position. The leader stumbled forward, just a few steps, but quickly regained his footing. “Because that kind of response is crazy,” Cade said, pacing backward to put some distance between them. “When someone disagrees with Praxis, you take away their sun, or you subject their planet to a military occupation. That’s not a healthy way to solve problems.”

  “Galactic order is a zero-sum game, but no one has the courage to embrace that. No one except Ga Halle. Come with us, obey my master, and we can bring the galaxy peace at last.”

  “Peace? It sounds a lot more like domination to me.”

  The leader shrugged. “As if you can have one without the other.”

  Behind Cade, two other Fatebreakers regained their poise and started to close in. A circle was beginning to form around him. “If you really think you can kill your way to peace,” Cade said, “all you’re going to have is a bunch of dead people everywhere you go. Now, if you’ll excuse me, my ride’s here.”

  Cade took off running as fast as he could toward the mountain’s edge. The Fatebreakers pursued, but hesitantly; it seemed like Cade had nowhere to go. But as he neared the edge of the mountain—and the fatal drop one step past it—a starship materialized through the mist, laying down suppressive fire that screamed past Cade’s head.

  “Watch it!” he yelled, though he knew Kira couldn’t hear him from her seat in the cannon’s hull.

  The Rubicon, Kira’s custom-made ship that she had constructed over the skeleton of an industrial junker vessel, came into full view. Its oval shape—like an egg turned on its side—was unlike any other in the Well’s fleet, or any fleet; at its rear, making the ship even more distinct, was an oversized transparent cockpit shielding—a detail that captured Kira’s boldness. She said the shielding was to give her better range of visualization, but anyone who knew her understood it was there so her enemies could see her in the moment just before she blew them out of the sky.

  When Cade was just steps away from the Rubicon, its body flipped on its side while the cockpit remained static. The entry hatch dropped down and Cade leapt; he hit the platform with a thud, but he was safely on board. As the Rubicon pulled up and away, Cade locked his sights on the Fatebreakers until the entry hatch closed. He had a feeling he hadn’t seen the last of them.

  Cade was dusting himself off when Kira grabbed him and pulled him toward the gunner hull.

  “You survived. Good,” she said. “But, so we’re clear, the next time you make me turn my ship over to the AI’s controls, it will be the last thing you do.”

  “You know, you might be a little too attached to your ship. And, thanks.”

  “Don’t thank me yet,” Kira said, strapping a comms device to Cade’s head. “You think you can manage the cannon?”

  Cade, exaggerating his offense, replied, “Yes, Kira, I think I can manage the cannon. Why?”

  “Because I’m taking control of this ship,” Kira said, heading toward the cockpit. “We still have a dogfight to punch through if we want to mass jump out of here.”

  * * *

  The sky above Ticus burned with war. Under Kira’s deft controls, the Rubicon maneuvered gracefully through the aerial battlefield even as debris from unfortunate starfighters clogged the known flight corridors. The area beyond was punctuated by streams of crisscrossing proton fire, leaving the Rubicon with no option but to punch right through the battle. Cade, now positioned in the ship’s cannon seat at the bottom of the ship, heard Kira’s voice crackle through his headset. “We’re going in,” was all she said, and before Cade could respond, the Rubicon dropped sharply and then, just as quickly as it’d dropped, rose again and accelerated full throttle toward the heat of the battle.

  As the ship stabilized, Cade caught an eyeful that explained where Kira was taking them, and why. He gasped.
Just ahead, Intruders and Echoes exchanged proton volleys, the Intruders executing protective patterns around a Praxis warship that was making its slow descent toward Ticus. With its array of heavy artillery weaponry, Cade and Kira both knew that if allowed to park over their planet, it would deliver enough firepower to decimate whatever remained of the Well within minutes.

  “Focus your fire on the Intruders,” Kira ordered. “I’ll hit the warship with vapor torpedoes as we pass.”

  “Aye, aye,” Cade responded, even though he knew they should have been clearing a path to make their mass jump and get as far away from Ticus as possible. It was the tougher choice—fleeing—but it was also the safer one. They needed to get out and take the Rokura with them.

  But safe choices weren’t exactly Cade’s or Kira’s thing. Even though they didn’t speak it, they both knew they couldn’t leave the Well to ruin.

  Kira banked the Rubicon to port just as an Intruder cut off their approach with a burst of proton blasts. Cade spun around in his 360-degree cannon chair and returned fire, narrowly missing. As the Intruder turned to make its second attack approach, Kira dropped the Rubicon into a downward spiral and broke for the warship. The Intruder followed, and Cade was anxiously waiting for it to get back into range when he heard Kara yell, “We’ve got company!”

  Ahead, two more Intruders streaked toward their direction, firing as they came. Cade’s cannon hull hummed as the Intruders’ proton fire deflected off the Rubicon’s shields. He whipped his cannon around, returning fire that, at the very least, would impair them from getting off such clean shots. The Intruders, in response to Cade’s fire, both banked, firing wild shots that failed to connect with the Rubicon.

  “Shields are holding, but we’re down to sixty-four percent,” Kira informed Cade through the headset.

  As they neared the warship, Cade got a closer look at its artillery; “overkill” was the only word that came to mind. Even on something known as a warship, the destructive capacity was hard to comprehend. Its cannons were focused on crisscrossing Echoes that swarmed the ship’s vicinity, while torpedoes poked out of launch tubes across the exterior, a warning to anyone who dared to come close. Like Kira. Cade, for a moment, felt a kind of grim awe in the face of the warship; he’d never been this close to one before, and he could hardly process how massive it was. It was black as midnight with red streaks that looked like smears of its enemies’ blood; its helix shape allowed it to be covered in offensive weaponry, so no angle was safe from its assault. Cade’s chest tightened as he couldn’t help but imagine what kind of damage the warship’s artillery could inflict.