But this infomerchant—this arrogant, snobbish infomerchant—was making Ortzo second-guess his own philosophy. It would be so satisfying to wipe that smug look off his face through the application of vile and excessive torture. He’d scream and cry, he’d beg for it to stop, beg to know why Ortzo was doing this to him, but Ortzo wouldn’t relent. He wouldn’t say a word. Ortzo glanced at LO-7, his personal interrogation drone, and knew he was up to the task. LO-7 was a relic of the prekingdom era, a clunky, outdated model that was nothing more than a slender black metal body with two orange-tinted bulbs for eyes. But that’s why Ortzo liked him. He wasn’t one of these new drones who, supposedly, developed opinions and ideas and thoughts of their own. Ortzo commanded, and LO-7 obeyed.
The infomerchant was panting, but only slightly. LO-7 had just finished sanding off the fingernails on his left hand, which broke most men by the time the crude sander touched their second finger. But not the infomerchant. He’d been trained in how to withstand torture, which meant he was good at his job.
Which meant he knew something about this Cade Sura and the Rokura he possessed.
“Ready to answer my questions, infomerchant?” Ortzo asked.
“My name … is Valis Portnoy.”
Ortzo grabbed the infomerchant’s bloody hand and pulled it close. Valis’s body shook at his touch. Good, Ortzo thought. He wanted pain; he wanted fear.
“You are an infomerchant,” Ortzo said. “Nothing more.”
“You’re wasting your time,” the infomerchant said. “I take it your mission is important, yes? A Fatebreaker wouldn’t be wasting his time on this filthy planet if it wasn’t. Set me free, and I will help you. I know people on Kyysring; I know people across the galaxy. Let me be of use to the Praxis kingdom.”
Ortzo eyed the infomerchant like a predator its prey. He thought he was so smart, this infomerchant, and he was. Smarter than Ortzo, even. But Ortzo would just see how valuable intelligence and guile were when pitted against cruelty that knew no bounds. Every man had a breaking point, and Ortzo would find the infomerchant’s.
He flung the infomerchant’s hand back at him and smiled.
“You’ll be of use, infomerchant. You will be of use.”
Ortzo walked down the ramp of his starcruiser, breathing in the Kyysring air. He could taste its acrid stench with every inhalation, as if this planet’s many transgressions had somehow permeated its atmosphere. He detested the fact that Praxis hadn’t annexed this planet or, better yet, wiped it off the galactic map. Ortzo was more than ready to lead a campaign that would seize this cesspool in days, if that. The Kyysring outlaws, as they thought of themselves, had no organization or resources; they hardly had the territorial pride, or the will, required to resist. But Ga Halle refused. The galaxy needed Kyysring. It needed a place of indulgence and vice, a place where anyone could go and relieve themselves of whatever weighed them down. Their anger, their worries, their sadness. Its cure was only a mass jump away, and the galaxy needed that outlet. Because people without release grew discontent. And discontent led to protestation, which led to revolt. There was no future in quelling uprising after uprising, and Ortzo agreed with Ga Halle’s strategy. He just hated the need for a lesser evil to stem a greater one. Ortzo wanted a pure galaxy, one with no disruptions, no transgressions at all.
“Commander Ortzo,” a voice called from behind him. Ortzo turned to find Wexla, the most junior of the Fatebreakers. In his possession he had a man, an older, slightly overweight man who was draped in fine silks that were stained by the blood dripping from his nose and mouth. Wexla shoved the man forward by the nape of his neck, where he’d been holding him, and the man tumbled to the ground right in front of Ortzo.
“Who is this man?” Ortzo asked.
“His name is Bon, and I’ve been told he holds special value to the infomerchant.”
Ortzo looked down at the man, this Bon, and smiled. He even allowed himself a laugh. To think that he had flooded this planet with coin, ordered his Fatebreakers to turn over every suspect establishment without pity, and the key to locating Cade Sura and the Rokura came down to an affair of passion.
“Please,” Bon said, kneeling before Ortzo. “I don’t know why I’m here, I don’t—”
Ortzo grabbed Bon beneath his shoulder and raised him, gently, to his feet. He dusted his robes, straightening them so they hung evenly on his shoulders.
“Everything will be explained presently,” Ortzo said. He gestured to the opening of his ship, the ramp that led to the darkness within. “Come with me.”
Bon looked at the darkness, then back at Ortzo. He trembled in fear.
“There’s no other direction for you to go,” Ortzo said, and he grabbed hold of Bon’s elbow and led him up the ramp.
* * *
Ortzo got exactly what he wanted. He returned to the small room where the infomerchant was being held, leading Bon through the door. The look on the infomerchant’s face was brief—only a flash—but it was exactly what Ortzo hoped to see: recognition. They indeed knew each other.
The infomerchant tried to cover his tracks. “Who’s this? Another person you can torture to no end?” he asked.
“That depends on you,” Ortzo said as he petted the back of Bon’s head. “Do you want to see this man get hurt?”
Ortzo shrugged and feigned disinterest. “I’ve seen plenty people I don’t know get tortured. This will be no different.”
“We’ll see about that,” Ortzo said.
Ortzo turned to Bon, who was trembling. Ortzo took his hands and quietly shushed him.
“You have such delicate hands,” Ortzo said. “Let me guess: an artist?”
Bon tried to form the words he wanted to say, but his shivering jaw and uneven breathing prevented him from doing so.
“What’s that?” Ortzo asked, leaning in closer.
“A m-m-m-musi-musician,” Bon whispered.
“Aaaah,” Ortzo replied. “I was close. I’d imagine you use these to play your chosen instrument, correct?”
Bon nodded vigorously.
“I figured, and I must say how much I admire your talent. I love music. Listening to it, it brings me … solace.”
Slowly, Ortzo tied Bon’s hands to the table in front of him. He stood up and drew his shido.
“P-please,” Bon stammered. “No.”
“Oh, don’t beg me,” Ortzo countered. “Beg the man behind me.”
“Your games won’t work,” the infomerchant said. His voice didn’t waver, not for one second. Ortzo knew he was going to let him go through with what was about to happen. And it would be a senseless, wasted gesture.
But sometimes—and Ortzo knew he took this for granted often—the universe was full of surprises.
“Mithlador!” Bon screamed, just as Ortzo was about to bring his shido down on his wrists.
“Bon, you fool!” the infomerchant screamed.
“What was that?” Ortzo said, withdrawing his shido. He leaned close to Bon, who was still trembling, but less so. He had found strength in rebelling against his lover.
“Mithlador,” he repeated. “Whoever you’re looking for, Valis sent him to Mithlador. But I don’t know why, I swear.”
Ortzo patted Bon’s head. “I believe you,” he said, then he sliced his shido clear across Bon’s throat. The dying man’s head dropped back, and he gargled uncontrollably, choking on his own blood as he bled out. Ortzo wondered why he wasn’t covering his wound with his hands, trying, pointlessly as all the others did, to stop the bleeding. But then he remembered that his hands were still tied to the table. Ortzo sighed at Bon’s misfortune, then turned to face the infomerchant.
“Why Mithlador?” he asked.
“You know exactly why,” Valis snarled.
Ortzo shook his head at the futility of Valis’s efforts. His risk and his life would all be for naught.
“You shouldn’t have done that,” Ortzo said. “I promise you, the man Cade seeks will be of no use to him, assuming he even makes it t
hat far.”
Valis looked up at Ortzo and smiled an angry, spiteful smile. “The Rising Sun grows strong,” he said. “And Praxis’s end is nigh.”
“Our kingdom’s reign is just beginning,” Ortzo scoffed, then he ignited his shido and jammed it into the infomerchant’s chest. It was cathartic, putting an end to the infomerchant’s life, like he’d shed a layer of dead, cumbersome skin off his body. Maybe, he began to think, this planet wasn’t so useless after all.
Ortzo stepped back outside and summoned Wexla.
“Bring back all our Fatebreakers,” he ordered. “And find someone who can dispose of some excess waste within our ship. I want it gone and the ship scrubbed clean before we take off.”
As the other Fatebreakers gathered back at the ship, Ortzo sat cross-legged on the top of its entrance ramp, meditating. He extended himself outward and felt the universe falling into order all around him. Everything was coming together as it should.
Praxis’s rule of the galaxy was nearly complete.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
The unobstructed view through the Rubicon’s cockpit revealed a unique splendor of sky that Cade found stirring. A nearby nebula filtered the visible universe through a prism of purple, yellow, and green, granting luminous glow to the stars and planets that ordinarily would fade unnoticed into the tapestry of the universe. Cade sat with his legs crossed over one another, breathing his thoughts in and letting them exhale out. Gazing upon the universe, he felt awed, something he hadn’t experienced since he first arrived on Ticus and witnessed the immensity of the Floating Temple. Somewhere between then and now, he’d forgotten how vast and full of wonder the galaxy was; he’d forgotten what the oath he’d taken as a Rai, a defender of peace in the galaxy, really meant. Maybe everyone else at the Well had, too. Because every system that came under Praxis’s control, every planet that ceded to Praxis’s regime, was the Well’s failure. Mired in galactic diplomacy, lacking the courage to act, and suffering from a vacuum of strong leadership, the Well and its peacekeeping allies had lost their way.
They’d become passive in the face of evil.
They’d grown afraid.
The galaxy couldn’t abide either for a moment longer. Cade had taken an oath; Tristan had taken an oath. And despite Cade’s status within the Well, he wouldn’t let himself off the hook for allowing himself to grow comfortable, just like all his Masters and peers. It made him angry with himself; it made him disappointed. The thought moved something within him, and he realized what it was: The Rokura shared his feelings. Or at least it empathized, as strange as it sounded that he could emotionally connect with an object, or vice versa. He didn’t understand his connection to the weapon—maybe it was because of Tristan, or maybe the Rokura had the power to communicate with everyone—but it responded to Cade’s motivation to take action against Praxis. It made him feel like he ought to do whatever needed to be done in the fight against the rotten kingdom. Cade breathed in, he breathed out. Calm, he reminded himself, despite the growing fury he was feeling. It wasn’t good enough to defeat Praxis; every vestige of its existence had to be ground to dust and salted so it could never rise again. He had a vision of the Praxis fleet burning in the space above its own planet just as the planet itself, somehow, erupted into nothingness. But is that what Cade wanted to do? Did he really want to take this as far as genocide of the Praxis people? He breathed. In, then out. More images flooded Cade’s vision, of mayhem and destruction. It was the Rokura, pushing these premonitions into Cade’s mind. The Rokura wanted him to do more than fight Praxis. It wanted him to lead. It wanted him to annihilate. He breathed its thoughts in, then out. Destroy Praxis, the Rokura urged. Seize power.
Cade gasped, and his eyes darted open.
The silence of the cockpit was broken when the door slid open and someone came treading softly in.
“It’s nice, isn’t it?”
Kira stood a step behind Cade as he got to his feet, though he could tell that her focus was on the same swath of space he’d been admiring just moments ago.
“I’d live in this ship if I could,” she said.
Cade looked back at Kira and smiled. “You know, I think it would suit you,” he said.
“I never get tired of it. It’s all so big, so … grand. And I don’t care about any of that ‘it makes you feel small and puts things in perspective’ crap; what I’m saying is that it’s beautiful, and it makes me happy. I figure that’s good enough.”
Cade and Kira shared a smile, and then they both fixed their gazes on the magnificence before them.
“Cade,” Kira said, turning toward him. “There’s something you need to know.”
Kira started to unbutton her shirt.
“Oh,” Cade said, and he took a step back even though he knew how childish it made him look. “Is this, uh, are we—”
“Get ahold of yourself,” Kira said. “I’m not going to pounce. It’s easier to show you what I’m trying to say.”
Kira pulled the right side of her shirt off her shoulder, taking the top of her bra with it. Cade followed the scar he’d seen when they woke up on his ship together. He thought, at the time, that he had a sense of her wound, but seeing it again now, he realized he had no idea. The scar ran across Kira’s chest, from her sternum over her breast, ending just short of her shoulder blade. The scar was deep, that much Cade could tell, and if whatever sliced her had caught her any lower or deeper the wound would have been fatal. Kira was lucky, in a sense, though judging by the pained look on her face, luck was the furthest thing from her mind.
“My father did this to me,” she said. “He cut me open with a triblade while my mother tried to smuggle me off my home planet. He’d rather see me dead than free.”
Cade read the hurt in Kira’s face, and he couldn’t even pretend to understand the trauma she’d endured. It was hard to believe this could happen to Kira, of all people, and he wanted to know how. He wanted to know why. But, wisely, he recognized that this moment wasn’t about him, so he zipped his lips and let Kira say what she wanted to say, how she wanted to say it. His job was to listen.
“I don’t even know where to start,” Kira sighed. “See, my mother knew that getting me away from my father, getting me away from my home, was the only way to save me. My planet, my home … it was changing, and my mother knew that my only hope for survival was for me to travel as far away as possible. My father, he wanted to kill her, but he couldn’t. He couldn’t, because…”
Kira looked down and took a deep breath, readying herself for whatever she was about to say.
“Cade,” Kira said, locking him in her haunted gaze, “I’m from Praxis. That’s my home. But it’s all gone wrong, it’s all gone so terribly wrong, and my mother, at least in part, is to blame.”
“I don’t understand,” Cade said. “Wait, is your mom Ga Halle?”
“No, my mom is definitely not Ga Halle,” Kira replied with a touch of levity in her voice. “But she’s one of the people who helped give Ga Halle her power.
“See, Praxis is ruled by a caste system. There’s this group of people at the top, the Barons, who control everything. They’ve always controlled everything. The role is passed down from generation to generation, which makes the Barons the most powerful people on the planet.
“My mother is a Baron.”
Cade cupped his hand over his forehead and pivoted his head. “I don’t understand; how does your mom play any role in what Ga Halle does?”
Kira scoffed. “She doesn’t—not anymore. My father, from what I’ve been able to gather, keeps her locked up and has assumed her role as Baron. But before that happened, my mother helped something terrible happen. She, along with the other Barons, voted in favor of allowing Praxis—allowing Ga Halle—to use its newly developed technology to drain energy from a distant star. Ours was dying, Praxis itself was dying, and the idea was to take the power from another star to save our own. Out of this desperate need, the Barons, my mother included, gave Ga Halle this technolog
y. But they didn’t know—my mother certainly didn’t know—what Ga Halle was going to do with it. They thought Ga Halle would siphon small amounts of energy from distant stars that no planet relied on for life. But that, as the galaxy knows, is not how things went. Ga Halle showed her true intent—she killed Quarry, and my mother could only stand by, horrified, as the blood ran over her hands.
“The other Barons got in line. Generations of having power as a right bred into them forbade them from seeing the necessity of rejecting what was happening. But Praxis was safe, and so was their power, and nothing else matters to them. But not my mother. She fought back, and when she found out that she was going to be imprisoned for her resistance, she risked her life to do one last thing: She freed me. She got me off Praxis and told me to never look back.
“That was fifteen years ago, and I haven’t seen her since.”
“Kira, I—” Cade stammered as he tried to collect the air that’d been stolen from his chest while listening to Kira’s story. He empathized with the shame she must feel at being forced into a kind of complicity with Praxis’s turn to evil. But more than that, Cade connected to who Kira was, deep beneath her boasting and her swagger. Kira was a stray. Like Cade, like the pilots she recruited into her Omega Squadron. She was a person who was dumped on her own, dropped somewhere she didn’t naturally belong, and made to figure life out as she went. “I don’t know what to say,” he continued. “I—”
“You don’t have to say anything. I know. I live with it every day. I’m Praxis, and my family has the blood of countless innocents on its hands.”
“What?” Cade asked, his incredulity unable to be contained. “No. You do not share that responsibility. That belongs to Ga Halle. It belongs to your dad. Not your mom, and certainly not you.”
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