“No, don’t do anything,” Cade instructed. “Just holster your weapons and stay put unless I say so.”
Rokura in hand, Cade stalked through the forest, trying to keep an eye on all possible angles. Each step was taken with uncertainty as he became acutely aware of every detail that surrounded him. The crunch of leaves beneath his feet; the scent of the flora pouring down from the trees; the feeling of thistles brushing against his pant legs. Everything was heightened, richer. Deeper. Cade tried to focus whatever it was that he was experiencing, but he felt overwhelmed instead. This was the Rokura at work, and Cade had no idea what it was doing to him, nor did he know where he was being led. The thought crossed his mind that whoever this former Paragon was, he had clearly gone to great lengths to keep hidden; for the first time, Cade considered the possibility that it was best that he stayed that way.
Cade heard a whistling sound coming from his left, racing toward him. He turned, but only in time for his face to greet an incoming quarter staff. The staff careened off his nose, busting it; blood splattered all over Cade’s face, and he dropped to one knee. He recovered immediately and pointed the Rokura forward as blood drained into his mouth and over his chin. He turned and saw a man retrieving the quarter staff that’d struck him in the face; it was lodged in a tree’s trunk, though it easily came loose.
“You should be better than this,” the man said, calmly and quietly. “Why aren’t you?”
The man turned, and Cade got his first clear view of his attacker; he wore a silken black shirt—collared and fastened closed with elaborate pins instead of buttons—with loose-fitting pants that matched his top. His clothing was frayed and worn, like he hadn’t changed it in some time. More important, he was young. Around Cade’s age, which made him too young to be the former Paragon Cade sought. And that was just great. Cade had gone searching for one lunatic and found another.
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Cade said, spitting blood. “But if a fight is what you’re looking for, then stop messing around and come face me.”
“Challenge accepted,” the man said, smiling. He removed a gray cloth from his waistband, stretched it over the bridge of his nose, then tied the two strands tight behind his head. The man blinded himself. “But let’s at least try to make this fight fair.”
“So, you’re a crazy person,” Cade said, feeling weirded out and a little uneasy.
“My name is Kobe Saja,” Kobe said, walking toward Cade. “But don’t worry about introductions; I already know you, Cade Sura. And I know that weapon in your hands. It does not belong to you.”
Kobe’s walk turned into a run just before he leapt into the air—unusually high, Cade swore—and brought both of his quarter staffs toward Cade. Cade blocked them with the Rokura and tried to push Kobe back, but by the time he shifted his weight forward, Kobe had already dropped down and swept Cade’s legs out from under him. Cade landed on his back, hard.
Luckily, Kobe didn’t use this window to hit Cade again. He circled Cade, taunting him with his concealed glare, waiting for him to get to his feet. “You should be faster than this, Rai. More agile. What are you waiting for?”
Cade growled as he got back into position. He didn’t like this Kobe Saja, whoever he was. He didn’t like his blind-warrior shtick. And he especially didn’t like getting his ass kicked. “You always talk this much?” Cade asked, gripping the Rokura tightly. It felt heavy in his hands, weighed down by his fear of what it might do at any moment. “Or are you being annoying just for me?”
Kobe came in for another attack, making short, rapid strikes with his staffs. Cade managed to deflect Kobe’s blows, using both ends of the Rokura to fight off the rapid-fire assault. Kobe was nimble and fast, and every move he made was precise. How he managed any of this without the use of sight, Cade had no idea. For the moment, all he knew was that Kobe’s hits were coming at him nonstop, and he had to move as fast as he could to barely defend himself. He hoped for an opening, a window in which he could push Kobe back, but he had the sinking suspicion that wasn’t going to happen. Just once, Cade thought, it would be nice to fight someone who wasn’t preternaturally skilled at kicking ass.
“Faster!” Kobe yelled. “Listen to yourself—you’re winded! You’re weak!”
“GGGRRRAAAHH!” Cade yelled and shoved the Rokura forward so it slammed against Kobe’s quarter staffs. When he did so, Cade felt a surge of power, of strength, and he knew it wasn’t just him feeling it; Kobe was knocked back about fifteen feet from where he had been standing.
“Better,” Kobe said, leaping back to his feet. “But I shouldn’t need to goad you. I shouldn’t need to push you.”
Cade shook his head, feeling the adrenaline of the moment still surging through him. “What are you talking about? Push me into what?”
Kobe scoffed, then he threw his quarter staffs to the ground. “Into having conviction,” Kobe said as he drew a small sword from his back.
Guided by the Rokura, Cade rushed forward to meet Kobe, and they locked their weapons together. They exchanged blow after blow, each defending himself against what the other came at him with. Cade swung low, and Kobe leapt over the Rokura; Kobe plunged at Cade, and Cade dodged, elbowing Kobe in his nose as his momentum carried him forward. Blood poured from his nostrils, which made Cade smile because now they were even. But Kobe was back on the offensive before Cade could wipe the grin from his face.
“You lack discipline!” Kobe snarled as their weapons entangled, bringing them close. “It’s no wonder you and your cowardly Masters have failed to keep the galaxy safe. It’s no wonder you fail to master the weapon you hold in your hands!”
“Shut. Up!” Cade yelled just before they drove so hard into each other that they had no other choice but to push back.
Cade and Kobe circled one another, a tense dance that seemed to only fuel Kobe’s rage. Cade, on the other hand, felt like he was fading; whatever surge he’d experienced—because of the Rokura, he was certain—was dwindling. And that meant trouble should Kobe attack again.
“People counted on you, Rai. Real people. You were supposed to protect them, not sit idle in your mystical castle as Praxis set the galaxy on fire. What is the Well waiting for?”
“We’ve saved systems,” Cade argued. “We’ve prevented war from consuming the galaxy.”
“Lies! You know the Well let Praxis do as they please,” Kobe spat, wiping blood off his lips. “Ask any system Praxis has annexed; the war you’ve allegedly saved us from has been happening for years. People out there have lost everything. And you? You’ve lost nothing.”
“Don’t you tell me what I’ve lost,” Cade barked.
“What—your brother? I’ve lost my entirely family. My home. My world. Romu was thrown into darkness while you and all your other keepers of peace failed to muster the temerity to do what needed to be done to have your vaunted peace.”
Cade felt a sting deep within him, and it made him wince. He knew all about what happened to Romu, the rebellion that led to massacre that led to the killing of its star. It all happened in Cade’s first year at the Well, back when he was just a student, just a kid. Still, Cade couldn’t help but feel guilty. Because if Cade was just a kid when all this went down, then so was Kobe. And not just a kid—an orphaned refugee jettisoned from a dying planet to survive the wilds of the galaxy. All Cade’s life, the Well had taught him that the tragedy on Romu could have been avoided through nonviolent resistance and peaceful negotiations. But it was all nonsense. It was just the Masters exonerating their own responsibility. Sure, the Well had their reasons for not getting involved, but none of them conveyed a sincere belief that protests and diplomacy would keep Praxis from storming the gates of Romu. The only truth that Cade could conclude was that the Well wasn’t prepared for Praxis. Its leadership wasn’t unified, and by the time the Masters truly grasped what they were up against, it was too late. They were overmatched. The Well could handle planetary squabbles and deliver aid; it could even protect syste
ms that Praxis had only a fleeting interest in. But preventing genocide because a system had the misfortunate of being of strategic value to Praxis? For that, the Well would need a savior, and Cade now realized how monstrous it was for his home to have wasted so much time searching for the Paragon while countless lives slipped through its fingers. Cade would rather see the Well try and fail; he’d rather they all go down fighting.
Anything would be better than culpability through negligence.
“I—I’m sorry,” Cade stammered. “I didn’t know.”
“I don’t want your apology,” Kobe said, holding his sword forward once again. “It’s too late for that.”
Kobe launched into a furious attack, and Cade knew he wouldn’t be able to defend himself. Without the Rokura giving him additional strength and acumen, he was as good as Kobe’s sparring dummy. Cade blocked and dodged as best he could, but it was only a matter of moments before Kobe landed a kick directly into Cade’s solar plexus, and he followed it by slicing a chasm into Cade’s bicep. Cade’s body slumped under the pain, and Kobe wasted no time sending Cade to the ground; he punched his sword’s hilt against the back of Cade’s head, dropping Cade to all fours. Cade staggered to get to his feet, only to fall right back down again. Vertigo spun his head so hard he felt like the world might turn upside down at any moment. Maybe it already had.
Cade closed his eyes tight, and when he opened them, Kobe had the tip of his sword pointed at his face; with it, he lifted Cade’s head by his chin, exposing his neck. Then, Kobe flicked his sword over to Cade’s carotid artery. It would take hardly the effort of drawing a breath for Kobe to slice his blade across Cade’s lifeline.
“Cade Sura, you are supposed to be better. You should be bett—”
A step behind Kobe, Kira pointed her sidewinder directly at Kobe’s head.
“Do anything to him, and you die,” she said. “Make a move, and you die. Clear?”
Cade felt the heat of the sword’s steel pull away from his neck, which he took as a good sign. But then he heard Kobe start to laugh, which he took as a bad sign.
“Very heroic,” he mirthfully said as he lowered the blindfold from his eyes. “Too bad I can have you and each one of your friends exterminated at a moment’s notice.
Now it was Kira’s turn to laugh. “Oh, yeah? You and what army?”
“This one,” Kobe said, his satisfaction palpable.
Kira stopped laughing, and Cade stopped feeling good about their odds of getting off Mithlador alive.
Cade’s vertigo diminished enough for him to look up and see the trouble that was coming from every direction. Stunned, Cade got to his feet as soldiers, dressed in green uniforms that camouflaged them with their surroundings and armed with TX-18 automatic blasters, walked out of the dense forest and created a circle around Cade, Kira, Mig, and 4-Qel. They kept moving forward, and the circle got tighter and tighter until the four of them were knit together in a tight cluster.
This couldn’t happen; Cade wouldn’t allow this to happen. He wanted to curse the Rokura and destroy it just out of spite. Why it had gone through such lengths to kill him was a mystery; if the weapon wanted him dead, it could have made it happen much sooner and saved Cade a lot of hassle. But that wasn’t the point. The Rokura wanting him dead was one thing. Killing his friends too was something Cade wasn’t about to abide.
“I say we blindly open fire at our enemies,” 4-Qel said quietly. “There’s dignity in taking at least a few of them with us.”
“I still have an explosive in my pack,” Mig said. “Cade, reach in there as fast as you can and activate it.”
“We move on three,” Kira ordered. “One—”
“Your beef isn’t with my friends,” Cade said, projecting his voice for everyone to hear as he took a step away from his group. He felt trigger fingers twitch all around him. “You have a problem with me, so take it up with me. Let my friends go.”
“It’s too late for sentimental gestures, Rai,” Kobe said, pacing arrogantly just beyond Cade’s reach. “Your fate is in our hands; it has been since the moment you landed on this planet.”
“I may not have the conviction or whatever it is you expect, but I’ll tell you this: You hurt these people, and I’ll do whatever it takes to use this weapon to blast your soul into oblivion.”
Kobe took a hostile step forward, positioning himself directly in Cade’s face.
“I’d love to see you try,” he said. “I’m waiting for it. We’re all waiting for you to—”
“ENOUGH!” a voice yelled, echoing throughout the area.
Kobe froze. His gaze, hard and angry, remained fixed on Cade, even as the soldiers surrounding them lowered their blasters. Cade took a step back to rejoin his friends, and he could feel the rigidity in all of them. Well, just Kira and Mig; 4-Qel, even by a drone’s standards, seemed perfectly at ease in this situation.
“What is happening?!” Mig yelled, nearly out of breath from the tension.
The soldiers in front of Cade stepped aside, revealing a clean view of a man just as he stepped out from a copse of trees. He was an older man with a graying beard and the beginnings of wrinkles around his eyes; a scar ran from his forehead down and over his left eye—which was milky white, with no pupil—and over his cheek. He wore the same black outfit as Kobe, with a pack slung across his chest and his sleeves elongated to conceal how much of his right arm was mechanical. Cade saw that his hand and wrist were prosthetics, but there was no telling where the robotic replacements ended.
As Cade met his eyes, the Rokura surged. He knew: This was the man he was looking for.
“You’re him,” Cade said. “You’re the Paragon.”
“My name is Percival White,” he said in a gruff voice. “And I don’t really talk about all that Chosen One business anymore, though I suppose we’re going to have to.”
“Maybe we can have a nice chat over some tea after you order your men to stand down,” Kira interjected.
Percival laughed, a casual, even friendly chuckle. Like threatening to kill a bunch of strangers was nothing for anyone to get worked up about. “Sure thing,” he said, and the soldiers surrounding Cade, Kira, Mig, and 4-Qel went at ease.
“Don’t get mad about what just happened,” Percival said. “Consider it a test, nothing more, nothing less. Now come, we have much to discuss and not a lot of time to do it.”
Cade felt his friends start to budge, but he held out his arms to hold them back. He didn’t like being messed with; he didn’t like not knowing who these people were, and he wasn’t about to start following anyone who, just a minute ago, was primed to kill him—even if it was just a “test.”
“No,” Cade refused. “We’re not going anywhere with you until you do some talking. Namely, who are all you people? What are you doing here?”
Percival sighed. “I suppose Valis wouldn’t tell you and risk you not making the journey to come find me. This isn’t easy to explain, Cade, so I hope you can keep an open mind. I’m sure you’ve already begun to learn that this galaxy is far more complex than the Masters led you to believe.”
Cade looked around. The soldiers. The weapons. The secrecy. The downed warship. His heart sank as he knew exactly what Percival was going to say just before he said it.
“We are the Rising Suns.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
“I like the way this woman thinks.”
They had gathered in a small enclave that, like many parts of the forest, had a natural canopy that concealed everything happening on the ground from any prying eyes looking down from above. Like a Praxis patrol. It was perfect for covering the Rising Sun encampment that was hidden away there. Percival had asked what they expected to achieve on Mithlador—why they had bothered coming, in so many words. Before Cade could give Percival the most obvious answer—to deliver him the Rokura and have saving the galaxy be his problem—Kira jumped in and divulged her plans to make a bomb that would annihilate the Praxis War Hammer. Cade couldn’t blame her for seiz
ing the opportunity: Here Kira was, on the planet that held the missing piece to her prized weapon, talking to someone who had no equal when it came to blowing up all things Praxis. Cade could tell Kira was a little awestruck by Percival, and it bothered him. A lot of things about Percival bothered Cade, like the fact that he was the leader of the Rising Suns, which he wasn’t totally okay with given his knowledge of their morally dubious—to say the least—warfare tactics. Or that his method of testing Cade was through a fight that, at the time, he thought was to the death. Or the way Kira was all smitten with him and his gang of freedom fighters. Cade tried to convince himself that he didn’t like the idea of her idolizing a terrorist, but that wasn’t it. Even with his misgivings about Percival, he thought “terrorist” was a little too extreme of a label. The difference between a freedom fighter and a terrorist all came down to which side you were on, and the more Cade thought about it, he figured he was closer to Percival’s side of active resistance than he was the Well’s side of theoretical resistance. Still, Kira’s interest in him bugged him, and he was distracted from the conversation at hand until it dawned on him: He was jealous. And rather than explore why he felt that way, Cade quickly shifted his focus back to the matter at hand. He’d sooner debate the destruction of the galaxy’s evil superpower than talk about whatever burgeoning feelings he harbored for his partner in rebellion.
“Sorry, but I’m going to interrupt you guys, because I have to know,” Mig said. “Did you take down that warship? Was that you guys?”
“It was us, yes,” Percival said.
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