Flying the orb was easy enough. One stick for guidance, one for controlling the claws. Cade jammed the stick down, not knowing how temperamental its navigation was; the vigor with which he plunged the orb down nearly flipped it over and sent Cade flying over its side. He righted its movements, though, and set it on a course for Kira and 4-Qel. He was coming in hot, but there was no other way. He didn’t have all day to learn how to slow this crazy ride down.
“Grab the claws!” Cade shouted. “I’m not … I don’t think I’m very good at this!”
And he wasn’t. The claws, under his control, chomped and swayed without much rhyme or reason. Cade realized that the stick for its controls was lined with buttons, and he had no idea what purpose any of them served.
Cade zeroed the orb in on his friends’ position, hoping he was low enough for them to grab on, but not so low that he would crush them. It was a delicate balance, and the difference between catching them and crashing into them was profound. As he roared overhead, he felt impact. Something happened. He pulled the stick back, elevating the orb and setting it on a course for the Rubicon. Apprehensively—he wasn’t eager to see Kira’s guts splattered all over the ground—Cade looked over his shoulder. No one was there, which was good. He hadn’t smashed into his friends.
“How you guys feeling down there?” Cade yelled.
“Like you should learn how to keep this thing steady,” Kira yelled back. “I’ve been in crashes that are smoother than the way you fly.”
Cade smiled. “That’s just because you haven’t crashed with me yet.”
* * *
Kira leapt off the orb as soon as they reached the Rubicon. They had about two minutes until detonation. She raced into her ship, getting all systems ready to fly. As she did, Cade angled the orb in front of the entrance and used its claw to fling 4-Qel inside the ship. It wasn’t the most eloquent entrance, but 4-Qel should have known by now that smooth operations weren’t characteristic of this team.
“We’re in,” Cade yelled, slamming the button to close the ramp as he darted inside. He leapt into the copilot’s seat just as the ship propelled off the ground.
“How much time?” Kira asked, focusing on the liftoff controls.
“Uh,” Cade said, looking through the cockpit’s all-encompassing viewport. “None.”
In the distance, Mithlador burst into flames. The detonations exploded in unison, and the result was an eruption that sucked in everything around it before bursting outward. The Rubicon rose higher and higher from the planet’s surface, and Cade watched as the colony collapsed in a flash of white light. In the blink of an eye, every structure—the towers, the silos, the smokestacks—disintegrated into pieces and crashed to the ground. And then, a secondary eruption detonated and doubled down on the carnage. The massive blast shot out from the heart of the explosion, a fiery purple and red, destroying everything in its path. And it was closing in on the Rubicon.
“Kira, we might want to—”
“Working on it!” Kira yelled as the ship continued its ascent. It was going in the right direction, just not fast enough. “The planet’s caving in on itself, and it’s pulling us with it.”
The blast was gaining; the ship was rising as fast as it could, fighting off increasing gravity that was determined to pull them back down.
“Come on!” Kira yelled, her face strained as she pulled the stick back with all her strength. “Come. On!”
Cade slammed the seat’s harness over his chest just as fiery death closed in on their position. The ship rocketed upward, throttled by a shock wave shot out by the immeasurable power of the blast. They were above it, but Cade still felt the ship being sucked downward. The ship inched forward, while his body was being dragged back with a force that convinced Cade his teeth were about to be sucked out of his mouth. The backside of the ship seemed about to turn over on them, which would send them uncontrollably downward—right into the fire.
“Oh no you don’t,” Kira spat, and she jammed the wheel to the right, sending the ship spinning on its side. As it did, she flipped the ship’s cockpit on its axis, catching the tumbling body in perfect sync; the momentum was enough to right the ship and keep it flying up, away from the fiery death below. Within moments, they were clear.
Cade exhaled and released the trembling grip he had on the seat’s armrest. After a few seconds of silently staring ahead, he blinked.
“That … that was some flying,” he said.
“Yup,” Kira said. “It sure was.”
Both Cade and Kira released cathartic breaths as the vastness of space consumed the viewport. Impulsively, Cade thought to do something with the control panel, but as he reached his hand toward it, he stopped himself. There was nothing for him to do. Kira released the stick, and Cade heard her start to softly hum an off-key tune.
“We don’t know where to go, do we?” he asked.
“No clue.”
The cockpit door opened, and 4-Qel shoved himself inside; he was moving along with his knuckles pressed to the ground, pushing his upper body forward as his legs trailed behind. With a pained grunt, he climbed into the seat behind Kira.
“How you feeling?” Cade asked.
“The damage isn’t as extensive as I’d feared. Only my knee joints need replacing, but I can patch them for now. Once we get Mig back, he will return me to normal.”
Cade and Kira cast uncertain glances at each other.
“We are going after Mig, are we not?” 4-Qel asked.
Cade ran his hand over his eyes then brought it down over his mouth. He hung his head, closed his eyes, and took a deep breath. There was a lot of uncertainty in his mind—about the Well, about what it really meant to be the Paragon, about a future for the entire galaxy that wasn’t shrouded in darkness. But there was one thing he was certain about, and it was nonnegotiable. No matter the cost.
“We can’t let Ga Halle get her hands on the Rokura,” Cade said. “It’s too dangerous.”
“Oh,” 4-Qel said, and Cade heard the fabric of his chair sigh. It sounded like his body, half broken, was slumping in his seat, but Cade couldn’t bring himself to turn and find out. He couldn’t look at 4-Qel, not right now. “I suppose you are right. And Mig … he wouldn’t want you to trade the Rokura for his life. He said so himself.”
4-Qel said the words, but Cade knew he didn’t mean it. Whether he was trying to comfort himself or Cade, Cade didn’t know. He just knew that 4-Qel’s sentiment was a lie.
Cade looked at Kira, whose glance dropped to the ground. She let out a fuming breath, then punched the stick. The ship jerked, but no one said anything. They sat in silence, floating in space, angst-ridden about what they were about to do. They were abandoning Mig.
“They were going to kill me, you know,” 4-Qel said. “The royal family of Eris had me scheduled for … scrapping. But Mig saved me. And not because he had it in mind to put me to use. He may be shrewd, but Mig is no cynic.
“Mig saved me because he can’t stand to see anyone left behind.”
Cade couldn’t do it. This was Cade’s friend—no, Mig was family. And Cade refused to lose anyone else over this stupid mythical weapon. Cade made a promise to himself to keep the few remaining people he cared about safe, and he wasn’t going to break it. He wasn’t going to jeopardize the galaxy and break his vow to Tristan, either. And that was a dilemma—which meant Cade would just have to get really smart really fast.
And he kinda sorta had an idea how to do just that.
“Well, then I guess our only option is to trick Ga Halle,” Cade said.
Kira shot him an askew glance. “What?”
“I mean we don’t let Ga Halle get her hands on the Rokura, we just make her think she has.”
“You mean … we lie?” 4-Qel asked, like he’d just been asked to shoot a baby out of an airlock.
Cade and Kira shared a puzzled look, then they turned to face 4-Qel, just to see if, somehow, he was joking. He wasn’t.
“How many people have yo
u killed?” Kira asked.
“Oh, you can fill a good-size cruiser with my body count. Why do you ask?”
“Never mind,” Cade stated. “And, yes, we have to lie.”
“Well … I suppose. It is for Mig, after all.”
“Okay, now that we’re all morally okay with deceiving the galaxy’s evil warlord, let’s work this out,” Kira said. “Cade, what are you saying here?”
“I don’t know,” Cade said. “I mean, not totally. But, look: We escaped the Darklanders. We kicked some Krell tail. We just pulled off the greatest heist ever. So why not add a jailbreak from the Praxis War Hammer to the list? We can do this. I know we can do this.”
“We can do this with planning, Cade,” Kira said. “With a precise strategy. Maybe even some backup. But Jorken gave us one day and, I’m sorry to say, we’re not close to having any of those things.”
“She’s right,” 4-Qel agreed. “We don’t have anything.”
“No,” Cade said. He tossed the harness off himself and got up from his seat. “We have each other. And not a single one of us has it in us to sentence our friend to death, so we better start thinking about the things we do have instead of what we don’t.
“We have Kira’s accelerator bomb. We have the shielding for it. And I don’t believe for one second that Praxis is going to relent from their plans. They’re going to drain Ticus’s sun. They’re going to kill another planet.”
Cade looked at Kira; he looked at 4-Qel. For the first time in his life, he felt like something more than what he’d always been—the disappointment, the screw-up. And he knew Kira and 4-Qel were in the same boat. As talented and amazing as Kira was, she worked so poorly with others that she was cast off to lead all the other misfits like her. 4-Qel was living in a world where, as soon as an improved model of himself existed, his creators—the very people he existed to protect—ordered his execution. Nobody expected much from them, which, Cade hoped, meant nobody would see them coming.
“Let’s go for it all,” Cade said. “Save Mig. Blow up the War Hammer. All in one big glorious—and probably suicidal—swoop.”
“I’ve never met someone so intent on getting himself killed,” Kira said. For a disheartening moment, Cade thought she was going to tell him what an idiot he was. But she didn’t. Instead, Kira pulled off her harness and stood next to him. “But I’m with you anyway. Let’s do exactly what we planned and take this fight to Praxis.”
“I can’t stand,” 4-Qel said. “Otherwise, I’d be right there with you.”
“Yeah, we have to get you patched up,” Cade said, cringing.
“I won’t be any use to you until you do. Because I too am in. Let’s get Mig.”
Cade smiled, even as he felt the terrifying realization of what was happening settle in. They were really doing this.
“Okay, I have a plan. Or, well … the beginnings of a plan.”
Kira groaned. “Here we go.”
“Don’t worry, I’ll get there. I have pieces that just need to … fit together. But I do know one thing for sure:
“We’re going to need help.”
CHAPTER TWENTY
The War Hammer’s viewport was swallowed by the vastness of space. Ga Halle tried to remember when she’d last spent significant time anyplace that didn’t have any artificial atmosphere and gravity locks, a place that cultivated organic life that you could feel in your hands, your nose, your mouth. She thought of the losmiss plants that grew wild in the backyard of her childhood home, those enormous orange and white petals that fanned out from their stem like the entrance to a magical palace only she knew about. Ga Halle remembered how she’d pick the losmiss in bundles, always in bundles, so she could crop them together and spin them in the air like the sweetest-smelling kaleidoscope that ever was. Running, she’d twirl the plants up toward the sun, its beams breaking through the petals and bringing a bright sheen to the whirring colors. But when her planet’s sun became dim, the losmiss all withered and died, never to return. Soon after saving her planet, Ga Halle visited her family’s former home, which had long been abandoned and taken over by parasitic weeds and flowers, and found a barren patch of dry dirt where the losmiss had been. It was the last time she even considered returning to Praxis and ruling her kingdom from there. She couldn’t. Even though she saved her home world’s dying star, the atmosphere felt different, it felt foreign. No scientific evidence backed up Ga Halle’s feeling, but she knew. The losmiss couldn’t grow, and she couldn’t stay. Her home was in space now, where she was everywhere and nowhere.
On the command deck behind her, Ga Halle’s crew went about their business with adroit efficiency, but she wasn’t interested in their work. Her steely gaze was instead fixed on a point of light so far off in the distance it was barely visible. But Ga Halle knew exactly what it was, and she didn’t need any meddling junior navigator or bridge chief to announce, seemingly for her benefit, where they were headed. Ticus was on the horizon, and the War Hammer was heading straight toward it.
Even if she tried, Ga Halle couldn’t count how many times she’d taken this exact approach to Ticus, how many times she’d watched it get incrementally bigger and bigger in whatever ship she happened to be flying. If this was a homecoming, it was the last time she’d ever do it. It would be the last time for anyone. There’d be an uproar after her work was done, but her regime was already prepared to spread word on how Ticus had forced Praxis’s hand, how the Well, desperate to hold on to its power, threatened the galaxy’s fragile peace. There’d be attacks against Praxis occupations in the wake of Ticus’s decimation—Ga Halle could confidently guess which planets would be the most troublesome—but any uprising would be crushed before it could turn into something even remotely worrisome. After all, if there was one thing Ga Halle had learned about the planets in her galaxy, both as a Rai keeping the peace and as the ruler of the Praxis kingdom, it was that they were incapable of unifying and mobilizing, even in the face of their own crumbling autonomy. Too much bureaucracy, too many petty squabbles between planets, and too many competing interests between people made them divided and weak. That’s why they couldn’t aid the Rai in making peace then, and that’s why they couldn’t unify and stop Praxis now.
Ga Halle was on the cusp of annexing the entire galaxy to her kingdom; she was about to claim the Rokura and buck the cruel hand of fate while undermining everything those ineffectual failures at the Well had drilled into her about destiny. She’d already accomplished more than even she’d dreamed possible, and she’d done it without the Rokura. And now, as if resultant of the power of her will and the unprecedented achievements it’d helped her mount, she’d have the weapon anyway. It, like everything else in the universe, would be under her control.
Still, Ga Halle couldn’t help but feel impassive.
She had no regret over what she had done, nor did she harbor any remorse for the lengths she’d gone to in order to do it. But she’d be lying to herself if she didn’t admit that, secretly, she had hoped more systems would have come to her side. While several planets and their moons had willingly annexed themselves to the Praxis kingdom, Ga Halle saw those systems for what they were: a collection of opportunists, also-rans, and criminal hives who, succeed or fail, had nothing to lose on the galactic stage by anchoring to Praxis’s rise. Ga Halle never saw herself as the galaxy’s villain, which she knew, despite her insulation within her kingdom, was how she was perceived. She brought chaos to order; she stamped out, with decisive efficiency, decades-old conflicts over land, over religion, over who-even-remembers-anymore. She’d done exactly what the Well had set out to do, but never did the Masters see things from her perspective. They didn’t even try. Instead, they cast her as a monster for doing what was necessary to save her home world and the lives of countless individuals; they decimated her self-worth by never publicly acknowledging what happened—what really happened—to her in the spire, choosing instead to act like she, and Percival, didn’t even exist. The Well was wrong, they’d been wrong
for a long, long time, and that’s why it was so easy to give the galaxy what it secretly wanted: strong leadership willing to do what needed to be done, no matter the cost. It was no accident that Ga Halle was able to dig into the Well’s pockets and steal allies right from under its nose. Ga Halle was no raving lunatic, spewing wild theories to anyone who would listen; she had the aid of many like-minded thinkers. She had followers. And now, the decisions she and the Well made irrevocably placed them on this collision course where they’d both soon discover who was meant to persevere and who was meant to perish.
The point of light that was Ticus grew larger. At this very moment, her fleet was preparing to strike, and the War Hammer would soon be in a position to extract enough energy from Ticus’s only star to render the planet a desolate wasteland. Ga Halle had little doubt what fate held for her. She just wished she felt more satisfied by her knowledge of what was to come.
A throat cleared behind her. Ga Halle turned and found Jorken, her most loyal ally, standing by her side at last. Although Ga Halle had sparingly exchanged holocomms with him, the difference between that and standing next to someone was remarkable. Jorken had weathered the years with dignity, but the Jorken in her mind didn’t have deeply set wrinkles around his eyes, graying hair, nor did he carry a little extra weight beneath his chin. Ga Halle didn’t judge her mentor for a single moment, only observed how time changed them all. She wondered briefly how she must have looked to him and considered the scars on her face and the containment suit that was forever strapped to her body—her constant reminder of what the Well had done to her.
“We have the prisoner securely guarded,” he said. “Knowing Cade, I have no doubt that he will come for him. He may attempt something foolish in the process—in fact, he’s guaranteed to—but we will have him, and the Rokura, on the War Hammer soon enough.”
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