by Rhonda Mason
More than a week had passed since the failed raid and still she couldn’t bring herself to visit him.
Inside the infirmary darkness enveloped the beds, the gloom broken only by a single lamp at Aarush’s bedside. Mishe sat there, reading something to their commander. Mishe was the only reason she knew anything about Aarush’s progress—or lack thereof.
Mishe visited him regularly. Aarush’s biggest fear, Mishe said, was that he had suddenly become useless to the rebellion because he couldn’t lead any more raids. It horrified him. So Mishe kept him in the loop. Brought him reports, updated him on everything from raiding plans to the Yari’s progress to the dwindling medical supplies. Made him feel included, if not exactly useful again. It gave him a future to hope for, Mishe told her.
Mishe had also told her that the damage to Aarush’s right eye was extensive, and that it was uncertain yet whether the tissue regeneration would take effect. Currently, he could only see vague shadows in that eye and the other one was gone completely.
Then there was Aarush’s foot. Cinni sighed, placing her palm against the door and leaning closer. The effect of the dreamers she’d taken whooshed through her bloodstream, blurring lines, washing away tension. Mishe was a familiar and much-loved haze of brown in the chair, the lamplight a puddle of butter on the pillow, but that gaping cavity at the end of the bed, that depression in the sheet where a foot should have been, was as crisp as the first time she’d seen it.
“Nothing to do,” she whispered, remembering Mishe’s report. “Nothing to do.”
The leg had been severed halfway up his shin. Before the occupation, it would have been a dramatic, if not necessarily life-altering injury. They’d had access to the medical equipment necessary to regrow the limb and reattach it.
Here? In this rat hole? Even if they had possessed the equipment they certainly didn’t have a surgeon capable of completing a reattachment. It’s not like you could stick the two ends together, slap a regen cuff on it and call it done. Not something that complicated.
Cinni sighed, feeling the mellow overtake her. One dreamer too many? Possibly.
She pushed away from the infirmary door, steadied herself, and started down the corridor slowly. She needed bed. And sleep.
And there was nothing to be done.
30
SHIMVILLE, FALANAR
Kayla made it back to the octet’s safehouse at sunset. Her blood still sang from her final words to Isonde. The promise of a ship from Ardin buoyed her.
They could do this.
The octet was gathered around the long table in the war room, the surface covered with a dozen schematics. Trinan and Vid seemed to be in the middle of a vehement argument about sewers, of all things, and Rigger slouched in her chair, head hanging over the back as if she couldn’t look at the schematics for another minute.
Hekkar, bent over the table, palms spread wide to brace himself, looked up at her entrance. “How’d it go?”
Trinan and Vid left off arguing, the topic tabled only briefly, based on their belligerence, and Rigger clearly thought Kayla’s appearance was a divine interruption.
“Went well.” Kayla dumped the hologram biostrip on the table, popped out the contacts and looked around for her kris as she spoke.
Hekkar straightened, and then passed Kayla her kris. “Ardin came through, then?”
“In a big way.” She gave them the short version of the conversation. “Bottom line, we have a ship. I assume one of you can fly it, whatever it is?”
“Yes,” they said in unison.
Kayla chuckled. “Figured. Now. Your turn to wow me. How are we springing Malkor?”
“Well,” Hekkar said, “I’ve got some shitty news, followed by more shitty news. What do you want first?”
“Bring it on.” He hadn’t said Malkor had been killed, and that’s the only thing she couldn’t work with. Everything else she could bend, break or twist her way through, if it meant saving him.
“The Sovereign Council retired their session while you were gone,” Hekkar said, “and presented their recommendation for the Council of Seven, which will convene in the morning.”
Kayla waited for the verdict.
“They’ve outlined a plan for full-scale militarization of the occupation. This includes sending troops and more ships immediately, along with increasing personnel recruitment, weapons manufacturing and battleship production.”
“So far we’ve only barely held Ordoch,” Rigger said. “Now we’re talking planetary annex-level militarization.”
Annexation. Making Ordoch part of the empire, their foothold into Wyrd Space.
“Not in my lifetime,” she spat.
Rigger shrugged. “If the Council of Seven votes that way, it’s going to be a frutt of a lot harder to free your planet.”
All that work. Weeks of it. Months, even. Studying the empire’s political power players, laying the groundwork for Isonde’s master plan, swaying council members. The speeches, the concessions, the debates—all of it, every last second of being Isonde—for nothing if the final vote didn’t go their way.
“What’s the rest of the news?”
“We’ve been over every millimeter of the schematics for IDC headquarters. Twice,” Hekkar said. “We’ll keep at it for a few more hours, but, I’m telling you now—it’s impossible to bust Malkor out of there.”
* * *
Sometime around twenty-three hundred Kayla and the octet finally surrendered to the reality of Hekkar’s earlier statement. There was no possible way to gain access to the cell block, not without an army that outnumbered the mass of IDC agents in headquarters, and multiple hacks into the many security systems that governed the place. Every scenario they ran through the complink ended in failure.
And that was unacceptable. Unacceptable and inevitable.
The octet broke for the night, everyone grabbing a few hours of sleep before they were back at it the next morning.
By then everyone had come to the same decision: it was time to call Vega to deal.
Kayla ate a quick breakfast alone, leaving the octet arguing over locations for the Vega meet/Malkor hostage exchange and different exit strategies. She could fight her way out of a mob armed with only a fork and a really bad attitude, but she happily left matters of strategy to the IDC agents. She was a bodyguard, pure and simple. She knew how to assess threats, rank risk levels, and protect a single person with her life. She wasn’t a soldier and her training in tactics didn’t scratch the surface of what the octet knew.
Besides, she needed time to wrestle with her demons.
She’d sworn, time and time again, that she’d destroy Dolan’s data—with or without the octet’s blessing—before handing it over to Vega. After what her family had suffered with the Influencer, what Vayne had suffered at Dolan’s hands…
The idea that anyone, anyone, could be subjected to that kind of soul-destroying torture made her physically ill. And here she was, agreeing to hand it over to Vega.
The breakfast she’d eaten threatened a return.
Who had she become, that she would allow this? Who was she that she would let someone else suffer the pain that had nearly broken her twin?
A woman in love.
That’s who she had become.
The ro’haar, the weapon, the ultimate bodyguard she was born to be had fallen in love. And not just in love, in love with an imperial. And so in love that she would sacrifice nearly everything to save him. Her ideals. Her morals.
She’d sacrifice the happiness of someone else’s tomorrow for her chance to save Malkor today. The faces of Vayne and Corinth swam before her suddenly watery eyes. Pray that the choice never came down between Malkor and her brothers—she wouldn’t survive.
Instead of joining the others, Kayla went downstairs to the weapons room, looking for a way to sharpen her kris and ease her soul. Her kris-sharpening kit and round diamond file had been left in her apartments at the palace after her mad flight for freedom.
Now
here she sat, with fine-grit sandpaper wrapped around the cylindrical handle of a medstick, trying to sharpen the wavy edges of her kris without marring the metal too badly. Thankfully her kris were fairly demure in design, with only a few mild curves on each side. Anything tighter would be a bitch to sharpen.
Hekkar came down the stairs quietly and found a stool in the corner to perch on. An oddly companionable silence bloomed between them, when for so long she’d felt that Hekkar was, if not her enemy, her biggest hurdle to winning the octet over. Now he watched her with respect and she felt joined to him in a purpose. No one loved Malkor more than these agents, with the exception of Ardin, and perhaps no one more so than Hekkar. In this, she and Hekkar were equals, and that awareness settled on them both.
“Why kris daggers?” he finally asked, as if the question had been bugging him since they met. He gestured to the pointed tip. “I mean, they’re sufficient for stabbing, and the curves give it a wider blade track without the weight of a wider weapon, but…”
Kayla chuckled. “Believe me, I know. Kris are rarely sharpened and hardly hold an edge. When it comes to cutting and slicing, a straight-edged dagger beats them for sheer utility.”
“Why would you use a blade that is less than perfectly efficient?”
“Credits. It’s all about the credits.” At least it had been when she was on Altair Tri and desperate for a way home. “This isn’t a ro’haar ceremonial weapon or anything. It’s an affectation, pure and simple. Showmanship.” Kayla looked at the wavy edges of the weapons that had surprisingly become her dearest possessions. “On Ordoch I trained with every type of weapon conceivable—and even things that you’d never think of as a weapon.” She smiled at the memories of fighting with a rolling-pin, a shoe, a musty piece of fabric. “You never know what you’ll have at hand when your il’haar needs protecting.” She shrugged her shoulders. “Sure, I went around armed with a plasma blaster, but my people had long ago figured out how to disable advanced weapons electronically. I couldn’t count on that. So I also wore two knives. Armed with low-tech and high, like a true ro’haar.
“When I landed on Altair Tri and realized the only way to get Corinth home was to earn an obscene amount of credits and purchase a ride back to Wyrd Space, I adopted the Shadow Panthe persona.”
“And fought in the pits,” Hekkar said.
“Exactly. Fighting in the pits isn’t about skill. I could have beaten most of my opponents armed with a pickle.” Kayla set her kris aside, its edge perfectly sharp. “Fighting in the pits—and drawing the biggest purse per fight—is all about showmanship. I learned that early on.”
“And so the kris?”
She nodded. “No one fought with kris daggers. They were unique. Exotic. They played into my mysterious Shadow Panthe persona. I made them work. And in the end, I could demand more credits per fight based on my ‘alluring mystique.’”
Hekkar seemed to take that in. It was refreshing to discuss weapons with a person who understood the balance between form and function, who valued lethality above all. Just as she’d been taught. A ro’haar did not plan to detain their il’haar’s attacker. A ro’haar killed first, and investigated the attack after their il’haar’s safety was assured.
“Will you give the kris up once you return home?” Hekkar asked.
The kris had served her well, kept her safe for five years in exile. Would they serve her as well when she and her family retook Ordoch?
“Depends on what my il’haar needs,” she said. The answer came without hesitation.
Rigger summoned them from upstairs and Hekkar got to his feet.
“What about Malkor?” Hekkar asked, without looking away. “What if Malkor needs something different from you?”
“That can’t matter,” Kayla said in a tiny voice, the sound almost swallowed by the darkness.
Could it? Could what Malkor wanted make a difference once they escaped from here?
“You might want to think on that one,” Hekkar said.
* * *
After a debate, it was decided that Hekkar would host the call to Vega and keep Kayla’s presence with them a secret. All Vega knew was that Kayla was in hiding, not that she’d teamed with the octet. Kayla watched the vidscreen from an angle, keeping out of sight when Vega appeared.
The senior commander looked perfectly composed, as if she received calls about illicit prisoner exchanges daily. She took the call in the back of a hover car, based on the plush seating, dim lighting and occasional glimpse of scenery behind her.
“Good to hear from you, Agent.”
“Wish I could say the same,” Hekkar said.
Vega nodded to acknowledge that. “I assume you’re contacting me about a trade?” The woman brought a new level of professionalism to the term “all business.”
“Malkor in exchange for Dolan’s scientific data.” Hekkar’s voice was grim, and Kayla could practically hear him adding, “and your head on a platter, while we’re at it.”
Too bad that outcome seemed unlikely.
Vega muted the comm to say something to her driver, then resumed. “I want all of it, Agent. Not just specs on advanced weapon design.”
“You’ll get what’s there.”
She shook her head. “Not good enough. I know the information about his Influencer is on that chip.”
“Influencer? That’s what we’re going with?” Hekkar made a sound of disgust. “Pretty benign term for a machine that strips a person of their free will.”
“Do you want your octet leader or not?”
“We’ll deal,” Hekkar said. What choice did they have?
“I assumed so. I took the liberty of selecting the exchange location. I’ll send coordinates a half-hour before. You’ll have enough time to get there for nineteen hundred.”
Vega stared him down. Neither was willing to give the other the advantage. Then again, neither was willing to risk ruining the deal.
“Fine,” Hekkar finally said.
“Nineteen hundred it is. Bring all of the data or don’t bother coming at all, in which case I’ll simply kill Agent Rua.”
“You wouldn’t dare.”
Vega arched a brow. “Why wouldn’t I? He’s already played the role I needed him for, quite admirably. His only worth at this point is as collateral.”
She’d do it, too. They all knew that. Her reasoning was perfectly logical, if frighteningly cold.
“We’ll be there,” Hekkar said, and ended the call. He swiveled in his chair, looking at the group. “Well?”
“I’d like to kill her,” Kayla said.
Hekkar smiled. “Noted. Anyone else?”
Vid raised his hand. “I second Kayla’s idea.”
The joking broke the tension. The situation was bleak, but at least they had a plan.
31
THE YARI, MINE FIELD
Vayne’s boot heels echoed on the plate decking that ran the length of the corridor’s floor. It was the only sound on this abandoned level, five below the last “safe” level, according to Ida. The lighting was non-existent. When curiosity overcame caution and his need to know what the crew of the Yari feared became greater than Ida’s stern warnings to keep to the three main decks, Vayne had popped a maintenance hatch and climbed down ladders until he’d dropped out here.
Of course he’d had to repeat the journey in reverse to grab a light to clip to his shirt. He swung by the commissary, thankfully empty, and armed himself with a plasma bullpup before heading back down.
For the first time in too many days he had something to do, even if it was walking empty corridors in the dark. Better than the endless brooding, the mistrustful looks from Gintoc, the infuriating conversations with Dolan’s ghost and listening to everyone else’s whacked-out plans to fire up the PD weapon.
The flashlight’s thin beam glanced wildly off the gorgeous rose-gold molychromium walls. The priceless metal, seen now only in works of art and classic buildings on Ordoch, provided the bare bones of the entire ship. In the da
rkness, with the surrounding air of abandonment, Vayne felt a little like he was robbing a tomb.
What was down here that required weapons as protocol?
In all likelihood the answer was simply nothing. The crew had all spent time in cryochambers—too much time. History vids commented on the rudimentary design of the Yari’s cryosystems, the inadequacy of them for long-term use. Without saying as much, the vids intimated that the crew of the Yari had basically intended to travel to Ilmena, shoot the shit out of it, and come home. There was no long-term end game in Ordoch’s plan to win the Second Ilmenan War.
Who knew what had happened to the crew’s consciousness in all the intervening time?
“I’ll probably find spiders the size of hover cars.” Despite his flippant words, something about the abandoned corridor made him stalk lightly, gripping the bullpup close.
The first sound came as he took a step, half-hidden beneath his boot-fall. Imagination? The natural shifting and settling of an ancient ship?
He halted, turning this way and that, looking for anything out of the ordinary. Doors lined the corridor, each sealed shut, refusing to open when he waved the RFID Ida had given him across the access panel. Each door had a small window set into it, and a quick peek inside with his light showed abandoned crew quarters.
He waited, muscles tensed, for another sound.
What he got instead was an awareness of his own foolishness. There’s nothing down here.
“Time to head back,” he muttered. Instead, something urged: Farther. The answer to the mystery is around this bend. He’d been listening to that feeling fruitlessly for an hour, and yet, he kept going. What was the harm? He had nothing better to do.
He’d only taken one step when a banging sound made him jump a meter. A pipe rapping against the molychromium? Bang bang bang—pause—bang bang bang—pause. It was impossible to tell if it came from behind or ahead. No bulkheads had been set into the walls here; it was only the metal frame, waiting in vain to be completed. The sound echoed all around him.
Vayne set his ear to the nearest wall once the sound stopped and held his breath.