by J. L. Lyon
Grace reached into her pocket and withdrew Crenshaw’s cutting tool, feeling a stab of guilt at the memories it brought to mind. This had been the tool he used to carve countless names on his Memorial Wall—a wall that she had summarily destroyed in the wake of her anger and grief over Elijah’s death. Oh, well, she thought. Nothing I can do about that now.
She traced the lines of the rose with her fingers and drew close to the wall, straining her eyes in the darkness to find the clue within the clue. At the very center of the rose, Crenshaw had explained, You will find a triangle whose sides curve inward. Within that triangle, the package should be hidden.
Once she found the triangle, Grace turned on the cutting tool and set to work. A thin red laser sliced into the wall, trailing smoke as she drew it along the perimeter of the triangle. In a matter of seconds the small piece of drywall came free and tumbled into her hand. On the back, a small gold piece of metal no larger than a hangnail had been securely attached, covered with some sort of protective filament to keep it isolated from the elements.
Whoever holds it may as well hold the fate of the world, Crenshaw had said. Somehow, it didn’t seem that impressive.
Grace switched the frequency on her earpiece, “Colonel, the package has been acquired. It’s time to go.” Nothing but static answered her. It occurred to her that all noise on the other side of the door had ceased as well. She whispered again, more forceful and desperate, “Colonel!”
He still did not answer, and somehow she knew that he never would.
-X-
The last of the Silent Thunder rebels fell lifeless to the floor, joining his comrades on their bed of dust among rotten books and pools of blood. One man remained alive—a man who had single-handedly dispatched the entire Silent Thunder team. His boots echoed ominously from the walls as he strode calmly past the bodies of those he had just killed, the white fire of his Spectral Gladius gleaming hungrily beside him.
“Marcus,” he spoke aloud. “She isn’t here. Tell me you did not fail me again.”
“We’re tracking one more on the top level, sir,” Marcus replied through his comm. “In the room ahead of you.”
“Alone?”
“Yes, sir…alone.”
-X-
Grace placed both the cutting tool and the gold chip in her pocket and backed away from the wall. Her team was dead, she was sure of it, and Colonel Traughber along with them. She shook off the stab of grief she felt for him—too much was at stake now to pause and mourn the dead. It seemed she had experienced so many similar goodbyes in the last year. Every time she wondered if this would be the one to break her.
The sound of wood splintering underscored the urgency of her situation, as someone broke down the door and stepped over her makeshift blockade. She should have known it would avail little against a Spectral Gladius. She heard boots land softly on the floor, only one set...just one man. And yet, he would not have made it inside unless he had managed to kill all of her men.
Her first instinct was to destroy the chip, but it was much more valuable to them intact. She just needed to figure out how to get it out and back to Crenshaw. She couldn’t go the way they came in, which left only one option: the roof. She spied a window just a few feet away and breathed in deep in preparation to lunge.
“It’s me, Grace.”
She stopped dead in her tracks. As long as she lived, she would never forget that voice. A weight pushed in on her chest, stirring up old anger and regrets. She had never really hated anyone before in her life; she had never wanted to. But this man...there was no other word for what she felt for him.
Grace stepped confidently into the aisle. “Grand Admiral,” she said. “Didn’t expect to see you here.”
Derek Blaine emerged into the low moonlight and flashed a sinister smile, “I suspect not. You have, after all, managed to elude me for more than a year now…often by minutes only. There were so many times when I felt I caught a glimpse of your shadow, only to realize you had managed to slip past me yet again.”
“I’m honored,” she said, her voice dripping with sarcasm. “To think you came all this way…just for me.”
“You know I’ve been hunting you. And you know why I’ve come.”
“I do,” she replied, the slight tremble in her voice betraying a sorrow only slightly stronger than her hate. “You need someone to blame, so that you don’t have to live with the truth of what you did every time you look into a mirror. Somewhere in that twisted mind of yours, you believe you saved him.”
“He bought into the lie that you fed him,” Derek stared her down as though he might freeze her soul. “His blood is on your hands.”
“Don’t you talk to me of guilt, Blaine! You are the murderer here.”
“I killed your father, yes. And you killed my brother.”
“It was not my blade that stabbed through his chest.”
“No,” Derek said. “The wound you gave was fatal.”
“Tell me you didn’t come all this way for an apology. What exactly is it that you want?”
“I want you to die,” Derek replied coldly. “But before that, I want you to understand that your pitiful rebellion will not long survive you. Whatever little remains dear to your shadowed heart I vow to destroy—until there is nothing left of you but the remnant of my hatred. My greatest regret is that you won’t be around to feel the pain of the loss.”
Grace’s eyes went wide as Derek’s hand shot toward his sidearm. He loosed it from its holster and pointed it straight at her head. “One year to the day, Commander. Happy anniversary.” He squeezed the trigger.
His hesitation gave Grace the time she needed to dive out of Derek’s line of fire, but the grand admiral was not content with a single shot. He emptied the entire clip at her within the space of a few seconds, and if not for the bookshelf that concealed her from his view she would not have survived.
The room went eerily silent as the firing stopped, and she remained still behind a row of books, barely breathing. Blaine couldn’t know for sure that she had not been killed in his firing spree, and that gave her an advantage.
His boots fell lightly on the debris-covered floor, cautiously sidestepping the bookshelf so as not to expose himself to attack. Grace looked to the closest window—her only shot at escape, and mouthed a silent prayer for courage. She would have to go through Derek Blaine to make it. Her hand gripped the hard casing of Novus Vita at her side, and she took a deep breath.
The grand admiral’s shadow appeared on the ground to her left, and she sprang. Her Spectral Gladius came to life and lashed out at him with white fury, but he was ready for her. His blade appeared between them and stopped hers short, sending a high-pitched clash of steel throughout the floor.
Blaine’s face alighted with surprise at her strength and speed—half a second faster and she would have killed him. But he recovered quickly, “Don’t be a fool, Sawyer. I just took out your entire team single-handedly. Surely you don’t think you can defeat me alone.”
“I’ve done it before,” She pushed his blade away from her and pivoted right—toward the window—bringing her blade into position just before Blaine’s cut into her thigh. “I can do it again.” They exchanged several blows, during which Grace carefully maneuvered him out of her line of escape. He was in a fury, lusting for her demise, and hopefully wouldn’t recognize her ploy before it was too late. Just a few seconds told Grace that Blaine was right: he was a master of swordplay, far more advanced than the last time they fought, and she couldn’t hope to defeat him by herself.
But she didn’t need to defeat him…only delay him.
She deflected one final blow and withdrew, moving quickly in reverse and out of the reach of Blaine’s Gladius. He froze at first, eyes wide with suspicion. Apparently his time in the top spot of the World System military had made him paranoid, and he suspected a trap. So much the better for her.
Grace pivoted on the ball of her foot and took off, sprinting for the closest window as though
even one lost second could mean her life. A horrible clicking sounded from behind her—the sound of a Spectral Gladius assuming its secondary form. Blaine was about to hit her with a Solithium burst. Even a glancing blow from the supercharged spark could be fatal…and if she survived, she might wish she hadn’t. Destruction of tissue, loss of bodily functions—a living death, some had called it.
She reached the window and leapt, throwing the full force of her body against the glass. It was brittle with age and shattered easily, some shards catching in her hair while others raked across her skin. In the rush she barely felt them.
A short drop awaited her as she cleared the window, and Blaine’s Solithium burst overshot her head as she tumbled down onto the roof. She rolled gracefully to her feet and drew her sidearm, laying a cover spray of bullets in Blaine’s direction over her shoulder. It was several feet to the next drop, which would take her down to another level of the roof’s stair-step design.
Her sidearm clicked. Empty.
She saw Blaine emerge from within the building out of the corner of her eye, and discarded the useless weapon. The sound of Solithium churning in preparation for the burst gave her enough warning to dive for the next drop. She rolled off the side just as the burst impacted the place where she had been half a second before, and then fell flat on her back to the next level. The force of the fall knocked the wind out of her, but she couldn’t stop. She struggled to her feet and kept going.
Lights suddenly ignited all around her, and she froze. The Spectorium was on the ground. They had the building completely surrounded. Of course, she thought. How could I have thought otherwise? She turned to face Blaine as he dropped down to her level, his Gladius reforming into a blade. He knew she was beaten.
“I’ve dreamed of this moment every night for a year,” he smiled. “To think that in a minute it will all be done…somewhat sad, like bidding adieu to an old friend.”
Grace raised Novus Vita between them, refusing to admit defeat despite how grim the situation seemed. Blaine taunted her with his victory march, but it gave her time to consider a course of action. They had surrounded the building, expecting her to make a run for it. So what did they expect now? A duel to the death with the grand admiral? To see her go down in a blaze of glory? No, she thought. Not tonight. Not here. Not with what I’m carrying in my pocket.
She just had to do something they didn’t expect.
With a final grin for Derek Blaine, Grace changed course and ran—not for the drop to the next level, but for the end of the building. Rather than avoiding the lights, she aimed for them, raising her Gladius high as she lunged into freefall.
It must have been a thirty-foot drop, broken when she landed on top of the men in charge of the lights. They were the lucky ones. Another Specter broke the fall of her Spectral Gladius, and died instantly. Pain reverberated through her legs and torso, but she had no time for it. In a moment the men on the ground would recover from their shock and she had to get a lead on them.
She sprinted, gunfire erupting behind her, and dove into a nearby thicket of trees. Now in favor of concealment, she deactivated her Gladius and returned it to her side. She ran as fast as her legs would take her, leaving both shouts and gunfire behind as she bolted out of the trees and down a concrete sidewalk. She continued to run, long after the gunfire had stopped and the shouts had faded, with only one goal.
If you should run into trouble, Crenshaw had said. Run. And do not stop running until you reach the river.
This was one time she did not question his counsel.
-X-
Derek Blaine had watched—horrified—as his quarry leaped from the building in apparent suicide, robbing him of his chance at vengeance. Was this her final strike at him? To take her own life to prevent him from fulfilling the vow he had made to his dying partner? He rushed to the edge, expecting to see her body splayed out on the concrete. Instead he saw one of his men lying there dead, two more struggling to ready their weapons. He followed their line of sight in time to see Commander Sawyer disappear into the trees.
The men fired, but in vain. She was gone.
“Marcus,” Derek said into his comm. “Tell those fools to save their bullets for another day.”
“Grand Admiral,” the slight tremor in his voice betrayed his fear. Marcus still had not gotten it through his thick skull that Specters would not be executed for failure—most of the time. “I’ll send our best men in pursuit. We’ll get her.”
“You are free to try,” Derek replied. “But once you lose sight of a phantom in the night, finding it again will not be easy.”
“Sir, we have a Halo armed with Solithium Concussion missiles on standby. If we vacate the area—”
“No,” Derek snapped. “I want to look into her eyes as she dies.”
“But sir, our orders—”
“You take your orders from me, Marcus,” Derek spat. “We will find her again. Today just wasn’t the day.” A grin spread across Derek’s face, part of him glad that it was not yet over. He wasn’t ready to give up his hatred…not yet. When it came to it, this was all just strategy, an elaborate game he was certain to eventually win.
For now, he was content to play it a little longer.
9
“THIS WAS A FOOL'S errand,” Lieutenant Commander Davian, second-in-command of the Silent Thunder 2nd Battalion, paced back and forth as two operatives lifted Grace onto a tall bed. Doctors swarmed around her, and she gritted her teeth in pain as one of them readjusted her right leg. It was not responding as quickly as her left.
Something was wrong, she had known it as soon as the adrenaline faded. Upon reaching the river she had collapsed from exhaustion, luckily into General Crenshaw’s arms. He had carried her to the boat that bore them to safety, and then nearly a mile from where they landed back to the camp. Sweat still hung in beads on his brow, but he had already caught his breath. Impressive, she thought. I hope I’m in that good of shape in twenty-five years.
“Eight men dead, including Colonel Traughber,” Davian went on. “He’s been with Silent Thunder since before I was born, General. And to hear how close they came to getting her, too—”
“I advised against her leading the mission,” Crenshaw said. “We both did, but if you recall we are dealing with the most stubborn—”
“Excuse me!” Grace interrupted harshly. “I am still here, you know. It might be better if you talk to me, rather than around me.”
Davian frowned and looked away sheepishly, “You know my position on this, Commander. I made it clear from the very beginning, and I’m sorry…but it appears I was right. I don’t care what was in that building, it can’t have been worth this!”
“It was,” Crenshaw said softly. “And you don’t need to remind me how long Traughber had been with Silent Thunder, Lieutenant Commander. I was there when the force was founded. His loss, and the loss of the other seven, was regrettable and not expected. But they did not die in vain. Commander, you have it?”
Grace grimaced again as the doctors continued to poke and prod, but nodded. She reached into her pocket for the triangle of wall and handed it over to Crenshaw. The general backed away from her and held it up to the light, squinting at the speck of gold. Davian stepped up to look over his shoulder, “What is it?”
“It's a piece of a data card,” Crenshaw replied. “We’ll need to get it to communications, see if they can pull anything off of it.”
“If,” Davian said. “You mean it might be worthless?”
“It’s one piece of a whole, Davian. I don’t know what we’ll find, but we will see as soon as the commander can move. How is she, Cade?”
The man he addressed, Silent Thunder’s chief military surgeon, hesitated to answer. He had been holding his x-ray scanner over a particular part of Grace’s right leg for some time, studying it. Grace felt a lump rise in her throat. She had seen men fall victim to numerous injuries during her lifetime—some they could not recover from. The thought of being in this much pain for
the rest of her life made her want to throw up.
“Doctor?” Davian asked, his concern beyond that of a subordinate for his leader. Grace had always thought of him as a trusted friend—a brother, even—but he had made no secret of his desire for more. In the last six months he had become more aggressive about it, which had led to a bit of strain between them. Grace wasn’t ready to love again, not after Eli, and she didn’t know if she ever would be.
“If it’s all the same to you, gentlemen,” Cade said. “I’ll direct my diagnosis to the patient.” He turned his attention to Grace and sighed, “You fell from how high again?”
“Thirty feet, maybe more.”
“I see,” he switched off the device. “Well, you were lucky. Looks like you came away with a hairline fracture in your right femur. You’ll need to stay off it for several weeks.”
“Weeks?” Grace asked incredulously. “You call that lucky?”
“A fall from that high could have been much worse. Could have been a clean break, could have shattered, or you could have suffered irreparable damage to your muscles and tendons. In any of those cases you might be looking at surgery, followed by months of recovery time. Trust me, this is better. Stay off your feet as much as possible…when you have to, use crutches to keep the weight off your leg. In time the fracture will heal itself. I’d like to place it in a cast as soon as possible.”
“To limit my movement,” Grace shook her head. “That will make me vulnerable, Doctor.”
“To prevent the fracture from worsening, which is a possibility without the cast. How vulnerable do you think you will be if you are in so much pain that you can’t move at all? That’s the risk you would be taking, Commander.”
Grace groaned in frustration, “Fine. Make me an invalid. It’s not like I actually use my right leg for anything, after all.”
“Nice to see you’ve kept your sense of humor,” Crenshaw commented.