Mig nodded at Kira, giving her the “all ready” sign.
“All right, hand it to Four-Qel and let him throw it in the middle of the sentries,” Kira instructed. “I’ll cover you, Four-Qel.”
“What, I can’t be trusted to throw my own creation?” Mig huffed.
“You throw like my dead grandmother,” Kira said. “Hand it to Qel.”
“It’s true, you have very weak throwing capabiliti—”
“Well, excuse me for not being able to do everything!” Mig sulked.
4-Qel took the magnetizer out of Mig’s hands and gave Kira an enthusiastic thumbs-up. Despite the grim possibilities, the highly advanced drone loved these kinds of situations.
Kira popped out from behind the security of her cover and opened fire on the drones. She managed to blast small craters into a few before those in the unit collectively turned their attention to her. Right as that happened, 4-Qel stepped away from the wall he’d been hugging, giving himself enough clearance to toss the magnetizer at the drones. It was a perfectly arced throw that glided right over the unsuspecting drones’ heads and dropped to the ground with a clink. The sentries stopped when they heard the noise, craning their heads like a dog that’d heard a whistle, curious of its source. When nothing happened, they turned their attention back to laying suppressive fire in Kira, Mig, and 4-Qel’s direction, but they never got a single shot off.
The drones began to bend. Backward, forward, left, right—whatever their position to the magnetizer was, their bulky bodies began to be pulled in that direction. At first, the pull was moderate, buckling the sentries at their waists. They rattled and buzzed, communicating something with one another. And just when it seemed like their bodies couldn’t take any more strain, the magnetizer shot up from the ground and hovered just over the sentries’ heads. There was a brief pause when the magnetizer relinquished its hold on the sentries, and they were as sedentary as the worshipping monks on Tatone. But it was only the slightest respite, because right when the magnetizer emitted a soft beeping noise, things got a little out of hand.
The sentries were the first to go. They were yanked off their feet, and then their feet were yanked from their bodies. Then their arms, their legs, their heads, and so on. The shredded appendages swirled around the magnetizer with tremendous efficiency, every single scrap of metal compressed with the force of an armored transport rolling over a tin can. The sound of metal crunching and squealing made Kira wince, but the goal had been accomplished. Not a single sentry remained, which meant it was time to take out the magnetizer.
The magnetizer, though, seemed to have ideas of its own.
In an instant, all the compressed drone parts unified into a collective heap that orbited, like a shield, around the magnetizer. And the device was just getting warmed up. More metal began to groan as the magnetizer’s pull increased dramatically; Kira could see paneling and other hardware, all metal, start to pull from the walls and toward the magnetizer. The device was getting stronger, a lot stronger, and there was still the issue of the shield it’d constructed to contend with.
“I thought you said the build to critical mass was gradual!” Kira yelled at Mig.
“Pfft. You think this is critical mass? Just you wait.”
Kira shot him a poisonous look.
Mig shrugged. “I’m just saying.”
The magnetizer had to die. Knowing that, Kira stepped out from behind cover and took aim. When she did, she immediately felt the device pulling at her weapon, which was crafted almost entirely from metal. The blaster jumped in her hand just as she fired, sending her shot wide. Kira tried to steady her hand, resisting the device’s pull; first her hand started to shake under the strain of trying to keep her sidewinder steady, and before long, her entire arm was convulsing uncontrollably. Kira held strong against inevitability, but it was too much. She was overpowered, and her blaster was sucked out of her grip.
Kira turned to Mig and 4-Qel, who’d both directed their sidewinders at the magnetizer, but it was too late. Before either could even got a shot off, their weapons were pulled out of their hands and joined the other swirling bits of scrap metal. Mig spat a panicked curse as 4-Qel grabbed hold of a vertical banister bolted to the wall. Kira could see him resisting the magnetizer’s pull, shifting his weight and strength backward so he didn’t end up crushed and cubed by his best friend’s invention. 4-Qel was freakishly strong, but Kira had a feeling that the magnetizer wouldn’t rest until the entire ship was turned inside out.
Metal continued to screech as it tore from whatever it’d been attached to. The reinforced material, made to withstand enemy attack, curled and buckled like it was being heated at an unimaginably hot temperature. Kira was exceptionally grateful that there was more than one layer before the outer hull, but it was only a matter of time before the magnetizer got to it, and a short time at that. Kira’s window to save their butts was closing fast.
“Now it’s reaching critical mass!” Mig yelled as he held on to 4-Qel’s waist, helping to keep him in place.
“Great!” Kira vented. “Any ideas?”
Mig pursed his lips to the side and searched the ground, as if the answer were somewhere on the flooring that was about to get torn out from beneath their feet. “No. Not really.”
Kira groaned through a tightly clenched jaw, then muttered a curse to the sky. That’s when an idea presented itself. “Hello, beautiful,” Kira said as her grimace turned into a smile.
Above their heads, a sliver of a support beam was tearing away from the ceiling, creating a nice point on its end. Pointy things can be used for stabbing, Kira mused, and stabbing something sounded ideal at that moment. She needed to reach the makeshift spear, though, before it got caught in the magnetizer’s orbit, and she couldn’t do that without some help.
“Listen, I have a plan,” Kira said, projecting her voice over the chaotic din. “But I need Four-Qel to give me a boost when I say so.”
“A boost?!” Mig howled. “If Four-Qel lets go, he’s dead.”
“If I don’t nail this, we’re dead anyway,” Kira shot back, seeing the spear about to loose itself. “Four-Qel, I need you to get me to that spear. You see it?” Kira nodded to the ceiling.
“I’ve got it,” 4-Qel replied.
Kira stood at the ready, anticipating her moment to run and jump. The spear was barely holding on, and when it twisted just a little bit more, the metal shard would break free.
“Now!” Kira yelled and ran toward 4-Qel. Just as she reached him, he released his grip on the wall and tossed Kira into the air just before his body was sucked into the magnetizer’s orbit.
Kira soared upward, her trajectory perfect to reach the spear just as it broke free from the ceiling. It raced toward the magnetizer, drawn fiercely by its pull. Riding it to the device’s orbit, she gave the spear the strongest shove she could muster, throwing her body into its momentum.
And she was rewarded by the spear breaking through the magnetizer’s orbit, its point driving right through the magnetizer’s core.
Blinding light poured from the magnetizer as it violently spasmed before bursting into pieces. In its wake, the hallway boomed with the thunder of all that metal dropping to the ground.
“Hot damn, Mig. What was in that thing?” Kira questioned as she got up from the floor, dusting herself off.
“Ohhh…,” Mig said as he helped 4-Qel get to his feet. “You don’t want to know.”
“Well, at least your device did us the favor of opening the bridge’s door,” 4-Qel said. “And by ‘opening,’ I mean tearing off its hinges and crushing it into a jewelry box.”
Kira stepped through the gaping hole and onto the bridge. Mig and 4-Qel followed. A single floating disk emanated light and did its best to illuminate the room, but its projection wasn’t nearly strong enough. The soft light cast a beam across the ceiling, exposing bits of dust that fluttered aimlessly. The rest of the area was almost imperceptible, lit only by the control panels that curved a horseshoe shape
surrounding the command deck at the ship’s nose.
“Wasn’t your contact supposed to be meeting us here?” Mig questioned.
Kira cast a suspicious glance around the room. This was all wrong. The crew should have been on the bridge, maintaining the ship’s functions. Slipping into auxiliary control was safe only for short-term use; flipping the ship into automatic was a good way for it to get bombed out of the sky.
Unless that’s what someone wanted.
Kira was about to order Mig and 4-Qel off the bridge, off the entire ship, when 4-Qel called her to the command deck.
“Is that your contact?” 4-Qel asked, pointing to the dead Kundarian slumped over in a chair. A single blaster wound drilled a hole through the side of his furry head; blood and brain matter had dried around the gaping point of entry.
“Shaddac,” Kira said, looking down at the lupine face she’d never seen in person until now. Sorrow struck her heart; she’d never met the man who’d risked so much to help his people and the Renegade movement—and paid the ultimate price for it. “His name was Shaddac.”
The Kundarian’s eyes were open, freezing his face in a look of perpetual shock that bordered on horror. Kira gently rubbed her hand over his forehead, closing Shaddac’s eyes for the final time. She then relieved her ally of his blaster rifle, a Kundarian blaze rifle, and handed it to 4-Qel.
“Stay sharp,” she instructed. “We’re caught in a—”
Before the word “trap” could escape Kira’s lips, the bridge’s comms crackled to life, showering the room in a fluorescent-blue glow. 4-Qel spun on his heels, brandishing the blaze rifle with one arm and guarding Mig with his other. But there was nothing for the drone to blast into oblivion—just the outline of a face taking shape as the line of communication became clearer and clearer.
Kira took a step forward, squinting as she studied the face coming through the comms. Slowly, as if it happened one muscle at a time, her expression shifted from suspicious curiosity to simmering rage. If the rifle were in her hands instead of 4-Qel’s, she would have shot the face forming before her eyes, if only just because.
The image came into focus, and though the person hovering just above Kira’s line of sight was bathed in blue, she knew his true face. It was seared in her mind forever: those cold, gray eyes, flat nose, and sharp jawline, the dramatic red uniform, crisp and spotless. She tried to view the enemy before her as just that, an enemy. But that wasn’t possible.
“Baron Ebik,” Kira said, trying to keep her tone steady. “I almost didn’t recognize you with that collar around your throat. How’s it feel to be Ga Halle’s pet?”
Ebik offered Kira half of a smug smile. “I feel alive, which is more than my fellow Barons can say. Or your friend—Shaddac, was it?”
Kira chewed on the inside of her cheek at the grating sound of Ebik’s voice; the mention of Shaddac’s name and the reminder of what Ebik had done to him made Kira draw blood. She tasted warm iron as the blood slid over her tongue and down her throat. She couldn’t bring herself to speak, so full of rage as she was.
“I see,” Ebik continued, “you don’t want to talk about your coconspirator. The traitor to the Praxis kingdom. Perhaps a different topic, then? After all, it’s been so long since we last spoke. So, tell me…” Ebik paused and cleared his throat. He leaned in closer to the comms and shot a satisfied grin at Kira. “Have you missed your father?”
“Um … what?” Mig said, taking a step toward Kira.
But Kira couldn’t answer. She swallowed hard, knowing that the man who was her father—in biology only—was baiting her into a psychological ploy. That’s what he did best, and Kira was no stranger to his games. For most of her life, she’d suffered under his mental warfare: the way he lured her into trust and betrayed it; the way he made her question her instincts; the way he planted seeds of doubt that, in time, grew into a plant that strangled her own self-worth. But she’d learned, after enough tortured years, who her father really was and what he was capable of, and she would be damned if she was going to let him run his game on her again.
“No, seriously,” Mig said after a quiet moment. “What is this whole father busine—”
4-Qel put his hand on Mig’s shoulder and drew him back. “I don’t believe now is the appropriate time.”
“What have you done here, Baron Ebik?” Kira questioned, her voice icy and distant.
“Well, if we’re going to stick to formalities, Kira, you can call me Admiral Ebik Gendry. The Baron caste has been … retired.”
“I believe ‘slaughtered’ is the word you’re looking for,” 4-Qel interjected.
Kira wasn’t surprised 4-Qel took issue with Ebik’s flippancy at the Baron massacre; it was the same kind of rhetoric the royal family of Eris used when they “retired” a line of Qels every time an upgraded model became available.
Ebik shrugged at 4-Qel, then turned his attention back to Kira.
“I know why you’re here,” he said, his voice as cool and his words as precise as Kira remembered. “You have an excellent military mind, Kira, but let’s not forget where you get it from. It’s no accident that I’ve been made admiral of the Praxian fleet; I still hold the highest score for the war game trials at the Praxis Military Academy, and no one has graduated with more honors than I have.”
“Congratulations,” Kira snarked. “No one simulates warfare better than you.”
“Discount my abilities all you want, but you only work to discredit yourself. Everything you know is because of me. And what is the one thing I told you, time and time again?”
“Always use the bathroom before a dogfight?”
“Know your enemy,” Ebik spat. “And I know you.”
Kira laughed in the face of Ebik’s arrogance and began walking around the comms projection, scanning the image of her father as if she were sizing it up for a brawl.
“Rescuing this ship was so important to you because you thought bringing these supplies to the Kundarians would galvanize them to fight at your side,” Ebik continued. “It’s a good plan, but transparent to anyone who’s looking. And I’ve been looking, watching your every move to learn how you think.”
“And what’s your strategy, Ebik? To bore us to death? Because if so, bravo. It’s working.”
Ebik stroked his cheeks down to his chin as he studied his daughter with an indifferent gaze. Hardly anything affected Ebik; he was a tactician in his heart and mind, always calculating every move he made. His high cheekbones, his perfectly parted black hair—turning gray, perhaps, Kira ventured to imagine—and the savagery in his eyes marked him as an aristocrat, and a proud one at that. Yet it also kept him in control. Kira knew he was too skilled to give anything away by flashing his emotions, assuming he even had any. She liked to goad him anyway.
“Symbols work both ways, my daughter,” Ebik said, returning Kira’s jab with one of his own.
Kira felt a shiver run up her spine, but she maintained her poise. She refused to let Ebik feel like he was getting to her; he could blow up this ship with her on it, but he wouldn’t do so without the pleasure of knowing he’d gotten past her defenses. Ebik liked warfare; he found it amusing. What he enjoyed more, though, was warfare of the intimate variety. He took pleasure in getting inside people’s heads and breaking them from the inside out. Kira had seen him relish this twisted delight on too many occasions.
“You intended this victory to be a symbol of hope, to inspire people to rebel against the galaxy’s ruling power. Now, it’s about to become the opposite. Your failure will be a lesson to those who dare defy Praxis. They’ll see what happens to those who oppose our order.”
“And your failure is in thinking that just because you own today that you own tomorrow as well,” Kira said. “You think you know us, but you don’t. You’re dealing with people who’ve experienced lifetimes of being beaten and broken. We’re resilient, and no single defeat is going to make any of us quit.”
“Defiant as ever. You may have my tactician’s mind, b
ut you have your mother’s fiery spirit.”
Kira’s hands balled into fists so tight she could feel the blood pumping in her fingers as it pushed to circulate. The mention of her mother was deliberately designed to elicit a rise out of Kira. That’s how Ebik operated, that’s how he won. By working people’s emotions, by preying on their weak spots and traumas, he kept his opponents rattled just enough to distract them from his true purpose.
Kira refused to fall into Ebik’s hands.
“We will not fail,” she snarled.
“Who will stop us?” Ebik’s voice raised a pitch, expressing his incredulity of the very idea of being defeated. “Your mother tried to stymie my plans, and look where it got her. The Barons attempted to undermine Ga Halle, and now they’re all dead. And through it all, little girl, I remain. I’ll always remain.”
Now it was Kira’s turn to scoff. “Remind me, Ebik, what happened to the girl who refused to follow your rules and plans? The girl—the little girl—who persistently stood up to you, even when you tried to kill her?”
Ebik’s lip twitched as his perfectly composed countenance showed signs of cracking. Kira smiled and took a step toward the projection of her father, pressing her fiery gaze deep into his eyes.
“You’re not the only one who remains, you son of a—”
Ebik snorted a short puff of air, then forced a smile.
“The ship is lined with explosives, which I’ve just activated,” Ebik said. “The Kundarians can watch their supplies—the ones you promised to return to them—burn. You and your friends have precious little time to escape or you, too, will go up in flames.”
Kira wanted to blast Ebik with overtures on how getting off the ship in a hurry—all of them, Cade included—was something they could do in their sleep, but before she could wrap up a barb of words and spit them at her father, Mig took hold of her elbow and dragged her away from the comms.
“Time to move,” he whispered, and Kira went along with his momentum.
For a moment.
Because Kira wasn’t done. She might not have time to boast and brag about her team’s abilities, but she wasn’t going to leave her father—the man she hadn’t seen since he’d dug a triblade into her shoulder and sliced her across her chest—without saying one final thing.
We Are Mayhem--A Black Star Renegades Novel Page 4