Kira turned back to the comms, just as the transmission was starting to fade.
“Hey, Dad,” Kira said, and Ebik’s flickering blue projection turned to face her.
“Forgot to say good-bye?”
“Not quite,” Kira said. “I want you to know something, and I want you to understand it as clearly as possible:
“The next time I see you, I’m going to kill you.”
Ebik rolled his tongue along the inside of his mouth before curling his upper lip, unable to conceal his disdain. “We’ll just see about that,” he said as the transmission evaporated.
Kira turned to Mig and 4-Qel, who were waiting at the blown-out doorway.
“Well, what are we waiting for?” she asked. “Looks like we have to go rescue Cade. Again.”
CHAPTER THREE
“Your brother murdered before your eyes, the Well and all your fellow Rai scattered across the galaxy. Your own Master, a man who was like your father, betrayed and tried to kill you. Face it, Cade Sura: You’re alone.”
Cade wiped away the blood that streamed from the wound Ortzo had sliced across his cheek. He left behind a smear of crimson that ran from the side of his face to his tightly pursed lips. The fight with Ortzo had spilled into the trade ship’s belly, the level that most crew saw only if they needed an escape pod. The rest belonged to mechanics. In the space softly lit by deep-blue and orange lights that spread beneath the floor and cast their illumination up, Ortzo had managed to contest Cade’s strikes at every turn. Ortzo was a tenacious, skilled, and determined fighter; Cade understood that within seconds of their duel’s start. But with the Rokura guiding his way, Cade should have been able to dispose of Ortzo, regardless of how fierce Ortzo was, without breaking a sweat. But Cade was sweating. And bleeding. And the more Ortzo taunted him, the more Ortzo got under his skin, the further he was from connecting to the Rokura and being able to draw on its power. Without it, Cade wasn’t certain he could get out of this fight alive.
“You have no idea what you’re talking about,” Cade said, trying to push Ortzo’s words out of his mind. The darkness they cast over him was proving to be deadlier than anything Ortzo could do with his shido.
Ortzo, standing opposite Cade, kept his shido at the ready as he began stalking a circle around the room. “Oh, that’s right,” Ortzo sneered. “You have your friends. Is that what you’re clinging to?”
“I’m warning you, Ortzo,” Cade said as he wrapped his hands tighter around the Rokura’s hilt. Visions of the Fatebreaker he’d disintegrated on Quarry—that the Rokura had disintegrated—flashed in his head. “I’m warning you.”
Ortzo huffed. “You think they, what, care about you? Percival is a coward and a liar, a terrorist. He sees you as a means to an end and nothing more. What do you think will happen when he finally accepts what I already know, that you will never, ever become a true Paragon? Do you think he’ll continue to waste his time with you? The same goes for your friends and this threadbare thing you’re calling an uprising. They’ll either abandon you or die; they’ll die because of you. Because you led them into a war under the lie that you could be something you’re not.”
Cade’s chest welled and caved as he panted with rage. He was smoldering, his fear and doubt having transformed into fury over the course of this fight. He wanted to throw Ortzo’s words in his face, but he couldn’t. His focus was dedicated to pushing back the Rokura’s influence, which was bleeding into his mind. It was as if the weapon had been waiting for this moment, for Cade to be unsettled enough to welcome its twisted purpose. It wanted him to seize power through mayhem and murder; it wanted him to find the control that eluded him by traversing its dark path. Somewhere in the back of Cade’s mind, he knew that the relationship he’d forged with the Rokura had been a ruse; it lent him enough of its power to keep him alive and enticed, but in the end, it wanted Cade for its puppet. And its pull was strong. Cade thought he could work with Percival and learn how to master the weapon through rigorous training and focus, but he was wrong. This side of the Rokura would always come bubbling to the surface, the side that covetously lusted for power, and Cade knew he couldn’t hold it back forever. He wasn’t strong enough, and he never would be.
Cade would never be the Paragon.
“It’s the nature of the world,” Ortzo continued. “We forge relationships that benefit our ends so we can fulfill our most basic impulse: to survive.
“Just give me the Rokura. Accept the truth, and you’ll be the one who survives. You have my word that the entire Praxis kingdom will leave you in peace. You can unburden yourself and disappear, Cade. Because they will turn on you—Percival, the Renegades, even that girlfriend of yours, I believe her name is—”
“GRAH!” Cade screamed as he charged Ortzo and slammed the Rokura down on him. Ortzo blocked the strike with his shido, but the defensive measure knocked him back on his heels. The Rokura was coursing through Cade, its influence taking over, and there was nothing Ortzo could do to combat its power. There was nothing anyone could do.
Cade swung the Rokura away from Ortzo’s shido and, with unmatchable speed, brought its blunt end around into Ortzo’s chest. The blow shattered the Fatebreaker’s armor, and Cade heard Ortzo’s ribs crack just before he started choking on his own breath. Futilely, Ortzo swung his shido at Cade, yelping in pain as he did. The Rokura in his off hand, Cade swatted the shido away and, with Ortzo defenseless, he sliced his weapon across his enemy’s thigh. The wound hobbled Ortzo, who staggered back until he was caught by the outer wall. He remained there, clutching his wound—which was gushing blood—as Cade crept slowly toward him.
Just as Cade reached striking distance, Ortzo looked up. He looked Cade dead in his eyes, and he started to laugh.
“Go ahead, kill me,” Ortzo taunted, looking up at the Rokura that Cade held just above his head. “It won’t change the fact that you’re a fraud. And when everyone around you figures that out, you’ll be all alone. You don’t even have parents to run to, boy.”
Energy began to pour off the Rokura’s tip, and Cade could see its brilliant sheen reflected in Ortzo’s eyes. Cade swallowed three deep breaths as he forced the Rokura’s sway out of his mind.
Kill him now, it said. Destroy him. Destroy them all.
The influence was so hard for Cade to resist, but he knew he couldn’t relinquish control. If he let the Rokura in, he feared he’d become nothing more than a vessel for its dominant will. That he’d be forever lost under the Rokura’s power.
Cade wanted to resist. He had to. But the question lingered in his mind, one he couldn’t let go unasked.
“What do you know about my parents?” Cade growled.
Ortzo propped himself up against the wall, angling away from the Rokura’s crackling power.
“Killed by a tragic ship malfunction, that’s the version you were told. But no, no, no. And you know it isn’t true. They were conspiring with Kaldorian scum—troublemaking idealists, like you and your Renegades.”
The Rokura surged. Cade felt the weapon’s white-hot power pulsing through it and his own body. Cade tried to control the rage that wanted nothing more than to blow Ortzo to bits right then and there. Leave him nothing more than a stain on the ship’s wall before he could say another word. But he was compelled to listen, as sick as it made him to hear Ortzo recall his parents’ death.
“My parents,” Cade snarled, “were aid workers.”
“Your parents were conspirators and enemies of the Praxis kingdom, and that is why their ship was blown out of the sky by cloaked dreadnought bombers,” Ortzo said as he pushed himself off the wall and neared Cade.
“It’s why I killed them,” Ortzo spat.
Cade was blinded. Light burst in cycling waves off the Rokura, and all he could see was its burning power. And in that power was the capacity to satisfy his deepest desires and heal the wound that’d been festering in Cade’s heart since the day his parents left and never came back. He could have his revenge. All he had to do
was release the Rokura’s might on Ortzo, and Ortzo would die an excruciating death. His skin and muscle and everything else, down to his atoms, would be eradicated from existence. Ortzo would be gone, obliterated, and Cade would claim the justice his parents deserved. All he had to do, he knew, was let the Rokura take charge. It taunted him with the promise of giving him everything he needed and wanted. Revenge, power, justice. He could have it all if he just surrendered, and he was ready to do it. Consequences be damned, because there was no way he could let the man who’d murdered his parents suffer anything other than the worst death possible.
But then, through the din of the Rokura’s power and the voice that crowded his head, he heard his friends call his name.
“CADE!” they screamed, and in his mind flashed an image, one of himself the way Kira, 4-Qel, and Mig would see him in that moment—maniacal with unimaginable power. Cade shuddered and tried to shake the image off, but the moment took hold of him. And then, the image began to change. Cade’s form was morphing before his eyes; soon, he was shrouded in all black, his face pale and ghastly. But then the blackness took hold, spindles of vicious vines wrapping around his body, until standing before him was nothing more than a featureless shape. Cade could see the shape’s shoulders rise and fall as it breathed. He cautiously reached out his hand and placed it on the thing’s shoulder; he wanted to turn it around so he could see what’d come of it, but the shape pulled away. It retched violently, and a shrieking unlike any Cade had ever heard before stabbed at his ears. Suddenly, daggers tore from the shape’s head; they twisted and turned, forming hideous, deadly shapes. Cade felt revulsion; he felt terror. Before he could pull himself away from the shape, its head began to turn. And there, staring into Cade through bloodred eyes, was Ga Halle. Ga Halle donning an obsidian helmet of gnarled horns, smiling with delightful malice.
“The Rokura is mine,” she hissed, and before Cade could shake off the horror he felt, he was jolted back to his waking life.
And in this waking life, the Rokura was exploding in his hands.
The revulsion Cade felt as he pictured his friends responding to the Rokura unleashing its furious power came rushing back. While Cade knew his friends would never abandon him, he questioned whether they would abandon the Rokura. Of all the grim possibilities the Rokura presented, that was the one Cade could least abide.
Just as the Rokura was about to erupt in Ortzo’s face, Cade flinched. He pointed the weapon over his head, and instead of atomizing Ortzo, the blast tore through the ceiling. And the ceiling above that, and the ceiling above that. Cade was thankful to be in the bottom of the ship; otherwise, his decision to defy the Rokura might have sent him propelling into space through the hole he’d made.
Ortzo, meanwhile, capitalized on the window Cade created sparing his life by trying to kill him. He swung his shido around like a club, its blades on a path to smash into Cade’s skull. But just before that could happen, a single blast flew over Cade’s shoulder and drilled Ortzo backward. He was knocked off his feet, and Cade turned to see 4-Qel with a smoking rifle in his grip. Cade saw the drone shoot him a thumbs-up just before he collapsed.
Every part of Cade—emotional, physical, and spiritual—was completely and utterly spent. He felt as if the vital thing that made him who he was—his soul, his essence, whatever name the galaxy wanted to ascribe to it—had been scooped out of him, leaving a husk behind. And that husk was now prone on the ground, the world spinning around him. Cade tried to push himself up, but he slipped under his own weight and dropped face-first back onto the floor. Through his bleary vision, Cade saw Ortzo dive into an escape pod. 4-Qel fired shot after shot at the pod, but the door closed before Ortzo could be touched. The Fatebreaker jettisoned into space, and all Cade could do was lie there, wondering what was happening to him.
Cade fought to keep his eyes open, but he couldn’t ward off the darkness overwhelming him. Just before he succumbed to unconsciousness, Cade felt Kira rush to his side. She propped his head up and called for 4-Qel to help lift him off the ground.
“It’s going to be okay,” Kira said. “Duke’s on his way. We’re getting out of here.”
Cade caught a glimpse of Kira just before his head lolled back and his eyes rolled behind his eyelids. She looked distraught. Haunted, almost.
Something was wrong with her. Something was wrong with both of them.
* * *
In the cockpit of the Rubicon, Kira took a deep breath and focused on the tasks in front of her: regrouping with the other Renegades, getting Cade the aid he needed, and salvaging what she could of the Kundarian failure. It was all she could do to prevent herself from bursting into tears. She’d kept herself together and led her squad off the Kundarian trade ship before it exploded, but it hadn’t been easy. Aided by the power of Mig’s propulsors, 4-Qel used his sheer strength to tear a hole through one of the thin doors that covered the escape pod hatches. They’d discovered that all but one pod—the one Ortzo had escaped in—had been decommissioned.
Together, Kira and Mig angled Cade through the do-it-yourself exit 4-Qel had made and, using his grav suit, sent him rocketing to 4-Qel, who was waiting to receive him. She let Mig propel himself out of the ship next, and Kira followed. She caught up to 4-Qel and grabbed hold of Cade, who was still unconscious. Together, they flew away from the ship and were intercepted by the Rubicon, piloted by Duke. Kira made it aboard just in time to watch the trade ship, not that far in the distance, erupt from one end to the other.
The ship she’d come to rescue was completely destroyed, and it was all her father’s doing.
Now, she was alone in the cockpit of her custom-made assault cruiser, unable to decide if she should cry, scream, or break her hand punching whatever was closest. She went with a little bit of all three as she howled madly before slugging the storage locker adjacent to the cockpit door over and over while hot tears formed in her eyes. Exhaustion combined with the recognition that hurting herself wouldn’t help her in the least finally brought her outburst to an end, and just as she was about to collapse against the locker she’d just beaten the snot out of, she stopped herself.
Kira refused to let this happen. She would not let Ebik do this to her.
She also realized Duke was in the room with her, operating the ship from her command chair.
“Oh, don’t mind me,” the cagey old drone said as he swiveled the chair to face Kira. “I fly with Cade; I’m accustomed to watching humans throw temper tantrums.”
“Well, I’m not used to throwing them,” Kira said as she pulled herself away from the dented locker. She straightened her clothes—a tight-fitting jacket and black pants combination, designed to fit well under the grav suit she’d been wearing—and when she raised her hands to push away the dreads that were hanging in her face, she noticed blood was dripping from her hands. She’d split her knuckles and shredded the surrounding skin to ribbons. She grinned defiantly at the sight of the crimson trickling down the back of her hand and beneath the sleeve of her jacket. Ebik had his little bit of her blood; he wouldn’t get a single drop more.
“How’s my ship?” Kira asked as she stood beside Duke at the command chair.
“Would you like to get cleaned up first?” Duke asked.
“Why? The sight of blood makes you uneasy?”
“Nothing makes me uneasy. I’m a robot. Where’s Cade? How is he?”
Kira exhaled sharply and turned away from Duke. She didn’t know what was happening with Cade, not exactly, and she didn’t feel like talking about it. Especially to Duke. Talking about whatever was happening to Cade would be an admittance that something was wrong, and she wasn’t prepared to cede that point. Not even to herself. Because then she’d have to come to terms with her lingering suspicion that, in the end, the Rokura would prove to be anything but the weapon of salvation it’d been hyped up to be. She was afraid. Afraid that neither Cade nor Percival really knew what they were dealing with as they tried to tame the weapon; afraid that it had the potentia
l to destroy everything she’d fought so hard to build.
And, more importantly, she was afraid that it would be the death of Cade. Yet that concern felt distant and abstract, obscured by her failure at Kundar. And Ebik. His voice echoed in her head, and she couldn’t exorcise the words that’d haunted her ever since the day she’d fled Praxis.
Personal ties only make you weak, Ebik had told her just weeks before he’d tried to kill her. They give you a reason to compromise the one thing you should never negotiate—your own destiny. And that works both ways. You’ll have to betray the ones you love, or they’ll betray you. It’s how these things always end.
Kira winced. Not because Ebik had been remarkably true to his word but because his words exposed the deep concern she had over Cade and the Rokura. Would the weapon be their downfall? Would she have to step in and destroy it, despite Cade’s and Percival’s protestations? They didn’t see the weapon the same way she did; they thought they could bring it under control despite its instability, despite its darkness. Their progress, so far, hadn’t been encouraging; it seemed that, at times—like just now in the belly of the trade ship—the Rokura was the one controlling Cade. Kira knew a time might come when the Rokura would have to be stopped, but would Cade stand by her side or in her way?
“Kira?” Duke prodded, snapping Kira out of her reverie. “I asked about Cade.”
“He’s resting in the medical bay,” Kira tersely said. “He’s stable.”
“Did you know that I retrieved Cade from the spire on Quarry after he first acquired the Rokura? He was as near death as anyone I’d ever se—”
“The ship, Duke,” Kira interrupted. “Let’s focus on the ship.”
Duke threw up his hands, surrendering. “You humans are so confounding,” he said. “It’s why I’m grateful to not have emotions obscuring my programming.”
We Are Mayhem--A Black Star Renegades Novel Page 5