Kira snickered. “Very carefully.”
“Yeah, but seriously,” Cade said, his face flashing real concern. “How are we going to pull this thing off?”
“We’re going to watch each other’s backs, and we’re going to make the most of what we have,” Kira said, pushing as much conviction into her voice as possible. Leaders were confident; leaders were inspiring. She had been taught that ad nauseam. But there was one thing she’d taught herself about being the person responsible for the lives of others: Leaders were honest. And so she added, “Also, we’re going to remember that we don’t have a choice.”
Cade and Kay both nodded, satisfied. Their concerns weren’t completely allayed, but they’d never be. Leaders were there to keep you alive and moving to the next objective.
“I’ve got bad news,” Mig said, and the entire squad gathered around him at the computer terminal. “Ebik’s signal exists independently of what transmits on and off Olanus. I can’t shut it down from here.”
Before anyone could so much as slump their shoulders, Kira cast aside the one door that wouldn’t open and directed their focus into finding one that would.
“What can you do from here?” she asked. “This station has to be operational and guarded for a reason.”
Mig smiled. “I was just about to get to that,” he said, then he spun around in his seat so he faced the terminal again.
Mig punched some keys, and suddenly, a three-dimensional projection of the Crucible flashed above their heads. A bunch of red dots blinked from the bottom of the projection all the way to the top.
“The security protocol,” Mig said with pride. “Not everyone would have figured out how to do this, but luckily for you, you have one of the galaxy’s best hackers on your side.”
“Do … what?” Cade asked.
“I push a button, and boom,” Mig said, snapping his fingers. “Every locked door, every locked gate, including the one that blocks the entrance, is open.”
“So not only will we be able to get in,” Kira said, her smile growing wider and wider as she pictured what Mig’s meddling would accomplish, “but all the inmates will be able to get out.”
“Chaos.” Mig beamed, hardly able to contain himself.
Kira liked what she was hearing. She nodded, mentally projecting an image of the Crucible as it would soon be—overrun by its own inmates, mayhem and carnage reigning. Between the security outage and Ortzo’s missing shuttle, Ebik would definitely know something was wrong. It wouldn’t matter, though. He wouldn’t risk detonating the planet until he was at a safe enough distance, and Kira was going to hit him with all she had before that time came. Let him see his walls crumbling in the meantime. Let him know that his end was nigh.
“As a bonus,” Mig continued, “I can also kill the lights. They’d be totally blind and wouldn’t see us coming until we were rushing the front gate.”
Kira’s smile turned into a determined sneer. “How soon can you do both?”
Mig gestured his ease at doing what he wanted, when he wanted. “At your word,” he answered.
Kira looked at her team and saw in them the same unwavering clarity of purpose she felt within herself. They knew as well as she did that once Mig did his thing, there’d be no stopping, no slowing down. The siege of the Crucible would begin.
She was ready.
They were ready.
“Do it,” she commanded.
* * *
It was the blackest night any of them had ever seen.
Under Olanus’s moonless sky, Kira charged through the dark forest, following 4-Qel, who barreled through any obstacles that stood in the way. Her squad trailed behind dutifully, none of them knowing how long they’d have to capitalize on the mayhem they’d manufactured. They ran with all they had, weapons hot and wits sharp, ready for anything. Kira could see the Crucible through the trees, that oppressive, obsidian obelisk, and she wondered where Ebik would be hiding within it. The lights of his command chamber were out; all of the lights on the Crucible were out.
When Kira burst through the tree line, just two steps behind 4-Qel, she immediately identified what was happening: the Crucible had erupted into a riot. A long, narrow strip of unleveled stone led from a faraway landing pad all the way to the fortress’s outer wall, but the space where an impassable gate should have been was empty. The Crucible was wide open.
With 4-Qel at her side and her squad at her back, Kira kept running toward their destination. With every step she took, the space just past where the gate normally separated Olanus from the incongruent world that existed within the Crucible’s walls became clearer and clearer. They were heading toward a courtyard; massive stone pillars and bronze monuments of larger-than-life figures—heroes of the Praxian war machine, Kira guessed—were scattered from the entrance all the way to the Crucible’s front door. The courtyard had to span about fifty yards, and at the moment, the space was raging with a furious battle. Former prisoners—political prisoners, enemies of the Praxis kingdom—went toe to toe with guards with the ferocity one would expect from someone given the opportunity to strike back against their tormentors.
But still, they were losing.
The guards had the numbers—if Kira had to guess, she’d say the guards were around one hundred strong, while the prisoners would be lucky to number sixty. The guards had compression pikes and E-9 tri-blasters, and though the prisoners had managed to get their hands on some weapons of their own, they were still overmatched. It wouldn’t be long before the prisoners were back in their cells, or worse.
Kira ordered 4-Qel to take cover ahead; there was a concrete pedestal at the mouth of the courtyard—holding up a statue of some undoubtedly cruel Praxian warlord; it had to be if the denizens of the Crucible paid it worship—that was large enough for them all to regroup behind before they entered the fray. They slid to the designated spot, unseen by any of the combatants within.
“Those inmates,” Kay said, gasping for air, “they’re going to all get slaughtered. We have to do something.”
Kira snuck a quick glance over the pedestal, hoping that, somehow in the past minute, the prisoners had found a way to rally and take command of their fight for freedom. They hadn’t.
“We caused this battle,” Kay continued. “We can’t just use these people as a distraction for our own ends.”
“I know, I know,” Kira agreed, tortured over the idea of having to weigh cost against benefit. She could command her squad to join the fray, and together they’d crush the guards. But then what? The prisoners had no way off the planet, and there was absolutely nowhere on Olanus to go. And this didn’t even take into account how committing the time to save them would undermine their efforts to prevent genocide. There was that small detail to account for as well.
“Mig, how much time before Ebik can detonate his weapon?” Kira asked, her anxiety growing more and more as she entertained the idea of taking any detour from their mission.
“About thirty-seven minutes,” Mig replied, looking queasy.
Kira gritted her teeth. They still had to make it all the way up the tower. They still had to infiltrate her father’s command chamber, take out whatever guards he was sure to be hiding behind, and disable his detonator. Still. They couldn’t just leave the prisoners they’d freed to be slaughtered. That was something Ebik would do.
“All right, listen up,” Kira said, cutting right to the chase. There was no time to expend on anything other than essentials. “We have no choice but to punch our way through this courtyard. Our time is short, and our mission couldn’t be more vital. But—”
“Kira, these prisoners need—” Kay interrupted pleadingly.
“But,” Kira continued, “that doesn’t mean that we can’t help along the way. Those guards are nothing but grunts and thugs, and we’re—”
“The Black Star Renegades,” Mig proudly pronounced.
Kira rolled her eyes. “Not what I was going to say. Not even close.”
“You’re welcome,�
�� Mig said.
After an exasperated breath, Kira continued. “Just remember we don’t have all day. We have to keep moving forward. We do what we can along the way, but forward motion is nonnegotiable. Got it?”
Everyone nodded.
“All right, then,” Kira said, steeling herself for what was about to happen. “Follow my lead.”
Leading with a sidewinder in each hand—she’d relieved one of the powering station guards of hers after Cade called dibs on the outpost pistol—Kira charged into battle. The guards, caught completely unaware, were target practice. Kira fired four shots, and four guards went down. She saw another seven fall in the space just ahead of her, all of them taking bolts from someone on her squad. It wasn’t enough to appreciably thin their numbers, but it was a start.
The task of mowing down Crucible guards became much more difficult, though, once the guards realized they were being ambushed. They weren’t so easy to hit anymore; in fact, some of them even started to fight back.
Nonetheless, Kira stayed true to her directive. She fired, she dodged, she took cover. And no matter what, she continued to push forward.
Coming around a pillar, she blasted two bolts into a guard who’d been popping shots in her vicinity from his tri-blaster. Kira was thankful for the weapon’s terrible aim; a more precise weapon might have done more than chew chunks off the pillar’s mortar. Each of her bolts hit the guard square in the chest, propelling him off his feet. But while Kira was focused on the guard with the tri-blaster, she didn’t notice one of his mates coming at her with a compression pike. The guard rushed in from Kira’s blind side, swinging the pike down in an arc that would have crushed Kira’s skull had she not arched her body back at the absolute last moment. The pike smashed against the ground, its weight and momentum pulling the guard with it—and right into Kira’s swinging elbow. Bouncing back from narrowly missing her head being split like a maga fruit, Kira delivered her weight into her hip and twisted it around; she threw her right elbow out, her timing perfect to catch the guard just as she was passing by Kira’s face. She tumbled backward, far enough for Kira to down her with one shot.
Kira took a moment to assess. Her squad was close by, as they should be; Mig and 4-Qel worked in tandem, staying tethered to one another as they cleared a path for them to push through and others to follow; Kay’s battle training helped him predict his enemy’s moves and stay at least one step ahead; though injured, Kobe still moved faster and with more fluidity than anyone around him; and Cade was Cade, blasting and attacking guards with his outpost pistol in one hand and his shido in the other like he was allergic to battle strategies. And he was. Cade relied on intuition, which both amazed and terrified Kira. Still, Cade and everyone else brought their own character to her squad, and that was exactly the way Kira liked it.
They’d pushed their way halfway up the courtyard without much resistance; as Kira predicted, like much of Praxis’s armed forces, the guards weren’t what anyone would consider elite. They were fodder feeding the kingdom’s war machine, as expendable as the uniforms on their backs. With Kira’s squad’s help, the tide was turning; the prisoners—maybe no better trained than the guards, but certainly with more to fight for—took control of the battle, and it wouldn’t be long before the courtyard, and their freedom, was theirs.
Through the last remaining wave of guards, Kira spotted the open doorway that led into the Crucible. It wasn’t far. Just a little more fighting, a little more adversity, and they’d be inside. It was one more obstacle down on the path to reaching, and stopping, Ebik.
But then, just as Kira was whipping her sidewinder across a guard’s face, a light splashed in her eyes. Kira had to shield her face and step out of the light’s beam; her vision regained, Kira surveyed the scene and realized that the battle had come to a halt. Every single combatant on both sides had stopped, and they were all looking up. Kira followed their gaze and found, clamped against the outer wall, a trio of spotlights burning brightly, illuminating the darkness. She tried to convince herself that the lights must have been running on a backup generator and were running in conjunction with an emergency protocol. But she knew that was just wishful thinking. Something else was happening.
It only took a moment for her to find out what.
“Kira Sen, you and your rabble have made what I suppose will be considered a noble attempt to fight for your cause,” a voice said, crackling through an unseen intercom. “Unfortunately, you’re not nearly as clever or resourceful as you think you are.”
Her eyes fixed on the sky—less on the light’s burning beams and more on the darkness around them—Kira hadn’t noticed Cade sidestepping next to her.
“Is that—” he began, but Kira cut him off.
“Ebik,” she said, feelings of anger, dread, suspense, and betrayal pushing down within her like a coil.
“I’ve been a step ahead of you the entire time, and I always will be,” Ebik continued. “Your attempted rebellion is over. It was over before it ever began. Good-bye, Kira.”
The intercom popped and then cut out. The entire courtyard waited in suspended animation, knowing something was going to happen. Kira thought to start firing again, to blast and scream and battle until every last charge was spent, until every shred of her will to fight was exhausted. But she knew she was trapped; she just didn’t know to what extent.
As abruptly as they’d turned on, the spotlights cut off. A shadow pressed down on the entire courtyard once again, and everyone took a startled half step back. Mig, 4-Qel, Kobe, and Kay had all managed to gravitate toward Cade and Kira. They formed a circle, tight and close.
“This is bad,” Mig said. “What’s going to happen? Kira, what is he going to do?”
Kira couldn’t answer. She surveyed the scene, her eyes examining every visible inch of the courtyard, trying to figure out what trap Ebik could have laid for them. Disbelief overwhelmed her, disbelief and a creeping, growing sense of shame. The contradiction of those feelings—Kira couldn’t believe Ebik had managed to pull the rug out from under her, yet she was ashamed that she hadn’t been able to prevent it—didn’t matter. All that mattered was that they were losing. That everything was slipping through her fingers. Never in her life did she consider retreat a viable option. She’d retreated the day Ebik nearly killed her and took her mother prisoner, and she vowed never to do it again. But now, it was the only option. She wouldn’t see her friends die fighting for a mission that she knew they could no longer complete. Ebik had won; the only thing Kira could do was minimize her losses.
But almost like Ebik was reading her mind, like he had somehow implanted himself inside her head, he took that option away, too. She was about to call for their retreat; she was about to lead them back into the forest and figure out what to do from there when she heard a subtle sound coming from within the Crucible, soft and distant but growing. It distracted her and the rest of them for just long enough.
“What is that?” Kay asked. They’d all turned their attention toward the open double doors that led into the fortress. Kira squinted, trying to get a better look inside, but it was no help. The entrance was a seamless onyx wall, and she couldn’t see an inch past it.
“Is that screaming?” Cade asked as the sound became louder and closer.
Blood rushed to Kira’s head. The screaming only got louder, but it was drowned out by her heart pumping in her ears.
“GO! RUN!” Kira screamed, but it was too late. The moment she turned, her squad right with her, the outer gate rolled on its track and slammed shut.
They were trapped inside.
“Oh no,” Mig murmured.
Kira whipped around and faced her squad; they looked how she felt—terrified. They were huddled behind one of the courtyard’s monuments, soon to be swallowed by their enemy. In that moment, Kira recalled an obscure lesson she’d learned about leadership, one she’d never understood until now: Squads needed leaders to win, but they needed leaders even more to lose. Ebik could get the upper hand o
n them, he could throw whatever he had in their path, and maybe this would be their last stand. But if it were, she wouldn’t let them go down like this. Not on her watch.
“Listen to me, all of you, right now,” Kira said, having to project her voice over the incoming yelling. “We’ve faced impossible odds, and we’ve come out on the other side. My mother once told me that the only time you lose is when you give up, and we are not giving up.”
Kira could see the resolve of her squad returning. Cade, Kobe, and Kay were ready. 4-Qel was made ready. But Mig wasn’t there. He wasn’t a warrior; he wasn’t even a soldier. Kira knew he needed more.
“And do you know why?” she asked, slamming a fresh charge into her sidewinder and catching Mig’s eyes. “Because we’re the Black Star Renegades, and we’ll show everyone who stands in our path what that means.”
Kira twisted her head around the monument toward the Crucible’s door; the onslaught had arrived. Soldiers upon soldiers rushed through the door, screaming a vicious battle cry all the way through. Kira couldn’t even estimate how many. A lot was the best she could do.
The Praxian forces rushed toward them, and Kira and her squad used their coverage to thin their ranks. Kira fired blast after blast, targeting enemies indiscriminately. But even after she’d depleted a charge and had to reload, she realized the opposition hadn’t thinned one bit.
As the horde closed in on their position, Kira committed to keeping one eye on each of her squad mates as she fought. Slowly, her unit was breaking; everyone was being pulled in different directions, farther and farther away from her, and they, like her, were being overwhelmed. Kira turned and fired two blasts into the chest of a guard taking aim at her, then she fired another shot into the guts of one who’d just missed her face with a blast of his own. Another guard charged at her, leading with a compression pike, and Kira fired again and again, but whatever armor he was wearing protected him from her strikes. She fired a blast that deflected off his helmet, then another that merely scratched his chest plating. He was nearly on her, and just as she was about to dive to the ground, she saw a shido’s blade smash against his face. The guard went down, and Cade, standing over him, gave Kira a wink.
We Are Mayhem--A Black Star Renegades Novel Page 30