by L O Addison
She had a small laser torch in her pack, but the alien device ran off jegga crystals, which put off radiation. She’d disabled the motion and heat sensors in the vault’s alarm system, but she hadn’t had enough time to disable the radiation sensor.
So she’d have to pick the padlock the old-fashioned way. Kaylin reached into her hair, searching for one of the bobby pins she used to keep her hair out of her face. She’d been cursing the Florida humidity earlier that day for making her wavy hair impossible to keep back, but now she was grateful she’d had to jam some pins in it.
Kaylin straightened one of the pins as she glanced down at her watch. Six forty-eight. She had planned on being out of here by six-fifty, giving her a two-minute gap to sneak out of the building before the guards on patrol circled around to this section of the building again.
Looked like she was shit out of luck. She’d have to get in and get out as fast as she could, and just hope she could dodge the guards.
Red skittered into the room, his scales flashing an alarmed teal color as he growled a low warning in his throat. He snapped his jaws open and closed, like he was trying to ward off an unseen enemy with his fangs.
“What's wrong?” Kaylin whispered.
Red looked over his shoulder at the door and snorted, his tail lashing through the air like a whip. Kaylin cursed, knowing exactly what that meant. They weren't alone. Her careful planning to avoid the guards had been a failure.
“Are you kidding me?” she muttered.
Red whimpered as he sensed her anxiety and scrambled over to her, reaching up with his front paw to tap at her arm.
“I’m not picking you up, you big baby,” she hissed. “Go guard the door!”
His head drooped, and his scales flashed a sad shade of purple.
Kaylin pointed fiercely toward the door. “Guard!”
Red snorted indignantly and trotted back over to the door, his head hanging low. He crouched near the door, ready to cry out an alarm if anyone got too close.
Kaylin turned her attention back to the padlock. It had a single hole on the bottom for a key. She shoved her bobby pin inside it, using it to delicately feel for the lock-pins inside. She jiggled the bobby pin, desperately trying to remember the proper way to nudge the lock-pins into place. The pins kept slipping out of place every time she nudged them, but she willed herself to stay calm and kept working at it.
“Come on, come on, come on,” she muttered at the lock. She glanced at her watch again.
Six-fifty. Time was running out.
A jolt of panic hit her. Then she felt it—the last lock-pin jostled into place. A surge of relief washed over her, and she gently twisted the bobby-pin, waiting for the satisfying click of the lock opening.
There was a sharp twang. It didn’t sound right at all, and as Kaylin glanced down at her hand, she realized why. Her fingers clutched at half a bobby-pin. The other half was stuck inside the lock, where it had snapped off.
Kaylin cursed and slammed her hand against the thick steel of the vault’s door, sending a jolt of pain through her palm. But she barely felt it through the panic starting to eat away at her thoughts.
Red let out a low trilling noise, a warning call that someone was approaching. He skittered back into the shadows of the door and shot Kaylin a worried glance.
She held her breath, listening, and there it was. The faint sound of footsteps. Definitely more than one person, maybe three or four. So it probably wasn’t guards. From what she’d seen, they always worked in pairs or solo.
So then who the hell was it? She’d spent an entire week monitoring the communication traffic coming and going from this base, and she was one hundred percent sure no one was supposed to be in the South Quarters except for guards.
But it didn’t matter who it was. All that mattered was that she couldn’t get caught.
Kaylin grabbed both the electric locks off the floor and stuck them back on the vault door. Their magnets clung to the steel, making it hard to notice that they’d both been deactivated. Then she jogged to the door of the small storage room that housed the vault. Red slinked at her heels with his claws retracted, his padded paws making no noise on the tile.
Kaylin strained her ears, struggling to listen for the sound of footsteps over the noise of her own heartbeat. They sounded close, but not too close yet.
“Camo,” she whispered to Red.
As soon as she uttered the command, his scales began to shift color, changing to a light grey color to blend into the walls and floor. There was a good chance she was about to get caught, but she wasn’t going to let the same thing happen to Red.
She ducked outside and strode swiftly down the hallway, searching for an open door to duck into. There. A storage closet stood just a few yards away, cracked open a couple inches. She carefully pressed against it, making sure it didn’t creak, and then pushed it open. Stacks of boxes filled the closet, and all of them had a thick layer of dust on top, reassuring her that this room was rarely disturbed.
She slipped inside, and Red followed after her, his scales shifting to a dark grey color as he camouflaged with the shadows inside. Kaylin pushed the door closed again, leaving it open just an inch, exactly as it’d been before. Then she backed away, deeper into the room, ducking behind a tall stack of boxes.
Red pressed his head against her knee and let out a quiet sound—half grumble and half whimper. “Hush,” she murmured, but she bent down and stroked him under his chin, allowing the smoothness of his scales to settle her nerves.
The footsteps came closer, their sound muffled by the closet door. Voices started up, and Kaylin strained her ears, struggling to hear what was being said.
“Commander Hayes instructed us to stay at the North Quarters,” a man’s voice said. It was prim and proper and had a strange accent Kaylin couldn’t even begin to place. “If I’m not mistaken, this building is on the south end of the base.”
“Yes, um, the commander misspoke.” It was another man’s voice, although this one had an American accent and sounded strangely familiar. “He meant to say the South Quarters. This is where we house medics who are in training, but the next training program doesn’t start for another couple weeks. So it’s empty in here for now, but it has really nice facilities.”
Kaylin strained her memories, struggling to remember who the voice belonged to. But she quickly gave up, realizing it was hopeless. She’d been a member of the Resistance for two years, and she’d worked alongside dozens of soldiers during that time. Remembering one just by voice was damn near impossible.
The footsteps came nearer, and Kaylin battled between the urge to hide deeper in the closet and the urge to peek out the crack in the door to see who the hell was disrupting her robbery. The first option won out, and she pressed herself closer against the wall, crossing her fingers no one dared to look inside the room.
“I’m going to put you in the rooms right at the end of this hall,” the familiar voice said. “They’re usually used by the doctors who come and teach here, so they’re the nicest facilities we have.”
There was a hesitant pause, but then the other man said, “I appreciate it, Beck.”
Holy shit. Beck. It was no wonder his voice sounded so familiar. Kaylin had spent an entire year working alongside him during the Syndicate War. He’d led the sniper team she’d been assigned to, and he’d taught her at least half the tricks she knew.
Not that he probably cared about that anymore. Kaylin was sure he despised her for ditching the Resistance, just like everyone else. And a small part of her also despised him. After all, he was the one who’d honed her into such a capable killer.
Despite that, she felt a sudden urge to open the door and cry out a greeting. They’d both lived through hell together, and both emerged from it through opposite exits. But they’d always have the strange bond that all soldiers shared after fighting the Syndicate.
“The ambassador doesn’t need someplace nice. He needs someplace safe. If Commander Hayes wants us in
the North Quarters, we should go there.”
It was a woman who spoke this time, her sharp voice breaking Kaylin from her thoughts. The woman spoke in the same strange, lilting accent the other man had, but her tone was far less friendly.
“It's just as safe in here, I promise,” Beck said. “The North and South Quarters both have equal levels of security.”
“But why are you disobeying your commander and bringing us here?” the woman insisted.
“I'm not disobeying. Like I said, Commander Hayes just misspoke.”
The woman scoffed. “I can only hope you're better at keeping guests safe than you are at lying, Beck.”
Kaylin raised her eyebrows, wondering who the hell these visitors were. One was apparently an ambassador, but from where? Beck was pretty high up in the Resistance’s chain of command at this point. Not the sort of person most visitors would feel comfortable casually calling a liar, regardless of their political status.
But whoever the woman was, she was right—Beck was a horrible liar. Embarrassingly so. It wasn't because he was actually stupid, it was just because he was stupidly honest, so he got almost no practice telling fibs.
Beck cleared his throat, and his awkwardness was audible as he said, “Um. You'll be safe here, I swear. I only took you here because the rooms are nicer in here. The security level is exactly the same.”
Yep. And that level was “compromised.” Kaylin still wasn't sure how the Resistance’s security had declined so quickly since she left, but she suspected it was because there was no active war at the moment. With no enemies at the gates, the Resistance was starting to get sloppy.
“I see,” the woman said, her tone dry. “If I had any respect for Commander Hayes, I'd report you for disobeying his orders. But I trust you more than that man, so I’ll refrain from reporting you. For now.”
Okay, this was getting bizarre. No one spoke about Hayes that way. He was a living hero and one of the most respected Resistance commanders alive. Kaylin had never met the man or worked under him, but his reputation was enough to make her respect him.
She waited for Beck to chew out the woman for daring to insult Hayes on his own base. But Beck just cleared his throat again and said, “Again, I apologize for my commander’s rudeness. But I assure you he wants you to be safe.”
“He certainly shows his eagerness for our well-being in a strange manner,” the woman said.
“Marin,” the other man said, his accented voice sharpening just slightly. “Please, let's drop the matter for now.”
The woman—Marin, apparently—replied in a foreign language. Kaylin couldn't understand a word of it, but it sounded like something from a funeral eulogy, slow and somber and thoughtful. The man replied in the same language, and Kaylin wished she could understand what the heck he was saying.
Their footsteps grew closer, until they were right outside the door. Red pressed close to Kaylin, and she reached down to stroke the top of his head, comforting them both. She was too nervous to breathe as the trio walked right past, with only a couple feet and the ajar door to separate them.
“Your rooms are right at the end of this hall,” Beck said. “You're welcome to make yourselves comfortable, and I'll come get you as soon as we have the communication link to your embassy stabilized. But this storm is going to make it take longer than usual.”
Kaylin mulled over this information. The security window her buyer had opened for her would be closed within the next hour, which would trap her inside. That meant she couldn't wait for the two visitors to leave their quarters and head for the communication station.
She was going to have to slip back into the room with the vault as soon as Beck left. All she could hope was that the two visitors would stay in their rooms, and she wouldn't run into them.
A flash of movement whisked by the door as the three people strode past. Kaylin peered closely, trying to get a better look, but she couldn’t make out anything except for the ripple of grey cloth.
“The storm should be over by morning,” the accented man said. “Vapor bombs generally don’t change weather patterns for more than twelve hours or so. Do you believe we’ll be able to depart then?”
“I think so, but it’s really not my place to say,” Beck replied.
“I do not understand your people,” Marin said, her voice stiff with disdain. “You pretend to have ranks and your superiors give commands. But you only listen to some commands, and others you claim are ‘not your place’ to even discuss.”
Beck cleared his throat. “Our command system is complicated.”
Marin scoffed. “On Rhuramentia, we would not call it complicated. We would say it is ‘vanushra.’”
The accented man replied sharply in their foreign language, and Kaylin knew without a doubt that the woman had just insulted the Resistance. But the rest of the woman’s words took Kaylin a long, incredulous moment to decipher.
Rhuramentia. Kaylin had heard the word before, but only when people were discussing the Ascendancy. No one really knew much about the Ascendancy, other than the fact that they were an alien civilization hell-bent on invading, destroying, and colonizing the known universe, like some sort of Napoleon conquest on intergalactic steroids. They were also Earth's worst nightmare, since humanity had barely survived the Syndicate War three years before and sure as hell wasn't ready to take on another alien invasion.
According to some of the rumors Kaylin had heard, Rhuramentia was supposed to be their saving grace. It was a planet on the edge of the Andromeda galaxy and home to an alien civilization that was the ancient enemy of the Ascendancy. Apparently, the Rhuramenti people had offered to band together with Earth, along with dozens of other planets, and try to stand against the impending attack by the Ascendancy.
She shook her head in disbelief. The people walking with Beck weren’t from a different country. They were from a different galaxy.
She couldn’t believe it. Well, actually, she could. The Resistance had proven to her very, very thoroughly that they couldn’t always be trusted. But, still, this lie seemed bigger than most. They’d sworn for years that they wouldn’t get involved in alien politics.
Apparently, they’d changed their minds, just like Kaylin had figured they eventually would. Over the years, the Resistance had grown to be just as political as any other military. They signed treaties, allied themselves with countries, and worked hard to grow their power. Allying with foreign civilizations was the next logical step in their expansion.
But it wasn’t any of her damn business. Kaylin took a deep breath and shook her head, reminding herself of what was her business: breaking into that vault, grabbing those crystals, and getting the hell out of there.
She’d spent plenty of time caught up in the business of the Resistance. And she was never, ever going back to it.
4
Lio
Lio could hardly keep track of what Beck said as the soldier guided them through the maze of halls in the South Quarters. Beck offered them a hasty lie about why he wasn’t taking them to the North Quarters, and then fumbled through a reassurance that they would be perfectly safe.
Lio resisted the urge to laugh at that. The Resistance had sworn the same thing about the Virtue, and instead of keeping it safe, they’d allowed it to be stolen from right under their noses.
The humans were liars, plain and simple.
Beck ushered them into their quarters, which consisted of two main rooms and a small bathroom. “I'll come back as soon as our communication team stabilizes the signal with your embassy,” he said. “So I’ll probably see you in an hour or so.”
“All right,” Lio said. He struggled to sound sincere as he added, “Thank you for showing us to our quarters.”
The humans may have been beyond rude to him, but Lio wasn’t going to repay their treatment.
“Yeah, no problem,” Beck said with a nod. “I’ll see you in a bit.”
Lio waited for an appropriate goodbye, but Beck just offered a hurried wave and t
hen stepped out of the room, closing the door behind him.
“Well,” Marin said, her voice frustrated and weary. “This is off to a terrible start.”
Lio laughed. He couldn’t help it—the noise just bubbled up out of his chest and escaped. Marin shot him a disapproving glance, but he didn’t even have the energy to fake remorse.
“Terrible is putting it lightly,” Lio said, finally allowing his pent-up panic to seep into his voice.
Marin sighed and closed her eyes. Lio waited for her to say something encouraging, or comforting, or wise. Throughout the two years they’d worked together, Lio had come to trust Marin’s guidance just as much as her skill with weapons.
But all she said was, “We need to get the Virtue back. No matter what the cost.”
Lio shakily made his way over to a chair in the corner of the room. His veins felt like they were filled with acid, and every breath he took sent spasms of pain through his muscles. The emergency trip to Earth had taken over a month of non-stop hyperspace travel, farther than he’d ever traveled before. Normally, the Council would never send a Collector with his level of experience on a trip this long, but the only other Collectors who knew Earthen languages and customs were hundreds of days away by hyperspace travel. Sending Lio had been the only option.
Lio knew better than to assume the Council could make a mistake. But he couldn’t help thinking their faith in his ability to manage the mission had been… misguided. Collectors were supposed to represent all the wisdom and peace Rhuramentia had to offer the universe. But, despite the twenty-three years of intense training Lio had received before being named a Collector, he didn’t feel wise or peaceful. He felt sick, exhausted, panicked, and like he wanted to punch something.
Marin frowned in concern as he gingerly lowered himself into the chair. Its cushion was nearly as hard as stone, and it did nothing to settle the ache in his bones.