by Ben Hale
“Can you two stop arguing?” Enara asked. “Dragorn and Hellina will be back soon.”
Ero glared at Enara, who was reading the latest reports about Kelindor, the bright world their father had just purchased. Enara was the middle child between Skorn and Ero, and usually sided with Ero, but she was too busy with the holopanel to notice the conversation.
Ero hopped down from the balcony railing and swiped across her holoview, dismissing the survey report.
Annoyed, she pushed him away before reactivating the holoview and returning to the report. “Not now, Ero. Father asked me to identify the best sites for new cities.”
“The whole planet is a suitable site,” Ero said, motioning out the window. “Kelindor is the brightest world in the entire quadrant.”
“The terraforming process went better than expected,” Enara said. “The plant life has taken to the soil and the atmosphere is maintaining a consistent hydro cycle. It also seems like herbivores have adapted into the ecosystem and carnivores are—”
“Ugh.” Ero groaned and flopped into a chair. “If I wanted to listen to a teacher, I would do my studies.”
“Which you don’t,” Skorn said.
“That’s because they’re boring,” Ero said.
“It’s aggravating how much you know without even trying,” Enara said.
“You’re just jealous,” Ero teased.
“Did Dragorn hire new dakorians?” Skorn asked.
“No.” Enara spared a look from the holopanel. “Why?”
Skorn was leaning over the balcony, his eyes on the ground. Curious, Ero hopped a couch and joined him on the overlook of their new home. The wide vista stretched away from them, an endless expanse of young trees, sparkling rivers, and great plains.
Their new home was on a hill near the center of an enormous valley. Another tower was several miles away and was also under construction, a home for Ero’s cousins. Other towers dotted the landscape, but none were as brilliant as the one in which Ero stood. Instead of being built of seracrete, theirs was fashioned of white granite, the stone sparkling in the sun. Krey craftsmen and hundreds of humans had built it, completing it just a few weeks ago.
At the base of the tower, a pair of dakorian guards stood next to the entrance. But Ero immediately spotted the group of soldiers threading through the trees. There were six of them, all advancing with an unhurried pace. Oddly, they were not coming from the road, but rather descending from a nearby mountain.
“Maybe a survey team reporting late?” Ero asked.
“They’ve all reported in,” Enara called from her place on the couch.
Ero opened his holoview and adjusted the viewer, bringing the approaching dakorians into sharp focus. “I don’t recognize them.”
Skorn frowned. “That’s a flanking tactic.”
“You’re being paranoid,” Enara said. She was reading the reports, her free hand fiddling with the simple diamond necklace at her throat. It was her favorite, and the pendant at the end was the same hue as her blue eyes.
Ero and Skorn continued to watch as the dakorians stepped out of the trees and approached the two guards. Ero was too high to hear the words exchanged, but there was no mistaking the drawing of weapons. Before Ero could react, two ion bolts hit the guards in their chests, burning deep and slamming them against the wall. As they slumped, the attackers jumped to the doors and disappeared into the building.
“Enara.” Skorn retreated from the balcony. “They just killed our guards. We need to move.”
“Assassins?” Enara came to her feet in a rush.
“Has to be,” Skorn said. “Is the upstairs Gate functional?”
“It’s still being built.” She grimaced. “We need to call Dragorn.”
Skorn activated his holoview, his other hand flying over the floating symbols. As his siblings argued, Ero stood frozen, his thoughts grappling to understand. Why send assassins? Who wanted Bright’Lor heirs dead?
“The vid network is down.” Panic infused Enara’s voice.
“They probably jammed it,” Skorn said. “But there’s a communications cortex on the roof. If I can get to it, I can send a message. We’ll have a hundred dakorians in three minutes.”
“Do it,” Enara said. “We’ll block the door and try to slow them down.”
“They’re trying to kill us?” Ero finally rotated to face them.
“How can you be so smart yet so stupid?” Skorn snapped as he sped from the room.
Enara hurried to the door of the room and accessed the door cortex. Holos streaked above her left arm, fading to be replaced with warning symbols. Enara ignored them as she forced the cortex to lock. There was a faint grinding from inside the door. Enara grabbed a plate from the counter and smashed it in half, the sound making Ero flinch. Then she jammed the edge into the cortex. Sparks erupted from the crystal and rained on the floor. The grinding came to a clanking halt just as heavy, rushing footfalls echoed from the ascender.
“Enara? Skorn? There’s been an attack. We’re here to get you out.”
The voices were low and urgent. It would have been believable if Ero hadn’t seen their guards killed just moments before. His thoughts spun as Enara raced across the room, grabbed his wrist, and pulled him towards one of the bedrooms.
“If we don’t hide, they’re going to kill us,” she hissed.
“The door cortex is damaged,” a dakorian growled, his voice muffled.
“Break it down,” a soldier snapped.
The door shuddered from an impact, and a crack appeared in the finely crafted wood. The sight jarred Ero from his stupor, and all at once fear thundered through his limbs. He clung to Enara as she ran from room to room, searching for a place to hide.
“Why are they here?” Ero whispered.
“Probably a rival House,” Enara said. “They want to weaken Dragorn, so they came after us. Now help me find a place to hide.”
Ero pointed to the floor of the dining chamber. “What about there?”
The chamber was at the corner of the tower, with a curving window allowing an unbroken view of the valley. Like the rest of the tower, the walls were polished granite. Dragorn had paid a fortune for real wooden planks to adorn the floor, the grain dark and swirling.
She paused in the doorway and grimaced. “It’s wide open. Just chairs and a table.”
She tried to pull him away, but he yanked her back. “Not the room. The floor.”
“Ero, we don’t have time for this.”
Ero pulled his hand free and jumped into the room. He dropped to his knees near the corner and, with fumbling fingers, grabbed one of the wooden planks. He pulled it upward until the plank lifted on hidden hinges. Inside, a tiny cavity contained an assortment of cortex crystals, the hilt of a krey energy blade, and a glintwell, a black sphere that kept glint off the grid.
Enara eyed the hinges, her eyes wide. “Who built this?”
“I did.” Despite his fear, a touch of smugness crept into his voice. “When the engineers built the dining chamber, I snuck in and added hinges to this section of the floor.”
“It’s brilliant,” she said, nodding in admiration.
The door in the entrance room shuddered again, the wood splintering and partially caving in. A dakorian voice bellowed into the opening, “Come quietly and we’ll make it easy for you!”
“Quick,” Enara said, “get inside.”
Ero wormed his way through the opening, which was so tight that it pressed against his ribs, forcing him to suck in his breath to pass. He squeezed himself into the welcome darkness and lay on his back. He tried to scoot to the side as his sister followed. Her legs were inside, but her waist was wedged in the opening, her upper body protruding into the room. The outer door cracked again.
“Hurry,” he hissed.
She twisted her body and grunted, struggling in vain to enter sideways. Her face dropped into view, her expression strained. Her hand slipped and scraped across the seracrete sub-floor.
�
�I’m not going to fit,” she said.
The outer door caved in, followed by the thudding of dakorian boots. Ero met Enara’s gaze, and he saw her fear. As young as Ero was, he recognized the decision. Enara could jump out and leave the secret door open. The dakorians would spot it before Ero could reach it, and they would take precious seconds to dig him out—seconds she could use to hide.
Enara could save herself.
By sacrificing Ero.
Tears formed in Ero’s eyes, and he braced himself for the betrayal. He’d seen the vids. He knew his race. Enara was an ally, but survival was more important than alliances. Enara’s features twisted with emotion.
“I’m sorry,” she said, and began to pull herself out.
“Please,” Ero whimpered.
Enara paused. She looked to him again, and then growled under her breath, “I must be crazy.”
She yanked herself upward to free her body. Then she shut the secret door, sealing Ero into a hiding place that no dakorian would discover. Shock bound Ero’s tongue as Enara pressed her face to the crack.
“What are you doing?” he hissed.
The dakorians’ footsteps drew closer. They’d finished searching the outer chambers.
“I’m sorry I considered it,” Enara whispered. “Live a good life, little brother. But do me a favor. Don’t be like the rest of our kind.”
She jumped to her feet and ran, slamming into a dakorian just coming around the corner. The soldier caught her by the shoulder and dragged her into the dining hall, his booted foot pressing onto the wood directly above Ero’s face.
“I got one,” the soldier called.
“Good,” another dakorian, their captain, said. “Find the two brothers. Quickly.”
A dakorian appeared in the hall. “Someone activated a distress beacon. I don’t know how they got around the jammer.”
“Skorn,” the captain spat. “He’s the one with a talent for coding.”
“We don’t have time to search the building and get out.”
“Forget Skorn,” the captain said. “We’ll have to be content with Enara.”
“Dragorn will come for you,” Enara snarled.
Through a crack in the floor, Ero watched the dakorian approach Enara. His heavy boots made the wood creak, and dust fell on Ero’s face. Ero could feel the fear burning through his blood and igniting his lungs, each breath becoming a shuddering gasp as he huddled in the darkness. Through the crack, he saw the captain pull a seracrete knife from his side.
“Let him try,” the dakorian said. “Now where is Ero?”
“I don’t know.”
“You lie.” He put the blade at her trembling stomach. “Speak his location and we’ll let you live.”
“Why would I believe you?”
“Because our employer wants you alive,” he said. “Speak, and live. Be silent, and I’ll tell him you died in the struggle. It’s your choice.”
Ero’s stomach tightened, and he held his breath. The dakorian was probably lying, but a desperate krey would likely accept the offer.
Enara did not even glance to the floor, and held the dakorian’s gaze with surprising defiance. “No.”
The dakorian chuckled, but the sound was so grim that Ero shuddered. “You refuse to betray your brother? Few krey demonstrate such loyalty. I respect your courage, but it will not save you.” He leaned in and plunged the seracrete knife into Enara’s body.
Enara screamed, and Ero put a hand over his mouth to stay silent. The dakorian holding her dropped her to the floor, a bone on his wrist catching the necklace. It ripped as she slid down, and the diamond fell to the floor and rolled across the wood. It hit the wall and fell through the crack to land next to Ero.
Enara, clenching her stomach, was dragged away. Ero hardly dared to breathe as the dakorians spent another minute searching for him, then left. The sound of their booted feet faded into a haunting silence. Ero still didn’t move, the seconds ticking away in mute terror until a new group of dakorians arrived.
Skorn appeared and greeted them, and they searched for Ero. Soon after, Dragorn arrived in all his fury, but it was not until they used a scanner that they found Ero. They had to rip up the floor to reach him, and when Dragorn pulled Ero from the darkness, he snarled at Ero, “Where’s Enara?”
Ero looked at his father. “She sacrificed herself for me.”
“Then she was not the daughter I hoped her to be,” he said.
He tossed Ero to the side and began barking orders to the dakorian soldiers, demanding they find the killers. He wanted revenge, but Ero could not stop thinking about how his sister had done the most un-krey thing he’d ever witnessed.
Over the next several weeks his father demanded answers, but they proved impossible to obtain. The six dakorians were discovered at a ship’s landing site just outside the forest. They were dead, their bodies burned, with Enara among them. Ero had actually mourned her, a sentiment he did not share with his parents, uncles, aunts, siblings, or even Skorn. He hid the diamond from her broken necklace and never told a soul what he had witnessed.
Ero hurried into his personal quarters in the City of Dawn. It was a spacious home near the summit, and even had a balcony overlooking the city. Hundreds of krey now lived in the expanding homes. They were outcasts and lower nobles, krey desperate enough to travel to a new House’s work site without knowing its location. A handful of unaugmented humans worked in the city, serving the House employees.
Ero ignored them all as he rushed into his home. The moment he entered, he shut the door and strode to a small wooden box resting on a white display shelf. He opened it and dropped its contents into his palm before tossing the box aside. In his hands was a simple blue diamond.
He shook his head, confused by the message. He’d been the only one in the room when his sister had been stabbed, and aside from the two dakorians, no one had seen the necklace break. Vid monitors had not been installed in the tower at the time of the attack, so there was no other evidence. Ero was the sole witness, and yet the message could not be referring to anything else. The answer—as impossible as it seemed—was clear.
Enara was alive.
Chapter Ten
Ero stared at the blue diamond. No one knew. No one could know. And yet the obvious questions came hard and fast. Where had she been? Why wait so long to make contact? And why now? Did it have to do with the augments? Or Malikin? Or maybe the missing Reklin? What did she want?
He pulled up the beamcast and checked the log, but it had come from an anonymous source. There was no trace of the sender’s location. He grabbed the holo and expanded it, hoping to find a secret embedded in the holo’s coding, but the stream was clean. It was just a tiny message from nowhere.
He paced in his room, confused yet hopeful. If Enara was alive, and she had sent the message, then she would have ensured there was a way to make the connection. She’d been as tactically brilliant as Skorn. She would have left a clue.
He checked every spec of the coding, searching for a random string of code, a clue to the coordinates. There were plenty of errors, the coding so sloppy it could have been written by a krey in his first century. He grimaced and used one of Skorn’s hacking codes, hoping to find a pattern. Still nothing.
The sun gradually sank into the horizon over the ocean, the sounds of the city diminishing with twilight, and then night. He continued to examine the coding of the message, hoping to tease out a secret. His efforts proved futile, and his frustrations mounted until deep into the night, when he sank into a chair with an explosive breath.
“What are you telling me?” he demanded.
He’d checked and rechecked the entire code, and although there was more density than normal, the errors appeared to be random. There was nothing else to look at except the message itself . . .
Ero sat bolt upright. He’d been so focused on looking for a clue he hadn’t considered the exact message. Cursing his own stupidity, he fumbled for the diamond, which sat in the open box on h
is shelf, and lifted it free. Then he tentatively extended the blue diamond into the center of the holographic text.
Specks of light in the words brightened, the errors in the coding reflecting the diamond’s surface. One by one they teased free and gradually formed into a set of coordinates.
“I knew it!” he crowed.
“Knew what?”
Ero whirled—and tripped on the lid of the box. He went down on his side, hard enough to draw a pained grunt when his shoulder hit the floor.
Skorn leaned against the open door and grinned as Ero flailed on the floor. “Did I startle you?” he drawled.
“No,” Ero said hastily. “I was just checking something.”
Skorn spotted the blue diamond, which had rolled across the floor, and picked it up. “Is this Enara’s?”
“Yes. Her necklace broke when they killed her and—”
“You kept it?” he asked, surprised.
“Skorn,” Ero said in a rush, “you’ll never believe what I did.”
“You gave a ferox with augmented abilities unrestricted access to our World Gate?”
Ero grinned. “Well, yeah, but—”
“Ero.” Skorn rubbed his forehead. “On this entire planet, there are only two individuals with access to that Gate: you, and me. Not the two hundred and eighty-seven krey we’ve hired. Not Lavana, Teridon, Worg, or Alina. Not even our krey allies have access to the Gate. No one except you and I have the ability to open that Gate. And you gave it to a human who has a history of defiance?”
Anger had crept into Skorn’s voice and gaze. Ero, reeling from what he’d discovered, struggled to adapt to his brother’s attack. “She had a lead on Reklin.”
“So why did you let her go alone?” Skorn growled. “That girl represents the most valuable aspect of our entire House, and now she’s out in the Empire—by herself—without any way to ensure she is under control or stays safe.”
“She doesn’t exactly need protecting.”
“You never take this seriously,” Skorn snarled. “She’s dangerous. She’s killed dakorians. She’s killed krey. And if Malikin gets his hands on her, it will be our end. Do you understand that?”