by Ben Hale
“I was captured several months ago,” Reklin said. “Before that, I was serving House Bright’Lor.”
“You’re Reklin,” she said with sudden understanding.
“The same. You know me?”
He pulled her up another set of stairs to a riser, using it to get higher in the mountain. Shouts and calls seemed to come from every direction, and the streets emptied. Doors shut and locked as the inhabitants vacated the space for Raiders to hunt, their haste suggesting the action was a common occurrence. Many furtive looks were cast in his direction.
A trio of Raiders appeared at the end of the corridor. The leader took aim and fired, the ion bolt burning through the toxic air as it passed Reklin’s shoulder. To Reklin’s surprise, Enara drew a small plasma gun from under her cloak, an old Mark II.
She fired three times and sidestepped into an alley. The first two shots struck the leader in the chest and thigh, but the third missed as the dakorian retreated out of sight. The third growled and spun his hammer at the charging Reklin.
Sprinting the length of the street, Reklin ducked a hasty hammer swing and sliced across the dakorian’s midsection. The Raider fell backward with a shout, leaving an opening for Reklin to kick the second Raider in the knee. The dakorian went down, and Reklin twisted to avoid the retaliatory attack. He grabbed the dakorian’s left horn and brought his knee up, crushing his nose. The dakorian slumped and did not rise. Conscious of the third Raider around the corner, Reklin retreated amid a hail of ion bolts. By memory, he launched his blade spinning into the air.
The weapon twirled high into the darkened cavern, arcing over a house before coming down on the opposite side. There was a shout and a cry, and the ion bolts tracked high, as if the attacker struggled to keep their hammer up. Reklin swerved around the corner and struck the dakorian in the throat. Then he yanked his energy sunderblade free and cut him down.
“How did you do that?” Enara asked, hurrying to his side.
“I’ve been here before,” he said. “I remember some of the streets.”
“You are as talented as I’ve heard,” Enara said, sprinting by.
Reklin caught up and guided her up the next set of winding stairs. “What do you want with House Bright’Lor?”
“To keep them alive,” she said. “Specifically my brother, Ero.”
“And the augments?”
Shouts came from ahead, and Reklin pulled Enara off the stairs and down a short corridor to the hangar bay. A Raider was guarding it, but was no match for Reklin. Leaving the dakorian unconscious and bleeding in the corridor, Reklin stepped into the cave, where a small Gerlon-class ship sat on its landing gear.
“That looks like the Nova,” he said.
“My House bought two, back in the beginning,” she said. “The Nova was Ero’s. This is the Grug.”
Reklin paused at the door, but it seemed they had momentarily lost their pursuers. “You didn’t answer my question.”
Enara stood halfway between the ship and the door, her cowl still covering her features, her mask dusted with red from the toxic air. Reklin checked his blade and then sheathed it before collecting the Raider’s cloak from the floor. He spun it around his shoulders and mentally planned a route back to the Midnight Star.
“I’ve been dead to my brothers for a long time,” Enara said softly. “And I never expected Ero to create augmented humans. What he has done will threaten the galaxy. Unchecked, they will be titans of destruction.”
Reklin thought of Siena. “They have a leader,” he said. “And she is not the type to be a destroyer.”
“I know of Siena,” Enara said with a nod, “and of my brother’s friendship with her.”
“She’s my friend, too.”
Enara hesitated, and then reached up and disengaged a small crystal in her necklace. As the holo fell away, Reklin’s eyes widened. Her skin was lined and wrinkled, her hair streaked gray and white.
“You’ve reversed the genesis machine,” Reklin exclaimed. “Why?”
“The Light believes that death gives life meaning,” she said.
Reklin scanned his memories and recalled a vague reference to a group called the Light. They were as much myth as anything, and were a group that had once tried to destroy Genysium, the planet that housed all the genesis machines for the Empire.
“Why show me this now?” Reklin asked.
“Because the existence of augments is just a catalyst,” she said. “And the war is coming. Keep Ero alive, Reklin. He is the key to everything.”
As shouts came from down the hall, Enara hurried under the hull and entered her ship. In seconds, the gravity drive powered up. The ship lifted off the deck before gliding out the shield and curving through the toxic cloud wafting off the lava streams.
As Reklin used the cloak to bypass the roving hunters, a task that was hardly difficult for a Shard team captain, he wondered what exactly Enara had meant. After an hour, he crossed the threshold of Burning Ghosts territory. He threaded his way down the dense corridors of packed people and through the noxious balcony clouds to reach the hangar containing the Midnight Star. There he found Visika waiting.
“You’re alive,” she said, clearly annoyed.
He shrugged and tossed the Red Raider cloak aside. “Did you expect otherwise?”
“What did you learn?”
Reklin pointed northwest. “She and her guard tangled with the Raiders. He was killed. She escaped.”
“Anything else?” she prompted.
“I kept them alive,” he said, guessing she already knew what he’d done. “You can’t get answers from the dead.”
She regarded him with an inscrutable expression and then turned to the ship. “We’ll see.”
As Reklin followed her onto the stealth vessel, he cast a look back at the closing hatch. Enara had taken a risk in revealing her identity as a member of the Light, but why? And what did she really want with House Bright’Lor? The questions lingered as they departed Revguard and jumped to hyperlight.
Chapter Twenty-Six
“Beamcast coming in from Skorn,” Kensen said.
“About time.” Siena rubbed the grease on her face in a vain attempt to clean it and activated the holo with a touch. Skorn’s features resolved in light.
“Status,” Skorn demanded.
“The Crescent’s remaining drive has failed,” she said. “There’s nothing we can do, and life support is failing.”
“Open a Gate and we’ll get Erlanex to you,” Skorn said.
“The Gate is failing,” she said, “and outbound requests are getting locked in the cortex. We can Gate out, for now, but inbound Gates will fail to connect.”
“Erlanex said the schematics you sent are coming through in fragments. We can’t fix it without them.”
The holo abruptly flickered and darkened, the light bleeding away before coming back online. Siena looked to Kensen. “What’s going on?”
“Same problem as before,” Kensen said. “The beamcast uplink is barely operational. It’s why the schematics I sent won’t go through in a single piece.”
Siena muttered a curse. “There’s a reason this ship never sold, and it’s about to be our tomb. What do you want us to do?”
A warning light appeared and cascaded into others. Siena and Kensen furiously shunted spiking power out the emergency exhaust the augments had rigged. The ship trembled anew, and the gravity drive whined.
“You can still do an outbound Gate?” Skorn asked.
“For now,” Siena said. “But I don’t know for how long.”
“Are you in range of Lumineia?” Skorn asked.
“Just barely,” Kensen said.
“Gate everyone to Lumineia,” Skorn said. “Go straight to Astaroth. The slaves can Gate to Ilumidora from there.”
“You want us to abandon ship?” Siena asked.
“I’m telling you to abandon a pile of junk,” Skorn said. “Set the self-destruct so there’s no evidence of the theft tracing back to House Brigh
t’Lor.”
The holo shimmered, and Siena nodded in relief. “We’re on our way.”
Kensen terminated the beamcast, dissolving Skorn’s holo into nothingness.
With warning holos blinking yellow and orange, Siena rotated and shouted down the ship, “We’re opening a Gate to Astaroth. Dakorians out first. Hurry!”
The Gate powered up, and there was a rush of movement as the remainder of Reklin’s family disembarked. Siena had told them the situation was dire, and they rushed through the portal carrying the wounded from Rebor. Inary nodded to Siena, then joined the last group. Begle and Bort exited, as did Rahnora and Quis. In their absence, silence settled on the Crescent, and Tana joined them in the cockpit.
“Did he believe you?”
Siena breathed a sigh and shut down the false warning holos. “I think so.”
Kensen tapped a symbol, and all the flickering lights on the ship returned to full. “If he didn’t believe us, he never would have told us to abandon ship.”
“We don’t have much time,” Siena said. “We need to get through that Gate.”
Siena guided the Crescent into a crack on the moon’s surface. She grimaced as a tip of the starboard wing brushed against the rock and eased it onto an angle. The sleek black starship was gradually swallowed by the crevasse until it became invisible to both sight and scans. Then she settled them on a broad ledge.
“Nice landing,” Kensen said.
“You sure it will be safe here?” she asked.
Kensen checked the holo of the system. “This is the only moon to Lumineia, but Skorn and Ero have already deemed it useless. There’s little chance they’ll scan it again, and even if they did, the Crescent’s superstructure and the teracrete will mask the results. It’s as safe as it can be.”
“You think the dakorians believed us?” Siena asked.
Tana grinned. “It’s not hard to believe. We had to rip it apart to fix it, and the starboard drive is barely operational. It’s still a mess.”
Siena didn’t like lying to the dakorians, especially Inary, but she and her friends had agreed that their plan was risky enough without including the dakorians. They’d already stolen the ship, but now they were going to keep it, and she couldn’t help feeling like she was betraying Ero. Still, she couldn’t deny the excitement of keeping a secret ship on Lumineia’s moon.
She powered down the ship and then left the cockpit with Kensen, joining Tana as they headed for the Gate. With panels missing and conduits cobbled together to make emergency connections, it really did look like a wreck.
“Have you been to Astaroth?” Kensen asked.
Siena shook her head. “Slaves haven’t been permitted to go there.”
“We get to see it?” Tana asked. “What a treat!”
Siena grinned at the girl’s sarcasm, then stifled a yawn. In the two weeks of travel to reach Lumineia, she’d spent much of her time using her healing augments to help the dakorians with the worst injuries. She was exhausted, but at least no more were going to die.
“You need to rest,” Kensen said.
“After we get back to Ilumidora,” she said.
She thought of the small house she called home. It was little more than a hut with a bed and a bathroom, but it felt like a palace. And according to the Bright’Lor charter Ero had ordered drawn up, it was property she owned. She yearned to collapse into her bed and sleep for a week.
“Every time we come back to Lumineia, we’re exhausted,” Kensen said. “Why is that?”
“Because we’re always in danger,” she said.
Kensen tapped the controls on the holo. “At least if augments become public across the Empire, we won’t be hunted anymore.”
Siena approached the Gate. “It won’t change anything.”
“Why?”
She held Kensen’s gaze. “Because I’m never going to be a slave again.”
Kensen fell silent, but she took a peek into his thoughts. They had not changed. Seeing what the Empire had done to Reklin’s family had left him shaken, and he was worried that starting a rebellion would just get them all killed. Although he tried to hide it, he was terrified that Skorn would just slaughter them all and start with the new crop of augments, one more amenable.
“Are you looking at my thoughts again?” Kensen asked.
“You don’t have to be so afraid,” Siena said quietly. “I promise it will work out.”
Kensen sighed. “I’m not brave like you.”
“And I’m not smart like you. We need each other. I can’t do this alone.”
He tilted his head and she kissed him. When they parted, he raised an eyebrow. “Then no more looking at my thoughts.”
Tana shouldered a pack and joined them. “Is she reading your mind again?”
“Yes.” Kensen pretended to glare at Siena.
“You just have to discipline your mind to stop it,” Tana said with a shrug.
Siena hid a smile as Kensen turned on the girl. “What does that even mean?”
“We’ve waited long enough,” Tana said. “Skorn will think we set the ship to self-destruct. Let’s go.”
She passed through the portal and Kensen followed. Siena cast a lingering look at the Crescent before following suit. There was the familiar tug against her spine, and then she exited onto a stone plateau. She shielded her eyes from the sun’s glare.
The plateau stretched for miles, endless tracts of barren, reddish rock interspersed with plunging ravines. A natural stone tower stood nearby, its surrounding caves expanded by a laser excavator to make it a fortress. It was a far cry from the lush lands of their previous home on Rebor, but there was a stark beauty to the region.
Siena spotted Lavana coming from the stone tower with a group of other dakorians. “Looks like they’re coming out to get us.”
As the dakorians headed to their new home, Siena closed her eyes and lifted her head to the sun. Had she ever gotten a chance to just sit and enjoy the heat? She pictured herself reclining on a beach, as if her life was her own, and snorted at the image. Humans did not get to live in luxury. At least, not while they were slaves.
“Siena?”
She focused on Lavana, who was striding to greet her. The head of Reklin’s family was dressed in a regal cloak of crimson, and was accompanied by Alina, Worg, and Teridon, the three members of Reklin’s former Shard team. Inary had sent a message to Lavana as soon as they left Rebor to apprise her of recent events, but Siena was uncertain about what sort of response she could expect from the matriarch of the family.
Lavana came to a halt in front of Siena and shook her head. “I do not like having to express gratitude to a human.”
“Mother,” Inary said, coming to a stop and turning back, “she saved our entire family. She hardly deserves a rebuke.”
Lavana ignored her daughter as she looked to Siena. “And yet if I must express a measure of gratitude, it might as well be to you.”
“Er, thanks?” Siena wasn’t sure what to make of Lavana’s gratitude.
Lavana gave a curt nod like the matter was settled. “Any word on Reklin or Mora?”
“Not yet,” Kensen said. “I tried to hack their network on our flight here but didn’t get much. They use too many isolated sub-networks to prevent back-tracing.”
“Kensen,” Siena said, “I don’t think they want any details.”
Kensen grimaced as Lavana glowered down at him. “Sorry. I haven’t found anything yet.”
“I know you’ll bring them home,” Lavana said.
The rest of the dakorians filed away, many nodding to Siena as they passed. Siena sensed a change in their attitude towards her and her friends. Was it really respect in their eyes? With a final nod, Lavana and the other dakorians left.
“Kensen,” Siena called, “connect the Gate to Ilumidora, would you?”
“Got it,” he said.
“Do you find it strange?” Tana asked.
“Find what strange?” Siena stifled a yawn.
“That an entire dakorian family looks at you with reverence.”
Siena flushed. “I think that’s a bit of an overstatement.”
“It’s not,” Kensen said with a faint smile.
“Will you focus?” Siena asked, stepping through the newly linked portal to exit in the sprawling city of Ilumidora. “Unless one of the krey demand my presence or a drake attacks, I’m going to bed.”
“Sleep well,” Kensen called.
She mumbled a reply, then trudged down the street and up the small slope to her home. She’d built the structure herself by lifting earth from the ground to shape the footings, then using her gravity augment to hoist beams onto the walls. Kensen had found an oblong scrap of seracrete plating that formed most of the roof. The door was boards cut from a lumberyard that she’d installed during their first month. Its rough wood met Siena’s fingers as she pushed it open. Kicking her boots off, she collapsed into the bed.
Her dreams were many and varied, a flurry of scenes and images that drifted across her consciousness. Sometimes she dreamed that she was back on Verdigris with Laurik, waking up to realize that her augments were all just a fantasy. Other times she dreamed of Reklin and Mora. But the most common person in her dreams was Kensen. His smile. His intelligence. His loyalty. Eventually the dreams faded and she gradually returned to awareness. She groaned when she awoke to a beam of light coming through the cracked door. Lifting her hand, she squinted across the small room.
The room had a chair, scrounged from the destroyed Nova, and a desk fashioned from the lumberyard’s scrap boards. She also had a dented cargo crate where she kept her few belongings. As her vision cleared, she found a person sitting at her chair.
“Jevin?” She squinted to clear her vision. “Haven’t you heard of knocking?”
“I did.” He chewed on an apple. “Several times, actually.”
She sat up and grimaced at her sore body. “So you just walked in?”