The Colossus Collection

by Nicole Grotepas

  Finally, the females flew to the trees and laid their eggs on the needles around the lake and then the cycle repeated itself.

  “Beautiful,” Holly said. “The life cycle of a fly. Except you interrupt it and feed them to the fish.”

  “But that is part of the life cycle. For me and the fish,” he grinned. “If you saw the clouds of flies, Holly, you would know that the lake can spare a few to feed the fish.”

  “I would love to see it. When does it happen?”

  “In a few weeks. The eggs on the needles survive through the winter.”

  “I didn’t know you cared so much about fish and flies, Elan.” She looked at him, admiring him. These things made him more interesting.

  The first hint of the sun’s body appeared over the horizon. Ixion was also in the sky, hovering like the giant that it was.

  “When I came here, I buried myself in research and learning about the environment so that I could become a part of it. In the city, I was just a part of the city. One of millions. But the city didn’t depend on anything I did. Here, what I do matters. The village is small enough that people know me, and I know them.”

  There was something about what he said that Holly loved and maybe even wanted for herself. “Would you have come here if not for what happened with us?”

  “No. You were the catalyst.”

  She smiled and looked out at an orange sailboat moving across the water like a skipping stone. The sail was swollen with the wind.

  “Do you like hearing that?” he asked.

  “I don’t know. I’m not glad to hear that I hurt you. But, you changed me. I let you into my world. I became different because of you. Is it too much to wish that I changed your world? That what happened between us did more than graze the surface?”

  “We changed each other.”

  “Yes.”

  “I will come with you.”

  She glanced sharply at him. She nearly asked what he meant, then remembered. She cussed and pulled her communicator out of the pocket of the jacket she’d worn to stay warm on the lake. It was still off. She switched it on.

  “What’s wrong?” Elan asked, eyeing her communicator suspiciously.

  Holly realized she hadn’t seen him with a communicator at all. “Do you have a communicator?”

  “No. I got rid of it after I left the city the second time.”

  Her communicator rang as soon as it was on. It was Charly.

  “Sorry, Elan. I have to answer—it’s my crew. Hello?”

  “What the hell? Where’ve you been? We’ve been worried to death about you.”

  “I’m sorry. I really am, Charly. I can explain everything later.”

  “Oh, there better be lots of explanations, Holly. Why your comm unit is off. Where on Kota you are—if you are on Kota—why you would run off without telling us where you are.”

  “I think Darius knew, Charly, honestly. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to worry you.”

  Elan touched her thigh in a gesture of reassurance. She’d spent some of the night telling him about her crew.

  “Darius knew?” Charly shouted. Darius could be heard in the background laughing and launching a defense of himself.

  “Look—once I’m back, we have all the pieces together to move on getting the keycodes. Everything else is taken care of.”

  “Really?” Charly said, sounding skeptical.

  “I mean it.”

  “Then get your ass back here. I have to go. Don’t be surprised if you hear from Odeon and Shiro.”

  Holly ended the call and gave Elan an apologetic look.

  “Time for you to go?” he asked.

  “Unfortunately. I have this thing weighing on me. I can’t run away from it.”

  “You don’t run from things, Holly. You never have.”

  “Can you come with me, now?”

  “I need to prepare my home for the time that I’ll be gone. That will take a day, and then I’ll be there.”

  “You can stay with me until we leave on the mission.”

  “I still have a place in the city. It’s small, but it will work.”

  “That will keep questions about who you are to a minimum. Thank you.” She still hadn’t told him about the run in with the Shadow Coalition thug on the train, and she probably wouldn’t. He had qualms about the violent nature of her life. Odeon would understand. Shiro would understand. Elan, she knew now, was a pacifist.

  Elan pulled up anchor and they sailed back to the wharf without having caught anything. He teased her that she would have to return to finally do that—it was left undone, which meant she’d need to come back. He liked that better, actually, than if she’d caught four fish immediately. He was guaranteeing her return, because he knew her. Holly Drake didn’t leave things undone.

  She laughed. He was right.

  22

  A map of the Megaron was on display on the large v-screen. Holly sat in Charly’s chair, her feet up on the desk, feeling playful. Shiro and Odeon continuously exchanged looks with each other from their seats on opposite sides of the couch, as though they were wondering what had happened to Holly. She saw them doing it and felt a stab of guilt. But, they were her friends. Just her friends. Nothing more. So she had no obligation to explain what had happened with Elan.

  Darius paused in his explanation of the map to riffle through a stack of paper on his desk. Shiro took the opportunity to say something.

  “Ms. Drake, do I understand that you were only in the northern settlements to personally ask someone to take the lead on getting the children from their Shadow Coalition bunkers to the tanker?”

  Holly touched her nose and then pointed at Shiro, winking and grinning as well.

  “And, er, nothing more?” Shiro ventured.

  “That's right.”

  Odeon joined in. “Because you seem . . . different.”

  “Yes, that's right, you do. Cheerier than you've been in quite some time.”

  It was strange given all that had been happening recently to hear Odeon and Shiro agreeing with each other.

  “Well, maybe it was the country air. That village was beautiful. And there’s a huge lake.”

  “Or maybe, more happened than just a recruitment meeting . . .” Darius muttered without looking up from what he was doing.

  “Really? Now why would you say that, Darius?” Charly asked. She was practicing fencing moves along the side wall with Shiro’s sword.

  Holly exhaled, thankful for the interference from her girlfriend. Before the meeting, Holly had filled Charly in on everything that had happened with Elan.

  “Did I say something?” Darius looked up and feigned mock surprise.

  “And what is the name of the recruit?” Odeon asked.

  Holly answered as though she had nothing to hide. “Elan.”

  “Does Elan have a full name?”

  They would find out soon enough anyway. “Zephyr.”

  “A Yasoan?” Odeon asked in surprise.

  “Yes. But he's not a permanent addition. He'll be with us for one mission. That's it.”

  “How do you know him?” Shiro asked.

  “Come on guys,” Holly said, wanting to avoid that discussion. “Back to the key codes. Seriously, You’ll meet him soon enough.”

  Shiro leaned close to Odeon and whispered to him. Fine, if being united against Holly was what it took for Shiro and Odeon to get along, then Holly could live with that.

  “Darius, please, take the floor before these scoundrels ask me anything else about the minor teammate that they'll only have to deal with for a short time.”

  “All right,” Darius began. “I found the map for the location.” He held up a paper with a rough map scrawled upon it in what appeared to be lipstick. “Courtesy of Drake’s good friend Xadrian Tyanne.”

  Xadrian? The writing medium made sense now. “You got Xadrian to do some work for you? Unbelievable.”

  “With the right bribes, I can get anyone to do anything. Within reason.” Darius snap
ped a photo of the map and soon it was showing up, enlarged on the v-screen. “And actually, it wasn’t Xadrian. Xadrian gave me someone.”

  Holly’s skin prickled. What? “You hired someone else?”

  “Sorry, Drake. I didn’t have time to do all the footwork myself.”

  “After Voss, I don’t trust anyone,” Holly admitted.

  “Except the pilot you recruited,” Charly joked, swishing Shiro’s sword until it pointed at her.

  “And the guy, Elan, you just got,” Darius said, giving her a half smile.

  Holly felt her cheeks flush and she grinned back at him, not willing to let her good mood go. “OK, you guys made your point. We all need to be careful with whom we share our information or let onto the team, or even who we hire for a quick side gig.”

  “Drake, listen, if there’s a vetting process we want to implement, I’m in. I tried to get in contact with you but couldn’t, and no one else could get in touch with you and I needed to move on this,” Darius turned to look up at the v-screen. “Just so you know—I’m not planning to hire anyone else soon.”

  “Sure, OK. Add that to our list of what we need to do—figure out a way to check out our potential recruits. For now, I trust you, Darius. And so I’m going to trust whoever drew this map for you, despite it being done in lipstick.”

  He shrugged. “It’ll probably work.”

  “What are we looking at, Darius?” Odeon asked. He sat forward and pulled a cloth out of his shoulder bag and began to polish the Ousaba club.

  “Thanks for asking, Odeon. What we have here is the Megaron. The Centau call it something else, but humans threw some old Greek term at it—it means throne room. Obviously there’s not a throne here. But that’s the joke, right? The Centau think so highly of themselves that they might as well have a throne. The spires here handle all the administration duties of the 6-moons. There are six buildings, one for each of the moons, and within each building, the affairs of that moon are handled. The manufacturing and shipping that happens on Paradise is monitored in the Paradise building. The hydrantium, its refining and then all the handling and shipping of aether on Po, it goes through here.

  “And so on and so forth. Gripping stuff, really. We’re concerned with the extra building—the military spire. It’s a free agent. Most of us don’t think about the military, because we’re busy living our lives and since there’s no fighting between the four races, what kind of military do we even need to have?”

  “Here, here, Darius. For myself, I had absolutely no idea that we had an active military,” Shiro said, laughing. He’d moved to the kasé machine and was puttering with the dried bean pods. There was a glug-glug sound of the water being poured from the pitcher into the reservoir. Holly sat up and moved to sit on the edge of the table beside him.

  “But there is,” Holly said. “Our tanker pilot, Old Scotch, he was in the military.”

  Charly looked at Holly, stopping in her sword-play. A sheen of perspiration covered her forehead. “What did he do?”

  “It’s not something most people know about—the Centau keep non-humanoid races out of the Yol system. And they do it in skirmishes out at the edge of the solar system.” Holly picked up an empty porcelain cup to wait for the brew to be done, and twirled it idly in her hands. She grinned, then realized she was flashing back mentally again to the night she’d spent with Elan.

  “What?” Shiro asked, seeing her expression.

  “Nothing,” she answered quickly.

  Darius turned back to the v-screen. “Anyway, we have a military. And this is the building where the keycodes are kept. According to the intel from my Constie who did the digging, the codes are behind one locked door. Can you believe that? The Centau. Fools. One locked door. Filed on paper. Which, I have to hand it to them—if they keep it off the network, no one can hack into it remotely and just steal it. Getting them requires legwork and only a few thieves in the world are desperate enough to do that sort of thing.”

  “Us,” Charly said, laughing. “Right, bros?”

  “And according to my Constie sneak, most of the personnel in this building, on that floor, are Yasoan. They ran out of Centau, I guess.”

  Odeon looked up from his work on his beloved club, intrigued. “Odd. Why Yasoan?”

  “Didn’t you hear Darius, Odeon? They ran out.”

  “Now then, down to the planning.”

  Shiro’s brew was ready and he pulled the carafe out and filled Holly’s small cup, then he poured some for himself. “Anyone else, chaps? Hot kasé?”

  Charly put Shiro’s sword down and came to stand beside them. “Thanks Shir,” she said. “What’s my role in this one, Darius? Breaking faces? Slicing through paper? I think I’m getting better at fencing.”

  “Not that it’s required much,” Shiro laughed. “At least, that’s been my experience.”

  The crew worked out the logistics, drank kasé, and laughed at each other’s jokes. It had been a while since the team had gotten together without someone being mad at someone else, or tension being the main emotional undercurrent. They set the start time and worked out the jobs. Holly smiled a lot, feeling the camaraderie that she’d missed of late.

  23

  Holly, Odeon, and Charly crouched near a side door into the military spire in the Megaron and waited for Shiro to do his part. The night was dark—Ixion had been setting earlier in the evening and then rising in the small hours of the morning.

  The Megaron plaza was not heavily guarded. Very little that the Centau did was guarded, except for the Yol system itself. Humanoids were trustworthy. Non-humanoids were not. Nevertheless, the crew had a distraction planned to get past the first stage of the military spire.

  “Almost ready,” Shiro said.

  “Good, get it going,” Holly said.

  “This isn’t going to work, guys. It’s kind of ridiculous. Whose idea was this? Not mine. And I’ll remind all of you later, when it fails.” Darius laughed over the comms. He was back at the Nest still, coordinating and overseeing, while also checking the security feeds in the building.

  “Shh. It’s going to work. One more try,” Shiro said. There was a snap and then a rushing sound. “Brilliant. It’s lit.”

  Holly looked toward the front of the building and could see the dancing lights of what Shiro had done.

  Soon she heard voices that weren’t Shiro’s over the comms and coming from the front of the building.

  “Oh, hello! Wait, what is this? What’s wrong? That’s my fire. I’m cold, chaps,” Shiro said. “I just needed a safe place for it, where there wouldn’t be a problem with accidentally lighting the whole city on fire. I need it to keep warm for the night. My wife kicked me out.”

  Charly snickered. “Shiro with a wife. Can you guys imagine?”

  “Put it out. This isn’t the place for a fire,” an unrecognizable voice said.

  “I’m homeless tonight.”

  Darius’s voice came over the comms. “Looks like the guards in the front lobby of the building are all attending to the crazy homeless guy. Go.”

  Odeon triggered the lock-pick and the mechanism sprang. The door swished open and the three of them crept into the building.

  “96th floor. Go,” Darius said.

  The team crept in their black clothes along the shadows of the lobby, to the elevators.

  “Use the card to activate the elevator,” Darius said over the comms.

  At the elevator, Charly and Odeon kept a lookout while Holly swiped the card that activated that elevator and hit the call button. The security guard desk was empty. Shiro was still on the comms loudly battling with the security guards that had vacated their position to get rid of him. He’d drawn his sword and was fighting them off.

  “Shiro, take it easy. We don’t want to you to get killed over this.”

  The elevator carriage appeared, the doors slid open, and the team boarded. “We’re on the elevator,” Holly said. She punched the button for the 96th floor with her gloved finger.
/>   “Pull it back, Shiro, pull it back,” Darius directed.

  “I’m walking away now,” Shiro said. “Truce, truce. Look, sword is down. I’m backing away.”

  “And don’t return. We won’t be so nice next time,” one of the security guards could be heard saying.

  “I agree. Seeing your beautiful faces again might be too much for me. I’d want to kiss them.” He laughed maniacally and then, judging from the sounds, turned and ran away.

  “Security cameras in the elevator are covered.”

  “When did you set that up, Darius?”

  “Drake, please. I’m the definition of efficient. Same time my contracted Constie got the map.”

  “Brilliant. Good work,” Holly conceded.

  “Hey, Shiro. You’re distraction worked like a charm,” Charly said. “I found your confession about wanting to kiss them very believable.”

  Shiro laughed. “I’m a master of disguise.”

  At the 96th floor, the doors opened and the automatic lights switched on. The crew exited carefully, checking both directions down the hallway to make sure no one was around.

  “Head right,” Darius told them over the comms.

  They complied, creeping softly over the tiled floor. Holly could feel her gun against her back as she moved and found it reassuring, though she hoped she wouldn’t have to use it, recalling the bad memories of the last time she’d been forced to do so. “Here’s the door,” she said, stopping at a metal door labeled “Files.”

  “Descriptive,” Odeon observed.

  “That’s what I thought,” Charly snickered, though her eyes were alert. She stopped on the other side of the door and stood with her back to Odeon to keep him guarded. Holly posted as well, facing the other direction.