Oosafar. Ho-ly splick. Magnus started scanning the orbits, his head swiveling wildly. His eyes caught dozens of dots orbiting roughly four hundred meters above the planet’s surface. Then another cluster. And another.
“The orbital blockade,” he said to no one in particular. It was Oosafar.
Magnus was called back to his pod’s limited flight controls when red warning lights started flashing at him. He flicked up on the small dashboard to see the atmospheric-entry indicator blinking. His capsule was plummeting toward Oosafar, and he needed to input some commands. He pressed the option to confirm entry—the alternative being a full reverse thrust that would send the pod back into the void—and felt the flight computer adjust the capsule’s angle of attack relative to the planet’s surface.
If Nolan had slaved the Stones’ capsules properly, they should be following the same command sequence. Magnus looked over his shoulder to see if he could spot them. Sure enough, three white pods trailed to his left, maybe three hundred meters of separation between each. He couldn’t tell who occupied which pod, but all three were executing a similar course change.
“Good job, Nolan,” Magnus said then made a mental note to buy the man a drink if they ever made it through this.
Already, the crimson sheet of fire was wrapping itself around Magnus’s pod. The small vehicle shook violently, so much so that Magnus was pretty sure it was going to split apart at any second. That, or it was just going to scramble his body to a pulp. His unsecured helmet smashed into his head several times, making him see stars and drawing blood. He fought to grab it and press it against his shoulder. If he’d had more room, he would have put the helmet back on, but the cramped confines of the pod didn’t allow for it. Forgetting to put it on before entering would have been a rookie mistake if it hadn’t been dead. It was also the first time he’d ever seen a nine-year-old girl do—whatever it was she’d done. Go nova, Awen might say. So he cut himself some slack.
Though the beating lasted for less than two minutes, Magnus felt like he’d endured a one-sided boxing match at the academy for an hour. All at once, the capsule sailed into thin air; only the sound of the wind whistled over the glass. The vehicle’s systems looked green, and so far as Magnus could tell, the Bull Wraith had made no attempt to hijack them. He glanced over his shoulder again and saw that the Stones’ pods had all survived as well. He searched as much of the rest of the sky as possible but couldn’t make out any other pods.
The flight computer’s limited sensors presented three different landing sites that fit its optimal profile. Without any reference to where they were on the planet, Magnus selected the first one and hoped the Stones’ pods would continue to adopt the same input. The small winglets on Magnus’s capsule rotated and sent the vehicle on a trajectory toward a flat expanse bordered by a low-lying mountain range to the west and a shallow canyon to the east.
He sailed through the upper atmosphere for a few more minutes as the wind noise became louder and louder. The computer displayed a definitive altitude, rapidly descending from ten thousand meters. He could also see the temperature rising, owing to the desert planet’s blistering daytime conditions—conditions Magnus couldn’t believe he was about to be subjected to again so soon after leaving.
Thermals buffeted his pod, knocking his helmet from his grasp. He noticed smears of red blood on the sides and visor. He secured the helmet yet again and touched his forehead, his lip, and his ear. Damn. He was going to need laser sutures after this.
Once he reached one thousand meters, the pod gave a single sonic and visual warning before deploying the parachute, which pitched the vehicle’s nose toward the sky. Magnus hadn’t been ready for the violent toss and, once again, banged his head on his helmet.
Magnus stood vertically now, staring out his pod’s cockpit window. He did his best to memorize as much of the geography as possible, knowing this might be his only topographical glimpse of their surroundings. He could see a sizable settlement in the east toward the canyon and another in the foothills of the mountain range to the west. He also noticed scorch marks—dozens of smaller ones and a few big ones. Orbital strikes. They had to be. Small black-ringed impact craters dotted the settlements, but two larger ones indicated where towns had once stood—now decimated by Republic LO9D cannon hits. Magnus wondered if maybe there had been a friendlier landing site on the list; he’d just assumed that the first one meant it was the best one. If this was the best, he didn’t want to know what the others looked like.
Suddenly, he realized only the Stones’ pods were slaved to his—at least, that was what he assumed from Nolan’s description. He wondered if the rest of the team’s vehicles had presented them with the same options. Magnus went from not expecting to make it out of the Bull Wraith to feeling wholly responsible for everyone’s survival. He had, after all, come up with this crazy plan. But the plan—good or bad—had gotten everyone off a hostile ship regardless of where it placed them on the planet. Well, almost everyone. He thought of Rawlson and the senator then looked to his left, wondering if the senator was even alive to see this. While Oosafar was deadly down below, it was lovely from above.
Back on the dashboard, large numbers counted down from ten as the altitude indicator flashed the last two hundred meters. He held his helmet tight and braced for impact.
* * *
Magnus popped the canopy off his pod and pushed himself up. The hull still smoked from extreme heat, hissing and creaking as it settled. He slung his MAR30 and cradled his helmet as he ran toward the first capsule about three hundred meters away. When he got closer, he saw Valerie trying to push up her canopy.
“I gotcha, I gotcha,” he said, putting his helmet and weapon down and pulling the glass away.
“Piper.”
“I think she’s next,” he said, offering his hands. Valerie took them, and Magnus pulled her up. It seemed so surreal, lifting a gorgeous woman in a gown from a smoking escape pod in a desert. The woman was so light that Magnus thought he might break her.
No sooner had Valerie’s feet touched the ground than she began to run to the next pod. Magnus retrieved his helmet and weapon and caught up to her. To his relief, Piper was sitting upright, eyes focused on them as they ran toward her. Her face was red and smeared with tears. No matter how brave she’d been up until that point, her true age fully emerged as she saw her mother running toward her. As Magnus wrested the canopy from its mounts, he uncovered a child in anguish, sobbing as she reached for the safest place in the galaxy: her mother’s arms.
They rocked together, sitting in the sand in a dress and a nightgown. Valerie held Piper’s head with one hand and her torso with the other, comforting her with gentle words. Magnus felt out of place, as if he was intruding on some holy moment, desecrating it with his voyeuristic glances and bloodstained armor.
He looked over at the last remaining pod then back at Valerie. He raised a hand to her and mouthed, “Wait here.” She nodded and continued to console Piper.
With boots sending up sprays of sand, Magnus double-timed it to the senator’s escape pod. The closer he got, the more certain he became that it was the senator’s coffin. Red blood splattered the inside of the canopy. As he glanced inside, Magnus saw the senator’s unmoving body, the head twisted to the right at an unnatural angle. He unlocked the glass, pulling the canopy from the pod. The familiar smell of death hit his nostrils.
“Splick,” Magnus said, reaching to feel for the man’s pulse. But the way the corpse’s glazed eyes looked unblinking into another realm told him all he needed to know. What scared Magnus the most was that the man had been alive when he climbed into this pod but had died before he even left the Bull Wraith. Magnus turned back and looked at Piper as a chill went up his spine.
31
Kane stood at the entrance to the den. A filthy hellhole.
You should fit in just fine, then. It was the other voice. But he’d stopped calling it that.
Kane waved a trooper forward. The man knocked on the t
hick doors with the butt of his blaster. When the Reptalon’s eye appeared, Kane leaned in and said, “Admiral Kane to see the master of this house.”
The guard’s green eye widened, presumably from seeing the platoon of troopers that Captain Nos Kil led behind Kane. “I’m sorry,” it hissed. “Sootriman’s not accepting visitors.”
“Sootriman?” So that’s his name.
“No visitors. Leave.”
“That’s a shame.”
The Reptalon’s eye blinked. “What?”
“I said, that’s a shame.”
In a single fluid motion, Kane raised his sidearm—an old MRG compact railgun pistol—and fired a lead projectile into the lizard’s eye. The railgun was a relic from the previous century, made obsolete by the newer gauss cannons. Never, however, had the weapon been refit as a handgun platform—until the MRG. The result was an incredibly loud, incredibly destructive kinetic weapon that discharged enough recoil to snap a wrist. The firearm had never left the prototype phase, however, and those pieces that remained were rare. The explosion of green fluid and gore that erupted from the small slit in the door blew back onto Kane’s face and chest. The admiral didn’t so much as blink but turned aside, moving past the door’s hinges, and looked at Nos Kil.
“Blow it,” Kane ordered.
The captain nodded and signaled his men. They stacked up on each side as a two-man team dropped an explosive charge into the ooze-dripping slit. The pair rolled away from the door and took cover, one tapping the other twice on the shoulder. Kane holstered his MRG and covered his ears.
A thunderous blast shook the ground as the doors blew off the building. Bluish-white light bathed the surrounding structures like a high-noon sun, peppering their surfaces with shrapnel and a shower of dust.
When Kane turned back to the opening, he didn’t even pause to survey the damage; he simply walked over the flaming debris. His boots sank into several masses of formerly living things that were now smoldering clumps of tissue. They’re happier now. He looked around the putrid squalor of the den’s interior. This was no way to live. The passage smelled of cat urine and mold.
“Lights,” Kane said from the head of the line that snaked its way through the corridor. Two troopers fired flares from lower canister extensions on their MX21s, each projectile sounding a hollow kuh-thunk as it was lobbed ahead. The flares exploded in a dazzling splash of red light and illuminated several Reptalons, who were still dazed from the breaching explosion. Kane pointed to each target as if his fingers had the power to release blaster bolts. Nos Kil’s troopers fired single shots at the reptilian brains, dropping the guards cold.
Kane noticed a strange growth moving along the walls, something serpentine but still fauna. Its gangrenous surface rippled from floor to ceiling and back again. Kane had the distinct feeling that it was going to lunge at them, a beast lurking under the gelatinous membrane.
He spoke over his shoulder at Nos Kil. “Torch it.”
“Yes, sir,” came the trooper’s amplified voice. Nos Kil pointed at a trooper to his right and flicked two fingers toward the mass slithering along the walls. An MF11 flamethrower burst to life and shot a stream of fire at the side of that corridor and then the other. The trooper swept his weapon back and forth, filling the hallway with more and more destruction. Bright-orange light washed the cavity, and Kane wanted to feel the heat prick his pockmarked skin just as it had so many years before. But he couldn’t. Whatever the creature was, however, it was not immune to fire and screeched as the molten liquid devoured its moldy flesh.
Several more Reptalons arrived down the corridor, summoned by the commotion. They took no more than a step into Kane’s field of view before their lives ended, blaster bolts searing through their scaly heads.
Kane and his men moved past the fire and up the central stairwell, stepping over bodies, before arriving at a set of inner doors. Most of the guards must have already met their end racing toward Kane, as only one lizard remained vigilant, pointing his spear at the invaders. Faithful or afraid? Let’s find out.
Why do you keep calling yourself that?
Keep calling myself what?
Kane.
It’s my name.
Is it?
The last Reptalon guard hissed, “Stop where you are.”
“Why didn’t you leave your post and assault with your brothers?” Kane asked, still moving across the landing.
The lizard hesitated. “I said, stop where you are!”
“They raced out to meet us, but you stayed here. Why?” Kane tilted his head, examining the beast. Faithful or afraid? He wanted to know before he dispatched the monster.
“I am the sworn protector of Sootriman! Don’t take another step.”
Kane stopped. Faithful. That’s honorable, deserving of a painless death. “Open the door,” he ordered.
“Never!”
Kane raised his MRG and fired another lead projectile. The Reptalon’s head exploded like a green pumpkin, showering the walls with brain and bone. The lizard’s body continued to stand, its legs and tail staggering to keep balance without a central nervous system. Kane walked toward it, pushed the spear aside, and shoved the headless body to the ground.
The admiral walked to the doors and pounded on them with a gloved fist. “Sootriman!” The heel of his hand came alive with pain. He banged again, an act that caused microfractures in his bones. “Sootriman,” he seethed, feeling possessed by the sudden rage he held toward this molten planet’s strangely named ruler. He struck the doors a third time, the pain searing up his arm and flaring in his mind.
But you can take it, he—it—said. The pain makes you come alive, makes you thrive.
“Sootriman, open your gates, or I will.”
A moment later, a mechanism shuddered and began to splay the doors apart. Kane rolled his chin as the den’s light caught him in the eyes. The place was filled with otherworldly sights and sounds far different from the ones he’d just passed through.
How flagrantly inconsistent. Inconsistency was not to be tolerated. It was the enemy of order. Without law, there was only chaos. Chaos consumed all until there was nothing left to feed upon.
That’s what it’s done to you, Kane, hasn’t it? The inconsistency took everything from you, everything you held dear. It gorged its bottomless stomach on what you loved until there was nothing left to love.
Kane moved into the room, his troopers fanning out behind him. They targeted anything that moved but stayed their trigger fingers, awaiting his command. A woman sat atop a dais at the far side of the room. Kane noted that she was exceedingly beautiful even from this distance. Sootriman’s wife? Or Sootriman herself?
The woman waved off several guards who seemed eager to approach the intruders. A wise move. Their plasma spears were charming and a truly violent weapon—something Kane could appreciate. However, every weapon had optimal engagement scenarios, and plasma spears were no match for advanced blasters. Unless they had some concealed secondary weapons, a confrontation would be no contest, and he was sure the woman knew that.
The admiral arrived at the base of the dais as his troopers took up defensive positions throughout the room. He didn’t even need to see them to know they had blocked the exits and held the most likely hostile threats at gunpoint. Always keen for an opponent to show their hand, Kane waited for the woman to speak first. So much could be gleaned from the initial tremors of someone’s voice in a moment of anxiety. Often, the effect rattled the speaker more than the listener. Likewise, an absence of anxiety could signal that the potential adversary was so hungry with rage or power that they ignored healthy fear. Or alternatively, they could just be as confident as they projected.
Kane stood with his chest out, MRG holstered on his hip, hands folded behind his back. He waited, wringing his hands in his glossy black gloves. The squeak satisfied him. Patiently, he stared up at the woman. Sootriman. But she was unflinching.
The admiral tried to decide which type of victim she would be—so
meone who did not respect how easily he could dispatch her or someone who was truly a worthy adversary, as consistent in the face of death as she’d been while building this floating empire over the least likely of planets. He hoped she was the latter. He would interrogate her, if so, and see how far she could go before breaking.
“I am Admiral Kane of the Paragon,” he said in a low voice, finally deciding to go first.
Are you?
Kane hesitated. You can’t be talking to me. Not now. Stop it. “I am Admiral Kane,” he said again. He winced in frustration, face contorting. “Of the Paragon.”
The woman watched him with odd fascination. She was studying him like a hunter studies its prey.
But she’s in no place to have any advantage, Kane. Take her now.
“I am Sootriman, tamer of Ki Nar Four’s tempests. What brings you to my domain, Admiral Kane of the Paragon?”
She’s not using your real name. And neither are you. Be consistent, or be nothing at all.
“I’ve come in search of a ship,” Kane answered.
“A ship? Well, you’ve come to the right place. Though I fear that whatever deal we strike will involve far more than you may be willing to pay, given how many of my pets you’ve slain and the dents you’ve put in my den.”
“A modified Katana-class light freighter. She sought port here. We—”
We? Who do you mean, Kane? You and me? Or is this still about you and your men?
“We’ve been—”
Which is it? Answer me.
“Yes?” Sootriman prompted.
Kane wrung his hands tighter behind his back. This was not the time to be having a conversation with himself. But it was happening more often, and the pain was getting stronger.
Focus. Focus!
Ruins of the Galaxy Box Set: Books 1-6 Page 24
