Planet Killer (Star Kingdom Book 6)

by Lindsay Buroker

  Casmir tried to keep himself from finishing it in his mind with derogatory and dismissive words.

  “I believe we can count on Asger and Tristan. They’re good fighters. Tristan helped break in my crushers.”

  “Glad the boy is good at something,” Bjarke muttered.

  Even though Tristan was the one who’d been kicked out of the knighthood, Casmir was sure the comment pertained to Asger. Poor guy. Why couldn’t his father see Asger for who he really was?

  “He’s good at a lot of things. Have you two fought together? Other than during that rather brief cluster of chaos in the astroshaman base?”

  “We used to spar when he was younger.”

  “But not since he became an adult? A knight? I hope you get a chance to spend some time together out here. And, uhm, work things out.”

  “We are working things out,” Bjarke said in a terse I-don’t-want-to-discuss-this-with-a-near-stranger tone.

  Usually, Casmir would take the hint and back off, but he cared about Asger. And he still felt guilt and worried that, through association with him, Asger was worse off with his superiors now than he had been before they’d met. Maybe even worse off with himself. Though Casmir remembered him reading that philosophy book when they’d first met, trying even then to make sense of the universe. And his place in it.

  “Are you?” Casmir made his smile hopeful, not skeptical. “Because I know he would like that.”

  Bjarke frowned at him.

  “You think he’s made some mistakes, right?”

  Bjarke grunted. “He told you about the calendars?”

  Was that at the heart of all this? Casmir reminded himself he didn’t know the details and that he didn’t have any right to judge. “He told me he’s made mistakes—what teenager doesn’t?—and he doubts his self-worth now. Because somewhere along the way, someone led him to believe he’s a mistake.”

  Bjarke squinted at him. “He said that?”

  “I’m paraphrasing. He was drunk at the time.”

  “I never told him he was a mistake.”

  “He believes it. I keep telling him he’s great, because he’s a loyal friend who stands up for me, even at the risk of his own life, and he tries so hard to do the right thing. But there’s only so much your peers can say to help. It’s the people above you, the people you fear and respect and want to please, who have power over you. Maybe it’s not fair, but what they say matters more. You can destroy someone with that kind of power.”

  Bjarke stared at him, his face hard to read.

  “You can also build them up with that kind of power,” Casmir offered.

  Could someone who believed in and followed the Knights’ Code truly not have the capacity to understand and care about his son?

  “You’re really an engineer?” Bjarke finally asked.

  “A mechanical engineer specializing in robots.”

  “Do they like your therapy sessions?”

  “I don’t think Zee is in need of therapy, but he would happily chat about human relations and social dynamics with me.”

  “Let’s save that for later.” Bjarke focused on the control panel. “We’re heading in.”

  Casmir’s stomach did a flip-flop as they went from skimming above the dull gray surface of the moon to dipping down into a well-lit tunnel. Fortunately, the usual queasiness did not take root.

  Another shuttle flew ahead of them. Indicator lights flashed on the side walls—a scanner system checking the ships?

  At a spot that appeared no different from the rest of the tunnel, the ship ahead slowed, thrusters flaring orange, and hovered. Was that where the forcefield was?

  Casmir realized they should be within range of the base’s networks and that he should have been working on getting onto them rather than talking about relationships with Bjarke. He closed his eyes, letting Bjarke handle the flying, and searched for a signal so he could let his programs loose and find a way in.

  After a long minute, he frowned. His chip was searching… and still searching for a signal.

  As they plugged in their code for the forcefield and flew deeper into the base, into a range where Casmir should definitely have had access, he realized with gut-sinking certainty that there was no network. Not a wireless network.

  Even worse, the moon rock walls blocked out access to the system-wide network. He couldn’t hack into Dubashi’s base, and he couldn’t even send a message to Kim to find out where she had ended up.

  He groaned.

  “What?” Bjarke asked.

  Casmir imagined running around with cables, trying to find physical ports to plug into a hard-wired network while the knights and crushers were battling enemies all around him.

  “My job just got more formidable.”

  28

  Bonita sat in navigation in the Stellar Dragon, watching the busy moon base from afar. She’d turned off the thrusters to avoid attracting attention, and the freighter floated between two previously mined asteroids, their surfaces gouged with deep pits and as tunneled as honeycomb. Her long braid kept trying to float free from her pod.

  While she watched, she was also monitoring the unsecured communications flying between the mercenary ships, as well as between them and the comm tower on the surface of the moon. The computer was running a search on it all, looking for mentions of Scholar Sunflyer and also of bioweapons. So far, nothing had popped up.

  Qin clomped into navigation, setting her boots carefully so the magnetic soles caught with each step. She wore her combat armor, though there was no threat to the Dragon at the moment, and she eyed the distant base wistfully. Bonita knew she’d wanted to go with Casmir and the knights and was now second-guessing her decision not to let Qin join them on their incursion. She’d asked Bjarke and Casmir to look for Sunflyer on their way in, but Qin could have made that her priority.

  Yet… Bonita had a niggling feeling that the situation would explode, and she’d been reluctant to let Qin get caught in the middle. The Kingdom fleet was on the way, the mercenary warships numbered in the dozens, and the moon base itself had weapons platforms all over the surface. This meeting might as well have been taking place on a rusty old land mine poised to explode at the slightest brush of pressure.

  As much as she wanted to complete her assignment and return triumphant to Stardust Palace, it wasn’t worth getting Qin killed over it, especially when she wasn’t certain Sunflyer was in there.

  “Thank you for staying with me,” Bonita said. “If trouble finds us behind this asteroid, I’ll need you.”

  “I know. Would you be upset if I hoped for that?” Qin flexed her fingers and extended her nails, as if to say she hoped for some action.

  “Trouble?”

  “Yes. It feels like we’re hiding while our friends go into danger.”

  Because that was what they were doing. “If they were smart, they’d be hiding too.”

  Qin shook her head. “They want to help their people. It’s worth personal risk to oneself to potentially save a great many.”

  Bonita’s mouth twisted. With thinking like that, Qin wouldn’t live to see twenty-five. But she couldn’t fault her idealistic friend for caring.

  “I know,” she said, “and if they need help getting back out, we’ll help them. Or if they find Scholar Sunflyer but can’t get him alone, I’ll have to send you in.” Somehow. Bonita eyed the hornet’s nest on the display with distaste.

  Qin’s pointed ears perked with interest.

  “Just don’t pray for that, please,” Bonita said. “On the off chance that God is listening to you.”

  “I’ve never prayed in my life.” Qin shrugged. “Neither the scientists nor the Druckers thought it was important to instill a sense of… spirituality into us.”

  Before Bonita could comment, the comm panel flashed. So much for hanging back with the thrusters off and avoiding notice.

  “Ugh, it’s that Fleet ship again.”

  “The Chivalrous,” Viggo said helpfully.

  “I d
on’t want to talk to that prissy poodle or any of his minions,” Bonita said.

  “We don’t have any knights left to call up to speak to him,” Qin said.

  “Which he might consider a problem, if he didn’t assign them to their current mission.” From what Bonita had gathered, Casmir had assigned himself his current mission… and talked Tristan, Bjarke, and Asger into going along with him.

  “Can we ignore it?”

  “We can. I’m debating if there could be repercussions.” Bonita eyed the scanners. “That ship, as well as… eighteen others are going to be at the base before long. Four of them are those hulking Kingdom warships. They could pulverize us without ever firing a weapon. They could just run us over.”

  “One would expect them to be busy with other matters,” Viggo said.

  “Are they going to fight the mercenaries meeting with Dubashi?” Qin asked.

  “They neglected to file their flight plan and itinerary with me,” Bonita said, “but my guess is they’re going to try to break up that meeting. Unless they’re smart and want to hire the mercenaries for themselves before Dubashi does. That would actually make sense, since they’re outnumbered, assuming the Kingdom can outbid a wealthy Miners’ Union prince. You’d think an entire planetary government would have such resources.”

  “Maybe we should talk to them and find out what they’re doing.” Qin scratched her jaw with one of her claws, her skin tough enough to withstand it. “And pass that information along to Casmir. If the Kingdom is hiring mercenaries, that shouldn’t be a problem, but what if a fight starts while our friends are inside?”

  “That’s what I’ve been sitting here worrying about.”

  The incoming-comm button flashed again. Insistently.

  Bonita reluctantly answered it, reminding herself that she wasn’t a Kingdom subject and would be under no obligation to do anything the snobby prince requested—or attempted to order.

  She groaned inwardly when his face filled the display. She would have preferred to speak to one of his minions, some random comm officer relaying a message.

  “Where is Bjarke Asger?” Jorg asked without preamble.

  “This isn’t his ship,” Bonita said, happy enough to avoid greetings.

  “Summon him to speak with me.”

  Summon him? What was she? A witch?

  “He’s not here. He went to the moon base.” Bonita wouldn’t share their plan, but out of a sense of self-preservation, she would point out that Jorg’s knights weren’t aboard her ship. She didn’t want to give him a reason to come visit her.

  “He what? His orders were only to get Sato.”

  Bonita shrugged. “He didn’t confide in me. He just left.”

  “How?” He squinted suspiciously at her. “Our Intelligence agent learned that his shuttle was destroyed on Stardust Palace Station.”

  “He flapped his wings and flew. Look, I’m not your Intelligence agent. If you want to—”

  “‘Ware your tongue, bounty-hunter peon,” Jorg snarled. “You do not want to make an enemy of the Kingdom.”

  “Peon?”

  Qin rested a hand on her shoulder before she could follow that up with the curses that wanted to spew out. “Sir Bjarke Asger and William Asger are trying to help the Kingdom, uhm, sir. Are you going to try to hire some of the mercenaries?”

  “It’s Your Highness, not sir.” Jorg curled a lip. “And I’d chew off my own arm before hiring mercenary scum. Where are the Asgers now? And even more importantly, where is Kim Sato?”

  Qin shrugged. “Maybe in that base? We don’t know for sure. We’re on another mission.”

  “What could you possibly be doing rubbing the belly of that ugly freighter on an asteroid?”

  Bonita grew chill at the knowledge that he’d taken the time to find out exactly where they were.

  “Ugly?” Viggo protested. “The Dragon is sleek with the lines of an elegant mythical creature swirling through the skies.”

  “We’ve been hired to look for someone,” Bonita said. “It’s none of your business who. You’ll have to look elsewhere for your wayward knights.”

  She cut the comm before the sneer on Jorg’s face could devolve into further insults. What an ass.

  “It doesn’t sound like he’s planning to hire those mercenaries,” Qin observed.

  Bonita grunted. “The Kingdom didn’t put their most diplomatic leader in charge of rounding up allies, did it?”

  “I believe he’s simply the person who was stuck outside of the system when their gate was blockaded,” Viggo said. “Shall we warn Casmir that the Kingdom fleet is only… six hours away now?”

  “He probably already knows—Rache knew they were coming, and that’s why he wouldn’t rendezvous with us—but yes, I suppose so.”

  Bonita sent a message to Casmir with the details, but after a minute, it bounced back with an alert.

  Unable to deliver message. Recipient offline. Will try again in one hour.

  “His chip is offline.” Bonita looked at Qin. “Can you contact Asger?”

  She tried sending the same message to Bjarke. The same error came back.

  Qin shook her head. “No. What does that mean? They’re all locked up somewhere with network access blocked off?”

  “Or they’re all dead,” Bonita muttered grimly.

  Casmir peered at the displays as Bjarke settled the shuttle onto the landing platform. They were deep in the moon base, and the scanners struggled to read their surroundings, beyond what was in the hollowed-out hangar around them. He hoped to see one of Rache’s other shuttles, a sign that Kim was down here and not far away. All he saw were some battle bots waiting outside, large bipedal robots with bug-like heads and arms and hands that held rifles as easily as humans.

  “They must have been sent to another bay.” Casmir slumped with disappointment.

  “Not surprising. There are lots of bays around the base.” Bjarke powered down the shuttle and rose to his feet. “Let’s let Tristan and William out and see if any human beings, or maybe Dubashi himself, come into the bay, before leaving the shuttle. If he delivered himself into our hands, that would be convenient.”

  Casmir doubted they would be that lucky, but he said, “True.”

  Bjarke looked over as Casmir rose from his pod, slinging his tool satchel over his shoulder. “Do you have a weapon?”

  “No. I have twelve crushers.”

  “I saw some rifles in the back. I guess we can’t give you one of those, if you’re supposed to be my dead prisoner, but you could fit a pistol in your purse there.”

  “It’s a satchel, a manly satchel, and I’ll pass. Even if I didn’t have an aversion to carrying deadly weapons, I’d consider it especially unwise right now.” Casmir remembered that Bjarke hadn’t caught up to their group in the astroshaman base until after he’d had his seizure, so he might not know about them. He was always reluctant to admit his weaknesses to people, but Bjarke should know in case it happened again here. Casmir dearly hoped it wouldn’t—under the best of circumstances, a seizure left him tired and disoriented, and under the worst… Well, shooting an ally was only one of the many problems it might cause. His enemies had a knack for timing their attacks on him—and his unreliable brain—well. “I have a tendency toward seizures. They were controlled back on Odin, but space has added some variables that my medication doesn’t compensate for as well.”

  “Oh.” Bjarke digested that. “Don’t have one while you’re hanging over my shoulder pretending to be dead.”

  Was that how he planned to carry Casmir out? Lovely.

  “I’ll do my best.” Casmir called back to the crushers. “Zee and friends, please release the knights. It’ll be time soon to do battle.”

  The boxes re-formed into bipedal crushers. Even though Tristan and Asger had air tanks, they sprang to their feet like swimmers lunging to the surface after holding their breath underwater for too long.

  “I will remain close to protect you, Casmir Dabrowski,” Zee said, “w
hile the others go out to fight. What is our goal?”

  A good question. Unless Dubashi came to them, they had to go find him. Casmir, as Moonrazor had subtly warned, couldn’t locate the prince through his chip when there was no wireless network, so he would have to make guesses about where Dubashi was likely to be. Already at his meeting? Preparing in an office or his quarters? Showing guests to suites?

  First things first. “We’ll have to subdue whoever comes to meet us and disable the robots waiting in the hangar out there.” Casmir pointed to the hatch they hadn’t yet opened.

  He was glad he’d had the foresight to download the blueprints on the way here, before losing network access. At least they had a good map. He perused it and found a route to the likely locations of Dubashi’s office and quarters, as well as the meeting rooms and other shuttle bays. Meanwhile, Bjarke remained up front, monitoring the scanners, waiting to see if Dubashi, or that officer who’d commed them, showed up. Asger went up and looked over his shoulder.

  Tristan waited with the crushers. He’d borrowed a galaxy suit and a rifle from Bonita’s armory, and Asger had given him back his pertundo, but he wasn’t as well-protected as Bjarke and Asger, both in their knight’s liquid armor. Since he still seemed very knightly in demeanor—Casmir couldn’t believe he’d rushed aboard Rache’s shuttle by himself to attempt a rescue—Tristan would probably eschew advice to stay back with him.

  “Two of the robots are walking toward our hatch,” Asger called back softly, as if he might be overheard outside of the shuttle.

  “No sign of the female officer or Dubashi yet.” Bjarke peered back at Casmir. “Should we walk out, pretending I’m going to hand you over to those robots, or fight now? I doubt we can get much further with the prisoner ploy. It got us in and through the forcefield, so that’s good, but since Dubashi is keen on you being dead, his robots might have orders to shoot you as soon as they catch sight of you.”

  “Comforting,” Casmir murmured.