Sword of the Legion (Galaxy's Edge Book 5)

by Jason Anspach

  “I believe,” Crash said in its most tutorial voice, “that Captain Keel has brought us into one of the four atmospheric sections artificially maintained on Tarrago Moon.”

  “That was the plan, right?”

  Crash blinked its visual receptors. “The plan was to enter the atmosphere of Tarrago Prime. However, based on the time lapsed from our exiting hyperspace to now, he must have entered the atmosphere of the Tarrago moon instead. I do hope that he was not confused by the similarity of names.”

  “Probably he just—”

  “Tarrago,” Crash continued unabated, “is a common name used in reference to Tarrago Prime. But the moon is also named Tarrago. And so the moon is called Tarrago Moon, and the planet Tarrago Prime—”

  “Crash…”

  “But such naming allows for confusion. Tarrago, left without clarification, can mean the moon or the planet, or even the system itself—”

  “Crash…”

  “And so if Captain Keel was told to infiltrate Tarrago—”

  “Crash!”

  “Yes, young miss?”

  “I don’t care about any of this.”

  Crash pulled its head back, as if surprised. “I apologize, young miss.”

  The ship hummed as it fired blaster bolts at some unseen foe. Prisma pricked up her ears, straining to hear what became of the shots. She was rewarded with a distant explosion.

  “I have analyzed the sound. It was at least three medium starfighters exploding in atmosphere, approximately two hundred meters in front the Indelible VI. That is to say: we were chasing them down.”

  Prisma smiled. This was something she could hear more of. “Tell me everything that’s happening outside!”

  The bot enhanced its audio receptors. As it processed each noise, it delivered details its best interpretation of the action outside. Prisma sat riveted.

  “Prisma…”

  “Prisma…”

  It took several moments for Prisma to realize that someone other than Crash was speaking to her. “Ravi?” she asked.

  “Yes, Prisma.” Ravi seemed to materialize next to her in the room.

  Crash stopped its narrative. “Who are you speaking to, young miss?”

  “I—” began Prisma. “You can’t see him?”

  The bot blinked its visual receptors. “See whom?”

  Ravi smiled and sat down next to Prisma. “I am… beyond the reach of this machine. It neither can see nor hear me. Though there may be a time when Crash achieves sufficient awareness to commune with me in my present state.”

  “If someone other than Crash came in… could they see you?” Prisma asked.

  “Some of them could, yes.”

  “But not all?”

  Crash looked around the room in apparent confusion. “Young miss, who are you—”

  “Shh!” Prisma hissed. “Not now, Crash.”

  “Very well.”

  Ravi smiled. “We are flying near the eastern wall, and I am needing your assistance.”

  “For what?”

  “Something very important. Something that will save lives.” Ravi inclined his head. “Will you help me with this, Prisma?”

  Prisma nodded.

  Ravi held up his palms to face her. “I am wanting you to place your palms against mine.”

  Prisma obeyed… and, for reasons she couldn’t articulate, closed her eyes.

  It was black. Blacker than when she normally closed her eyes. Blacker than when she slept without the lights on. The sort of black that swallowed the light. Removed it.

  It made her feel afraid.

  “Do you feel this?” Ravi asked.

  “Y-yes.”

  “I feel it too. It is… a way of death. A way of self and of destruction.”

  Prisma’s lip quivered. She felt… sad. As if she’d known this feeling before. As if it was there when her daddy…

  “What I am wanting you to help me with, is to push this darkness away.” Ravi pressed his palms against Prisma’s, and she could feel them. Feel the gentle warmth of his hands. “Even the most determined darkness cannot take away all of the light. We are to be pushing this darkness away. Bring forth the light, Prisma. You are being called to bring forth… the light.”

  Prisma imagined a sunrise. She imagined a sheet of blackness turning white as snow, the dark being pushed off the page from corner to corner. The light grew in intensity, until she found herself squeezing her eyes tight, as if asking for some darkness to protect her from being overwhelmed.

  And then it was all gone. She felt as though she was simply sitting in a room with her eyes shut. She opened them, expecting no longer to see Ravi, but there he was.

  “You have done very well, Prisma,” Ravi said, his mustache curling up with his smile. “I am proud of you.”

  “What did I do?”

  “As much as you were called to do. As much as you were capable.”

  Prisma tried to smile, but found that she couldn’t. “Are you going to leave again?”

  “Only for a time.”

  “Ravi,” Prisma began. She hesitated, picking at her fingers. She picked at them whenever she felt nervous now. There was no one left to tell her not to. “Am I… how do I become… pretty?”

  Ravi placed a hand gently under Prisma’s chin. “Oh, my dear child, you are beautiful right now.”

  “I don’t feel like it. Not like Leenah.”

  “Hoo hoo hoo,” laughed Ravi. “The pupatar always wishes for its wings, and the flutterer longs for the leaf. But I see beyond what is outside, dear Prisma. And you are filled with beauty.”

  Prisma smiled. Feeling a tear trying to escape her eyelids, she quickly wiped it away. “Thanks, Ravi.”

  “You are being very welcome.” Ravi began to fade from sight. “Remember what I have told you. Now is the time. Stay hidden. Do as Captain Keel and Leenah tell you. Stay safe.”

  10

  “That’s right,” Keel repeated into the comm as he juked and rolled the Indelible VI through a staggering minefield of debris hewn from the destroyers in their exchange of heavy turboblaster fire. “Don’t shoot unless you pick up a tail. I don’t care how fat of a target you see.”

  “Sorry,” answered Sticks over the comm.

  Leenah looked up briefly from her sensors. “Legionnaires aren’t much for being subtle. Guess the kill teams really like to emphasize the kill part of their names.” Keel liked that she understood the need to fly into Tarrago Prime without interceptors calling them in and making a big show of their arrival.

  He gave the princess an almost leering grin. “That’s not always such a bad thing, is it, Your Highness?”

  “Look out!” Leenah pointed out the canopy window at the wreckage of a vanquished starfighter spinning like an asteroid amid a belt of ruined lives and machinery.

  “I see it,” Keel said, feeling unjustly scolded. He banked sharply upward, the belly of the Six coming within meters of a blasted-out cockpit unit from one of those new model tri-fighters. “See?” He smiled. “No problem. Besides, you know as well as anyone that the Six’s shields would have handled that.”

  The freighter shook from some unseen impact. Keel’s eyes went wide.

  “Something hit us,” he said. “What hit us?” He was sure he’d cleared the starfighter graveyard that studded the open space between Tarrago’s moon and Tarrago Prime.

  “Wraith,” Chhun called over the comm, “a black-painted tri-bomber just seeded this whole area with proximity mines. Looks like Sullus’s pilots are conceding this sector and leaving some surprises for any Repub featherheads who come out this way.”

  “Now he tells me,” Keel muttered, scanning his sensors and visuals for sign of the disc-shaped explosives.

  “Are those dangerous?” Leenah asked.

  Keel could tell from the look on her face that she felt embarrassed for asking the question as soon as it left her mouth. He gave his head a half shake. “Fly in too close to one of those babies and they’ll detonate right insid
e our shield array. Make our mission real short.”

  Looking uneasily at her sensor display, Leenah said, “Well, they’re everywhere.” She sent over an isolation layer that made all the mines show as a bright yellow, whether seen out of the cockpit windows or on the HUD map display.

  “How ’bout that,” Keel mumbled to himself.

  “I know,” sighed Leenah. “I’ll start plotting another route to planet.”

  “No,” said Keel, “I mean, how ’bout that, there are no destroyers or starfighters between us and the planet. Just the mines.”

  Leenah’s mouth hung open. “You’re not actually going to try and take us through them? The shields won’t do a lot of good if those things blow up inside them.”

  “Don’t worry,” Keel said. “It’s me, remember?”

  Leaning forward, he flipped on the ship-wide comm. “Everybody strap in. Captain’s order. We’re flying through the minefield to get to Tarrago Prime.”

  “What?” came a chorus of incredulous replies.

  Keel overrode the incoming comm replies. “Shut up and let me concentrate!”

  The comm fell silent.

  But Leenah could still make her objections heard. “Aeson, this is suicide.”

  “Only if we die.” Keel adjusted some settings on his console, and the cockpit dimmed to a soft, red light. “Putting all power to shield and thrusters. Weapon systems powered down, life support is—”

  The cockpit door whooshed open, more slowly than usual, and Chhun entered. “What’s going on?”

  “Gonna run us through the minefield,” Keel said evenly. “Strap in.”

  Chhun took a seat behind Leenah and fastened his restraints. “C’mon, Ford. Let’s just circle around and run the blockade. The destroyers won’t be able to catch up, and we can take care of any starfighters that pursue.”

  “Have a little faith, Chhun.” Keel continued his adjustments. The Indelible’s engines whined with the influx of power being routed their way.

  The cockpit door again opened, and Masters stepped inside. “This is a joke, right?”

  “Sit down and strap in!” Keel shouted, giving Masters an angry look over his shoulder. “I’m about to hit the throttle, so unless you want to be a smear on the back of a bulkhead…”

  Masters quickly sat behind Keel and locked his harness in place. The moment Keel heard the click, he throttled forward at full speed.

  The burst of speed forced everyone to the backs of their seats. It felt almost as though the ship were making the jump into hyperspace, only without the padding provided by inertial dampers syncing with the jump.

  As the yellow-highlighted mines drew nearer, Keel felt a halting sensation, as if someone were alternating between hard brakes and rapid acceleration. This was the ship’s dampers attempting to counteract the inertia and give the cockpit a feeling of stationary stability. Ships the size of Keel’s freighter simply didn’t accelerate this fast—normally. He’d installed inertial dampers straight out of a Republic Raptor, two of them, but even they weren’t enough to keep from feeling the thrust in so large a craft without sufficient notice. And Keel needed to fly in the moment. Maybe Leenah could figure something out. Still, the help of the twin dampers was enough to allow Keel to take hold of the flight controls and begin swooping in large, wide arcs through the field.

  The first mine streaked by the cockpit, and Keel saw it flashing red from the proximity. It exploded in the Six’s wake, twenty meters behind it. The freighter streaked onward.

  Keel afforded himself a satisfied grin. This would work. At least, it could work. He increased the ship’s speed.

  Apparently not everyone shared Keel’s optimism. Leenah had grabbed hold of his shirt at the upper arm, constricting the garment so it pinched him like a half tourniquet. “Aeson…”

  “Wraith…” Chhun warned, his voice exuding the caution of a parent trying to head a child off from some impending catastrophe of his own making.

  “Oh, Oba!” shouted Masters, his eyes closed and face blanching white.

  As the Indelible VI rocketed through the minefield, more mines exploded, but the anti-vehicle ordnances were unable to keep up with the starship’s intense speed. The designers of these mines hadn’t anticipated a ship as fast as the Six lacing its way through a field.

  As the cacophony of explosions continued, Master’s shouts turned into a sort of mantra-like prayer. “Oba-Oba-Oba-Oba-Oba-Oba!”

  And then they were through, with open space between them and the planet.

  “Ha ha!” Keel laughed triumphantly. Bright interior lights returned as he rerouted power to the ship’s other systems. “I told you I’d do it,” he said, mostly to Leenah.

  The Endurian leaned over and planted a celebratory kiss on his cheek. “That’s for my doubting you,” she said with a smile.

  Keel felt a rush of warmth to his face, swallowed, and stared straight ahead, hoping that Chhun and Masters wouldn’t see him blush from their vantage points behind him. He moved the ship toward its entry trajectory for Tarrago Prime.

  “That was an… interesting tactic,” Chhun said, unfastening himself and standing up.

  Masters clapped Keel on the shoulder and looked down at him with a wolfish smile. “You sly dog, you.” He placed his other hand on Leenah’s shoulder, as if wanting to be absolutely sure that Keel understood what he was talking about. “You know, Leenah, I almost get my people killed all the time. So if you have any kisses left for a handsome young legionnaire…”

  Leenah rolled her eyes.

  Keel hitched his thumb toward the cockpit exit. “Beat it, huh, Masters?”

  Masters chuckled and stepped out, leaving Chhun alone with Keel and Leenah.

  “What was that, Ford?”

  “What?” Keel said, patting the side of his face where Leenah had kissed him. “The kiss? I can’t help that I’m irresistible.”

  “Not the kiss,” Chhun said. He hesitated before adding, “Well, partly. I mean… you’re being reckless. This kind of insertion isn’t up to Dark Ops standard, and you’re still a Dark Ops leej. I get that things are different when you’re drifting out on the edge, but that stunt could have easily gotten us all killed.”

  “So can lots of things,” Keel shot back, his ire up from what he perceived as a lecture coming from a soldier who used to be under his command. “Survival means taking risks, and you know I’ve never backed down from any of them.”

  Chhun nodded, while still managing to convey that he disagreed completely. “I haven’t forgotten. We can talk about this another time. But I need you to understand that this isn’t the same team you left. We were all keyed in to your style when we first joined up. Captain Ford—Wraith—running headlong into an ambush and leaving the rest of the leejes in the dust. And hey, it always worked. Every blind corner you took, every time you opened up and took the initiative… you made it happen. But listen. The team is keyed in to me now, and I’m not that guy.”

  Keel held up his hands. “No problem, Chhun. I get it. I’ll stay out of your way.”

  “I don’t want you ‘out of the way’ down there. I just want to maintain control of the situation, and of my team.”

  Keel nodded. “We’ll be inside Tarrago’s atmo soon. Probably should kit up the team. I’ll get my suit and bucket on once we land.”

  “All right.”

  Chhun left the cockpit.

  “Well, that was uncomfortable,” Leenah said after a beat.

  Keel gave a fractional shake of his head. “Probably not fitting for the company of a princess.”

  “How’s this going to work?”

  “With the kill team?” Keel eased the ship into the navi-computer’s programmed course as the burn from entry appeared around the cockpit windows. “I don’t know. We’ll get the job done. But after that…”

  He exhaled, long and loud. Less a sigh than a breath of resolve. “I’ve been thinking. After this op… after I deliver the kill team to whatever battle station they’re headed f
or next. If I were to… would you…?”

  Leenah took up Keel’s hand in both of hers. “Yes.”

  Keel smiled. “Good.”

  A notification chimed in the cockpit, meant to alert the pilot of the need for manual control. It continued to sound as Keel leaned in toward Leenah.

  “Shouldn’t you take care of that?” Leenah asked, her eyes closing as she moved toward Keel.

  “It can wait.”

  The cockpit door flung open to reveal Garret and KRS-88.

  “Oh, jeez!” Garret said, almost jumping as much as Keel and Leenah did. “I had no idea you two were… and I… uh, sorry. Oh. I should go. Should I go? Oh. No, I can’t. See…”

  Keel took control of the ship and guided it into upper atmospheric flight. “What’s up, kid?”

  “Should I arm the war bot?”

  Keel considered. “You sure you’ve got whatever Rechs did… undone?”

  “Definitely.”

  “It’d be nice to have a murder machine available.”

  Garret seemed pleased by this. “Okay. I’ll get him outfitted. Don’t worry about giving me access to the armory. I worked up a pass-all and tied it to my comm and biometrics.”

  Keel gave a sardonic frown. “Please, help yourself.”

  “Thanks,” Garret said, apparently missing the sarcasm completely. “I also linked up the AI in your concussion missiles to the long-band AI aboard the Six.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “You can shoot your missile in any direction now, and it’ll pretty much go right into the target—or it’ll wait, or land without detonating, or relay comms… pretty much whatever you could count on shipboard AI to do, it can be done with your munitions now.”

  “Garret,” Leenah said, looking very impressed. “That’s… incredible. To get that kind of adaptability from a warhead’s limited AI.”

  “Yeah, I know!” Garret beamed. “You’re technically not supposed to do that, because now the missile has the ability to kill something it doesn’t like, which is why ordnance AI is always slaved to the control of a shipboard AI, and only enough to make minor adjustments like velocity and trajectory in order to meet the will of the humanoid who fired it. But most AIs I talk with are nice.”