In the meantime, Mykah consulted the schedule the captain had posted for the guests: welcome drinks, dinner, nightcaps, first breakfast, late breakfast, midday meal. At least the trip would go quickly, with all the eating. Mykah looked forward to getting back on a regular meal schedule.
*
Raena missed her grab at her cache of weapons as she rocketed past the main hatch. Bihn twisted the ship into a corkscrew that knocked her into every surface in the hallway. She would have thought he was punishing her on purpose, but one of the attackers’ shots landed. The lights went out and the whole ship juddered, before he got it back under control.
“Are you to the pods yet?” he yelled back to her.
“Starboard or port?”
“Port.”
She caught a railing and hung on, winding her legs around it, too. She could see the airlock from here. “Give me a hard left.”
He cranked the ship hard to port and she let go her hold. She caught the handle outside the airlock.
“I’m back to the pods,” she called.
“Get the hell off my ship,” he ordered.
“Yes, sir.” She wished she’d been able to take any of his weapons. She wished the plasma rifle hadn’t vanished. She wished she had food or water or any way to survive in the desert. She wished she hadn’t been dragged back to Kai.
Climbing hand over hand, she got to the first of the escape pods and pounded its escape sequence in. Then she climbed over to the next and sent it to follow the first, and so on, until she crawled into the next to last pod. She’d leave him one, in case he and his crew needed to bail out, too. “I’m in!” she shouted at Bihn.
The pod’s hatch slammed shut, barely missing her head. Teeth clenched in a grin, Raena flung herself onto the bench and pulled the crash web over her as the jets engaged.
Glad to be rid of her, it seemed.
*
As soon as she noticed the message light flashing, Ariel listened to the snippet from Raena: “I’m never going to forgive you for dragging me to Kai.” Ariel heard the amused fatalism behind Raena’s words. The old joke harkened back to their adolescence together. Hungover, Ariel would groan it in the morning, after Raena had gotten them home safely from yet another ill-considered adventure that Ariel had proposed the night before.
Ariel tried to respond to the message, but got back “unrecognized communications code” in answer. Raena had used a scrambler to call. Not unexpected.
Ariel’s next call was to Tomur Corvas, the Varan attorney who had been her friend since he and his son had adopted one of her orphans. Corvas would know how to defend Raena.
*
The Khangho’s escape pod plummeted straight down. The pod was really bare bones, just the crash web and a small locker beneath the bench. It didn’t have any kind of viewport or controls, not even a comm console. Raena hoped the pod had enough shielding that when she slammed into the ground, it wouldn’t disintegrate on impact.
Some days it just wasn’t worth having walked out of her tomb.
She hoped that the attackers, whoever they were, weren’t about to blow her out of the sky. If the boys in gray were pursuing her, either they wanted to capture her or witness her death, or else they would have simply blown up the truck back on Lautan. She hoped she could escape them a third time.
While she was dropping, Raena twisted around to try the bounty hunters’ keys against the locker. One of them popped the door. Inside she found a rucksack jammed with water pouches, nutrition bars, and other survival supplies. It was the first thing that had gone right in days.
She bit the tab off a pouch of water and sucked its contents down, then a second, then a third. That ought to lighten the pack a little.
She pawed around inside the pack, looking for any kind of weapon. The best she found was a multi-blade survival tool that could be used as a knife. Better than nothing.
The escape pod jerked suddenly upward. After that, its descent became much more gradual. It must have some kind of parachute. That ought to alert her pursuers right where she was landing.
Raena wished she knew how much farther she had to fall. She unclipped herself from the crash web and crouched over to the hatch. The release was a simple red handle. Would it blow the door open explosively and should she save it as her best weapon? Or would it merely glide the door open and politely invite her pursuers in?
She decided it didn’t matter. She was in a mood to run. She pulled the rucksack onto her back and tried to psych herself up to be ready to jump as soon as the ground came close enough.
*
After they finished dinner on the Na’ash yacht, the Veracity’s crew retreated to their suite of rooms to watch the news. There had been another gang of humans arrested with a packet of Messiah, this time on Shtrell.
The news showed the footage of Raena with the Outrider head again.
“It would be awesome to see the androids knit themselves back together,” Vezali said, as she opened a bottle of xyshin with a pair of tentacles. “I didn’t know the Templars had tech that could do that.”
“It was terrifying to watch at the time.” Mykah held out his glass to her. “Raena would take the androids apart, but they’d just reassemble themselves when her back was turned.”
“And they looked completely human?” Vezali poured for Coni and Haoun and passed their glasses to them.
“Yeah,” Mykah said. “They could breathe, sweat, bleed. Absolutely eerie.”
“I don’t understand why tech like that would be wasted to deal in drugs. That’s so specific,” Coni said, “so trivial.”
“I don’t get why, if you had tech like that, you would only make androids that looked like Outrider,” Haoun said. “Why wouldn’t you also make robots that looked like any other species in the galaxy? Is it more possible that the Templar androids only mimic humans—or that there are other camouflaged robots at work in the galaxy even now, doing who knows what?”
That question put an end to the conversation.
Mykah changed the subject. “Are you sure Raena’s identity has held up?”
Coni hugged him. “Absolutely certain. It was tested when we went to Capital City. She will be fine.”
“I hope so. In so many ways, she’s just a babe in the galaxy,” he said. “It’s changed so much and she’s spent so little time in it …”
“You’re tired,” Coni diagnosed. “Have you seen Raena? She always lands on her feet.”
CHAPTER 7
Raena pulled the red lever that blew the door off the escape pod. The wind outside tugged at her, but she kept a good hold on the pod as she looked out. The ground was still a surprisingly long way down. It seemed to be mostly rock, broken by rivers of sand. She wondered if this desert had once been the bed of
an ancient ocean. How long had the Templars lived on Kai? Had they known the planet when this desert had been lush as the jungles on Lautan?
Now that she could see out of the pod, she discovered it was almost sunset on Kai. Perfect. Darkness would give her more shadows in which to hide.
She was still up high enough that there would be plenty of time to put the pod’s homing beacon out of commission before she jumped. Raena hauled herself up onto the roof of the escape pod, but the beacon wasn’t up there. Hm. Maybe she couldn’t smash it until she landed.
The parachute snapped and fluttered above her head, yellow against the crimson sky. She could see where the other pods had landed behind her, their parachutes bright as flowers against the dark brown ground. Turbo skiffs had already stopped to check out two of the other pods. A third skiff still chased the Khangho, barely a glint at the horizon’s edge, heading back into space. Excellent. One less thing to worry about.
Raena crouched at the base of the cables connecting the parachute to the pod. She wished she had some gloves. Then she opened up her survival tool and used the blade to saw at one of the three cables. It nearly took her eye out as it twanged past her head.
Gonna have to be more care
ful, she told herself, or she’d had that scar back again. Maybe this time it really would cost her an eye.
She pulled the spool of survival cord from inside the rucksack and wove herself a sling between the remaining two cables. Once she had herself tied in, she bent and used another tool to pry the cable anchor loose from the top of the escape pod.
The parachute yanked her suddenly upward as the escape pod plunged away beneath her. Raena concentrated on relaxing, letting the wind bear her away. The pursuers would be after her soon enough. They’d be moving faster than windspeed or gravity.
The escape pod clanged down the rock behind her. Only then did she realize how quiet the desert was. The only other sound she heard was the rush of wind in her ears.
Ahead of her rose a mountainous stone mesa cut by a maze of narrow fissures. Raena steered the parachute by shifting her weight. She aimed herself toward the uplands. There might be wildlife there, but she would have more cover than on the bare rock below.
Twilight drew on faster now. No lights glowed anywhere below her, but off in the distance behind her, she could see Kai City reflected against the clouds. It was a hundred kilometers or more distant, too far to hope for help.
One of the skiffs rose from the escape pod it had been investigating.
Raena stopped lying stiff and flat, facing into the wind. She forced her body downward, spread-eagled to catch as much wind as possible. It slowed her somewhat, so that when the updraft rose from the base of the mesa, she steered herself over the mesa top. Then she clenched her teeth, grabbed the cradle of rope, and sawed the survival tool through it.
The wind tore the parachute away. It grew smaller as it flapped off.
And a helmet, she thought. Wish I had gloves and a helmet.
Raena tucked into the fall, but the pack on her back made landing awkward. She lost a layer of skin on one leg. At least she managed not to break anything.
Before she could uncurl herself, a turbo skiff whizzed beyond her, chasing the parachute.
She hadn’t much time. Growling at herself to move, Raena got to her feet. She limped over to the nearest crevasse and slipped over its edge, feeling for toeholds as she went.
The sky grew darker by the moment. Dark was good. She could work in the darkness.
Raena struggled to keep her mind focused on the climb, wedging her fingers into the rock, keeping her body relaxed, evening out her breathing.
She hadn’t gone far before her mind wandered again. The rock face was still hot from the daytime. It didn’t burn her, but it hinted at how warm the desert would get, come morning.
Not only did she lack shoes, but she’d left her gargoyle goggles on Lautan. She remembered how bright the light had been last time she’d been on Kai. Crossing the desert in daylight was likely to burn her eyes right out of her head.
Focus, she ordered herself. She’d lost track of how far down the canyon face she’d come. It jolted her when she put her foot down on a boulder just above the canyon floor.
Searchlights caressed the top of the mesa overhead. One or more of the skiffs had come to look for her.
Raena hopped down off the boulder to the canyon’s floor. Then she darted into the darkness.
A channel ran straight down the middle of the serpentine canyon, clearly engineered rather than natural. Raena wondered if there used to be irrigation ditches on the surface of Kai. Maybe she could still find water. That would become important in a day or two, when she finished the water in her pack.
Without warning, the crevasse spat her out into a courtyard barely visible in the twilight. The ornate facades of a handful of buildings faced the courtyard. Bihn told her there were Templar ghost towns on Kai. It seemed that she had discovered one.
Raena ducked into the middle doorway. The building was pitch black inside. She forced herself farther in, wondering if Kai had critters who would seek shelter inside the abandoned houses. She had an emergency lantern in her survival pack, but if her pursuers saw it flashing around in the darkness, they’d know exactly where to look for her.
She stopped to listen. The old house held its breath. Raena couldn’t hear anything beyond the rush of blood in her ears, just like being in her tomb. Remembered terror shivered over her.
Raena forced herself to sit on the stone floor, to breathe in the darkness. She was safe for now. She had a little water and some food. They didn’t know where she’d gone.
She pulled one of the nutritional bars from her pack and unwrapped it, careful to put the wrapping back in the pack so it couldn’t betray her later. She nibbled the bar, trying to eat it slowly rather than gobble it down as her body wanted to do. It tasted of sweetness, but felt like some kind of small nuts or seeds. Not a bad flavor, if unfamiliar. She hoped eating it would still the tremor in her hands.
If her pursuers had infrared, they would find her. If there were enough of them and they searched long enough, they would find her. While she was curious what they wanted from her, she wasn’t interested in dying to find out.
If what Bihn told her was true and Kai City held the only civilization on the planet, then it offered her only hope of getting back into space.
Raena knew where the tourist spaceport was, but at the moment, barely armed and still barefoot, she had little to trade for passage off-world. Not enough for anyone to risk anything, if they knew Planetary Security wanted her.
She could lurk around the spaceport until she found a human ship to commandeer. One thing she’d learned as Ariel’s bodyguard, though, was that you didn’t steal from rich people. Working people might let a slight go, because they couldn’t afford to fight you and what else were they going to do, but the rich wouldn’t let it drop. They would hunt you down—or pay someone else to do it.
That meant she would have to find the secondary spaceport, the one for deliveries and workers. Kai had more human employees than Lautan did, but she would still be individual enough to be noticeable. She’d have to be extra cautious until she hijacked a ship. She would also have to wait until she found one capable of being flown by a woman whose knowledge of piloting was twenty years out-of-date.
As much as she loathed the idea, planetary custody offered advantages. It meant she would be fed, kept out of the sun, and sheltered from the gray militia. Maybe the only thing that made sense was to turn herself in to Planetary Security and wait for the cavalry to come get her.
Once the night settled in for real, Raena could not have moved if she’d wanted to. No telling if the floor of the old house was solid or how far back it went. The stone where she sat felt so smooth that she wondered if it had been swept. Had someone else set up housekeeping here?
She would have been happier with her back against something, anything, but without turning on her light, she wasn’t about to crawl off in search of a good solid wall.
To pass the time, she thought over what she knew about the Templars. She wasn’t certain of very much. They were an old species, maybe the first to travel the stars. No one knew where they originated. By the time other people crept off their homeworlds, the Templars had already colonized planets strewn across the galaxy. They were ready to trade, but to trade with the Templars, new worlds had to give up their interplanetary weaponry. Those who could not abide by the Templars’ rules were annihilated.
Mostly the Templars traded their technology for food. The translation devices Vezali and Haoun wore were Templar tech. Even the comm system the Veracity used to connect to the galaxy in real time was based on Templar tech, stolen and adapted by the Empire. The machines that made most colonized planets’ air breathable and water drinkable had come from the Templars. The galaxy relied on Templar-made fabrics and construction materials and miscellaneous electronics.
The galactic peace might have endured forever, if humanity had not run up against Templar space. The Empire wanted to expand—and they didn’t want to give up their weapons to trade by the Templars’ rules.
Between the Empire and the Templars stood the border worlds. These
managed to form a Coalition between their nonhuman governments and the human refugees fleeing the Empire. If any of them had had weapons of war, the border worlds might have joined the conflict on the Templars’ side. Unfortunately, the masters of the galaxy had destroyed all the weapons they’d confiscated before the War. The only way the Coalition governments could arm themselves was by hijacking Imperial convoys or by scavenging Imperial ships. They were late to the party.
The galaxy at large merely looked on in horror, unable to offer aid or even defend themselves.
The War had been going on for years by the time Raena ran from it. She’d never seen a living Templar, nor had most humans. If an Imperial craft came across a Templar ship, they destroyed it. The same happened if the Templars saw an Imperial ship first. The initial aggressor always won the exchange, at the price of total obliteration of the enemy.
Things seemed fairly evenly balanced when Raena was imprisoned on the Templar cemetery world. Wiping the Templars out must have struck the Emperor as the only gambit to level the playing field.
He hadn’t counted on humanity’s aversion to genocide. Everyone who had an opportunity to do so switched sides, choosing to live in the galaxy rather than assist the Empire’s plans to take it over.
Raena didn’t know what the Templars would have done if they’d succeeded in overpowering the Empire. Would they have wiped humanity out or seen its people enslaved? She was fairly certain the rest of the galaxy wouldn’t have censured them over it. Everyone was too reliant on Templar-derived tech—the tesseract drive as case in point—to be thrilled when they had to reinvent or reverse-engineer the things they relied upon every day.
Raena suspected that the failure of the tesseract drive was just a harbinger of things to come. Other tech would start winding down before much longer. If nothing else, without the understanding to manufacture translators that could add new languages, there would be no way to easily communicate with new peoples. Misunderstanding would escalate.
No More Heroes: In the Wake of the Templars Book Three Page 11
