Without the Templars to enforce galactic peace, Raena expected that many governments were already experimenting with interplanetary weaponry. At first the weapons would be justified as self-defense, but eventually someone would claim offense. Then there would be war again.
There was nothing she could do about it here. The silence of the dead village worked on her. Normally sleep was difficult for Raena to find, but now, in the blackness, it stole over her and she couldn’t resist.
*
When Raena opened her eyes, a faint green light glowed in the back of the house. She watched it, but it came no closer. The silence stopped up her ears.
Her body had stiffened up. Climbing painfully to her feet, she crept cautiously toward the light. It burned with an even emerald glow that was easy on her eyes. When she reached the room where it shone, she marveled at the size of the place. There was nothing cozy or inviting about the empty stone room. It had clearly been fashioned out of the rock for the huge Templars.
A faint mist floated ankle-high above the floor. Raena told herself it was a trap. She should be planning how to cross the desert and get herself back to Kai City. How could she overpower her pursuers? How could she be certain she’d be able to fly a skiff, if she stole one? How was she going to muffle its engine so the sound of it didn’t alert the others to follow her?
Instead, she stepped into the room. As she crossed the threshold, the ankle-high mist gathered itself into a sleeping couch.
Twenty years after its masters were erased from the galaxy, the faithful house still remembered the Templars, still worked to offer them comfort.
Desperately lonely, Raena sat on the couch. The mist moved around her gently, conforming to her body, supporting her aching and abraded limbs. Ariel had told her that human chemistry shared startling similarities to the Templars. Apparently, they were alike enough to trigger the furniture’s nurturing response.
It was so pleasant just to rest. Raena leaned back into the misty couch and closed her eyes.
*
When Raena woke again, she heard a pattering sound, like water. She stood up. The wonderful couch that had supported her dissolved back into mist and evaporated.
Following the sound of rain, she discovered another room lit by a pale green glow. Gentle droplets filled the air inside. She tested the spray with her left hand, but it was only water. She stepped into the shower and let it wash the sweat and worry from her face and hair. Later, perhaps, she would regret getting her clothing wet, but now she took the dress from the breast pocket of Bihn’s shirt and rinsed it out, too.
The couch had healed her while she slept. All her aches had been eased. The scabs washed from her abraded leg to reveal new skin beneath. She felt better than she had in days.
Rather than drain into plumbing and vanish, the shower water collected into a stream that ran down into the mountain.
Raena pulled the emergency lantern from her knapsack and followed the stream. It led down a winding stairway into the mountain. Eventually, the water trickled into an underground river that flowed farther than her light could reach.
She settled down on the shore of the river. The stone had been worked into a series of rises, smooth and flat, that would provide safe footing and a place to draw out boats. Mooring posts still protruded from the rock. She shined her lantern overhead, examining the ceiling of the cavern. Normally, Templar stone was rough-surfaced, covered in jagged nubbins, but this stone had been polished until it was softly reflective. She hoped that meant the river had been used as a highway.
She set the light aside so she could see as she pulled everything out of her pack. When she’d checked the pack in the escape pod, she’d noticed the inflatable raft. At the time, she had been tempted to leave the raft behind to spare herself the weight, but decided it might provide shelter in the desert, if she could find nothing else.
The pack didn’t contain anything she could use as a paddle, but it didn’t matter. The river seemed to have a good current. She hoped it was flowing to the ocean and not a waterfall, but she would soon find out.
*
Once she got the raft into the water, Raena scrambled to climb aboard. The river rushed with gathering speed away from the lonely house. Its course seemed to have been cleared of obstacles, so that Raena never encountered rapids or whirlpools. She stretched out in the bottom of the raft so that her head would not strike the ceiling, if ever it dipped toward her. In her cozy nest, she ate another bar and drank more water from her pack. After what seemed like hours, she slept again.
She woke when light caressed her face. The cave grew brighter as she neared its mouth. It did not seem to be daylight quite yet, but dawn was coming.
The scent of the air changed, as the water grew brackish.
The river spat her out into the ocean. Raena could see Kai City up on the cliffs a couple of kilometers down the coast, but the current was bearing her away, out to sea. She quickly collected her trash from the bottom of the raft, stuffed it into her pack, and then dove over the raft’s edge. She swam parallel to the beach for a while, long enough to get out of the current.
When she broke free of the outflow, she set out toward shore. The pack made swimming slightly awkward, but she wasn’t ready to abandon it yet.
*
Although the hour was not long past dawn, Raena watched for signs of pursuit, whether her friends in the gray uniforms or more bounty hunters. Instead, she seemed to have the beach to herself for as far as the eye could see.
She sat in the sand to eat the last of the nutrition bars. She had become fond of their flavor, whatever it was. She considered saving a wrapper for Mykah, so he could stock some on the Veracity, but that future seemed so far away that she didn’t give in to the temptation. Now that she knew they existed, maybe she would encounter them again.
She changed back into the dress she’d been wearing on Lautan. It was still slightly damp from being rinsed out in the Templar shower, but she figured wearing it made her look more like a tourist than Bihn’s oversized shirt.
She pulled the survival tool out of the pack. Even though she knew weapons were outlawed on Kai, she wasn’t prepared to give it up yet. She left the pack on the beach for someone else to find and started walking.
The isolation made it difficult for her to appreciate the morning’s beauty. Rosy light stole across the empty beach. The total solitude was eerie enough that Raena began to hope that Kai City had not been evacuated. It would be miserable to find herself altogether alone on the planet. The way her luck had been going, that was a possibility.
Eventually she walked past a familiar trio of stone arches offshore. Not far beyond that, she found the boardwalk where she and Ariel had jogged on their first morning together on Kai. She wondered if Ariel ever felt nostalgic for that beautiful dawn.
That, she remembered now, was the morning she’d met Mykah. Funny how she’d felt so fond of Kai after that trip.
As Raena crossed the outskirts into Kai City, things seemed to be coming alive. She stopped to ask directions, but eventually she found a resident who could direct her to the Planetary Security station. She threw the survival tool in the incinerator outside.
Raena ran her fingers through her hair to comb the tangles out. After that, there really wasn’t anything more she could do to fix herself up. She climbed the steps into the Central Security Station, took a seat in the anteroom, and waited her turn most politely.
They gave her a lot of time to rethink her decision. Stealing a ship, running away, would be so much more satisfying than simply sitting here. Once she ran, though, she would always be running. Kai already had hunters after her. No doubt Lautan could find something to blame her for, too. She could hide in Ariel’s villa, never to go out again. She could alter her face and body so she wouldn’t recognize herself. Or she could grow up and try to live according to the galaxy’s rules.
Finally, the clerk called her number. The black-feathered bird creature at the window tipped its head to reg
ard her with a shiny button eye.
“My name is Raena Zacari,” she said. “The Business Council of Kai put a bounty on me. I’m here to turn myself in.”
The Shtrell seemed bored by the whole process until it looked Raena up in its computer. “Oh, good heavens,” it squeaked. “Really? You are turning yourself in?”
“Yes,” Raena said, not showing the amusement she felt. “I escaped the hunters who’d captured me. Do I get to claim my own bounty?”
The bird must have triggered a silent alarm. An entire squad of Planetary Security agents poured into the waiting room. Raena turned slowly to face them, hands held straight out from her shoulders. As she knelt, she checked where the cameras were in the room. She gave them her best smile, hoping they were recording how docilely she gave herself up. Maybe her defender could show the recording to the jury on the first day of her trial.
She’d forgotten that Security on Kai didn’t carry weapons, other than stun staves. No one seemed particularly like he wanted to stun her now. They just surrounded her, confused by the little barefoot human girl waiting calmly for their orders like she’d done this all before. Eventually, the commander ordered her up onto her feet and they marched her into custody.
Raena kept her face composed. She could have taken the whole gang of them down several times over. Security on Kai was even softer than she remembered—and the last time she’d been here, she’d stolen a staff from one of them in order to subdue Jain Thallian. She was pretty sure that stun staff was still riding around on the Veracity, wherever Mykah had squirreled it away.
None of these agents held their staves right. As she watched, one juggled and nearly dropped his. They left too big a margin around her and bunched up so close to each other that they would have been stunning each other if she’d made any threatening moves. Clearly they’d never captured an actual criminal.
Planetary Security turned her over to the city jail, whose guards didn’t even have the benefit of helmets or armor. They ran the identity tests and got her booked. This crew also didn’t carry weapons other than sleep grenades and more stun staves. Maybe they were hand-to-hand artistes, but Raena doubted it.
From what she’d seen so far, Kai was not going to provide her any protection if a couple of hardcore bounty hunters showed up to take her out of here. The gray militia could probably level the place with a dozen soldiers.
Oh, well. She’d already bought the ticket. Hopefully, she’d be allowed to talk to Ariel before long.
First, though, they delivered her to a cell somewhere in one of the jail’s towers. Raena walked around the cell with one hand on the wall and her eyes closed, trying to get a sense of its size. It was smaller than her tomb had been, of course, but larger than her cabin on the Veracity. She supposed that counted as a blessing.
The cell even had a window. It was higher than her head, so she couldn’t see out, but it opened to the air. Raena stood on the dry stone bench beneath the window and studied the wall behind it.
The cell’s wall was rough black Templar-extruded stone. She thought she could see enough protrusions to form a climbable face. Anyone larger or heavier than Raena probably couldn’t find enough to dig its toes into, but she felt disappointed. She had expected escape to seem challenging enough that planning for it would entertain her a while. Knowing that she could just waltz out of here any time she took a mind to made the prospect much less enticing.
Besides, where would she go? She’d already done the math about leaving Kai. For now, she would have to relax and just see what luck came her way.
*
Raena spent most of the day cursing the solitude of her cell before another creature was shoved inside with her. It was some form of living rock. It took one look at Raena and started pounding on the door.
“Oh, no, you don’t!” it shouted. “You’re not locking me up with a human. This is cruel! Let me out.”
Raena remained seated on the sleeping bench, watching the show.
The creature kept glancing over its shoulder at her, making sure she didn’t sneak up on it. It kept up its racket for a remarkably long time, considering it got no response at all from the guards outside.
Eventually, after what seemed like hours, it gave up. Whimpering to itself, it crept over to the far wall, where it squatted down and stared at Raena.
“Don’t like humans?” Raena asked mildly.
“Don’t talk to me!” it shouted. “Don’t even look at me. I’ll squash you like a bug.”
“Okay,” Raena said. She kept gazing at the creature without moving from her bench.
“I mean it. Don’t look at me. I know what your kind is like.”
“Really?” Raena asked. “I’m not even sure what kind you are.”
“That’s good. It means you can’t manufacture some disease to wipe us out.”
Not in here, Raena thought. She had the sense not to say that aloud.
*
Raena found herself dreaming of her imprisonment in the Templar tomb, shifting images of darkness and hunger and despair. She remembered the days when she sang every advertising jingle she had ever heard, the hours when she remembered the face of every person she had killed. She would work through the crewmembers of the Arbiter, recalling everything she knew about each one. She would remember every meal she’d ever eaten and every drug she’d ever sampled and every sip of anything she’d ever tasted. And still her imprisonment dragged on.
The darkness became more oppressive, almost solid, weighing down on her, crushing the breath from her.
Raena wrenched herself awake. Her roommate lay atop her in the cell on Kai, crushing Raena to the sleeping bench with the weight of its stone body.
Raena thrashed around, trying to dislodge the lumbering creature from atop her. Pain flared suddenly sharp and bright in her chest.
“Why don’t you die, human?” the creature screeched at her. “I’m going to kill you. Hold still!”
Raena succeeded in wriggling out from beneath the creature. She bumped the creature off balance and knocked it to the dirt floor. It flailed on its back, screaming abuse.
It would have been funny, if she hadn’t hurt so much. Pain shot through her with every breath. At least one rib was broken. Raena didn’t even want to touch her torso to probe how many fractures she had.
She scuttled away from her cellmate, but nothing in the cell could qualify as a weapon, certainly nothing she could use against something clad in rock.
Raena huddled as far away in the cell as she could get. Maybe she could still climb up to the window, but it would mean dodging her cellmate’s grasping arms, then scaling the wall. She wasn’t sure she could put any weight on her right arm, to say nothing of crawling through the little window. And she didn’t know where she was in the building or how far she might have to climb down on the outside.
So this was how it was going to end: dying in a jail cell on Kai, killed by a cellmate who attacked her in her sleep.
Raena laughed at herself, but that led to a wet cough that felt like she was being stabbed in the chest.
“Die!” her cellmate screamed. “Just die already!”
The other creatures in the cellblock started shouting for her cellmate to shut it, people were trying to sleep. The cacophony grew worse until Raena felt herself blacking out. She wedged herself against the wall, afraid that if she fell down, she would puncture a lung.
Anger made her shake. She didn’t want to die. She wanted to see Ariel again, and Haoun, and Vezali, and Coni, and Mykah. She wanted to walk on the outside of the Veracity’s hull and look at the stars. She wanted to eat more of Mykah’s inventive cooking. She wanted to swim in every ocean and buy every pair of black boots she saw and she wanted to fly on makeshift wings among the skyscrapers again. Dying was stupid. And this was a stupid way to die.
The guards finally burst into the cell, stun staves at the ready.
“Raise your hands,” one of the guards ordered.
“Can’t,” Raena wheezed.
Her cellmate gloated, “Did I hurt you, little human? Did I break you? So fragile!”
One of the guards held out a hand to Raena. That was the last thing she saw as her knees buckled.
*
Raena woke in an infirmary ward. Cuffs pinned her limbs to a table. The pain in her chest had been replaced by a warmth that lingered on the edge of burning. That was better.
An orange-furred nurse noticed she was awake and came over to offer Raena a drink through a straw. The water was icy cold. Raena drank gratefully.
“How do you feel?”
“Better.” Her voice sounded familiar again. “Did you reinflate my lung?”
“Yes. We’re mending your bones now. You need to lie still to let the machine work. If you don’t think you can do that, I will sedate you.”
“I can do it,” Raena promised.
“Would you like some entertainment? I can put the remote in your free hand.”
“Actually, I’d like to call my sister.”
“I’ll connect it for you.”
The nurse typed in the comm code Raena gave her. Raena was certain that everything would be recorded for use against her, but she was tired of fighting alone.
Eilif answered the call. The nurse looked from the image on the screen to Raena and smiled gently at the similarities. “I’ll leave you two to chat.”
Raena didn’t correct her.
“Have you been injured?” Eilif asked.
“Attacked by my cellmate. They’re mending me now.”
“Shall I wake Ariel for you?”
“Please.”
When Eilif went off on her errand, she left the channel open. Raena tried to puzzle out where Eilif and Ariel were. It wasn’t Ariel’s office on Callixtos, or onboard Ariel’s racer. Definitely a ship, though. It looked old-fashioned, human-made, but not as antique as the Veracity.
No More Heroes: In the Wake of the Templars Book Three Page 12
