There Before the Chaos

by K. B. Wagers

  Then there was silence. I shook off the debris, scrambling to my feet and this time climbing to the second floor without Johar’s help thanks to the shifted debris.

  “Emmory? What happened?”

  Fire and smoke billowed into the sky from the embassy. A second explosion rocked through the air, more fire scarring the night sky. I could hear Gita dimly through the rushing of the blood in my ears trying to raise the others on the com link.

  “Emmory? Zin? Hao?”

  Only the static of dead coms answered me.

  44

  Damn it, Emmory, answer me.” My demand was filled with a desperate desire to be wrong even as the awful certainty rose up in my throat like bile.

  “Hail, what is it? What happened?” Johar yelled up.

  “The embassy—” I choked on the words, faces and names colliding in my head, my brain screaming at me that it couldn’t be happening even as the overwhelming rush of loss crashed into me and put me on my knees in front of the window.

  Outside the embassy was gone, a smoldering pile of rubble in its place that lay scattered across the street.

  The embassy I’d just sent my BodyGuards and my brother into. I stared out into the night, unable to move, to breathe. They were all gone.

  “Hail!” Johar snapped at me, her harsh voice cutting into the darkness around me for just a moment. “Need you to focus. What happened?”

  “They hit the embassy with something bigger than a railgun. I don’t know, a rocket launcher, maybe? It’s gone. I think—I think they were in it when—” My voice didn’t sound like me; it was hollow, so filled with grief.

  I swept it away, letting my rage fill the space, grinding the pieces of my heart into dust under a brutal heel. The sounds of gunfire outside were muffled by the blood rushing in my ears.

  “Majesty.” Alba tried to wrap her arms around me as I let out a shuddering breath, but I avoided her embrace.

  “We need to get out of here. Jo, can you get Gita up?” I said, rubbing the tears from my face with the back of my hand.

  Between the three of us, we managed to haul Gita to the second floor. I left them both with Johar until I found a way down. The rubble had shifted with the explosion of the embassy, opening a hole big enough for us to squeeze through back down to the ground in the corner of the room.

  Johar helped Gita over; the bandage at her side was soaked through with blood and my Dve’s gold skin was ashen. Jo stuck her head through the hole, made a hissing noise, and popped back up. “It’s about two and a half meters down. I’ll go first. Alba, you help Hail lower Gita and then go.”

  She shimmied through, dropping to the floor while Alba and I maneuvered Gita around to get her feet in position.

  “Anything?” I dared the question.

  Gita shook her head. “Coms are completely off-line. I can see you and Alba, that’s it. Jo’s showing but she’s not on the official roster. No one else is—” She squeezed her eyes shut, a tear leaking down to track through the dust and blood on her face. “It doesn’t mean they’re dead, Majesty. It could be a dampening field, anything. But we need to think about getting you somewhere safe, Hail. And I need medical attention. I can’t protect you like this.”

  “I can protect myself just fine. We’re not holing up anywhere, you don’t have the time.” I pressed my forehead to hers. Whatever lies Gita was trying to tell me, I knew Emmory and the others couldn’t have survived that blast, and the grief magnified itself until I thought my heart was going to stop. “I’ll handle it. You ready?”

  She nodded and we got her through to the bottom floor. Alba shimmied through with my help and Johar caught her below. I followed quickly after passing my AK-334 through to them. “Stay here, I’m going to take a look.”

  “Majesty.” Alba caught me by the arm. “Gita’s right, we don’t know that they’re dead. We should call for support.”

  “We’ve done that. Someone hacked our coms,” I replied. “First the shuttle and now the embassy just as the others were going in? I’m not going to chance it. Not until I know for sure what we’re up against.”

  “Majesty, the Solarians—” Gita said.

  “Fuck the Solarians! They let this happen!” I snarled.

  Gita and Alba recoiled from my anger. Johar merely raised a curious eyebrow. I closed my eyes, dragging in one breath after another until I had leashed my fury and dragged it back under my boot.

  “I’m sorry, Dve.” I gave her a short nod with the apology, since I was unable to call her my Ekam even though I knew it was what I should do. “Stay here. I’ll be right back.”

  “Hail.” Johar passed me a knife, wickedly curved and serrated. “Don’t lose this one.”

  I slipped into the dark. The sound of emergency sirens and the crackling of the fire at the embassy filled the night. Now I knew why Jamison’s men had pulled back. They’d been expecting the embassy to blow, waiting for it.

  This entire thing had been a mess from the start. I was done being the Empress of Indrana. Done being polite and constrained by rules and politics. They wanted a fight, they were about to get one.

  I spotted the two mercs at the same time my anger flared again. Slamming the butt of my gun into the side of the first man’s head bought me enough time to engage the second.

  I didn’t shoot him. The AK-334 would have betrayed my position, and my rage was calling for blood, blood delivered by fists and blade.

  Johar’s knife was perfectly weighted, the edge so sharp it cut through the throat and spine of the second merc with barely any effort at all. The smell of blood joined the ash and sulfur in the air.

  “Oh gods.”

  I pivoted. The first merc was on the ground, scrambling away from me, his eyes locked on the fountain of blood as it finished spurting from his comrade’s neck.

  “Pray all you want, it won’t save you.” I shook the blade in my hand, spattering him with his comrade’s blood as I stalked toward him.

  The man fumbled for his gun, screaming when I jammed Johar’s knife through his upper thigh and ripped it back out.

  “It was a mistake, all right? I’m sorry. I’ll go. I won’t—I’m not going to kill you.”

  “You don’t get it,” I said, pressing the tip of the knife to the side of his throat as I took the Glock 667 from his holster. “You idiots blew the embassy and killed the only people in the universe who could have kept me in check. That’s your last fucking mistake. However, I’m going to let you go. Tell your boss I’m coming for him, and there is nothing that can save you all from my wrath.”

  No live enemies, little sister. Hao’s ghost whispered the order in my ear.

  “Never mind. I’ll tell Jamison myself.” I cut the man’s throat and stood, staring down at his dead eyes.

  “Hands up.” The voice behind me was accompanied by the whine of a Glock 667 powering up. “Turn around slo—”

  I spun, bringing the Glock up as I did. Johar let the merc slide to the ground, his neck broken.

  “I told you to stay with Gita.”

  “She told me you’d need backup, and besides—” Johar jerked her thumb over her shoulder and I saw Alba supporting Gita behind her. “They are technically with me.” She raised an eyebrow before she crouched at the dead merc’s side and started stripping him of his gear. “Anyway, she was right, and I am not one of your BodyGuards to order around. Come here and put this on.”

  I let Johar slip my arms through the sleeves of the man’s shirt and then buckle me into the vest. She grabbed me before I could step away. “I know that look, Sister. That hollow, dead-eyed, nothing-left-to-lose look. Don’t give up hope on them and even if they are gone, you still have us. You still have an empire. Don’t give up, okay?”

  “I am not—” I couldn’t make the words leave my mouth. Johar sighed and touched her forehead to mine as she released me.

  “You are Hail Bristol, do not lose yourself to grief.”

  Sliding home the Glock, I went back to the other bodies to retrie
ve anything we could use. “Jo.” I tossed her one of the med packs and cleaned her knife off on the merc’s pants before passing it over. “Thanks.”

  “We’ll get out of here and find a ship. Get this mess sorted. Unless you want to try for the Farians?”

  The reminder that Fasé and Stasia had been in the embassy was almost enough to put me on my knees. For a moment I was tempted to agree with Johar’s suggestion, go find Adora and pledge to them anything they wanted if they would help me wipe out Aiz and the rest of the Shen until there wasn’t a speck of them anywhere in the black.

  You can’t trust them either, Majesty. You don’t know who was responsible for this, Zin’s ghost whispered in my ear, and I knew he was right.

  “No, we’ll get medical help for Gita somewhere. Where’s the nearest hospital? After that, we’ll find a ship or get in contact with the Hailimi.” I shoved a second knife into the sheath in my new vest.

  “Hail.” Bakara Rai emerged from the shadows, a gun in his hand. It was pointed at me.

  “You have impeccable timing,” I said. “If you’re here for Hao, he’s dead and gone.”

  Rai stared at me in shock, the rogue pirate at a loss for words beyond “I am very sorry, Your Majesty.”

  “Rai, what are you doing?” I could feel Johar tensing by my side, but our guns were both holstered and there was no way to reach them before Rai shot at least one of us.

  “Keep your hands where I can see them, Jo. I’m here for you, Majesty.” Rai admitted, and then he smiled and tipped his head at me. “I see one BodyGuard, where are the rest?”

  “They are also all dead.”

  “Maybe,” Johar said.

  “They’re dead. The coms are working just fine.” I snarled the words into the night air, their power growing every time I voiced the thought. Emmory and the others were gone. Why was I still running, still trying to survive? All I wanted right now was to stop, surrender, and let these faceless monsters kill me.

  The Empress of Indrana doesn’t roll over and surrender, Hail. My mother’s ghost was stern in my ears. And certainly, neither would the gunrunner Cressen Stone.

  She was right. I hated to admit it, but I couldn’t stop. I owed it to the dead to keep going.

  “Whatever the Shen are paying you, Rai, I’ll triple it if you get us out of here.”

  Rai shook his head as more of his mercenaries melted out of the shadows, guns glinting in the moonlight. “Too late for that, Hail. Even if I wanted to, at this point the only way to save your BodyGuard is to surrender.”

  Gita’s readouts suddenly flatlined in my head. I heard Alba’s desperate cry and turned, heedless of the guns pointed at me.

  Only to come face-to-face with Aiz Cevalla.

  I threw my punch at his throat without thinking. He moved at the last second, so the strike that should have killed him instead only glanced off the side of his neck. I heard Johar behind us hit Rai low before anyone got a shot off, slamming him into the building.

  The blow to the back of my head put me on my knees, and hands grabbed me, pressing me down into the street. I got one decent kick in before the warning whine of a gun I didn’t recognize powering up sounded in my ear and I froze. I couldn’t pinpoint the make of it, but that noise was clear enough.

  “Majesty, a little cooperation will make all this a lot easier,” Aiz whispered in my ear, and then the world went black.

  45

  I woke and surged forward, but the solid weight of cuffs locked me to the metal frame of a chair. The light hurt my eyes—too bright after the darkness of the street outside the embassy. This light had the familiar blue undertone of a ship and the floor hummed under my bare feet.

  “Easy, easy, Hail,” Johar murmured from behind me. “I’ve got my cuffs off; hold still and let me work on yours.”

  “Where are we?”

  “Burner ship of Rai’s. They brought us here after Aiz knocked you out. He brought Gita back from the dead, though, so that’s maybe a trade-off? Either way, I think we should get out of here.”

  “I’m in agreement. Alba, are you all right?”

  “Yes, Majesty.” Alba sat in the corner, Gita’s head in her lap and her face streaked with tears.

  My Dve was unconscious but breathing, alive when she hadn’t been less than ten minutes ago, though my smati still blinked desperate red warnings at me.

  The door slid open and Johar muttered a curse, launching herself at Rai as he stepped through the door.

  “Damn it, Jo!” Rai was still trying to untangle himself from Johar. The first tazer shot from the man behind him put her on the floor, but it took two more before she went down completely. Rai recuffed her, muttering obscenities the whole time. “Unnecessary. That was gods-damned unnecessary, Hail.” He glared at me, wiping the blood from his face.

  “Don’t you dare talk to me about unnecessary, you soulless piece of shit.” I leaned forward as far as the cuffs would let me. “I’m going to take you apart with my bare hands.”

  “Business,” Rai replied, but the smile he shot me was tainted with sadness. “I will extend my condolences again for the loss of your people, Your Majesty. That was not supposed to be part of the plan. But this whole thing went to shit the moment Jamison decided to light up the fucking party. I am going to wring—”

  “Take your condolences and choke on them, Rai. Or better yet, shoot yourself in the head and save me the trouble.” My cuffs rattled when I lunged forward, and the merc who’d moved to check my cuffs backed away. “I am going to set fire to your organization and everyone else responsible for this; I will raze it all to ashes. There will be nothing left when I am done with all of you except the warning of what happens to those who dare to harm what’s mine!”

  Aiz tsked as he came in the room. “I thought my temper was bad, Empress. But it is nothing compared to yours.” He avoided my kick, retaliating with an open-handed slap that would have put me on the floor had I not been cuffed to the chair. “That’s enough. Take another swing at me and I put a blast through your Dve’s skull first and then your chamberlain’s and then that terror of yours. She killed three men before we got her subdued the first time.”

  I saw Rai’s jaw twitch at the threat to kill Johar but kept my gaze locked on Aiz. “I am going to kill you.”

  Aiz grinned. It was a feral smile, and he grabbed me by the chin, leaning in until his face was inches from mine. “Watch your tone or I am going to put you back in a box and drown you over and over until you learn who is in charge here.”

  The sound of rushing water filled my ears, washing away everything else. It was broken only by the sound of Mia’s voice.

  “Aiz, what are you doing?”

  “Teaching her some manners, Mia, because I am tired of this jumped-up criminal pretending to be a queen.” Aiz released me and stepped back. His sister came through the doorway, shock on her elegant face. She was dressed in a gray uniform that matched her eyes. She was unarmed, not even a sign of a weapon, and I realized Aiz was the same way.

  They are the weapons, Majesty. Focus. Indula’s and Iza’s voices collided in my head.

  “She is the Star of Indrana, Aiz, and moreover we need her help. Show some respect. Your Majesty, I am so sorry. This is not how things were supposed to be.” She reached around me for the cuffs, releasing me despite her brother’s and Rai’s shouted warnings. I surged forward, my left hand around her throat, and slammed her into the wall with a wordless snarl.

  Aiz grabbed my other wrist, and everything stopped.

  Everything.

  My lungs refused to draw in air.

  My heart stopped beating.

  “Let. Her. Go.” His voice was soft in my ear.

  My hand opened of its own accord and Mia dropped, coughing, to the floor.

  “I could keep you here for an eternity, trapped before the moment your brain realizes your heart is no longer beating. These moments usually flash like lightning, and are over and done before you humans realize what has happened.”r />
  “Aiz!”

  I collapsed on the floor, wheezing, unable to get my lungs to cooperate. Aiz had been shoved to the side and through my tears I saw nothing but Mia’s storm-cloud eyes. She cupped my face. Everything started up again, a painful lurching restart that felt so wrong that for just a second I wished she’d left me to die.

  “I am sorry,” she murmured, tipping my head back and pressing her lips to mine. Air filled my lungs again. Heat poured through me, chasing away the chill of death. “My brother gets upset when I am—well, he’s very protective and it has been an awful evening. This is not at all how I wanted to speak with you. Take a few breaths, Majesty, the feeling will pass.”

  I threw up on her shoes.

  Mia, surprisingly, did not recoil but kept her hand on the back of my neck, her fingers threaded through my hair. She murmured something unrecognizable while I tried to bring my rolling stomach back under control.

  “Exhale, Majesty. It will be all right,” she said in nearly perfect Indranan, no trace of her accent and halting speech of before.

  I complied, the shuddering exhalation painful as my broken ribs reminded me they were still around, and then for a terrifying second I couldn’t drag the next breath in. Mia’s fingers tightened gently, and air flowed into my lungs.

  “That’s better.” She got to her feet, pulling me along with her, though I had to brace myself on the wall when my legs protested. “Let’s take care of this also.” Mia cupped my face again and warmth rushed through me; the pain of my broken ribs vanished and my vision blurred as my head spun from the rush of power.

  This was not the gentle warmth I’d felt from Fasé or any other Farian. This was wild and raw, the energy coursing through me with all the force of a tazer but none of the pain. It felt like the time Portis and I had been caught out in a lightning storm on Zartilia, racing for the ship as the rain slammed around us and collapsing on the cargo deck with spasms of relieved laughter.

  Mia smiled, sliding her hand down my arm and backing up a few steps. “Behave yourself, please?”