Willet placed a hand to his earpiece and, in a terse exchange, informed his team he was leaving and turned over control. Then he and Jess were sprinting from the trees. Satori saw them coming and engaged the wings, obviously impatient herself to get moving. The wide foils began cycling forward and back, gaining momentum as they ran toward the ‘thopter—powerful, deliberate strokes—and by the time they reached it their mighty thump was staggering. Crouching low they hurried beneath, straight to the waiting cargo door and jumped in. Satori looked over her shoulder.
“I saw the video from Dox,” she said to them both as they entered and closed the door. “You did it. You actually did it.”
“Zac did it,” Jess corrected, sounding bitter. She felt out of control of her emotions in that moment, stomach knotted with the uncertainty of everything staring her in the face. She made her way forward, Willet in tow.
Satori shrugged. “Hope he was able to dump that son-of-a-bitch.” Then to Willet: “I’ll get her back safe.” She puckered a quick smooch.
Willet kissed her.
Then climbed into the passenger seat.
Satori stared at him as he sat.
“I’m coming with,” he said, by way of explanation.
Satori’s mouth worked for an instant. “You’re—” She looked immediately at Jess. The obvious culprit. “Why?”
Jess didn’t answer. As she sat in one of the cargo seats and strapped herself in, wings pounding, turbine roaring, Willet finished hooking his harness in the passenger spot and looked to Satori.
“She says she’ll explain on the way.”
CHAPTER 2: A SECRET REVEALED
Lindin nearly tripped as he rushed down the stairs to the lab. He had to get his hands on the other Icon.
At the next landing he lunged forward, grabbed a railing in each hand, swung his legs out before him and leapt all the way to the next, hit and did the same for the next, dropped to the hallway below and broke into a run.
Irrational as this mad rush might be, he was not taking anymore chances.
Just minutes ago he watched in shock as the girl, Jessica, handed Zac one of the devices. Before that the entire control room had followed the video feed in rapt fascination as she and Willet made their mysterious approach to the grassy knoll, on foot, everyone wondering what the two of them were up to, exposing themselves so precariously right there in the middle of the park where the battle between the Kazerai and Kang took place. No one at that point had any idea what Jessica planned. The whole spectacle held the entire room transfixed. Somehow, for some reason, Satori had flown out there in a commandeered ornithopter, with Jessica, and that was really all anyone knew. Lindin was aware of what Zac meant to the girl, saw how she fought him so desperately not to leave, and so at first thought maybe she’d gone to inspire him or, maybe, be part of his doom or some other romantic such thing—to die with him, a real-life version of the sad girl in so many tragic fairytales. But as Jessica crouched on the hill, Willet near, their images grainy but clear enough in the feed coming from the recon team, Lindin saw it.
One of the Icons.
Shiny, silver. In her hands. And at that moment the developing scene captured his full, undivided attention. He knew at once what she meant to do. Suddenly it all made sense. She hadn’t gone to die with him, she’d gone to give him a way out. And the outrage of the realization of that, that she’d stolen an Icon—yet again—was mitigated only slightly by the small hope that she might, actually, pull it off. As angry as Lindin was some distant, more rational part of him realized the upshot, if successful, was that they would be rid of Kang.
And then it worked.
Jessica slipped Zac the Icon as the whole room watched, breathless. Zac took it, tackled Kang, activated it and …
The two of them disappeared.
The most dangerous monster ever to threaten the planet, perhaps the most dangerous single thing …
Gone.
A collective whoop followed. Cheers. Leaping applause. Lindin understood their exhilaration. After what Kang did at the school, after the destruction he’d wrought so far and all the suffering he was no doubt destined to continue, the thought that his threat was removed, all manner of future deaths prevented, the blood of the others avenged, was huge. The whoop moved quickly to a celebration and, for a bit, the battle that yet raged between Dominion and Venatres was forgotten. Lindin shared their zeal, all the while working to figure out exactly what he’d lost.
Then the terrifying thought struck him:
What if the girl had taken both Icons?
Followed by:
How did she get them in the first place?
And the rage returned. In force. And he hurried from the room, down halls, to the stairs, to the lab level where he now ran, boots pounding the metal floor in rapid succession as he curved up on the startled guards waiting outside the door.
He waved them aside and ran through. Inside the cavernous space the starship loomed; a massive weight of potential, poised for action.
“Nani!” he yelled for his lead scientist. She had to know how this happened. She had to be the one that gave the Icon to Jess. He could not, at first, imagine the soft-spoken Nani being involved, but it had to be her that knuckled under.
“Nani!” his voice echoed. The place was nearly empty.
“Here,” came a nervous response.
Lindin hurried around the edge and found her on the other side of the craft, near one of her workstations. But it wasn’t Nani’s voice that answered. It was the girl who came from Earth with Jessica. The other one. Bianca. She stood with Nani.
What the hell is she doing here?
Somewhere during the celebrations she must’ve slipped away.
Lindin slowed to a brisk walk and headed stiffly in their direction. This sort of lax attention to security was no doubt exactly what got them in this situation in the first place. And, as he approached, he could tell by Nani’s expression she was guilty.
Dammit! He resolved to lock things down.
“What did you do?” he asked, voice harshly accusatory. The Earth girl, Bianca, had a kind of a forced innocence about her, like she was preparing to lie.
Nani, however, was far too pure to hide any such emotion. She was terrified.
“They said they needed it to get rid of Kang,” his lead scientist fairly blurted, knowing exactly why Lindin was there, scooting back against the workbench as he stormed up. Unnecessary. He wasn’t going to strike her. Though he had to admit he felt a little like doing so.
Bianca interposed herself, trying to defend Nani, seeing lies were never going to work. “She saved us,” she insisted. Lindin ignored her, focus entirely on Nani.
“Where’s the other one?” The answer to that was more important than anything right then. Punishing Nani could be figured out later. Right then it served no purpose. What was done was done and there would be no undoing it. Lindin needed to assure himself all had not been lost.
Nani didn’t hesitate. She went immediately to a strong box at the end of the bench and entered a code. It popped and she reached in and took out the other Icon.
Lindin breathed a sigh of relief.
“We haven’t lost anything,” Nani tried to explain away her treason, to make okay what she’d done, seeking his understanding. “This one,” she handed it to him and he took it quickly—yet carefully, “the one Jessica took … the coordinates are plugged into the starship and into our computers. We’ve deciphered it. It’s all here. We have it all here. The device is no longer needed.”
Of course Lindin knew that.
Nani was shaking her head. “I’ve got everything we need.”
“It’s a small price to pay,” Bianca added her take on the situation. Repeated: “She saved us.” She looked at Lindin, as if to affirm that declaration.
Jessica’s actions had, indeed, saved their asses.
But it didn’t matter.
“No excuse,” Lindin was firm. He glared at Nani. “There was no excuse
for letting one of these go.”
But the Earth girl wasn’t through.
“Go easy on her, boss man.” She pushed her hair back over one ear, fidgeting, looking up at him with an uneasy glare. Clearly nervous but standing up for her friend. “You may run the show around here, but Zac just gave his life so we could live. And Jess, who loves him more than anything, gave him the way to do it.” She gained resolve. “They’re the ones that made the sacrifice. Not you. Not me. Not her.” She glanced at Nani.
Lindin really didn’t have time for this. Bianca’s sudden passion, however, did bring his fury down a notch. In light of the fact that they’d lost only the physical device, and in exchange rid themselves of a potentially world-changing threat, he was now mostly just annoyed.
He turned the other Icon over in his hands, cognizant of its incredible power. With a twist it could send a man clear across space, to a point light years away.
“Call security,” he instructed. Nani did so at once, without question, and Lindin could see she shook as she worked to press buttons. Probably worried he was about to put her in lock-up. I should lock both of you up, he thought, staring hard at Bianca.
He turned and glanced up at the starship.
What technicians were on hand had come closer at the commotion, watching the drama unfold from what they deemed a safe distance. Lindin had no idea if any of them were involved, but his purpose at the moment was not to start passing out sentences. His objective was to get the remaining Icon to safety and ensure no further breaches of security occurred.
“They’re on the way,” Nani reported.
Lindin suspected no one else at the complex but was nevertheless rattled by the breach. First thing to do was set protocols for the lab. His main objective, now that the deed was done, was to bring Satori and Jessica in for questioning.
Much as he hated to admit it, Bianca made a good point. Jessica was likely already considered a hero following the successful banishment of Kang. As a result he wasn’t sure how harsh he could be, but was determined to find out exactly what she was thinking. More than that, what else she was thinking. And what Satori was thinking. It was, after all, Satori that gave Jessica the Icon last time, ostensibly so she could go home, thus robbing Lindin and his team of that which they so desperately needed. Leaving the entire project, in effect, dead in the water.
But Satori had not known then what was at stake. Not exactly. Now she did. And if Lindin recognized anything it was that the Earth girl, Jessica, was a wild card. Apt to do anything, no doubt determined once again to get home. To go chasing after her Kazerai boyfriend. And this Icon, this one right here in his hands, was the key to doing just that.
He could only imagine.
Yes. The girl would need to be watched.
* *
Kel warlord Eldron half listened as one of his crew described their slow approach to the monster floating in space. His helmsman methodically aligned their trajectory so the thing would come in range of a bay door on the side of the battle cruiser, open in anticipation of bringing aboard the unusual “discovery”. Eldron made a little noise to himself. That thing out there was certainly more unusual than anything that had been discovered in their system or any other. He found himself eager to dissect it.
“In sync,” came the final report.
Down below a team of Kel warriors, suited up in space armor, were at the open bay, waiting to secure the creature and haul it aboard. That it lived at all was amazing. The best scans they’d been able to direct upon it indicated it had pulse and a heartbeat, lungs, organs and soft tissue, which meant it had internal body pressure, which meant it should’ve burst in the vacuum. To say nothing of the air it no doubt needed to survive.
Which meant, of course, that what Eldron was staring at was more than just a visual freak of nature. This beast was an anomaly to the greatest degree.
“Grapple deployed.”
Eldron watched the video coming from the cargo bay, a line of warriors standing at the edge of space in their dark armor, eyes on the mutated yellow form in the near distance, floating against the backdrop of stars, eyes open and fully alive. Staring back with what appeared to be complete awareness.
Slowly the robotic grappling arm extended in its direction.
For a brief moment Eldron took his eyes from that developing scene and turned to the other body floating in space, drifting further and further away. That one …
Human.
While they had no record of anything like the creature they now worked to bring aboard, they most definitely had record of humans.
The Fetok, they were called, in the Old Dialect. The “Tolerated”. A term introduced long ago when the Kel empire stretched across half-a-dozen worlds. It was a derogatory term, serving well to convey the feelings the Kel held for the inferior race. Much had been lost following the Great War, but prior to that the Kel knew the humans all too well. Ruled them. It was an uprising of the Fetok, in fact, that led to the Wars, which in turn led to the vast and irreversible destruction that, by the end, resulted in the collapse of the entire Kel civilization. The Kel homeworld fell out of contact with its empire, contracting, revolution eventually consuming Kel itself—such that their society fell into a darkness from which they’d only recently begun to recover. In that the Kel thought the Fetok little more than a part of their past, long gone. Now here was one, a human, clearly having arrived somehow with the beast.
The Kel had rebuilt. In the rebuilding Eldron’s people pieced together old technologies, old records where they could be found, managing to unite their homeworld once more. A powerful, warrior race, poised for empire.
The old worlds, however, the worlds of the Fetok, knowledge of where they were or how to reach them, no longer existed. Large chunks of the Kel history were lost or buried in legend, and though Kel engineers managed at length to enable ways to power their spaceships to the stars, to rediscover that ancient technology, the cosmos was vast. Only in the last years had they even managed to reach other worlds. None so far had been found with worthwhile life or habitability.
And the Kel were unlikely to look harder. Resources were plentiful in their own system. Due to the brutality of their existence there was no pressing need for population expansion. Simple gaining of new space was not motivation enough. The lessons of the past, perhaps, held them further in check. The Kel desired conquest, not merely new places to call home. War. Empire. Others to rule. The humans, the last known makers of civilization other than themselves, had been perfect subjects for past dynasties. Until the revolt. Now those worlds, long since lost from Kel records, could be anywhere.
Eldron always suspected the humans were still out there. They had to be. Possibly rebuilding, as had the Kel. Surely one of the human worlds had managed to put itself back together. Maybe even advanced. Maybe such a world, should they find it, would give them more challenge than before.
The troubling thing was that this human floating out there in space—Eldron studied the magnified image—like the beast, this human defied description. It was at once proof humans were still in existence, and … a harbinger of frightening possibilities. For, like the beast, the human was also alive. Impossible but true. Unlike the beast the human did not appear conscious, yet its heart beat and it gave off heat.
And this, possibly more than anything, caused Eldron a subtle sense of foreboding. If this was indeed a human he was looking at, and it could survive in the cold vacuum of space, then that meant humans had evolved in entirely unexpected ways. Not just restored lost technology, or lost civilizations, but had, somehow, become more indestructible as a race, perhaps even stronger, and if this were the case then a new war with them might lead once more to the ruin of the Kel.
How could they fight humans strong enough to live unprotected in space?
He would know soon enough. Once the demon was secured they would gather the human next and all questions would be answered.
Eldron’s superiors would be quite intrigued with this
find.
He turned to the feed from the cargo hold. The robot arm had gripped the yellow, horned form and was curling it in. The sturdy grappling arm was designed for attack, meant to secure other vessels in the act of boarding, to hold them fast as assault parties went across. Now, with nothing else to use in this unique situation, it was being employed to bring in a tiny, living body. Eldron watched the beast grip the thick metal arm as it held him, an appendage that was far too bulky for the task, hoping the arm’s operator would be able to apply its hydraulics lightly enough to avoid crushing the small form.
Eldron put his hands behind his back.
They were in the middle of something truly monumental. Two organic creatures, one possibly human one probably not, had just popped into space and were floating out there, helpless but alive.
“Securing the cargo.”
Eldron watched the arm reach its retraction point. His team moved in.
CHAPTER 3: ANATOMY OF A LONGSHOT
“What?!” Satori looked back at Jessica, strands of red hair snapping about her head in the chaotic turbulence of the cockpit. She flew the ornithopter low and straight, headed away from the battle, back to the mountain complex, but as she glared with wide, angry eyes Jess had the sinking feeling she was about to haul them up to a screeching stop, land them right there, march everyone out and start chewing them out. Like Mom stopping the car to scold her unruly children.
“Are you crazy?!” she demanded, gaping at Jess sitting in the rear jumpseat. So far she kept flying. No stopping yet. Willet, in the opposite seat, stared at them both, considerable confusion playing across his expression.
“Starship?” he asked for the third time. “What starship?”
“It’s the only way,” Jess spoke directly to Satori. Satori kept flying, full speed, on target, headed back. Silently Jess crossed her fingers. Hoping the red-headed demon girl would just keep going. Keep flying, she willed her. Keep flying.
“It’s nonsense is what it is!” Satori jerked her gaze back and forth between Jess and the rapidly-scrolling terrain blitzing along scant feet beneath them. Forward, back. Forward, back. It had Jess on edge.
Star Angel: Dawn of War (Star Angel Book 3) Page 2
