by Loren Rhoads
“You’ll want the padding when you hit the planet,” Vezali argued.
“Can we shave it down? I’ve been thinking about Mykah’s confiscated arsenal. I’d like to take some of that with me, but I’d prefer the boy not know about it.”
Vezali’s eyestalk bobbed in the imitation of a nod. “I’ve disabled the comm and stripped out everything but the cabinetry, as you suggested. You’ll have a big enough space to ride in, but there won’t be room for much else. You definitely don’t want anything as hard as a gun bouncing around in there with you. As it is, inside the console won’t be comfortable or very safe, but I’ve shielded it, made it look like the circuitry had magnetized. It should fool their sensors enough that they won’t know you’re in there.”
“Perfect. Thank you. I’ll try to find myself a helmet for the ride. And any space you can clear for weaponry . . .”
“I won’t be able to shield very much space, or they’ll get suspicious,” Vezali warned.
“Do what you can and I’ll pack it tight.”
* * *
Coni called to Raena as she passed through the common room. She made her way forward, trying to present as reassuring a façade as possible when she entered the cockpit.
“The logs are done,” the blue-furred girl reported. “We have a set of command codes, passwords for the security satellites, and a route through the minefield, presuming of course that everything wasn’t scrambled after the transport left to get you.”
“Thank you. That makes all this much easier.” Then she added, “Any of you had combat training?”
“Mykah’s played a lot of simulator games.”
Hunched into the pilot’s chair, Haoun made a snort that might have been a laugh.
“What about you?” Raena asked him.
“Since the War, there wasn’t been much of anywhere to get combat training, unless you’re somebody’s bodyguard or part of some security force. There aren’t any standing military forces any more.”
Raena supposed that what Haoun said should have been obvious to anyone not buried in a hole for the last twenty years. “Point taken. I’ll train Mykah and Vezali on the exterior guns. You just fly like your lives depend on it and we’ll be okay.”
There was an awkward pause as they digested that advice. Then Coni reported, “I’ve sent the decoded logs back to your cabin, like you asked.” Raena got the distinct feeling she was dismissed.
“Thank you,” she said again and left them alone. She wondered how Mykah, human to all outward appearances, had hooked himself up with these three. Not that it mattered, really. In her former line of work, Raena had had very little interaction with nonhumans—outside interrogation rooms anyway. She found it very odd to have her curiosity about other people coming back so strongly after spending so much time with Gavin and Ariel. Funnily enough, she hadn’t been curious about them at all.
* * *
At first Raena found it a shock to watch Revan’s log. She knew Thallian’s sons were clones; she hadn’t realized his brothers were as well.
She remembered Jonan as a man in his forties, old enough to have been her father. He could very well have aged to look like Revan, clean shaven, heavier in the jowls, black hair going silver, forehead etched with a worried frown. And yet Revan’s voice was different, slightly higher in pitch and not as resonant. Less commanding.
Seeing Jonan’s clone stirred up complicated feelings. The fear she dealt with easily enough. On Kai, she’d proven equal to Thallian’s handpicked kidnappers. But she remembered how it felt to have Thallian’s attention, the amount of pleasure she’d taken from him while he’d thought he was abusing her, the delight she felt in frustrating and subverting his dominance. Raena had spent enough time alone that she no longer hated herself for anything she had done, or thought, or felt. Still, she was surprised to be overwhelmed, however momentarily, by the past.
She set the log to play again and paid more attention to its subject matter.
If his log was any indication, Revan Thallian had been a man of few words. He had recorded only the barest facts of their journey: the trip to the Templar cemetery world, the avalanche and Jain’s injury, Jain’s intellectual leap that connected Raena to Sloane, and the disappointing interrogation of the engineer Lim. Raena suspected Sloane had known about Lim’s murder. She wondered how he had managed to hold his silence. No wonder he’d acted so squirrelly their last few days on Kai.
Apparently, the Thallians hadn’t had any real breakthrough on the hunt until they saw the video of Raena in flight. She smiled. She should remember to thank Mykah for passing that along to the boys for her.
In the end, Revan’s log wasn’t the fascinating catalog for which Raena had hoped. She wanted to learn more about the Thallian family structure, their home, their defenses, and their patriarch. Revan took those secrets with him to his anonymous grave.
* * *
The boy looked up when Raena entered his cell, but didn’t stop his calisthenics. She wondered if she was meant to be impressed by the muscles beneath the black clothes he’d worn around the clock since she’d captured him.
“I need your help, Jain,” Raena said. “It’s time to send a message to your father and let him know we’re on our way. I want you to lie back on the bunk and let me strap you down again.”
“What makes you think I’ll help you with that?”
“I’ve been aching for some exercise,” she said cheerfully. “Let’s go.”
He looked her up and down, from her black corona of hair to the pointed toes of her high-heeled boots. Clearly, he remembered what those boots had done to his uncle. Without a word, he marched over to the bunk and lay down. Raena was impressed he was clear-headed enough to realize he couldn’t beat her head on.
She waited until he’d positioned his arms, then clicked the remote to lock him in. She dialed down the brightness in the room until a single light beamed into Jain’s face. “Hey!” he protested.
“Got to make this look real,” Raena explained. She placed the Stinger pistol against his temple. Finally, she set the camera to hover at a good height, where his face, bound hands, and the pistol barrel were in the frame.
Raena grabbed Jain’s chin and pretended to examine his face. “Maybe I should have beaten you up a little bit.”
Jain closed his eyes. “That’s not necessary.”
“No? I wonder if they’ll think you’ve collaborated with me. If you gave me the command codes for the transport and brought me through the satellite net.”
Jain stared at her, the shadow of fear flickering through his silver eyes. “Why would I do that?”
Raena ignored the question. “I know what your father does to collaborators.”
“Stop it. Shut up. They know me. They’ve known me all my life. They know I won’t betray them.”
She noted that Jain said “them,” not “him.” Interesting.
Picking up the conversation again, she said, “I hope they do trust you, Jain. For your sake. I hope you don’t find yourself wishing I’d broken a few bones or removed an eye. Given you a couple ‘war wounds’ you could wear as badges of pride.”
She gave him a moment to consider. She had no doubt that he’d seen Thallian punish some suspected traitor, whether or not the victim had been guilty of betrayal.
“What do you want me to say?” Jain growled.
“Tell them you are the only survivor, but you are unharmed. Tell them we demand a ransom of one million standard credits.”
“One million!” Jain shouted.
“Can your dad afford more?” Raena teased. When Jain said nothing, she continued, “To be paid to the Fund for Orphans of the Great War. Payment must be made within one standard Earth day, or you’ll be coming home in pieces.”
Raena watched the boy’s face. Expressions flickered over it so quickly that she’d need to watch the video later to catch them all, but he was alarmed by the amount she had named. As she watched him break, she felt sorry for him. He would have t
o live with that sense of failure for the rest of his life.
How would it be for Jain—the chosen son, the alpha amidst the clones—to be captured by someone as small as Raena and dragged home in restraints, only to be ransomed as a prank? Although his faith in himself had been shaken when he ran from her in the market, his self-regard had been obvious from their first encounter in his cell. She knew firsthand that solitude could make a person question everything he knew about himself. She wondered if he’d ever in his life been alone as long as he’d spent in the holding cell: two days with no brothers to bully, no father to fear. The craving washed over her again: to take him apart, make him share his secrets, and bare himself to her as she had been doing to him. It was easier to resist this time. What purpose would it serve to own him? Her fate was sealed. She had to face Thallian, no matter what. There was no running for her. His supply of sons—and, for all she knew, brothers—wasn’t unlimited, but Jonan wouldn’t hesitate to expend them all chasing her. Even if she made Jain hers, she had no way to keep him.
“He won’t do it,” Jain said morosely. “He’ll never ransom me. He won’t take me back without a fight. You might as well kill me now.”
Raena turned the lights back up and reached up to deactivate the camera. “Thank you, Jain. That will be perfect.”
“What? I didn’t say what you wanted.”
“You said exactly what I wanted.” She weighed whether to continue, but decided to be honest with him. “He’ll know I’ve broken you.”
She had wondered if the boy would cry when confronted with her opinion of him, but he didn’t. He was one of those who went entirely internal, leaving his outside cold and seemingly controlled. “It was Jarad who betrayed us, wasn’t it?”
She’d nearly forgotten that she’d dared him to guess which brother had identified their homeworld. “No,” she said, letting him hear the honesty in her voice. “It wasn’t Jarad.”
She tucked the camera under her arm and turned to leave the cell. At the doorway, she clicked the remote and unlocked his cuffs. The boy threw himself at the door as it closed.
* * *
Raena leaned over the computer, watching the recording she’d made of the boy. She watched him say, “He’ll never ransom me. He won’t take me back without a fight. You might as well kill me now.”
Despite herself, she had developed affection for Jain. What would happen if she let him go? She tried to imagine the Thallian scion turned loose in the galaxy. Fourteen years old, no experience talking with anyone outside his family, no understanding of money, and no skills to survive where one had to find one’s own shelter and food. In all probability, he’d end up enslaved or, if he was lucky, serving as someone’s bodyguard. While she saw a certain poetry in that, she wouldn’t wish it on anyone else. He might not be fortunate enough to find a mistress like Ariel.
Raena wondered if her sister might adopt the boy and make him one of her gaggle of war orphans. Ariel had spoken up for protecting Thallian’s children. Was she serious enough about it to want to take one into her home?
Raena laughed at herself. That offered no real protection for the boy. He’d want to contact his brothers, if not his father, himself. Either way, Thallian would come for Jain. Jonan had never been one to share his playthings; he wouldn’t be able to stand the thought that his favored son might find a better life outside his control. Ariel would never be safe and could certainly never trust the boy not to betray her when the first opportunity arose. She probably didn’t have the strength to look into the face of her rapist every day, either.
Anyway, Raena needed the child. If one believed in fate, Jain was fated to return home. Whether he survived or succumbed, he’d have to make his own way. Any more of her interference would be unwelcome. Besides, he might enjoy having another opportunity to capture her. She wondered if he’d freeze in place the second time.
She turned off the recording and switched to the second log, Jain’s personal diary. Perhaps she could find what she needed in there. Either way, time grew short. She needed to finish this up, send the message off, and set the wheels in motion. They were only a day away from destiny.
CHAPTER 14
Aten brought the news that there had finally been some contact with the Raptor. Of course, it would be crippled Aten who came, the one with so little left to lose and therefore nothing to fear. In his pity, Jonan listened to his wheezing brother speak and then sent him away unharmed.
The message they’d received was brief. They got no response when they acknowledged its receipt. They believed the transport was not much more than a day away. That much Jonan knew before he spooled the message to play.
Jain filled the wall so recently vacated by Raena and her wings. The video jumped and skipped so that the sound didn’t exactly sync with the picture. “Uncle Revan is dead,” the boy said simply. “So are most of the men. An explosion at the spaceport on Kai damaged the transport, but we are limping home. I have her. Unharmed.”
The message dissolved into static. Jonan set it to play again.
He had her. Jain had her. The elation that coursed through Jonan sparkled effervescent. He’d known it was the best decision to send his favorite son along to capture Raena. Of course Jain hadn’t let him down. Some kind of reward was in order. Some sort of ceremony acknowledging his superiority . . .
* * *
Eilif huddled at the back of the shadowed conference room unmoving, watching Jonan replay Jain’s message over and over. Jonan hadn’t seemed to hear the news that Revan was dead. Instead, he trembled with euphoria.
Her skin felt as if she’d been dowsed with icy water. There were so few of the brothers left now. Revan had told her stories of the palace when it had been full of activity, bustling with warrior-scientists experimenting and sparring and driving each other onward. Now only three brothers survived.
And one was mad.
* * *
The uncertainty was killing Jaden. He’d watched Jain’s message with the rest of the boys. Unlike the others, he knew that Revan had been murdered in the fight capturing Zacari. He also knew from watching the news surreptitiously that some of the soldiers had survived the fight, but languished in prison on Kai. So far they hadn’t been recognized, but what if they identified the family or betrayed their homeworld? Would the galaxy come raining down to punish the last of the genocidal Thallian clan?
Jaden prayed the soldiers’ conditioning would hold and no names would be named. He couldn’t figure out how to warn everyone without incriminating himself. If Uncle Revan had been home, Jaden would have unburdened himself to the one uncle he trusted. But Revan was dead. Jaden could only hope that Jain would take responsibility for the mess he’d left behind on Kai.
* * *
Getting back onto Kai was easier than Sloane expected. The Planetary Business Council expected someone to come and investigate what had happened there. What they didn’t realize was that although the botched kidnapping attempt was hugely significant to them and their bottom line—it wasn’t a priority to the galaxy-at-large. Perhaps if someone could connect the men in planetary custody to Lim’s brutal execution, but no one, it seemed, knew about that relationship other than Sloane and Kavanaugh.
Sloane spread around a story that he and Raena—or Fiana Ryle, the name she’d been traveling under—had been agents charged with guarding Miss Lex, charitable do-gooder and all-round nice gal. The cover story got him back into their former hotel room, but of course, Raena had scoured away anything traceable there. She was tricky enough to track Thallian without his gang of teenaged sons noticing, and Sloane, though he’d acquired many questionably legal skills over the decades, was no match for her when it came to computer security. He’d hired someone and still hit a dead end.
While that washout was in progress, Sloane checked into the Thallians’ ship. It was a matter of researching all the craft that had landed in Kai City the night before or the morning of the fight, comparing that list to the ships that had blasted off soon aft
er Raena whupped Kavanaugh. When Sloane narrowed the list down, he found an antique Imperial diplomatic transport.
The fact that the old-fashioned transport had been near a jet-bike explosion in the docks threw Sloane off momentarily. If Raena crashed her bike, what had she been doing in the interim before the transport took off?
Gathering her crew, he realized. Raena could do a lot of things, but as far as he knew, she couldn’t fly a ship as big as a transport alone. She’d hired someone to go with her.
That infuriated him almost past the point of endurance. She knew he was a good pilot. For that matter, so were Ariel or Kavanaugh. Why had she gotten strangers involved?
And where had she gotten the money to pay them? Sloane promised himself that if he found out that Ariel had bankrolled the trip, he would execute her.
That was a project for later. Other problems were more pressing. The transport’s registration was in order, though minimal prodding proved it false. Tracing the transport’s ownership led him into recurring loops of sales and changes of ownership, false identities and unlikely coincidences. It did not bring him any closer to the transport’s actual port of origin.
Time was growing short. Every hour that Raena was gone was an hour closer to her showdown with Thallian. If Sloane didn’t find her destination soon, he’d miss the party. There was little point in showing up for the aftermath.
Still, because the transport used outdated Imperial technology, it wouldn’t be all that fast. Sloane figured he could catch up, if he stole a modern racer. He put some feelers out, trying to locate one in the Kai City docks.
* * *
“You’ve played video games, right?” Raena asked Mykah and Vezali. “Shoot the spaceships out from between the stars?”
They nodded.
“This is just like that.” Raena charged up the guns and flipped on their displays, toggles she’d helpfully labeled #1 and #2. “We don’t have anything out there for you to target, but climb into the guns and fire off a few shots. Get the feel of it.”
