by Juno Wells
“It’d be brave, going somewhere within view of the palace,” Wraxic said.
“Exactly. They won’t think we’re there.”
Veiko looked at their limited weapons. They had only what they’d got from the guards they fought off. “Let’s hope my sister didn’t throw away the entire arsenal,” he muttered, patting Aavik’s now healed arm and jogging up some stairs to look.
Hannah slid down against the window. The situation was starting to smother her.
Wraxic crouched by her side and took her hands in his. “I’m sorry that I doubted you,” he said. “Right up until the last minute I was so sure the king couldn’t do something like this. It’s my fault.”
She wrapped her arms around him and kissed him deeply. “I understand why you didn’t want to believe it. It’s why I’m here in the first place.”
“What do you mean?” Veiko asked from the stairs.
She was surprised they’d never had this conversation. They’d never questioned why she’d come to Vaher at all.
“My parents worked for… an agency. They both died, and I wanted to follow in their footsteps. It’s all I’ve ever wanted. I had an interview for a job and I didn’t get it. Instead, Yvonne offered me this. I took it because I believed so completely in the agency that I didn’t think they could do anything wrong.”
She quickly backtracked. “Not that I regret being here, with you, at all, but I came to Vaher for all the wrong reasons. Because I couldn’t bring myself to see what was right in front of me.”
Wraxic kissed her again, and then she stood up.
She might not be in the agency, she might never have realized what she thought were her dreams, but she was stronger than collapsing at the first sign of pressure.
“Let’s do this thing.”
Veiko had found enough weapons for a small army in the upstairs of the house, and he doled them out to her mates. They tried to find places to strap them onto their bodies.
“Shirts might be useful for that,” Hannah said, lips quirked.
All three gave her a dirty look.
“Okay, let’s get out of here,” Veiko said, slipping what looked like ball bearings into a satchel he wore slung over his hips. “People will be getting here sooner rather than later.”
They teleported again, this time appearing in the cabin Aavik had described. Hannah didn’t go to the window this time. If it looked over the palace then any movement inside might give them away. Instead they stayed to the side and sat on the floor, below where the window started.
Hannah sat with her back against a wall—wood, rather than metal—and asked, “So, what now?”
“Now we have a king to overthrow, I guess.”
24 HANNAH
Hannah at least felt useful while they came up with their plan. They listened to her ideas, and she came with plenty of new ones from her own planet and extensive reading on the thousands of coup d’états in various countries around the world.
“We still need a new leader,” Veiko said.
“Hannah is right, we should lead together,” Aavik said.
“We can’t lead,” Wraxic immediately dismissed. “We don’t know what we’re doing.”
“You should at least lead in the interim. Promise elections. That’s standard procedure,” Hannah said, sounding more authoritative than she felt. “If you’re going to overthrow a leader, having something stable to replace them with is important, even if it’s only temporary.”
Veiko ran his hands through his hair. “I don’t want it.”
“I know, but it’s still better than the fighting that will break out if you kick out the king without someone to replace him.”
“Fighting might still break out,” Aavik said. “We’ve never had anything like this on Vaher before.”
“I wish the goddesses were here,” Wraxic said, running hands through his hair. “There wouldn’t be any disorder then.”
“They must know what’s happening,” Aavik said. “They must know that the king is ruining their temple.”
“Not just the temple,” Wraxic said, and for the first time explained the entire conversation he’d had with the king. It was the first bit of breathing room he’d had.
Everyone shifted uncomfortable with the weight of his words. Hannah might not know everything about Vaher’s history, but she knew enough to know how bad their situation was. Money, trade and poverty were the same everywhere.
“Shit,” Veiko said, going to stand up and then remembering where they were and that they couldn’t be seen. “So taking the leadership is a poisoned chalice anyway.”
“There’s always a way out of it,” Hannah said. “Always. You’re more likely to find a way out than the king, who’s obviously just given up. I wouldn’t be surprised if he was pocketing all the money he’s getting from the Hystians and planning to run off with it.”
She got three sharp looks. She’d offered a possibility none of them had even considered, but that neither could dispute as realistic anymore. They were still tied by loyalty to the man they’d spent their lives guarding.
“We need a way of explaining to the public what is going on,” Veiko said. “Otherwise we risk people coming to assassinate us the minute we say that we’re taking power.”
“Is there any way you can broadcast to all the AI?” Hannah asked. “Send them a message explaining what’s going on? Tell them to go beneath the temple and see what’s happening? There must be some kind of TV system, or radio system, on the planet. What about that?”
“We can’t contact all of the AI,” Aavik said. “Only the king has the power to do that.”
“We’ve got no chance of getting close enough to the king to make him do anything without explaining to people what he’s done. The rest of the guards will protect him with their lives.”
Veiko looked down at his hands. “I don’t want to kill anymore Vaherians.”
“TV, radio?” Hannah prompted again, trying to keep them on track. They could deal with the emotional repercussions of everything that was happening when it was over.
“We have both of them.”
“Well then we need to get something out that can broadcast over both,” Hannah encouraged. “Something that will reach everyone, that people will be contacting their friends because they need to watch it.”
“I suppose that could work,” Veiko said. “But what are we going to broadcast. We don’t have any filming equipment.”
“Then broadcast a message telling everyone that they need to go beneath the temple and see what the king has done.”
“We don’t even know if the mining equipment will still be there.”
Hannah took a deep breath. She was a natural-born leader, had always assumed that leadership was where she was going to end up, but there was supposed to be a lot—a lot—of training before she took up the role. “You can teleport pretty much instantly, right?” she asked them.
“Yes,” Aavik agreed, and could obviously see what she was suggesting. “But we have to be careful with how much teleportation we use. We have to recharge the device every now and then, and by looking at mine I only have five or six teleports left. We can’t get to the recharge port in the palace. No chance.”
“Is that the only recharge port?”
“Not the only one on the planet, but they’re limited. People don’t have them in their homes. They have to go to somewhere nearby,” Aavik explained.
“Few enough that the king might have people guarding all of them?”
“Possibly. Don’t forget he has every Vaherian at his beck and call right now,” Aavik reminded her. “We can’t rule out that he hasn’t got people systematically checking every single structure on the planet for us.”
“Jesus Christ,” Hannah muttered, running hand through her hair. “Everyone has five or six teleports left?”
“I charged this morning. I’ve got more like fifteen,” Wraxic said.
“Five or six for me,” Veiko replied.
“Okay.
So, Wraxic, you need to teleport into the place below the temple and see if the equipment is still there. Be ready to teleport straight back out again if someone else is there.”
“We’re not supposed to teleport into the temples,” he objected.
“You’re not teleporting in. You’re teleporting underneath.” She took his hand in hers. “We have to find a simple way to get people on our side. This is the best thing I can think of without using up your teleportation to go and collect a camera, go and film, and then take that to the channels. Do you know for definite a place where a camera would be?”
“No,” he admitted. He steeled himself and squeezed her hand. “Okay. I can do it.”
Hannah asked them when Wraxic disappeared. The fact he didn’t immediately reappear made her pleased at first that no one was there, and then panicked it was because someone had caught him by surprise and he was already dead.
When he came back to the hut, injury-free, she curled into his side. “All good?” she asked, heart thudding. So much for not letting emotions in until it was all over.
“Everything is still there and untouched.”
“You think people will listen to a radio and tv broadcast?” she asked her mates.
“Yes,” all three men replied, not completely in sync.
“There’s no way of getting to the king before the broadcast has aired?” she checked.
“I’m sure he’ll have surrounded himself with people,” Veiko said. “There’s no way he’s letting himself be a sitting duck.”
“Will he be in the palace?” Wraxic asked.
“I’m not sure. I think he will be.” Aavik scratched the back of his neck. “I’m not sure where else he’d go, honestly.”
Hannah looked at her mates. They were the king’s interior guard. She could see dozens of empty corridors with unfilled rooms from when she’d walked through the palace. He couldn’t have that many friends on Vaher.
He must be lonely.
“Let’s hope so,” she said. “Though it probably doesn’t really matter, whether we actually find him or whether he’s just forced out of power.”
“So we should all go to the broadcasting house together?” Aavik said.
“Yes,” Hannah replied immediately, surprised she’d been included in their movements.
“No,” Aavik and Veiko said together.
“I meant us three,” Aavik clarified.
She sighed. “You’re the one telling me that they might be searching every building looking for us. I’d rather be with you.” She changed her tune intuitively, moving closer to them. “I’d rather be with you.” It felt manipulative, but she knew it was the right thing. Staying in the cabin would be the most dangerous. “And I really do want a gun. I’m a good shot, I promise.”
“Well if you’re coming with us, you’re definitely going to be armed,” Veiko said, handing her two weapons from his own belt. They were much smaller, and much lighter, than a pistol back on earth. The layout generally didn’t look much different though.
“It works the same?” she asked.
“Yes. It just does more damage.” He rearranged his belt. “I’m not fond of guns anyway,” he said, denying Aavik’s offer for one of his pistols.
“None of us are. We never fight at range on Vaher, and never to kill. Guns are meant for killing.”
“We might not have a choice,” Veiko said, and for the first time stood up. “We need to get going. The longer we wait, the more chance we have of failing, or of them finding us.”
It took more motivation than she thought it would to force herself to her feet. Suddenly, hiding out in the little cabin for as long as they could get away with was intensely enticing.
This might be the end for all of them. She wrapped her arms tightly around Veiko’s waist, burying her face against her chest. Aavik and Wraxic joined them, all wrapping their arms around each other in a tangle of warmth and safety.
“I love you all,” she said. “And I’m so glad I came to Vaher.”
Veiko’s laugh was half-hysteric. “Well this definitely isn’t how I expected this to turn out.”
Hannah shut her eyes, clung to her men so hard her fingers started to cramp. All this time she’d been clinging onto herself as someone who just wanted to be an agent, and it wasn’t until now, when it might all be ripped away from her, that she realized the only thing she wanted in her life was her mates.
With a shuddering breath, she pulled back and grinned tearily at them all.
“We’ll be fine,” she said, with none of the conviction she felt.
They all kissed her, sticking to the cheek because anything more intimate would have given them the excuse they were all looking for to put off leaving the cabin.
“I love you,” she heard three times.
And then it was time.
There wasn’t anything else they could do to delay it.
“Let’s go depose a king.”
25 WRAXIC
They teleported together. They used Wraxic’s teleporter for all of them. It would take his charge and leave the others with the same amount.
The closest they could teleport to was just outside the broadcasting building. It wasn’t ideal, but Wraxic had never actually been inside the building, so he couldn’t teleport in without it being a blind guess as to where they ended up.
Besides that, Veiko thought being able to scout out the surrounding city, even if just for a moment, was a good idea.
There wasn’t anything to scout. The area was quiet, but the broadcasting house was near the outskirts and there were no residential houses nearby. People didn’t walk to work when they could teleport.
They hurried inside. “Do you think everyone knows?” Wraxic asked, keeping Hannah just in front of him, in the middle of the three of them.
“They might have already sent out a broadcast on instruction of the king,” Hannah said. “But I still think this is our best option.”
Wraxic felt worse and worse the longer they walked through the huge building. It was mainly empty, which felt ominous. It was the middle of the working day. Shouldn’t it have been bustling with people? Or was it like the palace: a big building to look impressive that was always deserted.
“This is ridiculous,” Veiko hissed, back muscles getting tenser and tenser with every step they took. “I wish we could split up.”
Eventually they found what they were looking for. Of course the floor at the very top of the building was the one with people in it. Half a dozen people sat at desks. A large TV at the front broadcast the national channel managed from the broadcasting house.
Wraxic, Aavik and Veiko’s images were plastered across it.
“Shit,” they muttered.
It was too late of course. The people had already seen them standing in the doorway.
The employees stood. They might not work as soldiers, but every Vaherian knew how to fight. It was in their nature, in their blood, and they trained for it from childhood.
“Here to confess?” someone, the furthest from the door, asked.
They must be in charge, Wraxic decided. He took a subtle step closer to Hannah, who was stood with back straight and hand close to her weapon.
“You need to issue a broadcast,” Veiko said, voice strong. They always had the teleporter in their back pocket. They could run straight back to the cabin if they thought the men were going to attack.
“You’re a traitor,” someone else said, hand tight around a knife. These men weren’t fighters on a daily basis, so they didn’t carry a stash of weapons with them.
“The king is a traitor,” Veiko parried. “He’s mining beneath the Parnu temple for Tricanite to sell to the Hystians.”
Wraxic had expected snorts of disbelief, but a low murmur went around the room. He felt like a fool. He’d been so deep into his denial.
“Go if you don’t believe me,” Veiko said, tilting his head and daring someone to attack the best fighter on the planet. “Teleport there right now and tell me wh
at you find. That’s all I’m asking. To broadcast that people go there and see for themselves.”
“And you’ll stay here and turn yourself in if I do that, will you?” the man asked.
“Yes,” Veiko said without hesitation, and Wraxic opened his mouth to protest. Hannah squeezed his hand, telling him to stay quiet.
The man at the front obviously hadn’t expected the answer. He dithered. “Sten. Teleport to Parnu.”
“There’s a tunnel entrance to the north east side behind a rocky outcrop,” Veiko said.
“We’re running out of time,” Wraxic said in a harsh whisper. “One of them is going to contact someone soon. When people show up they’ll kill without waiting.”
“Be ready to teleport out,” Aavik said, voice just as low. “Wraxic you grab Hannah if we do.”
The next few moments passed tensely. Wraxic had no idea how long it would actually take for the man to find the tunnel, walk through it, and then examine the mining equipment. There was a chance the king had gone in and moved it by now, too.
Veiko tensed further and Wraxic followed his line of sight to where one of the men was chewing his lip guiltily.
“We have to go,” Veiko said. “Right now.”
But when Wraxic tried to teleport, it didn’t work. His grip on Hannah’s wrist was so tight it must have hurt. “What’s going on?” he hissed.
And then a figure appeared in the middle of the room.
“Oh,” he breathed, and lowered first his head and then his whole body until he was on his knees.
The goddesses had never wanted that kind of behavior from their people, he knew. They hadn’t been like the kings that had followed. They’d wanted to be friends with everyone, to know people.
But the reappearance of a woman whose image he knew off by heart from spending years learning about her in museums, of paying respects to statues, sent him to his knees.
Others had the same response.
Hannah remained standing the longest, staring with wide eyes. Wraxic wondered if she even recognized the goddess GOD.
“Don’t kneel,” GOD told her when she looked ready to sink to the floor with the others. “None of you should kneel.”
