Shadow Run

by Michael Miller

  I wanted to clarify that I’d omitted more than lied, but I didn’t have time for semantics. I had to tell her whichever parts of the truth that might help her crew stay alive. “This is a Treznor destroyer—”

  “I know Treznor makes destroyers. I’m not as ignorant as you might think I am, prince.”

  “No, I mean the Treznor-Nirmana family is behind this. They wouldn’t have taken you if you weren’t valuable to them. So maybe if you cooperate—”

  “Shut up!” Our guards, obviously fair-minded, hit us both in the shoulder blades with the butts of their rifles.

  That didn’t stop Qole from scoffing loud enough for me to wince in anticipation of another blow. “As if cooperating with you people ever gets us anything but screwed!”

  I didn’t risk an answer. Not that I had a good one ready.

  The hallway they were herding us down was remarkably different from those of the Kaitan. There, everything was composed of metal plate and grating that had been artfully riveted and welded together, and it was obviously a well-used vessel. Here, brilliant lights lined the ceiling on either side, and periodic viewports gave us glimpses of the molecular clouds through white paneled walls. Everything was made to look as clean and seamless as possible, like a showroom for terminally bored architects. It occurred to me that the last time I had seen something like this had been on a science vessel. Not that destroyers weren’t often coldly functional, but they were usually more like military strongholds and less like hospitals. I wondered why this one would have such a sterile design, and I didn’t like any of the possibilities I could think of.

  The universe, sensing my discomfiture, saw fit to provide the unwelcome answer a few moments later. Using the same ID cards that had locked our restraints, the guards authorized entry to a secure door, which hissed open. We entered what was obviously a laboratory—rows of displays lined the walls, each demonstrating different applications with statistics, graphs, or models. Robotic arms wielding surgical tools and mat-printers standing ready to produce more were on sliding tables, all arranged in a semicircle around a table with restraints.

  An operating table.

  I felt nauseated. Qole was right: cooperating obviously wasn’t a good idea. Something very, very wrong was happening here. Waiting for us were several men and women in white lab suits and the same goateed officer who had been issuing orders earlier.

  “What in the systems is going on?” I demanded.

  He ignored us, obviously getting a thrill out of doing so. “What is he doing here?” he asked the guards, as they tossed down the belongings they had confiscated from us—my bag among them. “We only need her right now, you idiots, not him. Lock him in a holding cell so I don’t have to hear him and get her on the table.”

  “The hell you will!” Qole rounded on the guard nearest her and decked him in the face with her metal restraints. He went stumbling back, but more guards and the men in the white suits were on her in a flash. They lifted her bodily and carried her, kicking and swearing, to the operating table.

  The goateed officer leveled a firearm directly at my face. “I’ll take you where you belong then. Turn around and get walking. Don’t be a hero, hm?”

  “What an original suggestion.” I looked at him with as much ice as I could summon through my warring emotions. “And I wouldn’t dream of it.”

  As we walked down the perfect hallway, accompanied by two guards, I wasn’t sure I could dream of it. What was I supposed to do? Fight a ship full of people? And then what? Pilot it victoriously, sitting on a throne of my slain enemies, toward a welcoming parade back home? Dying for a good cause was well and good, but my life was much more valuable to many people than my death. As tempting as it was to think in terms of simple heroics, I didn’t have that luxury. The prudent move would be to keep my head down and go to my cell like a good boy.

  The floor shuddered. The destroyer must have broken away from the Kaitan as violently as it had docked. But that meant the destroyer would once again be free to fire upon it if they felt like it…

  The hallway curved around, lifting and widening, and along one wall a series of doors flanked a huge gateway. Treznor Industries was known to have a particular penchant for vessels of death, which could be used to either vaporize pirates or oppress populations. With Treznor, they’d be happy to show you how they’d addressed both contingencies within the very same model, stock configuration. And as a result, they equipped the brig with extensive holding cells, since you never knew whom you might be bringing back as a guest—note myself.

  I finally felt vindicated in spending all those hours obsessing over the latest models from the shipyards, because I was a guest who had memorized the exact path from those cells to the launch bay of the onboard starfighters and could get from one to the other quite easily. Adrenaline started to weaken my limbs, and a tremor entered my hands.

  My family needed me alive, but the disgrace, or worse, the weakness, my capture would show would be considerable. Escaping would be well worth it, and might actually be fairly simple if I moved quickly.

  Simple, that is, if I decided to leave Qole behind.

  I had scant moments before getting locked into one of those cells would make my decision for me. The Treznors obviously wanted Qole for similar reasons to my family’s, but it seemed she wasn’t going to survive their version of the research. And it was likely they’d blow the Kaitan Heritage to dust in order to hide their tracks. My escape route would be far more complex with the significant detour back to the lab, and risking my life for Qole or her crew was foolhardy in the extreme. But her life was valuable on more than one level, and in the end, my family was governed by something that most others weren’t. We believed in an ideal, a greater good inherent in a brighter future for all, and in behaving to uphold that ideal.

  Family, ideals, and the lives of innocents. Seemed like a fine enough reason to be foolhardy, to my mind.

  The adrenaline in my limbs moved to my heart, and it began to beat faster, filling my chest. My vision sharpened. All right, then.

  As my guards and I entered my cell, I spoke. “Ahoy, Major Bristle Chin. I think you’re forgetting something.”

  Major Bristle Chin bristled. Even if I died right now, a part of me noted, it would be with some joy in my heart. He turned on me with a crushing comeback. “I doubt that.”

  I smiled. “Let me put it this way: I don’t think you’ve thought this through. Do you know who I am? Do you even have any idea?”

  “Yes, yes, you’re a Dracorte whelp. You think that impresses me?”

  “It should.” I took one step nearer. “My family is the right hand of the Empire, and holds a primary seat in the Kings’ Council. We are the single greatest law enforcer in the systems and wield technology from before the Great Collapse. Do you really believe you are anything compared to me? You are an insect, a bug. Nothing. Less than nothing. You couldn’t measure up to me if you tried, but you won’t dare try. You know as well as I that your days are numbered, Major Bristles, as numbered as hair on your scalp.”

  Much to my relief, he appeared utterly unfazed. He stepped close as he mustered every reserve of height he had to stare over my chin. “Is that supposed to scare me? I was arresting princelings like you before you were born. Enjoy your cell, Dracorte, while we make your family sweat.”

  I smiled. “I prefer prince to princeling. Prince Nevarian Thelarus Axandar Rubion Dracorte, if you don’t mind, heir to the Throne of Luvos. And you honestly think I’m here alone?”

  That rocked him back a step, which was excellent, because it let me flourish the ID card I had purloined from his belt. “Why, thank you.”

  Terror radiated through every nerve in my body in that second, followed by a surge of lightning-hot elation. There was no turning back now.

  For a heartbeat, the cell was silent as they stared at me and the ID card that I held. I waited, giving them a moment to respond as I had hoped they would, and then they all lunged at me at once. Academy muscle
memory made me duck underneath the rifle butts aimed at the base of my skull, and I stepped back, breathing in time with my movements. My hands swept apart, the mag-link cuffs still attached to my wrists, and cupped the butt of each rifle as they passed by. I’d swiped the ID card through my restraints before I ever flourished it at him—I was an egotist in favor of a good show, but not a complete idiot.

  I pulled back as they drove forward, and gloried in simple physics as it twisted the rifles out of their grips, wrenching their arms and sending them spinning. I tossed the rifles behind me and, just as I would on a training mat back home, shifted my feet into a wide stance as I met the onrush of the guards. I batted away a punch and ducked under the next, bringing my right fist to connect with a solar plexus. The rest was instinct, guesswork, and split-second strategy—a flurry of kicks, blocks, punches, and dodges in close quarters before I jumped back and hammered my palm down on the large red button next to the cell door.

  It slid shut with a satisfying whoosh, and the petty, childish part of me felt sorry it hadn’t afforded me a chance to wave at the cell’s new inhabitants with all three of their ID cards, which I now possessed, or the photon rifle I’d snagged.

  My body should have been screaming with exhaustion and pain. The last twenty-four hours had been brutal, and as I ran back down the hallway, I was dimly aware that earlier I had been limping from where Eton had managed to land a particularly savage kick near my knee. But now I had no limp, no pain, and no exhaustion. I felt fiery exhilaration. Unbidden, my mind conjured an image of that single trickle of blood from Qole’s nose, and I knew I’d made the right decision to go back for her.

  I didn’t dare use the photon rifle yet, as any discharged weapon was sure to set off any number of alarms. If I was lucky, no one would know about what had just transpired in the cell for at least a few minutes. If I was fast, I could get Qole out of the laboratory, into a starfighter in the landing bay and escape. Fear gripped my heart again; this was a free fall of a plan, and it could turn to disaster at any second with just one wrong move.

  I pushed it away, focused on the fire in me, on Qole, and ran faster.

  When the door to the lab hissed open, I had only a second to spot the lab suits gathered around a still thankfully conscious Qole—who was also angry, frightened, and now shocked-looking—before my attention was diverted by something important I had forgotten.

  They really hadn’t been after me at all. Only her. There was no other reason the Bladeguard would be here, turning his featureless mask toward me as I entered, his sword sweeping from his hip into his hands in a barely visible snap.

  This would have been a perfect time to use the photon rifle, if only the lab hadn’t been full of equipment that I knew all too well was, out here in space, as unstable as Shadow. If I missed and hit an oxygen line at full power, we might all be dead. And yet if I took the time to fumble with the rifle settings, I’d be in meaty ribbons on the floor. Instead, I dove for where our belongings had been deposited. They were still there, off to one side, and I understood what true good fortune felt like for the first time in my life.

  At some point, long ago, some clever scientist had discovered an effective energy shield against photon and plasma blasters. And then another clever scientist had discovered that the best way to compromise such a shield, which was great at stopping energy blasts and terrible at stopping mass, was a blade—a Disruption Blade. Over the centuries, certain people began to specialize in getting close enough to heavily armed soldiers to hack at them, and they turned into the elite of the elite: guardians of kings, queens, and potentates. Or into assassins. Without shields of their own, they had to be that much better at blocking and dodging, but their personal safety wasn’t the priority. Wielding a Disruption Blade meant you were trained to succeed at near-suicidal missions.

  I whirled up from my bag in the last split second, and metal clashed on metal. An errant spark flickered in the air as our blades grated. The white veins of light down the centers of our twin weapons made an X between us. I grinned, baring all my teeth. One family in particular was known for training the best Bladeguards in the systems.

  Mine.

  “I am Nevarian Dracorte. Who are you?”

  Most Bladeguards weren’t prone to flights of ego like me, so there was no response. He disengaged smoothly and lunged again, flicking his sword toward my torso and face with lethal speed. I danced back from the attack, then brought my blade in hard for his head. We met, and he swept my sword out wide and to my right, leaving my torso exposed. As he started to bring his blade back in to disembowel me, I stepped in close and delivered an uppercut right under the chin of his helmet with everything I had.

  He crumpled like a discarded suit of clothes.

  Oldest trick in the book, I thought. Then, Ow, as something hard and metallic hit me upside the head. Pain blossomed in brilliant colors across my vision. I dropped on top of the Bladeguard, twisting as I fell to bring my arms and blade up to protect myself, but another blow swept the sword out of my numbed hands. One of the lab suits stood there, face emotionless, as he lifted the storage unit he had turned into a makeshift weapon and brought it down again, hammering past my arms and into my chin. Then again.

  Ow.

  The lab technician hitting Nev was what pushed me over the edge.

  Strange, I thought as my vision went so dark it was like I was watching the world through a black-tinted window. I’d hit Nev myself only a little while ago.

  But he’d come here to help me against all odds, and when he’d started attacking, my heart felt like it was going to explode from both delirious relief and shame. Shame, because when he’d first burst in, I thought he’d sided with our captors.

  I would have been horrified and furious to find that blasted Disruption Blade aboard my ship, but here I’d felt a surge of vicious joy to see it singing through the air.

  …Until it had clattered on the ground after the lab technician kicked it out of his hand. Nev had brought down a Bladeguard—so legendary a warrior I’d thought them mythical—and yet all it took was one lab tech to drop him and begin pulverizing his face.

  So fragile, these bodies, I thought, and the blackness sank a shade darker.

  Except for yours. I felt so detached that the second thought almost didn’t seem like mine. The cold metal of the table against my back and the stinging sterility of the air in my nose were so present suddenly, as sharp as the newly printed scalpel on the instrument tray next to me. And yet, at the same time, I could barely register anything, only feel it. The flood of sensation passed by me, dazing me. Shadow usually heightened my awareness, but this…It was like facing into a blast of wind or noise so strong, I couldn’t think, only act.

  I acted, wrenching at one of the metal restraints that held me to the table. It groaned under the pressure.

  I was in control, but not. I was sitting in the bridge of the ship that was my body, but only instinct drove me, not rational thought. This had never happened to me before. I was losing to the darkness. But I didn’t care. It had risen with my rage, and I would drown them all in it.

  The two lab techs who had been prepping me spun away from Nev at the noise. They must have deemed him subdued enough—or decided that I was now a higher priority—because one of them quickly approached with a syringe. The second, who had already cut off the fur-lined robe I’d been wearing with a pair of medical shears, began snipping up the center of my black tank top, as if Nev had only been a minor interruption. My leather leggings would come next, I had no doubt, and then…what, my skin?

  The darkness in my vision throbbed, like a heartbeat. The extra-awareness surged through my body like never before, and I moved.

  More than moved. My arms cut through the alloy and fiber as if they were blades themselves.

  The two lab techs leapt back in alarm, then immediately reversed course, diving at me with shears and syringe. I seized their plunging hands before they could reach me, and their bones crumpled in my grip like
clumps of granulated snow. Ignoring their agonized screams, I bashed their heads together over the table, then pushed off them, tearing my feet out of the restraints. I rolled off the table just as the third tech, the one who had bludgeoned Nev, came at me.

  Nev was still conscious somehow. After staring at me in shock—shock I should have been feeling myself—he took a hand off his bleeding face long enough to swipe at the foot of the tech and try to trip him. But I didn’t need his help. I simply sidestepped the attack and shoved the tech into the wall with such force that he cracked the smooth, white surface. He fell to the floor like a broken doll.

  Nev tried to say something through the blood in his mouth. I shouldn’t have been able to understand him, but with my heightened senses I made out the mangled words as if he were speaking them clearly in my ear: “Other one.”

  I spun. There was a fourth and last tech in the corner. No, not a tech, I somehow sensed, but the one in charge of the lab—a scientist, maybe. I could tell by her stance, and my body recognized her as a greater threat than the others. She was sidling along the wall, trying to reach the alarm button. My hand seemed to move on its own, faster than I could think, catching up a fallen scalpel. The instrument left my grip just as quickly, pinning the shoulder of her lab coat to the wall.

  It wouldn’t have held her for long. But it was enough time for me to vault over the operating table and smash her to the wall with my bare hands. One flexed on her throat, making her eyes roll back in her head.

  I had to grope for words, remember how to speak. “Tell me,” I breathed. I wanted to say, Tell me what’s happening to me, but she looked just as shocked as everyone else had, so I went to the next most important thing. “Tell me what you want with me.”

  I had a clue, now, since my body had just torn through a metal alloy that was probably used to build ships. But I still had to know for sure. I leaned in, my face only inches away from hers. Her expression was bordering on full panic.