Shadow Run

by Michael Miller

  Their reaction exceeded my wildest hopes; they converged on me in a swarm as I charged. In seconds, they would overwhelm me.

  Second, become the unexpected. At the last possible moment, and at a dead run, I fell to my knees in front of them, letting their blades whistle over my head. As I slid under them, I brought my twin swords in sweeping arcs to either side.

  The edge of my blades caught, cutting armor and slicing flesh. Wounded, but still mobile, Bladeguards leapt away from my attack. I rolled onto my feet and was upon them.

  Third, use your attackers. Parrying blows on either side, I stepped between two guards and stabbed behind me, using my full weight. I drove the points home, pushing them into the others. My blades flickered out and spun, spraying droplets of blood onto their masks as I slashed and parried, feinting attacks from one to the next as I moved through them, never exchanging more than a blow before assaulting my next target. I used them against one another, and when I countered, I countered for the kill.

  I should have been short of breath, I should have been ready to collapse, but instead I moved with surety and speed. They would not touch my friends. Fourth, destroy their pillars. Pick the strong ones off one by one. Armor chipped, glass splintered, and the ring of steel echoed in the hangar. First one fell, then another.

  “Run,” I hissed at them again, beyond caring whether they listened or not. I remembered Eton and, as I might at a royal ball, I sidestepped and ducked between attacks to turn, trying to spot where he was.

  Telu was struggling to drag him to the Kaitan, but that wasn’t what made my breath catch. Qole and Arjan were down on the ground, with Basra standing guard above them. They’d made it…but running toward them were two Bladeguards. The rest attempted to bar me from either returning to the Kaitan or heading for Qole.

  “Stop!” I shouted, the words coming unbidden to my mouth. I reared back and snapped my body forward, sending both my Disruption Blades streaking toward their targets, embedding them with deadly accuracy into the backs of both runners.

  Before they had even finished falling, I launched myself into a flying kick that dented and spun the helmet of the guard in front of me. Unarmed, I turned back to my attackers, one arm out far in front of me, the other in a fist close to my face in the classic defensive position of the Academy.

  They didn’t hesitate. I sensed a deadlier purpose to them now. I still didn’t know if they would actually kill me, but they were certainly willing to put the medical facilities of the citadel to the test.

  I weaved between two slashing attacks, jumped back from a stab, and then moved into the opening. I slammed a sword-arm away, then grasped it as I brought my elbow into the owner’s chest. He stumbled, and I kicked at the next Bladeguard, aiming for the sword hand before snapping my foot up to the helmet instead, all in the same motion. My second target dropped. I returned to the first so quickly that he never had a chance to recover, and barraged him with elbows and fists until the knife edge of my hand found his throat twice. With a horrible rattle, he fell. Now I had a clear window for my little trick…

  Four Bladeguards remained, and they paused, forming a wall between me and their commander, who had appeared in the far doorway. They were obviously reconsidering their tactics against me, and I knew I didn’t have much longer before the effects of the EMP blast wore off and weaponry started coming back online. When that happened, the crew would be dead.

  “Not while I draw breath,” I rasped, responding to my own thought.

  “You’re unarmed,” one of them finally spoke. “Stand down.”

  That seemed to break the wall of silence, because another one spoke. “You killed my friend, traitor. For that, you’ll pay in blood.”

  I stretched both hands out to my sides.

  With a hum, my Disruption Blades dislodged themselves and flew through the air, directly into my waiting grasp. I’d designed the mag-couplings in my sleeve cuffs when I was fifteen. Temporally coded to the magnetic fields in the Disruption Blades, they had enough power for a single use. This kept their circuitry simple enough that they were immune to all but the strongest of EMP blasts, unlike the complex gravity disruptors in the Bladeguards’ mag-gloves. Yet another example of how I’d been practically engineered to be an innovative leader. I’d also been taught all my life how to be a warrior-prince for my family. And now I was bringing it all to bear against those who had made me this way.

  I smiled, although there was no mirth in me, only fury. “Then don’t send your friends to kill the innocent.”

  Disruption Blades clashed, grated, sparked, and clashed again faster than I could think. I pictured Qole before a Shadow run. Eyes bright, radiating purpose and calm, moving on instinct, memory, and pure focus. I channeled her, sinking into my body. My blades wove a pattern in the air over and over, the lights blurring into a permanent streak. I made my stand there in the wreckage of the hangar, in the cavern underneath my ancestral home, and fought four of my own elite guard to a standstill.

  I didn’t remember how they fell, or how fast, and I wouldn’t have been able to recount how I’d done it. My next memory was of me descending on their commander in his rust-blue armor and cape, leaping at him with unbridled rage and bringing both swords down in an overhead blow meant to remove his arms.

  My blades hit his with jarring force. His weapon was larger, broader, than most. It wasn’t meant for fencing, or quick work. It was meant for crushing armor and disabling spaceships.

  Our blades ground together to the hilt, sparks trailing, and I brought my face to the slitted visor of the helmet. “Stand down,” I growled. “This is your only warning.”

  The visor flickered, then folded away into itself, revealing Thelarus Dracorte. My king. My father.

  Time slowed as I attempted to understand what I was seeing. I knew those deep-set eyes; I had memorized every line on his face, knew every expression that it held.

  Or so I thought. The mixture of pain and anger in his eyes was unprecedented.

  I hadn’t seen him in armor since I was a child, so that was almost new. But he’d grown up with the same training I had, and he had many more years of experience. Far more battles.

  “No, son, this is your warning.” Father advanced on me, pushing against my blades with his, and I stumbled back a step, disengaging. “As your father, I ask you to drop your weapons before this goes any further.”

  I didn’t lower my guard. “No.” It was the first word that came to me, the expression of everything that had been boiling inside me since the last time Father and I had talked. “I drop my weapons, and then what? You kill the useless ones and torture the rest? Why are you even here? Where’s Devrak?” I had been deathly afraid that it would be him in the armor, but this was a thousand times worse.

  Thelarus lowered his own sword and, with a click, it attached to his hip. I recognized it now, even though I hadn’t seen it in years, either. It was the blade he had used before he was king, when he’d fought against pirates in the outer reaches. It had been given a name—Beadvar, the Shipwrecker. “I’m here to clean up your mess personally, since even Devrak isn’t entirely aware of the extent of our research.” Devrak would never have condoned the torture of innocents, and Father knew it. Anger laced his clipped words. “A much better question might be what you think you are hoping to accomplish here.”

  I shook my head. “I don’t want to fight you. I don’t want to fight anybody. But I’m not going to let you hurt anyone on the Kaitan again.”

  “Your delusion is assuming you have any say in the matter.” He stepped toward me, but I didn’t step back. He stopped, almost touching my blades. “All you’ve done is brought dishonor on your family, disaster on your people, and death to your friends. You’ve accomplished nothing else.” He took another step, and pressed himself against my blades. “Now, as your king, I command you to lay down your weapons.”

  I felt the twinge of a lifetime spent listening to that voice and obeying. But I had already struggled with my choices,
and they were made.

  I pushed back against him, my blades grating on his armor, but my father didn’t move, and my frustration spiked. “You taught me to never lay aside my duty to this family, which I learned all too well at my Rendering. Now you say I dishonor our family? Who took someone against their will and tortured them? Who lied to his son his entire life? You’ve dishonored everything, everything that you raised me to believe. You’ve forsaken your duty.” I was shouting at him now. “So, no, I’m not putting down my weapons, not by your command, because you haven’t earned the right.”

  Lightning flashed in my father’s eyes. He stepped back, and I never even registered how his sword appeared in his hands. It came at me, and on pure instinct, I brought a blade up to answer it. The weight of his weapon took mine to the floor; he shifted, trapped it there with his foot, and hammered his sword back up against my other one. Both were wrenched from my hands at the same time, and he slammed his hilt against my unarmored chest. I wheezed and staggered, falling almost as much from shock as from the blow. I had just been disarmed like a child being relieved of a toy.

  “Earned? Leadership isn’t bestowed; it is a decision!” Thelarus growled. The lines on his face deepened, and he stood tall, blade pointed down at me. “A ruler doesn’t dabble in sentiment. A ruler sacrifices. You would kill a hundred to save one you care for? The selfishness is staggering.”

  I suddenly became aware of cuts and bruises on me I had no memory of receiving, and at the rate I was bleeding, I’d probably pass out soon. On top of that, new troops were spreading into the hangar, weapons up and aimed. So much for fighting everyone off. Maybe I can stall them.

  I climbed to my feet wearily.

  “You say sacrifice a lot. Sacrifice of what?” I asked. “Somewhere, Father, you lost sight. You focused on the practical measures to accomplish our ideals. The big picture.” It was my turn to walk toward him, and I stopped with the point of his blade almost touching my chest. “But in the end, that means your ultimate ideal is the success of our family. What kind of choices do you think you make when that is what drives you? Choices that benefit us, or benefit others? Are you really so arrogant as to think those are one and the same?”

  Father’s face didn’t change, but he didn’t stop me either. What if I could reach him with my words? Surely there was some part of him that had to know this was true.

  “Do you know what you taught me? You taught me to make the lives of others better. Do you think their lives are better?” I shouted without warning, stabbing my finger at the ship behind me. My world had shrunk to this, just my father and me, and everything I had ever felt boiled in my veins. Love for this man, love for my family, and a raging despair that it had come to this. “Of what use is the big picture to them? Your big picture is made of billions of single lives, and you’d look each of them in the eye and say they deserve to die, when you yourself give up nothing?”

  I took a ragged breath and stepped back with my hands spread out. “Father, don’t you think that when stealing and torturing is what saves our family, the true sacrifice would be to let our family fail?”

  For the briefest of seconds, pain flickered across my father’s face, before it was replaced with the king’s stony expression once more. He put away his blade.

  “The ship of your terrorist comrades is surrounded, there are fighters outside this hangar, and drone security has, thankfully, reset the drones to their master program,” he informed me without a trace of emotion. “If you fight, we will incapacitate you. If your…‘friends’…fight, they will be killed. You are unwell and will be taken to the infirmary to be treated. I will visit you there when you’ve at least partially returned to your senses.”

  What am I supposed to do? I looked over my shoulder, at the Kaitan.

  Telu and Basra had Arjan on a blanket they were using as a makeshift stretcher. His wounds looked hideous, and I didn’t even know if he was alive. Eton’s leg was hastily bandaged, if still bleeding. Even though he could hardly walk, he was trying to help Qole up. She was on her knees, her eyes closed, her face drawn, as if she were waging some internal battle. The sight of her stabbed through me, and I wished I could go to her…but my place was here, between my father and her. The crew was battered, hurt, and yet, they’d made it back to the ship. They had defied all odds, and an entire royal family. The least I could do was defy a king.

  I turned back and shook my head. “Don’t you see? It’s not about winning; it’s about doing the right thing.”

  Thelarus shrugged his shoulders and raised his hand. “Watch the consequences of your choices.”

  This was it. He was going to give the order, the troops would attack, and everyone would die. Except for me, and I would no doubt go to an asylum for the rest of my days, or until I was somehow reprogrammed. I closed my eyes for a second. Congratulations, Nev, you’re out of ideas.

  “Thelarus Dracorte, there is a warning signal on your comm that just went off. It’s there because you receive an alert when any significantly drastic market action occurs.”

  Basra’s voice sounded in my ears, and even in my bedraggled state, I managed to start. His ability to sneak up on me was uncanny.

  I had no idea what he was going on about, but Father stayed still, watching as Basra walked past me.

  Something was different about him. Drying blood matted his clothing on one side, but that wasn’t it. Instead of his customary slouch, instead of all the little ways he faded into the background, Basra was standing straight, his shoulders square and arms clasped behind him. He exuded the confidence and posture of an executive in a boardroom, not a fugitive in front of a firing squad.

  “How do you know that?” Father narrowed his eyes.

  “Because that’s how every industrial head has their alert system configured, and you are the head of Dracorte Industries. Now, let’s not waste time on obvious trivialities. I have something much more important to tell you.”

  Basra stopped and cocked his head to one side. “I am Hersius Kartolus the Thirteenth. You know who I am, you know what my resources are. What you also might know is that for the past week—since our delightful run-in with your moral equivalents, the Treznor-Nirmanas—I have been purchasing Dracorte products from every broker I know across the systems. Minerals, mostly, the same minerals that constitute the majority of your sales and revenues. And Shadow, of course.”

  I blinked. “Pardon?” Perhaps blood loss was playing with my hearing.

  Father, on the other hand, seemed to be hearing just fine. What was more, he seemed to grasp what Basra was saying. His face was still made of stone, but he lowered his arm slowly. “You’re bluffing,” he said.

  Basra’s voice could have cut metal with the matter-of-fact edge it possessed. “Feel at liberty to check your comms, or the feed you no doubt have on your visor.”

  Shockingly, Father actually activated his visor, which reassembled itself over his face. Seconds later it deconstructed again. His eyes were angry, his face gaining color.

  “You think this is a good idea? To make me angry before your arrest?”

  “Your Majesty.” Basra steepled his fingers in front of him, and the way he said “Majesty” stripped it of any distinction outside of formality. “I think we both know that you have outstanding military and judicial capabilities, but your mind has never taken to industry like your father Axandar’s. Allow me to explain.”

  I looked around, trying to make sense of what was happening. The troops were spreading across the hangar, slowly moving farther out and surrounding us. These weren’t Bladeguards, and they were obviously somewhat taken aback at the devastation before them. Bodies littered the ground, and blood pooled in score marks and gouges left by the firefight.

  In the middle of all this, Basra was talking about the markets? His claim to be Hersius Kartolus—the Thirteenth, no less? There had somehow been thirteen?—was beyond absurd. I could buy that he worked for Kartolus, but I’d seen the man myself several years ago, and Basra was
most definitely not him.

  “First, there is a news article being leaked, with some remarkable footage from the Kaitan, stating that there has been a massive incident at the Dracorte citadel, thanks to an inability to control your mining drones any longer. Second, for the past hour, all the minerals I have purchased are now selling as fast as they can. When traders see a product being unloaded so quickly, they inevitably think something is amiss and follow suit. A few who are more intelligent, or just particularly well informed, might take the opportunity to buy instead. Such as, say, the Treznor-Nirmana family. Third, when news begins to spread of your drones running amok on your own homeworld, coupled with the Treznor buy-out, your investors will simply panic. They’ll think you’ve lost faith in your product, and they will lose faith in you. I’m sure Treznor will be happy to snap up what they sell, and watch you struggle to repay your debt to them in the allotted time frame…a task you and I both know was to be challenging in the best of situations. Shall I continue?”

  Father’s breath had become labored. Something in his face twitched. “You just signed your own death warrant.”

  Basra gave him a pitying smile. “Now, you know as well as I do how concerned the public already is over your ability to maintain control of your drones. The events of the past hour will be a disaster, but with my push, they shall be completely catastrophic. Should you detain or kill us, these events I have described will proceed as planned. The only way they will stop is if my biometric signature gives the order from the good ship Kaitan in orbit. What’s more, should my compatriots and I be allowed to safely leave the warm embrace of your hospitality, I will personally initiate a buyback. Your stock value is unlikely to return to its current level, but it should recover substantially.” He paused and added thoughtfully, almost to himself, “Since I’ll be purchasing more of the product back at a lower rate, I might stand to make something on the transaction. Everyone will win.”