“Just out of curiosity, how much shield do we need to withstand a hit from that warship?” Cade asked.
“If a torpedo gets us, every inch of the Rubicon, us included, will be space dust.”
“Oh,” Cade said, just as the Rubicon accelerated toward the warship. As it did, Cade’s targeting sensors began to whir. He turned and spotted the three Intruders they’d tangled with already, unified and flying toward his position in an attack pattern. Cade locked his targeting sights on the lead Intruder’s triangular-shaped cockpit, but its pilot spun right, avoiding the attack. Its two counterparts followed as they closed the gap between themselves and the Rubicon.
The ship jostled again as antifighter proton missiles—longer range than the warship’s cannons, though less potent—erupted around them. Kira, with smooth adroitness, dodged each missile, positioning the Rubicon to return fire. Cade spun to follow the three Intruders as they came around for a frontal attack, continuing to fire as they did, and he saw a single torpedo launch from the Rubicon’s starboard battery. The torpedo, timed perfectly, soared through the nettles of Intruders and Echoes ahead and nailed the warship’s antifighter turret.
“Woooo!” Cade yelled. “Great shot!”
“There’re about a dozen more on that ship,” Kira responded. “So let’s not celebrate victory just yet. Now, what about those three Intruders that’ve been hounding us?”
“Coming around for another pass, port side.”
“I’ve got them,” Kira said, pulling the ship to the left and putting it on a direct course for the incoming Intruders. “Focus on the center fighter; I’ll take care of the other two.”
In Cade’s experience, Intruder ships were heavily armored and, given the distance between his ship and the Intruder he had in his sights, breaking through its shields and landing a fatal strike was nearly impossible. But, Cade also knew that just because he couldn’t destroy the Intruder, that didn’t mean he couldn’t disable it and get it off the playing field.
With its aerodynamic design, Intruders relied on compact wings that protruded from their sides and rose up and in, nearly meeting at their tips. Cade focused his fire on those wings—less protected by the ship’s shield generator, but harder to hit.
The opposing sides raced toward each other, exchanging fire as they neared.
“How are the shields holding up?” Cade asked as he jabbed at the dual fire buttons beneath his thumbs.
“Fifty-six percent!” Kira yelled back. “But we need these ships out of our way if we’re going to be able to make a clean run at that warship. Now blast that Intruder out of the sky already!”
The space between the Rubicon and the oncoming enemies was razor-thin, and the Intruders were not going to back down. It was counter to their conditioning as pilots, Cade and Kira both knew that. They’d sooner crash into an enemy than retreat. With precious time left, Cade rattled off as many shots as he could, and he buried nearly every one of them in the Intruder’s wings. The ship careened off into space.
“Got him!” Cade yelled. “Whatever you were going to do—” Cade couldn’t get the words out, as he saw the remaining two Intruders angling directly toward the Rubicon. They were on a collision course, and there was no time to pull out.
The Rubicon didn’t need to pull out, though. A split second before impact, the Rubicon flipped back on its axis, flattening out. The oncoming Intruders were left with no time to respond to this sudden change of position; Cade whipped around to see them smash into each other—erupting into one gloriously fiery mass—as the Rubicon continued forward, unscathed.
“Can I ‘wooo’ now?” Cade asked. “Because that deserves a ‘wooo.’”
“You may ‘wooo.’”
“WOOOO,” Cade yelled, fueled by the exhilaration of coming within a hair of dying and escaping. He was getting used to the feeling.
Kira snapped the ship’s body back into its upward position and dove toward the warship. Exposed and in range, the Rubicon was blanketed in suppressive fire from antifighter turrets, turboprotons, and heavy artillery cannons. Kira banked and broke, dodging strike after strike with precision Cade had never seen before. But for every cannon blast she evaded, a proton clipped their hull, or antifighter spray came close to penetrating the cockpit.
“Shields at twenty-nine percent!” Kira yelled, the frustration coming through her voice. She fully expected to be able to singlehandedly take down a Praxis warship, even though that wild determination—which was no stranger to Cade—was more likely to get them killed. He just hoped Kira understood that, too.
Cade surveyed their situation: They were coming close to the warship and could soon drop below to its underside and make a few effective strikes, but none that would bring the ship down. And that was assuming they’d even get that far, which was becoming more and more unlikely.
“Kira, we’re not going to make it!”
“Yes. We. Are,” Kira snapped, and Cade could almost hear the tightening of her jaw muscles through his comms.
A proton battered the bottom quadrant of the ship, just above Cade. The hull throttled, and Cade was thrown from his seat and flipped head over heels. As he got to his feet, he saw it—the Intruder ship whose wings he’d clipped, floating in space. It gave him an idea.
Cade rushed to the cockpit. “I’ve got it,” he told Kira, whose concentration was so intense she barely registered his presence.
“Got what? And why aren’t you returning fire?!”
Cade slid into the copilot’s seat and swiveled toward Kira. “Because we’re getting hammered out here, and we need to pull out.”
“Not a chance,” Kira said, her focus still locked on evading the warship’s relentless barrage.
“Kira!” Cade yelled, turning her around by her shoulder. “We can’t make it, not like this. But I have an idea that will get us through. Trust me.”
Kira hesitated a moment, then went back to the controls. She pushed a raging breath through her clenched jaw then twisted the Rubicon out of the warship’s range.
“This better be brilliant,” she said the moment they were clear.
“This ship—it was built over a junk cruiser, right?”
“A Balenian reclamation vessel, actually. Which, yes, is a junk ship.”
“Does it still have the cargo arm?”
Kira gazed at him warily. “It does. Why?”
“Because,” Cade replied, smiling, “we’re going to pick up some junk.”
* * *
“I don’t know who’s the bigger idiot. You for coming up with this idea or me for following it,” Kira said as the Rubicon flew toward the Praxis warship once again. This time, though, was different.
Following Cade’s instructions, Kira returned to the downed Intruder and, using the Rubicon’s cargo arm, positioned it directly in front of her own ship so it worked as a cloak. With the Rubicon flipped downward, it was just narrow enough to hide, unseen, behind the Intruder. And now they were approaching the Praxis warship, acting like they were coming in for a landing due to battle damage. They scrambled the Intruder’s comms so no messages from the pilot could transmit; Cade and Kira would just have to hope that no one in the warship’s landing bay got suspicious about one of their fighter vessels coming in dark.
What they didn’t anticipate was being spotted from behind.
A blast smashed into the Rubicon’s stern, catching Cade and Kira off guard and reducing the ship’s shields to 12 percent.
“Great, we’ve got incoming!” Cade yelled.
Kira and Cade turned to see two Intruder ships quickly approaching from the rear.
“No way,” Kira said. “No, no way.”
Cade, though it made him sweat, couldn’t argue with Kira’s decision to accelerate forward rather than retreat. They were nearly at the warship’s command bridge, which was embedded in the center of its hulking mass. They would never get a shot like this again.
Another blast drove into the Rubicon, then another. “Take the cannon,”
Kira ordered. “If we can’t fly this thing into their command bridge, then I’m going to torpedo it there.”
Cade darted out of the cockpit but halted before he reached the door. It took a minute for Kira’s proposal to sink in. “Is that … is that safe?”
“Go!” Kira barked as the Rubicon’s control panel announced that shields were below 10 percent.
Cade hopped in the cannon and rattled off wild shots in the direction of the Intruders. Anything, he figured, to keep them off their tail for just a few more seconds. It seemed to be working, until three more Intruders approached and joined the other two. “Uh … Kira?”
“I see them,” Kira replied through the comms. “Torpedoes are hot—hold on!”
Kira threw the ship’s power to the rear engine, firing maximum reverse thrust to the Rubicon. As the ship hurled back, Kira launched a series of torpedoes—Cade had no idea how many—that smashed into the downed Intruder and erupted at nearly point-blank range. The Rubicon careened backward, spinning out of control as a result of the explosion; the dummy Intruder was reduced to nothing more than a ball of fiery wreckage, but it was a fiery ball of wreckage that was racing toward the warship. Kira stabilized the Rubicon just in time for her and Cade to see that massive fireball smash directly into the warship’s command bridge. The impact sent a rippling power surge throughout the warship, and it went completely dark before it began to slowly fall through space.
This time, it was Kira’s turn to cheer.
“WOOO!” she yelled. “Take that!”
Cade rushed back to the cockpit. He had his own choice words for the Praxis fleet, but they were cut off by the sound of enemy fire making impact with the Rubicon. Kira and Cade refocused in time to see a half-dozen Intruders bearing down on their position.
“We should go,” Cade said as Kira, sharing his opinion, dropped back into the pilot’s seat.
“Setting a course to mass jump to the Fringe,” Kira said. “Any preference?”
“Yeah, out of here,” Cade said as another strike drove into the Rubicon’s backside. And with that strike came the last thing Cade and Kira wanted to hear:
“Shields are now zero percent. Shields are now inoperable,” came the tinny control-panel voice.
“Now you see why I hate the AI?” Kira said as she punched coordinates into the mass-jump drive. “All right, coordinates set, let’s—”
Another blast struck the Rubicon, this time with more profound impact and a thunderous booming sound. An alarm sounded.
Cade surveyed the scene and saw the Intruder fleet closing in fast. Their attacks would only become more severe and proficient. “Kira, we need to jump—now!”
Kira frantically worked the control panel. “Yeah, well, tell that to the drive and its damaged core.”
“Kira, don’t even say that! Don’t tell me we’re stuck here!”
“Hush,” Kira said as she studied the information in front of her, assessing as quickly as she could. “Okay … good. We can jump, we just won’t make it to the Fringe. I’m programming the AI to take us as far as we can go.”
Cade looked up to see a proton blast race overhead, missing the cockpit by inches.
“Making jump to the Kyysring system,” the control panel announced.
“Kyysring?!” Cade erupted. “No—no. Take us anywhere but Kyys—”
Cade’s protestations were too late. The galaxy in view began to ripple and distort, and within a fraction of a second, the Rubicon was gone.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Everything was in its right place.
In the privacy of her Sutra Room, Ga Halle floated on a hoverdisc, meditating on recent events. Four small torches, one in each corner of the room, provided the only light, and the reinforced walls were sure to smother the din of the surrounding ship before a single decibel could penetrate her sacred chamber. The silence was uninterrupted; the serenity absolute.
She knew calm. She knew peace.
Ga Halle considered the might of the Praxis kingdom—her kingdom, built through the determination and audacity of her will—and found comfort in the order it had brought to the galaxy. Some systems still stood opposed to Praxis, but dissent would soon be a thing of the past. The Rising Suns would be rooted out; those who incited rebellion in any system would be made a public example of. Praxis had invaded Ticus at last, and it would only be a matter of time before every Rai and every Master was battered and broken. And while Ga Halle planned on taking unimaginable joy exposing the Well’s fraudulent spiritualism and defeating its vaunted Rai, Ticus’s end was a footnote in her motivation for sacking her rival’s planet. The Praxis kingdom was spread comfortably throughout the galaxy, with numerous systems under annexation and possessing a fleet large enough to dwarf even the unification of those opposed. It couldn’t be defeated. Even with their efforts to prevent a bloody galactic war and interrupt further annexations, the Well was nothing more than a nuisance that was closer to a relief brigade than the galactic guardians it claimed to be, and the only thing that had prevented Ga Halle from decimating it before was perception. Had Praxis, without provocation, launched a preemptive strike on Ticus, it would create martyrs, and martyrs make for rebellion.
But that reasoning didn’t matter anymore. Nothing mattered the way it once had. The Rokura had been released at long last, and no one could prevent the Praxis queen—a self-appointed role, and the first ever known to Praxis—from claiming what was rightfully hers. When she did, the galaxy would see Ticus—and the Well, specifically—fall, and they’d bear witness to Ga Halle, wielding the Rokura, as the one responsible for bringing them to heel. And no one, not one person in the entire galaxy, would dare utter one word in opposition about it.
Ga Halle knew calm. She knew peace.
This vision of a future sure to come helped bring Ga Halle as close as she could to inner tranquility. For years, she prepared herself, in body, mind, and spirit, and she would prove herself worthy of the coveted mantle that should have been hers years ago. As her body rested under the spell of her meditation, the world around her went dark. She could no longer sense the engine’s rhythmic hum or even feel her legs resting on the hoverdisc. Ga Halle felt close to transcending her body, but then she’d remember—the parts of her that weren’t her own. How her left arm, part of her chest, and the side of her face had been scorched off her body and replaced with flesh and bone that, even after all these years, felt like an invasive presence. How half of her body—a body she’d persistently cultivated throughout her life, physically and spiritually—was forever trapped in a containment suit that pulsed dark blue waves of antimatter over its indestructible exterior, preventing any more of her from being lost. It reminded her of her greatest loss and suffering. It reminded her of her need for justice.
It reminded her of her rage.
Ga Halle didn’t have to look at the apparatus grafted to her body to visualize it in her mind’s eye. That, and how she got it, were forever burned in her memory. The suit rose from her waist, covering most of her rib cage before fitting snugly over her left arm, wrapping around her neck, and plating the bottom half of her jaw. It kept her body—what was left of it—contained. It kept her alive. There’d been a time, at the urging of her medical team, that Ga Halle also donned plating over the scarring that veined over her mouth, across her cheek, and through her eye, like a lattice of ravines that’d been scored into her flesh. The remembrance of her scars brought back pain that gave way to agony much deeper than any physical discomfort. Still, she had no desire to cover her scars like they were something to be ashamed of, when the opposite was true. The scars—and the hurt that still lingered—made Ga Halle strong. They ensured that she never, ever lost focus of her purpose.
The containment suit, choking her body, tore Ga Halle out of her reverie and assured her that she’d have no peace, nor transcendence, until she righted the wrong from so long ago. Until she had the power to control the fate of the galaxy in her hands.
And as the door to her Sutra
Room opened, she knew that peace was delayed once again.
Ortzo, her chief Fatebreaker, entered the chamber, quietly and alone, and Ga Halle could tell by the apprehension in his gait that he’d failed his mission.
“My queen,” he said, taking a knee as Ga Halle turned to face him, still positioned on her hoverdisc. “We’ve returned from Ticus. Your instincts were correct: They were caught completely unprepared in anticipation of services for the fallen Rai. Our aerial forces were able to deliver tremendous damage to the Well’s infrastructure while our ground squads—”
“Buildings rise and fall. Soldiers die and new ones are recruited. Neither make for victory that is absolute,” Ga Halle said as she lowered the hoverdisc and stepped off. She bent her body downward so her face was inches away from Ortzo’s. Purposefully, so he felt the cold lifelessness of her touch, Ga Halle grasped his shoulder with her left hand. “You know what I’m concerned with, so tell me—what of the Rokura?”
Ortzo inhaled a shaky breath. “I take full responsibility, my queen.”
Ga Halle unfurled her dark red tunic, revealing both her slender body and the shido she kept holstered at her side. She drew it, swiftly, and Ortzo flinched. But Ga Halle merely held it out, examining it as if there were a single nook or crevice that she wasn’t already intimately aware of.
“This weapon,” she said, pacing, “is nothing more than an imitation of something greater. When placed in capable hands, it is no doubt dangerous. But it will never, ever be anything more than a reminder that something infinitely more powerful is out there, ready to make you bow before it.”
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