Black Star Renegades

by Michael Moreci

  Ga Halle stopped and looked up, remembering. “Praxis was forced to bow once before, and I’ve committed my life to ensuring we never bow again.”

  Ortzo, seeing what he thought to be his cue, removed his shido, and pointed it toward his own abdomen. A clean horizontal swipe would spill his insides all over the Sutra Room’s floor.

  “Before I depart, I’d like to point out one … irregularity that I noticed when confronting the boy who holds the Rokura.”

  Ga Halle eyed Ortzo, considering his fate. “Go on,” she said, then turned her back to Ortzo as ceremony dictated.

  “Myself and the other Fatebreakers, we had him cornered but … he never used the weapon. I advanced on him, and still he made no overtures to turn the Rokura on me.”

  Ga Halle turned her head, an eyebrow cocked in curiosity. “What are you saying?”

  “My queen, none of us know what the Rokura is capable of, not in fact. But this … this boy, he didn’t do anything with it. In fact, he needed the aid of some kind of modified transport vehicle to escape. Which leads me to believe he either doesn’t know how to use it—”

  “Or it’s not his to use.”

  “Yes, my queen.”

  Ga Halle paused, then turned to face Ortzo.

  “How do we find him?”

  “The ship he escaped in, our Intruders reported that it was damaged before making its mass jump. He couldn’t have gone far.”

  Using her shido, Ga Halle slowly pushed Ortzo’s shido away from his body. Ortzo blinked. “Rise, Ortzo,” she said, and Ortzo did as she commanded.

  “I’m holding you responsible for finding him. Use every ship. Pay every spy, enlist any gunrunner and pirate, do whatever it takes. Just find me this boy before the Rokura is taken off his hands by someone else.”

  “I will redeem myself.”

  Ga Halle returned to her hoverdisc and her meditating position. She turned her back on Ortzo, then floated away. “You’d better,” she said, and Ortzo moved to leave her alone once again. “I want that boy, and the weapon, brought before me with haste.”

  CHAPTER NINE

  The Kyysring spaceport bustled with activity as undocumented goods—illegal in one way or another, in one system or many—changed hands between smugglers, arms dealers, diplomats, mercenaries, ambassadors, and anyone else who wanted something they weren’t supposed to have. The Rubicon, its engines pushed to their limit to compensate for the damaged jump drive, landed with a rumbling groan. Cade’s disposition wasn’t all that different as he stepped off the ship and onto his home planet for the first time in years. The spaceport was exactly as he remembered it: crowded and grimy with a feeling of dread mixed with exhilaration, like a gambler’s high, permeating the air. Everywhere he looked, it was nothing but scams, hustle, and exploitation. The swindlers sold goods out of small stands, repurposed proton caches, or, in some special cases, the sweaty palms of their hands; the hustlers identified newcomers and cornered them into a game of “chance”; the desperate tried to do anything to get away with whatever they could. And these were the small-timers, Cade reminded himself. The bona fide crooks and cheats of Kyysring were comfortably nestled in the city, going about their business without having to worry about those pesky nuisances of life, like laws or paying taxes. Not on Kyysring. Everyone here did as they wanted; let the chips fall where they may. As long as you didn’t interfere with the planet’s criminal economy—and some did, do-gooders who thought they could “clean up” Kyysring; roaming marauders who possessed either the stupidity or the arrogance to think they could consolidate the entire illegitimate enterprise under their personal control—there wasn’t a single prohibition that stood between someone’s desire and its fulfillment. And that, Cade had seen firsthand, led to a lot of happy people, but it created even more broken ones. Cade learned, at a young age, that Kyysring was not for the faint of heart. This place deteriorated everyone in time; it was entropy accelerated, and Cade didn’t care to spend any more time here than he absolutely had to.

  “So, what are we doing here?” Kira asked as she set the Rubicon’s security protocols and then followed Cade off the ship. “You going to mope the entire time, or are we going to get our act together and figure out what to do next?”

  Cade slid into a beat-up jacket Kira had given him, which fit loosely enough to conceal both the Rokura and the shido that he kept crisscrossed over his back. They’d changed clothes while awaiting landing clearance from Kyysring’s central terminal, meaning they had to wait until their “docking levy” transacted. Cade abandoned his tunic, and Kira ditched her pilot jumpsuit. Both gave them away as coming from the Well, which marked them as authority figures. If there was one thing that the people of Kyysring unanimously rejected, it was authority in any shape or form. Plus, it was best to avoid recognition in general, given what Cade was masquerading as. There was no telling what kind of bounty Praxis would put on their heads, assuming they hadn’t already. Kira comfortably wore a leather jacket and cargo pants, and Cade was relieved to ditch his tunic in exchange for a pair of dusty gray khakis and a collared shirt, though he couldn’t help but crack a smile over Kira’s possession of men’s clothing. She must have sensed a wisecrack coming and stopped Cade dead in his tracks with a rigid finger pointed right in his face. He’d just have to let this one go.

  “I’m not moping,” Cade said, trying to conceal his moping. “I just don’t like this place, okay? So let’s fix the ship and get—”

  “Yes, yessss, this ship,” came a slurred voice from behind Cade and Kira. Cade didn’t have to turn to know what he was hearing—a foul, bottom-feeding Sloos coming their way.

  The Sloos lurched toward them, dragging the hunch on his back; he had a wide, bog-green flat face dotted with small features and tufts of hair that seemed like they’d been yanked out from beneath his skin. With his wet lisp, he continued. “Thish is some marvel of engineering you have here. The ownersh of this port, they charge you forty coin per day but do nothing to protect your property. What with the likesh you find around here, you never know what could happen. Now, if you’d like to discussh shervicess me and my men offer, we—”

  Without bothering to turn her attention to the conniving creature, Kira unholstered her sidewinder and stuck it in the Sloos’s face.

  “Or we can talk about thish another time.”

  Kira jammed the weapon back in her holster as the Sloos hobbled off in the opposite direction.

  “Get used to it,” Cade dryly said as he and Kira continued down the spaceport’s walkway, which led them to the city center. “Everyone here is looking for someone to dupe, rob, or who knows what.”

  “Thanks for the tip, grandpa, but I know all about this place, which is why I figure it might not be the worst thing that we ended up here.”

  Cade raised an eyebrow. “Totally, because, you know, we could’ve ended up parked on a lava geyser on F’Som. That would be mildly worse. Or marooned in the Darklands—that for sure would be worse. So, yeah, I guess from a certain point of view, landing in the galaxy’s armpit isn’t so bad.”

  Kira pulled back the dreads of her Mohawk, tugging on their ends. “Do I really have to explain this to you?” she asked, letting out a deep breath. “Cade, if you somehow didn’t believe we were at war before, well, now it’s literally exploded all over our doorstep. Praxis’s attack on our home wasn’t an isolated incident. They’ve opened a door, and now there’s no going back. If they don’t finish off the Well, and soon, they’ll look weak in front of the entire galaxy. We have only one choice—”

  Cade grabbed Kira by her arm, shoving them both into a nearby corner of the spaceport. “Kira, I know you think you get what this place is all about, but let me make something crystal clear: You can fire off whatever words you want against Praxis in the safety of the Well, but you can’t talk like that here. People on this rock, they want nothing to do with Praxis, war, rebellion, or any of the other bothodung you’re spouting. Trust me, they don’t tolerate anyone who threate
ns to bring Praxis to their backyard. They’ll either kill you or turn you over to whatever crime lord is closest. Maybe both.”

  “First of all,” Kira said, shaking off Cade’s grasp, “grab me like that again, and I’ll feed your face to a ranglin. Second, the degenerates around here are as worrisome to me as a cloudy day.”

  “Well, congratulations, Kira. You’re not afraid. But that doesn’t mean you need to be dumb. Praxis has ears everywhere.”

  “You really don’t get it, do you, Cade? Praxis is going to reduce the Well to cinders and ashes, and then they’re going to rule the entire galaxy. Not a single system will be safe. Do you believe me or not?”

  “It doesn’t matter what I believe; nobody cares what I believe.”

  “I do,” Kira said, without a hint of facetiousness in her tone. “I care.”

  Cade blinked. He wasn’t used to votes of confidence, and he felt a pang of remorse for thinking Kira was just another person who was going to steamroll over him with no regard for his thoughts or opinions. He released his grip on her arm, sorry that he’d overreacted.

  “I believe you,” Cade said. “There’s no doubt Praxis is going to go back to Ticus and finish what they started, and there’s not a thing the Well can do to stop them. But what you’re talking about, going up against Praxis … Look, I hate them as much as anyone, but we don’t have the numbers, the firepower, or the organization to stop them.”

  “You’re right, we don’t have the conventional means to make a stand against Praxis. But what if I told you we don’t need any of those things?”

  Cade took a step back. “What are you talking about?”

  From day one of Praxis’s ascension, not a single star system had been able to make the evil kingdom so much as flinch. Part of that was chalked up to Praxis’s judicious selection, especially in its earliest days, of weaker opponents, but that didn’t change the fact that the kingdom was able to roll into systems and give its leaders a blunt choice: annex or else. There were four occasions when Praxis showed the entire galaxy what “or else” meant: First on Quarry, then Maqis, Romu, and Tor-Five. These four planets—these bold, stupid planets—refused to bow to Praxis, and their failure to receive the invading empire with total acquiescence was considered an act of sedition, and sedition meant war. While the forces of these noncompliant planets fought with every ounce of their strength, utilizing every resource they had, it always ended the same: in darkness. The Praxis War Hammer came, drained the energy from the nearest life-giving star, and left behind an entire race of refugees who had no choice but to flee their dying planet. It was only a matter of time now, as Cade and Kira both understood, before the War Hammer came to Ticus. Only when it did, annexation wouldn’t be an option.

  “I’m talking about making Praxis look vulnerable,” Kira said. “I’m talking about hurting them the way they’ve hurt so many others.”

  At the end of the spaceport, Cade and Kira crossed beneath a pair of massive stone hands protruding from the ground, each holding a power blade that met at the center of the monument—some kind of bothodung ode to free enterprise—that marked the entrance to Kyysring’s densely packed city center. Night was falling as Cade and Kira walked inside, and that meant the planetoid’s pledge to fulfill its promise of anything-goes proclivities was about to be ratcheted up to the nth degree. Beyond this urban space, not a single inch of Kyysring was worth even thinking about; the landscape was sun-beaten and punishingly hot, making for an arid topography that was uninhabitable. What made Kyysring worth its placement on the stellar map was its fortuitous location directly between a bustling strand of Inner Cluster metropolises and a pocket of industrial planets on the Galactic Fringe. Back in the dark ages before mass jumping was equipped standard in every ship, being a strategic waypoint made Kyysring as valuable as its commodity-rich neighbors. After all, what good are commodities if they can’t get anywhere? By the time improvements in mass-jumping drove Kyysring’s layover value into the dirt, it didn’t matter. The crafty planetoid—and the ruthless profiteers who ran it—had already capitalized on its ingress and egress by building a shadow economy that centered on the laundering and movement of illegal goods. While the galactic community turned its attention away from Kyysring, assuming the obsolescence of its purpose would also spell the end of the seedy planetoid, it thrived. The services the kings of Kyysring offered attracted a type of person to its shores, and those people saw opportunity; a lot could happen in a place that all the right people had forgotten about. And all these years later, like it or not, the galaxy kind of needed Kyysring—it needed consolidated, localized debauchery, so long as it was contained—even though no one was thrilled to admit it.

  “Okay, look,” Kira continued. “Everyone knows the War Hammer is impenetrable, right? No one who’s gone up against it has so much as made a dent; and I’ll tell you what—the Maqins had some heavy-duty firepower in their arsenal.”

  “Never mind the fact that weapons can’t damage it,” Cade said. “That thing can park right up against a star and somehow be totally fine. That’s insane. How are you going to blow something up that can stand up to the heat of a star?”

  “Well, here’s the thing: We don’t have to blow it up. We’re going to make it blow itself up.”

  “Riiiiight,” Cade said with a chuckle. “Of course we are.”

  “Don’t do that,” Kira said as a Boxton, reeking of root, lumbered between her and Cade, its floppy ears dangling down at its waist. “Don’t dismiss me when you haven’t even heard what I have to say. Don’t be like the Masters.”

  “All right, all right,” Cade replied, trying to sound apologetic without apologizing. “Let’s have it. What’s this plan of yours?”

  They continued into the city, and Cade caught a whiff of panka dough frying in seedling oil from a food cart just ahead. It smelled like his childhood. Just beyond the spaceport, the city opened up to a marketplace of vendors offering all matter of counterfeit technology, knock-off products, and services that were, to say the least, frowned upon by polite company. Stout buildings demarcated the urban space from the nothingness beyond and defined the city’s ins and outs; thick concrete walls with exposed piping characterized the architecture, which was no more than utilitarian. Cade knew every inch of this place, every corridor, every blind alley. He knew which doors to never enter. For a brief moment, he felt comforted by the familiarity, but he knew better than to let nostalgia distract him from his purpose. He still had the Rokura strapped to his back, which might as well be a bull’s-eye inviting any takers to come after him.

  “I’ll make this as straightforward as possible,” Kira said. “When the War Hammer comes to destroy a system’s star, it’s not sucking up all its energy like a vacuum. I don’t care how badass the War Hammer is, you shove a sun inside of it without any means of containing it, bad things will happen. It has to control the influx of its energy so it can be contained—very precisely, very carefully. That’s just the way it is.”

  “Yeah, that sounds about right. But—and no offense—but how do you know all this?”

  “I know because I know.”

  Cade looked at Kira, whose face projected the definitive period she’d slapped on her statement. There’d be no more talk of how she knew what she knew.

  “Okeydoke,” Cade said. “So then what?”

  “Well, since we can’t damage the War Hammer, we have to do the next best thing: mess with its siphoning process while it’s siphoning.”

  Cade faced Kira, his interest piqued. Her plan wasn’t nearly as crazy as he expected. “Wait,” he said. “This is actually making sense.”

  “Oh, thanks, Cade. Because that’s the only thing this plan’s been waiting for: your validation.”

  Cade shrugged. “I’m here to help.”

  “Look, what we need to do is bomb the star, not the War Hammer. If we can get an energy accelerator into the star at the point of siphoning, it will create a surge that overloads the War Hammer’s intake process.
We do that, and that thing erupts from the inside out. We’re talking about a mega explosion here—bye-bye to Praxis’s greatest weapon.”

  “Okay, but you’d need to get right up on the War Hammer’s backside to drop the accelerator in the exact right spot. Praxis probably won’t let that happen.”

  Kira shot Cade an arrogant smile. “You do know you’re looking at the best pilot in the fleet, right?”

  Cade rolled his eyes. “And this device of yours, the accelerator—you have it, I hope?”

  “Well, see, that’s the problem,” Kira said, rubbing the back of her neck. “I don’t. I have the accelerator part, and it’s ready. But there’s no way to shield it enough from a star’s heat so it doesn’t melt before it gets close enough to detonate. It’s just … it’s so frustrating. And I’ve talked to everyone; nobody knows how to get that close to a star.”

  “Nobody except Praxis,” Cade said ruefully.

  “Nobody except Praxis.”

  Cade wanted to trust Kira. This was the first plan he’d ever heard that had a legit shot at breaking the illusion that Praxis was invincible. For as long as Cade could remember, the kingdom managed to stomp around the galaxy doing as they pleased because everyone seemed to figure that was just how things went. But take out the War Hammer and suddenly Praxis ain’t so tough. And who knew what could happen from that point? The psychology was simple: One kid busts the bully’s nose and suddenly even the weakest kid on the playground isn’t getting pushed around anymore. But the nagging voice in his head—the voice of fear or reason, Cade couldn’t tell—told him that the risk was too great. Yes, the solution to Kira’s heat-shielding problem was out there. It had to be, otherwise the War Hammer would never be able to hang out next to a star as it stole its energy and, that being the case, there’d be no problem to begin with. And it’s not like Cade was enthusiastic about destroying the Rokura based on his belief that it was a weapon of destruction and not salvation. Because what if, whoops, he was wrong? Even if he was right, he’d be condemning himself to a life of hiding on some forsaken planet, always looking over his shoulder until the day some lunatic caught up with him and let him know how grateful the galaxy was that he robbed them of their only hope.