“Yes, yes, of course. And, again, I wish you all the luck in the world. I hope you fare better than our previous Paragon.”
And there it was. Cade had just turned to leave and was stopped with one foot suspended in the air. He could keep his momentum going, he knew this, and leave Valis and his trap behind. But Cade wasn’t dumb. He’d been caught in Valis’s trap since he first called his name.
“What do you mean, ‘previous Paragon’?” Cade asked, holding back the urge to grab Valis by his silky robe and scream “Tellmetellmetellme!” in his face until he spilled what he knew.
Now was the time for Valis to start his performance. He threw a flat hand against his chest, his face awash in a combination of being stunned that Cade didn’t know this information and mortified that he’d slipped. Cade felt like he should applaud such theatrics.
“You mean—you didn’t know?” Valis asked. “Oh, my, the things your Masters don’t tell you.”
Cade shook his head, gingerly, as he considered that Valis might be lying in order to get what he wanted. Nobody laid a trap like a crafty infomerchant, and Valis was the craftiest. “There’s no way. No. Way. How can that even be possible? Everyone would know.”
“You’re right, Cade. If a Paragon popped up fifteen years ago and screwed up so badly that he went into hiding, I’m certain the Masters would have been very forthright about the matter. I mean, what an ideal way for the Chosen One to behave.”
“Okay, then who is this mystery person? Where did he go?” Cade knew he had to press Valis for verifying details, but he also knew this was how Valis’s game was played. He’d dangled the carrot for Cade to see; now it was time he brandished his stick—and it would cost Cade a price not to be lashed with it.
“Well now, I’d say the answer to that question is where things get interesting. Very interesting, indeed.”
“I’m going to ask you for the third and final time, Valis: What. Do. You. Want?”
Valis’s expression changed: Gone was the shadowy lizard, and in its place was what Cade might actually consider to be a human being. Valis seemed serious, he seemed intent, but Cade couldn’t decide if it was a moment of authenticity or another layer of subterfuge.
“I want to see Praxis burn,” Valis said, his voice deep and dark. “I want to see their ships, their bases, their flags in flames from one end of this galaxy to the next. Whether you like it or not, Cade Sura, fate has thrust you into a fight that’s larger than you even know. The galaxy calls to you, and you must play your role in service to the Rokura, whatever role that may be.”
Cade studied Valis, staring into his one good eye, expecting him to flinch. But the infomerchant didn’t, not for one second.
“And you think I’ll discover what my role is by finding this former Paragon?” Cade asked.
“Yes,” Valis answered. “I do.”
The decision to pursue Valis’s path, Cade knew, had already been made. If there was a living, breathing Paragon out there, Cade had no choice but to track him down.
“Okay then,” Cade said. “Now tell me who this Paragon is and how I find him.”
“I’m afraid I can’t tell you the former, as I think it’s better that you find out for yourself who he is. But the latter, I can do.”
“Whatever,” Cade said, knowing he had to take what Valis was willing to give him. “Let’s have it.”
“Mithlador. He moves around a lot, but you can find him on Mithlador at the moment.”
Wonderful, Cade thought. Mithlador. A barely habitable planet on the Galactic Fringe that was known for its aggressive hostility toward outsiders. All Cade had to do was fly a ship he didn’t have to a planet nobody could land on. Still, the possibility of another Paragon was better than anything he had, including Kira’s plan to make a suicidal run straight at the War Hammer and deliver a bomb they couldn’t make. Because if this Paragon was out there, Cade was saved. Everyone was saved. All Cade had to do was deliver him the Rokura, point him toward the Praxis kingdom, and let him do the rest.
“Now don’t go getting yourself killed,” Valis said, his tone righting itself as he and his bodyguards walked away. “The galaxy needs you.”
Cade grimaced. There went another person he was soon to disappoint.
* * *
Cade returned to his pod in a daze. He still had doubts about the authenticity of Valis’s claim, even though he knew he had no option but to pursue the one person in the galaxy who could fix everything that had gone terribly, terribly wrong. He looked at Kira with a pang of shame already settling over him; somewhere along the way, he’d have to ditch her, which he wasn’t happy about. She wouldn’t follow him to Mithlador, though, not while she was resolutely committed to seeing her plans through. Kira was the only person Cade knew who was strong and brave enough to have a unique vision and live it out. But while she was convinced of her path, he was just as convinced of his: Going after this former Paragon, whoever he was, was the only way to put the Rokura in safe hands and maybe even make its prophecy of peace a reality. Cade just wished he hadn’t made a promise that, now, he was forced to break. And he wished Kira wouldn’t hate him for what he had to do.
“Where’s the drinks?” Kira asked as Cade took his seat next to her.
“The drinks?”
“Yeah, the ones you left to go and get. Remember?”
“Yeah, right. Too crowded.”
Kira snapped her fingers in front of Cade’s eyes. “Hey, you in there?”
Cade blinked and pulled himself out of his reverie. “Yeah, yeah. Sorry. I’m just tired, I guess.”
“Well, snap out of it. Something you’ll never see again is happening right in front of your eyes. Take a look.”
When Cade saw what Kira was talking about, his jaw dropped.
“Is that … wait. What is a Qel doing here?”
“I’d say it’s getting ready to tear its opponent in half,” Kira commented.
Cade couldn’t take his eyes off what he was seeing. Qels were the stuff of legend; actually, he thought, check that. They would be the stuff of legend if more than a handful of people in the galaxy knew they existed. Because the Well had schooled them on galactic cultures, Cade and Kira knew what they were looking at when they saw the Qel. Otherwise, they, like the entire audience in the pit, would think they were seeing just another modified drone. The Qels were indeed drones, technically, but if they were capable of half the things Cade had heard they could do, that classification hardly fit. Superdrone would be more appropriate. They were strong, fast, agile, and smart, programmed with artificial intelligence that was parsecs beyond the technology that any other system possessed. And that programming was specifically tailored to make them perfect and unstoppable warriors. More drone than drone, more human than human.
Strangely, though, Qels didn’t look like vicious killing machines. As Cade eyed the one in the fighting pit, he was awed by what he saw. The Qel was tall, reaching well over six feet, Cade figured, and it was surprisingly svelte, especially where its torso narrowed before connecting to its hips. Colored in a mixture of olive green and obsidian, the Qel stood with a slight hunch in its posture, its gangly arms stretching below its pelvis. Its chest was double armored, Cade could see, though most of its housing was said to be impenetrable. When the Qel craned its neck in Cade’s direction, he finally got a good look at its face—which stirred a little bit of fright inside of him. The Qel had a rectangular voice box that protruded out from its face and, above that, two oblong, red glowing eyes. While the Qel’s body didn’t scream “murder machine,” its face certainly didn’t invite people to want to be on its bad side. Cade knew he sure wouldn’t.
For some reason, this Qel had also been provided with an overlay that made it seem like it’d been modified with homemade tech. It had propulsive boosters attached to its feet, a weapons system on its right arm, and a control panel / targeting system at the ready on his forehead—but Cade knew it was all for show. Qels had no need for homemade modifications. Th
ey required no help in doing what they were made to do.
“How’d this thing even get here?” Cade asked.
“Look, you know what it is, and I know what it is,” Kira said as she leaned in close and lowered her voice. “But do you think the knuckle-draggers around here know what we know?”
Cade smiled as he realized what Kira was getting at. She was right: The Qels were created with one purpose—to guard the royal palace of Eris and annihilate any threat that dared oppose the throne. A dwarf planet on the cusp of the Galactic Fringe, Eris’s isolationism dated back at least a millennium. They didn’t participate in the Galactic Alliance, and it was rare, nearly inconceivable, for Erisians to leave their home world, permanently or otherwise. How a Qel—manufactured to be a security slave to a planet with tightly shut borders—made its way from Eris to Kyysring was unimaginable. But here it was.
“You want to hear something that will take your mind from blown to obliterated?” Kira asked.
“We’re not at obliterated now?”
“That Qel you’re looking at—that, as far as I can tell, is a model four.”
Cade shook his head. “No way. I’d heard Eris was up to model six. Which would mean…”
“… that all the fours are dead. Apparently,” Kira said, gesturing toward the Qel no more than forty yards away, “at least one is not.”
“This gets weirder and weirder. I’m dying to know who registered him in the fight. Someone has to be bankrolling this thing. But how?”
Kira threw up her arms, surrendering to the mystery. “All I know is, that souped-up manhunter droid is about to get whooped. You can throw a Praxis annihilator in there, and I’d still push coin on the Qel.”
Cade looked over to the manhunter drone, the Qel’s opponent, whom he failed to even consider in his wonderment over the Qel. It stood no chance. Studying the manhunter, Cade could barely count the numerous modifications that encumbered its slender frame, from weapons to shielding to devices Cade wasn’t even familiar with. And that was all in addition to the manhunter’s stock programming, which was already equipped with the necessary skills to track and capture the worst fugitives across the galaxy. Cade now understood why this match was the main event: As much as the denizens of Kyysring loved to gamble, they enjoyed the occasional bloodbath just as much. And this was going to be a bloodbath all right. Just not the way people expected.
The gaming screen set the manhunter odds at 3:2; the Qel, listed as “custom drone” was set at 20:1. Kira pushed five hundred coin on the Qel. Noticing this, Cade threw Kira a surprised look.
“What?” she asked, innocently. “We can buy anything we need, right?”
Cade smiled. He was rubbing off on her.
The air horn boomed, signaling the start of the match. The crowd rose to its feet, the promise of an easy payoff and bearing witness to a lopsided victory unifying them for the first time all evening.
The combatants circled each other cautiously; the manhunter wasn’t as cocky and therefore not as rash as the Nootharian had been in the previous match. Though it didn’t know what it was up against, the manhunter knew better than to underestimate any opponent. In fact, it was that uncertainty that made the drone slow to act. Manhunters were programmed with extensive knowledge of humans, aliens, and drones throughout the galaxy, and they acted according to this knowledge. Doubtless, this manhunter had no supporting data on the adversary that circled slowly around him. Still, Cade knew that particular disadvantage was the least of the manhunter’s problems.
As the manhunter and the Qel continued their showdown, the crowd grew restless. Stuffed with booze and zep, many shouted their disapproval and urged the fighting to begin. Obscenities were lobbed, then empty liquor bottles. Cade looked at Kira, sharing an exasperated groan.
“Another happy day on Kyysring,” he said.
Maybe in response to the crowd’s restlessness, the manhunter finally made its move and seized the crowd’s anticipation. The entire audience, save Cade and Kira, roared as the manhunter shot an electroaxe out from the apparatus on its right arm and brought it down, mightily, on the Qel. With little effort, the Qel dodged the attack, weaving to its right. The manhunter, committed to its offensive strategy, continued to take swipes at the Qel; each attack was met with equal fluidity of movement from the Qel, until finally it decided to stop toying with its enemy. As the manhunter brought the electroaxe down for an overhead strike, the Qel held his ground. It clamped both its hands directly over the manhunter’s, halting the electroaxe’s descent. As they remained locked in this static position—the Qel gripped on the manhunter, who was struggling to break free—an astonished awe fell over the crowd. They knew something crazy was about to go down.
With no more than a tug from his forearms, the Qel tore the electroaxe from the manhunter’s hands, taking its arm modification apparatus with him. The manhunter stumbled back and, from a compartment in its own chest, it removed a single barrel X-19 sentry pistol, but, anticipating this move, the Qel rolled into a somersault just as a shot was fired. The Qel leapt out of his roll toward the manhunter; before the drone could raise its pistol and have it pointed at its opponent, who was coming on fast, the Qel descended on it, bringing its fist down on the manhunter’s face. The crunching sound hushed the crowd. The hoots and hollers, the stomping feet and clanging root bottles, all of it stopped. If the Qel had their interest before, now it had their attention. Because when the manhunter snapped its head back into position, the bottom half of its face was missing. Cade spotted it on the nearby ground, a small oval piece of metal glinting in the light cast from overhead.
Desperation set in for the manhunter. Meanwhile, the Qel, if Cade was hearing correctly, sounded like it was laughing. Which Cade found odd. It seemed to be enjoying the grisly blood sport, or maybe it just delighted in the thrill of victory. Either way, its joviality was more than a little unnerving.
The manhunter fired off one last wild shot from its pistol before the Qel knocked it from its hand. The combatants were in close quarters now, the Qel not giving the manhunter space or time to regroup. It tried to draw another weapon, this time from an apparatus on its leg, but the Qel kicked the manhunter at its knee joint, cleanly breaking it in two, then crushed its hand in its own. The manhunter dropped to its belly and was reduced to crawling away from the Qel, pulling its body with its one good arm toward its electroaxe. Abandoning all pretense, the Qel shoved off his modifications that, if anything, encumbered its natural abilities.
Just as the manhunter reached the electroaxe, the Qel snatched the weapon from its grasp. The manhunter was defeated, and the Qel had no interest in toying with it. It rose the electroaxe to the sky and plunged it into the manhunter’s backside, through its powering unit, efficiently ending the manhunter and the match.
The arena was silent. Knowing his home planet all too well, Cade figured they were about to cheer or riot. Cade was glad and relieved when they chose the former, erupting in wild applause. They all lost money—except Kira, who was collecting her coins—but the brutal thrill of what they’d just witnessed compensated for lost wages.
“Take your prize!” Cade heard a nearby Galibadan shout, the words gurgling through the two curved tusks that protruded outward from near his mouth. “Take your prize!” he repeated, and within moments, the yell became a chant. “Take your prize! Take your prize!” bellowed throughout the arena.
Kira leaned over to Cade, yelling in his ear so she could be heard. “Should I even ask?”
Cade drew a breath, then explained how it was customary for a winning combatant in the main event to take the head of its victim.
“Great,” Kira intoned. “Now I feel even worse about winning money off this.”
When the Qel failed to respond to the audience’s insistence, Cade thought it was for dramatic effect. But as it stood at the pit’s exit, the Qel gave the crowd one last surprise: It scanned the entire audience, and every single person waited for this mystery drone to do something. And it did
: It delivered an affirming double thumbs-up into the air. It was possibly the weirdest thing Cade had ever seen.
Pandemonium ensued. If there was one thing the denizens of Kyysring shared in common—other than being scumbags and lowlifes—it was their devotion to upholding the customs of the drone fighting pit. These were traditions that went back years, and they were tied to the essential character of Kyysring itself. Taking an opponent’s head, as a mark of victory in illegal battle, was the period on the sentence that said “Kyysring doesn’t follow your rules.” Bucking that statement—a statement that explicitly warned every galactic system to keep their law and order to themselves—was one of the few insults that anyone on Kyysring could suffer.
But, as indignant as the crowd was, based on what they’d witnessed of the Qel’s fight, they knew not to take their aggressions too far. The way out of the oval pit led straight to the grandstand, and the aggrieved audience in the Qel’s path all parted to make a clear lane for his exit.
All except one person.
A man around Cade’s age joined the Qel midway through his walk up the ramp that led to the arena’s exit. Cade only caught a glimpse of him—short and lean with a head full of unruly curly hair—in profile, but it was enough. Cade elbowed his way through the crowd ahead, trying to get a clearer look at the Qel’s companion. Cade kept his eyes on him, not wanting to lose sight of him for a moment. But just as this man and the Qel were about to leave, the man turned his face to look back at the crowd, and at the exact second, a burly Nootharian stepped directly in Cade’s field of vision, blocking him completely. A series of “boos” rattled through the crowd, and Cade looked up to see the source of the jeers: The Qel’s companion was plastered on the overhead projector so the entire crowd could know who he was.
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