“Seriously, Mig? What are you going to do?” Cade asked as he squared up against Mig, standing a head taller than him. “You’re not going to kill me, so let’s just cut to the point.”
Mig smiled a devilish smile. “You’re right, I’m not going to kill you. But I am going to settle our score.”
“Is that so?” Cade said, pushing Mig’s sidewinder away from his body. “You and what army?”
“That one,” Mig said, his eyes leading to over Cade’s shoulder. Cade turned and reacted with a start when he saw the Qel hovering over him like it’d appeared out of nowhere. Suddenly, the game had changed.
“I figure you owe me a ship,” Mig said. “You must have gotten here somehow. Well, that somehow belongs to me now.”
“Uh, no,” Kira said, stepping toward Mig. “That ship is mine, and it will not be used to settle your little love spat.”
Mig responded, calling attention to the Qel, but Cade had tuned him out. He was looking around the room, curious why every single set of eyes was locked directly on him. They weren’t following the debate between Kira and Mig, and they didn’t seem the least interested in the Qel. It was solely Cade, and he couldn’t understand why—not until his eyes drifted up, catching sight of the massive projector screen that hung in the center of the room.
There, Cade saw his face slapped on a typical bounty transmission and posted for the entire room to see. “Typical,” though, wasn’t quite a fitting word, because there was nothing typical about the bounty being offered by the Praxis kingdom for his capture: ten coin fourthed, which was basically enough for someone to buy their own private planetoid.
And if the call for anyone in the galaxy with a firearm to make a run at Cade didn’t sufficiently spice up his evening, the transmission also had a nice addendum attached to it, spilling the beans that Cade was the Paragon and that the bounty wasn’t complete unless the Rokura, and Cade’s accomplices, were also captured.
“Oh no,” Cade said as he stumbled backward and bumped into the Qel.
The Qel looked down at Cade, its face expressionless. “Mig wanted you to know that I can throw you through the dome up there,” it said in a gruff male voice, indicating the ceiling.
“You know what?” Cade asked. “That doesn’t sound like a bad idea right about now.”
Kira and Mig were still bickering over the finer points of ownership and debt when Cade grabbed them both by their shoulder. “Guys,” Cade said, his wavering voice drowned out by Kira and Mig’s increasingly heated argument. So he yelled, “GUYS!”
Both Kira and Mig stopped mid-sentence, and they both realized, at the same time, that the entire room had gotten silent around them.
“We’ve got a problem,” Cade said, nodding to the bounty projection.
Kira, Mig, and the Qel looked up as a murmur started to grow among the crowd. Cade realized it was only a matter of time, and not much of it, before somebody made their move.
“Wait—what?” Mig said, turning back to look at Cade, his face trying to shake off his incredulity but failing. “How?”
“Cade,” Kira interrupted, looking at her comms device, which displayed a miniature-size projection of the bounty transmission just above her wrist. “This … this is bad. That was broadcast everywhere.”
“Okay, okay,” Cade said, swallowing hard. “Let’s just back out of here, act like nothing’s wrong and—”
“Oh, you ain’t going nowhere,” a voice called.
Cade turned to see a man standing behind a table that was positioned between Cade and the elevator bank. He had deep scarring over much of his face—burns, it looked like—and an enormous, modified shock rifle perched casually on his shoulder. A bounty hunter, no doubt. “Nowhere ’cept the nearest Praxis warship.”
“You better think again.” Behind Cade, a female Kaldorian called out, her voice muffled through the helmet customarily worn by her species. The helmet—deep indigo and chipped, scuffed, even cracked from the action it’d seen—covered her entire face, revealing nothing of her appearance; two small ocular lenses collected the visual data from the room and projected everything a Kaldorian needed to know, and then some, within the helmet. Cade had worn one once and thought it was the coolest thing ever. “Praxis will not be getting its hands on him, his weapon, or his friends.”
The scarred man scoffed as he dropped his rifle from his shoulder and into his hand. “That boy’s worth the biggest bounty I’ve ever seen. Biggest bounty there ever was, I reckon, and I’m gonna collect it. Be willin’ to split it, in fact, if anyone wants to join me.”
Cade watched as three other men, all brandishing their weapons, stood up around the room.
“Are you out of your minds?!” A Nootharian, accompanied by a service drone, stepped behind the Kaldorian. Cade recognized them immediately—they were the pair from the fighting pit. “This is the Paragon, the Chosen One. He’s the only one who can stop Praxis, and you want to hand him over to those evil bastards? They tore my planet apart. We have no food, no coin, no future. Praxis took everything from us, and if you think you’re going to rob the galaxy of its one chance at stopping them…” The Nootharian paused as he clicked a handheld remote to switch his drone into battle mode; the drone stepped in front of its master, shielding him, and pulled a pair of blasters out from its legs and trained them on his enemies. “… you’ll do so over our dead bodies.”
Nearby, a Toofar slammed his fist on a gaming table, stood up, and barked, “Ar ar ar ar,” at the scarred man. Cade assumed he was voicing his agreement with the Nootharian.
Near the Toofar, a human got to her feet. “Praxis destroyed my home,” she said.
A Quarrian joined the chorus. “They annihilated my planet,” he said.
Then another human: “Those bastards burned my farm to the ground. I lost everything because of them.”
Others stood as well, of various species, unified in their refusal to give Praxis one more inch of a galaxy that belonged to no kingdom: It belonged to the people, these people. Cade looked around and felt the genuine frustration, bitterness, and sense of loss these people harbored, and he realized they were the same. How many loved ones did Praxis murder? How much land did the kingdom illegally seize from its rightful owners? How many people were, in some way, worse off because Praxis decided it was going to run the galaxy? It made him angry, but he also felt inspired. If just one person, one symbol, can rally the souls of Kyysring, he could only imagine what something larger might spark. Something like the entire galaxy watching the Praxis War Hammer burning as it fell from the sky.
But just as Cade thought the mess he found himself in was going to be okay, the elevator chimed, its tinny bell sounding loud and clear throughout the entire room. Everyone turned their attention to the doors as a feeling of expectancy saturated the room.
And that feeling hit a gasping pitch when a Darklands gang entered the casino.
Four of them stomped out of the elevator, all donned in tightly fitting black cloaks covering them from head to toe; they were well armored, well armed, and their reputation as merciless killers, kidnappers, and more was no secret in any corner of the galaxy. When Cade was a kid, the Darklands gangs were the boogeymen, ever present but never seen; his parents would threaten that, if he didn’t behave, the Darklanders would come for him. For the longest time, Cade assumed that, like most monsters, they didn’t exist. But he was wrong. The Darklands gangs were monsters, there was no doubting that—but they were real monsters. And they had, as his parents promised, come for him.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Cade said.
“Cade Sura,” the gang’s leader said in a monotone voice as he stepped in front of his pack, “we are taking you to the Praxis kingdom without delay. Anyone who stands in our way will be killed. The bounty specifies you and your three friends are to be brought in alive—but if you resist, you’ll wish being kept alive wasn’t a stipulation of the reward. In the event you doubt my words—”
Right on cue, the soun
d of glass smashing—erupting, it seemed more like—filled the room. At least a half dozen more Darklanders, equipped with rocket packs and armed with power pikes, came crashing through the windows and surrounded the crowd. Along with their buddies who’d entered through the elevators, they formed a tight circle that, step by careful step, was closing in on Cade.
That’s when pandemonium broke loose. Cade had no idea who shot first and sparked the chaos, but it didn’t matter. He was trapped in a close-quarters firefight with very, very bad people on all sides. And too many of them were gunning for him.
“DOWN!” Kira shouted as she shoved Cade to the ground, spraying offensive fire as they both dropped.
The Qel, with little effort, flipped the wellington table on its side and shoved it in front of Cade, Kira, Mig, and himself. They were still screwed, Cade was certain of that, but at least they had some cover to protect them from the errant crossfire. With any luck, they’d leave this room as captives, not corpses. And if that was the case, wherever they ended up, Cade at least had a chance to bargain for his friends’ lives.
Well, “friends” might not have been the best word, Cade thought as Mig grabbed him by the shirt and stuffed his sidewinder into his face. Cade realized it’d been modified; Mig had added a third barrel that shot who-knows-what. Cade wasn’t eager to find out.
“Cade, that lunatic said your ‘three friends,’” Mig spat. “He better have been referring to two people who aren’t Four-Qel and me.”
Cade shrugged Mig off and peeked over the table. Every inch of the room was complete and total anarchy. Some people took strategic positions behind support beams and overturned tables; some were simply punching each other’s faces in, and the smart ones were crawling toward the elevators. The one thing they had in common was that none of them had the slightest idea what they were fighting for, not really, and that was all Cade’s fault. He realized that he had to either figure out how to be the Paragon—or fake being the Paragon—or flee the galaxy forever. If he didn’t, this kind of madness would happen to him, and the people around him, wherever he went.
“Don’t worry, all right?” Cade said. “I’m going to find a way to surrender.”
Blaster fire erupted through the table directly between Cade and Mig. A few inches either way, and one of them would be dead. “Damn it, Cade!” Mig growled as he unleashed wild shots over the table’s edge. “Now I really am going to kill you!”
“Nobody is surrendering, and no one is going to lay one finger on Cade,” Kira yelled. She was down on one knee, taking shots at anyone who got too close. The Qel was in the same position on the opposite side of the table, efficiently targeting whomever it could get in its sights. “We’re getting out of here. Mig, do you or your Qel know any other escape from this place?”
“Hey, he’s not ‘my Qel,’ okay? He’s a Qel, and his name is Four-Qel.”
Kira looked back at Mig, her face exploding with anger. “Who cares!? Is there another way out or not?”
“There’s no stairs, no other elevators. There’s not even any paneling that connects this level to the rest of the building. It’s like it’s totally separ—”
Cade almost leapt to his feet, out of cover, when he felt the floor beneath him begin to shake. It was nothing but a murmur at first, then the quaking got more intense and then more, until Cade began to wonder why, exactly, this high-stakes gaming floor was perched on those six stilts at the top level of the Koga Club.
There was a momentary ceasefire as everyone readjusted to the floor, which felt like rolling thunder beneath their feet. Mig stood up and he looked around in terrified awe. “No. Effing. Way.”
Cade joined him. “It can’t be. For real—it can’t be.”
“What?” Kira asked, agitated, slamming another charge into her sidewinder. “Spit it out—we don’t have time to be mystified.”
The room jostled again and through the broken windows came the piercing sound of squealing metal. It sounded like it was metal that hadn’t moved in a long time.
It sounded like it was detaching.
“This place—” Cade said, drawing in a deep breath, “it’s a ship!”
Cade could feel the ship’s thrusters coming to life, breathing a vibrato hum throughout the floor. It wouldn’t be long before the room was free of the Koga—before it blasted off into space.
“We have to get out of here,” Kira said, and Cade could feel the panic in her voice. “We cannot get trapped in this ship.”
Cade looked around, searching for something, anything, that could offer an escape. Instead, he watched as things went from bad to worse. Thick metal shutters were beginning to slam shut in sequence around the room, over each of the windows. That was their only way out, Cade determined, so they had to either bust their way through or die trying. It was a choice between staying and definitely dying, or breaking out and maybe dying.
So many pleasant choices these days.
Cade grabbed his shido and ignited it. Just ahead, he spotted a window that was still open, but the closing shutters were coming to it fast. Even if they bolted for it right away, they wouldn’t make it.
“Four-Qel!” Cade yelled. “You’re first. The window straight ahead—I need you to jump through the shutter that’s about to close.”
4-Qel shrugged. “Okay,” he said and took off, charging ahead at a remarkable clip. Just as the shutter closed, 4-Qel erupted through it, shredding through the metal as he leapt out the window.
“What do you think you’re doing?!” Mig screamed in Cade’s face.
“Shut up and go!” Cade urged, shoving Mig ahead. Mig, with 4-Qel already gone and knowing he had no other option, did what he was told; Cade saw him jump out of the hole made by 4-Qel—and right into 4-Qel’s grasp, who was hanging by a power line just outside the ship.
“All right, I’ll catch the line with my shido. You—” Cade turned to address Kira, but she was paces behind him, firing at the Darklanders who were rushing toward them and gaining fast.
“NO!” Cade bellowed.
“Go!” Kira commanded. “Get out of here.”
The ship’s nose began to rise as its thrusters neared maximum power. There wasn’t much time.
But Cade wasn’t leaving Kira.
Cade charged back, running faster than he ever had in his life. Just as one of the three Darklanders was about to bring the electrified blade of its power pike down on Kira’s head, Cade blocked it with his shido.
“I don’t think so,” he spat.
Cade swung his shido around, knocking the Darklander’s power pike around and back, into a nearby Darklander. The blade dug into his chest and electrocuted him. Cade then sliced the pike-wielding Darklander with his shido, and Kira fired three blasts into the other. Still, more were coming.
“Good thing you came back—you’d never figure out how to disarm the Rubicon’s security without me,” Kira said with a wink.
Cade smiled. “Yeah, sure. That’s why I came for you.”
They bolted for the shattered shutter, feeling the heat of blaster fire scream past their heads. The ship was taking off, and Cade realized that when that happened, the power line—their only escape—would be out of reach. Which meant zipping down to the ground would be more like falling down to the ground from a very great height. The latter was sure to get them killed.
Cade pushed his body as hard as he could and leapt out the window. He stretched his arms out, and by some stroke of luck, the tip of his shido caught the power line. He barely had time to look up when he felt Kira pounce on his back, gripping him tightly.
“Let’s go,” she said.
Cade did as he was told as Kira wrapped her arms around his neck. He liked the feeling, but when he looked back at Kira, unaware of the goofy grin on his face, she told him, “Focus, Sura,” which was enough to get him to whip his head back to facing forward.
When they reached where the power line ended—a safe enough distance from the ground to drop from—Cade was surprised to fin
d Mig and 4-Qel waiting for them.
“Now what?” Mig asked.
Cade looked at Mig with a quizzical eye. “Now? Now you ditch us. What are you waiting around for?”
“You got us into this mess,” Mig said, poking his finger in Cade’s chest. “And now you, the almighty Paragon, are going to get us out of it.”
“Actually, Mig,” Cade said, using his thumb and forefinger to delicately remove Mig’s finger from his chest, “it’s you who’s going to get us out of this.”
“Aaaah,” Mig said, and Cade watched as the pieces clicked together in his mind. “I knew it. You’re here because you want something.”
“It’s a little more complicated than th—”
“Excuse me,” 4-Qel interrupted. “As captivating as this argument is, it isn’t. I was being sarcastic, though my tone doesn’t convey that. Anyway, we’re drawing attention.”
Cade studied the scene around them. The milling denizens of Kyysring—there were always people milling, no matter what time of day—had noticed Cade. In their daze, whether from drugs, booze, or something else, they hadn’t quite pieced together why he looked so familiar. But they would, and it would be chaos all over again when they did.
“I don’t know about the rest of you,” Kira said, keeping a cautious eye on everyone around them, “but I’ve had enough of this planet.”
Mig and 4-Qel shared a glance; Mig shrugged. “We’re burned here.”
“Great, that’s good enough to call this an agreement,” Cade said, leading them toward the spaceport. “Now let’s get off this damn rock.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Ortzo knew that the point of torture was to extract truth. Not information—truth. In his many travels across the galaxy, Ortzo had witnessed this interrogation tactic misused, or misunderstood, far too many times. Apply enough pain to your subject, fill them with enough desperation and fear, and they’re likely to tell you anything. And when that happens, with nothing but misinformation gained, you’re worse off than you were before the conversation even began. Torture’s purpose wasn’t to get someone to talk—no. Nor was its purpose to provide a sadistic thrill. Torture was a tool—a barbaric one at that, in Ortzo’s opinion, but not without value—that extracted whatever truth there was to be had. Nothing more, nothing less.
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