“All the misery in our lives—the real misery—Praxis has been behind it all,” Cade said to Mig once his punches subsided into exhausted jabs. “And you—you want to give them the Rokura. Well, here,” Cade removed the Rokura from his back and dropped it at Mig’s feet. “Take it.”
An alarm began to blare, and the cockpit’s overhead light flashed in a continuous loop. Cade looked at Kira, who was monitoring the control panel.
“We’re being boarded,” she said. “They’re coming in through the airlock.”
The cockpit fell silent. Everyone looked to everyone else, searching for something they couldn’t find within themselves. Comfort. A solution. But there was nothing.
Cade drew his sidewinder and grabbed the Rokura from the ground. He supposed it was possible that it would get him out of this mess, but he wasn’t confident. If it was the only chance they had, he had no choice but to give it a shot.
“Kira, send out a distress signal,” Cade said. “If we can hold the cockpit, then—”
“Whoever comes for us, they’ll…” Kira’s words drifted off as she struggled to finish saying what they all knew. Admitting defeat didn’t come easily to Kira, nor did surrendering to a fate that promised to be violent and cruel. “They’ll take us. They’ll take all of us and turn us over to Praxis.”
Cade smiled at Kira, though it was a sad smile. He already regretted this being the end of their time together. “We’ll just have to take our chances,” he said.
Kira nodded and drew her sidewinder. She stood next to Cade, ready.
“Mig,” she said, “you have to send out the distress signal. You’re the only one who can.”
Mig didn’t respond. He hadn’t moved; he may not have even blinked since the alarm went off. He was just standing there, staring at the door.
“Mig,” Kira said. “Mig! Set the signal.”
“No,” Mig replied. “We’re not doing this.”
Mig hurried past Cade and Kira and started rifling through his pack, which he’d dropped on the floor next to the pilot’s seat.
“We don’t have time for this, Mig,” Cade said. “Set the signal.”
“You heard Kira,” Mig replied. “Whoever comes—assuming they make it before the Krell eat our intestines for lunch—will send us on a one-way trip to Praxis, and that ain’t happening.” Mig turned and, in each of his hands, he held an orb with a single red light in the center. Explosives of his own design, Cade assumed. “Let’s blow these jerks back to whatever hole they crawled out of.”
Mig loaded a charge into his sidewinder and slung his pack over his shoulder. Cade eyed him skeptically.
“Uh, Mig, how is blowing up our own ship—with us in it—going to help?”
“I’m not going to blow up the ship, I’m going to blow up the airlock,” Mig said with a satisfied smile. Even when his plans ended with his own death, he still found satisfaction in being the smartest person in the room. Being able to cause mayhem was just icing on the cake. “These are special explosives—made them myself. They erupt like any proton-charged bomb, but they also emit a containment field. Which means—if done right—I can blow the airlock, kill the Krell, and break the tractor beam’s hold, all while containing the very breach I create. Sexy, right?”
Cade stepped in Mig’s way, stopping him from reaching the door. He looked at Mig and saw what he’d been wanting to see since he spotted him at the drone pit: his friend. This was the Mig he knew—clever, inventive, resourceful, caring, and deeply dedicated to the few people he held close. Cade had feared that the Mig he’d encountered the last few times they’d met—bitter, angry, selfish—had destroyed what was the real, true person he’d known better than anyone else in the galaxy. But, consistent with the galaxy’s penchant for balancing something good with something terrible, Cade’s friend returned just in time to die. Of course.
“You can’t do this, Mig,” Cade said. “You’ll—”
“That’s why I’ll do it,” 4-Qel interrupted, grabbing the pack from Mig. “I can fight off the Krell long enough and well enough to set off the explosions in the airlock and ensure the containment field is fully established.”
Mig grabbed hold of 4-Qel’s arm; he pulled him back with all his weight, trying to prevent him from leaving. It was a futile effort: 4-Qel was much too strong for Mig to cause him to even break his stride. “No!” Mig yelled. “This is my idea, so I’m the one who will—”
4-Qel stopped. He turned and put his hand on Mig’s shoulder, both a gesture of comfort and a way to stop Mig’s interference. Cade saw fear in Mig’s eyes as he looked up at 4-Qel, and he realized that their relationship wasn’t the mercenary union of greed Cade had assumed it to be. They were friends.
“I will return,” 4-Qel said, then exited the cockpit.
There was nothing for Cade, Kira, and Mig to do now but wait—wait and listen. They crept toward the cockpit door, silently so as not to drown out any sounds coming from the other side. The hush within the Rubicon dragged on for what felt like hours, only to be pierced by the sound of a high-pitched scream, like the sound of a wild animal thrashing in its death throes. Cade startled, and his body, from natural aversion, moved away from the door. There were more screams—neither human nor animal—each as bloodcurdling as the one that came before it. Cade knew it was a sound he could never get used to.
Mig mumbled a string of obscenities to himself. “Come on, 4-Qel,” he said. “Come on.”
The sound of sidewinder fire echoed through the ship, subduing some of the screams. That sign of life helped give them all a little bit of ease, especially Mig, though Cade struggled to keep himself from charging out the door and helping 4-Qel. Kira read his body language well enough to know what he was considering; she grabbed his wrist, hard, and told him “No.” It was a direct order.
After a few frenzied seconds, the sound of sidewinder discharges came to an end, as did the screams. The ship was silent once more as Cade, Kira, and Mig waited for the ship to blow up.
“Where are the explosions?” Cade asked. “Why aren’t the explosions happening?”
“They got to Four-Qel!” Mig screamed as he unloaded, then reloaded his sidewinder. “I’m going to kill every last one of those mangy fu—”
In an instant, the ship was rocked so hard by detonations that it was sent careening through space—through the debris field. Sensors screamed as the Rubicon smashed and bashed into broken chunks of meteors, ruptured ships, and other random bits of space junk. Cade knew that if they didn’t get this ship under control, the Rubicon would be joining this junkyard.
“Geez, Mig!” Cade yelled. “How many explosives were in your pack?!”
“I don’t like to take chances, okay?!” Mig hollered back as he, Cade, and Kira spun uncontrollably with the ship’s revolutions.
Kira, though, managed to get her bearings and move with the ship’s spin. Cade could see her getting at least a modicum of control of her body and, at the exact moment she was coming into alignment with the control panel from the opposite side of the room, she kicked off the ship’s wall and propelled herself forward. Without an inch to spare, Kira grabbed on to the pilot’s chair, pulled herself down, and strapped herself in. She shouted at Mig for the code to unlock the control panel and, with the reins back in her hands, Kira fired opposing thrusters and stabilized the ship.
Mig and Cade both dropped from the top of the cockpit and crashed to the ground.
Straightening out his jaw—which he felt had been jarred loose during his spin cycle around the cockpit—Cade took the seat next to Kira. “We good?”
Kira scanned the monitors. “Looks clear to me. Although I’m pretty sure we expended every ounce of whatever luck we had in the past few hours. We shouldn’t tempt fate by sticking around any longer than we have to.”
At the sound of the cockpit door sliding open behind him, Cade leapt from his seat and trained his sidewinder on whatever was coming through. He breathed a deep sigh of relief when he spotted 4-Qel, wh
o held his own severed right arm as he walked in.
“They are indeed savages,” 4-Qel noted. “And quite unattractive, too.”
Mig attended to 4-Qel right away, examining his arm where it’d been ripped off. “Ah, don’t worry about that, buddy. It’s a clean break; I can have you patched up in no time.”
“And then you’re going to get my ship back to the way it was,” Kira said as Mig helped 4-Qel into the seat behind her.
“I will,” Mig said. “And, look … I’m sorry. I think I got so used to fighting for myself that I forgot what the most important fight is.”
“And what’s that?” Cade asked.
“The ones you fight for someone else,” Mig replied. “Tristan taught me that.”
Cade stood at the head of the cockpit; behind him, nothing but limitless, wide-open space occupied the Rubicon’s massive glass exterior.
“Listen, we all have reason to be angry,” Cade said. “At Praxis, at the cruel hand of the galaxy, whatever. But none of that matters. I don’t know about the rest of you, but I’m tired of wishing for something else and never getting it. I’m tired of wanting to be somewhere else, wanting to be someone else, thinking that a better life is just going to fall into my lap. This is our chance to do something big—we have a chance to make a difference, and that doesn’t happen very often. So let’s take this chance and do something nobody expects us to do: Let’s win.”
Cade looked around the cockpit and spotted three faces that all agreed with him. Where they were from, what they did, what had been done to them—none of it mattered. What mattered was seizing this opportunity and proving to themselves, and the entire galaxy, that they were more than people thought they could be. They’d surprise them all, and they’d do so by striking at the heart of the galaxy’s ruling order.
“All right then,” Cade said, settling into the copilot’s seat, “for the last time, let’s please get as far away from this planet as fast as possible.”
“Agreed,” Kira added as she turned her attention to the control panel. “Where to?”
“Koruvite,” Mig said.
Kira cocked an eyebrow. “Um … is that a planet?”
“No, it is not,” Mig replied. “Koruvite is an element—a rare, rare element, but if you want to shield your bomb from a burning star, koruvite is what you need.”
“And you know where we can get some koruvite, I hope?” Cade chimed in.
“Yup,” Mig replied. “A little forgotten nowheresville called Mithlador. There’s a mining colony there—it’s the only place where koruvite can be found. Other than, you know, raiding Praxis’s pantry.”
“Mithlador, you say?” Cade said, beaming at Kira. “Mith-la-dor. Well, I have to say, that’s very, very interesting.”
“Oh, shut up,” Kira replied, programming their course into the mass-jump system.
“Hey, maybe fate is throwing us a bone for once.”
“Not likely,” Kira said. “The two things that we need are both in the same place? That’s not fate; that’s improbable coincidence. Which means it’s not a coincidence at all.”
“Like you said,” Cade shrugged, “it’s not like we can turn around and go home.”
“No, but we should probably be prepared for this to all go wrong at some point.”
“Your assessment of our situation does very little to inspire,” 4-Qel commented from his seat behind Kira.
“No kidding,” Mig agreed. “We might as well just jump out the airlock now.”
“All right, all right,” Kira conceded. “I just like to be prepared. It’s what I do.”
Cade smiled. “Hey, when you have a team like this…?”
Kira looked around the cockpit, and Cade felt like they were seeing the same thing: a one-armed Qel, a troublemaking genius, a rebellious pilot, and a counterfeit savior.
“Sure,” Kira said with a sardonic grin. “How can we lose?”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Ga Halle closed her eyes and imagined what it would be like to quietly unsheathe her shido and, without saying a word, kill every member of the Barons quorum.
As she listened to the Barons prattle on about all the luxuries their lives afforded—of their peculiar diets, their starship collections, their refined taste in art—Ga Halle turned her attention to the circular viewing port that was positioned at the apex of the monolithic tower lording over the base of operations for her entire fleet. From it, Ga Halle took in the enormity of the Praxis Fortress, the massive superstation that she and her army of Fatebreakers, gunners, infantrymen, and Intruder pilots called home. The station was built to satisfy Ga Halle’s strategic need to possess a battleship that would consolidate the Praxis forces and uniformly mold their allegiance and sense of purpose. The Fortress wasn’t meant to be an offensive vessel—something the Barons fought Ga Halle vigorously over in its planning stages, arguing it should be swifter and nimbler—it was meant to be the ultimate stronghold, both physically and psychologically. Ga Halle knew what it was like to be beaten and have nowhere to run, and she vowed to protect those under her command from the same despair; the Fortress ensured that, no matter what happened, the idea of Praxis and the people who fell under its rubric would never be exterminated from the galaxy. Praxis would endure.
But the Fortress wasn’t perfect. One blemish, one blight on its landscape, prevented Ga Halle from fully embracing it as belonging to her.
The Baron’s Sanctuary.
Centrally located on the Fortress, Sanctuary was a single-purpose edifice that stood higher than anything else on the station. This was the one thing the Barons overruled Ga Halle on, demanding a place to call their own during their rare trips to the Fortress. Like the Barons themselves, Sanctuary was an unnecessary addendum to an efficient system, a rusty gear that was responsible for slowing all the other gears that were churning toward progress. Its interior was an exhibition of frivolities and excess, overfurnished and accentuated with precious metals heisted from Praxis’s own reserves. These people, Ga Halle thought with disgust, were more focused on their own vanity than reinforcing the ambition of the Praxis regime—to definitively rule for the good of the Praxis kingdom and, in time, the entire galaxy. This space offered Ga Halle no sanctuary, contrasting so starkly with her own Sutra Room that she wondered if she and the Barons were so far apart that they were of two minds on even the simplest of terms. Though Ga Halle’s means were vast, her end was clear: She dared to be the first real galactic leader, and in her reign she’d bring order. To the Barons, though, means and ends were the same things: They wanted power for the sake of power, possessions for the sake of possessions. Their lust was insatiable, their thirst, unquenchable.
The divide between them is what drove Ga Halle’s designs to rid Praxis of the Barons like so many cancerous cells obliterated from their host. Her personal differences aside, Ga Halle knew that no kingdom could strive where there’s discord. Uniformity in thought, uniformity in deed, and uniformity in sentiment were essential to the sustainability of Ga Halle’s dream, and she wouldn’t allow that dream to be compromised by the bourgeois elite who knew nothing of real pain, sacrifice, and commitment—not the way Ga Halle did.
Still, she stifled the rage within her and kept her shido at her side. This was just a briefing session, one like so many others. The Barons, five in total, would half-listen to Ga Halle’s selective report on the latest activities within Fortress; they’d drink their hosberry wine and return to Praxis having felt like they accomplished something.
“Ga Halle,” one of the Barons summoned. “Ga Halle.”
Ga Halle broke her train of thought and focused her attention on Baron Chang, who was sprawled on the couch, swirling a glass of wine. He had an exasperated expression, and Ga Halle could tell by his tone that he’d paged her a few times. She’d tuned that elitist cabal out so thoroughly she hadn’t even recognized the Barons turning their attention to her.
“Yes, Baron Chang?” Ga Halle answered, her voice calm and steady.
“We’d like to bring into question the audacity that drove your most recent activity.”
Ga Halle’s eyes narrowed as she cast a gaze at Baron Chang that, hopefully, he interpreted as her desire to use her shido to cut him in half.
“Your assault on Ticus was not only unsanctioned, but it goes against our agreement to not wage an offensive conflict against the Well,” Baron Kanta—who recently filled his mother’s role as Baron after her passing—added. “When our takeover is complete, we need the Well as our ally, willfully or otherwise, to keep many contentious planets under our thumbs. We want to look like unifiers, not conquerors.”
The four other Barons murmured in agreement, touching on Baron Kanta’s final point despite how heavily, to Ga Halle, it reeked of faux profundity. She chose to remain silent and listen, though, afraid of where a heated debate might lead.
“And what of these reports of Praxis activity on Mithlador?” Baron Paqlin questioned. “We left that system long ago. Why return?”
Ga Halle smiled. “Housekeeping. It should be known that Praxis keeps a watchful eye on its domain. Especially when valuable assets are at stake.”
“More to the point,” Kanta interrupted, “we understand your actions were driven by the rumor of the Rokura somehow surfacing at the Well. Yet in your attack, you were unable to retrieve the weapon. Might I ask, how can you even be certain it was there in the first place? Are we to believe that, after all this time, the Rokura has been released from stasis again?”
“I’m confident of my source within the Well,” Ga Halle replied.
“And who is this source?” Paqlin asked, making sure the skepticism in her voice was as clear as possible.
“Revealing that information could jeopardize the life of my source, and I cannot do that.”
The Barons shared a tense look, silently agreeing with one another. Maybe they’d been sharper on Ga Halle’s activities than she gave them credit for; maybe they knew she was operating in what was essentially a rogue state outside her home planet. Never before did the Barons question Ga Halle; never did they even seek out details of the war she’d been waging, in their names, on the galaxy. Yes, bringing that war to the Well’s doorstep was a controversial move, but Ga Halle never thought it would’ve woken the Barons from their slumber. There was something else going on—like Ga Halle herself, the Barons were up to something.
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