Black Star Renegades

by Michael Moreci

  “Daaaaamn. How?” Mig asked, impressed.

  Percival smiled. “Very carefully.”

  Kira cleared her throat. “Getting back to the matter at hand: We need that koruvite, and we would already have it if it wasn’t for the Praxis blockade. How do we get around that?”

  “That’s a real problem,” Percival agreed. “And it’s no better on the surface. Praxis has occupied the entire colony, and they’re forcing the Mithladorians into long, brutal work shifts in order to mine koruvite as fast as possible. Based on the intel I’ve gathered, I take it they’re building more War Hammers. That’s why we’re here: We’re going to stop them.”

  Everyone sunk down a bit as the gravity of Percival’s words took hold. The galaxy was teetering on its last leg, and Praxis was just waiting to kick it out from underneath.

  “Once they destroy the Well, there’ll be no more need for Praxis to even mask what they’re after—complete domination,” Kira asked.

  “Which is why,” Cade said, injecting himself into the conversation, “which is why we need you.”

  Cade stood in front of Percival, holding out the Rokura for him to take. “You’re a Paragon; this is your weapon. I think it’s about time you two joined and did what you’re supposed to do.”

  Percival looked at the Rokura, and an expression of pain crept over his face. He sighed, then looked Cade straight in the eyes and said, “I can’t.”

  “Why. Not?” Cade asked, agitated.

  “Because it’s not my time anymore. I’m not the same person I was when I had the Rokura. If I tried to use it now, it would kill me.”

  Cade pushed the Rokura into Percival’s chest. “Try me.” He felt the eyes of everyone near on him. Everyone waited with nervous anticipation—like Cade—wanting to know how this tension would diffuse: with Percival accepting the Rokura, or with Percival cracking Cade’s head open. Because as Cade looked into Percival’s eyes and identified the intense fury that he was trying to contain, he figured this could end in either direction.

  “Look, Cade,” Kira said, “I don’t think—”

  “You don’t think what?” Cade snapped as he turned to face Kira. “You heard what he said, Praxis is building more War Hammers. So, what’s the plan now? Maybe, maybe your idea works and we blow up one War Hammer. But two War Hammers? Eight? It’s not going to happen. You guys can run around and play freedom fighters all you want, but you’re never going to beat Praxis. We need more.

  “Listen, I’m not saying the Rokura is the solution to all our problems,” Cade continued. “If what we’re doing here is the start of a serious fight against Praxis, you’re essential to its future, Kira. So is your plan. So are the Rising Suns. What I’m saying is that even with us combined, and with whoever we can still recruit, it won’t be enough.”

  Cade looked around at everyone surrounding him, this group of outsiders, criminals, and nobodies that truly had no business being together. But here they were, and they were all each other had.

  “We need something that inspires people from one end of this galaxy to the next to raise arms and join the fight against Praxis. We need the Paragon, and the Paragon needs us.”

  “But Percival said he can’t get the Rokura to work, and neither can you,” Mig said. “It’s not like we can just manufacture a Paragon.”

  Cade looked at Percival; Kobe was at his side, whispering into his ear. Percival nodded, whispered something to Kobe, then set his sights on Cade.

  “I like you, Cade. I didn’t think I would, but I do.”

  “I don’t remember saying I cared,” Cade said.

  “Let’s have a little chat, just me and you. There’s a way for all of us to get what we want, but there’s a lot of things you need to learn for that to happen.”

  Percival gestured with his mechanical hand, beckoning Cade to follow. Cade looked back at his friends, who shrugged noncommittally. They weren’t sold on Percival’s intentions, either.

  “Come with me, Cade. I want to show you something.”

  * * *

  It was a short, silent walk to an elevated ridge that looked over a narrow canyon that veined the terrain. The tree coverage thinned out, but the canyon was so slender that any overhead Intruder patrol wouldn’t be able to discern the finer details. Such as a couple of dasher bikes vertically parked along the canyon’s wall. Cade was looking straight down at them, though he was cautious not to get too close to the ridge’s edge with Percival behind him; he didn’t think Percival took him all the way out here just to throw him over the side, but he’d rather be safe than dead.

  “So,” Cade said, not wanting to waste any more time, “what’ve you got?”

  Percival smiled in a way that Cade was already getting sick of. It was a patronizing grin that pitied Cade for how little he knew in comparison to Percival’s unending wisdom.

  “In time,” Percival said. “In time. First, I have a question for you: I want to know what you see when you look at me. Who am I to you?”

  Cade’s knee-jerk response was to call Percival a terrorist and be done with it. But something stopped him. He stared at Percival, studying him. His scar, his mechanical arm, the weariness in his eyes. He saw someone who was battle-worn, who had seen—and done—things that he wished he hadn’t. He saw a man who was conflicted but certain. He wasn’t proud of the things he’d done, but he harbored no doubts about their necessity. If someone had to do the work of fighting a dirty fight against an even dirtier enemy, he was glad it was his burden to shoulder rather than anyone else’s.

  “A few days ago, I would have taken one look at you and called you a terrorist,” Cade began. “But the galaxy isn’t nearly as simple as I used to think it was. The Well knows what Praxis has done, they know the atrocities and the deaths and who knows what else. But they’ve been complacent. I don’t know why, but it’s the truth. You also recognize Praxis for what it is, but you’re doing something about it. You and everyone who follows you are risking their lives to remind the galaxy that no matter how the Well and other powerful systems try to rationalize Praxis’s rule, they are evil. And all of us need to fight back

  “Still, I could never do what you do. If half of what I’ve heard is true about your bombings and attacks against Praxis, and how civilians have died, I would never last in your ranks. I wouldn’t. There has to be another way. I have to believe that, if only for my own good.”

  Percival clasped Cade’s shoulder with his mechanical hand and smiled. “Cade, do you know the one common story coursing through all of sentient life’s history?”

  “No. But I’m assuming you do and you’re going to tell me.”

  Percival scowled and released his grip on Cade. “It’s a struggle for power. That’s all. Children grow up, throwing temper tantrums and fighting against their parents’ boundaries. They want to be the ones in control. Through adolescence and into adulthood, until the roles are reversed, the fight for power is ingrained in how we behave.

  “The scale only gets bigger, of course. Between tribes, between planets and spouses and siblings, we all want to exert our will and have the power to do what we want and protect what we love in the way we see fit, the cost be damned. That’s all our history is, an endless fight for power, or against power, cycling from one generation to the next. Nothing defines sentient life more than that.”

  Cade looked to the sky; a flock of birds burst out of a tree, and he could see them in silhouette against the sliver of the waxing moon. As they fluttered away, Cade tried to think of a polite way to call Percival on his big, empty words.

  “I don’t believe any of that. In fact, I don’t think you do, either. If you did, then everything you did with the Rising Suns, everything you are, would be completely pointless.”

  Percival smiled. “Good answer, and you’re right. Those aren’t my words but the words of a friend from a long, long time ago,” he said. “And your reaction sounds like the answer I gave to her. Which means what I suspected is true: You’re right for what comes
next.”

  “Oh, yeah? And what’s that?” Cade asked.

  Percival reached over his back, and from his pack he pulled out a shido. Cade studied it, trying to notice something unusual about it, but judging by what he saw, it was just an ordinary shido. Aged, and definitely used, but still a shido.

  “Okay?” Cade said. “It’s a shido.”

  “It’s not the shido itself that’s important,” Percival said. “It’s who it belonged to.”

  Cade looked at Percival, whose face had taken on an unexpected gravitas. Unease began to course within Cade. “Who did it belong to?” he quietly asked.

  “To my old friend: Ga Halle.”

  Cade recoiled. If his life had been turned upside down in the past few days, then this, this was the equivalent of taking everything he thought was true—what the Well was good for, why they existed, and his role within it—and shredding it right in front of his face.

  “No,” Cade said. “That’s not true. That can’t be.”

  “Ga Halle was a Rai, like you. Like me. She was a great one, in fact, and she was … she was my friend. But then everything between us, everything at the Well, everything in the entire galaxy went terribly, terribly bad.”

  “You’re lying,” Cade spat. “How could no one know this? The Masters couldn’t keep something this huge a secret for this long.”

  “Things change,” Percival stated. “This was nearly two decades ago, and all the other Rai have either died in duty, are sworn to secrecy as Masters, or—well, I take it you’ve encountered Ga Halle’s Fatebreakers, right? Former Rai, all of them.”

  Any disbelief that Cade harbored withered like a plant under a flame. He couldn’t think of a word to say. Everything he knew, everything he’d been taught to cherish and hold dear was only a meticulous selection of the truth. Because, in reality, the Well had birthed Ga Halle and her kingdom of totalitarian lust; the Well had trained the man who murdered his brother.

  “Cade, you know the Well as this place that contains Echoes and ground troops and armories and all that. But that’s not how it always was. In my time, those things barely existed, and the Masters only embraced the aspect of the Well in response to Praxis—and begrudgingly at that. And still, by then, it was too late. Those pompous fools wasted decade after decade waiting for a savior to come, and they lost sight of what it meant to actually protect the galaxy. Praxis knew that; Ga Halle knew that.”

  “Okay … okay. Let’s just slow down a little. I still can’t understand the how in all this. How did Ga Halle go from a being one of us to ruling the Praxis kingdom?”

  Percival scoffed. “Ga Halle doesn’t rule the kingdom, she created the kingdom. You have to understand, everything you’re caught up in now was set in motion years ago, back when becoming a galactic superpower was the last thing anyone expected of Praxis.

  “Praxis was dying; their sun was fading from existence, and it was only a matter of time before the planet became unlivable. And when that happened, Cade … no amount of relief, or rescue transports, or whatever would save the millions of people sentenced to death on their home planet. Praxis was in disarray, and many of its people didn’t have the means to find a new planet to live on—assuming any planet could handle the influx of so many refugees.

  “No one knew what to do, no one knew how to save Praxis. But Ga Halle, she had a will unlike any other person I’ve ever known. She didn’t care how she’d save an entire planet; all she knew was she was going to do it. And that was enough.”

  Cade listened intently, his mind racing as he tried to glue the pieces of Percival’s story together. All the while, he couldn’t stop playing and replaying what the Fatebreaker had told him back in the spire: The Masters weren’t being honest with their Rai. Things were being hidden, and Cade had the sinking feeling that Percival’s story was just the tip of the iceberg.

  “So, when did Ga Halle freak out, then? You guys were Rai, you were buddies, but now one’s a warlord and the other’s a terr—a freedom fighter. What happened?”

  Percival paused and silently studied Ga Halle’s shido. For the first time, he seemed vulnerable. Gone was the battle-hardened fighter who claimed to have all the answers and was ready to lay down his life to prove it. In his place was a man whose past was scarred by regret and bitterness, wounds that refused to heal. Ga Halle was his sworn enemy, and Percival had gone to extreme lengths to stop her. And now, now it was starting to make sense why.

  “The Well sends Rai to the Quarrian spire in pairs, you know that. I was sent with Ga Halle. We journeyed to retrieve the Rokura together. Back then, meaning before the lights were turned off over Quarry, Rai made this pilgrimage regularly. It was like a rite of passage. But our trip was … different. We both knew it. I don’t know how many times the Masters told us we were special, that one of us was destined to become the Paragon. I remember so clearly how they all came to watch our ship depart for Quarry, just waiting for a savior to return. But that, as you know, is not what happened.

  “We reached the Rokura’s chamber, and it was … mystical. Transcendent. You were there, you know—it’s impossible to put everything you experience and feel into words. Ga Halle and I even joked about being the ‘Chosen One’ because it was just so surreal. I mean, we were still young. The entire walk up the spire, we goaded each other about who would go first or if we’d go at the same time and become the Paragon together. In the end, she insisted it was me to go first. I thought it was a sentimental gesture; now, I realize it’s because she never believed I could do it. But she was wrong.

  “As vividly as I remember grabbing the Rokura and pulling it out of its stasis, I just as vividly remember the look on Ga Halle’s face when I turned to show her. I’ve never seen anything like it, not before, not since. She had this mask of pure hatred and rage, and I knew she was going to kill me.

  “You have to understand, I wanted the Rokura because I had a juvenile notion in my head about maintaining peace across planets. The galaxy had its problems—skirmishes, planetary feuds, a lot of unrest with the ruling order, though nothing like it is now. But Ga Halle, she needed the Rokura. In her mind, it was the only way to somehow save her planet. The Rokura is supposed to return when worlds need saving, right? Well, no planet was more desperate than Praxis. The Rokura was her only hope, and I’d just taken it from her and trashed her self-worth in the process. No outsider would be able to bring peace to Praxis, and she knew she was now an afterthought to a living and breathing Paragon—but only if I was living and breathing.

  “She unsheathed her shido and charged at me. Crazy. Frenzied. I was still dumbstruck by what’d happened, and Ga Halle was too fast, too strong, too angry. She stabbed me once in my gut, sliced my face, then cut my ankle and shoved me to the ground. And as she stood above me, ready to make her killing strike and take the Rokura for herself, she didn’t say a single word. No apology, no good-bye. She was ready to end my life, and it was nothing to her.

  “But the Rokura wouldn’t let that happen. Before either of us could do anything, it let out this … this fiery discharge that tore through Ga Halle’s arm; it sliced across her chest and throat and should have killed her. Cade, I’ve seen plenty of battles and bloodshed since then, but I still have nightmares about what happened in that spire. Seeing Ga Halle’s flesh disintegrate and knowing that the Rokura did it on its own sickened me. In that moment, I saw a flash of all the things I’d be called on to do as Paragon, how this … this thing, this weapon would shape the entire galaxy. I was terrified, and I wanted no part of it. I did the only sensible thing I could think of: I slammed it back in its stasis, and I ran as far away as I could so no one could find me. So no one could make me touch the Rokura ever again.

  “I went into exile, and Ga Halle survived—somehow—and returned to Praxis. In a dark corner of the galaxy, she somehow discovered a way to save her star—by taking the energy from a different one. The fact that these stars provided life to other systems must have been no more than an unfortunate side
note to Ga Halle. She had lost her mind. And once she decided to doom another planet to save her own, there was no going back. Not for her, not for Praxis. Praxis went from being a planet on the brink of extinction to a source of galactic terror, and Ga Halle used that to build her might. She made allies with planets who’d grown restless with the galactic order—most of whom she betrayed and subjugated in time—and destroyed others who stood in her way.

  “The Praxis kingdom was born out of the very weapon that was supposed to save us. But I’m sure you know by now that the Rokura is not what it’s promised to be.”

  Cade looked at the weapon in his hands; he swore he had holstered it, but there it was, crowding his vision when he looked down. “No. It’s not,” he said, quietly.

  Percival crept toward him. Cade felt him drawing near, to both him and the Rokura. “I knew your brother died the moment it happened; I felt the Rokura call out to me, beckoning me to possess it. Because that’s what it wants—to be possessed. You’ve felt it, haven’t you?” Percival asked, though his words sounded far away. Cade could hear his own heart beating in his ears; he could see the world around him—the branches on the trees, the leaves swirling on the ground—all move in slow motion.

  “I have felt it,” Cade answered. “It wants me to do more, to be more. But … I don’t understand.”

  “I’ve traveled all over this galaxy, and I’ve learned a lot about the Rokura. The one thing I know for certain is that it craves power,” Percival said. “It gives power, but it also demands it. And now that it’s free of its holding, it’ll find what it’s looking for. You have a chance to become what it needs, and you must. You must become the Paragon.”

  Cade felt claustrophobic, in a trance, and his instinct, through the Rokura’s fugue, was to shove the weapon back in its holstering. But when he tried to pull it back, he realized Percival’s hands were on it as well. Holding it tight. Cade gave the Rokura a gentle tug, hoping that it would urge Percival to let go. It didn’t.

  “Percival, let go,” Cade said, “Now.”