Cade fired up the engine. He had to get to Kira; he had to do whatever he could to save her. 4-Qel stayed at the ramp, koruvite in hand, blasting whoever was unfortunate enough to get in his sights.
Just as Cade was about to propel the Dawn up and spin it around so it could blast out of the hangar, a shock wave rocked through the War Hammer. The hangar quaked so hard Cade feared it might capsize, or worse. An alarm blared, and the drones and gunners that’d been knocked off their feet with the blast got up and ran. They’re evacuating, Cade realized as the entire room went dark. The auxiliary power kicked in, casting a dim yellow haze over the hangar just as the War Hammer’s port side began to sag.
“Hold on!” Cade yelled as the Horizon Dawn followed the War Hammer’s tilt and slid across the hangar’s surface. It screeched as it fell across the floor, and Cade was thrown from his seat before he could get his ship off the ground. He landed against the Horizon Dawn’s side, exacerbating the pain that was already coursing throughout his tender body. Cade winced and propped himself up just as Mig came tumbling after Cade, also succumbing to the War Hammer’s loss of equilibrium.
“What is this?!” Mig yelled as the Horizon Dawn crashed against the hangar’s side, bringing its sliding to an end.
Cade smiled. “Kira,” he said.
With his back positioned against the ship’s viewport, Cade brought up his comms again. She had to be there, he assured himself. This had to be her work.
“Kira,” he called. “Kira, come in. Kira. Kir—”
The receiver popped as a voice came screeching through the comms.
“WHOOOOOOOOO,” Kira howled, and Cade knew that scream. It was the scream he heard when they downed that warship.
Victory.
“Kira!” Cade yelled. “What’s happening out there? Are you okay?”
“We got it Cade! We nailed it!” Kira shouted. “You should see this damn ship burn. It’s a thing of beauty.”
“Where were you?” Cade asked. Assisted by Mig, he started to scale his way up Horizon Dawn, which had come to rest at a 60-degree angle.
“Oh, yeah, we ran into trouble, but we had some help.”
“Help?” Cade asked, cautiously. “From who?”
There was a pause, then Kira spoke. “You’re not going to like it,” she warned.
Cade groaned as he clambered upward. “Percival.”
“Percival,” Kira confirmed. “And where are you? I thought you’d already be out of there.”
“Yeah, we ran into a little … difficulty,” Cade said, thinking of his mangled hand. “But, wait—why didn’t the War Hammer combust? I mean, I’m not crazy about the idea, but I should be dead.”
“It’s burning,” Kira replied, “and it’s badly damaged. But it must have some kind of fail-safe to protect where the siphoned energy is stored from erupting.”
Cade reached his chair, and 4-Qel—who had no problem scaling his way to the front of the ship as Cade and Mig clawed their way up—plucked him off the ground and dropped him into his seat. The engine was hot, so he could lift it off the ground and straighten them out immediately.
But he couldn’t bring himself to rocket out of the War Hammer. The Praxis super weapon, their ultimate deterrent, the symbol of their might and control over the galaxy, was damaged, but it wasn’t destroyed. The evil kingdom would repair it, they’d even improve it, and it would be back to cast a shadow of menace and fear across the entire galaxy.
Cade couldn’t have that.
“You guys need to get out of there,” Kira said. “Praxis will have reinforcements swarming in no time.”
“Yeah,” Cade said, his voice faint. “We’re on our way.”
Cade cut off the comms, and with the tiniest thrust of the engine, he propelled the Horizon Dawn to the far side of the hangar, to the corridors opposite the one that led to the holding area. Those corridors had to lead deeper into the ship, Cade presumed.
“Uh … Cade?” Mig asked. “Remember that part about reinforcements and us leaving?”
Cade set the Horizon Dawn to hover as he got up from his chair. “Four-Qel, go get it.”
“I’m not sure what you’re planning,” 4-Qel countered, “but I’d wager that the wise choice would be for us to leave.”
“Making wise choices isn’t exactly my thing,” Cade said. “Now, please, give it to me.”
“What are you two talking about?” Mig asked.
4-Qel looked at Mig, then returned his focus to Cade. He grumbled disapprovingly, then tore open a welded-shut floor panel. In the cavity below their feet was the Rokura.
“You brought it with you?!” Mig yelped. “Wha—why would you bring it here?!”
“In case I needed it,” Cade said, calmly. “And I couldn’t think of a safer place for it—the last place Praxis would check.”
With the Rokura held firmly in his one good hand, Cade slid open the Horizon Dawn’s narrow cockpit exit. He looked back at Mig and 4-Qel and gave a smile. Whatever happened next, he was glad to have been on this adventure with his friends, and he was especially glad they were getting out of it alive.
“Wait,” Mig asked, quietly. “Where are you going?”
Cade looked at his friend, his brother, and he knew that Mig already had the answer to the question, and he was aware of what it meant.
“What we came here to do,” Cade said. “I’m going to use the Rokura to breach the energy storage. It’s the only way to destroy the War Hammer.”
“But,” Mig said, his voice cracking, “you’ll die.”
“Just, tell Kira … tell her I’m glad it came to this. Tell her I know she can finish the job we started today.
“And thank her for me. Thank her for believing in me.”
Cade turned and made the short jump out of his ship, leaving it behind. Leaving his friends and everything else in his life behind.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Ga Halle lorded over the War Hammer’s command center, and by all appearances, it seemed like she was overseeing the ship’s evacuation process. She positioned herself to give strength to her subordinates in a time of crisis. To help them through this difficult moment.
The truth, though, was that Ga Halle didn’t care if every single man and woman in the room burned with the ship as it floated through space. Her focus was singular; her rage over failing to obtain her prize, unquantifiable. The Rokura had slipped through her fingers, and her mind knew no other loss than that. The War Hammer was failing, and even if it was beyond repair, there’d be more weapons, more ways to kill. Jorken was dead, but she had plenty of allies. The Rokura was singular; there was no replacement, no substitute. And the longer it remained out of her grasp, the better the chance it was possessed by someone else. She’d burn this entire galaxy into oblivion before she let that happen.
“It is time, my queen,” Ortzo said, standing at Ga Halle’s back.
Ga Halle followed; she had no reason to remain on the War Hammer. She’d return to the Fortress and order her spies to press their ears to the ground. The first system to utter so much as a seditious word would be pillaged and scorched. They’d be an example to anyone else who got similar ideas in their heads as word of the War Hammer’s damage spread throughout the galaxy. And she’d finish the job she started against the Well. She’d root out the Rising Suns. But first, first she’d track down the Rokura. She’d find this Cade Sura and show him exactly what it meant to be worthy of the Rokura’s power. She’d suffered and sacrificed; she’d pushed herself beyond limits she didn’t even know were possible, twisting herself into something that, at times, even she didn’t recognize. But it was all for the Rokura, and her time was now.
But as Ortzo was ushering her toward her shuttle, she sensed something. Something stirring deep within her, awakening in her. Ga Halle closed her eyes and let the world around her go silent. The alarms, the yelling to bring people to order—it all died before reaching her ears. The only thing she could hear was a faint whisper that was calling out to her
. Beckoning her.
The Rokura. She could feel it.
Ga Halle turned and pushed her way through the crowd waiting to board the transport shuttles. Ortzo followed behind her, trying to keep up with Ga Halle’s driven pace.
“My queen,” he called. “We really should leave; the ship is unstable.”
“Leave,” Ga Halle ordered, not even bothering to turn back and face Ortzo. “My destiny has come for me.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Alarms wailed throughout the ship as all personnel on the War Hammer made for the evacuation pods. No one cared who Cade was or what he was up to as he ran against the tide of the fleeing navigators, gunners, and officers. They probably knew he wasn’t one of their own, but allegiances meant very little when it came time to save your own hide.
While Cade didn’t know everything there was to know about starcruiser mechanics—he was no Mig—he knew enough to deduce how to locate where the energy sapped from Ticus’s star was housed. The main engine was centrally located in the ship, so if Praxis had any brains at all they wouldn’t store the power of a star there. Just in case. And if what Kira told him was true—that fail-safes were in place to separate the containment area from a potential cataclysmic event—what Cade was looking for had to be near the siphoning entry point but far enough away to allow whatever protection was in place to cut the energy housing off from potential disaster. Because should that housing be penetrated, the entire ship would suffer the wrath of a star opening in its face. That would be bad.
And it was exactly what Cade was hoping for.
Cade found his way to a service corridor, easily detected by the grunts in coveralls and grease-stained faces pouring from it. These people were coming from the War Hammer’s belly; they spent their days and nights in the bowels of the ship, down where the real work gets done. Cade came to a fork in the corridor. On one side, a few straggling techs and mechanics were still filing out; the other side was vacant, not a single person was coming from that dark tunnel. If Cade ventured a guess, he’d say that people spent as little time as possible hanging around the contained power of a star, regardless of how impenetrable its container was. Granted, if something were to go wrong, being on the other side of a wall would do nothing to prevent your body, down to your bones, from incinerating into nothingness. Still, that was no reason to get close to it if you didn’t have to.
The corridor Cade pursued was a tunnel that swallowed light. The deeper he went, the darker it became; he navigated his way forward with his outstretched hand, its dulled sense of touch just barely able to register the obstructions and turns that awaited just ahead. Cade hoped he would be able to accomplish what he had in mind. The Rokura would have to work through him. Or he would have to work through it. What Percival told him spoke more to dominance than symbiosis, which is what Cade thought was the point of its relationship with its wielder. Cade was torn between reading the Rokura as a weapon of control or a weapon of peace. Maybe he was naive to believe you couldn’t have one without the other.
When Cade’s hand nudged against a solid surface directly in front of him, he figured he’d reached the end of the corridor. He grabbed hold of a thick metallic wheel in the center of what he assumed to be the door and began spinning it counterclockwise. The door clicked, and Cade felt a spasm of fear jolt within him. He knew what he had to do, he knew what it required of him, and he was afraid. Though it wasn’t the fear of death that made him pause; it was the fear of failure. Given the choice, no one at the Well would trust the task of destroying the Praxis War Hammer in Cade’s hands, even if he pledged his life to the mission. Doubt made him freeze at the door. What if he failed? What if he couldn’t get the Rokura to do what he wanted and, instead, he ended up delivering the weapon right to his enemies? Cade felt the conviction he had just moments ago racing out of him—but then he remembered his vow with Kira. They weren’t going to be the people the Well decided they were. Cade knew Kira was better than that, and he was pretty sure he was, too. Cade knew in his heart that the galaxy needed to be rebooted; its people needed a chance to start from scratch without being dependent on the Well or oppressed by Praxis. And he couldn’t think of any way to give people the liberation they needed other than by destroying the symbols of their hope and fear, the Rokura and the War Hammer, in one dramatic swoop.
Cade threw his weight into the door and heaved it open. The moment he did, blinding, white-hot light poured from the room, and it physically pushed Cade back. He threw his forearm over his eyes and, through the narrowest opening his eyelids could allow, looked inside. His pupils adjusted as much as they could to the ferocious light, just enough for Cade to make out a massive orb in the center of the room. He recognized the crackling orange and blue spidery tendrils of the koruvite shielding the orb, somehow containing the power of a star. Cade could barely comprehend what he was seeing, as it all seemed too immense to even be real. But it was, and it was now Cade’s duty to let that immensity free.
Every step Cade took was like fighting against a relentless cyclone, spinning and pushing, keeping anyone from getting close. Energy poured off the orb in pulsing waves, and Cade labored to take every step that led him to within arm’s reach of the shielding.
Cade raised the Rokura above his head with his one good hand, and he reached deep within himself to call upon his determination, his will, to get the Rokura to obey his command. He thought back to the spire, where he demanded that it strike down his brother’s killer, and even though the weapon fought against him, it eventually surrendered. This was the same thing, only Cade didn’t care what happened to him. The Rokura could take his hand, take his whole arm. It didn’t matter. All that mattered was busting a hole in the orb so that Praxis’s stolen power would blow up in its face.
Maybe it was Cade’s inner strength that triggered the Rokura, maybe it was its insatiable lust for destruction, but as he clenched it in his hand and thought only of the War Hammer’s demise, it came to life. The weapon erupted at its head, sparking explosive energy that was stronger than Cade remembered from the spire. Cade knew the Rokura was strong enough to tear through the koruvite; it was just a matter of whether it would let Cade do it.
“AAAAAHHHH,” Cade screamed, and he threw his arm down to drive the Rokura into the orb.
But his arm didn’t move.
Cade grunted, fighting to push his arm forward even an inch, but it wouldn’t budge. The weapon was locked in place, and he was locked with it. He couldn’t see anything wrong with the Rokura, and he couldn’t understand why it stopped in the blink of an eye.
Then he heard a voice, a raging voice, call out from behind him.
“That weapon,” the voice screamed above the blistering din of the room, “is mine.”
Cade turned, and though he’d never seen her before, he knew exactly who was behind him: Ga Halle. He couldn’t discern her features through the light; the only thing his eyes could visualize was the legendary containment suit, pulsing fiery waves of dark blue antimatter over the left side of her body. The rest of her was nothing more than an outline crouching against the waves of energy as she, like Cade, struggled to hold her position. Her arm stretched forward as she reached for the Rokura, and it was her will, Cade realized, that caused the Rokura to stop. She expected the weapon to soar to her palm, demanded it to, in fact. Cade could feel the conflict within the weapon; it was drawn to Ga Halle as much as it was connected to Cade. Maybe even more, Cade considered, as he struggled to keep the Rokura in his grasp.
“Oh, yeah?” Cade yelled. “If it belongs to you, then why don’t you have it?”
“You have no idea what it takes to control the Rokura’s power. I’ve made myself into the exact image of what it demands—what it really demands. And you? You’re an accident who actually believes the fairy tale the Well has filled your mind with.”
“You’re wrong,” Cade yelled back. “If you were this perfect specimen, the Rokura wouldn’t be struggling between us. It would have—”
“It craves a possessor! It seeks to bond with—”
“It would have allowed you to remove it from its stasis at some point in the past twenty years.”
Cade waited for Ga Halle to say something, but she didn’t utter a word. Her silence was far more terrifying than her words.
“Your fight with Percival changed you, and now … and now your scars and your wounds run far deeper than what’s on your surface. I can feel it.”
Cade noticed that the power that cycled throughout the room was starting to surge; between the orb’s residual energy and what poured off the Rokura, the space he and Ga Halle inhabited was getting unstable. And the more they argued, the more likely it seemed that they’d reach a critical mass that would destroy them both. The orb, Cade wagered, would remain secure, and that couldn’t happen. Cade had to do something.
But Ga Halle beat him to it.
Even through the room’s increasing cacophonous noise, Cade could hear Ga Halle’s labored, furious breathing. Cade unleashed a primal scream that cut like a knife through the room’s blustering noise as he felt Ga Halle exert every ounce of her will, every ounce of her rage, into commanding the Rokura. And it worked. The Rokura pulled away from Cade’s grip, and he knew it wouldn’t be long before his grasp failed him.
“Percival stole my chance,” Ga Halle growled. “He ruined me, he damned my people, and I will never apologize for what I did to save everything I loved.”
The Rokura pulled and pulled, and Ga Halle used its pull to trudge herself forward. Cade, meanwhile, mustered all his strength to keep the weapon away from Ga Halle, but it made no difference. This fight had nothing to do with physical strength.
“I won’t. Let you. Have it!” Cade yelled. “You’ll plunge the galaxy into darkness!”
“And you’ll plunge it into chaos!”
Cade squeezed the very end of the Rokura with a tenuous, failing grip. The weapon was escaping him, and it would be gone soon. That would be the end of everything, and Cade knew, without hesitation, that he’d rather die than see Ga Halle possess the Rokura. He’d rather die than be forced to watch Praxis smother the galaxy in despair, oppression, and tyranny.
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