Percival also explained who Ebik was to Kira.
Cade found Kira at the opposite end of the canyon, alone, working on her ship by floodlight. The harsh light cast the Rubicon’s oval shadow against the far wall of the pass, dulling the subdued light of the crystals embedded there. Cade went to the side of the ship, where Kira’s legs stuck out from beneath. He was about to duck his head under and say, “Knock, knock,” when a sidewinder poked out from the Rubicon’s underbelly.
“Stay right there,” Kira ordered.
“Whoa, easy,” Cade said. “It’s just Cade. The one who doesn’t like being shot at, if you need me to be more specific.”
Kira wheeled herself out from beneath the Rubicon and looked Cade over before getting to her feet. “You look terrible,” she said.
“Yeah, I think this is one of those situations where I actually am worse for wear.”
“Assuming you were all that sharp to begin with.”
Cade forced a smile at Kira’s barb, knowing this banter for what it was: a way to avoid talking about the road ahead. For both of them. He followed Kira to the Rubicon’s ramp, where she took a rag out of her back pocket and used it to scrub the grease off her hands.
“So,” Kira said, “I hear you’re going on a mystical journey to find some dead guy.”
“I’d like to say it’s not like that, but … it’s exactly like that.” He laughed, trying to bring some levity to the moment. Kira wasn’t having it, though.
“Well,” Kira said as she brushed past Cade, “good luck with that.”
“Kira, wait,” Cade said, calling after her. She turned, her face hard, her eyes refusing to meet his. “Just … don’t. Please.”
“What do you want me to say, Cade? We make a good team, all of us, and it sucks that you’re leaving.”
“A team?” Cade said as he stepped toward Kira. “Is this about all of us, or about me and you?”
Kira looked up at Cade and exhaled sharply out of her nostrils. She didn’t say a word, though.
“Look,” Cade continued, “Percival told me about Ebik, about … you know. I’m sorry—really sorry—that this is happening to you. To have him back in your life … I don’t even know how hard that must be.”
“It’s nothing,” Kira mumbled. “He’s nothing.”
“Kira, this man tried to kill you when you were just a kid. And now he tried to kill you again. He’s not nothing, and we both know it.”
“I’m dealing with it,” Kira said, reclaiming her resolve. “Ebik is my problem, and I’m handling it.”
Cade arched an eyebrow at Kira. He’d been concerned about how Kira was handling the sudden insertion of her crappy father back into her life. Now, he was concerned in an entirely different way.
“What are you planning?” Cade asked. “What’s this secret mission that Percival won’t tell me about?”
“Well, it wouldn’t be much of a secret if everyone went blabbing about it, would it? Besides, you’re not part of it, so you don’t need to care.”
“Is that what you think?” Cade said, his voice conveying his growing frustration. “That I don’t care?”
Kira shrugged and forced a flippant tone into her words. “Want to tell me again what you’re about to go do?”
“I know what you’re doing,” Cade spat. “I get that you’re mad, but you don’t have to throw up your walls with me.”
“What’s the problem?” Kira asked, casually defensive. “Just tell me what your next step is.”
Cade’s lips tightened, then he drew and exhaled an angry breath. “You know what I’m doing. And I thought you understood why I’m doing it. Why I have to do it.”
“Have to? Says who?”
“Says … I don’t know,” Cade responded, flustered. “This is what I have to do for the Rokura. It’s what has to happen.”
“And that is your problem, Cade,” Kira said, drawing close to him and staring him in the eyes. “Where do you draw the line with the decisions that the Rokura makes for you?”
Cade broke Kira’s gaze and looked around, searching. But the answers he was looking for—so many answers to so many complicated questions—were nowhere to be found. “I don’t know,” he whispered. “I just … I don’t know.”
Kira backed off, shaking her head as she put distance between them. “That stupid weapon is creating a wedge between us, between all of us. You have a choice, and you’re choosing to follow the Rokura.”
“Yes, so we can win this fight,” Cade implored. “That’s why I’m doing this, that’s why I’m following Percival on some ridiculous mission. We’re fighting for the exact same thing.”
“No, it’s not the same!” Kira yelled. “Everything we’ve made, everything we are, is built on people. On our hope and our courage and our will to fight. That weapon is not what makes us what we are; it’s not what makes you who you are.”
Cade took a step toward Kira, reducing the space between the two of them to no more than a few inches. “You’re right about what you said. Deep down, I don’t care about your mission. I don’t care about the Rokura, either,” Cade said, drawing even closer. “I care about you, Kira. I care about you.”
Cade expected Kira to yell in return. Maybe hit him, but probably just shove him away. Instead, she looked right at him, and with tears forming in her eyes, she said softly, “Then don’t go.”
For a moment, Cade couldn’t think of a word to say. Because it wasn’t like he hadn’t explored the possibility of abandoning the Rokura. Just like he’d planned on doing when he’d first held it. But as he walked for hours from the fields of derig to the crystal mountains, one thought, and one thought alone, plagued his mind: What would happen if he failed? If this gambit to find the ghost of Wu-Xia turned out to be a fool’s errand—which could very well be the case—there was no plan B. There was nothing other than him, Percival, and the wild hope that they could find Wu-Xia, and the Paragon Prime would impart wisdom salient to controlling the Rokura. And if that didn’t happen, it could very well be the end of everything. Because when Tristan pulled the Rokura from its stasis, he unleashed a powerful thing onto the galaxy that no one understood and only he could control. But Tristan was gone, and the Rokura wasn’t going anywhere. Worse, Cade had experienced its terrible power and purpose; in moments like the one he’d had with Ortzo, Cade was granted a vision that played out in flashes on the periphery of his mind. And in those flashes, darkness. Darkness spreading across the galaxy, extinguishing the light from one end to the other. It brought pain. It brought suffering. It brought the end of all things. It was that vision that Cade fought most ardently against, and if he failed to find a way to rule this thing that was beyond his or anyone else’s understanding—save the dead guy he was hopefully soon to meet—it would find its way into someone else’s hands.
It would find its way to Ga Halle.
Should that happen, Cade knew the vision that’d brought him to his knees on the Kaldorian trade ship—of Ga Halle twisted and more dangerous than he could have ever imagined—would no longer be a vision. It would bleed into reality like the blackest ink dropped into a shallow pool of water. Destruction first. Then death. Then absolute darkness.
“I have to,” Cade murmured. “I don’t want to go. I don’t want … any of this. But I have to. Percival knows what he’s doing. He has the best idea of what—”
“Then leave,” Kira interrupted. Her eyes grew dim and hard, and Cade could see the hurt and the anger burning inside of them. “Go.”
His heart heavy with sorrow, Cade tried to think of the words that would make everything better. But there weren’t any. Going with Percival was both the right and wrong thing to do. He had to take this one last chance to figure out the Rokura—either how to use it or how to destroy it. The cost, though, was being separated from the people he cared about when they needed him most.
There was no time left for Cade to consider options and outcomes. As he watched Kira squat beside her ship, he heard a dasher bike rumb
ling behind him. Cade knew who was there, and why, without having to turn around.
“It’s time to go,” Percival said solemnly.
Cade looked back at Kira.
“Be careful,” he told her, then he walked away. He thought he heard her say something, but he was too afraid to turn back and find her gone.
Cade boarded the dasher bike and took a deep breath. He had to do this; he had to focus on what was in front of him. What he was about to do could win the war or at least prevent it from being lost. Still, he couldn’t stop himself from looking back. And he saw Kira, still waiting at the edge of her ship, watching him go.
Cade kept her in his sight even as Percival pulled away. She became more and more distant until, finally, Cade couldn’t see her anymore.
He was afraid it was the last time he ever would.
CHAPTER FIVE
Kira had never seen such a sorry collection of soldiers in all her career.
Though, to be fair, she was hesitant to call them soldiers. Most of them were not. They’d been steadily taking on recruits from across the galaxy since the War Hammer had been blown into a billion pieces in the space over Ticus. But of those recruits, many of them—too many, in Kira’s opinion—were sorely lacking the stuff soldiers were made of. Some were too old; some were too young. Some joined because they had nothing else to do and leaving where they were, even if it meant the possibility of engaging in armed combat, was better than staying. Some were the troublemakers looking to skip out on whatever bounties, warrants, or payback homed in on them like a heat-seeking torpedo. Most of the lot had little to no training or the discipline to be trained; a good number of them were unpleasantly surprised when they realized what the day-to-day life of a grunt was like. Still, Kira had to believe that each and every one of them joined, despite whatever dubious reasoning motivated them, because they wanted to see the Praxis kingdom crumble. Or that they at least harbored a personal grudge that burned so hot within that it compelled them to put their lives on the line in exchange for the chance to exact some revenge. Even that would do. Because there’s no bounty in the galaxy that’s worth the exhausting grind of warfare; there’s no dead-end planet so bad you’d put your life on the line—with a group of underdogs, no less—to get away from it. No, Kira was convinced that despite whatever circumstances brought them into the Renegade fold, deep down, each and every one of these recruits was here for a noble reason. They were here because it was the right thing to do.
The light of righteousness, Kira knew, only burned so brightly. And when it’s already faint and sunk way down deep to begin with, it is that much easier to extinguish. Inertia and entropy were becoming as real an enemy to Kira as Praxis. As she looked out to the faces awaiting her command, she saw a lot of fires dwindling before her eyes. With Percival gone, it was her job to find a way to reignite those flames.
While Kira recognized her leadership style didn’t always make for smooth sailing—she was abrasive and blunt, and held tough, but fair, standards—she won troops over by being honest with them and by never ordering her squads to do something she wouldn’t. In that spirit of honesty, Kira had no choice but to recognize the difficult road they’d all faced since the War Hammer’s destruction. Even the recruits who shared Kira’s gusto for kicking Praxis’s collective teeth in showed signs of weariness. Until now, the Renegades had managed to balance their little defeats with little victories, and they could all cling to their marks of progress. But then Ebik came along and reminded them all of the power they were up against. Now, they were reeling from their first major defeat; now, they were forced to run from their homes and scramble into a cave for shelter like timid animals. Frightened, demoralized, exhausted. These weren’t the conditions for victory; these were the conditions in which rebellions come undone.
The onus was on Kira to reverse course. And fast.
“They look like men and women who’ve just witnessed their own executions,” 4-Qel said as he joined Kira on the boarding ramp of their newly acquired starship. “Would you like me to defeat the strongest among them in combat and win their respect? That might inspire them to do as they’re told, if only out of fear. I hear this tactic is very popular in prison.”
“Let’s keep that option in our back pocket for the time being,” Kira said as she leaned over the ramp, down to the space below the rear of the ship. “Mig, how’s this boat looking?”
Mig rolled himself out from under the ship, removed his soot-covered goggles, and tossed them to the ground. “On fifth inspection, it still looks fine. The problem isn’t going to be getting there; the problem is going to be getting in once we’re there.”
Kira nodded. Mig was right, but she could only tackle one problem at a time. That was her mantra. One problem to the next, solving one after another after another on a chain that had an unknowable number of links. Kira, though, was less concerned with the number—two links or two hundred, it didn’t matter—and more concerned with where they led: Praxis’s doorstep. The final link that would lead to the kingdom’s end. Kira would never stop breaking off links until she either reached its conclusion or was incapable of following the chain any further. Whichever came first was the only way she would stop.
“You’re certain of this mission?” 4-Qel asked as Kira turned back around. “I don’t mean to question your command. It just seems very … risky.”
Kira cracked her neck and squared her shoulders. Maybe 4-Qel was right. Maybe her plan would prove to be a terrible mistake. But Kira didn’t have the time or the luxury to allow doubt to stymie what little momentum they had left, not when the galaxy was racing toward totalitarian domination. Swift action was demanded of her, and she’d deal with whatever her decisions wrought, good or bad, when the time came. But right now, she had to save the Renegades. She had to strike a major blow against a relentless enemy that dwarfed everything her forces had to offer on their best day. To do so meant taking risks.
“Go get Kobe and tell him if he’s coming, he’s coming when we fire up our engines,” Kira ordered 4-Qel. “I’m not waiting around for him to finish murmuring his spiritual grocery list to the wind.”
“I believe he’s practicing a form of meditation similar to—”
“Qel.”
“Right,” the drone responded and headed down the ramp.
Kira watched as he left, then turned her attention back to the beaten and demoralized faces that awaited her, huddled in this damp, glittering canyon. They were searching for something, anything—even the outlaws, even the dead-enders—to light the way. It was all they had left: a path that led them forward.
“I want all of you to look at me,” Kira said, raising her voice less to be heard and more to command attention. “Look me in the eyes, because I want there to be no uncertainty in the words I’m about to say:
“We. Will. Not. Lose.”
Eyes widened. Heads rose a little higher. The crowd stood a little taller. They’d all been suffering from a feeling Kira hadn’t felt since she was a child, a feeling that she had Ebik to thank for: that losing, that submitting, was their destiny. And if Kira’s mother had not been there to tell her otherwise, Kira would have lived a life of submission. That’s how kingdoms like Praxis and men like Ebik won. Wars weren’t decided on the battlefields; they were decided in the hearts and minds of those who fought them. As long as you were still breathing, as long as you still had a shred of resistance left in you, you weren’t defeated until you decided. More than anything, they wanted to rob you of your audacity to resist and your will to fight. But Kira refused. She wouldn’t allow it for herself, and she wouldn’t allow it for those who followed her command.
“If you think this is defeat, then you don’t know defeat. If you think this is the breaking point, then you don’t know what it means to be broken. This is what Praxis wants, to deliver one big hit against us and destroy our collective will. Think about all the time Praxis devoted to that counteroperation against myself and my team. Think of the resources they expe
nded. And for what? To kill me. To kill Cade and take the Rokura for themselves. Well, I’m still here. And Cade still has the Rokura. So, who was it that failed? We took this one on the chin, there’s no doubt about that. But Praxis did not walk away with a victory. Far from it.”
Kira let her words linger as she studied the ragtag collection of men and women of all different species who would topple a kingdom and free the galaxy. If there was one thing Kira had learned in her life, it was to never underestimate people from whom no one expected anything. When provided the right motivation and even the smallest opportunity, there was nothing they couldn’t do. Kira was living proof of that. She led them because she was one of them. Misfits. Scoundrels. Renegades. But most of all, they were survivors, fighters. It was written all over their faces; these were people who’d endured.
“We all come from different places, and we’re all here for different reasons, but one thing connects us all: the thorough, unwavering knowledge that Praxis is wrong and must be stopped. Let them think we’re down. Let them think we’re out. We know this place, all of us. And we know how to come back from it. So, when they least expect it, we’ll get them. Then we’ll do it again and again and again until they’re the ones running from us. That day will come, and when it does, Praxis will stay down. They don’t have your resilience, your ability to pick yourself up and keep moving. And that is how we’ll win—we will not stay down.”
Kira nodded to Captain Temple, a grumpy old war veteran who, if the legend was to be believed, was responsible for ending the plunder of Carthaton with his own two hands. He’d been picked by Percival to command the Renegades in their absence, and Kira couldn’t think of a better choice to lead the mission to find a new home.
“Damn fine speech,” Temple said as he moved to take command. “I’m ready to eat a warship for breakfast.”
“I’ll be back soon enough, Captain,” Kira said, taking his hand. “Save some for the rest of us.”
A rare smile spread across the Carthaton’s smooth, olive-green face; Kira turned to board her ship and leave the captain to start his leadership. As she walked up the ship’s boarding ramp, she heard a voice call her from behind. She turned to find a Sulac woman whose skin was as dry and tough as her home planet’s arid topography. The woman called Kira again, and the crowd, who’d begun murmuring after Kira’s speech ended, went quiet.
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