“The Warden is the only person with the power to arrest a Baron, and only the other Barons could convict one of their own of a crime. As Ebik played me, so he played every other Baron. Your mother was in custody and convicted of the crimes Ebik had concocted within a week. And with her out of the way and you missing, he had a clear path to take your mother’s role and become a Baron, just like he always wanted.”
Kira’s rage settled behind her eyes and applied so much pressure that it felt like something would erupt from her forehead. She looked down at her hands and realized they were trembling.
“What about me? How did dear old Dad explain what had happened to his teenage daughter?” Kira said, fighting the urge to grit her teeth until they snapped.
“He said you were destroying evidence, trying to help your mother. And when he threatened to toss you in jail with Akima, you ran. You escaped the planet to avoid punishment.”
“And you believed him?”
Kay sighed heavily. “I don’t know. I look back at it all now, and I think there was no way I could have bought into what your father was orchestrating. But at the time … I was so loyal to Ebik, so trusting. It was like I was under a spell.
“Eventually, though, I did sober up. Little cracks started to show in the walls Ebik was building. Then the cracks got bigger; they ran straight into the foundation, and before I knew it, everything came tumbling down. You can only fool people so much until they reach a crossroads where they either willingly decide to live the lie or they make a change. I chose the latter. And it was a good thing, because Ebik was on to me. He suspected I was starting to come out from under his thumb, and had he known it with absolute certainty, he would have had me discarded in a heartbeat.”
“You went AWOL?” Kira asked.
“A little over two years ago. Went totally off the grid. Luckily, because of my position as Warden, I had comprehensive knowledge of Ebik and Ga Halle’s list of ‘agitators’—people who, in one way or another, resisted what they were turning our planet into. It took some doing for them to trust me and for all of us to join as a unified thing, but it happened. When Ga Halle massacred the Barons, we knew it was time for us to come out of the shadows and strike back. We’ve been gaining a lot of support ever since. Because what Ga Halle and Ebik have turned Praxis into—this isn’t us. This isn’t who we are. Not as a planet, not as a people. And I will not let these power-hungry monsters trash everything we are and commit one atrocity after another in our names.”
Kira stared Kay in his eyes; there was tenacity in his gaze, a steadfastness that she had no doubt was a great asset in unifying and leading people. There wasn’t a person alive who wanted to rally around someone who wasn’t certain. But in those eyes—brown speckled with black—there was also hurt. In the basement of the financial center, Kira had wondered what that hurt meant to Kay, and now she knew. And more importantly, she had little doubt that it was genuine.
“You sure know how to ratchet up the intensity,” Kira said as she grabbed the whiskey bottle and poured them both one more drink. “Remind me not to invite you to any parties.”
Kay stroked his beard as he swirled his drink. “What? Parties are a great way to meet new people and recruit them with the power of your message.”
Kira shot Kay an exasperated look.
“Come on, it’s a joke,” he said.
“Is it?”
Kay shrugged. “I don’t know, maybe,” he said, and he threw back his drink.
As he did, Gunk hurried into the room, a look of anxiety on his face.
“Sir, I need to speak with you,” he said. “It’s of the urgent-matter variety.”
“You can go ahead,” Kay said, motioning his hand toward Kira. “She’s with us.”
Gunk’s eyes darted to Kira for a moment, and she could see his uncertainty. If he hadn’t corrected himself, she would have walked herself across the room and backhanded him across his face. After everything she’d done for him, he owed her a life debt, not to mention a modicum of trust.
“Seriously, Gunk?” she questioned.
Gunk’s head recoiled into his shoulders, and every muscle in his face went taut—which probably caused quite a strain, Kira imagined, seeing that he was made of rock. He was the portrait of discomfort. “One can never be too careful in a revolution. That’s what my mother always says.”
“Gunk. The message,” Kay said.
After clearing his throat, the Poqlin continued. “Right. We received an urgent transmission,” Gunk said. “From Akima.”
Kay sprang up from his seat and gasped. Worry—very deep, Kira could plainly see, very real—was written all over his face. “What kind of transmission?” Kay asked, almost frantic. “What did it say?”
“I think you ought to see it for yourself, sir,” Gunk said.
Kira’s and Kay’s eyes met, and Kira knew exactly what was growing within each of them: dread. They didn’t waste a second dwelling on it, though. They followed Gunk out of the room, wordlessly, their paces hurried.
* * *
“We have to break her out,” Kira said. She’d stood up among Kay’s gathered audience of soldiers, instigators and outlaws alike, and could feel their skeptical, even scornful, eyes on her. There was nothing but silence hanging in the air, and an uncomfortable one at that. Kira looked over at Kay, who was cupping his mouth in his hand. He bore the expression of a man who’d heard something that he wished he hadn’t.
“Am I the only one who was paying attention?” Kira asked, her voice conveying no shortage of disgust at the impassive audience surrounding her. “The people holding her captive are closing in; she doesn’t have much time.”
“We heard the message,” said a squat soldier with a flat nose and eyebrows that formed a thick black slash across his forehead. He stretched his body up as far as it could reach so Kira could see him among the crowd. “And we heard Akima give clear orders: We need to get to our man on the inside and snatch whatever information Akima has to offer, and we have to do it tonight. ‘No matter what it takes,’ she said. I don’t know about you, but that sounds pretty clear to me.”
“Are you going to completely skip over the part where she suspects she’s been discovered?” Kira snarled, trying her best to shove aside the image of her mother, whom she hadn’t seen in over ten years, shaking as she implored her loyalists to follow orders while casually informing them she was about to be killed. She was right there in front of Kira not five minutes earlier, a blurry holographic image that was realer than anything Kira had been able to project in her head over the past decade. Real enough for her to see with her own two eyes; almost real enough for her to touch. Kira had to stifle the avalanche of emotion that threatened to overwhelm her, threatened to paralyze her. She hadn’t come all this way, hadn’t fought so hard so some grunt with a little bit of nerve could diminish her mother’s urgency. She wouldn’t let the cowardice that hid behind the call of duty have its day. “That is your commander,” Kira continued, “and where I’m from—”
“You’re from here; we know who you are, Kira Sen,” the soldier groaned. “Awfully strange that you come back home and immediately our mission is strangely sabotaged. And now, you want to draw out our troops and defy your mom’s orders. Seems like an unlikely coincidence, these things happening all at once.”
“That’s enough, Private Straker,” Kay ordered from the head of the briefing room. He was standing right where Kira’s mother—or at least the projection of her mother—had been standing just moments before.
“Just speaking my mind, sir,” Straker said with a condescending smile. “But since I have your attention, can you remind me what the chain of command is? Do we take orders from you, or from this—”
Kira was so focused on the raw fury that was burning a hole inside of her as she listened to this Straker run his mouth that she didn’t see 4-Qel stride soundlessly behind him. 4-Qel didn’t say a single word; he just snapped his left hand, chopping it against the back of Straker’s hea
d. The man was knocked out instantly; his head slumped into his chest, then the forward momentum pulled him onto the ground. He landed with a thud.
“Oh no, it’s happened again,” 4-Qel said. “It’s a reflex malfunction that I suffer from; you never know when it’s going to strike.”
The rest of the soldiers craned their necks to look at 4-Qel, silenced in awe.
“I’m sorry to interrupt,” 4-Qel said. “Would anyone else like to follow up on Private Straker’s line of conversation?”
One private, a woman who stared without blinking at 4-Qel, raised a shaky hand. 4-Qel called on her.
“Are you … are you a Qel?” she asked.
“Indeed I am. And everything you’ve heard about us is true.”
The woman slowly lowered her hand. “I think we’re good with questions.”
4-Qel motioned to Kira, giving her control of the room. Kira nodded, then looked over at Kay, who arched an eyebrow and took a step back. There was a good-natured playfulness in his expression, like he was challenging Kira to win his soldiers over.
“Listen, I’m not into giving long, drawn-out speeches, and we don’t have time anyway,” Kira said as she paced the head of the room, connecting with as many eyes as possible as she spoke. “I know what Straker was getting at, that I’m too close to all this because Akima is my mother. My response to that is simple:
“Shut your face.”
That caught a couple of smiles, which Kira wanted. She knew her best strength as a leader was in being one of them, the grunts. Not one of them, the commanders.
“I’m serious,” Kira said. “And I know my mother gave clear orders to go after this critical information that she has to share and to not concern ourselves with her. That’s a prudent call; it’s noble and brave. Any leader worth her salt, myself included, should do exactly the same thing. But my squad has one simple rule, and we don’t bend, break, or compromise it: No one gets left behind. Ever. And with or without a single person in this room, I will stand by that rule until the day I die. Which is my way of saying that I will not leave my mother—your leader—to die. All I need to know is who’s with me.”
“What if it’s a trap?” Gunk asked. He was standing off to the side, beside Kay, his hands held together at his waist. “I’m not saying she was coerced into making that message to set us up—she would never do that—but the message didn’t come over the usual secure channels, probably because she was in a rush. But that being the case, there’s no telling who picked it up.”
“Then the mission to get her information would be suicide either way,” Kira responded.
“Not necessarily,” Kay interjected. “Most of the contact with Akima is through a third party, someone on the inside. See, your mother isn’t kept in prison; she’s captive in the Baron’s Overwatch. We have a man on the inside there; she gives messages to him, he gets them to us. That’s how this exchange would go down. The kingdom doesn’t know who this person is, so they wouldn’t be able to intercept the exchange.”
“So you think,” Kira argued. “You know more than anyone that Ebik knows more than he lets on and doesn’t play his hand until he has to.”
“True, but if the kingdom did intercept that message, odds are they’ll expect us to do something to save Akima.”
“Not to mention,” Gunk added, “that it’s impossible to break into the Overwatch. You’d have to be a master escape artist. Or … or a magician.”
From the opposite side of the room, Mig fanned his lips. “Nope. Uh-uh. That’s what they all say, but no place is impenetrable. Trust me, I know.”
“It’s true,” 4-Qel added. “Mig is exceptional at breaking into places he doesn’t belong. I wouldn’t be here otherwise.”
Kay sighed, but his exasperation was paired with a smile. “Well, what, then?”
Kira looked to Mig, who gave her an affirming nod. It was all she needed to cement her decision.
“We double down,” Kira said without a hint of doubt in her words. “Kay, you lead a small strike team in to meet your contact, expecting the worst. I lead a stealth team in to save my mother, expecting the same.”
“It’s bold and risky,” Kay sighed. “But I like it.”
Kay turned to face his squad, speaking to them more than Kira. “We do it under one condition: volunteers only. This will be very dangerous. We’re talking about going across enemy lines and with no time to prep or strategize. I’ll only take people who come along willingly, and there is no shame—none—in turning down this mission.”
“Fair enough,” Kira agreed, then she turned to the men and women before her and asked, “No one left behind. Who’s with us?”
Every hand in the room shot up.
Kira nodded, and her mouth upturned into a determined smile. “All right, then,” she said. “Let’s show the kingdom exactly what they’re up against.”
* * *
Pink and green neon flashed with nauseating brightness in Kira’s eyes, and she wanted to smash every little pixel on the incomprehensibly massive screen to bits. It would do her no good but there was something to be said about striking back against the dizzying display that was scorching her eyesight. She couldn’t help but curse kids—every last one of them—and their inability to have their attention drawn by anything short of a seizure-inducing billboard of light and sound. But Kira had more important things to focus on, particularly rappelling down the side of the Baron’s Overwatch without being detected.
Standing ninety stories high and guarded tighter than any building in all of Praxis, the Overwatch was less a building and more a military-controlled compound. The ways in which someone trying to break in could get detected, caught, and likely killed were innumerable. Mig had hacked his way deep enough into the Overwatch mainframe to thieve just a glimpse of the security protocols in place: Sentry and alpha drones were pretty much stationed in every nook, cranny, and hallway inside the building; outside, gunners in flying mech suits, accompanied by buzzing raptors, patrolled the building’s exterior and ensured no one tried to do the unthinkable.
Which is exactly what Kira, Mig, 4-Qel, and Kobe were doing.
Mig had sold Kira on the idea that scaling the side of the building with the advertisement for Yocando—the video game juggernaut—was their best bet; unlike the Overwatch’s other three sides, which were all glass and sparkled with light reflected from the adjacent buildings, the side displaying the hyper Yocando ad at least offered some visual cover. They wouldn’t be spotted from the drones on the inside, Mig reasoned, and the display’s deep hues at least provided a chance for them to camouflage with the building. It was the only weakness Mig could find on such short notice, and even he admitted it probably wasn’t the best or safest way to get inside. When Kay cemented their plan by cashing in a favor with a razor pilot who could get them to the top of the Overwatch unnoticed, the decision was made. But that didn’t change the fact that busting into the Overwatch this way required people to be dumb enough to shimmy their way down from ninety stories up and do it with hardly any preparation.
Kira and her friends, apparently, were just the right kind of dumb.
“How much farther?” Kira asked, shouting into the comms headset that connected to the rest of her team. She had to shout over the buzzing din that poured off the Yocando display.
“Just a little bit more,” Mig answered, his voice taut and strained. Though the plan was his, that didn’t mean he liked it. Blasting off into space in grav suits or any of his similar stunts was one thing; Mig had time to prep, practice, and perfect everything he was going to do. But dropping down the side of a heavily fortified building without any planning or any proper tools—he didn’t consider rope, harnesses, and grappling claws to be proper—was something totally different.
Kira, who was just above Mig with 4-Qel and Kobe above her, tightened her grip on the rope, squeezing it so she could feel the harness tighten around her waist. A gunner in a mech suit rumbled by not twenty feet behind her, and she could only ho
pe he didn’t detect the four small shapes pressed like lichens against the sea of background color; if he did, they’d be target practice.
“Here,” Mig called into the comms. “Right here.”
Kira lowered herself to Mig. Every muscle in her body started to feel tense and sore, and when she looked up, just a quick glance, she was surprised to see that they’d only traveled around twenty stories. The physical demands of the journey, compounded with her personal investment, threatened to deplete Kira’s energy before they even got inside. She took a moment to breathe and let her body slacken; she knew better than to allow her emotions to intrude on a mission. She preached that lesson to her Omega Squadron constantly. Keep your focus, keep your perspective. She reminded herself that the task directly in front of her was all that mattered. First, she had to get inside the building, then she’d knock down whatever obstacle came after that and after that and so on, until there was nothing else in her way. Until she was standing face-to-face with her mother.
“This is where the gap between floors should be,” Mig said, tracing an invisible, not-so-big square against the building with his finger.
“Should be?” Kira questioned.
Mig shrugged. “Hey, you can study the schematics and do all the calculating in the world, but there’s no accounting for the times numbers and reality don’t align.”
“And what if there are alarms between the outside of the building and the inside?”
Again, Mig shrugged. “We didn’t scale the side of a building—which was terrifying, by the way—to start second-guessing, did we?”
“No,” Kira said, her resolve unflagging. She started to lower herself below Mig and called into her comms as she did. “Four-Qel, get us in there.”
With carefully applied strength and the precise calculations given to him by Mig, 4-Qel would be able to punch an opening in the building’s exterior big enough for them all to crawl inside. And creating an opening between floors would allow them to avoid detection from the drones waiting within, at least for a little while. It was a good enough plan—and then it was completely shredded when the billboard display went completely white.
We Are Mayhem--A Black Star Renegades Novel Page 18
