Kira was close enough to see Mig’s eyes as they subtly flickered, flashing with sudden pity. It was the last thing she wanted to see from anyone.
“Kira, you cannot think that way,” Mig said, steadfast in his opposition. “Whatever happens to your mom, it’s not on you. It never will be. This is the work of your dad, of Ga Halle, of every single complicit Praxian who’s allowed this reign of terror to go on. Mothers have died. Brothers, sisters, children—so many people have died, and it’s all because of Praxis. No one else.”
“You can’t tell me not to feel guilty, Mig.”
“You’re right,” Mig replied. “But I can tell you not to feel responsible.”
Kira drew a deep breath that helped to take the edge off her temper. “Fine, I’ll give you that. But that doesn’t change what I have to do.”
Kira tried to turn back toward her weapons, but Mig was quicker. He stepped around her, blocking her path. “So, what, then? Your mom sacrificed herself so you can go on a suicide run?”
As quickly as it had fallen, Kira felt her temper rising again. Of course she understood what Akima’s sacrifice was for, but she found it difficult to embrace what was supposed to happen after. Because while selflessness born out of love—not just for Kira but love for the people she represented as a Baron—was her way, it was Ebik who didn’t share Akima’s compassion or her patience. Akima resisted; Ebik fought. It didn’t matter what obstacles were in front of him or who got hurt along the way. Ebik pushed ahead no matter the consequences, and Kira’s darkest fear was the day she resembled her father in any way. And how far would her apple have fallen from the tree if she enlisted other people—friends—into her quest for revenge? She choked on trying to discern where her mother began, where her father ended, and whether there was room for her in the narrow space between.
“You’re not the only one,” Mig continued, filling the silence created by Kira’s intense contemplation. “I may not have had a dad who tried to kill me, but neither of my parents did much to keep me alive, either. I had a zep addict for a mother and degenerate gambler for a father, and neither one ever cared where I went or if I ever came back.”
Kira scoffed. “Fine, Mig. You had terrible parents. Congratulations. Is that supposed to make me feel better?”
“No, actually, it’s not,” Mig snapped, and Kira was taken aback by the indignation in his voice. She’d never heard such annoyance, or assertiveness, from him before. “It won’t make you feel better. Nothing will make you feel better. But even at the lowest points with my crappy parents, I was never alone, and neither are you. I had Cade, Tristan, and their parents, and you have me. You have Four-Qel and Cade. Even super-weird Kobe. And none of us are going to let you die so you can avoid what you’re feeling right now.”
“Mig,” Kira said, her eyes closed and her voice nearly down to a whisper, “do you even know what the Crucible is?”
Mig shrugged. “Not really. I know it’s not on Praxis; it’s on your nearest moon. And Kay is trying to find a way for us to get in before the moon reaches its farthest point from the planet. That’s when, he assumes, the explosives are going to be detonated and tear Praxis apart from the inside out. As for the Crucible itself, I imagine it’s some kind of military compound or something?”
“The Crucible is our prison. The previous generation of Barons built an impenetrable, inescapable jail on the moon to house the very worst prisoners—and not only from Praxis; the Barons sublet cells for prisoners from other nearby systems,” Kira said. “When Ga Halle took power, she gave inmates a choice: Serve in her army or rot forever. It was a quick, efficient way to bolster her forces.
“Now, the Crucible houses anyone Praxian police deems to be a dissenter or instigator, and it’s also my father’s operations hub; it’s Praxis’s only land base, and it’s guarded by the worst scum Praxis has to offer. So, trying to break in? No one would even dream of it.”
“Then good,” Mig said with a smile. “They’ll never see us coming.”
“Mig, you don’t understand,” Kira said, pinching the bridge of her nose. “Assuming we can even get in, and assuming we can get to the detonator and deactivate it before we’re all killed, there’s no way we get back out. This trip to the Crucible … it’s a one-way mission.”
Mig took a step away from Kira and let out an exasperated sigh. “Do you not understand what I’ve been saying to you? Do you not understand what we’ve all been through together means? I’ll just spell it out: We’re family. And we don’t let each other go through this kind of stuff alone.”
“I know we’re family, Mig,” Kira said as her lips curled into a bittersweet smile. “And that’s exactly why I can’t take any of you with me.”
Kira tried to walk past Mig—going where, she didn’t know, but she couldn’t drag this conversation out any longer—but as she did, he grabbed hold of her elbow. Not hard, but enough to keep her attention. “You won’t succeed, Kira. Alone, you won’t—”
Mig’s words were cut off by a sudden, intrusive sound. Kira’s head whipped toward the door; she and Mig stood silently, listening for the noise to repeat. As they did, Kira gripped the sidewinder holstered at her side.
“What was that?” Mig said, his voice low.
Kira shushed him and took quiet, cautious half steps toward the door. Before she reached it, the sound echoed overhead, filling the tiny room. It was an explosion. Muffled and somewhat distant, but an explosion nonetheless.
“We have to get out of here,” Kira told Mig. Any other time, Kira would have hidden her fear from everyone, especially those under her command. While Mig technically wasn’t her soldier, she knew he looked to her for leadership, especially when things went bad. But this time, she couldn’t hide the stricken expression on her face. They were trapped underground with nowhere to hide, and the enemy would be coming for them any minute.
They rushed to the bed, where Mig grabbed the tri-blaster. Kira took a second sidewinder while regretting how she’d busted the whipblaster even though it wasn’t the most ideal weapon for close-quarters combat.
Kira went to put her hand on the door but stopped. She turned to Mig and told him, “Stay behind me, stay small, stay alert.”
Mig nodded, tri-blaster at the ready. Slowly, Kira opened the metal door, using it for cover as she pushed it out. Its creaky hinges sent out an alarm so shrill it seemed like it could carry for miles. The narrow hallway leading from Kira’s quarters was empty; though Kay’s numbers had been thinned because of the ambush they’d suffered trying to retrieve Akima’s data, Kira was alarmed to find it completely desolate.
“Where’s Four-Qel?” Mig whispered. “Where’s Kobe?”
Kira turned to Mig and pressed her pointer finger against her lips. She could see the panic rising within him, and as much as she wanted to remind him to keep a level head, she knew the words wouldn’t matter. Even she was afraid. Something had gone terribly wrong, and odds were that something was coming for them.
Overhead, the single row of nude quirzine bulbs began to flicker; all the way down to the two overhead doors that swung out to the topside world, the line of bulbs was the only thing separating this arm of the bunker from total darkness. Kira knew what was going to happen next. It was inevitable.
“Mig, grab on to me!” Kira ordered.
Just as she felt Mig grab on to the waistband of her pants, every bulb surged, pouring white-hot light from their fragile cores. Then they burst. There was a succinct popping noise, then the entire space went dark. More than dark. It was like Kira and Mig had suddenly been plunged into the blackest night. Kira couldn’t see her hand, her weapon, or Mig. It was nothingness—real, total nothingness.
And she knew they had no time.
“Run and don’t let go,” she said, the words escaping her lips in gasps.
Kira charged ahead, aware of Mig’s hold on her all the way. They plowed straight down the hallway toward the double doors; they were the only way in and, more importantly, the only way out.
Thirty yards was all Kira needed; thirty yards to get to those doors and get out before somebody came in after them. Their footfalls slapped against the grated steel, but Kira couldn’t help but feel like they were going nowhere. Her heartbeat pounded in her head, hard and fast, muffling the sound of her own ragged breathing.
She led them forward with her left arm outstretched, desperately waving it to feel for the cold metal of the stairway railing. Finally, just as another explosion thundered above their heads, Kira made contact. She gasped relief and then ran her clammy hand over the smooth surface. As she was about to take hold of it, a single beam of hazy light shone in her eyes. Kira looked up and stared at the small sliver of white that pierced through a slender crack between the double doors. The sky was ashen with rain clouds and darkening with the sun’s recession below the horizon line. It was a rainy late evening on Praxis, and Kira was certain this smudge of sky was the last one she’d ever see.
“Go, go!” Kira commanded Mig as she stumbled back. “Get away from the door!”
Kira and Mig had barely pushed themselves back three steps when the double doors were flung wide open. The light, even as dull as it was, momentarily blinded them both. Kira rallied her tenacity and gripped both sidewinders tightly. She was ready to give whoever came down those stairs the fight of their life. If she was going to go, she’d be certain to take a few of her enemies with her.
Before her pupils could totally adjust to the sudden rush of light coming into the bunker, Kira’s attention was captured by the sound of feet marching down the stairs. The stomping footfalls were far too heavy to be human, which meant only one thing: drones, and a lot of them.
Kira fired at will.
The indistinct shapes gained more and more clarity with every passing second, taking on the definable outline of sentry drones rushing toward her and Mig. One by one, they were blasted off their feet. Mig joined the offensive spree, cutting down every Praxian drone that tried to invade their space. Kira put a hole through one’s chest and sent more than one bulbous drone head flying off its shoulders. Again and again and again they fired, shredding drone after drone. So many that they were forming a pile of scrap metal at the bottom of the stairs. But still, they kept coming.
“I’m running low on ammo!” Mig yelled, and Kira cursed the tri-blaster’s low charge capacity. She kept firing with one sidewinder as she took a break with her left hand to see if she had any spare charges on her. Right as she did, she saw the lifeless corpse of one of the downed sentries rise off the ground, its body limp like a puppet on strings. Suddenly, the body was propelled forward and flew toward both Kira and Mig.
“Move!” Kira yelled. She grabbed Mig as she dove for the ground, narrowly avoiding the incoming drone. Kira collected herself as quickly as she could, firing her sidewinder erratically as she pulled herself up. She knew, though, that they were done for.
A horde of sentry drones charged down the stairs, using the break in Kira and Mig’s onslaught to crush them with numbers. Mig, fresh out of ammo, was the first to fall.
“AAAH!” he screamed in agony. Kira turned, and she could only watch as he dropped to his knees, his fingers curled in on themselves, his jaw clenched tightly and teeth bared as his body convulsed uncontrollably. He dropped face-first to the floor, smoke wafting off his body.
“NO!” Kira howled, and she yanked back each of her triggers so hard that it hurt her fingers. “No!” she screamed as one sentry went down, “No!” for another, then “No!” for one more. Thoughts of her mother alone in her prison, of Ebik’s smug, callous grin, of Cade losing to the Rokura burst across her mind with each pull of the trigger. Kira continued to scream her fury as she fought back, but there were too many of them and not enough of her.
She felt the blaster bolt hit her square in the chest, delivering more of an impact than the hardest punch from the strongest person. Then came the electric shocks that surged throughout her body; her muscles tensed, her bones weakened, and the rush of energy kept her awake and alert for the most painful moment she’d ever experienced. Like Mig, Kira dropped to her knees, incapable of staying upright. The electric storm within her kept rolling and rolling, and just as Kira thought she couldn’t withstand any more and her heart was soon to burst, the torturous pain ended. She gasped as her body twitched uncontrollably, but the moment of respite was short-lived. Kira’s eyes rolled back in her head, and every muscle and joint surrendered. Her mind immediately followed, and though Kira’s instincts told her to raise her sidewinder and fight back, she couldn’t lift a finger.
Kira was out cold before her head hit the ground.
* * *
When she awoke, it was to screaming.
The sound was muffled and far away; the entire world around her seemed vague and distant. Even her vision, as it slowly returned, was as murky as the stormy sky overhead. It only took a moment for Kira to realize the cause of her impaired sight. Whoever had taken her unconscious body from the bunker had dropped her in a pool of mud, and that’s where she lay, half her face dug into brown sludge. Instinctually, she went to wipe the mud from her eyes but found that her hands were bound—by ionic cuffs, judging by the circuitous pulsing Kira felt at her wrists—behind her back. The best she could do was push herself up until she was positioned, unsteadily, onto her knees. Her body ached; everywhere felt battered and raw. Kira shook her head, angling it up so the rain could wash away some of the mud that obscured her vision. She regained enough focus to assess her surroundings. The earth that covered Kay’s underground bunker was nothing more than a sparsely wooded field. Sickly trees grew all around, thin and bare, while even sicklier grass grew in discolored patches along the barren ground. It all took on a completely different feel, though, with dozens of sentry drones patrolling the area. Kira spotted the top of a drop ship that poked out from a gorge just ahead, but parked about thirty yards away was a smaller vessel, a Polaris-class assault shuttle. And in every space in between, drones. So many damn drones.
As Kira became more lucid, the screaming that had woken her just a moment earlier was getting closer and closer until, finally, it snapped into focus. It was Mig she heard; he was on his knees right next to her, though he was being restrained by a sentry drone that had its mechanical arm locked around Mig’s neck. Mig was fighting with reckless abandon to get himself free. His muscles were taut from the strain he was putting into his resistance, and there was a frenzy in his eyes that Kira would have never guessed he was capable of. Even in the face of the life-threatening stunts they’d pulled together, Mig remained relatively even-keeled. Now, though, he was out of his head, and the sight of it alarmed Kira as she continued to regain full consciousness.
“Let him go!” Mig howled. “Wake up, Four-Qel! Wake. UP!”
Kira looked ahead and saw, through the rain that came down in sheets, the source of Mig’s frenzied protestations. She gasped. 4-Qel’s lifeless body hung in suspended animation, trapped in a shimmering blue containment field. Kira never imagined a scenario where 4-Qel could be captured—or worse. Seeing him hanging there reinforced just how desperate of a situation they were in. 4-Qel’s arms hung limply at his sides, and the green light that had shone in his eyes—the light that had conveyed more life from a drone that Kira ever thought possible—was absent. All Kira could see were dark shadows covering his eyes. She trembled at the thought that 4-Qel was gone forever. Despite her body’s burning soreness, she moved to get up and rush to 4-Qel’s side. She knew there was nothing she could do for him, at least not yet, but she couldn’t bear the thought of him trapped there all alone. As foolishly sentimental as it was, Kira was certain that, if nothing else, someone should be with him. And that someone should be Mig.
Kira got up off her knees just enough to dig her feet into the treacherous ground; though slippery, she still gained enough purchase to lunge at the sentry that was restraining Mig. She threw all her weight into the drone, knocking it over and freeing Mig in the process.
Unfortunately, Mig didn’t get f
ar.
By the time Kira looked up, Mig was on his feet but halted in place, staring down the blades of a shido.
Kira knew that black armor just as well as she knew the sadistic face of the man who wore it: Ortzo, the Fatebreaker who was responsible for untold misery across the galaxy, including the death of Cade’s parents.
“Ah, ah, ah,” Ortzo warned. “Your friend is going to fetch a fine bounty from the Eris royal family. They may even be so grateful for the return of their property that they’ll join our kingdom at last.”
“He’s not property,” Mig sneered.
“Look at the expression on your face,” Ortzo said, mocking Mig. “So angry, so hostile. You want to kill me, don’t you? And here I thought you would have missed me.”
“Let him go,” Mig snarled. “Or I will kill you.”
Ortzo laughed sinisterly. “Oh, you will, will you? Even if you weren’t bound, even if you weren’t weaponless, you truly think you can do what your Qel could not? What your Paragon, or whatever you want to call him, could not? No,” Ortzo sneered, “you cannot kill me. None of you can.”
“I beg to differ,” a voice called from the distance, breaking through the cacophonous rain as it pummeled the ground. The sentry beneath Kira started to push against her body weight, and Kira delivered a sharp elbow to its neck, disabling it. She then swung her head around and saw, through the haze caused by the incessant rain, Kobe.
We Are Mayhem--A Black Star Renegades Novel Page 22
