Beside him, Ersia lifted herself off the ground and spat blood.
“What are you waiting for?” she asked, wincing through the pain.
Cade blinked hard. He couldn’t tell if his ears were ringing or if the ringing was coming straight from his brain. Regardless, it was hard for him to think clearly enough to understand what Ersia was saying.
“What?” he groggily asked.
“They’re not going to stay down forever,” Ersia said. “You have to go get her. Get Ga Halle.”
“Sure,” Cade said, barely able to stand. “Right.”
Cade picked himself up and swallowed the pain that riddled his body. He stretched out his hand and helped Ersia to her feet, too.
“Thank you,” Cade said. “I owe you more than I can ever repay.”
Ersia nodded—dignified, royal. “Just do what that weapon was meant to do, and we’ll call it even,” she said.
Cade pulled the Rokura off his back and set off, half limping, toward the door. What was left of the Praxian sentries and gunners were still gathering themselves, and their numbers had thinned considerably. Unless the Thunder Cruiser had another reserve of troops, the Monaskins would be able to finish them off. Still, the damage had been done. Cade looked back one last time to see the throne room’s chaos. All of this death and destruction to satiate one person’s lust to obtain unlimited power. It was all so pointless, so tragic. Cade became furious as he conceptualized the scope of the misery Ga Halle had caused. Never had he been so determined to face her.
Never had he been so determined to see her fall.
* * *
“Cade Sura, the one who would be Paragon,” Ga Halle mocked. “I thought you’d never make it.”
Cade stood at the start of the landing platform, eyeing Ga Halle at the other end. She was exactly as she’d been when she’d appeared to Cade in his visions: the crown of daggers, the obsidian shawl that conformed to her body, the darkness in her eyes. Her containment suit had also conformed to whatever transformation she had undergone; the once-blue waves of antimatter now pulsed with inky blackness. Cade couldn’t even theorize what had happened to her, and he wasn’t sure that he wanted to know. Besides, his focus was elsewhere. Because just in case the unhinged ruler of the galaxy’s tyrannical kingdom wasn’t enough to deal with, there was more.
Ga Halle wasn’t alone.
Hovering behind her were the three specters that somehow were responsible for upgrading Ga Halle from an evil despot to a magical evil despot—the dark seeds of Mankarta. Though they mainly retained their ghastly forms, their faces were more articulated than they’d been in Cade’s previous encounter. Each had sculpted for itself a woman’s head, pewter-toned and completely hairless. Cade couldn’t decide if their lifeless faces made them more or less horrifying. As much as Cade thought it was in his best interests to keep an eye on the dark seeds—he had no idea what they were capable of—he couldn’t help but dedicate his attention to Percival.
Beaten, bruised, and bloodied Percival.
He was on his knees in front of Ga Halle, and she was stroking his hair with one hand like he was her pet. With her other hand, she kept her shido pressed firmly to his throat—one swipe and Percival would be dead.
“Let him go,” Cade called out. “Let him go, or I’ll obliterate every inch of you down to the shriveled thing you call a soul.”
“We both know you can’t do that, so let me offer you a deal,” Ga Halle said. “It’s very simple—give me the Rokura, and I’ll let Percival live. I’ll let both of you live.”
“I’ll never let that happen,” Percival snarled. “I’d sooner throw myself off this platform than let you touch that weapon.”
Percival had been staring at Cade through despondent eyes, so Cade was glad when he showed that he hadn’t lost his fire. Still, Cade knew the complicated history between Percival and Ga Halle, and he knew getting beaten by her had to have broken more than his body. The loss must have been profoundly demoralizing; Percival had dedicated so much of his life to waging war against his former friend, driven by his feelings of shame and anger for having been at Ga Halle’s side the moment her power-craving mania began. Shame because he’d abandoned his duty as the Paragon; anger for not being able to stop Ga Halle—to kill her—when he’d had the chance. Cade had been worried about Percival from the moment Ersia told him that he’d gone after Ga Halle. It was such a brazen and terrible idea, but Cade understood why Percival had done it. Knowing firsthand the Rokura’s terrible power, Cade never faulted Percival’s decision to reject the mantle of the Paragon and leave unfinished the job the weapon had started when it had tried to kill Ga Halle. But those decisions weighed heavily on Percival, because even if he’d done one of those two things differently—if he’d remained the Paragon or finished off Ga Halle—the galaxy would have been a much different place. Percival spent a lifetime trying to correct what had happened in the spire on Quarry, but he couldn’t. Ga Halle had gotten too powerful, and he’d gotten too old. And now, resoundingly beaten, Percival was a man with nothing left to lose.
Cade took two steps forward on the platform. “Do you even realize what you’ve done to the galaxy?” he asked, unable to stifle his disgust. “Do you understand the pain you’ve caused?”
Ga Halle was unmoved. “You silly boy, you know nothing. Do you truly believe that a galaxy absent of me would also be absent of pain? Let me ask you this: Have you ever heard of the tribal feuding on Adama? Feuding that had gone on, until just recently, for centuries?”
“I’ve heard of it, yeah,” Cade said.
“And do you know what life on Adama was like before the feuds finally ended? Did the Well ever send you there to try to make peace?”
“No,” Cade tersely answered.
“No. No, of course they didn’t. It was too complicated for them. Too messy, and the Masters didn’t like to get their hands dirty. You want to know about misery? Adama was misery personified. That planet was suffocated by a war waged by extremists. The various tribes fought their battles everywhere. On city streets, in parks, spaceports—they didn’t care. Collateral damage meant nothing to them; the innocent lives they took meant nothing to them. And what was it all for? Some ridiculous disputes over land and religion that’d been going on so long no one even remembered how it had all started.
“That is misery; that is suffering. And I released those people. Not the Well, not the Galactic Alliance. I did.”
“So what?” Cade said, scowling. “You’re branding yourself a peacekeeper now?”
Ga Halle shrugged. “At least I know what it takes to get there.”
“You are seriously out of your mind.” Cade’s voice was on the cusp of trembling, but he kept his righteous anger from boiling over. “I mean, this peace on Adama required a whole bunch of killing, right? That’s how peace is won?”
Ga Halle smiled but didn’t say a word.
“Peace through terror is no peace at all,” Cade growled.
“That’s where you’re wrong,” Ga Halle said, her voice thick with conviction. “There’s no having one without the other. The Well had their chance to make peace. They flooded the galaxy with aid missions and diplomacy and all their other weak attempts to justify their existence. They wanted what I’m giving the galaxy; what they got was Adama. The Well’s time is over. Now, it’s my turn.”
Ga Halle turned around and nodded to one of the dark seeds. At her signal, the three specters wafted in front of the Praxian queen and hovered in a straight line just over her head.
“The Rokura,” Ga Halle demanded.
Cade aimed the Rokura ahead. His thoughts flew to what Wu-Xia had told him about vanquishing evil, about refusing to compromise. He remembered the gorgan; he thought of what he’d done, how he’d channeled the Rokura’s light somehow through the determination of his will. Cade’s heart and mind were heavy with all of this, but the clarity of what he needed to do was new, and it brought him at least a modicum of solace.
“You m
ight have convinced yourself of this whole peacemaker line, but there’s no way I’m buying it,” Cade said. “Everything you’ve done, everything you plan to do, none of it is about you trying to bring order to the galaxy. This whole thing—all the battles and the blood—is all about you still trying to get back what you think you lost in the spire. Get over it.”
There was a tense moment when Cade waited for Ga Halle to attack him in a rampage, but she didn’t. She simply stood with her shido pressed against Percival’s throat, her dark eyes fixed on Cade.
“And now look at you,” Cade continued. “You’ve made yourself into something with the help of … whatever these dark seeds are. I don’t know what it is, and I don’t care. Nothing will change that you’re not the Paragon, and you never will be.” Cade drew a deep breath and fought back angry tears. “I know what the Paragon is; I saw it in my brother. Tristan…” Cade trailed off, thinking of the right words to say to capture everything he knew and felt about his brother. A bittersweet smile appeared on his face as he remembered what Wu-Xia had said. “Tristan was incorruptible. He was made to be this, and you disgrace everything he was by acting like you’re anywhere close to being his equal.”
“Give. Me. The. Rokura.” Ga Halle’s voice trembled with rage.
“Never.”
Ga Halle nodded; she seemed to know Cade’s resistance was inevitable. She probably even hoped for it. “Then die,” she said.
Ga Halle didn’t have to say a word or deliver a signal. The dark seeds knew. As they flew toward Cade, the masklike faces transformed into three human skulls that burned off streaks of effervescent tendrils that glowed deep red, green, and indigo. Their decaying jaws opened wide, and from them they discharged a bloodcurdling scream. Cade wanted to cover his ears; he wanted to rip his ears from his head, but he maintained his focus. The gorgan. He’d healed the scarred beast by appealing not only to the goodness of the Rokura but also the goodness in himself. Cade had to stay committed in his heart and mind to what he wanted from the weapon. He wasn’t going to defeat evil on its terms and compromise his own soul in the process, nor was he going to ever be strong enough or incorruptible enough to overcome the Rokura’s strength. Cade’s deepest desire was simple; he wanted to make the galaxy better. And Wu-Xia was right about the path to getting there. Evil had to be vanquished. Not by dominating it, not by bringing it to heel. The only option Cade had was to do what he did with the gorgan. He had to expunge evil, totally and completely.
Cade drew on this clarity. He fed it into the Rokura and, just like in the fighting pit, a burst of white energy was thrown from the weapon’s tip. The radiant light intensified with tremendous rapidity and crackled with raw power. Still, the dark seeds continued toward Cade undeterred. They were nearly within striking distance, their long, skeletal fingers reaching out, ready to claw and tear at Cade, when he pushed the light forward. A stream of the Rokura’s energy surged from its tip and propelled ahead; it halted the ghouls and began to wrap them in a force field of light. Soon, the dark seeds began to writhe and convulse; they shrieked as if suffering from torturous duress. Cade could only hope he was doing to them what he’d managed to do to the gorgan; he didn’t know what the dark seeds once were, but he knew they couldn’t have been born this way. At least he hoped not.
The three specters fought against Cade and the Rokura, but he didn’t relent. He continued to push until, finally, the weapon’s power hit its apex. The dark seeds were consumed by light that shone so brightly Cade was forced to look away.
Then it was over.
The light receded from the Rokura, though Cade felt the difference in the power it had expended. Before, it was like the weapon had been working through him, like he was merely a necessary vessel for its outward displays of might. But now, just like with the gorgan, Cade felt like he had agency in the Rokura’s power; he felt like it was coming from him, rather than through him. It was natural; it was, as Wu-Xia had promised, a product of him simply being.
When the energy Cade felt cycling between himself and the weapon ended, it was once again just a weapon, no different in appearance from a shido. What changed, though, were the dark seeds. Cade turned and saw them standing just an arm’s length away. Gone were the flaming skulls and the terrible shrieks; gone was the menace and the wisps of tendrils. They were now just three women, identical to one another, no older than Cade, clothed in red, green, and indigo dresses that were lavish, ornate, and unlike anything Cade had ever seen before. They seemed to be from an entirely different era.
All three women—sisters, Cade presumed—ran their fingers over their cheeks and lips as if feeling their flesh for the very first time. Or maybe, Cade considered, it was the first time in many, many years. The centermost one let out a soft laugh, then she looked at Cade. She smiled at him as a tear rolled off the contour of her cheek.
“Thank you,” she whispered, and then she took hold of her sisters’ hands. They formed a circle, drawing into one another; as they did, their skin began to peel off. Little by little, more and more of the bodies disintegrated, flesh and bone drying to dust and floating away, ostensibly, to join the universe. Cade watched it go and felt, for a moment, a sense of peace within himself.
But Ga Halle shattered that feeling.
“You shouldn’t have done that,” she said, her voice conveying not even the slightest hint of perturbation. “We’ll just have to make it even.”
Ga Halle’s arm barely even moved. It required hardly any effort for her to jam her shido’s blade into Percival’s throat and then cut.
“No,” Cade whispered, barely able to muster enough air to get the simple word out of his mouth. “What have you done?”
Ga Halle shoved Percival to the ground by his hair—an unnecessary display of her dominance. For a moment, Cade thought Percival was going to get up. That he was going to fight back. But he stayed facedown on the ground, unmoving, as the crimson pooled around his head.
“NO!” Cade howled.
Ga Halle charged Cade. Her shido left a trail of Percival’s blood behind her. And Cade, like Ga Halle, was transported back to the place that, in a way, he’d never leave: the Quarrian spire. He was watching his brother get murdered all over again, and he screamed with the fury he couldn’t control. Tristan and Percival, both murdered in front of him; both dead because he couldn’t do anything to stop it. Cade watched Ga Halle approach, and his rage intensified with every step she took. Every death, from the planets she’d snuffed out to the people Cade had loved, was because of her. And now she was going to try to kill him, too. Then Kira. Then Mig, 4-Qel, Kobe, and whoever else stood in her way. As he looked at the twisted, crazed look on Ga Halle’s face, the pools of darkness that were her eyes, the daggers that grew from her head, he knew there could be no redemption for her. She was dead in her core, dead in her soul, and Cade couldn’t risk keeping any variation of her in the galaxy. There’d be no saving Ga Halle.
Rage and pain swelled within him, and he poured every ounce of it into the Rokura. He called on it to do what it had done to the Fatebreaker that’d killed Tristan, what it had wanted to do countless times since then. Cade willed it to unleash its darkest desires, whatever they may be, and destroy Ga Halle. In his mind’s eye, he saw her being torn apart, piece by piece, from her flesh to her bones until there was nothing left of her. Cade hoped the pain it caused Ga Halle lasted an eternity.
But nothing happened.
Cade pushed and forced everything that was inside of him into the Rokura, but it didn’t respond. Ga Halle was almost on him, and he needed the Rokura to act. Now more than ever.
“Come on!” he yelled, pounding his fist against its cold metal. “Kill her!”
Ga Halle leapt high into the air; she held her shido with two hands above her head, and she was bringing it down on Cade when he gave up on the Rokura’s power and used it instead like a normal shido. He blocked Ga Halle’s strike at the last possible moment. In the meeting of their weapons, Cade felt Ga Halle’s imme
nse strength and the dark power that fueled it. He knew he was doomed.
Ga Halle wasted no time continuing her assault. She swung the back end of her shido around and drove it into Cade’s abdomen. It doubled him over, but he recovered just enough to block Ga Halle’s uppercut, also with the back end of her shido, aimed at Cade’s face. Rolling away from Ga Halle, Cade shoved her shido aside and tried to drill the Rokura’s blades into her containment suit. He didn’t know what would happen if her suit was compromised, but he assumed it wouldn’t be good.
Ga Halle, though, was fast. She knocked Cade’s weapon aside and followed her defense with a swipe at Cade’s midsection. He leapt back, avoiding the blow, and went at Ga Halle with a series of jabs, all of which were defended easily. As they exchanged blows, pushing back and forth across the narrow strip leading to the landing platform, Cade began to hope that Ga Halle would start taunting or mocking him. Anything to get her distracted. But she didn’t utter a word, and Cade was far too devoted to keeping up with his enemy to even think about drawing her into a battle of barbs.
The effort required to combat Ga Halle’s strength exhausted Cade, and he lost a step quickly. Ga Halle recognized Cade’s waning stamina, and she went in for the kill.
Coming out of a defended overhead strike, Ga Halle drove her heel into Cade’s knee, buckling his leg; Cade stumbled, and though he tried to recover his position quickly, he was too slow. Ga Halle swiped her shido’s hilt across Cade’s face, battering his right eye.
“Agh!” Cade growled, and he felt the flesh over his eyelid swelling immediately. He had only a few moments, at best, before his eye was swollen shut.
He went back at Ga Halle with a downward stab, trying to catch her off guard by going after her legs. Ga Halle wasn’t fooled. She grabbed the shaft of the Rokura as he plunged it toward her, then she drove her own shido into Cade’s thigh. The tips of all three blades chewed into Cade’s muscle; he screamed painfully, then howled louder when Ga Halle twisted her weapon out of his flesh. Cade could hardly see, he could barely move, and he knew his punishment was just beginning.
We Are Mayhem--A Black Star Renegades Novel Page 25
