Ga Halle struck high, and Cade defended, but the purpose of her strike was to get Cade out of position. As soon as their shidos clanged together, Ga Halle spun around Cade, narrowly avoiding falling off the landing strip, and she sliced her shido across his bicep as she passed. Behind him, she brained him with the butt of her weapon, and Cade saw stars. The blow destroyed his sense of equilibrium, and he fell to his knees.
Cade’s consciousness flickered, but he was aware enough to know he was about to die. His body vertiginously swayed but was righted by a hand clenching his chin. Cade looked up to see Ga Halle, triumphant, standing above him.
“You think I’m going to kill you, don’t you?”
Cade could hardly focus on her words; the only thing that kept him conscious was the hope for one chance to stop Ga Halle from getting what she wanted. As she waited for his response, Cade pooled what little energy he still possessed. It wasn’t much, but with all he had, he tried to raise his arm—nearly immobile from the deep cut in the muscle—and throw the Rokura into the fathomless depths that awaited over the side of the platform.
Ga Halle stomped on Cade’s wrist before it got an inch off the ground.
“That should have been the first thing you did when you stepped out here,” Ga Halle mocked. “But you had to be noble and try to do what we both know you’re incapable of doing.”
Cade wanted to cry furious tears over what he’d done. For whatever short amount of time he had to live, he would spend it lacerating himself for not following the instinct he’d first had when the Rokura was dumped into his possession: Destroy it and run. That’s what he was cut out to do. And now … now, it was all over. Because with a forceful tug, Ga Halle yanked the most powerful weapon in the galaxy from Cade’s limp hand.
Cade expected the galaxy to shake. He expected the ground to tremble beneath him. He expected Ga Halle to exhibit some sort of display of her supremacy. But nothing was torn asunder, and there was no satisfaction expressed from his nemesis. It was just the two of them, alone on a platform on a planet that had been decimated by the very weapon now held by the most dangerous person in the universe. And all Cade could do was succumb to the darkness that was crowding the periphery of his vision. To the feelings of shame that he couldn’t face, knowing his failure had damned the entire galaxy. Killing him, he realized, would have been the humane thing for Ga Halle to do, and that was probably why she didn’t do it.
What happened next was a blur to Cade. The last thing he remembered was being dragged down the platform toward Ga Halle’s ship.
And then, the ship exploded. The blast was just beyond his and Ga Halle’s range; he felt the explosion’s heat on his face, and his mind cleared as two Monaskin attack ships descended on Ga Halle. The ships opened up their cannons on Ga Halle; the first shots went wide, pelting the strip just behind Cade. Those turned out to be the only strikes that would touch the ground.
As if she’d done so a hundred times before, Ga Halle raised the Rokura skyward, directing it at the approaching ships. The weapon’s tip crackled with power, and the ships, paired in a tight formation, fired down once more. But this time, Ga Halle wouldn’t be caught in harm’s way.
The Rokura unleashed a streak of energy, catching the ships’ blasts in midair. The bolts disintegrated to ash, and the Rokura’s charge continued outward, capturing the ships in a field of sizzling light. Even through the haze of his lingering disorientation, Cade knew he was witnessing something different. This is what happened, Cade understood, when someone embraced what he’d worked so hard to fight against. And even in this glimpse, it was every bit as terrifying as he knew it could be.
Within moments, the ships were torn apart, their individual pieces—like the bolts—disintegrated. The pilots, too, were caught in the Rokura’s fury. And they, too, were obliterated.
“I hope you don’t mind,” Ga Halle said as she dragged Cade forward once again. “We’ll be taking your ship.”
“Just kill me,” Cade said, feeling sickened not only by what he’d seen but also by what he knew was still to come.
“You’ll remain alive for just a while longer,” Ga Halle said. “I wouldn’t want there to be any mistaking how the beloved Paragon died. So, they’ll watch. Your friends, your band of renegades, the entire galaxy. They’ll watch you die at my hands, and they’ll know at last who their savior truly is.
“They’ll know that I am their god.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
A thunderclap boomed across the sky, throttling the Praxian assault shuttle. For a moment, Kira thought that the storm on Praxis had followed them all the way to Olanus, the nearest of Praxis’s six moons and home to the Crucible. But she realized that the turbulence was caused by sloppy reentry executed by green pilots. Bolstering your forces through intimidation, threats, and conscription was fine for the numbers but terrible in the details. While a robust army looked good on paper, if the majority of your grunts couldn’t handle flying a starship, the numbers didn’t mean a whole lot. The soundest tactics, Kira believed, started with skill and morale. Ga Halle, though, liked to inundate her enemies. She liked to overwhelm. But she did so with coffers crammed with incompetent soldiers who were only there because they had to be. Stockpiling your forces with as many warm bodies as possible was conventional wisdom that most leaders followed. But most leaders weren’t Kira. She was convinced that she could pit ten skilled soldiers against a hundred sloppy ones and walk away with a clean victory.
At least she hoped she could. Kira could only guess how many troops were stationed at the Crucible, and even her most conservative estimations made her wish she had more on her side. A lot more on her side. Though if reinforcements were her only hope, she might as well request to be taken straight to the firing squad when the ship landed. She needed a plan, but seeing as she was heading to a place she knew nothing about, logistically, trying to predict even one second into the future was a wasted effort. There’d be no plan, no reinforcements, and that was that. But as she looked out the narrow window high on the wall opposite her, she noticed that it wasn’t raining on Olanus like it was on Praxis. At least she had that.
And she had her squad. Kobe was seated on Kira’s right, unconscious. He’d lost a lot of blood, but they’d sutured him well enough to survive the trip and the questioning Kira was certain awaited him. Kay sat across from her in the shuttle’s narrow hold, and he was doing his best to nudge Mig without any of the Praxian guards catching his attempts. Mig was slumped in the seat next to Kay, still reeling from 4-Qel’s captivity; 4-Qel was lying prone in the middle of the hold, hovering just a few inches off the ground. Mig hadn’t spoken a word since they were loaded inside; in fact, Kira wasn’t certain he’d even blinked. He stared at 4-Qel, his face weighed down by his grief. His eyes had darkened, accentuating the pallor of his skin. He was in his own world, and whatever Kay was trying to convey to him wasn’t getting through. He needed to be more aggressive if he was going to get Mig’s attention.
Which meant he needed a distraction.
Kira cleared her throat, the rasping sound rising just above the shuttle’s grinding hum, and looked at Kay without looking at him. When she noticed she’d caught his attention, she dipped her head to her left, just slightly, indicating the guard—Crucible guards wore reinforced tactical uniforms, all black, with matching black helmets that were broken in color only by the ruby-red shielding over their eyes—sitting next to her. He’d removed his helmet right after takeoff, and Kira was delighted by Praxis’s loose regulations. He didn’t know it, but this guard had given Kira just the opening she needed.
Once Kay acknowledged, subtly, that he’d received her signal—or the gist, just that he knew she was about to do something—Kira took a moment to scan the ship one last time. There was the guard next to her and two more at the door. All were armed with N-12 enforcer rifles, blasters that tested the limits of their holder’s ability to resist recoil. The hold was small, which gave them little room to maneuver when Kay put his schem
e in motion. Whatever it was, Kira didn’t care. Weaponless and bound meant nothing to her. It was her three against their three, and she’d take those odds no matter what the handicap.
Kira turned her head to the guard on her left and stared. He was facing straight ahead, but she knew he noticed her looking. The muscles in his face cycled between being tense and relaxed, and his right eye darted in every direction. Kira hadn’t realized it before, but this guard couldn’t have been more than seventeen years old—a baby who probably had been busted for theft when he was a teenager and dumped into the Crucible because that’s how crime and punishment worked on Praxis. Kira almost felt bad for him, but not bad enough to prevent herself from doing what she had to do. Not even close.
Finally, the guard turned to face Kira. He tried to look tough and hard, but he looked sleepy and constipated instead. He was closer to Kira now—the slightest bit closer—but since she was restrained to her seat, she needed every centimeter she could get.
“You got a problem?” the guard sneered.
Kira didn’t reply. At least, not with words. Instead, she reared her head back and threw it forward as far as her neck and her restraints allowed. Her forehead bashed the soldier’s face, catching him square in his nose; Kira felt the brittle cartilage shatter upon impact, and by the time she pulled back, his nose was already gushing blood.
“Hey!” one of the guards yelled from her spot next to the door. “What do you think you’re doing?!”
As she heard the boots stomping toward her, she knew what was about to happen. She knew it from the start. So when the butt of the enforcer rifle cracked against the side of her head, smashing against her temple, she was ready for it. The blow didn’t ring her bell any less, but at least she wasn’t caught off guard. All that mattered was that she’d accomplished her intended effect; all Praxian eyes were on Kira, and no one was paying attention to Kay and Mig.
By the time Kira’s ears stopped ringing and her vision regained its clarity, the ship’s comms system was announcing they were on their landing vector heading toward the Crucible landing pad. The guard seated next to her slid his helmet back on, and Kira could feel the tension growing in this diminutive space. The Crucible couldn’t have been an easy place to be stationed, and Kira’s arrival, mixed with Ebik’s presence and the plan he was executing, must have only made the tension even tauter. Which was good. People who were wound too tightly lacked focus and patience; they made mistakes.
Kay, on the other hand, was as calm as the soothing waters of Ohan. In fact, when Kira looked at him, he smiled.
“Hang on tight,” he said, even though it was a totally redundant thing to say. They were bound to their seats; if they were held down any tighter, their bones might start to snap.
Nonetheless, Kira got the point. Because a second after his caution, an explosion tore through the assault shuttle’s rear engine.
Still reeling from the blow to her head, Kira felt like the ship was doing barrel rolls as it plummeted to the ground. Everything around her was spinning uncontrollably, and even when she shut her eyes, it was like she was a die tumbling across a wellington table. The ship’s alarm screamed in her ears, its long, monotone bellowing sounding like the mating call of a monster that made the aquatic depths its home. Kira held tightly to the ionic restraints that wrapped around her shoulders and kept her in place, as if gripping a hunk of ionized metal would somehow protect her from the horrific crash landing they were all about to endure. And her holding on was even more of a futile gesture when the ship’s power went out and the bonds lost their charge. There was a breathless moment when she was no longer squeezed against the ship’s wall. But not just that.
She was free.
The guard next to her realized what the ship’s power outage meant; Kira could see the shock in his eyes. He went for his blaster—as if spraying bolts from one of the galaxy’s most powerful hand cannons was in any way a bright idea—but he was too slow. Despite the ship’s spiraling turbulence, Kira managed to land a chop against the guard’s neck, hitting him square in the sliver of space between where his uniform and helmet failed to seamlessly connect. A gargling sound crackled from inside the guard’s helmet, and Kira threw all her weight into driving her elbow into his chest, delivering one sharp blow and then another. The ship hit a pocket of air that threw Kira up and off her seat; when she came down, she was facing the rear door and the two guards who were posted there. One of them had his enforcer in his grip. It was locked on Kira and ready to fire.
A half dozen enforcer bolts tore through the hold. The room glowed a searing orange with each eruption from the powerful weapon, but the blasts never touched Kira. Not a single shot went anywhere near her. The guard hadn’t fired; she never even had the chance before her chest was riddled by a barrage of blaster fire. The assault shook her body like a marionette controlled by a drunken puppeteer, then she dropped face-first onto the ground. Kira turned to look over her shoulder, fully expecting to see Kay, his hands wrapped around the enforcer and a very satisfied look on his face. But Kay wasn’t holding the powerful weapon; Mig was. The look on his face was no less satisfied, but there was a dark determination in his eyes as well.
“Eat it, dirtball,” he said, and he was turning his newfound blaster toward the other guard when the ship began bucking wildly.
Everyone was thrown around the hold, and Kira knew it wouldn’t be long before they reached the ground. And when the ship smashed against the moon’s hard surface, there would be no survivors. The ship’s descent was too fast, and now it was too out of control. The shuttle would hit the ground and either explode upon impact or it would bounce and tumble, crashing into whatever was in its way until, eventually, it stopped. And by then, nothing would remain but a crumpled hunk of scrap metal and a bunch of human limbs. That meant they had only one option: They had to get off that ship. Immediately.
“Kay!” Kira yelled, drawing on all her strength to grab on to a small crevice that ran below the window. “Get the door open! We’re leaving!”
The guard who’d been sitting next to Kira was coming to and reaching for a sidewinder holstered at his waist. Kay pounded three hard, quick punches into his mask and then relieved him of his gun. He turned to Kira, tucked the sidewinder into the back of her pants, and smiled. “Aye, aye, Commander,” he said, then punched the guard one last time, just for good measure.
“Mig! Get Kobe!”
Mig stepped toward Kobe, who had regained consciousness but not mental clarity, but stopped. His eyes shot to 4-Qel, and panic spread over his face.
“What about Four-Qel?” he yelled. “We can’t leave him in the ship!”
“We’re not! We’re going to push him out and hope the containment field protects him.”
“What?!”
“Hey!” Kira yelled, losing her patience. “You’re the one always talking about science not being exact. Now move!”
Mig stomped petulantly, but he collected Kobe. And as Kay worked on opening the door, Kira took hold of the starboard wall and used it to help keep her balance as she scaled the side of the ship. There was a footlocker next to the cockpit’s door, and Kira prayed it had what she was looking for. If not, she would have wasted a whole lot of effort just to die in a horrific landing anyway.
As she reached the footlocker, a sequence of blaster shots burst from the ship’s rear. Kira turned and saw that Kay had subdued the final guard; he was standing with a keycard in his hand and Mig at his side.
“Got the key!” he yelled.
“Wait there!” Kira instructed, then she flung the locker open and breathed a sigh of relief. Something, finally, had worked in her favor.
“Incoming!” she yelled, and because the nose was descending, she had to hurl the three bundles she’d grabbed upward to reach Kay, Mig, and a barely lucid Kobe. They knew exactly what to do, strapping the packages to their backs. They were booster paks—personal jet packs that provided short, controlled bursts of flight.
“What now?�
�� Kay yelled.
“Are you serious? Open the door, grab Four-Qel, and get out!” Kira ordered. “And grab whatever weapons you can, too!”
As Kira turned to the locker, she felt an onslaught of wind at her back as she grabbed another bundle; she was strapping it to her back when the cockpit door opened right in front of her. And standing in the doorway was Ortzo.
Blood ran from his hairline down the side of his face, and Kira spotted bleariness in his eyes. She assumed he’d bashed his head open at some point after Kay’s explosion detonated and was just now coming to. Just when things were finally starting to look up.
Kira hurried to throw the booster pak over her shoulders, but despite having a concussed brain, Ortzo was just quick enough to stop her from getting away. With a vicious hand, he grabbed Kira by her throat and pulled her toward him.
“You will not escape,” he huffed. With his other hand, he brandished a blade, the same one he’d stabbed Kobe with. It was a triblade, a detail Kira hadn’t noticed back on Praxis. The same blade Ebik had used in his attempt to kill her.
Rage and resolve bloomed within Kira. If her own father couldn’t kill her with this weapon, neither would this damn Fatebreaker.
“Yes, I will,” Kira snarled, and she followed her words with a kick to Ortzo’s abdomen, in the same spot Kobe had pounded in their duel. Ortzo winced in pain, and Kira made the most of the distraction; she landed two quick jabs into Ortzo’s face, and he staggered back against the wall, disoriented from the blows. Kira planted both of her feet against his chest and pushed off as hard as she could. She tumbled out of his grip, landing hard on the floor. By the time she was up on her knees, Ortzo was stomping toward her. But Kira had everything she needed to make her escape from Ortzo and the ship.
We Are Mayhem--A Black Star Renegades Novel Page 26
