Virtue of War

by L O Addison

  Adrien nodded frantically and hurried toward where she pointed.

  “Wait,” Kaylin said, reaching out and grabbing the boy’s shoulder. Adrien whirled around, a fierce scowl on his face.

  “I did my part,” he snapped, edging his hand closer to the pistol at his waist. “I got you in here. Now let me go rescue my siblings.”

  Kaylin let go of Adrien and held her hands up in a gesture of innocence. “I’m not going to stop you. I just need to tell you the code to the cells. I watched someone put it in.”

  Adrien nodded eagerly. “What is it?”

  Kaylin quickly rattled off the eight-digit code, and Adrien nodded, repeating it back to her. Kaylin clasped the boy’s shoulder, and her voice softened as she said, “Good luck, Adrien. And thank you. We couldn’t have made it in here without you.”

  Adrien merely shrugged, and then dashed off down the hallway. But he hardly made it three steps before he skidded to a halt. He turned around and blurted out, “I really hope you guys don’t die.”

  And then he took off again, disappearing down the hallway. Lio shook his head as he watched the boy round the corner, silently hoping the same for the boy and his siblings.

  “Let’s get this over with,” Kaylin said, her voice grim. She looked to Lio. “What can we expect in there?”

  “That whistling noise was made by a Kastrin engine,” Lio said. “That means the ship they’re using has cutting-edge technology. It’ll have external shields, no doubt.”

  Beck nodded. “So trying to destroy the ship is pointless.”

  “Completely,” Lio said. “And trying to shoot the Ascendancy agents probably is, too. They’ll have personal shields.”

  “So what do we do?” Kaylin demanded.

  Lio considered this for a moment, wracking his brain for options. Then he turned to Matteo. “What sort of aircraft do they usually keep in the hangar?”

  “I’ve never been in there, so I can’t be sure,” Matteo said. “But probably personal transport ships and a couple cargo freighters.”

  Lio nodded and turned to Kaylin. “Would you be able to get one of those crafts started?”

  Kaylin bit her lip. “It depends. But judging by how shitty most of the security is in the East Wing, probably. They’ve let their guard down too much.”

  Lio nodded. “That’s our plan then. We get our hands on the Virtue, hijack an aircraft, and flee with it.”

  Beck let out a short, dry laugh. “So all we need to do is grab a highly-guarded weapon, hijack an aircraft from a hangar swarming with guards, and escape. Sounds easy enough.”

  Lio nodded to him. “Do you have any better plans?”

  Beck shook his head. “I’ve got nothing. Your plan sounds insane, but it’s the best insanity we’ve got.”

  Kaylin bit at her lip and turned to Lio. “Won’t the Ascendancy chase after us if we try to run off with the Virtue? If they’ve managed to track it down halfway across the universe, I doubt they’ll have trouble tracking it again.”

  “They’ll try,” Lio said. He held up the Fragment hanging from his neck. “But we have this.”

  “How will that help?” Beck asked.

  Lio hesitated. For so long, he’d hoarded the secrets of the Virtues, refusing to reveal his knowledge to anyone the Council hadn’t approved. But now he had no choice but to share them.

  “When a Fragment is properly connected to a Virtue, it can mask the presence of both objects,” Lio explained. “That’s why Collectors carry Fragments. It’s a cloaking tool.”

  Kaylin raised her eyebrows. “So if you can get your Fragment hooked up to that Virtue, the Ascendancy won’t be able to track it any longer?”

  “Precisely,” Lio said with a nod.

  Beck nodded a few times, his brow crinkling as he absorbed this information. Then he pointed to Kaylin. “You focus on getting into a transport craft and firing it up.” He pointed between himself and Matteo. “We’ll focus on getting our hands on the Virtue.” Finally, he pointed to Lio. “Stay close to us, and give us some covering fire if you can. But stay out of danger. You’re the only one who knows how to make that Fragment work, so don’t go getting yourself killed.”

  Lio nodded. Then he choked back a disbelieving laugh. “Don’t go getting yourself killed.” He was about to charge into an incredibly deadly situation, and that was the best plan he had.

  But it was going to have to do.

  38

  Kaylin

  Kaylin followed closely behind Matteo as he led them past the hangar’s main entrance and jogged to the far end of the hallway. A smaller door stood there, just as Matteo had suspected. Beck nodded to Kaylin, and she cautiously approached the door, pistol in hand.

  She quickly examined the keypad beside the door. To her relief, its screen was already green, showing that the door was unlocked. The Wardens were probably keeping it open in case the deal went wrong and they had to beat a hasty retreat from the hangar.

  “It’s unlocked,” Kaylin whispered to the others.

  Beck nodded and stepped forward to open the door. He held up five fingers and slowly lowered them, counting down. Kaylin tensed, ready to leap into action.

  Beck yanked the door open. Immediately, a figure on the other side whirled to face them. Kaylin fired. Her stun shot struck the guard directly in the chest, knocking the breath from him. He let out a strangled gasp, and before he could even collapse to the ground, Beck grabbed him and slapped a hand over his mouth. The guard twitched and trembled, but with the stun shot paralyzing his muscles, that was all he could do to resist. Then his body sagged, falling into unconsciousness.

  Beck dragged him backward into the hallway. Kaylin poked her head through the door, quickly examining the hangar.

  The side door was in the far corner of the lower level of the hangar, and a hulking staircase cut off her view of most of the room. The staircase led to the top level of the hangar, where the tarmac must have been. She couldn’t see up there, but she could hear voices and footsteps echoing down. Far above them, the giant metal panels that made up the ceiling were parted, exposing the underground hangar to the outside sky.

  Kaylin ducked back into the hallway and examined the guard they’d captured—he was young, no more than seventeen or so. She reached into her toolkit and pulled out a sedative tablet. It was tiny, but still enough to keep him conked out for at least a couple hours. Kaylin slipped it into the guard’s mouth, and then Beck dragged him backward and dumped him to the floor in the hallway.

  That was one guard down, and probably a couple dozen left.

  Beck gestured to Matteo and pointed to the spot the guard had been standing in. Matteo nodded, immediately understanding. He stepped inside the hangar, his weapon held at the ready, easily taking on the role of a guard. If anyone glanced over at the shadowy corner, they wouldn’t notice anything out of place.

  Beck gestured the others closer and lowered his voice as he said, “We’ll have to get up those stairs to the tarmac, but there are bound to be more guards at the top.”

  Kaylin chewed at her lip, forcing herself to push aside her adrenaline and focus on a solution. “Give me a minute,” she said. “I’ll sneak around the back of the tarmac and create a distraction.”

  Beck nodded, and his immediate trust in her plan gave her a much-needed burst of confidence. Before she could lose her nerve, she took a deep breath then ducked into the hangar. Red followed at her heels, staying camouflaged as he slunk close to the ground.

  The tarmac was on a large, raised platform about half the size of a football field, with a staircase at either end. Underneath the platform were support beams and what looked like a hydraulic system, probably to raise and lower the tarmac. Kaylin rushed into the shadow of the raised tarmac, blending easily into the darkness.

  Guards prowled along the perimeter of the platform, but there didn’t seem to be many under it. Kaylin carefully made her way to the other side of the raised platform, dodging around the cables of the hydraulic system an
d through the support beams.

  Voices trickled down from above, and she listened carefully, trying to get a feel for how many people were on the tarmac. There didn’t seem to be too many, or least not very many who were talking. There was a confident baritone voice, which she was almost positive belonged to Nathan, even though she couldn’t hear a word he was saying. Then there was a quieter man with a thick accent, and a woman’s voice with a similar accent but a much more forceful tone.

  All of them sounded serious, but Kaylin couldn’t detect any animosity in their voices. It just sounded like a regular old business deal. Which was a shame. It would have been way easier to disrupt their deal if there had already been some tension going on.

  So she’d just have to make some tension on her own.

  “Red,” she whispered. “Come here.”

  He trotted over to her, and she fished in her bag, drawing out one of the simplest tools she had in her kit: a flashlight orb. It had a magnetic base that would stick to metal and a tiny remote that could activate the device from a distance. Perfect for tossing into ducts and using as a lightbulb. Or for disrupting intergalactic meetings.

  Red perked up as she withdrew the ball-shaped flashlight and shuffled his paws excitedly.

  “No,” she thought at him. “We’re not playing fetch.”

  His excited shuffling stopped, and he sniffed at the plastic orb suspiciously. Kaylin pushed it closer to his snout, and he reluctantly took it in his jaws, staring up at her with a grudging look.

  “We’ll play fetch later,” she said, trying to drive the thought into his mind.

  He snorted softly and swished his tail. Kaylin stroked the top of his snout and knelt down to look him in the eye.

  “Listen close,” she said, driving the thought into his mind. “Take ball. Put in corner. Don’t let people see you.”

  Red snorted once more and then turned around, slinking off to the nearest corner of the hangar. Kaylin watched him go, the remote to the flashlight held firmly in her hand. She pressed close to a support beam to keep herself hidden and fished in her bag, pulling out a small explosive charge, large enough to make a bang and some smoke, but not enough to really cause damage. She quickly stuck its magnetic backing to the support beam and pressed in the button in its center. It activated with a quiet, insidious snick, and a tiny red light glowed on its side, telling her it was ready to blow whenever she triggered the remote.

  Red came jogging back, the flashlight no longer in his mouth. Kaylin gestured toward the floor, and he obediently lay down, flattening himself on the concrete. Then Kaylin turned her attention to the tiny remote and clicked one of the buttons.

  She started off simple—just a flash of white light, bright enough to be seen from the tarmac. Immediately, the guards swiveled toward it, chattering into their comm units. From above on the tarmac, the conversation came to an abrupt halt. She flashed the light twice more and then turned it back off.

  Kaylin crept forward, heading for one of the support beams on the side of the tarmac opposite the flashlight orb. With the guards focused on the area where Red had planted the orb, they didn’t notice her. The guards shifted closer to that corner, searching for the source of the strange light.

  Kaylin increased her speed, making it to the staircase at the opposite end of the tarmac, Red close on her heels. About fifteen feet away from the staircase, one of the main support beams had ladder rungs running up its side, all the way to the tarmac. Kaylin guessed it was her best chance at getting to the top of the tarmac without being seen—the guards on the upper level were probably focused on the staircase, not the ladder rungs.

  This close to the edge of the platform, she could hear the voices drifting down from the tarmac above.

  “It’s being taken care of.”

  It was Nathan’s deep baritone that said that, although Kaylin would have sworn she heard a nervous edge to his voice.

  “What exactly is being taken care of?”

  The woman’s accented voice was the one who gave the terse reply. Her tone was even sharper than before, an obvious warning.

  “We’re not entirely sure,” Nathan said. “But we’re looking into it.”

  “All right, Beck,” Kaylin whispered into her comm unit. “Get ready for your distraction.”

  She switched the flashlight’s setting to a red light and began flashing a quick, intense burst of light every second. The guards’ reactions were immediate—an unknown device hidden in a corner was flashing a light that looked to be counting down seconds. It led to an obvious—and totally wrong—conclusion.

  “Bomb!” one of the guards hollered, diving away from the orb. They sprinted under the tarmac, taking cover behind the nearest support beams. Exactly where Kaylin wanted them.

  She triggered the explosive she’d planted. The device went off with a deafening boom and small surge of flame. The guards let out panicked cries and scattered.

  “Run toward the light,” Kaylin whispered in her comm unit. “Use the smoke as cover. There won’t be any guards left over there, they’re all scattering away.”

  “Good going, Kay,” Beck whispered back.

  Kaylin glanced toward where she’d entered the hangar and saw movement. Good. The others were taking advantage of the distraction she’d given them. Now it was time to take advantage of it herself.

  She leaped toward the first ladder rung and began to scale the support beam, moving as quickly and quietly as possible. Her muscles tensed, waiting to feel a bullet or a laser tear through her skin. Instead, she felt only open air above her as she scurried up toward the tarmac.

  “Stay there,” Kaylin ordered Red, concentrating her thought on the shadowed base of one of the support beams. There was no way Red was going to be able to scramble up the ladder, not without making a huge ruckus.

  From below her, she heard a faint, nervous whimper come from the shadows. “I’ll come back, I promise,” she hurriedly added.

  Kaylin heaved herself up the last few rungs and pulled herself over the edge of the raised tarmac, then scrambled to the side, hiding behind a stack of cargo boxes. She knelt there for a long moment, catching her breath, and then peeked around the side of the boxes. Chaos had overtaken the tarmac, with the guards hurrying to cover the staircases and the Ascendancy agents hurrying back toward their ship.

  There were four Ascendancy agents—two guards, each dressed in dark clothing and armed with some sort of alien rifle, and two people dressed in business-type clothing. The guards looked about thirty, both of them well-muscled men with stern expressions, while the man and woman dressed in business attire both looked to be in their fifties.

  “How many people?” Beck asked.

  Kaylin did a quick headcount on the tarmac. “Ten. Six in Warden uniforms and four visitors.”

  “Ascendancy?”

  “I’m pretty sure.”

  More like kind of sure. Kaylin squinted closely at the four visitors, searching for any subtle differences that might give away that they were aliens. She couldn’t spot a single one. Unlike Lio, their faces, body, behavior, and attire all seemed one hundred percent human.

  Some small part of her worried that Nathan might have been right, that these people might actually be Russian agents who were simply working to gather alien technology. Then she took a closer look at their ship, and that worry vanished. It looked like it was made of the same material as Lio’s ship, some sort of pure-black metal, and there was no visible engine on the medium-sized craft.

  Throughout her days in the Resistance and working on the black market, Kaylin had seen damn near everything the Syndicate had brought to this planet. This ship was like nothing she’d encountered before.

  Lio was right. These people didn’t have scavenged Syndicate tech. They’d brought their own technology to this world.

  They were the Ascendancy.

  Nathan backed into the corner opposite hers, his pistol drawn and two guards at his side. They stood in front of a large cargo box, as if guar
ding it. Kaylin caught sight of a smaller box sitting on top of its closed lid. The smaller box was open, and judging by the way Nathan and the guards were nervously huddled around it, she was willing to bet the Virtue was inside.

  She unconsciously began to formulate a plan to get the Virtue away from them. But then she shook her head, forcing the thoughts aside. Her job now was to get her hands on a transport craft. She was going to have to trust Beck and Matteo to take care of the Virtue.

  “I think I have eyes on the Virtue,” she whispered into the comm unit. “It’s sitting on top of a cargo crate on the tarmac, but Nathan and two guards have it surrounded.”

  “Got it,” Beck replied, panting slightly. “On our way.”

  On the other end of the tarmac, she spotted motion on the edge of the platform. She squinted over at it and breathed a sigh of relief. It was Beck. He’d used the distraction to scramble up the support beam opposite hers, and judging by the way he kept glancing behind him, Matteo and Lio probably weren’t far behind.

  Beck quickly ducked behind a transport craft. With the guards’ attention glued to the staircases, no one noticed him. Just to be on the safe side, Kaylin quickly retrieved another small explosive from her pack. She tossed it over the edge of the platform, detonating it in mid-air.

  The boom ricocheted through the hangar, sending a fresh wave of panic through the guards. A door slid open in the side of the Ascendancy's ship, but the Ascendancy agents didn’t move closer to it. While the Wardens were focused purely on the bomb threat, the Ascendancy had their attention glued to the Virtue sitting behind Nathan. Bomb or no bomb, they clearly weren’t leaving without what they came for.

  Kaylin darted out from behind the cargo boxes, heading toward the nearest ship. It was a bulky cargo transport craft, so she quickly ruled it out as a getaway ride. But a smaller personnel craft was parked in its shadow. Kaylin did a quick scan of it—sleek double engines, an armored hull, and just enough space to fit four fugitives, a dragon, and an ancient weapon of mass destruction. Perfect.