Galaxy of Titans: An Epic Space Opera Series (The Augmented Book 3)

by Ben Hale

  “Remember, we have a pair of ships waiting if he does,” Kolas said.

  “They were waiting?” Ero swiveled to face him. “You knew Malikin was going to try to take me.”

  Kolas regarded him with a calculating look. “You’re not the only one under investigation.”

  Ero realized Kolas had accepted the beamcast from Malikin as a method to gain more information—from both of them. Ero was impressed. The captain was a gifted interrogator and Ranger. And the implication that the Rangers were investigating an Emperor’s Voice was significant. Kolas just might prove to be an ally.

  “Get him on the transport,” Edgore said. “Blinkers, escort positions. Let’s move.”

  Soldiers pulled Ero and Siena apart and put Ero in the right transport. He caught a glimpse of Siena’s worried face as she was placed in the second armored vehicle. Kolas got in with her, as did a pair of dakorians. One of the soldiers bound her shackles to the floor while the other activated a shield, sealing her inside the barrier. Then the door to the vehicle swung shut.

  Ero was also placed behind a shield, but only Edgore joined him. The dakorian drew his hammer and held it in his hands as he brought up a holo of the transport. Military grade, the holo was obviously linked to sensors on the vehicle, and it expanded to show the street and all the officers on escort vehicles. The engine rumbled and the transport began to glide forward. At the edge of the convoy, the second transport went the opposite direction.

  Ero? Siena called mentally.

  I’m here, Ero said.

  I don’t know if I can do this.

  The girl’s mental voice was the smallest he’d ever heard, and he realized she was terrified. In every other encounter, she’d had her augments to lean on. The dakorians she’d fought had not known her ability, and had assumed her weak. This time the Rangers expected more than a simple human girl, and, judging by the layers of security, were prepared for such surprises.

  Do you remember when we were in Olana’s office? Ero asked.

  When we rescued Kensen? What does that have to do with this?

  You didn’t know you were an augment, Ero said. But you didn’t hesitate to fight two dakorians to save a friend.

  I don’t understand.

  Siena’s voice was getting faint, suggesting they were reaching the limits of her mind augment. The second convoy was no longer visible on Edgore’s holo, and his own was exiting the canyon and turning south. A ship appeared ahead, lowering into an empty courtyard. The codex on Edgore’s holo tagged it as the Justice.

  You were a fighter before you were augmented, Ero said. You are smart and creative, and I trust you to figure out how to escape the Rangers. Even against the entire Ranger Corps, I would still bet on you.

  If I fail to escape and it dooms your House, will you regret choosing me?

  Never.

  The mental link faded, and he felt Siena’s absence. Ero realized much of her fear was not for herself. She probably could have escaped if she didn’t hold back, but she was keeping herself restrained for him. So he would not be in danger. Just as with Kensen, Siena was fighting for him at the risk of losing her own life.

  Edgore noticed his smile and frowned. “Why are you so happy?”

  “Having friends is better than I expected.”

  The dakorian eyed him like he’d gone mad. Then he grunted and returned his attention to the holo. Ero didn’t care. In similar situations, he’d always worried if his allies would betray him, and considered betraying them first. But deep into his bones he knew the truth. Siena was his friend. And friends—more than any ally—could always be trusted.

  Chapter Thirty

  Reklin nudged Mora awake. “It’s time,” he whispered.

  The girl was instantly alert and inordinately excited. “We go?”

  “Yes,” Reklin said. “Stay close to me, and be quiet.”

  The girl gave a fierce nod and her lips clamped shut. Reklin hoped it would last. Everything he’d learned since joining the Ghosts had built to this moment, but escape would be futile if the young dakorian drew attention from their captors. Reklin stood and began to pace, a motion he’d done enough over the last few days for it to be dismissed as normal if anyone was observing through the vid monitor in the corner of the cell. As he passed by the door, he paused and turned his back to the wall. In a burst of motion, he drove the bone protruding from his elbow into a very specific place on the wall.

  The section of wall resembled the rest of the room, with nothing to indicate an access panel. Only one with detailed schematics could find it, or one with a memory augment that had brushed against a krey engineer. The krey had made a repair six months ago on the cell. He’d been sloppy, and instead of replacing the damaged power conduit, a task that would have required removing much of the wall, he’d attached a leak reinforcer. The bulging knob kept the power conduit intact, but it required a thinner plate of metal. It was a weakness.

  Reklin hit it again, the jarring impact reverberating up his arm. The crack widened, and the plate gave way on the third blow. Ignoring the sting on his elbow, he turned and gently lifted the broken panel free to expose the knob.

  “Ready?” he whispered.

  Mora nodded, her features set. “I ready.”

  Reklin picked her up and held her against the hole. She wormed her smaller arm into the gap and followed the conduit upward, to where a safety mechanism was accessible from the outside corridor. She fumbled for the mechanism, then twisted the holo. In a whisper, the door swung open.

  Reklin set Mora down and darted into the gap, reaching Walt just as he rotated. His shout of alarm escaped in a rush of air when Reklin hit him in the stomach. Then Reklin caught his horn and slammed his head against the wall. The dazed soldier tried to raise his weapon, but Reklin wrapped an arm around his neck and tightened until the blood flow cut off. The guard struggled in his grip and swung a meaty fist at Reklin’s face, but the angle was insufficient to do any damage.

  “The holo,” Reklin hissed as he held the struggling soldier. “Quickly.”

  This was the most vulnerable part of Reklin’s plan, because it depended on Mora to loop the vid recorder so any observer would not notice their absence. He’d timed his escape in accordance with what he’d learned from another krey officer: The two krey tasked with vid security were fans of a particular channel on the open network, and never missed an episode. If Mora could loop the vid while Reklin subdued the guard, they might stand a chance of escaping the ship.

  “Just do it as we practiced,” Reklin urged, his voice strained as he held the guard.

  Mora activated the security node adjacent to the door and brought up the vid recorder. With nimble fingers she altered the code the way Reklin had described, and just as the guard was lapsing into unconsciousness, the vid recorder link beeped, replacing the scene of the empty cell with one of Mora and Reklin asleep. The door whisked shut, and Mora turned to Reklin with a beaming smile.

  “I expert coder,” she proclaimed.

  “Yes you are,” Reklin said.

  The dakorian guard finally succumbed to the lack of oxygen, and Reklin settled him onto the floor and released his grip. He rolled the dakorian onto his back. As he’d hoped, the Ghost had seracrete shackles on his belt. Opening the latch, he fastened them around the guard’s wrists.

  “We not kill?” Mora pointed to Walt.

  “Not this one.”

  Reklin stood and picked up the hammer lance. He didn’t explain that when Reklin had previously brushed against the guard, he’d caught a glimpse of the guard’s memories. Although the dakorian was a Burning Ghost, he was also trying to send glint back to his family and clan.

  Feeling the press of time, Reklin hurried to the end of the corridor and paused at the intersection. For several tense seconds he listened for any sign of alarm, but there was only silence. He opened the door and stepped into a wider corridor that ran the length of the ship. Sliding along the wall, he opened a compartment three doors down and entere
d a storage room.

  One of the most valuable things Reklin had obtained from the memories of other Ghosts was from Gellow. His former captain had proven to be a font of information, especially since the disgraced soldier had seen the ship’s schematics and inventory. Reklin lifted a crate and smiled.

  “Looks like Gellow was right,” he said. “Here, take this and put it on.”

  Mora wrinkled her nose. “I not wear krey clothes.”

  “You’re too small to fit into a dakorian uniform,” he said. “And since your horns haven’t grown in yet, you’ll pass a cursory inspection.”

  The girl muttered under her breath as she donned the black pants, gray vest, and black cloak of a krey in the Burning Ghosts. Reklin pulled out a uniform for a dakorian soldier and quickly dressed. The Gate room was a few decks down, and they were likely to encounter at least a few Ghosts. With any luck, the guards would not look past the uniforms.

  “Let’s go,” Reklin said.

  Mora finished dressing, her features dour as she followed Reklin back into the hall. If anyone saw her face it would be over, so kept her behind his back and feigned purpose as he headed to the aft ascender.

  Within a dozen steps, their makeshift disguises were put to the test. A passing dakorian ambled by, his attention hardly moving from his holoview. Reklin tightened his grip on the hammer lance he’d taken from Walt, but the soldier passed on without a word. Mora, gratefully, kept silent until he was gone.

  “Why you not kill?” Mora muttered.

  “For a four-year-old, you’re rather bloodthirsty.”

  “They kidnap us.” She jutted her chin out.

  “We kill if we must,” Reklin said, and when they stepped onto the ascender, he held her gaze. “Only if we must.”

  She released an explosive breath and pouted. Reklin couldn’t help but smile at her petulance. Normally she would be in training to a warmaster, who would teach her how to retain her honor as she lived a life of blood. Reklin had been privileged to have his own father as his warmaster, and had learned what it meant to be a dakorian.

  A pair of krey joined them one deck down, their eyes sliding off Reklin as if he didn’t matter. Krey arrogance was always a weakness, even in criminal organizations. They got off a deck below, and Reklin breathed a sigh of relief. Just as he reached for the controls, one of the krey turned back.

  “Why are you not assisting Gellow in preparing for Dragorn’s tribunal?”

  “My weapon needed repairing,” Reklin said. “I am returning now.”

  The krey frowned, his eyes flicking past Reklin’s arm to Mora. The touch of recognition registered in his gaze, and Reklin fired. The ion bolt hit the krey in the side, folding his body in half as he tumbled down the corridor. The second krey flinched, too surprised to flee as Reklin rotated and fired again. The bolt hit him in the chest, and he struck the curving wall before slumping to the floor.

  “They need die,” Mora said with a firm nod.

  A blinking yellow holo appeared close to the ceiling, and Reklin grabbed the ascender controls. It dropped beneath them, leaving the corridor behind. He cursed his luck. According to the schematics he’d pulled from Gellow’s memory, the warning light signaled a weapon discharge, a necessity on a ship owned by a criminal organization where not all members demonstrated integrity. In less than a minute, dakorians would arrive at the spot and find the two dead. Another minute, and they would pull the vids and see Reklin and Mora out of their cell.

  “We need to hurry,” Reklin said.

  The ascender came to a stop, and he pulled Mora off the circle of glowing glass. Together, they rushed down the corridor as the sounds of alarm came from above. Reklin slid to a halt at the door to the Gate Chamber. Recalling the access codes, he put them into the holo and the hatch swung open. The moment they were inside, he punched the door controls and the cortex disintegrated into a burst of sparks. Then he jumped to the Gate controls while Mora crowded his hip.

  “Where we go?” she asked.

  The courage in her voice was evident, but so was the tremble of fear. She sensed the heightened danger as readily as any soldier. Reklin brought up the controls and input the access codes he’d taken. The Gate powered up, and the potential destinations appeared. Reklin grimaced at the limited options.

  “We must be in deep space,” he said. “We’re too far out to connect to one of the main planets, so we’ll have to jump somewhere closer.”

  “Where?” Mora clung to him as she glanced at the door. “I need weapon?”

  “Hopefully not,” Reklin said.

  A blinking holo at the corner of the room turned red. They knew Reklin had escaped, and the Gate Chamber would be one of the first places they would search. He didn’t have time to wait for any better options, so he brought up the four potential exits. Of the four Gates in range, two were research outposts and the third was a smaller ship owned by House Fren’Iven. The fourth was a farming world, giving them the best option to disappear. He tapped the holo and the Gate powered up.

  Mora darted to it. “The Gate turn on!”

  Reklin cycled through his memories on coding and altered the memory on the Gate cortex, making it seem like it had connected to the Fren’Iven ship. The Ghosts would discover the ruse quickly, but they would waste precious minutes following the false trail. The coding set, he turned and caught Mora’s hand before diving through the portal.

  He exited onto a platform at the edge of a small settlement. The collection of ramshackle structures was like an island in a sea of endless crops, the farmland stretching to the horizon in every direction. The sun beat down on them, and Reklin squinted at the glare. Mora tugged on his arm, but he turned a circle, scanning for a destination. The Gate was no help; it was obviously a rural portal, and wouldn’t have access to much beyond the same destinations Reklin had seen from the Ghost ship. The settlement was abandoned, with little more than piles of equipment under overhangs. Usually farming planets either employed millions of slaves to work the planting and harvesting, or, as in the case of grapes, opted for automated harvesters.

  The machines resembled twelve-legged beasts, the legs rising and falling as they passed above the plants. It was mid-harvest, and the machines were bloated with fruit that hovered in gravity harnesses beneath their bellies. There wasn’t a soul in sight.

  “Where we go?” Mora asked urgently.

  Reklin realized it didn’t matter, so he picked a direction and pulled her into the field. “We run.”

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Reklin and Mora raced into the crop of drey. The plants were taller than Reklin, their thin leaves bending in the breeze, their heavy fruit growing from the center of the stalk. The crop lines were narrow, and the leaves slapped him as he ran. When Mora fell behind, he plucked her off the ground and slung her onto his back. She clung to his neck.

  “We escape?” she asked urgently.

  “We need to find a Gate,” Reklin murmured.

  The fields extended for miles—probably hundreds of miles. A working Gate capable of getting them out of Visika’s reach was unlikely, but there weren’t many options. He kept up the pace, hoping for the odds to be wrong. In the distance, a menacing shriek echoed across the fields. He knew the sound.

  Tracker mechs.

  He’d used them in the military and had never liked them. They were ruthlessly reliable, but tended to bring back targets either maimed or dead. Programmed to track by scent, they were the perfect tool to hunt him through the fields. He veered towards one of the harvesters.

  The harvesting mech was giant, with ten spindly legs extending from a bulbous body. Sometimes they were manually operated, featuring room enough for an operator, but this model was automated. One of the legs sliced past Reklin, the long blade at its end cutting the drey stalks. The plants fell in neat rows, and were quickly bound and lifted into the container nestled at the harvester’s belly. Reklin jumped to a leg and used the linked seracrete metal to scale his way upwards.

  Dr
ey leaves rained down on them as the skinny plants were dropped into a reed stripper that removed everything but the fruit, sending the purple berries tumbling down into a reservoir. Reklin reached the top and jumped to another leg. He descended quickly and leapt back into the plants on the opposite side. Just as he landed, a trio of tracker mechs appeared across the harvested track.

  Feline shaped, the tracker mechs had four legs and a sinewy body. Probably Mark IIs. Older than the Mark VIs currently used by the military, they were more brutal and less obedient. The head had vertical jaws strong enough to wrap around a dakorian leg and break the bone. They had no eyes, and tracked their targets through sound and scent. They glided to a stop where Reklin’s trail had disappeared and prowled through the fallen stalks, their jaws clattering open and shut in a disturbing cacophony. The gap in his trail would confuse them for a few minutes, but they were coded to perform an expanding circular sweep until they located a new trail.

  “We need to get inside.” he said.

  “Where?” Mora asked.

  “The harvesters probably have a hub nearby. I need you to see where their trails lead.”

  He lifted Mora onto his hand and then hoisted her above his shoulder. Her head poked above the tall plants, high enough to see the lines the harvesters carved on their way back to their point of deposit.

  She scanned the horizon and then leveled a finger to the north. “That way!”

  He swung her down onto his back and again sprinted into the crops. The sounds of leaves hitting his bones mixed with the faint groan of harvesters and the distant shrieks of the tracker mechs. When they reached one of the lines cut by a harvester, Reklin stepped into the open and leveled off into a full run.

  The plants were cut to nubs, leaving the ground bare twenty feet wide and miles long. In the distance, he spotted a squat structure on the top of a hill. Harvester bays socketed into the outside of the building, the cavernous openings large enough for the mechs to recharge or be repaired. Two harvesters were at the building, emptying their cargo as others exited to cut new lines.