The Colossus Collection

by Nicole Grotepas

  “Not a chance.” The guard wasn’t taking her seriously.

  Holly hesitated. “I don’t want to hurt you.”

  “You seem like a nice girl. I’m not really worried about it. You’ll be joining your friend in there in a few minutes.” He grinned like he had the upper hand despite the gun aimed at his face.

  Holly lowered the barrel and shot at his foot. A violet explosion singed his shoe and the floor surrounding it and he screeched, and began hopping on one foot. Holly clenched her teeth, feeling a surge of remorse for hurting him, but she was running out of options.

  “Now come over here, give me your gun, and open this goddamn door before I shoot you in the head,” she said through gritted teeth. That was a bluff. She wasn’t sure she could do something so brutal.

  The whimpering guard hobbled toward her, his hands raised above his head, tears streaming down his cheeks. He pulled his gun out of the shoulder holster and handed it to her. “I have a kid. Two kids. And a clan. Please, just, please…”

  She took the gun and put it in her waistband slot, normally reserved for her own gun, the Equalizer. “Shut up. Open the door. And nothing else will happen,” Holly said coldly. Her voice held a chilly confidence she didn’t really feel.

  “I am. I am opening the door. See?” He held his hand up to the lock and inserted a fat gray and black key. The lock sprang and the door slid open.

  “Good, now lead me into the room.” The Equalizer was still aimed directly at the guard’s head as he hobbled into the room.

  Shiro stood behind a set of aether bars. “Ms. Drake!” He grinned and took a step toward the bars. “What took you so long?”

  She glared at him. The arrogance . . . “Let him out,” she directed the guard.

  “But we already have a unit coming to pick him up,” the guard protested.

  Holly shot the small desk in the room. It burst into a violet, hissing fire and splintered before disintegrating where the aether ate through it.

  The will of the guard withered at the display and he thrust the same key into a panel on the wall that turned off the bars.

  “Come on, Jace,” Holly said, using one of Shiro’s aliases.

  He picked up his bowler and lion-head cane and stepped through the opening.

  “Get the key from the guard, Jace,” Holly said.

  “Certainly. Sir, if you don’t mind, the key,” Shiro said, holding out his hand. The guard reluctantly handed Shiro the key.

  “Now get into the cell,” Holly said.

  “But I’m wounded!” The guard protested.

  “Your friends will be here in no time,” Holly said.

  “I could die!”

  “I have news for you, friend, we’re all dying. Now move.” Holly pointed the barrel of the Equalizer at his good foot.

  The guard yelped and hobbled into the cell. Shiro used the key to turn on the bars then pocketed the key.

  “Let’s go,” Holly said. They went to the still open door and checked both ways then headed back the way Holly had come.

  Behind them, the guard had started shouting for help. “Should have shut the door,” she muttered.

  “Hindsight,” Shiro said with a shrug.

  Charly bounded around the corner ahead of them, running at full sprint. “Guys! Come on, there are more stupid guards coming!”

  Shiro launched into a sprint just as Charly turned and bolted back the way she’d come. Holly ran after them. Behind her she heard the guard still crying for help from the cell.

  As they entered the area where the bar and restaurant were, another Constie guard sprang at Charly—she fended him off with a jab and a hook to the jaw. Two more appeared even as Odeon materialized out of an alcove and swung at them with his Ousaba club, knocking them both back. Holly and Shiro skirted them.

  “Get back to the ship,” Odeon called.

  “Happy to. Come on, Shiro,” Holly said. “Odeon and Charly can handle them without killing them. I can’t.”

  “How many are there?” Shiro asked.

  “No idea. Let’s hope no more,” she said, slapping the switch to open the door into the corridor that lead to the hatch. When it opened, she slipped into the corridor with Shiro right behind her, followed by Charly and Odeon. The four of them hurried toward the inner anteroom that led to the airlock with Trip’s vessel.

  A guard appeared behind them and called out. Holly glanced back at him as they waited for the hatch to open. The guard had paused at the opening and engaged some kind of lock. Holly looked back at the hatch to the airlock and saw the aether bars as they appeared.

  “Shit,” she cussed.

  The guard was calling for them to stop.

  “Wait, Shiro, the key. You still have it?”

  “It’s right here,” he said, holding it up.

  “Use it.”

  “Alright. Where?”

  Holly looked around, searching for a release.

  “There, she said, pointing to the button she’d just pressed. Whatever the guard had done, it had triggered some kind of aether-shield over the button. There was a keyhole next to it. Shiro shoved the key into it. From her peripheral vision, she saw that the guard was gaining on them. He’d been joined by three more guards, all of them looking rather disheveled and hungry for vengeance.

  “It worked,” Shiro said, slapping the button. The hatch to the airlock opened. The guards shouted and began firing their own weapons at them. Shiro jumped into the airlock, then Charly. Odeon waited for Holly, “Go!” She shouted at him.

  “You first, Holly,” Odeon insisted.

  “Sometimes you’re really infuriating, you know that?” She leapt in and took hold of his arm, pulling him after her. They ran up the tunnel and into the Olavia Apollo just as the guards clamored at the hatch of the airlock.

  “Go, Trip, go!” Holly roared as she turned inside the ship and slammed her palm onto the hatch panel. It shut, sealing out the sounds of the guards.

  2

  “Look, guys, I’m just wondering how much longer that little boy, Jasper, is going to have to wait for us to do what I said we’re going to do.”

  Darius was leaning back in his desk chair, his feet propped up on the table where the kasé machine was. His fingers were interlaced behind his head and the suede elbow patches on his jacket were pointed at Holly. Holly stood in front of the windows looking over the club. Odeon was on the sofa with his back to Holly as he worked on some kind of drum, tightening the skin or something. Shiro hadn’t come in since they’d gotten back from the failed fuel-canister theft.

  “That’s right, Drake. I’m glad we’re talking about this right now. Because you said it to the kid. Which, if you’d asked me about a timeline then, I’d have given you one. It might be a while, I would have said. And I would have advised you to not over-promise anything to poor orphan children trapped on an orbital base under the thumb of an evil organization.”

  “I should have asked you, you’re right Darius,” Holly admitted, with a sigh. “He caught me off guard.” Leaving Jasper had been hard. She’d been unprepared to run into a child that she couldn’t take with—but he wasn’t the one the team had been there for. What if all of them had woken up as she searched for Charm, the Druiviin they’d gone to rescue? It wouldn’t have taken many kids to have turned that whole process into something borderline ridiculous and impossible. Getting Charm out worked. Restoring relationships between Meg and Gabe and Charm’s parents, Aetion and Tyro, had been rather difficult so far.

  “Ah, Drake, you know I’m not mad at you about it. I feel the strain of this on us as well. And now, with the fuel muck up, where are we? Nowhere. Back to square one.”

  Odeon slapped the drum, startling Holly. She caught Darius’s jump at the sudden sound as well. “It wasn’t meant to be,” Odeon said.

  “What?” Darius asked, giving Holly a look as though to say oh, great, now we’re going to get some crazy Druiviin bullshit.

  Holly turned back to watching Charly mingle out on th
e club floor with a crowd of Centau dignitaries. It was always fascinating to watch the politics in action because it was never just politics alone. These events were always about more than simply running Kota and the 6-moon system—it was dealing with the cultural divide. The race divide. The world-of-origin divide. At this event, there were Druiviin present as well. Very few humans other than Charly, who had somehow endeared herself and her club to the wealthy government leaders of the City of Jade Spires.

  Odeon continued. “Another way will open up, Darius. We’re on the side of good in this one. If it was right, the Universe would have given us the chance to get the fuel. We would have walked away with the fuel canisters loaded into our cargo bay. The issue of Shiro getting caught would not have happened.”

  Darius scoffed. “Excuse me if I doubt your assessment, Odeon. The Universe? Who is the Universe that It cares about whether or not we succeed or fail? It doesn’t.”

  Holly glanced at Odeon, who didn’t pause in his work on his drum as he continued. “There is a balance in it. When the balance gets tilted, the Universe corrects itself. That can take a long time. Or it can happen quickly. Hundreds of children being taken from their homes and forced into labor is an off-balance event. The Universe is trying to fix it. With us.”

  “I hate to burst your bubble, Odeon,” Darius said, shaking his head, “but you’re one hundred percent wrong.”

  Odeon said nothing. He kept working, and slapped his drum again. Holly knew nothing about drums, but she thought the tone sounded different. She looked back out at the party below. Charly was dressed in an elegant cream gown that showed off her lean, yet muscular bare arms. She moved from one small conversing party to another, a light touch here, a big grin there, politely listening for a moment, maybe two, then she moved on.

  Darius cleared his throat and continued, “And because you are wrong, Odeon, I’m going to plan a better way to get the fuel. Because this is the only plan that’s going to work—Shiro’s friend’s Really Big Ship can carry as many children as the freak show Shadow Coalition has on the base. We just have to fuel it. And I ain’t got fifty million novas hanging around to spend on fuel for a rescue mission.”

  Holly laughed. “Nobody does. Ever.”

  “Right. No one. But it’s a good way for the Centau to keep everyone else out of the fuel hauling business.”

  “It’s not working though,” Holly said absently. They’d been over this topic before. Right after they got back from the base orbiting Ixion and discovered that the children the SC was taking were being used to fly the small hydrantium mining ships.

  “Not at all. Well, I mean, it did. Until the SC decided they could make a killing mining and refining their own hydrantium.”

  “They’re also stealing it, though, I think,” Holly muttered.

  “Maybe our mistake was trying to get the fuel with Trip’s ship,” Darius said. He stood up and walked to the kasé brewer. Holly heard him behind her, fiddling with the machinery. There was the sound of the dried seed pods being ground up and soon the odor of brewing kasé filled the room. “Maybe we need to use Shiro’s buddy’s ship. Only that’s a lot harder to get away in, speeding off, if that’s what we have to do.” Holly listened vaguely. She sensed that Darius was talking himself through it anyway.

  Besides, using the bigger ship seemed unwise and she knew he’d likely come to that conclusion as well. She listened to Darius talking about it and continued to watch the politicking below her. As she watched, she started. She’d spotted a familiar face. Dave’s. He was one of the few humans at the party. She opened her mouth to tell Darius and Odeon that she knew someone at Charly’s party, then remembered that no one should know who Dave was. Except her. So she bit her lip instead, and ignored that she knew someone down below who was currently getting the royal treatment as a member of the political high society.

  Darius continued to ruminate aloud about which ship would be best for getting the fuel. Odeon chimed in that Trip’s was going to be no-fly for a few days as it received an engine overhaul, which was the main reason they’d decided to snag the fuel before they had Shiro’s friend’s ship in the first place.

  Holly watched Dave take a beverage from a passing server, sip it, and then cringe slightly. It was some sort of sweet cocktail, she could tell that much from her position up in the Bird’s Nest. There was a spear with slices of pineapple on it. Dave excused himself from the small group he’d been conversing with, and as he strolled toward the bar beneath the window where she stood, he glanced up at the window and grinned faintly, as though he could see her. But she knew he couldn’t because the glass was cloudy. He was just being clever.

  Wasn’t he? Did he know that the Bird’s Nest was above the bar? Did he know that the Surge Club was the home of her crew’s HQ?

  Holly considered his reaction to glancing up at the window. Really, was there anything Dave didn’t know or at least have a way to find out?

  Dave spoke to Torden and soon Charly’s Druiviin bartender was pouring Dave a tumbler of bourbon. Good choice, Holly thought.

  3

  Later that evening, Holly stood in her kitchen next to Meg and chopped vegetables for stir fry. Gabe sat on a stool across from the cutting board and sipped a bottle of a red imperial ale. Lucy laughed loudly from the living room. Gabe looked over his shoulder at his daughter where she sat on the couch with her friend Charm, giggling and whispering like they were conspiring. After much bargaining and convincing, Charm’s parents had agreed to let their daughter out of their sight for a few hours.

  “They got back a few days ago,” Gabe said in a soft voice as he turned back to face Meg and Holly.

  Holly glanced at him—they. He meant Charm’s parents, Tyro and Aetion. They’d just returned to Kota with Charm. A day after Holly had gotten back from the Ixion base with their daughter, they’d taken off for Itzcap for a series of healing and therapeutic singing ceremonies. Holly looked across the room at Charm. Her silver hair had been shaved entirely off but had returned in a fine silver stubble across her violet skull. The subtle smile on her face and brightness in her eyes suggested that the time on Itzcap had been helpful. Charm caught Holly’s look and her smile grew slightly. Holly flashed the little girl an encouraging grin. Holly still didn’t know the extent of what had happened to her, but letting her thoughts head in that direction ignited a small fire of vengeance in her belly. She would make the Shadow Coalition pay.

  “And they let you take her away from them?” Holly asked, returning her attention to the potato-like tubers from Yaso on the cutting board. Meg’s knife made soft staccato sounds as it sliced through a cabbage on the spare bamboo board.

  “They shaved their heads too,” Gabe muttered.

  Holly exchanged a look with Meg. “They did,” her sister confirmed. It meant they were reborn. Starting new. Holly supposed that when you lived for almost two hundred and fifty human years, finding ways to simulate rebirth became important.

  “Have they changed?” Holly asked.

  Meg shook her head. “Not much. That I can tell, anyway. It took a lot of convincing. They seem to think that the only person Charm’s disappearance affected was them. But it really did a number on Lucy.”

  Gabe nodded and sighed. He swirled the dark ale in the bottle. “We might need to take her to Itzcap for some of her own healing garbage.”

  “Gabe,” Meg said.

  He laughed. “What?”

  “Garbage? Really?”

  He shrugged. “Just my opinion.”

  “You need some healing shit,” Meg told him, tossing a strand of cabbage at him. He laughed and knocked it away, using the bottle like a shield.

  Holly finished chopping her vegetables. Then she pulled the plates off the slabs of tofu that had been draining and began slicing the knife cleanly through them in a grid pattern. Meg went to the stove and began heating the oil in the wok.

  “Well, sometimes I need a reality check. Not everything is death and danger and horrible people doing ho
rrible things. So I’m glad you guys could come by and bring Charm. I’m happy to see her doing well.” She cast a glance at the two girls on the couch again. They were playing hand games with chants. Seeing it made Holly miss her days teaching. She felt a pang stab through her, but ignored it. There was always something to long for in the past, even though it had been a dark place for so many years.

  Gabe cleared his throat and Holly caught him exchanging a look with Meg.

  “Uh oh. I know that sound. And that look. What’s going on?” Holly put down her knife and folded her arms. She leaned back against the counter.

  “There’s another reason we wanted to meet with you tonight.”

  “You don’t say?” Holly teased. “Besides the warning that mom is coming back to Kota? She’s finally giving up on Joppa and dad?”

  “Yes, that was important,” Meg admitted.

  Before Gabe or Meg could explain further, the front door opened and Odeon strolled in. He used his Ousaba staff as a walking stick. His hair was getting longer and hung down nearly to his shoulders. Charm shouted with glee when she saw him and ran to greet him.

  “I didn’t know Odeon was coming,” Meg said from beside Holly.

  “He’s got unlimited access to my condo. So he comes and goes as he pleases. He’s like a cat.”

  “A bit insulting, isn’t that?” Gabe joked. “How would you feel if I said you were like my cat?”

  “Oh, did I say he was my cat? I didn’t mean my anything. The man does whatever he wants. And I observe from a distance, enjoying it. When he chooses to be with me, I enjoy it even more.”

  Gabe grinned and sipped his drink. “I bet there are plenty of guys who would love to be your cat anyway, kiddo.”

  “Gabe, really.” Meg said, her voice dripping disdain.

  “Meg just hates it that I’m her cat,” Gabe stood up and sauntered over to Odeon.

  Meg sighed, then laughed and rolled her eyes as though exasperated. “Please. The last thing I need is a pet. Let alone a cat. Snobby. Elitist.”