I’ve been around long enough to know all of the weapons on sight, including what the Commune makes. Most of the guns are traditional projectile launchers. There’s a few railguns, plasma, pulse laser, ion blasters and the like. We’ve found so many ways to kill one another, it’s almost sickening. There are grenades too, along with other kinds of explosives. I bypass the guns and head right to the explosives, seeking something specific.

  The last three men to get their armaments are between me and my destination, in the middle of pulling on hardened armor. They don’t pay much attention to me because I look like I know exactly what I’m doing.

  I see a rack of pull-out crates, quickly scanning the labels to find the one I want. Opening the drawer, I reach in and take four slender square explosives marked KX-12. It’s a thermochemical polymer designed for a deep blast effect, perfect for cutting through thick metal like the kind found on vaults.

  “What are you going to use that for?” one of the guards asks, noticing my selection. “I thought we’re looking for one guy, and the boss wants him alive.”

  “It’s none of your concern,” I reply with authority. “You worry about your orders and I’ll worry about mine.”

  The guard turns away, embarrassed by my response. I pocket the KX-12 and cross to the handguns, finding one that complements the plasma pistol holstered under my arm. I put it in hiding and approach them, splitting through the middle to a shelf near the armor. I open another drawer, taking out a small case and flipping it open. A comm earbud sits inside.

  “What channel?” I ask the guards. They look at me, slow to respond. “What channel?” I repeat impatiently.

  “Si…sixteen,” the guard replies.

  I use my fingernail to power the earbud on and stick it in my ear. “Channel sixteen,” I whisper. The device hears me and switches channels.

  “This is Red One,” a voice says over it. “Red Team is in position.”

  “Copy that, Red Team. Blue, what’s your status?”

  “Colonel, this is Blue One. We’re on our way to Deck Seventy-three, sir.”

  “You have twenty seconds,” Colonel Whoever replies. “Haul ass, Blue Team.”

  “Roger, sir,” Blue One responds.

  There’s other chatter on the comm, and I listen semi-attentively as I make for the exit, ignoring the eyes on my back as I leave.

  “All set,” I say to the guards posted at the door.

  “That was fast,” Jessefs says. He looks at me, noticing I’m still carrying the same pulse rifle I entered with. “I thought you were supposed to pull something larger?”

  I smile and spread out my coat, showing him the two side arms beneath it. “Bigger isn’t always better,” I reply. “This’ll do.”

  His mouth opens but doesn’t speak, settling for watching me as I walk away unchallenged.

  Too easy. How much longer can my luck hold?

  Chapter 24

  Five minutes later I’m back in the emergency stairwell, dropping the final group of stairs to Deck Seventy-three. My trip back is almost uneventful, especially with the comm chatter helping me skirt around the densest pockets of security. Listening in reveals that Amelin’s got the entire base on high alert, with roving patrols trying to cover the station core and guard positions standing watch over what Rocklin and his apparent head of security, Colonel Trix, think are my most likely targets. That includes the barricades blocking exodus from the core to the station’s extended structure, reactor control, life-support, defensive control, and ironically, the armory.

  They’ve also got a team of techs headed to the security control room to override the lockout I put on the system and regain their eyes across the place. They’ll succeed too, but it’ll take them twenty to thirty minutes at least.

  If this isn’t resolved by then I probably deserve to die.

  Nobody on the comm mentions Deck Seventy-three again, but I put the piece in my ear just in time to know they think it’s worth defending, so I’m ready to run into opposition as soon as I come around the corner. With the pulse rifle stowed on my back and a pistol in each hand, I take the last flight of stairs like I’m in a Skirmisher, moving hard and fast into a devastating fly-by.

  There isn’t a ton of room on the stairs, which means there’s only one guard waiting near the door when I hit Deck Seventy-three. Of course, he’s heard my feet coming the whole time, and his rifle is already set, his finger on the trigger when I appear. But he’s green and slow, and isn’t prepared for me to juke sideways, hitting the bulkhead with my shoulder as I shoot across the deck at him. I’m off-balance and don’t expect to hit him with the first shot. I just need to buy time to get around the corner. I see the blue flashes from his PEP once I’m back on the run and double-tap both pistols as I close, the rounds smacking into his armor.

  The plasma is mostly absorbed by his protection, but the ion blaster punches right through, shredding his innards. I come up beside him, digging the guns in point-blank and shooting again on the way past. The results are predictable, leaving him dead on the floor by the time I come to a stop and turn around.

  “Colonel, Blue Six is down,” Blue One says over the comm almost immediately. “Odin’s in the stairwell!”

  “Copy that, Blue One,” Colonel Trix replies, staying calm. “I’m opening the access from deck seventy-four. Get in there. Orange, Yellow—intercept and neutralize him in the stairwell on Deck Seventy-three if at all possible. Otherwise, run him down.”

  “Roger, Colonel,” a pair of voices reply in response to the orders.

  I can’t hold back a smirk while I holster the ion blaster and reach into my pocket, quickly removing some of the KX-12 from its pack and pressing it into the upper left corner of the door. I repeat the process three more times in rapid succession, putting the explosive in each corner. By that time, I hear the door a deck above me slide open and I hurriedly descend the stairs to the next level down, leaving the explosives in place.

  Sometimes, getting the upper hand on an opponent is all a matter of leading them on a chase until the opportunity to turn the tide presents itself. Sometimes, all it takes is a little patience and a dash of creativity.

  I don’t like killing people. But regretfully, I’m pretty damn good at it.

  Three guards come around the corner and stop at the emergency access door to Deck Seventy-three. “Colonel, this is Orange One,” one of them says. “We’re at ED-73. There’s KX-12 in all four—”

  “Get the hell out of there, you idiots!” Trix shouts into the comm around the same time I swing into view. They all turn toward me, trying to bring their guns around to shoot me. I fire first, the plasma bolt sizzling past them and hitting the first explosive I placed.

  Everyone knows what happens next.

  The first blast knocks them down. The next three send star-hot plasma spraying all over them, along with shrapnel from the door and its frame. A lot of it pierces their suits and finds flesh beneath. They don’t even have time to scream.

  And I don’t have time to stay in one place.

  I break up the steps toward the still smoldering remains of the door. I’m careful not to step into the pools of molten metal burning through the metal grates of the flooring. It pours down onto the conduits beneath, eating through them and doing who knows what kind of damage to the station’s systems. They’re built redundantly to take hits like this, so I don’t panic when the pull of artificial gravity vanishes beneath my feet and I begin to rise from the deck. But then I realize everything else is losing gravity too. I turn over and place my palms flat on the ceiling to pull myself hand-over-hand through the door before globs of hot metal can rise to meet me.

  The gravity returns as I clear the threshold, and I quickly turn back over as I fall to the deck. I manage to land in a crouch, automatically checking for traffic in the corridor. It’s empty. No different from any of the other corridors I’ve used. My immediate thoughts make me wonder why Amelin’s trying so hard to keep people out.

  Voices continue in my ear.

  “Colonel, this is Orange Four. We’ve reached ED-73.”

  “Roger, Orange Four. Proceed with caution. Yellow is moving in from the other side.”

  I break into a run through the passage, eager to stay ahead of the security detail closing in. I come around the corner and pull up in a sudden stop.

  I’m at the entrance to a greenhouse. The sweet scent in the air is flowers. They spill from hundreds of baskets dangling from the ceilings. Thousands more of them fill the open, square room, and green leaves, vines and buds of every color cover the walls and floor. A narrow walkway cuts through the greenery around a small fountain in the room’s center. The fountain belches water and holographic mermaids dive through the waterfall. The display is beautiful and tacky at the same time.

  There is a door on each bulkhead. The one to the left of me is open, and there’s music coming from inside. I get my ass in gear, running along the walkway without care for what I trample or break on the way. I can hear the footsteps both behind me and on the opposite side of the greenhouse about to converge here, and I don’t want to get caught in a crossfire.

  I rush through the open door and slap the control panel on the wall beside it. I keep smacking it until the door finally begins to slide shut. It moves slow, and I duck down just as what’s left of Orange team comes into the greenhouse. The way they react tells me it’s their first time seeing the place, and they’re even more amazed than I was by the display. Yellow joins them a moment later, most of them reacting with nearly the same surprise.

  Most.

  One of Yellow Team looks my way. His eyes widen when he sees me peeking around the door frame, and he raises his gun. I take a wild shot at him, and they all rush to duck down behind the fountain.

  “Target acquired.” I can barely make out his words over the noise of the fountain filtering over the comm as he gets on it with Colonel Trix. “He’s in the room next to a greenhouse on the starboard—”

  “Hol...fire and stan...down! Damn it! Do not ent—”

  I only hear part of Colonel Trix’s interruption over the water noise, but only enough to be as confused by what he’s saying as his two teams probably are. I imagine they want a shot at me, especially after what I did to the rest of Orange. Why was Trix telling them to stand down?

  The door finally draws closed, cutting off the sound of the fountain, and that’s when I hear the soft music playing behind me. Still crouched down, I jerk around.

  “Amelia?”

  She’s sitting in a chair beside a large bed, looking as surprised to see me as I am to see her. Beside her, an ancient, bald head rises from crisp white sheets, all manner of tubes and wires connecting the rail thin body beneath the sheet to a bank of medical monitors.

  “Grandpa Rocklin, I presume?”

  Chapter 25

  Amelia frowns ignoring my question. “What are you doing here?”

  “Looking for you.”

  “Well, you found me.”

  “You and your grandfather, it appears,” I say, looking over at the old man.

  “Yes” She looks over at her grandfather with a proud expression. “This is Geramin Rocklin, founder of Naraka station a little over seventy years ago. He saw how the war with the Commune would progress long before it got here.” She looks at me. “That’s what Naraka is supposed to be. A safe haven from the war.”

  “It’s a den of thieves,” I reply.

  “Because Alliance law makes it impossible to live inside it without being part of the war effort. Without participating in something nobody here believes in anymore. We have to do something to survive. I never said it’s perfect, but it’s better than the alternatives for most of the people here.”

  “The way your grandfather wanted it. Is he...?”

  “Dead? Not yet. He will be soon though. It wasn’t that long ago, he was still able to walk among the flowers. He loved to prune them. He found peace in the simplest actions.” She sighs. “All I want is peace, Mister Grayson. For Naraka. For the Alliance. For myself. It seems so hard to find.”

  “It isn’t going to get any easier,” I reply. “Bad times are coming, Miss Rocklin. A new war is coming.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “It’s a long story, and your brother isn’t offering much time to tell it. I escaped from him and came to get you. We had a deal.”

  She looks at me, offering a weak smile.“One hundred and twenty-six. That’s how old my grandfather is. Old even by today’s standards. But he’ll be gone soon. I told Amelin all I wanted was to stay with him until he passed and then he could do whatever he wants with me. Not like I could stop him anyway. He doesn’t care about anyone but himself.”

  “He’ll kill you.”

  “I know. He’ll kill you too the second you try to leave this room.”

  “Purple, Black, converge on Deck Seventy-three,” Colonel Trix says in the comm, backing up her statement.

  “There has to be another way out of here,” I say. “An exit you know about but your brother doesn’t.”

  “How did you know?” she asks.

  “You’re supposed to be next in line, aren’t you? Only Amelin saw the writing on the wall and started importing military rejects to form his own goon squad. You lost the core because you weren’t prepared. We were captured in the hangar because you trusted the wrong people.”

  “Grandfather always said my greatest weakness is that I trust too easily, especially in a place like this. Oh, he knew what Naraka became. A necessary evil, he called it. The best of all the bad choices.” She looks at me again. “Of course there’s another way out.”

  “Then what are we waiting for?”

  “I told you, I’m not leaving while he’s alive. He’s done too much for this place to die alone.”

  I look at Geramin again. His eyes are closed, his breathing so shallow I can’t see the sheets move. “He’s in a coma. He doesn’t even know you’re here.”

  “The gods know he does,” she replies. “You’re safe in here for now, and we can escape.” Her smile is sly for a moment before fading. “I don’t know where I’ll go. My support is obviously waning. The people here don’t care if Amelin leads them to ruin and destroys everything my grandfather built.”

  “He’ll have to get in line,” I say.

  “What do you mean?”

  I look at her, our eyes meeting. “Me and my partner weren’t completely honest with you on the transport.”

  “Nobody on Naraka is completely honest, Grayson.”

  “Yeah, well, Naraka station is in serious danger, and not just from Amelin. Something worse is on its way here.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Mister Novari’s name isn’t Novari, it’s Rozik. He’s a Commune Captain who was part of a fleet that used some kind of new tech to go beyond the Disturbance.”

  “What?”

  “I know it’s hard to believe. The point is, he found something out there. Or rather, something found him. And it followed him and his fleet back into the Sphere. To Warrick. It’s a planet about—”

  “I know where Warrick is,” Amelia says. “But you’re trying to tell me there are aliens from the other side of the Disturbance inside the Sphere?”

  “Yes, ma’am. Hostile aliens. They destroyed Spindle station. They destroyed the Commune fleet. They sent ground units to the planet’s surface and attacked the settlement there. And they were in the process of draining the energy from the sun when we left to get help.”

  “Draining the energy…you mean like a Dyson Sphere?”

  “Not containing it. Draining it. A beam of some kind was sucking the energy out of it.”

  “But if they take its energy, Warrick will—”

  “Exactly. My wife was on Spindle station, along with two of my kids. The banshees killed them, just like they’re going to kill thousands more when that sun goes out.”

  “Banshees?”

  “Their vocalizations sound like musical screams, but that’s not important. What’s important is that we think they’re going to come looking for another target. Another sun or other large power supply. Rozik said every star just outside the Sphere is dead. Drained of all energy.”

  “Why would any race possibly need that much energy? And how can they possibly store it?”

  “Great questions, but answering them isn’t a priority at the moment. We came to Naraka to contact our respective militaries. To rally a defense. Then we find out the synchronizer is in the hands of a power-hungry moron and we have to depose him to get access. Okay, fine. But there’s another problem.”

  “What kind of problem?”

  “There’s a possibility the banshees wanted someone to escape Warrick so they could follow them, probably figuring we might lead them to another nearby star. We think they might have put a tracking device of some kind on our freighter.”

  “And you brought them to Naraka?” She’s pissed. I don’t blame her.

  “It wasn’t my idea,” I reply. “Rozik drugged me, knocked me out and brought us here. He thinks it’s better the banshees kill a few thousand here than millions on a colonized Commune or Alliance world.”

  “That son of a bitch,” she hisses.

  “I can’t argue that too strongly, but let’s be honest. This place is dirty.”

  “That’s easy for you to judge from the other side. Screw you, Grayson.”

  I shrug. “The point is, we had a deal. I want to honor it. I need to use the synchronizer. And then I need to get Valhalla away from the station before the banshees track it here.”

  “And the favor Nov…Rozik said he wanted?”

  “I don’t know what he planned with that. I want a ship that can get me back to Bruxton in time to go after the banshees. I want to go get my mesh partner and get back into the damn fight.”

  “A noble thought, all things considered. And if you do all that, what do you expect from me?”

  “An ally in the fight, if and when we need one. You have assets and connections.”