No More Heroes: In the Wake of the Templars Book Three (10 page)

At first, Coni had pitied the child locked in his small cell all day. Then she confirmed what Raena already suspected: Jain was responsible for the torture and murder of at least one of the men who had rescued Raena from her tomb. Jain looked like a child, but he was not innocent by a long stretch.

The final person in the security video was the ship’s captain, Revan Thallian. He had been Jonan Thallian’s older brother. Coni didn’t know Revan’s part in the creation or dissemination of the Templar plague, but she did know Revan hid his younger brother after the Human-Templar War ended and the human tribunals began, then did his brother’s bidding in the galaxy afterward.

Coni wondered how Kai could connect the
Raptor
to the
Veracity
without realizing that the Thallian murderers had roamed their capital city at will.

After the Thallians left the
Raptor
, it stood quietly for hours. Coni sped through the recording until Jain returned alone to the docking slip. He hastily parked his jet bike on the tarmac and rushed toward the
Raptor’
s hatch, fumbling his glove off as he went.

As if she’d fallen out of the sky, Raena landed atop the ship carrying a stun staff. Coni searched her memory. Raena said she’d followed the boy on a jet bike of her own. She ditched it in midair and let it crash into the next docking slip over. Coni remembered how Mykah had used the smoke as a beacon to lead him to the
Raptor
. Coni had thought her part in sneaking onto the ship had been exciting, but it paled in comparison to Raena’s original commandeering of it.

In the recording, Raena lay on the upper hull of the
Raptor
, then flipped gracefully over its edge, stun staff at the ready. From the way she held the staff, it appeared that she used the business end on Jain in the
Raptor
’s hatchway. Thanks to the angle of the camera, nothing questionable was actually visible. An argument could be made that Raena merely brandished the stun staff at him, without actually striking him with it.

After a brief time, Raena walked out of the
Raptor
alone. She looked around and aimed a Stinger at the camera. The video ended.

Coni set her handheld on the desk and rubbed her eyes.

That was it? That was Kai’s whole case? Raena landed atop the ship, she walked into the ship with a stun staff, and she walked off it with a pistol. There was no real evidence she had hurt—to say nothing of kidnapped—the boy. There wasn’t even any evidence she’d flown away in the
Raptor
. Without footage of her intentionally crashing the jet bike, the only illegal thing she’d done in the recording was to vandalize the camera.

Coni searched for other cameras around that section of the spaceport to see if she could find anything more damning.

How desperate was Kai that they would issue a bounty on such flimsy evidence? Were they simply hoping to extort money from Raena in order to have the charges dropped?

Yawning, Coni wondered if the crew of the
Veracity
had enough money between them to get everything paid off in the morning. The stress of the day was catching up with her. She hoped the hotel bed was big enough for her and Mykah.

CHAPTER 5

R
aena never imagined the crew would abandon her. Coni and Haoun had watched her get arrested. After the Messiah revelation, the ship had plenty of money. It should have been easy for them to come bail her out. When hours passed and no one came—and no charges were pressed—she began to feel anxious.

She would have thought twice about submitting so meekly in the spaceport, if she’d known she would have to sit in a holding cell for any length of time. She hoped she hadn’t inspired the kids to be so paranoid that they just ran away without her. The other creatures in the cell stayed out of her way as she paced.

Eventually a squad of ten Planetary Security agents came to retrieve her. Raena looked her escort over. That strength of numbers seemed entirely unnecessary for delivering her to a hearing. It looked surprisingly like a firing squad.

“What’s going on, Commander?” she asked.

“You’re being extradited.”

“I haven’t been charged yet,” she protested.

“Doesn’t matter to me.”

His agents took their places around the edges of the forcefield’s aperture, guns drawn. Raena looked them over, picking the one to take down first, planning angles of attack. The dispirited creatures in the cell huddled together, as far from her as they could get. Once the firing started, it would be a slaughter.

She couldn’t do it. These were innocents in the holding cell, pickpockets and grifters at worst. In the past, she wouldn’t have cared if they died during her escape attempt. In the past, she would have been running from Thallian. Now, she realized with a shock, she didn’t want their deaths on her conscience.

As soon as Raena stepped past the barrier, the smallest agent raised the manacles. “Please turn around,” she said.

Raena couldn’t see the person’s face behind the smoked faceplate, even to judge her species, but the agent sounded like little more than a kid. With a sigh, Raena complied and clasped her hands behind her back.

She noted that the Chameleon girls had taken control of the bench again.

“I haven’t seen the consul either,” Raena complained as the manacles locked into place.

“There isn’t any human consul on Lautan,” the squad commander said.

Someone nudged her with the butt of a gun. As they marched her out of the cellblock, Raena kept her head up, face forward, but her eyes scanned relentlessly. Too many jail guards lounged around for her to try anything, even to test the slack in the restraints, which—like everything else on Lautan—had been made for a larger creature than her. Without knowing where she was headed or what charge she had to face, it was stupid to consider any escape that might get her killed.

Oh, but she wanted to run. Adrenaline flooded her blood. Raena struggled to remember that, wherever they were taking her, it was not back to Thallian.

*   *   *

Ariel jolted awake, her heart hammering in her chest. She listened, but her room remained entirely silent. The lockdown telltales flashed from the monitor, but none of the alarms had been tripped. Everyone was still safe.

She crawled across her oversized bed to check messages. No word from Raena, not even an acknowledgement from the
Veracity
. The message had been opened, but no one had bothered to respond.

That meant trouble.

The sweat that slicked Ariel’s body turned icy. Raena would understand what Ariel was going through here. Even if she decided that Ariel was a big girl who could take care of herself, Raena would want to protect Eilif. If Raena hadn’t answered, it was because she couldn’t.

Ariel threw off her covers and went to shower.

Raena had to be okay. Ariel wouldn’t trust anyone else to spy on the Thallian world and survive.

*   *   *

The Planetary Security detail hustled Raena down a hallway and straight into the back of a patrol wagon. The truck had lights inset into its ceiling behind a heavy-duty screen. Built-in benches lined its walls. Raena didn’t see any sort of crash webbing, so this was a simple planetary vehicle. Hopefully, she’d get her chance to run on the other end, before they rushed her onto a ship.

The security corps didn’t remove the restraints that pinned her wrists, which made it uncomfortable to sit on the bench against the truck’s cab. Raena braced her bare feet against the agents’ boots to keep from being bounced around.

The agents regarded her through their smoked faceplates, but didn’t move their feet out of her reach. They also didn’t holster their sidearms. Someone must have studied the recording of her defense of Mykah on the beach. They weren’t taking any chances that she’d attempt to escape.

She remained confident in the identity that Coni built for her, but she wished she knew where they were going. She couldn’t think of anything illegal she’d done recently that deserved this level of security. Since her escape from the tomb, Raena had been to Brunzell with Sloane, where she never stepped outside after the night he’d taken her to dinner. From there, they’d gone to Kai to meet Ariel. She’d joined Mykah and Coni disrupting the jetpack race, but since those two hadn’t been arrested alongside her, she doubted that was what this was about. She’d never been linked to the bombing of Mellix’s apartment on Capitol City. He’d gotten her cleared of the fire on Verwoest. What could this possibly be about?

Something exploded softly in front of the truck. The whole vehicle shuddered as its engine made a weird stutter. The patrol wagon drifted to the left and continued around at a speed that felt ill advised.

The commander shouted, “Jhen, what are you doing up there?” He got no response.

As the truck toppled over, Raena scrambled to brace her bare feet against something more solid than the Security agents. A pistol barely missed striking her in the head. It lay there, just centimeters from her face, taunting her.

The soldiers hadn’t been fastened down either. The writhing mass of them ended up in a pile against the lowest wall of the truck.

The vehicle slid, grinding and bouncing, over the roadway. It finally crashed to a halt. The lights went out.

Raena sat up. The restraints on her arms were loose enough that she could easily slip her legs through and get her arms around in front of her. There was plenty of groaning and cursing in the darkened truck as the agents picked themselves up. Even disoriented and injured, they remained between Raena and the still-locked door. She decided to bide her time. She curled up as small as she could, trying to look harmless.

One of the Security agents folded open the lower door. As the agents duckwalked out of the truck, someone outside shot them down in the street.

Raena hoped that the
Veracity
’s crew hadn’t mounted a rescue attempt. If they were identified fighting Planetary Security, that would put an end to their ability to travel freely around the galaxy right quick.

Whoever was outside, though, was too efficient for her crew. The street filled with fallen Security agents, but Raena hadn’t even glimpsed the attackers yet. She also didn’t see any bolts. Whatever the attackers were using, they weren’t energy weapons. Who would risk killing Security forces?

The Security agent left to guard her yelled into his comm, “No, I need backup now! The prisoner is still restrained. Don’t worry about her. Everyone else is down. I need help!”

She could help. Raena waited until he’d turned the comm off and took his stance with his rifle before she went into action. She swept his legs out from under him and somersaulted backward, getting her arms in front of her body finally. As he flopped on his back, struggling to aim the rifle at her—she was too close, he would have done better to drop it—Raena sprang to her feet. She kicked him hard in the chest and snatched up his rifle.

While he was trying to gasp in a breath, Raena braced her back against the truck’s wall, balanced the rifle on her hip. Whenever the attackers came through the door, she was ready.

They didn’t make her wait long.

As they flung the topmost door back upward, the streetlights finally revealed them. They wore the same featureless gray uniforms as the soldiers who had attacked Mellix’s apartment on Capital City.

Raena was small and it was dark inside the truck, but she had no sort of cover. Her only hope was to shoot enough of the gray attackers to block the doorway with their bodies.

She didn’t bother shooting to stun. Whoever these guys were, they hadn’t come to her rescue.

“Drop!” someone ordered. Raena flung herself down on her face. Only then did she realize that the voice had spoken Imperial Standard.

The grays split in half. Some pivoted to deal with the threat outside. The others started toward Raena.

She recognized an EMP grenade as it spun into the truck. Someone outside was trying to disable the grays’ combat helmets.

The grenade had been pitched to strike the upper wall. Everyone standing caught the blast wave in the head. They collapsed like unstrung marionettes.

That was unexpected. The EMP should have just messed up their displays. The gray soldiers didn’t even seem to be breathing.

“Come on out, Raena,” the voice outside called.

“I’m afraid to,” she answered. She looked down at her stolen rifle, but the EMP had disabled it, too. She dropped it and crept forward to grab one of the gray soldiers’ sidearms. It was a surprising weapon, sinuous and bulbous. She’d never seen anything like it, couldn’t imagine what it was supposed to do. It didn’t even seem to have a trigger.

“You want us to come in and get you?” His voice held a hint of threat.

“No, I’m coming,” Raena promised. “Tell me you want me alive.”

The person outside laughed. “If we wanted you dead, that truck would be full of corpses right now. The bounty’s only good if you’re alive.”

Ah. Bounty hunters. That was familiar territory. Raena put the unusual weapon gently back on the bottom wall of the truck. She stepped over the fallen bodies, alert for one of them to grab her. No one moved.