No More Heroes: In the Wake of the Templars Book Three (17 page)

“Thanks, Ari. Tell Kavanaugh I say hi, too.”

Ariel smiled and signed off.

Raena tried to call the
Veracity
next, but the comm code had been disabled. She hoped the kids were all right.

CHAPTER 8

U
nder the bone growth accelerator, Raena drifted off again. For a change, her sleep was untroubled by dreams. When she woke at last, the burning in her ribcage had simmered down to a nice toasty warmth. She remembered not to stretch just in time.

She opened her eyes to find an unfamiliar man about to touch her shoulder. He wore a crisp cream-colored shirt beneath a brick-red jacket. His sandy hair had been trimmed close to this head and his eyes were an unremarkable brown in an unimpressive face. He swallowed audibly. “Are you really awake?”

She nodded. “Have you come from the consulate?”

“I’m the Deputy Consul on Kai.”

“Did Ariel send you?”

He looked down at his manicured hands. “Ms. Shaad is well known for her work on humanity’s behalf,” he said. “You’re the first of her wards that it’s been my honor to meet.”

Raena smiled, thinking that he was not the first diplomat she’d met. Instead, she said, “So far, I haven’t been officially charged with anything. I haven’t seen a defender. I haven’t been able to contact my shipmates. And I’ve been hauled from one pleasure planet to another without any explanation. How will the consulate help me straighten this out?”

“Apparently, your arraignment was scheduled for this morning. I got it postponed, since you are unable to attend.”

“Thank you,” Raena said.

“There does seem to be an added level of drama to your case, Ms. Zacari. And the legal system on Kai is often full of drama.”

“That doesn’t bode well.”

For the first time, the Deputy Consul smiled. “I will petition the court to reschedule your arraignment as soon as possible. You can’t begin to prepare a defense until you know what you’re being charged with.”

“Thank you.”

“Ms. Shaad’s Foundation is arranging a defender for you. I’m not sure where he’s traveling from, so I’m not sure when he will arrive. Therefore, I will accompany you to the arraignment, if he is unable to attend.”

Raena wondered what that was costing Ariel. Clearly this all required some extra special making up to her sister, once things were settled.

“I’ve also spoken to the jail commandant. When you are transferred back to the jail, you will be placed in a solitary cell. He has been made to understand that your safety is his personal responsibility.”

“I appreciate all you’ve done for me.”

“The Shaad Family Foundation is a powerful ally,” he said.

Raena nodded. She had clearly underestimated her sister when she thought of Ariel as simply insanely wealthy. She hadn’t realized Ariel had any political power, but that came, no doubt, of heading up a humanitarian cause that no one could argue with—and having a hot temper and the money to see your will done.

“One last thing,” the Deputy Consul said. “Kai doesn’t have much of a broadcast entertainment industry, since most of the populace are transient visitors. Because of that, they record their legal proceedings for galactic broadcast.”

“What?” That was an unexpected twist.

“You have the right to say no, but they would like to broadcast your trial.”

“I don’t want to become a spectacle.”

“Understood. They will record the arraignment, but we can block its broadcast. Recording is not optional.”

“I see. Thank you for warning me.”

A different nurse came in. This one was a delicate lizard with limbs as thin as a bird’s. She checked the readout on the bone accelerator. “I think you’ll be out of here soon,” she said cheerily.

“Then I’ll take my leave,” the Deputy Consul said. “Keep your head down and we’ll try to get your case settled as quickly as possible.”

“Thank you, sir.”

The nurse leaned over Raena. “I need you to take the deepest breath you can.”

Hesitantly, Raena breathed in, waiting for the pain to resume. It didn’t.

“Good as new,” the nurse chirped. “I’ll go start the process to get you released back to the jail.”

*   *   *

Her new cell was smaller than the first, but if that meant that it was hers alone, Raena decided not to mind. She stretched gently, making sure that everything inside her was really as good as new. From stretching, she progressed to a handstand, then to climbing the walls. This cell also had a high window. This time, she decided to find the path up to it in advance, in case she needed it again at a moment’s notice.

Once she’d accomplished every time-killer she could think of, that left empty hours ahead of her. It was hard not to dwell on the last time she stood trial.

When the Imperial guards removed her from Thallian’s torture device aboard the
Arbiter
, she had believed the end was nearly upon her. She hadn’t eaten or slept in days; how many days, she wasn’t sure. She could no longer stand on her own, so the guards carried her.

Treatment in the Emperor’s private prison was much better. The prison guards fed her by hand until she could feed herself. They allowed her to shower. She could dress, finally. And best of all, Thallian could not touch her. She began to feel less like a scarecrow of herself. It didn’t make sense to her that they treated her so well when all that stood ahead of her was a firing squad, but she savored every slight pleasure she had left. She so looked forward to escaping her life.

They brought her uniform to her at last. She dressed with care, polishing her boots and brushing her long straight hair. She knew this would be the last time Jonan ever got to see her, so she fixed herself up for him. She prayed he would be tortured by her memory.

The Imperial guards returned to escort her. She assumed they would take her to the prison square for summary execution. Instead she was marched into an auditorium and put on display as an example of what happened to those who flouted the will of the Empire.

The list of charges against her took most of the morning to present. Some of those things she regretted now: she wished she’d found some way to evacuate the prisoners from the mining prison, rather than leaving them to die when she vented their air into space. Of course, the Empire wasn’t accusing her of the prisoners’ deaths, only of destroying the prison. Despite her remorse over her mining prison escape, she didn’t regret scuttling the quasar-class
Avalanche
. Those butchers deserved to die for what they’d done on Zaja IV. If any of them survived Raena’s demolition of their ship, they would have found themselves on the wrong side of the tribunals after the Templar Plague. One way or another, they were all dead now.

During her show trial, Raena was relieved no one had calculated the civilian casualties for which she must certainly be responsible. Most likely, the Empire didn’t care about them. They had enough evidence to kill her several times over, without worrying about all the collateral damage.

She claimed full responsibility for her crimes. Execution should have been inevitable. Her chief hope was that Thallian would be required to watch it.

It surprised her, then, that Thallian went so far out on a limb to plead for her life. He kept trying to present mitigating circumstances, to blame others as her instigators or accomplices. He argued that she was too young to understand what she had done, that she was too damaged to be truly responsible. Every word led him farther into the trap they’d set for him.

Raena didn’t understand until much later, after the slab had closed on her tomb, that she had only been the bait. Her trial had never been about her guilt—only about Thallian’s.

It was paranoid to think the same might be true now on Kai. Even so, Raena could not honestly think of any crime she’d committed since she’d walked out of the tomb that would require this level of multi-planetary collusion. No innocents had been hurt, either by her actions or inaction, since she left her tomb. She had damaged no property, except the Thallians’. As far as she knew, she hadn’t even broken any laws, other than forging her new identity. If anyone was ever going to try her for war crimes committed in the service of the Empire, it wouldn’t be a pleasure planet like Kai.

Despite that, Kai wanted her in jail badly enough to put a price on her head. The guys in gray had now chased her across three worlds. Given her history, Raena could not help but think those things were merely theater, distractions from whatever was really going on in the galaxy. She wondered how long she would have to wait to see the curtain pulled back.

That day and the next day passed in a haze of boredom, broken only by the arrival of meals. As prison chow went, the food here surpassed any she’d had before. Something could be said for being locked up in rich people’s prisons, she thought.

*   *   *

Coni and the crew of the
Veracity
gathered with the other passengers in the yacht’s lounge to look at Kai before they landed. The planet burned in shades of ember and coal against the blackness of space. As the ship came around, Kai City shimmered like a gaudy spill of jewels at the edge of the ocean.

Coni had liked Kai all right when she lived there. Her job as a social worker, checking on the humans employed in the service areas of the tourist city, had been interesting. She felt she had really been able to help people with the contradictory regulations and bigotry they encountered.

When Mykah suggested she run away with him, she hesitated. Who would help the clients she was leaving behind? But Mykah made it sound so tempting: to apply what she knew to helping more people on a grander scale, to change the galaxy, to become a pirate for good. It would be an adventure.

And it had been. She was proud to have had a hand in revealing the Thallians’ hideout to the galaxy. She was relieved to have helped expose the Messiah conspiracy before it destroyed any more governments. She hadn’t been able to do much social work aboard the
Veracity
, but she had helped Raena settle in to her new life. She was proud to call the reformed assassin her friend.

She understood why Mykah had come back to Kai, even though he’d said he never would. He was offended that they’d stolen his ship. He was outraged that they’d picked on Raena, who had done so much good for the galaxy, even if her credit for it wasn’t widely known. Haoun was here because he’d become infatuated with Raena. He was more concerned about her as a person than as a symbol. Coni saw nobility in that. Vezali might have only come along for the ride. Sometimes it was difficult for Coni to understand why she did things.

Coni hoped this experience would cement them more together as a team. It could just as easily blow up and scatter them all farther apart.

At least, if their time on the
Veracity
had ended, she would be back on Kai, where she knew she had work to do. The trick would be persuading Mykah to stay with her there.

*   *   *

After Raena showered on her fourth day in jail on Kai, a quartet of guards showed up to escort her down to the court. She spent the walk counting cells along the hallway, the floors down in the elevator. Then she calculated how many prisoners the jail could hold if it was full.

She couldn’t imagine that there was much serious crime on Kai. It wasn’t like you could fly in, knock over a casino, and leave without Planetary Security getting in your way at some point. With only one city, it wasn’t like you could land elsewhere on the planet without them knowing about it. Whether you went through one of Kai City’s spaceports or not, they would have a record of you.

So who were all the other people locked up here? Was Kai arresting people on trumped-up charges, simply because they’d look good on camera? What was to stop the Business Council from jailing anyone they took a fancy to?

She didn’t bother to ask the guards, none of whom were human. They were simply doing a job. To them, more prisoners meant steady paychecks.

The guards escorted her into a holding area near the courtrooms. They led her to a chair where she could wait. After she settled, they activated a forcefield around her. It spat and sparked, on the verge of shutting itself off. If she stumbled into it, she could probably short it out. Instead, she tried to look meek, a model prisoner.

She wondered if the Deputy Consul would come to her arraignment as he’d promised or if she’d be left to defend herself.

An hour or so passed. Other prisoners were taken in to their hearings. Raena watched them go, trying to assign crimes to them. None of them looked like hardened criminals. She saw no other humans.

The Deputy Consul breezed in at last, greeting her with a wave. Today he wore a burnished copper suit. “Nice to see you up and around.”

“Thank you,” Raena said. “I’m feeling much better now that I have a cell of my own.”

“Good to hear it.” He stared toward the courtroom door, as if he could hear something she could not over the forcefield. Raena noticed he had a line down his jaw where the shade of his makeup didn’t match the color of his throat.

“Were you able to prevent them from broadcasting this hearing?” she asked.