No More Heroes: In the Wake of the Templars Book Three (26 page)

She put her room key into Coni’s hand. “Go up to my hotel room. The balcony has a good view down into the square.”

“Where are you going?”

“To check on Raena.”

“Don’t you want us to come with you?” Coni asked.

Ariel said, “If I get my head bashed in, it will be my own damn fault. I don’t want to be responsible for you.”

The blue girl’s expression was unreadable, but she nodded. “Good luck.”

“You, too,” Ariel hoped.

*   *   *

Ariel skirted the edge of the riot, trying to look harmless and lost. She slipped into an empty doorway to comm Corvas. He answered instantly. “Are you safe?” she demanded.

“I’m still in the hospital, getting my forearm mended,” he said. “What’s going on out there?”

“A huge fire in the jail. Now there’s a riot outside the Hall of Justice. The Business Council set a curfew for midnight.” She ducked deeper into her doorway as additional Planetary Security rushed toward the fray on jet bikes. “I need to get Raena out of the jail now. Advice?”

“Go around to the back of the building, where it faces onto the alley. Tell the guard you got separated from your party. You’re frightened. Cry.”

“All right, that gets me in. Then what?”

“Have they evacuated the cells?”

Ariel stared up at the smoke drifting out of the jail tower. “I hope so. The damage looks bad.”

He didn’t answer her right away. She wondered what he was looking up one-handed. “Disaster protocol says they will assemble prisoners in the courtrooms. You’re sure she won’t use the distraction to escape on her own?”

“She can’t,” Ariel said. “Haoun’s with her.”

“All right. That should get you to her. I’ll see if I can negotiate bail for her from here, but they may be too panicked to let anyone go tonight—even you.”

“Understood. Thanks, Corvas.”

“Be careful.”

*   *   *

“Prisoner Zacari,” the bailiff called.

Raena looked up to see the last person she expected standing in the doorway at the back of the courtroom. A pair of Planetary Security agents flanked Ariel. She had been crying, but she looked steely now. Raena clasped Haoun’s hand and pulled him after her.

“You’re being released on bond,” the Haru bailiff told her. “If possible, your trial will resume in the morning. You should present yourself here at 0800 Kai Standard Time. That’s 14:20 GST.”

Raena launched herself into Ariel’s arms. Ariel laughed quietly into her hair. When she set Raena’s feet back on the floor, she kept hold of her hand and drew her toward the back of the building.

“Secret exit?” Raena wondered.

“The street outside is a mess. We’re going out the back way. Then we’ll have to find another way back to my hotel.”

“We can do that,” Raena assured.

“You sound hoarse,” Ariel noted.

“Not enough breathers to go around,” Haoun explained.

Ariel nodded. “Do you need oxygen?”

“Just out of here.”

*   *   *

As soon as the back door of the Justice building locked behind them, Raena smelled Doze gas. The night was preternaturally quiet. She stifled a cough in the crook of her elbow. “Define mess,” she said.

“Riot,” Ariel answered.

“Smells like it’s been pacified now.”

Ariel checked the time on her comm bracelet. “We need to be off the street before midnight. That gives us forty minutes.”

“You take point,” Raena said. “Haoun, you’re in the middle. I’m gonna see if I can scare up some walking-around weapons.”

*   *   *

“What does she mean by that?” Haoun asked.

“If you have to ask, you don’t want to know,” Ariel told him. “For now, stick close to me and keep quiet. We don’t want to alert Planetary Security that we’re out here creeping around.”

He scooted close enough to shadow her. Ariel flashed him a reassuring smile, then turned to pay attention to their surroundings. She jogged up to the corner, motioned for Haoun to wait, then peered around it. The cross street was empty, but a block to their left, emergency beacons reflected off the buildings surrounding the square.

Ariel trotted across the intersection. Haoun followed right behind her. Raena was gone already, but Ariel trusted she was somewhere within shouting distance.

They crossed several more deserted intersections before turning back toward the hotel. There weren’t many people on the street even here. Most had their heads down, hurrying somewhere, like Ariel and Haoun. Once she saw a quartet of Walosi that she thought might cause trouble, but the creatures turned aside when they decided Haoun really was with her.

She and Haoun were barely half a block away from the hotel when a trio of soldiers in unmarked gray uniforms materialized out of the shadows.

Haoun stiffened in recognition. Before Ariel could say anything, Raena dropped from overhead. She held a stun staff in front of her like a bat. She bashed one of the soldiers to the ground with the height of her fall.

Ariel grabbed Haoun and pulled him around the fight toward the lights of the hotel’s entrance.

Raena reversed her hold on the staff and thrust it backward into another soldier. It sparked hard enough to throw him off his feet.

The third attacker pivoted to fire at Ariel. That gave Raena the opening she needed. She flung the stun staff like a javelin. The staff discharged across the back of the gray soldier’s armor, lighting him up. He toppled like a tree, all his muscles locked.

One of the assailants’ guns had fallen to the street. Raena hooked her foot under it and kicked it up into her hand.

As she advanced on him, Ariel shouted, “Run! It’s almost midnight.”

Raena sprinted toward them. When she caught up, she handed the weirdly bulbous gun to Haoun. “Please put this in your pack,” she said. “Gently.”

He unzipped the pack he wore slung across his chest and eased the weird weapon inside.

The hotel’s private security stopped the three of them at the door until they confirmed Ariel was a registered guest.

As the three of them strolled into the empty lobby, Raena said, “Haoun, get us another room, please. We’re moving Ariel out of hers. An internal room, if they have them. With two big beds.”

“In an alias?” he asked softly.

“Yes, please.”

Ariel watched him go. “You think that’s necessary?”

“Either they knew which hotel was yours, or they’re watching all of them.”

“Those guys in gray?”

Raena coughed quietly into her elbow.

“Who are they?” Ariel asked.

“Don’t know. But they’re the ones who started the jailhouse fires. There are at least nine or ten more of them around Kai City somewhere.”

“Mykah and Coni are up in my room, filming the riot.”

“Comm them. Tell them to grab anything you’re going to need tonight. Leave the rest.”

Once Ariel had done that, Raena asked, “What happens at midnight?”

“Curfew takes effect,” Ariel said. “I didn’t want you to be caught violating the terms of your release already.”

*   *   *

As soon as Mykah strode through the door of the new hotel room, he came straight over to hug Raena. Hard. It made her cough.

“You okay?” he asked.

She nodded. “Scared out of my mind, but okay.”

The warm buzz of having everyone together chilled.

“Tell us,” Ariel said.

“Come sit down.” Raena waited until they’d settled on the beds and the floor. “Those soldiers in gray: they’re the ones that attacked Mellix’s apartment in Capital City. They caused the truck accident on Lautan and would have killed me there, if the bounty hunters hadn’t stopped them. They were waiting for us on Kai, so either they can travel faster than a tesseract ship or there are more than the thirteen I’ve seen at one time. Then tonight, they were dropping fire on every prisoner sleeping on my level in the jail. If Haoun hadn’t been guarding me, I would have been burned alive like the poor bastard in the cell next to mine.”

“No idea who they are?” Mykah asked.

“None. I thought they were after Mellix on Capital City. That’s the logical assumption, right? But Capital City was the first time I’d been off the
Veracity
and used my own name. I think they were looking for me. Bihn, one of the bounty hunters, said he’d seen them several places around the galaxy, always wearing their mirrored helmets, always on a mission. He said that the galactic media was keeping their existence quiet.”

“I’ll ask Mellix about them,” Mykah offered.

“Please do.”

“What are you going to do?” Ariel wanted to know.

Raena coughed raggedly. It left her even more hoarse. “What are the odds that court will be in session tomorrow morning?”

“You’re not thinking of going back?” Haoun asked.

“I’m out on bail,” Raena reminded. “If I leave Kai, they’ll destroy Ariel and her Foundation.”

Coni agreed. “They’ll need to wrap up the trial for the broadcast audience. Leaving the planet now will be spun as evidence that humans aren’t trustworthy, that Ariel is finding homes for thugs and criminals.”

“Actually, I’m pretty sure they’re hoping you’ll jump bail,” Ariel said. “They stand to make a small fortune. They ought to put my name on the jailhouse when they rebuild it.”

“I’m sorry,” Raena said. “You shouldn’t have let them blackmail you.”

“I wanted you out of there tonight,” Ariel argued.

Raena leaned over to kiss her. “I want to go back in the morning and clear my name, if we can do it,” she said. “In addition to tarring Ariel, if I leave Kai, anyone who travels with me will be considered a criminal. At the moment, they’re only charging me with a planetary crime, but if we run, the Business Council could petition the Council of Worlds to take up their case against me. They could make it so the
Veracity
could never visit any civilized world again. None of you could ever go home. I don’t want that for you.”

No one had any response to that.

Raena’s cough rattled her whole body. Mykah got up to bring her a cup of water. Finally, after she got the cough back under control, she rasped, “Are Eilif and Jimi safe?”

“They’re on the
Veracity
with Gisela,” Mykah said.

Before Raena could ask, Ariel explained, “One of my daughters.”

Raena nodded. “Have you checked in with them recently?”

“It’s late,” Haoun pointed out.

“Eilif will answer,” Raena said. No one asked why she knew that.

“I’ll comm her,” Ariel volunteered. She got up off the end of the bed and walked over to the corner of the room to do it.

“Is Vezali with Kavanaugh?”

The
Veracity
’s crew exchanged a look.

“All right,” Raena asked, “what haven’t you told me?”

*   *   *

Mykah told her everything they knew about the activity on Drusingyi, from Jim’s initial message to Vezali’s plan to swim down into the ocean and take a look.

Raena sighed and laid back on the bed, rubbing her chest. “I’m touched you think I can solve anything,” she said hoarsely, “but I’m not sure what you want me to do about this.”

“If the robot was cloning him again . . .” Mykah started.

“I didn’t leave anything for the robot to clone,” she promised. “Jonan had hauled all the boys and his brothers together into the dining hall. I made sure they were all ashed. If there were cloneable cells stored elsewhere, the power was off for who knows how long after the ocean had swallowed everything. Nothing could still be viable. Even if somehow, someone managed to clone a Thallian or two back to life, they wouldn’t have Jonan to turn them into monsters.”

“We thought you’d be eager to make certain,” Coni said.

“Jimi’s more of a danger than any hypothetical clone,” Raena said. “I don’t trust him.”

“He got you out of a kidnapping charge,” Ariel pointed out as she came back into the conversation.

“And I’m grateful,” Raena said. “But he didn’t have to lie about being Jain. Kai hadn’t identified the Thallian boy I kidnapped. Jimi could have claimed his own name, but instead he lied. Did you see how smooth he was? Practiced. He lied to his family from the time he contacted me until I helped him prep his hopper for escape. He lied to Jonan for years before that.” Raena sat up and shook her head. “I spent years watching Jonan work. No one lied to him for long.”

“Do you think he sent Vezali and Kavanaugh into a trap?” Mykah asked.

“I don’t know. Something doesn’t add up.” Raena turned her attention to Ariel. “What’s the word from Eilif?”

“She didn’t answer. It is late, though. Sometimes she takes sleep drops when she’s anxious and can’t wind down. I left her a message to call as soon as she wakes up.”

Raena closed her eyes and nodded.

“What if it is Templars cloning themselves back from the dead?” Mykah asked.

“That sounds hopeful, doesn’t it? Having them back would negate humanity’s greatest sin. Unless they have a hankering for vengeance.”

“You’re just full of cheer tonight,” Ariel snapped.

Raena worked up a smile for her. “Just because you know I’m paranoid, don’t let me do all your worrying.”

She turned to Haoun. “Let Ariel take a look at the gun.”

He unzipped his pouch and cautiously took it out. Ariel accepted it with both hands.

“Any ideas?” Raena said.

“Never seen one like this before.” She held it carefully by the barrel, which she kept pointed at the floor.

“No trigger,” Raena told the others.

“Uh-huh.” Ariel didn’t look up from her examination. “The power system is enclosed, so either it’s rechargeable or it’s disposable.”

“Templar tech?” Raena asked.

“Possibly, but I’m no expert on Templar weapons. And I haven’t seen every gun in the galaxy yet.” She looked up at Raena. “This what you took off that gray soldier out in the street?”

“Yeah. They had them on Lautan, too, but I was afraid I’d blow my own head off if I tried to use it then.”

“Have you seen them fire it?”

“No. They’d drawn and were advancing on me when the bounty hunters took them down on Lautan. Tonight I stunned the last soldier before he could take his shot.” Raena watched Ariel set the bulbous gun atop the clothes cupboard.

“We’re either going to have to figure out how it works or how to dispose of it come morning,” Ariel said. “We can’t take it into court and we can’t leave it in the room when we check out, or Kai will bust us for possessing another weapon.”