No More Heroes: In the Wake of the Templars Book Three (32 page)

“I’m not disappointed,” Raena said. “I will definitely tell her that.”

CHAPTER 14

R
aena took the last of Coni’s moon cakes out of the cooler and carried them back to the Haru girl’s cabin. “It’s me,” Raena said outside the door. “Can I talk to you?”

“It’s open.”

“I brought a peace offering.”

“You didn’t need to do that.”

Coni didn’t get up from her desk. Raena handed the plate of cakes to her and sat on the floor. Coni took a cake and handed the tray down to Raena. They chewed in silence, then Raena said, “You’ve been a good friend to me. I don’t know how much time you put into my defense on Kai, but I know who found the evidence Corvas needed. Thank you.”

Coni waved that away, but accepted a second moon cake. “You are family, Raena.”

“I feel that way, too. I overstepped today. I am sorry.”

“No, I’ve been thinking about what you said. You’re right. I was crazy to think I could fight. I was so scared today, watching you. I couldn’t protect Mykah because I was afraid you would hurt me like that. I’ve been in denial. I thought the fighting would be quick. It would be bloodless, like a game. None of us would be hurt.”

“I get hurt all the time,” Raena said. “Eilif got killed.”

The blue girl nodded. “We’re not playing, are we?”

“No, we’re not,” Raena answered. “I would rather scare you away from combat now, here on the ship, than make you participate and regret it later. We will be safer if we can concentrate on what we’re doing and not worry about you.”

Coni asked plaintively, “Do you have to take Mykah?”

For once, the emotion in her voice was clear. Raena was pretty sure that Mykah wanted to come, but she told Coni what she wanted to hear. “I can go alone.”

“Thank you,” Coni said quickly, as if Raena might change her mind. “I . . . He’s my life. I don’t know what I would do if . . .”

Raena smiled. “You talk him out of coming. I’ll abide by his wishes.”

*   *   *

Mykah sprawled on the banquette with his arm under the bone-mender. He’d pulled off his shirt to deal with the machine’s heat. Close to hand, he had a glass of ice water and the remote. He paused the news when Coni came in. “You all right?” he asked, holding out his good hand.

Coni wove her fingers between his and came to scent him with her head. “I’ll be all right,” she promised. “I talked to Raena just now.”

“Did you let her live?” he teased.

She chuckled. “Yes. Raena excused me from going into battle with her.” Coni gazed at him with her lavender eyes. “She said you don’t have to go, either.”

“I know I don’t have to,” Mykah said. “What made her decide she didn’t want me to come?”

Coni looked away from him, at the image frozen on the screen. It was one of Mykah’s shots of the rioting on Kai, looking down from the lamppost in front of the Hall of Justice. A Planetary Security agent was in the process of stunning a little Eske.

Coni dragged her gaze away to answer his question. “I don’t want you to go.”

Mykah pulled her closer, then kissed her so she’d know he really meant it. With the lightest touch, she traced the lightning scar that branched across his stomach and onto his chest. He knew she was thinking of how badly he’d gotten hurt the last time he’d followed Raena into a firefight.

He took a deep breath. The pressure to get this right was enormous. “I am going with her,” he said quietly. “Raena can fight us past the gray soldiers. She can take apart the Outriders, if she needs to. But I don’t know if she can negotiate with the Templar Master. I don’t know if I can either, but I’m afraid to trust the future of humanity to a former assassin.”

Coni sat back from him sharply, but he kept hold of her hand and didn’t let her get away.

“You know that’s what she is,” he said. “We can dress it up and call her a warrior, but Raena is a trained killer. I don’t want her to charge in there and kill the reborn Templars because she’s the only representative humanity’s got.”

“You don’t trust her?” Coni asked.

“I trust her to protect us. I trust her with my life. But the gray soldiers have been taunting her all across the galaxy. I don’t trust her temper if they push her too far.”

“I don’t want you to die,” Coni said in Imperial Standard. It was the language Mykah had been born into, the one his parents had spoken to him. Coni used it when she wanted to stress something.

Mykah pulled her back down, so he could feel her fur against his bare skin. “I’ll do my best not to die,” he promised. He used Haru, Coni’s language, so she would understand that he was serious, too.

*   *   *

Back in her cabin, Raena checked messages, curious to hear how things worked out for Ariel and Corvas with the Business Council. She found several messages from Ariel. One of them was labeled Urgent: Where is Gisela?

Raena marched into the cockpit, where the girl hunched over the controls. She asked Haoun, “Could you give us a moment?”

He looked from one to the other of them and got up without comment.

Once he’d entered the passageway, Raena asked the girl, “You didn’t tell your mother you were coming with us?”

“She would have said no,” Gisela answered.

“She would have said no because you have a concussion.”

“She would have said no because of you,” Gisela argued. “She knows if there’s danger, you won’t back down.”

“I don’t know what Ariel has told you about me—”

Gisela cut her off. “She hasn’t had to tell me much. Eilif told me how you rescued her, how you killed all the Thallians singlehandedly. Haoun showed me the recording of you protecting Mellix outside Capitol City. Kavanaugh told me about watching you disassemble the Outriders. Mykah told me how you saved him from the Walosi on Lautan. I’ve watched the video of you fighting the death squad on Kai. You step up. You face the dangers. You don’t start fights, but you stop them.”

“I’m not a hero, Gisela. Heroes are good people who do the right things for the right reasons. That’s never been me.”

“Who cares what your reasons are, if your actions are heroic? You save people. You protect them. And this thing on Kai, this trial—you showed the galaxy that it’s possible to be graceful and calm in the face of enormous bigotry. Like it or not, you’re a symbol.”

“I never intended that,” Raena said. “Pedestals tend to have tiny cross sections and very long drops.”

Gisela had no answer to that, for which Raena was grateful. The whole conversation made her vastly uncomfortable. “Call your mother,” Raena ordered. “Argue your case to her. If she tells me you can stay, fine. Otherwise, we’re putting you out and she can come pick you up.”

*   *   *

It wasn’t long before Gisela commed back to Raena’s cabin. Ariel wanted to talk. Raena smiled at her sister’s image on the screen. “What’s your decision, Ari?”

“Gisela can stay, if she stays out of your way. If she’s going to irritate you, put her out.”

Raena studied her oldest friend. For all Ariel’s temper, her heart was tender and fierce. Gisela might not have been hers by birth, but Ariel would believe to the end of her days that the girl was family. Raena wondered if Ariel had ever trusted her with anything as precious.

“Now I’m a damn babysitter,” Raena groused.

“Sorry about that. I should have left her on Callixtos, but she is the best shot among my kids and she’s been a good bodyguard for my mother. I thought she’d provide the best protection for Eilif and Jim. Going to Kai was meant to be an adventure for her.”

“This trip is gonna be an adventure, too,” Raena threatened. “Where was she supposed to be when we left Kai?”

“At the hospital, following that nice Dr. Fishawk’s orders.”

“He was good looking,” Raena agreed. “So he didn’t release her to go charging into battle?”

“No.”

“Then I will do what I can to keep her out of one. But you know I really can’t promise anything.”

“I know, Raena.” Ariel took a long drag off of her spice stick. “She’s about the age I was when I ran away to join the Coalition. I thought I was so grown-up at the time. Was I really that young?”

Raena laughed. Instead of answering, she asked, “How are things working out on Kai?”

“I had a very nice chat with your friend Mellix. Is his fur really that beautiful color?”

“Yes.”

“Lovely. He’s sending an assistant to Kai to conduct some interviews in person. In the meantime, you have been publicly cleared of all charges brought by the Business Council of Kai. Even the weapons charges were expunged, considering that you knew there were Thallians prowling around on the planet. It’s officially agreed that no one should ever have faced them unarmed. Kai gave you a surprisingly generous apology for dragging you into their troubles, in hopes that you will consult with their new Head of Security. We didn’t make them any promises. The bail money has been returned. Corvas’s fees have been paid by the Business Council, in addition to lost income and transportation costs and a myriad of other fees that we were able to extract from them. Nothing too outrageous, but I wanted to make sure it hurt. Oh, and you received the bounty for Revan Thallian.”

Raena smiled at her. “Now I just need to survive to enjoy it all.”

“Yes,” Ariel said. “Only that.”

“We were on vacation when this started,” Raena remembered. “That seems so long ago now.”

“Well, I’m not recommending any more pleasure planets to you.”

“No blame from me,” Raena promised. “I enjoyed Kai when we were there the first time. Shame they got greedy and invited me back the way they did.”

Ariel didn’t argue with that. “When do you expect to be done with this adventure?”

“Don’t know,” Raena said. “I really will call you, as soon as I can, afterward.”

“Take care then. Tell Gisela to watch her head.”

Raena powered down her screen and went to check on Mykah. He still lay in the lounge under the bone-mender. Coni’s head rested on his good shoulder.

“How’s it feel?” Raena asked.

“Not as hot as it did.”

“That’s a good sign.” She looked over the telltales. “Make a fist for me.”

He did.

“No pain?”

“I’m good,” he said.

“Good.” She initiated the shutdown sequence on the machine. “I’m sorry about that, Mykah.”

“No, you made your point. But if you’re trying to scare me off of coming with you, you’re going to have to do a better job than that.”

Raena looked at Coni first, but the blue girl had her eyes closed. “I told Coni I can go alone, if I need to.”

“You don’t need to,” Mykah promised.

*   *   *

The rest of the trip to Drusingyi passed smoothly. Haoun was pleased with Gisela’s progress as a pilot. Raena suspected he had ulterior motives for spending so much time with the human girl, but he spent all his spare time with Raena, making up for the days in jail. She even got her bubble bath, as promised. Best of all, though, Haoun consented to play piloting games with her, so Raena could update her skills.

True to her word, Coni forgave her. She seemed resigned to—if not thrilled about—Mykah going into battle. Raena wasn’t sure what argument he’d used to persuade his girlfriend, but she didn’t question it.

Together she and Mykah went over the weapons on the
Veracity
. They chose their tools, made sure everything was powered up and ready to go, then packed for the trip. Raena got him fitted for a diving suit from the Thallians’ stores. And they sparred faster and harder than they had before. He would never be her equal, but he was becoming more of a challenge. For that, she was grateful.

All in all, time passed. Not as quickly as Raena would have liked, but plenty of little things filled her days. Her chief concern was that Kavanaugh and Vezali had not checked in from Callixtos. They didn’t respond to Haoun’s attempts to contact them. Raena didn’t need to say anything to the others. They knew the silence couldn’t be good.

On the final day before they reached the Thallians’ system, Raena called everyone into the lounge. They sat on the banquette facing her. Only now that she had them collected up did the differences in her age from theirs strike her. They were all so young. Only Gisela had ever been in a gunfight. None of them had seen real combat.

How had it come to this? Raena had never been a commander. She’d always been a lone gun. The weight of all these lives, dependent on her to figure this out and get it right, was terrifying.

Raena put a schematic of the Thallian city up on the screen. The cloning lab was highlighted. “That’s where we’re headed. Once the
Veracity
gets down to the city, we’ll have to circle it to see where we can dock. The Thallians’ hangar was here—” she pointed “—but Eilif leveled it as we left. I don’t know where the Templars have been docking, but they must have a plan for getting out of the city. None of the experts seem to think they can swim.”

She met each of their eyes and began to lay out her plan.

“I want us to come off the ship hot. That means, Haoun, as soon as we’re docked, you start firing the
Veracity
’s guns at anything that moves. Coni, I want you up in the turret. Gisela, you’re at the airlock to cover us. I’m out first, then Mykah.”