“Damn it, Jelena,” Erick snarled, whirling toward her.
Startled by his anger, she stepped back and lifted her hands, almost dropping her staff.
“Those are Alliance soldiers—the people who keep the shipping lanes safe for us. And you’ve got me out here helping a murderer to kill them.”
“He’s not dead, Erick,” she said quietly, patting the air with her hands and tilting her head toward the unconscious soldier. “And we didn’t help—”
“We might as well have,” he roared, his voice thunderous even over the crackling of the dozens of surrounding fires. “We shouldn’t be here. Even if we didn’t kill anyone, someone will know we were here, and they’ll blame us for being a part of this. And they won’t be wrong. We’ve picked a fight with people who are on our side. You think he won’t remember that?” He thrust his hand toward the soldier. “Remember us?” His voice turned less angry and more forlorn as he added, “What are we even doing here? We should be with your family, with Leonidas. He could already be—” His voice cracked, and he didn’t finish. His shoulders slumped, and he stared at the ground between them.
Jelena opened her mouth, but she had no idea what to say. After ten years, Leonidas was as much a father to him as he was to Jelena. And could she truly say that he was wrong? She’d dragged him off on her foolhardy mission, and nothing had gone right since then. Maybe homes would be found for those animals, but was that worth the fact that she and Erick were now being hunted by Stellacor, and they might have just turned themselves into criminals in the eyes of the Alliance?
Erick’s head lifted, and extreme wariness marked his eyes. Jelena started to ask what was wrong—was the fourth soldier coming?—but he turned to look up and to the side. She followed his gaze.
A dark, hooded figure stood atop the wreck, smoke curling about his lean form, ashes dusting his black attire. It wasn’t a Starseer robe that he wore, though Jelena thought she spotted a few familiar runes from the old Kirian language along one hem. No, the clothes reminded her more of something out of Old Earth history, the flowing but fitted costume of a ninja. Or maybe it was the curving sword gripped in the man’s hand that caused her to make that connection. Firelight gleamed orange on the bluish-silver blade, a blade stained with blood.
Jelena could feel his eyes upon them, even though she couldn’t see them under the shadows of his hood. She licked her lips, recognizing his presence with her senses even as her mind informed her that there wasn’t anyone else that this could be.
A joke formed in the back part of her mind, an irreverent thought to tease him about the sword and the outfit, but with the carnage around them, the dead people around them, she couldn’t voice it. He seemed so cold and distant up there, and she couldn’t get a feel for his thoughts. She definitely didn’t get the sense that he was glad to see them. She wasn’t even sure he recognized them.
Erick looked at her, as if to say this was her mission, and he was her project. She shook her head bleakly as she stared up at Thor. It was like looking at a stranger, and she had absolutely no idea what to say to the man before them.
Chapter 14
Erick was the one to break the silence. While Jelena was still trying to figure out what to say to the stone-faced man looking down at them, the man who seemed nothing like the boy she’d ridden horses with years earlier, Erick lowered his staff and spoke.
“Nice sword, buddy. You make that out of Zizblocks?”
Jelena had dismissed a joke as an opening, as it seemed wholly inappropriate given the corpses nearby, but Thor grunted and jumped lightly to the ground. He pulled out a dusty kerchief, wiped the blood and ash off the sword, then flicked his wrist. The blade retracted into the hilt, as if it were some telescoping camera stand rather than a weapon. He attached it to his belt with some magnetic clasp. A blazer pistol and a multitool were attached similarly on his opposite hip.
“Finely honed cobalt ahridium actually,” Thor said, his voice deeper than Jelena remembered. Cooler, too, almost disdainful. “With a few teylenese enhancements.”
Teylenese? Jelena thought she remembered Stanislav using the word in regard to the Starseer tool-making techniques he’d been instructing Erick in, but she didn’t know what it meant.
“Yeah, I can sense that,” Erick said. “Stanislav makes a lot of tools, but it’s definitely not his signature on it. Who made it?”
“I did.”
Thor looked around the woods, where the fires had dwindled but continued to burn, then gazed off to the west. Wondering if someone else was coming, Jelena sent her own senses in that direction. The animals had fled from the woods as soon as the fire began, so there was little life nearby, but she could detect people in what she assumed was the senator’s ranch home. A cluster of them stood together in an outbuilding—maybe a barn or a hangar?—but it was about three miles away, and she didn’t sense any of them coming yet.
“Snazzy.” Erick looked at Jelena, as if to say that he’d had as much of a conversation with Thor as he could manage, and it was her turn now.
Thor also looked at her, and Jelena made herself look back, though she didn’t know what to say. She felt uneasier in his presence than she had expected she would, even knowing about the assassinations.
He pulled his hood back, and she could finally see his face. It was lean to the point that his features were sharp, his cheekbones and jaw pronounced. His hair fell to that jaw, straight and the same length all the way around, closer to brown now than the sandy blond it had been in his youth. Fresh gashes at his temple and in his cheek had smeared blood on one side of his face, but he didn’t bring up the kerchief to wipe it or staunch the blood flow. Maybe that care was reserved for his sword.
His eyes, which Jelena remembered as blue, seemed more of a stormy gray tonight. They weren’t friendly or welcoming, and that sent an unexpected pang of disappointment through her. After coming all this way, she’d hoped for . . . she wasn’t sure what exactly, but more. More than this. More than a boy who had turned into a killer. More than to have been forgotten. Dismissed.
“You came to stop me?” he asked, sounding certain of it, and also not pleased by the idea. Eyes narrow, he looked from Jelena to Erick and back to her again.
The hairs rose on the back of Jelena’s neck. Had he read those thoughts in her mind? One of her earliest lessons as a Starseer had been learning to keep her mental barriers up so that other Starseers weren’t bothered by hearing her thoughts with their sensitive telepathic minds and also so that she could have privacy, even among her kind. He shouldn’t be able to read her thoughts now, but he didn’t sound like he was guessing. Maybe he was simply applying logic. Maybe he couldn’t imagine any other reason they would have come. Or did he think they had been sent by someone? Perhaps the Alliance? If so, that could explain his wariness, his coolness.
Erick nudged her. “I think it’s your turn to talk.”
Jelena flushed, realizing she’d been staring at Thor as she tried to figure him out. “Originally, we came looking for you to warn you that the Alliance was after you. But I guess you know that already. We also got ourselves into a little trouble along the way, so then I thought we might ask you for help. We need to get to Arkadius, but there are some people waiting for us there, people who wouldn’t mind killing us. Since our ship is known to them now, we thought we could leave it here and get a ride with you, if we could talk you into going that way. Leonidas is about to undergo surgery, if he hasn’t already.”
She thought he might express concern at hearing about Leonidas, but he said nothing, merely gazing at her with that cool wariness. Did he think this might be some kind of trap? As if she would ever use her family in some ploy. As if she would turn in an old friend, no matter what he was doing these days.
“But you also wish to stop me,” he said.
Something about the way he held her gaze, his eyes cool, made her feel compelled to tell the truth. The whole truth.
“I did have the thought that we might ta
lk you out of assassinating people while we were here,” Jelena admitted, “because it’s not very nice.”
“What these people did to my family was not very nice.” He sneered with those last two words, and bitterness hung in the air around him.
“No, it wasn’t, but aren’t you supposed to become some great leader? Isn’t that what Dr. Dominguez and all those Starseers and people who were loyal to your father were grooming you for?”
“You don’t think people will accept me as a leader if I kill a few old enemies first?”
She couldn’t tell if he was being dry and sarcastic or genuinely wanted to know the answer to the question.
“Well, they might find it creepy to follow some broody kid dressed all in black with blood dripping off a sword.”
“Broody?” His eyebrow twitched.
“Oh, yes. You’re oozing broodiness. Look, I see my hope of having you fly us to Arkadius probably isn’t going to happen now—” She glanced at the wrecked clipper, which never could have housed the three of them, if it was even capable of interplanetary flight. “But can you at least take a week out of your schedule to come help us? I know Leonidas would like to see you, especially if . . .” She couldn’t manage to finish the sentence with the words that came to mind, especially if he was dying. She didn’t want to think that could be true, that it was a possibility.
Thor’s already narrowed eyes narrowed further, and she thought she sensed his touch on her mind. Maybe he was reading her thoughts through her defenses. If so, that was rude. She folded her arms and glared at him.
“You do owe him,” Erick said, drawing Thor’s gaze toward him.
“Leonidas?”
“He got you out before everyone else in that hidden asteroid palace was killed, right? That’s the story you told us.”
Thor gazed into the darkening woods. “It might have been better for the system if he hadn’t.”
Add self-pity to brooding, Erick told Jelena silently, an exasperated tone to the words.
“He risked himself to keep you alive,” Erick said aloud, “to obey your father’s dying wishes. And then he and Captain Marchenko were the ones to come after you when Tymoteusz kidnapped you. And we all risked ourselves to help get you. And you know why? Because Jelena talked everyone into it. Even though you were a quiet, surly little kid, she liked you, and she cared what happened to you. You owe Leonidas, and you owe her.”
Even if Thor accepted that, he didn’t look like he appreciated the reminder. His face grew flinty as he turned back to Erick and Jelena.
“While I’m so pleased that you flew across the system to lecture me,” Thor said, “this isn’t the time for it. The senator’s people are coming.” He tilted his head in the direction of the ranch.
Jelena checked on the people in that barn again. Yes, they had climbed into a shuttle, and they were flying this way. It would only take them a minute or two to find the wreck—and the bodies. They would find her little group, too, if it didn’t move.
Thor hopped up to the mangled cockpit, moved the seat back, and pulled out a duffel bag.
“Is there a reason you’re losing your temper with everyone tonight?” Jelena murmured to Erick, not bothering to speak telepathically since she had a hunch Thor would hear them even if they did.
“Because Thor’s assassinating people, not just people on his list, but anyone who comes after him. We’re lucky he didn’t drop trees on our heads. Though I suppose the night is young.”
Thor jumped down, slinging his bag over his shoulder.
“Will you come with us?” Jelena asked, holding up a hand to hold off any further diatribes from Erick. “We have an escape vehicle waiting.”
At least she hoped they did. She still wasn’t sure whether Masika wanted to stay with them or turn them in to her employers. Sometimes, it seemed she wanted both.
“I haven’t fulfilled my mission yet,” Thor said.
“You’ll have a hard time doing so with the entire ranch awake and alert right now.”
A searchlight flashed through the smoke and the branches from above, as if to emphasize the truth of her words. Thor glowered toward it. He shook his head and turned in the opposite direction, toward the fence and the gate.
Jelena and Erick hurried after him as the light from the shuttle probed the remains of the torched woods. Running wouldn’t be a bad idea, she thought, but the light shifted in another direction.
“They’ve spotted where the Alliance ships landed,” Erick said.
“It won’t take them long to find the wreck,” Jelena said.
Thor, striding ahead of them, said nothing.
Is he coming with us, or are we all just walking in the same direction? Erick asked silently.
I’m not sure. He didn’t seem to love your lecture. When did you turn into such a responsible grownup, Erick?
Don’t tell me you’re not having the same thoughts. He owes you and your family, and everything he’s doing is selfish and self-centered. And illegal and horrendous.
He is . . . was . . . the prince and the heir to the empire. He grew up believing he’d rule over billions. The imperial loyalists probably treated him like that was still going to happen one day. It would be odd if he wasn’t somewhat self-centered.
I can’t believe you’re defending him.
Thor glanced back. They had moved away from the burning area, and Jelena couldn’t read his face or tell if he was looking at them or checking for pursuit. She also couldn’t tell if he’d heard their conversation, but decided that talking about him behind his back—even telepathically—wouldn’t be a good idea, especially if they wanted to regain his trust. She couldn’t help but feel bleak at the thought that they should have to regain his trust. What had she ever done that could make him believe she would be against him?
“Is Masika out there?” she whispered to Erick as they came out of the trees and entered the waist-high grass. She picked up her pace, drawing even with Thor. It was still a long walk to the fence, and it would be much easier for that shuttle to spot them from above now that they were in the open.
“Yes,” Erick said. “I’ve asked her to drive back to the gate.”
The rumble of the shuttle’s engine floated toward them. The craft might have paused to fly over the Alliance landing site a few times, but it was on the move again now. That searchlight flashed over the trees behind them. Jelena picked up her speed, transitioning to a jog. She expected Thor to start to run, too, but noticed he was limping.
“Do you need a hand?” she asked, though she didn’t know what she could do other than lend a shoulder to lean on.
“No.” He glanced darkly at her, as if he resented her noticing his weakness.
It wasn’t as if it was much of a weakness. He’d still handled those soldiers. She just wanted to hurry and get over the fence in the hope that the shuttle wouldn’t catch up with them. That could end up in more deaths, this time of innocent civilians, not soldiers on the hunt.
The craft cleared the trees behind them, their searchlight shining onto the field.
“That’s going to be a problem,” Erick said. “We better get down in the grass and hope it’s thick enough to hide us.”
“They won’t see us,” Thor said without looking back.
“What?”
“You heard me. Keep going.”
Jelena exchanged a long look with Erick, but kept jogging, trusting that Thor had the power to influence those people and muddle their thoughts. The ranch workers wouldn’t have expected Starseers on their doorstep and shouldn’t be drugged the way the soldiers had been.
Still, her shoulder blades itched as the shuttle flew closer, the night turning noon-bright as the searchlight flared all around them. The beam landed squarely on them as the craft passed overhead, and she was certain there was no way the shuttle pilot could miss them, especially when she sensed five other people in the craft with him. Could Thor influence so many?
The shuttle passed by, then banked to searc
h the field on the other side of the road. Thor kept going toward the fence, and Jelena let him lead, even though he wasn’t angling toward the gate. They would have to go over the electrical part, or maybe he intended to cut that mesh with his sword.
“Masika is coming, but it’ll be a few more minutes,” Erick reported. “She saw the shuttle take to the air and hung back for a while. She’s driving up now.”
Thor said nothing.
“Good,” Jelena said. “Tell her thanks, please.”
Erick nodded curtly. He still seemed upset over the night’s events.
They reached the fence, the mesh stretching from the ground to a line more than twelve feet high. The air close to it hummed with an electrical current.
“Can you get over?” Thor stopped and looked at them.
“Uhm?” Jelena pointed toward the gate, about a quarter of a mile away. “We came over that. It wasn’t—” She broke off with an alarmed squeak as her feet left the ground.
Eyes intent upon her, Thor lifted her into the air with his mind. Before she could decide if she wanted to protest—given time, she could have figured her own way over the fence—she found herself in the grass on the other side. A couple of seconds later, Erick landed beside her. It was telekinesis, the same as they both used, but it felt utterly strange having it applied to her, as if she were a crate of cargo manipulated by a hand tractor beam.
Thor crouched and leaped over the fence as if it were three feet high instead of twelve, and as if he wasn’t injured. Some of it was athleticism, but she also sensed him using his power, enhancing his jump. Jelena had never learned to do that.
She wondered if Erick would be offended if she shared the thought that came to her mind, that all of her life they had only been playing at being Starseers, like Masika playing that game where she had leveled up a Starseer character. Here was the real thing, someone whose training had been varied and intense, not simply part of a regular academic curriculum.
“Masika will be coming up the road,” Erick said, angling in that direction after Thor landed.