“The hell you will!” Qole rounded on the guard nearest her and decked him in the face with her metal restraints. He went stumbling back, but more guards and the men in the white suits were on her in a flash. They lifted her bodily and carried her, kicking and swearing, to the operating table.
The goateed officer leveled a firearm directly at my face. “I’ll take you where you belong then. Turn around and get walking. Don’t be a hero, hm?”
“What an original suggestion.” I looked at him with as much ice as I could summon through my warring emotions. “And I wouldn’t dream of it.”
As we walked down the perfect hallway, accompanied by two guards, I wasn’t sure I could dream of it. What was I supposed to do? Fight a ship full of people? And then what? Pilot it victoriously, sitting on a throne of my slain enemies, toward a welcoming parade back home? Dying for a good cause was well and good, but my life was much more valuable to many people than my death. As tempting as it was to think in terms of simple heroics, I didn’t have that luxury. The prudent move would be to keep my head down and go to my cell like a good boy.
The floor shuddered. The destroyer must have broken away from the Kaitan as violently as it had docked. But that meant the destroyer would once again be free to fire upon it if they felt like it…
The hallway curved around, lifting and widening, and along one wall a series of doors flanked a huge gateway. Treznor Industries was known to have a particular penchant for vessels of death, which could be used to either vaporize pirates or oppress populations. With Treznor, they’d be happy to show you how they’d addressed both contingencies within the very same model, stock configuration. And as a result, they equipped the brig with extensive holding cells, since you never knew whom you might be bringing back as a guest—note myself.
I finally felt vindicated in spending all those hours obsessing over the latest models from the shipyards, because I was a guest who had memorized the exact path from those cells to the launch bay of the onboard starfighters and could get from one to the other quite easily. Adrenaline started to weaken my limbs, and a tremor entered my hands.
My family needed me alive, but the disgrace, or worse, the weakness, my capture would show would be considerable. Escaping would be well worth it, and might actually be fairly simple if I moved quickly.
Simple, that is, if I decided to leave Qole behind.
I had scant moments before getting locked into one of those cells would make my decision for me. The Treznors obviously wanted Qole for similar reasons to my family’s, but it seemed she wasn’t going to survive their version of the research. And it was likely they’d blow the Kaitan Heritage to dust in order to hide their tracks. My escape route would be far more complex with the significant detour back to the lab, and risking my life for Qole or her crew was foolhardy in the extreme. But her life was valuable on more than one level, and in the end, my family was governed by something that most others weren’t. We believed in an ideal, a greater good inherent in a brighter future for all, and in behaving to uphold that ideal.
Family, ideals, and the lives of innocents. Seemed like a fine enough reason to be foolhardy, to my mind.
The adrenaline in my limbs moved to my heart, and it began to beat faster, filling my chest. My vision sharpened. All right, then.
As my guards and I entered my cell, I spoke. “Ahoy, Major Bristle Chin. I think you’re forgetting something.”
Major Bristle Chin bristled. Even if I died right now, a part of me noted, it would be with some joy in my heart. He turned on me with a crushing comeback. “I doubt that.”
I smiled. “Let me put it this way: I don’t think you’ve thought this through. Do you know who I am? Do you even have any idea?”
“Yes, yes, you’re a Dracorte whelp. You think that impresses me?”
“It should.” I took one step nearer. “My family is the right hand of the Empire, and holds a primary seat in the Kings’ Council. We are the single greatest law enforcer in the systems and wield technology from before the Great Collapse. Do you really believe you are anything compared to me? You are an insect, a bug. Nothing. Less than nothing. You couldn’t measure up to me if you tried, but you won’t dare try. You know as well as I that your days are numbered, Major Bristles, as numbered as hair on your scalp.”
Much to my relief, he appeared utterly unfazed. He stepped close as he mustered every reserve of height he had to stare over my chin. “Is that supposed to scare me? I was arresting princelings like you before you were born. Enjoy your cell, Dracorte, while we make your family sweat.”
I smiled. “I prefer prince to princeling. Prince Nevarian Thelarus Axandar Rubion Dracorte, if you don’t mind, heir to the Throne of Luvos. And you honestly think I’m here alone?”
That rocked him back a step, which was excellent, because it let me flourish the ID card I had purloined from his belt. “Why, thank you.”
Terror radiated through every nerve in my body in that second, followed by a surge of lightning-hot elation. There was no turning back now.
For a heartbeat, the cell was silent as they stared at me and the ID card that I held. I waited, giving them a moment to respond as I had hoped they would, and then they all lunged at me at once. Academy muscle memory made me duck underneath the rifle butts aimed at the base of my skull, and I stepped back, breathing in time with my movements. My hands swept apart, the mag-link cuffs still attached to my wrists, and cupped the butt of each rifle as they passed by. I’d swiped the ID card through my restraints before I ever flourished it at him—I was an egotist in favor of a good show, but not a complete idiot.
I pulled back as they drove forward, and gloried in simple physics as it twisted the rifles out of their grips, wrenching their arms and sending them spinning. I tossed the rifles behind me and, just as I would on a training mat back home, shifted my feet into a wide stance as I met the onrush of the guards. I batted away a punch and ducked under the next, bringing my right fist to connect with a solar plexus. The rest was instinct, guesswork, and split-second strategy—a flurry of kicks, blocks, punches, and dodges in close quarters before I jumped back and hammered my palm down on the large red button next to the cell door.
It slid shut with a satisfying whoosh, and the petty, childish part of me felt sorry it hadn’t afforded me a chance to wave at the cell’s new inhabitants with all three of their ID cards, which I now possessed, or the photon rifle I’d snagged.