The Reforged Trilogy: Book 1 — Crucible of Stars
Chapter 23
Reunions
“It’s easy to praise the glories of war when you’re not choking on the blood and tears.”
– Illma Mujambi, Mirran journalist (119 MA)
Elsa didn’t want to go. She hadn’t left the Nihilist cathedral in years and being so far outside the cracked black walls, she felt exposed.
“Bren ordered us to keep to the edges of Gharib,” Seon growled quietly. “Lord Gavriel wants to avoid police entanglements.”
“But the knights of this city are stretched thin, Burning One,” Alainna said with a dismissive flip of her wings. “They are motivated only by their lust for money. They will do nothing.”
“Even a half-dead bitch will get up and tear out your throat if you piss in her den,” Seon told the Arcadian. “We’re not risking it. And they’re called police here, bird-back.”
Alainna shrugged her narrow shoulders and followed Seon out toward the edge of Gharib. Elsa thought the gesture looked strange, but she remembered Bren telling her once that Arcadians had two sets of shoulder blades — one for their arms and one for their wings — that changed how the fairies moved.
Bren had pointed to the bones as he described them to Elsa, almost visible through the thin, waxy skin of an Arcadian man who had recently starved to death.
Elsa hurried behind the other two Nihilists down a dingy residential street that led out of the city and she smiled secretly. Both Seon and Alainna were much smaller than her and it made Elsa feel momentarily powerful.
A few silhouettes moved in the dusty windows, but most of the curtains had been drawn. Seon pricked his furry gray ears. A high, keening wail wafted out through one of the windows, but Seon shook his head, growling.
“No.”
Alainna was a hard-eyed fairy woman with long blonde hair she kept in a braid that fell between her wings nearly to her waist. Before joining Lord Gavriel, she had worked in an illegal Gharib brothel and used the profits to drown her old pain in narcohol. When Alainna had first arrived at the cathedral, Elsa had helped Bren splint a wing broken by her final customer. It was still a little crooked, but Alainna could fly well enough. The man who had snapped the delicate bones was buried in the stony field behind the Church of Nihil.
Seon was a tiny Lyran with steely gray fur over numerous scars and bulging knots of muscle. Elsa didn’t know much about him, but instead of the rough black worn by his female companions, Seon was dressed in robes of blood red. They marked him as someone special within the Church of Nihil. The red-robed group had a name, though Elsa couldn’t remember it just then. Seon’s brilliant, flowing robes almost hid a curved nanosword on one hip, a well-worn NI gun on the other.
Almost.
“That one?” Alainna asked.
“No. Too old,” Seon said, pointing his grizzled snout toward the window.
Elsa was impressed that Seon could tell how old the baby was just by hearing it cry. She wondered what else the Lyran could hear with his big, fuzzy ears, but decided not to ask.
The city street ended abruptly as the small, single-story houses stopped. Dry desert dust drifted in over the low curb, filling the cracks between homes and spilling out in miniature dunes over the sidewalk. Alainna spread her wings and leapt up into the air. The Arcadian wheeled overhead, vanishing from sight occasionally as she spiraled outward into the pale sky. The streets were busy, filled with men and women coming home at the end of a long, hot day. But no one paid any attention to Elsa and Seon.
Elsa wondered if she should try to talk to the Lyran, but decided against it. She was only there to take care of the baby that her companions were looking for, not to contribute to their plans or tactics. Elsa wondered what Lord Gavriel needed a baby for… Whatever the reason, Elsa would be glad for a chance to hold one, if just for a little while.
Seon leaned against the wall of a nearby house as they waited for Alainna to finish her survey. Despite the heat of the day, he fished a cigar from somewhere in his red robes and lit it. The acrid smoke made Elsa wrinkle her nose. It wasn’t the thick, organic scent of tobacco. Whatever the Lyran was smoking, it smelled poisonous — and probably was.
Alainna finally landed beside Seon and a pile of dust puffed out from her bare feet. The Lyran snuffed out his cigar on one of the thick black pads of his palm and Elsa flinched. That probably hurt, but if it did, Seon didn’t seem to care. He regarded Alainna with gleaming yellow eyes.
“There are a few other homes beyond these, Burning One,” she reported in her accented Aver. “But they are all empty. West of those is the… the place where starships land.”
“The landing crescent,” Seon growled.
“Are we likely to find a child there?” Alainna asked.
“No,” the Lyran answered. “But Lord Gavriel told us to cover this part of the city. All of it. The others are searching the rest of Gharib. You’re not questioning him, bird-back.”
“Of course not, Burning One,” Alainna said.
“Let’s go, then.”
“You owe me four hundred cenmarks,” Coldhand said.
“How did you know we wanted him?” Xia asked.
Gripper was still cowering, but even he looked curious. “Yeah, good question. We posted that bounty anonymously.”
“When I was paid back on Axis, I recognized the account suffix,” Coldhand answered. “I’ve been following you and your ship for a long time now.”
Vyron looked up from where he was tearfully embracing Kessa and his newborn son.
“What…?” he asked. “You mean you knew about this? And you didn’t tell me?”
Coldhand just shrugged. Vyron’s face went purple with rage, but he didn’t seem to trust himself to say more. Kessa stroked his cheek and he turned back to her, fury easing in his black eyes. Coldhand kept his gun trained on Maeve.
“I don’t work for free,” he said.
Tiberius’ jaw clenched so hard that his teeth ground together. The traitor was standing in his bird demanding money in return for reuniting a hawk with his family. But Coldhand had brought Vyron. Whatever the hunter might be, Tiberius was a man of honor and would pay the bounty as promised. He would have to get the color from the small safe in his quarters…
But Maeve had already pulled four red cenmark chips from her pocket. She threw them down at Coldhand’s feet and the money clattered loudly against the fibersteel floor in the sudden silence. Where had Maeve gotten that kind of money? Just one of those red chips was months of her pay.
Not taking his eyes off Maeve, Coldhand crouched and scooped up the money in his cybernetic hand. The plastic slid through his artificial fingers, but he tightened his grip. Coldhand threatened to crush the color chips, but quickly stood and slipped them into his own pocket. In return, he tossed the key to Vyron’s handcuffs on the floor.
“You’ve got your damned money,” Tiberius snarled. He pointed to the open airlock. “Now get off my bird!”
“Not yet,” Coldhand said. “There’s one more thing here I need: Cavainna.”
“Only in death, Logan,” Maeve answered.
There was no anger or defiance in her voice. It sounded like a long-practiced ritual. Maeve hefted her spear and settled into a fighting stance, half crouching with wings spread behind her. The bounty hunter’s eyes flickered over her blonde hair, her clean face and clothes. It was a wonder Coldhand even recognized her.
Duaal was still hidden in the hallway, taut and ready for a fight. Tiberius leaned over the railing.
“Get the hells away from her!” he shouted. “I’m not letting you take anything or anyone, Coldhand. You’ve been paid. Now get your traitorous tail the hells off of my ship!”
“Cavainna’s a criminal and I’m taking her in.”
Maeve circled the hunter slowly, her spear held low. The rainbow of streamers tied onto it rippled in a searing breeze blowing through the airlock. She was already sweating in the rising heat, making her shirt cling to her skin and revealing the lean lines of her muscles. Maeve moved smoothly across the cargo bay, graceful as a hunting hawk as she closed on Coldhand.
“Maeve, stop! Let him go!” Tiberius said.
But his first mate continued her side-stepping prowl, gray eyes bright with anticipation.
“Listen to him,” Gripper whimpered. “Smoke, please! Come on, what about Kessa and the baby? We need to get them out of here. Away from the Nihilists, remember?”
Maeve turned toward Vyron, who still held both Kessa and his son awkwardly in his arms. Baliend’s round blue face was unhappy, bunching up in preparation to cry. With a bare foot, Maeve sought out and found the key Coldhand had dropped. She kicked it across the floor toward the Dailons.
“Unbind your hands,” Maeve told Vyron. “Take your family into the ship. Tiberius will keep you safe. He is a good man and worthy of your trust. Go.”
“Damn it, Maeve! Stand down this instant!” Tiberius shouted, banging his fist on the rail. Orphia squawked indignantly at him.
Coldhand took advantage of Maeve’s inattention to slip around behind her. The Talon whined in his hand and a ruby bolt of laserfire hurled through the air, aimed at the fairy’s feathered wings. She cocked a pointed ear at the sound of his footsteps and leapt aside. The laserfire scorched several of her white feathers and burned a molten hole through a cargo canister.
Kessa ducked out of Vyron’s arms and grabbed the handcuff key. With one arm clutching Baliend, she fumbled, dropped the key and then finally managed to unlock Vyron’s manacles. He pulled Kessa toward the stairs, away from Maeve and Logan.
Baliend began to cry.
As the three Nihilists stalked through the landing crescent, Seon’s ears suddenly twitched. The red-robed Lyran had stopped in front of a small starship coated in yellow dust, the grit stuck to a layer of damp-looking lacquer on the hull.
There was a name painted beneath the dirt: Blue Phoenix. Elsa wondered what a phoenix was.
At the top of a lowered cargo ramp, the airlock was open. Elsa caught only a flash of glittering glass inside and the angry glow of a laser being fired. There was shouting coming from the ship, and the hammer of running feet. But over it all, she could hear the thin wail of a crying baby. Seon pointed at the Blue Phoenix.
“That’s the one we need,” the Lyran said.
Alainna looked through the open airlock. “There is a battle being waged in there.”
“Then we’ll find another way in.”
Seon gestured with one sharp claw to Alainna. She nodded and then leapt into the air, searching.
“Elsa, stay here,” Seon instructed.
Duaal held his breath. It was one thing to chase Coldhand’s tracks through Gharib. Hunting the Prian after his escape from the Blue Phoenix had been exhilarating. But now the hunter was right there and Duaal’s knees felt like water.
Tiberius’ face was bright red and twisted in fury. But there was something else in his expression — fear. Tiberius was frightened for Maeve. Duaal still didn’t like the fairy, though he had to admit that he didn’t really want to see her dead. But more importantly, the loss would wound his captain deeply.
Kessa and her family ran, Xia and Gripper close on their heels. Tiberius waved them all past, deeper into the Blue Phoenix. Duaal stood aside, out of their way, and turned to Tiberius.
“I can stop this,” Duaal said. “Coldhand won’t even know what hit him.”
His heartbeat pounded deafeningly in his ears, echoing a heavy crash below that he hoped wasn’t Maeve’s body hitting the deck. Tiberius grabbed the front of Duaal’s shirt in a fist almost as big as the younger man’s head.
“No!” he said. “You stay away from those two, Duaal! I’ll call for you when it’s safe.”
Duaal’s jackhammering heart sank. Tiberius told him the same thing when Coldhand escaped their ship before. Why would the old man never let him help? Duaal was a mage, one of only two that existed in the entire core! He was better suited to breaking up the deadly fight raging below than anyone else on the ship.
Still, the great mage had to admit that he felt very young and very small. Coldhand’s Talon whined again, answered by a screech of glass on metal. Tiberius let go of Duaal and shoved him after the others.
“Stay with Kessa and Vyron,” the captain ordered. Something in his voice made the Prian’s accent thick and heavy. “Please.”
Duaal wanted to protest, but he only nodded.
“What about you? What will you do?” he asked.
Tiberius stroked Orphia, his face set in a grim mask. “I’m going to protect my bird.”
Duaal had no idea if Tiberius meant the Blue Phoenix, his pet hawk or his winged first mate. Duaal ran after Xia, Gripper and the Dailons. He looked back once at Tiberius, at the old man who was the only father he had ever known. With the rest of his crew and passengers safely out of the way, Tiberius untethered Orphia and drew his gun.
The dim, hot sun was beginning to fall down out of the sky behind Gharib as Alainna landed on the small freighter’s wing. Elsa stared after Seon, chasing the Arcadian in a pair of powerful bounds on his reverse-articulated legs.
Seon climbed and Alainna flew along the dusty hull of the Blue Phoenix, along a ledge between sensor and communications spars. They paused like hunting beasts just before pouncing, and then slipped out of sight into some unseen opening. Elsa waited across the street, clenching her hands and tugging nervously at the sleeves of her black robe.
Maeve clung onto the edge of a planter swinging from the ceiling. Coldhand dashed across the hold below to get a better angle on her. The fairy was favoring one wing, her feathers ruffled and scorched by his opening shot. Maeve’s forearm oozed blood from a deep burn that dripped down her arm and along the haft of her spear.
The glass spear blade, too, had tasted blood. Coldhand’s leg was slashed across his left thigh and blood painted every other footstep in red. But Maeve had hit nothing vital. The pain was remote, as distant and dull as ever, a regular throb like someone playing music far away. Coldhand could barely feel the other cut, a flaying wound along his lower back. Pain or pleasure, Maeve’s spear or the failed seduction of the Arcadian whore… None of it mattered.
Maeve tracked Coldhand carefully. Something was wrong with this… Coldhand’s boots pounded across the fibersteel floor and she dove from her perch, her wounded wing trembling with the effort of holding her aloft. The spear whistled over Coldhand’s head as the hunter tucked his legs, dropping and rolling under the stairs that led down from the catwalk. Maeve caught the railing with her toes, spun and then was back in the air. Coldhand crouched, aimed and waited.
What was wrong? Perhaps it was just Maeve herself. After over a year of chasing the Arcadian princess, Coldhand was accustomed to finding a dirty woman, wired and alert to his presence only because of addictive chemicals injected into her veins. But this time, she looked different. The needle runs in her arms were fading. The Vanora White she bought on Axis had never been used except as a weapon. When was her last hit?
Maeve landed, forced to the ground by the confines under the stairs where Coldhand had retreated. As soon as she came into sight, the bounty hunter lowered his aim and fired. The laser found its mark, burning deep and hot into Maeve’s right leg. The shot was painful but not fatal, meant only to cripple. Coldhand wanted her alive, after all.
Maeve dropped to one knee with a pained cry, but she was close enough to stab her spear at him. The glass blade hissed against the fibersteel stairs, but fell short of striking flesh. Coldhand darted in a wide circle around Maeve, out of spear reach. Blood ran down her leg, but the fairy made no move to staunch the flow. If Coldhand could hobble either her other wing or leg, the fight would be over.
The Arcadian took to the air again, thrusting her spear toward Coldhand. That glass blade could shear even through the illonium of his cybernetic hand if he wasn’t careful. Coldhand retreated and brought his metal forearm down across the flat of the blade to parry the swipe. Maeve recovered, spun the spear and cut a bloody line along his shoulder.
It could easily have been a deadly blow. The fairy was far more dangerous with a spear in her hands than a needle of White. Had Maeve adjusted her aim only a little, she could have slashed open the arteries that carried the blood from Coldhand’s computerized heart to his brain. He would have been dead in less than a minute.
That’s what was wrong. Maeve wasn’t fighting to kill Coldhand. Why? Why fight Coldhand at all, if not to kill?
He took advantage of his superior size, kicking at the haft of Maeve’s spear to deflect the blade. Colorful ribbons tangled around his boot, but Coldhand turned his hips into the kick, wrenching the spear from Maeve’s hands. The glass chimed off of the floor plating as it spun away. Maeve offered the hunter a mysterious smile.
“Do not wait for my surrender,” she said. “You know that I will only refuse. Too many good men have fought for my life to give it up willingly.”
What did that mean? Coldhand brought up his Talon, drawing a bead on Maeve’s uninjured wing. Was that guilt in her voice? She wasn’t trying to kill Coldhand — she was trying to force him to kill her. The hunter had no intention of granting her suicidal wish, but couldn’t help wondering why the deception, why the chase? Maeve could kill herself easily enough.
It didn’t matter. Whatever the princess wanted wasn’t important to Coldhand. He would capture her and capture her alive. Maeve crouched, ready to leap on him and Coldhand tightened his finger on the trigger.
A shrieking brown blur struck Coldhand and a dim line of pain burned along his skin as talons dug into his natural arm. His shot went wild, blackening a section of bulkhead. Coldhand lashed out with his illonium hand, connecting solidly against his attacker. Orphia screamed and wheeled back up into the air.
Tiberius was on the catwalk overhead, his NI pistol drawn and pointed at the younger Prian, but he hadn’t fired. Yet. Maeve stared up at Tiberius with her lips pressed together in a tight, bloodless white line.
“Stop!” she cried. “I do not need or want your help!”
Tiberius wasn’t listening to his raging first mate. He glowered at Coldhand from under bushy gray brows.
“Get the hells off my bird, traitor,” Tiberius said. “Or I swear by the First Feathers that I will burn you down where you stand.”
The old pagan Prian oath rumbled like an approaching storm. Tiberius hated Coldhand, hated him with a passion that the bounty hunter could never imitate with stimulants. And Coldhand couldn’t say he blamed Tiberius. He had brought disgrace and dishonor to the gun he carried. His uniform and badge were probably gathering dust in some back closet, too unclean to pass on to a new officer. Coldhand should have felt shame, pain, or anger to know his name was slandered on his homeworld. Something. Anything.
But Coldhand felt nothing.
Even in his fury, Tiberius would never shoot Coldhand in the back. He still honored the Prian code of chivalry, but the hunter didn’t. Not anymore.
“Cavainna is a criminal,” Coldhand said. “Let me remove her from your ship.”
“This isn’t about her. This is about you, traitor!”
Coldhand swung his Talon-9 around to fire off a quick shot at Tiberius, forcing the older man back behind cover. He brought the laser down again, ready to fend Maeve off, but she hadn’t moved, not even to retrieve her fallen spear.
Tiberius ran down the stairs and his NI gun popped quietly, but it hurled a slug as thick as a Lyran’s claw from the barrel that only narrowly missed. Coldhand whirled again and fired at Tiberius’ feet. The retired cop jerked to a halt, a smoking hole in the floor just in front of his boots.
“Stand down, you stiff-necked old fool,” Maeve shouted. “Logan will kill you!”
The fairy stood rooted to the spot, her hands curled into fists. Coldhand could see the terror in her wide silver eyes. What did Maeve have to fear? She wanted to die — that much was clear — so she couldn’t be afraid for her own life. For Tiberius? No, that made no more sense. If the bounty posting was right, Maeve Cavainna had killed off an entire species. What was one old Prian beside that?
“I was a cop back home for fifty years,” Tiberius said, still barely glancing at Maeve. He ducked behind a stack of cargo canisters. “You left Prianus, Coldhand. You abandoned her. And for what? To become a bounty hunter? Whoring justice for Alliance cenmarks?”
“You left, too,” Coldhand pointed out. He circled the cargo pallet on sure, quiet feet.
“Tiberius, stop!” Maeve shouted. “This is justice!”
“I’m not about to let that traitor haul you off my ship,” Tiberius said. “If someone wants to arrest you, I’ll damned well see a proper badge first!”
Coldhand leapt toward Maeve. She was still unarmed and made no move to defend herself — Maeve was too busy arguing with her captain. Coldhand yanked a pair of handcuffs from his belt and they slipped in his hand, metal against metal, but he held tight and flicked them open.
“You do not need a badge to know what it right,” Maeve told Tiberius. “Please, go!”
She caught sight of Coldhand advancing on her and leapt back, beating her wings furiously and spraying droplets of blood from her injured wing and leg. Maeve kicked out and her bare foot connected with Coldhand’s jaw. He recovered quickly, dropping the handcuffs to catch the Arcadian by her ankle. Unbalanced, Maeve tumbled from the air and her breath whooshed out painfully as she landed on her wounded wing.
“Let go of her!” Tiberius shouted.
He came around the stack of cargo containers and fired a series of rapid shots to force Coldhand back away from his mark. Tiberius reached out to help Maeve stand, but she pushed herself to her feet.
“I have chosen my end!” she said. “Leave me to face it!”
Tiberius kept his gun pointed at Coldhand. “You’ll follow my be-damned orders, Maeve! Now get the hells out of the way so I can remove this filth from my bird.”
“This choice is mine to make!” Maeve said.
“Wrong,” Coldhand corrected. “It’s mine.”
A scream drowned out Maeve’s reply.
