Protector (The Vigilante Chronicles Book 7) Read online

  “That would be a mistake,” Barnabas said. “Without a public reckoning, the same thing will happen again.”

  “And so you propose to capture Grisor,” Gilwar said, “and deliver him to…whom, human? Who do you think will give him the Justice you seek?”

  Barnabas had been quietly self-assured, but that question took him aback. “I had not thought of that. The Senate…”

  “Might be sympathetic. He might sway them. You say you want this taken care of publicly, but what if the Jotun public agrees with him? That is the risk you take.”

  Barnabas turned away, rubbing his temples.

  “We don’t have to decide now,” Shinigami chimed in. Her voice was clear and cool. “Barnabas was right about one thing: a mission should have one objective. Ours is to get Jeltor out. If Grisor wanders into our hands, we will try to capture him, and if that is not possible, we will do whatever is necessary to get out safely. Is that clear to everyone?”

  There was a round of nods and murmurs, and Barnabas gave her a grateful look.

  “I have a request.” Tafa’s voice was very small. When everyone looked at her, she seemed to shrink into herself before very deliberately standing up straighter. She looked at all of them, but her eyes came to rest on Barnabas. “I want to be—upgraded.”

  “What?” Barnabas asked after a moment.

  “Like Gar was.” Tafa’s hands were clenched.

  “Like, for combat?” Shinigami clarified dubiously. She and Barnabas exchanged looks.

  “Yes,” Tafa said impatiently.

  “You want to be part of our combat missions?” Barnabas asked her. Tafa had participated in a bit of espionage a few weeks back, but that was a far cry from actual battles.

  “Well, no. I don’t.” Tafa took a deep breath. “But I’m not going to keep cowering here on the ship while all of you go into danger.” She swallowed hard. “If I were already upgraded, if I’d learned how to fight, I would be there to help get Jeltor back. I’ve failed him, and I don’t know if I’ll ever forgive myself for that.”

  Barnabas looked at her for a moment, and then—gently—peered into her mind. He had been surprised by her request, but now that he saw her thoughts, he could see how desperately she wanted this.

  She was scared. In fact, she was terrified, but she knew there were reasons to move past that fear, and she would do so in order to help her friends.

  “All right,” he agreed with a nod. “We’ll have you assessed in the Pod-doc, and we’ll figure this out.” Briefly, he debated telling her she hadn’t failed Jeltor, but he knew that she would never agree with him, so he only looked at the rest of them. “We know some of what the Committee has for resources. I want a plan for our rescue mission drawn up within the next hour. Any resources you have, now is the time to share them.” He gave Gilwar a meaningful glance.

  Gilwar laughed. “I’ll get you what we have on Grisor’s estate. I got a good map last time, including the utilities. We can probably work with that.”

  “Good,” Shinigami said. “Come with me, and we’ll transfer all that data.”

  Barnabas gave a nod and followed them out into the hallway. They would get Jeltor back.

  Then they would figure out how to undo his conversion. They would find a way. Barnabas promised himself that.

  * * *

  There was a ding from her computer, and Aliana looked up from her book. She did not move particularly quickly as she put the book aside and went to the desk; after the storm of tears, she had little energy left.

  She had skipped dinner, having neither the energy to face the rest of the crew nor the desire to see people eating live snakes. Someone had come and left a plate of a plain soup, though, that did not have any snakes in it, alive or dead.

  (She’d checked. Thoroughly.)

  What she saw on the screen made her eyebrows shoot up. She sighed, put her boots on, and went to find Zinqued.

  He was in the communal room off the kitchen, and he spun around in a chair to greet her with a smile. “Ah, there you are.”

  Tik’ta gave her a nod from one of the other chairs. She’d been open about the fact that she thought Aliana was making a mistake, signing back on, but she had been perfectly nice about it.

  “The Shinigami just passed one of our checkpoints,” Aliana reported.

  “Oh?” Zinqued sat up, deeply interested now.

  “I don’t think we can catch it on this round,” Aliana continued. “It’s going like a bat out of hell.”

  Zinqued and Tik’ta frowned, trying to parse this.

  “Sorry—it’s going really fast. And I mean really fast. There’s no way we could catch it, but it’s heading for somewhere near Jotuna.” She shrugged. “Anyway, I thought you might want to know.” She gave a nod to Zinqued and one to Tik’ta—who looked frustrated that Aliana was helping Zinqued with this—and headed back to her room before anyone could ask her any more questions.

  Steal the Shinigami, or not. She couldn’t find it in herself to care very much either way. She’d been trying to forget meeting Barnabas on High Tortuga. Something about the memory unsettled her.

  The sooner they were done with this job, the better, in her opinion. And if she needed to flee deeper into this sector to get away from human society, that would be just fine.

  Chapter Seven

  “Any luck?” Ferqar called.

  “Shh.” Kelnamon inched along a tiny ledge on the outside of the building. This was one of the tallest buildings on the outskirts of the main city, and it had a very tall radio tower on top of it.

  He needed to hook into that tower.

  As the days passed with no word back on his discovery, Kelnamon had become completely convinced that there was interference, either within the upper ranks of the government or in the buildings that held them.

  He was hoping for the latter, of course—some trickery, a false signal that the Jotuns had learned of and sent out. But there was the possibility that someone in the Brakalon government had turned traitor, and Kelnamon would be a fool not to acknowledge that and plan for it.

  Which meant he was calling in someone very different, and he had to do something unusual to get his message out.

  So he was climbing the outside of this building in the dead of night in a desperate attempt to get a message attached to the weather data being sent to orbiting satellites. Ferqar had helped him work out a way to make the satellites send the message on, and hopefully it would arrive soon at a place he knew Barnabas had gone once: Victory Station.

  He heard a strange skittering in the darkness and froze, but then pressed on. He didn’t see anything moving, and he needed to get this message up to the antenna.

  Once he hauled himself over the edge, he moved quickly. He attached a small device to the bottom of the antenna and waited while it ran through its warmups, then slightly changed the positioning of the dish and embedded transponder.

  “Come on,” he murmured. “Come on. Come on.”

  The message ran through once, then twice.

  “You need to get back here,” Ferqar’s voice said in his ear. “Someone’s coming, and it sounds odd. More of those bots, maybe.”

  Kelnamon grabbed the device and raced to the edge of the roof. He took one sweeping glance over the city before lowering himself over the edge and beginning to walk down the side of the building, holding the rope and bracing his feet on the wall.

  The city looked normal, he thought. In a sense, everything was normal. People were going about their daily business with no idea anything was wrong.

  Perhaps he should be making a big deal of this, making sure that everyone knew the government had been abducted. He feared hysteria, however, and a swift reprisal. Who could say what other forces were on Kordinev already, waiting to strike?

  No, it was too risky.

  He had just reached the ground when he saw them: turrets gleaming in the moonlight, their barrels swinging as they searched for targets.

  “Ruuuun!” he hissed to Fe
rqar.

  They pelted along the streets with the click-clack of the spidery Jotun turrets echoing behind them. The laser sights swung this way and that, but the street was deserted. Kelnamon and Ferqar were long gone.

  A few streets away, the two of them slumped into the shadow of a doorway.

  “Do you think the message got through?” Ferqar asked dubiously.

  “I hope so.” Kelnamon had never been one to delude himself with false hope. “I can only hope Victory Station manages to find Barnabas or we’ll be shit out of luck.”

  “He might find out about their plans from somewhere else,” Ferqar pointed out. “I worked with two members of Intelligence. They might know what’s happening.”

  “And if they don’t?” Kelnamon sighed. “Then we’ll need to take care of this ourselves. And they have the jump on us, and we’re divided.”

  Chapter Eight

  “Ma’am?” Gorsik was in the doorway. “We’re ready.”

  Admiral Jeqwar hadn’t heard him come in, but he was fastidious about keeping his suit oiled and in perfect repair. She knew he had once been in the secret service, and sometimes—like now—she wondered just what skills he had that she did not know about.

  Jotun assassins were rare, but those who existed were very, very good.

  She nodded at him. “I’m coming.”

  “I—” It was rare that he was surprised. “I’m sorry? I thought you just wanted to give the launch order.”

  “No.” She took a look around her office and did a quick status check of her weapons and defensive mechanisms. “I’ll be the one going.”

  “What? No.” He recovered almost immediately and moved to bar her path. “Ma’am, I would not disobey orders lightly, but this is madness. You correctly assessed that Jeltor is dangerous. Your order to kill him on sight was correct, and your current plan, to kill him from a distance, is also correct. But you should be nowhere near him.”

  “Gorsik, I know what I’m doing.”

  “Do you?” he pressed. “Or rather, do you really think it’s a good idea?”

  After a moment, she muttered an oath. “Dammit, Gorsik, why couldn’t you just let me do this? You’re the worst aide I’ve ever had.”

  His tentacles twitched in amusement. “If I thought you meant that I’d be devastated. Ma’am, why are you doing this? This isn’t the admiral I know.”

  “Don’t give me a sly set of compliments. You know I hate that.” She stalked back to the window and stared out into the black. The proximity sensors in her suit told her that he had come to stand next to her, but he let her stand in silence before speaking.

  In truth, she did not know what to say. She knew that this was folly. Her first assessment had been correct: Jeltor was dangerous, and the wisest course of action was to kill him before he could worm his way into the defense networks. When she had seen the recording of his conversation with Gorsik, she had been sure of her path. She had made her decision quickly, as she was wont to do, and had begun to execute it at once.

  And yet…

  “He asked me to do it,” she told him finally. “He asked me to send someone, but he sent word to me. I’m not a judge, Gorsik. I don’t choose who lives and dies, not that way. It feels wrong to send someone else. He reached out to me as a gesture of trust.”

  “If he was telling the truth,” Gorsik replied softly. “I wonder about that, ma’am.”

  She turned to look at him with interest. She had caught the double meaning in his voice—he doubted Jeltor, yes, but he wasn’t sure of the lie. And from a former member of the secret service, that meant something.

  “So you think that too,” she stated, testing.

  He looked over. “Think what? Now is not the time for misunderstandings.”

  He had a point. “You think he’s not sure what he wants anymore. That it might have been designed as a trap, but he still wants us to succeed.”

  “Yes,” Gorsik admitted. “I think he is conflicted. It is difficult to brainwash someone without destroying their mind. Since he still seems functional, that means he might still think his way out of this. But I think it would be foolish to trust him; for anyone to trust him. Even them.”

  “That’s why,” Admiral Jeqwar said. Her voice was low. “I have to believe this can be undone, Gorsik. I have to. If we have to kill every innocent person they’ve brainwashed…” Her voice trailed off. “I can kill soldiers who stand against me in battle. I don’t like it, but I can do it. I will even sacrifice my life if need be. But to kill civilians—ones who were chosen because they were allies? That’s different. I’m not sure I can do that, so I have to hope this can be undone.”

  “They aren’t your allies anymore, though,” Gorsik countered after a moment. “If they’re trying to kill you, it doesn’t matter why. You have to defend yourself—and the others who are depending on you.”

  Admiral Jeqwar looked away.

  Footsteps pounded down the hallway, and an aide burst through the door. “Ma’am? Ma’am! There was a flicker on one of the buoys, then our surveillance inside Senator Grisor’s estate saw footage of the Shinigami landing there.”

  Dammit. And yet, her heart soared. She had never been one for running from choices…until now.

  Now she was glad to let Barnabas take this choice from her.

  “What do we do?” Gorsik asked her.

  “We let Barnabas try,” she told him quietly. “The humans have good medical technology, we know that. Perhaps they can undo what was done.”

  “And if they cannot?”

  She wanted to run from this choice, but she must not. “Then I will offer to do what must be done,” she said quietly. “For now, send in our ship and hook me in remotely. If I can aid them, I will.”

  * * *

  The Shinigami landed lightly, as far as ships went. Its touchdown on the edge of Senator Grisor’s estate was incredibly delicate.

  In terms of more normal concerns, it flattened a huge number of carefully tended flowers.

  “Oops,” exclaimed Shinigami in studied innocence.

  Barnabas sank his head into his hands.

  “Well, it’s not like they’re not going to realize we were here,” she pointed out. “They’ll be missing Jeltor, so I think they’re going to figure it out.”

  Barnabas tried to keep from laughing. Laughing, he knew, would only encourage her. Like with a toddler, he thought whimsically. He straightened up and wiped his eyes surreptitiously. “Right. Let’s get out there and abduct our friend. Now there’s a sentence I never thought I would say.”

  “Right behind you,” Gar said, nodding.

  In the corner, Tafa watched from her chair. She gave a wan smile when they looked at her.

  “Do you remember last time, when you were helping with surveillance?” Barnabas asked her. “You helped immeasurably. Shinigami will hook you in so you can do the same this time.”

  Tafa nodded, looking a little better. She waved at them as they left.

  The gardens here seemed to have been designed for land animals, with the exception of the very large and very clear ornamental pools. Barnabas suspected there were many plants, rocks, and other elements underwater that he could not appreciate, but that Jotuns would find very relaxing.

  Grisor, he thought, did not deserve a place like this. He would have stepped on the plants as he passed, but they didn’t deserve that. He settled for toppling a large pergola.

  “My hand slipped,” he explained when Shinigami looked at him.

  She rolled her eyes and they continued. It became almost a game to see who could do the most damage. Gilwar sent a silenced shot from one of his arm guns to take out a statue at the opposite end of one wing of the garden, and Shinigami used one of the benches to drag a deep trench where one of the walkways should be. She looked absurdly pleased with herself.

  Gar, meanwhile, was moving rocks out of their carefully aligned places. He had an evil grin as he worked, which turned out to be particularly terrifying on a Luvendi.
>
  Jeltor is in one of the inner rooms, Shinigami said, but it’s closest to this side.

  Any chance that we’ve been detected? Barnabas asked.

  No, Tafa said. I’m monitoring their security response teams both in network traffic and a live feed of their offices. They haven’t noticed you. You’re giving me an awful lot to change on the security feeds, though.

  Whoops. Gar sounded guilty. Sorry, Tafa.

  No, it’s good. Gives me something to do.

  They continued to the edge of the building and, when Tafa gave them the all-clear, scaled the side of it. Jotun suits in general weren’t made for climbing, so they hauled Gilwar up with a makeshift pulley.

  This is undignified, he complained. Shinigami had hooked him into their Etheric communications stream.

  Better undignified than on the ground floor facing down a bunch of soldiers, Barnabas advised cheerfully.

  Why are those my only two choices?

  Laughing, they crept across the roof and made their way to the edge of the courtyard that held Jeltor’s rooms. A quick analysis confirmed the layout that Gilwar had found last time. The glass on the windows would be almost impossible to break. There was a way in through the ceiling vents, however, and they set to work getting in.

  They dropped into the large, open main room, and only just avoided going into the tanks. Stumbling and steadying themselves, they looked around. It was a beautiful room—if you managed to ignore the fact that it was a prison. Quiet and calm, it was filled with pale light that filtered in through the translucent glass of the windows.

  “Hello!” Jeltor called from behind them.

  Chapter Nine

  Barnabas didn’t have to wait for events to kick off. Without hesitating for an instant, Jeltor threw a bolt of energy with his Committee-made biosuit. Barnabas flung himself sideways and rolled, feeling the heat on the side of his face.