I stood in the clearing where the transport had crash landed with arms raised as Koraf angrily stalked toward me.
A shot rang out from above, hitting the ground in between us and halting his progress. Most of his men aimed their blasters at the ridge Ryuuk was perched on, though a few kept their weapons trained on me as Koraf spoke with barely contained rage.
“It looks like all of your allies have fled, and we have your little crew outnumbered,” Koraf said. “Tell your team to stand down or we’ll shoot all of them.”
I looked up to where Ryuuk was and then over to Cash and Vomero on the edge of the clearing. They were slowly and cautiously making their way toward us at the back of the downed transport.
Touching the side of my head, I spoke into our reconnected coms. Apparently whatever device Owen’s men were using to jam communications had left with them.
“Easy guys, we’re not here to beef with Koraf’s people,” I spoke into the communication device.
“Tell your guys to point their guns elsewhere and we will, too,” Cash called from across the clearing.
“I don’t bargain with terrorists like you,” Koraf shouted. “If you think you can take us all out before we can kill the lot of you, go ahead and try.”
“Shouldn’t you be focusing on getting your crown back instead of persecuting us?” I said. “You don’t have to be happy with our methods, but we’re not the enemy.”
“Not the enemy? Give me one good reason I shouldn’t have the lot of you executed!!”
“Because we’re the only reason you even have men left alive to outnumber us?” I spat sarcastically.
“This is the thanks your people give for all the help we provided to you, for expediting your travel documents, for looking the other way as you destroyed buildings and killed criminals without due process in our city? You lie, first about having the Diadem in your possession, then lie about leaving our planet in peace, and now here you are, jeopardizing the security of our entire commonwealth just to steal the treasure for yourselves.”
Tensions were high as the four of us squared off against Koraf’s men. Although I was inclined to use a more diplomatic approach, tempers had to cool first. My companions didn’t seem to favor diplomacy at the moment. We were all feeling the sting of an unsuccessful mission.
As I glanced around, I couldn’t find where Dick or Matthew might be hiding. They’d no doubt be keeping low in case we needed the element of surprise to extricate ourselves from this mess.
Unless they’re dead, a voice inside me whispered, but I tamped it down.
“Fine, if dealing honestly with you won’t work, we’ll try it this way,” Koraf said. He made a motion to a guard who brought out one of the Syreni attackers they had managed to take hostage. “Put down your weapons or we’ll kill this one.”
It occurred to me in that moment that Koraf thought we were in league with Owen’s group, and, though I could see the merit of that assumption from his point of view, the thought that we would throw our lot in with the man who kidnapped two of us and murdered Gramps made my own temper flare.
“What kind of fucking idiot do you have to be to think we would EVER deal with the likes of Owen and his people?” I snapped.
“An idiot would stand here and believe yet another lie from a woman who has repeatedly lied to my face,” Koraf responded. “Now, surrender or we start executing you, starting with this one.”
“I hate to tell you, but that’s a poor bargaining chip,” Cash said. “We don’t give a shit about this guy.”
He, Vomero, and Ryuuk now stood about 20 feet away from me and Koraf. Koraf looked disbelievingly at us.
“He’s right, we don’t care about his guy,” I said. “We’re not here to help them. We were here for their leader, a man we call Owen.”
“Nice try, but you’ve been playing me from day one,” Koraf said. “You’re bluff might be a bit more convincing if—”
“For fuck’s sake,” Cash growled, cutting him off.
Before anyone could react, Cash raised his blaster and fired a shot straight through the Syreni captive’s heart. Koraf’s men reacted with a start, drawing their weapons and preparing to fire on Cash if he even looked like he’d use the weapon on Koraf. Instead, Cash holstered his weapon and spread his hands out by his sides.
“Like she said,” Cash continued, stone-faced after killing a man in cold blood, “we don’t give a shit about Owen’s men. If you hadn’t stopped us, we might have been able to kill more of them before they slunk off into the hills.”
“You’re mad you lost the Diadem,” I said, “but that’s not on us. We were here to get justice for our friend, the one Owen killed.”
“Not on you?” Koraf said. “Yet, it was one of you who infiltrated our ship, incapacitated five of my men, and disappeared with the Diadem.”
I cast a confused look over at Cash. Ryuuk and Vomero wore similarly perplexed expressions, but I could see that Cash, while mulling things over, wasn’t completely in the dark. Did he know something? Was he in on whatever this was? And where were the other members of our team? Had I been a fool and half of my crew were working with Owen without my knowledge?
“Cash? What is he talking about?” I said, accusingly.
Cash rolled his eyes at my suspicious tone and sighed in exasperation.
“Seriously, Skye?” was all he said in response to me. Instead he addressed Koraf. “Where’s your proof?”
Koraf looked back and forth between us before motioning to one of his men. He appeared with a holo-tablet in his hand; with a touch of a finger, the pad began projecting security footage from inside the transport cabin.
As the ship came under fire, the crew began to prepare for an emergency landing and ready their weapons for combat. As soon as the vehicle hit the ground, those inside were thrown around by the impact despite bracing themselves in advance.
Seconds later, a small area in the back of the cabin began to shimmer with black and purple light as a familiar portal manifested near the back wall. Matthew stepped out of it, instantly incapacitating four of the guards with his void tentacles and killing another with an expert throw of his dark energy blast.
Next, the display showed him walk over to the dead guard and slice his hand off in order to free him from the case that was chained around his wrist. It look less than 30 seconds for him to arrive and depart with the Diadem in hand.
Glancing over at Cash again, I saw his hard expression, but there was no surprise on his face.
“You knew?” I asked.
“I suspected,” Cash responded.
“Matty?” Ryuuk asked in disbelief. “What is he doin’ taking the crown?”
“So, Matthew has been sabotaging our mission the whole time?” Vomero theorized, then his tone shifted to fury. “We never had a chance of getting at Owen, then.”
“You suspected he was working with Owen and didn’t say anything?” I asked Cash.
“Not everyone goes around pointing guns at people with every suspicion, Skye,” Cash returned. “If I was wrong, that’s a hell of a charge to levy on someone. If I was right, the only way to know for sure would be to wait for him to make a move.”
I thought back for a minute over the last few days.
“You suggested he be on this part of the mission for that reason,” I stated, and Cash nodded.
“It’s like we discussed, Skye, about not wanting more casualties,” he explained. “If I was wrong about him, our plan would have went on as scheduled. We’d be fighting it out with Owen personally miles away from here. If I was right about him, I didn’t want one of us caught in the middle of whatever alternative trap Owen came up with.”
I processed what he told me for a moment. It was the most logical plan, but I didn’t know why he hadn’t shared it with me.
“How did you know it was him?” I asked.
If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. Please report it.
“It’s not hard to figure out after the conversation we had the other day,” he said. “You’ve got kind of a big-sister blind spot where that kid was concerned, so you weren’t looking for it. What were we overlooking, what were we forgetting about or putting on the backburner?”
“Our original sabotage,” I said.
“You mean whoever set up the attack on our original transport?” Vomero asked. “You think that was Matthew, too?”
Cash nodded.
“He’s right,” I said. “I was blinded to it. He convinced me that he was some lost kid in need of guidance and help.”
“You want me to believe that the young Void Worshipper was working on his own, separate from your agenda?” Koraf asked, skeptically.
Ignoring him, I continued to speak to Cash and Vomero.
“He could have teleported easily undetected around the ship, killed the pilot and made it back without anyone noticing,” I said.
“And he was the only one who wasn’t really in any danger from the attack,” Cash responded. “As we saw, he could have just portaled out at any time.”
“I’m sure the plan was to attack the transport, let the breached hull kill everyone on board, and then scoop in for the cargo while it was adrift in space,” Vomero said. “We were just too effective at keeping the ship and everyone on it alive.”
“He couldn’t let it crash into the mountain or risk losing the cargo, too,” I continued. “Hence, here we are.”
“He brought a crew to recover the ship for him, but didn’t count on us still being alive,” Cash added. “So, he played it off like a rescue.”
“But he had all that time to take it after that,” Vomero said. “Why leave it sitting in the containment unit for days?”
“Maybe he didn’t know what he was dealin’ with till he saw it,” Ryuuk finally contributed to the conversation. “Maybe he thought it had to stay in the ship.”
Conversations raced through my head of Matthew urging us to leave it be because we didn’t know what would happen if we tried to remove it. Maybe it had been his impression that the entity needed to stay in the containment unit. Then Dick had come along and basically absorbed it into himself...
“Oh shit,” I said, suddenly, looking around the clearing. I had completely forgot about Koraf and his men in the light of this revelation.
“What is it, Skye?” Cash asked.
Vomero, however, continued to postulate aloud.
“What doesn’t make sense is what any of this has to do with the Diadem,” Vomero said. “Is he working with Owen or doing his own thing?”
“He’s definitely working with Owen,” I said. Dread was starting to settle in my stomach as I realized the scope of Owen’s mission, today.
Looking back at Koraf, who had been silently listening to our tale of betrayal, I tried one last time to reason with him.
“We weren’t here to interfere with your transfer, Koraf, you can either believe us or not,” I said, “but right now I don’t think we have the luxury of being enemies.”
Koraf contemplated that statement for a moment before nodding.
“Perhaps,” he said, sighing as some of the tension left his stiff frame. “Honestly, we don’t have much choice than to believe you. You’re the closest we’ve got to a lead since your companion has taken the Diadem.”
Nodding I turned to include both my team and Koraf in what I said next. I pulled the text pad from my pocket.
“They were using these text pads to communicate despite the signal jamming all our devices,” I said.
“That’s some old-school stuff I haven’t seen in a while,” Vomero commented, taking the text pad from me.
“The messages mention two objectives, taking the crown and something else they refer to as acquiring a target,” I elaborated.
“Wasn’t the target the crown?” Ryuuk asked, and I shook my head.
“I thought so at first, too, but the messages make it clear that they’re two different things. I think Matthew made a deal with Owen to steal the Diadem. In exchange, he wanted Owen to acquire this target for him.”
“And what would the target be?” Vomero asked.
My voice shook as I asked the question that had been multiplying the dread I felt.
“Has anyone seen Dick?”
* * *
Dick was indeed missing. Ryuuk confirmed that they had both prepared to leave the initial mission site after receiving our message about the transport attack, but they had been in such a mad scramble to get there, they hadn’t really kept up with each other.
“I’m sorry, I don’t remember seeing him after we took off,” Ryuuk said, sounding forlorn. “You think they took him?”
Reinforcements had arrived from Koraf’s people, and we had set up a small command center near the crash site. Koraf’s investigators would need to go over the area with a fine tooth comb and do detailed reports of the events here. We took the opportunity to strategize our next move and figure out how we were going to rescue Dick.
“Matthew’s mission was to get the entity. It makes sense then that Dick would be his target because it lives inside him right now,” I said. “Matthew didn’t take the entity before because he thought it had to stay in the containment unit to live. Then Dick picked it up and basically absorbed it.”
“What if he’s just in on it and a traitor, too,” Ryuuk said, but Cash shook his head.
“I eliminated him as a suspect,” Cash said. “It’s how I was able to narrow it down to Matthew. Well, him and Vomero.”
“Gee, thanks,” Vomero said sardonically.
“Look, Skye has been mulling over this idea that the transport sabotage was somehow unfinished business. Assuming that whoever orchestrated it wasn’t dumb enough to get themselves killed early, I knew it had to be one of us who were left,” Cash explained. “From there, I could eliminate myself, of course, Skye because why would she be drawing so much attention to something she wanted to hide, Ryuuk...well because Ryuuk...”
“I’m gonna consider that a compliment to my upstandin’ character,” Ryuuk said.
“Dick was eliminated because he already had the entity inside him,” Cash continued, ignoring Ryuuk. “If he was the one willing to kill us all for it, why stick around once he had it for himself and we were willing to let him walk away with it?”
“Absorbing the entity would have made Matthew’s job much more complicated,” Vomero pointed out. “Stealing a person isn’t as easy as stealing cargo, especially someone who can put up a fight.”
“He also wouldn’t be able to pull him through a void portal without killing him and the entity,” I added.
“I guess it’s lucky then Dick didn’t just take off with it back home...” Ryuuk said, but I could see his expression darken as the realization of exactly how deep Matthew’s betrayal ran sank in.
I looked at Cash, knowing that the truth Ryuuk was just uncovering had also been hovering at the back of his mind, as well. It wasn’t an accident that we all stayed behind when we could have left Kalo-Mahoi weeks ago. All of us, including Dick, had chosen to stay to get justice for Gramps.
“There’s no way he...” Ryuuk stumbled over his words, his fists clenched and shaking.
“Maybe he was hoping Koraf would back out on his deal to help us once he found out we lied about the Diadem,” I said, hoping to soften the blow, but at this point, I didn’t put anything past Matthew.
“It wasn’t Koraf he made a deal with though, was it? It was Owen. Whether he schemed to have Gramps killed or it just worked out that way for him, his life meant nothing to that boy,” Ryuuk said, icily. “And he’s been walking around here for weeks pretending like he cared, making us think he blamed himself, when in reality it was all lies.”
Gramps’ death had been the perfect scenario to keep us all on the planet for weeks longer. That left Matthew plenty of time to come up with a plan to make sure Dick never left. The need to make haste suddenly overwhelmed me. I had been worried about Dick walking into a trap back home. As it turns out, the real hazard had been with us the whole time.
“Unfortunately, getting your friend and the Diadem back is going to be a monumental task,” Koraf said. He had once again been silently listening as we discussed our next options. “You shot the only hope we had of tracking the shapeshifter. Owen, you call him?”
He looked at Cash as he spoke. We were all gathered under a makeshift metal dome designed to prevent intelligence leaks. It served as a space officials could speak privately in the field without worrying about prying eyes and ears. We could see and hear the hustle and bustle of Koraf’s crew going over the crash site beyond the shimmering clear walls of the dome’s shield, but those on the outside could neither hear nor see through to the inside, not even with the most sophisticated surveillance equipment.
“As it happens, we do have another option,” Cash said. He took a small round data storage chip from his pocket. “As I was saying, once I narrowed it down to either Matthew or Vomero, I decided to tag Matthew on account that he was the most suspicious of the two suspects, as well as the fact that Vomero can’t be tagged because his electromagnetic pulses would just fry it anyway.”
“Again, your confidence in me is heartwarming,” Vomero said, carefully picking up the chip with a pair of rubber gloves he kept on him for just such necessity. He popped the chip into a data pad and went to work configuring the signal.
“I did say you were the least suspicious of the two,” Cash pointed out.
“No shit, I’m the least suspicious between myself and the guy who is never around when real life-threatening danger is happening. Oh, and did we mention he also WORSHIPS THE VOID? That’s not exactly a hobby just anyone picks up in their free time, you know? It’s just not cool, there I said it, and I’ve been holding it in for a while now, but I said it. Void Worship is not cool.”
The screen of his data pad beeped, and Vomero looked perplexed at the readings.
“This is odd,” he said. “The signal is working, but its coming from some random spot in the ocean and still moving.”
“Let my man take a look at it,” Koraf said, motioning to one of two Malunite operatives Koraf had entrusted to be part of this discussion. His name was Benzo and was a specialist in tracking. The other was a big, burly guy who served as the head of Koraf’s security detail, Griff.
Vomero slid the tablet toward Benzo, who adjusted some settings on the calibration. His eyes widened, and he looked sharply up at Koraf.
“Sir, the signal is already seventy miles away but it’s slowing down around the M212 sector.”
Koraf looked visibly shaken.
“He can’t be. Not already,” he said, turning next to Griff. “Mobilize as many units as you can spare without leaving the city unprotected. We’ll leave as soon as possible.”
“Just a second!” Cash growled. “We gave you this information, and we’ve got a vested interest in this mission. You going to tell us just where the hell sector M212 is?”
Koraf took a deep breath, obviously not used to being part of an equal partnership. He regained some of his composure.
“It appears your former companion is taking the Drowned Diadem to the last place we want them to take it,” he said. “They’re headed for Maluna’s Grotto.”
“Maluna’s Grotto?” Vomero repeated. “That’s the site you’ve been fighting over with the Syreni, right? It supposedly holds the scepter that’s responsible for lifting all the islands up into the sky?”
“Yes,” Koraf said, and his people exited the dome to prepare for departure. “We were all on edge when the queen held that grotto hostage from us, and her intention was just to extort us.”
“Shouldn’t they be headed for Veridi or something?” Vomero asked. “That would make more sense. They can’t possibly have a valid reason for needing to take the Diadem there.”
I was starting to realize the gravity of the situation and Koraf’s need for haste. I looked around the table at my companions and Koraf.
“Two psychopaths walk into a grotto with an item of devastating power,” I said. “I don’t think we’re going to like how that joke ends.”