Chapter 19 #2
He growled, rage already crackling behind his eyes. Why her?
I don’t know. The moment I found out, I tried to track her through her comm. It was shut down, but I sent my nanites on the hunt. They found her. She’s not in your cabin. Not on any of the habitat decks she’s registered to.
Santi clenched his fists. Where is she?
Miral’s face appeared in his view, subdued. She’s crawling through the vent systems towards the Cold Sector and the prison, and there’s only one place they lead.
His heart thudded with dread.
Varnok’s vault, he rasped.
Miral nodded grimly.
The Skulls are using her, Santi grated. They’re going to try to spring him.
Looks that way.
He closed his eyes, then opened them full of fire, speaking out loud.
‘Prep the team,’ he barked. ‘We return to The Sombra, right fokkin’ now.
SOLEIL
Beneath the decks of the massive dreadnought, deep in its belly where light dared not linger, Soleil crawled.
The tunnel was narrow, damp, ribbed with rusted piping and coolant cables that stank of rust, mold, and engine oil.
Her elbows scraped along old residue, the thick staleness of recirculated air burning her lungs.
The deck plating groaned above her, footsteps, maybe. Or just the weight of the warship’s colossal frame shifting like a beast in sleep.
She pressed on, breath shallow, knees dragging over grime, sweat sliding down the curve of her back despite the chill.
Her cross-body bag thumped against her hip, payload still intact. Each movement felt like a gamble, like fate watching with narrowed eyes.
Through her neural node, Vern’s voice slithered.
‘Lower, pet. Take the left junction past the coolant feeds. Don’t make me trigger a shock again. You don’t want that, do you?’
She didn’t answer. She never did anymore. But still he whispered, a predator licking its chops in her skull.
‘Keep up the pace, otherwise, one twist of my fingers and you’ll be nothing but red paste on the steel.’
She clenched her jaw and blocked him with a wall of mental static, picturing Santi.
His body, warm beside hers. The way he kissed her temples.
How he held her with gentle protectiveness.
The fact that she was betraying him was killing her.
Her heart was breaking.
She hoped he kept away if he got wind of this fokkin’ cursed incursion.
She eased through a maintenance hatch into a vast, massive pipe crawl shaft.
Scarlet, from here, wear the anti-grav boots in your pack, to get to the breach faster.’
She obeyed, pausing to rummage through her duffel and change her shoes.
Even as she murmured without sound into the darkness, more prayer than plan, ‘Santi, stay away. Please.’
Her soul clenched.
She couldn’t bear to think of how he’d react if he did indeed come and once he found out her whole, terrifying truth.
With a ragged inhale, clicking on the levitation setting on her boots, she launched into the tight spaces, descending downward, past shafts and decks, one heartbeat closer to oblivion.
SANTIAGO
Santi hit the polished ramp of La última Sombra in a blur, spectral force powering his movements.
He didn’t pause; he stormed straight for the nearest elevator in which Miral glimmered into view with a swirl of violet nanites.
‘Report,’ he barked, edgy as fokk, breath shallow, pulse erratic.
Miral’s eyes glinted. ‘She’s breached a lower access shaft via the CVIQ conduit, slipping through a decommissioned security panel.
‘You have her?’
‘Confirmed. Visuals initiating.’
A holo screen bloomed before him, grainy, but unmistakable.
The massive pipe crawl shaft was panned in dim light, yet there she was.
Her slim silhouette wound through the network of giant pipes, pale face set in grim determination, a bag swaying over her side.
Her footwear blinked with pulses as she made her way down the shaft, guiding her deeper into the shadows.
He cursed and turned, bolting down the corridor.
There was no time to wait for a skimmer or ride one down to the Cold Sector.
The second he got to the railing edge leading to the Central Shaft of the massive ship, he jumped.
At the same time, he shifted, his body surged, muscles elongating in spectral flicker.
His wolf-wraith power lit under his skin as he flitted between matter and phase.
He descended in a controlled, rapid descent.
He parsed through walls and levels, vaulting over maintenance walkways and skimming down auxiliary ladders in a rush of grit, rage, and fear.
He stormed through the dilapidated prison decks, welded doors, rust-slick barriers, air damp with cryogenic condensation, and silence.
Miral’s voice spoke into his neural node.
‘You’ll reach her in less than ninety seconds if you maintain that trajectory.
She’s passing through the checkpoint above the vault now.
She has some live device hacking the codes to get past the security system, and I can’t seem to cycle them fast enough to stop her. ’
His breath steamed as he burst into the isolation chamber where, high above him, swung the gravity-null hover cage.
He landed with a heavy thud on the bottom plating.
The reinforced cavity groaned overhead, where the seclusion vault hung like a suspended mausoleum, with thick steel suspended and rotors whispering in the air.
Around it spun automated defense sentries, their red beacons flashing, motion-triggered and lethal.
A figure floated toward it like a phantom in a cold-lit dream.
His heart thundered as he recognized the silhouette that he was once so familiar with.
‘I see her,’ he growled.
Soleil’s boots pulsed blue light, thrusting her closer to the high security enclosure like a ghost drifting into the jaws of a myth.
Her face was cold, her expression focused, anguished, illuminated by the glow of the vault.
On her back was her duffel bag, bulky, filled with items.
Inside the chamber, watching her with an unmistakable hunger, stood Varnok Gage, tall and skeletal-thin now, with eyes narrowed and copper hair matted like oxidized wire.
In red jail sweats, his cuffs clinked like ceremonial chains.
Even from below, Santi caught the gleam in the bastard’s stare.
Recognition, and freakin’ anticipation.
Soleil hovered in anti-grav boots above the cantilevered platform in front of the vault.
Her arms stretched out for balance as she landed, her face pale, haunted, alight with grim focus.
A shattering fury surged in Santi’s chest.
‘Fokk,’ Santi whispered.
He took an inhale, tamping down his ratcheting fury and bewilderment.
‘SOLEIL!’ he shouted, his roar ringing like a gunshot.
She flinched and turned, eyes dilated, heartbreak written in the lines of her face. ‘Santi?’
She twisted midair, startled, almost losing momentum.
Her eyes locked on him, terrified.
With a growl, he activated his neural comms. Miral, get the override ready. Remain on stand by.
He launched up after her in a blaze of gold and violet.
A spectral arc of muscle and light hurtling toward the one thing in this void he couldn’t bear to lose.
Soleil never stopped staring at him.
Santi’s spectral power carried him forward the last few meters until he hovered before his lover, facing the see-through barrier shielding Gage’s cell.
His hands clenched into fists. ‘Mi sol, what are you doing? Why the hell are you here?’
‘Scarlet,’ Varnok purred from beyond the shielded force wall. ‘As I live and fester.’
Varnok chuckled, a rasp like rust and acid. ‘Ah, the lover arrives. Right on cue.’
Santi didn’t glance at him. Rage simmered in his chest; he saw only red behind his eyes, wanting to tear open that vault and burn the Carmine Cardinal to ash.
Still, his gaze never left her face. ‘Talk to me. Are you acting of your own volition?’
She shook her head, and then her entire body convulsed and shuddered, and he spotted a flash of energy arc from her hands and angle all over her.
She cried out in agony, and he tried to lunge for her, but she put out a hand.
‘Nada,’ she moaned as the pain shuddered through her.
‘Fokk this shit,’ Santi rasped, surging ahead.
Until she reached inside her bag and pulled out a round, silver, metallic, and pulsing device.
‘Don’t come closer,’ she whispered, and the tremble in her utterance made his blood run cold. She shoved her hand forward to show off what she was clutching.
Santi jolted, recognizing the shape.
It was an oscillating core bomb, proximity-linked, with a dual-modulation switch.
Not just dangerous, devastating.
It had the potential to take out half the deck they were on, heavy shielded or not.
Soleil was shaking, but her voice held. ‘If you come closer, my handler will detonate this bomb. It’ll take you and me out, but it’ll also rupture the cage’s dampener field and override the safety locks. He’ll escape regardless.’
‘So this is a breakout?’ he barked, storming closer. ‘You better have an fokkin’ good explanation for this shit show.’
‘We don’t have time for that,’ Soleil whispered. ‘I need to act now or we die.’
From within his cage, Varnok smiled, golden teeth glinting in the shadows. ‘Why so surprised, Signet dog. She wants to be reunited with her father. Me.’
‘The fokk?’ Santi’s voice cracked, his eyes still locked on Soleil. ‘Varnok Gage is your father. Which makes you -?’
Her shoulders slumped, and she muttered the truth with bitterness. ‘The Red Queen. Of the Red Skulls.’
Varnok crowed. ‘You had no idea she is the Alpha daughter of the Mad Wolf King, me?’
Everything within Santo jolted, lurched, and freakin’ tilted as all the disparate pieces came crashing together in shallow breathing truth.
Soleil.
The woman he held. The woman he rocked to sleep at night.
The woman had begun to dream of a future with him.
She was the daughter of Varnok Gage, the Butcher of Vael’Na’ra, AKA the Mad Wolf King.
The man who glassed three moons in retaliation, to avenge a rival, killing millions.
The man whose legacy was etched in blood across the moons of the Thren system.
His crimes were so numerous and grotesque that they didn’t even fit in one tribunal archive.
Santi’s breath caught as the old warlord smirked.
A vile slash that stretched his cracked lips.
His reign of terror and violence across the Wildlight was off the charts; thus, the need to keep him caged away from any living soul.
Now his woman was The Red Queen, his acolyte.
Santi stared at her, his mouth dry. ‘I met you first at the -.’
‘The munitions depot, naam,’ she finished for him.
He shook with disbelief and growing rage. ‘You were pulling strings, bombing and pillaging at will, before disappearing a few months back, and now you are about to detonate a bomb on my ship to free him? Fokk, what a freakin’ nightmare.’
Her chin lifted, and he caught a sheen of tears in her eyes despite her defiance. ‘He and my uncle command me. I didn’t have a choice.’
His heart hammered. ‘You had choices. Otherwise, I’ll have to believe you lied to me and used me to break your father out of The Sombra? You always had alternatives.’
‘I’m so sorry, Santi.’ Her voice cracked, stammering over her words. ‘I thought if I just gave them what they wanted, I could spare you. Vern is always listening. He’ll kill us both if I don’t do as he says. He’ll also destroy someone close to me. He ransomed my will, my freakin’ life.’
With that, she turned and placed her hand on the cage latch. He caught a flash of energy from her wrist to the door.
The lock disengaged with a long hiss.
Varnok floated toward the door like a revenant.
‘Don’t!’ Santi growled, drawing his pulse blade. ‘Don’t move, Gage. Stay where you are.’
Soleil stepped in front of him, tears streaking her cheeks, raising her hands to stop him.
He growled when he saw a silver cuff formed of nanites rise out of her left wrist.
‘Stand back, Santi. This, this device is linked to my uncle, who’s calling the shots here. If I don’t complete the modulation sequence on the bomb and attach it to the outer wall, we’re done for. All of us.’
He stared at her, shaking, his rage unraveling into grief. ‘You really came here to save him.’
‘Nada,’ she whispered. ‘Not to save him, to save you and your ship, because what they planned was much worse.’
‘What can I say to stop you?’ he rasped through clenched teeth.
‘Nada. I have no choice, but I’ll try to lessen the impact.’
She breathed the last few words, her utterance soaked in despair, pleading, and laced with defiance.
Santi’s soul convulsed, and he almost let out a groan.
Fokk.
He was so far gone for her, yet ripped, weak, with no strength to fight even if he tried, because that meant he might lose her.
Still, his soul refused to believe his woman was his betrayer.
Varnok placed a hand on Soleil’s shoulder. ‘She was always so thoughtful, my scarlet bird and our Red Queen.’
Santi, heart in shards, the shit before him driving crazy, realized in that moment that the battle was lost, his love for her not enough to stop the coming carnage.