Chapter 26
KENRON
The air shimmers with heat and incense, thick with sweat and sugar, and just beneath it all—death.
The plaza hums with celebration. Multicolored banners ripple overhead like prayers stitched from silk and fire.
Strings of lanterns bob in time with the music—Vakutan windpipes laced with human drums, alien rhythms twisted through familiar bass lines.
There are dancers spinning in spirals, faces painted in festival patterns.
And children, gods help them, chasing neon light trails between legs and tail-flicks and hovercarts.
Novaria Prime has never looked more alive.
Kristi walks beside me in silence, head bowed beneath the borrowed Vakutan shawl. The cloth hugs her shoulders, dyed deep dusk blue and stitched with fractal stars, a prayer pattern known only to a few. The kind meant to hide grief. Or vengeance. Or both.
She doesn’t hold my hand, but her fingers brush mine every few steps—just enough to tether. Just enough to say I’m still here.
We weave through the crowd like we belong. I wear the robes of a ceremonial guardian—flowing layers, dull metallic embroidery, old blood colors dulled by time. The weight of the shard presses against my chest, strapped under the inner lining, cool as guilt.
Inside that sliver of tech is the disruptor code.
And inside Kristi’s belt, wrapped in a silk satchel stitched with false prayer runes, is the manual override—biometrically keyed to Dennis Montana’s thumbprint. We didn’t get it through kindness.
We just have to reach the stage.
Beneath it, through the concealed hatch Kristi traced in schematics stolen weeks ago, lies the launch hub. The node built to spread a nanite weapon across a thousand bodies in seconds. No one here knows they’re standing on top of a bomb.
And we don’t get a second shot.
“Ken,” Kristi murmurs, her voice low, throat-thick with tension. “Red vest. Two o’clock.”
I don’t look immediately. I don’t need to.
“Earth First?”
“Watching the west end. Might be local security too. Blend, don’t hide.”
I nod once, and we slow to match the rhythm of the crowd, trailing behind a group of festival-goers draped in woven festival silks, laughing too loud. They make good cover.
The air is sweet with fried oil and burning herb. The kind used in ceremonial dances and back alley deals. Beneath it all, I smell copper and ozone, memory and violence. The smells of war.
A small Drevia girl hands Kristi a folded petal stamped with a unity glyph. Kristi takes it without breaking stride.
“Left flank—four guards in mirrored armor,” I say under my breath.
She doesn’t flinch. “Looks like a security corridor entrance. Could be a maintenance route.”
“Too risky. They’re scanning. We go through the crowd.”
Kristi breathes out slow. “I hate crowds.”
“You hate cameras more.”
She glances up at a passing drone—white-plated, council-issue, probably loaded with facial-mapping software and scent-trace ID.
Her lips twist. “True.”
We drift closer to the plaza’s center.
The stage rises ahead, glowing with polished synthwood and overengineered grace. Twin banners wave from its highest rig: one human, one Vakutan, fused at the edges in a mockery of unity. The crowd thickens as the hour nears.
This is where it starts.
And if we screw it up, this is where it ends.
I scan the platform’s supports. I know the schematics well enough to read the seams. There. Right beneath the central monolith. The access hatch glints in the shadows, barely visible under the draped silk stairs. Exactly where Kristi said it would be.
We just have to make it there.
“Do not run,” I say through clenched teeth.
“Wouldn’t dream of it.”
A cluster of uniformed officials crosses our path. One of them laughs, the sound too sharp, too polished. My hand drifts to my side blade, hidden in the ceremonial sash.
Kristi presses closer, her hip against mine for a heartbeat.
“Don’t,” she whispers. “Not yet.”
I freeze, every nerve vibrating like a live wire.
Her fingers dig into my wrist through the folds of ceremonial garb, a quiet anchor keeping me from lunging.
The Earth First enforcer in the red-trimmed civic guard uniform has been eyeing us too long.
He leans against the checkpoint post like he owns it, casual-like, but his posture’s wrong—too still.
Too practiced. The way a predator stands just before pouncing.
Kristi’s eyes flick toward the edge of the plaza, where the flow of festivalgoers tightens into a single artery feeding toward the stage steps. We don’t speak. We don’t have to.
The music blares louder. Some new anthem remix, designed to unify species and distract from the smell of rot beneath the gilded floors.
I nod once. Just a breath of a motion. Then shift back into the crowd’s pulse.
Two more steps.
Three.
The enforcer pushes off the wall.
“Hold it,” he calls.
I don't.
Kristi tightens her grip, just once, then lets go.
The crowd breaks around us as I pivot fast, like a dancer in battle stance. He’s already moving, hand reaching for the baton at his hip. My foot slides between his legs, weight shifting with trained precision, and I hook his wrist mid-draw.
He’s strong. But I’m angry.
A twist, a pop of cartilage, and his baton clatters against the plascrete.
Before he can shout, I drive my elbow into his throat—not enough to crush it, just enough to remind him who’s got the upper hand. He gasps, stumbles back, reaching for his comm bead.
I slam a shock pulse disk against his chest and hit the trigger.
The jolt knocks him off his feet. He spasms once, then hits the ground like a puppet with cut strings.
Kristi’s already moving.
“Door,” she snaps, voice taut with pain.
I turn. The security gate leading to the underground access is double-locked, a biometric reader glowing in red cycles.
She’s at the console in seconds, pulling a cracked palm-sized drive from her satchel. Wires snake out like vines, hissing against the panel’s surface. Her fingers blur across the touchpad.
I catch the scent of blood and ozone.
Her side’s bleeding again—fresh crimson soaking through the edge of her tunic where the wound tore open.
"Kristi—"
“Not now,” she bites out.
I turn my back to her and face the crowd.
A second enforcer's spotted the scuffle. He's pushing against the tide now, shouting something I can’t hear over the roar of the festival. Another shadow moves behind him—more coming.
“Three incoming,” I call.
“I need thirty seconds!”
I unsling the ceremonial staff on my back—hollowed, modified, rigged with a shock pulse core. It hisses alive in my grip. I plant my feet wide.
Let them come.
The first enforcer reaches me fast, baton raised. I sidestep, catch his wrist, and redirect his swing into the gut of the second one. Both stumble. I pivot, drive the butt of the staff into the first’s kneecap, shattering it clean.
A flash of movement to my left—someone’s got a stun baton drawn. I duck under the arc and slam the edge of the staff into his ribs. The pulse fires point-blank.
He goes down screaming.
Behind me, the door hisses open.
“Kenron!” Kristi yells.
I grab her arm, tuck her close, and we dive through the threshold. The door seals behind us with a low metallic growl.
Silence.
Darkness.
We’ve made it to the hub.
The walls breathe.
I swear to the gods, they do. The entire chamber pulses like a synthetic heart, lit with dull red glow from vein-like conduits snaking up from the floor.
In the center stands a control console the size of a dining table, its surface shimmering with pre-launch data.
Nanite dispersal arcs. Target recognition scans.
Countdown clocks that haven’t been triggered—yet.
Kristi limps toward the console, leaving a faint trail of blood on the floor.
I grab her elbow.
“You need—”
“I need to finish this.”
She shrugs out of my grip and slaps the shard into the input port. The console flares to life, code scrolling like furious scripture.
I watch her fingers dance.
Behind us, the sealed door vibrates once. A second time. They're trying to override it.
“Kristi.”
“Just a few more lines…”
“I’ll hold the line.”
She pauses.
Looks at me.
Eyes wide. Bright. Terrified.
But not weak.
“You always do,” she says.
Then she leans in and kisses me.
It’s not desperate. It’s not soft.
It’s everything.
And it might be the last.