Clay kept his composure. He had already half expected Klein to figure out who he was and why he was there. In many ways, dispensing with the cover simplified things. “If you’re so sure I’m not here to make a business deal, then why am I still alive, Klein?”
Klein laughed, regarded Clay’s plaser, turned it over several times, and finally tossed it back to Clay. “We’re all islands shouting lies to each other across seas of misunderstanding, Sean Clay. Give me a chance to prove it.”
Clay checked the weapon’s power cell. Unexpectedly, it was full. He powered it on and watched the charge load, then powered it off again. As near as he could tell, Klein hadn’t tampered with it in any way. “You expect to believe you really are a religious zealot who wants nothing but peace?” He debated pointing the gun at Klein’s head and demanding Keraunos, then remembered how Klein had shot the marshal on the Maguro without the slightest hesitation or emotion. He checked that Klein’s prosthetic arm was at his side, holstered the weapon, and nodded an insincere thank you.
“I may give that appearance as a shortcut to understanding my philosophies, but I’ve never encouraged any kind of faith in deities or spiritual nonsense. I’m trying to impart personal strength and self-reliance first and foremost, and then a desire to serve and help our fellow man.” Klein smirked. “Is there any part of this that you disagree with so far?”
Clay sat back and regarded Klein. “Mostly the cold-blooded killing part that you seem to enjoy with the fervor of a psychopath.”
“Psychopath!?” Klein furrowed his brow, dismissing the word. “I expected better insults from you.” He thought for a moment. “True, I have no trepidations about killing, few people on this planet do, but I like to think I reserve that only for those who deserve it.”
“Those kids tonight?”
“Ah, ‘do not let us mistake necessary evils for good,’” he turned to look out the window. “You are right. Three deaths. A Cerberus operative who was after Keraunos, a Dark Serpent assassin who was after me, and a man of questionable morals who, according to Prudence, had already assaulted and/or taken advantage of several of the girls in the camp. None of them had any real interest in joining us here at the temple. You’ll note I spared Mr. Nappal, who was generally harmless, but placed far too much faith in others, and too little in himself. Maybe he’ll find the strength to try again. If not, I consider it no great loss.”
“What about Annah?”
“A student of medicine and lover of music. Prudence has every faith in her. We think she will be a strong leader for us one day. Even if she decides not to join us, we will make her a formidable force in whatever profession she wishes to pursue.”
Clay resisted the urge to roll his eyes. “You can’t expect me to believe you set all this up as some sort of self-improvement school and ask only people to volunteer to be your front-line soldiers when they graduate.”
“Truth often suffers more by the heat of its defenders than from the arguments of its opposers, Mr. Clay.” Klein steepled his fingers under his chin. “Conscripts rarely make good soldiers, and there are enough of those on this planet anyway. Jade Shield will never have the numbers or the ruthlessness of a Cerberus, but we will make up for this with intellect, wisdom, and temperament. No, I believe you can change more minds with ideas, with words, even with art, than you can with guns and bombs.” He chuckled to himself. “The dead have difficulty learning new concepts, you see. By that metric, all of these anti-government factions have been dead for decades. They have no idea what Jade Shield truly is. Our tactics are subversion under the nose of oppression. Our weapons are the quill and voice. Our battlefield is the black market. Ground zero is Norinaga University.” He held his hands up in triumph, and without raising his voice, added, “and we’re winning, sir.”
“So, why do you need Keraunos if you’re an army of intellectuals who are so dead set against violence?”
Klein’s voice dropped half an octave, and his eyes became slits. “I don’t need Keraunos, Mr. Clay. You do.”
“In that case, seeing as how we’re not enemies, and you don’t really need it, you’ll just hand it over to me if I ask?” Clay gave his most charming smile.
Klein smiled back, laughed heartily, and pushed himself away from the desk. He pulled one of the hundreds of books off one of the shelves that lined the walls, and a small safe slid into view. It opened with a wave of his hand. From inside, he extracted a blue data rod, walked over to Clay, and placed it on the desk directly in front of him. Clay could make out the “Locke Industries” logo, embossed in gold on one side.
Clay leaned forward and picked up the Rod. He thought of a dozen ways Klein could kill him right now as he turned it over slowly in his hands.
“It’s quite genuine, I assure you. At least it had better be. It cost me quite a fortune.” Klein chuckled.
“So, what is it?” Clay asked, frustrated.
Klein laughed harder. “Honestly, I was hoping you knew. To me, it is encrypted gibberish, and nothing more than a means to annoy both Prevo and Cerberus simultaneously.”
“Which one does your friend Obryn work for? He didn’t impress me as one of yours.”
“A foolish alliance on my part.” Klein sneered and shook his head. “He’s something of an up-and-comer who had advance knowledge of Keraunos and Locke’s travel itinerary. I had a lot more faith in him back then than I do now. Rumor has it that he has been cozying up with anyone he can to get hold of that and making promises he can’t possibly keep. We parted ways as soon as we got back from Excipio station. I should have killed him then, but at least this way I decided to add his annoyance to Cerberus’ and Prevo’s by acquiring that directly from Talbot,” he chuckled, then added, “for considerably more than I think Locke was hoping to get out of it, I might add.”
“We think it’s a newtech weapon. We also think someone wants to manufacture it here, on Notosia, and manipulated Locke into coming here. You don’t have those kinds of capabilities. What were you hoping it was?”
“Locke was no fool, Clay. He should have known he was a dead man six different ways, whether he made a deal with one of the factions, the government, the syndicates, or even if he tried to return home. I at least offered him a chance at a long life.”
A shadow crossed over the moon in the window behind Klein. Clay’s heart sank. “If only you could say the same for us,” he muttered, quickly pocketing the datarod.
Klein looked confused and walked to the window. “What did you see?”
Clay walked up next to him and looked out at the sea, illuminated by the moon. “I’m not up on your local birdlife, but if that’s what it was, it had a wingspan of nearly three meters.”
“Nonsense,” Klein said, leaning forward to catch any sign of what Clay was talking about.
Seconds later, the shape appeared again. It was spirally descending over the estate. “That’s no bird. It’s a glider,” Clay gasped.
“A glider? Who would be on a glider at this time of night?”
Clay moaned and pulled the plaser from its holster. “A particularly persistent ninja who stole that for Tachibana’s Shadow before Talbot used his leverage to force the girl to betray everyone and give it to you. I’d alert your guards. Also, if we get out of this alive, I’d have this place swept for transmitters. His arrival seconds after you pulled that out of the safe is too much of a coincidence.”
Klein walked to the desk and pressed a button. “Intruder on the compound. Guards to the roof and ground level.” An alarm sounded in the distance, and outside the doors, Clay heard a half-dozen people shouting orders to each other.
“You don’t have any other way out of this room? A safe room? A secret passage?”
“This is the safe room. There’s a passage up to the bedroom on the top floor. Not exactly the direction we want to be heading right now.” He typed a command on the desk’s holoterminal, and Clay heard seals engage on the large door at the front of the office. Klein gestured to the monitor, which showed the ninja, having already landed on the roof and dispatched the guards there, smashing open the skylight and swinging down to the balcony directly in front of the third-floor bedroom. Stopping only to incapacitate the lone guard who ran from the room to challenge him, Hei Gezi then leaped over the railing, disappearing from the camera view completely.
There was a clamor of shouted orders and gunfire in the living room outside, several of which sounded as if they had struck the large doors to the study. Eventually, shouts turned to screams of desperation and agony, then gradually subsided. There was only the faintest sound of scratching from directly on the other side of the study’s entrance.
The seals hissed open again, and the door to the study clicked and slid back. Clay ducked behind the desk next to Klein and aimed his gun at the entrance. Hei Gezi stood in the doorway, sword in one hand and a hysterical guard acting as an improvisational shield in the other. The guard was missing his right arm at the elbow and was just taking his blood-soaked left hand from the door lock controls. The ninja pushed the guard through the doorway, slashed his neck with the sword, then crouched and darted for the room’s left wall.
Clay fired twice, wildly missing as Hei Gezi closed the distance, vaulted the desk, and landed flat-footed on the other side. He grabbed the gun and bent it forward, stripping it out of Clay’s hand. Klein attempted to grab the sword with his cybernetic arm, but the ninja was faster, twirling it with great dexterity as he stuck the point in Klein’s leg just above the knee. The big man lost his balance and fell backward, firing once with the dart launcher in his arm. Hei Gezi switched his killing lunge into a blocking sweep that deflected Klein’s dart. Clay slammed into him, sending both reeling. The ninja pivoted, flipped Clay so that he hit the desk square in the middle of his back, then spun, stopping when the flat of the sword was lying across Clay’s throat. Suddenly, the room was quiet. Clay could hear Klein whimpering in the corner behind the desk, and his own heart pounding in his ears.
“Talbot is dead,” Clay said hastily. The ninja froze in his tracks. “Your girlfriend is about to be in a world of pain. I can help her. Why don’t we strike a bargain?”
Behind the mask and goggles, the ninja tilted his head as if sizing him up. For a moment, Clay thought he might even agree to a deal. In a flash, the sword was lifted and Hei Gezi’s hand turned, preparing to bring the butt down on Clay’s face. Clay blocked it reflexively this time, half-surprising himself when he succeeded.
“Look,” he said, leaping backward over the console and positioning himself on the opposite side. “Can you go with the right side for once? Between the two of you, the left temple is starting to get sore.”
The black-clad figure showed no sign of understanding what he was saying and planted a knee square into Clay’s abdomen. Before Clay could regain his balance, he was thrown over a chair and into a large marble pedestal, nearly knocking over the stone sculpture on top. He grabbed the sculpture and lunged forward, swinging it at the ninja’s head. Its unexpected weight and the earlier kick to his stomach caused him to stumble with the weight of it.
The ninja merely leaned backward, neatly dodged the swing, and followed up with a backflip that put two feet into Clay’s chin. He landed on his feet again, a split second later. Clay, laying on the ground, momentarily oblivious as to how he got there, opened his eyes to find the point of a sword centimeters from his face.
“Listen to me,” Clay insisted. “I’ve got the last five doses of Shard on this entire planet and the possible means to make more off-world. If you kill me, that knowledge goes with me.”
Hei Gezi said nothing but held his left hand out, sword still pointing directly between Clay’s eyes.
“Yeah, okay, you’re younger, faster, and better trained than me, and you’ve got the pointy thing there.” He slowly reached into his jacket pocket beneath his holster. “But you know what I have?” He retrieved a small cylindrical object and placed it in the ninja’s hand, then rolled onto his stomach, curling into a fetal position.
The stuncap went off instantly, sending Hei Gezi backward three meters and into the wall. The ninja landed in a crumpled heap, writhing in pain.
“Brains!” Clay yelled as he stood up and bolted for Klein, ignoring his slightly blurred vision and ringing ears. “Klein, we’ve got to move!”
“Ask for me tomorrow, and you shall find me a grave man.” The big man was panting and winced in pain. “I’ll be fine, but right now I’ll only slow you down. Take the datarod and go!”
Clay kept the stunned ninja in the corner of his eye, still down for now. “How do I get to your roof?”
Klein nodded. “Third floor utility closet. There’s a ladder.”
Clay put a hand on the big man’s shoulder, then turned and scurried out of the study. He crossed the wide parlor underneath the bedroom balcony, broken glass from the shattered skylight reflecting moonlight like stars. The room was eerily silent. He decided to take a chance and ran up the stairs, watching the hallway below for Hei Gezi. When he reached the third floor, he opened all the doors and compartments until he found the ladder leading to the roof. He quickly darted up, opened the access hatch at the end, and climbed out.
Two nearly full moons bathed the roof in moonlight, allowing him to maneuver confidently. After a few seconds of searching, he found what he was looking for. He hefted the weighty gliderpack over his back and slid his arms through the control sleeves. It took longer than he’d hoped to find the power-up switch and adjust the fittings — long enough for a familiar figure to emerge from the shadows, marching toward him with purpose.
Clay backed away, still attempting to adjust the chest piece so he didn’t slip out of the pack as soon as he was airborne. Hei Gezi grabbed his shoulder with his left hand and hit him with a palm strike under the chin with his right. It was a simple attack and now required both hands to position the target.
“So, the stuncap took something out of you. Normally, I would never resort to a cheap tactic like that, but it’s nice to know you’re mortal after all.”
Though he was seeing stars, Clay decided to press his luck and charged back at the ninja, knocking them both over and to the ground. He managed to haul himself upright, put both fists together, and pounded them into Hei Gezi’s face as hard as he could. Unfortunately, his opponent, still faster, deflected them and tilted his head, only catching a glancing blow before using Clay’s momentum to flip him off and onto his back.
Clay was still catching his breath when the Ninja silently pounced on him, planting a knee squarely in his groin and a fist in his solar plexus.
Completely disoriented, Clay kicked wildly, knocking Hei Gezi off of him and onto his side. He quickly stumbled to his feet and aimed his gun squarely at the masked man, at the same time making sure he was far from any potential hand or fist attacks. The ninja froze, watching him, making no attempt to stand up.
“Okay, look,” Clay said, panting for air. “I’ve got your toys, I’ve got Keraunos, I’ve got the Shard. I’ve won. Maybe your stupid ninja code requires death before the dishonor of admitting defeat, but at least tell the girl I’m willing to save her.”
Hei Gezi still did not move. He lay on his side and regarded Clay. It might have been defeat, curiosity, or even amazement. There was no way to tell beyond the featureless mask and goggles.
“You know what, fuck it. You’ve really pissed me off. I’ll tell her myself.” He pulled the trigger of the gun a split second after the shuriken embedded itself in his wrist, causing the shot to veer wildly. At his wits’ end, Clay threw the gun as hard as he could at the ninja’s head, also missing completely, ran for the cliff-side edge of the roof, and leaped off into the night.
He waited five seconds before hitting the deploy button that extended the glider’s wings. With an ominous “whump,” he heard the struts and fabric deploy, and instantly, his free-fall velocity became lateral momentum. He sailed out over the ocean, located the amphib where Ness was waiting to retrieve him, and banked right, putting himself on a direct course. He cursed himself for letting his rage unbalance him to the point that he had nearly gotten himself killed just now, simply to show up an upstart assassin, and he was the only one who knew how dangerously close he had just come to splattering himself on the cliffside if he’d misunderstood the gliderpack’s controls.
At least one primary objective was complete. He finally had Keraunos. He patted his jacket where he had stuck the data rod and found it empty.
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