He flicks his hands at me. “Are you demented?” he asks as he approaches me. “I almost flattened you!” He’s at least a foot and a half taller than me and he’s all brawn with short, military-style hair. His Cavar uniform is that of an officer. The tribal tattoos on his neck are a comforting sight. “Who are you? What are you doing in the middle of the Beezway?”
Blood is roaring in my veins. He comes and stands right in front of me. From my pocket, I pull out the harbinger. As I point the weapon at him, I’m surprised that my hand isn’t trembling. “Take me to the detention area,” I order him. “Now!”
He glances at the harbinger in my hand for a second, and then he meets my gaze. Before I can react, his hand closes over my heavy weapon, pulling it out of my grasp. His other enormous hand wraps around my neck. He twists me around so that my back slams hard against the front of his black hovercar. Holding the harbinger he confiscated from me to my forehead, he says through clenched teeth, “Give me a reason not to kill you.”
I wheeze and cough, all the air inside me knocked out. “Baw-da-baw,” I manage to say as he squeezes my throat so hard that tears come to my eyes. Immediately, his grip on my throat eases. I cough more and gasp for air.
Thump. I turn my head as an Alameeda missile hits the Ship of Skye in the distance, sending out a rolling wave of fireworks. The shock of the blast causes the tunnel in front of us to shudder and then collapse. Rock dust spews outward, shadowing the destruction. It cuts off the flow of traffic, making it impossible to move in the direction the hovercars were traveling. Had the hovercar I stopped kept going, everyone inside would be dead now, crushed beneath the weight of the tunnel ceiling. A fast-moving vehicle behind us isn’t able to stop in time. It crashes into the caved-in debris and explodes into an inferno. More hovercars follow it into death.
“It’s the Alameeda,” I say, when the soldier with his hand to my neck looks down at me, “they’re attacking.”
With a grim expression, the Cavar tightens his grip once more. “Really? I hadn’t noticed the triple nitronium fritzwinter sonicdrites hitting the ship! ” he growls. “Who are you?”
“It doesn’t matter. Cavars are trapped in the detention center—Trey Allairis, Jax Roule, Wayra Waters—they’re locked in cells, guarded by Brigadets. If we don’t get them out, they’re dead.”
He lets go of my neck and sweeps the cowl of the red overcoat off my head. My wet hair falls in waves onto the hovercar’s shiny black veneer. “You’re the Alameeda priestess—Kricket Hollowell—the one Wayra has been guarding,” he states.
“You know Wayra?”
“The wacker owes me money!” he says.
“It’s going to be tough to collect; the Brigadets have him incarcerated in the detention area. He’s likely to die in there with the Alameeda attacking.”
“You’re Alameeda,” he says with renewed hostility, pressing the barrel of the harbinger harder against my forehead. I wince.
“Yes. You got me. You should take me back to the detention center where I belong,” I suggest.
“Maybe I should just kill you as a traitor,” he counters with a malicious sneer on his lips.
“Kesek Alez,” a voice behind him says, addressing his superior as the rank of major, “she may not be a traitor. Look at this!”
“Report, Cyphon,” Kesek Alez growls. He pulls me off the hood, twisting me around so that my back is to him. One of his hands holds my neck while the other presses the harbinger to my temple.
In front of me, two armed combat-uniformed Cavars have their weapons drawn on me. The other two Cavars on the transport I stopped have exited the vehicle and are now trying to stop the traffic from plowing into the death trap ahead of them.
The one who spoke holsters his weapon, saying, “HQ is running this on a loop.” The one I take to be Cyphon holds his arm out in front of us. From the watchlike band on his wrist, a mini-hologram projects a surveillance camera view of me appearing out of thin air in the commissary. The image of me then points to the middle of the room—the Brigadet I was near soon fires on the spot, and then moments later, the Alameeda soldier falls out of the circle.
The soldier with the wrist hologram looks at his commanding officer. “It looks like she was trying to help the Brigadets.”
Kesek Alez turns me loose. I step a few feet from him and pivot to face him. He frowns at his subordinate. “I don’t give a fat shickle, Cyphon, if she was trying to help the Brigadets. Right now she’s impeding us.”
I interrupt them. “I just saved your lives from that.” I point to the debris in the road. “I need transport to the detention area. Gennet Trey Allairis is being detained by Brigadets,” I lie. “They claim to be the authority here. Defense Minister Vallen would never have allowed that. He would’ve appointed Cavars to be in charge of Rafe’s defenses.” Honestly, I have no idea what Defense Minister Vallen would or wouldn’t have done in this situation.
“They’re calling Gennet Trey a traitor too,” Kesek Alez says with an arrogant sneer. “And he has escaped from the detention center. There are bulletins alerting us to the fact that he’s armed and extremely dangerous.”
“Sir,” Cyphon interjects, “I served under Gennet Allairis when he was Kesek. I’ll never believe anyone who tells me he’s a traitor.”
I latch on to Cyphon’s bit of support. “If you don’t give them the benefit of the doubt, all the detained Cavars in those cells will die if this ship goes down. Let them fight for their lives against the Alameeda. You can figure out their guilt or innocence after we survive.”
“If they’re traitors and I let them out, they can destroy this ship!” Kesek Alez shoves his finger in my face.
“Take me there—talk to Wayra—you know he’s not a traitor—if you know him at all, then you know that.”
Kesek Alez thinks for a moment, seeming to be swayed for a moment by my argument. Touching a spot on the collar of his combat armor, he activates a communicator. He speaks into it, “Command: we’ve intercepted a fugitive in the area of Griffin Flow and Hurst Haven.”
“Identify fugitive,” a fem-bot voice pipes in from the console within the vehicle near us as well as the earpiece that Kesek Alez has.
“Kricket Hollowell,” he states.
There is hardly any pause at all before he gets a response. “Remain where you are—sending fugitive transport to secure prisoner,” the feminine voice coos through the speaker.
“You knob knocker! You can’t give me to them! Why won’t you help us? You’re a Cavar!” I scream at Kesek Alez in frustration.