Justice Keepers Saga - Books 7-9

Chapter 5-1

As he entered Larani"s quarters aboard the Alarinto, Jack noted that her sitting room was very much like his own. A sofa on the back wall was sandwiched between two small tables that supported lamps, each one filling the room with golden light.

AlarintoLarani sat in a chair that faced the wall to his right, a tablet held up in front of her face as she perused its contents. “Thank you for coming,” she murmured, barely aware of his presence.

Jack stood in the doorway with his hands in his pockets, his lips compressed into a nervous frown. “You asked to see me,” he said, stepping into the room. “And since we"re going to be disembarking in an hour, I assume it"s serious.”

“It is.” Larani tossed her tablet onto the coffee table with no care for whether she damaged the electronics. Not that there was much to worry about. Leyrian tech was built to last. Still, Jack cringed to witness it. “I just received a status update an hour ago, when we dropped out of warp to make contact with Leyria. Leo has escaped.”

Jack looked up to fix his gaze upon her, then narrowed his eyes. “Leo escaped,” he said, nodding once. “The man I locked away over a year ago is now loose and most likely terrorizing my family.”

“It"s unlikely he would go that far.”

It was all he could do not to snap at his new boss. After all the s**t he"d put up with in his short life, he"d developed something of an outer zen composed of snark and random pop-culture references, but even he had his limits. Damn it, did this woman even read the reports that came across her desk.

The last time Leo was free, he went after Harry and promised him that Melissa and Claire would be his next targets. He did that because Jack had survived not one, but two of Leo"s attempts to kill him. The man seemed to take it as a personal challenge. He went after the people Jack loved most. “When did this happen?”

“Two nights ago,” Larani said. “Just after we left Earth.”

A frown tightened his mouth, but he nodded slowly in response to that. “So, we start looking into Leo"s mysterious benefactor,” he began, “and not twenty-four hours later, he decides to go all Virgil Hilts on us?”

“What are you saying?”

“Methinks the timing doth coincide too much.”

Of course, Larani would have reached the same conclusion, and when he saw her in that chair with her hands folded over her stomach, staring blankly at the wall, Jack knew that he had voiced her biggest fear. “I thought the same thing,” she said. “And that means someone has been keeping an eye on us.”

“Any ideas about who?”

“We have very little to go on,” Larani said. “Remember Onica Myers? The young woman we met the other day? Her code was used to open the door to Leo"s cell, but she fled Station Six before anyone knew that something was amiss. No one knows where she is now. Most likely somewhere on Earth"s surface. And it gets worse.”

“There"s worse?” Jack spluttered.

Larani got up with a grunt, standing with arms folded and shaking her head. “The man you and Harry brought in six months ago,” she said. “The one that you encountered while retrieving the first cipher.”

“Arin.”

“Yes. He"s gone too.”

Jack found himself pacing; this was just too much for him to deal with. Two of the most dangerous men he had locked up in the past year released at the same time. It was like someone had grabbed his stomach and squeezed as hard as they could. Summer tried to calm him down, but it wasn"t working. “What do we know?”

“Not much,” Larani admitted. “Their trail goes cold after they left the station. We don"t know how they got off, but the most reasonable answer is through a SlipGate. After that they, they could have gone anywhere. Perhaps down to the planet"s surface, perhaps to a ship. However, it"s very likely that they"ll flee to a remote star system at the earliest opportunity. Chances are we"ll never see them again.”

Hissing air through his teeth, Jack nodded slowly. “You"re right,” he said. “That is the most probable scenario, but it"s not what Leo will do. The guy"s got an itch he cannot wait to scratch.”

“And what itch is that?”

“Me,” Jack said. “Leo"s coming here.”

Anyone stupid enough to become chief director of the Justice Keepers had better make friends with it exhaustion because they would be living with it for a very, very long time. Two weeks on Earth spent bolstering diplomatic relations between her people and the locals followed by three days on a starship, and now – the very instant she set foot on Leyrian soil – someone was waiting in her office.

Operative Kaz Torens was a tall and skinny man in gray pants and a black jacket, a handsome young Keeper who wore his black hair cut short and neat. “Director Tal,” he said. “We have news.”

“I would imagine as much.”

“Ma"am?”

Larani strode across the floor tiles with a heavy sigh, shaking her head. “I assume you wouldn"t be here otherwise,” she snapped. Her crankiness was bordering on outright unprofessional behaviour, but she had just disembarked from a long flight. “Out with it, Kaz; I need details.”

The man tapped at his multi-tool, ordering the room"s holographic projectors to create an image that floated between the two of them. An amorphous blue blob that just hung there. She could see Kaz standing behind it with a frown on his face, and that left her feeling uneasy. Larani recognized the shape.

“Leyrian Space,” she said.

The young man shut his eyes and nodded to her. “Yes, ma"am,” he said. “While you were returning from Earth, several border patrols reported back. The sensor data that they shared is quite unnerving.”

Thankfully, she didn"t have to ask him to elaborate. Kaz just lifted his forearm and tapped more commands into his multi-tool. Red dots appeared on the right-most edge of the blob, labeled as Belos, Alios and Palissa respectively. The Fringe Worlds? What were the Antaurans up to?

But it wasn"t the Fringe Worlds that had Kaz feeling so uneasy; she could see that as he modified the image further. Small white dots appeared beyond the left-most edge of Leyrian Space, in what would be the unoccupied region between Leyria and Earth. Most people referred to that part of the Galaxy as Dead Space, and for good reason.

left-most“Several Keepers on missions near the border of Dead Space had detected these strange sensor blips.”

Larani felt her mouth tighten, then lowered her eyes to stare at her shoes. “Sensor blips,” she said, eyebrows rising. “And you have no idea what they are? You weren"t able to identify those ships?”

“It"s very difficult to identify a ship at warp, ma"am,” he said in tones that made his irritation known. “You can determine how large each ship is by its warp trail, but-”

“Yes, yes, I know,” she cut in. Damn it but she really was in a foul mood today. It wasn"t Kaz"s fault – and she normally prided herself on a certain level of decorum – but the poor young man had stepped into her office at the wrong time. “So, how big are they? Let"s start with that.”

“Some are as large as a battle cruiser.”

“And where are they going?”

“We don"t know.”

Tilting her head back, Larani closed her eyes and tried to stifle her irritation. “You don"t know,” she mumbled. “Well, have you liaised with the Space Corps to determine if they"ve encountered these sensor blips?”

Through a transparent hologram of blue light, she saw Kaz standing there with his arms hanging limp, his eyes downcast. “No, ma"am,” he said. “We wanted your approval before we talked to anyone.”

“Why should my approval matter?”

A wave of Kaz"s hand caused the hologram to wink out, and then he let out a sigh. This subject was prickly for him. “We think these are Ragnosian ships making incursions to our side of the galaxy.”

“All the more reason to share this data.”

Kaz sat down on her desk with hands gripping the edge, his head turned so that he wouldn"t have to look at her. “Ma"am, you"ve heard the anti-Ragnosian sentiment in our media,” he said. “In light of Councilor Dusep"s posturing, we thought it best to-”

Larani squinted at the man, unable to squelch the loathing she felt. “To withhold vital information from the elected representatives of this planet,” she barked. “Have you forgotten what it means to be a Keeper, Operative Torens?”

“No, ma"am, I-”

“At what point did you decide that it was within our mandate to determine whether the Leyrian people were capable of handling sensitive information. When exactly did we become the arbiters of what should be classified and what should be public knowledge.”

“Ma"am Dusep has been vilifying us for weeks and using his platform to stir up a virulent Leyrian nationalism.” The young man was fuming with every breath, obviously trying to restrain his anger. “If this data were to become public knowledge-”

“It doesn"t matter,” Larani said. “We"re protectors of the community, not governors. It"s not our job to determine what people are ready to know. We can only share what we find and trust them to do what"s right.”

“Liaise with the Space Corps,” she said. “Find out what they know, and prepare a report on your findings. I"ll deliver it to Council this afternoon.”

“Yes, ma"am.”

A brass railing atop a metal wall at the edge of this open-air restaurant overlooked a five-hundred-foot drop. Down below, the dilapidated buildings of an old city stood silent, many with holes where windows should be. They all looked very much the same from up here: tall, rectangular and gray.

Of course, on the surface, things were anything but quiet. You couldn"t tell from up here, but the surface was a wonderful place to visit if you wanted a brush with violence. Gangs roamed the streets; the d**g trade was getting out of hand, and violent crime was on the rise. But up here, on Racada Island, everything was peaceful.

He could see another floating island maybe twenty kilometers away, hovering over the city. Saucer-shaped structures that maintained their altitude through anti-gravity tech, the islands were home to the Ragnosian upper class.

From here, he could see trees atop the one in the distance, gardens and parks and other outdoor facilities. That island was very much like the one on which he now stood: four or five stories tall, over half a kilometer in diameter and filled to bursting with idiots who insisted on troubling him with their trivial concerns.

In black pants and a long coat that fell almost to his knees, its collar buttoned over his white linen shirt, Grecken Slade stood with his hands on the railing. A gust of wind caused his long, dark hair to stream out behind him.