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  There was no sign of human activity anywhere. No one asked for their ID or was tracking their transponder or giving them landing instructions. Annie assumed that the Runners had already taken out whatever few poor bastards worked on this dismal outpost.

  “They’ll get you again,” Annie said, pulling back and slowing down the SRV. “The World Council, I mean.”

  “We’ll see about that,” Ivan said dismissively.

  “Screw the WC. I’ll get you, you son of a bitch,” Jordan said.

  Ivan looked at him but said nothing.

  He focused on the screens over their shoulders, his pulse gun aimed steadily at the back of Annie’s head. Their landing on the tarmac was smooth and, on the rearview display, he saw the battle cruiser trailing behind them, lumbering like a behemoth on such a small ramp.

  Annie brought the SRV to a gradual stop. Her grip on the controls tight, her knuckles white knobs.

  “Okay,” Ivan said. “Wait until the cruiser comes to a full stop. Then open the commlink.”

  Annie flipped some switches to start powering down the SRV.

  And Ivan quickly shot out: “No! Leave her running.”

  “They’ll notice if we don’t power down.”

  “Maybe not. And you. Jordan.” He had the gunner’s full attention. “Don’t get any last-ditch heroic ideas about shooting it out, ‘kay?”

  Jordan eyed him steadily, coldly sizing him up.

  For a coffin, no doubt.

  “All you’ll accomplish is seeing your captain’s brains decorating the controls. If I’m fast enough, yours as well.”

  “You’re a son of a—”

  Before he finished, the commlink chirped.

  “Ivan Delgato, I’m bringing our cruiser alongside the SRV.”

  “In front, Commander. Move your ship directly in front of the SRV.”

  A pause.

  Confusion perhaps?

  “I’m your commanding officer,” Ivan said sternly. “That’s an order.”

  Then: “Yes, sir.”

  ~ * ~

  The cruiser slowly rolled past the SRV, towering over it and casting a thick wash of shadow across the tarmac as it passed before finally coming to a stop in front of them.

  Piece of cake for the forward gun, Annie thought.

  “You can—” the commander started to say.

  “Commander.” Ivan’s voice was firm. In control. “Bring a squad out to take possession of this vehicle, its cargo, and its passengers.”

  “And do what?”

  Annie shivered when she heard Ivan laugh.

  “Like I said. Whatever the hell you want. But I can’t stand here all day holding a gun to their heads. Get a move on.”

  “We’re heading out even as we speak.”

  Then silence in the cockpit as they waited. Sweat ran down Annie’s neck, and she was thinking: Is there anything, anything, Jordan and I can do?

  She remembered all too well what had been done to all those people on the stations along the way. The death from the warrows. The devastation on Hydra Salim.

  No question what’s going to happen to us.

  She thought: A last-ditch hopeless effort may be the only card I have left to play.

  Jordan was thinking the same thing, she knew.

  Annie tried to think through her limited possibilities.

  They didn’t have many ... but the SRV’s engines were still running.

  ~ * ~

  Ivan watched as the battle cruiser’s hatch opened, a giant clamshell, slowly sliding open, wide enough to drive the SRV into its massive cargo bay.

  The cruiser’s commander appeared first, walking ... strutting, leading two rows of Runners—twenty soldiers in all, each one holding a pulse rifle at the ready.

  Good, Ivan thought, not too many.

  For a moment, he scanned their faces.

  Do I know any of them? Have I led any of these Runners?

  Before they turned into a paranoid homicidal organization that seemed intent on turning the Road into one endless, bloody battlefield.

  But the faces were all young. Hard faces. Chiseled. Good material for the type of destruction best carried out by those who don’t question orders.

  Maybe Kyros had purged the ranks of any loyalists—Runners who would question this “war” against the World Council, his attempt to grab power and hold on to it with the threat of death.

  “You bastard,” Annie muttered as the line of Runners marched closer, their figures resolving from the heat haze.

  Ivan noticed Jordan’s hand drifting slowly toward the pulse cannon controls.

  “I wouldn’t do that.”

  Outside, the commander raised his right hand to the headset on his helmet.

  “Prepare to be boarded.”

  His voice filled the cockpit.

  Ivan could sense Annie and Jordan both tensing up, waiting for the order that would expose their ship—and her passengers—to whatever hell the Runner commander decided to inflict on them.

  “Jordan,” Ivan said, his voice mild—pleasant.

  The gunner turned and glared at him.

  Ivan handed his gun back over to him.

  The gunner looked at his handgun, stunned—then at Ivan.

  “You son of a bitch,” he said as a slow smile crept across his face.

  “There they are,” Ivan said, his voice sounding hollow even to his own ears. He wondered again if he was betraying any men who had served him so loyally.

  “Look at all those Runners …” After a brief, stunned silence, Ivan said, “Do what you do best.”

  Jordan snatched his gun and jammed it back into his holster while, in one fluid move, he turned back to the cockpit window.

  And grabbed the controls for the forward gun.

  And then, with blasts rocketing out of the SRV, the line of Runners— out in the open—was exposed.

  The commander spun around and fell to the ground like a discarded toy. A line of dust kicked up where the pulse cannon ripped into the sand and asphalt a few meters in front of the line of men.

  Jordan’s blasts swept viciously back and forth across the line.

  All of the men—well-trained, Ivan noticed—hit the tarmac, flattening themselves to make the smallest targets possible. Some ran left and right, dodging for cover.

  It took only a few seconds. The air filled with dust.

  Only the commander lay dead on the ground, red seeping from his head into the sand.

  “If I were you, I’d go for their main guns,” Ivan said. “Her shields are down with the loading bay door open.”

  Jordan didn’t need the prompt.

  He was already moving his sights up from the now-pinned boarding party to the four turret guns on the front and side of the cruiser.

  No fire came from any of them ... and by the time anyone could get to them and power up, each gun had been turned into a twisted, charred crater of glowing, smoking metal.

  “Good eye,” Ivan said, as if Jordan needed to be told. “But I noticed you didn’t take out any men, except for the commander.”

  “Yeah. I won’t kill anyone in cold blood no matter how much they might deserve it.”

  Ivan raised an eyebrow.

  There was more to Jordan than he thought.

  Then: “Okay, Captain ... I’d say it’s time you got us the hell out of here.”

  “Agreed.”

  Annie revved up the SRV’s engine even as Jordan kept puckering the cruiser with blasts. He aimed at—and hit—the forward wheel carriage. The huge battle cruiser lurched heavily to one side, threatening to topple over like a wounded elephant. Support struts snapped like toothpicks.

  Annie glanced at Ivan, not saying a word.

  “You’re a man of many surprises, Mr. Delgato,” Jordan said.

  Ivan looked at him and laughed but said nothing.

  Annie turned the SRV around, no longer threatened now that the ba
ttle cruiser was crippled where it stood. And then the SRV pulled away from the burning wreckage, heading toward a ramp that led to the way station’s nearby portal.

  Jordan looked a tad frustrated, now that there wasn’t anything left to shoot at. Maybe it had been too easy.

  Ivan grabbed a rail to steady himself as the SRV lunged forward, engine whining.

  “I still have to get those panels deionized,” Annie said, frustration and worry in her voice.

  Behind them, a thick column of black smoke billowed into the sky from the burning battle cruiser. Men were running around, their figures diminishing rapidly as Annie increased the SRV’s speed.

  ~ * ~

  “There,” Sinjira said to Rodriguez. “You should be fine.”

  “What’s the hell’s going on?” he said. “We’re leaving already?”

  Sinjira slid into the seat across the aisle from the scientist and buckled in.

  “Appears that way.”

  “What was all that shooting about? I thought we were being boarded, that the Runners had ...”

  Sinjira raised her eyebrows. “Go figure, Doc.”

  Then she turned to look at the cockpit door. Ivan hadn’t returned to the passenger cabin yet.

  What’s happening up there? she wondered. Is he helping the captain get away?

  If so ... then the woman sitting up front, Ruth, the wide-eyed Seeker, had done something that saved all their lives.

  Might need to reevaluate her, Sinjira thought, but for now, all she could think was how tired she was. She tried to settle into her seat as the G-forces increased.

  Reevaluate her, and Ivan, and Rodriguez, and—

  Another thought, this one unexpected ...

  Maybe even myself.

  Look at me playing a nurse. Caring for the wounded.

  Will wonders ever cease?

  Apparently not on this trip.

  Another, stronger wave of exhaustion washed over her. Maybe once they got back onto the Road, she and the rest of them could catch up on some much-needed sleep.

  Maybe ... but not likely.

  ~ * ~

  “Hang on tight,” Annie said to Ivan. “It isn’t recommended that you enter a portal standing up.”

  Her eyes were fixed on the screens and the fluctuating readings, checking the readouts and displays to see if the battle had left the SRV with any fatal weaknesses. Ivan spoke, his voice low.

  “Done it before. Builds character.”

  “Um ... I bet.”

  “How’s the deionization?” Jordan asked.

  “Fluctuating all over the board.” Annie looked grim. “We’ll be lucky if we don’t burn her out on this next stretch.”

  And then they entered the spinning luminescent wringers. After a momentary feeling of disorientation as everything in the universe dilated, they were out of the portal and onto the Star Road again.

  ~ * ~

  This section of the Star Road appeared to be endlessly straight, as though it might never curve one way or the other again.

  Good time for a nap, after everything we’ve been through.

  “Everything looking good?” Jordan asked. He stifled a yawn behind his hand and shook his head.

  “Amazingly, yes. The deflectors still show too much heat buildup. But the core’s within safety parameters. If we keep our speed down, we should be okay until we get to—”

  She stopped.

  Ivan had let go of the railing and come up behind her, looking at the screens over her shoulder.

  “Do you mind?” she asked.

  “It’s just... I’ve never been in a SRV cockpit before,” he said.

  Annie shook her head, amused.

  “Well, we should be okay until we get to Omega Nine. No more stops.”

  She glanced to Ivan.

  “I guess we...you still want to go there, right? Even after what just happened?”

  He nodded. “Now more than ever.”

  The Road was straight, no speeders, no battle cruiser, no Road Bugs. Jordan turned to Ivan.

  “That was some trick you pulled back there. Had me a touch nervous for a while.”

  “It worked. That’s what counts.”

  “True enough. But you could have gotten us all killed.”

  “I didn’t, though, did I?”

  A pause as everyone adjusted to the feel of the Road.

  “I had to convince you if I was going to convince the commander.”

  “But they’re after you,” Annie said. “They were coming to free you. Isn’t that what you want?”

  She looked at Jordan. “I don’t get it. Do you?”

  Then back to Ivan. “So why don’t you explain, nice and slow, so even Jordan will understand.”

  “Up yours,” Jordan said.

  Ivan grinned.

  He’s enjoying this, she thought. And she reminded herself that he had at one time been the leader of the Runners.

  Nothing more than a pirate of the Road.

  And yet...

  He just saved our lives—again.

  Her guess was he had his reasons, and they probably had nothing do with the lives of the people on the SRV. In the end, they were all probably expendable.

  “Okay. Story time,” Ivan said, rubbing his hands together. “This time, a true tale. And why we need to get to Omega Nine ...”

  ~ * ~

  Annie made sure the cockpit door was bolted. Until she knew Ivan’s story, she didn’t want anyone else hearing it.

  This trip’s been crazy and bloody enough as it is.

  Annie nodded. Jordan sniffed and shook his head, eyes focused ahead on the Road.

  “After my conviction—for treason—the head of covert operations for the World Council met with me and offered me a deal.”

  Annie was already skeptical.

  “I could be released—I would be released—if I did something for the World Council.”

  Jordan shook his head. “So while everyone’s thinking Ivan Delgato, the ruthless leader of the Runners, has been sent to an off-world penal colony, the council is cutting deals?”

  “I might question the word ‘ruthless.’ Some people don’t think the World Council has the right to control the Road. Even some council members. People want the Road open and free ... to everyone who wants to take the risks.”

  “Yeah. I heard that speech before,” Jordan said. “You can save it.”

  “What did they ask you to do?” Annie asked, still not convinced.

  “Ever hear the expression: ‘The enemy of my enemy is my friend?’ “

  Annie nodded.

  “They let me go so I could cut a deal with my brother Kyros. Or stop him. He took over leadership of the Runners after I was captured. But as soon as he did, things started changing.”

  “No shit,” Jordan said.

  “The council saw that my capture didn’t weaken the Runners. It only made them stronger. And now under Kyros, worse. What was that word you used, Jordan?”

  “Ruthless?”

  “Yeah. Ruthless. The Runners attacked mining operations, and they not only raided them for their ores and heavy metals. The death and destruction left behind were warnings. These weren’t the Runners I used to lead.”

  “So you took the deal to get your freedom?” Annie said.

  “Yes—and no. I didn’t want to spend the rest of my days on some barren prison planet. But also”—he glanced at Jordan—”despite what you might think, this wasn’t the organization I led. Something went wrong, and all because of my brother.”

  “A lot went wrong,” Annie said. “You’re responsible for the deaths of a lot of people.”

  “Not me. Kyros. I was in prison, awaiting trial for a long time. I had plenty of time to wonder about what had changed him. Changed the Runners. If that was my legacy, I needed to find out and—if possible—stop it.