Hero Code Read online

  Asger snorted. “Don’t suggest that. He probably would. He’s in enough trouble without incurring the wrath of pirates.”

  “He does have a noble streak.” Qin almost pointed out that Casmir had the noble streak she had expected in Asger, but he was having a real conversation with her for the first time, and she didn’t want to ruin it. “Is there any way to help him out of that dungeon? Bonita said she wouldn’t act against the king and all his men, and I understand that—that’s even worse than taking on all the Druckers—but it seems like there ought to be something crafty we can do.”

  “The queen will be back soon. She said she would speak with him. I’m hoping—”

  A boom thundered through the city, and orange light flashed on the bluff behind Asger.

  He whirled. “What the hell?”

  Fire leaped from the rooftop of a blocky building at the end of the bluff. A siren wailed, and a dozen others started up. Qin winced, the sounds an assault on her sensitive ears.

  “A bomb?” she asked uncertainly, more accustomed to seeing explosions in space, where they weren’t so violent and where the vacuum swallowed sound. They had to be a mile away from that structure, but she could hear the flames crackling.

  “It’s the synagogue.” Asger broke into a run. “People could be in there. Sometimes, they have night services.”

  As he sprinted for the street, Qin only debated for a second whether to follow him or return to the ship. If it had been a bombing, people could be hurt, and whoever had done it might not want a knight to show up to deter their getaway. Qin didn’t feel loyalty to Asger, but now that she knew him a little, she felt something. They’d fought together before, so he was akin to a crew member in her mind, and she didn’t want him to be hurt.

  She snatched up her boots, put them on, and raced after Asger. She was impressed by how fast he could run without, as far as she knew, any cybernetic enhancements or genetic modifications, but she was almost as tall as he was, and she caught up and ran beside him.

  He glanced at her but didn’t suggest she go back to the ship. He kept running, the street swinging wide to switchback up the hill toward the bluff. Emergency aircraft appeared in the sky, and the sirens continued to wail. Lights in the city that had been off earlier came on, and people stumbled out of apartment buildings to gape at the flaming building.

  As Qin and Asger reached it, aircraft tankers started dumping water on the flaming rooftop. A different aerial vehicle sprayed a white fire suppressant.

  “Crushers!” Asger blurted. He’d been running toward the structure—the synagogue, he’d called it—but he switched directions, racing down the street after two tarry black forms. They were also running. Fast.

  Qin started after Asger, but a scream of pain came from the synagogue. Two of the stone walls had been blown out at the corner, leaving a gaping hole with the roof half-collapsed. The flames were already dwindling, but cries for help increased. The air smelled of soot and the residue of Mark-Pak, an amalgam explosive Qin was familiar with. It also smelled of blood and burned flesh.

  Qin glanced at Asger, his cloak flapping as he sprinted after the crushers, but she decided to go to the people. Even with her speed, she doubted she could catch the robots.

  She sprang over rubble that had been a section of wall and into the structure. Numerous people were trapped under wood beams and collapsed pieces of the roof. She ran to a woman who was pinned alongside a child and used her enhanced strength to hurl a beam off them.

  Her first-aid training was limited, and more people were trapped under rubble, so she left the pair once they were free, trusting that medics were on the way. She ran to another pinned person, a bearded man with blood streaming down his face. She freed him, then heard victims crying under a mound of rubble. She dug into it, throwing pieces wildly to the sides until she realized more people were streaming into the area. Uniformed Kingdom Guards and medics with robots with hover gurneys. They lifted the people Qin had freed, helping them walk out or laying them on the gurneys.

  When Qin pulled a frail gray-haired woman out from under crushed pews, she started to pat Qin thankfully, but then she saw Qin’s face and her pointed ears, and she reared back with a terrified gasp. She scrambled to get away, glancing back and almost falling several times as she fled the building.

  The reaction stung, but Qin made herself keep working, keep freeing people. Her great strength ought to be good for more than slaying enemies.

  Unfortunately, some of the worshippers did not move when she cleared the rubble from atop them. She didn’t stop to check for pulses, again leaving that for someone else.

  Finally, when her ears, nose, and eyes told her that everyone who could be rescued had been, she turned for the exit—the gaping hole where the corner walls had met. When she stepped out into the light from dozens of land and air rescue vehicles parked outside, several Kingdom Guards pointed rifles at her.

  “Stop right there!”

  “God, what is it?”

  “Some freak from another system.”

  “She might have done the bombing. Cuff her.”

  “You cuff her.”

  Qin blinked rapidly to keep tears from forming in her eyes. This wasn’t the time for hurt feelings. She crouched, preparing to spring to the rooftop—what remained of it—and flee back to the ship before they could arrest her.

  “Lower your weapons,” came Asger’s stern voice as he strode up from the side.

  Sweat bathed his face, some of his shoulder-length hair was plastered to his neck, and he was breathing heavily, but he managed to look authoritative as he approached. Four of the five Guards lowered their weapons. Only one hesitated, glancing back and forth from Asger to Qin.

  “But, Sir Knight—”

  “Lower it.” Asger had reached him by then, and he snatched the rifle from the man’s grip. “She was with me when the bomb went off. She wasn’t responsible.”

  “Er, but she’s not… human.”

  “Go find who was responsible. At the least, there were two crushers—big black robots that can turn to liquid and back to a solid at will. But there may have been people here too.” Asger looked toward the injured men, women, and children being loaded into ambulances. “Terrorists.”

  He clenched a fist, his eyes burning with fury. The Guards, perhaps thinking some of that anger was directed at them, scurried away.

  “I want to see if there’s any obvious evidence before the Guard swarms all over the interior,” Asger said to Qin and strode toward the interior.

  A part of her, thinking of the dead she’d uncovered, was reluctant to go back inside. She felt she’d failed those people by not arriving in time. But if she didn’t stay with Asger, she might end up being arrested. Besides, it would be cowardly to be unwilling to walk among the dead. It wasn’t her fault that this had happened. She’d done the best she could.

  As Asger climbed over the rubble, a boy of seven or eight ran up to Qin, a metal robot doll clutched to his chest. He stopped and stared up at her.

  “You are a cat woman,” he whispered.

  “Something like that,” Qin murmured warily, certain he would blurt freak next.

  “That is so supernova! And you saved my sister.” He jumped up and hugged Qin.

  She was so startled that she almost couldn’t stop her instinctual reflex to spring away from a threat. But she did. She stood still for the embrace, the robot doll being smashed against her thigh.

  “Herschel!” a woman called, waving from one of the air ambulances.

  “I have to go. Here.” The boy thrust the doll at her. “A sheynem dank!”

  Qin gaped as he ran to join his family as they climbed into the ambulance. The hatch closed, and it rose into the air and disappeared over the rooftop. Qin belatedly realized the boy had given her a gift.

  “What was that?” Asger looked back at her, glancing at the robot doll.

  “A young Casmir, I think.” Qin cradled the boy’s gift in one arm, vowing to clear one
of her candle statues out of its case in her cabin to make room for it.

  “Is this his religion?” Asger waved at the structure around them. “Or do you mean because of the toy?”

  “I think both,” Qin said, though she’d only meant in demeanor—and because the boy hadn’t called her a freak.

  “Hm.” Asger walked through the interior, water dripping from the destroyed roof, most of it now open to the misty night.

  The flames had dwindled, and he took a flashlight from a member of the search-and-rescue team. They were focused on carrying out bodies. Asger pointed the light beam toward the walls and ceilings. In addition to the corner having been blown out, there was another gaping hole high in the back wall of the main room.

  “Are you looking for where the blast originated?” Qin asked.

  “Yes, or other clues.”

  “I can find the spot.” Qin tapped her nose, then focused on sifting out the myriad odors in the area. She’d caught a whiff of a familiar explosive before. Yes, it was still there, underlying the scents of charred wood, stone dust, and death.

  She climbed over shattered pews and rubble to a doorway near a pulpit. A flame burned in a hanging lantern, undisturbed by the chaos around it. The hallways and rooms in the back were dark, but her nose led her down a corridor, up a set of stairs, and back toward the hole they’d seen. Light poured in through it. Asger had followed her, and they soon overlooked the worship area.

  “There were probably two bombs.” Qin pointed toward the collapsed corner where they’d come in and then at the opening in the wall in front of them. “One was planted around here and probably destroyed in the blast, but maybe…” She sniffed, letting her nose lead her to the remains of a small piece of wrapper, half shredded by the explosion. “I’ve seen bombs like this before.”

  She was about to describe them, but Asger took the foil from her and said grimly, “So have I. A Mark-Pak. They’re manufactured in System Cerberus.”

  “You think pirates did this?” Qin asked uncertainly, knowing the Druckers had often purchased such supplies in the dubious no-taxes, no-questions system. She couldn’t imagine them targeting the Kingdom—what could be gained?—but worried Asger would have reason to be suspicious of her again.

  “Terrorists,” he said. “The Black Stars. We’ve recovered the remains of their ordnance before.”

  “Are those the same people who are after Casmir?”

  “Yes. I hope it’s a coincidence that they targeted this place. There are seven other churches and temples on this street that represent the major religions practiced in Zamek City and the Kingdom.”

  Qin also hoped it was a coincidence. She knew Casmir would be horrified if someone targeted innocent people as a way to hurt him. She feared he would be horrified when he heard about this, regardless.

  8

  The second evening that Kim returned to her mother’s apartment was similar to the first, except that she walked in distracted, answering messages that scrolled down her contacts, both from her brothers and from Casmir’s parents. Her brothers wanted reassurances that she was fine and would return soon to the dojo. Casmir’s parents wanted to know what had happened to him. She wished she could tell them precisely.

  Apparently, he’d sent them a quick note when they were landing, saying he was back on Odin and hoped to see them soon, and they hadn’t heard from him since. Kim also hadn’t heard from him since he’d walked off to the castle with Asger. She could only assume he’d been detained somewhere that blocked network access.

  Unfortunately, she wasn’t much less of a prisoner. She did have network access from the apartment—the government lab she’d been assigned to blocked personal communications and all but work-related resources—but as she’d found out the day before, her two bodyguards would allow her to walk to and from work, but she couldn’t detour elsewhere. When she’d asked about stopping for take-out, they had laconically informed her that she should get used to grocery delivery.

  More than once, she’d thought about asking her new shadow, Zee, to hoist them from their feet and toss them into a dumpster, but she feared her career and her citizenship would be at risk if she didn’t cooperate with the government.

  At least Zee and the guards remained in the corridor outside of her mother’s apartment at night, and Kim had the interior, including a small balcony, to herself.

  Or she usually did. She lurched to a stop when she walked into the living room and spotted a large gift basket resting on the dining room table.

  She looked around warily. The unimaginative rental furnishings were undisturbed and the door to the single bedroom stood halfway open, as she had left it that morning, her shower towel draped over the corner to dry, because the laundry machine needed repair. A built-in bookcase, its shelves overflowing, rose to one side of the door, and she eyed it, but if any of the tomes had been disturbed, she couldn’t tell. They were mostly non-fiction books related to her mother’s field, but a few fiction classics that might have come with the apartment lurked on the top shelf, and her mother had, to Kim’s surprise, kept the four novels she’d written and published under a pen name. She had signed them and given them as a gift, but her mother had never mentioned if she’d read them. Probably not. Her mother had always preferred historical mysteries and thrillers.

  The curtains stirred in a breeze, and Kim realized the sliding Glasnax door to the balcony was open a couple of inches. She hadn’t left that open. Even though the apartment was ten stories up, she wouldn’t have made such a security faux pas, not with the city in a state of high-tension in the aftermath of the synagogue bombing.

  Did that mean that whoever had brought the basket was still here? It couldn’t be for her mother—it had been months since she’d been on Odin last—but nobody should know Kim was here. What if it was a booby-trapped basket, left by some of the terrorists after Casmir? Or what if someone was waiting for her to be distracted by opening it and would jump out and grab her when she did.

  Now, she wished she’d made a habit of bringing Zee into the apartment with her in the evenings, but a lewd discussion from the guards about whether he could morph himself into something more anatomically accurate had left her disinclined to give them more joke material.

  The curtains stirred in the breeze again. Or was it just the breeze? She eyed them warily.

  At home, she would have had bokken and various sporting implements at hand to grab, but there was nothing like that in her mother’s apartment. If someone jumped out at her…

  Kim curled her hands into fists and lifted her chin. They would find that she wasn’t defenseless.

  It occurred to her that she could call in the guards to have a look around—in theory, they were there to protect her as much as to imprison her—but she was reluctant to ask for help or have them tramping around in her personal space. She also wasn’t certain she wanted to set them on the trail of whoever had brought the gift.

  She walked slowly and quietly, toes touching down first, around the apartment, checking the bedroom, kitchen, and bathroom to make sure nobody would jump out. Lastly, she approached the balcony door. She paused before sliding it open further. Full night had fallen, and she could easily imagine someone crouching in the dark, poised to spring.

  Kim flicked the outside light on, and it illuminated the two chairs and small table out there but nobody lurking. She thought about simply closing the door and locking it, but some instinct, or maybe her curiosity, made her open it further and look to the side.

  A dark figure leaned against the wall in the corner of the balcony.

  Kim leaped back, landing in a crouch with her fists up. The figure did not rush into the apartment after her or even peek inside.

  Was it possible he or she—the figure had been cloaked with a hood up—hadn’t seen her? Or heard her pushing the door open? No, the door had made noise. Even the distant roar of the sea wouldn’t have drowned it out.

  “That’s not a public balcony,” Kim called.


  “No? I didn’t see a private-property sign on it.”

  She gaped at the familiar dry voice. “Rache?”

  What was he doing here? On Odin? Wouldn’t his ship be shot out of the stars if it was spotted near the planet? For that matter, wouldn’t he be shot if he was spotted?

  “What are you doing here?”

  Kim didn’t lower her fists. She had no idea what to expect from him. How had he even found her? She was positive she hadn’t told him her address and certainly not her mother’s address. Both might be in a public directory somewhere, but how had he known she would be here?

  “I came to deliver your gift. I would have taken a more conventional approach, but there are Kingdom special agents adorning your front door.”

  “So, what—you climbed the ten floors to my balcony?”

  “Of course not. I’m not an orangutan. I have jet boots.”

  Kim kept expecting him to come inside or at least stick his head through the door so they could speak without raising their voices, but he remained in his spot against the wall. It couldn’t be because he worried about intruding on her privacy, not when he was lurking on her balcony and he’d obviously been inside to drop off the basket.

  “If you’ll open your gift and let me know if it’s acceptable, I’ll leave you be, assuming that is your wish.” Rache paused. “Though I’d be amenable to a sample if you’re inclined to try it out.”

  “Of course it’s my wish. You’re… you.”

  “A crime in itself.”

  Kim picked up the basket—it was heavier than she expected—and walked out onto the balcony. “I can’t accept a gift from a criminal. Or have you here. I’m already…”

  She paused. She didn’t want to admit to him that the authorities were suspicious of her because of her association with Casmir, not when she didn’t truly blame Casmir for anything he’d done. Yes, he’d been impulsive and unwise, but she understood that his heart and emotions drove him as often as rational thought.

  “You can’t accept it?” He stood in the same spot, his shoulder blades against the wall, his arms folded over his chest, his hood up and that mask on. He also wore black gloves to match the rest of his black attire. For a ludicrous moment, she imagined him with the same pink bowtie she’d wanted to wrap around Zee’s neck. “You requested it,” he added.