Axira Episode One (15 page)

I knew my face was covered with sweat, I knew it trickled
down my brow, collected along my chin, and dashed against the
collar of my civilian jacket. I knew my face was contorted in fear
and desperation too. I could feel the muscles pulling tight and
twitching.

That wasn't the case for Em. Her expression was calm, maybe
even detached. Her eyes were open and focused, and her lips pulled
into a thin frown. But that was it. Sweat didn't drench her brow,
and neither did her expression contort with fear.

It looked as if she'd done this before. As if the prospect of
walking along a calm, purportedly safe street right outside the
Academy only to face two Kore assassins was something that couldn't
possibly throw her.

Something else that couldn't possibly throw her was the
cybernetic assassin. With the help of the coiled antenna, it got to
its feet, the antenna pushing its whip into the back of the
cybernetic assassin until it thrust it forward.

The cybernetic assassin reached Em, and wrapped an arm around
her middle. For the briefest moment fear pulsed through me, it felt
as if it was some kind of sun lodged in my throat. Before it could
burn through my resolve and send me tumbling to my knees, Em
resisted.

The cybernetic assassin didn't have time to pull one of the
weapons from its holster. It didn't have time to bring up one of
the electro blades lodged permanently into its arm. Em bent her
knees, twitched forward, and sent the both of them hurtling towards
the ground. She managed to flip, and landed on the cybernetic
assassin's body, before ramming both her elbows backwards,
collecting it in the guts, and rolling off.

She was amazing, incredible, but she couldn't keep this up.
Neither of us could. We had to get help, get help before these two
assassins killed us and moved onto God knows who next.

Theoretically the Academy and the whole city around it had a
security net. Sensors that permanently scanned the surroundings for
any danger. Clearly they weren't working. Whatever technology the
Kore assassins were using to jam my wrist device was obviously also
working on the security sensors.

That meant I had to raise the alarm some other way. I didn't
want this fight to spill out onto the street, even though that
would presumably alert the whole city to what was going on. At the
same time, I knew I couldn't let us die alone here in the darkness
of this cramped alleyway.

Thoughts flashed through my mind faster than blasts from a
plasma gun.

We had to end this.

How?

I didn't have any weapons.

Or at least that's what I thought.

As Em fought, she did so with one hand, using the other to
type something into her wrist device. Though with her it wasn't
latched around her wrist – it was further up her arm, just above
her elbow.

Sinking her feet into the ground and shoving her shoulder
hard just as the cybernetic assassin whirled around to attack her
again, she kept one hand free to keep typing something into the
wrist device.

I had no idea what she was doing. Presumably her device was
just as jammed as mine.

But maybe I was underestimating her.

The cybernetic assassin twisted towards her, its massive
clawlike feet sinking into the cobbles and making them crack and
shatter to powder.

Em was a first-year recruit, but she didn't bat an eyelid.
She didn't scream, not even when the cybernetic assassin brought
both its hands forward, electro blades slicing from the claws and
catching what remained of the light as blue pulses arced across
them.

The cybernetic assassin's face didn't contort with rage; it
couldn't. It was essentially dead. Here and there flesh fell off it
in green slimy chunks. Any skin that would be lost in this fight
would be replaced with genetic therapy.

The glassy, dead look in its white rimmed eyes could not be
replaced though.

I watched the coil-like assassin suddenly spring towards Em,
making its whip rigid like a knife.

I darted forward, before my brain could think, going
completely off instinct. I reached the coil assassin and kicked it,
drawing on strength from somewhere to send it skidding
backwards.

This apparently bought Em the time to do what she did next.
She wrenched her wrist device off her arm then chucked it towards
me. “Wrap it around the coil,” she shouted.

I did what I was told. There was something about the exact
shaking tone she managed to achieve that bypassed my reason and
reached far down into my training. She reminded me of an admiral
barking orders from the bridge.

As I skidded forward towards the coil, I turned my back on
Em. The next time I twisted around to see her, the assassin was
lying motionless at her feet.

Before I could register that, I somehow grabbed hold of the
coil and slammed Em’s wrist device onto it. I didn’t clutch hold of
that sleek, twisting metal for long; I knew it could become
electrified at any moment and blast me backwards or singe me to a
crisp.

It was long enough, though, to secure the wrist
device.

Then something kind of incredible occurred.

The coil assassin stopped. It twitched as if some electrical
pulse passed through it, then buckled, crumpling to the floor and
falling to my feet like a dead snake.

My heart beat so powerfully in my chest it was a surprise my
head didn’t bounce off and start jumping over the floor like a live
wire. My hands were drenched in sweat, and my jacket and shirt
stuck to my back.

My breathing was so short and sharp it felt like my lungs had
been chopped in half.

But it was over, right?

It was over.

Before I could question that, I heard Em move slowly to my
side, her unhurried footfall matching her casual stance. “It’s
over,” she mirrored my thoughts.

I let out a stuttering sigh. No, it was more of a groan as I
brought a hand up and tugged down the torn fabric of my jacket,
revealing the massive slice along my arm underneath.

Before I could become too distracted with my injuries, I
immediately turned to survey our enemies. “We need to contact
Academy security.”

“
They will already have been contacted. The coil assassin is
no longer jamming the security net. Trust me, the Academy is on its
way.”

As if to prove that fact, I suddenly heard an alarm blare
from across the city. I knew the pitch and I knew the toneless
melody. That would be the citywide yellow alert klaxon. You barely
ever heard it. I’d only witnessed a security breach three or four
times during my entire career.

“
Are we sure they're down?” I asked as I pivoted on my foot to
stare at the cybernetic assassin.

It wasn’t moving, and neither was the other one.

“
They will not get up again,” she answered.

“
What … did you do? How did you manage to use your wrist
device against it?”

“
Our wrist devices have the capability of being used as
weapons. We learnt that in the first week,” she counseled
me.

“
I know that. But goddamnit, that’s a coil assassin,” I
stabbed a finger towards it. “How did you do that?” I couldn’t keep
the surprise from reverberating through my voice. It shook and
rippled through it like thousands of stones thrown into a once calm
pond.

“
I modified my wrist device,” she answered, “To send out a
strong, repeating electrical field, timed to make it through the
coil assassin's rudimentary shielding.”

I stared at her, my mouth open, surprise apparent for anyone
to see.

“
I don’t know what that means,” I admitted.

“
It doesn’t matter. It worked.”

I kept staring at her, as if my eyes had been locked onto her
with targeting sensors. “And what about that guy?” I nodded at the
cybernetic assassin.

“
I managed to get him off guard, and disconnected the primary
command circuit from the back of his neck,” she answered
smoothly.

I drifted into silence. I couldn’t find my breath, let alone
force any more words through my tortured dry throat.

The alarm was getting louder, and now I could hear the steady
drumbeat of boots approaching.

“
I have no idea how we lived through that,” I said as I fixed
the coil assassin with a glassy stare and wiped a hand down my
mouth.

“
That’s not the question you should be asking. The question
you want to ask,” she tipped her head back to stare at the scrap of
sky between the two buildings, “Is what an intelligence team were
doing so close to the Academy.”

“
What?” My brow crumpled.

“
Have you forgotten your lessons on the Kore
Empire?”

My mouth continued to march its way down my chin.

She pointed behind me at the two downed assassins. “They
constitute an intelligence team. The specific grouping of assassins
the Empire sends out when it is gathering intel.”

My gaze slowly drifted from her and locked on the
assassins.

My mind was coming back to me now as the sound of a security
detachment sprinting towards us calmed my nerves.

She was right. The two specific assassins we’d encountered
did constitute an intelligence team. The cybernetic assassin could
protect the coil and feed it secrets to send back to the
Empire.

This was it, wasn’t it?

Christ, I'd just stumbled across my lead. Sure, maybe this
intelligence team didn’t have anything to do with my mission –
maybe they were gathering secrets about something else. But I
doubted that.

Just as the security team rounded the laneway and a cruiser
suddenly darted up high between the buildings and shone a light
down onto us, I pushed forward and dropped to my knees next to the
coil.

“
I wouldn’t touch it,” Em suddenly warned me. “If you are
looking for the information the coil would have been transmitting,
it’s too late. It would have been destroyed as soon as the coil was
taken down. They have a backup mechanism, a safety feature to
ensure captured coils can’t divest their secrets.”

I swore. I knew that. Everything she was saying was common
knowledge.

I planted a sweaty hand into my head just as the security
team reached us.

I quickly explained what had happened, and the team secured
the area, taking us and the assassins back to the
Academy.

I was separated from Em as she was taken to the med bay. I
didn’t think she needed to be taken to the med bay. Frankly, I was
far more injured than she was.

Still, I was glad she was fine. Ecstatic, in fact. If it
hadn’t been for her, I wouldn’t have made it through that. Heck, if
it hadn’t been for her, we wouldn’t have taken a shortcut down the
alleyway and we wouldn’t have found those assassins in the first
place.

But, as incredible as this lead was, was I actually any
closer to finding the leak? Both the coil and the cybernetic
assassin had wiped their memory banks. There was no information –
no clue about what they’d been doing.

Or so I thought.

Chapter 9

Axira

I found myself standing before Lieutenant
Ma’tovan.

Considering what I’d just done in that alleyway – how I’d
fought off two Kore assassins essentially on my own – I shouldn’t
be standing here. I should no longer be on Earth, in fact. I should
have taken the first transport to get away. To get away from the
rumors that were about to spread about me.

Instead I was standing here, with my hands behind my back,
considering a patch of wood on his desk.

“
What did it feel like?” He asked staring at me directly. “To
make a difference? Jason Singh may be one hell of a lieutenant, but
if you hadn’t been there, Cadet, he wouldn’t have lived through
that. So what did it feel like to be the difference? The difference
between someone living and someone dying?”

The lieutenant already knew all about what had happened in
the city. Heck, all the upper brass did, and soon enough, the rumor
would probably spread through the cadets. Though I fancied the
teachers would try hard to keep on top off it.

The fact a Kore Empire intelligence team had been kilometers
from the Academy headquarters, undetected, and clearly running some
kind of mission was not one the top brass would like to
spread.

I considered his question.

Because that question was the only reason I was still
standing here.

How did it feel to have made a difference?

Right. It felt right.

“
It felt good, didn’t?” He answered his own
question.

I nodded.

“
You helped protect the Academy tonight, Cadet. Something none
of the other recruits will do until they graduate. You saved
Lieutenant Singh, heck, it sounds as if you saved that section of
the city too. I probably don’t need to tell you, but if those
assassins hadn’t been rumbled, they could have gone on to destroy a
good section of the city before self-destructing.”