Reavers (Book 3) (20 page)

He had always believed she thought of him as nothing more than Mr. Stuffed Shirt, a nickname she had adopted to make fun of his attention to detail.  He was the guy she’d call in when she needed advice on decorum or help at one of these fancy events.  He never imagined she looked forward to them, that she enjoyed his company.  As he pondered his course of action, his eyes slowly drifted down to his hand.  Memories of Kindra pressing his hand to her chest flooded his mind.

Vigorously shaking his head, Sanderson tried to focus on the speaker.  Yet another anonymous diplomat was describing in detail why the Commonwealth would fall apart without their services.  Scanning the faces on the stage, he locked on Kindra.  She was sitting to Rufas’ left, playing with her dress under the table.  A look of supreme boredom filled her face.  He couldn’t shake how pretty she looked from his mind.  Sanderson angrily eyed Janet, who was sitting to Rufas’ right.  Why had she put these thoughts in his head?

He sighed.  It wasn’t really her fault.  He had been interested in Kindra since he first met her.  After she gave him that horrible nickname, he assumed it was for nothing and never bothered to tell her.  Once again his eyes drifted to Kindra.  He couldn’t make up his mind.  In his experience, deals that offered a person’s wildest dreams always came with strings and foul consequences.  Plus, what if Janet was wrong?  He would rather remain Kindra’s friend than act on worthless intelligence and ruin everything.  As his mind ran in circles trying to figure out how to proceed, he noticed something odd.

Kindra wasn’t playing with her dress anymore.  She had an odd expression on her face he couldn’t decipher.  Boredom was easy to spot at any range, but this new one was impossible to tell from his seat way in the back.  Something about the expression was alarmingly familiar.

Pretending to scratch his nose, Sanderson lifted a device to his eye.  Officially, he had left the device back at base.  Given his assignments he always liked to be prepared and kept a few on his person at all times.  The device attached to his eyelid and shifted color until it matched the color of his eye.  As he lowered his hand, he appeared to everyone around him no different than he had a moment earlier.  The device silently began to work, magnifying his view. 

As his vision zoomed in on Kindra, a lump developed in his throat.  Her eyes were downcast, her shoulders sagged, and a faint down turn was evident in her lips.  Sanderson dismissed his first impression.  No way this could be what he feared.  Slowly but surely, Kindra’s hand moved over the table.

Her eyes seemed to glaze just a bit.  Finally her hand rested on the knife in front of her.  As she slowly pulled the knife back, her eyes locked on her wrist.  He had been right.  It was a Weaver attack.  Someone in the crowd was pressing her depression into suicide.

Reaching into a concealed pocket along his pants leg, he discreetly pulled out a miniature rifle.  To the average citizen, it looked like nothing more than a toothbrush.  As he steadied his hand, he kept his emotions calm.  If there was a Weaver in the audience, he couldn’t give himself away.  Aiming carefully, he lined up the shot.

As Kindra was just about to bring the knife to her wrist, he pressed the small rifle’s trigger.  A tiny flash of light zipped over the half sleeping audience and struck the knife.  Kindra’s reflexes kicked in and she instantly threw away the suddenly blistering hot knife.  He calmly watched the audience below for their reaction.

A single man stood in alarm
before
the others.  Standing alongside the rest of the crowd, Sanderson forced himself to mirror their panic and surprise.  As the Weaver surveyed the crowd for the person who had foiled his attempt, the device over Sanderson’s eye zoomed in on him.  He couldn’t believe his eyes.  The Weaver who had just tried to kill Kindra was
Dante
!  The Weaver instantly locked his gaze on him.  His surprise and shock had been too different from the rest of the crowd. 

Before the Weaver could attack, he fired a second shot from the small rifle.  The small burst of light zipped along and struck the Weaver’s right arm.  The Weaver fell to the ground, gripping his arm in pain.  The crowd panicked and started to stampede.  Sanderson easily blended into the chaos and forced his way to the stage.

Protectorates were already infiltrating the crowd.  Their uniforms easily stood out in the elegant crowd, and he was easily able to avoid them.  Jumping onto the stage, he grabbed Kindra and pulled her into the crowd.  Still frazzled from the attack, she limply followed as he pulled her.  Using the panic of the crowd to his advantage, he snuck out alongside the other guests as the Protectorates searched for the sniper.

Instinctively, he moved through the city until he arrived at the hotel Janet had arranged for them.  Passing the stub to the receptionist, Sanderson checked the streets for any signs of pursuit.  If he was lucky, the Weaver was too busy trying to flee the Protectorates with a wounded arm to think about his lost prey.  As soon as the receptionist finished with the details, he pulled Kindra as quickly as he could to their room.  They were on the third floor, and, thankfully, there was an elevator waiting. 

Reaching the room, he gently placed her on the bed before adhering small black diamonds to each of the corners of the ceiling and floor.  Peeking through a small slit in the window coverings, he scanned the streets.  The device still attached to his eye allowed him to zoom in and search for several blocks.  No sign of pursuit.  Finally relaxing, he gingerly released the device from his eyelid and sank into a chair.

“Sanderson?” Kindra asked as she started to recover from the shock of everything that had happened.

“I’m here,” he said soothingly.

“What’s going on?”

“I don’t know.  Someone tried to kill you.”

“
What
?”

“A Weaver.  I think we are safe now.”

“From a Weaver?  He’ll find us.”

“No he won’t.”  He smiled and gestured to the black diamonds.  “Prototype blockers.  Still in the testing phase, but they should prevent every known scanning device
and
Weavers.  As far as he’ll be able to tell, this room is empty.”

“How did . . .” Kindra’s voice faded.

He turned and found her sitting in the center of the bed, staring at him in shock.

“What?” he asked as he jumped to his feet.  “Can you feel him attacking again?”

“It’s not that.”

“Then what’s wrong?”

“Your uniform”

“What about it?”  Sanderson glanced down.  He had suffered no cuts or bruises as far as he could tell.

“It’s . . .
wrinkled
.  And you’re missing a button!”

It took a second for her words to register.  She was right; his clothes were in shambles, and he had apparently damaged his ceremonials while struggling to get to the stage.  He couldn’t help but laugh.

“I’ve seen you march through bug-infested bogs without getting a stain on you.  I’ve been by your side in a firefight, and you’ve always emerged without a single crease.”

He chuckled to himself as he flopped on the bed, exhausted from the night’s excitement.

“Someone tries to take your life, and my appearance is all that concerns you?” he asked, still chuckling.

Kindra didn’t answer.  Sitting up, he realized she was crying faintly.  He moved to her side.  The severity of what had just happened must have finally set in.

“It’s alright now,” he said reassuringly.  “I won’t let anything happen to you.”

“I never realized how you felt,” she said as she wiped her eyes.

“
What
?”

“Your appearance means the world to you.  It’s the most important part of your life.  But tonight, you didn’t care at all - you didn’t give it a single thought.  The only thing you were worried about was me.  I never knew.”

Sanderson didn’t know what to say.

“I can’t imagine why you’d care that much for me.  I’m nothing special.”

“That’s not true!  You’re . . .” he silenced himself.  Without realizing it, he had taken her hand.

“I don’t have much to offer.”  Kindra lifted his hand to her chest.  “Are you sure I’m what you want?”

He shifted his glance from her face to his hand and back.  He could feel her pulse racing as she held his hand close.  Reaching around her with his free hand, he pulled her close.  She looked at him with misty eyes and nodded.  He lowered her to the bed and pressed his lips to hers.  Sanderson decided that, regardless of the consequences, he wouldn’t be separated from her again.

“Curse that brother of mine!” Connor bellowed as he kept pressure on his arm.

“Relax yourself,” the bony old man said in annoyance.  “The wound isn’t serious at all.”

“First a Jepsen, a real Jepsen, and now some kind of secret agent?  How did he make such troublesome friends?”

“Secret agent?”  The bony man chuckled.  “Someone has watched a few too many 3Ps.  According to my intelligence, that was most likely nothing more than a sniper. There were a couple of them in Dante’s old squad.  Although, I have to admit I’m surprised he was able to carry such a weapon on a core world.  The Protectorates are mostly inept but are quite effective at ferreting out concealed weapons.”

“Not only that!  He
knew
where I was, even had a shot line up on me.”  Connor gestured angrily at his right arm.

“In a crowd that size it’s impossible for him just to have known.  You must have given yourself away somehow.”

“Now it’s
my
fault?”  Connor shouted.  “You sit here in this ship, safely away from any danger and you dare blame me?  What do you think I’m doing?  Waving my arms around like a headless chicken!”

“With a temper like that, you might as well be.  Did it once occur to you to use the Protectorates to stop the man who had shot you?  At the very least you could have confused them all long enough to kill the girl.  Do you even have a hint where they went?”

Connor grunted as he slammed his left fist against the wall.

“I’ll take that as a no.”

“For a while I thought I had them.”  Connor felt his lips as if remembering a meal he had once eaten.  “But all of a sudden they faded away.”

“Got too far away?”

“I don’t think so; it was different.  It was like they just completely disappeared.”

“You’re one for three.  Not the best odds.”

“You’re giving up?”

“What more can we do?  You have no idea where they have gone.  And if this young sniper has more tricks up his sleeve, it’s doubtful you’d be able to handle him even if we did stumble on him.”

“So that’s it.  I get shot and they run free?”  Connor ground his teeth.

“Not exactly.  I still have friends remember.  I’ve got an eye in every port.  When they try to run, we’ll know where they are headed.”

“Great, so we wait until they come out of hiding?”

“Far from it!  There is still work to be done.”

Without warning, the ship lurched to the right - slamming Connor’s aching arm against the hull plating.  He could feel the slight force as the ship zipped along the planet’s atmosphere.  He knew the bony man had done that on purpose.  As he debated thrashing him, he noticed something on the ground.

Pulling up a small monitor, he refocused its view on the surface.  In the center of one of the huge cities was a small crater.  At first he thought it was some kind of meteor strike or perhaps a ship crash landed.  However, as he magnified the view he quickly realized that wasn’t the case. 

While not very wide, the gouge in the planet’s surface was incredibly deep - so much so it faded to black before any kind of bottom was visible.  Circling the wound in the city were dozens of construction crews, military and governmental.  The crews were busy repairing block after block of devastation.  Strangely, the damage to the surrounding blocks didn’t match what Connor had imagined fall out from a meteor strike would look like.  Instead of damage starting at the top of the buildings, it seemed to be worst at the bases.

“What is that?” Connor asked as he kept studying the site.

“What’s what?”

“Down there, that big hole.”

“You mean the landing site.  Looks like they’ve got most of it taken care of.”

“Landing site?”

“What are you going on about . . . oh, that’s right.  You were stuck on that miserable sand dune.  You missed the whole thing.”

“The whole thing?  Are you telling me that’s from the war three years ago?”  Connor studied the ruins more intently.

“Precisely.  I guess your home was too remote and worthless for even the Shard to care about.  Lucky for you.  Had they invaded you’d most likely been wiped out.  Weaver tricks don’t work on Shards.”

“So what attacked the city?  I’ve never heard of a weapon that does damage like that.”

“A weapon?  Didn’t they teach you
anything
while you were on Hellacus?  A Citadel imbedded itself there.”

“A Citadel . . . that’s the warship of the Shards, right?”