Jarek Slater stood tall and unflinching before the scrutiny of the three Resistance commanders, wishing they’d get on with it. For the moment being, though, they appeared perfectly content to sit back and wait for god knew what. Certainly not for the rest of the council to arrive. Not a single soul had been late to this particular gathering. They’d piled through the doors in force, jockeying for position to secure good seats for what was sure to be the event of the year: the chastising of the Soldier of Charity.
And now their stares bored into him from all sides like a hundred prodding fingers goading him to lose his shit.
Entitled pricks.
They were going to have a long wait if they wanted to see him squirm. Especially since he was wearing Fela. If this dragged on much longer he could close the exosuit’s faceplate and take a damn nap standing up.
He never should have let Al and Pryce talk him into this olive branch bullshit. Hell, the way things were going, he was starting to wonder if he shouldn’t have just stayed at Pryce’s shop and enjoyed a nice whiskey instead of flying off to the port and duking it out with the Red King’s army to save the day for the Resistance. Which he totally had, by the way.
Apparently someone had forgotten to tell that part to the two dozen glaring a-holes in the council chamber.
Finally, by some imperceptible cue that Jarek could only assume involved divine right, Commander Nelken deigned it the appropriate time to begin and leaned his paunchy bulk forward on the commanders’ head table.
“Mr. Slater.” His voice was heavy. Solemn. Freaking theatrical. “You know why we’re here. Twice in the same day you endangered the lives of our men and women. First when you raided our armory and committed what would reasonably be construed as an act of war against us. Then again when you knowingly brought an enemy combatant—and a raknoth, no less—into this base only hours later. It’s unacceptable.”
Nelken was right. It was unacceptable. And he could take that unacceptable pile of bullshit and shove it—
“Easy, sir.” Al’s smooth English accent was crisp and soothing in his helmet earpieces. “Control.”
Al was right. That would drive the bastards crazy.
He spread his hands wide and put on his best carefree grin. “Okay, you got me. I’m trouble. A real loose cannon. Maybe even a terrorist. But let’s not stop there. I think we missed a few parts. Like where I stopped said raknoth from killing everyone and saved actual shiploads of your people.”
At the head table, Commander Sloan’s creepy slender form straightened and he opened his mouth to speak.
Jarek silenced him with an armored finger. “Plus, on a scale from no-no to act of war, I’d put the business here somewhere around stealing from the cookie jar. You know, aside from the part where it wasn’t actually stealing on account of this suit belonging to me and everything.”
Murmurs. Murmurs everywhere.
If they were going to try to take him into custody or make him pay for his “crimes,” he wished they’d whip ’em out and get to it. But they wouldn’t. Of course they wouldn’t. Because this was how it went with outfits like the Resistance, wasn’t it?
They putzed around, babbling about their cause and fighting the good fight until someone came along and actually got shit done, and then they all lost their heads over the audacity of the thing.
Who the hell did he think he was to swoop in and right their sinking ship?
How dare he take back what was his? How dare he be his own man, follow his own compass? Who’d given him permission?
Jarek had met more than a few freedom fighter types since the Catastrophe and remained woefully unimpressed. Most were just as afraid of upsetting the status quo as everyone else. And those who weren’t, in his experience, tended to be goddamn psychopaths.
There was a reason he’d steered clear of organized tomfoolery like the Resistance since a catastrophic hiccup with one such psychopath in his teenage years had earned him the ridiculous nickname Soldier of Charity and nearly cost him his life to boot. And as good as saving the day at the ports had felt last night, there was an even better reason he couldn’t wait to get the hell away from all this.
A couple dozen reasons, actually. And they were all still staring at him, muttering back and forth behind raised hands as if Fela’s sensors didn’t allow Jarek to hear every word they said.
Commander Sloan’s disturbingly green-eyed glare was particularly ferocious as he whispered to Commander Nelken that they could not—repeat, could not—just let Jarek walk away from this fiasco without punishment.
Jarek kind of wished they’d try to stop him.
“Fine,” he called.
The room snapped silent at the sound of his voice.
“It’s unacceptable. Don’t accept it. Was there something else you fellas wanted?”
Nelken’s perpetual frown darkened. Sloan looked like he was actively trying call bright green death rays from his eyes to smite Jarek down.
Beside them, Commander Stacy Daniels gathered herself to speak, her expression mostly neutral, if maybe a bit stern. “I think it’s safe to say our time would be better spent calling it even and moving on to the matter of the nest device’s activation and what it might mean for us.”
Jarek gave her a grateful micro nod. Compared to the rest of these jackals, Daniels didn’t seem so bad—even if what she’d just proposed was an exercise in futility.
The truth was that they knew jack crap about the raknoth device that had blasted a holy Jesus beam into the sky last night, aside from the one cryptic tidbit the Red King had given them between his maniacal raknoth giggles.
Retribution, he’d said. The nest had raised the call for retribution. Whatever the hell that meant.
There was a decent chance it was nothing but pure, grade A bullshit—a fun little threat the defeated King had spun in the moment to keep them afraid and guessing. But something told him it wasn’t.
Jarek clearly wasn’t a people person, but he did like to think he could read them fairly well, and the Red King’s little meltdown had felt sincere enough to make him wonder what the hell could frighten a raknoth like that.
He’d been hoping to shake the red-eyed bastard until more answers fell out, but the Resistance had unsurprisingly taken quite strict custody of their raknoth prisoner the moment he’d entered HQ—never mind the fact that Jarek had been the one to capture him, thank you very much.
From what little he’d heard, the King had been monk-like in his commitment to silence since they’d brought him in. Jarek wasn’t sure he could do much better, but that didn’t make him any less irritated at the territorial shutout.
Either way, if they weren’t going to try to slap him in the ol’ irons, he wasn’t about to sit here and listen to the council try to extract a meaningful conclusion from a single itty-bitty clue.
“I’ll leave you guys to it then,” Jarek said, turning for the door. “Wouldn’t want you to have to slow everything down for me.”
Nelken’s voice was heavy with threatening authority. “Slater.”
Jarek kept walking.
Sloan must have been close to conjuring up those death rays after all, because Jarek swore he could feel the glares pelting into the back of his head as he pulled open the double doors and slipped out to the narrow hallway.
“Masterfully handled, sir,” Al said. “Glad to see all those communication self-help books are paying off.”
“It’s the strangest thing. I wiped with every single page, and I feel like I just didn’t absorb anything!”
“Charming, sir. And you have company.”
He’d already heard as much. Fela’s auditory sensors were a work of art, but even without them, he would have heard Commander Nelken’s approach easily enough. The man wasn’t exactly light of foot, and his normally heavy breathing was clearly elevated right now. Anyone’s guess why.
“You arrogant son of a bitch.”
Jarek turned to watch Nelken close in at a spry power walk and didn’t try overly hard to hide his amused grin. “Don’t hold back, Commander. Tell me how you really feel.”
“Like I’d take great pleasure in ordering my agents to rip you out of that suit and hog tie you in the brig if I didn’t think the fight would wreck half the base.”
“That”—Jarek cocked his head and nodded—“is actually fair enough. You know, wild injustices aside and whatnot.”
Whatever else Jarek could say about Nelken, it took some stones for the commander to march straight up to Jarek and prod him in the armored chest. “All you had to do in there was half-ass an apology. Order could have been restored, and we could have gone back to peacefully disliking each other. Was that too much for your pride to swallow?”
Jarek wrinkled his nose at the strong waft of aftershave and what he could only assume was pure, distilled anger. “I dunno.” He glanced toward the council chamber. “I think I really nailed the half-ass bit.”
“Dammit, Slater,” Nelken growled. “This is an unstable time for us. For all of us. These people need to know we’re steady and afloat here.”
By what looked to be a considerable force of will, Nelken took a step back and let out a sigh. “Look, I know it was… uncouth of us to try to keep your suit, especially once you helped Carver escape from the Fortress, but we’re not the villains here. I don’t need to tell you how uneven this fight is for us. I’m not asking you to sign the dotted line and give me a ‘Sir, yes sir,’ but I can’t have you around here if you can’t at least act like you give half a damn about Resistance authority.”
“That’s the thing, Nelken. I don’t give a damn about you or your Resistance. I came here to get my exo back and I stayed to help my friends. That should’ve been the end of it. But now that crazy raknoth bastard in there”—he pointed toward the holding cells—“the one I captured, by the way, tells us some kind of retribution is about to rain down on our heads, and I kinda wanna know what the hell he’s talking about before I go gallivanting on my way. So you can give me back my prisoner, or you can suck it up and let me at him. I don’t really care. Just don’t go thinking I’ve joined your fight. I’m not your soldier—not to command, and sure as hell not to reprimand.”
They held locked glares for a good ten seconds, Nelken’s eyes stern and unyielding. Finally, the commander’s expression relaxed by a hair’s breadth. “I did say act like you give a damn.”
The crack in Nelken’s domineering exterior took Jarek by genuine enough surprise that a huff of a chuckle escaped him. His surprise doubled when Nelken returned a thin smile of his own.
Guy was probably going to pull a muscle if he wasn’t careful.
“Fine. Maybe I can steer clear of blatant disrespect for a day or two, assuming no one tries to steal my suit in the middle of the night.”
Nelken tilted his head. “All right then.”
Jarek gestured toward the holding cells. “He really hasn’t said anything yet?”
“Not a word. And he doesn’t seem to particularly care about any physical discomfort.” Nelken hesitated before adding, “If he keeps this up, we might have to ask Rachel to take a crack at, you know.” He tapped at the side of his square, buzzed head.
“I don’t know much about telepathy, but as far as I understand, that kind of thing is dangerous to toy with, and Rachel isn’t exactly clear of mind right now, what with Michael having been touched by a Jesus beam and everything.”
Nelken nodded. “I’m aware. But we need to figure this thing out soon. The King is healing disturbingly fast.”
“Huh. Creepy.”
Nelken looked exasperated. “There are reasons beyond pride that we were upset about you bringing a raknoth here. I don’t see how he could break out of his restraints, but I’m not interested in taking chances.”
“Well, as a rule, I stay away from the real sadistic shit, but if we need to trim him down a few limbs”—Jarek patted the hilt of the enormous sword strapped to Fela’s back, the one he’d dubbed the Big Whacker—“all we need is a good chopping block.”
Nelken’s brows crept upward. “And that doesn’t fall into the category of ‘real sadistic shit’?”
“I’ve seen some stuff, man. And some things.”
Nelken studied him for a long moment. “I don’t doubt that. Now would you be willing to talk to Rachel? With Carver’s current condition… Well, you know her better than anyone else who’s currently conscious. I can see to it you’re updated if anything happens with the prisoner. Otherwise, it’s probably better for everyone if you stay on your ship.”
“Yeah, well, I was gonna do all that anyway, so…” Jarek turned back down the hall and threw the most sarcastic two-fingered salute he could manage over his shoulder.
“So glad we cleared that up,” Nelken muttered behind him. Then, more loudly, “Slater.”
Jarek paused and turned his head just enough to show he was listening.
“Don’t go thinking this little talk means you’re off the hook. I might be a commander, but if you give my people reason to come calling for your head again, I won’t stop them.”
Jarek grinned.
Maybe Nelken wasn’t the worst jackal on the planet. Jarek wouldn’t pick the guy as a drinking buddy or anything, but at least the stern bastard seemed to be playing things straight with him now.
“Understood,” he said. “You know, assuming any of us still have the luxury to worry about whose is bigger at that point.”
Nelken frowned. “You really think something’s coming?”
“Eh.” Jarek shrugged. “Above my pay grade.”
“No one’s paying you.”
“Exactly.”
With that, he continued down the bland hallway, enjoying Nelken’s silence behind him. His grin faded soon enough, though.
In truth, he had no idea what to think. He hadn’t been lying to Nelken. If it weren’t for the nest exploding and the King’s cryptic warning of impending doom, he probably would have made for the hills that morning—dropped Alaric back in Deadwood and taken several hot showers to wash the traces of the Resistance’s mangy mitts from himself and Fela.
Hell, maybe he would have even offered Rachel a ride home and seen where that went. As a rule, he pretty much avoided anything outside of casual, fleeting engagements, but after the string of mishaps they’d muscled through together over the past couple days…
It didn’t matter. And not just because she would’ve said no (okay, probably hell no). It didn’t matter because the nest had exploded, and the King had warned them that retribution was coming for them. The best laid plans of Jarek, as they so often did, had gone and gotten royally cocked up, and now here he was, tied up in what was almost certainly someone else’s problem.
“This is why we don’t get involved,” he mumbled.
“You’re right, sir,” Al said. “I’m sure this will all resolve marvelously if we fly away now and pretend none of this ever happened.”
“Yeah, yeah. Keep it up, Mr. Robot. We’ll see who’s laughing when I hand you over to Pryce for parts.”
Al didn’t deign to respond with any more than an indignant sniff, an utterly unnecessary affectation for a bodiless construct.
Jarek reached the end of the dull hallway, started to turn toward medical, and paused. As far as he knew, Rachel hadn’t left Michael’s side since they’d arrived last night. She’d be hungry. Peace offerings never hurt.
He turned for the mess hall, tromping from one dull hallway to another. From what he’d seen, every room and hallway of HQ was nearly identical: gray cinder block walls, smooth, slightly-darker-gray concrete floors, yellow lighting that had a sort of plastic feel to it.
Before the Catastrophe, it would’ve been the kind of place people made Soviet prison jokes about. Now, though, those same people would look at the place and see safety, security.
Jarek just felt cramped.
No matter where he was, he seemed to be hunkering down to avoid smashing his head into the ceiling. The hallways were narrow enough that everyone felt the impulse to go chest-to-chest passing by one another, even if it wasn’t strictly required.
And that was just the physical stuff. It had been a long while since he’d spent much time in such a densely populated space, especially one where everyone wasn’t actively trying to kill him.
It made him antsy.
The sooner he figured out what the hell that giant beam-shooting egg had actually done, the sooner he could confirm whether it was safe to leave this circus behind and go back to the good life. And if it wasn’t, and the Red King wasn’t just blowing fear-mongering smoke in their eyes…
Honestly, if the sky was about to fall, he wasn’t entirely sure what the hell he was going to do about it, but it was pointless to speculate before they knew more. Answers first.
But before they got to that, he had a pair of sandwiches to find.
