Page 109 of Stars in Halo

She hung her head. ‘Naam. Kidnapping you was not on the table before Korin discovered our signals from the gems I planted on Eden II were being blocked.’

‘So you had to change tack, up the ante and capture me instead.’

Katya’s eyes fell again as she nodded in shame. ‘Until I got to know you better on those two days and tried to stop them coming into my suite.’

‘What was your plan B to gain access to the vaults?’

She shrugged. ‘Stealing your wrist comm and somehow hacking it.’

Xion smirked. ‘You’d have never succeeded, not against Mirage’s quantum mind.’

‘I get that now,’ Katya sighed. ‘But with my kids kidnapped, my back was to the wall.’

Once more, she gazed at her feet, and he spotted her bite her lip some more, a sign he now recognised as her nerves showing. ‘Khaliya, don’t blame yourself. A ruthless enemy played you and I. We now get to play him back. Why the heist of the Serpent’s Iris?’

‘We were deep in debt. The first half deposit money he paid us for it was enough to fund this ship, the crime, this freakin’ caper and pay off all our debts.’

‘Who did you hand the Serpent’s Iris to?’

‘The King, The ALMQ monarch. He took it along with the delivery of yours truly when we landed on LeCythi. We also received full payment for our services soon after.’

Xion ran his tongue under his top lip. ‘I understand. The Iris, what’s it for?’

She shrugged. ‘All I know is that he needed Sable vault access and your metanoids to bypass Sable. After which he intended to use the Iris, but what exactly for we were not privy to.’

Mirage piped up. ‘On the matter of the noids K’Sumi harvested, I deactivated them, but I still have eyes and ears on the ground in Iccythria, and I’ve learnt that K’Sumi was livid about the fact. He’s nuked the lab and the doctors who siphoned them. He’s also screaming blue murder and tearing his palace down until his advisers devise another way to get what he wants.’

Xion changed tack. ‘Like the Khosana said, he’s getting shit wild and on the lam. Did you always deal directly with K’Sumi?’ he asked Katya.

She shook her head. ‘At first, he used a proxy to procure my father’s services, but I believe he became frantic and started dealing with Korin. He’s the one who insisted on the card game because it’d be the one sure way I would place the gems into Sable hands.’

The Rider sat back, his mind racing.

‘So here’s what I think,’ he grunted a few minutes later. ‘We know the Supreme King of the House of ALMQ is desperate as his influence wanes on Iccythria. He needs to pull off a major coup to stay in control. ‘I suspect what he wants from us, Riders, will give him a vital advantage over his enemies and offer him his last chance to hold onto power.’

He leaned back in his chair and thought. ‘And he needed my metanoids for it. Given my work on the rock, this means high security, for I have the highest clearance, bar Kainan and Zane.’

He thought for a beat longer. ‘Katya, you were also tasked with playing a card game on Eden II that would allow you to secret a gem with a hack bomb into our systems. So, we know the target is Eden II’s framework. He has to breach a facility where my security privilege is crucial. What would that place be?’

‘Somewhere that holds items, data or goods that are highly valuable,’ Katya posited.

Xion’s eyes gleamed. ‘There’s only one location that fits the bill. The Sable Vault.’

‘He needs access to it to take something out,’ Mirage suggested, chiming in. ‘It can’t be mullah; he’s rolling in Ccyth reserve funds. It can’t be jewellery; Iccythria is the source of Pegasi’s gems, so it points to an artefact or something of otherworldly power.’

‘He can’t be thinking of the Shard?’ Xion asked.

Mirage shook their head. ‘Nada, too big, too risky.’

Katya snapped her fingers. ‘What if it’s something within the Shard? One of them?’

Xion knifed forward in his chair. ‘Fokk, that’s it, khaliya. He needs access to the vaults to get into one of the Shards. Why? What’s so potent inside it that he’d risk so much to get it?’

He whirled around to his monitor. ‘Can we all do some research now and examine what we find? What threads connect Iccythria to the Shard?’

The trio set off to work.

Xion, Katya and Mirage sat in the silence of the Tachy’s cockpit, glued to individual massive view screens displaying scrolls, maps, files and feeds from all over the galaxy.

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