Page 42 of Stars in Umbra
The door behind them hissed open before he could recover, and the room filled with voices and laughter.
Kage shouldered the door wider, sporting a broad beam, and swinging a bottle of amber-gold whiskey like he’d just robbed a distillery.
‘Well, look who finally stepped into the galaxy’s most hectic job,’ he boomed. ‘Chief of Security. Welcome to our madness, oh venerable guardian.’
Riv strolled in right after, already snatching tumblers from the shelf. ‘Nada, he’s going to be less guardian and more beast because given the kind of shit thrown our way, we require a brute.’
Kage jabbed a thumb toward Mo. ‘Hope you negotiated hazard pay, brother. Babysitting us is at least triple time.’
‘Funny thing, Kage,’ Mo retorted without blinking, ‘I don’t need a scope to shoot you at arm’s length.’
Ki’Remi was last through the door, arms folded, eyes glinting like a knife edge.
He raked Mo up and down with slow, deliberate judgment before delivering his verdict. ‘About freakin’ time we welcomed you into this mad house.’
Kisan’s face flickered onto the wall screen from halfway across the system, standing under a blood-orange sky with a drink in hand.
‘Couldn’t have happened to a better man. Congratulations, friend,’ he rasped.
On another feed, Xion’s kids were clambering over furniture, shrieking war cries as their father ignored them, muttering, ‘Welcome to the brotherhood, Mo.’
Kage popped the cork with a flourish and poured out the whiskey, the scent of smoke, char, and spice curling into the air.
Kainan lifted his glass first. ‘To our new Chief of Security, may he survive us long enough to regret taking the job.’
Riv toasted next. ‘To the man who’s going to need more patience than ammo.’
Zane’s voice came smooth and dry. ‘To the poor bastard who just agreed to babysit a pack of untamed meta shifters.’
The room erupted in rough laughter as glasses collided.
‘To Mo!’ they rasped together.
The whiskey burned like fire, and so did the back slaps, Kage’s crushing hug, Riv’s firm smack, Ki’Remi’s clasp.
It was a claiming, and as Mo gazed around at the faces in that room, at his brotherhood of lethal operators, warriors, and family, even Mirage, he fought back tears.
For the first time in a long, brutal life, he wasn’t just standing guard at the gates, looking in.
He was home.
9
A Raw, Volatile Energy
RINA
The Eden Justice Centre towered like a crown of polished steel and crystal in the government sector, its vast amphitheater packed wall-to-wall with the faces of Pegasi’s military elite.
She managed to avoid the masses of protesters out front and their frothing anger by coming in via a side door.
Only to have the guard at the security checkpoint tell her that protocol now dictated that everyone come in through the front to focus most security on that entrance.
‘It’s in case of a breach on the frontage where all the VIPs are arriving through anyway.’
‘I’ll keep a note on that private,’ she told the guardsman as he waved her inside.
Rina swept in, eyes scanning the sea of uniforms and crests in the plenary hall.
