Page 43 of Only Rogue Actions
Wereturnedtothecontrol room to find Siya and Asterin talking to a man in his fifties with light brown hair and ruddy skin.The man was wearing the emerald green of House Collier, and his jacket stretched across his broad shoulders and stocky chest.Even though the battle was over and our enemies were dead, the lunarium hammer clenched in his fist was burning with a bright golden light.
Rigel’s dark brown eyes flicked over Kyrion and me.No emotion showed on the other warrior’s face, but the angry glare on his hammer dimmed in what I could have sworn was relief.
“I thought the two of you were going to do some simple training,” Rigel rumbled.“Not dig up a scandal big enough to bring down a major House.”
Kyrion shrugged.“Vesper and I are overachievers that way.”
Rigel barked out a laugh and clapped Kyrion on the back, making the Arrow wince and wobble on his feet.
Rigel and the other House Collier Hammers quickly took control of the scene.First, they made sure all the House Battis warriors were dead and then gathered up their tablets and weapons.Rigel also sent some Hammers to the garage to see if any more explosives were attached to Siya’s transport.
Meanwhile, Kyrion and I followed Siya and Asterin into the locker room.Siya opened the locker, and Kyrion and I fished out our stormswords, blasters, and tablets.
Kyrion plucked a skinbond injector off his silver bandolier of supplies and stabbed it into his upper left arm.The healing chemicals flooded his system, and some of the tense lines of pain eased in his face.He slowly curled his left fingers into a fist and opened them again, although the gruesome black blaster burn remained on his palm.
“You want to go into the infirmary and get healed by a medtable?”Siya asked.
Kyrion shook his head.“No.The medtable will make a record of my injuries, and the less House Battis knows about what happened, the safer we will all be.I can wait until we get back to the Collier estate.”
Kyrion used a second skinbond injector on himself.He offered the other ones on his bandolier to me, Siya, and Asterin, but the three of us had minor injuries that didn’t need immediate attention.None of us was in the best shape of our lives, but we would live.
The four of us returned to the control room.Jeffrey was still unconscious on the floor, but Siya cracked her hand across his jaw several times, and he finally jerked awake.
Jeffrey blinked and blinked, as if he didn’t know where he was or what was going on.Slowly, his eyes sharpened, and he glanced from me to Kyrion to Siya to Asterin.The technician jerked back again, but he was trapped against the control panel, and there was nowhere for him to go.
“Listen closely, Jeffrey,” Siya said in a deceptively light, pleasant voice.“You have two options.You can keep quiet and allow me the pleasure of breaking all the bones in your body with my hammer, or you can start talking and hope that I only leave you to rot in a House Collier detention facility.Your choice.”
Jeffrey sucked in a breath.“It wasn’t my idea.Noneof it was my idea.Roderick was behind it all, I swear!He’sthe one who lured people into the maze, not me ...”
Jeffrey spilled his proverbial guts like the spineless coward he was.According to the technician, Roderick had been using the maze as his own personal playground for the last three years, and he’d lured dozens of people to the facility, locked them in the maze, and hunted them after hours.
“We used the lava to incinerate most of the bodies, but Roderick ordered the Hammers to bury a few of them,” Jeffrey said.“In the flower beds in the garden biodome with the House Battis castle statues.”
Disgust crinkled Kyrion’s face.“So that’s why some of the flowers in there were so much larger and more colorful than the others.”
Siya shook her head.“More trophies,” she muttered.
Asterin shuddered, her face pale and tight.Siya shot her a sympathetic look, but Asterin was too distraught to notice it.
I looked at Siya and raised my eyebrows in a silent question, and she shook her head again.Siya might have told me about Roderick cheating on Asterin all those years ago, but she wasn’t going to reveal the information to her stepsister.At least, not tonight.That was probably for the best.Asterin didn’t need any more heartbreak right now.
By the time Jeffrey finished talking, Rigel and the other House Collier Hammers had completed their sweep of the training facility.
Rigel stepped back into the control room.“We’re clear.No other personnel are on-site.”
Kyrion stabbed his finger toward the corridor.The bodies of the House Battis Hammers I’d killed were still sprawled across the floor.“What are you going to do with them?”
Siya swiped through a few screens on her tablet.“No idea.Right now, Aldrich and Verona think the best course of action is for us to quietly slip out of the facility, but I don’t see how we’re going to explain what happened to Roderick and his people.We can always claim they were alive when we left, but I doubt anyone will believe that.”She sighed.“Either way, the story about Roderick’s death will be all over the gossipcasts by morning.”
“Is that a bad thing?”I asked.
Siya looked up from her tablet.“House Battis is arguably the most powerful of the Erzton Houses.They’ve never been particularly friendly to House Collier, but this will officially make them our enemies.”
Kyrion frowned.“Even though you have footage of the Black Scarab and Roderick attacking Vesper and me in the maze?”
Siya shrugged.“We’ll keep a copy of the footage, but I doubt it will be much help.Even if we release it to the gossipcasts, Lady Battis will probably claim it’s fake and that her darling son wouldneverdo anything so horrific.She’ll do her best to discredit and undercut House Collier at every turn.Even if this incident doesn’t boil up into an all-out war, Lady Battis still has enough money, influence, alliances, and resources to make life very, very difficult for us.”
Rigel nodded, agreeing with Siya’s assessment.Asterin’s face paled again, and she clutched her stomach like she was going to be sick.Kyrion’s forehead crinkled with concern.
