Page 27 of Only Hard Problems

I hurried over to her. “Are you okay?”

“Fine,” she growled. “Now that this bastard is down.”

Silas was lying flat on his back. Blood dripped down his arm from where my sword had sliced him, but that was a minor wound compared with the three blaster holes Asterin had punched in his chest. The acrid stench of his fried flesh mixed with the electrical burn of the blaster bolts that still filled the air, along with a faint coppery tang of blood. Even if I’d had another skinbond injector on my belt, it wouldn’t have been enough to save him.

“Any last words?” I asked, crouching down beside the dying man. “Care to confess what the Techwave stole? Now that your mission has failed?”

Silas grinned. Blood stained his teeth a dark, ominous crimson and trickled out of the side of his mouth. “I didn’t fail. I already . . . sent the data. Now we have . . . almost everything we need . . . to finally destroy . . . the Imperium . . .”

His head lolled to the side, his chest stilled, and his last breath escaped in a raspy sigh.

I muttered a curse and stood up. “Is it true? Did he have time to send data to the rest of the Techwave?”

Asterin shook her head. “I don’t know. After he shot you, we went straight to a library. He opened a hidden compartment in a bookcase and connected his tablet to a terminal. I couldn’t see what he accessed or who he might have sent it to.”

I raked a hand through my hair and started pacing back and forth beside his body.

“What do you think the Techwave is plotting?” Asterin asked, worry creeping into her voice.

I stopped pacing and stared down at Silas. Perhaps it was my imagination, but his lips seemed to be curved in a smug smile, as though he had beaten us, even in death. “Nothing good.”

IsearchedSilas’sbody,but other than his tablet, he wasn’t carrying anything noteworthy. I slid the device into my pocket, then picked up his hand cannon and hooked it to my belt so I could study the Techwave’s new weapon later. Finally, I retrieved my stormsword from where it had landed on the ground and boarded the blitzer while Asterin stood guard with her blaster outside.

The blitzer was a common Techwave model, and my quick search didn’t turn up any obvious clues, other than the jamming device Silas had used to block signals around Castle Rojillo. I shut off the device, then sent the ship’s location to the closest squad of Imperium guards so they could come and secure the scene.

Once that was done, the Imperium investigators, engineers, and scientists would go over the Techwave ship from top to bottom. Perhaps they would find something I’d missed, but I doubted it. Silas had already sent the stolen House Rojillo tech to his superiors, and it was doubtful that he’d left any important information behind on the blitzer.

I stomped down the open cargo-bay ramp, frustration pounding through my body with every loud, harsh, clanging step.

Asterin was still keeping watch outside, her blaster trained on the trees around the ship. “Find anything?”

“Nothing,” I growled.

She nodded, let out a tired sigh, and lowered her blaster. Then she reached up with her left hand and gingerly probed the side of her head, hissing a bit. A large reddish bruise had puffed up there, as though she had tucked one of the pink-star honeysuckle blossoms behind her ear.

“You’re hurt.” An unexpected bit of concern shot through me, along with more than a little guilt. “I’m sorry, but I don’t have any more skinbonds.”

Asterin shrugged. “It’s nothing. Just a little sore. I don’t even remember bumping into anything.” She pointed at my head and made a small circle with her index finger. “Besides, I’m not the one who got punched in the face by a Black Scarab.”

The skinbonds might have dulled the sharpest pains of my many injuries, but the goose egg on my temple was throbbing again. I reinforced my psionic shield, adding another layer to that glass box in my mind. The last thing I needed was for the box to shatter here in the middle of the woods and for me not to be able to walk back to the castle.

Asterin’s gaze flicked over my body before landing on the large black hole scorched into my jacket. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

I puffed up my chest. “Just fine and dandy. It takes more than a point-blank cannon blast to the chest to keep Zane Zimmer down for long.”

She snorted. “Talking about yourself in the third person issopretentious.”

“Haven’t you heard? I’m Zane Zimmer, the Imperium’s most arrogant idiot.”

A thoughtful look filled her face. “You’re a lot of things, but an idiot is not one of them.”

I gasped, clutched my hand to my chest, and staggered back in mock shock. “My dear Lady Asterin, is that, dare I say it, acompliment?”

She rolled her eyes, but a small, reluctant smile curved the corners of her lips. “You must have a low bar for compliments if someone saying you’renotan idiot is your idea of high praise.”

“I would take any praise from you, my lady.”

I said the words as a joke, but as soon as they left my lips, the truth of them sliced through me. I might not like Asterin, and I definitely didn’t trust her, but I respected her. The Erzton lady was smart, strong, and cool under pressure. All admirable qualities, but it was her secrets that intrigued me the most.

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