Chapter 24
Gray skies spread from the mountain tops to the city skyline, and a heavy rain drenched everything in sight. But Mirana had experienced enough time hidden in transport shuttles for one week, so she slogged through the downpour with no protection but a raincoat. The water splashing on her face was cold, but it was also somehow cathartic, as if it were washing away the stress of the past few days and the uncertainty of the future. Of course, it would have to wash away a lot more than that before Mirana could really relax, but for the moment it was enough.
A few people passed her on the street, but they all had their heads ducked into their hoods like she did, trying to avoid getting splashed by the passing hovercrafts. Mostly, though, the streets were empty, and Mirana was alone with the sound of water running off of the metal buildings. Once, this city had been home to her, but the Anacronian Capitol had changed a lot in recent years. Even aside from her home being vaporized, the entire planet had been evacuated during the Alien War, and everyone living here now had been forced to quickly abandon their new homes on Venom, minutes before their new Plasma-generated city had been blown apart. One more thing they could all blame Mirana for, she thought with a wry smile. Not that they had room to complain. Anacron was prospering nicely under the new government.
As if to offer evidence of the government’s prosperity, the Imperial Palace came into view, reaching above the other buildings like a metallic mountain. Mirana looked up at it as she approached, ignoring the extra water on her face as her hood fell back a little. She had a long history with that place. She could still remember the night she had let Koral Ralok leave the planet, taking the Shield Crystal beyond Trelan Thendrak’s grasp. She had regretted that moment for years, and yet in hindsight it had been one of her better choices, even if she had made it mostly in ignorance. She shook her head and pulled the hood closer. In a way she wished she could just put all that behind her, and yet here she was, trying to dig even deeper into her strange history. She wondered if she would ever move past it.
Eventually the street ended at a transport center. The hovercrafts entered a tunnel that lead down to a checkpoint and the tunnels that served the palace and its surrounding buildings, while the sidewalk rose up toward an entrance to the building some distance above street level. Mirana followed the path until it led through the doors, then stopped inside to let herself dry off for a moment. She almost decided to continue as she was, using her own credentials; after all, what would be the harm even if someone did spot her here, surrounded by Imperial security? But she had snuck onto this planet and she was definitely going to leave unnoticed, so she could not really justify the risk of being exposed in-between. So she took a deep breath and started looking around the terminal for a secluded place to vanish.
Riding on the outside of shuttles and sneaking around silently really was harder without her armor, but Mirana managed to tail people all the way to the main palace tower and through a service entrance; getting into a maintenance passage was a simple matter after that. Mirana had been sneaking around this building practically since she had been a child, just as a way of practicing her abilities, and while being here again did not exactly feel nostalgic, it was certainly less stressful than most other places she had infiltrated. Finally she made her way up to the residential floors, where camera coverage was practically nonexistent. She dropped down from a ceiling passage and into a quiet hallway and made her way to a nearby door, where she knocked, as if that whole trip had been a perfectly normal commute. She almost forgot to drop the Shadow field.
“Mirana?” She smiled as the door slid open and a young teenage boy regarded her in surprise. A much younger girl peeked shyly from around a corner at the back of the large entrance room.
“Can I come in?”
Ren Marnax chuckled, still looking stunned. “Yeah, come on in. Mom’s away at some meeting, and I think Jenez is downstairs practicing moogball or something. I was just doing homework.”
Mirana followed Ren in and sat down across from him at a console table that was showing several documents at once. Lizia’s young face returned Mirana’s smile, but then she ran off into another room, ribbons bouncing in her hair. Mirana had left the Marnax home before Lizia had been born, so it was hardly a surprise that the little girl was being shy.
“It’s been a while,” Ren said.
“Yeah. I’ve been busy. You know, spying on people, knocking bad guys around. What have you been up to?”
“Not much. I have Mr. Deltrix for history, and he wants us to memorize like everything that ever happened on Chigraltis Prime, as if anybody cares. And then he grades us really hard on stuff that doesn’t even matter, like punctuation. He’s such a belchmonger.”
Mirana chuckled. “Yes, history can be tough to get through. There’s some interesting stuff there if you dig deep enough, though. I’m having a bit of trouble with it myself, actually… So how’s Rinel?”
“She’s good.”
Mirana waited for several seconds before realizing that that was all the information she was going to get without further prodding. “She was working on some kind of planetary reclamation project, wasn’t she?”
“Yeah, trying to fix up the other planets that were evacuated during the war. The other war, I guess.”
Ren’s eyes dropped as he said this last sentence, and Mirana realized that as much as Ren was trying to live a normal life, having his father away had to be making things hard.
“I saw Gerran just a few days ago,” Mirana said, trying to sound casual. “He was doing well. Galactron is a great ship.”
“I know.”
So much for casual conversation, she thought. “I had a long walk. Do you mind if I get something to eat?”
Ren smiled. “No, I’m afraid the kitchen is off-limits to military personnel.”
Mirana smirked at him. “Well you’re going to have to stop me then!” And with that, she vanished and ran to the kitchen. Ren didn’t follow, but when Mirana turned she saw that he was biting his lip to hold back a smile. Ren and Jenez had grown up with Mirana around most of the time until she had moved out, and neither of them had really gotten used to their almost-sister being a mercenary; the Shadow Plasma was completely beyond them. But Mirana always got a sense of satisfaction from using it around them, maybe because this was the only casual use for her power that she had found.
Jenez came down just as Mirana was finishing up the sandwich she had made. Mirana was shocked at how old she looked; she was a couple of years younger than Ren but much taller than she had been the last time Mirana had seen her.
Jenez smiled and ran forward. “Tickle laser!” she shouted, poking Mirana in the side.
“Not fair!” Mirana protested. “I don’t think I can lift you anymore.” The usual response would be to pick Jenez up and “fly” her around like a starfighter.
“Taking a vacation?”
“I wish. I’m here to annoy your mom with some galactic-order stress.”
“Sounds good.” Jenez looked around. “Where is he at?”
“Who?”
“You know, the mysterious Plasma Master.”
Mirana chuckled at the assumption that she would have brought Ned here. “I have no idea. Safe I hope. Why do you ask?”
“Just wondering if it’s true. You know, what they’re saying.”
“What? Who is saying what about me?”
“Everyone. You know, on the social network. Your fans.”
“My fans?” This news was going downhill fast.
“Yeah. They say you and Nedward Simmons are dating! Flying around in secret so Dark Viper can’t break you up. They say there are Plasma sparks when you kiss. So is it true?”
Mirana took Jenez by the shoulders and fixed her with a serious look. “Listen very carefully. There is not a micron of truth to anything you read or hear on that network, about me or probably anything else. I am not dating Ned Simmons. There are no sparks. And I do not want any fans!”
Jen
ez giggled and looked away. “Whatever.”
Mirana shook her head in disgust. “Tell me about something else.”
“Stuff’s pretty normal here.”
“Are you dating anyone?”
“No.”
“Good.”
“I have to beat the guys away with a broom, though.”
“Let me know if you need help.”
Jenez smiled wistfully. “Dad scares them enough, I think. You should have seen him when Elrig asked me to go to Hradix beach with him over the break…”
“I saw Gerran a couple of days ago,” Mirana heard herself saying for the second time. “He’s doing well.”
Jenez nodded. “We never hear anything about what’s going on.”
“That’s because we’re going to take care of it before there’s anything to tell. No sense getting distracted from your moogball tournament.”
Poke. “Tickle laser!”
“All right you little-”
But Jenez had already run off. Mirana ran after her with a smile, happy for the chance to ignore whatever it was they had been talking about.
Rinel came home a short time later carrying bags of warm food; in spite of her many years in Imperial housing, she had never liked the idea of servants walking through her home, so she always insisted on picking up the meals her family did not make themselves from the kitchen. Lizia accosted her the moment she was in the door, and she had to set down the bags quickly to avoid being knocked off balance by the arms wrapped around her legs. She laughed and spun her daughter around a few times. Mirana let Ren and Jenez greet their mother too before poking around a corner herself.
“Mirana!”
“It’s funny,” Mirana said with a smile. “Everyone I meet is always so surprised to see me!”
“Why ever could that be?”
Rinel hugged the older children and then embraced Mirana just as warmly, and for a moment Mirana felt like she were ten years old again, coming home after a normal day at school.
Mirana knew better than to bring up the war before dinner, so she helped set the table and then ate mostly in silence, content to watch what she realized was the only normal family activity she had witnessed in years. It was nice to think that her work was making this possible for someone, even if Mirana were unlikely to ever experience it for herself.
When it was done, Rinel carried Lizia into a living area with ridiculously comfortable chairs and collapsed into one of them. Mirana sat down across from her and found that she had to resist the urge to just lean back and fall asleep instead of addressing the real reason she was here.
“Just taking a break?” Rinel obviously knew the answer to that.
“Yeah, I wish.” Mirana spent some time filling Rinel in on classified information that she was probably not supposed to have but clearly did not mind being told, about the battle and Mirana’s investigations into the enemy Plasma Masters. She was vague about the actual battle details, not wanting to worry Rinel or Lizia, although the little girl was far too young to understand or care about any of it.
“I’m glad he’s well,” Rinel said when Mirana had finished. “I suppose he knows what he’s doing.”
“I’m sure he does. I’m the one who’s a little lost. That’s why I kind of need your help.”
“What do you need?”
“This next part needs to stay very quiet.”
Rinel nodded in understanding. “Lizia, could you go tell Ren I asked him to get you some dessert?” She did not have to say any more than that; her daughter was out of the room in seconds.
“I need to get to Palandora,” Mirana said once they were alone. “There are high speed shuttles going there once in a while, but I was hoping to bring Nightsong along. I launched it from Delta Epsilon to a shipping company that’s storing it on Anacron, in a very large crate, without any record of association with me. I was hoping you could ship it to Palandora for me, and then I could sneak onto the ship that would carry it.”
“You don’t think it would look suspicious for me to make a shipment to Palandora?”
“Not if Kayleen Rax had ordered some hydrolithium filters for her main production facility.”
“Did she?”
Mirana tilted her head innocently. “Sort of.”
“You know, this hacking habit you have is going to get you into trouble someday.”
“It almost got me killed a couple of days ago, but what can I say? Bad habits are-”
“All right,” Rinel said. “I’m still confused though. If you can hack Rax’s corporate data, why not make it look like someone else sent the shipment?”
“The problem isn’t who sends it; it’s who authorizes it. If the shipping company looks too closely and finds my fighter, my cover is blown. But if the Emperor’s wife signs off on a shipment, that means the scanning has already been done, and the shipping crew will pass it over without a second thought. And that kind of authorization is something I can’t fabricate.”
Rinel took a deep breath, obviously displeased. “I want to help, but I’m sure you can see why I’m concerned. If someone figures out what happened – even after the fact – they might come back here looking for more information. I know security is good around here, but if you can get in, then it’s possible that someone else could too.”
Mirana had considered the same possibility, and now she was feeling rotten for having brought the idea up at all. “I did think of that,” she said. “I’ve fabricated the information trail back past you, to make it look like the request is coming to you from a random office in your reclamation program. I’m hoping that anyone who looks will just think you were part of the bureaucracy I fooled. But… I understand if you feel it’s too big a risk.”
“But, you feel this is important.”
“I had to leave Nemesis behind so it could help in the war. Sooner or later, I expect to be attacked, and I’d like to have the strongest thing possible at hand, which means Nightsong. And even though I’m not even certain I’ll find anything on Palandora, it’s my only lead – it’s kind of my last hope of finding out something about the Plasma that Viper doesn’t know, or at least to find out what he does know and even things out.”
Rinel was looking off at a simulated window. “I hate this whole thing. I hated the idea of Gerran in the middle of war, I hate the idea of you risking yourself, and I hate the fact that the kids can’t live a normal life without attention from a hundred planets every time they step outside.” She sounded bitter, but her eyes were soft when she looked back at Mirana. “But I understand why you do what you do. It’s a worthy cause. And I know you’ll do everything you can to keep us safe. So tell me what you need me to do.”
“I love you.” The words were out almost before Mirana realized she was saying them, and all of a sudden she felt awkward, like she had impersonated someone else. But it made Rinel smile, and all of a sudden Mirana was that ten-year-old girl again. “The next time you see me, this will all be over, and everything will be back to normal.”
Rinel nodded. “I think I can hold out until then.”