The Starlight Lancer

Chapter Thirty-Four: The Looming Tempest

"Ah, the Vahataman Crystal. Nothing makes a finer decorative piece. Such exquisite material is worth a fortune—the galaxy has little of it left."

—Deraw Gulfrees, Chairman of the Ildgul Mining Conglomeration's Public Relations Department

"We've been probing his defenses for a few months now," Reida said. "Trying to find information on where the sensors are and aren't—blind spots in the security system."

"I'm guessing the roof is one of those blind spots?" Zaina asked, pacing back and forth to work out the excess energy her anxiety was generating.

"Yeah, sort of."

"Sort of?"

"Well," Reida replied, "there's no way inside the building without tripping a sensor. Every entry and exit point is covered—and even if you destroy a section of the wall, there are internal sensors built into every inch of the interior's framework."

"So, how the hell are we gonna get inside?"

"Simple. On the captain's signal, we're gonna disable one of these turbines and go in through the duct system."

Zaina's mind raced, trying to make sense of this plan. "Okay, but—won't we trip a sensor?"

Reida shrugged. "Yeah, but at that point the system won't care. Captain Danjai's going to create a diversion down below on the street level—if she can poke a few holes in the building, it'll prioritize those over a shorted turbine. There isn't much security up here, to be honest—I was shocked that there weren't even cameras. The outer surface is made from nonmagnetic material, so no magnetic hook-guns—and no regular hook-guns, either, since they'll lodge themselves inside a wall and trip one of the internal sensors; and these towers here are tracking for active engines and cascading signals at a certain energy threshold in case anyone tries to come via ship. That's why we had to come on those stupid discs—the system isn't designed to look for anything that small."

"You really know your stuff."

"Like I said," she replied, "we've been probing. We've been able to figure out what works and what doesn't—for the most part."

Zaina's eyebrow rose. "For the most part?"

"Well, truth be told, we don't know as much as we'd like about the basement-level defenses. Only what we've been able to get out of contractors who worked on it and Bilvane's employees—which isn't all that much."

"What happens if we fail? You know—if something bad happens."

A coy smile spread over Reida's lips. "Then this whole thing will be considered another probing attempt for whoever tries next."

"So if this goes sideways, we're probably dead?"

Reida shrugged. "Yeah, probably."

Zaina didn't understand—how wasn't she taking this seriously? "Aren't you afraid to die?"

"Nah," Reida replied. "Never understood that mentality, really. It can come anytime, any place; there's no sense in living your whole life avoiding it. Half the fun of it all is being right on that edge—you'll never know what it means to live until you're right there. And once you know that feeling, it's—well, it's everything. Nothing else really matters after that."

It was strange to hear someone talk so openly and casually about death. Zaina had put her life on the line a few times on Demelia. Memories of the surges of power, of the thrill of the fight briefly made her heart skip with excitement, but it was quickly replaced by the shaky lurch of a deep pit of fear opening in her stomach.