Hera by Chrystalla Thoma

fear in her chest. Pelia was dead, and Hera had to know what
exactly had taken place. She flexed her fingers and willed her
pulse to slow.
    “Snap out of it,” she whispered to herself.
“Do something.” All this waiting and hoping in the dark, only to
find that the light would reveal death and despair.
    I will not let this happen.
    After accessing the classified page of the
secret police, she entered another password, opened the newsfeed
and scanned the fuzzy images recorded by the surveillance cameras
across the street from Pelia’s apartment.
    A shooting.
    The gunshots sounded tinny on the bad
recording of the cameras. Pelia’s long, flat aircar — the new S152
model — appeared. A thin, young man dressed in dark clothes
stumbled out of the aircar door, holding Pelia’s limp body in his
arms, and laid her down on the deck. He knelt over her. Then more
shots rang and fuzzy silhouettes with big guns in their hands moved
out of the shadows. The image fizzled and went black.
    Hera banged her fist on the desk. Nobody
outside the Undercurrent was supposed to know the importance of
Pelia’s work. Pelia had been betrayed.
    A traitor walked among them.
    Icy sweat trickled down Hera’s spine and her
hands trembled. Knowing she had no time for a breakdown, she shoved
her fear deep inside its box. A quick search of the message pool
showed her that the shipment had not yet been found. She sagged in
her chair, releasing a pent-up breath. Then who had it?
    Her eyes narrowed. The boy . He must
have the shipment. Pelia’s chauffeur, right? Sort of an adopted son
she’d recruited from a monks’ factory on Ost. He’d been with her
when she was shot, and therefore was the only person to whom she
could have given it.
    Hera pushed back her chair, grabbed her
longgun and her glitcher from a drawer and stood. Others had
already seen the images. They would be searching for the boy right
now. Dammit all to the five hells.
    Holstering her gun, she stepped out into the
lobby of the administration offices and strode out and down a
passage leading to the great auditorium of the Echo Palace. Turning
abruptly left at the fresco of the butterfly garden, she headed to
the main hangar. Her mission was compromised. It was imperative
that she found the boy, and time was running short.
    As she crossed to the helicopters, she nodded
a greeting to the hangar officer, a tall, lithe woman with ash
blond hair in a braid. While climbing into the first helicopter in
the row and powering up the system, she gazed at the woman.
    Curvier than most, filling out her gray
uniform well, the young officer turned to stare back at Hera, fine
features locked in a scowl.
    Hera winked, blew a kiss and raised her
forefinger and thumb, flashing the woman an “all well” sign. Then
she took the helicopter out of the hangar and up over the Tower’s
white turrets and green groves, over the grey slopes of the
mountains and then the boring plain.
    She would find the boy — if he’d made it out
of the shooting alive.
     
     
     
     
    Chapter
2
     
     
    B lood seeped between
Elei’s fingers.
    The small wound was above his left hipbone.
He pressed down harder to staunch the bleeding and gritted his
teeth. His pulse leaped under his palm as he sat shivering on a
hard, cold bench. He rested his other hand on the grip of his
holstered gun. In his blurry eyes, everything had a shimmering
edge, suspended between reality and dream.
    Then the world tilted.
    Danger.
    Elei jerked and sharp pain erupted in his
side. Hissing, he drew his gun and waited. His possessed eye
throbbed; cronion, the strongest of his resident parasites, hated
surprises. The world lit up in bright colors. Be ready . His
heart pounded in his chest, sent bruising beats against his ribs.
He swallowed past a dry throat and gripped his gun until his
knuckles creaked.
    Nothing moved. Oblong objects around him
pulsed in cool hues of green and blue. Safe. Nothing living .
He relaxed a little. For a while he simply