Page 4 of Vindicated

“You heard them,” Hal said as he wrung his hands. “They’ll be back.”

“Next time they might not be so clueless,” Vallia said.

“You can’t charm you way out of everything, Athena,” Hatch teased.

I wasn’t sure if he was right about that. So far, I’d been able to sweet-talk my way out of most predicaments. But I wasn’t the one sitting in jail. I looked at Lettie’s red-rimmed eyes and guilt gnarled my stomach. “I know I can’t, and I know this is serious.”

“The Vandar promised to send help,” Hal reminded me. “Where are they?”

As much as I wanted to give the couple we’d rescued the benefit of the doubt, I couldn’t help but feel we’d been abandoned. The all-too-familiar sensation prickled the back of my neck and made my throat clench.

If there was one thing I despised, it was being left behind. It made me feel like a little girl again, clinging to my mother’s skirts as my father stormed off. I hadn’t known then that my final, timid peek at him would be the last time I’d see him. I hadn’t known that the days would stretch into weeks and then years until finally the waiting was stretched so thin there was nothing left of it to gather into any semblance of hope.

I gathered my courage and straightened my shoulders. “I don’t know, but if the Vandar aren’t coming, we’ll have to save Vern ourselves.” As soon as I said that, my stomach unknotted and the tension in my shoulders unspooled. “We managed to hide two valuable prisoners and get them off the planet. We can rescue one person from jail, can’t we?”

I ignored the slack-jawed stares directed at me. I might not know how we were going to rescue Vern, but I couldn’t dwell on the details. Dwelling wasn’t my style, anyway.

Always so dramatic and impulsive, my mother would have said, usually with a long-suffering sigh.

I brushed that aside. I was an actress. Dramatic and impulsive were my brand. And I was going to use them to save Lettie’s brother.

“Who’s with me?” I asked, sweeping my gaze around our small group.

Lettie was the first to bob her head up and down. “I’m in. If they wat to arrest me anyway, what do I have to lose?”

Vallia patted her on the shoulder. “That’s the spirit! You know I’m all for anything that embarrasses or hurts the Empire.”

“You can’t pull it off without us,” Hatch and Ringo said, nearly in unison.

Hal huffed out a tortured sigh. “This means opening night is going to be delayed, doesn’t it?”

Just then, the back door flew open and a figure rushed into the theatre, breathing as if he’d run a race. “We’re under attack!”

Chapter 3

Lorken

I’d memorized the layout of the alien city, although Raas Wrexxon’s battle chief had understated how narrow its streets were and how the closely huddled buildings trapped the planet’s heat. I swiped the back of my hand across my brow after dispatching another Imperial soldier with my battle axe.

Tvekkinghell, the place was like an inferno.

The raiders on my team paused with me to catch their breath, their bare chests streaked with sweat and grime as they gripped their bloody axes.

“The enemy is in retreat, Raas,” one of my warriors said, as distant uniformed figures fled down a long alley.

I grunted. “Let them try to run. They cannot escape.”

What I knew, and the Zagrath did not, was that my horde ships lay in wait and unseen above the planet’s atmosphere. Even if soldiers managed to flee in spaceships, my ships would be waiting to blast them from the sky.

I scanned the tall buildings to either side of us and glanced above me to check the position of the sun. Then I tipped my head to a dingy alley. “The theatre should be this way.”

I led the procession as we jogged in formation, our boots pounding the stones beneath us and kicking up plumes of dust.Screams and blaster fire echoed behind us, but I was confident that we were hearing the defeat of the Zagrath and not of my raiders.

The alley spilled into a larger square, and I paused to assess the open space for threats. Then my gaze landed on the towering building with an ornate facade, and satisfaction hummed in my chest. We’d found the theatre precisely where Kolt had said it would be.

I cocked my head to one side. It seemed shabbier than I’d expected, but the battle chief had mentioned that it was struggling to stay afloat under the Zagrath regime. The peeling paint and dingy, crooked sign only seemed to reinforce this point.

“This is it,” I told my team.