Discovery

(English)

There had to be another way.

I held almost all the cards right now. The last thing I wanted to do was risk losing some of the progress I’d built up. I knew about SPARK. I was pretty sure I knew what Admiral Hakho was up to with him. I even knew most of the important details of the plan. But without all the details, I was still missing that last card…

I didn’t see any way around it.

I needed to risk talking with Kemon again. Having no other choices pricked at my sense of safety. Our edge right now was not in what we knew, but the fact that Kemon didn’t know we knew anything. If I gave even the slightest hint away, that advantage could evaporate in a second.

Not just any approach would do. I bided my time for the right avenue. Jordan had good advice, which was to trust how clever Kemon was. I’d done very well for myself remembering how easy it was for anyone to be stupid.

But that was not something to rely on in your enemies.

I got my shot when a new development shook up the whole camp.

“The A-ships are all operational,” Kemon announced.

“So we’re outta here?” Johnny asked.

“Not immediately,” Kemon admitted. “We need to pack up all the camp structures and move supplies between the Fafin in orbit and here on the ground. But I think we can leave within ten to fifteen days, local time.”

A timetable. Whatever Kemon was planning would fit in that window.

Excited murmurs went through the gathered abductees. Several people looked toward me, maybe anticipating me to raise a fuss, but I ignored them.

“Do we know where we’re actually going?” Madeline asked.

“Not yet,” Kemon said. “I’d like to present several options to you all in a few days. Ordinarily my crew and ship follow where I decide, but I believe this is a decision you all should have input on.”

Kemon’s gaze flickered toward me for a moment. Gauging my reaction? It wouldn’t do any good. I already knew where he wanted us to go.

Convincing us to go to a Vorak system though? To attack it no less?

My gut said no way did everyone agree to go attack the Vorak…right? It was too big a leap, surely. Even with the abductees riled about the Vorak as much as they were. No…this was exactly the kind of detail I was missing about Kemon’s plan.

There had to be another step to the plan between attacking Fintuther Station and now.

“What can we do to make ten days more likely than fifteen?” I asked.

If Kemon was surprised to hear from me, he didn’t show it.

“Truthfully, not much. The most time-consuming tasks will be disassembling our power conduits and hauling them back into orbit with Win’s shuttle,” Kemon said.

“Why not just use the A-ships?” Drew asked before I could voice the same question.

“Launching the A-ships will require several hours of calibrations between each one,” Kemon explained. “They’re too close together to launch simultaneously and we can’t drag them to better grounds. Do you remember how difficult landing them here was?”

Reluctant groans answered him.

The meeting of older abductees wrapped up as it usually did: with casual conversation and only a handful of people eager to discuss planning for the immediate future.

For once, I wasn’t one of them.

Glancing at Jordan earned me a small nod. She agreed; this was my best chance to interrogate Kemon.

“Ah, young Ted,” he said, turning to face me. He was walking toward the outcropping where Win’s shuttle was parked. “Here to deride my character, no doubt?”

“I’ll save that for when I have an audience,” I said. “I need to ask you some things before you pop into orbit for the next few days.”

“…Very well,” he said. “Ask.”

“Who’s Caleb Hane?” I asked. “I’ve met everyone in camp. No one introduced themselves as ‘Caleb’.”

“Then where’d you hear the name?” Kemon asked. At first I thought he was on guard, but it wasn’t more than idle curiosity.

“Sid implied I might be humbled if I met him.”

Kemon actually smiled at that. “I wish you would meet him. Dira, I wish any of us would meet him.”

“Oh yeah?”

“He’s an abductee who fought some of the most dangerous Vorak Adepts,” Kemon said, his voice filled with genuine admiration. “You are not the only abductees the Vorak are after. Caleb was freed from the A-ships earlier than the abductees we’ve found, and he ran afoul of the Vorak in another star system.”

“And you think me talking to an abductee with your same views on the Vorak is going to get me on board?” I asked slyly. I had to be careful not to be too smug, lest I give myself away.

“I figure he’d have a much better chance of convincing you than me,” Kemon said.

“They way Sid talked, it sounds like you mentioned him a lot more before Jordan and I arrived,” I said.

Kemon grimaced. “You might give me some credit for why; I first learned of him a few months ago when he fought the Vorak. It made me go looking for more information, and there’s plenty about him before that point, but since?”

“He’s dropped off the radar?” I asked.

“I’m actually worried he might be dead,” Kemon said. “Like I said, he fought some of the most dangerous Vorak alive and won. A certain kind of success can make you a target.”

“…And you could be playing up that possibility to the others,” I noted, “to get them even more riled up about the Vorak. But you haven’t…and think I’m going to give you credit for that?”

“I’m not ignorant of your suspicions of me,” Kemon scoffed. “You think my motives are nefarious, but—”

“But nothing,” I cut him off. “It’s not even that hard to figure out. You’re demonizing the Vorak and having Win train us to fight. It doesn’t take a genius to see you want us to fight some Vorak.”

“I don’t want you to need to fight anyone,” Kemon said. “But you’re right, if it comes to a fight? I want you to win.”

“Like Caleb Hane did?” I asked. “Because he sure sounds like a badass, and if you think he wound up dead…”

“He only might be dead,” Kemon said. “And in fact, there’s no evidence to suggest he is. He’s just been keeping a very low profile.”

Thank you, God, I thought. We hadn’t actually done anything to disguise me while we’d traipsed through Mummar. I’d used my own name at every psionic workshop we’d organized. But that wasn’t enough to reach Kemon’s ears. Word of mouth didn’t jump between planets that easily, much less stars.

“Oh, I have no doubt,” I snarked. “I just can’t help but imagine why you might mention him so much less if you think he’s dead. Almost makes me wonder about how big the risks of what you want us to do are.”

Kemon shot me a truly withering glare.

“Why are you like this?” he asked.

“Like what?”

“You always have another angle. There’s always something for you to… dira, what’s the word… nitpick! You always have something to nitpick. How long can you go without asking yourself if you might be wrong?” he asked.

What a strange question to ask...

“I’m constantly asking myself if I’m wrong,” I scoffed. “But I’m also not going to assume I’m guaranteed to be. So I have to keep asking if everyone else is wrong too.”

“And so, you see your fellow humans successfully cooperating with me and my crew, and you think, ‘this cannot stand’?” Kemon asked.

“Hey, I’d have no problem if it were just your crew,” I said. “They seem like good folks. But they have tragic taste in leadership.”

“Always so sure…”

“Hard not to be,” I said. “You practically threatened me the last time we spoke.”

“That was not my intent,” the Casti said easily. “I let myself become impatient and spoke carelessly. If that is why you’re so sure that I’m hiding something, I’d urge you to reconsider your stance. You’re too intelligent for us not to be cooperating.”

“…Nope. I think I’ll stay belligerent until you come clean,” I said.

“About anything in particular?” Kemon asked, rolling his eyes.

I decided to take a risk. If I wanted to figure out his plan, I needed to learn just how much this lawyer-turned-insurgent knew.

“…You can tell everyone about Nora Clarke and the human enclave in Shirao first,” I said. “That would be a good place to start.”

Kemon blinked.

It took me my own confused moment to realize that the alien had no idea what I was talking about. He hadn’t heard of Nora or the Mission on Archo…in fact, the only word he recognized was the system.

I didn’t miss the impulse to cover his mistake. He halfway opened his mouth, perhaps to play off his ignorance as something else…but he read my expression too, thinking better of it.

“…My instincts as an attorney are to always pretend like I know what’s been said,” he confessed. “But I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

Huh. That was news.

But as intriguing as that revelation was, it wasn’t the direction I wanted the conversation to go. I wanted Kemon to be the one spilling details, not me.

“You’re serious?” I asked.

“Truly,” he said. “I’ve never heard anyone in camp mention any ‘Nora Clarke’.”

My mind whirled for a few seconds while I tried to figure out if he was playing me. Funny thing was…looking at Kemon’s confused expression, I was sure he was having the same reaction.

A possibility occurred to me. Kemon had been just given an opportunity to win me over a smidge. I needed to speak carefully, but I couldn’t hesitate either.

“…You haven’t been keeping that a secret?” I asked.

“I cannot keep a secret I don’t know,” he said. “…Is it possible you’ve been keeping it secret for mistaken reasons?”

I’d seen that response coming, and I let him score the point. I had to gamble that he couldn’t read human facial expressions like I could Casti. I feigned embarrassment and hope it would seem genuine.

Kemon took advantage of my awkward silence and pressed. Good.

“Honestly, I’m a little hurt, Ted,” he said. “You’ve been so sure, doubting my motives, when it’s you who’s actually been keeping information to yourself.”

“Can you blame me? You’ve been suspicious as hell,” I frowned.

“I don’t mean to rush, but I need to leave to be aboard the Fafin in just a few hours. What can you tell me about this enclave?”

“Honestly?” I said. “I was hoping to wheedle information out of you about it. I just know someone named Nora Clarke is in charge of a group in the ‘C2’ system. The Vorak were…not forthcoming with information.”

“Shirao isn’t a Vorak system,” Kemon nodded, “but it is being occupied militarily.”

“From what I know though, the Vorak are cooperating with them,” I said.

“And so you’ve doubted me for my warnings of the Vorak?” he asked, bewildered.

“I doubt you—still—because you aren’t giving us the opportunity to consider things for ourselves. You’re telling us what to think. I’m dumbfounded I’m the only one pushing back.”

“Because you’re not the innately rebellious type?” he asked.

“By sheer probability there ought to be at least a handful of kids more contrarian than me here,” I said. ‘That kind of consensus doesn’t happen by accident’ went unsaid.

“You are aware exactly what ‘cooperating’ with an occupying military might mean, right?” Kemon asked.

“It didn’t sound like the Vorak were threatening them,” I said.

“Truthfully? It might be the opposite,” Kemon said.

“What?”

“Shirao is the system where Caleb Hane fought the Vorak. So if there’s a human enclave there, he might have beaten them badly enough to force negotiations. This could be why we haven’t heard more about him since…”

“Caleb Hane is badass enough to force them to the table?” I asked.

“I don’t know how to properly describe it in English…” Kemon said.

“Try me,” I said in Starspeak. I could let him impress me here.

“Combat Adepts fall on a spectrum of ‘very threatening’ to ‘so threatening, they redefine strategy’,” Kemon explained. “Caleb Hane fought three of those ‘redefine strategy’ Adepts—plus one more—and won. Convincingly. The Vorak give names to their most fearsome foes. Mark my words; Caleb Hane has been given an epithet. The Vorak fear him.”

So close. I needed to get him monologuing. I was so, so scared of trying too hard. Kemon was sharp. He’d notice if I was too direct.

“…The Vorak he fought fear him,” I nodded. “…But what about all the rest? The ones who weren’t there?”

“Those are the Vorak we worry about,” Kemon said. “The ones who see our camp and think maybe we’re easier prey. That’s how it’s been from the start.”

“The start?” I asked. Had I clinched it?

“From the start of this war, it’s all been fought over Casti skies,” he said. “The Vorak and the Assembly have been occupying my people’s planets for a decade. They’re creatures of opportunity, see? Everyone is, really, but them especially. They come into Casti worlds and take control of them. They don’t even run things well…”

It was chilling to watch him be so sincere. I’d learned that some of the most convincing lies came from a place of profound genuine conviction. This was firsthand evidence Kemon believed in what he was doing. His worthy cause.

“They’ve been heaping it on our heads for years. You have to imagine it, young Ted,” he whispered, “what could happen if they got a taste of their own war…”

I could almost hear the sentence continue in his imagination, ‘their own war, above their own skies…’

Was that the point of attacking Fintuther Station? But…with the Ronin?

A single crew couldn’t win a fight like that, even with every last one of us abductees backing him up…

“I’m sorry I can’t share more about this enclave,” I said.

“Me too,” Kemon shrugged. “If you’d mentioned it sooner, we might have cleared the air…I don’t suppose there’s anything else fueling your suspicions, is there?”

“Maybe a few things,” I said. “…But they can wait.”

I retreated, letting Kemon hike up toward the shuttle. My mind raced the whole time.

Kemon was going to attack Fintuther Station. Surely. With human’s contributing somehow, too. But how?

The only possibility I could see…was some kind of false flag. Somehow engineer events so it looked like the Vorak there attacked first. But even if it were somehow possible, it was beyond stupid.

Talking with Laranta had made it clear that the Coalition was spread thin. Everything I’d heard from Admiral Hakho supported that. Trying to push into Vorak territory would be suicide for the Coalition.

Kemon had to know that. He was too smart not to.

So what was his angle?

·····

Kemon was only going to be gone from camp two days, but I figured that was time I should best exploit unopposed. Easier said than done, though.

“I’m stuck,” I said. “I can’t figure out his angle.”

“We’re late,” Sid criticized. “Brood on it later.”

“I do not brood,” I complained.

It was time to put the combat flowchart to the test, and I’d promised Madeline I’d watch her spar.

“You also still haven’t seen Madeline’s Adeptry up close,” Sid said. “I can’t believe she let you help on the flowchart without seeing her tricks.”

“Half the point of the flowchart is that it isn’t about Adeptry,” I said. “Plus, I’ve been steering clear of the Ronin gang; sue me.”

I materialized two camping chairs for us, and Sid eyed me.

“You just have camping chairs practiced? Ready to materialize?” he asked.

“I make psionic blueprints really easily,” I said. “As long as it’s not heavy, and doesn’t need to do anything chemically, I can whip up a template that I can just fill with mass.”

“Chairs just seems like really lame Adeptry,” he said.

“The seemingly lame Adeptry is the most useful,” I said. “Silverware? Plates? Socks?”

“Well, all of the Ronin make me really jealous, so you can trust they have some cooler tricks than that,” Sid said, nodding toward Johnny and Madeline standing off.

I’d heard Johnny’s style used a lot of wide range, high mass ground spikes to corral opponents. It was crude, uncomplicated, and undeniably effective. The idea, at least, had my approval, and the opening to the fight didn’t disappoint.

Black iron spikes porcupined up between him and Madeline. Johnny really could materialize quickly. If she’d been standing even a few inches closer she might have been gored. Actually, that was pretty unsafe for a spar…

Madeline didn’t flinch though, and punched her way right through the spikes.

I stood up halfway in shock. Had I seen that right? The screech of metal tearing into metal accompanied the cloud of dust that exploded out from where Madeline struck. She hadn’t used just her fist though.

A metal casing wrapped around her elbow, thickening down her arm into a massive, mechanized gauntlet. It looked ludicrous. The fist itself was bigger than her torso. It should have weighed a thousand pounds, but she sprinted towards Johnny without even tipping over.

“Told you,” Sid said.

Except I was in shock from two different things. Madeline’s mech fist was fascinating, but more than that I was dumbfounded by how clumsy they both were.

Aarti’s fight with Ben had shown plenty of gaps, but I’d dismissed them for…no good reason, now that I thought about it. But Madeline and Johnny were supposed to be the best this camp had to offer.

But Madeline’s response to Johnny’s spikes was sloppy. She’d gone straight through them, like he would still be in the same place. Except Johnny had stayed in one spot, preparing another set of spikes!

The actual speed the spikes materialized at was impressive, but Johnny badly telegraphed the timing. His follow up to Madeline’s direct approach wasn’t much better. More iron sprouted from what he’d already created, a blunt pole lancing up more precisely toward her chest.

It was simultaneously the lamest option I could imagine while still being risky as hell. It wasn’t clear from this distance if he’d blunted the pole or not.

Maddie, meanwhile, managed to stop her momentum from carrying her right into Johnny’s second attack. She materialized another gauntlet from her other arm and crushed the pole.

“What are you doing?” I muttered.

It wasn’t the strategy we’d discussed at all. She wasn’t trying to keep her distance, and she’d ignored Johnny’s own retreat.

She went after him again, dematerializing her gauntlets in favor of comically large mech legs that she used to leap clear over the wall of rough iron Johnny pivoted around.

I wanted to shout. His positioning wasn’t even good! Even if he was using his cascade to track Maddie’s footfalls, he was willfully cutting off his own lines of sight, and not controlling the center of the battlefield. He’d herded himself closer to the edge, and worse, Maddie didn’t capitalize on the mistake.

“Shocked?” Sid asked. I was not hiding my dismay.

“Not for the reasons you think,” I said.

“Why do you think you know enough to judge what you’re looking at?”

Hah.

“Strictly speaking, their Adeptry is incredible,” I explained. “Madeline’s especially. Those mech prosthesis look ridiculous, but they’re changing size and weight without dematerializing. That’s…complicated to pull off untrained. Johnny’s got speed and mass too. Strong fundamental abilities.”

“…But?”

“But I could beat them both without Adeptry,” I said. “Hell, if you knew what you were doing, you could win.”

Sid frowned. He opened his mouth to protest, but the words didn’t come out. He saw that I wasn’t just spouting nonsense like I was in denial.

“Their Adeptry is good, but their combat is awful,” I said. “They know how to use their abilities, but not in a fight. If a skilled martial artist just blitzed them? I think they’d probably lose. Johnny might have a chance if he got a wall up in time, but—even if he’s doing a good job hiding them—he’s got serious gaps.”

“You think I could get away with…” he started, but once again trailed off. “You think I could just punch her right in the face. Go for a conventional KO.”

“Anyone could,” I said. “She’s trying to get closer, but she’s not keeping a proper guard. Look at her stance, look at how she’s stomping around; she’s not ready to react to an attack.”

“What about Johnny then?”

“He’s not trying to win,” I said. “He’s let the superpowers go to his head, so he’s not taking advantage of the opportunities she’s giving him. But when he does attack, he’s doing some risky crap that I would consider off-limits for spars.”

Of course at that moment, Madeline traded a mechanized boot the size of a car for a sword big enough to cut through a tree trunk. So now both sides were guilty of reckless endangerment. Then again…if Maddie could punch through Johnny’s iron…the sword wasn’t really broaching any new lethal territory.

This whole thing had been a mess from start to finish.

It had me looking toward Win.

The Farnata Adept was silently spectating their match, but I didn’t see any strong reactions on his face. There was no way he didn’t know how poorly they were fighting…right?

Maybe Johnny wasn’t satisfied with the way things were going, maybe he just wanted to show off. Whatever the reason, he switched tacks.

He still stuck to a distance, but he went on the offensive.

A wall of dark crystal iron erupted in a perfectly straight line. It was thicker than the earlier bouquet of spikes. Madeline was instantly cut off from half of her remaining maneuverable room. Another wall hemmed her in further.

This was insane. Johnny hadn’t even dissolved the first spikes he’d created. They were still there, eating up his mass limit. The size of all his iron constructs made me wonder if he wasn’t trading density for volume somewhere. Because if each of those spikes weighed as much as real iron did, he might approach Nai’s league for sheer mass.

Madeline had learned from watching Aarti fight Ben. Her gauntlets couldn’t bust clean through these walls, but she managed to dent them enough to give herself a handhold to climb free.

It was a bad move though.

Johnny's cascade must have been running through his creations, and Madeline wasn’t paying enough attention to notice. He just added to the wall’s material the moment she reached the top. Her leg was suddenly encased in the crystalline black iron and she was stuck.

That was the first properly good move I’d seen from Johnny so far. Adding directly to mass you’d already created was a simple tactic with a ton of upsides that was very easy to overlook for a lot of Adepts.

Johnny wasn’t precise though. There was still some wiggle room between her pinned leg and the iron. He was far too slow to carefully fill in the gaps, and it let her materialize another mech-boot. Materializing the boot only deformed the iron crystal and technically had the metal grip her leg tighter. But de materializing the same boot left her with enough room to snatch the leg free in a panic.

Madeline was far too fazed by the close call. She went airborne, trying to materialize…some sort of wing-rotor backpack? To actually provide her lift, the thing had to be as comically large as all her other mechanized creations so far.

But she made this one too quickly, because it never fully materialized properly. A few gusts of air pushed her upwards enough to clear the wall, but the rotor destabilized immediately and crumbled to dust on her back.

She hit the ground hard, and I leapt to my feet just in case. Thankfully I wasn’t alone. Aarti and Donnie were ready to intervene too. But Win stayed motionless.

He could see Madeline was still conscious.

Picking herself up from all fours, she glanced at me for the first time in the fight. Her eyes widened and she rapped a fist on her own forehead.

Stupid, she must have told herself.

I flashed her a questioning thumbs-up, and she returned it confidently.

Aiming every psionic sense I had at her, I felt more of her own constructs spin to life. She’d forgotten to employ the very thing she wanted to put to the test here. Would she fare any better now that she actually remembered our flowchart existed?

Madeline backed off now, not rushing to materialize a new weapon. Good.

Identify goals, evaluate threats. That was the first thing our psionic flowchart reminded her to do.

She needed to pin down Johnny or get him to concede. Could she see where he was vulnerable? If not, would the flowchart help her notice anyway?

Johnny didn’t give her much time to think, dematerializing one wall and creating a new one so she was trapped back between two walls again.

This time, she took the correct choice of running straight toward him.

The flowchart was working as expected. Johnny had a weakness many high-mass Adepts did, which was that he oriented his creations such that they originated from himself. Even though his walls stretched for more than a hundred feet apiece, at least part of each one had been created inches away.

He could have walled in Maddie without giving away his own location. He could have kept himself safe and hidden by continually throwing up smaller walls at random. His cascade was certainly big enough to keep track of Madeline anyway.

Still, Madeline had too many yards to cover for Johnny not to react. But there was weakness number two: Johnny’s depth perception wasn’t great. His eyesight was probably fine, but that was the problem. He was aiming by sight rather than using his cascade.

He tried to throw up another pincushion of spikes to block Madeline’s charge, but it was off target and too early. Madeline didn’t even have to break stride to materialize a mech-gauntlet and remove the obstacle.

Smart. Instead of just bashing through this set of spikes, she actually tore it up from the ground like a weed.

From my vantage point, I saw Johnny finally reposition again. Dealing with the spikes made Madeline miss which direction he moved though.

Fifty-fifty on which of his two walls he’d ducked behind…

Maddie made the right choice and picked neither.

She’d given a blitz approach a good college try, but Johnny was too quick with the walls. She had better options that didn’t play to his strengths so much.

Madeline went on a rampage.

She made two new gauntlets and slammed them into the ground, cracking the rocky surface. Attagirl. Johnny’s biggest advantage in these spars wasn’t his walls, or mass. It was his cascade.

He could track his opponents footfalls by keeping his cascade running through the ground.

Breaking that ground into less uniform pieces would disrupt his cascade’s ability to propagate through the material. Tamped down dirt could be cascaded decently, but loose sand and gravel just shifted too much.

The ‘tactile’ part of tactile cascade just didn’t stay consistent enough to track.

Johnny caught on too slowly again.

His own iron walls were anchored into the ground, so when Madeline had bashed them earlier, the impact had at least cracked the foundations along the whole length. His own work had torn up the ground as much as she had.

She’d leveled the playing field. That was good. But now they had the same disadvantage of being unable to track the other. But Johnny was the one in control of eliminating that disadvantage. As soon as he dematerialized the walls, they’d just be able to see each other again.

Madeline was prepared with a ranged option though. The gun she materialized was—keeping in theme with the rest of her tricks—comically large. Fused to her arm like a bazooka the size of a great white shark, it fired a net big enough to trap an elephant.

I was realizing she wasn’t one for subtlety…

Johnny materialized a sharp iron spike, tearing through the net. But before he could wriggle through, Madeline just fired another net, tying him to his own spike. Dematerializing the spike just tangled the two nets more, and Madeline added a third one.

“Give up yet?” she asked.

No…stupid… I thought. She’d been doing so well. Why did she stop? More could be done to incapacitate him, even without hurting him.

Instead, as she walked closer, she let her successes go to her head. Even tangled up in the nets, Johnny could still touch—and therefore cascade—the ground. Torn up as the area was, it wasn’t enough to ruin his aim at that distance.

Four iron poles lanced up around Madeline, quickly sprouting thick bars branching off horizontally. Madeline was a second too slow to dematerialize her net-gun and its bulk left her pinned. Johnny learned from his first mistake though. He filled in the intervening space, with further bars and poles sprouting in a fractal lattice until Madeline couldn’t move a muscle, trapped inside the block of bars.

And…that was how the fight ended.

Johnny couldn’t quite get another good spike beneath himself to cut the nets, and Madeline was stick in the cage. Both of them wriggled around in their respective bindings for a minute before Donnie shouted from the sidelines.

“I think it’s a draw, you two!”

That was, in fact, not enough to convince them just yet, and they wriggled for another minute before giving up.

All in all, the fight was…disappointing. It felt more like watching a scripted wrestling match than a real spar. In a way, it was also reassuring. Half the reason they were so bad at fighting was because, on some level, they both must have known their abilities could be lethal. I couldn’t be sure how careful they’d actually been not to injure each other, but I’d seen rougher behavior in the non-Adept self-defense activity group.

That said…there was a problem and an opportunity both here. Kemon ostensibly wanted them prepared to fight. But as it stood now…I could beat every one of the Ronin’s little gang with little trouble.

So, what if I did?

Kemon…was a manipulator. He wasn’t holding anyone hostage…he was trying to sway us all toward a certain opinion. He wanted to lure us into making the decision ourselves.

So if I challenged and beat each of the Ronin…they would have to think twice before choosing to attack a target that would be suicide for ten of me, much less our ragtag outfit.

Sid, attentive as ever, saw the smile spreading across my face.

“I thought they weren’t up to your standards,” he said. “What’s got you so excited?”

“Oh nothing,” I smiled. “I’m just pretty sure I know a way to discredit Kemon once and for all.”

I might not need to know all the details of his plan if I could get it aborted in the planning stages. He wanted us to fight? I could exploit that.

So the only missing part of my plan was the follow-up…contacting the Jack and my allies would be essential the game from going to overtime.

It would all come down to Jordan…