He stood and leapt toward the staircase he ascended five minutes ago, when he had first seen the Rakshasa. Entering the building had been a gamble—if the Rakshasa had spotted him, a few blasts at the already shaky structure would have taken it down on top of Lukas. He wished he could tell himself he had taken a calculated risk, but he hadn’t. He had panicked.
He’d gotten lucky, though, and the Rakshasa had moved on, either because it didn’t know where Lukas was or it didn’t care.
On the first floor, he stepped over collapsed steel beams, shattered desks, and large chunks of plaster—but no bodies. Most of the civilians received word of the incoming troops before they arrived and were safely away. The military didn’t seem too concerned about the few people left behind who never got the message.
Lukas knew he was partially to blame—the money he took with him from Luthien had allowed him to be indolent and less than watchful while on Tikonov—but he preferred blaming the generals and warriors who were busy reducing Tukwila to rubble.
At the exterior door, he poked his head out and scanned the street in both directions.
To the south, he caught a flutter of movement, ground troops crossing an intersection. They might have been as close as a quarter mile, but dust, smoke, and darkness obscured them. Lukas could barely make out their forms, so he knew he would be just as difficult to see.
He walked out of the door slowly, staying near any walls that still stood. His breathing was rapid, his ears heard only rushing blood. He ducked instinctively as a red laser flashed high overhead, but it was nowhere near him.
No other weapons fired. No one noticed him walking.
At the next intersection he turned west, away from battle, away from the Prince’s Men. He couldn’t risk running into their ground troops. If they knew who he was—they probably didn’t, but if they did—Davion’s troops would shoot Lukas on sight. If he was lucky.
After two blocks, he turned south again, walking slowly, swiveling to look north, then south, then north again so quickly that he started to feel dizzy. He slowed even more.
Patience, he told himself, patience, even though his heart and mind and muscles were straining to run until he collapsed.
He covered a mile in twenty minutes. Acrid smoke stung tears out of his eyes, washing clear trails through the grime on his face. He blinked, then rubbed his eyes, trying to get them clear.
When he opened them, it stood in front of him. He knew this humanoid shape well—a Wyvern, smaller than a Rakshasa, but, like any ’Mech, plenty big enough to take care of a single unarmored human. Smoke curved around its torso as it trotted through the streets, heading, like all of Davion’s army, east. Lukas jumped backward, his back flattening against a cool metal wall. He let the haze settle around him.
The Wyvern kept moving, a single beam of light from its head pointing forward, sweeping back and forth, illuminating the smoke and little else. The beam stayed ten meters above ground level, and Lukas exhaled a sigh. The Wyvern was looking for something taller than a single human. It was not looking for him.
The impact of the metal feet shook the road as the ’Mech drew near Lukas’ position, then moved past. He watched the armored shins walk by, and the Wyvern didn’t slow, didn’t even look down. Then it was gone.
Lukas re-emerged from the shadows and continued south, still glancing over his shoulder every other step. But the explosions seemed to be getting farther and farther away, the battle moving east with the Prince’s Men.
His pace slowed as adrenaline drained away. This wasn’t the first time in his life he’d been on the run. He vowed it would not be the last.
Running from the military, he reflected as he tripped over a damaged piece of street that jutted upward, was quite different from evading the usual team of assassins, vigilantes, bounty hunters, or mobsters. Small groups could be tenacious, but much easier to evade than an entire army.
Maybe he should have stayed on Luthien, taken his chances with any agents the Combine sent against him. For all he knew, they never would have connected him to the assassination and he could have retired with the money from the sale. There were plenty of places to hide on Luthien.
But then he remembered Celia, eight years ago. All she had done was sold a few secrets, troop movements, to Sandoval in the Draconis March. She’d barely made enough to pay for a few weeks of vacation. Minor league stuff, really.
But she’d disappeared. For months after she vanished, small pieces of her kept showing up across Luthien.
To the Combine, no treachery was minor.
If they had done that to a low-level spy like Celia, what would they do to him? They probably didn’t have proof—Lukas himself couldn’t be completely certain he’d even done it. But he trusted his gut, and it told him that he had played a part in one of the greatest crimes ever committed against the Draconis Combine. If some Combine agent had the same feeling, proof or no proof, they’d come after him.
He felt the heat approaching, received word through backdoor channels that investigations were growing more active, so he left Luthien, fleeing the Draconis Combine. He’d gone to the home he’d run away from decades earlier, only to have the Steiner-Davion civil war find him there. Now he was in the sights of Victor Davion’s men, the only people who might want him dead more than House Kurita. If they knew.
There had to be somewhere he could go, a safe haven, a place to hide, anything to get away from the armies rushing toward him.
A rush of air followed
