Read Online No More Heroes: In the Wake of the Templars Book Three by Loren Rhoads - Free Book Online Page B

overhangs, but no one seemed immediately suspicious. Raena climbed out of the car, ready for a fight. Nothing materialized.
    Coni peered out of the taxi’s doorway at the downpour. Raena thought she could read dismay on the blue-furred girl’s face. “Go wait somewhere dry,” Raena advised. “I’ll bring you those supplies from the ship.”
    Coni shook her head and pushed herself out of the car into the rain.
    Lautan’s spaceport was arranged like a Mandelbrot set. The docking bays were grouped roughly by size, smaller ships ganged around larger ones. The Veracity was parked toward the ocean side of the port.
    Raena had to take two strides for each of Coni’s, but they moved along at a good clip through the rainstorm.
    *   *   *
    As they neared the correct docking slip, Raena turned to Coni. “Hang out here,” she said, scarcely louder than the rain. “Let me make sure it’s clear.”
    Coni found a place to shelter from the storm. Her fur had doubled in weight. Heavens, she hated rain.
    She was too far away to hear what triggered it, but Raena spun suddenly, crouching low.
    Then the loudspeaker over Coni’s head boomed, “On the ground now. Face down. Arms out.”
    Coni stared around, panicked. She didn’t know what to do. She wished Mykah was with her.
    What seemed like a whole squadron of Planetary Security encircled Raena, rifles trained on her. She looked them over calmly, then knelt, set down her pink shopping bag, and stuck her arms out at shoulder height.
    “Face down,” the speaker repeated.
    From where Coni was standing, she could see that the tarmac had flooded. Raena didn’t want to lie down in that.
    The woman looked so small that it was hard not to think of her as harmless. Coni wanted to race to her rescue, demand to know the charges, protect Raena—but it made more sense logically to keep from being arrested, to work to get the charges dropped from outside the jail. Coni hated herself for being a coward.
    As Coni struggled to decide what to do, she saw Haoun galloping down the common way toward the Veracity . The Security squadron hadn’t seen him yet, but he was going to get himself shot down . . . Coni flung herself into his path. “Stop!”
    Haoun crashed into her. They skidded on the wet walkway and landed in a heap. “What are you doing?” he growled, shoving her away.
    Coni struggled to hold him down. “Don’t get yourself killed in front of her,” she commanded.
    When they looked back, Raena had complied with the soldiers’ orders. She lay in the puddle, spread-eagled. Security agents surrounded her with rifles at point-blank range.
    Coni expected to see Raena spring up, snatch one of those rifles, and beat the security corps off with it, but she didn’t. She lay meekly in the water, let them restrain her and haul her up to her ridiculous boot heels.
    Coni scrambled to her feet and pulled Haoun up after her.
    “What’s happened?” he demanded.
    “Raena and I were shopping when a bounty hunter attacked her this morning. We came back here to get some weapons . . . Didn’t you get my message to stay away from the ship?”
    “Yeah, but Mykah sent another message that we had to get off Lautan right away,” Haoun argued.
    Coni glanced at her comm bracelet to see it flashing. “What’s happened?” she echoed.
    “I don’t know.”
    The Security detail marched Raena past them. She didn’t turn her head or acknowledge her crewmates at all. The rain had washed her ragged black hair into her face, but with her arms bound, she couldn’t wipe it away.
    Coni thought: Raena shackled and sodden, surrounded by Security, may be the worst thing I’ve seen in my life. Then she thought over the things Raena had seen and realized how sheltered her own life had been.
    Once Security left, people crept out of the nooks in which they’d hidden. Vezali retrieved Raena’s shopping bag as Mykah leaped over the puddles to join Haoun and Coni.
    “The Veracity has been impounded,”