Page 47 of Stars in Umbra (The Sable Riders #8)

Poetry In Motion

MOLAN

T he Stygian Corp Headquarters hung like a monolith cast into Dunia’s twilight-arched skyline, a jagged shard of black glass suspended in the upper stratosphere.

Its geometric silhouette sliced through sunlight, each edge illuminated by veins of cobalt light humming with defensive power.

The fortress was fortified by anti-radar plating, cloaked electromagnetic fields, and crewed by an elite mercenary legion whose loyalty had long been purchased in blood.

From a distance, the structure appeared inert and dormant.

The signs of life Mirage detected earlier had all but disappeared.

It was dawn, so perhaps most of the base was asleep.

Still, Mirage, at the helm of the Sable Corvette, camouflaged and hovering just beyond visual telemetry, scanned for the heat signatures.

Mo stood at the loading hatch, helmet off, pulse calm, body alive with divine current.

‘Mo, you are good to go.’

Without ceremony, he leaned over the edge of the rear bay and fell, a meteor in midnight armor.

As he dropped, the glyphs engraved into his suit lit up like runes of war.

He descended like a verdict.

His Sacran-infused blood surged through his limbs, every molecule tuned to precision and power.

The credentials from the data cube, coded into his nanite suit, helped him punch through the invisible energy shield.

He righted himself from a head-down bullet approach to feet first, slowing his velocity until he landed on the dark building’s roof without a sound.

For a moment, only the whisper of wind traced across the upper deck.

Then a proximity sensor flared. A siren wailed. Doors split open.

A unit of Stygian soldiers poured out of a doorway, weapons raised, their boots hammering against the carbon steel floor.

They had zero time to blink, just as Mo came at them.

He became motion, a blur of obsidian and heat, blades igniting from his suit’s gauntlets, his celestial force amplifying each devastating strike.

He crashed into them like a divine hammer.

A blade to the collarbone. A spinning kick to the throat.

A guard screamed. Mo silenced him with an elbow that crumpled cartilage and bone.

He carved through the first squad like parchment, their limbs falling before their cries could echo.

Within seconds, five lay broken in a bloom of crimson and scorched armor.

Above him, Rina dropped like fire through smoke .

She landed with a dancer’s grace and a killer’s focus, her Sable armored suit flowing like second skin.

She moved with eerie stillness between shots, her body liquid and smooth.

Mirage fed her combat telemetry through an encrypted neural line. Three to your left. Silenced weapons. Close quarters.

She ducked into the shadows, rolled into a flank, and dispatched them with two double taps and a palm blade buried under the last one’s chin.

Her breath never changed. Calm. Deadly.

Around them, security klaxons rose to a shriek.

Steel gates slammed shut.

It was too late.

Rina reached into her hip pack and triggered a nanite dispersal bomb, tossing it toward the locking mechanisms.

The micro swarm hissed like a thousand metal locusts, dissolving controls and disintegrating gears with acid-laced corrosion.

Doors peeled open in molten submission. Mo surged ahead, unrelenting, moving through the opening like a flame through dry brush.

The deeper they plunged into the facility, the more intense the resistance.

But Mo was elemental now, divine fire wrapped in mortal form.

Gunfire curved around him, moving so fast that he was a blur of spectral, glowing radiance, putting off his attackers with millisecond shifts in his trajectory.

His enemies attempted to aim. He was already inside their lines.

A blur. A shadow. A reckoning.

One soldier whimpered, crawling from the fight, prayers for his life a broken litany. Mo let him go, having no desire to earn a reputation as a deific tyrant.

He rounded a corner and came upon a trio of men, their guns aimed at him.

Their faces were uncovered; he recognized them from The Haloed Horn , the hovel in the Trossachs.

These were the highly trained operators Rina had robbed of Thrall’s credentials.

He touched the side of his helmet, and it glimmered away, folding into his suit.

Mo stood in his full glory, sigils glowing, eyes pulsing with white and gold radiance.

The lead man, dark-haired, lean, handsome, leaned in and stared. ‘I know you. You’re the kinai from the bar.’

Mo arched a brow. ‘What are you going to do about it?’

The man tilted his head, his eyes raking over Mo’s form, assessing his strength.

He nodded to his companions, and all three sheathed their weapons.

‘ Nada . We spotted your infil on holo cams. You fight like a savage deity, and we know well enough not to mess with that shit.’

Mo jerked his head. ‘Then get the fokk out of this facility before I burn it all down.’

The trio crept past, staring in respect and wonder at him, then at Rina.

She trailed Mo like a ghost of vengeance, checking blind corners, dispatching snipers with cold precision.

Her blade was silver and final.

Together, they were a fury’s crescendo, too quick and lethal to contain.

‘Let them go,’ Mo told her.

She lowered her rifle, and the three men passed, their leader saluting as he stalked away.

Presumably towards a hangar, and a ship to get the hell out of dodge.

The couple smiled at each other and strode on.

Soon, they reached the command deck, which was sealed with a security lock.

Mo stepped forward without hesitation.

He placed his palms flat against the surface.

The glyphs on his body flared with such brilliance that they blazed through the seams of his armor, glowing in white and gold.

With a hum that deepened into an unbearable pitch, divine fire etched runes into the steel.

The door shattered inward in a controlled implosion, and haze bloomed from the chamber within.

A squad of elite guards met them with a cascade of gunfire.

Mo moved like wrath unbound, his strikes poetic in violence, graceful in annihilation.

One man managed to lift his rifle. Mo broke his fingers with a twist and kicked him into the wall.

Finally, the firing ended as the haze of blaster rounds clouded the air.

‘What do we have here?’ Rina murmured as the smoke parted.

A man smiled at them, seated behind the facility’s central command desk.

He reclined in the massive chair like a bored prince, fingers laced behind his head, boot heels up, and crossed at the ankle on the table before him.

His navy silk shirt was untouched, his charcoal suit jacket draped over the back of the seat.

However, his eyes, those cold, aquamarine orbs, betrayed him with a flicker of fear lacing the smirk, underscored by the ticking in his jaw.

Rina stalked forward, touching a button on her HUD so it glimmered away from her face.

She rolled to a stop, studying him in the dim light, every polished edge of his groomed appearance, each smug crease of his grin.

Recognition and disgust flared hot in her gut.

‘Lucian Makori?’ she asked, her voice flat.

He gave a finger-gun salute. ‘The one and only.’

The bile rose in her throat.

She recognized him and the legacy his bloodline carved across worlds.

His father, Massimo Makori, was the architect of Dunia’s brutal takeover coup a few years ago.

He had shot Selene Sable’s father dead with malice.

The war for Dunia’s liberation had been vicious, with tens of thousands of lives ravaged by the Makori family.

It was this legacy of greed, arrogance, and death that Lucian Makori, the scion of the disgraced traitor Massimo, was born into.

For years, his face dominated holo magazines and news, the quintessential playboy, living a hard and fast life, burning through his family’s immense wealth. With a reckless abandon that was both legendary and expected.

After his father’s ignominious end, Lucian vanished from the public eye.

Most pundits, including Rina, believed he had gone into hiding, shamed into exile by his kin’s betrayal.

It appeared they’d all been fokkin’ wrong.

Rina’s voice dropped to ice. ‘What the hell are you doing here?’

Lucian’s grin widened. ‘Oh, Caidan and I? We’re tight. Family-vacation-close.’

She took a step closer, her body electric with fury. ‘This is no freakin’ sojourn. So speak. Why target Mo? Why attack the Riders? What the fokk are you two trying to do?’

Lucian stood, slow and deliberate.

He adjusted his cuffs like he was bored with the question.

‘Revenge, of course. My father died in disgrace. You Riders saw to that. And Caidan? Well, his daddy, Lord Callum Thrall, was Klatsch royalty. After the Sable Riders gutted the Klatsch leadership, Callum was never the same. If you believe the gossip, he put a gun to his mouth. Blew out his honor with his brains.’

Lucian shrugged. ‘Caidan took it to heart. Swore he’d restore the family name. Reclaim the glory. And I? I just wanted to finish what my father started.’

‘Revenge, huh? So your disappearance was no shame-fueled retreat. Instead, you’ve been busy in the shadows, plotting a return.’

He grinned. ‘Well said. My self-imposed exile was a season of self-reflection as I planned my vengeance.’

Mirage spoke then, her voice quiet but iron-edged through speakers in their HQ that she’d hijacked.

‘I’ve found data in Thrall’s network that tells me more about why they experimented on Mo.

Caidan studied him and spotted the divine pattern buried in his genome.

He wasn’t just a meta. He was a celestial mutation.

So Caidan built a neural node and inserted it surgically into Mo’s brain.

Then he waited. When his plans aligned with Mo moving closer to the Riders, he activated him.

Mo became the perfect weapon. He tested him with other paid assassinations and assignments, until it was time to go after the Riders. ’

Mo’s body was still, but power rolled off him in waves.

His fists clenched and unclenched.

His voice was cold. ‘You turned me into your blade, and that’s all I was to you.’