“I still don’t understand why you wanted me to send those two to the Family,” I moaned as Hel and I made our way back to the Marsupial. “I could have had the beavers throw something together by the time we got back.”

  Hel sighed. “You can’t keep people in a cage thrown together out of rebar and barbed wire. There’s a certain minimum level of care you need to provide prisoners. Otherwise people will claim they were treated unjustly at the trial.”

  “They tried to drop a plate on people; they deserve it,” I grumbled. “At least guarantee me that they aren’t going to get any special treatment while they’re detained.”

  “Stuffed in isolation cells and provided with only the basics,” Hel promised.

  “Fine, I’ll send them to the Family headquarters,” I finally grumbled. “It’ll save me the trouble of pulling the Beavers off their existing projects.”

  “You’re such a benevolent person,” Hel snorted.

  As soon as our Kodiak docked with the Marsupial I made my way back up to the bridge. The ship had dropped low enough to lower the cables and start retrieving the pods, so it wouldn’t be too long until the Marsupial was ready for a second assault.

  Collapsing into one of the bridge chairs, I quickly checked over the various monitors. Everything looked fine until I got to the final display. “Nyx, why is this monitor broken?”

  “All of the bridge monitors are fully functional,” my AI reported, using Dusty.

  “Now I know that’s a lie, because if that was the truth, this monitor would be showing me the position of the other council members,” I growled, “But right now it’s completely blank. Explain that!”

  Stepping up behind me, Bandit cleared his throat. “I’m sorry, boss, it’s my fault. I was supposed to be keeping track of them while I was inside, but sometime during the assault someone hacked the squirrels and slipped the board members out from under my nose.”

  “FFFucking why?” I moaned. “This was supposed to be quick and easy. Secure the control system, gather up the council, go home, and pretend that was the end of the problem.”

  “It’s not the end of our problems, though. We would still need someone to take over from the council,” Hel reminded me,

  “That’s why I said pretend,” I groaned. Pushing myself to my feet, I trudged over to one of the side consoles, which I had taken to using as a communication area. “We should call the others and give them an update.”

  Connecting my augs to the panel, I made a quick call to Sharron and the others and waited for it to connect.

  “Evelyn? What’s going on up there?” Sharron asked through the speakers, the instant the call connected.

  “Nothing now. Hel and I took control of the council building, secured the command console, and ran into a couple council members at the same time. I left a small contingent of bears to keep the area secure and sent the council members to the Family HQ. Now we’re heading back. Why?” I asked tiredly.

  “The news feeds have been blowing up for the last half hour, broadcasting the fact that samurai stormed the council building. Of course not a single one of them has tried to find out the facts. They’re just regurgitating the theories over and over again,” Angeline explained. “They’re saying everything from house cleaning to samurai insurrection.”

  Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  “Well, they’re kind of right on both accounts, what’s your point?”

  “It looks like someone is trying to use the major news outlets to distract people from the fact that the council attempted to drop a plate on the undercity and make you look like a bad guy,” Stalking explained. “It’s corporate damage control 101.”

  “Yeah, the problem with that is I don’t give a shit about some corpo’s opinion of me. If they have a problem with that, they can take it up with Bob,” I grumbled.

  “We have another problem though,” Hel said as she stepped up next to me, “While we were securing the council building, someone came in and grabbed the other council members. We don’t have a clue where they are.”

  “They just vanished? What happened to the surveillance squirrels?” Nora asked.

  “According to Nyx and Bandit, they were hacked,” I explained. “Don’t ask me how someone managed to fucking do that, but they did.”

  “Static defenses are one thing, but hacking into a samurai’s system? That’s another thing entirely,” Angeline said. “The only ones that could pull something like that would be another samurai.”

  My eyes slowly narrowed. “Another samurai?”

  “Teddy, darling, we all know what you’re thinking, don’t jump to conclusions,” Stalking suggested. “It could be that the Denver forces asked for help bringing this conflict to a swift end.”

  “I might have believed that if the head of Denver’s military forces hadn’t tried to force his way into the council building not ten minutes ago,” I growled.

  “Oh, that’s not good,” Nora whispered softly. She probably wasn’t even aware that the microphone picked it up.

  “Any more reasonable explanations? Or should I go have a talk with Mirage now?” I asked as calmly as I could. It wasn’t that calm.

  “Teddy. I know you have no reason to trust me, but please give me half an hour before you burn down the city looking for him. He may not be behind this, and if he is, he might have acted without all the information. Please?” Stalking pleaded.

  My eye twitched slightly. Every fiber in my being told me to hunt that prick down and have Bob have a one-on-one discussion with him, but somehow I resisted.

  Taking a couple deep breaths to calm down, I stared at the bridge console. “Thirty minutes. After that, I’ll go ‘discuss’ the situation with him myself.”

  “Thank you. I’ll call you all back as soon as I have news.” Stalking whispered. A second later there was a nearly inaudible click as she disconnected.

  Someone let out a long, low breath. “Alright, now what?” Sharron asked.

  “You guys keep working on finding a replacement government. Just because those assholes are still free doesn’t mean we can’t replace them,” I suggested softly.

  “And what are you going to do?” Angeline asked.

  “Me? Not much. I’m going to do some research, find out where Mirage lives and works, and then I’m going to prepare to destroy him!” To my credit, I managed to get almost all the way through my statement before exploding.

  “You promised you’d give Stalking half an hour!” Nora reminded me.

  “And I will. Thirty minutes. Starting now. Half an hour should be long enough for me to put everything in place to level everything he owns and loves,” I screamed.

  “Evelyn, please listen to yourself. The whole reason you started this crusade is because the council was willing to hurt civilians, and now you’re threatening the same thing. Be reasonable,” Sharron yelled.

  “Mirage has never been reasonable, why should I be?” I yelled. A second later I felt a slight pinch in my neck, and a sudden calmness swept over me. Turning, in confusion, I stared at Hel. Auto-injector in hand.

  “Did you just drug me?” I asked. “I hate drugs! I can’t believe you did that.”

  “I needed to; you were being completely unreasonable,” Hel explained. “I knew you and Mirage didn’t get along, but fuck, that was something else.”

  “He’s an asshole,” I moaned.

  “Yes, I got the fact that you didn’t like him by the tirade earlier,” Hel said as she slipped the injector into her jacket. “Now isn’t the time to go off the deep end. If Mirage is behind this, we need you to be rational. Both of you are strong samurai, and if you ever got into a fight, you’d cause unbelievable amounts of collateral damage.”

  “Is everything good over there? Evelyn suddenly got quiet,” Angeline asked.

  “I’m fine. Hel just injected me with something to calm me down. Everything’s fine now, I guess.”

  “That’s good. I sounded like you were about to do something you were going to regret,” Sharron said quietly.

  “I’m not going to lie, I might still do that,” I admitted. “But at least I’ll make that decision rationally and not emotionally.”

  Sharron sighed, “Evelyn…”

  “Don’t worry. I’ll keep her from doing anything too stupid. Angeline, can you please pivot off the government issue and do your best to find those council members? That might be our best way to avoid a full-blown conflict here,” Hel suggested.

  “On it!” the woman instantly replied.

  “As for you, Sharron and Nora, can you please reach out to all your samurai contacts and try to keep the situation as calm as possible? The last thing we need right now is for the situation to spiral out of control.”

  “Please,” I scoffed. “Like that would ever happen.”

  “Teddy,” Nora sighed. “Please stop tempting fate like that.”