Bel leaned down to open her vacuum capsule. She pushed aside clothes and devices until she reached something at the base and gestured a command sequence. The side of the vacuum capsule clicked open in a way Kiem was fairly sure wasn’t standard—but he recognized that capsule. He was fairly sure she’d had it when she arrived on Iskat. Inside the false compartment nestled two lumps protected by layers of gray sheeting. Bel unwrapped one. “Seen one of these before? It’s an incapacitator gun.”

The electric feeling in Kiem’s blood grew stronger. This was a bad idea, but he was all out of good ones. He held out his hands and gestured for her to toss it over. “I know what a capper is.”

“From vids?”

“My mother.” Kiem caught it when Bel threw it. “She sent me to army cadet camp one horrible month when I was sixteen.” The capper was oddly light in his hands. He’d forgotten what these things felt like.

Bel eyed him dubiously. “So you can use one?”

“There was a reason they sent me home early,” Kiem said. He lined up the sight.

“Don’t hold the trigger like that!” Bel said. Gairad leaned away. “Gods, okay, I’m rethinking my position on arming the kid.”

Kiem lowered it. “It doesn’t matter. We’re only going to use them for bluffing, okay? Nobody gets hurt.”

“Sure, that will go down well,” Bel said. “‘Yes, Your Majesty, we did steal a shuttle and break into a military base, but nobody got hurt, so that’s all right.’”

Kiem forced himself to shrug and reached for a smile. “Here’s the way I see

it,” he said, in a totally reasonable voice that for some reason made both Bel and Gairad look at him warily. “If they didn’t want us to break in, they shouldn’t have tried holding Jainan there. Let’s make them reconsider.”

CHAPTER 25

“I wouldn’t call it a war,” Aren said.

There was a terrible brilliance to him, sitting casually with the warehouse lights casting a halo of white around his hair, in the middle of a weapons stockpile that could take out a small continent. Jainan forced his voice to stay under control. “Then what would you call it?”

“A quick rebalancing of power,” Aren said. “A tactical strike, if you like. No offense, but Thea has the military capability of a preschooler with a hangover.

We’d barely have to take two cities before you sued for peace. You set yourselves up for this, you know,” he added. “If you hadn’t kicked up so much fuss about your system resources, Kingfisher might still be a mining operation.”

He laughed. “No, I take that back, we’d still have the Resolution to deal with.”

The remnants. There was a thick lead case beside Aren, the type Jainan had seen protecting radioactive samples. “You stole the missing remnants?”