Chapter 173: An Old Face

Silence fell across the holographic meeting as Lara and I stared one another down, neither of us willing to give any quarter as we both stared daggers across the table. 

"You… know each other?" Tessa asked from my side, "How is that even possible?" 

I mulled the question over in my head, wondering how much I should give away considering the situation that Lara and I had found ourselves in when we had last met. 

Destroying a planet in combat was certainly one way of getting to know someone. 

I didn't get the chance to tell the story my way. 

"Oh, Jacob and I are very well acquainted with one another," Lara said, "We knew one another a long time ago, in a place very different and yet incredibly similar to this one. Never mind, I'm sure we will settle our differences at some point or another." 

There was a lot layered into that statement that I had to carefully try to unpick. 

We weren't exactly well acquainted, that wasn't the way I would put it. If anything I barely knew the girl. The most I had gotten to know her was actually when her father had explained to me the upbringing she'd had, and even then that was through the lens of his understanding and not her own. 

The real danger was the veiled threat there. 

She intended for us to meet up at some point, and when we did she intended for us to… settle our differences. 

If we fought it would probably mean the end of another planet, which was sort of the opposite of what I wanted to happen on this world. I wasn't going to lose another planet, especially not to Lara. 

My blood had started to boil. My anger was starting to rise. 

But somehow she had implanted herself here and had managed to get an entire council of humans to trust her. That was impressive work for such a short period of time, especially considering how unhinged she had been the last time I saw her. 

Maybe she had changed. 

Maybe with some distance from her father, and some actual respect from a group of people that genuinely needed her help, instead of being relegated to the show pony tour that she had been operating back on Prespian City had done her some good. 

That didn't mean I was going to let my guard down during our eventual confrontation. 

<I wouldn't let your guard down from now to the time we get off this stinking star blasted rock,> BB muttered, he was not having a good time. 

That too was something I could thoroughly understand. 

Before we had paired up BB would have been just another BB unit, waiting to be assigned to the first space wizard that needed him. That would have meant that he would have been plugged directly into the Guard systems, watching everything that was going on. 

Watching Lara grow and bring in new members of the Guard in the entry tournaments. 

To him, it would have felt like much more of a betrayal than it had to me when Lara revealed her true colours. 

"Yeah, we go way back," I eventually said when it was clear everyone was waiting on me to give some kind of response, "It was a bit of a shock to see you here Lara, I have to admit. We all thought you were dead." 

"Ah well, you know death," She said, very pointedly emphasising how she said the word 'you', "It just doesn't stick around like it used to." 

She knew. 

I didn't know how she knew, but it was incredibly clear that she did. 

My world had titled on its entire axis once more. Had she in fact died? Were the Reapers playing some sick game with me now that they knew I had started to move against them and the Maw? 

There were so many possible ways that this could go. So many different options as to what was happening, and what could happen in the future… and I still didn't have access to the bulk of my powers or the system that managed them. 

No matter how it went down, I was beginning to feel like I had bitten off a bit more than I could chew. 

"Nevertheless, if you have met this individual in the past, would you say he is of the right sort to help us further our goals of resistance to the topsiders?" The short man cut into our conversation of heavily charged references to our shared past . 

"Oh almost certainly," Lara replied, her voice dripping with faux sweetness, "He's just about one of the most selfless and principled people that I've ever met. No matter the situation, no matter how likely he is to get ground down under someone's foot, he'll still keep on plugging along." 

I detected just a hint of spite behind that last sentence, and couldn't help but feel a little bit proud. 

"In that case, majority rules, Jacob will be accepted into this council and will be expected to assist us in overthrowing the tyranny of the topsiders," the short man said, "With that piece of business concluded we will move onto our next and last item in our itinerary, the occupation of the fifty levels above the furnace." 

My interest perked up in the topic change immediately. 

For some reason, I had assumed that the people who were pushing back against the topsiders really weren't doing very much in their attempt to claw their way back up to the top side of the city, but a global territorial hold on the next fifty floors in the towering megacity? That would be an incredibly impressive feat and not something that Lara or myself would be able to do ourselves. 

As strong as we were, even working together, we wouldn't be able to be everywhere at once. 

I'd stumbled into an action plan, and I was more than willing to stand my ground right alongside everyone else.