The three Wisps were standing in the corridor outside the teleport room when Nicole arrived. She’d half expected Tomas to seal himself in, but the door was wide open. For a moment she wondered if she should bring a couple of Wisps in with her, decided she’d have a better chance of talking Tomas out of this if she was alone, and stepped through the door.
The door to the control room was also open, and Nicole could hear the murmur of voices coming from inside. She crossed the teleport room and went inside.
Tomas was sitting cross-legged in front of one of the consoles, a handful of tools laid out on the deck beside him, peering up into the console as he set aside the access panel he’d apparently just removed. “That was a forty-twenty back-flex modulator, right?” he asked.
“Right,” the young woman beside him said, her fingertips restlessly tapping the inhaler in her hand. “Better hurry this up before Nicole finds out—”
“Speak of the devil,” Nicole said casually. “How’s it going?”
Tomas looked over at her, his expression darkening. “Yeah, we figured you’d show up sooner or later. You slumming? Or just tired of playing Big Boss?”
“I was never playing anything,” Nicole said. “And this isn’t going to help.”
“How do you know?” Tomas countered. “You don’t even know what I’m doing.”
“I think I do.” Nicole looked at the Sibyl. “Shantal, wasn’t it?”
“Yes,” the woman said.
“You can go back to Carp and his group now,” Nicole said. “Tomas and I can handle things from here.”
Shantal’s eyes flicked to Tomas, back to Nicole. Then, with a silent nod, she headed out, crossing the teleport room and disappearing through the door.
“So what now?” Tomas asked. “You try to appeal to my higher instincts? Because those instincts died when the bastards killed Bennett.”
“No, I’m going to appeal to your common sense,” Nicole said. “There are twenty ships full of Koffren out there. Dozens, maybe even hundreds of the bastards.”
“Yeah, I know,” Tomas said. “That’s the point.”
“That’s not the point,” Nicole insisted. “You pull them in one at a time and it’ll take forever. Even if they don’t notice you doing it, which they probably will.”
Tomas frowned. “What the hell are you talking about? Who said anything about teleporting Koffren back here?”
“I thought…” Nicole floundered. “What you said to me down in the basement. You’re not looking to line them up against the wall?”
“Of course not,” Tomas scoffed. “I’m going to take care of them a different way.” He gestured in the direction of the Q2 arena. “Sixteen Koffren. I’m going to send one each out to those ships. With bombs strapped to them.”
Nicole felt her eyes go wide. “You’re not serious.”
“Hell, yes, I’m serious,” Tomas bit out. “They killed Bennett and tried to kill the rest of us. They deserve to die. All of them.” He scowled. “Course, there are twenty ships out there, so we can’t get them all. But taking out sixteen would be a good start.”
“Yeah, a damn good start,” Nicole agreed, thinking fast. “But what about the Wisps? Do they deserve to die, too?”
“I’ll bring them back before the bombs go off.”
“You may not be able to,” Nicole said. “The Koffren commander has already said he doesn’t care if our prisoners live or die. And they know all about the Wisps and the Fyrantha’s teleport system. If a bunch of Koffren suddenly appear with big bombs strapped to them they’ll probably open fire and try to stop the bombs from exploding.”
“Not if we build them right,” Tomas said. “But so a few Wisps die. Isn’t that better than all of them dying? Along with all of us?”
“I don’t think anyone has to die,” Nicole said. “If we can get the Fyrantha up and running—”
She broke off, jumping, as a hand unexpectedly touched her shoulder. She had just enough time to look back and see it was one of the Wisps from the corridor—
Nicole, this is Allyce, the doctor’s voice came in her mind. Jeff’s gone woozy—I think he’s got internal bleeding. I need to get him to the closest medical center.
Nicole clenched her teeth. Yes, of course, she replied. Get the Wisps to carry him. What about the Core?
I don’t know. I think he’s almost done, but I don’t know.
I’ll get someone else there to finish up, Nicole said. You just worry about Jeff.
I will.
“I’ve got to go,” Nicole said to Tomas. “Jeff’s in trouble—he needs to get to a medical center, and I need to find someone to finish his work on the Core.”
“Yeah, good luck,” Tomas said. “I’ll keep working my side of the—”
Abruptly, the deck seemed to jerk under Nicole’s feet. She started to turn—
“Attention, everyone,” Iosif’s voice came from somewhere in the ceiling. “We’re under attack. Repeat, we’re under attack. Nicole, get the hell back here.”
“Damn,” Nicole snarled, grabbing the Wisp’s arm. Iosif, I’m on my way, she thought, hoping one of the Wisps would relay the message. “Tomas, you need to get back to Carp in case that node goes down again.”
“I’m working here.”
“Yeah, whatever,” Nicole gritted out. “We’ll try to let you know when the ship starts getting blown apart around you.” She turned to the door.
“Wait.”
She turned back. Tomas was staring at the console in front of him, his lips compressed into a hard line. Then, abruptly, he started gathering up his tools. “Never mind,” he said as the deck rocked again. “You need the Core fixed? Fine. How do I get there?”
“The Wisp will take you,” Nicole said, feeling a flicker of relief. Wisp, take Tomas to the Q1 Core.
I obey the Protector.
“Good luck,” she said to Tomas. “I’ve got to get back to Iosif. Maybe there’s still time to stop this.”
“Yeah,” Tomas ground out. “If you can’t, don’t forget we’ve still got Koffren. And bombs.”
The deck was bouncing like a truck over city potholes by the time Nicole reached the control center. “What’s happening?” she asked as she made her way through the outer darkened console rings to the center. On the wall displays, the twenty Koffren ships had broken their earlier formation and were buzzing around the Fyrantha like a group of hornets, their weapons blazing away.
“They got tired of waiting for you,” Iosif said tightly. “I had to raise the shields, which naturally showed them where the gaps were. So now they’re trying to shoot through them.”
Nicole winced. “And succeeding?”
“Yes and no,” Levi said. “Their lasers—or whatever those are—are getting through just fine, but they aren’t doing much against the hull armor. Their missiles seem to be a lot more powerful, but they take a few seconds to get here and so far we’ve been able to roll or pitch the hole out of the way in time.”
“The shields we do have are working okay against them?”
“So far,” Iosif said. “But they’ve figured out our strategy, and they’re starting to coordinate their attacks. We’re a hell of a lot more maneuverable than anything this big should be, so at the moment we’re still staying ahead of them. But sooner or later they’ll get a shot through.”
“Any idea how many shots the hull can take?”
“Not a clue,” Iosif said. “But I’m guessing we’ll find out a lot sooner than we’d like.”
“What’s happening at the Core?” Levi asked as the screens shifted in response to another Fyrantha maneuver. “Allyce said Jeff was in trouble?”
“Internal bleeding or something,” Nicole said, picking up the mic. “Tomas has gone to finish his work. Let me talk to the Koffren.”
“Okay, but they won’t want to talk back,” Iosif warned. He keyed a switch. “You’re on.”
Nicole thumbed on the mic. “What the hell is this?” she snapped. “I told you I was going to talk to my people.”
“The time for talking is finished,” Djit-vis-ees said. “Do you surrender? Or do you die?”
“Neither,” Nicole said. Ryit lifted a thin hand and pointed to one of the screens, and she saw that two more of the shield gaps had been filled. Still twelve to go. “I warn you again: if you persist in this attack you’ll regret it.”
“Vjiu-fusi-suut said you spoke such vague threats and nonsense to the Lillilli who once controlled the ship,” Djit-vis-ees said scornfully. “Perhaps they were intimidated by such words. We are not.”
On the schematic, two new gaps suddenly appeared. Nicole thumbed the mute and pointed. “Iosif?”
“Yeah, I see it,” Iosif said grimly. “Wisp?”
One of the Wisps stepped closer to him, and Iosif touched its outstretched arm. There were the usual few seconds of silence—“Kointos and his people are on it,” Iosif reported. “If you’ve got more stalling up your sleeve, this is the time to do it.”
Nicole looked at the screens, feeling helplessness and panic bubbling together in her throat. The Koffren ships were zooming back and forth, firing their lasers and missiles as they glided gracefully like the ducks on Concourse Lake.
She frowned suddenly. Glided gracefully as they fired …
She thumbed the mic back on. “Okay, fine,” she said. “I didn’t want to do this, but I guess there’s no choice. We’ll be sending our prisoners back to you shortly.”
“You think to bribe us?” Djit-vis-ees scoffed. “I already said we don’t want them.”
“Too bad,” Nicole said. “They’re coming, anyway.” She paused. “Wait a second. Sorry—I said that wrong. Not shortly; we’ll be sending our prisoners back to you briefly.”
“Your words are translating improperly,” Djit-vis-ees said. “You say briefly?”
“Yes,” Nicole said. “Actually, you probably won’t even have time to say hello before you all hit the road for hell together.”
“You speak nonsense.”
“No, you just don’t understand,” Nicole said. “And since there’s nothing you can do to stop it, there’s no harm in explaining it to you. You know about the Fyrantha’s teleport? Of course you do—that’s how Vjiu-fusi-suut and his crew came aboard in the first place, isn’t it? Well, we’re going to deliver the prisoners back to you the same way.” She smiled tightly. “Only each of them is going to be carrying an extra package. A package that goes boom on delivery. We’ve got the first two ready. Do you want to point out the two least important of your ships?”
She thumbed the mute back on, holding her breath. If there’d been a flaw in Tomas’s plan—if the teleport couldn’t handle ship-to-ship transport, for instance—then the next sound she heard would be Djit-vis-ees laughing in her face.
But no one was laughing. And on the screens—
“They’re pulling back,” Levi said disbelievingly. “They’re actually pulling back.”
“And they’re jinking,” Iosif added, pointing. “Breaking up their vectors and curves.” He looked over his shoulder at Nicole. “Trying to make it harder for you to hit them with the teleport.”
“And making it harder for them to hit us, too?” Nicole asked.
“Looks like it,” Iosif confirmed. “At least they’ve stopped firing.”
“Great,” Nicole said, exhaling a sigh of relief. The bluff had actually worked.
At least, for now. “Let’s see if we can keep them at it.” She activated the mic. “You’ve got to be kidding me,” she said, putting as much scorn into her voice as she could. “The Fyrantha’s teleport can hit a planet a gazillion miles away. You really think backing off a couple of miles is going to be a problem?”
Djit-vis-ees didn’t answer. The Koffren ships were still retreating, Nicole saw, but now the jittery movements Iosif had pointed out were increasing.
“So do we really have bombs to send across to them?” Levi asked quietly.
Nicole muted the mic. “Not that I know of,” she said. “That was Tomas’s idea, by the way.”
“So he was planning on delivering instead of picking up,” Levi said. “Yeah, that sounds like him.”
“Let’s just hope we can keep them off balance until we can get the rest of the shield gaps fixed,” Iosif warned. “If they call our bluff, we might have to actually throw together some kind of bomb.”
And sacrifice a Wisp to deliver it? Nicole’s throat ached at the thought. But it might well come to that.
She touched the Wisp beside her. I wish to access to a memory, she said. What Jeff said to me about choices and generals after the Shipmasters killed four Wisps.
There was a moment’s pause …
I know you’re hurting about the Wisps. So am I. But we’re in a war, and war requires choices. No general worth an honest salute likes making the decisions that will cost people their lives. But they keep making the choices, and the sacrifices that go with them, because if they don’t a lot more people will die.
Nicole didn’t want to be a general. She’d told Jeff that. All she’d ever wanted out of life was to be safe and not afraid and to have enough to eat.
But the Fyrantha had chosen her as its Protector, and the people and Ghorfs aboard had accepted her in that role, and she no longer had a choice.
And if it came to sacrificing a few Wisps to save everyone else, she knew she would indeed do it.
“Uh-oh,” Iosif muttered.
“What?” Nicole asked, looking back at the displays.
“New strategy,” Iosif said. “Nineteen of the ships are still doing their jump-and-twitch dance, but the last one is coming straight at us. Big, slow, and fat.”
“Calling our bluff,” Levi said tightly. “Offering us a clear shot if we actually have one.”
“Only we don’t,” Nicole said, looking at the schematic. There were still thirteen gaping holes in the Fyrantha’s shield. “I guess we’ve just got one option left.”
She thumbed on the mic. “I see you’re sending in a transport,” she said. “Good, because I was just about to ask for one. I think it’s time we had a face-to-face.”
Levi threw her a shocked look. “Nicole?”
She motioned him to silence. “I assume there’s a way to dock a smaller ship with the Fyrantha, but I don’t know how to do it,” she continued. “So I suggest you just wait outside the shield—hover or float or whatever it is ships do out there—while I get a spacesuit and come across. Then we can talk this out together.”
“Once again, you speak nonsense,” Djit-vis-ees said. “We have nothing to talk about.”
“I think we do,” Nicole said. “Are you going to just throw away the chance to maybe get the Fyrantha without any more damage to it or yourselves?”
There was a short silence. Levi and Iosif were looking at her with widened eyes, Nicole saw, and she again gestured a warning to them to keep silent.
“Very well,” Djit-vis-ees said. “I accept. My ship will await your arrival. You have ten minutes.”
“Make it thirty,” Nicole said. “It’s a big ship, and getting into a spacesuit is a pain.”
“You have twenty.”
“Twenty minutes,” Nicole agreed.
She thumbed off the mic and gestured for Levi to cut the connection. “Figured he’d take me up on it,” she said, handing Iosif the mic. “He was already willing to sacrifice that ship. Might as well let it hang around and see if he could get a good hostage out of the deal.”
“You’re not seriously thinking about going over there, are you?” Levi asked.
“That depends on whether we can get the rest of the shield fixed in the next twenty minutes,” Nicole said.
“And if we can’t?”
Nicole took a deep breath. “Then I go to see them. And buy you as much extra time as I can.”
“And if we say no?” Iosif asked.
“I’m the Protector,” Nicole said. “No one says no to me.”
“No!”
Nicole jumped violently as the sudden voice echoed through the control center. Through the control center … and inside her mind.
What the hell?
“No!” the voice said again, deep and rumbling and powerful.
And suddenly, between the dark outer console ring and the display screens on the wall the holograms of Ushkai and R’taas appeared. “You will not leave me alone, Protector,” they said, speaking in unison, their voices somehow blending into this new voice. “You will not.”
With an effort, Nicole found her own voice. “Who are you?” she asked. The two holograms drew themselves up, again in unison.
Then, to her amazement, the images flowed into each other, swirling and twisting and sparkling together, until they’d formed a new image, an image utterly unlike either of them, an image like one of the golden Greek gods from Nicole’s old mythology reader.
And suddenly she knew. “You’re the Fyrantha,” she breathed.
“I am Leviathan,” the new figure said in the same sonorous voice. “I am training ground. I am ark of refuge. I am peacekeeper. I am war-bringer. I am scourge of the Arm. I am strength and resolve and purpose.
“I am death.”
And suddenly, the consoles in the two outer rings came to life, flicking on with lights and controls and images. On the big ship schematic, the gaps abruptly filled in, and the light blue haze of the shield deepened and thickened. Beneath the blue shell, a hundred orange spots appeared at points scattered all across the hull.
“Protector!”
Nicole took a deep breath. “I’m here,” she called.
“I rise against this attack,” the voice said. “Guide me.”
Nicole looked helplessly at Levi and Iosif. Guide me? “I don’t understan—”
Without warning, a flood of images filled the room and her mind. Faces, thoughts, fears, hopes. Images of women, mostly young, all of them surrounded by other people and consoles with glowing lights and controls. All of them feeling helpless, all of them abruptly aware of Nicole and of each other.
It was the Sibyls. All of them, their minds linked to Nicole and to the ship.
And the last piece of the puzzle that was the Fyrantha finally fell into place. The ship’s builders, the ones who’d first brought in humans as partners in their work, had never intended them to need the slow poison of the inhalers to hear the ship. That had only become necessary when the Fyrantha’s mind and soul were fragmented. Tomas had finished the work Jeff had started in the Core, and the ship was once again whole.
And now, for the first time in perhaps centuries, the Fyrantha was at its full capabilities.
No. Not the Fyrantha.
Leviathan.
Maybe the Koffren commander guessed what had happened. Maybe he was just reacting to the ship’s newly strengthened shields. But suddenly the distant ships stopped their defensive jinking and swung back to their attack, their lasers and missiles filling the sky.
“Guide me.”
Nicole took a deep breath. Sibyls, this is the Protector, she spoke to the images in her mind. The weapons control consoles are in front of you. Find them, and each of you stand in front of one.
There was a brief moment of doubt and fear as the Sibyls reacted to the flood of thoughts within their minds. But they’d spent years listening to the Fyrantha, and the confusion surrounding the new voices quickly disappeared. The mental images shifted as each of them obediently moved in front of the proper console, and on the schematic nearly half of the orange spots brightened to show which weapons clusters were now active and ready.
The ship is under attack, Nicole said. We’re going to help it defend itself. Consoles—
She’d already seen there were no numbers on the orange spots. Yet somehow she knew which cluster was which.
—fourteen, thirty, twenty-seven: target the nearest Koffren ships and fire lasers.
How? someone asked.
But even as the question formed in Nicole’s mind it vanished into understanding. Leviathan was guiding the Sibyls just as it was guiding Nicole, and just as she knew which cluster was which so they knew how to aim and fire the weapons as Nicole had ordered.
The sky was filled with blazing light as the Koffren continued their attack, their weapons not even denting Leviathan’s shields. They got five more seconds before the Sibyls got their own weapons lined up.
And Leviathan returned fire.
Nicole caught her breath. She’d thought the sky was as brightly lit up as it could be. She was wrong. Leviathan’s weapons were sheets of blazing green, the Shipmasters’ greenfire weapons scaled up a million times, slicing through the Koffren ships like they were cardboard. The targeted ships disintegrated, a few of them bursting with secondary explosions as their remaining missiles blew up.
Consoles eleven, eighteen, fifty-six, seventy: target and fire.
Four more blasts of greenfire weapons. Four more Koffren ships destroyed.
Consoles fifteen, twenty-two, ninety-one, forty: target and fire.
Four more blasts. Four more disintegrated Koffren ships.
Nicole gazed at the screens, awe and disbelief mixed together with horror. In the space of a dozen seconds, half the enemy force had been utterly destroyed. A dozen more seconds, a couple more salvos, and the rest would be turned to dust.
And the Koffren commander knew it. The remaining ships abruptly broke off their attack and turned to flee, flying desperately away from the unexpected disaster.
Finish them, Leviathan ordered.
Nicole watched the Koffren ships another moment. No.
I am Leviathan. I am scourge of the Arm. You will guide me in destroying them.
No, Nicole repeated. At least, not yet.
“Levi, let me talk to them,” she said aloud, reaching to the console and picking up the mic.
She focused on Levi. He was gazing at the screens, his eyes wide. “Levi?” she prompted.
He seemed to shake himself. “Right,” he said, reaching to the controls. “You’re on.”
“This is the Protector,” Nicole called. “I have a message for the leaders of the Koffren. Promise to deliver it, and I’ll let the rest of your ships leave. Otherwise, we’ll just have to find another way to deliver it. Probably directly to your home world. Personally.”
There was a short pause. “Speak your message,” Djit-vis-ees said, his voice tense.
“You’ve been using the Shipmasters’ data to steal war slaves from other worlds,” Nicole said. “That stops now. Any beings you’re still using are to be removed from whatever battlefields they’re on and returned directly home.”
“Many of the recruits now serve others,” Djit-vis-ees said. “We cannot simply demand them back.”
“Oh, I think you probably can,” Nicole said. “If not, we’ll just have to go to them directly, get their attention like we just did with you, and deliver the message. Of course, if we have to do that we’ll also make it clear that the Koffren knew what was coming after them and didn’t bother to tell them what they needed to do to avoid it.”
“I’ll deliver the message,” Djit-vis-ees said. “The Koffren leaders will do all they can.”
“I hope so,” Nicole said. “Because we’ve got all the Shipmasters’ records here, including the names and locations of every world they sold to you or others. We’ll be checking all of them, so the faster and wider you can spread the word, the better. Understood?”
“Understood,” Djit-vis-ees said. He was still angry, Nicole could tell, and refusing to acknowledge his defeat. But he did understand.
“Good,” Nicole said. “And just in case you forget anything, we’ll be sending Vjiu-fusi-suut and the other survivors home with the same message. Probably without any bombs attached, but you never know. Now get out of here, before we decide that Vjiu-fusi-suut can handle the message without you.”
She muted the mic and signaled Levi. “You think they’ve had enough?” Iosif asked.
“I don’t know,” Nicole said. “Let’s find out.”
They had. On the displays the remaining Koffren ships continued to fly away, accelerating as they went. As Nicole watched they did a little flickering sort of jump, like something out of a movie, and vanished.
Why did you not let me destroy them?
Nicole took a deep breath. The Sibyls, she noted, had disappeared from her eyes and mind. Apparently, this new conversation was between just her and the ship. Because that’s not who you are anymore.
I am scourge of the Arm.
That’s what you were once, Nicole said. That was when your job was to punish. But that changed. Someone else took over, and you weren’t there anymore to punish people who deserved it. You were just a warship.
I was the most powerful warship.
Maybe, Nicole conceded. But you didn’t care about why you were doing what you were doing. You were fighting whoever your masters told you to fight. You didn’t care whether they deserved it or not.
Leviathan seemed to think about that. No, it said. I always cared. It was the masters who did not.
I know, Nicole said, her throat aching. How many times had she done something just because Trake had told her to? Did any of the people she’d helped rob or hurt really deserve it?
She didn’t know. She would never know.
Because she’d never wanted to.
But then things changed again, she went on. You were damaged in battle, or maybe your masters broke your Core into pieces on purpose, and you weren’t a warship anymore. Someone else took over and made you into a zoo.
Not a zoo, Leviathan said, its voice thoughtful. I was an ark of refuge. A sanctuary. Animals were brought aboard to live until their home worlds could be rebuilt and reinvigorated.
Really? Nicole asked, frowning. The Caretaker had told her the Fyrantha was a zoo. Had Ushkai been wrong then, or was Leviathan wrong now?
Maybe it wasn’t either of them. Maybe the ship had been made into a sanctuary, and also a viewing place so people wouldn’t forget why it was important that the animals’ habitats be put back together.
For that matter, maybe Leviathan had been the cause of that destruction in the first place. Maybe the Fyrantha’s job as sanctuary had been an effort to help atone for Leviathan’s wars.
And that was good, she said. But then the Shipmasters came—Nevvis and Fievj and the others. They took out the animals and turned you into a place where people fight each other.
So that once again I was a warship?
Yeah, I suppose, kind of, Nicole said. But here’s the thing. You rattled off a list of things you’d been when you first woke up. But between being a warship and an animal sanctuary, you said you’d been a peacekeeper. Tell me about that.
It was the Plimkatae, the ship said slowly. The beings who created me, the people of the Oracle who names herself R’taas. They won me back, and made me once again their instrument of justice. But instead of a scourge against evil I was made a vessel of peace. I stood between aggressor and victim, forcing those who sought destruction or conquest to stand down or flee.
Nicole nodded to herself. So R’taas’s people had built the ship, lost it to someone, gotten it back, then lost it to the Lillilli. The first group of Lillilli had then lost it to Nevvis and his group. Like a bunch of gangs fighting over the same couple of blocks of territory. So you know what it’s like to stop fights, she said. How about we go back to that?
We? Does that mean you’re staying with me?
I don’t know, Nicole said, frowning. Somehow, she hadn’t thought that far ahead. Do you want me to?
I don’t want. I need.
Nicole swallowed hard. Was she about to trade one imprisonment for another?
But really, why not? Trake was dead, and even if he were still around she had no interest in going back to her previous life in his gang. Here, she could do things that mattered, maybe even live up to the name Protector the ship had given her. Was there anything else she needed or even wanted back on Earth?
Actually, now that she thought about it, there was.
I’ll need to go back for a day or two, she told Leviathan. I have to see my grandmother and tell her I’m all right. She winced. And tell her how sorry I am for the way I behaved to her. She was right—she was always right—but I was too sure of myself to understand. Can you do without me that long?
I can, Leviathan said. You will return quickly?
I will, Nicole promised. Don’t worry, I have plans for us.
She smiled tightly. Yes, she had plans, all right.
Big plans.