26
FLIGHT OF THE COMET

Diocletia said nothing as the rickshaw took them through the Southwell and then the Well. She seemed to have shut down, her eyes fixed straight ahead, the holographic Jovian flag casting a flickering red and yellow light on her black hair and pale neck. Mavry sat beside her with his head bowed, holding one of her hands in both of his.

They disembarked from the rickshaw and walked in silence down the long tunnel to the ship terminal. The Cybelean customs officials saw them coming, and one of them hurriedly said something to the spacers waiting in the short line at their booth. They stood aside and the Hashoones walked up to the station, where their departure documents were presented.

The lead official was looking down the tunnel past them. Tycho turned and saw a cart piled with gear, trundling toward them. Three Comets sat on its sides, with Grigsby at the controls. The warrant officer’s face was gray and drawn, his riotous tattoos extinguished.

The cart drew alongside the Hashoones, and Tycho saw the long form covered with a blanket, the boxes and duffel bags set carefully around it. Diocletia said nothing, while Mavry’s head came up briefly, registered the cart and what it carried, then went back down.

Grigsby stepped off the cart and spoke quietly to the customs officials. Documents were stamped and the group walked forward again, the cart trailing them.

The docking terminal was filled with people. At the sight of the Hashoones the buzz of conversation stopped. Hands went to heads, and hats were removed. All of those waiting belonged to the bridge crews of the other Jovian privateers, Tycho realized. The captains stepped forward and stood in front of their crews, Garibalda Marta Andrade next to Dmitra Barnacus, who stood next to the Widderiches, and so on, until the slight figure of Zhi Ning at the end of the line.

The privateers stood at attention as the Hashoones passed. Then Diocletia held up her hand, stopping her family. She turned, her eyes taking in the line of captains and the crowd of privateers behind them.

“Thank you, captains,” she said quietly, and then her eyes turned left and right. “Thank you, ladies and gentlemen.”

The privateers remained still and silent until the cart had passed beyond their sight and vanished into the umbilical leading to the gig.

“Captain?” Grigsby asked over the Shadow Comet’s comm, his voice quiet and almost apologetic. “Full complement belowdecks.”

“Thank you, Mr. Grigsby,” Diocletia said into her headset from where she sat in the captain’s chair. “Vesuvia, status for departure?”

“All systems are operational,” Vesuvia said.

“Vesuvia, verify headings,” Tycho said, finding himself grateful for the years of mind-numbing routine. Departure had long ago become a familiar, near-automatic checklist, one he could follow with minimal intervention by his brain.

“Course verified,” Vesuvia said.

“Cybelean Traffic Control, this is the Shadow Comet requesting immediate clearance for departure,” Tycho said.

“Granted,” a voice said instantly. “And Godspeed.”

“We’re green for departure,” Tycho said, and then slumped in his harness. With his checklist complete he had no idea what to do. His eyes crept to where Yana sat numbly beside him. It was strange not to hear the clatter of their grandfather shifting his metal limbs behind him on the quarterdeck, ready to quarrel with Vesuvia or share an old pirate yarn.

“Carlo, take us up—” Diocletia said, her head turning to the left, as it had so many times before. She stared at the empty chair for a moment, then turned her gaze back to the main screen.

“Mavry,” she said. “Take us up to our tanks.”

The Comet eased slowly away from her parking orbit, beginning her climb to the long-range tanks clustered above Cybele. Attis hung in space ahead of them. Mavry guided them smoothly beneath it. Diocletia sat silent and motionless in the captain’s chair, staring straight ahead.

Mavry turned at his console, looking at his wife. Attis was below and behind them now, casting a shadow over the web of domes and corridors that marked the surface of its asteroid companion. Above them, Tycho could see pinpoints of brilliant light—long-range tanks waiting for their starships.

With a hum, the control yoke rose from beneath Diocletia’s console.

“My starship,” she said. “Vesuvia, beat to quarters.”

“Acknowledged.”

Belowdecks, the pipes shrilled and Grigsby began barking orders.

“Dio?” Mavry asked, but she had activated her headset.

“Yana, on sensors,” Diocletia said. “Mr. Grigsby, gunnery crews to their stations.”

“Captain?” Grigsby asked. “What’s our target?”

“Bazaar.”

Tycho looked at Yana in shock, but his sister didn’t look back. She was activating her sensor boards, extending sensor masts and running hurried diagnostics.

“Dio, what are we doing?” Mavry asked.

“We’re going to the place where our son died. Where nobody helped him.”

The Comet banked to port and dipped her nose. Cybele grew from a spot of light into a shape once again, a gray lump made bright by the distant sun.

“Mom,” Tycho said. “Elfrieda’s there.”

Diocletia said nothing.

“Mom?” Tycho tried again.

“I heard you.”

Tycho looked helplessly at Yana. But it was Mavry who leaned over to Diocletia.

“Dio,” he said quietly. “Don’t carry that weight too.”

“Shadow Comet, this is not an approved departure vector,” a voice said over the comm. “Acknowledge.”

Diocletia’s hand went to her headset. “You have three minutes to evacuate Bazaar.”

Below them, Cybele grew until its surface filled the viewports. Diocletia leveled off and the Comet cruised slowly over the barren plains.

“Shadow Comet, return to your departure vector immediately,” the traffic-control official said, and Tycho could hear panic creeping into his voice.

“Three minutes,” Diocletia replied.

“Comet, any hostile action against Cybelean citizens or property will be considered an act of war.”

“If you think any of your toy ships can stop me, send them down here.”

Tycho could see scattered domes, pits, and landing fields now—the outskirts of Cybele’s settlements, farther from the Westwell than he’d ever dared to go. He wondered which of them had sheltered the Ice Wolves, and where the Securitat had made its headquarters. He could imagine the people below looking up, surprised by the unfamiliar shadow overhead.

And then he saw it—the pressure dome where his brother had died. He hoped Elfrieda had heard the warning and heeded it.

“Gun crews, prepare to fire on my mark,” Diocletia said. “Counterclockwise rotation.”

The Comet slowed, Bazaar dead center in her viewports.

“Mark,” she told Grigsby.

The Comet shivered and bucked, and the first projectiles streaked toward Cybele’s surface, delivered by the bow chasers. Two blossoms of flame sprang up below them, blindingly bright. Then Diocletia spun the Comet to bring her starboard cannons to bear, and Bazaar vanished behind a wall of fire and ejected dust and rock. The guns roared out from bow to stern, a continuous rolling thunder of sound, and the frigate rattled and shook. The Comet continued to spin, and after a brief pause the port guns were firing, pouring destruction into the surface of the asteroid below.

Tycho’s ears were ringing when the Comet completed her rotation and the firing stopped. The dust thinned, and Tycho saw there was no pressure dome below them anymore—only a low depression, its churned-up surface bubbling and glowing red.

“Target destroyed,” Vesuvia intoned.

The bells clanged out three times.

“Cease firing,” Diocletia said. She stared at the spot where Bazaar had been, the glow already fading as the rock cooled and began to solidify. Then she stood the Comet on her tail and accelerated toward the long-range tanks waiting above.

A crewer belowdecks began to chant Carlo’s name. He was joined by another, and then by a third, and then by many more. After a few seconds of dissonance the chant found a common cadence, the syllables booming up the ladderwells accompanied by the stamp of boots.

The Comet reached her tanks. The stabilizers engaged and the fuel-line connectors mated, the familiar sounds faint amid the chanting below. The whine of the engines rose to a howl and the frigate shot into deep space, toward distant Jupiter.

Diocletia unbuckled her harness and got to her feet, one hand clutching the back of the captain’s chair. Mavry hastily stood as well. He reached for Diocletia and she sagged against him. Then a sound emerged from her throat, a guttural moan that rose to a ragged scream, one that went on and on even as Mavry buried her in his arms, rocking her back and forth.

The chanting stopped belowdecks, leaving that dreadful keening wail to penetrate every compartment of the ship, from the lowermost hold to the top turret. It trailed away and then began again, inescapable and endless, and none of the Comets aboard that day would ever forget the sound of Diocletia Hashoone crying for her lost child.