The Gradus, the Corps cruiser assigned to monitor the mouth of the Derith wormhole, was one of the newest in the fleet. It had been named after the late Grand Consul Gradus at the request of his widow, the Archmage Syrene, who had worn her navy-blue widow’s robes to its inaugural voyage—a grand affair where all had feted her, and crowds had cheered. As far as the commander of the Gradus was concerned, Syrene and the rest of her sort could take a jump into a boiling pit of lava for all the difference it would make to him. For someone who had chosen to cloister herself in the Marque, he grumbled to himself, Syrene certainly spent a lot of time playing the grand public dame. Well, she used to, before she apparently vanished into the depths of the Marque to meditate, or play with voodoo dolls, or scratch her backside, or whatever it was the Nairenes did behind its walls.
The commander yawned. His name was Waltere, and he had been staring at the Derith wormhole for so long that he saw it in his sleep. Already the Gradus’s tour of duty at Derith had been extended twice, despite assurances from CentCom, the Corps’ new central command, that he and his crew would soon be put to more productive use. He was growing uncomfortably familiar with that promise, and it was starting to sound distinctly hollow.
CentCom had been established at the outbreak of the war, when a new structure became necessary in order to ensure that communications remained uncompromised by the Military. For Waltere, it was just another layer of officialdom and bureaucracy. The Corps seemed to be forming new subgroups, and instituting additional protocols, on a daily basis, all of them designed to disguise the fact—whisper it—that the war was most definitely not going according to plan. Oh, the initial attack on Melos Station had gone brilliantly, removing from the board, with one massive explosion, a good quarter of the Military hierarchy, and a tenth of its ships. Unfortunately, all of the other assaults had been botched, either partially or entirely, mostly because the Corps had grown soft. That was what happened when the Military was left to handle the dirty work of conquest: its troops became battle-hardened and seasoned, while Corps forces were only good for mopping up the stragglers, or directing traffic.
The Securitats were another matter, although even they got in much of their practice from torturing civilians—Waltere had done one tour of duty on Earth, in France, and had no illusions about how the Securitats went about their business. But there weren’t enough of the Securitats for them to be able to engage in full confrontations with the Military without massive Corps support, and the two organizations had their own command structures, neither of which entirely trusted the other. Meanwhile, a good chunk of the Military remained intact, although scattered or in hiding, popping out only to launch lighting guerrilla raids on Corps ships and stations before retreating back to their hidden bases. But the rumors were that the Military was preparing for a massive counterattack, in the hope of regaining the Illyr system, and the homeworld, and forcing the Corps and its allies either to surrender or sue for peace. To be fair, those rumors had been circulating since the start of the war, when it became clear that the initial attacks designed to decapitate the Military had failed, but they’d been growing in intensity in recent times.
Sometimes, Waltere thought that he might have picked the wrong side in this fight, but it was too late to change now.
The Gradus, although big, had a skeleton crew of just twelve, operating in three rotations. It boasted state-of-the-art shielding and weaponry, none of which it had yet had a chance to test. Boredom had made the crew fractious and difficult. Being trapped in a tin can beside a remote wormhole tended to have that effect. Only the regular bursts of contact from CentCom through the beacon arrays confirmed that the Gradus had not been forgotten entirely.
Waltere blamed his ship’s name. He had been present when Syrene requested—ordered, in anyone else’s language, since what the Archmage wanted, she got—that the Gradus assume primary responsibility for monitoring the wormhole. He knew that the only reason anyone still cared about Derith was because the Archmage’s stepdaughter had vanished into it, along with a handful of humans, two of whom might have been involved in Grand Consul Gradus’s death. The real meat on those tenuous bones, and the only interesting thing about the mission, was that a Mech had accompanied the escapees.
Waltere had never seen one of the artificial beings. They were all supposed to have been destroyed before he was born. He didn’t hold out much hope of seeing the one that had entered the Derith wormhole anytime soon. Whatever lay on the other side of that hole was bad news: a giant meteor field, a sun, a collapsing star . . . Someone had even suggested aliens. Waltere had almost laughed at that one, until he saw something flicker in the face of Syrene and some of the senior Corps officials when the possibility was mentioned. He’d said nothing, but their reaction had remained with him.
Now he sat slumped in his captain’s chair, staring at that blasted wormhole, thinking of all the possibilities for glory and advancement that had passed him by while the Gradus floated in this backwater of the universe. It was all an illusion, of course. Waltere was not particularly bright, but he was savvy enough to know that he would never excel in the field. If he’d actually fought in the war, then he’d either be dead or injured by this point; that, or given a posting far from the lines where he couldn’t do any harm.
A bit like this one, he supposed.
Yallee, his second in command, stepped into his field of vision. Yallee wasn’t very pretty, but then Waltere wasn’t very handsome. With nothing else to do on board the Gradus, she and Waltere had begun a casual affair. It wasn’t a good idea, of course, even if they were both single, because it wasn’t like there was any way of getting away from each other when they fought, which was increasingly often. It was also against all regulations. They could both be court-martialed if CentCom discovered their relationship, although at least that would mean they would both be sent back to Illyr for trial. Waltere was occasionally tempted to confess, just so he could return home. If he did, he and Yallee wouldn’t be going back alone. One half of the crew was permanently sleeping with the other half: they got together, they broke up, they got together with someone else. He had trouble keeping track of who was bedding down with whom. By contrast, he and Yallee had been together for so long that they counted as an old married couple by the standards of the Gradus.
“It’s time for a drill,” said Yallee.
“Really?” said Waltere. He had a headache, and the noise of the drill siren would only make it worse. “Maybe we could just postpone.”
Nobody liked drills. It meant waking those crew members who were asleep, or disturbing those who were off duty, just to line them up before the captain’s chair so Waltere could be sure that, if anything did happen, they might actually be prepared to deal with it. During the last drill, Holtus, one of the engineers, had simply refused to leave his bed, and not even the appearance of Waltere beside his bunk threatening him at gunpoint had convinced him to get out of it. Eventually, Waltere had put away his pulser and gone back to his chair. It just didn’t seem worth the effort . . .
Later he’d had a talk with Holtus, who accepted that, among other things, it was bad for morale to have him disobey a direct order. Holtus agreed to appear for drills as long as they were scheduled for a time when he wasn’t asleep, which wasn’t ideal from Waltere’s point of view but was still better than nothing. Unfortunately, when this arrangement became widely known, nobody else wanted to be woken up either, so now drills were scheduled for when shifts ended, and the time was posted a day in advance so everyone knew when to expect it. This completely defeated the purpose of drills, but nobody cared, least of all Waltere, because nothing ever happened here anyway.
Which was why, when the ship appeared from the Derith wormhole, it took him a few moments to register its presence. He could see it, but his brain, numbed by inactivity, struggled to accept the reality of it. Eventually, he managed to get the words out.
“That’s a ship!” he said, standing up.
Yallee turned to look. By the time she saw it, Waltere had already sounded the alert, and the siren raged through the Gradus.
“You’d better tell them that it’s not a drill,” said Yallee.
Good idea, thought Waltere. He hit his coms button.
“This is not a drill,” he announced. “Repeat: this is not a drill. Seriously.”
• • •
Steven and Alis saw the Corps cruiser the moment they emerged from the wormhole. Steven was dizzy from the boost, so he quickly handed control of the Nomad to Alis.
“Rizzo?” he said. It came out sharply, like a high-pitched bark, and he cursed puberty, vowing to modulate his tones next time. Well, if there was a next time, for already the cruiser was turning toward them, its heavy cannon swiveling in their direction.
Rizzo appeared calm, however, and was quickly making adjustments to the weapons.
“Targeting,” she said.
Steven nodded at her, swallowing hard. I’m not even sixteen, he thought, what the hell am I doing?
“Three, two, one,” said Rizzo. “Targeting complete. We have a lock.”
On the screens, the nameless vessel turned green.
Steven swallowed again. Actually, wasn’t he almost eighteen? A couple of years had already passed on this side of the wormhole, if the Cayth were to be believed; technically, he was nearly old enough to drive! In another parallel universe, he’d be old enough to have a pint, legitimately, with Paul down at the Bear Arms near his Edinburgh home. Maybe his mum would have joined them; she always liked a dash of lime in her lager.
His mum . . .
“Fire,” he said.
• • •
On board the Gradus, the rest of the crew was still assembling when the torpedo launched. Yallee had taken the copilot’s seat and was maneuvering the ship to bring the new arrival under their guns. Their scanners had identified it as the same vessel that had fled into the wormhole over two years earlier.
Elvo, the duty weapons officer, was already at her post.
“Shields!” cried Waltere.
“Shields up,” confirmed Elvo. “But it’s going to hit us.”
They braced for impact, but none came. The torpedo erupted in a burst of white light while it was still some way from them. In an instant, the Gradus lost all power. The only illumination came from distant stars, and the glow of the energy net that now surrounded them.
“All systems down,” said Yallee, but Waltere didn’t need her to tell him that. He could see and hear for himself. Oxygen was their first concern. They needed to get emergency life support up and running, or they’d soon start to suffocate.
A wall of illumination appeared in the center of the cabin. There were no Others on the Gradus, but it didn’t matter. The torpedo’s functions were automatic: arm, fire, disable.
Decontaminate.
Waltere felt heat upon his skin, and then he felt nothing else at all.