Of course we argued about it. Kristiana insisted that Yoan go back to Darius and out of this. My instinct was to send the parawolves somewhere else, too. Yoan was hotly indignant and refused to leave. I’m sure the parawolves would simply not have understood why we were sending them away. In the end, everyone stayed.
We even took both ships.
“Of course we can take both. We must take both,” Jai said. “The blues attacked when two ships were stationary. We just have to give them a fat enough target to attack two ships again. This time, we have Sauli and Saito’s expensive runabout—”
Sauli snorted.
“If the blues even recognize it as a rich target,” I added.
“If they don’t, it doesn’t matter.” Jai’s tone was complacent. “With the Lythion there, they won’t be able to resist. You beat them once. If they’re truly aggressive, they won’t let that insult lie.”
“They’ll come out with their weapons on full charge,” Dalton said. “How do we stop them doing that again? We have to find a way to speak to them.”
“First, we must find them,” Jai said gently. “This will bring them out.”
“You’re banking on them knowing we’re there,” I pointed out. “What if they just happened to stumble across the other four ships?”
“Four that we know of,” Lyth corrected. “There may well be others.”
Jai rubbed his jaw. “We don’t know how to signal to get their attention. But none of the other four ships would have signaled in any way. They just happened to be in the same general area of space, so we must put ourselves there and wait.”
“It could be a long wait,” I pointed out.
Jai smiled. It had a nasty edge to it. “Colonel, if an enemy unit slapped your face for you, when you thought your team unstoppable, wouldn’t you watch them very carefully after that? Look for signs of vulnerability?”
“I would,” I said evenly. “I’d make it my mission in life, because that enemy unit would now be a threat I must reduce or disable.”
“Or eliminate,” Dalton said grimly.
“Or eliminate,” I echoed reluctantly, because that was just as true as any of the other possibilities. They’d called me the Imperial Hammer for a reason.
Jai nodded. “They don’t know where we are from, just as we don’t know where they are from. But we both know where each of us was. So let’s go there.”
We dusted off from the Wynchester platforms six hours later. It would have been sooner, but Sauli’s ship was still going through post-landing checks and resupply. Sauli’s captain, Baha Truda, spent money to make the turnaround as short as possible.
Venni stayed with the parawolves on the Lythion, and Lyssa extended the sandpit to accommodate the five of them. Yoan also stayed, donned coveralls and dived eagerly into the engineering compartments, watched over by Lyssa.
Jai and Marlow moved over to the Omia Zaos, coaxed there by Sauli’s offer of the best scotch ever distilled from real oak barrels.
As we headed at dead slow speed toward the inner lock gate, I settled against the captain’s inertia shell on the bridge and shifted the view on my dashboard back to the city we were leaving behind. I studied it with a touch of regret. We hadn’t stepped off the platforms even once. Now I had seen Wynchester for myself, I itched to explore it. The city was an ancient anomaly among all the domed and lidded communities scattered across the galaxy. Its very long history tugged at me.
I promised I would one day visit properly and spend time here.
Then I shut off the display and watched the approaching lock instead. We had things to do.
Lyssa stood beside me.
“You have the coordinates from Lyth?” I asked her.
“I do.”
“Does Captain Truda?”
She paused. “He does,” she confirmed.
“As soon as we’re beyond the speed limit outside the Great Lock, you can jump.”
“I would prefer to build up speed before we jump,” Lyssa said. “The Omia says it is faster than me.”
“And you want to prove it wrong?” I asked curiously.
“I want to make sure we don’t fall behind. I want to emerge into normal space at the other end either before the Omia or at the same time.” Her expression was withering. “The shipmind is a baby. If it runs into the Blues and I’m not there to guide it, it will curl up and suck its thumb.”
I held back my laugh. “Then by all means, build up your speed first.”
It took an hour to move through the Great Lock and back into open space beyond. Lyssa immediately kicked in the reaction engines and the Lythion leapt forward, with the Omia right beside us.
“See you at the other end, Captain,” I called out to Truda.
“I calculate five hours from now, Colonel,” Truda’s voice informed me.
I glanced at Lyssa. She wiggled her hand, with a grimace.
“That’s about right,” I told Truda. “Go in with your guard up,” I added.
“I’ll have everything running hot,” Truda assured me. “I’ve seen the footage,” he added, his voice dropping.
Three minutes later, we jumped.
*
We emerged into normal space with both rail guns primed, and a full arsenal of nasty stuff just waiting to deploy, with my fingers on the triggers dashboard, and Lyssa with every external sensor at full stretch.
I held my breath, listening with every cell in my body, looking for any excuse to slide my fingers across the triggers.
“Nothing,” Lyssa said at last. “We’re on the far edge of the Carina arm, as far away from any human establishment as the arm will let us get. And the Omia just emerged.”
I studied the starfield ahead of us. It even looked different. “I didn’t have time to study the stars when we were out here last time,” I murmured. “There’s almost no stars to see in this direction, except for that band there. What is that?”
Lyssa frowned and I knew she was consulting her innards, checking star maps. “Brother?” she said diffidently. “I have no reference points,” she added to me.
In other words, her maps didn’t go that far.
Here be dragons.
Lyth’s voice came in. “Our galaxy is a spiral galaxy. That band of stars is the next arm over from ours.”
I stared at it, my heart thudding. “Lyth, are you thinking what I’m thinking?”
“I’m thinking what you’re thinking, Danny,” Jai said, from the Omia. “We had to come out here to see the possibility.”
“That they’re from that other arm…” I murmured.
Lyssa stiffened. “Incoming!” I think it was the first time I’ve heard her scream. Her voice was replicated on every system, and alarms sounded, flags flashed at me from my dashboard.
At the same time, Captain Truda on the Omia shouted, “Aft inbound! Brace yourselves! They’re right on top of us!”