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Hunter’s borrowed armor whistled to indicate he was dressed. He looked down automatically and everything was in place. Its fullerite plates overlapped perfectly to create a seamless ripple of scales. It glimmered in the light, ready to project appropriate camouflage when he left the ship.
“It looks good on you,” the Dragon’s Leader said from behind.
Hunter turned to greet his friend with a smile. “Thanks, Spense. For everything, including the fly-by pickup from Blossom. I hope they don’t dump your rank for that.”
The Leader’s lips quirked. “It’s okay. They can’t do without me.” He raised a hand to grab Hunter roughly round the back of the neck and pull him closer. To share an intense stare. “Be careful out there. If you ruin my new armor, there’ll be hell to pay.”
Hunter slapped Spense on the shoulder. “Understood.” He pulled away with a nod. “You be careful too. I’d hate to see you get hurt.”
Spenser frowned as if considering Hunter’s words but there was no time for more. Hunter swung toward the door and his armor carried him there in a single effortless step. The dark headband circling his forehead hummed to remind him to activate his helmet if he was about to enter a hostile environment. He silenced it with a thought and stepped through the door holo.
Wing barreled into him and bounced straight off. He’d been coming through the door at speed and was thrown back into the far wall of the corridor. Spenser’s armor was top quality indeed.
“Sorry,” Hunter said and hoisted his cousin to his feet. “What’s the hurry?”
Wing never had a chance to answer. A familiar voice interrupted them.
“Sector Leader Chen,” Clearwing said through Spenser’s com. “Can I join you on the bridge? There’s something odd about the visuals of Blizzard.”
Hunter exchanged a frown with Wing. Technically Clear was a guest on board, with no official standing despite being an observer for the Arck, but they’d be fools to ignore any warning from his ex. She remained the best data analyst he’d ever known.
“Please define ‘odd’, Professor,” Spense said to his com.
“Our path to the planet seems clear with no visible hostiles, but the image is blurred in places. No, not exactly blurred, more mismatched. It’s like looking at a straw in a glass at the point where it moves from air to water. The difference here is so minute it can’t be seen with the naked eye—but it’s there. A step that looks like a refraction error in our feed.”
Spense fiddled with the gold insignia on his cuff. “Could it be a data error? This is only the Dragon’s second mission.”
“Possible, sar, but doubtful.” Clear spoke crisply and Hunter smiled. Her usual diffidence always vanished when she had a puzzle in front of her. “I’ve run diagnostics three times and the visual feed looks good. I think we should slow down.”
Captain Chen didn’t hesitate. “Drop to one-tenth speed, Glamwing,” he ordered the pilot.
“Thank you, sar,” Clear said. “I’m sorry I can’t be more precise, but it feels like we’re flying into danger. Whatever lies ahead is arranged in a faint pattern. If my feed is correct, it’s showing hints of an unknown substance that’s camouflaged but shaped like a net. This could be a trap.”
“How close?” Hunter and Spense asked together. They shared a look and Hunter offered an apologetic nod. Spenser shrugged a hand but there was no time for more.
The ship hit something.
The Dragon roared and twisted when its nose was driven back toward its tail. It thrummed like the inside of a bell while inertia-dampening fluctuated wildly. Gravity thrust Hunter into the floor before reversing to suck him toward the ceiling. He smashed into the distant roof so hard his armor pinged in protest. He started to push away from the new floor but scarcely moved, until the ship’s gravity abruptly cut out to leave him floating there.
Hunter shook his head, which brought the world back into focus. His brain ached but not as much as it should have. His helmet had deployed and was humming in a way that seemed entirely too smug for a piece of armor. The environment had certainly become more hostile than Hunter anticipated. Fortunately, the helmet had done its job.
Unfortunately, Wing and Spense had only had com protection. They bobbed beside him, both unconscious.
It was hard to shake off a sense of unreality and Hunter’s hands felt strangely numb when he decompressed a med pad. Their ship had just stopped in space. There had been no explosion, and no debris-spreading impact, while no tractor beam was strong enough to halt the Dragon either—not so quickly.
It had felt like running into a wall, which was obviously impossible.
“Report,” Spenser croaked.
Hunter threw the med pad his way while unrolling a larger weave for Wing. His cousin remained still, and blood blossomed around his head. It was hard to find its source in a weightless world, so Hunter covered his entire head. He examined the rest of Wing while listening for a response to Spenser’s request.
No one reported back and only static came from the open com link. Whatever had tossed their ship back through space had taken a toll.
“Get me to the bridge,” Spense ordered. He held out a hand which Hunter gripped in his gauntlet.
He ordered the armor to thin and spread over Spenser too, which it did in less than a second. Hunter’s protection was cut by half, but he still wore the boots in the relationship. He ordered their thrusters to fire.
Nothing happened. “Boots?”
Spenser managed a wan grin. “Click your heels together.”
Of course. It wasn’t unusual to add extra layers of security to armor, but Spense brought his own flare to everything. Hunter tapped his heels together and rockets erupted from his soles. They shot him forward far faster than any com could manage, while Spenser whooped and hung on behind.
They reached the bridge in less than a minute and shot across it in less than a second.
Hunter had to perform a full battle-mode stop. A reverse tractor field in his helm halted its progress in an instant. His blood drained from his head while his feet continued on and Spenser swung forward past him. Their combined momentum spun them into the curved wall of the bridge. Hunter activated the magnet in Spenser’s gauntlet to leave his friend tethered there, half-stunned and bobbing from the wall.
Hunter rocketed back across the sphere to where Clearwing hung in mid-air. She was little more than a silhouette in the dim emergency lighting. Her scans had shut down, along with all the holograms that should have made the chamber bright. She was facing the ceiling and motionless, with her head thrown back and limbs hanging down.
Someone groaned and was answered. There was a general stirring among the nine crew members around Hunter, but Clear was completely still.
“Guano.” He decompressed every one of his med strips and sent out a call for medics. His one-time wife looked dead, until her ribcage lifted just enough to prove otherwise. She raised her head to drag in a rasping breath, but her body shook, and she started to cough. A med strip migrated to her blue lips before slipping into her mouth.
Clear stopped coughing but there was blood floating in the air between them. She stared at Hunter with glassy eyes. He made a supreme effort to unclench one of his fists and gently take her hand. So, so gently. “It’s all good. I’ve got you. More help is coming. You’re going to be okay.”
“Promise?” she sighed on half-a-breath.
“I swear it. I’m so sorry. I should have supplied you with a military-grade com.”
“That’s not on you,” Spenser said over Hunter’s shoulder. His voice was faint but steady. “I apologize, Professor Pinion. You should be recovering as well as my crew and it’s my fault you’re not.”
Clear fluttered a few fingers as if trying to wave their apologies away. “All good. Not energy barrier.” She stopped and closed her eyes, taking a moment to breath carefully. “Hit something ... solid.” She took another drag of air. “Solid, but pliable. Yielded for 2.2 seconds ... then ... rebound. That was my last reading, before ...” Her fingers twitched again to indicate the dark sphere around them.
“Thank you,” Spense said solemnly. “You saved our lives. The medics are here. They’ll take good care of you. Please excuse me.”
The Leader offered a nod for Hunter and then he was gone, to check on his crew and restore his crippled ship. Hunter almost envied him but didn’t let it show. He owed Clear plenty and the least he could do was stay with her.
She squeezed his hand when the two floating healers placed an energy brace under her back.
“Does it hurt,” he asked, glaring at the medics, but Clear let go of his fingers. Her hand drifted back to her side, and he realized she was smiling.
“Thanks,” she whispered. “Be careful out there.”
Hunter crossed his arms. “I don’t have to leave yet.”
“You do. Now. Go. Save us all.”
Hunter knew he should stay but her point was valid. The ship was out of commission so he needed to get to the surface as soon as Wing could fly. Oh, guano. “Wing,” he blurted into his com but there was no answer. He gave Clear a farewell smile that was far too manic, but she smiled too before closing her eyes.
A click of the heels was enough to shoot Hunter back down the length of the ship. He slowed his flight near the end, but still took less than a minute to curve past the maze of crumpled and twisted metal that used to access the Dragon’s prow. The link had been pushed back and up, along with the nose of the ship, to curl toward the stern. He threaded a careful path through the deformed passageway, grateful that the crew quarters at the front of the vessel were empty during active deployment.
Wing was missing.
A spray of blood was slowly dispersing around the spot where he’d been. Fortunately, it left a trail that was easy to follow further into the carnage. Hunter continued and found his cousin near the end of the battered link. Wing was slumped in the open doorway to his cabin, cursing at the thick med weave now on his chest. It looked like he was trying to peel it off.
“What the hail are you doing? Leave that alone.”
Wing’s head flew up and his eyes seemed to wobble. It took a second for his gaze to settle on Hunter. “You! Fix this. The drakking meds won’t listen to me. Use your armor override to get them off.”
Hunter floated close enough to feel renewed gravity from the cabin. He let it pull him into the room and touched down, before crouching beside Wing. “You look awful. Trust me, you still need the meds.”
One side of his cousin’s bloody mouth lifted in a sneer. “Choose your words more carefully. If I trust you at all it’s only briefly. Plus, you owe me. Get these drakking things off so my armor deploys.”
Hunter jutted out his chin and accepted Wing’s words. They hurt but were all true. How could his cousin ever trust him—truly trust him—again? “I’m not denying any of that. But there’s a reason why your armor won’t activate. Those bulky dressings are healing you. They’ll shrink to fit beneath your plate, once you’re well enough.”
Wing’s right hand lifted to pluck at a med pad stuck to his temple. “No time for this. Darsey needs us now. Both of us.”
“We’re nearly there,” Hunter murmured and patted his cousin’s hand.
Wing’s fingers curled tight to form a fist. He pulled his hand away and tried to shake a finger at Hunter, but it started trembling and wouldn’t stop. “Drakkit. He’s here, Hunter. The Devourer. Who else could stop a ship in mid-flight? The monster’s here and already on Blizzard. With Darsey. So, let’s go.”
Wing groped for the door frame and hauled himself to his feet. He swayed there while blood began seeping through the pad at his temple. His eyes wandered again, and he started panting.
Hunter pushed down the terror trying to seep up from his gut. They were out of time.
He placed a gauntlet on Wing’s shoulder and pushed his cousin downward, guiding him firmly back to the ground. It took frighteningly little effort. He tapped the medic alert on his com and crouched once more. “I get it. Someone needs to get close to Dee now. That someone should be you. Absolutely should be you and will be. But not yet. You need to heal first. Until then you’re a liability, so someone else needs to go instead.”
A gasp that might have been a laugh escaped from Wing. “You?”
Hunter sat back on his heels, while holding back the first word he wanted to yell, which was ‘yes’. Instead, he took a deep breath and held his cousin’s bloodshot gaze. “Anyone you wish to send. Spenser will go if we order him to. You won’t find a more competent and committed officer in the fleet.”
A more normal laugh lifted Wing’s bloody lips. “Except when it comes to Darse. Only one person is as committed to my wife as I am. Just go. Save her. Be the hero.”
Hunter nodded to hide his relief. He started to straighten but Wing’s hand flashed out to grip his wrist with surprising strength. They exchanged what Hunter hoped was an intense look but might have been a glare.
Wing’s arm dropped to hit the floor hard, but his eyes stayed locked on his cousin. “Hunter, everything’s sideways. Blizzard’s locked down so tight we can’t get ships in. God knows when our troops will arrive. You need to keep Darse safe, but you’ll need help. So, find her and wait. Don’t commit to action unless you must. Understood?”
“Find Lady IceFlight but stay stealthy. Wait for reinforcements. Only move if I must.”
Wing finally closed his eyes. A clatter from the link made Hunter turn while still in a crouch. However, the noise was a medic with a healing tray finding a path past walls that looked like concertinas. The man threw a salute at Hunter who answered it in passing.
It would be a long flight to the surface, even if Clear was right and the obstacle ahead was a net with gaps large enough to pass through. He needed to get moving. The link ahead opened up, and he drove more power to his boots. The smooth metal around him turned to a gray blur. A second’s thrust was enough to catapult him into the quick route that bypassed the bridge. The demands of the mission helped Hunter drag his mind away from all the things that might be happening to Dee.
“Leader Chen, I need the fastest sliver you’ve got, along with Clear’s data. Can you send it through?”
Spense answered at once. “Done and done, sar. The aft launch-tube is still functioning, and a sliver is locked in place. I took the liberty of highlighting the anomalies in Professor Pinion’s visuals, but the pattern I produced doesn’t look right.”
“Explain,” Hunter ordered, while reversing thrust to drift up to the waiting sliver.
“It sounds crazy, but the barrier looks like a web. Not just a net, but a freaking linked-together-circles web. All around Blizzard. It just needs some dew and a spider.”
Hunter froze in the process of powering up the sliver’s control holo. “Or an army of spiders,” he whispered.
“What was that, sar?”
“Nothing. Warn Falkyn. Make sure you get through.”
“The Arck, sar?” Spenser must have been curious but kept his question simple.
“Top of the list, Captain. Warn all ships in the vicinity, of course, but ensure you get a message straight to Falkyn. If you get blocked use the phrase ‘web in space’ and threaten his subordinates with Wing’s name. Get Wing to do the threatening if he’s up to it but do it now.”
“On it, sar, and don’t worry. I can get the Arck to answer me.”
“Good, because I’ve got another call to make. Let me know once you manage to get through that web. Enter a low geostat orbit over Judgement as soon as you can. Good luck, Leader.”
“Godspeed, sar,” Spenser replied but then he was gone. Off to obey orders of course and it was time for Hunter to be off too.
He launched the sliver into darkness, with a holo that showed hints of the web ahead as his only guide.