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After all the smuggling Jaxan had uncovered Varley to be involved in, she was still surprised the man knew something as petty as locks. “That’s a handy little hobby, Commander,” she whispered as she scanned up and down the corridor.
He snorted but otherwise remained focused on the wire-tool he’d inserted into the lock. After a couple twists and soft curses, something pinged within and he pulled it out, stepped back to twist the handle. “Got it.”
The door revealed stairs double-backing down into shadows. It was as they’d guessed, by its position just down the hall from a turbolift; for emergency access, should the lift fail. Neither had wanted to risk that, knowing it’d likely be monitored and could certainly be halted by outside control.
Hearing something echo up the corridor from the left, Jaxan nudged Varley. “Hurry up.”
He ducked through the door and she followed, gently closing it behind her and plunging the two of them into near blackness. A couple blinks to her augmentations activated her onboard night-vision and brought a weird partial lighting to her surroundings. Varley was already padding down the steps. After a glance down into the unseeable depths of the shaft, she followed.
“It’s not exact,” Aval’s voice rang tinnily in Jaxan’s mastoid implant, “but scans suggest you’ll need to go down twenty levels to reach the basement level.”
“That’s it?” Varley quipped—a little too loudly, and it carried down the dark shaft. Lowering his voice, he asked, “Why the basement? Why not up?”
“A feeling,” Aval replied after a pause.
Oh great. Jaxan gestured for Varley to keep moving when he tossed her an incredulous look. Ignoring the chill rising up from the shaft to numb her bones, Jaxan whispered to Aval, “This is like the walls; looks like it’s been built into the original structure.”
“The Ring has had centuries to enhance the place,” she replied, the lost words hissing with static. “I’m getting break-up in your signal; probably from the structure.”
“Recorders are on,” Jaxan said, following Varley into another switch-back of the stairs. “We’ll get everything, if we lose you.”
They continued down, down into the dark. Weird echoes that Jaxan wasn’t sure they’d made rippled up and down the stairwell and that damnable chill worsened. Her feet had numbed, as had her fingers. Varley was visibly shivering.
Suddenly, he held up. “Well, this is a problem.”
After another turn below them, the stairs simply stopped. It looked as though the Citadel’s occupants had simply ceased construction. The swish of water somewhere below hinted at a reason for this, but nevertheless, their route was at an end.
“We passed a door, back twenty paces,” Jaxan said, and reversed course. A quick scamper brought her to it. She put her hand upon its simple handle and glanced back at Varley, who nodded encouragement. It gave before her twist without resistance and she cracked the door, peered out.
The hallway beyond was dimly-lit by distantly-spaced lanterns of pale, yellowy light. The floors were clearly Morvenan in construction, but the walls the black, alien metal, and slightly slanted. Jaxan nodded to herself; the whole structure was like that. The Ring had fashioned halls and rooms out of the decks of the long-crashed ship, which were, themselves, at an askew vertical angle.
A gentle echo, what might have even been a voice, passed down the hall to their right. Instinctively, Jaxan started that way. Varley followed, apparently drawn as well. The light grew ahead, took on a fluttering, flame-like hue. Sounds of movement increased, even a muttering. By the illumination, they could tell the hall opened up ahead.
And suddenly they were stepping out into an amphitheater-like chamber, fashioned into a shaft that rose high above them till it seemed to open to the glitter of stars. They stood upon a walkway overlooking tiers of seats leveling down to a dais and an altar of black basalt slab, lit by a crackling brazier. The latter’s foul smoke reached them and bit the nostrils with its almost-brimstone reek.
Varley put his hand upon her shoulder, pulled her down a little behind the balustrade that lined the walkway. Figures in the gray shirt-pant-belt attire of Ring servitors moved around the periphery of the main floor, looked to be hurriedly tidying up. One of them cast a glance up towards the walkway, eyes like twin sparks for a moment, before returning to the seats and the labors before them.
Jaxan couldn’t take her eyes off the slab on the dais. In the infernal light, it almost seemed the obsidian surface was stained and tacky.
Varley nudged and she broke her fugue, started across the walkway to the other side of the chamber.
“Any idea what that was?” Jaxan whispered hoarsely as they reached the opposite exit and paused in darkness once more.
Static obscured Aval’s answer, but it was clear she was still following along.
“Do we even know what we’re looking for?” Varley muttered.
Jaxan noticed he’d drawn his blaster and thought to scold him; but that was pointless. If they were discovered here, they were in enough trouble as it was. His shivers were more than from the cold that emanated from the black-metal walls, too; and Jaxan shared his fright. She suddenly didn’t want to be here—she really didn’t. But swallowing that back, she nodded down the corridor to their right, leading away from the weird meeting space.
The hall led from one blanket of shadows to another, its feeble lanterns barely managing shallow pools of illumination against the dark. A short flight of stairs led down to a curve in the corridor, and then another long stretch. Halls branched off from the main one. But another spray of light straight ahead drew the pair of them.
Slowing, they halted outside another doorway and looked into the first truly well-lit chamber they’d encountered, lined with tables. These were of an institutional sort, metal and plastic and battered. Chairs crowded around in various states of disarray. A few lay on their backs, knocked to the floor. Plates littered the table tops and food scraps cooled upon them.
“Looks like a mess hall,” Varley hissed. “Looks like they emptied out in a rush.”
Jaxan eyed the serving bar and kitchen off to one side, vats of gruel left still bubbling and filling the air with a bland odor that reminded her of overcooked potatoes. Left in a rush, indeed. She thought of the transports outside.
A cry from beyond the cafeteria sent a jolt through both of them. Recovering, Jaxan scampered into the hall and crossed it, not looking back to see if Varley followed. That had sounded like a girl’s voice, pained and desolate, and she saw Yssida in her mind. Another cry, sharper, added urgency to her motion. She reached the far side of the room in two steps and held up at its exit.
More darkness lay beyond and she knew the bright light behind would silhouette her, so she bent low as she slipped out. An arched, columned hall opened around and below her. Stretching into the distance, she couldn’t even see its far end. Crouched atop a balcony looking down onto a main floor, she counted dozens of side doors, what she quickly realized were cells.
But the source of the sounds was directly below. A wiry form of long, purple limbs and a ragged gown sprawled upon the floor. In the near-distance, Gray Ring servitors, some carrying blasters, were going from door-to-door, double-checking each cell. But surrounding the fallen girl stood a ring of Morvena in the full gray robes of Masters.
One of them started for the girl, reaching out a hand. A weird pressure filled the air, felt across Jaxan’s skin. Suddenly, the Master was sliding backwards on his heels—pushed by some unseen force. A second one lunged in and set his hand upon the girl’s shoulder wrenched her upright. She screeched aloud at him, eyes blazing yellow-red. The Master withdrew his hand with a hiss of agony. That became a warble of fright as he was flung backwards to slam off a column.
Telekinesis!
The other Masters pressed in, holding hands out before them, pushing. Their circle closed in as the girl cringed and fell back on the floor, writhing. A scream tore from her gaping mouth, rose to the arched ceiling, struck Jaxan like a physical thing. Yssida was suddenly beside her, phantasmal, like the images of Dad had been, screaming along with the girl.
Jaxan wanted to curl up and scream with them.
One of the Masters stepped in again as the girl crumpled flat to the floor. His fist rose and fell, struck her jaw and cut out her voice. He struck again and silence followed. Frantically, the hooded fiend waved for one of the others, who brought forth a case which he flipped open to reveal syringes. With shaking hands, the first prepared one of these and savagely jabbed into the unconscious girl’s arm. Then he was waving again, and a pair of servitors scampered forth to drag her from the hall.
Jaxan slumped back from the overlook, thumped against the wall at her back, exhausted and sick to her stomach, as though she’d just been in a firefight. Varley crept back to her, knelt at her side, and set a hand upon her shoulder. His features were gray and chorded under the flesh with tightened sinews. That the scene had affected him, too, was not in doubt.
“Can’t stay here,” he whispered.
She sucked in a breath to calm her guts and nodded, met his gaze. “We need to see what’s in those cells.”
His throat bobbed, but he nodded and offered her his hand, pulled her up to her haunches. Together, they scuttled along the walkway lining the upper level of the hall. It ended to either side at doorways and stairwells that led down to the main floor. The treads of the steps were well-worn by constant use and Jaxan could imagine the denizens of what she knew now was a prison trudging up and down these from the cafeteria.
They followed them.
***
YLURA CUPPED HER HANDS to her mouth to hold in the scream that he remained lodged in her throat the entire time as she watched Jaxan’s progress through the holographic relay. Tears had long since run out, dry on her cheeks, the collar of her uniform left damp.
Getting herself back under control, Ylura leaned forward and touched the comm control. “Are you reading me, now?”
In the hologram, transmitted to her from Jaxan’s augmentations, the pair of intruders had paused at the bottom of the stairs, just outside the long hall. Lines of pixelation marred the image as the interference of the ancient, foul structure took its toll. But the audio came back clearly, Ylura listening to the controlled rhythm of Jaxan’s breathing as she watched the last of the Ring servitors follow their Masters from the space. For moment, she wondered if Jaxan had heard her.
“READING YOU,” came the text-keyed message from Jaxan’s wrist pad comm.
Ylura nodded approvingly of the caution. “We need more, just a little more.”
“UNDERSTOOD.”
The view bobbed out once, a furtive glance down the hall. Then Jaxan was sliding out into it, looking both ways as she crept down along the row of cell doors. The first hung wide open and she looked in. A drab double bunk lay within, turned over in haste with blankets strewn across the floor and a crude foot locker flung open to spill menial belongings about.
Varley skipped past Jaxan in her peripheral vision, padded down to the next cell, also open, and looked in. He frowned and shook his head back at her. She repeated the leapfrog pattern, found another open cell, another hastily-emptied space. A low hiss of annoyance escaped her at the subvocal level, but picked up by her augmentations; the fruitlessness of the search was combining with her fear of discovery, Ylura could guess.
At the next cell, Varley slowed and grimaced, looked back at Jaxan and made a gesture at his nose, indicating that something stank. Jaxan’s view bobbed as she acknowledged with a nod. The cell door was only-partially ajar, a single crack allowing a slash of light to escape from within. Gingerly, he used the muzzle of his blaster to part the door and draw it back. The illumination bathed his face as it contorted in horror.
Ylura gulped back bile, didn’t want to see this, but couldn’t look away. Jaxan stepped up to Varley’s side and looked in. Haze hung in the air, faintly yellow-gray. Charred blaster marks blackened the wall. These walked down until they met a pile of scorched rags that Jaxan’s eyes revealed to be half-starved bodies, heaped together and still smoking from a flurry of gunfire. An arm splayed to one side and a hand still clenched a chain pulled from one of the suspended bunks and improvised as a weapon.
Jaxan and Varley hovered outside the cell a moment longer. Then Varley was pushing the door shut again and Jaxan’s wrist pad text was scrolling out along the display. “IS THIS ENOUGH?”
Apparently, Ylura did have more tears and she had to wipe these away before touching the comm key. “There’s a t-section ahead, by the look.” She had to swallow again to master her voice. “Check where that goes, first. Then, yes.”
Jaxan’s subvocal grumble of protest was audible, but she moved up to the side passage between cells that Ylura had noticed. A sharp, dizzying look back showed the hall behind them still empty. Then she was darting to the right, down the passage, with Varley at her heels.
The hall was so poorly-lit, Jaxan’s augmented vision cast everything in the weird, flat green of night-enhancement. She tried a couple doors along its way, found each locked and waved tersely when Varley started to work at one. They kept going, their breathing obscenely loud in the hologram.
A set of double doors had been left flung open to the right. Jaxan slowed upon reached these. Another set lay directly ahead, also partially cracked. Varley went on to the latter while Jaxan leaned into the former and looked around.
Shivers built from Ylura’s gut as Jaxan’s gaze panned about and took in stained tables and the glint of sharp tools. Proceeding a few steps further, Jaxan slipped on something, hissed, and looked down. Something shining inky and black in the poor, enhanced visual smeared under her foot. She cursed softly and looked up again.
Ylura saw cages through Jaxan’s eyes.
Jaxan crept between the rows of foul tabletops to a threesome of confinements whose bars looked like they could be recessed into the floor. Rags heaped within one of these. As Jaxan stooped close and held out a hand, bony limbs lolled within. An emaciated face hung off to one side. Wide eyes stared off into some horrified distance, black and empty without the glow of a Morvenan lifeforce.
A hiss split the air and caused Jaxan to yank back her hand. The view spun and jolted, tossed as Jaxan left the horrid chamber and lurched out the door to the right. The doors at the end of the hall were wide open and Varley stood silhouetted against a pale light. Jaxan clambered up next to him and looked about.
“Oh...” Ylura cupped her hands to her mouth again. “Oh, ancestors...”
The cell was cramped and circular, fashioned from slabs of the black metal of the Citadel. A slit window allowed the distant hiss of the sea in and the faint glimmer of stars. Occasional firework booms lilted through, along with flutters of red-hued brilliance that fluttered like a heartbeat and faded.
A single slab occupied the exact center, also fashioned of the black metal, glinting coldly.
“What the hell?” Varley whispered. He was kneeling beside a splash of white on the jet floor. Jaxan’s gaze panned fully to face him. He lifted a strip of torn fabric and held it up for her scrutiny. Clearly, it was part of one of the Initiates’ gowns, rent and stained.
“It’s true,” Ylura warbled, aware that Jaxan and Varley would be hearing her, but unable to stop. “Oh...it’s not a trick. It’s not games.” She buried her face in her hands for a moment. But she could still see that damnable slab. She could see her cousin splayed upon it.
“It’s all true.”
“Now do we have enough?” Jaxan asked, aloud this time.
Ylura wiped her eyes clear and checked her pad, ensured the icon for “record” was still glowing. “Yes,” she replied and cleared her voice to find some sort of some strength. “Yes, that’s enough.”
“Get the hell out of there.”
***
“ENTERING THE ZADOMIR System, Captain,” Zovga announced.
“Reduce speed to sub-light drives,” Dath replied and stiffened in his seat, leaned forward, eyes intent on the main screen. A tactical display popped out in the lower left-hand quadrant and showed the five-planet system, with their destination the fourth out and the rest unremarkable rocks. “Analysis.”
“Contacts above Zadomir, as expected,” Alvarez replied. The tactical zoomed in to show the fourth planet and a sprinkling of icons circling it at geosynchronous over a site near its subarctic zone. “Construction docks, by the look.” Another sub-display materialized, showed schemata of the installations. “Several are consistent with Venkalth construction, though likely not built here, in-system.”
“The planet?” Dath asked.
“Sparsely-populated,” Regal answered from Operations, though doubling for the absent Ylura as Systems officer, too. Pricks of light winked across the dirty gray orb of Zadomir. “A few major population centers, all centered around small spaceports.”
“Orbital defenses?”
“Some,” Regal replied. “Notably, that arctic installation, which appears to have a Class-II fusion battery, by the signature I’m picking up, and shields.” She turned in her seat. “Nothing that can stand us off for long, though, Captain.”
Clemens let out a hiss at her station and pivoted to face Dath as she plucked her earbud out. “Captain, receiving several hails from the planet, all demanding response.”
“Several?”
She smirked. “All claim to speak for the central government.”
“Very central,” he chortled. “Is one of them from that arctic installation?”
“Yes sir. And we’re also picking up energy pulses between that and the docks. Might be coded laser-signals.”
“Put that one on screen, please.” Dath stood and tugged his uniform straight.
“Audio only, Captain.”
Dath remained standing, anyway, folded his hands behind his back. “Go ahead with it.”
“Might be slight garbling, due to the transmitter, sir,” Clemens noted, inserting her earbud once more and pattering a command into her console. “Here you go.”
“Republic vessel,” said a voice that sounded like it was hissing through clenched fangs, “you are in violation of Zadomir space. Slow your approach and explain your presence, or be fired upon.”
“This is the RNS Tenacity, Captain Dath Raker speaking,” Dath replied. “We have traced attacks on Republic citizens in Unity space to ships originating from your construction facilities. We request permission to inspect these docks and, where practical, collect evidence.”
A sound like a blade screeching across a whetstone filled the speakers and it took Dath a moment to recognize it as cackling. “You cannot be serious, Tenacity. This is Wild Space! Republic claims mean nothing here! Withdraw or be fired upon. Now!”
A blat sounded from the Tactical station and Alvarez’s smile went grim. “Multiple targeting beams from the surface. We are at extreme range.”
“Braking for orbit, Captain,” Zovga put in. “Three minutes out.”
Dath worked his jaw in fierce thought. He had what amounted to letters of marque from the Senate to deal with piracy and broad latitude to interpret what amounted to a “pirate”. Zadomir certainly fit the description and was even noted in those standing orders. But the ugliness of simply bullying their way into the system might still have repercussions. Still, this was why they were here.
A fresh blat sounded from the Tactical. On the display, icons glittered about the space docks and began to slide away from them. “Reflex signatures,” Alvarez said. “Ships are leaving the docks. They’re accelerating!”
“Running for it,” Dath snorted. “They must not be too confident in Zadomirian defenses.”
“They’re emptying out, alright, sir,” Alvarez replied. Schemata popped out, displayed various vessel types. “A couple re-purposed Republic types, one Ree transport, something that looks like it was once an old-style Morvenan light cruiser. All armed, but all increasing speed away from us.”
“Red Alert!” Dath sat back down as Regal pattered at her console and klaxons blared through the ship. “Zovga, alter course to pursue!”
“Aye sir!”
“Anything left behind on those docks?” Dath asked Regal as Tenacity thrummed eagerly around him with speed.
“Unfinished chassis, by the scans,” the young woman answered. Her brows crinkled as she read something from her holoscreen. “This is...interesting.”
“What is?”
“Like the Lieutenant said, the docks were likely towed from out-of-system. Nothing on that planet can manage that level of manufacturing on its own. But some of them are different makes, not Venkalth manufacture, at all.” She turned to Dath wide-eyed. “I think they’re Golgothan, sir.”
Dath locked gazes with her, had his mouth open to ask for confirmation of that when a shudder passed through the ship.
“We’re taking fire!” Alvarez announced. “It’s coming from Zadomir!”
Another shiver worked through Tenacity as shafts of blue-white chopped out from the gray orb to flare her shields. The glare had only just faded when similarly-hued bolt snapped out from the fleeing vessels, speckling the forward deflectors in flower-pattern flashes of impact.
“Damage?”
“Minor disruption to starboard and aft shields,” Rougan announced from the auxiliary station behind Dath.
“They just don’t want us getting a look at those guys,” Dath growled through a clenched-tooth grin. “Zovga, can we overtake them?”
“Easily, sir.”
Dath had to grip the armrests as a double-strike from both the planet and the fleeing ships caught Tenacity in a momentary crossfire. “Then do so. Alvarez, target the slowest ship, engines only, and fire when able.”
“That will be the Ree,” the little man said, fingers pattering across his console. On the tactical display a halo drew itself around the last of the cluster of pirate vessels. But the icon suddenly blossomed into a squirming tangling of white tracks. “Missiles!” Two of the other ships followed suite and the Tactical writhed with a stirred viper’s nest of them.
“Point-defenses!” Dath ordering, hastily counting the inbounds with the help of his augmentations’ prompting and knowing Tenacity’s weapons could handle them. “Plow through! Don’t let them give us the slip!”
The hull quivered as plasma blasters opened fire and cyan bolts began chopping missiles from the stars. Hot white orbs swelled as energy met warhead and antimatter blazed futilely against the void. The explosions swelled to an inferno as Tenacity’s targeting found the range and smeared most of the mixed fusillade from existence. A few missiles weaved through the storm to be shredded contemptuously away as the battlecruiser’s main guns lit up.
The repurposed Ree pirate staggered as a solid azure bolt from one of Tenacity’s heavy particle cannon speared it in the flank. Shields strobed and blew apart, secondary explosions skipping up along the ship’s spine as its projectors detonated from overload. It continued to coast at sub-light speed in a swirl of debris and bleeding atmosphere, but Tenacity whipped by it, leaving it behind as she lunged after the others.
“We’ll come back for them,” Dath barked. “Keep at the rest!”
The by-now familiar blat of missile attack filled his ears. On the Tactical display, fresh twists of their trails swirled forth from the fleeing pirates and looped back, littering Tenacity’s path. Heavy and point-defense guns mixed their fire to make quick work of the volleys. But Dath could see, clenching his teeth till they ached, that they were doing their job; the pirates were starting to pull away, stretching out for Void Speeds.
“Don’t let ‘em go, Zovga!”
The Korthan leaned over his helm station, shoulders tense. “We will get them, sir.”
“Captain!” Alvarez squawked. “Analysis of the missiles! They’re Golgothan, too!”
“Busy black-market trade, out here in Wild Space,” Dath snarled.
“No, sir, you don’t understand.” Alvarez whipped his seat about to face Dath. “These aren’t cast-offs or antiques; I’m picking up modern tracking, telemetry, and maximum-yield antimatter blasts. These are ship-killers!”
“What are you getting at?”
“Sir, I think these ships have been—”
A warble filled the air forlornly as the Tactical display speckled with fresh contacts, coming around from behind the mass of Zadomir. All instantly coded red with hostile targeting beams, hastily-raising shields, and energizing weapons systems. Dath counted six, filling the space directly to aft and accelerating rapidly. He blinked, sweat stinging in his good eye, momentarily fogging the artificial. Schemata of ship types crowded the hologram.
“Alvarez, what am I seeing, here?”
“Mixed vessels,” he replied, voice gone up nearly an octave. “Another re-purposed Ree, corvette-class, by the look. Four old-style Golgothan Widow-series cruisers, and—” Alvarez cut off, mouth working as though he didn’t believe the words he needed to voice. On the Tactical, a halo ringed the sixth icon and pulsed blood red as its schematic pushed to the fore.
Dath read the description through bared teeth. “Tarantula-series battleship.”
Ambush.
“Zovga!” he bellowed. “Get us out of here!”
The lurch as the Korthan peeled Tenacity’s great bulk out of its pursuit course registered as a vague, queasy wobble through the inertial compensators. Dath clenched his armrests as he watched the turn to port, followed by a flaring of the ship’s Void Drives into a headlong dash for the system’s edge. The gravity well dragged, but the Hypernaughts were already tearing free of its pull.
Problem was, at least two thirds of those retrofitted derelicts had engines that could match. That damned Tarantula certainly could. And they filled the display to aft, roaring after Tenacity.
“Tom,” Dath called over his shoulder to the auxiliary station, “can you give me max Void Speeds?”
“Only if we drain power from weapons and shields,” came the reply. “We’ll strain just to get to Speed Seven, like this.”
“We’ve just got to keep ahead of them,” Dath started to reply.
Another warble scrawled the air and new contacts winked across the Tactical, splaying out from behind the system’s fifth, outermost planet. All glowed crimson.
“Two more Widows,” Alvarez announced in a dread-limned monotone. “And a refitted Carapace-class destroyer, it looks like.”
“Evasion to either starboard or port puts us in range of the others,” Zovga called.
“Go straight at them!” Dath roared. “Alvarez, are we still holding those plasma torpedoes at overload.”
“We are, sir!”
“I’m going to have a target for you in just a few seconds!”
The air wailed with fresh alarms that doubled, tripled as the Tactical display writhed with dozens of missile trails. They scrawled the holograms to aft, fired at a frantic rate the older chassis could hardly keep up. And they writhed into Tenacity’s path ahead as the trio vessels streaking out from the fifth planet cut across the axis of their flight.
“Count forty inbounds!” Alvarez’s voice was creeping ever higher.
It was the epitome of the Golgothan attack known as the Death Web. Like spiders of space, they wove webs of intertwining missiles to snare their enemies, overwhelm their point defenses, and plaster their shields. With such victims frantically entangled in holding off the salvos, the Golgothans coasted into close range and unleashed with massive short-range blaster fire, an often-lethal final “bite”.
Tenacity quivered and the system’s sub-display popped up, showing the aft shields flickering red. “Long-range fire to the stern deflectors!” Regal squeaked.
“Projector coils holding,” Rougan called out at Dath’s back. “Five percent damage, and recovered quickly. They can only snipe with their plasma blasters at that distance.”
“It’s that damned Tarantula,” Dath grated, watching the flutter of the Golgothan icon as it accelerated ahead of its outdated comrades, clawed at Tenacity’s tail with energy fire while she blossomed in fresh missiles to join those already in chase. “She’s coordinating the whole thing.”
Tenacity shivered again, kept vibrating as her point defenses erupted at the closest missiles. Her heavier weapons added to the punishment, turning missiles into short-lived embers against the dark. But the swarms converged from every direction, thinned out, but undeterred. The inbounds now numbered only a dozen. Frantic blaster fire halved that number. Sharp cracks rippled the length of the ship as her anti-missile racks spewed sleeting clouds of hypervelocity pellets into the space around it, halved the missile count again.
But...
Whaaam!
Dath felt the deck lurch to starboard beneath him, the armrest to his left biting into the ribs as impact flung him one way, then another. Lights flickered through the bridge, then dropped to the red of emergency lighting. Holograms pixelated as the port shields crackled and snowed over in silent white flame.
“Where?” Dath demanded, ignoring the slivering pain of his flank. “Were did that hit?”
Whatever Alvarez had meant to answer was swallowed in another crash through the hull, this time shuddering up from aft. A deep wail sounded from below decks, alarms sounding as blast doors automatically shut against depressurization. A meaty smack of a body striking the floor right behind Dath was followed by a curse.
“Tom?”
“I’m alright,” the engineer gasped. Out of the corner of Dath’s eye, he could see the man staggering back to his feet and the auxiliary station.
“Is the ship alright?”
“Port shields at sixty percent!” Rougan hollered. “Aft shields at fifty-five!” Another jolt went through the deck and the Tactical strobed with plasma bursts from that Tarantula. “Fifty-percent, sir! I can compensate by drawing from the Voids!”
“Negative!” Dath bit back. “Maintain speed!”
“They’re picking us apart!”
“All ship-to-ship missiles, fire to aft,” Dath commanded over Rougan’s shriek. “Concentrate all targeting on the Tarantula! Fire!” He waited for the telltale quiver of missiles surging from Tenacity’s racks and the looping trails of them across the hologram, back towards their pursuers. Some of these were already exploding as they met the follow-up volleys from the Tarantula. “Alvarez, set all energy weapons to concentrate on point defense, AI-guided fire. Stand-by with plasma torpedoes, single target.”
“Aye sir! Which one?”
Dath wiped seat from his brow with the back of a sleeve and glowered into the hologram. The three ships moving to cut them off came on in an inverted triangle with the Widows at the upper two points and the corvette further back at the lower third one. All belched fresh missile spreads as they raced straight for them, insane speeds devouring tens of thousands of kilometers a second.
“Zovga, ten degrees to starboard,” Dath ordered. “That Widow to the right will be your mark, Alvarez. Hold on.”
Tenacity’s energy cannon belched cyan and azure spears across the vacuum, splattering missiles in blooms of antimatter and hyper-accelerated slag. Untouched projectiles juked through the maelstrom only to collide with fresh blasts or to tear apart in the swirls of shrapnel from their detonating kin. But even the maniacal fire of a Fenris-class battlecruiser couldn’t cover every angle of so many warheads. And now the three pirate vessels were firing blasters as they followed the missiles in, scouring Tenacity’s shields.
Dath held on to the armrests till his knuckles creaked and planted the soles of both boots on the deck as impacts translated through the shields as jolts to the hull. The Widow to starboard loomed insanely close, now, showing its belly as it twisted into a belated evasion. “Torpedoes, now!”
Shafts of apocalypse-white ravaged from the battlecruiser’s ventral tubes and carved across the void, connected with the Widow. The outdated cruiser’s shields flared instantly through a blinding spectrum of retina-searing colors. Even a modern ship would suffer before Tenacity’s full, overloaded torpedo volley and the Widow was no such thing. Shields evaporated before the titanic blows and the daisy chain flashes of the cruiser’s shield projectors blowing out finished with the thermonuclear eruption of a Reflex Furnace collapse.
Dath thought he had a glimpse of hull shattering away from the explosion, spraying as half-slag splatters into their path. “Hard to starboard, now!!!”
The globe of superheated gases and shrapnel was already around them, glazing their shields in a yellow-white aurora. This unraveled, swept away to aft.
Into its placed slashed a tracery of plasma bolts as Tenacity emerged from the fireball into the crossfire of the surviving Widow and the corvette. Blaster strikes stitched across the port shields in a chain-lightning pattern that walked along the lozenge-like nimbus of the shields, even as Zovga put the ship into a half-roll to bring about the untouched ventral shield.
Despite all that, something had to get through—did get through with a rending, tearing racket.
Dath didn’t recall how he ended up on the floor, only that he was still holding on to one armrest with his right arm, wrenched awkwardly behind him. Unknotting himself to get up brought a splintering agony from the joint and a gasp through grinding teeth. White pain-light blanked his vision for an instant and he sagged against the base of his chair. When it cleared, he was seeing the smoked wreathed bridge, smelling burnt circuitry, watching his crew work their stations frantically.
Rougan’s hand was on his left shoulder, trying to pull him up, which brought another knife of pain from the opposite side. Hiding it with a wince, Dath grabbed the front of the man’s fatigues with his good hand and snarled, “Forget me, Tom! How bad’s the ship?”
The engineer yanked away from his grasp, was gone from sight as Dath tried pulling himself up into the chair. “Port deflector coils blown or automatically shut down to avoid feedback,” he reported. “Rotation of the ventrals held off the worst of the damage.”
“Where are—” Dath cut off his own words with a hiss as he got himself up into the chair and fresh pain blistered from shoulder into torso “—the others?”
“We’re past,” Alvarez replied. “They’re all in the aft quarter now, but gaining.”
“The Number Two Hypernaught took feedback damage,” Rougan was reporting. “She’s fluctuating wildly. Singularity might be unstable. We’ve got to take her offline!”
“Negative!” Dath shrieked in a voice he almost didn’t recognize as his own. “Best possible speed! Rotate all shield reinforcement to aft quarter” he took a breath to fight down shock-nausea “and power up all chase armament. All other systems reroute to those!”
“We’ll barely make Void Six, like that,” Rougan pointed out.
“Better than Void Four and getting overtaken,” Dath rasped back. “We’ve just got to keep ahead. Zovga, can we do that?”
“We are doing that, sir!”
“Then don’t stop.” Dath fought for another settling breath, one that didn’t send pain sparkling through his wrenched torso. “Just...keep going.”
***
“STAY ON HER,” HEATH ordered from his chair on the bridge of the Devourer.
“The other vessels are straining to keep up,” Mueller noted from his perch behind the Systems Officer. “They’re all operating with skeleton crews.”
“Tenacity is not getting away,” Heath said simply. “How badly did we hurt her?”
“Reflex signature fluctuations indicate engine damage,” Keitel answered from Tactical. “And it appeared she was operating with one engine down, to begin with.”
“Hurt from the fight at Farside,” Heath said. “Then we’ve got her. We’ve just got to stay with her. Prepare another Death Web!”
On the Tactical display, thrown up across a third of the main screen, the Golgothan-Zadomirian fleet spread out like a cloud distending before a breeze as they pursued the blue icon of Tenacity across the void. Only the red icon of Devourer was truly gaining on her. Even heavily-retrofitted, none of the pirate vessels was built for this kind of stern chase.
“Missile racks loaded,” Keitel reported.
“Fire!”
Devourer’s twenty-missile salvo erupted from its launchers and seethed across space. Tenacity’s energy weapons opened up as the tracks swirled in around her, a spasm of stabbing beams and globular fireballs consuming half of them in seconds. The rest were still at their winding paths to doom when an opposing volley vomited from Tenacity’s racks and streaked back for Devourer.
“Repel,” Heath ordered; unnecessarily, as Keitel was already lighting them up with their plasma blasters.
Tenacity’s counter-volley shredded to bits before Devourer’s superior short-ranged firepower. The last handful of missiles wheeled off suddenly, looped towards the Carapace-class corvette. The smaller ship unleashed its smaller complement of defensive fire, picking most of the inbounds from the void—but not all. A single warhead juked through to impale itself upon her shields. She seemed to stagger in space and the white fire of overwhelmed shields became sparkles of slag and secondary explosions as she abruptly fell out of formation, fell behind.
“Biter is hit,” Mueller said with a slight crack to his voice. “She reports heavy damage and is dropping out of Void Speed to manage a fire near her Reflex Furnace.”
Heath opened his mouth to demand they keep in the chase, but a jolt passed through Devourer, coupled with a flash across the forward view screen. He gripped both armrests belatedly, listened as the crackle passed along the hull. On the Tactical, Tenacity strobed again and a fraction of second later, Devourer bucked again.
“Heavy particle cannon!” Keitel barked from his station. “We are at extreme range, but Tenacity can reach us.”
“Forward shields at eighty percent,” Mueller reported. “Holding there.”
Heath pattered both sets of fingers across his armrests, jaw working as he did. This was stalemate developing. A Republic vessel had the weight of longer-ranged energy weapons; a Golgothan ship, the preponderance of its missile batteries. At distance, both would simply wear each other out. In fact, Tenacity was the heavier vessel and would eventually win the contest through her greater tonnage.
But Devourer had to get in close to finish this. Or, Heath thought, glancing at the cloud of Golgothan-crewed privateers laboring to keep up, they had to outmaneuver Tenacity somehow, lure her into the midst of his little task force.
“Drop back to Void Six, even,” Heath demanded. “Stay right out of their energy weapons range and ready another Death Web!”
“Aye sir,” came from both Helm and Tactical.
“Brother-Captain,” Harlander spoke up, stepping to his side and setting a hand upon the back of his chair, “perhaps we need to consider this hasn’t worked.”
Heath glared over his shoulder at the man. “I’ll be the one to decide that, Magus.”
“Of course,” the man replied. “You are the captain. But consider this” he raised his voice and looked at Mueller “Brother-Commander, how far to the Unity border?”
Mueller looked at Heath, paled-faced at the awkward moment—a Magus did not command, but neither could he just be ignored. Scowling, Heath waved his approval and Mueller leaned in past the Systems officer to key something on his console. The Tactical display shifted, zooming out to take in the nearby region, and color-coding to show the delineation between Unity and Wild Space.
“Thirty-eight minutes, current speed,” Mueller reported.
“Once Tenacity crosses,” Harlander said, “Devourer cannot follow. To do so would be taken as a Golgothan declaration of war on the Unity.”
“Once the Unity has Raker’s report of our involvement in this Zadomir scheme,” Heath rasped back, “it will be the same thing!”
Muscles chorded under Harlander’s ghastly pale jaw. “Perhaps it is another’s choice, then.”
And that Other filled Heath’s mind—was obviously filling Harlander’s, too, by the look of ecstasy-fright on his face. The Mistress smothered their nerves and thoughts with her zeal. In the mind’s eye, fangs dripped hungrily and eyes blazed with fury. Heath smiled, savoring the fog of her vengefulness, enjoying Harlander’s abrupt realization that he did not have the sense of Her favor, this time. He’d clearly forgotten; Raker and his damnable Tenacity had destroyed sister ships of Devourer.
They’d destroyed Sisters.
“Continue pursuit,” Heath said with a smirk and waited for Harlander to withdraw from his side. “And target with full Death Web.”
“Fire!”
***
POUNDING UP THE STAIRS to the Citadel’s main level, Jaxan couldn’t stop thinking about that preacher-man in South Solace. He’d shown no remorse, Dad’s cop-friends had told her, when they were ripping up the floors of his place and finding the desiccated corpses of his parishioners.
There wasn’t a milligram of remorse anywhere in this place, either.
“It’s still an hour till dawn,” Aval was saying in her mastoid implant. “If you can get over the wall and into the water, you should be clear.”
“No way I’m staying here,” Jaxan muttered in response.
They reached the door at the top, paused a moment to breath in the dark. A glance back, showed Jaxan Varley in the flat green light of night-vision, jeweled with glints of sweat and his eyes haunted. She figured hers looked the same as she pointed at the door. He nodded and holstered his blaster, which he’d clenched till then with a deathlike-grip.
Gently, Jaxan turned the handle and cracked the door. The hall outside rang faintly with the activities from the landing pad, but nothing else. She pushed it full open and looked both ways, saw nothing. With a nod back at Varley, she sidled out into the corridor, hugging the wall to her left and any puddle of shadow she could find. Pulse hammered with the knowledge of escape.
“I have no sense of when Tenacity will return,” Aval was whispering from Jaxan’s implant. “I have no sense of how these recordings will be taken. Once you’ve made good your escape, you may have to blend in as tourists for a time.”
“Could use a vacation after this,” Varley grumbled under his breath.
Open air whistled ahead as the corridor opened up to the external walkway and light from the landing pads shafted through. Only a few meters more to the battlements, then the quick rappel down to the bay. But Jaxan wasn’t seeing any of that; she was seeing a pile of limbs in a cage in the levels below.
And suddenly she was seeing a corridor full of Morvena before her.
With a breath sucked in with shock, Jaxan flinched backwards, into Varley. A party of Gray Ring denizens aped their motions in reverse, two Ring Masters in robes stumbled back into a trio of servitor guards. The shorter of the two Masters wore gray of particular finery, traced with silver sigils at the sleeves and hems. And Jaxan froze to her core as his ember-eyes locked with hers.
Voadd.
Shock became a haze in her mind, settling like the smoke after a blast.
It wasn’t Voadd; it was Tahna standing before her. She worked her hands together, mouth opening and closing, tears running down her face. Stop, the phantasm pleaded, just stop and think about what you’re doing. And she did, caught in a dizzying eternity of indecision—a drawn-out trance like trying to wake from an extremely deep sleep. What was real?
Who was real?
But Dad was mixed in there somewhere, too, and this time it was no conjuring of Shala. It was his wisdom, echoing across space no time, no mind-games, no death could obscure. Hit him, baby girl. She could see his combative grin as clearly as dawn.
Hit. Him.
Jaxan’s right leg shot out into a front-kick that took Voadd squarely in the crotch.
The move seemed as effective against Morvenan male anatomy as a human’s. The Master’s glowing eyes fluttering as they bulged in the sockets and the rest of him folded over with the blow—right into Jaxan’s follow-up heel strike, taking him on the point of his chin. Purple-black blood sprayed away from the blow as Voadd rocked back, glanced off the wall to the left, and crumpled in a twist of robes.
The normally-silent Morvena erupted in cries of alarm.
The second Master backpedaled with a warble, entangled the servitor at his back, who was fumbling for a holstered weapon. So blocked, the Master had no escape as Varley’s fist took him in the throat. Whistling, the Morvenan cupped both hand to his neck and sagged against the guard. Varley wheeled into a right side-kick, sent his heel crunching into the Master’s sternum and slamming both him and the servitor together against the wall to the right. Both hit with bone-jarring force and collapsed together in a tangle.
One of the remaining servitors turned reflexively at Varley’s savage assault, raising a blaster rifle. Jaxan spun on him with a downwards-chop of her right arm, dashed the weapon from his hands to the floor. He was turning in shock as she, in turn, spun into a high roundhouse. Slightly off-balance, she only had enough force to clack his teeth together and send him stumbling back. But with the space suddenly opened up, she had enough room to pivot and shoot out again with her right into a side kick that sank into his belly. He folded into her leg and a sharp elbow-drop to the back of the neck finished him.
The last servitor spun with a squall of terror and raced back the way the entourage had come. Varley was already in motion, scooping up the dropped blaster rifle and flinging it for the Morvenan’s shins. The spinning weapon caught between his ankles and sent him tumbling. His resultant scream cut off in mid-note as Varley reached him in another step and booted him in the temple.
More shouts sounded from outside, on the walkway running along the landing pads. Someone had heard the commotion. Varley was going for his own blaster.
“Wait!” Jaxan barked.
Before either could react further, an alarm blared from overhead speakers.
“Back!” Jaxan squawked and waved Varley after her as she twisted into run the opposite direction. “Back the way we came!”
“We can’t!” he hollered after her. “There’ll be more coming from inside the Citadel!”
“Not back inside!” she snapped back. “There was a stairway leading down into the landing area, back the way we came!”
“The landing area? What are you—”
“The transport! It had just started taking on prisoners and supplies when we arrived. It might still be loading. In the confusion, we might not be noticed slipping aboard!”
“We’ve got no idea where they’re taking them!”
She halted and whirled upon him. “You’ve got a better idea?”
Skidding to a halt, himself, Varley worked his jaw. Shouts echoed up the passageway behind them and he flinched at the closeness of the pursuit. “Fine. Go. Go!”
***
“JAXAN?” YLURA TAPPED the subspace pad frantically, until it began a stab-stab. “Are you still there, Jaxan?”
Nothing. Static snowed the hologram for a moment before it winked out.
Ylura sagged back in her seat, momentarily drained by surprise and dread. Then she was moving, scooping up the pad and shoving it back into her duffel. The alarm from the Citadel wouldn’t just stir the whole complex; the psychic shock of Jaxan and Varley’s intrusion would be rippling out across the city by now. And that had been Voadd...he’d seen them before. There’d be no way denying their identities.
Unless they got out.
But, for now, it was Ylura who had to get out of here. She had to make certain the evidence was seen. If necessary, she had to make certain it was broadcast. Arrakka and the Council needed to consume it, for certain, but it couldn’t remain behind their closed doors and closed minds; the Morvenan people had to know what foulness had accreted at the very heart of their culture.
Lurching for the door, she slapped the control and stepped out, needing to find her uncle as soon as possible.
And finding him standing right in the hall outside.
“Uncle!” she blurted out loud.
His face was as expressionless as his aura was sternly unreadable. “My child,” he replied, also vocally, “what have you done?”
She flinched at the tone in his voice, flinched at again at the sight of Count Avla standing slightly behind him with an equally cold aura. “Unc—Count Arrakka, I need to speak with you, immediately and alone.”
A grim smile quirked up the corner of his lip. We are never alone, are we?
Cold flowed through Ylura’s core along with the meaning of his thoughts. You already know?
As do I, young Ylura. Avla took a step closer, stood beside Arrakka and glowered at her. You and your Republic friends have made an unfortunate miscalculation.
But you must see! She clenched the duffel bag close. We have evidence, now, of what the Gray Ring has been doing, right under the noses of the Council and the Shala Masters! The lack of reaction from the pair turned the chill in her blood into a sickness. She lowered the bag and let out a breath. Wait...you know?
Arrakka exchanged a look with Avla. This is not the place for this conversation. Things will soon be in quite the uproar. His eyes affixed upon her again, smoldering like stirred embers. You should understand everything before that.
Understand what?
Ylura noticed for the first time the pair of Morvena in the green-trimmed body armor of Avla’s household guards—noticed, too, the blaster rifles held tensely at hand.
Arrakka’s aura chilled her with its mingling disappointment and fury. Come.
***
TENACITY shook as another Golgothan missile scrawled closed dangerously close before the point defenses picked it off, the blast basting the aft shield in brilliance for a moment. Rougan held on to the auxiliary console and inwardly cursed the stupid design that left whoever manning the station with no seat.
“How bad?” Raker demanded.
Rougan blinked through sweat to read the systems schemata. “Aft shields holding at forty percent!” He looked over his shoulder at the captain. “They’re going to just keep picking away at them unless we divert power from the Drives.”
“And then they’re on us!” Raker snapped back. Before him, on the main screen, a Tactical display showed the eight vessels of the little fleet shadowing them, icons flickering as they occasionally pecked away with long-ranged energy fire. Most of these lost destructive coherence long before tickling Tenacity’s shields. “And then we have no options at all! Zovga, how long till the Unity border?”
“Still fifteen minutes, present speed, sir.”
Rougan wiped his brow with the back of his sleeve, noted that the Tarantula-class leading their pursuers was actually gaining on them. He knew the type well. If she wanted to get out ahead of them, she could with a burst of speed. That’d be a gamble on the Golgothan’s part; even wounded, Tenacity outgunned her in a straight, one-on-one fight by nearly twenty percent. But they might get desperate, close to the border.
“Clemens,” Raker was calling, “can we get a subspace transmission out?”
The Communications Officer shook her head. “They’ve been jamming us since we broke out of the Zadomir System, sir. It’s all of them, to varying degrees. I can’t pierce that.”
“Then it’s down to a sprint,” Raker growled.
As if in answer, a flutter went through the lights and a shiver through the hull. Rougan’s console blatted with an alarm and a holographic readout of the engine nacelles popped up before him. The Number Two pulsed ugly red.
“Tom?” Raker twisted in his seat to look back at him. “What’s happening?”
“The second Hypernaught is destabilizing,” he cried. “It’s like I feared!” Fingers pattered across the holo-wafer keys, opening a connection to Main Engineering. “Hold on, sir!”
A globular hologram bubbled into existence, showed Vekkla’s stretched face and rows eyes, wide with fright. Behind the cephalopod, the engine room pulsed crimson and figures scampered back and forth. Sparks were flying from something and smoke added an infernal hue to the air.
“What the hell’s happening down there?” Rougan asked.
“Overload damage to the singularity containment fields,” Vekkla replied. “Feedback from the shield projectors fried some of the circuitry. It was holding, Commander. But the strain...”
Rougan nodded at their meaning. “Can you correct it?” he asked, already suspecting the answer, but hoping for some kind of Xokan cleverness—something he hadn’t thought of.
“Not while it is in use, Commander,” Vekkla replied. “And it is a couple hours of work, at least, to reroute the lines.” The cephalopod leaned close in the holocamera pickup, eye rows glittering with fear. “Sir, the singularity is eating through its containment. It will break through in approximately two minutes, if we do not shut down.”
Rougan looked over his shoulder. “Captain?”
“I heard,” Raker snarled. “Ensign Regal, scanners! Are there any systems nearby? Any place we can hide or any phenomena we can use to advantage?”
Part of the main screen divided off to show a regional map as the young woman tapped away at her console. A series of light motes winked at her command. “No star systems close enough to reach in two minutes, sir. There’s a class-two comet and...wait!” She tapped furiously and the map zoomed in on a single point, became a reddish-brown swirl of gas ringed by sparse debris. “Rogue planet at point-three light minutes. She’s barely on the charts. Type-I gas giant, Jovian. Designation MEU-1279. Mostly hydrogen and helium outer atmosphere, sir.”
Raker snorted. “An old trick...like an Academy simulation. Desperation move.”
“You want to hide in a gas giant’s atmosphere?” Rougan asked incredulously.
“Unless you want to be overtaken by that mob,” he replied, “that’s exactly what we’re going to do. That’ll give you time to get that Number Two sorted out.”
“We’ll be surrounded.”
Raker shrugged. “We’ll be able to come out at full power, swinging.”
Rougan chuckled; it was better than shivering in terror.
“Can we make it, Regal?”
“If we drop out of Void Speed now, sir!”
“Ensign Zovga, cue on Regal’s course,” Raker order. “Prepare to drop the Void Drives.”
Instinctively, Rougan gripped the corners of his console and again cursed the absence of a chair as he stiffened his legs.
“Do it!”
Tenacity—and the very fabric of Creation, it seemed—lurched around Rougan. His guts felt as though pulled out through his nostrils by the violent deceleration from faster-than-light non-reality. The phantasmal streaks of space-time distortion rent apart on the main screen visual and fluttered away like cinder scattered by a breeze. Points of light resolved from weird smears of red, became stars. One of these reddened, browned, became a striated orb, swelling into view.
On the Tactical sub-display, the icons of the pirate fleet shot past them and began to squirm, scatter, recombine. Alvarez let out a cackle. “Well, that got them!”
“For a few seconds,” Raker growled. “Zovga, full sub-lights for MEU-1279!”
“It is not speed we need, sir,” the Korthan replied in a voice throttled with stress. His clawed hands scrawled over the holo-wafer console. “It is actually brakes!”
Rougan gulped, seeing the Helmsman’s meaning; no longer a sphere on the screen, MEU-1279 rushed to meet them like a wildly-colored wall. The shudder of Tenacity’s maneuvering fields firing in reverse rattled up through his heels, through the marrows, into his chattering teeth. Out of the corner of his eye, he noted a system schematic pulsing yellow as the fields reached the upper limits of their yields.
“Use its gravity!” Raker cried to Zovga. “Slingshot us into orbit!”
“I know, sir!”
The mass of MEU-1279 swerved before them on the display, suddenly heaved under their belly and became its curve. That flattened quickly, brown-red swirls and vortices stretching out endlessly ahead and below. And they were still falling towards them. Shields glowed, began to streak in crimson.
Rougan’s knuckles ached from gripping the console. It was impossible not to stare at that vast panorama of striations and storms the size of planets. And they were dropping towards them, forever. He had to swallow back bile as dizziness overwhelmed him.
Jewels of sweat stood out across Raker’s bald scalp as he eyed spasming telemetry readouts on the main screen. “Zovga...?”
“We are getting it, sir!” the Korthan grated. “We’re almost there!”
Tenacity’s shields flared fully, now, their passage leaving a gouge of friction fire across MEU-1279’s weird, rust-smeared heavens. Visuals blanked in flames, whitened, went out as the AI canceled them to protect viewers’ eyes. Sensor readings remained, showed a grid-line illustration of the planet below—no, now around them as they slowed and settled into its ionosphere, kept slowing and sinking.
“We’re...” Zovga had to gulp once to find his voice. “We are there, sir.” He touched a control as Tenacity’s awful gyrations eased. The main screen resolved into a visual once again. “We are in high orbit.”
Raker dragged a sleeve across his sweat-limned lips. “Take us down further.” He looked to his right. “Regal, how deep can we go safely and still obscure sensor readings?”
Her fingers pattered at her console. “I think twenty kilometers into the atmosphere will be sufficient, sir.”
“Better hurry,” Alvarez warned. On the Tactical, blips of Golgothan privateers whipped back towards the gas giant.
“Zovga, do it,” Raker said. “And good work, Ensign.”
“Thank you, sir.”
The vast brown swirl of the giant rose up to them, details of mighty cloud columns becoming clear, an anarchy of systems and storms and mushrooming reds. Flickers in the deeper dark below betrayed storms. Rougan thought they looked way too much like particle cannon fire.
“Tom,” Raker called over his shoulder.
“Captain?” he replied, jerking out of his fascination.
“We’re not going to have forever. Those ships will come down looking, at some point.” He smiled grimly. “But we’ve bought you time. Get that Drive back up.”
Rougan nodded and started for the turbolift.