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“Did you feel that?” Varley whispered at Jaxan’s side, “I think this thing just jumped to Void Speed.”
The only thing Jaxan felt, crammed into the tight compartment into which the Morvenan transport’s landing gear had folded, was the urge to scream. She’d never liked tight spaces. This had been Varley’s idea—really the only one that could have worked, to be fair. The transport had already sealed-up; the only way in had been to climb up the gears before they retracted. But they’d nearly been crushed.
And it still felt that way.
“I think it’s time to find a way out of here,” she rumbled at him.
She felt him nod, practically on top of her with the gear recessed in such a way that he’d had to shove her into a corner reeking of lubricants. But he sidled free now and used the huge, folded-insect leg of the transport appendage to climb upwards. Following his course with her eyes, Jaxan blinked once to enable her augmentations’ enhancement and could suddenly see his intent; what appeared to be a maintenance hatch in the ceiling, reached by a row of hand rungs.
“Let’s hope it’s not locked from inside,” Varley muttered as he reached it.
“Happy thoughts, Commander,” Jaxan replied, a little squeakily as she tried to keep the knot in her throat down. She couldn’t stop thinking of the walls crushing in around them, the suffocating dark—or bodies sealed under a killer’s household floor.
Stop!
A crack and hiss sounded from the hatch as Varley twisted a release lever. Slowly he lifted it and faint yellowy light spread into his face. He unholstered his blaster and looked down at her, smiled and nodded.
She drew her own weapon and followed him up.
The climbed out into a narrow, angular passageway that clearly appeared to run along the belly of the vessel. Looking either way revealed distantly-spaced lights dimly-illuminating cargo bays crammed with what looked like a mix of food crates and construction materials. The silence of it all was reassuring, punctuated by an occasional thrum through the deck, almost subliminal—likely the reverberation of the Voids, like Varley had suggested.
“There’ll be holds for heavier stuff,” Varley hissed at her ear, “in the level above this.”
Jaxan blinked to her onboard AI, prompting its library and querying it. Diagrams of several Morvenan vehicles popped up in the corner of her vision and toggled. Another blink caused it to pause on a specimen she thought looked like this one, when they’d viewed it from outside. “Skyuza-series heavy lift,” she murmured. The diagram cross-sectioned to show internal layout, confirming Varley’s assessment. “There will be ladders up at the end of this, both fore and aft.”
“Right on.” Varley started aft.
Passing another bay, this time stacked with what were obviously weapons crates, they quickly reached another set of hand rungs, leading up. Varley put his hand upon one of these and began to ascend. Jaxan shot out a hand and grabbed the back of his pants.
He looked back at her with a confused smirk. “Not that I’m not flattered, but this is hardly the time.”
“Shut up.” She pulled him the rest of the way back down. “Let me go first.”
His smirk went slightly ugly. “Because you’re trained for this?”
“Yeah, at least more than you, and” she grimaced a little “Scott, you’re loud.”
He hissed and rolled his eyes, but didn’t resist and scuttled back, let her take the lead. Planting a foot softly, instinctively, on a rung and grabbing another, she hefted her way up with pantherish ease. Reaching the next level in a fluid stretch, she paused just below the glow of brighter, more evenly-space lights in the next level. Holding her blaster close, she extended her knees, pushed herself slowly above the level of the hatch and the floor into which it opened.
A similar corridor opened up before her, better-lit, but still shadowed. Along the left wall, separated by bulkheads, sealed doors marched into the distance. Lights blinked monotonously on control panels beside each. No guards walked the deck. Not even an echo stirred air thick with a vague tang of sweat and dirtiness.
Jaxan waved Varley after her and climbed the rest of the way up into the passageway. The ship’s diagram indicated each of the doors would open into a rectangular compartment that could be loaded with truck containers, up through the belly. A level above this was the main bay, suitable for vehicles and large loads.
She regarded the lock control on the nearest door, gestured to Varley. “Think you can pick this one?”
He stepped close to inspect it and his features crinkled in immediate surprise. “I...don’t think it’s locked.” He glanced at her uncertainly, then touched the blinking pad.
The door slid back and foulness purled out. Varley grimaced and Jaxan actually fell back a step, gagging, literally pushed by the stench. Body odor warred with a vaguely ammonia-like urine stink and the sweet-vile reek of smeared feces. The dark space before them seemed to visibly haze with the putrescence. And beyond that filmy blur, greater horror lay.
“My god...”
Bodies piled in the gloom, cast on top of one another in twists of ragged hospital gowns or drab gray onesies, limbs entangled, heads lolling together. The mass of them almost seemed a single, hideous entity. It looked as though they’d been simply dumped within, piled like garbage with no concern for harm.
“Are they...?” Varley took a step into the chamber.
Jaxan held him up with an arm extended across the hatchway. “Maybe watch our backs, Commander?”
He gulped and nodded, took up a place halfway in with his blaster readied, while she fully entered and stepped in among the bodies. The space was hot, humid, and rustling. Motion registered in the dark, bodies rising and falling slowly. She nodded, touching one poor, filthy form and feeling warmth. “They’re alive.” She touched another, grasped a face between thumb and forefinger and turned it to her. “They’re comatose.”
“You are not one of them,” a voice said from behind her.
“Shit!”
Jaxan shot backwards, spun at the hips as she slammed through the limp forms and hit the wall behind her. Blaster came up reflexively, took aim at the source of the voice. Varley had his levelled, too, from the doorway. Jaxan’s finger itched to take up the rest of the trigger’s tension.
A pair of slits opened from the shadows, the ember glow of Morvenan eyes brightened to a brighter orange as the settled upon Jaxan. A small face crinkled from amongst piled comrades, framed by greasy, disheveled black hair—a young girl. Her mouth worked with words and Jaxan recognized the momentary garbling as her augmentations’ universal translator struggled to interpret such a soft voice.
“You are human.”
Jaxan lowered her weapon. “Yes.” She pushed up again, winced at the way she’d crushed against the bodies behind her. “Yes, we’re Sanctuarian.” She glanced uncertainly at Varley. “We are...here to help.”
“Help?” The girl’s eye glow swirled with darker shades of red. Jaxan was no student of Morvenan expression, but she thought she detected confusion. “Do we...need help?” Her face contorted. “Why are they doing this?”
“What did they do to you?” Jaxan asked and gestured around. “To them?”
“Needles,” the girl answered. “The Masters drugged them.”
And suddenly, the horror of it all was in Jaxan’s mind. The weight crushed, filled her chest, clenched at her lungs, her heat. She heard her own breath struggle, gasp. In her skull she saw the girl dragged from her cot, shoved by blaster muzzles, threatened psychically. Jaxan watched the glint of metal being shoved into others’ arms.
“Jaxan?” Varley called through the fog of the mental rush.
Jaxan gave herself a violent shake and held up a hand to the girl. “No more!”
The pressure relented almost instantly, left only those twin eye-flames fluttering in confusion at her.
“Are you...” Varley scowled. “Was she in your skull?”
“It’s alright,” Jaxan snapped, louder than she intended. She swallowed and met the Morvenan child’s gaze again. “I...seem to be more sensitive to them than you are.” She chortled. “Lucky me.”
Yes, the child-voice was back in her mind again, gently now. I can feel. I have only ever encountered one or two humans, but they are blanks to me. You are more...inquisitive.
“Detective’s kid,” Jaxan snorted.
Excuse me? The child shook her head and rasped out loud, “They forced us in here, threw us in!” Her voice acquired a warble. “Why is this happening?”
Jaxan reached out and touched the kid’s shoulder, felt tension leave it immediately, as though absorbing her strength from her. “What’s your name?”
“Vetai.”
“Vetai,” Jaxan repeated, “do you have any idea where this ship is going?”
“None,” the girl moaned and started to sag against her. “They pulled us out of rest-cycle, dragged us. They beat some of the others. They have never been gentle and always told us it was for our own good.”
“I’ll bet,” Varley snorted bitterly.
“But they were never like this.” Vetai put her head against Jaxan’s shoulder and tears leaked out to dampen it. “We are Initiates of the First Ring! Is this what Shala is?”
Jaxan hugged the kid to her with her free hand. “No, dear. This is nothing like that.” She glanced at Varley, saw the rage distorting his face.
“This is wrong.”
***
ALLOWED TO SIT FREELY in the short-ranged shuttle—though notably deprived of her Fleet utility belt, blaster, and SRA duffel bag—Ylura watched Avla and her uncle obviously exchange something telepathically before the former left the passenger compartment for the front. A hatch sealed behind him, left her alone with Arrakka as the shuttle vibrating with takeoff. The glare of sunrise blazed through the window to her right—his left—bathing both in its bluey-white brilliance.
“Where are we going?” she asked out loud as the landing pad at the end of an extended arm of the Council complex fell away and the cityscape loomed shadowy around them.
House Green compound, he replied telepathically without looking at her. We are going to get Tahna.
Ylura gulped back acidy taste and fought the icy current in her blood as she asked with her mind, And do what with her?
At this point, I’m not really sure that is your business, my dear! He looked at her now, sharply, eyes yellow-white with anger, and his aura flaring to match. You chose the Republic before. But I don’t know that I fully appreciated, until now, that you also rejected Morvena.
She gasped. That is not true!
Do you have any idea what you’ve done? He leaned forward, glowering. But the hot blaze began to cool immediately as the lids hooded, narrowed. How many of your agents have infiltrated the Citadel?
I don’t know what you’re talking about, she replied, too quickly. He would know, would see the deception speckling her aura in black.
He hissed and settled back in seat, shaking his head. We have sensed the Ring’s intruder alert, Ylura. They are trying to cover it up, but the shock of it is spreading psychically. Soon, they will have to admit the breach. And, by then, they will have formulated how to explain it. They will have their lies in order. And they will have their blame ready.
Now Ylura leaned forward. Then we need to broadcast what we have found out about them!
Rather than meet her gaze, Arrakka stared out the window. Sunlight carved shadows in the deep stress and age lines of his purple features. Look at that. Dawn. Dawn after the Festival of Infinity. He sighed out loud. You want to wake up the whole Unity, on this day, to such horror?
You said unimpeachable evidence, Uncle, she replied. I have that, in that bag you confiscated.
Thousands of years, her uncle mused, as if not having sensed her thoughts, at all. That’s what it took to bring the Unity together, Ylura. Thousands of years under Shala. His long fingers tensed around the armrests of his seat, caused both to creak, then slowly relaxed. That some have perverted that greater good to their own ends is regrettable. But isn’t it worth saving the bond of many, even if a few suffer?
Ylura stretched out her hand, grasped his forearm, tried to get him to look at her. She is our family.
I know. His face convulsed for moment; his pain raw in the link between them. But a surge of anger forced both back into passivity. Even we must sacrifice.
Ylura withdrew her hand as a fresh dread, born from Arrakka’s moment of emotion, built within her. Uncle, why did you really summon Tenacity to the Unity, if not to solve this problem?
He looked away for a long time, his aura utterly veiled from her. I did summon you here for that. I hoped the T’Sona couldn’t resist something as tempting as a Republic battlecruiser, some overriding statement they thought they could make by attacking her. His jaw worked and still he refused to meet her gaze. And I expected Tenacity to annihilate them.
Ylura’s guts shriveled within her. She wanted to vomit, wanted to scream. She couldn’t control her roiling thoughts enough to manage telepathy and resorted to her voice, shaking with disgust and barely above a whisper. “You brought us here to kill her.”
Arrakka shot out of his seat and turned to pace away from her, kept his back to her in the small space. She could feel the struggle within him, but again, his mastery of his self and Shala smoothed it away, masked it. I wish, he said at last, coldly, you could think of it as putting her out of her misery.
“She’s not an animal, or a pet!” Ylura stood, trembling with fury. “She is your sister’s youngest daughter!”
Her mother was mad, too; but you wouldn’t have known that. He pivoted slowly to look at her now, eyes a desultory smolder. She died before you came to us. Died by her own hand, at least. He winced. Tahna’s mania, on the other hand, turned outward, not in.
“She was abused! Wounded!” Ylura jabbed a finger at the window, at the city sliding by below the shuttle. “And her tormentors go on, in places of power, hurting more in the same way.”
And you think the hurt will be less, if we go and tear apart the very thing that has brought our people together?
Tear down the Ring, not the Order!
He sighed and shook his head. You think people will be so discerning, my dear? Do you think House Red—Gorrod and that maniac, Krazmyb—will give people a chance to think so rationally? They plot, even now, their own breakaway nation.
“I know this already, Uncle.”
And I have been working against that, he went on hurriedly, almost desperately. She felt his desire to make her see. I’ve finally swayed Avla and Green to our side. Others will follow. He clenched a fist. We are so close! He lowered it. But let Tahna go on—let you show your evidence...people will lose all faith in Unity. Gorrod’s secessionism will take hold in all the Houses.
“So, you’ll just let it go on?”
We will grind down the Ring from within. Your friends’ little break-in may serve a purpose, after all. We can show your recordings to the Shala Masters, perhaps, in time, and discredit the Ring without a public scandal.
“All in private. All in the family.” She sneered. “Because that’s justice.”
He scowled at her, his distaste a sour note ringing between their minds. You have a Sanctuarian’s concept of justice, I fear. You have a child’s concept of it.
“The Republic values people!”
The Republic is an empire, just like the Golgothans. Just like the Old Kings.
“Like the Houses, the Colors of the Council,” she snapped back. “Like the Order, the Ring. All of you building empires!” She shook her head and turned her back on him. “How will the Unity be different now?”
Her uncle’s disappointment felt like a winter storm, sliding across the sky, and blotting out the sun.
We will remain unified.
***
ROUGAN STOOD AT THE workstation by the Reflex Furnace with half the Engineering team crowded behind him, watching the hologram projected over the console. Within it, they had Spencer’s view of the inside of the maintenance chute running aft along the Number Two Void nacelle, relayed to them by his augmentations.
“Is that the last one?” Rougan asked.
Vekkla splayed across the interior of the chute, tentacles spread to give it balance while a pair worked a small blaster-torch over an open panel. Sparks flew for a moment while another tentacle kept a pair of goggles before its front set of eyes—the others squeezed shut for protection. Satisfied with its soldering job, the cephalopod deactivated the tool and lowered the goggles to look at Spencer.
“I believe it is complete.”
Rougan touched the console before him and a daisy-chain of icons lit along a holographic schematic of the Number Two assembly. All showed green. “Looks like the connection is good. Hang tight. We’re going to try it.”
He really wanted to call the pair back. When the relays lit up, first the containment fields would activate, then the singularity, itself, would form. In theory, the fields would protect them, just as they protected the rest of the ship. In practice, no one wanted to be only a few meters away from a newborn, barely-tame black hole.
But there was no damned time.
“Here we go.” Rougan touched a pulsing icon.
Currents of power whined through the deck beneath him, passing from the Furnace, up into the nacelle. Rougan watched a green line pass from one relay to the next, power building with each, coursing towards the Drive. And then an ugly blat filled the air as the connection completed, but pulsed red further up in the engine.
Rougan cursed under his breath, could hear the collective groan from the onlooking crewmembers behind him as he punched the connection key to deactivate it. Another diagram was popping up and he read it. “Plasma injector failed.”
“Must have burned-up from the overload,” Styx suggested, standing amongst the onlookers. “We wouldn’t have known till we ran a current to it.”
Rougan scraped sweat from his brow. His empty pocket—the absence of his flask—itched. His pallet dried unbearably as he turned to the officer. “Get back to Parts and Storage!” he ordered. “Get a replacement kit!”
“Right!” Styx waved for a pair of spacers to join him and dashed off.
“The rest of you,” Rougan growled, “quit standing around, gawking! Check all your systems for overload damage!” He waited till they broke away before wiping the endless sweat from his eyes. He could really use that flask now. And, damn it, I should have known to check the injectors, fist. Wasted all this time, when we could have been working on that, too! He touched the communicator key. “Just hang out, Vekkla, Spence. Styx is bringing a fix.”
“Aye, Commander.”
“Spence, you know plasma injectors,” Rougan went on, “double-check the others while we wait.”
“You got it, sir.”
While we wait...shit. They were stuck in the upper atmosphere of a roiling gas giant that looked like it wanted to eat them alive, while a small fleet waited above, seeking to do the same.
The communicator blatted from his console and he grimaced, seeing the identity before he keyed it to respond. “Captain.”
“How are we coming down there, Tom?”
The tightness of Raker’s voice sent a tingle of alarm through Rougan’s blood. “We’re almost there,” he lied. “Maybe another hour.”
“I’d been hoping for better news,” Raker replied. “We’re about to have company.”
Rougan gulped. “They’re following us down into the atmo?”
“Just one ship, by the look. It’s hard to tell.” Raker paused. “All the electronic interference hides us while we’re hovering at low-power. But if we fire weapons, anyone watching from orbit will be able to trace the blasts back to their source.”
Rougan realized that Raker was asking for suggestions without actually asking. “You need a weapon that won’t leave a trace,” he thought out loud. Missiles wouldn’t do it, either; tearing through the atmosphere, they’d leave even more of a trail than blasters. Inspiration struck suddenly. “Suicide shuttle?”
“I was wondering,” Raker agreed.
“Jerry-rig an antimatter warhead to one of the administrative units,” Rougan went on, excitement giving his voice a higher pitch. “And load her up with an ECM pod, but set to broadcast a false silhouette, rather than jam.”
“Lure them away from us and then blow it in their faces,” Raker finished for him. “I like it. How fast can you make it happen?”
Rougan hid a snort. “Maybe fifteen minutes, once I’m down there with a crew.”
“You have enough to do that and get me my Voids back up, too?”
“Aye sir.”
“Then do it. And hurry, Tom.”
Rougan killed the connection and started for the exit with a humorless chuckle. Hurry, right. Like no one’s hurrying.
He really, really wanted his flask.
***
DATH TRIED NOT TO SQUIRM in pain as Imliss tightened the wrap around his torso and checked the sling for his right arm. “Gah! You’ve got a light touch, there, Doctor!”
“Quit your complaining,” she murmured. “You wouldn’t leave the bridge, so this is the best I could do.”
She leaned in close, over him in the command chair, and re-fastened an adhesive strip, pinching his battered ribs on the left even further. He caught the faintest whiff of a flowery perfume, was surprised at the contrast, the cold, businesslike woman’s favor for something so feminine. Another tug and jolt of pain drove away the impression, though, and he couldn’t keep in a hiss.
“A couple bruised ribs,” she said, stepping back and eyeing him with her perpetual disapproval. “And I think that shoulder got dislocated, but the readout from your augmentations is inconclusive. I’ll need to do tests.”
“Not leaving my bridge, Doctor.”
“Of course, not,” she replied with an eyeroll. “I should get back down to sickbay.”
“How bad?” Dath asked softly.
“Twenty-eight wounded,” she replied, gathering up her medical kit. “Three critical. It could have been worse.”
That it might get worse—would get worse—Dath didn’t add. “Thank you.”
She nodded tightly and turned to go.
A shudder went through the deck and Dath gripped the right armrest with his free hand. The tension sent fresh pain slivering through shoulder and torso. “Another discharge?” he asked as the lights flickered.
“Aye sir,” Alvarez reported from Tactical. “Lightning from those storms.” He whistled softly. “Much further down, caught in one of those...we’d be pounded to bits.”
The main screen showed a churning panorama of red and brown, underlit by nervous, electric flutters. Rusty cloud valleys and crags loomed all around them, constantly in motion. Great plumes of darker, dirtier vapor pawed up between them for heavens of deceptive blue, mushroomed as they reached thinner, higher altitudes. Propelled by incomprehensible heat from deep within the giant, they plumed and merged and sometimes wound together.
It almost took Dath’s breath away, watching a tornado the circumference of a moon form, several hundred kilometers off, begin to spiral with world-ending forces while lightning ripples glimmered along titanic chords of vapor. That breath dashed out as a fork of that power lashed across the skies and lit Tenacity’s forward shield in a splatter-pattern of white fire. Impact jarred through the ship.
“Damage?” Dath called hoarsely.
“Like the last one,” Regal called. “Minor buckling. Forward shields still at ninety-five.”
“Is it me,” Clemens wondered, “or are those coming much closer spaced-together?”
That brought nervous chuckles from the others, but Dath figured from the hoarse note of her voice that she was rattled, was being serious. He relaxed his near-death grip on the armrest, working the feeling back into his hand. In truth, the discharges were a godsend, clouding sensors and masking the signature of their shields and engines. They could operate at above minimum levels, still, and blend in.
But...
“Do we have eyes on our ‘friend’ still?” he asked Alvarez.
A quarter of the main screen divided off with a tactical display, showed a slice of the gas giant’s vast globe, Tenacity’s position over it, and another icon descended for them. A dotted line indicated the newcomer’s course, placing it in the upper atmosphere about four hundred kilometers away to the west and about twenty kilometers higher than them. Thunder rippled the length of the ship and the sensors snowed over a moment.
“MEU-1279’s about three hundred times the size of Morvena,” Alvarez said, “so that one ship has got a lot of ground to cover. It’s bad luck on our part that they even descended on the correct side of the planet.” A blat sounded from his console and he frowned. “And that’s not going to help, either.”
A shimmering pulse rippled out from the descending ship.
“Active sensors?” Dath asked as the light passed through them.
“Yeah,” Alvarez whispered, as though it was a game of hide-and-seek—which it was, after a fact. Realizing what he was doing, he raised his voice. “Static electricity and the violence of all this excited gas will make a hash of subspace readings, at least. Unless they know where to look, it’s pretty much the old needle-in-a-haystack.”
“Where’s that shuttle?” Dath asked.
“She’s away, sir,” Regal answered. A smaller icon separated from Tenacity’s and skimmed away, into the roiling cloud-verse. “She’s on pre-programming, since we’re likely to lose direct connection, without a power boost—”
“Which would give us away,” Dath filled in.
“Yes sir. She’s set to head out to a point about five hundred clicks before increasing power to her sub-lights, at which point she’ll probably attract some attention.”
Dath watched the shuttle’s course, watched it accelerate, glad he didn’t have to ask someone to actually sit in the thing. “Zovga, are we going to be able to hold here?”
“As long as we aren’t required to engage, we can idle on just the battery for a time,” the Korthan replied. “But if we have to fully energize the shields or activate weapons, we’re going to need Void Power.”
Which would highlight them like a bonfire.
“Hold here.” Dath met Alvarez’s gaze again. “What kind of ship?”
“Another Carapace-class, sir.”
Dath scowled. “Not going to risk anything bigger on us.” He eyed the tactical, the sprinkling of contacts well above in high orbit over the giant. “How about the rest?”
“It’s passive sensors only; you understand, sir. But looks like two cruisers have taken up geosynchronous, here and here.” A pair of icons pulsed at his word. “The rest are out of sight, around the curvature. I’d guess at even points, scanning for our every angle of escape.”
“It’s a damned siege.”
Another icon blinked as it appeared over the horizon to the west. “And there’s the Tarantula-class.” Alvarez arched an eyebrow. “Sir, we’ve confirmed from the engine signature, now; that’s the Devourer.”
Dath grunted. “Heath’s ship? What the hell is he doing all the way out here?”
“Maybe he’s looking for a rematch?” Alvarez smirked. “Last bout didn’t go so well for him, sir.”
Dath smiled fiercely. “No, it did not.”
An alarm warbled from Alvarez’s console and on the tactical, the Carapace-class frigate suddenly lurched out of its gentle descent into the upper atmosphere, shot towards them.
“We’ve been seen?” Dath stiffened.
“I think it’s the shuttle!” Regal answered before Alvarez could. “Look! She’s following her automated evasion routine.”
And the shuttle was, veering out of its straight-line course and accelerating as the frigate coursed down into the cloud cover after it. Its passage kicked a trough across the red-brown smears, sent up wild vortices that smeared and stained the upper blues like blood. Lightning of an entirely artificial sort slashed out from the frigate, punching tunnels that sometimes ignited through the gases before crashing back together with thunder that carried all the way to Tenacity.
“Zovga,” Dath grated, clenching his armrest as the ship quivered, “take us down further, z-minus ten kilometers.”
“Sir.”
“Captain,” Regal said, as cloud formations began to rise over them with their own descent, “I don’t think the frigate will pass that close.”
“No sense taking a risk.”
What Dath left unsaid was that the deeper into the atmosphere they went, closer to the troposphere, the more they exposed themselves to the rogue giant’s witch’s-brew of lightning, gas, and crushing pressure. Plenty of damned risk, all around.
And as Regal predicted, the frigate streaked by on the tactical display, at least a hundred-and-fifty kilometers distant. Blaster fire streamed out from it, clawing for the fleeing shuttle, which had begun to juke and throw out chaff packets and jamming to confuse pursuit. But the pirate vessel had its number now, hosing torrents of cyan fire at its tail. The shuttle’s meagre shields glimmered with hits. A white flash indicated their failure and the icon quivered as it began to tumble.
Dath sat up in the seat, tense with a sudden realization. “Regal, how far are they from—”
Antimatter glare swallowed the shuttle as its suicide charge blew. A terrific globe of pale flame rushed out, yellowing, reddening as it cooled and mixed with gases, some of which ignited anew. The fireball swelled to a terrific blister of superheated vapors the size of a small island—rapidly becoming a huge island. Shockwave shivered out ahead of this, jarring cloud formations apart in a titanic donut shape.
“Hold on!” someone cried—it might have been Alvarez.
The shockwave hammered into Tenacity’s shields, lighting them up with its savagery, rending the clouds around it into a maelstrom. Alarms wailed over the rumble of the gyrating hull. Holograms snowed over and blanked. A whiff of hot electronics coursed from straining ventilators. Everyone gripped armrests or consoles with white-knuckled desperation and pain-fire limned Dath’s vision as he tensed.
A couple hundred kilometers off their starboard bow, the Carapace crashed away from the blow, shields flaring, then flashing apart as they, too, failed. The shockwave passed, left the frigate’s insect-like hull bare and quivering with the sparkle of small explosions from its blown shield projectors. For a moment, it looked as though it would right itself, that straining drives might drag it clear of the soupy churn around it.
A snake of lighting from a vortex distending below it snapped out and clenched its durasteel silhouette, held it, throttled it. Shredded and slagged hull shed from it in a cloud-smear and it began to plummet, tail-first. Secondary explosions bulged plated from within, sent spats of fire twining across the sky. But none of it would be any more fatal than the inexorable drag of gravity.
Tenacity’s shudders fading, Dath gulped reflexively as he watched a last glimpse of the ship, fully afire as it plunged from sight. “Hell of a way to go. Damn.” He looked around. “Are we alright? Is everyone alright?”
Yet another alarm blat from the Tactical station defied him. Pale-faced, Alvarez was pattering as his console. “Another sensor pulse,” he explained. “Multiple sensor pulses, from above. They detected the blast. They’re looking for us!”
Grinding his teeth, Dath poked his armrest comm. “Engineering! Tom, are you there?”
“Just a little longer, Captain!” the engineer replied in a rush.
“Make it very little, Commander,” Dath grated. “Because this game is almost over.”
***
“CONFIRMED,” KEITEL announced gravely from Devourer’s Tactical station. “Explosion consistent with an antimatter mine.”
Heath folded his arms together as he watched the main screen replay the blister of light in the atmosphere of the gas giant. White glare dimmed to yellow-red, then nothing. “Anything from the Carapace?”
“Nothing, sir,” Mueller replied quietly, perched behind Bauer at the Communications station. “Contact lost at the moment of the blast.”
Costly reconnaissance, he thought grimly. But perhaps effective. “Last comms showed they were in pursuit of a shuttle, correct?”
“Yes sir.”
“Keitel, can you estimate, based on course, speed, and type, how far that ship could have been from Tenacity?”
“I can try, Brother-Captain.”
Pattering fingertips prompted a series of holographic concentric circles to draw themselves out from the site of the explosion. A dotted line cut across these, tracing the route of the shuttle from the moment the Carapace detected it, and relayed that back to Devourer. The largest of the circles took up a third of the globe, ten-thousand kilometers in diameter.
“These are the best the computer can do with the data, sir,” Keitel said hesitantly. “But Tenacity would have to be within these ranges.”
Heath tightened his arms’ grip around his torso, fought to keep his frustration inside. They’d had him—they’d been right on Raker, damn it! “He’s down there,” he growled.
“We could send another ship,” Mueller suggested.
“And risk the same result?” Heath snapped back impatiently.
“Orbital bombardment, sir?” Keitel offered.
Heath shook his head, could feel the first stage of a headache prickling behind his eyes. “Too much space to cover. Unless Raker flinches, we may never hit anything. Missile guidance will be uncertain in that soup, down there, and we’ve already expended quite a few of them in this chase.”
“Any reason why we can’t just wait them out?” Harlander asked from the shadows in the rear of the bridge. “We’re still in Wild Space, we’ve jammed their transmissions, and they’re wounded.”
Heath considered it, but knew that could only drag on so long. Raker would be making repairs, down there. When he finally came, he’d be more dangerous. More, at some point someone was going to notice the clustering of the small fleet’s tachyon emissions around this otherwise unremarkable gas ball—and come snooping.
Another consideration occurred to him. He gulped, knowing how such an imposition might be taken. But, closing his eyes and opening himself to Her, he knew had to try. Forgive, my Mistress, but might you have a suggestion? With your enhancement, could you extend the range of your senses?
Silence answered his mental plea for a moment. Then imagery assaulted him. He sucked in a breath as his senses filled with the vision of that Morvenan girl, cocooned within layers of webbing, crawling with the Children, eyes flickered with the weak light of campfire coals blown upon. The Mistress loomed behind Her meal.
You presume much, Damain Heeeeath, She hissed in his skull. But, no, I have already searched and the Sanctuarians remain out of my detection. I lack any sort of direct tie to them, as we had before.
By that, the Mistress meant the brood they’d seeded upon Tenacity after the attack, months ago, on Crossroads; a mass of Children who’d nearly seized the vessel and drawn Devourer after it with their calls across the void to their kin.
Heath unfolded his arms and set them upon the armrests, balling a fist and beating it slowly against the right. “What if we—”
A blat from the Communications station cut him off. Mueller was leaning over the tech there to read something as Heath turned that way. “Subspace transmission, sir! Encrypted, coming from Unity space.” He stiffened at something and straightened up to look at Heath. “It’s the Morvenan traitor’s code, sir.”
“What?”
A section of the main screen divided off to show a strategic view; the slice of Wild Space they currently occupied and the Unity boundaries, along with a swath of what would be House Red territory along them. A point of light pulsed, was clearly on the move towards the border, followed by faint streaks of other tachyon wakes.
“Long-range scan shows an Ayaza-class heavy cruiser on the way,” Keitel reported. “Not a hundred percent certain, but signature is consistent with the House Red flagship we encountered before. His fingers pattered on holo-wafer. “Mixed vessels accompanying. Over a dozen.” He paused in typing and turned to Heath. “It’s the secret fleet, sir.”
“What in hell are they doing?” Heath stood from his chair and tugged his uniform straight. “Answer that transmission. Put it on screen.”
After a moment, a pixelated image of Count Krazmyb materialized. “Captain, I would have a status report from you.”
Heath worked his jaw to control his rage at the impertinence. “Certainly. We have the Republic ship trapped.”
“But not destroyed?” Krazmyb blinked once, a flutter of uncertainty crossing his otherwise unreadable, inhuman features. “Speed was of essence, here, Captain, and you have squandered that. Now, time is short.”
“What are you talking about, Count?” Heath asked, shooting Harlander a glance. “Raker can’t escape us and no one knows where we are.”
“Events have run beyond our control,” Krazmyb answered, visibly shivering with his own fury. “The true nature of our arrangement with the Gray Ring and, thus, with you is about to be revealed. We will deny, of course, but the suspicions of the other Colors will be irreparably aroused.” The Count leaned forward in the holocamera pickup, close enough that speckles of sweat could be seen glinting along his purple flesh. “We must make the break from the rest, now.”
Heath went rigid as the points of the Mistress’ fangs dimpled the surface of his mind with Her own tension. “And our arrangement?”
“We must have the rest of the ships.”
“They are with us, now.”
“You used our fleet for your—” Krazmyb cut himself off before his fury could fully spill forth. After a pause to obviously marshal his self-control, the Count looked to something off-screen, seemed to listen to something. He nodded and looked back into the holographic pickup. “We are receiving the ping-back from this transmission. We have your location, now. The rest of our ships are with you?”
“Confirmed,” Heath replied.
“All of them?”
Heath scowled at him—and it was almost a rictus as the agony of the Mistress’ anxiety conducting through his soul reached unbearable. “What of the supply?” he rasped. “We had a deal.”
“The subjects are on their way to Zadomir,” Krazmyb replied haughtily, “where we had expected to meet you.”
“Meet us here,” Heath grated, “MEU-1279. Once we have transmission from Zadomir that the package is received, you will have your ships.”
Krazmyb’s face twisted, then settled. “This is acceptable. We will make rendezvous in ninety minutes.” The transmission cut out with a squall of static.
“Brother-Captain,” Mueller said hesitantly into the quiet that followed, “they have enough ships to simply take us.”
“And how many of their would-be fleet would they have to destroy to take it, fool?” Heath snarled back at him. Regretting the loss of control, he paused a moment to grind back his anger. Mercifully, the Mistress was receding from his mind, apparently satisfied, for now.
“Keitel,” Heath grated, “prepare orbital bombardment, energy weapons only.” He didn’t wait for the Tactical Officer’s response, glared at Mueller. “All ships, same orders!”
By the Mistresses and God, they would dig Raker out before he had to treat with these purple-fleshed freaks again!