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BRACING A HAND AGAINST the corridor wall, Sigurdsson closed her eyes for a moment. When she opened them again, the corridor was still spinning and she took several slow breaths to prevent herself from vomiting. The low-level buzz in the back of her skull, which she had to assume was the psychic presence of the Matriarch intruding on her own consciousness, came and went in waves. Sigurdsson didn’t understand why that was – she assumed it was just the usual comings and goings of thought – but she knew that whatever it actually was, it was alien enough that her brain was having a hard time adapting to it.
"It won’t do either of us any good if I’m too fucked up to get off this planet," she said to herself and, by extension, the Matriarch.
Almost immediately, the buzz lessened considerably.
"Thank you."
"Sigurdsson," said Elgrapharr as he and his commandos stepped into view. "Are you injured...?"
She looked up, forced herself upright and faked a smile.
"No, I’m fine."
"She is lying," said Aylarr and Sigurdsson shot her a dirty look.
"You are wearing armour," said Elgrapharr, all four of his eyes narrowing as he examined her arms and neck.
"Yeah, it’s-."
"An udukiin Matriarch has bonded with her," said Aylarr, earning another dirty look from Sigurdsson.
"Yeah, fine. Matriarch. Bonded. Whatever. Can we get the fuck out of here please? As if ATC Castle didn’t have reason enough to shoot me, I’m now playing host to an escapee from their little torture lab."
"Is it safe to bring her back aboard the ship?" asked one of Elgrapharr’s commandos. Sigurdsson couldn’t remember his name, but wanted to slap him regardless.
"Safer than staying here," she said.
"She has a point," said Elgrapharr. "Doctor Frankenstein?"
"From what we know, bonding with an udukiin Matriarch does not replace the host personality nor does the Matriarch control the host’s actions. In the early stages of bonding, very little change occurs," said the brill. "Once the bonding process is complete – which takes several days – the Matriarch serves as an enhancement to the host. It does not control."
"I accept the brill’s explanation," said Elgrapharr. "And knowing Sigurdsson’s stubborn nature, I don’t believe an udukiin Matriarch would easily overcome her personality."
Sigurdsson smiled and showed him her middle finger. Or tried to, before realizing that her icaran hands did not have a middle finger.
The rest of the icarans accepted Elgrapharr’s judgement call and everyone fell into step back to the shuttle.
When Sigurdsson, Frankenstein and Elgrapharr arrived on the command deck of the Azrael's Tear, Singh was waiting for them.
"We are breaking orbit now," he said, scratching at his bushy beard. "The haulers are with us and Cagliari is flying escort with her fighter wing. We will be moderately late to the rendezvous point, but not unreasonably so."
"We may require... a detour," said Elgrapharr.
"To the Udukiin Priex," added Sigurdsson.
For the first time since their arrival, Singh turned away from the observation windows and looked directly at them.
"What reason would we have for travelling to the Udukiin Priex?"
"We freed an udukiin Matriarch from Duster’s Range," she said, quickly continuing before Singh could ask any questions. "We need to take her home."
"The udukiin attack any ship entering their space," said Singh. "I have no intention of taking the Azrael’s Tear into the Priex."
"Actually, Captain, the udukiin are very attuned to one another psychically," said Frankenstein. "Not a hive mind, per se, but more aware of their fellows than humans or icarans."
Singh simply frowned his well-practised frown.
"Given the high level telepathic abilities generally attributed to the Matriarchs, it stands to reason that our entry into the Udukiin Priex would be noted and the udukiin would be well aware of the presence of the Matriarch on board the Azrael’s Tear."
Sigurdsson looked from Frankenstein back to Singh.
"They’d know she’s on board," she said. "The udukiin revere their Matriarchs. They won’t attack."
"My contract with Miss Cagliari was for the retrieval of the Starfighters and their safe delivery to the rendezvous point," said Singh, turning his back to them. "Now if you please, the command deck is becoming crowded and we will have two very capable military vessels joining us in this system momentarily."
The two haulers were starting to pick up speed and though they would never have the same thrust power as the fighters, Cagliari was glad to see they wouldn’t be a hindrance. She watched as they moved into formation beneath her fighter and then looked back up as the AI in the Argentavis picked up the incoming vessels. A second layer of holographics popped up over the area from which the ships came, a magnification layer, and even though they were still too far away to identify by name, it was clear that the larger ship was an ATC Castle vessel while the smaller one appeared to be Commonwealth Navy.
"They’re not even pretending to be separate anymore," she said to no one in particular. "Outlaw Squadron, heads up on the incoming. Your UHUD should already be picking them up."
"Hauler One ready for system-exit burn on your order, Cags."
"Ditto Hauler Two."
"Hey Cagliari, you there?" said Sigurdsson, coming through on a private linkup to Cagliari’s fighter.
"Hold steady, Outlaw Squadron," she said, before switching to Sigurdsson’s feed. "Yeah, what’s up?"
"I need you to convince Singh to take me to the Udukiin Priex."
"The fuck for?"
"There was a Matriarch down there, Kestrel. An udukiin Matriarch. They were torturing her, testing her."
"Are you serious? And she was still alive?"
"Yeah. And I have her aboard the Azrael’s Tear. I have to take her home."
Cagliari thought for a moment, watching the other ships getting larger on her screens. The udukiin were notoriously vicious fighters. And if Radko could pull off even half of what he’d talked about while they'd pretended to sleep together, earning some goodwill from the udukiin could be a massive coup.
"Put Singh on the line."
A few moments of silence followed before Singh’s gravelly voice came on.
"She’s asked you to talk me into going to the Priex," he said. It wasn’t a question.
"I’m already paying you a lot of money," said Cagliari.
"Not enough for that."
"Don’t forget, Captain, that if not for me, you wouldn’t have your fancy LiDAR scrambling armour."
"The answer is still no."
"You have two pursuit craft in your docking clamps," she said. "Malkova Industries model 971. They were shit brand new and that was twenty years ago."
She could hear his sigh even over the comm line.
"What is your point?"
"If you take Freyja to the Udukiin Priex to return that Matriarch, you can replace your shitty 971s with two Argentavis starfighters."
Silence followed.
A long silence, and the ATC Castle ships – she considered them both ATC Castle ships now – continued to close the gap.
Cagliari was about to prompt Singh for a response when he spoke again.
"You have a deal. I will collect the fighters from the rendezvous point upon my return from the Priex."
The connection closed and Cagliari smiled. Two fighters was a small price to pay if everything worked out the way she hoped.
"All right, Outlaws," she said, switching back to the squadron-wide channel. "We’re going to be on our own for a bit – the Azrael’s Tear is leaving on a different heading. Cover their escape, but more important, protect those haulers."
She watched as the Azrael’s Tear began its burn, heading out deeper into the black. The enemy ships were closing, but she had no worries about Singh getting away. The armour plating on his ship had been the prototype version of what covered the sleek hulls of the Argentavis fighters – not as advanced or refined to be sure, but he, like them, should be all but invisible to LiDAR. The haulers, though, were another story. They were simple civilian-grade heavy cargo carriers, albeit with upgraded engines to cut down travel time.
Only a moment later the external communications lines crackled to life.
"Attention cargo haulers leaving orbit of Duster’s Range. This is Edward Vossek, Assistant Director of Operations for ATC Castle. You will power down your engines immediately and submit to inspection. We have reason to believe you have stolen property aboard."
"Mister Vossek, this is Kestrel Cagliari, President and CEO of Cagliari Aerospace, and I’m just taking back what you stole from us. So fuck you."
"If you do not power down and submit to inspection, we will use force," he said. "Be smart about this, Kestrel. Two gunboats against two cargo haulers are not good odds."
"Agreed," she said, a smile creeping into her voice. "But I feel pretty good about two gunboats against eight Argentavis fighters."
Dead silence followed from the radio for nearly three full minutes. Cagliari got some satisfaction out of that, as it told her Vossek knew just how advanced her fighters were and how they were beyond anything ATC Castle could manage. And that eight of them versus a pair of gunboats tipped the odds in her favour.
"This is Commander Ty Tagakara of the HMAS Newcastle. I have no idea what an Argentavis fighter is, but acts of piracy against-."
"Shut the fuck up, you corporate shill."
"I am an officer in Commonw-."
"Yeah, I’m sure you may even still believe that, but it’s a lie. You are now an officer in the corporate clusterfuck that is ATC Castle – it just hasn’t been made official yet," she said. "These haulers contain property – two squadrons of starfighters, specifically – belonging to Cagliari Aerospace and stolen by ATC Castle. I’m taking it back. Stay the hell out of my way or I will declare you a hostile and we will attack."
Once again, silence followed, and Cagliari knew the discussion that was taking place across closed comm lines. The Commonwealth ship would be wanting to know if she was telling the truth and pointing out that they would have a hard time fighting Starfighters that their LiDAR couldn’t even detect, while Vossek would be trying to push them into holding firm.
Cagliari chewed her lower lip as she waited for a response. Her fighters were fully capable of engaging, but butterflies had appeared in her gut at the thought that she might have to order an engagement against a Commonwealth Navy vessel.
"Haulers, this is Cags," she said, the fighter’s AI automatically switching her back to the squadron’s closed channel. "Hard burn and get the hell out of here."
"What about those ships?"
"We’ll worry about the ships, you worry about getting to the rendezvous."
"Understood."
The entire mission and all the planning and setup would be for nothing if Vossek got his hands on those haulers.
A soft beep came from her UHUD and Cagliari saw that both the Adirondack and the Newcastle were altering course.
"God damn it."
The Newcastle was setting an intercept course for the haulers while the Adirondack was...
She immediately opened a link to the Azrael’s Tear.
"Captain Singh, this is Cagliari. I don’t know how, but it seems like the Adirondack is tracking you. They’ve just started on a course that plots right along yours."
Whether he responded or not she didn’t know – at that moment, the Newcastle opened fire. The bursts were random and unfocused, with the fighters still being too far away and with their black hulls being too difficult to see against the blackness of space. The closer the ship came, the easier it would be for their gunners to visually aim, but Cagliari knew that the Newcastle would disengage once the Adirondack was out of system.
At least, that’s what she was hoping.
"Evasive maneuvers and warning shots only, Outlaw Squadron," she said.
"They are the aggressors," said Daxma. "We should be defending ourselves."
"The point of this operation was to bring more assets to the war effort, not subtract any. Just occupy them long enough for the haulers to go and then we follow. Understood?"
"Understood," came the response from each of the other pilots.
"Checkers and Dee," said Cagliari. "On my wings. Prepare for close-range flyby of the Newcastle observation dome."
Both pilots acknowledged. Checkers, a middle-aged Frenchman, had been a test pilot at Cagliari Aerospace when Cagliari was still in high school, and Dee – whose real name was Theodora Damianopolous and thus very early on had been given a much easier nickname – had been a certified Ace with the Commonwealth Starfighter Corps before it had been absorbed into the Commonwealth Navy five years prior. The three of them had been the first pilots to ever fly the Argentavis and had logged many hours together.
As Checkers appeared on her right and Dee slid into place on her left, Cagliari couldn’t help but smile. Maybe it was weird and maybe it spoke ill of her mental state, but she was really enjoying this.
"On my mark," she said, then paused for a few moments. "Mark."
In unison, the three fighters dove toward the Newcastle, their wings folded back like attacking birds of prey.