Alsea Rising: The Seventh Star (Chronicles of Alsea Book 10)

by Fletcher DeLancey

  “Now that, I believe,” muttered the fuck me officer.

  A shiver ran down Ekatya’s spine, leaving her dazed with the realization. It was done. They had not merely stopped this attack; they had destabilized the Voloth Empire. This entire conversation was public. The Empire would never be able to contain the damage.

  “He values pride,” Lanaril said. “And contributing to his Empire. Salomen’s job will be easier if we tell him . . .”

  Ekatya listened carefully.

  “When you base an empire on lies,” she repeated, “you build it on sand. It cannot hold against the tides of time. You have brought the truth to your Empire, Commodore Vataka. History will record you as the man who helped to save it.”

  Lanaril had a rather loose definition of saving, she thought with an internal smile. But Vataka glowed, proud to be singled out for his belief.

  “It’s time to finish this. Lancer Tal,” she said, cuing her comm officer to make the prearranged addition to the call. “My Chosen. I see that Blacksun remains untouched.”

  The Voloth bridge officers goggled at that. She wasn’t sure if it was because their attempted genocide hadn’t worked, or because Fahla had put the leader of Alsea on the line.

  Andira shook her head, smiling at the impromptu political boost. “My Goddess. The sun still shines on Blacksun, thanks to two courageous warriors who captured the missile mid-flight. We thank you for watching over us.”

  Now that was a brain stunner Ekatya hadn’t prepared for: having Andira speaking High Alsean right in front of her while simultaneously hearing her voice over the Voloth com, distorted by the translator.

  “I will always watch over you. Alsea is under my protection,” she said, cringing the moment the words were out of her mouth. She had probably just influenced the next two thousand cycles of Alsean culture.

  Lanaril came to her rescue once again, feeding her the right lines.

  “But you must never grow complacent. Your brave warriors committed that act on their own, with no aid from me. My influence lies on the spiritual plane, not the physical.”

  Those might be the most truthful words she had uttered in the last fifteen minutes, and they weren’t even hers.

  “Spiritual aid is still an aid, and one we value greatly.” Andira had the audacity to wink at her. “Your wisdom has seen us through trying times. I pray it shall ever be so.”

  “Is your emissary ready?”

  “Yes, Fahla. She and her team can be there in a tentick.”

  “Very good. Send her.”

  “This is our best chance,” Lanaril said. “It’s time to teach the Voloth a few truths.”

  Surely it was the height of irony that Ekatya was letting a religious leader speak for her in the middle of a battle. Her self-image might never recover.

  “Commodore Vataka.”

  He snapped into a respectful posture. “Yes?”

  Lanaril spoke fluidly, pausing at regular intervals to allow her to repeat the words.

  “You recently referred to the Alseans as primitives. Among my brethren, we use that term differently. To us, primitives are those who act as you acted earlier today, before you understood the power of truth.”

  He had been stiffening, but at this he relaxed and smiled.

  “Your Empire has been primitive throughout its engagements with Alsea. Its cruelty toward its own people has led them to become cruel in turn. But the most primitive thing about you is your belief regarding the Termegon Fields.”

  She could practically see the electricity running through the bridge crew at the mention of their afterlife paradise.

  “You believe that only citizens may enter the Termegon Fields upon death. This may be the greatest lie you tell yourselves. It is certainly the greatest lie you tell your hangers and slaves. The Termegon Fields are not for sale. You do not buy your way in with citizenship in the Empire. You earn your passage. Each time you act with compassion or kindness toward those less fortunate, every day that you live in truth and seek a higher truth, you take a step closer to our home. Think about that. Who is likelier to enter the Termegon Fields? Your citizens? Or your hangers and slaves?”

  Though not a warrior, Lanaril had delivered a hammer blow to the officers. More importantly, this was a message to the hangers and slaves making up the majority of the flagship’s crew complement, as well as the crews of the four destroyers. For the next part of their plan to work, they needed those crews to stand aside.

  “I have asked the Alseans to send an emissary to your ship to discuss terms of truce. I suggest you use this opportunity to repair some of the damage you have all done to your chances at a happy afterlife.” Speaking on her own now, Ekatya let her anger show. “You have attempted genocide against a peaceful people under my protection. Not a single person in this task force will set foot in the Termegon Fields unless you make a change today. Greet this emissary with peace and honor.”

  “I will,” Vataka said shakily.

  “You will? Or your crew will?”

  He drew himself up. “My crew await the arrival of your emissary. She will be received with honor.”

  “Good. You may yet salvage your fates.”

  16

  Back to the beginning

  A flash of green light.

  Darkness.

  A flash of green light.

  Darkness.

  A vibrating hum, steady and somehow reassuring. Voices, one closer and another farther away. She could not make out the words.

  The familiar pressure of emotions. Fear and worry. Desperation.

  The green light flashed one more time and ceased, replaced by an overall brightness. The hum intensified.

  A slight bump set off a wave of agony. Had she any voice, she would have screamed.

  The hum died away. Now there were scraping sounds and hurried, staccato words. More emotions crowded around, their worry controlled by intense focus.

  “ . . . lucky it didn’t clear the hull. You’d never have sealed the hole.”

  “I don’t fucking feel lucky. I’m alive because her body stopped it. Get her out of there!”

  “First Pilot, you’re not helping. Give us room.”

  She recognized some of the voices, but could put no faces to them.

  One snapped out orders, her tone conveying perfect confidence in herself and the obedience of everyone around her.

  Beneath that confidence was a black hole of terror, controlled and hidden but ready to swallow everything the moment it was freed.

  A prick to one arm. Then to the other.

  “Give me the laser cutter.”

  “Dr. Wells, are you sure—”

  “It’s going to take a small body and small hands, so unless you want me to shrink yours with this?”

  “There’s no need for threats. I understand your stress—”

  “You understand nothing. Now follow Candini’s example and give me room.”

  Confidence-over-terror brushed against her legs.

  “Stay with me, Rahel.”

  The quiet, caring tone unlocked a face in her mind. She opened her eyes to find that same face looking down at her in surprise.

  “She’s conscious!” Dr. Wells called. “My sainted Shippers, how are you conscious? Dammit, I wish you weren’t.”

  She tried to ask why, but all that came out was a tiny sound in the back of her throat.

  “There’s a piece of sabot going through the hull and your chest. I have to cut you free. I’m sorry, but I can’t give you anything to help with the pain. You’ve lost too much blood and your pressure is too low.”

  Sabot. Yes, she remembered that.

  She was sure she had died. Instead, she was . . . on the Phoenix?

  There was something about the Phoenix, some reason she had not expected to be here. She couldn’t remember.

  “It will take about thirty seconds. I’ll try to stabilize as I cut, but there will be vibrations. I’m sorry, Rahel.”

  Dr. Wells vanished from her fie
ld of view. A high-pitched whine rose from behind her.

  Her chest caught fire.

  The voice she had been missing burst out of her in a hoarse scream. Then another. She had never experienced an agony like this.

  A tempest of grief and fury swept over her and was immediately locked down by ferocious determination.

  The whine stopped. The fire did not.

  “Clear! Ready transport!” In a softer voice, Dr. Wells spoke into her ear. “One more jar. Then you can relax.”

  She appreciated the warning.

  It didn’t help. Her body was shifted forward and lifted, sending another wave of flames through her. She had no strength left to scream.

  They laid her on something soft, positioned on her side, and the wave mercifully ebbed. After the flames, this pain was nothing more than standing barefoot on hot sand in the summer.

  “The worst is over. Stay with me, all right? After this, I’ll be furious if you give up now.”

  She tried very hard not to give up as they brought her down to the shuttle bay deck.

  But the lights dimmed, and she couldn’t turn them back on again.

  17

  Emissary

  From her position in the copilot’s seat, Vellmar had an excellent view of the Voloth flagship they were approaching.

  “Fahla on a funstick, that thing is ugly,” she muttered.

  “True words.” Her pilot, an older warrior from Whitemoon Base, shook his head. “I used to think the Caphenon and Phoenix were what all Gaian ships looked like. Beautiful. Curvaceous. Then our destroyers arrived, and I thought, eh, not every ship can be a work of art. They’re nice enough, but I don’t want to stroke them.”

  Vellmar chuckled. “You wanted to stroke the Caphenon?”

  “I did stroke it. Took a tour back when it first opened for viewing. Someday I’ll fly on that ship,” he said with certainty. “But this? What a bucket of bolts. It looks like someone gave a group of children some building blocks and said ‘Go now, make a ship from these.’”

  “It did a lot of damage for a bucket of bolts.”

  “Eh. It needs to be blown back to its constituent molecules. Or better yet, towed into the sun.”

  “I think Lancer Tal has a better use for it.”

  “If she keeps it, I’m not flying on it. We’re still four lengths away and already my skin wants to crawl off my body.”

  Vellmar watched a bristling row of rail gun barrels slide past her side window and wondered whether Lancer Tal had taken that into account. If they succeeded in seizing this ship, how many Alseans could bring themselves to serve on it? There was already a waiting list of applicants to crew the Caphenon once it was raised. This would be a much harder sell. It was more than the ugly appearance or its provenance; it was what the crew had tried to do. Genocidal intentions were surely embedded in its bulkheads.

  Rubbing the back of her neck, she silently admitted that it gave her the shivers, too. She was not looking forward to boarding it.

  The shuttle bay came into view, its vast doors open and waiting. She listened to her pilot converse with the Voloth bridge and tried to shake her sense of flying straight into the jaws of a predator.

  A small fish, Rahel had said.

  In their last conversation before battle prep closed the communication lines, they had wished each other luck and offered a few words of encouragement. Rahel’s had been typical of her: pragmatic and somehow poetic at the same time, with a dash of dockside wisdom.

  “You’re a small fish,” she said of Vellmar’s strike team. “But a lethal one. One thing you learn growing up by the ocean: size isn’t everything. Ever see a firefin?”

  Having grown up by landlocked mountains, Vellmar had not. The image Rahel showed her was of a rotund little fish the size of her fist, its body covered in iridescent swirls of green and blue while its fins were flaming orange and red.

  “There’s enough neurotoxin in one of these to kill fifty Alseans,” Rahel had announced. “Nothing eats a firefin. Even the biggest fish take one look and flee. The Voloth still don’t know that size isn’t everything, or they wouldn’t come back. Be a firefin.”

  Perhaps she was flying into the jaws of a predator, Vellmar thought. But that predator would regret taking the bite.

  She sent a silent wish of luck to her friend, somewhere out there among the fighters still guarding their world, and unfastened her harness. Standing up attracted the attention of the twelve Lancer’s Guards seated in the main cabin. These were her finest, and she was proud to have them at her back.

  “Listen up,” she called. “Lancer Tal says the bridge crew is quiet and noncombative. We have control of their commanding officer. That doesn’t mean we have control of the rest. Captain Serrado just destroyed their belief system. That will knock the fight out of most, but a few will fight even harder. Never underestimate the determination of those desperate to avoid admitting they were wrong.”

  “Is that really Captain Serrado?” Senshalon, her second-in-command, voiced the big question. “It didn’t sound like her.”

  “She’s acting.” Dewar had one arm wrapped around the medic’s pack on the seat beside her. “She wouldn’t be chatting with that blindworm like one captain to another. She has to sound like a goddess.”

  “I’ve never heard a goddess speak,” Vellmar said. “I couldn’t say what one sounds like.”

  Senshalon snorted. “Lead Templar Satran is your lover. Don’t tell us you don’t know what a goddess sounds like.”

  The shuttle filled with laughter as Vellmar tried and failed to keep the blood from rushing to her face. “Someone needs to teach you the difference between literal and figurative.”

  Lanaril would be highly amused at Senshalon’s comment. Vellmar wished she were in Blacksun Temple now, telling her. They had lost four precious days together, all for nothing. She had been based in Whitemoon on the assumption that their ship infiltration would occur near the space elevator, so of course the Fahla-damned blindworms had tried to bomb Blacksun instead. Her pilot had put their shuttle through an unplanned speed test getting them into position in time.

  She held up a hand, quieting her warriors when Lancer Tal’s voice sounded in her earcuff.

  “Vellmar, a bridge officer named Onruang is coming to escort you. You can trust him as much as you can trust any of these officers. He’s unhappy and hasn’t been afraid to verbalize it.”

  “In front of that commodore?”

  “He’s only shot four people so far.” Lancer Tal sounded darkly amused. “And none of them for repeatedly saying ‘shek me.’ Onruang will bring you to a conference room off the bridge. I expect to see all eleven of you walking through here, understood?”

  “Do you expect our uniforms to be clean as well?”

  “That would be ideal.” Her voice grew serious. “Onruang is obeying his orders to escort you, but he was lying when he agreed to ten warriors each. His loyalty is to the ship and the Empire. He’ll take precautions.”

  “I understand. We’ll be ready.”

  The shuttle bay was nothing like that of the Phoenix. Vellmar had been to Captain Serrado’s ship several times, first to visit Rahel and more recently to practice moving through it with her team. She liked the enclosed bay with its exit tunnel and green guidance lights.

  This bay was pretentious, open to space as if advertising that the Voloth didn’t need thoughtful, protective design. Inside, nine shuttles were lined up in rows of three, each as bristly and unattractive as the flagship. A large square outlined in blinking lights was clearly the landing area for incoming shuttles. Shelving lined the bulkheads, reaching from the deck to the distant ceiling and packed with crates held in place by crisscrossing metal bars.

  Two force fields kept the bay pressurized. One dropped as they entered, then reactivated behind them. For a few stressful pipticks, they were trapped between fields. Then the inner field dropped, and they flew into the massive bay.

  Vellmar let out a soft exhale. “That
’s the first wall to climb. Glad we didn’t have to fight our way in.”

  “It wouldn’t have been difficult. Just a matter of forcing the right one.” Senshalon was behind her, peering over her shoulder. “Look at that. Ten soldiers for us to see and fifty more hiding in those shuttles.”

  Vellmar had just finished her own count, dismayed at the number of emotional signatures flaring all over the bay. A six-to-one disadvantage was more than she had prepared for. Worse, most of them were nervous, which made them unpredictable.

  “How are we going to empathically force sixty soldiers?” Senshalon asked.

  “I think we’ll have to be ready for something a little quicker and more permanent.”

  He patted the knives at his hips. “That’s why I brought these.”

  “Or, maybe they’ll be remorseful and walk us to the bridge with no problems.”

  “Sure,” he said skeptically. “And maybe dokkers will learn to sing.”

  When the shuttle landed, she touched palms with the two Guards who would remain with their pilot. “If I give the word, or fail to check in at the appointed times, don’t wait. You know your duty.”

  “Yes, Lead Guard.” Neither Varsi nor Corlander were happy with being left in the safest place. On the other hand, if they did have to carry out their alternative duty, it would make their names. In the event that Vellmar couldn’t bring her team back, they would force the nearest capable Voloth to bring down both force fields, depressurize the bay, and drop a package on their way out. It was a rigged Delfin torpedo from the Caphenon, and Captain Serrado had assured them that exploding it in the bay would cripple the flagship. After that, the Phoenix would finish it off.