by Dan Allen
“Really?”
“Captain,” Gauss announced. “I estimate we will rendezvous with the fleet in three weeks, two days, seven hours.”
Captain Austin sat back in his chair. He didn’t seem concerned about an attack from behind, and Jet knew why. The ASP fleet dreadnaught lasers were effectively useless in the gas plume of the dropship’s ballistic thrusters.
The ship was designed for just that: a very high-profile escape from a planet. Enough dropships burning thrusters could screen an escaping fleet vessel.
“Captain Austin,” Gauss reported. “Regrettably, I will be forced to revise our rendezvous estimate. I cannot engage the fusion pulser. It appears to have suffered a catastrophic energy surge as a result of power cell failure. Our approach will require two additional weeks.”
Oops.
“Great. We’re gonna have to ration.” He looked at Jet. “Marine, get your hotshot posterior in cryo before I drop you out of the airlock.”
“Yes, sir. As soon as I’ve made sure Yaris’s condition is stable.”
Jet maneuvered to the medical bay and found not one but two marines with medical tubing running from their bodies. “What the—”
Monique pointed at the stalky form beside Yaris. “Dormit was still alive. The bullet struck a rib bone. It sent a fragment into his lung, but Gauss can regrow a lung from stem cells and a tissue scaffold. He’ll make it.”
Jet could hardly believe his ears. Dormit was like family. He clapped a hand on Monique’s shoulder. “That is one lucky son-of-a-gun.”
Monique’s silent reply said it all.
It wasn’t so lucky for the rest of his squad. Eight went in, only four came out.
Those who had survived were headed for Xahna, the ninth planet, along with every Believer in the galaxy with a chance of living.
ASP would have to harvest tritium from the Avalonian ocean for months before their fleet could launch again, and they would have to do it all in radiation suits.
“Angel, how fast are the ASP fleet ships?”
She paused for a moment, then said. “It’s not about speed but acceleration. The total distance is twelve light years. But the only time the ASP fleet really can do any catching up is during the year of acceleration toward light speed and the deceleration. They could take a few years off their cryo time if they pushed the beta by accelerating the whole time, but collecting the fuel for that would take more time than it saved.”
“Makes sense.” Jet vaguely recalled some movie about relativity he had watched in basic training. “But can they beat us to Xahna? How many g’s can their main engines deliver? And how long can their forces survive that kind of acceleration?”
“Aggressively, at 2 full g’s, they could only carve three months off each end of the trip. But very few ships have that kind of acceleration. Decelerating any faster than one g for long periods is a serious risk to passengers. And it requires special rigs to rotate people and prevent blood pooling and brain aneurisms.”
“Still,” Jet said, “they could outfit a sprint ship with a crew of Wodynians or AIs.”
“Naturally,” Angel said. “But against our three-to-six-month head start, ASP would have their work cut out to beat us to Xahna. I give them less than one chance in four of making first contact. Even then, we would vastly outnumber whatever advance elements they could send on the sprint ship, until their main fleet arrived. And we’ll already have survey satellites in orbit. They’ll be coming in blind.”
“Yeah, I still don’t like those odds.”
And getting there was just the beginning. Jet could only hope the beings on Xahna had something that could stop the ASP fleet.
This better be worth it.
Chapter 9
Minutes after leaving her parents’ home, Dana barged into Forz’s shop.
Brista sat on a workbench, arms folded on the counter, head on her hands, staring wistfully across a worktable at Forz.
“I have to leave,” Dana announced.
Forz stood holding a sayathenite crystal in tongs, the delicate crystal inches above an open metal resonator cap. He lifted up a magnifying monocle. “But you just got here.”
“I mean I have to leave Norr.”
Forz looked at Brista and back to Dana. His expression fell. “Tonight?”
“I need some food first—I ran out on my family and . . .”
Brista sat up, her expression changing into a look of confusion. “Dana, what happened?”
“It’s complicated.”
Brista turned up her hands. “It always is with you.” She seemed to understand without having to rehash the whole scenario, the way her mother had.
I don’t belong. It’s time to go.
“I suppose you’ve made up your mind?” Brista opened her purse and offered a large red embol fruit. “Did you even eat anything before you ran out?”
“Oh, Brista, you are the best.” Dana bit into the embol. Its sweet juice filled her mouth.
“Dana . . . I . . . where are you going?” Forz asked. He looked from Dana back to his work, then back to Dana. “Just a minute. One crisis at a time.” He carefully placed the crystal in its metal housing and closed the cap. Then he selected a tuning fork from an array of them on his wall, struck it against his palm, and brought the base of the tuning fork against the metal housing. The deep hum reverberated through the metal casing. A moment later the sayathenite crystal gave off a satisfying green glow.
“Finally!” Forz dropped onto his work stool and wiped his head. “That bunch is finicky. The nodes from the southwest caverns are far more stable.”
“Okay, can I have my crisis now?”
Forz pulled of his work gloves and set them on his workbench. “Right. You’re leaving—to where?”
Brista returned from Forz’s sleeping area and dropped a bedroll on the table. “To Shoul Falls.”
Dana froze. “How did you . . .”
“But I have a better idea.” She went to Forz’s pantry and grabbed a cheese wrapped in a small cloth, several strips of bandeer venison jerky, and a bag of theeler roots—horrid, but fantastically satiating, which she added to the pile.
“Which is?” Dana said, tapping her foot. She bit another huge chunk out of the embol fruit.
“Shoul Falls obviously has no supreme,” Brista said as she rolled the food in the blanket. “But it still has kazen.”
“What do they do without a ka?”
“Whatever they can to help,” Brista said. “Their last supreme either quit or died decades ago. Anyway, the city council hasn’t found anyone they trust to take his place, which is why Vetas-ka can get his hands on the bloodstone.”
“So?”
Brista took a wooden dowel from the wall and shoved it through the knot on the bedroll, making a carry-all which she dropped onto Dana’s shoulder.
“There is a monastery—a sanctum—in the mountain above Shoul Falls where new adepts are trained—vetted—to see if they will be worthy to be the next ka.”
“Okay, that does sound interesting.”
“The sanctum’s location is supposed to be a complete secret. Even people from Shoul Falls aren’t supposed to know how to find it.”
Dana wasn’t worried about that. Curious animals knew about every possible shelter from winter weather. She could find it.
“So they actually want adepts like Dana?” Forz lifted his gloves, as if weighing them, and then reached out and stuffed them into Dana’s satchel. It was a gesture of kindness that Dana could not repay. She smiled her thanks. Forz shrugged.
Dana’s brow furrowed as she considered Forz’s situation. “You’re a druid, too,” Dana said. “Or haven’t you told your mentor why it’s so easy for you to train a mechanodron?”
Brista looked up at Forz, her already fawning expression widening into a look of rapturous admiration. “Druidism on mechanodrons?”
“He uses spring water with sayathi in it,” Dana said, dropping the secret into the room like a load of dirty laundry
into the wash basin.
“Sayathi water?” Brista gasped. “It’s poisonous if you aren’t blood-bound to the source.”
“Only to animals,” Dana said. “Once the sayathi are in the vines that power his mechanodrons, he can sense them.”
“It’s like having extra arms,” Forz said. “If the training motion doesn’t feel natural, I know. So I get it right every time.” He smiled proudly. “Trade secret.”
“So that’s why you go out of the city all the time,” Brista guessed. “You’re filling that canteen with water from underground and bringing it back into the city.” Her face registered the difficulty in reconciling that with Forz’s usual strict rule-keeping. She turned back to Dana. “But about going to Shoul Falls. Vetas-ka will be watching for someone trying to bring the bloodstone back.”
“So, I won’t go straight across the highland trade road,” Dana said. “I can follow the Kyner River to the sea and then go up the Shoul River Canyon.”
“It’s twice as far,” Forz said.
“But safer,” Brista added.
“Yeah, and what do I do when I get there? I can’t just pull out the bloodstone and say, ‘Hey everybody, I got Sindar killed and brought this back for Vetas-ka to kill you for.’” Dana set aside the embol fruit core and stared at Brista’s unfinished dinner plate of steamed redroot and fried greens. “You weren’t going to finish this, were you?”
She wrinkled her nose. “Not anymore.”
Dana helped herself. “Brista, you’re a gem.”
“Well,” Forz offered. “I suppose you could just enroll as a kazen trainee. Learn everything you can, and if Vetas-ka comes for the stone, run away.”
“He oversimplifies everything,” Brista blew of a strand of hair out of her face. “But at least if you take the stone away from here, the kazen won’t be attacking Norr for it.”
“It brings up the question.” Forz looked Dana in the eyes. “If Vetas-ka came for it—if you had no other choice . . . would you use it?”
Dana squeezed the stone in her pocket. She shook her head. “I . . . I don’t know.”
“That’s not good enough,” Brista said. “If you’re even tempted, then the moment you think you haven’t got any other choice you’ll give in. You’ll use it.”
“And what if I do? If I become a supreme, would that be so bad?”
Brista grabbed two fistfuls of hair and tugged. “I can’t even—are you hearing yourself?”
“What if the Creator intended for me to get this?”
Forz blinked. “You’re serious?”
“It’s my responsibility,” Dana said. “I’m not going to give it up to Vetas-ka. You weren’t there when Sindar died. I felt everything in his head.” Dana’s eyes unfocused. She wrapped her arms around her waist. “Everything he knew about Vetas—his cruelty, his bloodlust . . . I’ll never give it to him, even if I have to use it.”
“Vetas-ka was once the greatest defender of peace Xahna ever knew,” Brista said. “Dana, he was probably a better person than you.”
“Power corrupts, Dana,” Forz said. “That’s why we have no ka in Norr.”
Dana looked down at the floor. “It’s why you have no Dana in Norr—well once I’m gone.”
“The civic guard already shut the gates,” Forz noted. “What are you going to do—wait until morning and sneak out in a disguise?”
Dana shouldered the rucksack. “I can’t wait until morning. My parents will freak out and send the civic guard to search the city for me. Uh . . .” She looked to the corner where Forz’s mechanodron sat crumpled and idle. “How about a wheelbarrow ride from Blamer? I can pretend to be a load of garbage to haul to the dump.”
“The civic guard doesn’t open the gates for a mechanodron with a load of rubbish.”
“Well, have you got a better—wait.” A smile spread across her lips. “I’ll just fly out.”
“Stealing a greeder?” Brista’s lateral sifa quivered. “No.”
* * *
Dana crouched behind the tall wire fence that penned in the riding greeders. These belonged to of some of the wealthier residents of Norr.
Brista and Forz scurried across the street and crouched next to her.
Brista stared at the huge animals with their heads tucked under their wings. “Dana, are you crazy?”
“It’ll glide right over the wall.”
“She’s right,” Forz said. “It’s the only way to get out of the city at night. The walls are domed at the top—nowhere to loop a rope for climbing. And there’s no chance the greeder will disobey Dana.”
“What if she’s caught?” Brista whispered.
“Then they’ll send me to counselling with Warv, and I’ll try again tomorrow night.”
“Stealing is wrong,” Forz admitted.
“She’s the cleric’s daughter,” Dana said to Forz. “What’s your excuse for being so worried?”
“I dunno. Honesty? Look Dana, even if you escape, there’s a chance they could track you.”
“Tracking an animal that can glide downhill? I don’t think so.”
“Yeah, but . . .” Now Forz was in one of his analytic modes.
Great.
“If they guess where you’re headed, the signaler could send a message on the static line to Port Kyner.”
Forz would think of think of something like that. He had set up his own static lines around the workshop and even run a line to Brista’s attic bedroom over the chapel.
Dana huffed an impatient breath. “Anyway, I can avoid big cities with static lines.”
“If you steal a greeder, we’ll be accessories to the crime,” Brista added.
“How about this?” Dana suggested. “The moment I’ve actually stolen the greeder, why don’t you both start yelling and hollering, and then instead of being accessories to the crime, you’re the ones who are responsible for reporting me.”
They still won’t catch me.
Forz rolled his eyes. “That won’t be suspicious.”
“Come on, this won’t take long.” Dana stood up and crept along the fence to the bolted gate. She loosened the rope tie and drew back the bolt.
The unmistakable sound of the door through which food came caused a few napping greeders to lift their heads expectantly.
One of the more eager birds was not fully mature but certainly large enough to support Dana.
Reaching out to the animal with her mind, she stirred its hunger.
“Forz, where’s that bucket of feed?” Dana whispered.
Forz trudged up and set the bucket down next to her. “If someone comes along right now, I doubt calling out and pointing at you is going to do us any good.”
Dana gave him a severe look. “People are going to die if I don’t get this bloodstone back to Shoul Falls, Forz. Would you quit worrying about a stupid greeder?”
The bird under Dana’s influence gave an angry squawk of agreement.
“You stay out of this,” Brista snapped.
The bird ducked its head.
“Come here.” Dana lifted the bucket and slipped inside the enclosure.
The tall, long-legged bird stretched out its neck and then toed across the dirt-floored pen.
“Hold this.” Dana handed the bucket to Brista, who froze with fear as the seven-foot-tall bird lowered its sharp beak and snapped eagerly at the grain in the bucket.
Dana ducked into the shed, pulled out a riding saddle, and loaded the saddle bag with her supplies.
“Little help?” Dana held out the saddle.
Suppressing his reluctance, Forz took the buckles on the opposite side, helped her lift it up over the greeder’s back, and handed the neck and body straps around to Dana. Once the straps were secure, with an urge from Dana, the bird sat, still devouring the free illicit meal from Brista, who flinched at every sound of crunching from its huge beak.
Dana hopped into the saddle. “Okay, let’s go.”
The bird kept eating.
“Oh, great.”
Agonizing seconds passed.
“Dana?” Brista said, her voice even more anxious.
“It’s hungry. I’ll have to think of a way to motivate it.”
Brista, her face flinching to the side, gave a whimper that spoke of both terror and acute pain of conscience.
Dana summoned a thought of a whip cracking, and the animal bolted forward suddenly, knocking Brista out of the way as it burst through the narrow gate and stretched its wings to a half-span as it raced ahead.
“Stop,” Forz called out in a lackluster voice that couldn’t have carried across the street. “Thief.”
He hadn’t the heart to raise an alarm after all.
Dana almost laughed as the greeder turned onto the high street and gained speed on the downhill slope toward the center of town.
In three bounds, it passed through the town square which hosted both festivals and public punishments.
Greeder thieves were beaten, Dana realized with a gulp.
“Go!” Dana urged the creature with desperate plea. The greeder surged forward, gave two huge beats of its wings, kicked off the ground, and rose even with the city wall, fifteen feet high.
For a moment, Dana thought the bird would strike the stone wall, but at the last minute the bird kicked out its feet and vaulted off the stonework, soaring past a dumbfounded pacing watchman as it glided out into the night.
A rush of excitement filled Dana as her greeder soared out over Kyner River, crossing into the wild country.
She left behind her ambivalent family, her friends who could do only so much to assuage her strained existence, and a town full of wary parents who tucked their children into bed every night with whispered warnings about “people like Dana.”
She left them all willingly, out into a world that did not hate her but would kill for what she carried in her pocket.
Only then did she consider the fact that the kazen might be watching from outside the city walls.
Chapter 10
With his vision still fuzzy from being wakened from cryo early, again, Jet exited the AI-piloted shuttle and stepped through the airlock into one of the long, clear passenger tubes in the expansive hangar bay. It was his first time aboard the flagship Excalibur.
