by Skyler Grant
Alexis frowned and nodded. "I concur."
"The folks on the station were scanning for nobles. This have something to do with that?" Quinn asked.
"It does. Ilinar and Mahara were both mages, powerful ones. Hostile ones to the Imperium and dangerous in the extreme,” Mara said.
"Would the Emperor really do that? Wipe out a whole system to kill one man? I've always heard ... well, I may not get along with the Imperium, but they're good people. The Emperor was a good man," Taki said.
"Our former Emperor was a decent man in peace and a monster in war—as any who opposed the Imperium learned," Mara said.
It took them fifteen minutes to get ready. Mara changed into one of her full body stealth suits, the material clinging tightly to her form. Kara was in her battle armor, while Quinn, Taki, and Dela all wore armored vest and had pistols.
It was crowded in the station lift going up to the tenth deck.
"You'll see how the doors are sealed when we get up there. It looked like Kara should be able to force them though," Quinn said.
"When it comes to displays of physical prowess I am pretty amazing," Kara agreed.
They reached Deck Ten and the doors hissed open. Both sets.
"This the same lift?" Quinn asked Taki.
Dela raised her scanner to examine the outer doors. "Lots of damage to these, Captain. Looks like it was melted at one point and then again later."
Mara readied her energy pistol, her body shimmering for a moment before she vanished from sight.
"Guess she's got point. Kara, lead us in," Quinn said.
Kara stepped out of the lift, Quinn and the others following. This level had seen a lot of damage. There were scorch marks on the wall and hundreds of impacts from bullets. Quite the battle had been fought here.
Most of the corpses on the floor wore armor, although mixed here and there among them were white coats. The medical doctors who worked this level.
"Look," Kara said.
There was a hole melted through one wall. Through it they could see what looked to be an escape pod. It must have clamped onto the station and someone blasted their way inside to reach this deck.
"We've got live ones, sir," Taki said.
There was a room filled with stasis pods. Critically wounded that the station’s medbay couldn't handle and waiting for transport. These had been waiting a long time. They were all long since dead, cables running between them.
"Independent power sources. Looks like they were jury-rigged and all running into one," Quinn said.
"Uh ... Quinn?" Jinx called over the comms.
"Little busy here," Quinn said.
"I get it—it’s just that ... some ships are leaving the station," Jinx said.
24
Quinn and the others hurried back down in the lift, Mara uncloaking her stealth suit.
"How could someone still be alive?" Kara asked.
"You saw it. Stasis pod, must be," Taki said.
"It’s Ilinar. He must have rigged one to revive the occupant if the medical systems reset and channeled enough batteries into it to last a long time, when the power came back online the medical systems reset and his pod started its wake sequence," Mara said, almost harsh.
At the docking ring they ran for the Centauri Bliss. The other docks, about half of which had contained vessels, were now empty. Not that most of the ships seemed to have gone far, slowly drifting away from the station.
"Get us undocked," Quinn said, as soon as they boarded the ramp.
"No can do, Captain. The fuel system reversed, sucked us dry. And we still shouldn't be flying with the thruster the way it is, but even if we want to try it, we're going to need forty-five minutes to fuel us up," Melody said.
"I'll take the Whiskey," Mara said.
"Fumes there too. I was going to refuel in the morning," Dela said.
"The Tango then, I refueled when I got back," Mara said, taking off at a run for the shuttle. Quinn and Dela headed towards the cockpit, settling into their seats. They might not be able to fly, but at least they had the ship’s sensors—although in retrospect Quinn realized Station Command would have even better ones.
"What is all this about?" Dela asked.
"Releasing the clamps on the other ships in port so we couldn't take another vessel after him, and venting our fuel so we couldn't pursue ... if he'd known about our shuttles, he might have tried something there too. Only one ship out there should be moving under power," Quinn said.
"Got it," Dela said.
It was a shuttle, small but very well armed. A lot like the Whiskey. The Tango had its stealth technology engaged, but the other ship still appeared to detect it, turning and taking several shots. The Tango tried to evade. A shot caught the main flight controller and the ship was instantly spinning out of control and drifting into the field.
Quinn received an incoming comm.
"I'm alive, but I'm not going anywhere. When you can I'm going to need a pickup," Mara called.
Quinn looked over to Dela. "Can you pull up the data Mara transferred us earlier? Where does Ilinar think he’s going?"
Dela tapped at a few keys. "Looks like he’s headed towards one of the Divide.”
"Think he realizes there is no getting through that?" Quinn asked.
Dela shrugged. "Whoever this guy is he is still alive after two thousand years. He might not have a firm grasp on his limitrations."
Quinn agreed. The ship was heading full-thrust in that direction. It should reach the Divide—or at least the closest portion to it—in about half an hour. Melody would finish refueling fifteen minutes later.
What happened next was unlike anything Quinn had ever seen. Space ahead of the ship crackled with red pulses of energy far more diffuse than any weapon could create. The pulses continued, ripples of power coursing sending a red beam ahead of the ship to impact the barrier which warped and distorted.
The sensors were going wild, they didn’t know what to make out of what was happening out there, they weren’t alone.
"That's new," Quinn said mildly.
"Captain, we've got a problem. Fuel tank three has ruptured," Melody said. “Just bad timing, not sabotage. It can happen when you dump fuel in and out fast like this.’
"We need it to launch?" Quinn asked.
"I could work around it not being there. I can't work around the highly flammable fuel all around the sensitive insides of the ship. I'm sorry, we're not going anywhere until I get this cleaned up and it’s going to take awhile. Like, over a day awhile."
The navigation board flashed. A leyline had gone active that wasn’t there before, one going right through the Divide.
There was now a tear in space. That impenetrable shimmering wall had a hole.
Instead of going through it the gunship reversed course, heading for one of the systems Runestones. .
"Mara is not going to be happy about this," Dela said.
“A whole in the big magic wall keeping us away from something or other? Probably not,” Quinn said.
“You think he’s going to be able to get that runestone active?” Dela asked.
“You want to bet against him at this point? You can be the one to tell Mara. Take the Foxtrot and go tow her back. We're not going anywhere for awhile," Quinn said.
"Well, this is awkward," Quinn said.
The others decided to give Quinn and Mara some time alone her first night in the Centauri, she could get used to the group later. It had taken Dela a few hours to tow her back. Quinn understood that Mara spent most of that time cursing after learning they couldn't give pursuit.
"Look at the bright side?” Mara said wryly. “Since I’ve already been terribly disappointed once this evening, you can hardly do much worse." She was still dressed in her stealth suit and she presented her back to Quinn. "Help get me out of this thing? Magnetic seals in the back, a half-second press to each will release it."
Quinn found them, tiny rectangular tabs. Pressure on each soon had them peeling away rev
ealing Mara's pale flesh.
"We could put it off," Quinn said.
"I was quite looking forward to this night until a few hours ago. We'll do no such thing," Mara said.
Quinn reached the last tab, located just below the small of Mara's back and she didn't so much shrug as peel out of her suit.
"How do you spend all day in an outfit like that and not smell at all?" Quinn asked.
"It's a poor level of stealth if you can smell me from half a mile away," Mara said. Beneath the armor she proved to be completely nude. It wasn't the first time he'd seen her figure, pleasantly rounded hips and an ample chest with nipples especially pink and perk. She saw him looking. "Genetic engineering, remember? The bacteria that make you smell get one taste of me and keel over."
Mara leaned in to press a kiss to Quinn's lips before her hands moved to his shirt, unbuttoning and tugging him free of it.
They didn't say another word for some time, the rest of his clothes joining his shirt in a pile as their lips played against each other like things possessed. Quinn thought she tasted faintly of strawberries. Her hands played back and forth along his chest with abandon as their tongues tangled.
Mara pushed him back against the bed, Quinn's back bouncing when it hit the mattress and in an instant she was atop him, thighs straddling his waist tightly as she lowered herself down with a long sustained push that left them both gasping.
Quinn rolled them over. Beneath him her body was deceptively hard. For all the roundness of her hips and chest, Mara’s body felt almost as strong as Kara's.
Mara reached up, her fingers tangling in his hair and pulling his head down for another ravenous kiss. Her teeth grazing against his lower lip as their hips began to rock properly.
There was little buildup to the rhythm, just raw hunger and need, more hers than his, at least at first. Quinn found that passion quickly sparked passion and soon the room was filled with the sounds of their bodies coming together, her nails clawing into his back and his buttocks, urging him onward.
"Harder," Mara panted as she squirmed beneath him and Quinn obliged, the joining of their bodies gaining an intensity that would leave them both sore come morning. Yet, it didn't quite seem to be enough, Mara's hips bucking upwards wildly in a chaotic rhythm that jarred teeth and made the bed groan.
Quinn was desperate to make sure that she finished. A task growing increasingly difficult by the second, yet his attempt to slow things down a little was met by a growl. A frustrated and almost feral sound as Mara's nails dug in more.
It finally proved too much and Quinn found himself suddenly gripped by his release. The world seemed to blur and fall apart for a moment. At least he wasn't alone. Perhaps he wasn't the one who had been holding back after all, for Mara's walls were tightening around his length. Given the intensity of the sex the crash afterward was particularly intense, their bodies practically melting together.
"Wow," Quinn said, breathlessly.
"Not done yet. After today I've got a lot of frustration to burn off. Why don't you call in Kara?" Mara said.
So much for not springing a group on her. It proved to be a very long night.
25
With them already being delayed for another day Quinn ordered Melody to go ahead and take the extra time needed to remove the transponder. The plus side was it gave them time to continue to salvage. By the time another day had passed their cargo bay was filled with items small, valuable, and easy to unload.
The system did have an active runestone again. Whatever had sealed it dissolving into a flare of red light. After freeing it the gunship had jumped out. Quinn thought it was only a matter of time until the curious and the desperate from the other side decided to travel through one and they wouldn't be alone in their salvage efforts. They were already receiving communications through it from the Hope's Reach colony, it was repeatedly making attempts to contact any Imperium ships in range.
In normal times the Imperium surely would have arrived swiftly to reclaim the abandoned station, but with the Imperium now fragmented and their presence being so weak in this part of space Quinn wasn't sure what would happen first. The crime families? Pirates? Someone strong would come to make this place their own.
Repairing the shuttles and getting the ship in full working order took time. It was three days later that Mara tracked Quinn down in the cargo hold. He was looking over their take.
"Are we ever going in pursuit?" Mara asked.
"Is there any reason it is our business to pursue this man? You know me, Mara, I'm willing to help out when I can. What I'm not seeing is how this is our business," Quinn said.
Mara took a deep breath and began to pace. "Isn't it enough to trust me?"
"Oh I do, you say he's bad and I'm prepared to believe you, but I'm still stuck on the how is it our problem bit. We might have turned back on the lights, woken him up, but that doesn't make him our responsibility," Quinn said, looking aside from a jewelry box he'd been studying.
Mara rubbed at her eyes and leaned against a wall. She gave a bitter laugh. "You're right, of course, it isn't your responsibility. You’re only trying to do the right thing for your family, our family. I get that."
"I need to call in Tamara and you can make your case to the two of us?" Quinn asked.
Mara looked as if she was wavering for a moment and then nodded. "Please. Bring Jinx in too."
They met in what Quinn could now call his study. With his bedroom having been commandeered, Tamara had set aside a space for him. It had astrogation charts on the walls, a model of the Centauri Bliss on an old wooden desk, along with a picture of Kat, one of Tamara, and another of the family on Arkstone.
"So you're finally ready to give us some answers?" Tamara asked Mara.
"Not to everything, but you've stumbled into a big mess here. You deserve to know just how bad," Mara said.
Everyone pulled chairs in around the desk.
"Why am I here?" Jinx asked.
"You're one of the Emperor's heirs. I know, not by blood, but my words stand, and they matter, and you deserve to know a bit of what that might entail," Mara said.
"This sounds serious," Quinn said.
"Deathly. More of this information than I would like is speculative. In fact, I'm lost with even where to begin."
"Start with that fellow you so badly want us to go after. Ilinar? Who is he to you?" Quinn asked.
Mara took a long moment to reply. "Ilinar was, is, one of the strongest mages alive. One of the Unshackled, known in his day as the Bringer of Wrath. He liked to think of himself as a great general, although he wasn’t. Still, his ability to corrupt flesh into wrathspawn let him turn the innocent into armies and he used them to terrible effect."
Silence greeted that.
It all sounded very impressive, and it meant absolutely nothing to Quinn.
"That sounds pretty major, but I'm a history buff and I don't have a clue what you're talking about—and I should. So did you just go crazy or what?" Jinx said.
"A good point," Mara said. "A good place to begin is earlier. Let me ask you a not-so-theoretical question. What if there was a type of magic that spread like a contagious disease? Destructive, virulent, and in part transmitted by the knowledge of its existence? And you believe, if left unchecked, it will destroy a population? What do you do?"
Tamara said, "A broad and ridiculous question, but I can guess where this is going. You'd quarantine your population. Inoculate the elements you could. You’re claiming something like this was done? The Divide?"
"I am. It was. Magic when it entered humanity had two main strains. One limited, orderly bound firmly to bloodlines and one that was vastly more unstable. The Emperor quarantined as much of the Imperium as he could and wiped out one of those strains," Mara said.
Quinn said, "And a possessor of this unstable magic may have just run back to civilized space? If so, I'm terrified, but I'm still not seeing where you've done anything except make the point we should run long and hard in the other dire
ction."
Jinx said, "There are stories, myths. Largely undocumented. So many records were lost with the fall of the Library of Stars.”
"There is more to that story as well but this is not the time. But yes, the history of the period is incomplete and fragmentary and a great deal of that is at the Emperor’s doing. An intentional effort to make humanity forget a power that had proven destructive to it," Mara said.
Tamara cleared her throat. "For what it is worth, here, I believe her. I may not have Tourmaline's memories, but I have seen ... things."
Mara nodded. "Most of the powerful in the Imperium have. No effort is absolute. Even if you aren't her, a fact I continue to disbelieve, you are at least a host Tourmaline prepared. The Emperor had the ability to warp minds but you were likely built with some resistance, as was I."
"But I'm not changing anything," Jinx said.
"Aren't you? You needed a protector, and a complete monster of a lawyer suddenly grows a heart and decides to defend you to the very end?"
"One moment you say I'm resistant to alterations, and then you claim that when I’m doing the right thing it’s just me being mind-controlled," Tamara said flatly. "The latter is an implication I strongly reject."
"If that’s so, you're saying we're all mind-controlled. And while I admit I'm not living the life I expected, it’s one I chose," Quinn said firmly.
Mara raised her hands. "I surrender. You're all exactly where you want to be and so am I. Let’s say then that Jinx is sort of a living antidote to this untamed magic. True of blood and true of spirit, and those pledged and truly loyal to her are protected from this contagion. Everybody on this ship, apart from Alexis, is safe from Ilinar’s ability to corrupt living flesh. That is why we must be the ones to pursue him."
It was a strange way to think about it, but Quinn could picture it. They might not be sworn to her as an empress, but they were a family, they had vows and obligations to each other. Quinn would die to keep Jinx safe or any member of this family, if he had to.
