by Blaze Ward
Panthers in trees on a dark night.
Ife snarled back at that connard in charge over there.
“Whoa, something just broke,” Obioma said, staring at her screen as she tried to out-guess the other pilot. “SeptStar seems like she’s drifting rather than maneuvering.”
“Hit them again, Ngozi,” Ife yelled. “Everything you have, pour it into them now. That same spot on the rim, if you can. The central hull if you cannot. We must have found a soft corner.”
Ife watched the two women react and plot. Daniel’s ship also seemed to understand, as all three of the little popguns on it opened up at the same time, rather than pulsing sequentially as they had.
What was there on the rim of SeptStar that would cause such a problem? Surely, they hadn’t put their bridge in such a place. If they had mirrored the design that closely elsewhere, the bridge was above and behind the main guns forward, where they could spot while flying, but keep the Ram Cannons central.
That section of SeekerStar was generally quarters for flight crew. SeptStar hadn’t launched anything in this battle, but he also didn’t look like a carrier. SeekerStar’s primary striking power was in the twenty-plus Spectres Kathra could send after a pirate ship.
“Keep pounding,” Ife said absently.
She had only been planning on chasing the ship off so that Daniel could escape, but if she had just hurt him, Ngozi needed to get a knife into the gap again and again.
Could they actually score a kill today?
The Mbaysey owed a mighty debt for WinterStar, even though nobody had been killed when the ship died. Kathra had still lost her first flagship, and the first casualty of what would turn into a greater war based on today.
SeptStar was their answer to get back at Kathra. Ife could see where it would be a problem for SeekerStar and The Haunt. Many small guns to kill Spectres. Lighter vessel, so it could outrun them through valence space, which was how the Mbaysey had always managed to escape Patrols and that Septagon in the past.
Something had gone wrong over there, though.
“Okay, they’ve fixed it, whatever it was,” Obioma said. “Ship’s under control again.”
“Hit their rear turrets, Ngozi,” Ife said. “Misses might damage the engines.”
“On it,” the woman growled. There was almost a note of triumph in her voice.
Like maybe it was possible to take on a Sept warship and not just survive, but win?
The Mbaysey had never once won. They had only endured, time and again fleeing deeper and deeper into darkness to escape.
Even Kanus and Ogrorspoxu hadn’t been far enough to escape those salauds. Or this connard.
“Is he coming about?” Ife asked, not trusting her own screens now, since she was too busy being in command.
She would need to talk to Kathra about making some changes up here soon. If Ife was going to act as an aspbad, she would need someone else on the sensors.
What was the galaxy coming to?
“Negative on maneuvering,” Obioma said. “I’m smelling fear. He’s starting to accelerate, but we have a small advantage in speed right now. Should we give chase?”
Ife studied the situation like a naupati, rather than a sensors officer.
Saw the vectors align in her mind.
Acceleration. Inertia. Maneuverability. Armor.
“Drive him, Obioma,” she decided. “Push him, but let him out-accelerate us. If he is fleeing, he’s going for a jump and wants us to stop hurting him. Don’t give him the chance to pull a reverse as we get going too fast. Ngozi, just pound on him until he is gone. Obioma, don’t get too close, and stay off his flank as much as you can.”
More shots hammered the ship. Ram Cannons were terrible beams, designed to engage much larger ships. Accuracy wasn’t all that great, but the impact was awesome when they did.
SeptStar fired back, but his heart didn’t appear to be in it.
Something in the crew quarters on SeptStar had caused the whole ship to black out for perhaps ten seconds. She wasn’t sure what idiocy had put something important in such a fragile location, but that was the difference in Daniel being dead and escaping.
“He’s gone,” Obioma announced, but only after Ngozi had scored two more hits on the central hull. One engine might be permanently off-line until they got repairs at someplace like Tavle Jocia.
Except that Ife knew in her soul that they would limp all the way to Sept space instead. No aspbad would want a potential enemy like the Free Worlds to see how badly SeptStar had been spanked in its first battle.
Especially not if the Sept were going to go after the Free Worlds soon, like everyone assumed.
“Stand down from combat and vent the engines forward until we can slow enough to turn without torqueing anything important,” Ife ordered.
SeekerStar couldn’t stop in less than a half-day at this speed but they could kill some momentum and let the rest of the system catch up with them, turning much more carefully than attempting the ancient maneuver known as a bootlegger on a ship this big.
“Repair teams, start your work,” Ife said over the intercom.
They hadn’t taken many hits from counter-fire, but a few. Plus she could tell by the way the ship sounded that things had broken. Nothing important. Perhaps as much maintenance as two months of normal sailing in an hour.
Still, they had won.
Ife had won. Taken SeekerStar into battle against a ship that her sensors showed was at least a peer, and defeated it.
A comm line blinked. The alien signaling.
“Thank you, Ife,” Daniel’s voice said, with Joane echoing her.
Nothing more, but somehow Daniel had known Kathra wasn’t aboard.
But it was Daniel. He was like that.
And the Sept would be back for them. Ife had no doubts about that.
But you lost badly, connard. Do you have the courage to try again?
Forty-Eight
Hadi looked around his bridge, studied the pale faces trying to absorb what had just happened.
At least he had managed to get away, although he had no idea how.
And now he knew what it felt like to be inside another mind when it died.
The Ishtan were no more. Extinct. Whatever gods they worshiped have mercy on their souls.
“Damage report,” he croaked as the ship limped across valence space on only three generators.
Someone sent him a readout showing all the red and yellow spots where SeekerStar and the alien freighter had damaged the ship.
Only one really mattered. The Ram Cannon shot that had passed through the crew space where four deathless Ishtan had waited, their minds wound up with his own as they screamed their death agonies directly into his soul.
Hadi had the faintest memory of having echoed that scream outward, tearing at the minds of his bridge crew, but he would go to his grave blaming the alien snakes instead.
Nobody in the galaxy except Daniel Lémieux knew the truth now. That Hadi Rostami was no longer human. That he had been altered by those alien creatures before they died, then absorbed some of that agony into himself as their bodies were torn apart and vented into the cold tomb of space.
“Course, sir?” the pilot croaked back, looking like a man who had just woken in a jail cell after a three day bender.
Hadi considered his options. There was a forward resupply base that would be the first step. After that things got complicated.
“Zabol,” he ordered. “But prepare for a long sail back to Ardabil after that, rather than a Free Worlds port.”
“Understood, sir,” the man’s voice was slowly regaining strength.
What must it have been like to have Hadi Rostami scream directly into your mind as he thought he was dying?
How many of these men would be broken as a result? Or come to fear that their commander was somehow no longer human?
How many would he have to kill to protect this new secret, at least until he could have a long and dangerous conversation w
ith Amirin Pasdar about the future of the Sept Empire?
Forty-Nine
Kathra waited on fidgety feet as the two ships both landed in the same bay below her and the outer hatches locked, allowing atmosphere to flood in. Through the window, the Cargo-2 bearing Daniel and Joane looked worse for the wear, having been nearly broken in two under the horrible fusillade of fire. Next to it, the SkyCamel looked almost quaint.
It was a tight fit, but not that bad, as both pilots appeared to be experts. Kathra would need to meet this Tragee fellow, if he was as good as Erin in such a confined space.
“Commander, they’ll be a few minutes,” Wyll Koobitz said, approaching from her side. “We should move to the conference room and prepare.”
She studied the shark closely.
Wyll Koobitz was far more than he had first appeared, and even then he had given off hints of being a major figure.
Since the battle had ended, Kathra had seen a whole other side, as he started giving orders that were obeyed without question or hesitation.
What are you, Wyll Koobitz? What is your position?
But she nodded and followed him into a larger room than the one where they had met before. Caterers were in the process of laying out a spread representing almost every color under the rainbow.
She found a comfortable chair and allowed someone to bring her a glass of a sweet juice in a shade of green. One of them Daniel had approved. Or Joane.
Wyll joined her, as did Obaj Gendrah again sitting beyond him. Other Anndaing as well, but it was obvious that the rest were merely aides and couriers.
Kathra wondered at what point she would meet actual members of the Merchants Bank Board, the men and women who controlled Anndaing space. Ruled was too strong a term, from what she had learned, but they controlled the money, and with it the power in these sectors.
Erin arrived at the head of the line, with Ife and Ndidi along as Kathra had ordered, the rest of the comitatus remaining behind to protect the ship against SeptStar suddenly returning, even though her ship was now safely under the big guns of the station.
The Sept commander might be desperate. A’Alhakoth had attempted to ram Vorgash, after all.
Daniel and Joane followed closely behind, in the company of two other Anndaing Kathra did not recognize. She rose to greet everyone, liberal with hugs, even for the surprised sharks.
It had been a close thing. Daniel might have survived, and maybe been able to bring Joane with him, but it would have also revealed far more than Kathra was prepared to at this time.
“Weren’t there four crew on the Cargo-2?” Kathra asked as she was introduced to Raja Zoodrah, Trademaster of Windrunner.
“There are,” Raja replied, stepping back to look up at her. “But Bipahl insisted on supervising the repair crews and my loadmaster Kayna is overseeing the removal of the two cargo pods so repairs can begin.”
“I see,” Kathra replied. “I would still like to meet them at some point, so I can thank them as I thank you and Tragee for getting Joane and Daniel home safe.”
“That was Joane, Commander,” Raja said. “I’ve never been under fire before. We would have gotten destroyed if she hadn’t given me expert advice on how to evade SeptStar.”
Kathra looked over at Joane and saw the quiet pride in that woman’s eyes. Even more so than Daniel’s but his eyes promised a story when it was just the two of them.
Rather than talk, the larger group attacked the food, with Daniel and Joane explaining all the plates and trays and vegetables to everyone equally between them.
Eventually, they settled at long tables that reminded Kathra of the trestles in her dining hall aboard SeekerStar. She had Erin on one side and had dragged Ife to sit on her other, with Daniel and Ndidi outside that and Joane across, next to Wyll Koobitz.
They ate. It was a complicated mélange of tastes, but everything was alien to her tastes, however amazing it was. Daniel declared it a success, which seemed to be the thing that the Anndaing were looking for.
Servers brought wine, coffee, and tea as they ate, making small talk that very pointedly ignored all the critical discussions that were needed. Like where Joane and Daniel had been, and what they had seen.
Wyll clapped his hands—fins—together and looked around. The servers and aides cleared the room like a bomb threat had been announced, pulling the door shut tight behind them and leaving only the four Anndaing and five humans in the room.
Kathra studied his face.
“How did the Sept find you here, Commander?” he asked her simply, as if they were alone and the rest of the group elsewhere.
Kathra felt the surge of anger pass through Erin’s thigh, touching hers under the table. Kam, Iruoma, and Nkechi would react the same way were they here,.They had all met the Ishtan personally at Tavle Jocia.
“It was not the Sept,” Daniel spoke up, causing all the sharks to look that way.
The humans knew the truth.
“Who, then, Daniel?” Koobitz asked.
“They were called the Ishtan,” he said.
Kathra felt her own surge of emotion course through her stomach.
“Were?” she asked, in harmony with Koobitz and Gendrah.
Daniel turned to her and she saw the truth in his eyes.
“Urid-Varg destroyed most of their species eleven thousand years ago,” Daniel continued, turning back to the Anndaing. “The six survivors had mental powers of some sort, but were weaker than the Destroyer, so they waited patiently, quietly stalked him as well as they could ever since, perhaps helping some of the revolutions that inevitably brought down his various empires. I never did get the truth from them.”
“You’ve met them,” Koobitz accused.
“Oui,” Daniel nodded, and then nodded towards Erin. “They kidnapped me, Erin, and several others at Tavle Jocia. In our escape, we killed two of them. Iruoma did. The other four got away, and obviously joined up with the naupati of Vorgash after we had fled.”
“And followed you here,” Koobitz declared.
“I felt them when we arrived, Wyll,” Daniel answered as Kathra watched the two of them.
“I did as well,” Kathra said.
Daniel’s head came around sharply.
“They called my name and I sounded the alert that got SeekerStar in motion,” Kathra continued.
Daniel nodded at some previously unguessed clue.
“You said were,” Gendrah spoke up now. “They are no more?”
“I am surprised the entire station did not hear their death scream, Obaj,” Daniel spoke to the other merchant. “It struck me like a migraine, but I was also fighting with them when Ife killed the salauds.”
“Ife?” Kathra turned to catch the woman blush, even as dark as her skin was.
“Ngozi, actually,” the woman said. “We hit them at long range with a Ram Cannon shot on the rim of SeptStar. The whole ship seemed to shut down for as long as ten seconds afterwards.”
“Oui,” Daniel agreed. “Their dying screams stunned the entire vessel as those deathless creatures were annihilated.”
“What do you mean you were fighting with them, Daniel?” Wyll Koobitz asked. “You mean Raja and Windrunner, correct?”
“No,” Daniel said.
He turned to Kathra now and with his eyes and face alone asked for permission to extend the conspiracy to four new players, including three male Anndaing.
Females could not use the power. Could they convince the sharks that it was a human thing, as a form of insurance? What lies would Daniel need to spin?
Still, she nodded. He was as comitatus as the other women seated here, including Ife. That blade cut both ways, because he obviously believed strongly in what he was asking, and Kathra did not have all the details.
Daniel reached down now and pulled his outer shirt up and over his head, tossing it onto the table, and then removing the piece of thick cloth he kept over the gem.
It glowed with an inner fire as it was revealed.
The shar
ks all shrank back with cries of surprise that quieted quickly to a dangerous silence. Kathra knew she could escape the room, the station, and the system if they needed to, but at a cost of these as potential allies.
Daniel would not do this recklessly.
“I was fighting with them mentally at that moment,” he said simply. “Distracting them from what Ife and the others were doing. What Joane and Raja were doing. I heard them die.”
There was a long pause.
Gendrah had paled. Raja and Tragee had shrunk in on themselves in interesting ways that must have a story behind them.
Wyll studied Daniel like a predator spying a stupid tuna swimming along.
“What is that thing, Daniel?” he finally asked. “And how did you come to possess it?”
“It is the mind gem of the biggest, most ancient of the Ishtan to have ever lived,” Daniel said. “Urid-Varg killed it and then tried to wipe out the rest of the species so they could not stop him in the future. The six escaped the anti-matter bombs dropped on the surface of their world and swore to follow him forever. They did, only because Kathra destroyed the thing after I killed his body.”
“You claim not to be Urid-Varg,” Wyll said accusingly.
None of the sharks made a motion. The humans, Kathra included, were poised at the edge of violence, however unnecessary it would be here.
“I am not,” Daniel said. “I can never be that powerful, because the gem amplifies native powers, and the Mnapyre were far in advance of humans or Anndaing on that front. Plus, Urid-Varg had inscribed himself into a second gem that contained his mind and memories. This gem contains all the people he rode before me. Those are the ghosts I inherited. The K’bari language and the Ovanii. There are many others.”
“You are Urid-Varg, then,” Gendrah accused.
“No,” Daniel said, holding out a hand to the two closest men. “If you take join hands, I will show you the truth that Kathra and the entire comitatus already know.”
