“Jetta, get up here!”
But she knew she couldn’t. If she didn’t get the engine started they were all as good as dead.
Think, she told herself. Remember the basic principles.
She was four again, with her brother and sister in the mining ship, working on the secondary engine on one of the bigger drills. It lay on the deck in pieces, like an intricate puzzle with an infinite number of parts. Someone had used lysturil to lubricate the spindles, and the entire fusion core had eroded. Now they were left struggling to refit the engine before their next shift—a purposely impossible assignment that would give Yahmen a convenient excuse to punish them later.
“We can do this,” Jetta remembered her sister saying. “We just have to divide this into working sections. Jahx, take the sub-processor. Jetta, you take the combustion network. I’ll take the oxidizer and cooling control units.”
Jetta had struggled with her assignment, not having grafted enough knowledge of combustion networks to make sense of the injectors and propellant mixers.
Jaeia scooted over beside her and showed her the different support rings. “Don’t look at all the pieces. Just think of the first few steps. Then after that, the next few. Don’t think about the end. Just see look at where you are. It will all come together—promise.”
“Just look at where I am,” Jetta said. She flipped over the hydrogen cells and made a few more connections. It was a shoddy job but all she could think to do given the available parts.
“Try it now!”
Sputtering. Straining. Something misfired. A puff of noxious gas burped out of the exhaust as Triel revved the motor. Jetta crawled out from underneath the belly of the ship and away from the growing black cloud, coughing and sneezing as the engine struggled to fire.
“Turn it off! Turn it off!” Jetta shouted, but Triel couldn’t hear her above the grating of the engine.
Something flitted in and out of the mist to her left. Several purple vines crept out from around a statue and exposed their pink buccal linings.
“Jetta!” Triel screamed, popping her head out of the hatch. The engine turned over. Overjoyed, Jetta ran to the ship and climbed aboard. As she slid into the cockpit she saw what Triel had been trying to tell her.
“Oh my Gods...”
A huge purple shoot the width of a small building had curled over the edge of the courtyard to hover above their ship. Jetta reversed the polarities on the impulse engines and spun them away just as the vine came crashing down on their docking site, slamming into the roof of the Temple and taking out the courtyard.
“I can’t see!” Jetta said, wiping away the soot on the visor shield with her sleeve. The laser wipers cleared only half the grime on the outside as she fought to orient the ship.
Another massive purple vine came coiling toward them. Jetta thrust the engines into second gear, and they narrowly averted another attack.
“Triel!” Jetta shouted. “Are the jumpdrives online yet?”
“You can’t jump here!”
“Why not?” Jetta asked as the ship began to lose altitude. Two alarm lights on the dashboard warned of a combustion overload.
“Besides the fact that you’d be destroying an important piece of Prodgy history, this clearly isn’t a normal juncture of space-time!” Triel said, trying to strap herself in as Jetta banked hard right.
A massive roar shook the freighter. Jetta couldn’t believe her eyes. The tree base rose out of the mist and completely encapsulated the Temple of Exxuthus.
Jetta’s mouth dropped open as teeth and salivary glands exposed themselves at the tree’s core. “Hei Meitka!”
Jetta looked at her readings. Primary thrusters were offline, and the jumpdrive was still in precycle. Jetta hesitated over the navigational input as she dodged another vine. Triel was right. This was arguably a place that was already experiencing space-time disturbances, and creating a rift might have unintended consequences. There had to be another way.
Another vine whipped past them, clipping the wing of the ship and sending them spinning out of control.
“Hold on!” Jetta said. It felt like her stomach was rising up her throat until she finally brought the ship under control. Triel and the wolves were laid out in the back of the cab, dizzy and disoriented from the ride.
Jetta swallowed hard and tried to boost the gravitational compensators to stabilize the ship. Then she had an idea.
“Stupid launnie,” the captain sneered at her as he captured two of her last three game pieces. “Always putting your battleship in my targeting sights.”
Jetta was aboard the Dominion ships, playing one of the Fleet officers in another of the endless rounds of the Endgame. This scenario was rigged so that her ship engines had all failed, and she was completely exposed to her opponent’s front line. She had already grafted the Sumarese captain’s knowledge, but it was no help. He was a good commander, and he was correct in his assessment that she was just waiting to be slaughtered.
Then she thought of something that neither the captain nor her predecessors had. A tactic she synthesized from the bits and pieces of knowledge that thousands of Sentients had given her over the course of her short life. She smiled.
She ordered her last remaining ships to fly belly up toward the enemy line.
“What in the name of Sukathra are you doing?” he said, his many eyes jumping out of his head at the unexpected move.
Fortunately her last battleship was Martcion class, meaning that she had doubled the normal reserves of power that her other ships carried; it was like sitting on a giant atomic bomb.
She provoked him, hoping that he would fall for her trick. “I will accept your surrender, Captain Daylis. Accept now or lose your entire Fleet.”
The captain bared his teeth and stabbed his console. “All ships, fire at my mark.”
He flashed his most arrogant smile, speaking every word with a superior air: “Three... two... one... mark.”
The entire enemy fleet had lined up to fire at her ship. This would be better than she had hoped. When the captain gave the command to fire, she released the internal gravitational compensators, which she had set in a redundant feedback, flushing her ship at million parts per nanosecond. When the enemy missiles hit the wall of reversed gravity, they rebounded in the opposite direction.
She never forgot the look on the defeated captain’s face as his ships vanished from the game field.
“Let’s hope that would really work,” Jetta said as she set the gravitational compensators in a redundant feedback. The ship rattled as the compensators overheated.
“What are you doing?” Triel asked, crawling back into the nav seat. A nasty bruise was forming on her cheekbone.
Two more vines looped toward them. Jetta put her arm across Triel. “Hold on!”
She reversed the compensators. In the simulation the missiles launched by the enemy fleet had been repelled at the firing vessels, but in this instance their freight cruiser was propelled backward by the force of the attacking vines.
Jetta wrestled with the controls to right their ship as they flipped over on their broadside and hurtled through the sky. The needles on the altimeter spun around and around while Jetta tried to reboot the thrusters and level out their ship.
“Precycle complete!” she heard Triel shout.
She looked out of the window to see the toothy mountaintops they had crossed to escape the Lockheads rising up to meet them. There was no way they would survive the crash.
“Jetta!”
Jetta typed in the first destination that came to mind. She didn’t know why she chose such a dingy, remote planet, but it came through her fingertips before she had time to second-guess her choice.
She looked out the window as she hit the punch. It was too late. She braced for impact as the nose of the ship collided with the snow-capped peak of the unforgiving mountaintop.
OUT OF THE NOWHERE, Jaeia felt like someone had knocked the wind from her lungs and swept her legs out from unde
r her. She fell to her knees, gripping the railing of the lift as she tried to catch her breath.
“Should I call a medical team?” the admiral asked, slowing the lift.
“No,” Jaeia said, collecting herself. “I’m fine. Just haven’t been eating enough lately.”
It was a lie, and the admiral knew it. But she didn’t see how she could possibly get him to understand the truth.
“Jetta?” the admiral inquired, helping her up.
Jaeia decided to give him a chance. “She blocked me out a while ago, but that doesn’t mean I can’t feel her when something big happens. She’s in trouble.”
“What kind of trouble?”
Jaeia shrugged. “I don’t know. She’s not sharing.”
“Can you go through with the meeting?” the admiral asked as he opened the lift gate.
Jaeia straightened out her uniform and rewrapped her hair in a bun. “I have no choice.”
They filed in behind the other few senior officers left. When Jaeia took her seat at the conference table she caught sight of her reflection in the tabletop. She pulled down the lower lids of her eyes to make sure it was really her. She knew the Motti modifications were making her sicker, but she never expected her appearance to alter so drastically over such a short period. Her eyes looked bleary and aged, and her skin sagged like she had aged thirty years in a matter of weeks.
Maybe I just need to rest.
No, she quickly corrected herself. It wasn’t just the stress of their situation. It was more than that, and it showed in her reflection.
Jaeia turned away from her thoughts to see Wren taking the podium. His uniform was unbuttoned and his eyes were ringed with shadows. She wasn’t sure who looked worse.
“This is it.” That was all he said before clicking on the holographic projector in the center of the room. The lights dimmed as the picture of the central news anchor for Trigos fanned out into three dimensions.
“Tonight on Channel 97, we are following up on today’s disturbing broadcast from President Victor Paulstine of the Galactic Republic. His startling accusations against the Kyron twins and the role of the Alliance in keeping their psychological instability out of the public eye has divided the General Assembly.”
The news team played a shortened version of the tape Victor had shown them. Jaeia looked around the room. The carefully set faces of the other officers could not hide their dwindling hope.
“Public support for the Starways Alliance took a two-thousand-point drop this evening. Forecasters predict the collapse of—”
But Wren clicked off the feed. The projector slid back down into its pod. “It’s over. Victor won.”
“He said he would give us his demands—” Jaeia said.
Wren kept his head down. “It’s over. We are finished. The General Assembly is pulling out all the stops. What we do from here on out is no longer sanctioned by our government.”
“What government?” Msiasto Mo exclaimed. “Victor dissolved that, too!”
Shouting and accusations flew across the table. Jaeia sagged in her chair, bewildered and defeated, unable to engage in any form of argument or diplomacy.
The admiral put a hand on her shoulder. “Don’t give up. Not now. Please.”
He stood up and took the podium from Wren. When the others wouldn’t settle, he slammed his fist against the speakers with a thunderous boom that shocked the audience into silence.
“As many of you already know, I’ve been in close contact with the Liberalist Pancar of Nagoorian for the last several years. Though he is no favorite in the courts or in the eyes of our former Minister Razar, he has been slowly building a following for the last decade. We may no longer hold the favor of the General Assembly, and Victor may now have the funding and the following of a greater army—but we have something more. We have the truth. When the people hear the truth, Victor’s hold on the Starways will crumble.”
“What truth?” Commander Rook asked over the hush of the room.
The admiral looked over at the Minister. Wren looked like a man out of options.
“We will tell the worlds the real story of the Kyron triplets. And we will tell them about Kurt Stein.”
The room filled with excited chatter. Jaeia spoke up. “But we don’t even know if he’s alive.”
“Yes, but the idea of him will be enough to quell Victor’s fear-mongering. It will give the people hope that we can rebuild our worlds, and that we don’t have to live under his umbrella of protection to defeat the Deadwalkers.”
“But even if we found Kurt Stein, it wouldn’t be enough to stop the Deadwalkers. Victor still has that advantage,” Wren pointed out.
“Yes, but it will give us time; it will be enough of a diversion for us to regroup with Pancar’s army and come up with a way to infiltrate Li’s army and learn of their countermeasures.”
“Collaborate with that Liberalist?” Msiasto Mo said. “As the chief of military intelligence, I can hardly advise this.”
Admiral Unipoesa held up his hands. “I understand your reservations, but we are running out of options. The only reason I returned to Alliance grounds is because I believe in universal freedom and a future without fear. I would not have risked refreezing or imprisonment if I didn’t have my convictions about the core values and the integrity of the Starways Alliance.”
Jaeia grappled with an old, nameless feeling that pressed against her sternum. She remembered when the admiral had first convinced her to challenge Li and then face Jahx. She remembered the shadowed pain behind his words as he asked her to make the choice that would ultimately end her brother.
Then she saw the broken figure of Tarsha Leone hunched over the Endgame console and the jackal sneering back at her. She heard the admiral’s words—I loved her from the very beginning—and saw him pick up the gun and kill Urusous Li’s only love in cold blood.
Jaeia rose from her seat. “I stand by you, Admiral.”
Nobody said a word. Jaeia didn’t break the admiral’s gaze. She thought she saw him smile.
“I also stand by you, Admiral,” Severn Mallok said.
“I, too.”
Others joined in steadily until only one remained. Gaeshin Wren walked up to the podium. There was too much turbulence in his emotions for Jaeia to determine what he would do next. She braced herself against the edge of the conference table as Wren got in the admiral’s face.
“For the Alliance,” he whispered. “I too stand by you, Admiral.”
It was decided that the admiral should deliver the message to the Starways. He was an old war hero of the Raging Front and the best-liked figurehead in the Fleet, but he would also be the most likely to goad Li into action. After the content of the message was decided, the group disbanded to enact the plan’s individual components.
Dr. DeAnders stopped Jaeia as she exited. “I wanted to wait for a better time to tell you this, Jaeia, but there really hasn’t been a good opportunity.”
Jaeia leaned against the door frame and closed her eyes. “Jahx.”
“Yes.”
“How long?”
DeAnders shook his head and removed his glasses. “I don’t know. A few days. A week or more if we’re lucky. But it’s inevitable. The Grand Oblin’s cellular decay is steadily increasing despite every measure we take. He’s dying.”
Jaeia refused to cry. She pressed her knuckles into the metal door frame and reflexively thought of her sister. “Thank you for telling me. I’ll stop by later this evening.”
“Of course. Let me know if there’s anything else I can do to help you.”
Jaeia didn’t realize what she was doing as she programmed the lift to take her to the security and interrogation wing; all she knew was that she had to see the Spinner named Aesis again.
Jaeia let herself slide down to sit on the lift floor as she cruised down the halls. “Jetta,” she whispered, the tears rolling down her cheeks freely. “You have to come back.”
Chapter VI
Jetta! she heard s
omeone cry. The voice was somewhere overhead, but very far away.
She found herself stuck in the vertical air duct joint again. Jaeia had told her to take the tube of engine grease with her in case she got stuck in the c-juncture, but she had left the apartment in a hurry that night. Yahmen had beaten them all pretty badly and there wasn’t time to nurse any bumps and bruises at home.
Her headlamp sputtered on the last few ounces of juice as she wiggled around the sharp turn, scraping her sides. They had marked their routes with little hash marks in case their lamps failed, but the last thing she wanted to do was be stuck in the dark. On a place like Fiorah, always suffused by light, the dark became that much more terrifying. That’s when she was alone with her thoughts. That’s when nightmares became real.
“Jetta!” the voice called again.
The headlamp petered out and darkness prevailed. Jetta swept her hand along the walls, tracing her way back home by the feel of the grooves. Duct rats scuffled in a nearby joint, and she quickened her pace. Not long ago she had found a dead alley cat that had gotten stuck in one of the upper airways. Once she cleared the carcass she could see that its backside had been picked to the bone. Its head and neck, still untouched by the rats, was postured in sheer panic, as if it had been eaten alive.
A soft light glowed up ahead. A figure hovered over the opening. The silhouette was larger than a child, but smaller than either Galm or Yahmen.
(Jetta,) the figure cried, (you have to come back.)
Tiny whiskers tickled her feet. Something furry brushed her toes.
(Climb faster—)
(You have to come back—!)
(Hurry—)
Teeth bit into pink skin—
“Jetta!”
She awoke to the crack of thunder and someone shaking her shoulders. When her eyes converged on the figure overhead, she couldn’t believe who she saw.
“Triel?”
“We’ve got to get out of here!” Triel shouted above the rage of the storm. “It’s getting worse!”
Jetta held her aching side as she looked around the ship, trying to assess their situation. Their collision with the peak had horribly buckled the forward cabin, but despite the heavy damage the freight cruiser had sustained during their jump off of Algar, it had somehow landed safely. If the cockpit seats hadn’t broken off their pedestal on impact, neither of them would have survived. Jetta’s lips twisted in a half-smile at the irony of the poor, antiquated design of the freight cruiser actually saving their lives.
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