by Rachel Ford
What that would mean for this conversation – whether his eagerness would manifest as gratitude to central command’s orders, or loyalty to the people – he wasn’t about to speculate. He’d learned his lesson already on that score with Dagir. “Captain Le,” he greeted. “What can I do for you?”
“You can surrender, sir.”
Well, so much for that. “I’m sorry, what?”
“Drake Elgin, former Captain of the TS-Supernova, I’m ordering you to surrender yourself to my custody immediately.”
Elgin laughed. No one called him Drake. Hell, not even his parents called him that. He’d always been ‘D’ to them. He brushed the thought aside. It was an odd memory to have in mind at a time like this. “I’m sorry, Jai. But that’s not going to happen.”
The junior officer bristled at the use of his proper name. “I’ve been empowered by Admiral Lenksha and Supreme Leader Velk to-”
“You’re following the orders of men who have directly violated the constitution you swore to uphold,” Elgin interrupted. “I really don’t give a damn what authorizations they’ve given you. You’ve chosen to betray your oath of service, Captain.”
Jai Le’s cheeks burned. “Crew of the Supernova,” he snapped, “you have fifteen minutes to turn this traitor over, or you will all be targeted for destruction. Surrender him, and no charges of complicity will be brought. I expect you to remember your own oaths of service.”
The screen went dark. A hush settled on the bridge. “Well,” Elgin said in a minute, “what a prat.”
A few nervous chuckles met his pronouncement.
“Tactical, I want defense grids online. Weapons too. Helm, I want you ready to move this ship the instant Night Dragon powers her weapons. Understand?”
“Yessir.”
“Sir?” Lt. Fal asked.
“Yes?”
“Are we…are we really going to target our own ships?”
Elgin considered his response for a moment. “I won’t fire first, Lieutenant. But I won’t let this crew die, either. I won’t let the people of Central die.”
“No sir. Of course not.”
“But, I will give all of you the chance, now, to disembark. You don’t have to explain yourself. You don’t have to account for your reasons. I know you’ve all got them – kids, parents, family. Hell, a pet dog. Whatever your reason is, if you don’t want to stay, you don’t have to.
“Because, the truth is, I don’t know how many ships Le’s got. It might be just the Dragon. It might be the whole damned fleet.”
He cast a glance around the bridge. “There’s shuttles in the bay. I’m going to my ready room. I’ll give you five minutes to be off the ship – anyone who wants to go. If you’re still here when I get back, well, then we get to work. Clear?”
“Yessir.”
“Good. Vor, send the order ship-wide. Make sure everyone has a chance to get off, if that’s what they want.”
“Aye-aye.”
Chapter Ten
“So what’s the plan?” Tig asked, shrugging the protector’s great coat over his slim shoulders.
Plan was a generous word for it. “I was thinking I’d carry him to the door, buzz in, grab some supplies, and head out.”
“Head out where?”
“Umm…out of camp. Toward the mountains north of here.”
Tig shivered. “North? It’s not cold enough for you?”
It was a forced levity. His friend’s manner had been strained since their earlier words. But Tal grinned along. “It is. But there’s just tundra south. Nowhere to hole up. Nowhere to hide. Nothing but wolves out there. In the mountains, there’ll be game and maybe shelter.”
His companion nodded slowly. “Alright. North it is, I guess.”
“We’ll need another gun for you. As much food and water as we can grab without getting caught.”
“Tal, I’ve got an idea.”
He glanced up from the desk drawer he was rummaging through. “Oh?”
“I’ve been thinking about it for a while. What I’d do, if I escaped.”
“You have?” As far as Tal knew, Tig was dead set against the idea of running.
He nodded. “Yeah. Why do people die out there?”
“Uh…the cold?”
“Yeah, but it’s cold here too. It’s cold in the mines. What’s the difference?”
“Shelter?”
“Exactly. And when the protectors venture out, they don’t do it on foot. Because on foot, it’s suicide.”
Tal nodded slowly. “Are you thinking…steal a rover?”
Tig grinned. “I thought it was crazy, because we’d need someone to palm us in.” He gestured at Dre Baltir’s prostrate form. “But you took care of that piece.”
Tal grinned again too. “That’s genius, Tig. But it’ll be risky – they’re going to have another guard there, at least.”
“I know. But you’ve got a gun now. And you know how to use it, which is better than I can do. That shifts the odds in our favor, doesn’t it?”
“You’re damned right it does.”
“I’d rather take my chances against another guard than out there without a rover.”
Tal nodded. “Me too.”
“So are we still going to the barracks?”
He considered for a moment. “I don’t know. It seems like added risk. The garage will have some supplies. We could grab them. Take the guards ’ guns and ammo.”
“No sense breaking into two buildings,” Tig agreed. “Double the risk, for the same payoff.”
“Alright. Then, looks like this is everything I can find here. You ready?”
“As I’ll ever be.”
“Okay. Then I’ll get this son-of-a-bitch. You get the door.”
“Roger that, Captain,” Tig declared airily – as if they weren’t, both of them, on the run from a monster; as if they weren’t about to forge into the frozen hellscape of the world beyond; as if they weren’t about to gamble their lives on the craziest yet most brilliant plan he’d ever heard.
Tal hoisted the unconscious protector to his shoulders, and Tig got the door. A blast of frigid air slammed into the pair of them, and both men shivered visibly. “Let’s go.”
His friend took the lead, cutting a path through the snow and serving as a kind of wind block. Of the pair of them, Tal was the strongest, so carrying the unconscious man had fallen to him. Since Tig would be taking point and absorbing the full fury of the storm, he’d got the protector’s coat.
They moved as quickly as the conditions and their burden would allow. The garage was past the barracks, on the far end of the camp. Even behind Tig, his teeth were chattering before they’d crossed half the distance.
He thought, now, of what a fool he’d been to think he could make it out here without some kind of transportation.
In a sense, the storm was something of a blessing. Without it, they would never have gone undetected as long as they had. It would also cover their tracks as they went, hiding the rover’s path from sight.
He gritted his teeth, peering into the veritable wall of white in front of him. He could make out nothing. They’d passed the barracks already, and for all the he could see, there was nothing left but snow and wind. He hoped Tig’s sense of direction was reliable, because, at the moment, his was not.
Brek had hobbled along a stretch of uneven passage, taking breaks now and then, until he found himself in another cavern. This, though, was not like the ones he’d reached before.
He lifted a hand to shield his eyes. Some hundred or so meters from him was a great, glowing body of blue. His head hurt at the sight. So long had he been in the dark that such a source of illumination made him cringe.
Slowly but surely, he was able to turn his eyes toward it, first by squinting and finally without reservation.
It was huge, stretching out deep into the darkness: a great, placid plane of glowing blue. He stared in stupefaction. The color was similar to the glowworms overhead, but more brilliant and – mor
e notably – solid. This was no gathering of larvae, each making their own slow way from one point to another. This was a stretch of luminescent blue, as far as the eye could see.
Still, from his current vantage, that was about all that Brek could ascertain.
He passed a dry tongue over his lips. Something about the sight frightened him. It was so foreign, so unlike anything he’d ever seen before, like melted wax glowing iridescent, seeming one moment darker than the next, then lighter. It was positively eerie.
And yet – so beautiful. There was an aura around it, like a kind of halo, casting the walls of the cavern in light.
What was this wonder? Was he in hell after all, wandering toward a pit of lost souls, lured on to his own doom? Had he found the gates to paradise, that soft light a promise of the world beyond that he had but to reach out and join? Or was it some delusion brought on by cold and starvation, some madness in his final hours of life?
He had to know.
He pushed forward, ignoring the throbbing in his ankle. Meter by meter, the distance fell away. The glow got brighter, bigger.
There were two other changes as well, though at first each was subtle. The further into the chamber Brek pushed, the higher the temperature rose. He barely noticed it until he’d covered half the distance. A kind of tingling began in his digits and across the surface of his skin. He thought, at first, he was imagining it, but he’d been so long without heat that the sensation of pin prickles as he warmed was unmistakable.
The second was an odor like the stink given off by phigon eggs left out too long, a kind of pungent, sulfuric smell. It, too, grew worse as he neared. What in the hell?
The closer he got, the stranger that shimmering blue got. It was not a solid, unmoving surface as he’d first believed. It rippled and undulated in a mesmerizing fashion.
When a form, pale and long, leaped up, Brek lost his footing in sheer surprise. Gasping, he jumped backward, and landed in a painful heap. A fresh wave of hurt swarmed his thoughts, but a more pressing realization took command of his senses. My gods. It’s water.
It was indeed water, and the thing he’d seen – that grotesque, pale body – some manner of fish or eel. He couldn’t be sure which. He’d seen a glimpse of fins and a long, colorless form, but little else. It was the sound it made as it disappeared, though, that really caught his attention.
It was a sound he hadn’t heard in far too many days: the sound of water, splashing freely. This strange, glowing mass was an underground lake. He’d found water.
And in that water was some kind of animal – something he could eat. For the first time in days, Brek Trigan felt hope swell in his chest.
He pushed forward heedless of the pain, forcing himself on to the edge of that lake. When he reached it, he stretched out cupped hand to scoop up water to drink.
But he froze, his palms inches from the water. This water was the source of the heat he’d felt earlier. Warmth was radiating off the lake, intense against his still chilled fingers.
Carefully, gingerly, he reached down to the water. His hand hovered right above the surface, and he held it there for a moment, letting his skin adjust to the warmth.
After a space, he stuck a finger into the pool. Hissing out loud, he retracted it as quickly. It felt like fire on his flesh.
But, then, the feeling passed, and he realized that it wasn’t scalding. He was reacting to the starkness of the different temperatures between himself and the water, and nothing more sinister.
He reached in again, this time dipping his entire hand in. His senses tingled and flamed. Warmth shot up his arm, and he shivered violently at the sensation. He’d almost forgotten what it felt like to be warm.
Barely remembering to pull off his boots first, Brek waded into the water, immersing himself in its heat. Like jumping into the lake clothed, removing the shoe from his swollen ankle might have been a mistake, he thought too late. But it was done, and no sooner than had it been done was his attention focused on an entirely different front.
A feeling, like a thousand pin pricks across the surface of his body, hit him. He reeled at the sheer force of it, and his senses swam. Then, slowly, it eased. The chill receded bit by bit.
Oddly enough, the warmer Brek got, the more he seemed to shake with cold. It was as if being reintroduced to heat forced his body to remember just how cold it actually was.
Chapter Eleven
Elgin had waited the promised five minutes, and now he was stepping back onto the bridge. He half expected to see it deserted, or to find an armed escort waiting for him, prepared to take him into custody.
He breathed a sigh of relief as he saw the bridge crew where he’d left them. He paused, taking the thought back. Lt. Fal was gone, and in his place stood a young woman, an ensign from second shift. Kerel, he remembered. Ensign Kerel.
“Captain on deck,” Vor called.
“Sir,” Kerel said, rising to her feet and offering a brisk salute. “Ensign Kerel, reporting for duty.”
“At ease, Ensign. And – thank you. All of you, for staying.”
Grins broke out across the deck. “Wouldn’t miss it for all the silver on Central, sir,” Vor said.
Despite the situation, Elgin smiled. If they lived through this and didn’t end up sentenced to death or life in the penal colonies, there’d be some promotions in order after today. His smile faded. As he reflected on it, it was a grimmer thought than he’d originally intended.
Earlier, he hadn’t picked a side. Now, Velk and Lenksha had left him with little choice. For his own sake, for the sake of his officers and crewmen, he hoped the revolutionaries won. If they didn’t…well, there was going to be hell to pay.
If we even survive the next few minutes, that is. His inner musings were doing him no favors at the moment, so he pushed them aside. “Alright,” he said aloud, “tactical, status?”
“All weapons systems primed, sir. Deflectors at maximum strength. We are ready.”
He nodded. “Good. And the fleet? What’s their status?”
“Most of the ships are still acknowledging our hails, sir. The Dreadnaught and Seven have gone silent. Red Whale is pulling into position alongside the Night Dragon. Looks like she’ll be backing the Dragon up.”
“So all we know for sure is we’re two to one so far.”
“Yessir.”
“Possibly four to one.”
“Yessir.”
He forced an easy air. “Well, hope you’re all ready for a hell of a good fight. Looks like we’re about to get one.”
Lt. Vaki at tactical grinned. “It’s what we signed up for, isn’t it, sir?”
“Damned right. Alright, tactical, I want weapons lock on the Dragon’s engines and weapons grid. The Whale too. This old bird can take a beating, more than anything those two can dish out, but only for so long. We need to disable them sooner rather than later.”
“Roger that.”
“And I want secondary locks on the Dreadnaught and Seven, just in case they make the wrong choice once the torpedoes start flying.”
“Already done, sir.”
“Good.”
“And I’ve got a predictive scan going on the rest of the fleet, to anticipate aggressive action.”
“I’m also monitoring interfleet comms, sir,” Vor put in. “So far, other than a fleetwide broadcast from the Dragon demanding they back Le up, there’s been no chatter between the ships.”
“Well hell, this crew’s so damned efficient,” he said, “you don’t even need a captain. If we live through this, drinks are on me.”
The promise of drinks more than the compliment drew grins from his officers. There was a nervous energy on the bridge that was palpable, but it had taken on an edge of excitement, of anticipation even. He was glad of that.
This was a hell of a thing he was asking them to do. Now was not the time to have them questioning the morality of firing on other Tribari ships, on their fellow officers. If they were going to survive this, they needed to focus
on survival; not ethics.
That could come later.
“Sir,” Vor called, “we’re getting another signal from the Night Dragon.”
“Put it through.”
Captain Le’s face filled the viewscreen. It was smugger and more controlled than earlier. Something about the expression rankled Elgin, and he sat back in his chair and smiled calmly at the disembodied head before him. “Captain Le, what an unexpected pleasure. Have you decided to honor your oath of service after all? I’m ready to accept your surrender.”
Le’s eyes flashed, but he maintained his composure. “Amusing, Elgin. I am giving you the opportunity to spare your crew. I see some of them have fled already. I have no desire to kill good officers. And I think you are not so vain as to sacrifice the flagship of the Tribari fleet, and all her crew, for your own ego.”
“True enough,” Elgin nodded. “Which is why, if you insist on a fight, I will win it, Captain.”
Le smiled. “You’re four ships to one, Drake. And once the rest of the fleet sees how badly, how decisively, you’re losing, it’ll be one to all of us.”
Well hell. So the Dreadnaught and Seven picked a side, then. Aloud, he said, “You should have more faith in your people than that, Le. Not everyone’s willing to turn their back on their duty.”
Now, Le laughed. “Fine words from a traitor. You’ve got three minutes, Elgin. Three minutes before the blood of everyone on that ship is on your hands.”
The screen went dark, and Elgin frowned. “Interesting. Vor, did you pick up any noise from the Dragon while Le was on the line?”
The ensign glanced at his console, and his eyes widened. “Actually, sir, yes. I didn’t see it at first because…well, I was watching the screen.”
“What’d it say?”
“It’s encrypted. It’ll take a few minutes to decipher.”
“We don’t have a few minutes.”
“No sir. I’m sorry, I don’t think I’ll be able to break it in time. But I can see that it was sent to the Red Whale.”
Elgin grinned. “That tells me what I need, Ensign.”
“It does?”
