by Rachel Ford
“Excellent. Good job.”
Focused on preserving his own ship as he was, he almost missed Vaki’s work. But his eyes darted to the screen in time to watch the first missile bore its way into the ship and detonate an explosion just large enough to destroy itself and widen the hole. The second rushed in moments later. Fire ripped through the underbelly of the Night Dragon, and she careened violently off course.
“Helm, reduce speed. Take us alongside the Dragon.”
“Copy.”
“Tactical, target their weapons. Make sure we don’t get knifed in the back lending them a hand.”
“Aye-aye.”
“And,” he flipped on an intership comm, destined for the medbay, “sickbay, prepare for incoming casualties.” His crew had done damned fine work taking her out of commission, but those were still his men and women on the Dragon. He wasn’t going to let them die if he could help it.
Chapter Nineteen
“It’s almost pretty, from up here,” Tig said.
Tal glanced down at the planet below them – an orb of silver-white snow and frozen blue oceans. “Maybe,” he agreed. They’d just broken out of orbit, and the cold was all too familiar for him at the moment. Objectively, it was pretty. But he doubted he’d ever be able to see Zeta as anything but a specter of death.
“Any sign of pursuit?”
“Not a thing. They’re probably still trying to figure out how we got the rover. I doubt they figured out we have a shuttle too.”
Tig grinned. “Taking all the keys was genius. That’s going to cost them hours.”
“And we’ll be long gone by time they figure out what’s happened.”
They sat in silence for a moment, appreciating their impossible victory. Tal still couldn’t believe it. Six hours ago, he’d been in the mines fighting for his life.
And now he was free – as free as an escaped prisoner could be, anyway. He had an imperial ship with a full tank of fuel and an open sky in front of him. His prison grew smaller and smaller behind them, until it was just another speck of light in the eternal night sky.
“Hey,” Tig’s voice interrupted his thoughts. “When we were in the rover, and you stopped back at the prison block…what was that about?”
“I told you: I forgot something.”
“Ah, bullshit. You didn’t have anything, Tal.”
He frowned. “What are you talking about?”
“I spent how many weeks sleeping on a bunk across from yours? You didn’t have anything except the clothes on your body. No stash of rations. No contraband. Nothing. So what’d you really go back for?”
Tal shook his head. “You weren’t a protector before this yourself, were you?” When his friend wasn’t distracted by the question, he sighed. “I went back…well, I went back for Engel.”
Tig flinched. “Engel? What do you mean?”
“I shot him.”
“Oh.” He stared for a moment in surprised silence. “He’s dead, then?”
Tal nodded. “I made sure, Tig.”
“Good.”
“I should have done it on Central.” He shook his head again. “I was the arresting officer. I should have – I should have said he resisted. I should have put a bolt between his eyes then.”
“You followed the law.”
“Yeah. But we both know that’s worth less than the paper it’s printed on.”
Tig glanced up at the bitterness in his tone. “You wouldn’t have been a protector, if you believed that. Would you have?”
“No,” he admitted. “I wouldn’t. That doesn’t mean I’m wrong, though. It just means I was an imbecile.”
They were quiet for a minute more, and then Tig said, “Arresting officer? What did you – well, what did you arrest him for?”
“Same thing.” Somehow, saying the words out loud seemed undoable. Maybe it was the way Tig would flinch or turn away ashamed when the topic arose. Maybe it was the mortification he’d felt – still felt – at the thought of Engel’s dirty paws on his own body earlier. But he couldn’t say it out loud. He couldn’t say “rape.”
“Ah.”
“Murder too. He’s done now, though. He’ll never – well, he’ll never bother anyone again.”
Tig nodded slowly. “Good.”
Consciousness returned slowly for Nikia. Her thoughts were foggy, her head heavy. There was a haze in her brain, and every time she would begin to shake it, it would come back twice as strong.
She rested fitfully, drifting back and forth between consciousness and sleep. A vague kind of terror filled her, but her thoughts were transient and hard to define. She only knew that something – something terrible – had happened, or was happening.
“Nikia, are you awake?” A familiar voice sounded in her ears, cutting through the fog of fear.
She blinked into a brightly lit room, and a set of kindly eyes. “Doctor Kel?”
He smiled at her. “Nik.”
Dr. Kel was her family’s physician. She frowned, trying to remember why she’d been so afraid. “Something happened. How did I get here?”
He reached out a hand to her shoulder as she moved. “Careful, Nik. You’ve had a terrible shock. Another one. I gave you something to help you sleep, but it’s still wearing off.”
She frowned, fighting the laziness of her brain. It felt like spider webs stretching over her thoughts, catching them fast as she tried to make sense of what was going on. “What happened? Where’s Giya? Where’s mother?” Her mother had been there, when she’d last been awake. She remembered her face. Worried. Scared.
Why had Elsa been scared?
“Giya isn’t here. He’s at the palace.”
“The palace.” Her eyes opened wide, and a wave of memories hit her. “Oh my gods. Mer. Mer!”
Her mother was dead. She remembered, now. She remembered the ghostly gray forms. Elsa Aldir had been shot. Luk Aldir had been shot. “Der. Oh gods. Der.” They were both dead.
A monitor started to beep, and Dr. Kel threw an anxious gaze at it. “Nik, listen, I need you to take a deep breath. Your blood pressure is elevated – dangerously elevated.”
“I need to go,” she said, pulling at the medical tubing taped to her. “I need to get back to the palace. Mer. Oh gods, mer. It’s my fault – it’s all my fault.”
Kel put a hand on her shoulder again, and the touch drew her attention almost as much as the tone of his voice. “Listen to me, Nik: your hypertension keeps approaching critical levels. You’re going to lose the fetus at this rate. You may die.
“The only thing you can do now is rest. We’re keeping you hydrated, but you need to stay on bedrest.”
“But my parents-”
“They’re dead, Nik. And dammit, they wouldn’t want you to die too. Neither would Grel.”
She stopped fighting at the mention of her husband’s name, and her eyes welled with tears. “My gods, they’re all dead.”
Kel knelt beside the bed, so that he was face-to-face with her. “But you’re not. And they would all – all – want you to stay alive.”
“What about Giya? What about the palace and Velk? If Velk doesn’t surrender-”
She was about to explain that it wouldn’t matter if she lived past this moment or not – she’d be dead either way. But he interrupted, “Velk is gone, Nik. They took the palace. After you collapsed – the whole thing was broadcast. They stormed the primary palace. They pulled the doors down, and everyone who didn’t surrender…” He shook his head. “Well, they’re dead.”
“And Velk?”
“Giya took him out to the public square, and they held a trial.”
“A trial?” Nikia felt a chill settle in her blood. “What kind of trial?”
Kel shrugged evasively. “A court of the people, he called it.”
“What happened?”
“He was found guilty of murder, of treason, of a slew of charges. And – well, they shot him.”
She said nothing for a moment. She didn’t know what to say
. Velk deserved death, and not only for what he’d done to her parents. He deserved death for what he’d done to so many Tribari. “It was supposed to be a bloodless revolution.”
Kel shook his head. “No revolution is bloodless, Nik. But sometimes – well, sometimes blood needs to be spilled. Now I’m going to give you another sedative, and I want you to sleep.”
“Wait,” she said. “My brother, Diven: what of him?”
A troubled light filled the doctor’s eyes. “Diven is in custody. He was found guilty as well.”
“What are they going to do to him?”
“That will be decided later.”
She pushed herself up again, and moved to get out of bed. “I need to talk to them. They can’t kill him. He’s my brother, Doctor Kel.”
“They’re not going to kill him, Nik.”
“They’re not? How do you know?”
“Because – because they ruled that his fate was yours to decide.”
She blinked. “Mine?”
He nodded. “Yes. He betrayed your parents. And – well, you’ll talk about it with Giya. Know that he’s safe. They’re keeping him well protected.”
“You’re sure, doctor?”
“Very. Now lay back down. Please, Nik.”
Chapter Twenty
Brek flinched as something brushed his face. He wasn’t fully awake, but the sensation of wetness and coldness on his skin drew him from slumber. He blinked into the dim blue glow of the cavern. Then, he started.
“What the-” He almost screamed it out, pulling himself back with a haphazard, panicked jerk. A creature, pale as Theta itself, hovered above him.
Now, as Brek scrambled backwards, it watched him with narrow golden eyes. It was a four-legged animal, he saw, with a silvery white pelt of thick fur. Its head was angular, and its ears pointed. As the creature studied him, the ears moved independently of the head.
A wolf. My gods, it’s a mountain wolf. He’d never seen a mountain wolf, except in drawings and old photographic prints. The species was native to Theta, but believed to have gone extinct hundreds of years ago as the Consortium expanded its mining operations.
Except, staring into those golden eyes, Brek could see that it was clearly not extinct.
The wolf watched him for a minute, cocking his head to the side as if trying in turn to understand what manner of creature Brek was. Then, it loped past him, stopping by the carcass of the cavefish and taking it in its jaws.
“Wait,” the man cried. “Don’t touch that. It’s mine!”
The wolf turned curious eyes at him, Brek’s unfinished meal dangling from its mouth.
“Please,” he pleaded stupidly. “I don’t know if I’ll find anything else. I need that.”
Predictably, the animal paid no mind to his supplications, and in a moment sauntered off in the opposite direction.
“Dammit,” Brek yelled, “you son-of-a-bitch, that’s mine.” He’d eaten his full, as much as he’d been able to choke down. But he’d only just woke, and he could already feel the pangs of hunger gnawing at him. The wolf was following the shore of the lake, growing smaller and more distant by the moment.
Dammit, he repeated, this time in his mind. For all he knew, he might never find another cavefish, or anything else for that matter. That might have been his only meal – disgusting though it was.
Another thought hit him, though, pushing the others aside. Where in hell did that wolf come from?
Surely, it didn’t live in the cave. Its eyes, those small golden eyes, were a far cry from the great, black ones the cavefish sported. The cavefish was adapted to live in darkness, and its eyes reflected the need.
But the wolf’s eyes were as ordinary as his own, like those of a thousand other above-ground species.
Brek glanced in the direction the wolf had gone. It was still visible, a small white blur following the edge of the water. He pushed to his feet, ignoring the throbbing pain in his ankle.
The wolf wasn’t – couldn’t be – subterranean. That meant that it was headed for the surface.
That meant that there was a way out of the caves after all.
“There’s a planet out this way,” Tal said. “Trapper’s Colony. We can stop off there and refuel.”
“Trapper’s Colony,” Tig repeated. “That’s the one the protectors were saying is declaring independence.”
“Yeah. Hopefully they were right. Hopefully, that means they won’t give us shit.”
“Yeah. What kind of planet is it, anyway?”
“Smallish. Not much bigger than one of Central’s moons. Cold, too.”
“Aw hell. Another ice planet?”
“Not like Zeta. People live there, they farm there. It’s just cold. Regular cold.”
“Regular cold?”
“Like winter.”
Tig considered. “After Zeta, it’ll still probably seem like a vacation.”
“Yeah. Anyway, we won’t be staying long. Just long enough to hopefully bum some more fuel.”
“How? We don’t have money.”
“No. But we’ve only got fuel for another day or two at most out here. We’re going to have to hope we can work something out.”
“Well, so far none of your crazy plans have gotten us killed. I’ll trust you on this one.”
“The rover,” Tal reminded him, “was your idea.”
“True. But that wasn’t crazy. That was genius.” Tig added with a grin, “If I don’t say so myself.”
He laughed. “They’re not mutually exclusive.”
“No. So, supposing this works out and you don’t get us killed-”
“Great optimism.”
“Where do we go after that?”
“Hell, I don’t know. There’s a few more settled worlds out there.”
“Settled worlds mean imperial presence.”
“Yeah. On the other hand, the empire has ships in most of the star systems around here. There aren’t many places to hide.”
“No,” Tig agreed. “But there’s some habitable planets that haven’t been colonized yet, right?”
“Yes.”
“I say we head as far as we can get out of here, and find one of them. Set up shop there.”
Tal frowned. “An uninhabited planet?”
“Yeah. Why not?”
“Well…that means, no other people. At all.”
Tig nodded. “I can live with that.”
“I don’t know…and what would we do for food?”
“What our ancestors did: live off the land.”
“I’m no farmer. Not much of a hunter, either.”
“Well, what’s the alternative? Hope we find a colony that won’t turn us over to the protectors?”
Tal considered, then admitted, “Pretty much.”
“Those seem like worse odds than learning to hunt.”
It was a fair point. Still, the idea of such an exile from Tribari-kind filled him with dread. He wasn’t the most sociable of men, but to be stranded on a planet in the far reaches of known space, with only a single person for company? “I don’t know, Tig. I’d rather find a place with a large enough population where we could slip under the radar. Like Tau, maybe. Or Triole. I could program the shuttle to take off after we left, and keep going until it ran out of fuel. We could lay low in one of the cities, blend in.”
His friend nodded slowly. “I guess.”
“We’d have better odds of surviving that way than trying to make it in the wilderness.”
“Yeah, suppose so.” Tig didn’t sound convinced.
“You’re not…wanted on Tau, are you?”
An eyebrow raised on the other man’s face. “Gods. Once a protector, always a protector, I guess. No, Tal, I’m not wanted on Tau.”
He flushed. “Sorry, Tig. Just, I had to ask. You seem pretty hesitant to go there.”
“It’s not Tau in particular.”
“Then…what is it?”
“Just…” Tig frowned. “I don’t want to get caught. They ca
tch us, they’re not going to kill us. They’re going to take us back. And if you think it was bad the first time…” He shook his head. “We did what no one else has. We got off-planet. We outwitted them, stole a rover and a ship right under their noses. We killed one of their prisoners, and they killed one of their own protectors trying to stop us. They’re not going to forget that.”
“Or forgive it,” he agreed.
“Exactly.”
“I still think it’s our best shot, Tig.”
The other man nodded slowly. “Alright. Then, let’s do it.”
Chapter Twenty-One
“Captain Le is demanding to speak to you again, sir,” Ensign Vor said, managing to keep most of the frustration out of his tone.
Elgin, on the other hand, made no such efforts. Le was not adapting well to being in custody. He didn’t seem to consider that the alternative was being left on a derelict ship. “Mothers of the gods. Tell him I’m going to disable the comms in the brig if he doesn’t quit it.”
“Copy that, Captain.” The ensign smiled discreetly, relaying the message.
For the first time since he’d taken Le onboard, Elgin almost wished he could hear the other man – just to hear his irate response. To judge from Vor’s smirk, it would have been worth listening in on.
“Lieutenant Dagir’s patrol is returning, sir,” Kerel informed them.
“Copy. Open a line to the lieutenant, Vor.”
“Yessir. Line open.”
“Dagir here,” a voice filled the bridge.
“Morning, Lieutenant. How’s our beautiful home world?”
Dagir had been tasked with a flyover of the city. Since destroying the Night Dragon the day before, they’d had no official communiques from Central. Velk had locked down interplanetary broadcasts, leaving the fleet entirely out of the loop.
He was doing his best to conceal it, but the silence was worrying Elgin. At this point, he would have preferred Admiral Lenksha’s threats or Supreme Leader Velk’s fury to the radio silence.
“I’ll be onboard in five, sir. I’ll give you my report in your ready room.”
