Path of the Outcast

by Gav Thorpe

  ‘We need to speak,’ said Aradryan. ‘In private.’

  ‘Now is not the time, Aradryan.’ Maensith’s tone was stern rather than cruel. She shook her head softly. ‘You are in no state for any conversation, and we are about to embark on an attack.’

  ‘You look like a corpse,’ remarked another of the officers, Sayian.

  Picking up a silver plate from one of the tables, Aradryan looked at himself. His eyes were shrunken in dark sockets, all life leached from them to leave them bloodshot and red-rimmed. His skin was like creased and cracked parchment, flaking away as he lifted a finger tip to prod at his stiff flesh. His fingernail was half-chewed and bloody, and his knuckles prominent and rubbed raw. His hair sat in a tangled mess upon his head, the natural black colour coming through, the white ends still showing artificial pigment.

  He felt as bad as he looked. Aradryan’s spine ached as though the bones had fused together from so much time spent lying down. His breath wheezed in and out of his dry mouth and down a raw throat into shrivelled lungs. His spirit stone was a grey oval on his chest, with the barest flicker of light. Every joint flared with pain as he stooped to place the plate back where he had lifted it from, the dish falling onto the tabletop with a clatter from his numb fingers.

  ‘An attack? Where?’ He asked, turning his bleary look on to Maensith. The words were little more than a wisp of breath from shrivelled lips.

  ‘It is none of your concern,’ said Taelisieth, shoving Aradryan. The former steersman had no strength to resist and tottered awkwardly backwards for half a dozen steps. ‘You do not belong here.’

  ‘I have to go back to Alaitoc,’ said Aradryan, clumsily dodging Taelisieth’s next thrust, pain flaring through the muscles of his legs and back. ‘Please, a moment of your time is all I ask.’

  ‘When the raid is finished,’ said Maensith. ‘Whatever you have to say can wait until then.’

  Dizziness struck Aradryan and he staggered to his left, almost colliding with Taelisieth. The officer struck Aradryan in the chest with an elbow, sending him sprawling onto a couch. Aradryan lay there, only half aware of what was going on. Thirianna’s warning whispered in his ears.

  ‘They are coming to kill us. We will all burn.’

  ‘Leave him for the moment,’ he heard Maensith say. The looming shadow of Taelisieth withdrew. Aradryan lay still, breathing quickly. He dimly heard the conversation continuing, but could not make any sense of it.

  A name struck him, heard amongst talk of strategy and manoeuvres: Nathai-athil. It was a star system not far from where he had lost the Fae Taeruth. Through the fugue of his exhaustion, he recalled that it was a dead system, of no interest at all.

  ‘Why Nathai-athil?’ he asked, pushing himself upright. ‘There is nothing there.’

  ‘It is a new convoy mustering point,’ said Maensith, waving for Taelisieth to silence his protest.

  Aradryan absorbed this without comment, slumping to one side, head pounding. The conversation continued around him. Something nagged at him, trying to pierce his thoughts through the constant whispering that threatened doom and fire. There was something about Nathai-athil that unsettled him.

  ‘There is nothing there,’ he said, straightening once more.

  ‘You are babbling, cretinous wretch,’ said Taelisieth. ‘Please, Maensith, let me eject this wreck.’

  ‘Wait a moment,’ said Aradryan, fending away Taelisieth’s grasping arm, focus returning. ‘How did you learn of this place?’

  ‘We captured a fast freighter moving out of Daethronin three cycles ago,’ said Maensith, again waving for Taelisieth to halt. ‘Its systems showed a rendezvous at Nathai-athil. Seven ships, poorly escorted.’

  ‘Nathai-athil is a terrible mustering point,’ said Aradryan. ‘It is nothing but dust clouds, gas and asteroid fields. There are no navigation markers or landmarks. The humans will find it difficult to gather there.’

  ‘But it is an ideal place to hide if you do not want to be caught,’ said Maensith. ‘You do not know this, but we have continued to reap great success in your absence. The humans will try anything to avoid or catch us.’

  ‘Anything?’ said Aradryan. ‘Would they sacrifice a ship for that?’

  ‘An ideal place to hide...’ muttered Taelisieth. He looked with narrowed eyes at Aradryan, but some of the aggression had gone, replaced with curiosity. ‘You think we are being lured into an ambush?’

  Aradryan shrugged. The effort of staying coherent amidst the after-images and echoes of the long dreaming was becoming more and more taxing.

  ‘We cannot simply turn away,’ said Maensith, her gaze moving across her officers. ‘If it is not a trap, we waste a great opportunity.’

  There were no replies from the others. Maensith shook her head in irritation, darting an angry glance at Aradryan.

  ‘A dream- and drug-addled fool, you are, and paranoid too,’ she said. ‘A doom-monger no less.’

  ‘Yet we should act with caution,’ said Taelisieth. ‘Send the Kaeden Durith to investigate first.’

  ‘And risk warning the flotilla and escorts of attack?’ Maensith was scornful. ‘They would scatter into the clouds and be lost.’

  ‘We do not have to separate the fleet,’ said Taelisieth. ‘Just send a ship first before committing full strength from the safety of the webway.’

  Aradryan could barely hear what was said next. The dreaming was beckoning to him, dragging him back from reality. He remembered why he had come here, and fought against the lure of the dreaming. His body was almost dead, the exhaustion dragging him down into dark, cold depths. Aradryan managed to summon the energy to pass on the warning.

  ‘I need to go back to Alaitoc,’ he said. ‘They are coming to kill us. We will all burn.’

  Aradryan woke up feeling more refreshed than before, though his throat and lips were still dry and there was an ache in the back of his head that pulsed dully down his spine. He found himself lying on one of the couches in Maensith’s chamber – the same seat on which he had passed out, he recalled with some difficulty. His mind was blurred, as was his vision, and it was hard to remember what had happened. He was left with a recurring thought, as of a half-dream.

  ‘They are coming to kill us. We will all burn.’

  Sitting up, Aradryan was relieved that there was no fit of dizziness. He found a carafe of water on the floor next to him, and a small crystal tumbler. As he reached out for the drink, he noticed the yellowish stains on his fingertips and wondered at the amount of dreamleaf he had consumed over the cycles following his humiliation by Taelisieth. It was no wonder he had lost sense of himself. Despite his slightly improved physical condition, he was still ashamed to his core at his recent failures; his indulgences with the Dreaming would have done nothing to repair his shattered reputation.

  Swinging himself around to sit properly on the couch, Aradryan leaned forwards, hands on knees. There was a tingle in his mouth, an itch of craving for dreamleaf that was easy to ignore. Less accommodating was the nagging whisper in his ears. If he paid attention, Aradryan would swear it sounded like Thirianna’s voice.

  Recalling the mix of dream and nightmare, the presence of Thirianna and the dread warnings she brought with her, Aradryan’s head swam again. He squeezed his knees tight and stamped his foot on the floor, trying to assure himself that he was not dreaming again. It was impossible to tell, of course. With so much dreamleaf and his long expertise, any dream he underwent could well be indistinguishable from reality. For all that he knew, this was a memedream that he was experiencing, and not a new awakening at all. He tried hard to remember if he had woken before and subsequently returned to the dreaming, but he could not tell.

  Such thoughts threatened to send him down into a spiral of insanity. He drank a tumblerful of water, savouring the liquid as it slipped over his swollen tongue and down his parched throat. If this was not reality, his imagination was doing him proud, he thought.

  ‘More coherent this time, I hope.’ Aradryan looked
towards the door and saw that Maensith had returned. She wore her battle armour, her weapons hanging from her belt. Seeing her sent flashes of recollection through Aradryan’s skull.

  ‘Did I...’ He did not know how to ask the question. ‘Have I dreamt long?’

  ‘Thirty cycles and more, with barely a mouthful to eat and drink every cycle,’ said Maensith, her face showing pity rather than sympathy. Her look sent barbs into Aradryan’s pride and he straightened up and looked her in the eye.

  ‘And what else did I do?’

  ‘Nothing much,’ said Maensith. ‘You asked me to return to Alaitoc. You did not say why, but it seemed very important to you. Who is Thirianna?’

  ‘They are coming to kill us. We will all burn.’ Aradryan spoke the words without thought, letting them free from where they had been fluttering around inside his head.

  ‘That is what you kept saying as you dreamt,’ said Maensith, her face now showing genuine concern. She sat beside him. ‘What have you seen?’

  ‘Alaitoc aflame,’ replied Aradryan. He shuddered as images from the dreaming floated through his thoughts: images of death and burning and misery. He could not shake the feeling that it was somehow his fault. He looked at Maensith, a deep dread gripping his heart. ‘It is a warning, I am sure.’

  ‘We shall see soon enough,’ said Maensith, standing up. ‘In seven more cycles we shall be there.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Aradryan stood also. ‘We are returning to Alaitoc?’

  ‘Yes, we are, which is why you need to bring yourself back to a state that at least vaguely resembles sanity and hygiene. There are still some of your clothes in my bedchambers, if you wish to change.’

  Maensith took three steps towards the door before Aradryan spoke her name and stopped her.

  ‘Why are we going to Alaitoc? This is not because of me, is it?’

  ‘Yes, in more ways than one,’ Maensith replied. ‘Even in your dream-woven state you saw something was wrong with our attack at Nathai-athil. Taelisieth went first with the Kaeden Durith and found more than a dozen Imperial ships waiting for us. It seems we have agitated the humans enough for the moment, so I decided we should leave the Winter Gulf. Between your babbling about fires and Thirianna, and my desire to seek out somewhere a bit safer than open space to collect myself, Alaitoc seemed the natural choice.’

  ‘I do not want to go back, not now.’

  ‘It is not your choice, Aradryan. Morai-heg cast a loose thread for you, and now it is unravelling. You have already lost me one flagship, the ship I stole from my kabal to earn my freedom, and you are not welcome on this one. The crew speak out against you, and I must listen. Even the passion I once shared with you does not turn me to your cause any more. I will be returning you to Alaitoc, or setting you on a small moon somewhere; it is your choice as long as you do not stay aboard.’

  Aradryan flopped back onto the couch, limbs limp. Maensith twitched her head in irritation and left him to his dark thoughts.

  When he slept, Aradryan did not dream. It was better to fall into the utter blankness of unconsciousness than to risk the return of the nightmarish Thirianna and her whispered warnings. Aradryan slept and woke, and regained something of his strength and dignity, if not his pride.

  When he awoke again he felt a strange tension in the air. The chambers were empty still, but a note thrummed through the ship, keening across its fabric and along the crystal lines of its psychic network. It was this that had roused him from his deep slumber and it took a moment for Aradryan to realise what the sensation was. The Naestro was at full stretch, every part of her engines running at the highest power. Aradryan’s nerves resonated with the force flowing through the matrix, sending the ship speeding through the webway.

  Leaving Maensith’s chambers, Aradryan headed for the control hall. The doors opened for him – he had wondered if there had been a psychic bar put in place – and he stepped inside. Maensith was in the command pod, her face screwed up in intense concentration. Taelisieth glanced up from the weapons console. A frown creased his brow when he recognised who had entered, but he said nothing, nodding his head towards the display sphere at the heart of the hall.

  The holo-image showed the webway behind the Naestro. It looked like they were rushing up a gleaming silver tunnel towards the surface, a black lattice of rune-carved wraithbone keeping the walls of the webway in place. Two dark shapes stood out against the streaming silver fabric, their hulls mottled midnight blue and black, their prows studded with curving sensor blades, hulls jutting with barb-like cannons: Commorraghans. The livid white marks along the lengths of their hulls spoke of recent repairs and Aradryan’s gut shrivelled into a tight knot.

  ‘Khiadysis,’ he muttered.

  ‘It was not just the humans waiting for us at Nathai-athil,’ said Taelisieth. ‘Khiadysis must have heard something of the trap being laid. They were waiting for us to bolt back to the webway, but we spotted them two cycles ago. They have been following us ever since.’

  ‘Where is the rest of the fleet?’ asked Aradryan. ‘We have two cruisers outgunned.’

  ‘The cowards scattered as soon as the Commorraghans appeared,’ Maensith snarled from the centre of the chamber. Aradryan looked at her, but her eyes were focused on the console gems. ‘Our only hope is the sanctuary of Alaitoc. Even Khiadysis will hesitate to attack us there.’

  ‘And how long before we reach Alaitoc?’ asked Aradryan. He started towards the stairway leading up to the piloting suite, but Taelisieth broke from his console to stop him.

  ‘You are not a pilot or officer,’ said the corsair, eyes narrowed. ‘It is no small fault of yours that we are pursued.’

  ‘We will be at Alaitoc shortly,’ replied Maensith.

  Aradryan felt impotent as he watched the dark shapes of the Commorraghan cruisers closing slowly with the Naestro. Forward gun turrets extended from the prow of the ship, revealed by lines of sliding shutters that opened up like the gills of some monstrous shark.

  ‘Baring their teeth for nothing. They are still out of weapons range,’ announced Taelisieth.

  ‘Keep them out,’ snapped Maensith.

  In the holo-display two small stars appeared, each deep red in colour, jettisoned into the wake of the Naestro. Aradryan realised they were some kind of munitions, but was not sure of what type. The pursuing pair of cruisers had time and space to avoid a direct contact with the two stars, though they lost some momentum doing so. When the lead cruiser – it looked like Khiadysis’s own ship to Aradryan – was level with the closest star, Taelisieth gave a satisfied growl and manipulated a control on his console.

  The star expanded into a ball of red lightning, flaring from one side of the webway to the other. The detonation caught the second star in its arcs of energy, causing a secondary explosion. The tubular passage of the webway was filled with a storm of power that sped along the walls and rippled along the hull of the Commorraghan cruiser. The energy wave expanded, catching up with the Naestro in a few moments.

  Aradryan felt the shock of the webway’s shuddering through the psychic network, a moment before the ship physically shuddered, causing him to sway on his feet. Looking back at the display, he saw that both Commorraghan cruisers had ploughed on through the psychic storm, the flares of energy dripping from their hulls like water off the oiled skin of a marine beast. Taelisieth cursed loudly and looked over to Jain Anirith at the sensor controls.

  ‘Some kind of psychic shielding,’ Jain reported. ‘No lasting damage detected.’

  The chase continued endlessly. Aradryan was rooted to the spot, unable to tear his gaze away from the holo-display. He was not sure if it was reality or his imagination, but he thought he could see the Commorraghans eating up the gap between the ships. He did not know how they could move faster than the Naestro, which was one of the most efficient ships he had ever been on, but somehow they did. Aradryan sensed the Commorraghans getting closer and closer, creeping up on him like a slow death. Eventually their forecannons would
come into range and the chase would rapidly end.

  ‘Sending warning to Alaitoc of our approach,’ announced Maensith. ‘We will be coming out of the portal at full speed.’

  ‘Let us hope that there is no ship trying to come back in,’ said Aradryan. Maensith scowled at him for pointing out the obvious danger.

  Aradryan could not bear the tension – both in his body and the fraught psychic power being channelled through the ship. As much as it pained him to stay and not be able to do anything, he could not leave and simply wait for the outcome. He lived every moment, etching the sight of those two black predators into his memory like nothing else.

  This is vengeance, he thought, as he looked at the Commorraghan vessels. This is the payment I make for the decisions I have made. It would all catch up with him in the end, he knew that. Ever since Hirith-Hreslain he had stayed one step ahead of his doom, trying his best to outwit fate. Now it was not up to him. He would perish or live by the actions of Maensith and the others.

  Looking back he realised he had craved freedom but had enjoyed none. Always had he been in the thrall of someone or something else. First it had been his fear of death, and then his lust for Athelennil. His desire for danger had mingled with Maensith’s passion to create an intoxicating and addictive combination that had steered his life for a while. And then his shame had been his prison, locking him into his fears as much as the dreamleaf.

  ‘Freedom is a myth,’ he said, to nobody in particular.

  He was startled when he realised that the ships in the holo-display were getting smaller. Suddenly they were replaced by the snarling face of Khiadysis.

  ‘Run, you pathetic worms, run!’ growled the hierarch. His right eye twitched with a tic that Aradryan had not noticed before. ‘You cannot stay at Alaitoc forever, you conniving bitch. I will find you, or the Crimson Talon will.’

  That image disappeared to be replaced by a golden wheel of energy, the brightness of the webway gate causing Aradryan to put his hand in front of his eyes, blinking hard. When he could see again, the soaring towers of Alaitoc were racing past, silhouetted against the slowly turning disc of the craftworld’s webway portal. The Naestro swept over domes and bridges, almost brushing the forcefields and gravity nets that covered Alaitoc. It was a view of the craftworld that Aradryan had never experienced before, seeing her racing past in all of her glory; he had previously been too occupied with piloting to notice the size and grandeur.