Victorious Dead (The Asarlaí Wars Book 2)

by Marie Andreas

  “I’ll send it to all of you. See if you can pick up anything I missed.” Vas turned away quickly and pointed to the map Gosta had sent her. “Here’s where they went down. The beacon is in this section. I know there will be some serious protections on it, so we’ll need to send the shuttle. These people all died to keep us safe. We owe it to all who died to keep the Warrior Wench out of harm’s way.”

  Ragkor nodded. He’d seemed at a loss when Vas told them about the tragedy, but he’d recovered now. Former military, he had a good grasp of explosives and traps. “Aye, they will have planted things that could also be hidden, even to a ghosting computer system.” He nodded and smiled to Gosta who agreed with a shrug. “I can take Walvento and Marwin with me in the shuttle.” He held up his hand as Gosta started to protest. “Master Gosta, I respect your skills, however it would be better if the man who knew what we were looking at was not within harm’s way.”

  Vas rocked back a bit. That was the closest to a full command she’d heard from Ragkor since he’d joined them. It was good to see him stepping into his own. Probably because this was an area he felt comfortable with, but whatever worked.

  Gosta turned to Vas.

  “I agree with him, and that’s the same reason I’m staying here. The point of having experts is to use their expertise. You can guide their moves from your station.” Marwin was a good choice. As one of the triplet pilots from the Gyolin province, he was one of the best shuttle flyers they had. Next to Mac and herself, that was.

  Three was a good number and all were skilled in explosives and military grade weapons. Vas knew Aithnea well enough to know the booby traps around her little toy were likely from a number of different cultures’ militaries.

  “Captain, we’re closing in on the system you wanted.” Mac’s comm call cut into her thoughts. “And, yes, I did jump through a dozen gates before we got here. I didn’t take any shortcuts.” The petulant tone in his voice told her he was still smarting from last month. Vas had taken him to task on a job when he tried to take a short cut and ended up dropping them out right on top of the local space cops who were looking for them.

  Good. The longer it smarted, the less likely he was to try and pull crap like that again. Her crew worked best on a job, a mercenary job preferably. The little rescues, missing persons, finding things, and work they’d been doing the past two months had been relaxing at first. After the first week, her crew became bored and fidgety. Never a good thing with a ship of particularly smart and dangerously skilled people. The little outbreak on their base planet, Home, pointed out that it wasn’t good for any of her people.

  Vas led the rest of the command crew out on deck. Ragkor nodded and went to get Walvento and Marwin and ready the shuttle.

  The system Mac had picked was close enough to the one the nuns had been in that Vas could swoop in to help if her people ran into trouble, but far enough that no one should notice them. That it was a dwarf star system with only one artificially created planet was a bonus.

  “Okay, Mac, I want you to keep us ready to move if we have to,” Vas said then opened a ship wide comm. “We have a new job, one I’m paying for. It might very well involve the gray ships and those black-suited soldiers from them. We have to pick up some things, then I’m heading back to Home to restock and get more people. If you need to stay on Home for a bit, shore leave is granted. I have a feeling we might not be able to go back again for a while. Submit your requests to Ragkor.” They’d go to Home after retrieving the buoy, then on to Yholine.

  Vas wasn’t worried about too many people wanting to leave. The recent boredom guaranteed most of them would stay. But she wanted to give them the chance. Everyone on this crew right now had gone through the attack by the Rillianian monks a few months ago. They were used to being able to fight. If one of them fell in battle, it was expected. But they hadn’t been able to fight and had to watch as their companions suffocated. Only five people died that way—the monk had been trying to bring the crew in alive originally—but it was a horrible way to go. She knew that revenge for what happened, and a chance to get some payback from the people on the gray ships, was on more than a few of her crew’s minds.

  “We’re ready, Captain.” Ragkor’s voice came in from the speaker at her chair.

  Vas looked over to Gosta. At his nod, she responded. “You’re good to go. Keep in contact with Gosta at all times. If you see any ships out there, hide. If they are bigger than you, come back.”

  “Aye, Captain. Contact with Gosta.”

  Vas waited a second for the rest of the confirmation, then smiled. Deven used to try that too. Simply not confirm any order he wasn’t planning on following. “And the ships?”

  Another pause, then a sheepish sounding Ragkor clicked back on. “Aye, Captain. Smaller than us, hide. Larger than us, come back.”

  “Good. Oh, and I’d secure the item you bring on board in the decon bin if it fits, or close off the back of the ship under a shield and keep it there. These are very talented folks who left this. It was for us, or she wouldn’t have shielded it as she did. But she’d want to make sure no one else got to it first. Disarm what you can, then lock it up to bring back.”

  “Aye, Captain.”

  Vas trusted Ragkor on that one. Marines didn’t mess around with explosives.

  “Vas?” Terel said. “I know you’re in the middle of something big, but you might want to come down here.” She’d been concerned when she heard the story of the nuns but it seemed like she had been more concerned to see how Vas was handling things. She’d gone back to her med lab the moment the briefing ended.

  “Can it wait?” Vas knew she could monitor what Ragkor and the others were doing from anywhere on the ship, and was trusting Gosta to be the main eyes and ears. But somehow being on the command deck felt right for anything important.

  “Not if you ever want to see our Deven back again,” Terel said.

  “Damn it, on my way.” Vas was worried about Deven, or Devens as the case appeared to be. And goddess knew she wanted her Deven back.

  “Gosta, Mac, notify me directly if anything odd happens with our away team. Xsit, you monitor all communications that we can reach. Boost what you can. I want to know what they had for breakfast in the center of town in Galacian if we can.” She gave the entire crew the ‘I’m watching you look,’ and went to the lift.

  “This better be good. We have a touchy situation going on,” Vas yelled as she came into the empty med-lab.

  Terel peered through a doorway in the back. “It’s not good, but it is something we need to deal with.”

  Vas sighed and walked to where her med officer had disappeared. This was where Terel kept most of her serious equipment; the front room was mostly for simpler injuries and illness. This room was where she did her big projects as she called them. Things she would talk about for hours if someone got her drunk and they stuck around to listen.

  “Okay, what do you have?”

  Terel looked up from the scanner she was peering into. “I was able to compare the blood sample you got from the pirate to Deven’s own on record. It is him. Or rather, it was him, but he appears to be breaking down into someone, or something, else. I have a feeling the first one you saw might be doing the same thing. At the rate this sample is changing, I’d say we might have a week before all genetic traces of Deven in these two people is lost.” She had never admitted that she believed Vas about the gahan Deven, but the evidence of the pirate one pulled her into agreement. They had two Deven copies floating around.

  “How? Why? How in the hell did one mostly dead second-in-command become two different people who are now unbecoming him?” Vas stabbed a finger at the computers and scanners all around them. “Is such a thing even possible?”

  Terel leaned against the counter and folded her arms. “I have no idea on any of those. And you know I don’t admit things like that easily.”

  Vas knew that; she also could tell that Terel was mad as hell that something big was about to blow up in
her face.

  “Okay, so how do we find out what to do? We don’t even know who Deven’s people are, let alone how to find them. They’d be the only ones to deal with this.”

  Terel nodded, but then bit the side of her mouth and dropped her gaze to the ground. Never a good sign in Vas’s opinion. Always meant Terel was going to give her an only option to a problem that Vas was going to hate.

  “Tell me. We don’t have much time from what you’ve said, and I need to get back to the bridge.”

  “Marli. We find that Asarlaí friend of Deven’s and ask her.”

  8

  “Damn it,” Vas swore, but at the situation, and that Terel was right, rather than at Terel herself. Marli was the only remaining Asarlaí—regardless of what those monks had claimed. She had made herself immortal long before her people imploded, and travelled the galaxy under a disguise. She and Deven had been friends for longer than Vas had known Deven. “Any idea how we go about finding her? Deven always said he thought she’d been aware of what was going on with the gray ships, but was fighting her own battles. The Rillianian monks are gone, but those creatures they worshipped, whether real Asarlaí or fakes, are not. I’d think Marli would be focusing on wiping them out.” Clearly, she hadn’t succeeded yet if those damn gray ships were still destroying people Vas loved.

  “I have no idea.” Terel looked as disturbed as Vas had ever seen her and started stomping around the lab. “There must be a way. Maybe something in Deven’s things?”

  Vas turned away at that. She wasn’t the emotional type, but after Deven’s death, she’d locked up his quarters and keyed them only to herself. She told herself she needed time to sort through his things alone. She hadn’t opened the door once.

  Before she could admit it, and deal with everything she knew that Terel would have to say about the situation, her comm buzzed.

  “Captain, we’ve got a ship coming in. It’s still about twenty hours out, currently in the Jolian system. But it’s hailing us.” Xsit had a bit of a chirp in her voice; she was concerned.

  Vas was glad that she’d had Xsit look long range. “Who is it?” There shouldn’t be any ships hailing them or knowing where they were. Nevertheless, knowing Aithnea, this could be something she set up. That woman probably planned this entire thing a year ago.

  “The ship is the Scurrilous Monk. I think it’s that friend of Deven’s, but it’s one of her people sending the hail.”

  Vas shared a look with Terel. She looked as surprised as Vas felt.

  “Is the line secure?” Knowing Marli’s tech abilities, it was, but she needed to make sure. Vas had plenty of time to call back her people and get the hell out of here before the other ship could get here if she needed to.

  “It appears so, Captain,” Bathie responded this time. “There aren’t any breaks in the hail and it has a rotating security code that’s swapping around every thirty seconds.” Bathie was more security focused than Xsit, so hearing her assessment was good enough for Vas.

  Vas shrugged to Terel but then responded to Xsit. “Send the hail down here. I want to talk to them.”

  Having Marli show up right when they needed her would be uncommonly good luck. Or would be if she wasn’t the last known Asarlaí, with skills and tech Vas could only dream about. An immortal member of that brutal and corrupt race, she’d fled them long before their final collapse. How she and Deven had met had never been made completely clear to Vas, but he seemed to trust her. Mostly.

  “This is the Scurrilous Monk, hailing the Warrior Wench. Come in, Wench.” A man’s voice came through. One with enough annoyance that Vas wondered how long they’d been hailing before they got within range. When the Commonwealth had closed in on itself, the communications on all ships had suffered.

  “This is Captain Vaslisha Tor Dain of the Warrior Wench.” Vas needed to ask questions, like how in the hell they knew they were needed, but she wanted him to go first.

  “Thank gods.” The man’s sigh was extremely audible through the comm. “Hold on while I patch you through.” He didn’t even wait for her response, just clicked off.

  A moment later a familiar voice came on. “Vas? Is that you? We’ve been trying to find you for weeks now.”

  Vas pulled back from the comm and looked at it. It was Deven. Just as the other two men she’d run into in the last two days were him—this was Deven’s voice.

  “Deven?” She held her breath, there were now three Devens? What was going on? She should have taken this call near Gosta so he could run a screen or something on it.

  “It’s me, Vas. It’s hard for you to believe, but I told you I’d find a way back.” He sounded like him, but exhausted. Like he’d been on a merc job for a few weeks without backup.

  Terel’s mouth dropped open as Vas clicked the comm to speaker so she could hear as well, but she didn’t say anything.

  “Where are you? When did you come back?”

  The laugh was pure Deven, but still exhausted. “It’s a long story, and one I might not have time to tell. Something happened when I came back, I’m—”

  “Not all there and feel like a few parts of you are missing?” Terel cut him off and held her test results in the air even though she would have known the comm had no visuals.

  “Yes, actually. Nice to hear your voice, Terel. Marli can’t figure out what’s wrong and we think I’m running out of time. I appeared on her ship in the Folthing system a few weeks ago. It’s taken us this long to get back to normal space.”

  “I heard that, boyo,” a distant female voice shouted out. “Because it’s not part of your Commonwealth doesn’t mean it’s not someone’s normal.”

  “How fast can you get here, Marli?” Vas knew somehow those other two Devens were tied into whatever was happening.

  “Good to hear you, Vas. Maybe you can get this one to settle down. We need to find the right treatment to fix him.” Marli sounded closer now. That calm, ‘I am the top predator in any known galaxy’ voice filled the med lab.

  Terel didn’t speak but was shaking her head and pointing to the results again.

  “According to my medical officer, time isn’t on our side. There have been two spottings of people I would have sworn in a Commonwealth high court were Deven. One was a kept man of the empress and the other a pirate.”

  “Damn it,” Deven said. “I think I know what happened, not exactly how, but what. We need to get those two, and me, together.”

  Marli started talking about something but it was in the background of the conversation and didn’t seem to be directed toward Deven or Vas. “Actually, based on the results I received, I know we need to get all of them together, and I’m locking this one in stasis until we meet up. If you capture one before we get to you, do the same. It’ll slow the degradation. I’ll contact you when we’re closer. Stay put.” The click was solid and final.

  Vas was silent for a moment. What the hell just happened? Vas made her money being a tough mercenary, but she counted herself fairly educated. What species could not only come back from being blown to smithereens, but come back in three different bodies, two of which appeared to have been around for a while?

  “I need a drink,” she said, then realized at some point she’d actually sat down and not noticed.

  “I might join you this time.” Terel looked even more upset than Vas felt. Her medical background, all her years in school and in the field, and there was no way she was ready for this.

  Vas pushed herself out of the chair and spun Terel toward the door. “First round or ten is on me in my ready room.” She nodded as Terel’s assistant, Pela, stuck her head out of her lab. “I’m borrowing your boss. Carry on.”

  “I take it that wasn’t what you thought was going on?” Vas continued to lead a still silent and perplexed Terel down the hall to the lift.

  “That’s it, I had no idea what to expect. I looked at that sample in every situation I could devise. The best I could come up with was the degradation. But this is something else.”

/>   Vas called the lift and held open the door since Terel still looked a bit drifty. “You know what this is then?”

  Terel stared at the panel that showed the floors as they sped past them and silently shook her head. “Not a clue.”

  Vas relied on her crew of experts to know things far beyond her knowledge and abilities. Nevertheless, she actually felt better that Terel was as lost as she was. At least for the moment the solidarity felt good. She knew Terel would shake it off and keep poking to find answers. Right now they both needed a drink.

  Besides, if there was anyone, besides herself, who Vas would trust to bring Deven back from whatever in the hell happened to him, Marli was it.

  “Captain, Ragkor has reported they are approaching the buoy.” Mac’s voice hit her as she and Terel were approaching the door to her ready room. Damn it. All it took was Deven’s voice—his real voice—to make her forget everything else. That was going to have to stop before they got him put back together again.

  “Sorry, no drinks,” Vas said to Terel then spun and moved into her command chair as if that had been her destination all along. “Report, Mac. What is their situation?”

  “They haven’t seen anything yet except a lot of debris. Here, you can talk to him.” Mac clicked over and the comm in Vas’s chair came to life.

  “Ragkor? Mac said you’ve not seen anything?” Part of her mind was still dealing with the impact of Deven. Had the first one she’d run into, or even the second one, actually been him, she would have dealt with it better. But two false starts threw her off and this one side-smacked her. And the first two now looked like they might be part of Deven? Weird clones?

  The comm brought her back to the current situation.

  “Not yet, Captain,” he said. Then a flick on the screen at her chair and the view channel changed from the stars around them to a debris field. “There are explosives, well planted and hidden ones. Your friend was very skilled. They were protected from the original blast, and then moved out in a gamma pattern.”