Victorious Dead (The Asarlaí Wars Book 2)
Page 30
Vas touched the carved stone, but shook her head. “No. I think we need to check out that other building first. And no, I have no logical reason why.”
Hrrru looked to Deven, and at his nod, he smiled and bobbed his head. “As always, we follow our captain.” He bowed again and led the way down the road.
Vas turned to Deven. “I have no idea why I think it’s there. I could be wrong, you know.” She knew she wasn’t—like many of her gut feelings, it just was.
“His people are very spiritual. They believe the connections from past lives guide the future. And that you are being guided.” He smiled. “Besides if you are wrong, I think we have enough time to go back and check the first building. It’s going to take the Silantians and the Hight Collective a while to sort out the issue of the black suits.
Vas nodded and they made their way to the small building. The walls were made of large and very substantial bricks and were at least a foot thick. The door was of a heavy wood that would have been very expensive five hundred years ago. Now it hung battered and weather-beaten, halfway off its hinges. She shouldered open the door to find piles of broken furniture. She pulled a few pieces out. Someone had been here after the final battle and the abandonment of the planet, but not recently. The mess was too well-placed to have been actual refuse.
“We need to get this out of here,” Vas said and turned to see similar looks on both faces. The ones that said, you’re crazy, but you’re our captain.
It only took a half-hour to get everything out, but the room still gave Vas no clues. Gosta had stayed silent on the comm, but she could practically feel him up on the Warrior Wench wondering what was taking so long.
“There would be something to show where the stored items are. I know it.” Vas stomped around the small room a few more times, adjusting her night goggles to different frequencies. She was right next to Deven when she spied the small knot of wood about halfway up the far left wall.
“Found it.” She pulled the knob, and she and Deven dropped into a pit as half of the wooden floor swung down.
“Captain!” Hrrru ran to the edge and peered down.
“We’re okay, and look what I found.” Vas brushed off one of the small crates they’d landed on—the mark of the Clionean order was there under the dust. It was on all the crates and boxes here, at least twenty, maybe more.
“We need to bring the shuttle closer. Getting these out won’t be quick or easy.” Deven had wiped off a few boxes as well. “Whatever she wanted you to find, there’s a lot of it.”
“I can get the shuttle,” Hrrru said. “Master Gosta has cleared me for flying.”
Vas almost told him no, but he was so excited she motioned him on. “Fly low. We’ve been down here long enough that if anyone did notice us, they might come looking.”
“I will be careful.” He was gone before she could change her mind.
Which left them with a massive collection of whatever Aithnea had wanted them to find.
Vas forced off a lid—weapons. Blasters, explosives, and blades. None of which were anywhere near five hundred years old. At least some of this store was from a far more recent visit.
If all of these were filled with weapons, the Warrior Wench had enough for herself, the Victorious Dead, and a few other ships for a lot of campaigns. They weren’t hurting for weapons, but Vas had begun to wonder what might happen if more rim planets fell. Most of the Commonwealth’s weapons manufacturers were on the outer rim.
“Weapons…and a map?” Vas found the ancient sheet of steel under the first lid. It was an ornate map. The designs looked easily to be a few hundred years old. It was an ancient star chart with a bunch of writing she couldn’t understand. But it clearly pointed to a single planet. One she had a bad feeling she was becoming way too familiar with.
Deven took the map and confirmed her thoughts. “Mayhira. The marks are ancient and faded. But this is leading to Mayhira.”
Vas looked at the crates around them. This place had clearly become a storehouse for the order after the Silantians had abandoned it. There were probably relics and artifacts of great import to the order—things Aithnea was trusting into Vas’s care. But she knew this map was what Aithnea had wanted her to find. There was something on Mayhira that had drawn the interest of the gray ships, the black suits, Empress Wilthuny, and the order of the Clionea nuns.
Each one except the last was a reason to not go there.
A buzzing sound came from overhead and Vas looked up to see a drone scanning the room. It focused on the top crates and the map in Deven’s hands before Vas could shoot it down.
An explosion outside told her the drone had brought friends.
“Hrrru, what’s going on out there?” Vas closed the crates back up and put the map in her pack.
“There is a ship out here, Captain, an armed shuttle. It has not seen me yet but is heading in your direction.”
Deven held up a wing of the blasted drone—the empress’s tag was stamped in gold.
“What moron marks her drones?”
Another explosion hit and the roof and the floor above collapsed on them.
Vas wasn’t frightened of too many things, but a pile of brick crushing her to the floor was one. She’d been buried alive on one of her first campaigns and it had taken a few years of working with her original mind-doc to come out of it.
“Vas!” Deven was close, but not close enough. The bricks hadn’t crushed her yet—but it wouldn’t be long. The darkness and pressure was suffocating her more than any real lack of air.
There were many ways to die in her field of work—this one was not high on her list.
Suddenly the pressure eased and Vas could see. Well, mostly see. Her night vision goggles had taken a hit so they were useless. But she could still see Deven as he pulled her free of the rubble.
She wrapped her arms around him as he lifted her out.
Her face was pressed against his neck, and he smelled so much like Deven—her Deven—that she kissed him.
At first it had been a reaction to the terror of being buried. But it changed quickly. The passion from the last kiss—the one before he died—was back. Everything that had existed between them before came slamming into her. Had she been standing, she might have had some problems. She pulled back and watched his face.
“I remember now. I mean, I remembered you before, but when those walls fell just now the rest came back.” Deven shrugged and gave a gentle smile. “You told me you loved me before I went to save everyone.”
Vas was laughing and crying at the same time as she pounded his chest. “I told you that before you committed suicide, you mean.”
“Captain? Deven? They have seen me. I’m nearly to the shuttle. I can come get you.” Hrrru’s voice broke as he uttered a yowl of his people. “They have ground troops. I will save you though!”
Vas gave Deven a quick kiss then scrambled out of his arms. Her legs were still a bit wobbly and she tried to convince herself it was simply the aftereffects of being buried alive. “We have to get out of here.” She hit her comm. “Hrrru, we’re okay. Stay where you are. Don’t fight.”
“I will avenge them.” Hrrru gave another yowl, then cut his comm.
Vas tried to crawl out of the pit but even with Deven’s help she kept sliding down the pile of rubble. An explosion further away told her there was a very good chance that the empress’s people had blown up their shuttle. She prayed Hrrru was still alive.
“Gosta, we need evac immediately.”
“It will be a while before we can get there, Captain. The Silantians are checking our papers. They did pick up on your departure.”
Vas swore. If the empress didn’t destroy them, the Silantians were going to lock them up.
She fell back onto Deven as she tried once more to climb out.
“Might we be of assistance? I was escorting a certain ship to join you when I noticed your distress,” Marli said as she cut in on their comms as if she was asking them if they needed anything fr
om the store. “Your shuttle seems to be burning.”
Damn. Sometimes Vas hated being right. “Yes, can you get a fix on Hrrru? He’s out there somewhere.”
“Found him. You and our man next?”
Vas looked around. There were so many crates here, she had no idea what they’d be leaving for the empress.
Deven hit his comm. “You cocky enough with that high-end particle mover that you could move us, and everything in a ten-foot radius around us?” There was a challenge in his voice.
Marli ate it up. “Oh, boyo, you know me too well. Hang on!”
42
Deven was awake by the time they returned to the Warrior Wench. He’d been out longer than any transfer before, but it had been a weird one. Vas wouldn’t have believed that they could pull up two people and most of an entire building in one transfer if she hadn’t been part of it herself.
The contents of the building—all of them—were taking over half of the Warrior Wench’s shuttle bay. Marli and the Scurrilous Monk had taken off on yet another of her errands. Marli was up to something far beyond this quadrant of space—but seemed to pop in to check on Vas and her crew with annoying, if helpful, frequency. Vas, Deven, Flarik, and Gosta had moved to Vas’s ready room to try and sort out what had happened and what came next.
Hrrru was in a med bed, but still out. He’d fought hard to save the shuttle from the empress’s ground troops before they blew it up. Terel said he’d recover from his injuries. But she was going to keep him on bed rest for quite a while. Not that that would slow him down. Vas knew he’d be on the computer the moment he awoke.
The discussion of what to do next started slowly, with Deven remaining oddly quiet. Vas was ready to go hide and sort through the items left by the Clionea nuns. That was until Gosta got a look at the map.
“We don’t have a choice, Captain. Whatever is going on, it’s taking place on Mayhira. We have to go back there.” Gosta said.
“We should take care wherever we go next.” Flarik started pacing and shot a glare at Gosta. She had glanced at the map, but had been focusing on the legal ramifications of them conducting an unsanctioned trip to Yholine and then fleeing the Silantian system. “I have notified the Hight Collective government that we had to withdraw our people due to a personal emergency. I have returned their payment, plus a fee to address the broken contract. They weren’t too upset about the withdrawal, the Silantians are restricting the insurgents based on the non-sanctioned support they received from the black suits. The insurgents claim they didn’t hire them, but no one believes them. The fight is over for all purposes.” She folded her arms and glared at Vas and Deven. “The Silantians have also agreed to not press charges concerning a certain side trip.”
Vas pulled herself away from the map to smile at Flarik. “Thank you, I’m afraid with everything going on I hadn’t put a thought to that.”
Flarik narrowed her eyes, then finally nodded and resumed her seat. Aside from reporting what she’d done to mitigate the debacle in the Silantian system, she didn’t have anything else to contribute. She starting trying to translate the writing on the metal map.
“Gosta is right. Too many people are focused on that planet for us not to go there,” Deven finally spoke up. From the tone of his voice, his lack of involvement had been residual from the particle mover transfer rather than lack of opinion.
“But we have no idea why everyone is focusing on it.” Vas held up a hand. “Ignore that. Whatever the Asarlaí did to it has to be the focus. But how did so many people find out about that? And just what are we supposed to do when we get there?”
Xsit cut in. “Captain? Ragkor—excuse me, Captain Ragkor is on the line. He says the Victorious Dead is at our call, and asks ‘where are we going?’”
Flarik immediately looked up from her translation of the map panel, her eyes wide. “Tell them we’re going to Mayhira. We have a planet to blow up.
“Belay that,” Vas said and looked sharply at Flarik. “Tell him we’re looking into Mayhira as a destination and to be ready to follow.” She scowled at Flarik. The feathers on the back of her head were standing up and her eyes were still huge. “Do you want to explain that?”
Flarik wasn’t one for blurting—anything. Every thought was processed and analyzed before she spoke. “Your nuns knew what the Asarlaí did to that planet—they knew about it hundreds of years ago and were watching for any changes.” She tapped the wording on the side of the map. “They knew. And they were terrified of what it could become.”
Now it was Vas’s turn to pace. “So the molten silver crap is the danger?”
“I’m presuming, yes, or something that material will trigger within the planet. It’s difficult to translate their cant cleanly,” Flarik said. “It’s unclear whether the substance under the surface caused the explosions or the explosions were done to bring the substance to the surface.”
Deven shook his head. “We saw the gray ships stopping the explosions. Since it still looks like they are either being run by or working with the people trying to bring back the Asarlaí, why would they try to stop whatever is happening down there if it is part of an Asarlaí plan?”
“Maybe there are divisions within them?” Gosta said, “The empress clearly knew there was something she wanted on Mayhira—but she might not have known exactly what. Perhaps she joined forces with some of the gray ships that were stranded on our side of that super gate? Our blowing up their access to their dimension, plus destroying their main lackey here, Bhotia, might have caused some disarray for the ships trapped here.”
Deven and Flarik both nodded, but Vas was still trying to put the pieces together. It was like assembling a blaster with fifteen pieces lying around but only needing twelve. It was hard to pick out what wasn’t important. “Let’s back up a bit—something prompted Flarik to state we had to blow up Mayhira. How about we start there?”
Flarik was still far more agitated than Vas had ever seen her, but the feathers on her head were settling down. She started pacing however.
“I apologize for losing control.” Flarik held up the map and the translation on her hand-held as she moved around the room. “This map is over seven hundred years old. Approximately two-hundred and some odd years after the fall of the Asarlaí. The nuns had a cant, like a thieves’ cant, something only known to them—seven hundred years ago. Translation isn’t clear, but this is a prophecy of sorts. One telling when the destroyers would return. And how they might come back through the changing of an already changed world. If the planet is destroyed before it can transform, we might slow down whatever is happening.”
Vas started swearing. It wasn’t lost on her that Flarik said slow down, not stop, whatever was coming.
“Your swearing is well placed. Although they didn’t call it Mayhira, that name only being four hundred years old, the location is the same and the transformation of it is one of the signs.”
Deven walked over to Flarik’s stomping ground and held out his hand. “May I?”
She shrugged and handed over both the metal map and her hand-held with the translation.
“The empress is after the planet, and sacrificed some of her own people—the gahan—to sue the government there?” Vas was still dealing with too many blaster pieces and needed to nail some down.
Flarik nodded. “Yes. I believe she was going to sue for access to land. I looked over her original statements and she wanted property as recompense for her lost people. The place where the gahan ‘died’ was to be a retreat and memorial.”
Vas poured herself a drink from her flask. “Probably the first place the material surfaced.” She nodded at Gosta. “Do we know what it is yet?”
“No.” The tone of that single word let everyone know how he felt about that. Gosta solved mysteries, and not being able to break one down did not make him happy. “The only thing I can tell is that it is some sort of transitive material. Had you physically touched it, it would not have burned you even though it appears molten.”
The feathers on the back of Flarik’s head spiked, but only a little, and then she smoothed them down. “I hate to say it, but I agree. It’s clear we have to stop Mayhira from changing.” Her face went still. “Even if that means destroying it. My words were rash, but the motivation behind them was not.”
Vas swore again. “Damn it, whatever is going on, we need to get the population off that planet.”
“I already took care of that,” Deven said. He was still trying to glance between the hand-held and the map. “You had already started the process when we found Therlian and Kaena—I moved it forward. Five generational ships from Home should be close to Mayhira by now.”
Gosta scowled. “They might not be needed.” He had been fussing with things on his own hand-held, but flicked the information onto the larger screen at Vas’s desk. “It’s not huge, but there has been a steady stream of ships leaving Mayhira since we left a few days ago. People haulers. It appears over half of their population is already on the move.”
Vas watched the images. That was good, but someone tipped off the rich and infamous and they were fleeing. The haulers were all extremely high end. They’d still need the generational ships for those too poor to afford passage.
“I believe I’ve cracked the code,” Deven said and nodded to Flarik. “You are correct on most of it. Mayhira is transforming into a power source, one that could be used to provide energy and power weapons for thousands of ships.” He tapped the hand-held. “When the planet changes, it will also create a leak in dimensional space. It will make the breach on the side of our ship seem like a crack. As many ships as they want can come through.”