by Gorman, K.
Captain Arnelli strode to the navigation station. “Give me metrics on Leonessa and put her on screen.”
A few seconds later, a light-yellow circle pulsed in the top right quadrant of the screen, close to where Luna, Earth’s sole moon, hung against the starry Black. The map image zoomed in, accompanied by a camera feed made grainy by the magnification.
“She’s a larger carrier, stores the majority of Center Core’s spare armaments and war machines. About eighteen thousand on board.”
“No cryo stores? Just machines?”
Tillerman had mentioned something about cryogenically frozen troops. She assumed Center Core would have some, too.
“No cryo,” Captain Arnelli confirmed.
“If I gave them ten minutes to evacuate, could they do it?” she asked.
And, at once, the room let out a collective breath. She resisted the urge to let her lips twitch into a smile.
They’d thought she had been planning to slaughter the ship without mercy.
“Yes,” Captain Arnelli said. “Ten minutes should be sufficient.”
“Good. How long would it take us to get there?”
“‘Us’ as in Artemide?” he clarified.
“Yes.”
He turned. “Ensign Yeo, do you have an answer?”
“Yes, sir. Less than ten minutes. Six, assuming a direct line.”
“Good.” Karin gave them both a nod. “Please inform Grand Regent Nolen that she has ten minutes to evacuate that vessel. Please also inform her that, in addition to having no fear drive, I am in fact a psychopathic killing machine who feels neither pity nor remorse, and who does not care for Centauri politics. As for us, please tell the fleet to stay on standby, and not to be alarmed when we vanish from lidar. In four minutes, we’ll move out. Captain, please notify me when we’re ready. I’ll be switching us over to the other world. Anyone have any questions or concerns?”
“Yes, Regent.” Captain Arnelli looked over, a frown on his face. “The ‘other world’?”
“Yes. It’s the ones the Shadows originated from. Which reminds me―” She turned to the station behind her, which still had Bourbeau’s blood being cleaned off it. “Comms, please send a message on the Artemide’s internal speakers and to all servicemen on board to not attack any Shadows that they find within the next several minutes? We will be warping over to the Shadow world for a few minutes of transit before warping back.”
Tillerman was frowning. “You can warp an entire ship over?”
“Yes.”
She gave a nod, then appeared to switch gears. “Our guns won’t break their shields. Not immediately.”
“I won’t be using our guns,” she said. “We just need to get within a certain distance.”
Understanding clicked. “Ah. I see. The ‘sheer a thick gouge through the hull’ attack you threatened Fallon with?”
“Actually, I plan to cut the ship in half. I feel it would send a better visual.”
“You really are psychopathic, aren’t you?”
She nodded. “Yes, selectively psychopathic. The only emotions I feel fully nowadays are anger and amusement. Please feel free to convey that in the message.”
“Yes, Regent.”
When Tillerman strode to the comms station to set up a channel, Karin turned to Captain Arnelli. “How are you doing, Captain?”
“I am well, Regent.”
“You and I will need to have a chat at some point. I am sure that we both have questions for each other, and I would like us to get closer to the same page.”
“Despite being a psychopathic killer?”
The grimness of his smile belied the joke. Likely, he had not taken well to her recent kill in the command station.
Suns, the blood was still there.
“Actually, this is something my old self and I would be in agreement about, albeit for different reasons. Neither one of us wants the position we find ourselves in―you without your old Grand, me suddenly in charge of a foreign fleet―but it is the situation and, unless we want to witness the end of the universe and human race as we know it, we have a job to do.”
He studied her for several long seconds, gaze flicking over her. Then, he gave a nod.
“I’m loyal to my ship, Regent, and I am loyal to the Tri-Quad. We will have our talk.”
Well, that at least cleared up a few things about him. He didn’t like her, but he was going to be a professional about it.
“Regent Makos.” The comms tech said her name with an accent, as if she weren’t quite sure how to pronounce it, turning the ‘os’ into more of an ‘us’ sound. “I have several calls coming from within the bay for you.”
“Are any of them leadership challenges?” she asked.
“No.”
“Good. What are they?”
“They would like a confirmation that they are not supposed to attack the Shadows,” said the tech.
“Please confirm. Do not attack the Shadows. Defend if initially attacked, yes, but do not do pre-emptive or first strike. The Shadows are pan-dimensional beings, not demons, and their initial attack strikes were prompted by a human scientist. Think of them as refugees who have been manipulated.”
The comms tech gaped at her for a moment. Then, she must have realized she was gaping, because she shut her mouth and gave a quick nod before typing furiously on the pad in front of her.
“Regent, our route is set,” Captain Arnelli called from the navigation station. “Transit time will be five minutes, fifty-eight seconds, and will start in―” he glanced at the screen beside him. “Two minutes twenty.”
“Thank you, Captain.”
“Regent, Grand Regent Nolen is calling our bluff.”
Great.
“Too bad for her it isn’t a bluff.”
If the Grand Regent was going to be stupid, that wasn’t her problem, and the deaths of her people would be on her.
Karin had a universe to save, and Center Core was already in her way.
“Contact Leonessa directly to warn them. Any more calls from within?” she asked the tech in the comms station.
“Yes, but none I can’t answer.”
By the concentrated frown on her face, and the way she was biting her lip, there was a lot she wasn’t saying.
“What’s your name?” she asked.
“Communications Specialist Odila Asner.”
Ah, Bourbeau’s replacement.
She smiled. “Congratulations on your promotion.”
“Thank you, Regent.”
The requests for her attention lulled for the moment. Further in the comms station, Tillerman was having a rapid-fire conversation with Ensign Yeo in Centauri, the syllables moving fast and staccato in their patois. There were some root words she could pick up, and variants of other words that were similar enough to romance language roots to pull at her ears. Behind her, Captain Arnelli was occupied in navigation. The sounds of a busy, functioning bridge filled the air. Only one or two people kept watching her, their stares making the skin on her shoulders itch.
She shifted her attention to the holo in front of her, studying the lightmap and charts with a critical eye. A few she recognized, but more than half of the ones displayed were foreign to her. And the map itself, though displaying in two dimensions, looked as though it could be three-dimensional.
There was a give and take to the screen that reminded her of the holotable on the Courant.
Then, she turned her gaze to the windows.
Earth filled a third of the view, bright and luminous on its sun-side, with a terminus that turned its bottom edge into a rich darkness. A sprinkle of lights shone on its surface, marking cities and roads. Between them, the trash of the planet’s inner orbit sparkled like pieces of littered tin in the light of Sol.
Her lips twitched.
Once again, she was very glad she didn’t have to pilot through that. Though she suspected that the Centauri shield systems simply handled it as the cost of re-entry.
She wondered
how much the trash would cost to clean up.
More than anyone on Earth cared to spend, clearly.
Sol was a fiery speck at the far right of the bank of windows, blaring a white-gold light at them that the Centauri’s autotone turned into a dismal green.
Still, she could feel the light enter her skin.
Her Eos powers were very happy.
Happy to receive all that unfiltered radiation, Tia commented.
Still in there and reading my thoughts, I see.
As I am wont to do. You think you’ll get any more challenges?
Today? Hopefully not. Maybe tomorrow. Honestly, I was expecting a bit more of an outcry when I told them I was shuffling this ship over to the Shadow world for the six-minute journey.
Huh. Isn’t that straight into their definition of Hell?
No idea. I suppose they have a reputation as ‘badasses’ to keep.
“One minute, Regent,” Captain Arnelli called.
She dismissed Tia with a thought―just a quickly-packaged impulse request for her to remain quiet so that she could focus, likely the same thing she’d been doing before―and gave him a nod.
“All right. Comms will be cut off soon. Don’t move the ship until I give you the go.”
“Yes, Regent.”
She nodded toward the large screen. “Can I get a diagram of the Artemide up, please?”
“Yes, Regent.” Arnelli turned to someone behind her and spoke a few short sentences in Centauri.
A second later, the screen unfolded to show a three-dimensional model of the Artemide. It fluctuated once, giving a brief cross-section, suggesting that, if she chose, she could view each section right down to the wiring, ventilation, and plumbing pathways.
Impressive. She didn’t think Fallon ships had that detailed of a monitoring system. But then, the Centauri had a reason to be more competitive.
She slid her gaze over the model, feeling her brain work.
Got it? she asked Tia.
Yes. You can start now.
Huh. Tia sounded…excited.
She took a breath, focused on the diagram, and let it go.
Then, she closed her eyes, pulled on the boundary of the dimensional fields, and dove deep.
The dimensional shift power wasn’t something she had experimented with to any great length―just in bits and pieces, transporting people and objects across, phasing to avoid bullets and blaster fire, splitting varying parts of people and objects through the boundary.
Before now, the Nemina had been the largest thing she’d ever taken across.
The Artemide was four-hundred meters from nose to tail, with a wingspan of three-hundred meters, and a volume she didn’t care to calculate.
The world twisted, and her mind split.
She thought the power would slice an envelope around the ship. That, she thought, would have been the most logical.
Instead, the power crawled her brain through every square centimeter of space in the ship. She squeezed through pipes and vents, pulled herself across riveting and weld patterns, smelled the burn of lasers and hot metal and the heady scent of fuel casing, which came to her with the odor of new plastic. Her breath stopped. Her mind became a blend of metal and air, flesh and bone, blood, wastewater, the burst of engine fusion, sound bites of speech and thuds and metallic whines, the subtle groan of bone and flesh moving inside a body, heartbeats, the flicker-pulse and electronic hum of holoscreens, the sensation of light, many lights, shivering across her body.
And, over it, the shadow of the dimensional crossing covering it all like a cloak.
Pain spiked through her, and her body jerked. An unfamiliar heaving hit her stomach. In her mind, the world twisted. She bent over and squeezed her eyes shut, the fingers of her right hand tensed into claws as she gritted her teeth and pulled the ship across.
Then, with a click she felt throughout her entire body, it was done.
She took a slow breath through the pain and straightened as the calm of the Shadow world enveloped the ship.
“Eos.”
The voice sent a shudder through her spine. Still shaking from the effort, she straightened and turned. Sure enough, her Shadow stood less than a meter away, looking out of place against the bright lights of the bridge, its black, depthless body wavering at the edges.
Once again, she felt it reach out. Felt something within her reach back.
“Hello, Shadow.” She glanced about. Roughly a dozen more had appeared throughout the bridge, causing a minor disruption. Some of the Centauri had jumped from their seats.
But they only gaped. No one attacked, though she could tell some wanted to. The nearest cyborg had a strained expression that made her think he was doing the mental equivalent of sitting on his hands.
“We’re over,” she said, turning back to the front and striding toward the front windows. “Captain, please proceed.”
“Yes, Regent.”
The floor gave a small nudge. The ship’s grav gen compensated a second later, keeping only a small pull in effect as they accelerated.
Outside, space was pitch black. Not a single star shone in the void.
“Scans show a planet and a satellite consistent with Earth and Luna.” Captain Arnelli was bent over one of the navigation desks. “There is some interference. Not much light, but we do detect a nearby star with a radiation pattern consistent with Sol.”
Which meant that the sun was still there, just not shining.
“If you’re looking for answers, I don’t have them,” she said. “Sadly, Fallon did not see fit to run any tests on the Shadow world.”
They were pretty quick to pick apart the Shadow Nemina, Tia commented.
Yes. Too bad they didn’t extend that enthusiasm to anything remotely useful.
“Any idea on what that interference is?” she asked Captain Arnelli.
“Negative, Regent. It’s coming up on the magnetic spectrum. Would you like us to run scans?”
“Only if they don’t interfere with our mission.” She shook her head, then stood at the windows, crossing her arms over the blood-splattered armor on her chest. Gods, she could still feel some of it at the edges of her face and neck, areas she’d missed with the cloth, and there was definitely some in her hair.
I hope this place has a shower.
She gave her head a mental shake and stretched her right shoulder, staring out into the blackness beyond the window panes.
“Do we have anterior lights?” she asked.
“Yes, Regent.”
“Turn them on. Maybe we’ll see something.”
Tillerman gave a quick command in Centauri. A second later, lights on either side of the bridge’s windows switched on, revealing the white and gold curves of the Artemide’s hull and bridge flare.
And, in front of them, the darkness yielded in a veil of cloud.
The bridge went dead silent.
It looked as though they were moving through a massive cloudbank. The blackness undulated like a mist, spreading thin over the panes as the ship accelerated across the space.
It was dizzying to watch. She flinched as they smashed straight into the peak of another black cloud, its particles scattering over the panes and sliding back. At the side, she saw the same occur over the hull.
This looks a lot like Sasha’s power, she said.
Yes, Tia agreed. Something to ask Tylanus about, perhaps?
Definitely.
“Well, I suppose we found our disturbance,” she said. “Captain, scan what you can now, but save any deeper scans for another time, when we're not against the clock. I definitely want to know about this.”
“Yes, Regent.”
She breathed out, watching another formation of black cloud crash silently over them.
Suns.
They continued through the density for another five minutes, the ship accelerating silently through. The clouds didn’t appear to give them any trouble, but Karin couldn’t take her eyes off of them.
Everything
about them just felt…odd.
And the Shadow never left her side.
After the five minutes and fifty-eight seconds were up, a notification from the navigation station beeped, and there came a slight backwards nudge as the ship’s anterior thrusters slowed their momentum.
But it was only slight. Which meant that the Artemide had some excellent G-force dampening. Even on the Manila, one of Fallon’s most advanced, prestigious ships, capable of turning moves of hundreds of G-forces into sub five for its crew due to its grav generators and dampening, the nuance of movement was still detectable.
The Artemide’s movement, by contrast, was a fine art.
“Regent, we’re here.”
Down to the second. Impressive.
“Perfect,” she said, reaching out for the dimensional fields. “I’ll bring us back over.”
Transitioning the ship back over was the same as the first time. The power splintered her mind, like her brain was being forced into every nook and cranny of the ship. Every duct and rivet, every breath of air, every heartbeat, every slip and dance of energy, every flicker of light and electricity―it all played across her mind in multiple streams.
At some point, pain spiked. A heavy throb. Her body rebelled. She gasped a hiss, clenching her teeth as her chest seized. It felt like an arc of electricity slashed through her body.
She pulled the ship across, a wash of awareness running over her as the Shadows vanished with their world.
Then, alarms and notifications began to ring out, and the holoscreen lit up with a play of ships in their immediate field.
They hadn’t moved the Leonessa as she’d thought they might. Instead, they’d mustered their forces into a defensive ball around it. Extra labels on the map indicated that every ship had their shields active.
A warning alarm sounded, followed by another two dozen in the subsequent second.
“Regent, we’ve been target-locked.”
She wiped the fresh blood from her nose and forced herself to straighten. “How are our shields?”
“Holding. No strikes yet.”
“Did they evacuate?”
Tillerman paused. Her expression turned grim as her eyes skimmed a report on the holoscreen in front of her, then her eyes shifted to Karin. “No.”
Ah.
