There was a pause, the pool of her mind stilling, becoming blank for a moment.
HOPE I’m not doing it for them
And then the Fuckers … mired. Hope’s gravity weapon reached out, the Endless fields providing acute positive mass, a sea anchor slowing the ship. Drives flared on the enemy vessel, the Fuckers trying to maneuver, but it was like watching a bug stuck in treacle. The positive energy field kept pace with the Fucker’s relative velocity, stunting any movement the ship might make.
Machine intelligences, doing the math faster than human minds, worked out what would happen. Not what had. Nate was sure they were confused, scrambling to understand why they were stuck like dinosaurs in a tar pit. But working on available data, their mission was still the same. Kill the emperor, kill the Empire. All the Fuckers’ weapons fired on the Tyche. Beam weapons lanced out, torpedoes launching.
Nate wrenched the sticks, the Tyche lurching in fright. There was a ripping sound, the holo stage updating with an outline of the ship. A tip of one of her wings had been shorn clear, the port side venting O2. That side’s PDCs, gone, as their guidance lines were cut from the hull. Or the PDCs were cut from the hull. Difficult to know without an Engineer on board, and Nate had left his Engineer behind.
There was a tok-tok-tok, the windscreen blowing out into space, explosive decompression pulling Nate against his harness. He tried to grab the sticks as his helmet lapped into place over his head, but his left arm didn’t move. Nate looked down, seeing a glowing hole punched through both his arm and leg. He looked up, taking in the line of punctures across the top of the flight deck.
His left arm, now dead weight, fell against the sticks, the Tyche tumbling. Nate felt his stomach lurch as up became down became sideways. He grabbed his left arm, dragging it away from the console, the ship settling. The holo blanked, then came back, then blanked again.
A bright, bright light, a new star born in the heavens. The Tyche was facing away from the Fuckers, the light reflected in incandescent white from the hull of the Gravedigger, too close for comfort. The Fuckers exploded, a hit against their reactor or weapons store or whatever held the promise of atomic destruction.
The Tyche’s hull shook, and shook, and shook, and it went on and on, the ship tumbling in the dark. Port side taking more damage, tearing away. Hull no longer holding the hard black at bay. The drives stuttered into silence, the ship’s reactor entering emergency shutdown. Nate felt the shunt as the ship ejected the reactor into space.
Nate coughed, wheezed, and coughed again. Blood sprayed the inside of his visor. His good arm, the one made of flesh and blood, found the hole in his suit. A fragment of metal from the Tyche’s hull, piercing his chest. He tugged the metal away, a hiss of air and blood into vacuum. Nothing but his suit’s lights, the Tyche’s holo fading.
He touched the dark console in front of him. “We did it,” he said. “You and me. I wish it could have just been me, but, you know. Way it had to be.” Nate felt light-headed, either blood or air loss or both.
Stars looked so bright without the tension of atmosphere in the way. Nate marveled at them. The bright flare of the Cantor, and the Gravedigger both, trying to maneuver, but carrying so much momentum they’d never make it in time. He was adrift, the planet Cantor looming large.
It was a fitting enough grave.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
WHEN GRACE FOUND Nate gone, his mind shut away by the devilry of his sword, she had almost run from the Cantor’s bridge.
Almost.
She had shouted at the comm after he’d shut it off, wanting him to hear her, but her words didn’t get through. Not on the comm, and not into his mind, so he could see, just one more time, how much she loved him.
Grace stood at the forward window of the Cantor’s bridge. Meenaz had made her way here. Hope was below decks with Kohl, but El was near. All her family were close, bar one. One stupid, stupid man, who thought there was only one way to save them all.
Problem was, he might have been right.
All her life Grace had lived by her wits and her sword, and here when it mattered, neither would help. Her man, her love, her life was out there, daring the machines. And the machines dared right back. The Cantor’s bridge holos fuzzed with static and interference as counter electronics were deployed against them. El was working the Helm, pushing the ship harder, and harder.
Grace should have been on an acceleration couch. 10Gs pulled at her frame, but she wouldn’t look away. She held herself upright with her gifts, her mind all the acceleration couch she needed. If Nate would die, he wouldn’t die without witnesses.
“Gravity weapon deploying,” said El. “We’ve got … nothing. No, wait. We’ve got a lock. My bad. We’ve got nothing.”
Grace turned, clenching her teeth against the thrust. “Which is it?”
The main holo blinked, then bloomed with numbers and text, random gibberish to Grace. But El said. “No, we’re good. Lock is clear. Hope did it.”
Turning back to the forward window, Grace watched as the enemy ship stuck fast, like space had become a tar pit. It wasn’t a big one as far as their enemy went, a polyhedron of twelve sides. Drive plumes flared as it tried to break free, then the telltale shimmer of an Endless field, but nothing broke it loose.
The Gravedigger launched a massive salvo of weapons. Everything she had, handed down, paid forward, a debt from humanity to the machines. A big fuck you, right on time.
The machines fired back. Grace wanted to scream as the Tyche took hits. She watched as the flight deck window blew out, imagining the glitter of glass in the dark. But no body, her Nate still anchored inside. The side of the Tyche was cut free, a chunk of the ship blasted away. Torpedoes were on target, locked on to the tiny hull. So much hate for just one man.
The Gravedigger roared past the Tyche, PDCs reaching dotted fingers of light against the stars. Reducing the torpedoes to fragments of metal, their anger spent, and then the enemy ship exploded. A bright, bright flare, an expanding cloud of rock and metal and gas, and then … gone. Vanquished.
It took three human ships and the death of a man. That’s all.
“El,” said Grace. “Turn us around.”
“Already on it,” said El. But her voice said, It won’t help.
“Just get us closer,” said Grace. “Just a little closer.”
The Cantor shuddered and groaned as the ship banked, a whale after a minnow. The Tyche was tumbling, and she’d fall into the planet Cantor’s gravity well before too long.
Not if I have anything to say about it.
“You … can’t,” said El. “Can you? The Tyche’s a hundred and fifty tonnes, Grace.” But her voice wasn’t saying don’t do it. It was saying please try. El wanted her captain back. They all did.
Grace reached out with her mind. The Tyche was a small starship. Smaller, now, that part of her was gone. But still carrying the best hope for humanity. A stupid, stupid man who kept trying to die so others wouldn’t have to.
The fingers of her thoughts clutched at the hull. She felt the strain of the ship, the need to rest, the exhaustion in every spar and strut. The missing reactor, the heart of the vessel gone. The weight and heft of the hull as it fell towards the planet.
Breathe. Just breathe.
Grace focused, like sensei had taught her. Let all other thoughts go. Let all memories fade. Let the future and the past be one. Be here, now. Be Grace. Be the blade. Be the will behind it. Be its destination and its source. She felt people around her, their fear/anger/terror/hope, mixed like a stew of need. Grace saw the fade of Nate’s thoughts ahead, visible now. He must have dropped his sword. Nate was hurt, and he would die. He would die, if she didn’t pull the Tyche back to them all.
She shut her eyes, teeth clenched. That impossible, huge weight of the starship in the hard black. But impossible was just a word, one like mongrel, a term people used when they didn’t understand something. Grace pulled. She pulled with her strength and her will. Grace remembered w
hen Nate had bent his knee, holding a ring. She’d still been recovering after the battle with the Ezeroc above their homeworld. Grace had said what is this and he had said everything. Grace curled her fingers, feeling the Tyche. And she pulled harder. She pulled with her heart.
Someone on the bridge — she wasn’t sure who — said, “My God.”
Grace fell to one knee. A hand was on her shoulder, the warm weight of a friend. Grace screamed, the consoles on the bridge trembling and shaking as she focused all of herself on one point.
She felt sick, spent. She opened her eyes to see the decking in front of her, spattered with blood. Her nose bled. Grace stood, shaking, to look out the forward windows. The Tyche no longer tumbled. She no longer fell. The ship was close, ready for the Cantor to hug the Tyche and her precious cargo close.
Grace turned to thank whoever had put their hand on her shoulder, but found no one there. Just the wide-eyed stares of everyone around her. El, speechless. Meenaz, who had a hand over her mouth. The boy Will, eyes like saucers. A handful of Cantor’s people.
It was enough. She slumped to the deck, letting the darkness take her.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
WHEN NATE WOKE, it was to bright lights and a feeling of vague surprise. He tried to get up, found his metal arm useless, and tried with his other arm.
And found a medtech by his side, a gentle hand on his chest. “No,” he said. “Not today.”
“I’m the emperor,” said Nate. “I can do what I want.”
“No emperors in my medbay,” said the man.
Nate looked past him, to Grace’s pale face in a bed beside him. She was out. He looked around, taking in not the rustic-looking machines pumping life into him, but his crew. El, his Helm. Hope, sitting down. Kohl, arms crossed and looking bored. And even Saveria, for once not wearing her cap. “Hey,” he said.
“You’re alive,” said El.
“You’re back,” said Hope.
“That was fucken stupid,” said Kohl.
Saveria said nothing at first, but she smiled. She reached behind her, drawing out Nate’s blaster. “I kept it safe,” she said. “Just in case.”
• • •
It took two days for Nate to walk again. The nanites coursing through him had kept him alive as his blood tried to escape, but it’d taken a long time for him to get back to the Cantor. Too long, because the nanites had strip-mined his other cells for materials. The medtech said looks like fucking sorcery, but I think you’ll be fine, and went off to deal with other patients. People hurt in the Ezeroc invasion. Hope had fixed his arm and his leg, which was a mercy, but the limbs clicked and whined in ways they shouldn’t.
But walking wasn’t the problem. Nate sat in a lower observation lounge as Grace came in. She still looked pale but used her anger like a set of crutches as she steered towards him. People got out of her way, then seeing her trajectory, left the lounge, trickling out like they’d never been.
“Hey,” said Nate.
“Do not ‘hey’ me, Nathan Chevell,” she said.
“Okay,” said Nate. “Way it had to be.”
“Stop talking,” she said. Grace sat across from him. “Just … stop.” She shook her head, then lowered it.
“There wasn’t another path,” he said. “I tried to find one.”
“You’re still talking,” she said. He caught Grace’s glare through the veil of her hair, so he stopped moving his lips for a second. You’ve got two ears but just one mouth for a reason. Quiet for a spell couldn’t hurt. “Together,” she said at last. “We do things together. You and me.”
It was his turn to look down. “Forgive me,” he said after a moment. “Forgive me if the one time I don’t want to do something together is the dying part. If there’s a chance you can live—”
“We could both live!” she shouted. “Together. You and me, Nate.”
He said nothing to that. He felt the truth of her words, and the doubt in his heart, and wrestled with that for a while. “It’s just,” he said, then stopped.
“It’s just what? What’s so important you had to die for it?”
“You,” he said. He looked out the window, Cantor below them, the promise of Ezeroc waiting for another day. “You.”
“Oh,” she said, looking out the window with him for a while. “Okay,” she said. Then, “It’s just…”
“Just what?”
“My whole life…” Grace wound down, like she was running out of steam. “The words are hard. Don’t … leave me. Alone.”
“I’m sorry.” Nate put his hand over hers. “I won’t.”
She looked at him, eyes bright with tears that threatened to fall. “Do you promise? On your life? Your precious Empire?”
“No,” said Nate. “I promise on my heart.”
Grace glared at him for a few more moments, then sighed. “Guess it’ll have to do.”
“Reckon so,” said Nate.
“Okay,” she said. “I’ve got something to show you.”
“What is it?”
“A surprise,” said Grace. “For me, too.”
• • •
The hangar bay was full of people, construction machines reaching arms towards the Tyche as sparks flared. There was no autofactory on the Cantor, but there were still people. The Tyche was being put back together by a team of fifty souls, using the sweat of their brow to heal the ship that saved them.
Nate stood by Grace at the hangar’s airlock. It was a raised platform, the people of what used to be Cantor Station below them. Nate caught Hope’s pink hair, directing people this way and that. He saw the bulk of a reactor on an autoloader’s tray, waiting for installation. El was cursing at someone. Kohl was dragging pieces of metal this way and that. Even Saveria Complex was there, a collection of paints by her side, as she touched up the Tyche’s face on the hull.
In the middle of it, Meenaz Lohdi, the head of Cantor system, was talking with the captain of her guard, Ebony Drake. Ebony wore new armor, all in black, and Nate wondered where she’d got it. Meenaz noticed Nate and Grace by the airlock and stopped talking.
Then she bent down on one knee and bowed. Beside her, Ebony copied the pose. It was like a stone dropped in a pond, a ripple spreading out, as every member of the previous terrorist anarchy of Cantor system bent a knee to the Empire.
“This feels kind of awkward,” hissed Nate to Grace. “This is a hell of a surprise.”
“Don’t look at me,” she whispered back. “I wanted to show you the Tyche.”
Nate took a step forward, pulling Grace along with him. “Uh,” he said. “Hey.”
Meenaz looked up, then stood. “Of all the peoples of all the stars, just one of them was willing to die for us. If you’ll have us, Cantor would like to return the favor.”
“You want to join the Empire?” said Nate.
“We want to help,” said Meenaz. “If joining an Empire is what it takes, we’ll do that too.”
Nate thought about that. About how humans had their backs to the wall, and about how what he needed was an army, or a navy, or both. How he had one bridgeliner, a corvette, and an aging heavy lifter. Not always about what folk can do for you though, is it? A little hope goes a long way. Costs you nothing and gives ‘em plenty. “I’d be honored,” said Nate. “Welcome aboard.”
Meenaz grinned. “Thank you.”
“Great,” said Nate. “You got any beer left on this station?”
• • •
The Cantor fell behind them, thrust at their backs. Nate had an argument with Chad before they left, the Empire’s Bulwark spymaster saying you’re crazy and suicide and other such nonsense. But Karkoski, looking worn thin, had put a hand on Chad’s arm and said, someone needs to protect these people. One corvette wasn’t much against an AI menace, but it was better than zero corvettes. Nate liked her math.
That’s how the conversation ended, the one that started when Chad wanted to take the Gravedigger to the Tyche’s destination.
“You sure abo
ut this?” said Grace. She was on an acceleration couch in the ready room, Kohl, Ebony, and Saveria nestled in there with her. Turned out, the black armor she wore was a promotion. Kohl had asked her if she wanted on the team, and the fool woman agreed. As far as Nate knew, Ebony Drake and October Kohl were the only remaining Emperor’s Black in the universe.
“I’m sure,” said Nate. He looked at El. “How are we doing, Helm?”
“Helm is ready for jump,” she said. Nate pretended not to notice the shake in her hands as she worked her console. “Endless Drive is online. And, would you look at that, it’s good for more than one jump. Much as I hate to say it, we can jump to our doom anytime you like.”
“Let’s get to jumping then,” said Kohl.
“I like how you didn’t focus on the doom part,” said Saveria.
The comm clicked. Hope said, “Engineering is ready to go. We’ve got as much green across the board as we’re gonna get with borrowed hull metal.”
“Will she hold?” said Nate. “Will my ship hold?”
“She’ll fly true, Cap,” said Hope. “She always does.”
Nate nodded. “Helm, you are clear for jump.”
“Copy,” said El. She clicked buttons on her console. “Negative space bow wave is stable. Ready for jump. In three.” A big green three lit the Tyche’s flight deck holo. “Two.” The three changed to a two. “One. Jumping.”
Space outside the flight deck windows stretched, pulled, and Nate felt—
His crew, a blanket and a hearth both. The souls of the Cantor, ready to wage war on the insect menace that had taken their planet, a new start to the Empire. The ship around him, facing foes too numerous to count, but grinning at them as they came. The pure thrill of acceleration, impossible, unbelievable acceleration. He couldn’t feel it. He was it. He was everything. He was the universe.
Stars stretched, made points of light that streaked past the Tyche’s flight deck.
They jumped.
• • •
You’ve finished Tyche’s Demons. I hope you loved it!
Tyche's Demons: A Space Opera Military Science Fiction Epic (Ezeroc Wars: Tyche's Progeny Book 1) Page 28
