by Mick Fraser
“You know them?” Angela asked.
“Seven Rings Fleet. Nasty. We need to get back to the others.”
Angela grabbed the Avellian’s arm. “Wait! How? They’re between us and the ship. If we go around we still won’t beat them back.”
“We can’t sit and do nothing!”
Angela looked back to the red ship. A thought occurred. “How many were there?”
“Twenty-three,” Gaelan replied instantly. “Why?”
“And how many can a ship that size carry?”
“Um... It’s a Silsir warp-jet, repurposed. Not more than twenty, comfortably. They’re flying cramped. Standard for corsairs.”
“Then I guess there won’t be many left aboard?”
“Maybe three,” said Gaelan testily. “What’s your point, Earthborn?”
“I’ve an idea. Follow me.”
Angela hurriedly picked her way towards the ship, staying as low as possible and giving it a wide berth.
“What are we doing?” Gaelan asked her.
Angela knelt beside her in the shadow of a large golden boulder. “Criminals are criminals. I know how they work. We’ll give them something they need in return for leaving us alone. These ships, they have batteries, right?”
Gaelan thought for a moment. “Batteries? Er... An Aethir core, you mean? Yes. And a back-up. Corsair hopper like this will probably have two.”
“Can you find them and remove them?”
“Yes. But how do we get in?”
Angela reached out and pulled down the zipper on the Avellian’s jumpsuit. “Just knock on the door.”
Gaelan looked down. “You’re shitting me, right? And what if a woman answers?”
Angela winked. “I’m a woman. You turned my head.” Feeling suddenly emboldened she leaned forward and kissed Gaelan on the lips. “Come on. Use what your momma gave you.”
“Remind me to kill you for this later.”
“Will do.”
Gaelan rose, took a deep breath, and boldly approached the ship. A soft wind swirled the sand at her feet. With a last scowl at Angela, she rapped twice on the cargo ramp. For a moment there was a still, expectant silence, and then it suddenly ground open. In the doorway was a green-skinned To’ecc holding what looked like a giant wrench. He was not in the least bit interested in the contents of Gaelan’s jumpsuit.
“What?” he demanded. “You lost?”
“Actually,” Gaelan said, “I was hoping for a human, an Auton or an Avellian – or maybe even a Silsir. The plan was obviously to use my feminine charms – by which I mean my breasts – to distract you so that my friend and I can break in and steal your Aethir core.”
The corsair looked puzzled. “Feminine what?”
“Never mind.”
Gaelan stepped aside and Angela arced past her, slamming the corsair to the floor. Two others came running but she arced by one – another four-armed To’ecc – and whipped out the Braid, wrapping his neck and dragging him bodily into the near bulkhead. Gaelan leapt up the ramp, coming out of a barrel roll to catch the last corsair, ironically a lanky human with bad teeth, with a spinning clothesline. As he hit the deck she stamped on his crotch, causing him to sit bolt upright and put his face in perfect line with her swinging boot heel. He dropped back and lay still.
Shakily, Angela glanced around at the strewn bodies. She felt warm inside, alive, more vital than she could remember ever feeling before. She looked up at Gaelan. “Think that’s all of them?”
“For their sakes I hope so. That was pretty impressive.”
“Thanks. It felt... good.”
Gaelan smiled. “Well, your blood is up.”
Angela felt herself beginning to blush.
“Right,” she said, trying not to look flustered. “Come on. We’ve got work to do.”
CHAPTER 40
~JUXTA SEVEN-RINGS~
DRENNO WHISTLED SHARPLY, ordering the crew to fan out and take cover as the corsairs approached. They were brazen, secure that their superior numbers would be enough to overwhelm the few interlopers. They were probably right, too. They outnumbered Drenno’s crew three to one, and they had the high ground advantage.
The leader strode ahead of the others by a pace or two. He was a huge, red-skinned Endrani, his paling crimson mane pulled back into scores of braids tied with silver twine. He wore heavy bangles on his muscular wrists that didn’t jingle, one oversized dark leather pauldron and a baldric from which hung two enormous knives and a long-barrelled shard-slinger. The soft fur of his bare chest was perma-dyed with white ink, an intricate pattern that Drenno recognised immediately. He halted around thirty paces out, on a jutting outcrop of rock, and placed both clawed hands on his hips. His first mate, a snow-skinned Silsir with a half-shaved head and a midnight blue eyepatch, knelt beside him like a cat ready to pounce.
The Endrani smiled warmly, yellow eyes raking the scene before him. “Having some trouble there, are you?”
Drenno’s eyes flickered to Gage; the Auton had her shard-slinger trained on the speaker. He looked back. “Some. Nothing we can’t handle, Captain Juxta. Yeah. I know who you are.”
Juxta’s grin grew wider. “And I know who you are, which saves us a conversation, Captain Drenno. Are you needing some help?”
“Are you really offering?”
The Endrani took a few paces to his left, angling the bright sun above and behind him, casting him in silhouette. “I’m curious, actually: as you came screaming through the atmosphere in that wee little boat of yours, did you happen to see the sign?”
The question almost threw Drenno, but he noted the look in Illith’s eye and sighed. “No, we didn’t see a sign.”
Juxta made a show of throwing up his hands, exasperated. “They didn’t see the sign, Kaleth...” he said to his first mate. “Fucking thing must have fallen down again.” He swung back to Drenno. “Well, had there been a sign to read, it would have read: Property of the Seven Rings Fleet. We’re the Seven Rings Fleet, and I’m... Well, you already said, you know who I am.”
Juxta Seven-Rings was notorious across the Reach, but this system in particular was widely known to belong to him and his fleet of corsairs and reavers. Drenno considered a change of tact. “We crashed. We don’t intend to be here long. Now is there something we can do for you? Because we’ve got a lot of work to do.”
The Endrani stopped smiling abruptly. “Ha. Listen up, Captain. There are two ways we can do this. Actually, there are hundreds of ways, but only two of them are worth the time and effort. One: we take what’s left of your ship – for the bounty – and leave you here. When the tide comes in, and it will, the jabbers will get some of you. Some of you might get away, find a beacon, get off this beautiful rock of ours. Or two, one of your rabble does something rash – I fancy the Auton there – and we shoot you full of holes, feed you to the jabbers, and take the ship – and your head – anyway. The second way’s better, since then I won’t have to live with all the horrible guilt and uncertainty about whether or not you got away.”
As the corsair spoke, Drenno took stock. There were twenty-three reavers, lined up along the dunes and up on the ridge above. Without a doubt, Gage could take out the three furthest left before they could react. Dizzy and the belly-guns could do maybe five in a couple of shots. Shimmer and Six-Tails would go melee, up the ridge in a heartbeat, easily accounting for two each. That would leave ten, plus Juxta, for Drenno and Illith. Not the worst odds, but these weren’t green recruits; they were corsairs, ruthless and seasoned. No way to do this without a casualty somewhere, but he knew even as he thought it that it was his choice to make, and the others would follow him. Before he could make a move, Juxta put his head on one side and smiled again.
“Ah!” he laughed. “And here was I, pointing fingers at the bot.”
As he raised his hand and Drenno went for his handcannon, there was a sudden shriek from one of the corsairs along the ridge, followed by a flash of light – and Angela appeared, coming out of an arc to
press a long-handled blade against Juxta’s throat. In her other hand was a cannon, which she pushed against his cheek. Gaelan sidled up on the far right, one cannon trained on Juxta, one on Kaleth.
Drenno’s eyes flicked from Angela to his daughter and back again. “What the hell was that?”
Angela blew a dangling braid out of her face. “Beast mode,” she replied.
“So what now, sweetheart?” Juxta mocked. “I move and you shoot, then she shoots and we all shoot until everyone’s full of missing parts?”
“I guess so. I hadn’t thought that far ahead.”
Drenno glanced at Illith. Angela had two weapons on Juxta, but it was only a matter of time before he took a chance on his superior strength and his greater force.
“You’re shaking,” the Endrani purred at Angela.
“Of course I’m fucking shaking,” she snapped, and Drenno smiled despite himself. “We’ve got your Aethir cores. All of them.”
Now Drenno saw uncertainty in Juxta’s feline eyes. “Trask shit.”
“Two To’eccs and a human with bad teeth. They’re, um, sleeping. Kind of.”
Juxta raised an eyebrow towards Gaelan, and his jaw tightened. The situation was fast slipping out of control. “There’s no out here for you, girls. You’ve made a show, and you’ve got pluck, but you’re fucked and you know it.”
“Merroch!” Kaleth suddenly shouted, using the Endrani word for “Captain”, at the same time as Dizzy shouted to Drenno over the Shadowstar’s tannoy.
Drenno whirled just as a sonic boom exploded across the island and three black ships burst out of Phase-shift inside orbit. They tore through the air above, hammering the ground with a downburst of pressure that knocked everyone sprawling and kicked up a mushroom of sand and dust. The ships wheeled like a flock, coming to a halt some way away and landing together in a cloud of thick black vapour and grit.
Angela, now half-pinned beneath Juxta, tried to move, but the Endrani elbowed her hard in the stomach, smashing the wind from her lungs. She coughed, wriggling, and he hit her again. Gasping for breath she managed to free her hand; she flexed the Braid, but before she figured out what the hell to do with it the ground began to shake. The three ships opened up, and Exethan troops poured from within. Behind them, shard-slinger over his shoulder, came Marshal Varo, striding down the ramp as the sand heaved around him.
Juxta rolled away as huge blasts of sand burst from the ground all around them like geysers, and Angela saw something close to manic joy in his face. “What is that?” she shouted.
“That’s all of us fucked, lass!” he laughed, actually laughed, as the sea surrounding the island erupted, discharging gouts of water fifty feet high within which Angela saw colossal dark shapes spiralling up out of the broiling surf like launching rockets.
Jabberhawks.
Dragons, by any other name.
They pirouetted into the sky in almost perfect unison, spreading their great wings and diving as a uniformed flock towards the stricken corsairs. One sped towards Angela, wheeling at the last instant to snatch Juxta from the ground in a pop of dust. Instinctively Angela leapt up, sprinting through the sudden chaos of plasma bolts, explosions and striking monsters, keeping one eye on the dangling corsair.
She arced up onto an outcrop of solid sand, jumped to the next, this one higher, and arced again, whipping out the Braid to catch Juxta’s flailing leg. The jabberhawk was strong, and its flight barely faltered until Angela’s dangling foot found another outcrop and she was able to arc the other way, maintaining her pull on the Braid. She landed on the far side of a claw of sand, but the beast’s velocity dragged her forward to crash painfully against it; it caught nonetheless and Juxta, torn free, crashed down a few paces away from her. He looked at her with a mixture of relief and disbelief and rose groggily.
“I suppose you think I owe you for that,” he slurred.
Angela pushed herself up in the sand. “You know damn well you do.” She pointed. “Your cores are buried in the beach, over that ridge. So that’s two.”
He helped her up. “Two in the same day counts as one,” he joked. “Where’s your crew?”
She realised she had followed the jabberhawk a hundred yards or more. The firefight was behind her, beyond a high curved ridge of sun-baked sand. Together she and Juxta sprinted back, and he ran off ahead, pulling his slinger round in its harness to fire at the Exethan troops. Angela crossed to where Drenno crouched in the cover of a line of smoking sand boulders beside Illith and Gage. The Silsir tossed her a handcannon.
Angela caught it as her eyes raked over the four-way battle. The jabbers had already thinned, but so had the Exethan and the corsairs. Of Varo there was no sign, but Shimmer was engaged in hand to hand combat half-way up a solid dune with a female Silsir dressed in Scepterist colours. Of the others there was no sign.
“Where’s Gaelan!?” she shouted.
Drenno scanned the beach. “She’s with Tails. We’ll find her. We need to get on board and get in the air.” He slapped a hand against his ear. “Dizzy! How’s my boat?”
The To’ecc’s gruff voice burst over the commlink in a crackle of static. “She’s tired, but she’s working. Three turns. Make your way back now!”
On the dune, Shimmer got the better of the Silsir, impaling her on one end of her double magnablade. She tossed the body aside, just as a jabberhawk exploded into view, frantically trying to gain altitude with Six-Tails clinging to its back. He grabbed its wing in two hands and tore it free, causing the beast to squeal and spiral into the sand. The Endrani leapt clear, bounding on all fours towards the crew. Shimmer swung with him as he passed, and they regrouped in cover.
“Is there a plan?” Six-Tails asked.
“Yeah,” Gage replied. “If you could pop back out there and tear the wings off the other jabberhawks, that’d be just golden.”
Angela grabbed his huge, furred arm. “Where’s Gaelan?”
He looked at Drenno. “I thought she fell back.”
Snarling, Drenno strode out of cover, his duster flashing green and red as his shield absorbed a volley of incoming fire. Without hesitation the others followed, leaving Angela to chase after them as they cut a swathe of sparks and plasma-burn through the remaining Exethan. The jabbers had mostly dispersed, feeding on snatched pirates and Scepterists. A few circled high above, wary now of the pain of hot plasma. Their hollow, echoing cries were a dirge for the dead. Heading to the right, Angela and the others crested a dune to see an Exethan troop ship smoking and billowing black vapour, its hull blown open. Long, disjointed bodies ringed it like the parody of a halo.
A sudden roar of engines signified the ship to its left lifting off. It swung, bringing its long-guns to bear on the Firebrands. They scattered, knowing it wasn’t enough to escape the splash damage of the cannons, when suddenly the Exethan ship erupted, spitting metal and fire like a steel volcano. Through the wall of smoke came a ship, and through its main window Angela saw Juxta, predatory smile in place, raising one finger and mouthing the corresponding number. She nodded and he laughed, spinning his shuttle and blasting into the sky. He still owed her one, and she hoped she’d never have to claim the rest of her due.
CHAPTER 41
~PARLEY~
THE FIREBRANDS REGROUPED, racing around the nearby dune. Here the ground was level and they found themselves on a stretch of empty sand that led back to Dizzy and the waiting Shadowstar, or onwards to the final Exethan ship. As they approached it a hot, churning unease rose in Angela’s stomach. Drenno felt it too, she knew, for his pace quickened around the bank of dark sand. In front of the final remaining ship stood Varo with a dozen troops – and Gaelan, grasped in the To’ecc’s lower hands, with his handcannon to her temple. She was on her knees, bleeding from her nose and mouth, but when Varo saw Drenno he dragged her up and held her like a shield.
“Stall your cores, Ellys!” he cautioned, his cold reptilian eyes travelling over the group. “Where’s my fellow To’ecc this time?”
&
nbsp; “Dizzy’s in the Shadow,” said Drenno coldly. “Give me my daughter.”
“Oh, is that how it works? You say it and I do it? Where is Veyla?”
“Who?”
Shimmer answered. “Veyla, his first mate. She is the Silsir with the hole in her belly.”
Varo laughed dryly. “You Ri'in really are as cold as Elbion winters, aren’t you? She was a good investment, Academy stock. I trained her for three years. I should kill this one just for that.”
“Hurt her and you’re dead.” Angela threatened.
Varo shifted his attention to her. “You know, I had planned to kill you. All of you. But I wasn’t betting on a flock of jabberhawks or half a fleet of corsair savages, so you got lucky. Now you all get to walk away; all except you, Outsider. You, and the Machine, for the Avellian.”
“What Machine?” Drenno bluffed.
Varo’s rage exploded. “What fucking machine? I’ve been chasing your sorry excuse for a crew for five systems. You almost cost me my commission, my career, my command. Now all Her Highness wants is that sack of bones and the Machine. Hand them over, or I swear—” he hammered on the back of Gaelan’s head and she dropped, but as she did he swept his upper right arm over her to reveal a second cannon, this one pointing straight at Drenno, “—I’ll kill you both and deal with the consequences later!”
Drenno raised a hand. “Wait! Wait! Okay.” He glanced at Angela, and only she saw the look in his eyes. He was terrified. He’d lost his wife, his best friend, any chance of a normal life. If he lost Gaelan too, it would kill him faster than a bullet.
Angela stepped forward. “I’ll come.” She looked at Drenno. “I’ll go. It’s alright.” His face twisted in conflict, but she gently stroked his arm. “It’s fine. Any father would do the same.” She dropped her handcannon in the sand and raised her arms.
Varo sneered. “And that!” he ordered, pointing at the Braid. “I know what that is. Lose it.”
