“They spoke with you?” Ra demanded.
“Yes, after they realized that Gatticus is an android.”
“Then that explains it,” Ra growled.
“Tanik,” Riker spat. “This is all his fault.”
Ra grabbed his neck and pulled him close once more. “We will see him soon,” Ra intoned.
“Hey, if you guys are planning some kind of revenge, do you think it can wait until we’ve got our fuel?” Blake asked.
Ra bared his teeth. “Do not worry. You will get what you need.”
Darius noted that wasn’t a promise to leave Tanik alone.
“How do we get into your ship?” Riker asked. “I tried to get in and find more weapons, but the rear hatch is code-locked.”
Gatticus walked wordlessly by them to the rear airlock of the Osprey, and the others followed. When he reached the ship, Gatticus handed his severed arm to Lisa and then tapped the code into the keypad beside the airlock. It slid open and they climbed in one after another.
“Care to share the code with us?” Blake asked as Gatticus cycled the outer doors shut and opened the inner ones.
Gatticus glanced pointedly at Ra, then shook his head, and said, “No.” With that, he led them inside.
“He does not trust us,” Ra replied smilingly as they walked into the Osprey’s troop bay. He let out a sissing peal of laughter. “It is mutual.”
Gatticus took them to the cockpit and everyone except for Darius re-took their usual seats, leaving Cassandra’s chair glaringly empty. Darius stared at it for a long moment while the newcomers stood around looking uncomfortable.
“Where do we sit?” Ra asked, also eyeing the empty chair.
“On the floor?” Blake suggested.
Ra glared at him, and Blake grinned.
Gatticus said, “There’s an extra chair on the other side of the door. Fold it out please, Darius.”
He snapped out of his daze and went to do as he was told. He slid open the panel and folded out the seat beside Lisa’s as he’d seen Gatticus do back on the Deliverance.
Captain Riker sat down there before Darius could pull out the harness.
Hearing the rising whine of the ship’s engines starting up, Darius glanced back at Gatticus. “What about the others? There aren’t enough seats.”
“Ectos and I can stand,” Ra replied, glancing back from where he stood behind Gatticus’s chair. “Veekara, you may sit in the other chair.”
The Vixxon took Cassandra’s seat, and Darius was finally able to put a name to that eerily human face. Her glaring white eyes found him and narrowed.
“Yes?” she asked.
Just then the Osprey’s engines roared and the deck shook. The bomber hovered up a few feet and then listed to one side, flying sideways off the landing pad and sending Darius careening into Blake.
“Hey! You mind?” Blake said.
Ectos, the Sicarian, stumbled but didn’t fall. He hissed and his pink tongue flicked out between his teeth.
Gatticus righted the bomber. “Sorry,” he said. “It’s not easy flying with one arm.”
“Maybe you should let me try?” Darius asked. “I flew small aircraft back on Earth.”
“This is somewhat more complicated than that, but perhaps we can download a flight training module for you when we return to the Deliverance.”
“That might be too late. What if something happens to you?” Darius asked. “We could use another pilot.”
“No,” Gatticus insisted.
“I can fly,” Captain Riker put in, and everyone looked to him.
Darius frowned. “What were you a Captain of?”
“A Dreadnought-class Destroyer, but I flew SF-76’s for a while before that.”
“How did you end up here?” Lisa asked.
Captain Riker shrugged. “After you’ve helped subjugate half a dozen species for an oppressive regime, you get a little fekked up in the head. I stole a transport and abandoned my ship. I took my first officer with me... Tamara. We ran out of fuel and ended up here. Phantoms shot us down and we crash-landed in the forest. We barely made it to Karkarus alive.”
“Tamara,” Lisa said. “Was she your...?”
“My wife, yes,” Riker said in a suddenly hoarse voice. He cleared his throat and looked away, out the side window of the Osprey.
Darius grimaced and turned back to the fore. Ra was giving Gatticus some basic directions, indicating that he should fly along the coast. Gatticus took them down low along the steep, sandy shore. Wet sand gleamed dark gold in the moonlight. Waves rose up beside them in towering walls that curled and crashed, spraying the cockpit with glittering beads of moisture.
“How far away is Tanik’s base?” Darius asked.
“Three days’ walk on foot,” Ra replied.
“That doesn’t sound very far,” Darius said.
“The days are long on Hades,” Captain Riker put in. “Thirty-five standard hours.”
“Standard...? How many Earth hours is a standard hour?” Blake asked.
“One point two,” Gatticus replied.
“Well, it won’t take us long to get there in the Osprey,” Darius said.
“No, but we’ll have to search the ruins on foot,” Riker said.
“Ruins?” Blake asked.
“Over there,” Ra said pointing up ahead to where the forest disappeared and the beach turned to sheer black cliffs like the ones hedging Karkarus. A massive tower sat along those cliffs. The top half of it had collapsed and fallen over to lean against the bottom half in an upside-down V. The base of the tower was the size of a small city. It was a sprawling, mostly flat structure of maybe a dozen stories high at the edge. It looked like something that ants might build if they were intelligent.
“What species built that?” Darius asked as they flew over the flat base of the structure and slowly circled the tower. The entire thing appeared to be made of metal or concrete.
“The natives of Hades built it,” Ra replied. “The Kivani. They were an arboreal species that is all but extinct now. When they joined the USO and their tributes began going to the Crucible, none of them ever returned. Their population stalled, and the adults became embittered and angry with the loss of their children. Some joined the Coalition. The rest became troublemakers who were later rounded up and sealed for death by the Skavas,” Ra said, nodding to Gatticus.
“Interesting,” Darius replied. “There aren’t any lights coming from the tower. Is that because the exiles don’t have electricity?”
“They do,” Ra replied, “but they stay below ground to keep from being seen or detected by Cygnians.”
“And that works for them?” Blake asked. “Seems like you should be hiding in the ruins too, then.”
“It does not work. They are forced to move around constantly from place to place. We have found it better to stay in one defensible location and fortify ourselves there.”
Darius nodded. “So how do you know they are in these ruins?”
“We don’t, but because this location is close to the depot they attacked, it is a reasonable deduction.”
Gatticus stopped the Osprey over a flat, clear section of the tower base and began hovering down for a landing.
Just then, a double chime sounded from one of Gatticus’s displays and he glanced at it. “That’s interesting...” he said.
“What is it?” Ra asked.
“There’s an energy signature coming from the ruins.”
Darius walked up behind Gatticus to get a look at whatever he was seeing.
“There—” Gatticus pointed to the base of the tower just as a bright orange flash of light illuminated the structure. The source of the orange light jetted up, roaring into the sky at a steep angle.
“It’s a ship!” Darius said.
“Cygnian or USO?” Captain Riker asked as he got up and came to stand behind them.
“USO,” Gatticus replied. “It’s a T-20B Starskimmer.”
“That’s the same class of transport
I came here in. Tanik, that son of a vix, he must have found it and fixed it up!”
“And left all his people behind?” Ra mused. “They cannot all fit on such a small vessel.”
“Maybe they suffered some losses,” Riker said. “Don’t let them get away,” he said to Gatticus. “I’ll man the forward turret, see if I can use it to force them down.”
“You will not,” Gatticus replied.
“Can we radio them or something?” Darius asked. “They’ll probably share their fuel if we offer to share the Deliverance.”
“Perhaps,” Gatticus said. “Everyone sit down and hang on.” Not waiting for them to do so, Gatticus pulled up, and suddenly Darius was standing on a slope, trying not to tumble over backward.
Captain Riker scrambled down to the gun turret at the bottom of the ramp, and Darius went to take Riker’s seat beside Lisa. He pulled out the harness and locked it in place over his chest.
Ectos came over with Ra. They both stood leaning against the cockpit door. For additional support, they grabbed Darius’s and Lisa’s harnesses to use them like handrails.
“Ready,” Ra said.
Gatticus gunned the engines, and a deafening roar resonated through the ship. Darius was pinned to the back of his seat for long seconds, which he spent blinking the spots from his eyes and fighting to stay conscious.
“Unidentified USO transport, this is Gatticus Thedroux of the... independent Colossus-class carrier, Deliverance. Is Tanik Gurhain on board?”
“If you’re trying to trick me, Gatticus, you’ll have to do better than that,” a gruff voice replied. “Break off, or we’ll open fire.”
“Our ship is here under special circumstances. We believe it may have belonged to the Coalition before it ran out of fuel and ended up here. The crew was killed by Banshees. We are the sole survivors. We were in cryo until power levels dropped low enough to wake us.”
“A Coalition ship? Go on. What exactly do you want, Gatticus?”
“We believe you may have raided the Cygnian depot on Hades and stolen the fuel there. If true, we would be willing to share the Deliverance with you in exchange for that fuel.”
“And how do I know this isn’t a trick to capture us?”
“Why would we bother tricking you?” Gatticus countered. “We’d just shoot you down and be done with it. You’re in range, and an Osprey is more than a match for your Starskimmer.”
“Are you certain your vessel is still here? I’ve got nothing on sensors this side of Hades.”
“We landed it on the moon and powered down again to avoid detection,” Gatticus said. “We can take you there. Do you know how to land on a carrier?”
“I could land on the backside of an Ikarian sand beetle. Lead the way, full throttle. We’re not in a mood for delays.”
“Understood,” Gatticus replied.
“Hey, what about Cassandra?” Darius demanded.
Gatticus glanced over his shoulder, then turned back to the fore and spoke into the comms once more. “We have people on the surface. We need to go back and get them before we go.”
“We cannot wait,” Tanik replied. “You can come back for them after you show us the ship.”
“No deal,” Darius said, shaking his head.
“We’re not happy with that,” Gatticus replied.
“That’s too bad.”
“Grak it, the girl can wait!” Blake said. “It’s that, or we don’t get our fuel.”
“He’s right,” Gatticus replied.
Darius was about to object, but the roar of the Osprey’s engines grew suddenly louder, and the pressure of acceleration increased by a factor of two. Dark clouds whipped by the cockpit, and spots clouded Darius’s vision.
“I’m going to... pass out...” Lisa said between gasps, her voice barely audible over the roar of the Osprey’s engines.
“We’ll go back down for her while we’re refueling the Deliverance,” Gatticus said.
“If you think you are the ones in charge here, you are mistaken,” Ra said, sounding barely winded by the high Gs they were pulling. “They could take your ship and leave.”
“They can’t take control of it without my permission,” Gatticus replied. “They don’t have the access codes. We will get your daughter, Darius,” Gatticus said. “I promise.”
Chapter 26
The dark, cratered landscape of Hades’ moon whipped by beneath the Osprey, and the Deliverance rose up like a mountain from the horizon, shaded green by the bomber’s nav computer. Darius winced as Gatticus brought them down lower, skimming the surface of the moon. The landing bay loomed ahead, an open green rectangle with slanting sides that somehow managed to prop the carrier up without collapsing under the vessel’s crushing weight. The moon’s lighter gravity must have had something to do with it.
Gatticus fired the Osprey’s thrusters in reverse to slow down as they reached the landing bay. He flipped the bomber over until the moon’s fractional gravity sent all the blood rushing to their heads. The bomber angled toward one of the landing strips in the ceiling of the landing bay, and the exiles’ transport appeared beside them, also inverted and firing its thrusters in reverse. Docking clamps from the carrier paced them, racing along tracks in the landing strips. The two ships touched down on parallel landing strips at almost the same time, and Darius heard docking clamps clunk against the underside of the Osprey. A split second later, the sliding clamps in the landing strip slammed on the brakes and threw them all against their harnesses. Ra and Ectos growled and hissed as they clung to Darius’s and Lisa’s harnesses to avoid flying through the cockpit canopy.
Just a few seconds later, the Osprey ground to a halt on one of the carrier’s landing pads. The exiles’ transport slid to a stop on the pad beside theirs. Then both landing pads flipped over until they were sitting right side up inside the carrier’s launch tubes, with the moon’s gravity now tugging them down into their seats.
Darius shook his head to clear it as all the blood suddenly rushed back to his feet. A headache throbbed in his temples, but he ignored it. Pulling the lever to release his harness, he jumped up and strode over to Gatticus’s chair. He was literally itching to get back down to Hades and pick up Cassandra. He studied the flight controls as Gatticus selected the overhead hangar and configured the vehicular airlock to take them up.
“Show me how to take off and land,” Darius said.
“I told you. It’s complicated,” Gatticus replied.
Darius gritted his teeth and shook his head. “Riker!” he called down to the gunner’s position below the pilot’s chair.
“Yeah?” the man replied.
“Take me back down to the surface.”
“No. I have a score to settle with Tanik.”
“No one is settling any scores,” Gatticus said. “The last thing we need is to all start shooting each other. The Phantoms killed your wife, not Tanik,” Gatticus said.
“He provoked them!” Riker roared. A moment later he came bounding up the ramp, his face flushed and blue eyes flashing.
“Yes, but that makes him a secondary offender,” Gatticus replied. He rose from the pilot’s chair to face Riker just as the Osprey emerged inside the hangar alongside the exiles’ transport. “He did not provoke them with the intention of getting innocent people killed. He obviously did it to steal fuel so that he could escape Hades.”
The two ships’ running lights illuminated the darkness inside the hangar, twin pools of silver in a sea of gleaming black shadows.
“Like I give a fek what he intended to do!” Riker said.
“The skava is right,” Ra put in. “We should go back to Karkarus and start rebuilding. Our people need us alive, not dead.”
“Grak that! You said—”
“Forget what I said. If we allow these others to come to harm because of our thirst for revenge, then we are no less careless than Tanik himself, and you still have your children to think about, Riker. Remember that. Let the Revenants deal with Tanik.”
> “The Revenants!” Riker scoffed. “They don’t exist! That’s just a story the Cygnians tell to make themselves feel better about the ones who don’t come back from the Crucible.”
Ra stalked over to Riker and grabbed his face, smushing his cheeks together in one long-fingered hand. “Guard your tongue,” he growled.
Riker slapped Ra’s hand away and glared at him. “Keep your paws off me, brother.”
“Now is not the time for justice. We will return to the surface.” Turning to Gatticus he said, “Where are the weapons you promised?”
“In the back of the Osprey. You can keep the ship, too, if you like.”
“After you fly me and my daughter back up here,” Darius said.
Ra inclined his head to Darius. “Of course.” To Captain Riker he said, “Let us be on our way.”
Riker scowled and hesitated, visibly grinding his teeth, but he gave in with a nod. “Fine.” He shouldered past Gatticus and sat down in the pilot’s chair. “Whoever’s going—go, everyone else, sit down and secure your harnesses.”
Blake and Lisa got up, while Darius went to sit in the seat Blake had vacated.
“Don’t barter the whole carrier away for the fuel,” Darius said, nodding to Gatticus as the android bent to retrieve his severed arm from a webbed compartment beneath the pilot’s seat.
“I was trained to negotiate peace treaties between alien empires,” Gatticus said as he straightened. “I believe I can manage with one disreputable human.”
“Well, just watch your back,” Darius said.
“Noted, and likewise,” Gatticus replied.
Darius nodded and caught Lisa’s eye. “You sure you don’t want to come with me? Sticking around to negotiate with convicted criminals could be dangerous.”
“Same goes for going back down to Hades,” Lisa replied; then she grimaced and added, “Besides, one take off was bad enough for my stomach. I’ll see you when you get back.”
“All right. Be careful,” he said.
“I will.”
“Let’s go, people,” Riker growled. “Before I change my mind and go kill that son of a vix.”
Veekara made an irritated noise in the back of her throat. “Kindly do not use that expression in my presence. Some vixxons are monogamous and mate for life.”
Broken Worlds: The Awakening (A Sci-Fi Mystery) Page 16
