Soroya seemed to thaw somewhat upon her doppelganger’s approach, shaking her head and smiling wanly. “Now that you mention it, not at all. You really do know how to make an entrance, ‘Neci.”
“You two…?” Vichante began, still eyeing the newcomer with wary interest.
Xenecia half-smiled, half-frowned—a facial gesture he was thoroughly convinced only the Shih’rahi were capable of perfecting—as she leveled her gaze upon Vichante. “Who is this one, then?”
“My husband, thank you. Flight Commander Vichante Harm.” Soroya threaded her fingers through Vichante’s for emphasis. “And yes,” she added, speaking to Vichante. “We are sisters, of a sort.”
“Husband?” Xenecia’s mirrored lenses seemed to shine especially brightly as she appraised Vichante, with all his coffee skin and gunmetal grey eyes. “He is a great warrior,” she said with a note of approval, still eyeing the man critically. Almost hungrily.
“The most you shall ever lay eyes on.” Soroya nodded over her sister’s shoulder. “And your companions, Xenecia? Are you not going to introduce them?”
“Ah.” Xenecia smirked. “My manners. So sorry.”
Fenton Wilkes. Roon McNamara. Ensign Ohana Cassel. All refugees of Morgenthau-Hale, the latter still wearing elements of the high-collared, hunter green uniform characteristic of its officers.
With some effort and hurried shuffling of personnel, accommodations were arranged for the Irregulars’ newfound allies—though Fenton and Roon pointedly insisted they would be more than comfortable sharing space. For her part, all Ensign Cassel was concerned with was a shower and a fresh change of clothes.
Vichante nodded. “You all go ahead and get cleaned up, get something to eat, stretch your legs. We’re not exactly five stars here, but you’re welcome to share whatever we have.”
Roon smiled wanly. “You have our gratitude.”
“We should meet in a few hours,” Fenton said. “Compare notes, get to know each other better, that sort of thing. We have a lot to talk about.”
“No doubt.” Raising a hand, Vichante signaled for a pair of guards who had overseen the entry of the yacht but were now more or less milling about shiftlessly. “Until then, everyone here is at your disposal.”
Again, Roon smiled. “Thank you, Commander Harm, but we don’t want to put anyone out.”
“Besides,” Fenton added, “it turns out we’re all fairly low maintenance people anyway.”
“Be that as it may, anything you need, don’t hesitate to ask. We’ll do our best to accommodate you. In the meantime, Specialists Jareth and Hennery will escort you to your quarters.
“Well, aren’t they a motley lot?” Vichante observed as Jareth and Hennery escorted the other new arrivals from the landing bay. There was a distinct note of amusement to his voice, but also respect. Perhaps even admiration.
“Quite.”
“Also, when were you planning on telling me you have a sister?”
“When it became relevant.” Soroya sighed. “Which, I suppose, it just did.”
“Quite.”
“If you are trying to be glib…”
“Not at all. Just agreeing with you.”
“We chose very different paths a very long time ago.”
“So I noticed. Are those ocular implants?”
“Yes. She is a huntrex. I imagine they are in service of that somehow.”
“A huntrex?” Vichante furrowed his expansive brow thoughtfully. “So why is she keeping company with one of the galaxy’s most wanted corporate fugitives instead of turning him in and laughing all the way to the next system? Furthermore, why the hell are we?”
“That is the question, is it not?”
“I hate it when you do that.”
Soroya fixed him with a sly, teasing tweak of her lips. “Liar. You love it.”
“Maybe a little.”
A low whistling sounded behind them. Vichante and Soroya turned to find Corliss and Rishi ambling in close, admiring the Morgenthau-Hale yacht. A team of engineers and technicians nearly a dozen deep fanned out alongside them. To a man and woman, they looked as if they were staring at a myth, something they had never expected to lay eyes upon in their lifetimes.
“They may be resource-lusting, planet-raping bastards,” Rishi said of Morgenthau-Hale, “but my god do they build beautiful ships.” He looked to Vichante hopefully, almost pleadingly. “Do you suppose there’s any chance we can take some external readings?”
“What do you think I called you down for?” Vichante said. “Scan it from top to bottom, then do it twice more. Better than nothing. And if our new friends are amenable, we’ll get you inside. Maybe we’ll get lucky enough to reverse-engineer this thing. Imagine the advantage we would have going forward.”
Corliss nodded hungrily; Rishi was practically salivating, all but licking his lips at the thought. “Good thinking. Let’s get to it, people!”
Rishi was assigning the techs and engineers to their various duties—‘directing traffic,’ as the phrase around base went—when Vichante looked to Soroya. “Should we check in with Medical?”
“I suppose we should. At the very least we owe Specialist DeCoud our sympathies.”
Walking into Medical, they found Alexia bawling softly, her face pressed tight against Corporal Torrance’s shoulder. Torrey shook his head slightly upon seeing them. Not sending them away, necessarily, just making sure they knew Dell’s prognosis didn’t look good.
“Hey, Lexi,” he said softly against the curve of her ear. “We’ve got company.”
Stepping forward, Vichante just bowed and shook his head. “I’m sorry, Alexia. I know you were hoping for the best. We all were. He was a great wingman and an even better man. The best of any of us.”
“Thank you, Commander,” she offered tearfully.
Vichante nodded once more before turning his gaze to Torrey. “Corporal Torrance? A word?”
“I’ll be right back, alright, Lexi?”
Nodding mutely, Alexia slid liquidly from Torrey’s embrace and into the unoccupied seat next to Dell’s bed. There he was, his chest rising and falling softly. He looked so natural, so alive, yet so utterly vacant at the same time.
“Sir? You wanted a word?”
Vichante gave his head a disabusing shake, forcing himself to focus up. This wasn’t going to be easy by any stretch of the imagination. He gestured for the young soldier to follow as he led them a few paces away. “Corporal Torrance—Torrey, if I may—I’m about to ask you to do the hardest thing you’ll ever have to do.”
“I can handle it, sir.”
“I understand you were involved in the battle on the deck?”
“Three kills, sir. Couple wounded, but it doesn’t exactly seem sporting to count those.”
Vichante smirked in spite of himself. “Funny, I never thought I’d have something in common with a ground-and-pounder.”
“‘Scratch-and-dents don’t count for shit,’” Torrey quoted, smirking back just so.
Vichante eyed him closely, only then making the connection. “Torrance,” he said. “You wouldn’t happen to be related to Raina Torrance, would you?”
“My aunt, sir. May she rest in peace.”
“Well, doesn’t that just beat all? I flew my first mission doing mop-up for her wing.” Vichante looked off a bit, smiling wistfully. “Those were the days.”
Torrey cleared his throat respectfully. “It’s not something I make a big deal of, sir.”
“Of course, of course.”
“You mentioned a hard call?”
“I did. Now that we have their clan-sire in custody, we’ll be negotiating with the Tyroshi soon. Ideally they’ll leave the system first, then we will, and the Oviddians will have won their war for survival.”
Torrey nodded. “About the best we could have hoped for, given the situation a few weeks ago.”
“Indeed,” Vichante said, presenting the unvarnished truth. “Once we leave this planet, though, we’re done here. After
all we’ve been through this last year, anyone coming with us has to be able to contribute. We’ve barely got racks and rations for live bodies as it is.”
Torrey’s face darkened with understanding. “And that means…”
“Exactly.”
“Sir. Please don’t ask me to do this.”
“It will sound cruel if I’m the one who proposes it.”
“God damnit, sir, but it is cruel! She just found out he’s still alive, and now you’re asking me to convince her to pull the plug? No. No, I won’t do it. Throw me in one of those immersion chambers if you have to, but that’s my answer.”
“It was never an order, Corporal. You have every right to refuse.”
“Then I do. I do refuse—”
“You two act like I’m so grief-addled I lost my hearing,” Alexia said from Dell’s bedside. Her voice was thick with sadness. “I get it. Dell isn’t coming back. I just want a few more hours with my brother, okay? Then we can do whatever the hell has to be done.”
“I am truly sorry, Alexia,” Vichante said after an appropriately silent beat. “I’ll leave you to it.”
“Me, too,” Torrey said.
“No,” Alexia said, almost pleadingly. “Stay, Torrey. Please?” The look in her eyes could have melted even the hardest soldier’s resolve.
Vichante took note of Soroya’s grimace as they rejoined at the hip. “That did not seem to go very well,” she said.
“It did and it didn’t. The point is, they both understand what has to happen. In the meantime, let’s go see what our new friends have to say for themselves.”
The first question, not surprisingly, came down to exactly how they had managed the feat of running the Tyroshi blockade.
“Engines,” was Ensign Cassel’s one-word assessment. “That’s what M-H ships do best. Outrun and outmaneuver. Oh, and just try to pull that retrieval maneuver in anything less than an M-H boat. Not happening.”
“How is your man, by the way?” Roon wondered.
Soroya sighed, cocking her head to one side briefly before giving it a disabusing shake. “The medics say Dell DeCoud is too far gone. He is alive, but only in the most cursory sense. It is quite distressing. His sister is… well, I am sure you can imagine.”
“That’s awful,” Roon said softly. “We did everything we could for him.”
“Of course,” Soroya said.
“How did he even survive so long? He was adrift for what—two, three days?”
Soroya nodded. “Roughly three days.”
“It’s been theorized that as long as the cockpit remains pressurized, a pilot could survive on its oxygen and their own reserves for up to seventy-two hours,” Vichante said. “The problem is, the models always put the odds of that happening at less than a quarter of a percent. Statistically impossible.”
“Not for Dell DeCoud, apparently.”
“Amazing.”
“Truly. That said, the very fact you risked so much to bring him back to us—we can never repay that.”
“I’ll second that,” Vichante added. He had been quiet for most of the exchange up to that point. “That said, if there’s anything we can do…”
“Sign us up.”
Vichante raised a brow at the only other person in the room who had been quieter than him to that point. Fenton the fugitive. His head was freshly shaved down to the pate, but still there remained the slightest trace of soft pink where a close round had grazed his scalp. Judging by the width, Vichante guessed something in the forty to fifty caliber range. Talk about dodging a bullet. And now here he was, bucking to throw himself in front of hundreds of thousands more. “Are you sure about that?”
“We’ve already talked about it. We don’t have anything to go back to. Whatever friends and family any of us had left have been told we’re vile, traitorous scum. We’re outlaws. Maybe not the sexiest outlaws…” Fenton shrugged. “We might as well be part of something, right?”
“Be that as it may, we usually prefer our new recruits bring a little something more to the table than casual apathy.”
“Well,” Ensign Cassel offered, “we did also bring you one of the most advanced pieces of military tech in the entire M-H fleet. The known galaxy, really. Dropped it in your laps, if you want to get technical about it.”
Soroya nodded. “An excellent point.”
“True, but there’s also the matter of the bounty on your heads.” Vichante tipped a brow, looking to each of them in turn and back again. “I say heads because I presume that by now it’s been extended to the rest of you.”
Fenton scoffed. “Are you really going to sit there and tell me no one would pay good money for your head on a plate? For your wife’s? Because I can think of a few if you can’t.”
“Easy, now.”
“Another excellent point,” Soroya conceded.
Vichante shot his wife a pained glare. The message was clear. She was being counterproductive.
For her part, Soroya glared right back. The message was equally clear. She would not allow her opinion to be suppressed, however contradictory it might be to his own.
“Have we sufficiently made our case, Commander? Madam Commandant?”
Vichante cupped his hands over his face, pulling them down slowly. “Just tell us something you can do for us that we can’t currently do for ourselves.”
“Well, for starters, we can make the Tyroshi forget all about you.”
Rishi narrowed his eyes. “Just like that?” he wondered.
“Just like that.”
“For how long,” Corliss demanded hoarsely.
“Long enough for you to evacuate the planet without risking any losses whatsoever. Hell, long enough for you to stay put and resupply first if that’s your fancy. But I won’t presume to tell you how to structure your itinerary.”
“Right. Just how to win our war.”
Fenton shrugged casually.
His mouth breaking into a wide grin, Vichante crossed his arms and sat back obligingly. “Alright. How do you propose to do that?”
“You’ve got nukes, right?”
“Of course we have nukes.” Rishi seemed downright offended by the very question itself.
“Only thing that keeps the scaly bastards at bay is the threat we’ll nuke the moons, irradiate the whole damn thing,” Corliss snorted.
“We do not have a reliable way to deliver them to their fleet, however. Everything we send past the No-Fly Line, they shoot down.”
“Stalemate,” Vichante concluded, spreading his hands.
Fenton raised an eyebrow as if to suggest the obvious. “Hmm, I wonder what proven method of running the blockade might be a useful vehicle for just such a priority delivery?”
Corliss barked out a gruff laugh. “You’d let us use the M-H yacht you all risked your collective asses to steal as a means to nuke the Tyroshi blockade?”
“We risked our collective asses bringing it to you, too,” Fenton reminded them. “They didn’t exactly give us a free pass through their blockade. Besides, the way we see it, you sign us up, it becomes your property. Part of your fleet to wield how you see fit.”
Vichante’s eyes widened just so as the substance of Fenton’s proposal dawned upon him fully. “You’re talking about manufacturing a shooting war between Morgenthau-Hale and the Tyroshi.”
And with that, Fenton let a small grin play across his lips. “That is exactly what I’m talking about, Commander, yes.”
Silence prevailed as the Irregulars traded discrete, knowing glances. Could they really countenance such a diabolical deception? Especially after condemning their enemies for employing one not so different?
Rishi was the first to speak up. “Alright, I’ll be the first one to say what we’re all obviously thinking: It’s genius.”
“Bloody. Fucking. Brilliant,” Corliss agreed, enunciating each word as if it were its own self-contained sentence.
“We win, they win, the Tyroshi lose…” Soroya shrugged demurely. “Yes. I vote yes.”
So there it was. Vichante found he did not disagree. Only one question remained.
“Who pilots the yacht?” he finally asked.
“That depends.”
“On what?”
“On just how vindictive you’re feeling.”
23 • B.F.B.
Tj Yeleyhi awoke slowly, her senses so muddled she was not even entirely certain she was technically awake. Darkness prevailed in the strange void she found herself occupying. Her eyes were open, of that much she was relatively certain, yet there was no light whatsoever for them to detect. Similarly, she was relatively certain she hadn’t been deafened, yet she could hear nothing and no sound came when she attempted to speak. Even her sense of touch had been, for lack of a better word, muted.
This was not the Aftermire she had prepared herself for just before Commander Harm shot her.
But if she was not in the Aftermire, then what? Some sort of purgatory?
She shut her eyes, attempting to will forth some sort of understanding…
Bit by bit, she managed to reconstruct the last few moments of her life. Confronting Commander Harm. Lifting his chin. Seeing the surprising life in his eyes. The vicious ambush that followed. Commander Harm’s hand around her throat, throttling the life out of her. Her pathetic, unforgivable plea. The endless, gaping black hole of Harm’s massive sidearm as he leveled it between her eyes…
And then his laugh as he lifted and brought the heavy barrel crashing down between them.
Which could only mean…
Alive.
She was alive.
The word flashed through her mind like a bolt of lightning, reanimating her to the reality of her situation.
But if not the Aftermire, if not purgatory, then what?
She thought back to her exchange with Gatz, suddenly making the connection.
Immersion chambers.
“Fascinating,” she said, her voice dissolving into nothing as she spoke. She knew the words had left her lips, but there was nothing to aurally confirm it.
She would have to recommend an inquiry into this brand of tech as soon as she was released from this unfeeling hell.
The Lazarus Particle Page 16
