Shadow Call

by Michael Miller

  Basra’s voice came from below us. “If you need money to help your cause, I hear I’m richer than the Great Unifier, or so the rumors say.”

  Devrak’s lips now formed a line, as if the thought of bribery was distasteful. “I don’t need money to pull rank. Our military isn’t composed of mercenaries. It’s that Solara can’t know I’m here if I’m going to keep helping Nev in certain covert ways.”

  Nev looked through the grating beneath his feet to the crew stations below us. “Telu, can you actually do what Solara accused you of? Hack an entire vessel and keep at least its QUIN from sending inter-system messages?”

  “Yeah, but it might take me a—”

  “Do it now.” Nev glanced at me. “With your permission, of course, Captain.”

  Since Telu wouldn’t need to disrupt our signals once we launched our attack—which would happen almost as soon as Nev and Devrak left the ship—she’d have the time, presuming I could keep us alive. And this might be the best chance for us all to survive. I nodded. “Do it, Telu.”

  “I mean, it could take me days,” Telu snapped, glaring up through her slash of hair. “To be any faster, I would need…Wait, did you say you have the rank to take command of that battle carrier, Mr. Whatever-Your-Title-Is—Devrak?”

  Devrak nodded seriously, despite the informality of her tone.

  “Then you have access codes to the QUIN hub that it’s linked to. Give them to me.”

  I thought the head of Nev’s family’s security would balk more at a rebel hacker demanding he hand over top-secret information that he probably usually guarded with his life, but all he did was glance at Nev.

  Nev nodded.

  Devrak turned back to Telu. “The QUIN hub with which it communicates is number QL54, and the code that should get you inside is DH13A07M84…” The string of numbers and letters carried on, followed by a second verification code. I lost track, but Telu’s fingers were flying. “I assume you know how to cover your tracks. Otherwise I may as well comm the battle carrier from here and announce my presence for them to report to Solara.”

  Telu scoffed. “Of course I do. No one will know how I got in. Especially since I’m going to reboot the system.”

  Devrak blinked. “The entire hub? That will make several dozen carriers and destroyers go dark.”

  “Exactly. For a few minutes, at least. They won’t know where the problem is until they realize this one is unreachable. And then they still won’t know why. I’ll erase this carrier’s particle configuration from the launch sequence. Afterward, its quantum link will be disrupted, and it’ll only have local comm capability.”

  Devrak smiled faintly. “The likeliest conclusion they’ll come to is that it was destroyed.”

  “However it works, can we get on with it?” My voice wasn’t angry; it was dead. “We’re nearly as close as we’re going to get undetected.”

  I barely spared Nev a glance as I turned back to my station. He was alive, but any joy I’d felt upon discovering that had been burned to ash—a shooting star, trailing to dust. I was ash, like so much of the surface of Alaxak.

  But then I felt hands on my shoulders. Nev’s head bent beside mine, his temple pressing into my own. He smelled like sweat, blood, and everything I’d ever wanted, but now couldn’t have.

  “Fly safe. I’ll see you soon.” He said the words like he might a prayer. Then he pressed his lips to my cheek.

  My own lips tingled, even though he hadn’t kissed them, my skin coming alive at his touch. Now was not the time. I needed to be clearheaded, functional…mechanical…to do what I had to do. But if I was about to die anyway, or if Nev was, then what did it matter if I let myself feel something impossible for just a moment, in spite of it all?

  I reached up, squeezing Nev’s fingers. He readjusted his grip, his hand coming hard around mine, and for a second we just sat there, holding each other, hands clasped, heads bowed. I closed my eyes against the pricking tears and felt the warmth in my chest rise like blown embers. It wasn’t the ice of determination or the heat of rage. No purpose, no function. It was just…there, soft and glowing.

  For a second, I just let myself love Nev.

  But then I had to let go.

  When Nev finally straightened, he met my eyes behind their black sheen. “Don’t…” I knew what he wanted to say. Don’t use Shadow. And it was something I couldn’t promise him. “We’ll get through this. Just stay alive. Please.” And then he was gone, ducking through the airlock doors and into the docked shuttle. Devrak followed him with a respectful nod to me.

  As I watched him go, knowing this might be the last time I would ever see him, the warmth peaked in my chest, burning with such intensity I nearly gasped. With all the Shadow heightening my senses, it felt almost like physical pain.

  “Yes.” The voice in my ear made me jump in my seat. If I was hearing it already, that didn’t bode well. I glanced around, blinking, both looking for anything visually wrong and to make sure Arjan hadn’t noticed. Everything, including my skin, was in place, and Arjan was scanning the feeds.

  “Open. Embrace.” The voice again.

  I’d heard those words before, if not so clearly enunciated. They’d been more feelings than anything. In my darkest moment, they’d come to give me hope that maybe Shadow wouldn’t drive me mad…but they hadn’t really helped. At least maybe this time, the hallucinations would stay as only harmless, nonsensical sounds. That was the most I could hope for now.

  Ignoring the voice, I said, “Jerra, Hiat, you and your forces keep the starfighters busy, and stay away from that battle carrier.” It should have felt weird to call a pack of fishermen our forces, but I did it without thinking. “I’m going for the platform.”

  “You don’t think more of us should help you?” Hiat asked.

  “When I’m done with it, there won’t be anything left to shoot.”

  We broke our holding patterns then, once Nev had a good head start on us. Engines and lights flared to life, and our three squadrons went jetting out from behind the moon.

  * * *

  The battle carrier noticed us first, the massive photon guns lining its port-side edge turning on us in unison. Scores of starfighters immediately regrouped and swarmed like a hive.

  None of us fishing captains had a true squadron leader, no one directing us, and that was what made us better than them. We faced each other, the battle carrier looking as huge as a moon behind the starfighters, with the platform seeming much smaller behind—deceptively tiny and innocent, from this perspective.

  Nev and Devrak’s little shuttle flew between us all. I suddenly wondered if they had any guns or shields, or if their vessel was as defenseless as it looked.

  As if he felt vulnerable, Nev asked, “Telu?”

  “Check, got it. Hub rebooting in three, two, one…Done.”

  There was no change in the battle carrier. Maybe across the galaxy it had seemed to wink out of existence, along with many other ships elsewhere, but here it was just as large and deadly as ever.

  Devrak’s voice rang out over the inter-ship comm—a channel that the Dracortes could pick up. “Hailing captain of the DFS Endeavor, this is Devrak Hansen, head of royal security. Hold your fire. I repeat, hold your fire.”

  There was a silence. The starfighters kept gunning for us. The first photon blasts streaked white through the blackness. The fishing vessels around me began to tuck and spin out of the way and to return fire. They were fishing vessels no longer.

  A voice responded over the comm with the clipped accent of Luvos, the Dracorte home planet. “Sir, if it is indeed you, I am unable to confirm it with your biometric signal. We can’t get a read. We would verify your location and mission with Command, but the QUIN—”

  “Is down, yes, and that is because I took it down,” Devrak said, his voice smooth and authoritative. “And you can’t get a re
ad because the hull of my ship is scrambling my biometric signal. This operation is top secret and of the utmost urgency. Our emergency alert code is EA994634 and my personal identification code is C0021DH.” These were different from those he’d given Telu—apparently he had various codes for the degrees of secrecy. “I command you, and Governor Rexius, to cease fire.”

  Fishermen threaded the sky like they were flying a Shadow run, spiraling around missiles and starfighters alike. The enemy was definitely having trouble hitting any of us, even in our clunkier ships. I barrel-rolled and dove myself, ducking under a group of them and blasting out on the other side, headed straight for the platform.

  All the starfighters were still firing. At least the battle carrier hadn’t opened up on us…yet.

  “Sir, I beg your pardon,” the voice on the other end of the comm said, “but you might be impersonating—”

  “Before you choose to risk disobeying a direct order from a superior officer, at least get a look at my face first. We’re docking.” Devrak’s shuttle, like his voice, didn’t hesitate, flying straight for one of the battle carrier’s open bays, indifferent to the several dozen cannons and missile launchers aimed right at it.

  A throat cleared. “As we can detect no explosive devices on your vessel, you are permitted to dock. Sir.” The voice sounded nervous now.

  I didn’t have time to see how that would play out—especially when they realized Nev was onboard. The starfighters were engaging my group as they realized we were trying to push through. Several were on my tail alone. But I would reach the platform ahead of them.

  Or at least Shadow would.

  I gathered it from the holds of the ships around me, as easily as drawing in a deep breath. A black cloud coiled in front of the Kaitan, moving in step with us, ready to lash out at the monstrous, glowing weapon of destruction spinning above my planet.

  “What are you doing?” a voice said. A familiar one.

  “Nev?” I said, blinking in surprise and narrowly dodging a plasma missile.

  “What?” Nev said over the comm-link between only the shuttle and the Kaitan. “We’re disembarking; I can’t really talk now.”

  “I thought I heard—never mind.” Ancestors. I could have sworn that was Nev. Obviously I was wrong. That the auditory hallucinations had used a familiar voice to say something was more than they’d ever done before. They were getting worse.

  Arjan cast me a sideways glance, but I ignored him, refocusing on the Shadow in my grasp, on my goal. It didn’t matter whose voice it was; it was an illusion, and it wouldn’t stop me.

  Almost as if the enemy could sense what was coming, their captain’s voice blared out over the inter-ship comm. “Cease fire, cease fire, cease fire!”

  He must have seen and recognized Devrak.

  The starfighters immediately pulled up and withdrew toward the battle carrier, leaving the fishermen to regroup. The wing of someone’s vessel in Jerra’s crew was smoking and diffusing sparks, but it was the only damage I could see. The remains of several starfighters floated in the black. Despite that, the battle carrier’s guns abandoned their targets, the barrels retracting into the gleaming white hull.

  I didn’t withdraw. With a furious hiss and a jerk of my hand, I sent Shadow crashing toward the platform like a vicious ocean breaker. Purplish, gleaming blackness slammed into the massive white disk. For a second, the wave of Shadow seemed to break against it, scattering into glittering sparks…until I realized the glitter was really part of the platform dissolving beneath it. And then the fire started. Brilliant orange cracks appeared across the rest of its surface, like the cracks that were splitting my vision—except these were actually there. Silent explosions bloomed against the black. In mere seconds, it seemed, the platform was only dissipating tendrils of flame and sparkles of light that vanished into the backdrop of stars.

  Everything was equally quiet to my ears, except for the voice:

  “NO.”

  And then I realized things weren’t quiet at all. Telu and Arjan were whooping, Eton was cursing under his breath, and Nev—the real Nev—was shouting at me. “Stand down, stand down, Qole!”

  I looked around in surprise—and saw the skin of my left arm tear away in ribbons. My muscles unraveled like string behind it, my nerves like glowing filament, dancing in the air above the wet glisten of white bone. I couldn’t help it. I caught at my arm, trying to gather it back together, and let loose a terrified scream.

  Arjan flew out of his copilot’s seat and was at my side in an instant. “Qole, what’s wrong?”

  “My arm…” I looked at it. It was whole under my fingers.

  My brother’s face was creased with concern. “Your arm is fine.”

  “You shouldn’t have done that.” Nev’s voice, again. The comm wasn’t active.

  “Shut up!” I growled.

  My brother blinked at me, looking shocked and hurt. He took a step back.

  “No, not you.” But that was the wrong thing for me to say.

  “Then who?” he asked, quiet. His eye flicked down and back up. I didn’t need to follow his gaze to know that Basra and Telu were likely out of their stations and looking up at me too.

  “No one. It was no one. I’m fine.” The words sounded hollow and shaken, even to me. I was shaking.

  The real Nev saved me from having to say anything else, his voice coming loud and clear over the comm. “If the various representatives of Alaxak want to meet on the Kaitan for a minute, I have an announcement to make. We’re safe, but I have more to say than that, and I can’t imagine you want to meet on the carrier.”

  Jerra’s voice came back, hard and cold. “And who the hell are you?”

  Right. Not everyone knew his voice as well as I did.

  “I am Nevarian Thelarus Axandar Rubion Dracorte—your ally, and the rightful king of the Dracorte system.” It was the first time he had used his full name since his father had disowned him. The first time he had reclaimed his lineage.

  The name hit me like a punch to the stomach.

  The roar of too many voices trying to speak at once overtook the comms.

  * * *

  Of course, when he’d said he would challenge his sister’s claims, he meant more than her accusations of regicide. He also meant her claim to the throne. I’d been too distracted to realize that.

  Hours later, I hardly felt less distracted. The voice was murmuring unintelligibly in my ear, the Kaitan occasionally tried to crack apart, my skin was defying gravity and flying away, and I was trying to suppress full-body shivers and to stay on my feet without looking like I was trying. On top of all that, a dozen new arrivals crowded around the table in the Kaitan’s messroom, plugging the space around the table and stepping on each other’s toes on the plate-metal flooring, along with my usual crew—including one newly declared king.

  And through it all, I couldn’t help wondering: What did this mean for us—Nev and me? I felt selfish, petty, idiotic, to even think it when so many bigger parts and pieces were moving around us, when I might not even live beyond tomorrow, but I couldn’t help it. We’d kissed after he’d found me on the Kaitan, but did that mean he still thought of us as having…whatever we’d had? It might not have been much to speak of, but all that might be impossible now. Every daydream I’d ever wandered into with the two of us together on Alaxak was now just that—a fantasy. At least, he certainly wasn’t going to be my copilot on Shadow runs anymore.

  But then, he was a king. Which meant he might be able to decide a few things for himself. Why couldn’t he choose me, a new future?

  Despite everything, the thought made my stomach flip.

  Before heading to the battle carrier, he’d taken his contacts out and popped his face back into its usual shape. Even Jerra seemed a little dazzled by his appearance, fidgeting and repositioning her wheelchair against the table several t
imes rather than meet his silver-gray eyes. He still had the beard and his mishmash of clothes—I was glad he hadn’t borrowed any Dracorte regalia from the battle carrier, since it wouldn’t have gone over well in this crowd.

  Because, beautiful as he was, most of them probably would have been happy to gut him.

  Before anyone could try, I explained that Nev had been the one to subdue the carrier without a fight and call for the cease-fire, with Devrak’s help. I also explained that he’d been a loyal member of my crew for over a month and a half, and while he had been the one to bring us to Dracorva in the first place, he’d then returned to Alaxak with us after he’d realized his family wanted to use us, challenging his father and getting exiled in the process.

  “And you just hid him, without telling anyone?” Jerra’s voice was stung, angry, and I couldn’t help grimacing.

  “He would have been assassinated otherwise—his sister tried, a week and a half ago, on the Luvos Sunrise, and again, less than a day ago.”

  “Maybe you should have let him die, if he’s been the one to bring this upon us.” Hiat looked truly distressed at what Chorda had suffered, but I didn’t feel an ounce of pity for him.

  “And what good would he have been to us dead? He helped stop this, Hiat. You were the one who wanted to bargain with the Dracorte queen, and now you see what she’s capable of.” Before he could argue that this wouldn’t have happened if we had bargained with her, I added, “We all voted to oppose her, because a bargain with her would have been a lie. It would have been subjugation.”

  Luckily, there were enough nods around the table that Hiat kept his mouth shut.

  “Well, what does he get out of this?” Arjan folded his arms and turned to Nev. “First, you wanted us to give up, but now you want to fight? Why?”

  Nev took a deep breath. “Because now I think we can win. I can rally support and challenge Solara’s claim to the throne. Devrak informed me that many of our generals will come to our side if I declare myself king.”