Dark Tempest

by Manda Benson

  DARK TEMPEST

  By MANDA BENSON

  LYRICAL PRESS

  An imprint of Kensington Publishing Corp.

  KENSINGTON PUBLISHING CORP.

  http://www.kensingtonbooks.com/

  Chapter 1

  Hijack

  Be we not of Steel and Flame,

  Of feeble flesh and bone,

  With the stars’ pure light as ours to tame,

  Surveying our dominion alone.

  A deeper mind of infinite sight,

  Crafts ice candles in the hungry night,

  And we of fractious fear and flight,

  Are entertainments for that dust-hewn might.

  Our ephemeral strife, against such ancient jest,

  Defines our saga: but a mayfly’s quest.

  The onset of confusion was so sudden and intense Jed couldn’t remember what she’d been doing beforehand, nor form any speculation on what might have caused it.

  She opened her eyes and got to her feet in one silent movement. The dull glow of console lights picked out the flight pattern below the span of the bridge window. Outside, the glittering starfields of the Perseus Arm spread before her like dewdrops in the Shamrock’s path. Only the dull murmur of its computer hardware and subluminal engine drive penetrated the ship’s interior.

  Something was wrong. She couldn’t remember the course tensors. The atlas data came to her sluggish and vague when she tried to find them, and the Shamrock felt numb, like a limb that had been lain on for too long.

  Jed pressed her fingers to the metal of the interface crown on her forehead, a thin band of silver circling from temple to temple an inch above her eyebrows. No, her connection was not at fault. The three tines remained in place, as they had been ever since being shot through her skull to bury their dendrites in her frontal lobe.

  She went to the starboard side of the bridge’s window arc, and looked back upon the Shamrock’s flank, the bronze colour of its Teng steel hull dim in the starlight. The pectoral wing jutted toward the nebulous glow of the galactic center, and way back along the ship’s length, a faint plasma bloomed, a product of subluminal thrust. She saw it, she felt it, but none of the feedback she was receiving confirmed it.

  The Shamrock’s bridge began to take on hostile dimension. This remote scene could have been anything, and Jed felt no connection to it. This ship could be the Agrimony, and she could be standing on it alone, with no control over anything.

  Steel and Flame, why could she not work it out? Jed tried to steady her breathing, fighting down a swell of blind panic as all her instincts began to revolt. Her training did not allow her to lose her grip on her own vessel.

  She plied the diagnostic computer for a status report on the engine and got no response, not even an error. It was as though the sensors and processing routines involved in the action had ceased to exist, as though a portion of Jed’s mind had been cauterised. The interior systems brought up the same result. At last she managed to trigger a response from the ventilation computer, and only then because its status had changed. The recycling vents in the starboard corridor were overcompensating. Carbon dioxide must be leaking from somewhere.

  Jed scoured the Shamrock’s readings available to her for signs of a fault, but the data she could access were insufficient to form a conclusion.

  She turned to face the distant, alien rear of the bridge. The main corridor beyond lay in Stygian shadow, a sparse line of dim red lights marking each wall. It could just be a burnt-out circuit, she told herself, some part of the interface control array. Or perhaps the ship’s carbon dioxide ballast was leaking, but as far as Jed knew, there was no access point to the ballast system in that location, and already her imagination ran riot.

  She reached simultaneously to her belt for her neutron pistol and to the pouch at her side for a half-inch cube of conurin. The bitter, chalky taste made her grimace as she chewed, but already the drug reinforced her perception, heightening her own and the Shamrock’s senses.

  She advanced to the corridor, one hand guiding her progress along the familiar wall surface, the other tensed and gripping the weapon.

  As she passed the equipment store on the approach to the main airlock, Jed smelled a difference in the air. The grate of air through lungs made her start, distant but prominent in the silence of her concentration.

  She crossed the corridor, passing the entrance to the equipment store and flattening herself to the wall behind the bulbous escape pod.

  An intruder stood there—a male, tall and thinly graven in the weak starlight of the corridor viewport. Clothed in dark material, he had his back to her, hair tied in a silver line down his nape.

  An icy terror ran through Jed’s blood, turning her limbs flaccid and heavy, and it took all her resolve to keep herself from falling or letting out a noise. She held herself in against the wall while she tried to regain herself. Steel and Flame, she reminded herself, Steel and Flame! This was not Mathicur’s way. The thought of Mathicur’s disgust at seeing her respond to this situation so was some reassurance to Jed.

  She forced calm, measured breaths. The man had not seen her. If she could shoot him before he saw her she could finish this.

  Jed raised her weapon to the still figure in the aft corridor, her concentration unbroken and intense. Her hand shook and the muzzle described crazy patterns in the air.

  The scrape of a foot and a rush of air from behind—Jed tried to turn too late. A thick, meaty arm clamped around her neck and she fell backward onto the assailant. She plunged the gun back, but a hand twisted the weapon from her grip and it clattered to the ground. She breathed sharp gulps and strained her eyes to their limits trying to look behind her. The grip around her neck panicked her to the point of wanting to scream herself hoarse and lash out at everything within reach.

  The tall man standing by the viewport had turned, and approached.

  The man who had seized Jed—he must have been hidden in the equipment store—rearranged his grip roughly to pinion her arms behind her back. Clumsy, thick fingers dug into the insides of her elbows, and a powerful smell of alcohol masked a stench of sweat and urine.

  “More there any of you are?” He shook her.

  Jed cursed herself for her stupidity, which her training should have overcome had she applied it properly. She, an Archer of the ancient clan hortica, had allowed herself to be overpowered by a drunkard who couldn’t even speak properly.

  Sliding his IR-UV bifocals from his nose, the tall man scrutinised Jed’s features in the starlight. The grey of his hair and eyes, the whiteness of his skin, and the black of his clothing made a monochrome image in the pallid light. Something distantly aristocratic lay in that countenance of high eyebrows and thin-lipped mouth—a man of the Blood.

  “She’s an Archer. One Archer, one ship. Is that right?” When Jed did not answer, the man smiled slightly and said, “I see you speak nearly as well as Taggart here.”

  “Shut you up, Wolff!” snarled Jed’s captor. “How know you that an Archer she?”

  The man lifted his finger so the tip was a few inches from Jed’s forehead. “This piece of metal is a mind-to-machine interface of the greatest complexity. Only men of the highest Blood lineages can use it, and she’s of the Blood, it’s there to be seen—dark hair, pale skin, grey eyes and the wasted keenness of regular conurin use.”

  Jed stared into the man’s face. After all her years of solitude, eye contact with another frightened her. He was bigger than her, he was very much real, and he was in her ship.

  “Walk!” snapped the other man, and he dragged Jed about so she was facing back toward the bridge. She stumbled on, arms still restrained by his grip, and searching hopelessly for some flaw in their defense she might exploit.

  “Cover her, Wolff,�
�� Jed’s captor ordered the tall man. He handed him a gun and he held it against her right temple. “Now sit there.”

  Jed bent her knees and felt for the bridge seating with her hands. The speaker revealed himself to be a squat, ugly-looking man with greasy curls of black hair hanging over his eyes, and a stubbled, heavy jaw. He was not of the Blood. “We kill her, should,” he said, glaring at Jed. She wasn’t sure whether his speech and coordination were attributable to alcohol, or if men of the lower castes typically behaved in this way.

  “We can use her, Taggart.” The taller man set down a box and turned away to look at the bridge consoles.

  “Ay.” Taggart’s face slowly creased into a lecherous leer. “For something.” He inclined his head, leaning his face forward to where she sat until his eyes were level with hers and his hot breath gusted on her face. Jed did not flinch, but a maelstrom of intimidation and fear started up inside her.

  “The Archer’s ship does not work without the Archer!” Wolff pulled Taggart away from Jed by the shoulder. “We have little enough time here as it is.” He threw a sudden glance to the bridge windows.

  “Where is the computer?”

  “I shall find it.” Wolff handed his gun to Taggart, who pointed it at Jed. Wolff stepped forward to stand in front of the consoles. To Jed’s surprise and scorn, he bowed deeply before them, lowering his head almost to the level of his knees, but this didn’t compare to her alarm when she felt the Shamrock respond to him in a subtle, unfamiliar way.

  “It’s here.” Wolff pointed to the access panel underneath the consoles.

  Jed tensed as the shorter man glanced at the sloping consoles, beneath which the core of the hardware lay, the gun remaining in his hand and pointed at her. What he might do to the Shamrock could be worse, by far, than anything he could do to Jed herself. Within a few seconds Wolff had a panel off and was wiring in an interface unit. Flickers of rogue code ran through Jed’s ship.

  The shorter man frowned. “It’s not responding. Sort it out, Wolff!”

  Wolff bowed to the Shamrock again, and with a rising anger, Jed cancelled out whatever it was he was commanding it to do. The Shamrock’s senses were still not responding, but its mind remained hers.

  “What are you doing, Wolff? I thought computers liked you said?”

  Wolff’s shoulders gave way to a disparaging sigh. “It’s her.” He pointed casually at Jed, and Taggart’s hand and the gun’s muzzle drifted out a fraction as he turned toward Wolff. Jed sprang from her seat and threw herself at his Wolff’s back, putting his body between herself and Taggart’s gun. Her fingernails dug into his neck and she held onto him as he turned, using his motion to add force to a backward kick, catching the shorter man hard in the diaphragm with her heel. He doubled up and fell to his knees, wheezing.

  The tall man had picked something up. He swung it over his shoulder and it struck the side of her head. Jed lost her grip and felt the jarring impact of her shoulder against the floor, before consciousness departed.

  Chapter 2

  Deadlock

  Fear not the cold and dark without,

  But the colder dark within;

  Permit to your soul the Seeds of Doubt,

  And you’re foundered before you begin.

  Jed could hear the taller man saying something, but his voice was distorted and unintelligible.

  “Mind interface ships...” The shorter man’s cracked voice broke into an incomprehensible splutter. “Nigh impossible to reprogram.”

  Jed shivered, wondering what they might have done to her or the Shamrock during her unconsciousness. A dizzy pain filled her head. She moved her arms. A tight cord bound her wrists together and, flexing her knees, she realised her ankles were tied likewise. She reached up and touched the interface crown on her forehead. The Shamrock still felt close and properly connected. She was lying on something—against her side and back. The feel and smell of it told her it was the seating at the bridge’s back wall.

  “You don’t have to reprogram the ship, merely replot the course tensors. Here, let me try.”

  “Stand back, Wolff! Foolish bastard, Samaritan of Archers.”

  “We need that Archer, Taggart.”

  “Star Archers work under no one. She will nothing be but a threat and a liability. Broke her neck down there near airlock I should have.”

  “Taggart, when you speak you don’t concentrate, and we have little enough time.”

  The other man struggled to form words. “Soon this vessel will be under my control.”

  “You’re not even in control of yourself! If this ruse of yours fails, on your head be it!”

  “Silence!” A smash of glass accompanied the shrill exclamation, making Jed wince and draw her arms over her face.

  The blurry shapes of the men became visible, the shorter one hunched before the console and the other standing back with an arm raised in a defensive posture. The tall one had the gun. She smelled alcohol, and saw the wet shards of the bottle lying on the floor before the seating.

  “Petulant fool. There. The ship flies to my command.”

  An instant of fear gripped Jed. A disoriented pain forced from the inside of her skull, and her vision took on strange colours. She twisted forward, bending her arms and pushing her elbows out so she could reach one hand to her belt pouch for the conurin that would steady both nerve and resolve. The pouch was empty.

  She struggled to stop despair engulfing her. Conurin was just an enhancer. Her teachings and inherent qualities were what gave her iron will and lightning reflexes. Conurin was just a fine-tuner. Conurin was just frippery. She must draw strength from the Code now.

  The recollection of the debacle down in the starboard corridor hit her and made her doubt herself again.

  She watched the men—the shorter one engrossed in the Shamrock’s console and the taller one observing him. She had to act now.

  Bending forward slowly, she angled her legs down and leant into a seated position, head down and doubled up at the waist. The colour and sound drained from the world for a moment, and Jed’s vision swam before her. Craving for conurin at this time of need compounded her pain, but she held it off, refusing to fall back into the peace of unconsciousness.

  Stretching her arms between her knees, she selected one of the longer shards.

  “Has it accepted the course yet?” The taller man’s voice made her start.

  “Silence while I am working!” Taggart, or whoever he was, berated him.

  Jed drew her hands back into her lap, flattening the blade between her thumbs so it lay between her wrists and across the rope. Keeping a furtive watch on her captors, she gripped it in the heels of her hands.

  Head down and spreading her fingers over her face so as to conceal the action, she pushed down on the glass with her teeth. She felt it grating on the edge on the cord, shearing away some of the fibre on the outer wind of rope. She pushed back on the piece of glass, and felt the hot-cold touch of the blade against the skin on the inside of her thumb. Blood trickled into her palm.

  A twist down, a squirm of her wrists, and a snap under the pressure of the glass blade, the cords fell slack. Jed leant forward to sever the bonds on her ankles with one deft movement. Eyes fixed on her enemies, she reached for upper half of the bottle, its flared neck shattered into a jagged flower

  Mustering all her concentration and energy, she stood and kicked out in one concerted movement, her foot striking Wolff’s hand and sending the neutron pistol spinning across the floor. The man let out a stifled sound, clutching his fingers in his other hand, his face contorting in agony. Jed’s next kick landed squarely in his groin and sent him staggering back into the wall.

  Taggart lunged for the gun as he gathered his legs beneath him, but he missed it, and Jed dived under a badly aimed punch. She attacked him from behind as he had her, this beast who had tried to kill her and take her ship, this loathsome man who had dared to challenge her and steal her property and subject her to this indignity. The fragment in
her hand bit as it pressed into his throat, and she relished his pain and fear. A violent jet of blood geysered from the point of incision and his struggles ceased abruptly. He fell to the ground with a thick gurgle.

  Wolff was halfway across the bridge, bent in grim, suffering determination, but the anger in Jed’s eyes seemed to dissuade him, and he fled into the corridor like a shadow.

  Jed looked at Taggart’s corpse, dark blood ebbing in thick, slow gouts from the neck and onto the floor. On the table, her pouch supply of conurin had been arranged in a neat stack, each cube still wrapped in its paper.

  The Shamrock’s consoles flickered with unfamiliar patterns. A schematic diagram of the vessel, bright yellow delineating its dart-shaped form, showed no suggestion of vector or surroundings. She could still pick up the bearings from the ship’s octahedral compass and feel its sensory input, but the navigation systems were a blank. Offline. Something in the ship’s workings had locked, and now it was accelerating back toward the galactic center.

  Jed knelt on the floor beside the body. She wiped the blood from her hands on his clothes, revolted by the stench and filth. She searched the disgusting body with only precursory thoroughness, feeling the pockets of his tunic and trousers. She found a handful of credits with some identifying paraphernalia and the remainder of the rope they’d tied her with, as well as a flat electronic device. She cast them on the console and stepped back. The robots operated on a different circuit to the ship, and metallic shapes scuttled across the deck to clear away the mess that had been Taggart.

  She washed her hands as best as she could with a cloth wet from a drinking flask. There was not time to clean herself properly. She placed the cubes of conurin back into her pouch. She would have to deal with the Shamrock later, when there were fewer distractions.

  Jed breathed fast and deep. Wolff must be somewhere in the aft main section. Precisely where, she could not be sure, but she could get rid of him. She could kill him by opening the main airlock. He could suffocate down there with his blood fizzing in his veins, and the ship’s robots could deal with the mess. It was an impersonal execution and she need have no active part in it.