Gregor recovered from the blow in time to grasp the man’s power pack located against his back. He twisted the pack hard, spinning the man around and tossing him against the wall. The attacker rolled away to his feet and leapt back at the big man. The other two guards were still trying to get a bead on him as he landed headfirst against the giant security guard. Gregor let out a whoop of air as the impact pressed him back against the other guards. He reached out to grab the attacker, but the gloved hands wrapped themselves around his wrist and pulled. Gregor was sent head over heels against the same wall he had just landed against. The attacker jumped past the next guard, right at Lee.
Lee raised his pistol to fire, but his hand was swatted away. He felt his wrist pulled and his body twisted around as if he were a rag doll. He felt the pressure of his own pistol pressed against his shoulder as the man held him tight. Lee tried to break free, but felt the other man’s grip like iron. He could feel a tremor from the other man and looked down. The environmental suit had thin filaments of cable and plating that were moving almost on their own. Lee realized the suit was augmented. It explained how the man was able to perform the fantastic stunts moment before.
“Ya’ll better pack it up and get on outta here before whatever happened to the station happens to you too.”
The amplified voice resounded against the metal walls. Lee realized he knew the voice. He turned his head and pulled away slightly to look at the helmeted face of Connor Jakes.
“Mornin’, Captain,” Jakes said. “Time to go.”
14
It took nearly an hour before the boarding party was able to rejoin Resolute. Jakes had insisted on a full decontamination cycle before he would step foot on the battleship. Sixty minutes crammed into a small airlock with nothing to do but listen to security guards talk about security made Lee wish he had Henry Moore to talk to again. Jakes, for his part, randomly erupted into song to keep things lively, which made the guards ignore him all the more. When they were finally able to step into the engineering corridor, Doctor Demsiri had them strip down to the black, skin-tight pressure suits and leave the environmental packs in the airlock.
Lee released the guards back to their stations and walked Jakes back to a cabin where he could shower. The man had been left on the station for days without being able to take off the mechanically-enhanced environmental suit. His long hair was greasy and tied back, and he smelled of the recycled waste that the suit stored. Jakes gave them instructions to pull away from Terpsichore and hold position until he could brief them. When he finally emerged from the borrowed quarters, Melaina Petros was waiting.
“Connor!” she exclaimed, running to embrace him in the corridor. “I’ve missed you so much.”
“Don’t worry, babe,” Connor said. “A little snafu on a pleasure station can’t hurt Connor Jakes. I’m just worried about the Corsairs. Have they sent any word?”
Melaina turned to Lee with a questioning glance. Lee shook his head. The two looked into each other’s eyes for a few moments before Jakes broke the embrace. He stepped around Melaina to Lee.
“I need to call the Liberty, Captain,” Jakes requested. “They should have called as soon as they saw you.”
“We haven’t detected any active ships in the area,” Lee replied. “These ships are all dead. There’s no power coming from anywhere but the station.”
“Captain Pearce, my Corsairs are pretty good at hiding themselves,” Jakes explained. “It’s kind of an occupational necessity in our line of work. Let me send a recall signal and they’ll light up for you.”
“We can signal from the bridge,” Lee said. “First, I’d like to know what the hell was going on over on that station.”
“Captain, the station is dead,” Jakes said. “Chang sent us here, same as you. When we got here, I got an automated distress call. I went aboard to see what went wrong and told the others to hide in case anyone else showed up.”
“You mean scavengers?” Lee asked. “I’m surprised they haven’t already been here.”
“It wouldn’t do them any good, Captain,” Jakes replied. “There ain’t anything alive in there higher on the food chain than a daisy. Even if they did come, they’d all be dead anyway.”
“Do you think it was the Ch’Tauk?” Lee asked with concern. “Are they moving into this sector?”
“Nahh, Captain,” Jakes said, raising his hand back to Melaina, inviting her to join him. “It ain’t their style. This was something else. Maybe when we get Earth back, I’ll get back this way and try to figure it out. In the meantime, we got some more travelin’ to do.”
Jakes pushed past Lee, with Melaina at his side. He walked down the corridor like an emperor with his consort, head up and arms akimbo. Lee wondered at the two. They were so different and yet they seemed to make the perfect couple. He followed the couple down the hall to the nearest lift. As they entered, he saw Melaina wrinkle her nose at Jakes. She leaned in and whispered something to him. He smiled and nodded to her.
“Later, darlin’,” he replied with a smile. “I got work to do now.”
The doors slid aside and Lee stepped out into the short hallway leading to the bridge. Melaina and Connor followed, still arm in arm. Lee passed his quarters and continued to the command center. The three entered and Lee took his seat.
“Status report, Mister Farthing,” Lee ordered.
“Ship’s status is nominal, Captain,” Farthing replied. “We are holding steady right where you left us.”
“Thank you, Commander,” Lee replied. “Mister Jakes needs to use our radio to call his ship. Can you open a channel?”
“Aye, sir. If the captain could provide a frequency for the transmission.”
Jakes left Melaina and walked around the command well. As he stepped closer to Farthing, the felinoid’s muzzle began to twitch. Lee had noticed the remaining odor of the environmental suit lingering on the man. He supposed the larger nasal cavity of the Vadne would amplify the odor. Lee suppressed a smirk as he watched Jakes tap keys on the communications console.
“This is Jakes callin’ Liberty, come back,” the pirate captain said. “Would ya’ll get on the horn and talk back. We gotta git movin’.”
There was a static pulse crackling through the speakers. Jakes looked at Farthing with a half-smile on his thin face. Lee leaned in to listen to the static as the pirate turned back to the comm. Jakes tapped a key on the console and responded to the static with a squeal of high-pitched tones. Farthing reached across to stop the signal, but Jakes stayed his clawed hand. The man held the tone for another moment before shutting it off. Farthing’s crest had risen to its full height and he looked as if he wanted to shove the other man aside.
“That ought to do it,” Jakes said, standing and facing the screen. “Now, can you make that thing show me the underside of your ship? Just in front of the docking collar, I bet.”
Lee nodded to Farthing and the screen changed. Instead of the view of the station spreading out in front of them, the image became dark and partially obscured. Fine controls pulled the image back and Lee could see the outlines of a small private yacht tinted black. He could only make out the edges where they obscured the stars beyond. Lee looked back at Jakes.
“You mean they were hiding there the whole time?” Lee asked. “Right under our noses?”
“Best place to hide when someone ain’t lookin’ is right under the belly of the sleepin’ dog,” Jakes replied, flashing his smile at Melaina, whose olive skin blushed. “They probably ain’t been there long. Just since I came aboard, I’d guess.”
Alarms sounded on the tactical console as the octopod’s panel began to register power on the yacht. Lee saw the lighting flicker on the outside of the dark ship. Crudely painted cursive spelled out the ship’s name, Sweet Liberty, in lurid red tones just beneath the bridge. The image closed in tighter as Farthing attempted to focus. Lee thought he could see a white-haired woman waving back from a forward viewport. He resisted the urge to wave back, and turned back to J
akes.
“Connor,” he said, raising his voice. “Tell them to back off. If our screens overlap, we’ll have a power feedback loop.”
“Don’t worry, Captain,” Jakes replied, walking back across the bridge to Melaina. “That can’t happen. I disabled the shields just after I came aboard. I can flip ’em back on as soon as I call the Corsairs and let ’em know you’re getting touchy about it.”
“Jakes!” Lee shouted, standing and advancing on the other man.
“Oh hell,” Jakes said, holding up a small transmitter. “You used to be more fun.”
When he flipped the switch, the image showed the other ship backing off rapidly. Sweet Liberty cleared the battleship and lowered itself a half kilometer below the docking strut. Lee grimaced at Jakes as the octopod rapidly tapped keys. The shield grid snapped on, causing the entire bridge crew to relax.
“If you ever…” Lee began.
“Captain,” Farthing said, holding the small listening device against his white furred ear. “We are receiving a signal you should be aware of.”
Lee stared at Jakes for another minute, willing the man to do anything but smile back. Jakes simply grinned and wrapped his hand around Melaina’s waist. The two were locked in a test of wills that Jakes seemed uninterested in winning. Lee turned back to his first officer.
“What is it, Commander?” Lee asked.
“One of our deep space relays has just transmitted an unusual request,” Farthing replied, tapping keys to bring up a tracking image. “The relay is asking for a location adjustment. It said it lost the special fix that kept it stationary.”
“So?” Lee asked, stepping back to his chair. “Can you reset it from here?”
“Negative, Captain,” the Vadne replied. “The signal states that the celestial axis has shifted and can no longer administer attitude controls.”
“Relay the message to Admiral Chang and let them send someone,” Lee said. “I don’t think we have time to go fix communications satellites.”
“Sir, it is more than that,” Farthing said. “For the relay to lose fix due to an axis loss, the object that it was locked onto would have to have disappeared altogether.”
“Again, Commander … so?” Lee asked, looking at the scrolling figures on the main projection.
“Captain, I think I can explain,” Goldstein chimed in. “These coordinates are giving me a detailed view of the relay’s location.”
“I am aware of that, Josh,” Lee said. “What’s going on?”
“I can bring up the relay’s video feed,” the helmsman said. “It’ll be delayed a few seconds, but it should give us an idea. I can give us a split between what should be there and what the relay sees now.”
The projection flickered and one half of the screen disappeared. On the other half, an image of a black planet, surrounded by asteroids, popped into existence. Lee remembered deranged Admiral Hathaway and their near disastrous final confrontation with him. The Terran Princess had nearly been destroyed, and would have been if it had not been for Captain Chang and the Resolute.
“I almost forgot about that place,” Lee said to himself. “I stole a ship and took it there once.”
“Best piece of work you ever did, sir,” Jakes said quietly.
“Here’s the feed, sir,” Goldstein said, hating Lee’s glance back at Jakes.
The blank side of the projection flickered as the new image resolved. Instead of the meteors and their host planet, there was only debris. A large chunk of rock — Lee realized it must have been the size of Earth’s moon — rotated slowly in the center of the image. Lee stood from his seat in awe. He heard a gasp from behind him as the image shifted to expose powdery fine fragments floating in a strip of melting core material. Whatever had happened had only just finished.
“What the hell?” Jakes’ voice came from behind the command chair.
For a moment, nobody spoke. A small blurry shape seemed to bloom in the corner of the image. Farthing tried to focus in, but the delay made the maneuver impossible. Tendrils of blue-brown energy were opening and closing on the screen, outlining the familiar shape of an Independence class battleship.
“Josh,” Melaina said, stepping into the command well and around Lee’s chair. Are there any energy readings from the probe?”
“There is some embedded scan information,” Goldstein said, tapping more keys. “I can bring them up on the screen.”
The image of the black planet changed to a sine curve with a strange, jagged hook. Melaina stared at the scan in horror. It took her only a few moments to turn and look at Lee’s eyes. Her own face was streaming with tears.
“Lee,” Melaina said through a gasp. “It’s Banu. He has the cannon. It works.”
“That thing did that?” Lee asked, stepping closer to the woman.
“Yes,” Melaina replied, wiping her tears with the back of a hand. “It destroyed that planet with one shot, Lee. There’s more, though. See that hook? He missed, Lee. That shot did not hit with full power. If that thing fires at an inhabited planet…”
Lee stared at the image. Glinting particles reflected the distant starlight of space. Lee’s mind reeled at the consequences of what he was seeing. The black planet had sheltered them for years and now Banu Rao and the Victory had destroyed the planet utterly. If what Melaina was saying was true, they had no choice.
“Goldstein,” Lee said. “Undock us and set a course for that relay. We’re going after him before he destroys everything.”
“Captain…” Farthing said, wanting to raise a cautious tone.
“No,” Lee said. “We need to stop Banu Rao before he commits genocide. I made a promise once that we would retake Earth. I also said we would do it the right way. We need to hunt that ship down, and now. Effective immediately, we are at battle stations. We’re hunting down Victory.”
15
Ch’Tauk Home World
The prisoner was dragged to the feet of the Consort and dumped onto the cold stone floor. The coral-marble floor was a darker shade of pink than the female’s skin, but seemed more alive than the prisoner. The Consort thought the human’s skin looked like the shoots of new sheefa grass that waved outside the Winter Palace while the Empress was in residence. He had always associated the color with life. This woman, however, seemed to be nothing but death.
The Consort, once known as Ki’Bara, had ordered the prisoner moved from a holding facility to bear witness to the birth of the new Ch’Tauk Emperor. He had been responsible for conquering her people. It felt right that a human be present to witness the genesis of their new ruler. He felt pity for the woman because she had no idea how important she would become to her own people. She would be the martyr that laid eyes on the Emperor. He almost envied her.
“You have been brought before me so that I can anoint you before the presence of the Empress Ch’Tauk,” the Consort said to the woman. “You may remain prone before me, but I hope you have more spirit left. I will have you on your knees before my beloved.”
The Consort stared down at the pitiful creature before him. He had not asked for a translator to be installed. She would not be able to understand him, but he hoped she would crawl to her feet anyway. He blinked his four eyes and tried to understand how humans thought. The idea of the creatures as having any thoughts at all was nearly distasteful to him, but he knew better. He had studied the tactics of his opponents once and he would again. This woman was a strategic move placed on a galactic game board.
She had been taken from the field of battle as the tide was turning for the Ch’Tauk fleet. The former contender for the title of Consort, Ki’Bontri, had mishandled the campaign to wipe out the weak creatures. Ki’Bara had seen the captain of an Earth ship risk his ship to protect the woman. He heard an exchange between the two over the primitive communications they used. Taking her from the battle made the human captain careless and dangerous. The loss of the woman had also meant the end of Ki’Bontri’s fleet. Ki’Bara had kept the woman as a hostage in case the captai
n ever came looking for him. Ki’Bara now knew the man would never come. He had watched the man’s execution and realized the woman had no value as a hostage.
“If you are not willing to rise to greet the Empress, I shall have to dispose of you,” the Consort said. “I would prefer not to do that until you have become the blessed witness, but your presence is not required.”
The Consort watched as the woman lay on the cold stone and breathed. Her breathing had steadied as her body adjusted to the environment. He had requested she be stripped of the scraps of clothing she clung to and cleaned. Her body showed signs of bruises and cuts earned during transport. Even after all the time in the prison, she continued to fight her captors. It was remarkable how much the humans were capable of holding out hope even after utter defeat. It made them fascinating.
There was movement from the floor. The Consort did not know if she was responding to his speech or simply trying to attack him from her pitiful position. On scraped knees, her body peeled from the floor in a painfully slow movement that left the Consort wanting to reach down and help. The reaction was like a father wanting to help a child when it fell. It was another unexpected feeling elicited from the human..
The human made an unintelligible noise from her swollen lips. The Consort could not determine if she was speaking or screaming to him. It did not matter to him in the least. He would need to get her cleaned again before he took her to the Empress. She was drooling scarlet blood on the pink floor. The consort wondered how these creatures could be so troublesome and so fragile at the same time.
The woman’s head came up suddenly. He clicked his mandible once in surprise and the guards stepped forward. The Consort held a hand low to warn them off. The centurions stepped back into place, rifles shouldered. She looked up into his lower eyes. She showed fire in her gaze, a thrill of the predator running along his chest. He would enjoy killing this one when his son was born.
Resolute Victory (The War for Terra) Page 12
