/I will return./ He withdrew from that contact and rose, pacing the cell. Sascha was on the other side, with someone unfamiliar… Narain? They had been put in the same cell? /Sascha./
A start of surprise so sudden it felt like a jab with a practice sword. Hirianthial touched his side where he’d taken one such hit too many and smiled a little. /Sascha, it’s Hirianthial./
/It is you! How… you… oh, don’t look over there—/
Over there were memories that involved Narain. /You don’t appear to be doing anything worthy of embarrassment,/ he commented, amused.
/We’re not now. We might have been before… you… wait, you’re talking to me./
/This does seem to be the only way to do so. Narain is with you? Does he know anything?/
/I’ll ask./
Hirianthial leaned a shoulder against the wall, eyes closed. Sascha’s mental presence felt furry to him, comfortable and blood-warm and a little tingly; he registered the latter on his tongue, like peppers, or mint, or champagne. Very different from Bryer, who had been cool and diffuse, like fog. He was still sorting the impressions when the tigraine returned.
/Um, can you hear me?/
/Here, arii./
/Right. Narain says we ran into… I don’t know if I believe this, but battlehells, here we are… a Fleet battlecruiser. A stolen Fleet battlecruiser, Dusted, in orbit above Ontine. And they scooped us up because, you know, battlecruiser./
/I don’t, actually?/
A hint of a different voice, very distant. Sascha said, /They’re about four times—ten times? Make up your mind, sweets—fine. The Fleet Intelligence ship holds fifteen people. This one has a crew of four hundred, usually. They’re way, way bigger than us./
/A Fleet battlecruiser,/ Hirianthial repeated. He frowned. /Does Narain know what pirates are doing with one?/
/He says there have been rumors that pirates were trying to get hold of Fleet ships, but not that any of them had succeeded./
/Well, now they know./ Hirianthial looked out into the hall. /Four hundred people, he says./
Another pause. /He says there might not be four hundred pirates. That you can drive this ship with twenty-five people and fight it with fifty. You just get into big trouble if someone actually hits back./
A different voice now, thin and distant and also, somehow furry… but lusher and cooler than Sascha’s, and overlaying a mind of astonishing clarity and depth. /Most of a cruiser’s complement is redundancy, and science-based./
/Narain,/ Hirianthial said.
/At your service, alet./
Sascha now. /Can you tell how many people are on this ship? I mean… can you… feel it?/ A hint of embarrassment, as if he felt guilt for asking.
Could he? He drew in a breath and reached—
—and found himself on the floor and did not remember sitting so abruptly. His tailbone hurt. /Only vaguely,/ he answered when he was sure of himself. He recalled the ballroom at the opening of the court and the way that group of over three hundred had felt to him, their weight, their presence. /There are not four hundred, though. Or if there are, they are dispersed./
Narain again, with that cool swiftness of thought. /If we can get to a computer, we can find out. But someone’s got to let us out first./
/I had noted the lack of guards at the door…?/ Hirianthial glanced again at the halo field barring his exit.
/Fleet doesn’t post them. There will be a station at the end of the hall, and that’ll be the only exit. The person there will have surveillance on all the occupied cells and can control their disposition./
A person in a station. That he could do. Hirianthial sought the flicker of an unfamiliar mind, passing Solysyrril and her people until he sensed the enemy. And… then what? If he put the man to sleep, or killed him, they would not be freed. Does everyone need killing? A good question. Not relevant, however. He hovered over the ugly tent of the pirate’s mind. Not greasy, the way the Rekesh of Keryale’s had been, nor cold and stark like Surapinet’s, the drug lord. A man with an unexamined mind, thoughts edged with occasional cruelty and a great deal of boredom. Just a man.
Ask him for help, came the voice from memory.
Help! A pirate!
Killing is a far greater intimacy, but you court that quickly enough, my son.
Hirianthial half-opened his eyes, lost the sense of the distant mind and made an irritated noise. Urise had said nothing about his teaching surfacing in the form of phantom conversations, but then again… would he have? He could well imagine the priest’s amusement. You would not have believed me.
No, he admitted, he wouldn’t have. He closed his eyes and concentrated, and this time… he asked for help. Slipped into the unfamiliar mind and was polite. Turn off the force-fields, he suggested. There is no one there to guard. Nothing on those monitors you see. No reason to keep them up.
The pirate resisted him, not because he felt attacked, but because he was puzzled by this contradiction between his thoughts and reality. Hirianthial leaned on him, made the reality he was crafting more real than the one the pirate was living… succeeded.
The halo fields died as he opened his eyes, just enough to watch. Then he sank back into the trance and suggested the helpful pirate sleep. A great deal. And soared free of the claustrophobic smallness of the man’s mind as it passed out of consciousness.
He was once again sitting. And now very hungry, in a way that also made him aware that he wasn’t quite healed yet from Baniel’s attentions. His ribs ached, and he passed a hand over them once, sighing. And then he smiled, imagining Reese’s reaction. ‘Fine, you opened your own cell this time, but you haven’t rescued yourself yet.’ “At work on it, my Lady,” he murmured, and then Sascha peeked in.
“You did it!”
“I did. Where is your roommate?”
“He went to get the others. They’re all heading straight for that station so they can mess with the computers.” Sascha padded in and crouched in front of him, tail curled behind him for balance. “You look a little peaked.”
“I have been better,” Hirianthial admitted, and then smiled. “You have seen me worse, though.”
“I have!” Sascha’s brows lifted. His expression matched his aura, not awed, but something like. And glad, too, strangely. “And… you think this is funny?”
“Funny…” He trailed off, then shook his head, hair brushing his neck. “No, that would be pressing the matter. But I am…” What was he? Not amused. Not buoyant. Not pleased. A little of all of those things, but they were expressions of a single feeling. “I am done with cells, arii. And I am done with letting other people put me in them. And for some reason, this strikes me as something to celebrate.”
“That you’re through being a victim?” Sascha grinned like sunrise. “Okay, sure. I see that. Hells, I’m glad to see it. Do you need help getting up?”
“Let me try first.” He pushed himself up and paused, assessing himself. Tired, hungry and sore, but serviceable. He needed Urise’s trick of not needing to eat or rest to power these abilities, but the memories associated with that knowledge overwhelmed him, thousands over thousands of them, confusing and vast. It would have to wait. “I appear to be steady. Let us go to our allies.”
“Right.” Sascha paused, then added, “Ah, if we die before the day’s over—”
“We shan’t.”
Sascha cleared his throat, one ear sagging. “Right. But just in case we do, can I just say.… “
Hirianthial waited.
“…you can pet my mind anytime.”
“Sascha!”
The tigraine snickered. “Now I feel better. Come on, it’s down this way.”
Shaking his head to hide the smile, Hirianthial followed, and Kis’eh’t’s temple bell sang at the end of the hair-dangle.
Bryer was standing outside the guard station’s door, watching the corridor, and all the Fleet people were indeed inside, crushed together over a single console as Narain manipulated it. When he and Sascha ent
ered, Tomas said, “That mind-reading thing is a lot more handy than you suggested it might be, Lord Hirianthial.”
“I am never sure how much it is capable of,” Hirianthial demurred. “So I thought it best not to overstate the ability.”
“As long as the surprises keep being good, you just keep on keeping on.”
“We can certainly use some good surprises,” Soly muttered, her tail flicking behind her in agitation.
“Is this a bad surprise, then?”
Soly looked up at him; she was leaning over Narain’s shoulder with one small hand on the console, and he had never seen her look so grim—or was that her aura he read? “Alet, these pirates have a Fleet battlecruiser.”
“So Narain told me. I presume this is not a vessel easily captured.”
“Easily—” She choked on the rest of the words, her ears slicked back. “No. No, it’s not, and Fleet keeps very careful tabs on all its ships. Particularly its capital ships. We’ve had evidence that the pirates were trying to capture something, but the only battlecruisers lost have been on the border with the Empire. Fighting them, not fighting pirates.”
“Ostensibly,” Hirianthial guessed.
“Ostensibly. It’s not a secret that the Empire’s been encouraging pirate activity on the border, but if they’re looking the other way while lawless men are stealing Fleet ships of this size… or even encouraging them.…”
“They want to split your attentions, no doubt.”
Soly sighed. “No doubt. Yes. But we have got to live through this, alet, because someone has to know.”
“Looks like we’ve got just over a hundred people aboard,” Narain interrupted. “Eighty of them are in engineering. Fifteen up on the bridge… the rest of them are moving around.”
“One hundred and eight?” Tomas said, squinting over the tigraine’s other shoulder.
“One hundred and eight to nine,” Sascha said. “That’s… uh… “
“Long odds,” Tomas said.
“Yeah.”
A pause as Narain worked the console, scowling at it, and everyone else frowned at one another.
“So what do we do?” Sascha asked finally. “Find the nearest Pad and escape?”
“If we do that, we’re leaving a manned floating fortress in orbit above the planet,” Soly said, tense. “A Dusted one. The scout that’s due here will show up and die: or worse, get captured itself. Plus, anything we do on the planet will be useless if they have this much backup available.”
“Can this thing go atmospheric?” Sascha asked.
“No. It doesn’t have to. Its weapons will.”
Another ugly pause.
“The only thing for it, then, is to take the ship,” Hirianthial said.
“Us. Against a hundred and eight pirates?” Sascha eyed him skeptically.
“Could be done,” Narain muttered. “Maybe.”
“It’s that group in Engineering I’m worried about,” Soly said. “We could take the bridge and lock them out of the computer, but if they’re physically there they can kill the power themselves.”
“Likely result in their deaths,” Bryer said from the door.
“They’re not going to kill themselves just to get to us.” Tomas nodded to the Phoenix. “He’s right on that. They can work past the computer lockout from Engineering, but it would take time.”
Softly, Lune said, “They have tools there. And suits.” When everyone glanced at her, she said, “They can walk on the hull, to reach the bridge. The tools are meant for such work. They could breach.”
“Hells,” Soly said. “What a mess.”
“What about our ship? It looks like it’s in one of the landing bays.” Narain brought up a diagnostic. “Not damaged either, beyond a few surface dings. Maybe we could haul it out of the ship and keep an eye out for walkers?”
“And what if they have a Pad in Engineering? They often do.” Soly frowned, tapping her fingers on the console.
“That clot in Engineering’s going to be trouble,” Tomas said. “This ship’s got guided entropy packets. I say we secure the bridge and then take out Engineering.”
Hirianthial had expected an electric silence in response to that comment, but instead Narain frowned. “Unless we’re careful, or lucky, or both, that’s going to kill the power to the ship. We won’t be able to use it.”
“No, but neither will they.”
Hirianthial said, “There is no way to render them unconscious?”
Soly shook her head. “Like gas them? The ship’s not set up for that. There’s no way to block the ventilation. Any sort of dangerous chemical leak like that is taken care of with a vacuum system: it sucks air out, it doesn’t trap it in place.”
Tomas said, “If it’s one hundred and eight to nine, we don’t have a lot of choices. We absolutely can’t leave this thing operational up here, and we can’t get a message out without alerting them—that’s game over for us, and not much better for Fleet, given how few ships they’ve got to send out this way. We either have to destroy a part of this ship, or destroy the whole thing, and I’d rather live.”
“Hard to argue that,” Narain muttered.
“Show me Engineering,” Hirianthial said, suddenly. “Is it a single room?”
Narain looked up, surprised, but Soly waved an encouraging hand at him. The pardine brought up a schematic, floating it over the console. “It’s got a lot of compartments, but the actual power plant needs a lot of room, so it’s got a big space in the center.”
That it did, though the power plant occupied the prominent central space. And yet… surely that would be close enough. His power seemed to flow outward in a circular radius—was it spherical? He shifted the schematic with his hand and saw that the compartment was several levels tall. The whispers in his mind gave no report on whether he could extend his influence upward as well as outward. He had to imagine he could—costs more—but yes, that it would be more effort. He closed his eyes, paying closer attention to the hissing memories he could sense but not experience. Was there a flaw in this plan? You will not be able to pay for it easily. Everything had a price. If he managed even twenty of the eighty, that was something, wasn’t it? But not enough.
“Lord Hirianthial?” Soly asked, cautious.
“If we could take Engineering, that would be a goodness,” he guessed.
“A lot better than gutting it, yes. If we could keep the ship intact then we’ll have one more to use against the ones your escaped pirate might be bringing back as reinforcements. We might not have enough people to fight this ship well, but the armament on it is overkill against the typical pirate.”
“Unless, of course, they’re bringing more battlecruisers,” Tomas said, quiet.
“Not something we can control,” Soly said. “But we can foresee it, yes. And having this one if they do will help. Especially if we can trick them into thinking we’re one of theirs for long enough to get them to turn their back on us.”
Sascha, who was watching Hirianthial, said, “You’re thinking of doing it on purpose, aren’t you.”
“Shouldn’t I?”
“Doing what on purpose?” Soly asked, ears switching forward.
Ignoring them, Sascha said, “I dunno, Boss. To hear Reese tell it, it lays you out flat.”
Jasper spoke for the first time. “There is a Medplex in this vessel. A significant one.”
Hirianthial glanced at him.
“I’m qualified to use it.”
“And you’re going to need it why?” Soly asked.
He told them.
To their credit, the Fleet personnel recovered more quickly than he anticipated. Tomas spoke first. “Sounds like it would be easier to take them on in smaller groups. That might work out better, actually, if you sneak in and take down a handful at a time.”
“Until you get to the main compartment,” Narain said, frowning.
“Not necessary,” Lune offered. “If all the groups are taken care of first. This sounds like less strain for the
God’s gift.”
Hirianthial glanced at her sharply, but Soly was already nodding. “I can see that. I don’t like it, but I can see it.” She folded her arms, tapping her fingers on her upper arm. “All right. Here’s the plan. We’re going to head to the bridge with the intention of taking it. We’ll stop on the way at one of the upper level Pad stations to send Lord Hirianthial to Engineering. Narain, you go with him. I want you to do sensor duty. Find clots of people in Engineering and guide him to them. As much as possible, take care of the small groups first. If Lune’s right and that saves him from over-taxing himself, so much the better. If it turns out it doesn’t work that way, then at least you’ll have winnowed them down before you need to get out.” She studied their group. “I’m assuming your people want to stay with you, alet? So you three are together, and Narain. Lune, Tomas, Jasper and I will take and hold the bridge. You give us updates as you can. If things go bad, get out and we’ll lock the compartment down.”
“Splitting up is a good idea?” Sascha asked, hesitant.
“We can’t do this otherwise. If Engineering finds out we’ve locked them down before you’re done down there, you really are done. And if you fumble Engineering, they’re going to fortify the bridge against us.” Soly shook her head. “No, we’re going to have to do it at the same time, as much as possible. We all clear?”
When no one objected, she said. “Good. Let’s go raid an armory.”
There was surprisingly little chaos in the woods near Ontine where the former hostages were filing over the Pad on their way to Reese’s castle. Beronaeth was overseeing the operation alongside Malia and Taylor, who’d brought the Pad in accordance with the plan; they hadn’t wanted to risk losing it to the enemy by bringing it into Ontine, and definitely didn’t want Surela’s guards to know they’d used it to whisk the hostages away once they’d been smuggled out by the servants. Olthemiel and Belinor had stayed behind to point the hostages in the proper direction and clean up the evidence of their passage.
It was all going very well… except Reese wasn’t back yet.
“Where is she?” Irine paced, shoulders hunched and arms tucked close against the cold.
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