by Blaze Ward
Afia reached out and triggered the mechanical linkage that the computer would have brought in-line, had she known to just push the Open button. None of them had thought to ask. At least nobody had suggested blasting the door open.
She was pretty sure there was enough firepower handy to pull that off. Even this reinforced monster bitch of a door.
Afia rose to her feet as the others hyped themselves up. She was the smallest person here, so she could peek in and see things first. Javier and Sykora were going to rely on her the most going forward, especially if he was going to be busy keeping Sykora from getting out of hand.
That woman just might, yet.
The lethal, gray fishbowl hovered about three meters up, just below the door jamb, but high enough to not be in anybody’s way if the dragoon needed to fire.
Javier was on the other side of the door, so Afia was able to peek as the door moved to one side. It opened sideways away from her side of the frame on slightly grinding rails, probably a bit of gunk in there somewhere from being closed too long. Common problem. One of the reasons you opened every door regularly as part of maintenance.
Inside was a vast chamber that took her breath away.
She gasped, but the others would see it soon enough, so she didn’t need to say anything.
At least there was nothing to shoot.
The hatch slid the whole way open and disappeared into the bulkhead with a small thunk.
The air coming out had a different smell. Afia couldn’t say what it was, but it was there.
The bridge of the Neu Berne Flagship Hammerfield.
Huge. Wasteful. Impressive.
From her vantage, it was a round room, about twenty-five meters across, with a domed ceiling at least nine meters at the peak.
Two meters in, stairs went down a meter to a walkway on either side of the four meter entryway.
Afia could see a number of crew stations around the outside of the bridge, but the central section was the most impressive.
Six stations arranged in a hexagon pattern, looking outward over the stations around the outer ring that faced the bulkhead.
It was the center that caught her eye and her breath.
A raised dais. A round pedestal maybe a meter tall and three across, with steps ringing it all the way around. A command station, similar to what the captain had, back on Storm Gauntlet, but bigger, more ornate.
And occupied.
A man sat there, facing them, unmoving.
Sykora had both guns out so fast that they might have always been there.
From her close proximity, Afia could see them shake, just the slightest bit.
About what Afia would have done, after a night of watching really good zombie movies.
The probe pinged the room hard. Afia felt it in her bones, the pulse was so heavy across so many frequencies. But it held its fire, so Afia assumed everything was good enough, at least for now.
“Sykora,” Javier barked sharply.
Afia tore her eyes away from the bridge to look at her companions.
Javier was poised, his attention riveted on the dragoon, but he was carefully not interposing himself between Sykora and whatever terrible visions she was having. Sykora was an alabaster statue, except for the vibrating barrels, that image being possibly the most frightening thing Afia had ever seen in her life.
Djamila Sykora was normally the rock that the rest of the crew was built upon.
What would they do if she came apart on them?
Hajna and Sascha had peeked, but they had their fire lanes to maintain. Stone professionals.
That left Afia.
Internally, she shrugged.
You are an engineer. Treat this like an engineering problem. Understand that sometimes, you have to go into a hostile reactor and die killing it for the good of the crew.
“Cover me,” she said, stepping quickly forward and out of any lunging reach.
“Damn it, Afia,” Javier said, but that was all.
She was pretty sure Sykora was keeping all of his attention.
The fans were on in here, a nice, background hum that meant safe on board a starship. Lights as well.
Heat. That was what was different.
The hallway had been four degrees, just enough above freezing that pipes with water weren’t at risk. It was closer to eighteen degrees in here. Not quite warm enough to strip naked and enjoy the feel of nothing but breeze against her skin, but close.
Oh, so damned close.
The rest of the crew would probably still be in jackets and pants, but they hadn’t grown up with a glacier across the valley, either.
Why would this room be so warm?
None of the other stations were inhabited, just the captain’s. Afia paused after about four meters to slowly pivot in place and take it all in. Twelve stations along the outer wall. Six stations around the captain. And the throne.
From here, Afia could see a panel on the far wall, six meters by three, that roughly mirrored the entryway. Visual screen, but only for the captain, since everyone else was facing the wrong way usually.
Impressive as hell.
Afia took a deep breath. Her suit was reacting to the greater warmth by shutting down the heating elements. She wasn’t suddenly chilled with fear, no, sir.
That’s what she told herself.
She was an engineer. He was not a zombie, that unmoving man up there. Screw that.
She took another step closer, just to prove her own courage.
Okay, he’s dead.
Dried up. Shriveled like a hunk of beef jerky.
Hard to tell how old he was, but Afia guessed him to be the actual captain. The red uniform he wore had enough bangles to be a senior officer of some sort.
Blond hair looked like it wanted to be graying, but hadn’t quite made up its mind, yet.
Anglo, obviously. He had that pinkish tone to his skin that differentiated Neu Berne from her own Indonesian ancestors, even if she had grown up with her family in the Yukon Protectorate, back on Earth.
His head was tilted down, but she was short and he was on a riser, so Afia could see his face.
At least his eyes were closed.
She took another step closer.
He was fully strapped in, with his hands resting on the armrests, looking utterly peaceful.
There was a large, white envelope in his lap, but there was no way in hell she was getting that close.
“Hammerfield, please provide operational status,” she called out to the room.
It had ignored Javier outside. Maybe it was deaf. Maybe it was asleep.
Maybe the bridge defensive systems were about to come live and try to kill her.
Afia had her doubts about that, as keyed up as the probe and the dragoon were, right now.
Nothing.
No change to the air systems blowing. No lights coming on or going off where she could see them.
“Afia?” Javier’s voice carried across the vast distance that separated them right now.
She spun slowly in place again, taking it all in while she was still the first conqueror to set foot on this bridge.
“All clear,” she said.
“Everyone in,” she heard him order.
“No,” Sykora said weakly. “We should not all be trapped in there.”
“Djamila, we’re going to stay together,” Javier replied in a voice that he might use on a skittish horse.
Afia turned so she could watch the corpse and her friends at the same time.
Had they really found the last flagship and her crew?
BOOK NINETEEN: HAMMERFIELD
PART ONE
WITH BOTH DJAMILA and Javier outside the ship, Zakhar was pulling a watch duty on the bridge, when he would normally leave it to the rest of his Centurions and their assistants and go do paperwork himself. He probably still should, but it was better if everyone else got some down time.
Lir himself only knew when something would happen, or what it would look like.
This system was so messy, so complicated with gravity wells, that there really wasn’t any safe way to trigger a jump longways across the entire system, punching home a goal between the primary star and the binary pair that had been captured later.
There was barely enough space to get a running start away from the ancient warship if it decided to come after them.
Zakhar hoped there was enough space.
Storm Gauntlet was old, but still dated to the period after the Great Wars had ended. She should be more advanced, technologically, than Hammerfield, even if the little corvette had been massively outgunned by the galleon before she had taken so much damage escaping Svalbard.
If Neu Berne had been more advanced, they wouldn’t have lost so badly, taking down the Union of Man, Balustrade, and everyone but the Concord, quietly sitting over in one corner of the galaxy away from the main players.
Djamila and her team had gone silent as soon as they emerged from the flight bay. Zakhar had watched them cross the space on passive optics only, until they vanished from sight into the maw of the gray beast.
Javier made a pretty good Jonah, on reflection. Zakhar pondered, but was unable to identify where Nineveh might be, in the modern context. Or maybe, who?
“Clock time?” Zakhar called out.
Not because he couldn’t look it up himself, but to remind everyone to stay sharp.
Tobias Gibney was manning the science station this shift. Thomas Obasanjo had gunnery. Mikhail Dominguez sat in the pilot’s chair.
It was a tossup who would respond first. They were all pretty good, or they wouldn’t be sitting on his bridge in a potentially dangerous situation.
“Ninety-four minutes since they boarded, sir,” Gibney replied.
Zakhar wondered at what point he would have to decide to go rescue them, rescue her, or give up and get on with a post-piracy life, if no signal ever came.
No answer availed itself.
He keyed a comm channel.
“Wardroom,” he said in as light a voice as he could fake right now. “Captain would appreciate some tea, please.”
“Coming up,” a man’s voice replied.
Zakhar settled himself for a long night, wondering if he would ever see Djamila again.
And if not, when would Prince Charming surrender his dreams of happily-ever-after?
PART TWO
JAVIER WATCHED the Amazon like his life depended on it. Even more than usual.
Sykora was wound like the strings on a violin right now, just waiting for some musical lunatic to come along and make her scream in agony.
She stared back at him with eyes that didn’t have any iris, any color, at all.
Just black portals to hell.
“We’ll do this together, Djamila,” he said quietly. “This is a tomb, a war memorial, and will be treated as such. But I need you focused. The rest of the women can handle anything that comes along. Can you do this?”
He had seen this iron woman raging. Cunning. Embarrassed. Befuddled. Even drunk once, and singing martial folks songs in German.
He had never seen her on the edge of cracking up.
At least he would die quickly when she did, since Javier had no doubt he would be first on her shit list when she lost control and opened fire.
Sykora took a breath.
It was shallow, but indicated that she was listening. Hopefully unwinding and not unraveling.
She nodded, just as shallowly.
Nothing more, but enough to tell him she was in control, however fragile that hold was.
He would ask what the hell had come over the bronzed berserker, but he already knew. Or could hazard a guess.
That might be King Arthur himself, seated on that dais over there. This might be Avalon.
And it might also be Niflheim.
She hadn’t shot him, yet, so Javier took a gamble and stepped into the room, trusting the pathfinders to cover the hallway and Suvi to shoot Sykora if push really came to shove.
Hopefully, Suvi understood how utterly weird things had gotten and wouldn’t overreact.
Which was the strangest thing Javier could think of, on an already bizarre day.
He needed Sykora, galling as that thought was.
Eight steps in, Afia watched with the sort of feigned nonchalance that didn’t fool anyone, but he let it slide.
“What have you got, kid?” he said to try to smooth over the general awkwardness.
A glance back revealed that Suvi had come into the room and side-slipped to one side so she could cover all the organics, living or dead, in a single arc of fire. Which said a lot about her read on things.
Sykora followed, like a marionette whose strings have tangled, lurching step by step when she was normally smooth grace itself. Javier figured she had recovered somewhat when she holstered both pistols and looked around, awe scribed on her face like a ten-year-old at a theme park.
“He’s dead,” Afia replied, pointing at the guy in the captain’s chair. “Apparently left a note for you.”
“Me?” Javier asked.
“I’m not grabbing it,” she said, feet rooted firmly to the deck. “Sentience isn’t responding, but it isn’t shooting, either. What do you think, boss?”
Javier looked around quickly. Nothing amiss in here. Sascha had entered. Hajna was following, walking sideways like a crab.
“Afia,” Sascha called. “What button closes the door?”
“[Enter] key,” the tiny engineer yelled back. “Bottom left.”
Sascha keyed it in, and Javier watched the door slide shut with a soft click.
Here they were.
Sykora had drifted closest to the corpse, but stayed at the bottom of the steps, like a peasant waiting her turn to present a petition.
No guns, and a minimum of fidgeting. Probably a good sign.
Javier walked noisily up to stand next to the giant woman. He could probably have tried to sneak and she’d have still tracked him, as keyed up as she appeared.
One glance over and he confirmed that there was still no green in those eyes.
Just white and black.
At least she wasn’t as pale as she had been.
Javier sniffed, aware of what old corpses in space tended to smell like. It wasn’t like the old, dried leather you got in the desert.
More stale and musty. Three-day-old bread, maybe.
“Probe,” he said in a normal voice. “Status, please.”
“All scans nominal,” Suvi said in the dumb, computer voice she was hiding behind.
Again, she would warn him, hopefully. But there was an even bigger Sentience here. Maybe older. Maybe her age. A dangerous sibling, in any case.
Javier didn’t think the dragon could sneak up and take Suvi over without a sound, or a fight.
But he really hadn’t studied the Great War more than enough to ace his history exams at the Academy. And that was a long time ago.
Afia was twitchy. Sykora right out on the ledge. The pathfinders were trying to look every direction for zombies coming out of the vents and side doors.
That left him.
But this was why he got out of bed this morning.
Javier took a loud breath, deep and meaningful, as a warning to everyone else.
Not like what came next would be a surprise to anyone, but still.
He climbed the four steps to the platform, where he could stand next to the dead guy.
Uniform didn’t mean anything either, except that the guy looked more like a captain and less like an admiral. Those people always had to get extra silly with their decorations.
Scarlet, long sleeve shirt. Not cotton, but something stretchy if still a little loose, with refractive elements in it that looked like glitter.
Glossy black, leather, slip-on boots to mid-calf. Black pants that were tight down through the thigh, and then flared out into little bells before tucking into the boots, like big, black mushrooms.
It was hard to tell the man’s age, given that he was all dried u
p and wrinkly, but Javier would have guessed him around fifty when he died.
The face was calm in death. The arms relaxed on the armrests of his grand throne, like a king of yore.
He was composed.
At peace.
This man hadn’t died in agony or horror. His corpse wasn’t here as a warning to future generations or a trophy.
Javier looked down at the envelope in the man’s lap. The paper was a cream color, almost almond. It was oversized, like a standard piece of paper folded in half, instead of thirds.
There was writing on the outside. Big, blocky letters.
This did not look like a man with a florid, cursive hand.
And he had placed it facing outward, so that it would be immediately legible to someone standing where Javier was, and upside down to the captain on his chair.
Javier picked it up and held the document in one hand, weighing it.
Heavy linen stock. Filled with several pages of the same weight inside, from the bulkiness.
Javier’s German was pretty good, better spoken than written, but still competent enough if something was a scientific article. Less so with literature.
He was probably safe with this man.
“What does this say?” he turned to show it to the only native in the room. In the crew. Maybe it would help.
Djamila’s eyes focused. Squinted a little. Her head came forward unconsciously, just a touch, but enough to break the fragile rigidity she had assumed.
She blinked.
Javier could see tears forming in her eyes. Happily, nobody else was in a position to perceive that. Something else he had never expected to know about this woman.
Possibly something else to carry to his grave.
Javier honestly hadn’t believed that sort of thing was possible with Djamila Sykora.
But this was the future, and all things were possible.
“We did our duty,” she said in a voice that managed both quiet reverence and that sort of profound heaviness that only Neu Berne culture ever conveyed.
“Yeah,” Javier said. “That’s what I thought.”
Javier had a pretty good speaking voice, even translating something as he went, and he knew they would want to hear it.
