The Secret Kings

by Brian Niemeier

  Without shedding a drop of his blood.

  An ugly bruise at the base of Grahm’s skull hinted at the cause of death. Cook had seen similar injuries in victims of crashes and falls. A full autopsy might prove him wrong, but he surmised that Grahm’s spinal cord had been detached from his brain—internal decapitation.

  Cold dread tempered Cook’s urgency. Grahm was a thirty year navy veteran, with most of those years spent in security. Yet he’d died with his weapon holstered and without any defensive wounds. He’d been struck from behind by crushing force delivered with pinpoint accuracy. In all likelihood, he never knew what hit him.

  Grahm had been stationed at the intersection of three corridors leading to the bridge. He’d mainly been there to keep the foolish and curious—especially children—away from the compromised area. Since he’d almost certainly stood facing the main corridor, the fatal blow probably came from the direction of the bridge.

  Cook stood and inspected the bulkhead. Its matte grey surface was pristine, except for the warnings emblazoned across it in red, yellow, and black.

  Nothing could have passed through that door without blowing it open, or at least exposing the whole section to vacuum. Yet the dead crewman testified that the Serapis had been boarded by enemies unknown.

  But how?

  Cook had figured that the ramming ship would try a boarding action, but he’d expected chaos and destruction; not a single casualty.

  And eerie silence.

  The enemy’s stopped firing. They definitely had people on board, then. The only question was—

  The boarding ship is a nexus-runner. That’s how.

  Saving Tefler from the Fire Stratum had given Cook a crash course in Night Gen translators, which had the ability to turn people and objects into prana, beam them through the ether, and rematerialize them elsewhere. Translation normally required line of sight, but placing the departure point inside the general target area would make a blind jump much less risky.

  They could be anywhere!

  Cook slowed his racing pulse with a series of deep breaths. If his hunch was correct, the enemy had translated into the hallway and were proceeding on foot. That limited where they could be.

  The auxiliary bridge wasn’t their target, since they’d have passed Cook on the way. He’d assumed that the Lawbringers wanted the Serapis itself, but their Night Gen allies were clearly after something else.

  Cook’s mind raced to think of other targets of value on board. The silence was so oppressive that he almost wished for the distant thunder of dud torpedoes hitting the stern.

  Like the one that blew the hangar open.

  A seemingly random hull breach. The sudden ceasefire when another ship had entered from the bridge. Unknown killers stalking the halls.

  As Cook turned these jumbled pieces over in his mind, a terrifying picture started to emerge.

  He dashed back the way the way he’d come. Sparing a final glance at Grahm’s still form, Cook made a silent vow—not to avenge his shipmate, exactly, but to honor the man’s death in the line of duty by taking up his charge.

  Cook knew where Grahm’s killers were going. He would meet them there. But he’d stop by his quarters on the way to pick up a little welcoming gift.

  2

  They definitely came this way.

  Cook fought to calm the rage that burned his blood when he saw the second and third corpses—both men he knew; both clearly stabbed to death. He fought down his gag reflex when he rounded a corner and saw most of a fourth.

  The pitiful heap—too small to have been a grown man—lay upon red-stained steel deck plates in a corridor leading to the hangar. The pieces were sliced so cleanly that their raw ends looked like polished crimson marble. The hallway smelled of blood and approaching storms.

  Reason spoke over Cook’s wrath. Whatever had butchered the fourth victim was unlikely to have run the third and second through, let alone to have bloodlessly dispatched the first outside the bridge. The differences in style, subtlety, and skill were conclusive.

  There’s at least three of them.

  Cook stalked along, the ever-present engine hum masking his footfalls. The metal deck felt cool under his bare feet, in contrast to the warm metal tucked into his belt that pressed against the small of his back.

  Voices emanated from the next hallway, beyond which stood a main hangar entrance. Cook froze in place at the corner. Though hushed, the voices were clear enough for him to make out words, and although the words were in Gen, he’d read enough of Captain Malachi’s books to get the gist of the conversation.

  There were indeed three men—Night Gen, judging by their strange dialect. They were trying to open the door that had sealed shut during the hangar breach. Someone or something called Izlaril, most likely a fourth member of their team, had already entered by some way denied to the rest.

  Cook knew that some nexists had the power of personal translation. Was this fourth intruder one of them? However he’d gotten in, his allies seemed to resent being left behind.

  Quiet words faded to incoherence under the click and clatter of tools, until Cook heard a phrase that turned the fire in his blood to ice.

  Shaiel’s Blade

  Who were these Night Gen talking about? They couldn’t mean Hazeroth, since Astlin had left nothing of Shaiel’s last Blade but a charred skeleton. Irallel had coveted the title, but she was hardly in any shape to fill the vacancy since, thanks to Xander, she was now a living flood buried under an ancient seabed.

  But according to the Night Gen, Shaiel’s Blade was on the Serapis with them.

  “Damn the Smith,” said one of the Gen. “If not for his tinkering, I’d cut this door like paper.”

  Another of the Gen chuckled. “Surely that was the point of his tinkering.”

  The sounds of work stopped. “Quiet yourselves,” hissed the third Night Gen. “Or keep distracting me, let Izlaril take the prize, and trust our lives to the greycloak steersmen’s restraint.”

  A knot formed in Cook’s gut. He didn’t know what the greycloaks sought, but the Gen’s threat implied that Shaiel’s people were only toying with the Serapis. Cook knew his enemy. The games would stop the moment they got what they wanted.

  Cook scanned the broad, sparsely lit corridors. Not a friendly soul in sight. No use sending for backup, either. The enemy could be gone; the Serapis an expanding cloud of hot vapor behind them, by the time help arrived. And the outmatched security officers would probably end up like the bodies in the hall.

  The prospect of taking on three armed, murderous Night Gen—and who knew what else—didn’t thrill Cook. But a resounding metallic thud and gloating laughter from the direction of the door made up his mind for him.

  Cook glanced around the corner and immediately wished he hadn’t. Two Night Gen in dark green uniforms stood at the far door with their backs to him. The final member of their team kept watch on the hallway. The lookout’s yellow eyes narrowed as they caught sight of Cook, and his ashen brow creased in anger.

  Surprised, Cook froze as the lookout charged him. The Gen’s hair trailed him like a black silk streamer tied to the base of his skull. He already held a short sword, its matte steel blade poised to eliminate one more threat.

  The thought of his shipmates lying cold in their own blood roused Cook from his stupor. He pivoted back around the corner and pressed up against the wall. Keeping time by his enemy’s rapid footfalls, he ducked when the moment was right and kicked out into the hall.

  A sense of timing honed by years in the galley served Cook well. An onrushing shin collided with his outstretched calf. The Night Gen tumbled past him but gracefully turned the fall into a roll that brought him up in a crouch facing Cook.

  The Gen’s angry leer became a disgusted frown. “The clay tribe are as soft as their name,” he said in heavily accented Trade. “We smother cripples at birth.”

  “I’m not crippled.” Cook swept his leg in a blurring arc that connected with the flat of the short sword,
sending it clattering down the hall. He stood and looked down at his foe. “Just ugly.”

  The Night Gen rose into a fighter’s stance, but his eyes suddenly widened. Cook saw the alarm on his foe’s face and heard footsteps approaching from behind, the direction of the hangar door. He and the Night Gen lunged in different directions at the same time.

  Rising to one knee in the adjacent hallway, Cook turned his eyes toward a deep rending sound like a chunk of ice falling free of a glacier. An area encompassing the intersection of two walls, and extending for three vacant feet on all sides of the corner, buckled in ways that made Cook nauseous. The warped space slammed back into position, but the affected section of wall crashed down in a jumble of irregular sharp-edged pieces.

  “Watch your aim, Pelm!” Cook’s first opponent cried down the hangar corridor. “Unless you want me to end like that boy.”

  Cook recalled the pile of cleanly sliced meat. Pelm. I’ll remember that name.

  Most likely shaken by his close brush with messy death, the first Gen wasn’t ready when Cook sprang. Surprise was just one advantage of attacking head-on. More importantly, closing with his opponent would buy him some protection from Pelm’s space-warping.

  Cook ended his leap with his leading foot stomping on the deck and his rising palm planted under his foe’s chin. The Gen’s head snapped backward, sending him reeling. Cook slid behind the dazed Gen, secured his enemy’s arms in a tight hold, and forced him down the hallway toward the hangar doors.

  Another Night Gen stood halfway down the hall on the right, his hands empty of weapons and shock etched on his grey face.

  You must be Pelm.

  Cook doubled his pace, pushing the groaning Night Gen before him like a battering ram. Except it wasn’t a door, but a murdering Gen, obstructing his path. Cook threw his semiconscious burden forward. Pelm reflexively reached out to stop his comrade from falling, and Cook used the opening to land a flying kick to Pelm’s face. Both Gen toppled to the deck.

  Just one Night Gen remained—a weaselly fellow with shoulder-length hair who turned away from the exposed guts of the hangar door and drew a short sword as Cook rushed him.

  The Gen slashed at chest level. Cook ducked under the whistling blade, and a breeze fanned his bald scalp. Maintaining his forward momentum, he jammed his elbow into the Gen’s solar plexus. Another gout of air—warm and moist this time—told Cook that he’d driven the wind from his opponent’s lungs. The Gen duly dropped his sword, doubled over, and fell gasping onto his side.

  The door caught Cook’s trained eye. He straightened to his full height and looked over the intricate locking mechanism exposed by the removal of a foot-square panel.

  These folks know their stuff. They already bypassed the Worked failsafe and most of the mechanical backups.

  A weird yet familiar tearing sound sent a chill down Cook’s spine as a terrible force tried pry it out of his back. The agony wrenched a cry from his throat and drove him up against the door.

  A mental image of disjointed meat and metal incited fear that temporarily suppressed Cook’s pain. He spun to face the hallway and locked eyes with Pelm, who stood a stone’s throw away, blood streaming from his nose and mouth; his hands thrust forward.

  Cook had wondered what kind of weapon could instantly dissect anything from human flesh to steel sheets to space itself. Now he knew that Pelm didn’t wield such a weapon. He was the weapon—a particularly vicious breed of nexist.

  And Cook’s inattention had left him defenseless at point-blank range.

  Pelm’s face contorted in a vengeful scowl. The air in front of him wavered, but the spatial distortion stopped within a foot of Cook’s face.

  The first Night Gen staggered to his feet behind Pelm and gestured toward the hangar. “He’s inside the anti-nexic field!”

  The Night Gen’s earlier conversation made sense, now. Besides being a souldancer, Mirai Smith was a nexist capable of otherworldly engineering feats. He must have rigged a way to suppress nexism like the Serapis disrupted Workings. The anti-nexic field had protected the door from Pelm. Now it protected Cook, who offered a silent prayer of thanks.

  The implications weren’t lost on Pelm, who fumbled to draw the short sword at his belt.

  The third Gen’s sword lay within reach of Cook’s foot. He kicked the weapon straight up, caught the hilt, and threw it. The sword’s graceful journey ended with the blade buried in Pelm’s throat.

  While the nexist lay choking on his own blood, the first Gen retrieved his sword and lurched toward his cornered, unarmed foe.

  Despite his misgivings, Cook reached back and slid the warm, smooth sword from his belt. The uncanny lightness of Cook’s blade almost threw off his parry, but its white curve met stark grey steel and checked the Gen’s blow with a clear ringing like silver temple bells. The opening was all Cook needed to lay his last opponent out with a knee to the chin.

  Not the last, Cook reminded himself as he turned to the hangar door. His back still stung. Luckily the white scimitar’s blade made an adequate mirror. The wound reflected in lavender hues was much less serious than he’d feared—just a small gash below his right shoulder. The bleeding wasn’t bad enough to risk a trip to the infirmary; not if Shaiel’s Blade was on board.

  Besides, he could get it stitched up later.

  Cook tucked the scimitar back into his belt, reached into the guts of the door, and finished the Night Gen’s work for them.

  The heavy doors parted in the center with a hiss. Cook’s heart lodged in his throat when he imagined being blown through an inch-wide opening into a vacuum left by a failed emergency containment field. His muscular chest rose and fell with a sigh of relief when the doors slammed open, revealing a fully pressurized hangar.

  The cavernous space was no less of a shambles, though. The once grey floor had been scorched black and buckled in several places. The few remaining cargo containers that held the last of the ship’s supplies were strewn at odd angles like the building blocks of a child colossus.

  Scratch that, Cook thought as he looked past the onyx trident of the Kerioth to the hangar’s main door. It’s even worse.

  The massive shutter lay in a single twisted piece on the deck—blown off its hinges by pinpoint torpedo fire. The opening yawned like a giant mouth full of broken teeth, and Cook felt the deck turn to quicksand when he saw the oblong hulls of four corvettes brooding in the dark beyond.

  They’re matching our speed but holding their fire—which is good, considering how accurate their gunners are.

  Since he couldn’t do much about the tailing ships at the moment, Cook dragged the two incapacitated Gen from the hall, locked them in a cargo container, and resealed the inner door. He felt isolated, but not alone.

  Cook climbed the stairs to a second story catwalk. The metal grates underfoot rattled despite his best efforts at discretion. The prevailing charred smell was even stronger up here, with an acrid undercurrent. The faint stench heightened his unease.

  You’re down there somewhere, Cook thought as he surveyed the mess below. Yet there was no sign of the enemy.

  Had he misheard the Night Gen? After all, Cook could see that the other shipside hangar doors were all sealed. Even if someone could open another without leaving traces of tampering, reaching the next closest door would require a long detour to port or starboard.

  Cook searched his encyclopedic memory of the Serapis’ layout. Besides a few hatches that were even less accessible than the doors, the only other ways into the hangar were a system of pipe and cable-strewn ducts that a small, exceptionally limber child might be able to crawl through; and from outside, which at the moment was a hard vacuum.

  What about nexism? Unlikely, since Mirai Smith’s field had kept out the Night Gen.

  Normally, Cook would take a situation like this as proof of his own fallibility. But the situation was hardly normal. These weren’t pirates out for loot; they were servants of a self-styled Void god. Who knew what they wanted—or what they�
��d do to get it?

  Cook shuddered. More than one book in the late captain’s collection told of beings with stranger powers than nexism. If anyone could dredge up servants like those, it was Shaiel.

  “Gid,” Cook sent through the stud on his ear, “I’m in the hangar. The damage is just like you said. A boarding party entered from the main bridge. Three Night Gen. Possibly a fourth man—or something else. They killed four of ours. I returned the favor to one of them; locked up two more. What’s the situation down there?”

  The silence that answered Cook’s sending chilled him more than the cold metal grill under his feet. The feeling of motion assured him that Gid was still on the Wheel. Which meant the ship’s comm was damaged—or jammed.

  “If you’re sending, Gid, I’m not receiving. Keep the channel open. I’m going rat hunting.”

  Cook descended the stairs to the main deck where an impossible sight made his heart miss a beat.

  I know this was the one I locked!

  Yet there it was. The cargo container; its doors wide open. A quick check confirmed the suspicion that twisted Cook’s gut. Quiet, bloodless death had claimed both Night Gen in the time it had taken him to walk downstairs.

  Shock washed over Cook’s body, leaving gooseflesh in its wake. His chest tightened as he cast about the huge space in vain. But his will, trained as rigorously as his body, asserted control.

  Breathe. You’re in the main hangar on the Serapis. There are ten shipping containers, a parked nexus-runner, and a killer on the loose. That’s just one thing that wasn’t there before. Just one problem to solve.

  As Cook’s panic subsided, his senses sharpened. He felt the hard deck underfoot and vibrations from the engines far below. He heard the constant bass note of their hum and the regular beat of his own pulse.

  Cook strode toward the Kerioth. Nothing else moved in the black mirrors of its three-bladed hull. A section of cracked grey paint stretched between him and the ship, as if the deck had seen a hundred summers and winters. The area was clear with nowhere to hide. He hesitated only a moment before proceeding.