Galactic Thunder

by Cameron Cooper

  I put my arm through his. “Let’s go, then. We have things to tell you.”

  —21—

  It took time to bring Sauli, Kristiana and Yoan up to date. We took them into the map room, which functioned as a full-immersion 3D tank, and all of us stood around in a circle and gave each of our sections of the full story.

  They asked a great many questions on the way through. Nearly all of them were practical questions, but even they, the most practiced team of engineers I’d ever come across, still asked the same unanswerable questions we had been asking ourselves.

  What is this blue species? Is aggressiveness just their nature? What do they want? Where have they taken the crew of the Ige Ibas, and the other three ships? And what do they want with them?

  Dalton halted the speculation. “It doesn’t matter what they want. And I don’t give a damn where they come from, except for how it will help me find them again. I want my son back. That’s all I care about.”

  Fiori gripped her hands together, her expression strained, and remained silent.

  Jai nodded. “A good point, and the reason we’re all here.”

  Dalton drew in a breath, visibly forcing himself to relax. He nodded. “You’re right. I’m sorry. I appreciate that everyone is working on this.”

  “A shitty reason to bring us all together,” Sauli added.

  “Most of us,” Lyth murmured.

  “Yeah, most of us.” Sauli grimaced. “Where is she, anyway?”

  Lyth waved toward the star map we stood amongst. “Pick a spot.”

  It occurred to me that if Lyth could find missing ships despite lack of documentation, then surely, he could keep tabs on Juliyana’s ship. Had he chosen not to?

  Sauli rubbed the back of his neck. “Used to be, ex-Rangers outnumbered civilians on this ship. We could use her.”

  “Sorry,” Lyth said shortly.

  “We have two ex-Rangers and two ex-Shield,” Jai said. “And a great deal of exceptional expertise between all of us, most of it non-military. Each of us has learned how to survive and that is our greatest strength. There is no one else who can do this but us.”

  “Yeah, but how do we do it?” I said.

  Sauli smiled. “I know a way.”

  We all looked at him expectantly.

  “These blue buggers are stealing people. So, let’s give them some people to steal.” He shrugged. “Let’s give them us.”

  —22—

  Of course we argued about it. Kristiana insisted that Yoan go back to Darius and out of this. My instinct was to send the parawolves somewhere else, too. Yoan was hotly indignant and refused to leave. I’m sure the parawolves would simply not have understood why we were sending them away. In the end, everyone stayed.

  We even took both ships.

  “Of course we can take both. We must take both,” Jai said. “The blues attacked when two ships were stationary. We just have to give them a fat enough target to attack two ships again. This time, we have Sauli and Saito’s expensive runabout—”

  Sauli snorted.

  “If the blues even recognize it as a rich target,” I added.

  “If they don’t, it doesn’t matter.” Jai’s tone was complacent. “With the Lythion there, they won’t be able to resist. You beat them once. If they’re truly aggressive, they won’t let that insult lie.”

  “They’ll come out with their weapons on full charge,” Dalton said. “How do we stop them doing that again? We have to find a way to speak to them.”

  “First, we must find them,” Jai said gently. “This will bring them out.”

  “You’re banking on them knowing we’re there,” I pointed out. “What if they just happened to stumble across the other four ships?”

  “Four that we know of,” Lyth corrected. “There may well be others.”

  Jai rubbed his jaw. “We don’t know how to signal to get their attention. But none of the other four ships would have signaled in any way. They just happened to be in the same general area of space, so we must put ourselves there and wait.”

  “It could be a long wait,” I pointed out.

  Jai smiled. It had a nasty edge to it. “Colonel, if an enemy unit slapped your face for you, when you thought your team unstoppable, wouldn’t you watch them very carefully after that? Look for signs of vulnerability?”

  “I would,” I said evenly. “I’d make it my mission in life, because that enemy unit would now be a threat I must reduce or disable.”

  “Or eliminate,” Dalton said grimly.

  “Or eliminate,” I echoed reluctantly, because that was just as true as any of the other possibilities. They’d called me the Imperial Hammer for a reason.

  Jai nodded. “They don’t know where we are from, just as we don’t know where they are from. But we both know where each of us was. So let’s go there.”

  We dusted off from the Wynchester platforms six hours later. It would have been sooner, but Sauli’s ship was still going through post-landing checks and resupply. Sauli’s captain, Baha Truda, spent money to make the turnaround as short as possible.

  Venni stayed with the parawolves on the Lythion, and Lyssa extended the sandpit to accommodate the five of them. Yoan also stayed, donned coveralls and dived eagerly into the engineering compartments, watched over by Lyssa.

  Jai and Marlow moved over to the Omia Zaos, coaxed there by Sauli’s offer of the best scotch ever distilled from real oak barrels.

  As we headed at dead slow speed toward the inner lock gate, I settled against the captain’s inertia shell on the bridge and shifted the view on my dashboard back to the city we were leaving behind. I studied it with a touch of regret. We hadn’t stepped off the platforms even once. Now I had seen Wynchester for myself, I itched to explore it. The city was an ancient anomaly among all the domed and lidded communities scattered across the galaxy. Its very long history tugged at me.

  I promised I would one day visit properly and spend time here.

  Then I shut off the display and watched the approaching lock instead. We had things to do.

  Lyssa stood beside me.

  “You have the coordinates from Lyth?” I asked her.

  “I do.”

  “Does Captain Truda?”

  She paused. “He does,” she confirmed.

  “As soon as we’re beyond the speed limit outside the Great Lock, you can jump.”

  “I would prefer to build up speed before we jump,” Lyssa said. “The Omia says it is faster than me.”

  “And you want to prove it wrong?” I asked curiously.

  “I want to make sure we don’t fall behind. I want to emerge into normal space at the other end either before the Omia or at the same time.” Her expression was withering. “The shipmind is a baby. If it runs into the Blues and I’m not there to guide it, it will curl up and suck its thumb.”

  I held back my laugh. “Then by all means, build up your speed first.”

  It took an hour to move through the Great Lock and back into open space beyond. Lyssa immediately kicked in the reaction engines and the Lythion leapt forward, with the Omia right beside us.

  “See you at the other end, Captain,” I called out to Truda.

  “I calculate five hours from now, Colonel,” Truda’s voice informed me.

  I glanced at Lyssa. She wiggled her hand, with a grimace.

  “That’s about right,” I told Truda. “Go in with your guard up,” I added.

  “I’ll have everything running hot,” Truda assured me. “I’ve seen the footage,” he added, his voice dropping.

  Three minutes later, we jumped.

  *

  We emerged into normal space with both rail guns primed, and a full arsenal of nasty stuff just waiting to deploy, with my fingers on the triggers dashboard, and Lyssa with every external sensor at full stretch.

  I held my breath, listening with every cell in my body, looking for any excuse to slide my fingers across the triggers.

  “Nothing,” Lyssa said at last. “We’re on t
he far edge of the Carina arm, as far away from any human establishment as the arm will let us get. And the Omia just emerged.”

  I studied the starfield ahead of us. It even looked different. “I didn’t have time to study the stars when we were out here last time,” I murmured. “There’s almost no stars to see in this direction, except for that band there. What is that?”

  Lyssa frowned and I knew she was consulting her innards, checking star maps. “Brother?” she said diffidently. “I have no reference points,” she added to me.

  In other words, her maps didn’t go that far.

  Here be dragons.

  Lyth’s voice came in. “Our galaxy is a spiral galaxy. That band of stars is the next arm over from ours.”

  I stared at it, my heart thudding. “Lyth, are you thinking what I’m thinking?”

  “I’m thinking what you’re thinking, Danny,” Jai said, from the Omia. “We had to come out here to see the possibility.”

  “That they’re from that other arm…” I murmured.

  Lyssa stiffened. “Incoming!” I think it was the first time I’ve heard her scream. Her voice was replicated on every system, and alarms sounded, flags flashed at me from my dashboard.

  At the same time, Captain Truda on the Omia shouted, “Aft inbound! Brace yourselves! They’re right on top of us!”

  —23—

  It isn’t possible to hear anything in space, but I suddenly wished we could hear. I felt as though all of me was strained backward, to sense whatever was coming at us from behind. There was no time for Lyssa to turn the ship to face it.

  She held very still, her attention on all her externals, processing the data.

  “Turn the rail guns!” I shouted at her.

  “I have,” she said shortly.

  I shut up. Lyssa’s reactions were faster than any of mine. Anything I thought of now, she’d likely already covered.

  Pounding on the ramp to the bridge announced the arrival of the rest of the ship’s compliment. Fiori actually beat Dalton onto the deck, and Dalton was a sprinter. She skidded to a stop next to my shell. “What can we do?” she asked breathlessly.

  “I’m on weapons,” Dalton said, settling behind the weapons dashboard. The triggers array disappeared from mine as he took it over. That gave me a few precious seconds to think.

  “Stand against that shell over there,” I told Fiori, pointing at the navigation shell. “Lyssa will put up a 3D display of the ships in this area. You get to watch everything over her shoulder, and if you spot anything hinky, like a fourth ship, you scream.”

  Fiori nodded and went over to the shell. The navigation tank formed in front of her, saving me from having to ask Lyssa and possibly distract her.

  More pounding. I glanced back at the ramp as Yoan hurried onto the bridge. I pointed at the engineering dashboard. “Your father’s post. Go.”

  Yoan nodded and settled behind the dashboard, scanning it to familiarize himself with the remote controls for the engineering compartments and systems.

  I watched Lyssa. She’d got the ship moving, burning through space at a speed that made the floor vibrate beneath our feet. I presumed the Omia was doing the same but wouldn’t trip anyone up with useless questions.

  The faster we burned now, the longer it would take the newly arrived ship to catch up with us.

  Then Lyssa stiffened. She turned to face the back of the bridge and, presumably, the ship on our asses. “You have to be fucking kidding me!” she cried.

  Another first.

  I waited for an explanation, every heartbeat hurting, and every muscle taut, ready to react as soon as I knew what this new development was.

  Lyssa turned on her heel to look at me. She was pissed. “It’s not the Blue guys,” she said, her voice flat with the heavy control she was exerting on it.

  The speaker overhead gave a soft click. “Danny, what the fuck are you doing out here?” The voice, despite the anger and tension in it, was more than familiar.

  The Lythion’s engines cut out. We were coasting along on inertia.

  “Juliyana?” I straightened from my lean upon the shell. The sudden release of tension gave me the shakes. “Get your fucking ass over here and tell me what is going on. This had better be good, granddaughter.”

  —24—

  The three ships, The Lythion, the Omia Zaos and Juliyana’s little Penthos, maneuvered carefully together. Then we hooked together with fast-release cables and set up molecular barrier tunnels around the cables. The cables served a secondary purpose. They give us something to pull ourselves along while we were weightless, outside the reach of a ship’s gravity.

  I stood at the open exit hatch and looked out at deep space. Just standing there gave me gruesome shivers. “I am not going out there,” I said flatly.

  “It’s perfectly safe,” Yoan assured me. He was taller than me by nearly a handspan and looked down at me with an understanding expression. “The technology is very old and reliable,” he added.

  “Thanks,” I said dryly. “But this very old carcass got that way by not taking stupid risks. Floating out in raw space without a suit, depending upon coherent molecules for air to breath, rates as stupid in my lexicon. Everyone can come here.”

  I stalked off to the diner to get a drink. I would rather have screamed or kicked in a few walls, but a drink was civilized.

  If Juliyana’s explanation for what the hell she was doing all the way out here on the very edge of nowhere wasn’t absolutely solid, then screw civilized. I’d wring necks. I would scream. And I would feel better afterwards.

  With the brandy warming my middle, I moved around the Lythion to what we had once called our Boardroom—a space made to resemble a mountaintop camping area, with a long wooden table, and a view that could take your breath away if you paused to study it.

  Lyth was already there, sitting on the tabletop with his hands gripped together. He didn’t look any happier than me.

  I went up to him. “Did you actually look at the Penthos?”

  “Yes,” he said flatly.

  “It’s not a freighter.”

  “No.”

  “It’s bristling with armaments and weapons. One of them looks like the new torrent rail guns I heard chatter about, last year.”

  “Yes,” Lyth agreed, even less happy.

  “Lyssa actually screamed when she heard it.”

  Lyth just nodded this time.

  I spared him any more grating of his nerves. I rested my hand on his shoulder. “We could use a ship like that.”

  Lyth’s jaw worked. “I didn’t know until just now that it wasn’t a freighter.”

  I considered that. “She lied to spare you a heart attack every time she left. There’s hope in that thought, you know.”

  His eyes widened a little. No, clearly, he had not thought it all the way through. He was mired in his own…whatever. Guilt, most likely, for Lyth was good at blaming himself for everything.

  I patted his shoulder again and let it go. “Can you hear them?”

  “They just came through the hatch.” His knuckles whitened for a second, then he loosened his hands and stepped to the ground with one long-legged movement and straightened.

  Lyssa rose up from the ground, which was unusual for her. She preferred to move around the ship the way humans did. But she was clearly trying to get ahead of the visitors.

  “Dalton, Fiori and Yoan?” I asked her.

  “On their way.” She moved over to the table. “Do you need anything? Coffee? Food?”

  “Not until I know what is going on,” I replied. I just barely held back the curse that wanted to form in the middle of the sentence. I wasn’t the only one flailing about, trying to understand this new development. I had to take it easy on everyone.

  I could hear the tramp of spacer boots on the deck of the ship, now, heading toward the room.

  The door opened and Dalton, Fiori and Yoan slipped inside. Dalton moved directly over to Lyth. “You holding up?” he said softly.
<
br />   “I’m holding up,” Lyth said grimly.

  Dalton raised his brow at me. I nodded, telling him with one movement that I was fine, and that I thought Lyth would be okay, too.

  Then we all faced the door and waited for our guests to appear.

  And that right there, I thought to myself, showed how great the distance was which Juliyana had put between all of us. I didn’t think of her as part of my crew anymore.

  Even Jai, who had gone out of his way to make sure Sauli and Kristiana were pulled into to help us get Mace back, hadn’t thought to reach out to Juliyana. Although even if he had, he wouldn’t have known where to reach her.

  The first person through the door was not Juliyana. The woman looked trim and fit, with deep brown hair that hung in waves, with a wide streak of gold running down both sides that might have been cosmetic, for the effect was striking. Yet the rest of her didn’t match such painstaking attention to appearance. She wore space coveralls, the type that didn’t fade, stain, rip or wrinkle, which shed water and were very forgiving about the dimensions they could stretch over. As a result of all that utility, the fabric was a dull brown or grey. They were the only options.

  The woman had squeezed into coveralls that appeared to be too small for her, but as the things could stretch quite a way, I presumed she had picked a standard size and hadn’t cared about precise fit.

  All the stretching had the effect of outlining an impressive musculature. She walked in a way that said she had strength to spare, with a spring in her step. I focused on her bare forearms and saw tendons flex as she walked—tendons that were far too regular and oversized for a human.

  She was enhanced, then. I’d heard that the practice of increasing muscular strength with super-tendon connections and other augmentations was growing more popular, but this was the first time I’d seen anyone I could reliably judge as having an enhanced body. Clearly, she didn’t mind people knowing what she had done to herself.

  I found it hard to look away from her, but then I saw Juliyana behind her and my attention shifted.