From Ruins

by M. C. A. Hogarth

  "We've been talking."

  She looked over her shoulder, and he met her eyes and shrugged, helpless. "I like talking to people."

  "You talked a homicidal psychopathic D-per into saving our lives."

  "I... don't know if I'd go that far," Vasith'h said. At her look, he said, "I mean, he saved our lives. I'm just not sure about the homicidal psychopathy. How much of that is him and how much of it was something he just... abetted? Do we even know what he's done, besides protect Kamaney?"

  "Protecting Kamaney is enough," Sediryl said. "More than enough."

  Vasiht'h grimaced. "Okay. Granted. But he did a good thing."

  "And does that make up for all the bad things?" Sediryl asked.

  "I hope so," Vasiht'h said. "Because at some point, we've all got to have a chance to come back from mistakes. Or change our ways. Otherwise... what's the point? We might as well kill everyone who offends society, because it would be the only way to prevent recidivism."

  Sediryl rubbed her brow, trying not to let the tension in her neck become a headache and already failing. A small voice was whispering in her head: You're a killer now, too, who's going to prosecute you for murder? Who's going to excuse you for the blood you've spilled? "I'm grateful, however you managed it."

  "I am too," Vasiht'h admitted, and they glanced at one another, and in his eyes Sediryl saw her own relief and confusion and fear.

  Lodii's interruption surprised them both. "It begins."

  A pinprick of light flared on the sensorspread. Sediryl leaned forward and enlarged it, and her mouth dried as the pirate fleet dove on the orbital station circling the Vault. Other blossoms of light announced the deaths of the satellites.

  "Like a pack of baunepe, tearing apart a sick serdu." The Faulfenzair's muzzle wrinkled, exposing her teeth. "Nothing is fighting back."

  "The Chatcaavan ships are gone," Sediryl said, numb. "That's why we're here. The Twelveworld Lord took them away to fight the war, and left his fiefdom defenseless."

  "And now pirates will kill them all." The Faulfenzair's ears folded closed, flat to her head. "I know it is necessary, but it is still ugly to watch." Checking her panel, she said, "We should make our attempt to creep in a better direction, now that they are distracted with killing."

  "All right," Sediryl said, and a new course lit up on her panel, one that snaked past the planet to a place they could engage the Well drives. "Looks good."

  "Then, we move." The Faulfenzair tapped her display. "Few hours, but safe is good. Those ships are very powerful military vessels. If they know at all how to use them, they could find us."

  "Dusted..."

  "It would be effort," Lodii said. "But it is not impossible. Nothing is."

  The minutes had never felt slower, and it didn't help that the planet didn't noticeably recede. When Lodii had promised they would ‘creep' through the system, she hadn't been exaggerating. Talking about anything, no matter how consequential, felt impossible with her throat choked with all the confessions she couldn't make, and all the regrets she couldn't surrender. She was on the bridge of Liolesa's ship, wearing a robe too short for her body and nothing else, surrounded in strangers, and she was leaving behind the wreckage of a world that belonged to her enemies... the wreckage she had orchestrated, and called necessary.

  She didn't even recognize herself anymore. Maybe Crispin was right: she needed a psychiatrist.

  "Some of the pirates are splitting off," Lodii said. "Chasing other quarry, maybe. Other worlds nearby?"

  "There are some, yes." Sediryl remembered the map. "And if the military forces are elsewhere, those are going to be tempting prizes. Industrialized worlds with a great many resources."

  "Must be their plan, then," Lodii said. "This world offered no resistance." She tapped the display. "Some of them are staying, including the ship we abandoned. To take prisoners and wealth, I am guessing."

  "Yes," Sediryl answered, numb.

  They were all looking at the display when the ship's alarms howled and every board lit with errors and damage, which they noticed after they stopped gripping their restraints against the sudden bucking of the deck. Lodii recovered first, grabbing the edge of the console to steady herself. "We are hit? We're hit. By what? Faulza dancing, there is another fleet!"

  "Another what?" Sediryl touched her lip. She was bleeding... what had she hit? The wall maybe? Ignoring it, she widened her sensor field and discovered the Faulfenzair was right. Another fleet of ships had come out of Well nearly on them, and one of them had glanced off the Visionary, sending it tumbling.

  "What are those!" Vasiht'h exclaimed.

  "Chatcaava," Sediryl said. "It has to be."

  "Which is bad, because they are chasing us," Lodii said. "I flee!"

  "Wait, can we..."

  "Rough ride coming," Lodii warned. "We are badly damaged."

  Absurdly, Sediryl thought of the tea set and wondered if any of it had shattered, and how she would explain it to Liolesa. "Do what you can."

  The Faulfenzair was bent close to the controls now, her tail flicking in agitation. "They are chasing the pirates-good. But us too, because they cannot tell us from the others. But if they are about to drop out of Well, we are able to go in...."

  Sediryl clenched her fists, held her breath. Nothing happened.

  "And our drives are not functioning." Lodii hissed. "Then. We run the other way."

  Vasiht'h asked, pained, "That... splotch of red... that's coming closer... does that mean they're following us?"

  "We'll make a sensor tech of you yet," Sediryl said.

  "Sediryl...."

  "Arii-"

  "Incoming fire!" Lodii said, and this time when the ship took the hit they didn't stop tumbling.

  "Are they... are they still targeting us?" Sediryl asked.

  "Doesn't matter, no control now. One or two thrusters..." Lodii bared her teeth again. "Heading for planet."

  "The planet!"

  "If we crash there, they will stop looking for us," Lodii said. "They will think we are dead."

  "Won't we be dead?" Vasith'h asked, aghast.

  "Possibly," Lodii answered. "But we are definitely dead if we stay here, so..." She grinned without humor. "Prepare for very emergency landing."

  CHAPTER TEN

  They broke out of Well into a firefight.

  The Emperor stood at the back of the bridge, where the Admiral-Offense had his own separate pit for oversight of the entire fleet. At its fore, the Worldlord's son was delivering orders and requests in a calm, clipped voice, his aplomb admirable given the chaos into which they were advancing.

  The Emperor knew what had happened. Hearing confirmation of it, when it came, was less a matter of illumination and more an opportunity to see how his newest navy reacted under stress, how quickly they organized and responded to the unexpected. He was, so far, impressed. Reservists should not have been so disciplined, nor so practiced.

  Joining them in the pit, the Worldlord's son said with a scowl, "The militia and the navy are fighting. And the militia itself is greatly reduced. Not by casualties, but because they aren't here."

  "Slipped away to join the war against the freaks," the Admiral-Offense said.

  "No doubt."

  "Broadcast our identity," the Emperor said. "Tell them Apex-Navy has arrived and requires their obedience. Militia units are to cease their rebellion. Naval units are to report to the Admiral-Offense for assignment to our order of battle."

  "Do we kill them if they disobey?" the Admiral-Offense asked him, wings tight against his back.

  "If any of them attack us," the Emperor answered, "then they have made their choice." He twitched his head toward the Worldlord's son. "Broadcast the announcement. Speak for me-confusing them now about the identity of Apex-Navy would be ill-advised."

  "Yes, Exalted."

  As the younger male stepped up onto the fore of the bridge, the Admiral-Offense said, "There is another possibility."

  "That the missing units have gone
to reinforce the Usurper?" The Emperor kept his eyes trained on the screens and their storm of combatant icons. "I know."

  "We will have a great deal of work to do."

  "There is never a time there isn't." The Emperor paused, then smiled a little. "I seem to recall a similar conversation, not that long ago."

  "It wasn't, was it?" The older male rolled his shoulders. "It seems much longer ago. The flagship before the betrayal. It seems as if that was a different time altogether, and we are now... sometime else."

  "And yet," the Emperor said, "Here we remain, huntfriend. And all their attempts to kill us were in vain."

  "Thus far," the Admiral-Offense muttered. And then huffed a laugh. "But then, what other life for us, ah?"

  "If it is war we desire," the Emperor murmured. "We shall never be done in this lifetime."

  "Does it disappoint you?"

  Did it? The Emperor thought of the Queen in his arms, the Ambassador. The fascination of learning the alien shapes. Thought of leisure, away from duty. Thought of who he would be if he hadn't been shaped from his earliest memories into a hunter, and a conqueror. Battle had once been pleasure, and purpose. It was no longer pleasure. But it remained a purpose, and a greater one than he'd first embraced. To fight for power-that was one thing. To fight for the security of his people, and for the space to let them Change... "No," he said at last. "This was what I was born for."

  The Admiral-Offense glanced at him. After a moment, the Emperor met his gaze. "Do you doubt?"

  "No," the Admiral-Offense answered, low. "Would it anger you to hear that I did, for a while?"

  "No," the Emperor said. "It would please me, because it means you are capable of reforming your opinions based on new evidence. We will never advance if we continue flying the same patterns."

  "I suppose I did let my wings lock. It was easier."

  "We were not bred for ease," the Emperor said.

  "No," the Admiral-Offense said. "And if you pardon me, Exalted... I have a fleet to fight for you."

  "Go."

  He sat on an unused jumpseat, observing the Worldlord's son and the Admiral-Offense about their business, listening to the comm chatter, watching-again, as he had before he'd been betrayed-the flicker and lunge of the icons on the combat display as their vessels advanced on the conflict. One by one, those dots began to shift color, from orange to green, as they declared for Apex-Navy and submitted themselves to the Admiral-Offense's control. Some of those orange icons turned green but drew back on the map, recusing themselves from the fight: those developed red circles to mark them as rebellious Naval units, rather than the militia units they were fighting. As the Worldlord's son led their fleet into the fray and the ship switched to battle lighting, the Emperor wondered at his own calm. Entering a fight used to adrenalize him, particularly in space where so much of the outcome was out of his hands. The thought that he could die because of a weapon aimed from some ship he would never know about before he died... how he'd hated that.

  Now he weathered the shudders as they dove into the middle of the fight without any change in his breathing, his pulse. He understood, a little, how to live with powerlessness. Not well, but... a little. Enough to recognize this situation as temporary, and unlike the grinding helplessness of true lack of control.

  He waited, thus, and read the displays. After some time, he doublechecked what he was seeing against tactical information drawn from the console along his seat and frowned. Their quarry was using the fight to scatter, an escape made possible by the Naval laggards who had withdrawn to await the outcome. That was calming the situation in the system, but he was not glad to delay this fight, no matter the opportunity to consolidate his forces. Finding those rebels again... if they headed for the throneworld, to the Usurper's aid, that would be simple. But if they went hunting the Alliance, or dispersed to dark corners where they could gather their strength and make another attempt at some other date....

  There was no help for it. They had enough to do, fighting the ships that remained.

  Sometime later, he rose and rejoined the Admiral-Offense, who looked up from his display to growl, "Deserters."

  "Opportunists," the Emperor answered. "How are we?"

  "Better than I hoped," the male answered. "Half of the active Naval fleet is fighting on our side now."

  The Emperor canted his head.

  "They don't know who you are, of course," the Admiral-Offense continued. "They assume you're the false Emperor, with whom they have grievances. But better to fight as a group, as we once did, than to lose against the system lords."

  "One enemy at a time," the Emperor said. "Just the way they fall easiest."

  That earned him a laugh.

  "Our ally?"

  "Stealthed and watching from a safe distance. For the best... we don't need them complicating things."

  "No," the Emperor said. Not yet. "How long?"

  "Most of the work is done. Another hour, maybe." The Admiral-Offense glanced at him. "We have taken more casualties than we should have. If those ships had obeyed us..."

  "They refuse to help the male they believe has shattered the Navy. You're surprised?"

  "Yes!"

  "I'm not," the Emperor murmured. He set a hand on the Admiral-Offense's shoulder. "Finish the clean-up. Then it will be my turn."

  "What will you do?" the Admiral-Offense asked. "With the mutinous. We kill mutineers."

  Thinking of the Ambassador's meteoric progress in the Chatcaavan court, the Emperor said, "Killing is not always the best choice."

  "But when it's the only choice?"

  "Then, I will mete it out."

  The male met his eyes-satisfaction there-and ducked back into the pit's organized activity.

  Naturally they had exited Well into a firefight. Laniis sat at the commboard, the station she'd been assigned since being attached, and looked at the pulsing metrics that had erupted onto her display at their arrival. It was less a matter of finding a comm channel to plug into and more a matter of choosing one-the entire system was lit up with traffic, all bewilderingly encrypted.

  She almost jumped out of her chair when the Knife leaned over her shoulder. "Huntsister? I have a suggestion."

  "Is this a good time?" she asked as behind her Meryl and Shanelle and Na'er debated the tactical data and Lisinthir just... stood there, watching.

  "The most natural time," the Knife answered, handing a data tablet over her shoulder. "This is Uuvek's communications mark. Can you tap it?"

  She looked to the side and almost bumped against his nose. Ears sagging, she exclaimed, "Speaker-singer! If you stand any closer, Na'er is going to have words with you."

  "What?"

  "Nevermind," she said. "Just... stop breathing in my ear." She opened a channel and hooked it to the provided commtag, blinked as it widened and started requesting leave to send realtime data. "Uh... Knife...."

  "Say yes," the Chatcaavan said, firm. "It should contain the flagship's tactical data."

  "He can do that?" Laniis squeaked.

  "Yes," the Knife answered. "He is very good at computers. That includes making translations between systems that cannot usually talk to one another."

  "I mean, is he supposed to be doing that!"

  "Oh!" The Knife looked chagrined. "Ah. Well. That is a different matter." He added, "So say yes. That way if he's caught, he will have at least committed the crime."

  Laniis hit the ‘accept' and squinted, hoping she hadn't blown anything up, but...

  "Hey, Laniis? What did you just do to my display?"

  "Make it more useful?" Laniis said, hopeful. She turned in her seat and found everyone crowding around the floating view as the human enlarged it.

  "Well, well, well. What have we here?"

  "Is that a feed from the Chatcaavan flagship?" Meryl asked, tail sagging.

  The Knife's wings twitched. "Uuvek and I discussed it while we were in transit and we thought it would be wise to make it possible for you to see our data? To keep you f
rom being accidentally involved?"

  Meryl guffawed. "Accidentally involved. That describes this entire enterprise. All right, then, let's see what we've got." She bent close to the display, then frown and pinched it, pulling it up until it was wide enough for all of them to stand.

  "Looks like a bad fight. They haven't marked everyone yet?"

  "We have only just arrived," the Knife said.

  "I'm getting a broadcast..." Laniis tilted her head, pressing one of the headphones to an ear. "It's from the flagship. The Worldlord's son, commanding everyone to stand down, or report to them for assignment."

  "Bet that'll go over well," Meryl muttered. "Keep us Dusted."

  "Not your fight?" Lisinthir murmured.

  Meryl snorted. "Those people see us among all the Chatcaava... what are they going to think? No, I think we're going to stay the Emperor's little secret until he decides it's time to divulge us."

  "Wise," Lisinthir said.

  "Also, we're way out of our weight class," Meryl said. "And I'd like to be alive tomorrow to make some decisions." She nodded at Laniis. "That link work both ways?"

  "Yes? I think?"

  "Then let's put ourselves to use sneaking around and seeing what we can find out."

  The last time Laniis had been so nerve-wracked, she'd been hunched on a seat in an Alliance shuttle, hoping to escape the throneworld before the Chatcaava discovered Lisinthir had freed her and the other slaves from the harem. Creeping around the edge of a violent firefight... for hours... every time the ship shivered, she imagined boarders crashing onto the bridge to drag her away again to that hell.

  But no such thing happened. This was the arena for which the FIA agents had trained, and they were good at sneaking. She didn't even think any of them was sweating. Swearing, though...

  "Damn it," Meryl snarled. "That's another one gone."

  "They can't cover all the bases with half the Navy hanging out there waiting to see who's gonna win," Na'er said, eyes locked on his display. "People who want to skedaddle are going to succeed."

  "Maybe they're heading back home?" Shanelle said.