Nani didn’t move. Didn’t engage. Silence. A long silence; too long, and as the warning klaxons started blurping Bianca fully expected Nani to take control and head them back. To Earth. It was the right thing to do. And the most horrible thing. Bianca was crushed. She would do anything—anything!—but how could they … ?
Nani unstuck herself, in action, setting a course, the first Kel attackers were in range and she was warning:
“Hold on.”
And the quantum drive engaged.
**
The queen had the sword. Jess watched her warily, locked in her binders against the X-brace. Her armor hadn’t been removed. Zac was across the room, seething in the purple Raza field—how did they get the Raza?!—making eye contact with her when he could, such hatred, such desperation from within that binding shimmer … She’d tried already to reach him via telepathy. Either the unique energy or the stress on his own mind, or some combination of both, so far prevented it. Each time she sought him she got no response.
But he saw her.
Kang stood near him, too near, and Jess tried not to worry about something she could do nothing about. Cee dominated the center of the room, her bishop—a particularly evil looking Kel—nearest her side. Everyone else, a handful of guards and an officer, stood further out to the edges of the room.
Cee was nervous. Jess could almost smell it. Here was the girl that defeated the Bok, and who had now put on a spectacular display against her soldiers, right before her eyes. Yet, Cee was also triumphant. At once afraid, and elated with what she’d done. She’d captured the herald, or so she thought, and Jess had been rendered completely powerless—though Cee did not exactly think that, Jess could see—and the queen believed, despite any twists in what she’d come expecting, despite any dangers that might be lurking within this impossibly powerful girl that hung fettered in braces before her, Cee was, despite any of that, about to learn everything she wanted to know.
She truly believed it.
Jess watched her stroll the floor, back and forth, trying to appear far more in control than she was; holding the sword by the handle with one hand, the blade in the other, turning it slowly to catch the light, studying the inscriptions that, Jess knew for a fact, she’d already studied beyond any ability to see anything new. It was theater. More than that, Cee realized Jess saw right through it.
Still she played. Played the part, walking slowly, disturbed by so many things. It wasn’t just Jess. Cee had problems, and in the bits of conversation Jess overheard during their transport, the strained interactions, Jess knew the queen suppressed greater issues. For Cee, her entire future depended on what Jess could tell her.
“Give Horus to me,” Kang growled. His eyes remained locked to Zac, had been for nearly the entire journey, from the dreadnought to here, the holding room they occupied somewhere deep in the heart of Cee’s dark fortress. “Give him to me. Let me kill him. Before her eyes.” He spared a pointed glance at Jess.
“No.” Cee was imperious.
“You have no more need!” Kang matched it with fury. “You have the girl! Horus is mine!” When Cee didn’t respond Kang bellowed: “He’s right there!” leaning in toward Zac, the sound of his shout hurting Jessica’s ears. It hammered the room and she cringed, noticing everyone else did too. It was no sign of weakness. They were all weak before Kang.
Calmly she read the scene. It was her only choice, at the moment, and so she made an exercise of it. She could not allow her own emotions to be baited into dread, or panic, or anything else useless. She couldn’t get caught up in this drama. Right then she was stuck, and until she figured out a solution the only thing she had going for her was her own determinism. That vague thing Galfar placed so much stock in. She had to admit she felt it, a little; could tell, somehow, that Kang would not override Cee’s wishes. He could, he most definitely could, Kang could do what he wanted—and he wanted; man did he want—but dangerous as he was Jess sensed this relationship between Cee and Kang had come this far for a reason. The two were together in their effed up little union because Cee had, somehow, managed to control him.
The Kel queen repeated, voice level and forced: “No.” Then: “You will have your precious Horus. Do not worry of that. But not now.” She turned her gaze directly to Jess. Cee’s confidence had risen since the holding cell aboard the dreadnought. This was the first, prolonged look she’d held since reaching the fortress.
But it didn’t last. The queen pulled back in alarm as Kang suddenly came to life, whirled from his face-off with Zac and stormed past. Jess thought for a second he was going to knock Cee down, but he kept on as she stumbled aside, continuing for the door. It slid open for him, barely fast enough as he charged into the hall and was gone.
The door slid shut. Impassive, merely performing its intended function; marking the end of that awkward scene.
Cee wanted to curse. She wanted to scream, it was right there about to burst forth and for a second Jess was sure she was going to. But she didn’t. Instead she fixed her gaze on her again and came closer.
“Where are your powers now?” she wondered mockingly, though there was that same uncertainty in her eyes.
“She needs to move,” Cee’s bishop also had a falsely confident expression on his face, trying to make himself believe he was secure in his knowledge. Cee looked sharply at him. Jess could tell she didn’t want him talking. His expression held, then faded, and whatever next thing he’d planned to say remained unspoken.
Cee turned back to Jess. Looking up at her. On the X-frame she hung a head above her.
“Is that it?” Cee asked. “Is that how you do your little tricks? Do you have to be able to move?”
Jess bored into her. Made Cee really see her, and the queen took an uncertain, and unwanted, step back.
“You should kill me now,” Jess advised her calmly. “Soon it will be too late.”
Cee didn’t like that. It reminded her she’d been afraid, and there was the doubt again, the worry, and it took hold and all at once her confidence was gone and she was angry.
She turned to her bishop and pointed to Zac: “Take him to another room.”
The ones in charge of the Raza and Zac’s containment prepared to move him as the bishop bowed to his queen and took charge.
Cee turned back to Jess.
“I’m through playing games.”
CHAPTER 61: INTO THE SPIDER’S LAIR
It was like entering the spider’s lair. Somehow more scary than the battle, more frightening than the proximity of the fleet back on Hamonhept, though nothing here yet moved. Each new thing, more deadly in its potential. Bianca shivered. Deeper they went, and any minute the monster would spring.
Nani had taken them to Kel. Not back to Earth.
We’re going for her. Bianca had fought for it, argued for it, and now here they were.
Kel.
Chasing Jessica to the bitter end. Her skin was crawling so bad she could actually feel it moving.
“I can’t believe we’re back,” Willet said quietly, an incredible chill on the bridge, each of them transfixed by the giant purple planet filling the screen. Marker, doorstop to the home of their enemy. The most dangerous place they could be and, yes, they were back. Vividly Bianca recalled stealing this very starship, the Reaver, that fateful day, rushing to this spot to rescue Zac. Back then Jess made them do it. And it worked. Somehow … they rescued him. They rescued him and got away. Now here they were again, this time to rescue her. Bianca stared. Out there in the black of space, where it all began, the purple gas giant, titan of the Kel system, so burned into her mind. So deadly.
What now?
Smack in the middle of the enemy’s home system, and the Kel were surely about to pounce. At the moment it was freaky calm. Right now absolutely nothing was happening. No Kel were out near the beautiful purple world. Right now the pilots of the Reaver were simply stargazing; looking at a spectacular view through the amazing, crystal-clear wrap-around optics of the ancient warshi
p. It was a magnificent planetarium, an IMAX viewing room on overdrive, that high-tech bridge with its comfortable seats; made all the more amazing because it was real. Outside those walls, right outside the armored hull … reality.
Heath and Pete were getting an eyeful. First the space battle in Earth orbit, enough to pop the eyeballs out of their heads. Then, just as they were getting used to that … bam. Pop to another planet. Giant blue Saturn and an Earth-like world, Hamonhept, looking for Jess the last place they knew her to be. Neither Heath nor Pete had been in space, neither of them—no other Earth human, in fact—had been to another world.
Now here was another, this time a purple gas giant, but there was no time to appreciate it. More eye candy, incredible eye candy, and Bianca could see the two Earth soldiers were by now completely dazed. Pete kept wanting to say something, but there was nothing to say.
“I’ve got it.” Nani was scanning. Always scanning. “We’ve been detected and units are scrambling. I found the queen’s dreadnought. It’s here. In a berth near their capital city.” She looked up. “That must be where they took her.”
Bianca made eye contact. Then everyone was looking at Nani, then at each other. They all knew what this meant.
Bianca wondered who would be the first to call bullshit. To finally put an end to the insanity. They’d gone too far. This was it. Nani’s heart was in the right place, but she should’ve just gone back. Coming here was foolish. The joy ride was over, they should’ve been saying. Faced with the reality of it, there was just no way. The Kel capital? No matter how ultimate the Reaver was, no matter how superior, there was no way one ship was going to attack the Kel homeworld, find one person, in their capital city, pull her from the fire and, somehow, get away.
The weight of that impossibility hung heavy on the bridge. It was as if the very air had gotten thicker. We can’t possibly even find her, much less rescue her! they should’ve been screaming. Get out of here! someone should at least have been suggesting.
But no one did.
No one moved. Not Nani, not any of them. For an infinite interval in time, stuck, an impossible decision no one could face.
Until Satori broke the spell.
“I don’t think we have a choice.” All eyes went sharply to her and she paused. No one had asked, but the question needed no voice. Satori merely answered what they were all thinking. Then, for some reason, she stood. It was a dumb thing to do, to stand under those conditions, everyone at battle stations and ready to be back in the fight any second, but there she was, rising from her chair, deciding whatever she had to say would be better said on her feet. Each of them swiveled in their seats to look directly at her.
“It’s come to this.” She had their full attention. Red hair and eye patch; as “commander” as she’d ever been. “And I can speak for you,” she looked to Darvon, “you,” to Willet, “you,” Nani, then right at Bianca, “and certainly you.” She turned to Heath and Pete. “You two I can’t, you don’t have enough skin in this, but sorry, you’re outnumbered, so whatever we decide you’re along for the ride.”
She put her attention back on the others.
“We’re in this. We’re too far in this, way too far, and now we’ve reached the point where we either all make it, or we all die. Sorry, but it’s as simple as that. Jess is down there,” she pointed into space, in the direction where she imagined the Kel homeworld to be. “So we go get her. That’s all there is to it. We all live. Or we all die. Maybe, at some point, it wasn’t that clear. Maybe, back then, we had choices. Self interests. And sure, even now, we’ve got people depending on us. A whole fleet in the thick of it around Earth, trying to make it work, counting on us to help. They might make it without us. They might make it with us. They could fail or succeed either way. With or without us, there is no guarantee.
“Unfortunately that will have to take care of itself. Because we, this little group here, have a problem. One of our own needs us. And whether we can or can’t save her, we, sadly, have no choice but to try.” Unexpectedly a very tiny, very small smile turned the corner of her mouth. A tired, sad, yet accepting expression, and she looked around the bridge. “There were times along the way we could’ve said no.” Bianca could swear she saw Satori’s good eye glisten. Satori shook her head. “God knows I tried. Harder than the rest of you. But we didn’t. We kept letting her get away with it. We kept letting her go along, blazing this trail, and now look. Here we are. We’re committed. To her, to each other. And now, because of it, we have no choice—no choice—but to do whatever it takes to save her. To save any of us if we were in the same situation.”
No one said a thing.
Satori looked to Willet. “She made me go back to save you. At the Crucible. Remember that?” Of course Willet did. “And that was before she really even knew you. Then she dragged us both to that field in Midbay to save Zac from Kang. Then. Then,” she rolled her eyes to the ceiling as if this next bit was the real doozy. It was. “She made us steal this.” She gestured around the bridge, to the Reaver itself. “She made us steal a starship and come here, to this very spot, and rescue Zac. We stole a frickin starship, to rescue one guy. One of us. Remember that? And, holy shit, we actually pulled it off.”
Bianca was recalling it like it just happened.
Oh Jess!
Why did you have to get caught down there? She looked deep into space, toward Kel.
Satori let those words hang, then turned directly once more to Willet.
“Then you. You guys.” She passed her gaze across Heath and Pete, then back to Willet. “When you came aboard the queen’s dreadnought, just you and a handful of other, absurdly optimistic fools, did you think you were going to save me? Did you really think you had any chance at all?”
Willet was slow to respond, but he shook his head.
“I mean,” Satori couldn’t believe it, “raid a Kel flagship? Right in the middle of their fleet? Really. Can anyone actually say that now without laughing? How insane was it to decide to do that? I hope you guys were at least drinking when you made those plans.”
Willet nodded softly. “Impossible.”
“Did that stop you from trying?”
Again he shook his head.
Satori stood tall. “Because we save each other. It’s what we do.”
Bianca glanced to Pete, then Heath. They’d been part of that mission. Boarding a Kel flagship to rescue Satori. They knew what it meant to have no chance of success.
They all did.
Satori was back to looking at everyone.
“So we go.”
**
Cee continued her battle with nerves that stubbornly refused to loosen their grip. Trying to adopt a firmer tone wasn’t working. The human girl, Jessica, was hanging there, completely restrained, barely speaking, they were in the heart of her mountain fortress, on her homeworld, she, queen of it all, the entirety of the Kel war machine readily to hand, the girl with no ally in sight; one girl against an entire world …
Yet Cee feared her.
You are Tremarch! A warrior!
Her self-admonitions, so far, were having little effect.
There were seven other Kel soldiers in the room, plus their commander. Kang had stormed off, no doubt skulking about the giant fortress somewhere, pretending to be inconsolable. The girl’s one friend, Horus, was off in another room, being maintained in his energy lock by her bishop, Raal. It was just she and the girl, and so far Jessica had told her nothing.
She tried a different tack.
“What do you know of the Prophecy?” Cee asked; a benign enough question, filled with heretical implications based on her own mandates. She didn’t care. The soldiers chosen for this assignment were elite, both in their combat prowess and their discretion. They were part of a special unit, formed explicitly for this purpose. Cee looked to them briefly, as she had been, watching their expressions. She’d debated sending them away, they should not be needed, but those last dregs of fear would not let her be alone. Not
with …
Jessica made eye contact but was silent. Staring at Cee from a lowered brow, those keen yellow eyes as disconcerting now as they had been the whole time. Cee wanted desperately to know what thoughts were running behind those eyes. Strands of hair fell across them, hanging, the effect somehow more chilling than if she’d been completely pulled together and unharried. In the armor, signs of the conflict in her disarray, centered by those unflinching, all-powerful eyes …
Cee decided to have the armor removed very soon.
“You may not know of it,” she kept on, tone falsely casual, continuing to turn the sword idly in her hands as she talked. “It’s all nonsense anyway. However, you most definitely fit the descriptions of that old fairytale and, as you may imagine, this has created a minor sensation.” Perhaps engaging her as closer to equal would crack her so-far stoic regard. To get to what she really wanted might take time, but Cee was prepared to take that time. Extraction of information under duress might not work where this one was concerned.
She spoke conversationally into the steady silence. “It is said you are a herald.”
“I know of the Prophecy.”
A response! And it was an answer to the question. Cee waited. There was more coming, and the girl was talking.
Yes!
“Now that I see it unfolding,” the girl spoke carefully, “I’m having a hard time believing how clever it all was.”
How clever?
“It took a while,” she seemed to be musing, “but, incredibly, I’ve created the reality I intended. Now it’s almost complete.”
Cee wasn’t sure what to say to that.
“Of course,” and the girl rattled her wrists in the confining bands, “this isn’t quite working for me.”
A joke. She was making jokes!
Before Cee could decide whether that was a good or a bad thing for the progress of her questioning the girl continued, eyes boring harder than ever into her own:
Star Angel: Prophecy Page 65
