The Glory of the Empress

by Sean Danker

  Awed, Bjorn could only stare. This was how Tenbrook powered his jumps, and his fusion cannon. Just one of these reactors, a much smaller one, was all the Lydia had to provide for her needs. Tenbrook’s battle station housed hundreds of them.

  There were power lifts, and a dizzying web of catwalks. Far below, a light was moving among the rows, some kind of maintenance hovercraft.

  There was no sound except the overwhelming hum of the aether. It was sharp and clear, almost melodious.

  Hypnotic.

  Nothing Evagardian ever lacked for scale, but Tenbrook’s engine room put everything else to shame. Doyle’s Sunbath could fit inside this chamber with room to spare. The Julian. Entire domes from Oasis.

  Bjorn couldn’t breathe. He realized he was stationary, lost in the endless rows of glowing spheres, and their haunting music. He looked down in panic, calling up his holo and searching for his destination.

  His heart sank. It was all down to luck, but he’d still made a mistake. Making for the highest levels of the station had been the wrong decision. His suit told him he was a full kilometer from his marker.

  That ride in the lift had taken him far away from where he needed to be.

  There was a footstep behind him. It was too late to change things now. It had been a long shot to begin with.

  Bjorn turned around, backing away, farther along the catwalk. The aether reactors seemed to sing louder as he stepped out over the abyss.

  Cophony followed. He wasn’t bothering with the nanoblade. His sidearm was trained squarely on Bjorn’s chest. No reason not to use it; small arms couldn’t hurt anything in here.

  “Had enough?”

  “Just taking in the sights,” Bjorn replied.

  “Kneel and put your hands on the deck.”

  Bjorn didn’t move. He could see Cophony was done. He was out of patience.

  “Courage is good,” Cophony said, raising the pistol. “But it’s not enough.”

  “Courage?” Bjorn stared back. “Is that what this looks like to you?” He ducked and lunged forward as Cophony pulled the trigger. He got under the pistol and threw a punch with all of his strength and all of his training behind it, but it didn’t do any good against a man like Cophony.

  Strong fingers closed on Bjorn’s wrist, pulling him off balance. From the moment Bjorn put his weight and momentum into that blow, it was already over. Cophony deftly diverted the punch, taking full control of Bjorn’s body. It was effortless, the way Cophony spun him around and sent him over the railing.

  Bjorn hadn’t expected anything less.

  He sailed out over the dark chasm, and the white figure of Cophony shrank away as he fell. The globes flew past, the roar of rushing air mingling with the harmony of the aether reactors.

  Combat was Cophony’s specialty, after all. And Bjorn was still just an analyst.

  32

  THE globes seemed to blur together, creating unbroken chains of gold that stretched away into the darkness above.

  Bjorn wished he had more time to admire it, but he was falling. The aether room looked bottomless, but it wasn’t. He keyed the com for the first time since he and Mao had left the bridge of the Lydia.

  “Diana,” he said, raising his voice over the roar of rushing air. “Anyone still out there?”

  “Bjorn?” She sounded breathless. “Where are you? The Lydia’s set to self-destruct!”

  “I’m aboard Perdita. I need a favor.”

  “What is it? Wait. What?”

  “One of you hit something that disrupted the gravity in here a minute ago,” Bjorn said, catwalks and even light hovercraft whipping past. “I need you to do that again.”

  “Now?”

  “Yes, please.”

  “I’ll try,” Diana replied. Her voice was ragged, but it sounded like she had more to say.

  Bjorn cut the com.

  He knew how the surviving pilots must feel out there. They probably felt a lot like he did at this moment. Falling. They could fly. They could even fight. But there was no happy ending waiting for them.

  No one could know the exact time, but they were all on the same course to that one sudden stop.

  But not yet. Bjorn turned over and spread his arms and legs, squinting against the rushing air as the dark and the golden globes seemed to merge together. There was still something Bjorn needed to do. One last service he could perform. The Empress, if she was even real, would never know.

  But that wasn’t the point.

  The aether room suddenly spun around him, and he felt a powerful tug in his core. His stomach rose and fell as the gravity vanished.

  Gravity could be turned off, but momentum couldn’t. Bjorn was still falling, but now air resistance was on his side, and he was slowing down. He could stop himself without losing his arms.

  He grabbed the railing of a catwalk and swung himself around and up onto it, kneeling and pressing his palms to the metal as gravity returned, and his body weight with it.

  Bjorn looked up. It had been a long fall, but he wasn’t there yet. There was still a long way to the bottom.

  Someone was shouting, and he doubted Cophony would miss the significance of what had just happened. Bjorn wasn’t that lucky.

  He ran to the nearest lift and leapt in, then opened the console and used Mao’s crystal to override the unit. Bjorn triggered an emergency descent and grabbed the handle by the hatch as the carriage seemed to drop from beneath him. It wasn’t quite free fall, but it was close.

  There was a sound over the com from Cophony. Not a word, just a sound. Bjorn was glad he’d at least been able to annoy him.

  He looked up at the camera in the corner of the lift as the carriage screamed downward.

  He didn’t say anything.

  Back on the bridge of the Lydia, Mao had said that Cophony had her figured out. The tables were turned now; Bjorn was inside Cophony’s head, and he knew exactly what he had to do.

  The lift slowed and stopped. Bjorn slipped out and took off at a run. The passage opened up onto another platform.

  Bjorn shoved through the crowd, ignoring their reactions to him and his macabre EV, and boarded the tram. An awkward moment passed with everyone staring at him before they all stampeded for the doors. As the tram began to move, he grabbed a handhold, hoping it would reach the next stop before security could get organized enough to have a meaningful presence waiting for him there.

  The tram wasn’t the most tactically sound choice, but his marker was still too far off to reach on foot, with Cophony hot on his heels.

  “What are you doing?” Cophony demanded over the com. He wasn’t angry. He wasn’t exasperated. He was past all that. He was simply dumbfounded. “What are you doing?”

  “It’s the Service,” Bjorn replied, watching the lights of the tube go by. “I’m serving.”

  “Maybe you think you are. But Tenbrook is a hundred decks away.”

  The tram was pulling up to the platform, and Bjorn knew there was trouble. Security must have set an alert, because there were no passengers waiting.

  Bjorn darted off the tram, making straight for the platform guard, who was still in the act of drawing his pistol. Bjorn tackled him with every ounce of strength he had. It was a mighty impact, throwing the man hard enough against the bulkhead to knock him senseless.

  Bjorn snatched the pistol from his hand and scrambled up, wishing someone would give the alarms a rest.

  He checked his marker and took off again.

  It came up even faster than he thought; it was incredible, the amount of ground those trams could cover in mere seconds. He rounded a corner too fast for his own good. Ahead was a gray blast door, and two more guards, much closer than Bjorn expected.

  The closer one swatted the pistol out of Bjorn’s hand as his partner raised his scattergun. Bjorn ignored the weapon and leapt in, shov
ing one man into the other. Both men fell, and Bjorn went for the fallen pistol, but his legs were kicked from beneath him.

  He crashed to the deck, shoving the scattergun out of reach before the nearer guard could get at it. He pushed him down and climbed on top of him, giving him the same punch he’d meant for Cophony. It took only one.

  An arm locked around Bjorn’s throat, dragging him to his feet in a choke hold. He pushed back hard, slamming the guard against the blast door and driving an elbow into his side. The grip loosened and Bjorn whirled, driving his knee into the man’s groin and hitting him hard enough that it felt like he’d broken something in his hand.

  The guard sank to the deck, a fountain of blood erupting from his nose. Bjorn leaned against the bulkhead, shaking his sore hand and pulling in deep, ragged breaths.

  His gaze fell on the man at his feet. He grabbed his hand and pulled it up, dragging the limp guard with it. Bjorn positioned the man’s palm and pressed it to the lock.

  The blast door hissed and began to rise, but there was a flicker of movement from behind. Bjorn caught a glimpse of white and threw himself down. He dodged the first shot, but not the second. It punched through his thigh as he hit the ground, snatched up his commandeered pistol and pulled the trigger.

  Cophony dove behind cover, and Bjorn dragged himself through the blast door. Once through, he raised the pistol in one shaking hand, squeezing one eye shut to aim. He hit the control panel on the first shot.

  The door slammed down.

  Bjorn let go of the pistol and clamped a gloved hand to his leg, which bled enthusiastically. He twisted to look into the bay.

  Just as he had hoped. Before him stood Major Lucas’ Everwing fighter. The original Unit One. Undamaged. In fact, it looked untouched. Bjorn had been counting on that. Tenbrook must have hoped to break through the fighter’s pilot security to allow Cophony to use it. Even without the Lydia and all its specialized equipment to rearm it, refuel it, and maintain it, this fighter was still good for at least a few minutes of operation. Cophony could have done a lot of damage with that one flight.

  But Evagardian security wasn’t beaten so easily; this wasn’t like finding a way to sneak through the force shields that protected the Lydia’s bays. The fighter could be piloted only by legitimate members of the Lydia’s crew. The biometric could probably be fooled, but Tenbrook’s people obviously hadn’t figured out a way in time.

  Bjorn tried to get up, but his leg gave out. He fell with a curse, but he knew it wouldn’t take Cophony long to get through that door. If he couldn’t unlock it, he’d just slice through with his nanoblade.

  Bjorn dragged himself across the deck, leaving a bloody smear behind.

  The fighter’s canopy was standing open. Tenbrook didn’t have the means to refuel it, but Major Lucas hadn’t been in flight long when he was taken. The Everwing would still have power.

  Every second Bjorn expected to hear the blast door, but the only sound in the bay was his own gasping breaths.

  He struggled to his knees, then got his hand on the bubble. He hauled himself up, feebly making his way into the seat and locating the collar. He got it closed around his neck as the door hissed upward.

  The canopy sealed, shutting out the sounds of the station.

  Blue lines extended around the interior of the canopy, signaling that the fighter had power.

  Bjorn put his bloody hands on the controls.

  Cophony stood wide-eyed, backlit by the corridor, distorted by Bjorn’s red handprint on the outside of the bubble.

  Had he not known this was where the fighter was being kept? Had it never even crossed his mind that Bjorn might try to reach it?

  It didn’t matter. Bjorn offered Cophony none of the courtesy or conversation that the other man had extended to him. He targeted him with the fighter’s rail gun and fired.

  It was a weapon that could pierce meters of armor. The uranium projectiles would not deform or destabilize; they would cut a path through their target as neat and clean as the polished metal itself.

  Cophony simply fell over backward, sprawling on the floor of the corridor, an almost unnoticeable hole in his chest. There was no blood; the friction of the projectile leaving the barrel raised its temperature well beyond the point of instantly cauterizing wounds.

  It was instantaneous. Clean. The puncture itself wasn’t even fatal—it was so tiny—but the shock of impact to the body was all it took. Bjorn wondered if it was more humane than Cophony deserved.

  He sagged in the seat, looking down at his bleeding leg. He would run out of blood at this rate, especially if he wasted time judging men he didn’t really know.

  Bjorn closed his eyes and breathed, savoring the quiet calm of the cockpit.

  These past minutes, the time since the Lydia had been crippled, since it became clear that none of them were going home—none of it had felt real. Bjorn hadn’t been especially fearful. He hadn’t worried about how much time he had left, or how quickly it was running out. He hadn’t cared.

  The cockpit of Major Lucas’ Everwing was a comfort. It was a comfort in a moment when Bjorn hadn’t known he needed comfort. He breathed in deeply. Bjorn thought about the engine room, and imagined himself piloting the Everwing through the corridors of the station to reach it—but that was no good. The corridors were too small.

  If he could get enough momentum, he could use the kinetic protector to burrow there—burn his way through the station itself—but there was no point. He’d seen the aether room. The amount of power there was staggering, but it was perfectly stable. Compartmentalized. Nothing short of a deliberate overload could threaten this station, and that was well beyond his abilities.

  He wondered if Mao was still alive. It was a temptation to reach out to her over the com, but if she was still on the loose, contact from him would be a distraction she might not want.

  Every move Bjorn and Mao made aboard this station was a step on a tightrope. The commander’s mission here was her dying wish. Bjorn wouldn’t jeopardize it just to hear her voice.

  He rotated the fighter and fired the rail gun through the bay’s carbon shield, which blew away just as it had on Oasis. The bay depressurized in an instant, and Bjorn shot through the gap before the station could seal the breach with a force shield.

  He was suddenly in the open, on the far side of Perdita. There was no debris field over here, only stars. Bjorn synced his suit’s coms, brought his full weapons array online, and checked his status.

  His explosives had all been removed—taken for study or use, once Tenbrook realized he wasn’t going to get control of the fighter so easily. All Bjorn had was his rail gun.

  And he was reading four Everwing signals. They were all still out here. What difference did it make that they’d all managed to survive just a little longer? Bjorn didn’t know, but he was glad they had.

  He was being targeted. Bjorn dove, tracking the signals and plotting himself a course around Perdita to get closer to the other fighters.

  “What’s going on, guys?”

  “Bjorn?” Diana actually sounded emotional.

  He took in the limited data his tactical readout could give him. He couldn’t work the grid from the cockpit; he had to focus on flying. Without anyone running tactical, the fighters couldn’t do much more than follow their instincts and shoot at whatever they thought was best.

  “I got Major Lucas’ fighter,” he said. “They weren’t using it.”

  “That’s actually really good,” Ibuki said, “that they don’t get to go home with that thing.”

  “Why are there still so many of these guys out here?” Bjorn asked. “Why do you still even have ammo? Are you hourly?”

  He watched Ibuki strafe a cruiser with his rail gun. Even from his less-than-clinical perspective, Bjorn could tell it was sloppy shooting.

  The pirates were no longer jumping in and out, an
d the majority of the drones and fighters had disappeared. The battle—if it could be called that—appeared downright sedate. As if no one was really trying. Bjorn didn’t understand.

  He pulled up the pilot feeds. Diana was still deathly pale, and her eyes still burned red—but she wasn’t sweating. She looked calm, if a little winded.

  “We decided there’d been enough killing,” she said.

  “The battle ended when Doyle got out,” Golding added.

  “So what are we doing? Just seeing who runs out of fuel first?”

  “Pretty much,” Diana replied.

  “I’m trying to disable as many of these ships as I can. If I can’t kill them, I can at least inconvenience them,” Ibuki said, smiling grimly.

  “They could leave if they wanted to,” Bjorn pointed out.

  “Apparently not,” Golding said. “Seems like Tenbrook can destroy them remotely if they try. He dragged them here as cannon fodder. They’re not our enemies. Not really.”

  “You guys wouldn’t be doing this if the commander was still around,” Bjorn admonished them, grinning.

  “She said we could do what we wanted,” Ibuki protested. “And we don’t want to kill any more people.”

  “What about Cophony?” Bjorn asked, taking a wide arc around the defensive formation surrounding Perdita. He could see now that this wasn’t a battle at all; the pirates were firing, but their hearts weren’t in it. Tenbrook thought the hard part was over; he didn’t mind soaking up whatever ordnance the Everwings had left. With the Lydia itself spoken for, he’d won. It was as simple as that.

  “I could make an exception for him,” Diana said.

  “Then rest easy. I got him.”

  “Really?” Sergeant Golding sounded genuinely shocked.

  “Is it that hard to believe?”

  “I didn’t know you had it in you,” Ibuki said.

  “And I got shot again,” Bjorn added. “That’s three times. The analyst got shot three times. How is that fair? Don’t act like you’re not impressed.”

  “I’m impressed,” Diana laughed.