“You won’t get it,” Mose Dryz said. “This whole conversation is a dangerous distraction. There’s a large Apex force in the Kettle System, the human fleets have not yet arrived, and we must decide if we’re going to wait for the others or go to the rendezvous point.”
“Apex will find the battle station if they’re given long enough,” Lenol Tyn said. “If that happens, the Singaporeans will be destroyed before Drake and Tolvern return.”
“That is nothing to us,” Dela Zam said. “Let the humans die. I will rejoice.”
The general was annoyed with his new adjutant, beginning to wonder if it wouldn’t have been better to have her commanding her own ship after all. Order her to charge or to hold back, let her obey or not, but he wouldn’t be forced to deal with her on a personal basis.
“Then you will be happy to know that I have decided to wait,” he said.
“I’m not in favor of that course of action, either,” the priestess said with a dismissive hum. “We have twenty-two sloops of war. There hasn’t been a force like this since the death fleet made its glorious charge on Albion.”
“Your so-called glorious charge resulted in the death of millions of innocent humans—”
“There is no such thing as an innocent human.”
“—and the obliteration of the greatest portion of Hroom military strength. A force that might have fought off a harvester ship and saved the lives of millions of our people. Or do Hroom lives not matter to you, either?” Mose Dryz paused to let this sink into her head before pressing on. “I promised Admiral Drake thirty sloops. I have twenty-two.”
He glanced toward the door. The itch, the pull to take his next sugar dose, was growing.
Not yet. Perfect self-control. That is the key. Too much and you lose your life. Too little and you lose your soul to the buzzards.
The other two followed his gaze, and their nostrils closed as they shared a nasal hum. He could see their minds working.
“The priestess and I are in conflict about a good many things,” Lenol Tyn said. “But we share a mutual concern.”
“Leave that aside,” the general said. “We are here to form a consensus about the position of this fleet, not to argue about personal matters.”
“We feel,” the young colonel continued, “that if you would only take the antidote—”
“Not now. I must be clearheaded.”
“Your dose is low,” Lenol Tyn continued. “Your addiction manageable. Maybe the recovery would only last a few days. The priestess and I both agree.”
Mose Dryz suppressed a derisive whistle. His adjutants had no idea. The sugar addiction had its claws wrapped around his spine, its tendrils buried into his brain. But there was an even deeper, uglier threat buried in his head. Only the sugar addiction kept it at bay.
“You have us waiting,” Dela Zam said. “Waiting, waiting, doing nothing. Use this time, Lord General. Shake off this human curse. Reclaim your birthright as a Hroom.”
“And if the situation changes while I am shaking and drooling? If the birds find us and charge, or if the human warships arrive and Admiral Drake orders an attack? Who will lead you then?”
“Let us form a consensus,” Lenol Tyn said. “I will take command of this ship, Dela Zam the fleet itself. We will carry out the orders you have given us.”
“I won’t have a cultist leading the fleet. She would ram the enemy, then use the remnant to attack the humans.”
“No, I wouldn’t,” Dela Zam said.
“I don’t believe you.”
“You accuse me of lying?” the priestess said. “Do you think me so low that I would attempt a human deception?”
“You’ll tell me one truth, while holding another in your heart. That second truth would seem more and more important as the battle continued.”
“There is something else, isn’t there?” Dela Zam said. “Something you’re hiding. Information we should know that you refuse to share.”
“You would not understand if I explained it to you.”
“Tell us, Lord General,” Lenol Tyn urged. “We can help.”
“No.”
“The human sugar is wicked, an abomination to the gods,” Dela Zam said. There was zeal in her voice. “Your faith is weak, Lord General, but surely it exists. I feel the ember burning in you. Take the antidote. If not for the sake of the god of death, then for His younger brother. You are in His shrine. Pray for higher consciousness, and allow your mind to cast off its shackles. The god will strengthen you.”
Yes, throw them off. Not only the sugar addiction, but the gnawing at his brain from the Apex poison. For a moment, he was almost convinced.
Mose Dryz didn’t remember how the birds had captured him. During the Battle of Kif Lagoon, he’d gone up against Drake, who was then the captain of HMS Ajax, the ship that would later be overhauled and renamed Blackbeard.
The cunning Drake had ambushed Mose Dryz’s forces with a powerful armada of cruisers. He split the general’s fleet in two, smashing one force, and pinning the other until Dreadnought arrived and obliterated the remnants.
Mose Dryz escaped in a damaged sloop. He avoided patrols of Albion destroyers, minefields, and active sensors digging into every nook and cranny of the system, looking for him. Somehow, he reached the jump point undetected. From there, he remembered jumping, something about an unknown ship harpooning him, and then he woke up strapped to a cold metal table.
A giant bird in brilliant plumage stood over him. Two smaller, drab-colored birds pried his mouth open, and the big one dripped saliva into it.
Mose Dryz didn’t know where he was or who these aliens were, but he was terrified, and tried to spit it out. Some of it went down his throat, and the large bird—he knew her now as Ak Ik, the queen commander of an Apex flock—had him sent back to his ship. The birds had left his crew stunned and in a torpor, and when they came back around, they knew nothing of what had happened to their commander.
Mose Dryz tried to tell them what had happened, but something held his tongue. Instead, when someone offered that it was an unusual jump concussion, he let them persist with that belief.
Soon, he was working for the aliens, although he didn’t realize at first why he was making so many strange decisions. When a fleet of lances attacked the far side of the empire, the empress ordered him to leave the Albion frontier with his fleet and fight them off. Normally one to charge into battle, Mose Dryz felt curiously reticent and took his time moving his ships from system to system.
By the time the general’s forces arrived, the lances had destroyed several mining colonies and launched a surprise attack on the fleet guarding the Singapore-side of the empire. Mose Dryz’s eight sloops may or may not have turned the tide of the battle, but he’d arrived too late and had no choice but to withdraw.
The empress called him back and angrily denounced him on the floor of the senate. But with Albion agitating to resume hostilities, a growing Apex menace to their rear, and a death cult promising to redeem the Hroom race by unleashing a holocaust on their human enemies, she was forced to leave him in command. Any new ships coming out of the struggling Hroom shipyards joined his fleet, and he was soon ready to sail off, stronger than ever.
He was flying toward Apex when he got the urge to ignore them and move back toward Albion-controlled space. Lenol Tyn had begged him for answers; Apex was already devastating another system, and it looked like the general was running away. Mose Dryz refused to answer. He didn’t know why himself, only that the urge was irresistible.
Lenol Tyn seemed on the verge of overthrowing his command, when word came that a lone Albion cruiser had been detected infiltrating Hroom territory. Now the colonel was convinced that her commanding officer possessed supernatural ability, given him by the gods themselves.
The cruiser turned out to be Blackbeard, with Drake in command, bringing the Hroom the gift of a sugar antidote. Mose Dryz accepted the antidote, suspicious, but was shortly distributing it to his crew. It worked, by the god
s. Why his old enemy had handed it over, the general could not fathom, but the ways of the universe were strange.
Some Hroom took the antidote reluctantly. Others deserted, fled in skimmers, or fought to maintain their sugar habits. A few even killed themselves, but these were so deep into addiction that they’d been on their way to death already.
Mose Dryz was eager to cure his own addiction, and would have done so if not for a shortage of the antidote. The labs were producing it as fast as they could, but he’d decreed that those with the most crippling addictions would get the antidote first, and he refrained from cutting in line. Finally, it was his turn.
The night before he was to swallow his caplet, he sat on his bed, a triple ration of sugar heaped on a piece of paper in front of him. He’d been hooked on it since human slavers raided his home world when he was a Hroomling. The humans had been driven off, the slaves freed, but Mose Dryz and many others were left addicted.
Ferocious self-control kept the addiction at bay throughout his youth and career, and the cravings, while intense, didn’t rise to the level of screaming panic, as they did in many others. It was foolish to let his restraint slip now, but surely even tripling his dosage wouldn’t be enough to stop the antidote. Meanwhile, he wanted to feel it, needed to swoon like nothing he’d ever needed in his life. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have the courage to swallow the caplet.
He hesitated one last moment, but a temptation, once succumbed to, could not be denied. He carefully folded the edges of the paper into a funnel, lifted it, and poured the sugar into his mouth. There was a moment where the sweet taste lingered on his tongue, and then a glorious, expanding sensation filled his head.
In moments, the swoon would carry him away to unthinking bliss, and this time would be more intense than ever, but there were always twenty or thirty seconds where he was alert but floating. He could sense things outside his body, feel the pulse of the stars carry him into a universe that was both endless and smaller than his consciousness.
This time, a thought came unbidden into his head, as if whispered there by Elyot Kar, the god of higher consciousness.
Mose Dryz, why did you delay?
“I sensed danger. It saved my fleet.”
You turned back toward Albion.
“I knew there was danger from the humans.”
And why have you kept your encounter with the birds a secret? They captured you, spit in your mouth, yet you have told no one.
The general tried to answer the unseen voice, but he could not respond. He couldn’t even explain why he himself hadn’t asked the same question before. It had never occurred to him. How strange.
Never before had a discordant element entered his mind after taking sugar. Normally, it was pure, mind-expanding bliss. But this time he was squirming with discomfort. It only lasted seconds, and then the swoon carried him away, deeper, richer, and sweeter than ever.
But when Mose Dryz emerged on the other side, he knew. The brightly colored bird had spit in his mouth. Some substance had entered his blood and migrated to his brain, where it influenced his behavior. He was repulsed and terrified.
Sugar. That was the key. A small dose, taken with extreme control. The drug burned its own circuits in his brain, and when he took it, he could control the urges to obey the whispered commands of his enemy. Could even trick the queen commander, as he had when he’d dropped down to the planet to speak to her in person.
He’d lied, knowing she’d never suspect deceit from a Hroom.
Ak Ik had given him a vial of liquid to feed to Admiral Drake. A version of the mind control substance, except tailored for the human brain instead of the Hroom. He still had the vial in his possession, but only so he could hand it over for study. The human scientists were clever; they’d break it down and use it against Apex.
But now, looking at the worried face of the colonel, and the suspicion and religiously induced hostility on the priestess’s, he didn’t see how he could explain it to them.
Don’t worry about me. I’ve only been infected by mind-control saliva. I kept the fleet out of action when the birds were destroying our people, but I’m better now. Sugar, that’s how I do it.
Instead, he said, “I prayed to Elyot Kar, and He promised to release me from the sugar curse.”
The two adjutants glanced at each other. Again, the sense that something was passing between them. What exactly had they been discussing before he entered the sweating room?
“My skin is drying out,” he said. “The room needs more steam.”
He didn’t expect Dela Zam to move—the priestess was too haughty to be ordered around by a mere general—but Lenol Tyn would normally be springing to her feet at the suggestion. Instead, she sat strangely inert. Mose Dryz made a noise of irritation deep in his throat and got up to do it himself.
“Yes, but when, Lord General?” Lenol Tyn asked.
Mose Dryz drew a ladle of water from the bucket. “When, what?”
“When will Elyot Kar release you from the curse?”
“When Apex has been defeated.” That was not in any way a lie, yet left out layers of truth. “Until then, I must continue to eat sugar.”
Mose Dryz poured the water. Steam billowed, and he drew another ladle, then a third. As steam filled the room, he drew it into his lungs, letting the heat and the vapors calm him. Soon, he almost forgot the sugar waiting for him outside.
But it was time. Already, two competing needs were scratching in his head. One, Apex, demanding to be heard and obeyed. The other, the sugar craving. He would feed the one in order to put off the other.
Mose Dryz turned around, ready to order the adjutants to their posts, and drew back in surprise. They’d risen silently while he poured water, and now stood close to him, the colonel to his left, the priestess to his right.
“What is this?”
His eyes fell to Lenol Tyn’s left hand. She clenched something in her palm.
“Lord General,” Lenol Tyn said. “Do not make this difficult. Do not resist.”
Mose Dryz reached for the door, but the priestess seized his wrist. He tried to shake her off, but her grip was iron, and her eyes gleamed with holy zeal. Lenol Tyn grabbed his other wrist.
“Let go of me. Stand back, both of you.”
“I must ask you one more time,” Lenol Tyn said. “Will you take it willingly?”
“God of Death take you, no I will not. You have no idea, you don’t understand. I can’t take the antidote, curse you. If I do, everything will be lost.”
Lenol Tyn let out her breath with a sad-sounding burr in her throat. “Every sugar eater thinks that, Lord General. You feel better on the other side.”
“No!”
Mose Dryz gave a violent jerk. He got loose from the colonel, who was still holding the capsule in one hand, and then shoved at the priestess’s chest. She fell back, and he was loose. He sprang for the door.
Dela Zam tackled him before he could get it open. He fell into the water bucket, spilling it. She wrapped one of her long, bony legs around his neck as he tried to rise, and scissored him down. Lenol Tyn leaped onto his back. He fought them with all the savagery of a cornered pouncer cat, but they were younger than he was, and there were two of them.
“Listen to me,” he cried as they pinned him down. The priestess seized his jaw. “Please, I beg you, don’t. Let me explain.”
He kept struggling and thrashing as they got his mouth open. Lenol Tyn shoved the capsule in his mouth, then forced his jaw closed. It broke in his teeth, and a bitter, almost spicy flavor filled his mouth. He tried to force it out through his closed mouth.
“Hold the bastard down,” Dela Zam said. “Don’t let him spit it up.”
“Swallow! Lord General, please!”
Mose Dryz kept thrashing, but couldn’t spit the stuff out before he reflexively swallowed. Some bubbled out of his mouth, but most went down. It burned all the way to his stomach. He stopped fighting.
The priestess let go of him first. “That
’s all, that’s enough.” She heaved for breath. “It either went down him, or it didn’t. The gods will decide.”
Chapter Eight
A welcome sight greeted Captain Tolvern when Blackbeard jumped into the Kettle System: a Royal Navy cruiser, HMS Peerless, her hull gleaming, the rampant Albion lions shimmering gold on her shields. Spread out in the space around Peerless was an impressive collection of navy warships: three lean, barracuda-like corvettes, five destroyers, three missile frigates, and six torpedo boats.
Blackbeard had not even begun to scan the system for other ships when Peerless hailed the bridge.
“Shall I put them on, sir?” Smythe asked.
Tolvern rubbed her temples. They throbbed from the jump, and she’d rather have an hour or two before facing company, a couple of gallons of hot tea, maybe even a good night’s sleep.
“Sir?” Smythe prodded.
“Go ahead.”
Captain Reginald McGowan appeared. He was older than Drake, somewhere in his mid-forties, but an exceptionally handsome man whose looks had only been enhanced by age. Sharp, penetrating eyes made her want to either stare or look hurriedly away. A jaw so strong that if attached to a hammer shaft could have split stones. Dark hair, going salt and pepper at the temples, and a finely shaped nose added to his aristocratic bearing. He was trim, with strong shoulders and the sort of lips that made women swoon at officer balls, imagining what it would be like to be kissed by them. Kissed hard, in fact.
Tolvern didn’t like the man.
“Captain McGowan,” she acknowledged.
“Tolvern. Looks like your ship has been knocked around a little. You really should be more careful with navy hardware.”
This brought mutters from the others on Blackbeard’s bridge. Fortunately, Capp was off shift, or no doubt she’d have let loose with one of her outbursts. And at the same time, given McGowan a lustful eye, scheming for the best way to get him in her bed.
“We’ve been in a few scrapes,” Tolvern said. “But don’t worry, we’re all patched up. For now—don’t know how long that will last.” When he didn’t speak, she added, “It’s a rough neighborhood out here.”
Shattered Sun (The Sentinel Trilogy Book 3) Page 6
