“Eibriyu?”
The guide seemed to grope for the proper words in Galcenian. “Ah … material? For rebuilding the body … it takes purpose quickly as needed.”
“Fetch some,” Llannat said. “I want this man beside me when I speak with the First.”
“Perhaps I can be of help,” said another voice close by. The new speaker’s Galcenian, while accented, was far more fluent than the guide’s had been.
Llannat turned, and saw a person—a man, by the voice—in the black robes and mask of a Mage, carrying another, identical mask in his hand.
“I am the First of the Circle aboard this vessel,” he said, and offered the mask to Llannat.
She hesitated for a moment, then took the mask and slipped it on. She found that the portion over the eyes was partially transparent, leaving the room darkened and misty—but now, when she stretched out her senses around her, she could see quite clearly the nets and patterns woven by the silver cords.
“If you are the First aboard this ship,” Llannat said, “then tell your medics to give this man the same treatment that your own crew members would receive.”
“So it shall be,” the First said, and spoke rapidly to the other in his own tongue before turning back to her. “Is there more that you require?”
“I need information,” Llannat said. “I need to know purposes.”
During the whole time she was speaking she had not taken her eyes away from the silver cords. Another reason for the mask, she thought. No one can tell whether a Mage is looking at things, or looking into them. As she was looking now, still seeking the pattern she had seen aboard Night’s-Beautiful-Daughter what seemed like a lifetime ago, the pattern that the Professor had left behind him for her to finish.
She found it. Closer than ever before, but distorted. Large patches of the fabric no longer held the design that the Professor had so laboriously created. The First was speaking to her, but Llannat no longer heard what he said. She was concentrating on grasping the loosened cords and weaving them again into the fabric, bringing the design together. One of the cords moved closer to its position … .
New movement in the room brought Llannat out of her almost-trance. She saw a man in a brown uniform, carrying a metal tablet not unlike the clipboards used on the Republic side of the Net. He spoke in his own tongue to the First.
“Your pardon, my lady,” said the First. “This has the highest priority identifiers. You see how minor duties interfere with the most important matters?”
He looked at the pad and apparently read whatever was there.
“Your pardon again,” he said to Llannat. “I must leave you for a moment.”
He turned at once and departed, with the messenger following behind. Shortly afterward Llannat felt the disorientation that signaled a jump into hyper.
The silver cords floating in her peripheral vision knotted and slid into place.
“Ready,” Beka said. “Moving out.”
Warhammer rose from the deckplates on nullgravs, turned, and headed out of the bay. Beka took the freighter at low speed into the asteroid field, and carefully through—getting out was easier than getting in, but it still wasn’t a job for an amateur. Several minutes of finicky piloting later, Beka flipped on the intraship comms.
“Stand by for run-to-jump,” she said. “If you’re not strapped in, time to get that way. Next stop, Pleyver.”
“Wait a minute,” Jessan said from the copilot’s seat beside her. “Contact up ahead. Big one.”
“Oh, lovely,” Beka said. “Absolutely lovely.” She fed more power to the realspace engines. “What’s the ID?”
“Warship,” Jessan said. “Lighting us up with frequencies in the fire-control range. But nothing Republic in the signature.”
“Mages?”
“Looks like.”
“Just what I goddamn needed.” She switched on the shields at full, kicked in the override to give more-than-maximum power to the engines, and pushed the throttles all the way forward. “Where is the son of a bitch?”
“Moving, he’s moving.”
“Tell me he isn’t covering my jump point for Pleyver.”
“He’s heading that way.”
“Get there before me?”
“It’ll be close.”
“I’m going to jump if I have to leave my engines behind.” Beka cut the shields in half and fed the power that she’d freed to the ’Hammer’s realspace engines.
“They’re launching fighters.”
“Let’s see ’em outrun me.” Beka flipped on the internal comm. “Gunners, take your stations.”
Jessan unstrapped and headed aft.
Beka kept on flipping switches. “Gravity, off; life support, off; all nonessentials off-line.”
She pushed the newly freed power to the realspace engines as well, then checked the navicomp and the sensor screen. “Come on, you bastard, where are you?”
A few more seconds, and she didn’t need to ask: she had the Mage warship on visual. She watched it swelling from a bright star to something the size of an asteroid in its own right—as if High Station Pleyver had sprouted guns and engines and dropped out of hyperspace on top of her.
“Hell,” she said. The warship was sitting on her jump point, all right. She put in some up vector. “Sorry about that, big boy—I’ll see you later. Guns?”
“Number One gun on station,” came Jessan’s reply; and LeSoit, echoing: “Number Two gun on station.”
“Anything in range, kill it,” Beka said. “But don’t just shoot for the sake of shooting—I want every ounce of juice I have for speed.”
“Roger,” she heard her gunners echo. Then she was passing above the other vessel, watching the huge bulk of the warship slide by on the ’Hammer’s ventral side. She had clear stars in front of her; she was running—
A wrenching shudder ran through the ship. The ’Hammer bucked and pulled against the grip of a heavy tractor beam.
“Hold your fire!” Beka called out the gunners. She fed more power to the realspace engines. “I’ll need everything we’ve got just to pull away!”
The engines roared; the freighter’s hull sang and moaned with the vibration that tore at it in every direction; but slowly, slowly, Warhammer began to make forward progress and pull away from the beam.
“Come on, baby, you can do it,” Beka murmured. “You can do it. Fastest pair of legs in the galaxy …”
She heard Jessan swear in Khesatan over the earphones and heard a bolt of energy fire from Number One gun bubble. Then both guns were firing—continuously now—and Jessan cursed again as something struck the freighter’s after portion with a deafening, bone-jarring impact. Damage-control lights flared red all over the main console, and the numbers on the engine power readout ran down toward zero. The rear sensor screens went blank. Loss-of-pressure alarms shrieked.
“What the hell—!”
Jessan’s voice came to her over the internal comm. “One of their fighters rammed us.”
“Damn and blast.” She switched off the engines. After a few seconds, she flipped on the comm. “Everyone, stand by. We’ve got a problem. We appear to have been captured by a Mage warship.”
“Dropout in five minutes, Commodore,” Jhunnei said.
“Very well,” Commodore Gil said, “I’ll be in CIC in four.”
He poured himself one last cup of cha’a and left his office for the Pavo’s Combat Information Center.
“We’re set for general quarters on translation,” the tactical action officer told Gil as he entered. “No telling what’ll be waiting for us. Ops officer is on the bridge, overseeing navigation personally.”
“Get positive identification on all targets before launching any attacks,” Gil said. He took a seat near the main battle tank. The tank’s display area was darkened while the ’Tina ran in hyper. “We may be attacked by friendlies who aren’t sure of our allegiance and intentions.”
“Condition red, weapons tight,” the TAO said to the gun
talker, and the message was passed through the weapons spaces.
“Stand by for dropout,” came a voice over the ship’s internal comm system. “Five, four, three, two, one, mark.”
The hyperspace transition wave swept through the ship. “Full sensor scan,” the TAO said. “Light up the tank.”
The holographic display winked into life. This time it showed the Gyfferan system, with the view in the tank centering on Gyffer itself. Blue dots appeared, marking the body of Gil’s task force: Karipavo and her sisters from the Net Patrol Fleet; Merrolakk the Selvaur’s privateer flotilla; and the odd collection of armed merchantmen and Space Force vessels from the Suivi Detachment that had been the reluctant contribution of Domina Beka Rosselin-Metadi.
“Unknown units detected,” the comptech on the main tank said. “Bringing them up now.”
“At least this time we have hi-comms,” Gil commented to the TAO. “Locally, anyway. Fighting blind and deaf isn’t an experience I plan to repeat just for the pleasure of it.”
A yellow dot appeared in the tank close to Gyffer. “Energy release in Gyfferan system space,” called out a sensor tech.
“Rotate that over here,” the TAO said. “Magnify. What parameters are you reading?”
“Task Force D’Rugier dropping out in sequence, in place,” reported the tech in charge of fleet communications. “Comms normal.”
“Deploy fighters in diamond formation,” Gil said. “Scouts out to Gyffer.”
“Picking up transmissions in the clear from Gyffer Inspace Control,” said the local-comms operator.
“What do you have?” TAO asked.
“All units in the Gyfferan Local Defense Forces are being directed to save themselves if they can … more traffic from Gyffer, transmission from the surface, Gyfferan Citizen-Assembly requests immediate aid from Republic Space Force or any planetary government capable of responding.”
“Can’t get more immediate than us,” Gil said. “Reply to the Citizen-Assembly, tell them that the Space Force is here.”
“IDs coming in on vessels in Gyfferan system space,” the tank comptech said. “Gyfferan units displayed in green, task force units in blue. Unknowns yellow. We have a bunch of ID’ed vessels marked as Space Force, not from this task force.”
“Get names on them,” Gil ordered. “Correlate with last assignment prior to the war.”
“Working. The Space Force units are from the Infabede Sector Fleet.”
“Infabede units appear to be attacking Gyfferan units,” the TAO said, looking at the data running up the sensor tech’s screen.
“That would be Valiant, damn his eyes,” Gil said, remembering the news he’d picked up on Innish-Kyl. “Designate Infabede units hostile. Put a screen around Gyffer. Protect their spacedocks and their communications nodes for as long as possible. And send a signal to the Infabede units, message as follows: ‘To Infabede Sector Fleet, this is Net Patrol Fleet. Interrogative what the hell do you think you’re doing, over.’ And while we’re waiting for a reply to that,” Gil remarked to the TAO, “if anyone out there shoots at a Gyfferan unit, that someone is a designated target.”
“Yes, sir.”
“You know, Jhunnei,” Gil remarked to his aide, leaning back and taking a sip from his cha’a, “I used to worry that because I’d joined up after the last war was over, I’d never do anything more important than write reports and assign other people to write reports for me to read.”
“Who knows, Commodore?” Jhunnei replied. “Maybe you’ll get to write the report after we finish this one.”
Gil shook his head. “Until you said that, Lieutenant, I was almost ready to enjoy myself.”
II. DEEP SPACE: WARHAMMER; SWORD-OF-THE-DAWN
BEKA FLIPPED off the link and sagged back in the pilot’s seat. She gazed wearily out the ’Hammer’s viewscreen as the Magebuilt battleship drew closer and closer.
How the hell did they find me? Was it Tarveet—did I tell him the coordinates when he had me drugged on Suivi?
Beka sat up straight again. Tarveet. She could at least make sure that he didn’t live long enough to enjoy a Mageworlds victory. She left the cockpit and ran back through the common room—where Doctor syn-Tavaite looked somewhere between pleased and in despair—and onward to the crew berthing compartment that had been Tarveet’s prison ever since Suivi Point.
The door refused to open for her. Jammed. On purpose. She slammed her fist against the bulkhead.
“Damn, damn, damn …”
“No, Captain.” Ignaceu LeSoit had appeared at her elbow while she was still working at the lock. “Tarveet didn’t reveal the site of your base to the Mages.”
Beka snarled at him. “How the hell do you know, Ignac’?”
He shook his head. Any further reply he might have made was cut short by the sound of magnetic grapnels striking on the hull. Then Jessan came, and Doctor syn-Tavaite with him.
“I can’t find Owen or Klea anywhere,” Jessan said. “The inner door to the main lock is closed. The outer door is open, and there are two p-suits missing. I believe they’ve gone outside.”
Beka pounded on the bulkhead again. “Damn, damn, damn it to hell … what do they think they’re doing?”
“They said that there would be Mages aboard this ship,” syn-Tavaite said. “They said that they were going to find one for you.”
Beka went back to the ‘Hammer’s cockpit—she didn’t want to deal with anybody else right now, and especially not with Inesi syn-Tavaite or Ignaceu LeSoit. Instead, she watched the Mage battleship grow larger and closer as its magnetic grapnels pulled the freighter in. More beams, tractors and pressors working together, drew the ’Hammer down to rest on blocks inside a huge docking bay. Bright worklights washed over the freighter’s hull, glaring into the cockpit windows; the outer bay doors closed down like jaws; blast-armored and pressure-suited workers came out of their airlocks and into the bay.
“No point in waiting,” she said aloud, and headed aft.
She didn’t know what Owen and Klea were up to, beyond the information that Doctor syn-Tavaite had passed along, but anything that served to distract the Mages from possible intruders could only help. As long as the two Adepts—and the replicant—were safe, her long-shot plan still had a chance.
In the common room, Jessan and Lesoit and syn-Tavaite were sitting at the mess table in an uneasy silence. They all looked up when Beka entered.
“I’m going out,” she said. “They want a prisoner, I’ll give them one. The rest of you, stay inside and stay quiet.”
Jessan looked unhappy. “I wish you’d let me go instead.”
“Sorry,” she said. “You’re not notorious enough.”
“Be careful, then.”
“For as long as I can.” She looked at syn-Tavaite. “Remember, Doctor: you’re combat-sworn to D‘Rugier, and he gave you to me. Betray me now, and you’re breaking your word to him. As for you, Ignac’—”
“Captain?”
“This makes three times now that I haven’t killed you, for old times’ sake. Remember that. All of you: nobody mentions my brother and his apprentice, or what we’ve got in the hold. If Owen makes it back here, you do whatever he says.”
“Understood, Captain,” said Jessan. He had grown steadily more pale and drawn as she spoke. “Bee—”
“Goodbye, Nyls. I’ve got to leave now.”
She left the common room without looking back. In the ’Hammer’s airlock, she donned her p-suit with practiced haste, sealing her blaster into the suit’s cargo pocket. Maybe she’d need it. Maybe she’d even have a chance to use it.
Right. And maybe I’ll sprout wings and fly home to Galcen. But as long as I’m planning to jump off the roof, I might as well try flapping my arms all the way down.
She closed the inner door and set the lock to cycle. The joints of her p-suit stiffened around her. When the cycle had finished, she hit the bulkhead controls to open the outer door and lower the ramp. The foot of the ramp clanged down onto m
etal deckplates, and’ Beka stepped out of the lock.
A cluster of p-suited workers had gathered at the edge of what looked like a safety circle painted around the landing blocks. She approached halfway to the circle’s perimeter, then stopped and waited for the workers to come the rest of the way.
The stark worklights glinted from the workers’ helmets, and they seemed to move in slow motion. A voice sounded in Beka’s ears—an all-frequency transmission, most likely, coming over her helmet’s comm link—saying words that she didn’t understand. She kept on waiting.
After the voice fell silent, the workers in their white pressure suits came up and surrounded her. She saw that they carried blasters of unfamiliar design, made with oversized trigger studs for use with gauntleted hands. Not workers; then, but an armed guard. Except for the visible presence of the weapons, however, none of the Mageworlders had so much as offered a threatening gesture.
The troopers formed two ranks, a column on each side of her, and started back toward the airlock from which they had emerged. Beka, now surrounded, had no choice but to go with them. The airlock, twice as tall as she was and wide enough for a skipsled to pass through with ease, held the entire formation without crowding. The outer door slid shut behind them. The lock was huge, taking so long to traverse that Beka felt the changing pressure make the joints of her suit grow looser as she walked.
The inner doors of the lock slid open and the troopers around her stopped. They removed their helmets to reveal disconcertingly ordinary men and women—a bit on the short side, most of them, by Republic standards—with the collars of brown uniforms peeking from the necks of their suits.
The ranks in front of her parted and she saw that another man had been waiting on the far side of the lock. His plain brown uniform was the same color as the troopers’ collars, but instead of a blaster he carried a short rod of dark wood bound in silver: a Mage’s staff. He nodded at the troopers to either side of her and gave an order she couldn’t hear.
By Honor Betray'd: Mageworlds #3 Page 33
