Children of Zanar 1: The Zanari Inheritance

by Niall Teasdale

  ‘Okay. I’ll do my best.’

  Thea nodded and turned to Mirganna and Nirayla who were watching the preparations in silence. ‘You’ve both been of great assistance. Next time we see Marienna, I’ll mention your names, and if you need help of a more assertive nature than usual, we can always be contacted through the Peace of Serenity.’

  ‘It was our duty,’ Mirganna said.

  ‘And pleasure,’ Nirayla added, flashing a grin at Sienna.

  ‘Still,’ Thea said, ‘let us know if you need us to repay the… duty.’

  ‘And one other thing,’ Sienna said, walking over and putting a hand on Nirayla’s shoulder. ‘This one is ready, Mirganna. She’ll make a fine Sister.’

  Nirayla’s eyes widened, but she said nothing, letting Mirganna speak. ‘Thank you, Sister Advisor. We will conduct the ceremony as soon as possible.’

  ‘She deserves it.’

  ‘All right,’ Thea said. ‘Let’s get moving. The timing on this is semi-critical.’

  ‘Semi-critical?’ Kaya asked.

  ‘We’ve got some leeway, but getting this right would be kind of useful. Otherwise we’re going to need to deal with a cruiser as well as the ground troops. That would be less fun than I’d like.’

  Giltanish Prime Spaceport.

  ‘Section three, anything to report?’

  Jay listened to the voice traffic over the radio with vague disinterest. Garaka continued to sound annoyed and tired, and it was unlikely that the mercs would see anything until Thea made a run for the Sword.

  ‘Section three, nothing to report.’

  Yeah, nothing to report. If Jay had to guess, the zanari could walk right past Garaka’s goons and not one of them would notice.

  ‘Section four, report.’

  ‘Section four, no sightings.’

  He had men checking trains coming in on the maglev. Like that was going to do him any good. The volume of traffic alone would make it hard to spot anyone in the crowd.

  ‘Section five, report.’

  ‘Section five here. Nothing to report, sir. Thought I had something, but it was a false alarm.’

  Jay’s ears perked up. A false alarm? Section five was the maglev station. Maybe if one of the mercs there had really good eyes, he might have seen someone. Maybe, if he had, someone had persuaded him he had been mistaken.

  Well, if Thea and Kaya were in the port, they would be making for the Sword. Trying to intercept them was a waste of time. Turning to the stairs behind him, Jay started down to the landing pad level.

  ~~~

  ‘I was sure that mercenary spotted me,’ Kaya said. At the moment, she was alone in the washroom with Thea and Sienna, but someone might decide they needed to use the place at any moment and there were women among the mercs, so they might have decided to check. The three of them were, therefore, in separate cubicles, waiting for Jinny to arrive.

  ‘He did,’ Sienna said. ‘And then he decided that you looked nothing like the woman he was looking for.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘Don’t worry, Kaya,’ Thea said from her other side. ‘We’ve done things like this before.’

  ‘Yes, but I haven’t.’

  ‘You’re doing fine. Jinny will be here with a change of clothes in another minute. Then it’s a short walk to the ship and we’re home free.’

  ‘Somehow, I don’t think it’ll be that easy.’

  ‘Oh, it will be. I’ll be making sure there’s no one in the way to bother you.’

  ~~~

  There was no way to get aboard the ship. Jay had checked earlier and found no obvious means of opening the hatch. Maybe it was some sort of radio command, or maybe it responded to telepathy or telekinesis. Whatever, the ideal solution of laying an ambush inside the craft was out.

  There was little in the way of cover nearby too; Giltanish Prime prided itself on its looks, so packing crates on the landing pads was a big no-no. There were the landing struts the Sword was resting on, big legs, retractable, but designed to hold up three thousand tonnes of spacecraft. They would at least make him harder to spot.

  Jay moved in behind the forward strut and crouched down, his shotgun at the ready in his hands. Now all he needed was a target.

  ~~~

  They were operating in teams of four, which made neutralising them difficult, but diverting them was quite a reasonable possibility.

  Thea watched the mercs patrolling down the corridor, brash as anything, and wondered how Monteagle had swung that with the planetary authorities. Probably by shouting at them a lot. Maybe he had favours he had called in. Maybe the local authorities were as annoyed about the death of Xaviran Monteagle as his son was. No matter.

  Four men in combat suits with assault needlers. Which would have been tough if there had not been a lot of civilian traffic on the walkway. Some big cruise liner had to have come in recently or something, which was fine by Thea. The mercs were walking two-by-two, and she turned her attention to one of the back pair, the closest to her.

  Look to your left.

  The man’s head jerked around, his body and rifle following it. For a second, he saw Thea, grinning at him through the crowd. Then she was off, running back the way they had come from. He raised his weapon, but there were just too many people. He was authorised to shoot, but unnecessary non-combatant casualties were not permitted.

  ‘Shit! She’s there! Behind us. Uh, section four here. Target sighted heading for section three. All teams converge on section three.’

  He was already giving chase, the display on his helmet visor indicating that his team was following. A brief second later, he could see other teams around the port moving to close in on their target. They were going to get her. She would be caught in a pincer in section three. No problem.

  Thea watched from the side of the corridor as the fireteam ran past. By now, they had lost sight of her, but they were working on the theory that she had nowhere to go but ahead. She waited for them to run on for thirty metres or so and then stepped back out into the crowds. She was almost at the ship and the others would be following soon.

  But she had not seen Jay yet. Somehow, she expected Jay to still be a problem, and the fact that he had, so far, failed to appear made it seem more like an issue waiting to happen.

  ~~~

  The lowering of the stairs from the airlock did not make a lot of noise, but it made some and Jay tensed as he heard it. Someone was there. Probably not Kaya. He doubted Kaya knew the trick to opening the hatch. Maybe Jinny, probably Thea.

  Jay swung around the strut and lifted his gun. Thea. Thea not yet aware of him. He fired. At least one pellet whined off the descending metalwork, but most of them hit. He could tell because he could see them falling to the concrete having, as far as Jay could tell, flattened against Thea’s skin. How… She had done something to protect Kaya back on Abertine. Diyou! Ducking back behind the landing strut, Jay reached for a cartridge on his belt.

  ‘There you are,’ Thea called out. ‘I was wondering where you were. And you’ve got a null-field generator on you too. Clever man.’

  Jay rushed to get the cartridge into the receiver. Part of him was wondering why she had not rushed him. Why was she not coming around the strut to attack him? The null field? Was she trying to stay outside the null field?

  ‘Kaya wants you kept alive, Jay,’ Thea went on. ‘In the spirit of that desire, if you come out and give me the gun, I won’t break all your teeth.’

  Jay stepped around the strut again, raising his gun. ‘You talk too much,’ he said, and pulled the trigger.

  The slug punched through Thea’s shirt and she gave a grunt, frowning. Jay saw blood, but somehow there did not seem to be enough of it. ‘Now I am going to break your teeth,’ Thea said. She closed the distance between them with two long strides, her left hand forming a fist and driving at Jay’s face. He spotted the feint, rocking his head back to avoid the punch, but he could not get his gun around fast enough to block her second strike. Her fingers jabbed into hi
s right bicep and his arm went dead.

  Shock hit Jay right as he heard his gun falling onto the concrete, but he threw a wild punch with his left hand, which connected with nothing at all. Thea’s elbow came at him and he dodged aside, but then her hand came in out of left field, jabbing at one of his temples. His vision blurred briefly and two more jabs slammed into him, rocking him on his feet.

  ‘Go down, idiot,’ Thea told him, her words coming through a haze of pain and fog.

  Jay’s knees gave out and he collapsed onto the concrete, and Thea was beside him, checking his pulse. She frowned. ‘Stupid damn fool,’ she muttered, and began hauling him toward the stairs.

  ~~~

  The airlock’s outer door sealed behind them and Kaya waited along with Sienna and Jinny for the inner door to open. There had been no problems getting to the ship; Jinny had looked distinctly annoyed about that, but Kaya was just relieved.

  ‘Thea?’ Sienna called out. ‘How are we doing?’

  ‘We’re doing fine,’ Thea’s voice came back from the speakers. ‘I have launch clearance. We’ll be airborne as soon as you lot are sitting down. So get sat down.’

  The inner door opened and they walked through, heading for the lounge with its seats.

  ‘Any trouble?’ Jinny asked.

  ‘That would depend upon your definition of trouble. I ran into Jay…’

  ‘Is he okay?’ Kaya asked quickly.

  ‘He’s in the medical bay. He’ll be fine, once the autodoc has finished with him. It’s programmed to keep him unconscious, however. I had to hit him a few times before he’d stop fighting back.’

  ‘Oh. Well, I didn’t say you couldn’t hit him. Or kill him if you really had to.’

  ‘I know. I didn’t exactly mind hitting him. We’ll deal with him later, after Geo’s had a look at him. For now, we have a Kraggan cruiser to deal with. Jinny, you’re on point defence. Let’s hustle, people.’

  Monteagle’s Prize.

  ‘Sir, that ship you told us to monitor? It’s left the ground.’

  Garaka Monteagle blinked at the lieutenant who had spoken and frowned. His brain was working on too little sleep and it took him a second to realise what he was being told. ‘Contact the ground teams, get them to verify. I thought they were closing in on one of the bitches?’

  ‘That was the report, sir. Apparently they weren’t.’

  Garaka bit back on his immediate response. ‘I’m going to the flight deck. Contact them and tell them to bring the weapons online. I want us ready to intercept as soon as that ship is clear of the atmosphere.’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ the lieutenant replied. He snapped off a salute before turning to his comms unit.

  Garaka stalked off toward the door. They might have got past the ground teams, but he was not letting them get past him.

  Sword of Zanar.

  ‘They’ll attack as soon as we get out of the atmosphere,’ Jinny said into the microphone on her headset.

  ‘I know,’ Thea replied. ‘Just be ready to counter any missiles they throw this way.’

  ‘That won’t help if they can bring their graser turrets to bear.’

  ‘If this works right, you won’t even have to counter the missiles, Jin. Don’t sweat what you can’t affect.’

  ‘That’s easy for you to say. You’ve got a century and a half on me. I don’t want to miss out on all that due time.’

  In the flight chair in the central control room, Thea smiled despite the situation. ‘You’re over seven hundred and you’re worried about a mere hundred and fifty?’

  ‘Have you any idea how much I could blow up in a hundred and fifty years?’

  ‘Huh. Hold on to that thought. We’ll be clear of the atmosphere in… five… four…’

  Monteagle’s Prize.

  ‘They’re clearing the atmosphere now, sir,’ the bridge officer said as Garaka walked in.

  ‘Fire at will,’ Garaka replied, heading for the captain’s chair.

  ‘Gunnery, fire tubes one and two. Get a firing solution for the cannon.’

  Two forty-centimetre missiles, each carrying a high-explosive warhead, flew from the launchers in the Prize’s blunt bow. A second after their rapid expulsion, their engines fired, driving them toward their target as it rose from the planet below.

  Sword of Zanar.

  ‘Incoming,’ Jinny announced, her voice calm. ‘Engaging.’

  Invisible beams of coherent gamma rays began lancing out from two of the Sword’s turrets and missiles began to explode before they were even close to hitting their target.

  Kaya could not see that, however. ‘Are we going to be okay?’

  Thea glanced at her tracking displays and smiled. ‘We’re going to be fine, Kaya,’ she said. ‘Any second now, however, that cruiser is going to get a nasty surprise.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Oh, you don’t think Cassandra’s going to stay out of this, do you?’

  ‘Cassandra? But I thought she was staying out of the way.’

  Thea laughed. ‘Oh, she was…’

  Oracle of Zanar.

  Waiting for Thea to get in touch had been an annoying, interminable period which Cassandra had not enjoyed. The Oracle had been sitting at the L1 point between Giltanish Prime and its star for weeks. Every civilised planet with an iota of self-preservation instinct had objects at the L1 point monitoring solar activity, and there were generally a few other things out there to take advantage of the plentiful, free energy. Giltanish was no exception and one more spacecraft in halo orbit around the gravitational balance point was just extra clutter as far as most sensor systems were concerned. It was outside the planet’s hyper limit, which made telepathic communication impossible, and that just made the wait more annoying.

  Now, however, the wait was over. The Oracle had been powering in for three hours, dumping most of its velocity for the last ninety minutes, but keeping on enough for the manoeuvre Cassandra had planned. She grazed the atmosphere on the loop around Giltanish Prime and came up and out in a passing action which brought her in under the Monteagle’s Prize. They might never know what hit them.

  ‘Fay,’ Cassandra said over the internal comms, ‘we have line of sight. You may fire when ready.’

  Fay, in the forward gunnery control station, had been ready for thirty minutes. She had full schematics for the Nuberg-class cruiser available, plenty of time to plan, and two very nasty weapons to fire. Fay was, at heart, something of a pacifist, but she was also a filarax. She found the slaughter of innocents abhorrent, which was why her people had chosen to hunt her to death, but she had absolutely no problem killing people who could fight back and showed no desire to avoid violence. She programmed her targets in a few seconds and executed the fire commands.

  Monteagle’s Prize.

  ‘Their point-defence fire is extremely effective, sir,’ the gunnery officer announced. ‘We’re not getting anything close.’

  Garaka slammed his fist down on the arm of his chair. ‘I want that ship destroyed! Fire every–’ Pain lanced through Garaka’s chest and he clutched at it, unable to really understand what was happening to him as the beam of a psi-powered weapon played across the ship, causing massive disruption to the autonomic nervous system of almost everyone on the ship.

  In the forward weapons bay, a telekinetic beam began chewing into the substance of the vessel. Metal shrieked as it was crushed or pulled to the limits of its tensile strength. Fay had targeted the weapon bay for one very good reason, and if the crew had not been gasping for breath or keeling over from heart failure, they might have realised the trouble they were in before it actually hit them. As it was, no one even tried to prevent the chain reaction as the ten remaining missiles waiting to be launched exploded, ripping the cruiser apart from the inside as the Oracle of Zanar flew past.

  Garaka Monteagle would probably have died before any of his crew could get to him to resuscitate him, but as it was, he died when the flight deck was torn apart, along with everyone else on th
e ship.

  Oracle of Zanar, Hyperspace.

  Kaya was feeling… a little out of sorts.

  They were safe. There was no way any of the Kraggans were going to follow them into hyperspace, assuming there were any Kraggans left to do it, and the Ishara Complex might have viewed the Kraggans as their own, private, dirty police force, but they were not going to seek revenge over the loss of a cruiser which had fired on a ship leaving the planet. They might have to deal with Garaka Monteagle at some point, but Jay, who was the main problem, was tucked away in the medical bay. Geogracus had been less than enthusiastic about making sure he did not die, but Kaya had been quite persuasive.

  The Sword had re-joined the Oracle on the move without incident. Cassandra and Fay had moved all of Kaya’s things from the cabin she had been using to a new one on the starboard side where Jinny and Fay had their cabins. Jinny thought it was fabulous and that they would have loads of fun. Kaya had been happy to have a change of clothes on hand and had slipped back into top and shorts, though she had left her Sisterhood chain around her neck because she somehow felt that taking it off was wrong.

  There had been food and the recounting of the adventures they had all been on for those who had not heard them. Even Geogracus turned up for some of it, though Kaya got the vague impression it was mostly to hear what treatment Kaya might need following her ordeal.

  Kaya had been horrified to discover that Thea had been shot, but Geogracus declined to bother treating her for the wound which was, Kaya had to admit, not what you might call serious. Thea had taken a shotgun slug in the stomach and it had apparently caused a bit of an injury, more bruising than anything. Thea assured her that it would be healed within a day; biokinetics were a wonderful thing in more than one way.

  So, everything was more or less fine, but Kaya was still feeling wrong, and the reason for that was that she was preparing to go to bed, not in her own cabin, but in Thea’s. Cassandra had said nothing about it when Thea had suggested that Kaya might like to join her. Kaya had not declined either, but as she reached for the hem of her T-shirt and realised that she was about to have sex with Cassandra’s lover aboard the ship Cassandra ran… she felt a little out of sorts.