“Well, I would kill him,” Poledri snorted in fury.
“If you like…” Kitzov turned to Poledri. “I’ll appoint you executioner. We will hang him after the guilty verdict is passed down by our judges.”
Poledri looked at Kitzov and gave a short nod of acceptance.
“Be my honor and my pleasure, sir.”
Both turned as they saw Thresh come along the corridor escorted by a med-drone. Poledri stepped over to her.
“You are looking great, Thresh. Ready to get back on the Fist?”
“She’s not going anywhere,” Kitzov said. He wrapped an arm around Thresh as she was escorted into the med-bay. “She still has injuries from the Battle at Kalis LZ.”
“We’ll take good care of her,” Poledri said.
“I’m sure you would, but a few hours in a high-end med-pod here on the Silence and she’ll be fighting fit again.”
Thresh walked slowly. She looked at Boyd.
“I can’t believe he is a spy,” she said. “He deceived us all.”
Kitzov helped Thresh up into the pod. As she lay back, she again looked at Boyd in the pod next to hers.
“Don’t worry about him,” Kitzov said. “He’s out cold until we wake him. He won’t deceive anyone else ever again.”
The drone activated the pod, and the cover slid over Thresh and sealed shut.
“Do you think she’s—” Poledri asked.
“No.” Kitzov turned on Poledri, fury in his eyes. “She is Faction, more than anyone here. She wouldn’t betray me. I know her better than any of you.” He turned back to Thresh and laid a hand over the top of the pod. “She will be out for an hour, two at most. You don’t have facilities like this on the Fist. Speaking of which…” He turned and faced Poledri.
Poledri nodded, straightening up. “Yes, sir. I’ll get back aboard the Fist right now. Just let me know when I can have my engineer back.”
Kitzov looked down at Thresh. She was motionless now that the induced coma had taken hold. She looked relaxed, calm. He remembered back to the first time he had met her. She had been nervous, a lost child amongst pirates. He had seen a hint of her talent in the way she fixed an aging pulse pistol. She had looked relaxed when absorbed in the work and then fearful when she handed it over to her pirate captor. Kitzov knew he had to take her for his own. A lost child, safe with him.
He had tutored her, allowed her to develop her natural gift with machines, showing her spacecraft power systems, weapon systems. She had absorbed it all. Then he had brought her into the Faction, put a gun in her hand and picked out a target—a Union scumbag that would have killed them all.
He remembered how nervous she had been and how upset she had been afterwards. He promised her it would only take a few more kills for her to get used to it, but her pitiful, sorrowful face had touched him, and he never sent her to kill again.
Now she looked at ease.
Whoever her parents had been, they could not have treated her any better than Kitzov had. He was pretty sure they had abandoned her or sold her. He had kept her safe and made her one of the best engineers in the Faction.
A message appeared on his wrist-mounted holo-stage from the Silence’s flight deck. His flight deck crew reported that the ship was ready to get underway.
“Okay,” Kitzov said, looking down at Thresh again. “Detach soft docking tunnel from the Odium Fist. I’ll take the command chair. Hold until I get there.”
Kitzov turned away from the sleeping young woman and stepped out of the brightly lit med-bay into the corridors of the Silence. He walked slowly toward the flight deck. He needed to choose a heading, a location for the trial of the Union spy. It needed to be somewhere hidden enough that the Union could not intervene. It needed to be open enough that the Faction could see everything. With a few corridors to go before he reached the flight deck, a ship-wide alert pulled him from his thoughts. Red lights flashed along the corridor.
“What is it?” he spoke into his holo-stage as he broke into a run.
“Incoming signal. A single ship. Approaching at speed.”
Kitzov ran into the flight deck and saw the image of the incoming ship on the main holo-stage.
“Skarak,” he said.
He climbed up into his command chair and opened a channel to the Fist. “Poledri, we’ve got company.”
“I see it. A Skarak warship. I thought we’d seen the last of them when the Union kicked their scaly hides off of Kalis. I think with our two ships, we can take it down.”
“One thing at a time, Poledri.” Kitzov accessed the navigational systems and looked for a friendly Faction settlement with a sturdy orbital defense.
“Asteroid settlement, Gemini, in the belt,” Kitzov said. “Make that your heading. Send a message to Faction defense at Gemini that we will be approaching at speed.”
Kitzov sent the coordinates to the pilot. This was like the old days, Kitzov managing his flight deck, but this time, he was running from an alien invader and not a Union cruiser or some private hunter. The drive on the Silence activated with only the slightest of background hums. In the old days, on his old ship—a stolen Union corvette he had named the Renegade—the noise of the drive powering up had been dreadful, and the vibration of the deck plates before the hull stability field kicked in had been terrifying and mesmerizing. He remembered the way the deck flexed and heaved only to snap back to perfectly rigid in a second. It had been amazing every time, and he knew that any time the Renegade powered up, it could pull itself apart. What a ship.
The holo-stage showed the Silence move away from the Fist, leaving the battered old raider behind.
“Problems, Poledri?” Kitzov said, watching the Skarak ship close in on the Fist.
Poledri appeared on the Silence holo-stage. The lighting on the Fist’s flight deck was dimming and brightening rapidly.
“No, sir,” Poledri said as he was buffeted about in his command chair. “The Fist is a bit cold. The reactor is a little out of symmetry, but the engineer said it’ll come good any moment.”
And at that moment, the lights on the Fist’s flight deck stabilized. The image of the Fist on the holo-stage showed it accelerate and catch up to the Silence.
The Skarak ship was closing in fast. Kitzov watched the range counter fall rapidly, and he realized he could not escape without a fight.
“Poledri, you got weapons over there?”
“Yes, sir. Hail cannon are active, but not much ammo. Spitz guns charged and standing by.”
Kitzov tapped away at his armrest control, sending fire orders to his gun crews and weapons operator on the flight deck. “Poledri, load maximum density kinetic hail to the cannons. We’ll throw a hail curtain up in that Skarak’s face. Fire on my command.”
Kitzov watched as the Skarak closed in. He had seen the warships in action. He knew their primary weapon was housed in the rapier cluster at the front of the ship. He calculated that the ship would not charge through the hail curtain and risk its primary weapon.
“Ready to fire, sir,” Poledri said.
Kitzov watched the range to the Skarak ship. It needed to be close enough to make it slow down to avoid the hail curtain, giving them crucial time to get to the safety of the Gemini defense platform.
Watching the Skarak, Kitzov tried to understand what they were doing here in the Scorpio System. He understood the Union—they were descendants of the first fleet to arrive here in the system and they wanted total dominance. He understood the Faction—scattered at first, avoiding scrutiny by the authorities, longing to live free. But the Skarak, what was their game? They had been hiding here in the system for who knew how long and only attacked when discovered. Then they came en masse and attacked the Kalis landing zone, a Faction meeting. Their firepower had been enough that they could have obliterated the surface and every Faction ship there in seconds. But they chose to land ground troops, snatch up living humans, carry them off to their ship, and then return them as walking corpses.
Kitzov flatter
ed himself that he understood the motivations of his allies and his enemies. He understood the Faction, he understood the Union, and he even understood the spy he had on ice in the med-bay, but he did not understand the Skarak. Who were they? Where had they come from? What did they want?
“Fire,” Kitzov said, clenching his fist so tightly that his knuckles went white.
The image on the holo-stage showed the kinetic hail blast from the Fist and the Silence. The fragments were tightly packed at first and then spread out to create a curtain of kinetic hail fragments, their positions displayed as a cloud of red haze.
The Skarak warship charged on undeterred. Kitzov leaned forward in his chair.
“They are not slowing,” Poledri said.
Kitzov could hear Poledri’s anger. The captain had always been explosive and ill-tempered. It was what Kitzov liked about him. It made him a fierce fighter.
“Load high-ex,” Kitzov said. “Stand by all spitz guns. Target the center of the rapier cluster at the leading edge of the Skarak warship.”
The Skarak ship on the holo-stage lit up as the blue crackle beam lanced out from the front. The beam flickered across the curtain of kinetic hail, lighting up on one minute fragment after another. The hail shimmered as the crackle beam spread over it like lightning through a snowstorm.
As the flickering blue beam fizzled out, the Skarak ship plowed into the curtain. The hail fell aside as the ship burst through, tiny lights flashing over the long, straight rapier structures.
“Kinetic hail curtain has failed,” Kitzov said to Poledri as he sent his orders for the second salvo. “The hail should have shredded their forward section.”
“That crackle fire just turned the hail fragments to dust. I knew we should have fired high-ex.” Poledri was pacing the flight deck of the Odium Fist, moving in and out of the field of view on the Silence’s main holo-stage.
“Calm down, Poledri,” Kitzov said. “We had a free shot. It might have slowed them down. But now we hit them hard. Fire high-ex rounds on my command.”
The Skarak ship closed in, the maximum range of the crackle beam shown as a red cone on the holo-image. The Silence and the Fist would have another free shot before they had to tangle at close range—the crackle beam from the Skarak warship against the agile Faction ships and their rapid-fire spitz guns.
“Fire,” Kitzov said and brought his fist down on the armrest of his command chair.
The salvo of high-ex rounds closed in on the Skarak ship. The crackle beam fired again and slammed into a round. It detonated and set off a chain reaction that spread out from the first high-ex round to those around it, balls of white plasma burning at a trillion degrees for a fraction of a second.
The hail rounds that made it through the cascade of detonations slammed into the forward section of the Skarak vessel, the white-hot explosions lighting up the rapier cluster from within. They looked fragile as the detonation flashed. Several rapiers broke away, tumbling aside as the Skarak ship charged on.
“Spitz guns, fire.” Kitzov saw the Skarak ship close into crackle beam range, its rapiers lighting up, not with the detonation of high-ex this time but with the building blue crackle beam.
“Break, break,” Kitzov said. “Scatter and attack opposite flanks.”
The Silence peeled off to the port side, the Fist turning to starboard. The Fist’s turn was not as sharp as the Silence’s. It opened with its spitz guns, white plasma rounds leaping away from its starboard guns as the top-mounted guns swiveled to add their fire to the attack.
Kitzov watched, leaning forward, tension growing, as his spitz guns poured fire into the Skarak ship. The points of impact glowed white hot. The spitz rounds appeared to sink slowly into the Skarak hull, as if its surface was made of a thick, viscous material. The heat and impact from the blasts dissipated across its dark hull.
Then the crackle beam blasted out, slamming into the Odium Fist, catching her amidships. The scene on the Fist’s flight deck relayed briefly to the holo-stage on the Silence. The blue beam flickered over every surface of the flight deck and crept up over Poledri as he paced the deck. The image froze as contact was lost with the Fist, the crew on the flight deck trapped in a painful moment as blue and white lines of energy flickered over them.
Kitzov pushed the Silence to speed, trying to move out of range of the Skarak warship as she slowly turned her rapier structures toward his ship. The blue crackle beam grew in the rapier shadows and then burst out, slamming into the Silence.
Kitzov gripped his armrests. The holo-stage cut out. The flight deck lights went dark, and then the deck was lit up by the blue crackle beam that crept over the deck and bulkheads. They flicked about like hundreds of angry snakes on a hot surface. The first blue line touched the foot of the crewman at the weapons console. It climbed up over his body, turning white as it did so. The man shuddered, his yell of pain cut short as he fell. One by one, the flight deck crew fell like dominoes. The blue flickering lines crept toward the command chair, up the plinth at the footrest, and then onto Kitzov.
The blue light’s first touch was agony and as the line crept over his body, the pain grew until he felt himself slump in the chair and slip into a dark, painful dream.
10
Boyd woke to darkness. The last thing he remembered was being dragged to the med-bay and sealed away in a pod for transport to some nasty little Faction world where he would be tried, sentenced, and executed—all to be broadcast across the Scorpio System.
He was awake, expecting at any moment to be dragged out to howls from a braying mob, but nothing was happening. He found he could move his arms and legs a little, but the restraints still held him in place. He wriggled and felt them slacken. He tried to sit up, straining against the straps across his chest. They moved a fraction and his head hit the cover of the med-pod.
Boyd could see almost nothing. He could just about see a faint light blinking outside—a small green light—and he realized that the pod’s cover was clear, so it was the ship that was dark.
He struggled against his straps and finally pulled free. He pressed his hands to the cover and tried to open it. Freedom. The Faction always went on about it, and now he would have it for himself.
But the cover would not move more than a fraction.
Then he heard a noise, nearby, just to his right. He heard Thresh. She was panicking, mumbling, grunts and yelps of frustration and fear. Then she spoke.
“Boyd.”
Boyd turned and looked across. The distant flashing shone over the cover of her pod. He could just make out her body inside—not strapped down but still trapped by the cover.
“Kitzov,” she mumbled. She was grunting now, desperate. Struggling.
“Thresh,” Boyd said in a harsh whisper. “It’s me. Are we still on the Silence?”
“I don’t know. What’s happening? I can’t see.”
“Power is down. I’m trapped. How about you?”
He could hear her struggling and then, to his surprise, he heard the cover of Thresh’s pod slide back.
“I’m free.”
“Good. Help me out of here.” Boyd pushed against the pod cover. He saw Thresh moving, a shadow in the dark, lit only by the distant single flashing light.
“I don’t know,” Thresh said. “Kitzov put you in there. I don’t think I should let you out.”
“Come on, Thresh. There’s something wrong here. Let me out and we can work out what’s gone wrong.”
With his eyes growing accustomed to the low light, he saw the dark shape of Thresh move across the med-bay to one of the consoles. The small flashing light was on that console—a tiny red point in the dark.
Thresh hit the panel.
“The power is down. This medical console has its own supply, for emergencies. I’ll get it powered up.”
Boyd was finally able to get his fingers through the small gap that had opened between the cover and its edge, and he pulled the cover down to his waist.
The med-bay lit up with
a low green glow.
“I’ve got it. The consoles here are live. Power’s on,” Thresh said.
Boyd wriggled free of the pod and glanced over at Thresh at the medical console. She was tapping into ship systems for a status report. Boyd went to a cabinet and opened it. He fumbled around inside and found an electron scalpel. He activated it and a centimeter-long blue blade appeared. With a small adjustment, he extended the electron blade to a full five centimeters. It was not much but it was a weapon. If he was going to stand a chance at getting out of here, he would need to be armed. The sooner he upgraded to a pulse pistol the better, but for now, the scalpel would have to do.
“Power is down across the ship,” Thresh said. “I am detecting life signs across the ship but no movement.”
Boyd joined Thresh at the console. “Can you access the internal surveillance net?”
“I’m trying.” Thresh looked over her shoulder at him. “You are a spy, aren’t you? Why don’t you try?”
Boyd looked at the scalpel in his hand. If he deactivated it, he would be unarmed, and he knew from personal experience that Thresh was very competent at hand-to-hand combat. Did he really want to be unarmed next to a dangerous Faction fighter? But then he saw something in Thresh’s eye, something deep. He knew he didn’t need to fear her. She looked at him with a mixture of distrust and respect. He could tell she would not hurt him, at least not right now. Somehow, he knew he could trust her.
“Okay, let me try,” Boyd said.
“Not a chance, Union spy,” Thresh said with a half-smile as she opened the sensor net. She moved closer to Boyd, pressing her back close to Boyd’s chest.
Boyd saw the holo-image of the flight deck. It was dark, all consoles were unpowered, and the only light came from the small red flashing light on each console. They flickered across the flight deck, showing that the crew were either lying on the ground or slumped against their workstations.
Blue Star Marine Boxed Set Page 32
