I grinned back, relief making my knees feel watery. “What took you so long?”
Hirin held a hand out to help the young man get to his feet, and he wasted no time in doing so. He swung his daughter up into his arms again. “Thank you so much,” he almost whispered, as if fear had stolen his voice.
Outside the door, Baden held his datapad and another techrig that didn’t look familiar to me. The unfamiliar one was pressed to the wall next to the door’s control pad. With a free finger, he tapped codes onto its screen.
“Should I ask?”
He glanced at me and winked. “Everybody clear?”
Hirin listened for a moment, then nodded. “We didn’t hear anyone else in the stairwell, and there’s nothing now. Better reseal it.”
“Already on it,” Baden said, and a series of clunks sounded as the lock-seals activated around the perimeter of the door.
The decking vibrated under our feet as another impact shook the station. Hirin grabbed my hand. “Time to go again,” he said, tugging me after him.
“Move, everyone,” I ordered, and caught the eye of the young man with the child. “You too. Let’s get you both somewhere safe.”
He didn’t need urging, but ran after us. I wondered belatedly, as the battle raged outside and rattled FarView, if the Tane Ikai would be the haven I hoped.
AS WE SPRINTED back down the docking arm corridor toward the Tane Ikai, another impact hit one of the lower levels and the overhead lights dimmed. I winced, waiting for the repaired stairwell door to burst open behind us, but it held. We rounded the curve and the Tane Ikai came into sight. Maja and Jahelia Sord stood at the airlock, Maja looking anxious, and Jahelia Sord looking—defiant? worried? Whatever it was, I’d never seen that particular expression on her before.
All along the docking arm airlocks slid shut as other ships detached, either to try and assist the station, or perhaps just hoping to put some distance between them and the fight. I wasn’t sure that was the smartest move, but everyone had to decide for themselves.
“Everybody inside,” I ordered, not wanting to stand around in the corridor talking to Sord or explaining how I’d managed to pick up a man and a little girl. “My crew, head to the bridge and be prepared in case we have to move. Everyone else, follow me to the galley.”
Surprisingly, no-one argued. I didn’t plan to go anywhere immediately—I thought the ship was as safe docked here as it was going to be in the middle of a dogfight, and I didn’t see us being a huge help with all the Protectorate ships already out there. If the worst happened and the station started to break apart—but I wouldn’t let my mind go there.
Sord and the young man followed me into the galley. The first thing I did was pull a double caff for the man and a cup of juice for the girl. “Here, sit,” I said, putting the drinks into their hands and motioning to seats at the big table. “Hold onto these. If we get a big jolt they could go flying.” Neither argued. The man took a careful sip of the caff and closed his eyes. A bit of colour came back to his cheeks.
“Where’s your ship?” I asked Sord.
“As far as I know it’s still docked,” she said, “but there’s a minor breach in that section of the C-arm and the blast doors came down. I can’t get to it.” She ran a hand through her straight, glossy hair, shattering the unruffled air she tried to project.
“You can stay here,” I said, “as long as you have to. If you need help getting back to your ship when this is over, we’ll see what we can do.”
She looked almost surprised, as if she thought she’d have to convince me to let her stay aboard. I didn’t have time to talk about that, though. I turned to the young man.
“I’m Luta Paixon, and this is my ship,” I told him. “I haven’t had a chance before this to ask your name.”
He flashed a grateful smile, which transformed his pale face from distraught to handsome. “I’m Farro Grenna, and this is my daughter, Neive,” he said.
“Do you live on FarView?”
He nodded. “Temporarily, at least. My partner moved here for work six months ago—”
His voice shuddered, and he broke off, glancing at Neive. “My partner works as a manager at one of the restaurants,” he said. “He was at work when—”
“I’m sure it will be fine,” I said, although I wasn’t sure at all. The hit had felt like it happened on one of the lower levels. If he’d been on the other side of the station and the protective airlock doors had engaged, or if he’d been in a refuge station at the time—but we obviously weren’t going to talk about those or the other possibilities in front of the child. “You can stay here on the ship as long as you need to, but we may have to disengage from the docking arm, depending on what happens.”
He nodded. “I understand. I can’t thank you enough—”
I held up a hand and smiled. “Don’t thank me yet. In fact, no thanks necessary at all. Just make yourselves comfortable in here, all right? I have to go and talk to my crew and see what the situation is.”
The ship shuddered, sloshing the liquids in their cups a little, but they didn’t spill. “I know this is scary, but I’m sure it will be over soon,” I told the girl, leaning down to her eye level and putting on my brightest smile.
Farro nodded again. Neive looked up at me and spoke the first words I’d heard her say. “Do you have any cookies?”
Farro tried to shush her, but I smiled and nodded. “I think I do.” In the cupboard under the scrubber there was a container of the crunchy solanto cookies Cerevare Brindlepaw had taught us how to make. Rei had proven herself able to duplicate the Lobor’s recipe with great accuracy, and they’d become a crew favourite; brown-sugar-sweet, flavoured with roga-nut spice from the planet Renata, and drizzled with a sweet glaze.
I put two on a plate for the girl. Her father tried to remonstrate but I shook my head. In the midst of the frightening things that were happening, a couple of cookies was the least I could do.
Then I left them, motioning for Sord to follow me to the bridge. “Have you heard from Sedmamin?” I asked her.
She shook her head. “I thought I saw him the first day I arrived, but it was across the hub and I wasn’t sure. Nothing since then.”
I couldn’t believe I was worried about the man who’d caused me so much grief, but if he’d been caught in the explosion—whatever he’d had to offer us to help against the Chron would be gone, too.
“Well, let’s hope he’s safe, or we’re both out of a job,” I said, but the humour didn’t really work. My mind constructed horrible images of the station levels below us. I felt like I couldn’t pull enough air into my lungs. The tourists. The families. People going about their daily business or having some fun. A bustling little microcosm of life the way it was all through Nearspace.
On the bridge, everyone sat expectantly waiting for me, looking either worried, nervous, or both. I got my first glimpse, out the front viewscreen, of the scene outside the station. Small Chron ships—for they were Chron, the ships matched the configuration of the ones we’d seen before—buzzed around the station like angry hornets, launching torp-like missiles and occasional particle-beam blasts. A clutch of Protectorate fighters and at least one Pegasus-class vessel, like Lanar’s, harried them, trying to drive them off or destroy them. But the Protectorate ships were hampered by their need to keep the station safe, so they had to aim with care.
From this vantage point on the docking arm, the damage to the lower level was horribly obvious. Debris floated in a tumbling, lazy spray beyond a gaping hole in the station’s outer wall. A shimmer of yellowish light shone in the dark hole like a beacon, the emergency field straining to stay intact every time the shields suffered another impact. I forced my eyes away from the debris, not wanting to identify bodies, which surely formed part of the mess. From the three docking arms, ships of various types disengaged, moving away from the station, whether to join the fray or distance themselves from it. Lights on some levels dimmed as I watched, as energy reserves were divert
ed to power the shields.
I had never felt Yuskeya’s and Viss’s absence as keenly as I did in that moment. The world was tumbling to pieces around us and two of the keys to my crew were absent. Maja sat, looking a little paler than usual, at the nav board, and Hirin was at the unofficial “security” station—that is, looking after the weapons that we’d never really needed a designated board for in previous years. The engineering board was conspicuously empty.
Jahelia Sord said, more humbly than I’d ever heard her speak, “Captain? With your permission, I can sub in at the engineering board if you need me to.”
I hoped my surprise didn’t show in my face and raised an eyebrow. “Your qualifications? I’ve seen your Protectorate Academy records, and I don’t remember an engineering credit.”
Hirin also stared at her, waiting to see what I’d say.
She grinned and held up thumb and forefinger almost touching. “I was this close to finishing the course when I left the Academy, and I’ve got . . . a few years of experience under my belt since then.” She glanced at the others and then winked at Hirin. “I’ll bet Gramps would say experience is the better teacher anyway.”
Surprising me, Hirin grinned. “Your call, Captain. But she does have a point.”
I wondered briefly what Viss would say—I shuddered to imagine, actually—and then nodded. “If you break my ship—”
“I’m aboard her, too, and you know how I like to look out for myself,” she assured me, and slid into place at the board. It felt oddly comforting just to see the seat filled.
A blossom of energy and debris bloomed against the dark backdrop of space as a Protectorate fighter took out one of the Chron ships.
“I count six Chron left, and ten Protectorate ships,” Baden said. “We have the numbers on our side. If they don’t run soon the Protectorate will just keep picking them off.”
“But they can still do more damage before that,” Maja said, her eyes riveted on the viewscreen.
“Ten to six isn’t exactly insurmountable odds,” Jahelia Sord said. “You’ve got weapons, should we be going to help?”
“We’re not a fighter, we’re a far trader,” I said, perhaps a little too sharply. “We can defend ourselves, but we don’t have the maneuverability. We don’t want to be a hindrance, more civilians for the Protectorate to worry about.” Truthfully, disengaging and going to help had been my first instinct as well, but practicality kept me from doing anything about it. What I’d said was true; the Tane Ikai wasn’t built for dogfighting, although we could hold our own when necessary. And now I had Farro and Neive to think about, too. They’d already been thrown into danger through no fault of their own.
But the Chron made no move to retreat, apparently determined, as Maja said, to simply do as much damage as they could. I watched another torpedo sing toward the station’s central spire. The shields flared a protective blue and the torpedo detonated harmlessly. The yellow repair field flickered but held.
For every few that were foiled, one got through. Another tremble ran through the ship, as an impact erupted on the main hub’s docking level and the energy dissipated through the station and out along the docking arms, but it felt less violent than earlier ones. I sat down in my chair and switched the servos on to massage my back. I could practically feel them bumping over the tension knots in my muscles.
And then they hit us with the big one.
Chapter 11 – Lanar
Among the Relidae
MY STOMACH DROPPED along with the launch as we left the relative safety of the Cheswick and plummeted down toward the alien city. Cerevare Brindlepaw had assured me we were perfectly safe, but I was keenly aware of descending into the environs of our enemies—or at least the close descendants of our enemies. That this particular sect claimed to seek peace and friendship was comforting, but a lifetime of conditioning had instilled fear into the very word Chron. I resolved to think of these Chron, the peaceful variety, from now on only as Relidae, the way Professor Brindlepaw identified them. The names Chron and Pitromae could stay reserved in my mind for those who sought to harm us.
This side of the planet lay under the blanketing shadow of nighttime, and the flickering glow of lights showed only small inhabited regions compared to a planet like Earth or even Mars. That made sense for a breakaway segment of the race that had separated from its more aggressive counterparts and sought a peaceful existence away from the home world. From the height of the Cheswick, the planet showed green and umber, suggesting deserts and oases rather than the watery blue globe of Earth. I expected the water was there—the Chron were not so different from us that they could survive without water. Our oldest investigations into their species, by way of tests performed on the few corpses left to us as a legacy of the Chron war, had provided that much information.
“Could be a Nearspace planet, coming in at night like this,” Linna Drake observed.
I startled out of my reverie. “It could be, at that,” I agreed. “Let’s hope we get a Nearspace-type welcome.”
She turned her head just enough to observe me out of one eye. “Expecting trouble? You might have warned me.”
I shook my head. “Not expecting, no. But . . . wary.”
“You could have said. There’s such a thing as playing things too close to your chest.”
“Just drive, Drake,” I said, and she laughed.
Viss Feron cleared his throat. “Without saying too much, let me assure you that we’re not without . . . options,” he said. He didn’t look at me directly.
I opened my mouth to say something, but realized that although I’d specifically told him not to bring weapons to the surface, that still left options. Viss was a man who thought outside the box. I closed my mouth. Brindlepaw hadn’t warned against it, after all.
Instead I said to Drake, “Ping Professor Brindlepaw again, would you? I want her to know we’re getting close, in case there’s anyone she needs to notify. I’m not in the mood to be shot down as an unidentified hostile.”
“Just wary, right,” she snorted, but she put the message through.
“Admiral, you are cleared to land,” Brindlepaw said. I punched up the video on my datapad, and her furred face appeared, liquid canine eyes bright and upright ears pricked forward. She smiled in greeting. “All necessary authorities have been alerted, and you should encounter no difficulties.”
“Good to know, Professor,” I acknowledged. “We’ll see you shortly, then.”
We came in over the city from the west, wary of dipping too low until we could gauge the height of buildings. A few other flying vehicles crossed the sky at lower altitudes, and the roadways below were also quiet. I wondered just how late at night it was, here. Although the darkness masked details, the city followed the usual structure of transportation ways networked through developed sectors. The lights that glowed in the windows were not the yellow burn that harkened back to candlelight, but ranging through blues and greens, spotted with dots of purer white. Blocks of buildings, too, showed subtle differences. There were few discrete structures; buildings crowded close together, as if a tall glass structure might share the lower part of a wall with a shorter, distinctly different building. And instead of generally square and rectangular shapes, many structures featured upward-sweeping rooflines or odd, irregular architectures. I wondered if the style was influenced by the Chron’s highly individuated bone crests.
The coordinates Brindlepaw had sent carried us down to a wide landing area in front of an impressive building. Two glass-fronted sections shaped like soaring cathedral windows anchored a taller, slender, central connecting segment. Greenish light shone from the windows—or was the glass tinted? Low, neat hedges of pale green leaves lined the sides of the landing area, and an inlaid stone walkway led from it to the front of the building. The landing pad glowed with luminescent markings similar to the few examples of written language the Chron war had left with us.
As we descended, I made out three forms standing just outside the obvi
ous doors of one of the cathedral ends of the building. A human, a Lobor, and, I guessed, a Chron. A Relidae, I corrected myself. As vehemently as Luta had assured me of their good intentions, I still felt a clench of fear in my gut as I recognized the form. It stood relaxed, hands clasped behind its back. The Lobor—obviously Professor Brindlepaw—lifted a hand in greeting, and the human did as well. As soon as the viridian light fell across her face, I knew it was Yuskeya Blue, and the fear was replaced by a warm rush of relief. She was safe.
“Shall I stay with the shuttle?” Linna Drake asked as we settled down on the landing pad and she cut the engines.
“No, come along,” I said. “I doubt anyone’s going to make off with the launch, and you might as well take in as much of this as you can. We’re going to be writing reports forever about this meeting.”
She grimaced, then nodded and unbuckled, waiting for me and then Viss to exit the ship before following. I thought she locked it up behind us.
My first breath of the alien air was . . . strange. The night had, presumably, lent a coolness that it might not have held during the daytime, but it was desert-dry as well. Unusual scents, like cooking spices from a foreign culture, wafted on the breeze, neither appetizing nor repulsive, merely different. Like the planet itself, the air seemed green and brown—it managed to hold the dusty scent of desert and sand, and verdant growth, at the same time.
Yuskeya and Professor Brindlepaw had started toward us, although the Relidae held back, waiting. Yuskeya reached us first and saluted. She wore a yellow tunic-like blouse that fell past her hips and narrow-legged grey pants tucked into soft boots. Although I knew she wouldn’t have been in Protectorate uniform aboard the Tane Ikai, I didn’t think these were her own clothes. Since she’d been here several days now, I supposed it made sense that she’d have had to find something else to wear.
“Admiralo, it’s good to see you,” she said. Although her face remained calm, I read relief and pleasure in her dark eyes. And perhaps something else, but I couldn’t identify it in the half-dark. “Commander Drake,” she added with a smile, and shook Linna’s hand. Then she abandoned Protectorate reserve and threw herself into Viss Feron’s arms. His circled her in a tight embrace and I saw her close her eyes.
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