“But…but…the transmitter?” Jake, his eyes wide with fear.
“I’ll take care of it,” Dalia said through gritted teeth as she struggled with Patch’s weight.
“No,” a new voice gasped as someone came crawling up the stairs, step by struggling step. It was someone that Dalia recognized, and they weren’t alone.
“We will take care of the transmitter,” hissed the second voice as a figure tumbled herself onto the landing below them, clearly fighting the same psychic waves that Dalia had managed to.
The figure nearest to them was Anders.
And the figure scrabbling behind him was the red-haired, black-clad throne assassin that had almost killed them all, twice.
25
Ansible Link
“What the holy stars?” Anders heard Dalia say above him. Which, actually, was pretty much how he felt about the entire situation as well.
“I could tell you, but it’d take too long,” Anders hissed through the waves of cramping fear and nausea threatening to unman him. The only saving grace from being beaten to a bloody pulp was the fact that the pain his body was in had given him something to take his mind off his psychic pain, which had radiating down into the Death Palace.
That had been before the woman who called herself Black Rose had showed up, of course. She had sprayed him with all sorts of wound seals, injected him with an even stranger array of chemicals—one of which, apparently, was a psycho-suppressant that gave him just enough sanity to be able to move. It was more freedom than all of the Night Raiders, who he hoped were still huddled, clutching at each other in the converted hangar bay, praying for it all to stop.
“Just help me up, for heaven’s sake!” Anders hissed. He tried to move as he heard a thump and a groan, then Dalia’s strong hands were under his shoulders and hauling him to his feet.
Anders wavered. This close to Jake, the feelings were unstoppable, even with whatever drugs Black Rose had. He shook his head as he saw Dalia step back to where she had deposited Patch, not offering to help the similarly-struggling Black Rose at all.
“Patch!” Anders’s heart lurched at seeing the ruin of the young Voider’s chest plate. He made to move forward, but Dalia held out a hand.
“It’d take too long to tell you,” she echoed his words. “He’ll be fine if we can get him to the Nova’s medical bed…” She had already slung her arms under his shoulder and was more carrying him than helping him to walk, Anders saw.
“My Code-X has better medical facilities.” Black Rose managed to push herself up to the landing, and Anders saw her look into the room.
“You’ll have to excuse me if I choose to refuse your offer,” Dalia muttered angrily, reaching the airlock on the opposite side of the landing.
“Is that it?” Anders said, still frozen in place as his eyes sought out what had so entranced the assassin.
Black Rose had appeared as Anders fell to the floor in front of the bonfire-bell, certain that he was dying as waves of panic and terror washed over them all. She had been struggling herself but had been the only person able to at least move, thanks to her psycho-suppressant drugs, he thought.
But she didn’t kill me. Anders still didn’t know what sort of game she was playing. She said that she wanted information, and that she was going to get it, that much Anders could understand.
‘And I need you alive,’ she had said to him as she used her own suit’s scanners to locate the others.
She knew about Patch’s field ansible, and she knew about the Archon device, but how she had found out this information was beyond him. The woman appeared to be on the verge of rage at every moment.
But she saved my life, Anders thought. Even if it was only to kill me later, she saved my life.
“Do you have micro-explosives?” Anders breathed. There was a hiss of the airlock door behind them, then an angry grunt as Dalia manhandled Patch through to the relative safety of the Nova on the other side. The waves of emotion lessened somewhat as soon as Jake was out of sight, but they were still bad.
“We’re not destroying it, Corsigon.” Black Rose, similarly, was seeming to recover a little. “I’m taking it in. Which, I think, is what you had intended to do as well, wasn’t it?”
“Yes,” Anders breathed, uncertain. But we were going to use it to stop the Eternal Empress, and you work for her.
As if in answer to his unspoken question, Black Rose half-turned, covering him with her laser pistol. Anders still had no weapons, and, despite the medicines this woman had applied to him, was still as weak as a child.
“For the moment, our goals align,” she said. “And as soon as your Ilythian steps up to your ship’s bridge, she will realize that my Code-X has already docked with your Nova,” Black Rose said smartly. “I tracked and hailed your Moriarty,” she said, with a small smirk at the name, “and informed him of the situation. Your tactical intelligence was very reasonable in seeing things as I do. He cannot jump, he cannot even fly at full impulse, and his shields are barely at thirty percent. Luckily, however, if you choose to remain docked to my Code-X when I jump, then my field engines will encompass both ships.” She squinted at him. “Or I could take the field ansible right now, get on board my ship, and leave you to face a few hundred Night Raiders and their shadow-craft?”
Anders gritted his teeth and gave a silent snarl at the woman, but he knew when he was beaten.
Until I get some strength back and take over your ship, he promised himself.
There was a groan from behind Black Rose as one of the balled-up figures started to move, shaking. It was a Night Raider, who was similarly recovering from the psychic wave that Jake had been generating.
Black Rose continued to look at Anders as she casually shot the man dead.
Yeah, I get it. You’re a hard-ass. Anders nodded. “Fine. You win. We take the field ansible.”
“I’m glad that you see things as I do.” She turned quickly to the only surviving podium-like control console while gesturing for Anders to move toward the device.
“Huh? Why me? I’m not even an engineer!” Anders said.
“Because I’m the one with the gun. Now go and wait for my command!” Black Rose was scanning the console irritably, her brow furrowed slightly as she tried to work out the controls.
Anders stepped in front of the giant metal dish with the small hook-like ansible suspended on rods in its center. It looked ridiculously small for such a powerful thing, able to beam subatomic particle-waves across the entire galaxy.
He heard a series of dull chimes from Black Rose’s controls, and then the rising klaxon of an alarm. Oh great. The thing was programmed not to be tampered with.
“It’s fine!” she spat, apparently lying. “All I have to do is reduce the energy flow to the field ansible.” Anders watched as her gloved hands twisted dials and hit buttons.
In front of him, the small unit looked like any other dead piece of metal. There were no lights, no glittering fields emanating from it. But all the same, Anders felt a dread in his stomach that was somehow saner than the psychic torment he had so recently felt, and the hairs on the back of his neck were standing on end.
“Got it. It should be released from the mechanism. Just detach the couplings and we’re good to go,” Black Rose said.
Anders hesitated, although he didn’t know why. There was just something about this tiny device that radiated threat.
But the klaxon was wailing, and Jake’s psychic waves were lessening by the second. How long would it take before the raiders were able to get to their feet and figure out what was going on, Anders wondered.
They probably already were—
Anders reached up and seized the field-ansible…
As something dark and ancient, and deeply, cosmically insane filled him.
Epilogue
Sector 8 (Near Territory)
The Code-X craft rocketed through the Void, rising above the debris field as the lights of Bonetown behind it started to come on. The shapes
of the gigantic raider shadow-craft started to uncouple from their docking positions and turn to follow it, but the angular, pointed Code-X craft was too quick.
It was too quick even with the added weight of the Nova slung under its belly. The clipper was a little more than half the size of the Code-X Reconnaissance vessel, but the superior throne craft had no trouble whatsoever carrying its wounded ally.
And then, with a ripple of bright lights and distorting colors, the Code-X fired its FTL engines, and the haze of light eclipsed both vessels long before the pursuing craft could ever get a weapons lock on them.
On board the Code-X craft, the atmosphere was chill. Black Rose regarded her new ‘guests’ and thought that she should be proud of what she had achieved. She had the criminal Anders and the Ilythian spy known as ‘Dalia,’ and she had also managed to secure two new throne dissidents: Patch McGuire the Void engineer, and J-14, the PK.
It was the one called Dalia that she had to be careful of. For the moment, she was busy seeing to her three comrades, but Black Rose knew it wouldn’t be long before the two women would go head-to-head.
But for the moment, she had the upper hand. She had Patch McGuire in a medical bay under heavy sedation, she had J-14 in the bay next to him, also under sedation owing to his erratic PK abilities, and Black Rose had the fugitive Lieutenant Anders Corsigon in the last remaining medical bay, but she had no idea what was happening to him.
Anders had fallen into some sort of stupor as soon as he had gotten his hands on the field ansible. Black Rose figured that he must have finally succumbed to his injuries and psychic strain. In the end, it had been Anders’s feverish, near-comatose state that had helped her convince Dalia to transfer the wounded to her vessel.
Which also makes it a lot easier to bargain with the Ilythian, if she knows I have the power of life and death over her friends, Black Rose thought with a small, bitter smile.
Finally, she would be able to get some answers.
THANK YOU
Thank you so much for reading Night Raiders, the third story in the Memories of Earth series. Anders, Dalia, and their team escaped the Night Raiders and the void with the help of a very unexpected ally. The real question is whether they are free or prisoners..
The next story in the Memories of Earth series is called Secrets of Ilythia and will be available soon. Keep an eye out for it on Amazon.
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Night Raiders Page 13
