in short sentences, separated by longer periods of silence while Nicholas became more comfortable in the command chair; but what Reigel eventually said still came as a shock. “That’s about all I can show you. I’ll get you to stop a little further along and I’ll get off.”
“Where do we go now?”
“Not we, just me; your staying with Basilisk.”
“What am I to do?”
“You are going to go back to the fortress?”
“If I am to stay here; then how?”
Reigel looked at him puzzled. “In Basilisk.”
There was more than a trace of panic in Nicholas’s voice. “Alone?”
Reigel smiled in a reassuring way. “Basilisk is the rebellions last chance, and she is now yours to command, to go anywhere you choose.”
“Me. No; you can’t go.” Fear gripped Nicholas. “I can barely move this… this... I can’t get all the way back there… I don’t even know in what direction to go.”
“Isla will do everything, except fight for you.”
“Fight,” Nicholas gasped. “I can’t fight… I don’t know how to do anything?”
“Then you must learn. The rebellion swings about you alone. I must not be part of it; I explained.”
“I need you, or I will fail.”
Reigel could sense Nicholas’s panic. “No Nicholas: you will not fail, you will free your people, in the same way you fought the Veldt and the captain.”
“The Drakken…I am one, against a fully trained crew?”
“Two, if you include Isla. Trust her; trust basilisk, together you can do far more that you realize.”
Nicholas was at last realizing that Reigel really intended to go. “Be that as it may, I can’t think of any at this moment.”
“For a start, the crew of the Drakken are simply doing a job, you have a passion.”
“The Marshal has a passion to see me dead.”
“And a rule of battle is not to hate your enemy: it clouds the judgment. You have already learned that.”
“The Drakken is bristling with weapons.”
“Battles are not always won by weight of firepower; they are won by placing firepower in the right places.”
Nicholas tried pity as his last persuasion “I want your help Reigel.”
“You may want it, but you don’t need it, and you cannot have it any more than you have had.”
“Then I would feel much more confident with you beside me,” he almost begged.
“And that is all it is; a feeling. This is the last I can do, from now on you and your people must cope with whatever comes your way.”
“Then it saddens me that our parting must be under such circumstances, for there was much I would like to have talked with you about; I fear I will never have that opportunity again.”
“I have confidence in you Nicholas: we will meet again and have that conversation“.
Nicholas doubted that would happen as he realized they were approaching the abandoned rebel quarters.
“Here,” Reigel looked at Nicholas and reached to clasp his hand firmly in both of his. “May your God be with you Nicholas Day of Boramulla?” Reigel stood and walked back out of the cabin.
The feeling of loss was greater than Nicholas could have expected. His mentor had gone, and now everything depended on him. What was he to do? How could he take on the Drakken in battle? It was many times the size of this little ship, and undoubtedly had an armory that was as proportionally deadly. The thought suddenly struck him “Isla, how are we armed?”
“I am equipped with three weapon systems.”
“The Drakken, what does it have that we don’t?”
“I have never encountered the Drakken, so that I cannot say. The Military guard their secrets well.”
“Can we face them in battle?”
“Face to face? From a purely tactical point of view, the short answer is no,”
It wasn’t what he wanted to hear and Nicholas’s heart sank.
“In a straight battle of attrition, a standard warship: and I assume the Drakken is that; would win by being able to bring more firepower to bear on us, over a longer period of time, than we can on them. That is how capital ships fight. They are armored, so they take as little damage as possible while hitting back with overwhelming firepower. So what we must not do; is not to be cornered where they can achieve that.”
Nicholas’s heart sank even further.
“I may not know their capabilities, but I’m confident that we will have superiority in speed and maneuverability. Warships are generally not designed for skirmishing in an atmosphere, and to chase us will probably mean they have to divert power to the engines instead of their shielding. Of course these are both assumptions.”
In his gloom Nicholas tried to think how he could take the advantage, but this type of warfare was far beyond his knowledge. His mind was a blank, and sheer panic had already begun eating at the edges of his confidence.
Simeon tried to lift his head high as he walked out into the courtyard, but the brisk steps and slight smile on his face masked a despair that he had never felt before. He looked again for Nicholas, but could see him nowhere. He didn’t want to believe that he would have deserted them, even if it were the sensible thing to have done; but the proof was in his eyes.
Some of the others were already there; more were coming out of other doorways, all collecting together close to the stables.
The gate was open and other rebels from down in the city were being brought in. Their faces visions of terror: as they beheld the ominous shape of the Drakken for the first time.
Antony was waiting and they clasped each other warmly. “We fought well.” Simeon said without the conviction that he felt they had.
“We did,” replied Antony, “But tyranny has no conscience or convention. He who is prepared to lay waste to all; can make the last call.”
“Another day, another time it will be different Antony. The fuse has been lit; and long may it smolder, because one day it will blow up in the face of the Marshal.”
The guards began herding them towards the stone steps that led up to the battlement walkway. Simeon let himself be pushed forward, though he noted they were driven with less violence than they had been the previous day. Some even passed sympathy in the way they looked or spoke.
It was a long and painful walk up many steps until they each stood back to the courtyard, before a coil of rope. Simeon lifted his eyes. It looked so calm and peaceful as the first light began to break over the city.
There was somebody crying to his left, he tried not to look who it was by looking right along the line of faces: some were missing. A guard had told him last night that he believed it wrong to execute the women and he would try to spirit some away. It seems he had, but not Maryanne: she was known and thought a traitor; so she was there. She smiled back, but it was false; she was obviously scared, and had reason to be. Simeon forced his eyes away and down. There was a small crowd of city folk brought to witness the occasion; they looked tiny from this height. At least as deaths go, it would be terrifying, but quick.
An officer and two guards began making their way along the line, picking up the rope and slipping a loosely tied noose over each head before tightening it and draping it over the right shoulder.
Simeon expected his hands to be bound but none were; he knew there was no point; a sudden jolt, a snapped neck and instant death was preferable to a slow and agonizing one; trying to support the weight of their own bodies from choking them.
He had never though before that a rope would hang so heavy on his shoulders. He looked at the last dawn he would see. He would try to face his fate with courage, as would he hoped the others.
Far over to his side he could hear more crying and the sharp shouts of the guard. He felt a jab in his back pushing him up onto the top of the wall between the crenulations.
The dawn was spreading rapidly over the sky and on the distant horizon he could see the first bird to take wing. Framed in t
he pink glow it was flying straight and true, directly towards him.
A short way ahead, Nicholas could see the end of the tunnel where it opened out into the darkness of pre-dawn. A section of the paneling in front of him lit up, icons and words flashing on as others began to pulse. “Flight controls operative,” said Isla.
“What shall I do?” Nicholas’s voice was apprehensive.
“Maybe a short display; to further familiarize you with the controls?”
“Yes... I think that’s a good idea.”
“Keep your hands over the domes. Hold them lightly, and follow their movements. I will demonstrate what you need to know.”
The pliable hemisphere under his fingers felt alive as it pulled his hands this way and that, correspondingly the craft moved slowly to left and right, up and down.
At what point his fear left him Nicholas could not recall; but he did know that he had never been so exhilarated in his life. Suddenly he felt his hands move back sharply and the night sky, laden with stars rolled into his view. There was no feeling of movement, until out of the corner of his eye he saw what he had always thought of as the companion moon; it was growing rapidly in size.
“I am under full cloaking so for a few minutes we will be undetected.”
“Cloaking?”
“I am invisible.”
They banked to the right; below them he could now see the brilliant blue and white planet as it curved away out of sight. Nicholas gasped and it took him some time to come to terms with the fact that the beautiful sight below him; was the place of his birth. He wished he could have shown Harriet. But he had no time to lapse
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