Ella listened intently, but said little; Tris decided not to mention that she’d been praised for her murderous mindset.
Though many Siszar of all colours and sizes still flocked along behind them, they all kept a respectable distance this time. The Elder’s influence, no doubt.
The weird, valve-like membranes worked in reverse as exits, spitting Tris and the others out into the water above the palace. Even this deep, it was bright compared to the interior. Tris’ visor refused to compensate; the jelly must have affected its sensors.
It was a short float back to the ship, for which Tris was grateful; it had been a stressful meeting, and he was now over halfway through his backup air tank.
At the first sight of the shuttle, his heart leapt. It actually looked like they were going to get out of this alive. The odds had been so heavily against them that he’d stopped trying to count the ways in which they were likely to die. Now, so close to safety, he didn’t want to risk it.
They made it to the airlock in one piece, and Kreon used his transceiver to let them in. The cocoons jostled together awkwardly as the Empress shoved them inside, then began to relax their grip as the water was pumped from the room. With the pressure relieved, Tris found he could move again, albeit with difficulty; he made a heroic effort and threw himself out of the bladder in one motion.
“Ugh!” he said, as his shoulders hit the deck. “That was horrible!”
Lord Balentine, who was still upside-down and struggling to get more than his helmet free of the jelly, gave him a glare worthy of Kreon. “At least you knew what the hell was going on!”
The shuttle had lifted off the rock shelf long before Ella made it to the pilot’s seat. The Empress and her followers had returned to their nestships, as effortlessly under half a mile of water as they did on land. Two of those ships were carrying the groaning shuttle back up towards the surface at an impressive rate. Tris could almost taste the air, though he had no idea if this planet’s atmosphere was breathable.
We made it! Now safely back in the shuttle, surrounded by things he could understand and control, he felt a surge of triumph welling up inside him. The meeting with the Elder had gone better than it had any right to. Hopefully the Siszar war was over for good, but that was more like a happy bonus as far as he was concerned. He’d gone down there with three objectives clearly defined in his mind;
1) fulfil the Empress’s obligation to visit the Elder,
2) make a deal that would keep them alive while they figured out their next move, and
3) not die horribly in the process.
He figured he’d gone three for three.
Anything more than that was gravy.
The stressing of the shuttle’s hull betrayed itself in a series of knocks and groans. But the pressure was abating with every passing second, Tris told himself. Ella was at her console, ready to fire the drives up; whatever power source the shuttle used, they’d left it switched on the whole time they’d been underwater.
Tris had never thought to ask about that. Between assassination attempts and brawls with giant aliens, questions about spaceship engineering had kind of fallen by the wayside.
“Hey,” he said to Ella, reaching forward from his seat to lay a hand on her shoulder. “We made it through this without having to fight! That must be a first.”
And suddenly, her console pinged a warning.
The look she shot him was pure disbelief. “Really? You had to jinx it?”
And in a flurry of bubbles, a school of Siszar nestships plunged down from the surface towards them.
18
The attacking ships rained down on the Empress’s followers like a meteor shower.
Smaller, but with massively greater momentum, they slammed into the friendly nestships with a force that sent them tumbling off in all directions, tentacles flailing.
As Tris stared through the viewscreen, one hit just in front of them, the crack of the impact loud enough to be heard through the shuttle’s hull.
Shit! The hull! If one of them hits us…
The thought was barely through his mind when the shuttle lurched violently, throwing him against his restraints.
“Damage,” Ella called, “but not critical. No breach.” Somehow she was managing to stay calm; Tris resolved to pay more attention to her meditation lessons in future.
“Another strike like that may well finish us,” Kreon said. “How close are we to the surface?”
“Less than a hundred metres,” Ella replied. “But we’re sinking. The Siszar drawing us have been knocked away.”
Kreon swore. “Can we fire the jets? Manoeuvre at all?”
Ella punched some controls, shaking her head the whole while. “Thrusters won’t lift us. I can try the main drive, but if it works anyone behind us is getting deep fried.”
Another impact shook the ship, and the bulkhead nearest Tris squealed in protest.
“They’ve latched on,” Ella reported. “I think they’re melting through.”
Empress! Tris was frantic. We’re being boarded!
He expected alarm, but her response bordered on glee. My consort is coming!
Tris opened his mouth to relay that information, but a screeching sound from the hull drew everyone’s attention.
“Are they coming in?” he asked, reaching around his suit for the glaive.
“No!” Ella’s calm demeanour had finally cracked. “Look!” She tapped a control, and the feed from an external monitor sprang onto the main viewscreen. On it, at an oblique angle, a massive Siszar nestship could been seen tearing at the one attached to their hull. The smaller ship clung on like a limpet, but the larger one prized it loose one limb at a time. It came free with another screech of tortured metal, and the larger ship set on it immediately, ripping the arms off and casting them aside.
The shuttle lurched again, and Ella cycled through external feeds to show that two more of the Empress’s followers had taken hold of them, dragging them back towards the surface.
Almost immediately one of them was struck by a ship from above, losing its grip on the shuttle as the pair careened off into the deep. Another ship swerved in to replace it, wrapping battle-scarred tentacles around their engine housing.
“Seventy-five metres,” Ella called out. “Seventy.”
“How many of them are out there?” Balentine asked — presumably rhetorical, as none of them cared to start counting.
Another attacking nestship streaked towards their escort, but the scarred brute on their engine raised its swimming arms and deflected the smaller ship like a pinball.
“Fifty metres!” Ella announced.
This close to the surface, the light was strong enough to see everything that was happening around them. There were nestships everywhere, tangled into balls as three of four attackers mobbed each of the larger ones. Still more screamed down from above, punching into the ocean like diving seabirds. The velocity gained from their trip through the atmosphere drove them deep, great clouds of bubbles marking their transition into the water.
“We’ll never make it,” Tris breathed.
Everywhere he looked, the Empress’s followers were writhing in the grip of countless smaller vessels. Chunks of carapace and plumes of ichor spread out around them, the attackers flaying their targets with scores of tentacles.
“Brace for impact,” Ella called, and Tris saw what she meant; dead ahead, a small brown nestship was careening straight towards them. He grabbed his helmet, making sure it was still fastened, and gripped Ella’s shoulders as the mark grew to fill the screen.
But at the last possible moment a larger body slammed into it from the side, carrying it off in a flurry of tentacles.
Two more of the heavier ships swerved past, intercepting another pair of attackers, and more rose up either side of them, flinging themselves into the thickest knots of fighting.
Are they yours? Tris asked the Empress, unable to keep his panic from spilling over into the message.
From the
palace, she replied, her eagerness giving way to shock. The Elder has sent them to aid us.
“Yes!” Tris shouted aloud. “We’ve got company! The good kind, for a change.”
Light from the surface was brighter still, and Tris felt he could almost see out.
“Twenty metres!” Ella reported, stabbing at her console, and Tris recognised the ignition controls for the main drive. “Tris, tell them to drop us as soon as we hit the surface.”
We’re nearly there, he sent to the Empress. We can take off as soon as your followers are clear.
In response the Siszar on either side of them peeled off, a last thrust of their powerful arms propelling the shuttle upwards.
The instant they breached the surface, Ella hit the ignition, and they rose into the air on a cloud of superheated steam.
And Tris got his first look at what was waiting for them.
A cloud of green nestships swooped down, their scales glittering bright in the sun.
They’re everywhere!
“Fire!” yelled Balentine.
“We’ve no weapons,” Ella shook her head sadly.
“What?” The old Warden was disgusted. “You commandeered an unarmed shuttle?”
Kreon glared back at him from the nav seat. “My options were severely limited.”
“Hold tight,” Ella told them. “We’re going to run for it.”
Hauling on the manual control stem she banked their nose hard over, making the deck into the ceiling. The shuttle’s artificial gravity wasn’t up to this level of compensation, and crashes came from the cabins as anything not strapped down went ballistic. “Sorry!” she called back.
Their new trajectory took them directly away from the attacking fleet, skimming the waves as Ella tried to outrun their pursuers. But they were fighting gravity and inertia, whereas the nestships dropping from orbit had both on their side. As Ella righted the shuttle to another cacophony of bangs and crashes, the leading nestships veered in on either side of them.
“Ram them?” Tris suggested, just as Ella attempted exactly that. But the Siszar ships were far more manoeuvrable, side-slipping effortlessly as the shuttle slewed towards them.
A big nestship shot out of the ocean beneath them, smacking into the ship on their left and folding it into a crushing embrace. The two ships plunged back into the water as Ella took advantage of the gap, veering hard to port. Her scope pinged with new threat assessments every second, the display awash with pursuing blips.
“They don’t have guns either,” Tris said, having just figured that out.
Ella shot him a look that said, ’No shit!’ before devoting herself to piloting. She wrenched the control stems back, hauling their nose up as a nestship charged through the space they’d been heading for. Her reflexes were amazing, but Tris could see the swarm of ships gaining rapidly on the rear monitors.
Empress? They’re up here too, more than we can handle. Any chance of reinforcements?
The palace ships are from the deeps. Many do not fly.
Still, Tris saw through her eyes as a handful of her followers breached water and streamed up into the atmosphere. Tris tried to find them on the monitors, but the churning scrum behind them obscured everything else.
“They’re above us,” Ella said, now sounding tense. “And in front of us.”
Tris looked back at the main viewscreen to see dots in the distance, growing rapidly.
The shuttle jerked as something hit them from behind. Tris didn’t need to look at the monitor to know their time was up.
In desperation Ella rolled them over, redistributing the cabin contents again, and curved back the way they’d come. Tris couldn’t follow the move but it ended with them pointing upwards, burning for space as she threw every scrap of power to the drive.
The Siszar in the upper atmosphere streamed down to meet them, in a game of chicken that the knackered mining shuttle had no hope of winning.
“I’m so tired of saying ‘brace for impact’,” she sighed.
Tris put his hands on her shoulders again. If they were going out, at least they were doing it together.
The nestships raced towards them, a mass of green limbs that filled the sky.
Tris tightened his fingers, and Ella reached back with one hand to twine her fingers in his. “I love you,” she whispered, though the channel was open to all.
He couldn’t help but smile. “I know.”
Then her console pinged with a different tone.
Lasers lanced across their bow and the lead nestships exploded, splattering their colleagues with organic material.
“What the—?”
“Nightshade?” Ella read from her display, as the Siszar scattered in all directions. A sleek black ship burst through them, fire blazing from turrets top and bottom. The Siszar were clustered too thickly to manoeuvre, and missiles exploded amidst them as the powerful lasers stabbed out again and again.
“That’s Kyra’s ship!” Tris yelled, as clouds swallowed it from view. “Get her on the comm!”
Ella tapped a control and flipped him a thumbs-up, but kept the shuttle twisting as the scrambling nestships swung back in their direction.
“Kyra! Thank God you’re okay!”
The voice that came back was deep and masculine. “Ah, sorry Tris, it’s just me.”
Tris felt the blood drain from his face. He’d thought he was scared a minute ago, but he wasn’t. Not until now.
“Where is she? She’s not—” he couldn’t bring himself to finish the sentence.
Kreon was staring at him intently, waiting for the answer.
Then the comm crackled, and an entirely different voice came over it.
Kyra’s voice.
“Where’d you think I am, Tris? I’m inside yo’ momma, and I’m pushing all her buttons!”
And the colossal bulk of the Folly dropped into view, a dozen turbolaser batteries spitting fire.
“Sorry,” Lukas said, “I’ve been watching cartoons with her.”
Explosions filled the air around them as the flanking nestships were riddled with energy bolts.
Faced with volley after devastating volley, the Siszar craft swerved away from the space station. Most headed out of the atmosphere, fleeing back to space.
“Yee-haaa!” Kyra crowed. “Suck on my shiny metal ball, bee-yatches!”
“Lukas?” Tris addressed the comm. “What the hell kind of cartoons do you watch?”
The Folly wasn’t really designed to operate inside an atmosphere, so they followed her back into orbit before attempting to dock.
Kyra was waiting for them as the ramp came down — one of the advantages of having an AI in charge.
Overwhelmed with relief, Tris was torn between throwing himself into her arms, or breaking down and weeping. He managed to avoid both — narrowly — and instead gave her what he hoped was a cocky grin. “Better late than never,” he said, stepping aside so the others could follow him out.
She spread her hands. “I can’t leave you people alone for five minutes! Look at the state of this shuttle. I’d say you’d wrecked it, except it was a piece of crap before we took it.”
Kreon, the next out, laid a hand on Kyra’s shoulder. “Sharki?” he asked.
Her face went hard, her lips pressed tightly together, and she shook her head.
“I am sorry, Kyra. Truly. He was an excellent soldier.”
“Yeah.” She blinked away tears, dabbing at the corner of her eyes with her knuckles. Then she looked up, and her expression turned a shade darker.
Tris followed her gaze and saw Ella, frozen in place halfway down the ramp.
“You,” Kyra said, levelling a finger. “We need to have words.”
The deadlock held for a second, until Lord Balentine appeared at the top of the ramp, struggling with the clasps on his helmet.
Kyra stared up at him, clearly confused. “Who the hell is this guy?”
***
They assembled in a crew lounge to discuss their next
move in relative comfort. Askarra’s hologram materialised to describe the living arrangements and upgrades to the Folly, and Kreon recounted their success on the planet below.
Kyra remained tight-lipped about her own experiences, and Lukas sat there munching on M&Ms like he was watching them perform a play. Tris found himself casting furtive glances at them when they weren’t looking. The big man didn’t seem to mind that he’d been accidentally co-opted into their crew. Kyra obviously hadn’t thought to return him to Helicon Prime before heading into Siszar territory… or had she? There was definitely something different about the two of them. The last time Tris had seen them together, they’d barely been able to stand being in the same room. Now they actually talked, instead of hurling barbs at each other. It was a mystery. Sadly, not one he had the time to investigate.
The Empress had returned from the surface with the ragged remnants of her entourage. She was jubilant, however; apparently fighting against her own kind was far more intoxicating than brawling with humans.
The handful of marines and engineers rescued from the Vanguard had been responsible (along with an army of repair bots) for installing the Folly’s new weaponry. Sixteen turbolaser turrets had been stripped from the wrecked chunk of cruiser, giving them more firepower than they’d had in quite some time. Still not enough to hold off an entire fleet; the Folly’s glory days of utter invincibility were long gone. “However, my advanced targeting matrices allow me to engage multiple foes simultaneously,” Askarra explained. “Assuming, that is, I am allowed to remain operational.”
The computer managed to inject annoyance into her monotone, which was hardly surprising. Tris had apologised for turning her off whilst under the Empress’s mind-meld, but he couldn’t adequately explain what had happened to him.
He shuddered at the memory. That elusive web of energy came to mind though, and he found himself fantasising about it. Had he imagined the whole thing? Or was there a psychic network permeating all of Siszar space, perhaps generated by their collective unconsciousness?
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