Without thinking, he reached for it. Traces of energy danced at the fringe of his awareness, as though inviting him to chase them. They were almost in his grasp, rippling sinuously, laced with the promise of forbidden knowledge. He just had to go a little further…
“Tris?” Ella was staring at him again, with that concerned look on her face.
Crap! “I’m fine,” he said, brushing it off. “Just thinking.”
“Well that’s new,” Kyra quipped.
Askarra gave them a beat to settle down before continuing with her report. “Several sections within the Vanguard’s hull fragment were still sealed, including a substantial armoury and a small store of provisions. This will allow us to feed our present population for an additional three days. However, even with rationing, our supplies will not last more than a week.”
“Can’t eat guns,” Tris fretted.
“I should also inform you,” she added, “that the Siszar presence has continued to grow. I now count in excess of two-hundred vessels in our vicinity, and more are arriving every hour.”
Tris caught a flash of the Empress’s sentiment. Fresh blood!
“They’re on our side,” he pointed out, before anyone asked. “Now that the Empress has met with the Elder — and survived — she’s become even more of a celebrity.”
“Be that as it may, the attacks by these lesser Siszar still concern me,” Kreon said. “We are operating out of our depth here, and the ability of one random rebel to end us all on a whim places our entire strategy in jeopardy.”
Tris was inclined to agree. The sheer number of nestships that had attacked them was the problem. The Empress and her followers could take a lot of heat, but it only took one determined alien getting through to wreak havoc.
“They can find us through her,” Tris said, realising this wasn’t obvious to everyone else. “Just like new followers are arriving to join her. They’re all connected — the Siszar I mean — to this kind of psychic network. She can’t hide from them, not that she ever would. But as long as we stay with her, the Skinless One’s lot will know exactly where we are.”
Kreon’s eyes narrowed suspiciously. Balentine nodded, as though he’d suspected it all along. Kyra merely looked bemused; whilst the attack on the Vanguard had been mentioned to her, some of the finer points had been left out.
Tris was trying to decide if a more detailed explanation was needed, when Askarra chimed in again. “High Warden Oktavius left a message while you were all underwater. Would you like me to play it?”
Kreon raised his eyebrows. “Why not?”
Askarra flickered out, to be replaced by Oktavius’ floating head.
“Kreon,” the High Warden began without preamble, “you won’t be able to reach me for the next twenty hours because I’ll be travelling.” He paused for a grin. It looked like a rictus on his gaunt face. “We’re headed for Earth, Kreon! I’ve gathered the remainder of the Council, and their vote was unanimous; four out of four. I didn’t even need to cast yours and Lord Balentine’s votes in absentia. I suppose that is a fringe benefit of being decimated. We’ve equipped a fleet with every esoteric weapon we could find, in the hopes that one of them will prove effective against the Black Ships. We still have no idea how to find them, but there is already a sector fleet in place around Earth to stop smugglers, so we plan on joining them. Any extra intel you get hold of would be considered very valuable at this point, so now is not the time to keep secrets. Reach me on my usual channel; I’ve brought Atalia out of mothballs to give us some presence on the battlefield. After all the Wardens that have sat in this chair, who’d have thought it would fall to me? Anyway, I’ll be in touch again when we arrive. Try not to get yourself killed before then.”
And the talking head disappeared.
Kreon sat back on his couch, visibly shocked.
“That’s good, right?” Tris prompted him. “We wanted them to defend Earth, or try to.”
“It is… momentous,” Kreon said, his voice oddly distant. “Atalia was a ship once, or at least, the top section of it was. After our ancestors chose that location for our headquarters, the ship was incorporated into the structure, and it hasn’t moved since. After ten-thousand years, Oktavius has brought her out of retirement for what could well be Earth’s final battle. It is fitting, if tragic, but…” the Warden gazed off into space. “I would have dearly liked to see it.”
“We still can,” Balentine said. Unlike Kreon, the elderly Warden seemed to have taken the news in his stride. “There is still time for us to make it back to Earth and join them. One glorious battle! If we can’t win like that, then perhaps it is for the best that we all perish together. Do our sacred duty, and so on.”
“No.” The steel was back in Kreon’s voice. “We will defeat the Black Ships here, or we will die in the attempt. The answer is in the data, I am sure of it. I just need more time.”
“Earth doesn’t have more time, remember?” Tris said. “And neither do we, if the Skinless One’s army keeps battering us.”
Lukas hunched forwards, reaching out to offer his bag of sweets around. “Not that it’s any of my business,” he said, as everyone bar Tris refused him with a scowl, “but doing anything under constant attack gets old. If these guys won’t stop coming after you, maybe you need to clear them out first, to get some breathing room.”
“The Empress has committed herself to killing him,” Tris said, remembering that not everyone had her voice inside their heads. “It’s like a sacred charge for her now. She brought us to the Elder, and now she’s been asked to do this. She’s going after the Skinless One no matter what we do.”
“Which makes our options extremely limited,” Kreon surmised. “Where she goes, her followers go. And without their protection, we will not survive long enough to achieve our aims. Therefore, this decision makes itself.”
“So we’ll help her?”
“Indeed.” Kreon’s eyes glittered. “However, not only for our sakes, but the sake of everyone living on Earth, we had better hope the resolution is swift.”
“Great!” said Lukas, standing up and stretching. “So we’re done here? Because I have a massage appointment.”
Kyra rolled her eyes at him, but it seemed to Tris like all animosity between them had vanished.
“I’m so glad you two finally got over each other,” he blurted. “Or did you get under each other?” He realised what he’d said as soon as he said it, and put his hand to his mouth as though he could stuff the words back in. “Oh shit, Kyra. I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean…”
The look she turned on him was cool, but thankfully not hate-filled. “That’s okay, Tris. I know you’re an idiot. But it reminds me.” She glanced around, spotting Ella in her typical place by the door, and crooked a finger at her. “Hunting for skinless aliens sounds like a lot of fun, but there’s something I’ve got to do first.”
Kreon left immediately to continue his studies. The message from Oktavius, and the idea of the ancient ship being resurrected for this desperate battle, seemed to have reinvigorated him. Tris was fine with that; if they were going to stand a chance of defeating the Black Ships, they needed the old Kreon back again.
Balentine excused himself to check on the Vanguard’s crew, a job which Tris was more than happy to hand off to him. And Lukas left for his massage; God only knew how he’d managed to arrange one so quickly. He’d never met any of the Vanguard’s crew before, and according to Kyra they’d only been back on the Folly for an hour.
That left Tris, Kyra… and Ella.
The assassin didn’t look thrilled about it. Handling intense interpersonal situations was something Tris knew she was secretly terrified of. At least when she couldn’t kill any of the people involved.
“I need you to do something for me,” Kyra started.
Ella left her self-imposed guard post by the door and flopped onto the sofa opposite Kyra. “You want to know where Evie is.”
Kyra looked suspicious. “Yes… I thought I’d ha
ve to force that out of you. So you can tell where she is?”
Ella took a deep breath, then sighed it out. “I can access the Priesthood’s network and trace the location of her last data-dump. I’ll need to do it from my quarters though. All my gear is there.”
“Okay then.” Kyra stood up to leave. “You do that. Let me know what you find out.” She smiled sweetly. “No rush.” She sauntered towards the doorway, but paused when she reached it and looked back at them. “And in case that wasn’t clear enough, by ‘no rush’, I mean Right. The Fuck. Now. Okay?” She batted her eyelashes at them. And left.
Tris switched sofas to sit next to Ella, taking her hand and twining his fingers in hers. She smiled at the gesture, then lapsed back into staring at the wall.
“Can you really do that?” Tris asked — more to hear her voice, as the weary silence was starting to freak him out.
“Yes,” she admitted, her voice small and distant.
“Won’t they have closed your account? Like, revoked your passwords and stuff?”
“No. My codes will get me in.”
“But… if you could just do this all along, why haven’t you?”
“For the same reason they haven’t closed my account. As soon as I access their network, they’ll know exactly where I am.”
“Oh…” Dread settled in the pit of his stomach. “But it’ll take them ages to get here. They’ll have to fly halfway across Siszar space to find us.”
Ella squeezed his fingers, and shook her head. “You don’t understand, Tris. They’re already here. The Priesthood has eyes everywhere. The only issue is whether they have a high-level agent nearby. I can’t imagine they’ll keep sending me beginners.”
19
With their course of action decided, Askarra came up with an easier way of setting their destination.
Having delved through her archives, she’d discovered an ancient map of this sector created by early Lemurian explorers. Correcting it for stellar drift over many centuries, she displayed the results in a hologram. Tris invited the Empress to look through his eyes as he toggled the map, and after a short time they were able to pinpoint the planet where the Skinless One had set up his base. It wasn’t exactly a secret; his followers were broadcasting a universal invitation to come and challenge their boss. He was certainly confident about his position.
Ella’s information on her sister’s whereabouts proved to be less useful than anticipated; all she could tell Kyra was that Evie had last logged onto the Priesthood’s network several days ago, from a monitoring station in orbit around the training world unofficially known as ‘Blessingway’.
Kyra snorted at that; apparently her experience of the planet had been less than idyllic.
Hundreds of nestships now swirled around the Folly in a seething mass of restlessness. The Empress was eager to get underway, if for no other reason than the longer they remained like this, the greater the chance of all out war erupting between her followers. Several fights had already flared up, which she made no attempt to stop; even Tris could tell a few challenges were inevitable. They seemed a major source of entertainment for the other Siszar, and he started to gain an understanding of this gladiatorial aspect to their society. As she pointed out; If something were to prevent us from killing each other, there would be altogether too many of us.
Seeing as how they ate the bodies of their fallen, that would rob them of their major food source, as well as adding more mouths to feed. To say nothing of ending their national sport…
“You know what they remind me of?” he asked Kreon, as they prepared to engage the grav-drive.
“I have the distinct impression that you are about to tell me.”
“Constant infighting, stepping over bodies just to get ahead, only loyal to power… and they eat each other. They’re basically politicians.”
They took the Folly only part of the way, relocating in case any members of the Priesthood came snooping, but at the same time not wanting to drag a boatload of civilians into what was almost certainly going to become a combat situation. It was a short hop via grav-drive, after which Tris, Ella, Kreon and Kyra all piled into Nightshade for the rest of the journey.
“I’ve only got two rules,” Kyra said, as she led them up the ramp. “One; wipe your feet. And two — this is especially for you, Kreon — no blowing up my shuttle. Okay?”
Tris had to admit, that seemed fair.
Lukas was already aboard. As far as Tris could tell, the big man was living there. Kyra made no comment about it, but Tris felt sure she’d declared the shuttle a massage-free zone.
It felt good to be a decent-sized crew again. After so long with just Kreon and Ella for company, Tris was over the moon to have Kyra back. He loved spending time with Ella, and even Kreon could be fun in his less-broody moments. But the banter he shared with Kyra had got him through many tough situations, both emotionally and physically. He was pathetically glad that she’d survived her ordeal, and wished there was more he could do to make her feel better. She hadn’t confided in him though, probably because of his relationship with Ella, and he found that troubling. Not that Kyra was one to wear her heart on her sleeve, but he’d hoped he could be there for her the way she had been for him.
Though somehow, he couldn’t ever imagine telling her to ’suck it up cupcake’.
There was never any question about who would pilot Nightshade; Ella took a seat in the shuttle’s small lounge for take-off, and kept herself out of sight in one of the spare cabins for most of the flight. Tris was sorely tempted to visit her there, but even his raging hormones could tell this wasn’t the best time. Whilst outwardly back to her quick-witted, snarky self, there was a sharpness to Kyra that he’d never experienced before. It made him ponder all the strange tales she’d told him over the last couple of months. He still knew almost nothing about her childhood — about any aspect of her life before Kreon. Or most aspects of her life since then, come to think of it. She was a master at deflecting, at redirecting…
And quite possibly a princess?
She’d kind of admitted it, under duress, but that didn’t really mean anything.
Because one thing he did know about Kyra: she was definitely a compulsive liar.
As Nightshade dropped back into real space, the first of the confrontations was already underway. Packs of nestships circled each other warily, their powerful arms rippling with intent. Seen en masse, the Empress’s followers were easy to distinguish from their adversaries; larger and heavier, thick scales covered their pods in muted, earthy tones. Every tentacle showed old battle scars, and they moved with a languid grace that spoke of confidence and lethality.
Swarming around them in far greater numbers, with brighter colours towards the green and yellow end of the spectrum, the Skinless One’s nestships looked new and shiny in comparison. For now, they seemed mostly content to watch the procession, as the Empress and her consort led their entourage down towards the planet.
Tris felt more than a little exposed on the Nightshade. Though she was undoubtably a capable ship, and heavily armed for her size, nothing was more confidence-inducing than an AI-controlled battle station the size of a small moon. But leaving the Folly behind had been the right decision. Tris just hoped — as he did every single time he left — that he’d survive to see her again.
For a change, the chances were good. The Empress led her followers towards the planet unimpeded, the mottled Siszar ships creating a funnel into which Kyra skilfully steered Nightshade.
If the forces in orbit were indicative of the ones on the ground, they had less to fear than he’d thought.
Still, it was no time for complacency; as the Empress was quick to remind him, any one of those ships could tear your shuttle apart if it gets close enough.
He relayed the warning to Kyra, though only an idiot would do anything other than stay the hell away from the surrounding maelstrom of enemy vessels. Numbering in the thousands, they buzzed around the planet like flies on a corpse.
They are not deep, the Empress explained, though some choose to live here regardless.
Do they come here to breed? he asked her, remembering the planet’s odd designation.
Of course not! She sounded faintly disgusted. Only humans breed here.
Wait — there are humans living here? Full-time?
There are many, on a number of breeding worlds.
What? Tris was stunned by this revelation. Then why do you call them breeding worlds?
Because that is what humans do best.
And you just… let them?
We encourage it.
Tris struggled to wrap his head around that concept. But why?
For the same reason any species breeds lesser creatures. For sport, and for food.
Tris sat back in his seat, feeling sick. Not for the first time, he wished he hadn’t asked.
Minutes later they were flying low above red-brown forests, and Tris could make out rough structures of logs in the occasional clearing. When they reached the edge of the trees they hit land that appeared to be cultivated, though not in the neat, organised way of fields back in England. Here, small stick-fences had been erected to guard patches of dull brown crops. His eyes were glued to the camera feed from beneath them, taking it all in whilst trying to spot the locals.
“I’d say we’ve found our destination,” Kyra said drily.
Tris looked up — to see a majestic crimson space-cruiser sitting smack-bang in the middle of the landscape. Sticking out like only a million tones of deep-red military hardware can, the enormous vessel dominated the surrounding farmland.
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