by Blaze Ward
“Why?” he asked, suddenly turning cagey. “I’ve done my research and am frankly surprised that you were willing to deal at all with a male.”
Kathra noted the way Isaev’s majordomo cringed, and the comitatus warriors around the room bristled, ever so slightly. Nobody spoke, but eyes suddenly turned cruel and cold around her.
“I did my own research, Mikhail Isaev,” she replied. “There are places I could have gone. Women I could have worked with, but your hatred of the Sept is something that tipped the scales in your favor.”
“I do not hate the Sept Empire,” he retorted.
“And you will barely trade with them at all, preferring to have all your corporate hulls go no farther than the last TradeStations in Free Worlds space,” Kathra said.
“I wasn’t aware that anybody was paying that close of attention,” he blinked, somewhat surprised.
“What I was asking was a major undertaking, Factor Isaev,” Kathra let her voice go almost as cold as the women around her. “And the Sept has made it clear that they would see the Mbaysey broken and returned to the Imperial fold. I will not allow it, but whoever I dealt with would come in for some level of Sept displeasure.”
“And later, it will be worse?” he asked, licking his lips unconsciously.
Kathra shrugged, unwilling to speculate. The Sept might have left Azgon and decided to never bother her again.
And pigs might fly.
It would only be a matter of time. Or rather, distance. If they could not pursue her into uncharted, unclaimed space, they might have no choice but to grind their teeth and relinquish their revenge.
And pigs might fly.
“Who knows?” Kathra settled on. “Tavle Jocia is central on many trade routes, which is one of the reasons we picked it. It also provides a path for the Sept to strike here, as long we remain. Fortunately, they cannot send significant forces this deep into Free Worlds space, and SeekerStar can handle a Patrol.”
“Should I look at building heavier vessels?” he asked.
Again, Kathra shrugged. If the Sept even threatened this system, she would probably never return to the Free Worlds. There were other TradeStations, further from Sept space, they just didn’t have the ship-building capacity Mikhail Isaev had at his fingertips.
Perhaps she needed to just buy the sorts of oversized metal-stamping equipment that she could use to make a new ringship herself. ForgeStar already produced raw bar and sheet stock, most of which was used on the ships for repair and smaller tools.
She could be entirely free at that point, if she got desperate.
“Commander, I’m picking up an alarm from WinterStar,” Ife called out. “Drives are beginning to charge for an unauthorized jump.”
Kathra rounded on the Trade Factor, as though he was somehow at fault, but the man had gone pale, an ethnic risk with skin already nearly white to begin with. It wasn’t him. But something had gone wrong with Erin and Daniel.
“Bring everything to alert and contact them immediately,” Kathra ordered. “Get the Trade Factor to his shuttle in case we have to give chase. Someone stealing my ship won’t ever be able to run far enough to escape me.”
Stina stepped up and directed the two males off her bridge, while everyone else rocketed to the hallway and began to race outward to the launch tubes that would see their Spectres in space and ready to fight.
Kathra remained here. She would need to direct everything and SeekerStar had the firepower to destroy her old ship, if necessary. Hopefully, it wouldn’t come to that.
Thirty-One
Daniel pulled on the gloves to his suit as they traversed a long hallway with frequent warning signs that you were about to enter zones that might not be comfortable for humans. Technically, he wasn’t sure he even qualified at this point, but his biology was still human, as were the four women with him.
He had never tried protecting four others with a defensive field, but maybe he could just cover their heads with breathable air if something bad happened. Maybe this was a dangerously stupid idea and he should just turn around right now and flee for his life.
It was a seductive idea. Just leave now and forget all this nonsense forever.
Daniel stopped and shook his head like he might rattle something loose. Around him, the four women had all come to a halt, almost like there was an invisible line in the deck, mocking them.
He growled when he realized that it really was an effect being projected on him. Something like he could do. Daniel and the others had just walked up to the outer edge of what he presumed was a zone of compulsion. A wall intended to drive him back quietly, and possibly without him even understanding why.
Anybody but a chef with a Golden Diamond awarded by Gastropode magazine, and it might have worked.
“What was that?” Erin snarled under her breath as she looked at him sideways.
“A figment of my imagination,” Daniel snapped back at her. “We have arrived.”
He started to take a step and realized that Iruoma was frozen in place. That surprised him, as he always thought of her as the fiercest of Kathra’s warriors. Tattooing one’s skull was one of the most painful places he could think of, and she had all manner of designs that she showed off daily by shaving her skull to a gleaming polish.
But there were whites visible around her dark pupils now. Her breathe was ragged and accelerated. Something about that barrier had gotten inside her mind, and it appeared to take everything she had right now just to stand still and not flee madly.
Daniel stepped in front of Iruoma and studied the woman. Dark brown skin clad in tangerine like a flame on a dark night.
Fierceness, incarnate.
“Iruoma?” he asked, but there was nobody home inside those eyes.
Terrified, but unwilling to admit it even to herself.
He grabbed her by the lapels and tugged until the woman looked down, staring into his face from ten centimeters away. Her eyes were like full moons at night now.
Daniel didn’t want to test if his powers could work inside their field, since he had no idea what might happen if he did. Might warn them he was here.
Might even open him up for the sorts of domination by them that Urid-Varg had once done to these women, when that salaud had gotten into his mind the need for a harem.
He pulled her close and kissed her full on the lips, holding tight to her lapels as she suddenly struggled to pull away from him.
Surprise replaced fear on her face.
And then rage set in.
Daniel was pretty sure she was going to punch him now as he let go and she staggered backwards one step. He did deserve it, after all, but he’d been unable to think of another way to break through the fear that held her.
A fist came up and clenched in a rage so primal that he could smell it. This was going to hurt. But that was the price.
Instead of knocking his silly, Rabic ass onto the deck, though, Iruoma chuckled after a moment. She lowered her hand instead of punching him in the face.
“You could have just asked, Daniel,” she said slyly.
“Oui,” he agreed. “Maybe next time. For now, I figured that would get through anything those shits were doing to you. Areen is the only one that wouldn’t want to kill me for taking such a liberty. And I’m sorry.”
“Apology accepted,” she said as her face cleared.
Before he could move, she grabbed him and returned the kiss. It wasn’t passionate, but maybe more than the sort of thing she would give her sister. Maybe a really close sister, as some of them were.
He could be a sister to these women. There wasn’t a higher compliment that he could think of.
“Are you two done?” Erin asked with a sour mom voice.
Daniel and Iruoma both turned and smiled at the boss.
He shrugged.
The seriousness on Erin’s face deflated the balloon of silliness that he had tried to wrap himself in. He nodded instead.
Serious business. Four women killers escorting him
into the gates of whatever hell might await.
And whoever might be waiting beyond.
Thirty-Two
“What is our status?” Pasdar asked as he again paced the length of the Great Causeway at the center of the ship’s Command Node.
Aspbad Rostami walked over to one side to review the screens displayed below before answering, but Pasdar was not offended at the pause. Better to confirm your answer before speaking than to err at this critical junction.
“Squadron Command?” Rostami called to the man seated on the operations deck.
“Three Patrols are currently in place, awaiting orders, Aspbad,” the man replied. “All ships have cleared for combat and charged their drives.”
Pasdar nodded and stopped his pacing. He always found himself at the front of the node at moments like this, as though leading his men into battle, even though the Command Node itself was a tower rising above deck seventy almost at the center of the ship. At least a third of his men were closer to the enemy physically, but likely not emotionally.
Not today. Omezi was close out there. Distant observations still showed her in orbit of Tavle Jocia, not far from the TradeStation where spies had placed her weeks ago.
Why she remained in the vicinity he did not know. Did not even particularly care, other than it made the chase that much easier for his fleet.
The Free Worlds would erupt in rage and complaint when a Septagon dropped out of jump this deep in their claimed space, but he was acting under orders of the Emperor himself. Further, he wouldn’t be staying long. Patrol vessels had snuck close enough to the planet to note that the rest of Omezi’s fleet had departed already, but WinterStar was still there.
It tantalized him, to think that they could surprise the woman and possibly destroy her and her flagship before she could react.
Pasdar knew he might never get an opportunity like this again.
“Aspbad?” he prompted Rostami, noting the hungry smile on the man’s face as his mind went to similar places.
“Flight Operations, prepare for jump,” Rostami called out, setting the table.
“Alert!” another man suddenly yelled. “Sensor readings have changed. Repeat sensor update. WinterStar has moved to trans-light and left the system. Another vessel appears to have left in pursuit.”
Pasdar nearly snarled at the man, but those signals were already ten minutes old at this point, as far out as the squadron had landed to prepare for this last jump. WinterStar had already left, and Vorgash was only now catching up with that signal.
Still, if she wasn’t here, he didn’t have to provoke Tavle Jocia’s authorities. Small victories in his wider campaign.
“Sensors, calculate her jump and triangulate,” he ordered, skipping over Rostami, but it couldn’t be helped.
Time was critical, if WinterStar had left. It would take precious minutes to identify where she had fled to, and then reprogram his own systems for the Patrols to give chase. Plus Vorgash was slower through jump, so Omezi would have extra time at the other end for mischief.
Maybe he would be lucky and she was leading him to her fleet, and he could round them all up at once.
The survivors, anyway.
Pasdar returned to his pacing. Any orders now would just delay his men. Rostami returned to his chair and sat patiently as well.
Several minutes passed like days as his Command crew consumed the signals and refactored everything.
“Naupati Pasdar, we have a course plotted,” one of the man spoke up now. “Probability seventy-seven percent for their destination, based on nearby geography and gravitational geometry.”
Pasdar walked over to look down on the man from the Causeway. He would have liked to actually lean over the man’s shoulder to see the math itself, but he was three meters above him here, a downside of putting the commanders on their own mezzanine above.
Still, the screen before the man showed a course from Tavle Jocia that intercepted another star roughly fifteen light-years away. That one was marked uninhabited from the icons on the map, which made perfect sense. Omezi avoided others whenever possible, so she would have sent her forces to a quiet system for her rendezvous.
Someplace where Vorgash could drop out right on top of her, if the gods favored him, and he could destroy her. Better, perhaps he would be lucky enough to locate her alien allies and destroy them as well.
The Axial Megacannon was already charged for battle. Fifteen light-years wouldn’t take all that long that the charge would need to be bled off.
“Send the signal to the squadron,” Pasdar ordered. “Vorgash will lead and all vessels conform their flight times to ours. We will transition to battle directly from jump so all vessels prepare in flight.”
Pasdar paused to turn on his heel, taking in everything he could see from the large windows around him, as well as the men seated below.
He held the moment for a short stretch, knowing that signals would require a bit to reach everyone, even though they should have been prepared. If not, a Patrol vessel could move much faster than Vorgash, so they could catch up.
As long as everyone landed at once, he would be in a position to catch Omezi off-guard and finish her off for good.
“All vessels jump,” he ordered.
Thirty-Three
Now that he knew what to listen for in his head, Daniel could see the lines of mental force that surrounded them constantly. He dared not seek out their source, because there seemed to be more than one of them, and they formed something of a net.
He would only get one chance at this sort of breaking and entering shenanigans. He needed to do it right.
This corridor wasn’t like the other places on the station where he had roamed. The metal was heavier here. He couldn’t think of a better way to describe it. It conveyed a solemnity of purpose that was much more brutal and unyielding than the other lobes.
Daniel interpreted that as being reinforced for all possible environments. Similarly, nothing was painted in the bright colors he had grown accustomed to. Everything was gray. Not steel gray, but a sealant primer designed to keep things from reacting.
He supposed that if you had to add trace elements to the air in places, you didn’t want them reacting with the hull metal and weakening things, so he could understand that.
But it made him slightly miserable at some psychological level.
Plants. That was it. There were none, anywhere. In the human sections, there were always some around. The wealthier the deck, the more common the pots.
None of that was to be seen in any direction. Just metal walls and decks, painted with stripes in colors and patterns he presumed worked to direct someone to a particular destination, or at least an environment where one could relax and perhaps take off your breather mask.
They approached a lobby. That was the impression Daniel got of the volume as they entered the space. A three-deck-tall open space, such a tremendous waste of volume, but it lightened his mood, so perhaps that was why.
The ceiling was transparent as well, showing off the four towers around him and the stars straight up as he looked, so this was something of a courtyard, if you were on the surface of a planet instead of orbiting one.
“Now what?” Erin asked quietly.
They had the space to themselves, a circle roughly sixty meters across, broken up by tables, benches, and a few large planters that looked more to provide a modicum of visual privacy rather than for growing anything.
“You wait here,” Daniel said.
He walked out into the middle of the space and found a compass rose that had been inset into the deck with gold-colored tiles. Each direction was marked, like they were on the surface of a planet again, and Daniel lined himself up with North.
Looking up, one of the four towers was directly in front of him, so he could see the purpose of the compass now. If you got lost, you came here and found the icons that matched up with where you were supposed to go.
Cheaper than having a human or other docent here
to help travelers.
They were inside a zone of compulsion, but it was hollow. Just the suggestion at the edge, and then it fell off once you crossed an unseen line.
He did not go looking for the being generating the thing, so much as leaned back and stared at the tower, opening his mind to whatever it was. Daniel still lacked an adequate vocabulary to describe what he saw and how he did things, although Urid-Varg probably had had everything detailed.
Daniel could handle ignorance, if the alternative was going down that path.
Nothing stood out as he waited, so Daniel turned to the east and listened. The signal, whatever it was, was stronger here, but not much.
South lit his mind up when he turned. It almost felt like staring into the sun on a cloudy day. He checked west, just in case, but the signal tailed off, so whoever it was, whatever they were, was in the south tower.
Daniel narrowed his eyes, like he might narrow his mind, and began counting decks. They were much larger here than in the human sectors. Generally eight meters apart, presumably because some species might need sealed vehicles with their own environment, and chairs against the heavy gravity humans preferred.
Daniel knew of a few intelligent species that were primarily aquatic, so being in the air was like being in space to them. They drove around in portable swimming pools.
Eight decks up, the light was brightest. Or whatever it was. Daniel called it a mental spotlight. That was close enough, since he would need to share minds with someone else for them to even detect it, and he was pretty sure that would create a spotlight down here if he did.
Daniel came back to himself and felt a sweat break out, as though someone had just turned the thermostat up. Kathra kept WinterStar warmer than any other ship Daniel had ever been aboard, but she didn’t believe in heavy, wool clothing, either. Light and gauzy, whenever possible.
The air hadn’t changed though. This was some new reaction to stress, he supposed.
A hand beckoned the warriors closer, moving on silent feet even when nobody was there to watch.
