Sara considered the idea. Eventually, she nodded. "I like it. I mean, I don't like that I won't have you here if we get into a fight, but I think you're right. We need to move on the dreadnought, and I can't take the time to do it myself," she said with a smile. "Besides, it looks like we’re going to be out roaming the galaxy on a wild goose chase for the foreseeable future anyway. We may as well be getting shit done back home while we’re at it."
Boon's face split into a huge grin. "Izz is going to be super excited."
"Excited about what?" Gonders asked from the door. She was freshly showered, and still drying her long, black hair with a towel.
"Sara wants us to go work on the dreadnought!"
Gonders grinned. "That sounds like a real treat, being trapped in a ship a few thousand meters underwater."
Boon laughed. "Trust me. That ship is so big, you'll forget where it is the moment you see the central park inside."
Gonders flipped the towel onto her shoulder. "Okay. I trust you. When do we leave?"
"Sometime in the next twenty-two hours," Sara said, noticing Gonders' toes were painted as well.
What the hell? Even Gonders, the badass Marine specialist, found the time to paint her toes… Why am I suddenly so obsessed with painting my toes?
Baxter took that moment to stick his head in the door. "Hey, there you are. Are you hanging out in here, or were you coming back to your room?" he asked, giving Sara a smile. "I thought maybe we could have a drink..." He turned to Gonders and made the same face Sara had at the airlock. "Or something."
Gonders frowned at him, then looked at Sara. She was making the same creepy face as Baxter.
"You two are so weird," she said, backing away slowly.
Sara and Baxter burst into laughter.
Chapter 41
Sara stood on the bridge of the Raven, watching the cargo transport move away from Reemass Station. Boon and Gonders were onboard, and Sara wanted to see them off.
When she had contacted Director Franklin asking about transport back to Earth for two of her people, he informed her that there was a regular shuttle, and Sara had arranged for the two women to be on the ship. The trio had spent their remaining time together planning what needed to be done on the dreadnought. Nyx had even given them the name of a Keeper that would be able to help with the project, and brought up a few ideas she had.
After several pots of coffee, a good meal, and a short nap, they had packed up what belongings they had, and headed for the passenger shuttle. That was an hour ago. Sara was far more emotional about them leaving than she would have guessed. It seemed that over the last few months, Boon had gone from being just one of her crew to her close friend. Sara hadn't had many close friends growing up, other than her sister, and having one now and watching her leave was a bigger deal than she would have imagined.
The sleek passenger shuttle moved away from the system, gaining speed, until it reached safe warping distance. In the blink of an eye, it vanished.
Sara felt a tug in her gut when the ship slipped away, but she smiled knowing that Boon was off to do important work.
"Grimms, are we ready to get back out there?" she asked, a small smile still on her face.
"Aye, ma'am. The crew is all accounted for, and the raw materials have been loaded," he said, glancing down at his tablet. "The nanobots completed all repairs a few hours ago, and they have been resupplied as well. We're ready to start looking for our needle in a haystack, as it were."
Sara reached over to where Alister sat on the holo table next to her and scratched under his chin. He had been pretty upset about Silva leaving; though, Sara didn't know if that was because they were actually friends, or if he was just going to miss his hardcore napping partner, since she saw the two of them do little else together.
"Connors, take us out," Sara ordered.
"Aye, ma'am. Unlocking docking clamps now," he said, working his console.
The large, green light on Reemass Station turned red as a ca-chunk reverberated through the Raven's hull.
"Docking clamps released," he said, easing the ship away from the station.
When they were a few dozen meters away, he swung the prow of the ship up and away, giving them a view of the green and blue planet below. Soon they were pointed out into open space, and he poured on the speed.
"What heading, ma'am?" he asked, glancing over his shoulder at Sara.
She raised an eyebrow. "Good question, Connors. I suppose we should start where we left off," she said, zooming in to the system where they had found the abandoned human planet.
She was deciding where to make her mark, when a hesitant Mezner said, "Uh, ma'am. I'm receiving an encrypted communication."
"Is it from the station?" Sara asked, immediately thinking Dr. Sloan had found something.
"No, ma'am. It's coming from out of system. They're using an Elif code, but it's an old one; it's on the ‘do not use’ list."
Sara frowned. "Could it be dangerous? Like a virus or something?"
Mezner shook her head. "With the core in use, any virus would be destroyed before it had a chance to do any damage. The code is one the Elif think the Teifen have gotten a hold of."
"The Teifen?" Sara echoed in surprise.
"Maybe it's our new friend, Grand Admiral Bok," Grimms suggested.
"Is it a video communication?" Sara asked.
Mezner leaned into her console and looked closely at the data. "It's a whole packet, ma'am. It looks like there are several files, including a map update and a video communication."
After a minute’s consideration, Sara said, "Put it onscreen."
"Aye, ma'am."
The message was indeed from Grand Admiral Bok. He was sitting in what looked like an office—probably his ready room, Sara guessed. His hands were folded on the desktop, and he wore a slightly bored look, which she thought of as his ‘resting devil face’.
"Captain Sonders, I hope this message finds you well," he began, and Sara raised an eyebrow at his friendly manner.
She had thought of the Teifen as a hyperaggressive race for so long, it was jarring to see one being pleasant.
"I realize it has only been a little over two days since we last spoke, but I am taking this opportunity to call in that favor you owe me."
"Great. This guy doesn't waste any time, does he?" Sara quipped with an eyeroll.
Bok continued. "The situation is even worse than I originally thought. My late governor, it seems, has been ignoring pleas for help from our Rim worlds. Several of the systems are now unresponsive, and I fear they have come to some grizzled end.
"My fleet is now fully engaged in several battles with the Galvox across several systems. Luckily, we have not encountered any of the Vitas thus far, but I fear they are not far behind their allies.
"My people have mapped out the regions that have gone dark, and included the information in this message. As you can see, it looks as though a force is moving in like a wave from the edge of our galaxy."
Sara waved to Mezner. "Show me the map he's talking about."
The holo table rearranged itself to show the section of space they were currently in, along the spiral arm. Several hundred systems lit up with names and other metadata for the occupied systems. There was a crescent shape along the edge where the names were grayed out, as if something had taken a bite out of the galaxy.
"I have no ships to spare to investigate what is happening out on the Rim, but I would like to help them if I can. In that regard, I am calling in my favor. I ask that you travel out to the system I fear is the next target, and see what can be done."
Bok leaned back in his chair, a grim expression on his red-skinned face. "I know that this is a rather quick turn of events, and our truce is far from stable, but I have no more options. I either ask this of you, or let my people die out there, alone, on the edge of the galaxy. So, here I am, choosing the one option that might make a difference."
The video ended, and Bok's image disappeared.
&n
bsp; "Well, that was unexpected," Sara said, after a few seconds of silence.
"It could be a trap," Cora said, and Grimms nodded.
"It could be, but then again, he could just be a decent leader who wants to save as many people as he can," she countered with a frown.
"We could go into the system cloaked. See what's happening, and make our call once we have a better idea of his true intentions," Grimms said.
Sara's brows rose in surprise. "I never would have guessed you would want to do this, Commander. I like the cloaked idea. And who knows, maybe we'll find a human colony along the way."
"The odds of that are pretty slim," Cora said.
"It's not like we had much of a lead to begin with," the captain said with a shrug. She marked the system Bok had indicated with the swipe of a finger. "Mezner, send this packet to Admiral Franklin directly. Be sure to mark it for his eyes only. We don't need the rest of the UHFC knowing about our deal with the grand admiral, unless Franklin thinks they should."
"Aye, ma'am. Sending it down to the communications mage now," Mezner said.
"Cora, as soon as the message is away, engage warp," Sara said, stepping back to her captain’s chair and sitting down.
Alister leapt from the holo table to her lap and settled in. After a few quiet moments of Sara hoping she was making the right decision, Cora dropped them into a warp thread.
It was too late for her to change her mind.
Chapter 42
Gerrold Grenolt leaned back in his makeshift lounge chair—really just a pile of old clothes and discarded bedding—and took a sip of Regelian Red from the tin mug he had rummaged from a drawer in the engineering room. He gave a contented sigh as he gazed out into the vastness of space through the Rizz's observation dome. Reaching up, he carefully slicked his black hair down between his long, thin horns.
Newer Elif warships had done away with the observation domes, calling them ‘out of date’ and ‘an unnecessary weak point’ in the design, but the Rizz was not one of those sleek new warships. No, the Rizz was a hunk of space junk so old there had been nothing but dust lining her halls when Gerrold had found her, floating between the stars.
It had taken him and his crew nearly two years to get the Rizz into her present condition. Now the Rizz only looked like a piece of space junk, but her guts had been completely revamped with the best components money could buy. At least, the best components money could buy out on the Rim.
In the pirating business, it helped to be underestimated.
Working in an Elif warship while being Teifen usually came with a whole slew of problems, but not the kind of problems most people would first assume. Mostly, the problems came from the fact that the average Teifen was a good head taller than your average Elif. The ship’s low ceilings could become an issue for people like Hooper, Gerrold’s closest friend and the cook/gunner on the Rizz. Gerrold was small in stature, at least for a Teifen, but Hooper stood well over two meters tall, with a belly to match.
Sitrix, Hooper's girlfriend, was the only other Teifen on board. She was an ex-harem girl from the regional governor’s personal stock; she and Gerrold had become friends while he was a guard on the dreadnought, and they had escaped the governor’s wonton cruelty together to strike out on their own.
She was their talker, their public figure, as it were. Sitrix was the one who took the goods they pirated and sold them at market. There was a huge advantage to having a beautiful, confident woman making the deals: people underestimated her, just like the Rizz.
The rest of the crew were all Elif, and for one reason or another, had decided their government could kiss their asses. Then they moved out to the Rim, where things like emperors and regional governors were a little less of a problem.
Gerrold had found his pilot and controller, a set of twins named Bestin and Restin who’d been trained by the Elif Royal Navy, in a bar trying to drink themselves to death. After buying the boys a few rounds, Gerrold finally got them to open up about what had driven them out to the Rim worlds. After much hemming and hawing, Bestin's story boiled down to them abandoning their post when they were ordered to fire on a Teifen civilian transport. He and his twin brother stole a shuttle out of their ship’s bay that very hour.
And then there was Seena. Oh, beautiful, dangerous, angry Seena. She had been a front-line mage in the Royal Marines ‘til she was framed for a crime her superior committed. After all the years Gerrold had known her, she still wouldn't tell him the whole story, but like him, she had abandoned her post while still wearing her Aetheric armor. This made the two of them the ‘away’ team—the up close and personal side of pirating.
"Hey, whatcha doing?" a lovely female voice said, making him nearly spill his drink down the front of his jumpsuit.
Then there was the last and most terrifying member of his crew: Reggi.
Gerrold turned in his 'recliner' and held up the bottle of Regelian Red to show the short, slightly built woman coming up the stairs into the round glass dome.
"Hey, Reggi. Just taking a break and looking at the stars. Want a drink?"
Reggi shook her head, sending her brown bob bouncing. "You know I hate that stuff, it gives me the most brutal hangovers. I honestly don't know how you can stand it," she said, coming over and sitting on the floor beside him.
Reggi was a mage, a powerful one. That, however, was not what made her so terrifying; Gerrold and Seena were both mages, after all. What made Reggi such a terror was her heritage. Her human heritage.
"What do you think our chances are?" she asked after a few minutes of stargazing.
Gerrold blew out a breath. "Well, we just have to hold until the planet's evacuated, and last I saw, they were getting pretty close. Every ship not capable of fighting is shuttling people to New Hope. The rest of us are just waiting ‘til that's done, then getting the hell out of here. So I guess the question is how long is the evacuation going to take? Because I don't plan on sticking around any longer than we have to."
Reggi laughed. "You really are a pirate, through and through. Don't you want to stop the attacks?"
"Hey, little missy, don't you go disparaging our calling. We might be pirates, but we're commissioned pirates. I still give a shit about our home out here on the Rim. Why do you think I risk our butts going out and robbing the core worlds, just to come back and give most of the prizes away?"
She gave him a sideways look. "Because our privateering contract says we have to give up half."
Gerrold waved a hand dismissively. "Aw, shut up. What do you know? You've only been part of the crew for a few months. Once you've been doing this for a few years, we'll talk. There's a loyalty out here you just don't understand yet," he said, taking a sip of the red liqueur before continuing. "We survive so we can fight another day. What good would it do us to stand and fight an enemy to the death, when we can just let ‘em pass us by?"
"Yeah, but they're not passing us by, Gerrold. They're wiping out whole star systems and not slowing down," she said, waving a hand at the expanse of stars. "Back home, we draw a line in the sand, and anyone who crosses that line doesn't survive. Sure, a lot of my people die, but everyone else back home is safe."
" ‘Everyone else back home' has War Mages. I don't know if you've noticed, Reggi, but there aren't a lot of those ‘round these parts," he said, turning to her in frustration.
But she wasn't paying any attention to him. Instead, she was squinting at something outside the dome. "What is that?" she asked, pointing out into the black.
He squinted. "I don't see anything... Oh, shit!" he exclaimed as something passed in front of a star, blocking the light for a split second.
He began rummaging through the pile of clothes and bedding, eventually having to get up and dismantle the pile entirely to find what he was looking for. The room's electronic scope fell out of the leg of a pair of pants he picked up, and he snatched it off the ground.
Turning to the glass, he tried to pick out the anomaly again, but he had lost it in his search
for the scope.
"Where did it go?" he asked, and Reggi, never having taken her eyes off of it, stepped up next to him and pointed.
He needed to squat down to sight along her arm, and he eventually saw another star blink as whatever it was passed in front of it. He held up the scope and began focusing it. The short, black tube made whirring noises, as the servos moved the internal lenses back and forth as he searched the area.
He glanced over a section of space and almost swept past it, but something made him take a second look. He watched the area for a few long seconds. Right as he was about to continue on, one of the stars in the scope moved and warped.
He zoomed in and pushed a button, trying to place a tracking mark on the object. Though the software was not able to lock on to anything, he was still able to get a close-up view.
"Ho. Lee. Shit," he said slowly.
"What is it?" Reggi asked, leaning forward and squinting harder. "I can't really see it, only the stars around it being warped."
"It looks like a black hole," he said, and meant it. It was like there was a blank space that the light was bending around. He zoomed in further. "Wait, I think I see…"
There was an outline of something, just for a second, as a light flashed behind it. But now the center of the anomaly looked as black as the rest of the space around it.
"Bestin," Gerrold said over his comm, "I'm tracking something with the spotting scope in the observation dome. I'm sending you the feed now. Can you pick it up on sensors?"
There was a second’s silence, and Gerrold thought maybe Bestin had taken his earpiece out again. Just when he was about to call Restin instead, Bestin answered.
"Hey there, Cap. I don't have anything on sensors that shouldn't be there," he said casually. "I'm patching in the signal from the scope now."
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