“So when the Eye collapsed, it took their entire belief system with it, annihilating their hope for a life after death. They blamed our arrival for that event. They think we’re devils come to kill them all.” Tanik smirked. “Ironically, that’s not far from the truth.”
“If the collapse of the Eye was the catalyst,” Darius began, “then maybe the civil war won’t start until we confront the Cygnians.”
Tanik shook his head. “I doubt it. Word of our arrival and the collapse of the Eye will spread, and now that the Augur’s influence is gone, the Cygnian Royals won’t take long to change their minds about who can and can’t be preyed upon. Once that happens, no one will be safe anymore.”
“Then we should jump straight to Cygnus Prime and threaten them now, not in six months’ time,” Darius said.
“If we have our ships in position to threaten all of their worlds at once, it will be much more effective than simply threatening their home world and waiting for them to relay that threat to the rest of their people. A simultaneous threat will prompt a simultaneous reaction from all of the royal houses, otherwise we risk getting a partial or fake surrender.”
“They could still offer a fake surrender,” Darius replied. “Pretend to back down, wait for us to leave, and then attack when our guard is down.”
“Indeed,” Tanik replied. “That is a valid concern, which is why we won’t back down until we’re sure that it is safe to do so. Rest assured, Darius, Admiral Ventaris and I have discussed this strategy extensively, and we will do everything we can to limit the loss of innocent life. Now, I trust that answers all of your questions?”
Darius gave in with a hesitant nod. “It does.”
“Good. Then I’ll see you three in the aft cargo bay for training.” Tanik turned and walked back up the aisle to the exit.
“I don’t trust him,” Cassandra said. “There’s something he’s not telling us.”
Darius snorted. “There’s a lot he’s not telling us.”
“Whatever he’s hiding, one thing’s for sure: he’s right about the Cygnians. They’re going to go goffity when they hear that the Eye is gone.”
Chapter 31
—SEVENTEEN DAYS LATER—
Trista sat watching the jump timer counting down the last ten minutes to their arrival in the Sol System. They’d spent the past seven days in FTL, partly because they already had all the supplies they needed, but mostly because Trista wanted to avoid any unfortunate run-ins with Yuri’s gang.
Gatticus had offered her a job as palace courier to keep her safe. The offer came with a Union-issued clipper, so she could sell the Harlequin before her reputation as a friend of the metal heads caught up with her. It would also mean a steady salary and plenty of benefits that she’d missed out on as a freelancer.
The down side? Less excitement, less freedom, and giving up on her life-long dream of owning her own ship and being her own boss. Trista had told Gatticus that she’d think about it, but the truth was, thanks to Jaxon, she didn’t have much of a choice.
Trista glanced at Buddy. “You’re unusually quiet.”
“Are you going to take the job?” he asked, not looking at her. Apparently he was thinking about the same thing as her.
“Well... yeah, I think I am.”
“Then I guess this is goodbye.”
Trista did a double take. “What? Why?”
“They’re not going to let me be your copilot. Togras aren’t citizens. People think all we’re good for is being cute and cuddly, and keeping real people company. We’re just pets to them.”
“Not to me. You’re intelligent—more intelligent than a lot of so-called real people that I’ve met. In my book that makes you just as much a citizen as anyone else. I’ll tell them we’re a package deal. They’ll have to hire us both, or I won’t take the job.”
Buddy looked at her, his big brown eyes sad, and his chubby cheeks drooping. “They won’t go for it.”
“Maybe not, but you don’t have to leave just because they won’t let you ride in the cockpit. We’ll save some creds and wait for Yuri to get bored of looking for us. Give it a year. After that, we can resign and buy a new ship so that we can go back to doing what we do best.”
Buddy regarded her with wide eyes and his furry brow hopefully furrowed. “Promise?”
Trista nodded. “You bet.”
The jump timer hit one minute, and the cockpit door swished open. Trista glanced over her shoulder to see Gatticus stepping in. “Ready to empty your bank account into mine?” she asked.
“Your fee will hardly empty my account. Executors are highly paid, and we have fewer reasons to spend money than biological lifeforms,” Gatticus replied as he folded out an extra seat and acceleration harness beside the door.
“Must be nice,” Trista said.
The timer hit zero and a flash of light suffused the cockpit. The contacts panel chirped for her attention, followed by the comms, with a blinking red light to indicate a waiting message. Earth appeared dead ahead, a shining blue and white jewel. Trista checked the contacts panel as a matter of routine, and icy dread trickled into her gut.
“What the hell?” She checked her nav panel for confirmation and saw the same thing there.
The click of an acceleration harness releasing reached her ears, and Gatticus appeared, looming over her shoulder.
“That’s a Cygnian Fleet,” he said, pointing to the contacts panel.
“No kak,” Trista replied. “But what’s that?” She traced a clump of unidentified gray blips on the nav panel. It was a rhetorical question. She already knew what she was looking at, but she didn’t want to believe it.
“Debris,” Gatticus replied in a quiet voice. “See if you can get a visual on them.”
“One second...” Buddy said.
A magnification box appeared, overlaid directly on the cockpit canopy. Debris filled the box, jagged black shapes tumbling against the cloud-streaked blue backdrop of Earth’s oceans. Trista caught a glimpse of something familiar in the debris field. “What’s that?” she wondered aloud as she magnified a particular piece of debris. A hull fragment with charred white lettering appeared. Trista read it aloud, “U.S.O.S—they attacked a Union Fleet! The Cygnians are the rulers of the Union. Why would they destroy their own ships?”
“That’s a good question,” Gatticus replied. He pointed to the blinking red light on the comms panel. “Maybe that message will help us answer it?”
Trista checked the sender’s ID tag.
ADMR COVATHUS 12th USON FLEET
Then she checked the message characteristics.
NO ENCYRPT, AUTO REPEAT, OPEN CHANNEL
She keyed it for playback and a human voice issued from the cockpit speakers: “This is Admiral Covathus of the 12th Fleet to all incoming vessels: the Cygnians have attacked us without provocation or warning, and they are not responding to comms. They are invading Earth. Run and spread the word. The Cygnians can no longer be trusted to uphold the laws that they themselves established. As of this moment, the Union is at war with itself.”
“Grak it!” Trista said. “Turn us around, Buddy!” She checked her Alckam drive and grimaced. They were down to 10% fuel. Where could they go with so little fuel? More to the point, where could they go that might be safe?
“Hang on,” Gatticus said. “I’m the Executor of Earth. They won’t attack us if they know that I’m on board.”
Trista snorted. “Yeah, I’ll bet that’s what that Admiral thought right up until they sneak-attacked him.”
“We have to at least try to open a dialogue. Maybe I can figure out what started this conflict and negotiate more favorable terms for Earth’s surrender.”
Trista eyed him dubiously. “You heard the admiral—he said the attack was unprovoked and they weren’t answering hails. If they’d wanted to talk, they would have done so before blasting the entire 12th fleet to scrap.”
“We have to try,” Gatticus insisted. “There are billions of people down there. Ar
e you willing to sacrifice all of their lives just because you were too afraid to stick around and see if you could help?”
“Grak it, bolts-for-brains! Fine, get on the comms! The Alckam drive still has to cool down, anyway, but I’m not waiting any longer than I have to.”
Gatticus nodded. “I need your authorization for remote access to the comms.”
Trista spotted the access prompt on her main holo display and granted his request. “Done. Start flapping that silver tongue of yours—and sit down. I need to engage the engines to get us headed away from Earth.”
“Of course,” Gatticus replied. A moment later, Trista heard his harness click into place, and then she engaged the thrusters at one and a half Gs. The engines roared and her stomach lurched as the acceleration pressed her against her seat. As the initial sensation passed, the steady pressure became a welcome reprieve from weightlessness.
“Buddy, keep an eye on those Cygnian kakkers, and let me know if any of them start heading our way.”
“Aye-aye, Captain,” Buddy replied.
Trista used the nav panel to find all of the star systems they could jump to with their remaining fuel. There were only two options—the Centauri System at just over four light years, or Barnard’s System at just under six. She picked Centauri, hoping that whatever had sparked the conflict on Earth it hadn’t spread to Earth’s colonies yet.
Gatticus’s voice interrupted her thoughts as he recorded a message. “This is Executor Gatticus Thedroux of Earth to the 9th Cygnian Fleet. I am returning to Earth aboard the independent transport, Harlequin. See the attached ID code and credentials for confirmation of identity. Please confirm friendly status. Over.”
Trista didn’t hold out much hope for his negotiations. About ten minutes later, the comms chirped with a reply. Considering they were only a few light seconds from Earth, the Cygnians had obviously taken their time to reply. Trista was just about to play the message, when Gatticus beat her to it.
A series of hisses and growls rumbled through the speakers. “This is Queen Rissara of the 9th Fleet. We confirm friendly status for the Harlequin, but do not bother returning to Earth. We have seized the planet and re-designated it as an active hunting ground. Do not interfere with our hunters.”
Trista scowled. “You want to ask them why they seized the planet?”
Gatticus recorded his reply, “My Queen, if I may know the answer, why did you seize Earth? Perhaps there is some way we can resolve this dispute without subjecting the entire population to your hunters?”
This time the reply was much quicker, and it was not the queen who replied, but a computer-generated approximation of a human voice: “Executor Thedroux, please dock your vessel with the Rissara’s Wrath and report for reprogramming and reassignment.”
“So much for friendly status,” Trista said.
“What are we going to do?” Buddy asked.
Trista kept an eye on the Cygnian fleet as she considered that very question herself. “We’ve still got two minutes left before our Alckam drive finishes cooling,” she said.
“And then it has to warm up,” Gatticus pointed out. “We’ll never make it.”
“So what do you suggest? We give up?”
“No. Turn around. Make it look like I’m complying with my orders.”
But before Trista could do anything, a proximity alert sounded and a yellow blip appeared right behind them, well within effective weapons range. It was a Cygnian transport. The comms chirped with another message, this time from that transport. Trista’s hands began to shake. She clamped them around the armrests of her chair and used her ESC to play the waiting message.
More growls and hisses. “Power down your engines, and prepare for boarding.”
“Fek that,” Trista muttered.
“You can’t hope to win a fight with them,” Gatticus warned. “You have to do what they say. Perhaps they will show you mercy.”
“Sure,” Trista snorted. She hauled back on the throttle with one hand to make it look like she was complying with their orders, but with her other hand she activated the Harlequin’s defensive turret and used the targeting camera to aim for the Cygnian transport’s cockpit.
“They’re powering weapons!” Buddy said.
Trista pulled the trigger and held it down. Her target camera flashed with golden lances of fire that stabbed repeatedly through the enemy transport’s cockpit. A moment later, it blew open in a glittering rain of shattered glass. The pilot appeared to be dead, but the co-pilot began thrashing in the suddenly airless cockpit. Folding metal shutters rolled out, re-sealing the cockpit. She tried aiming for those, hoping to breach the cockpit once more. Two more lasers snapped out from her turret, drawing condensing white streams of escaping air. Trista grinned, but her elation was short-lived as those gusts of air sputtered out. They must have plugged the holes.
Her surprise attack was spent. There was only one thing left to do. “Buddy, spin up the Alckam drive!”
“Where to?”
“No destination! Emergency jump,” Trista said as she shoved the throttle up to six Gs, and activated an automated evasive routine.
“Ayyyye-ayyye!” Buddy howled as the sudden burst of acceleration drew out his syllables.
Trista gritted her teeth against the rib-cracking force of the engines, and switched to hands-free control of the Harlequin.
The Cygnian transport returned fire, sky-blue lasers flashing by on all sides. A moment later the Harlequin’s combat computer produced a hissing crunch to signal an impact. A damage alert squawked, and Trista glanced at it.
“We’re losing cabin pressure!” Gatticus announced, reading the report before she could. He didn’t sound at all fazed by the high Gs they were pulling.
Must be nice to be an android, Trista thought. The Alckam drive began spinning up, and a jump timer appeared at the top of Trista’s main display. Eleven minutes. She grimaced. That was fast for a transport, but not nearly fast enough under the circumstances. She wished now that she’d found some way to upgrade the drive system. She also wished that she’d had the sense to wear a pressure suit. As it was, wearing just a jumpsuit, all it would take was one lucky hit to the cockpit, and she’d be in big trouble.
Trista used her ESC to keep up a steady stream of return fire with the Harlequin’s defensive turret. Golden laser beams snapped out to punch holes in the enemy transport’s outer hull, but there were no telltale bursts of escaping air. It must have thick armor, Trista thought.
The jump timer hit nine minutes, but it may as well have been counting down from infinity. Trista desperately targeted another part of the Cygnian transport, hoping to score a lucky hit on its antimatter containment tanks.
Another crunch sounded from her combat computer, followed by another damage alert.
“Cabin pressure is down to sixty percent!” Gatticus announced. “I can’t deploy repair drones until you stop accelerating.”
We stop accelerating and we die, Trista thought. We don’t need air in the cabin right now. Buddy’s eyes darted to hers, wide and bulging with terror. She tried to offer a reassuring smile, but the Gs they were pulling turned her expression into a grimace.
She directed her attention to the Harlequin’s targeting systems, and aimed for another part of the Cygnian transport. Golden laser beams stabbed its hull once more, again to no effect. Being a military transport, the Cygnian ship probably had two hulls.
“They’re not firing missiles at us,” Gatticus said. “They must be trying to take us alive.”
Probably so they can send us down to Earth to be hunted with everyone else, Trista thought. Too bad, kakkers, you’re gonna have to kill me.
Another crunch sounded from the Harlequin’s combat computer, but this time the noise was drowned out by a much louder roaring sound. Trista’s ears popped and her guts clenched. A violent wind whipped by her, tugging at her hair and making her eyelids flutter.
“The cockpit’s been breached!” Gatticus yelled to be heard over the
sound of escaping air. “You have to kill the engines!”
Trista fought to stay conscious in the increasingly-thin air. She mentally activated an airflow sensor to identify the location of the leak, and watched on her main holo display as a holographic representation of her ship appeared. The hull panel directly above her head began flashing. Straining to look up, she spotted a thumb-sized hole glaring back at her. It wouldn’t take much to plug it, but all the loose articles in the cockpit were securely stowed under her and Buddy’s seats, and the hull patch kit was in a compartment under the floor, out of reach. Trista began to hyperventilate in the thin air.
“Trista!” Gatticus screamed. He sounded very far away. “Kill the engines!”
I guess we’re dead anyway, she thought, with heavy lids sinking over blurry, dimming eyes. She killed the engines with a final lucid thought, and then blacked out.
Chapter 32
When Trista came to, she heard the slapping sound of a butcher’s mallet tenderizing meat. The meat turned out to be her cheek, and the mallet was Gatticus’s hand.
“Wake up!” he said.
“Ouch,” she mumbled and rubbed her stinging cheek. It had certainly been tenderized. Dead ahead, the white eye of a warp disc glared at her. “What the...” Trista trailed off.
A thunking noise sounded from the cockpit door.
“We’ve got company,” Gatticus explained.
Adrenaline stabbed through Trista’s veins, and her eyes flew wide. “Cygnians?”
Gatticus shook his head. “No, your ex.”
The thunking noise returned, followed by the muffled sound of a familiar voice. “Open the door, Tris!”
Trista’s eyelids fluttered in shock. “What? How?”
“Jaxon followed you to Earth on one of Yuri Mathos’s ships, the Death’s Head. He must have checked the course you plotted before we forced him off the Harlequin.”
Broken Worlds- The Complete Series Page 54