Again, she had to force herself to rely on instinct. Don’t think. Just do. This time, Cassandra tilted the stick to the right, applied rudder from the left pedal, and pulled up gently on the stick.
To her amazement, the Vulture’s nose drew a straight line above the horizon, and a moment later the green diamond of the waypoint swept into view. It was two hundred and four klicks away, and forty thousand feet up.
Cassandra began pulling up to reach that altitude. That was when she remembered Tanik’s instructions to engage the fighter’s stealth mode. Letting instinct guide her, she found the toggle switch on her dash and flicked it. The noisy roar of her fighter’s engines quieted and the Vulture slowed its ascent.
Cassandra let out another sigh and flicked off her helmet lamps to gaze up at the stars while she climbed. As the range to her waypoint scrolled down, she noticed the Autopilot button at the bottom of her nav display. She recalled what Tanik had said about using the autopilot, and she touched the button. A series of options appeared, but the course was already laid in, just as Tanik had said it would be. Cassandra engaged the autopilot and the flight stick went limp in her hand. She released it to rest her hands in her lap, settling in for the journey ahead.
Tanik had said he’d follow her after an hour. But how long would it take to reach the Nomad? Cassandra mentally queried the autopilot and the answer flashed at the bottom of her HUD.
ETA 1:21:34
Almost, Cassandra nodded to herself. Tanik would be taking off in his fighter just before she reached the Cygnians’ ship.
Cassandra’s thoughts turned to what lay ahead after that—negotiating with the Cygnians. Cassandra couldn’t believe she’d let herself be talked into it, especially after all of her father’s visions. But Gakram would be there to protect her, and so would Tanik. Besides, why would the Cygnians want to kill her anyway? What could they possibly stand to gain by shooting the messenger?
Cassandra laid her head back and allowed her eyes to drift shut. With the autopilot doing all of the flying, she could afford to rest for a little while.
* * *
The autopilot took Cassandra into orbit and halfway around Cratus to reach the Nomad. When she was just a hundred klicks out, the Cygnians sent her a curt message, demanding that she identify herself. At that point, Cassandra told them what Tanik had said she should—that Gakram had invited her. They left her waiting for about two minutes, no doubt while they checked with Gakram to confirm her story, and then she’d been granted clearance to land on pad 4B.
It took her most of the way to the Nomad to figure out how to feed a specific landing pad into the autopilot.
As the Nomad swelled before her, she struggled to spot the hangar bay. Where was the autopilot taking her?
Her fighter slowed to a crawl and swooped down along the Nomad’s hull. I’m going to crash! Then she spotted lights flashing down the length of a flat, skinny line in the side of the ship’s hull. A pair of magnetic docking clamps came racing down the strip, and a clu-clunk sounded as they captured her fighter.
The clamps braked her remaining momentum, and she slammed into her acceleration harness with bruising force. The Vulture shivered to a stop in the center of an illuminated green landing pad, marked 4B in holographic letters floating on her HUD. In the next instant, the landing pad flipped 90 degrees and carried her sideways into the ship. A pair of metal doors slid shut to her left, sealing the outer hull, and a loud roaring began as air pumped into the space around her fighter. As soon as the sound died away, another pair of doors opened to her right, and the landing pad carried her fighter down a set of rails and into a darkened hangar. Gleaming fighters and Ospreys occupied dozens of matching landing pads and rails.
Cassandra slowly shook her head, peering into the hangar and searching for any signs of life. Why was it so dark? Then she remembered that Cygnians had very sensitive eyes. They were practically blind in brightly-lit areas. They compensated with their sense of smell and hearing, which was apparently acute enough to create full mental images of their surroundings even with their eyes closed.
She pulled the release lever beside her seat to disengage the harness. Next she removed her air hose and pulled off her helmet. She took a moment to revel in the cool air caressing her hair and face. Stowing the helmet at her feet, she shut down the Vulture’s engines and punched the open/close canopy button. Cassandra grabbed a handrail inside the cockpit as it opened, and stood up carefully in the zero-G environment. “Hello?” she called out.
But there was no answer. The hangar was deserted. That was definitely strange. Why was there no one here to greet her? Cassandra reached out in the ZPF and found a Banshee loping toward her on six legs.
“Welcome to the Nomad, Cassss,” the Banshee said.
“Gakram!” Cassandra recognized that voice. She groped in the dark to find the railings of the staircase that should have folded out beside her cockpit. Finding the railings just below the rim of the cockpit, she climbed down to the deck. Her mag boots drew tinny clangs from the steps as she went.
“I am glad you changed your mind,” Gakram said.
Cassandra turned to face him. “So am I.”
“Why did you?” Gakram asked. She saw his giant head tilt to one side, then the other, like a dog. Cassandra smiled at the memory. She missed dogs.
“Tanik spoke with me. He convinced me to come.”
“Why would he want you to join us?” Gakram asked. “He is no friend of my people. It was his plan to threaten us and demand independence for the Union. And it was his idea to use the ZPF bombs to do it.”
Cassandra shrugged. “Maybe he is more of a friend than you think. He told me something, but... I think he wanted to be the one to tell you. He’ll tell you when he lands.”
“Lands?” Gakram echoed with a growl. “Tanik is coming? We did not invite him to join us. Why is he coming?”
“It’s a long story.”
Gakram bared his teeth. “He cannot come.”
“He has to! Admiral Ventaris did something to your ship.”
“What did he do?”
Cassandra chewed her bottom lip. “Well, I guess there’s no harm in me telling you now...”
Cassandra went on to explain about the sabotage, and Tanik’s plan to accompany her to Cygnus Prime as a bodyguard, in case the negotiations didn’t go well.
Gakram held his tongue until she was done speaking, but as soon as she stopped, he let out a terrifying shriek that sent her reeling back a step and left her ears ringing. “This treachery will not go unpunished!” Gakram spun around and darted away, bounding across the hangar.
“Wait! Where are you going?” Cassandra called after him.
“To stop Elder Arathos from using the jump drive before we all die!” Gakram replied.
Chapter 38
Darius woke up sweating and shuddering with horror. His chest was tight, his breathing shallow. He sat up and the covers fell away, making him shiver. He stifled a sob, and worked to control his breathing.
A dark shape sat up beside him, and a warm hand rubbed his back. Dyara’s chin came to rest on his shoulder. “It’s okay. It’s not real,” she breathed beside his ear.
“Not yet,” Darius replied. “This is the fifth time I’ve seen myself at her funeral in as many nights. It’s getting more frequent.”
Dyara’s chin left his shoulder. “What do you think that means?”
“I think... I don’t know. Maybe the Sprites are trying to tell me that what I’m seeing could happen soon. I have to talk to Cassandra.” Darius stood up from the inflatable bed, and walked over to a modular closet to put on a jumpsuit.
“You’ve already warned her. Why wake her up just so you can repeat those warnings? It can wait until morning.”
“No,” he shook his head. “It can’t.”
“It doesn’t even make any sense,” Dyara insisted. “Why would she try to negotiate with them after you’ve warned her not to? And we can’t get back to Ouroboros anymore, so
how could we possibly have a funeral for Cassandra there?”
“I don’t know. Maybe the setting isn’t important. Or maybe the setting could change. All I know is there has to be a reason I keep seeing the same thing, over and over again.”
“I don’t know what to say,” Dyara said. “Maybe it was just a dream, and you’ve turned it into a recurring nightmare by fixating on it so much.”
“I hope that’s true,” Darius replied. He finished putting on his jumpsuit and padded barefoot down the hall from their sleeping quarters.
Breezing through the magnetic door flaps at the end of the hall, he stepped into the common area of the habitat. The overhead lights were still on, but turned down low. It was enough to see by. On his way through the room, Darius’s bladder gave an insistent twinge. He hesitated, and his gaze strayed to the door of the Acolytes’ shared bathroom. Then he shook his head. He could hold it.
Sweeping through the door flaps barring Cassandra’s room, Darius walked down a darkened hallway to her bed. He sat on the side of it, and the inflatable mattress sank under his weight. He felt around for her under the covers. “Cass?” The bed was still made.
A jolt of adrenaline shot through Darius’s heart, and his pulse began thundering in his ears. Suddenly he was out of breath, as if he’d run a marathon. She probably stayed out late, he decided. But what would she be doing in the middle of the night?
Darius took a deep breath, shut his eyes, and reached out into the ZPF. He expanded his awareness rapidly, picturing himself floating through the top of the habitat and soaring high over the camp, looking down. Luminous beings were everywhere, mostly inside the habitats, sleeping in their beds. Darius tried to find the familiar tone and texture of his daughter’s mind, but he couldn’t sense her anywhere in the camp. He broke out in a cold sweat; a flash of panic coursed through him, but he clamped down on it and cast himself higher still, until his awareness covered the entire island. He saw bugs creeping in the dirt, birds roosting in the trees, fish darting through the water—even a giant sea monster roaming in the deep...
But there was no sign of Cassandra. Darius gave into the panic. He cast his mental presence higher and higher until the island fell away and the dark crescents of adjacent islands appeared. From that altitude he sent himself racing over the surface of Cratus, circumnavigating the entire globe in a matter of seconds. He couldn’t find his daughter anywhere.
There was no sign of the Cygnians either. Their island had been abandoned, leaving only swirling echoes of their presence. Darius directed his attention to the stars and cast himself out into space.
He found her—aboard a lone destroyer, on the other side of the planet far away from the rest of the fleet. All of the beings around Cassandra felt intensely alien, their thoughts dark and violent. Cygnians.
Darius’s eyes flew open and his heart kicked against his sternum. He flew out of Cassandra’s room, yelling, “Dyara! We have to go!”
She and several of the other Acolytes burst out of their rooms as he reached the common area.
“Go where?” Dyara asked.
Darius hurried through the room. He needed to put on his mag boots and sword. “The Cygnians have her,” he yelled, as he reached the doors to their room.
Dyara stood blocking the way. She blinked at him. “You mean like a hostage?”
Darius shook his head. “I don’t know! Maybe! She’s on their ship!” He grabbed Dyara’s shoulders in iron grips and forcibly moved her out of the way.
“She probably just went to visit or something.”
“No. They evacuated Cratus. I can’t sense any of them down here with us.”
“They did? How do you know?”
He breezed down the corridor to their room, and Dyara followed close on his heels. “Talk to me, Darius!”
“It’s happening, Dya!” he said. He reached their room and started pulling on his boots. “They’re leaving to warn their people that we’re coming, and Cassandra’s on board. She’s going to try to negotiate with them, and they’re going to kill her.”
Darius went to the wardrobe and fetched his sword. Dyara clapped a hand to her mouth and slowly shook her head. “Why would she do that!”
“I don’t know, but we can’t let them take her. We have to stop that ship from jumping away.”
* * *
Darius burst through the doors of the habitat and onto the grassy street. Dyara came out right behind him.
“We should find Tanik,” she said.
Darius shook his head. “I already tried. He’s not in the camp.”
“Then where is he?”
“I don’t know, but it doesn’t matter.” Darius nodded to the command center. “The admiral will know what to do. Come on.” He sprinted down the street, drawing on the ZPF to enhance his speed. He ran so fast that his boots kicked up clods of dirt and grass behind him. Dyara kept pace beside him. Habs blurred into white streaks as they ran by. Revenant patrols stopped and stared. Some of them called out to ask why they were in such a hurry, but Darius didn’t stop to explain.
They reached the command center in just under a minute. Darius slowed as he reached the building, but he didn’t stop. The soldiers guarding the doors moved to block his way. One of them held out a hand, and he slammed into an invisible wall and bounced back a few steps. “Halt,” the man said. “Go back to your habitat, Acolyte.”
Darius glared at the man. “I need to speak with the admiral. It’s urgent.”
The soldier traded a dubious look with his fellow guardsman. “About what?”
“About the fact that my daughter is aboard the Cygnians’ ship.”
“So?”
“So, they’ve evacuated their island!” Darius thundered.
“Maybe they don’t like the heat.”
The other guard snickered at that.
Darius scowled. He didn’t have time for this. He reached into the ZPF and shoved the guards aside as hard as he could. They went flying in opposite directions and bounced off the nearest habitats.
“Darius!” Dyara protested. “You could hurt them!”
Darius ignored her, and directed his attention to the doors of the command center. He tried pushing through them, but they were locked, so he drew his sword and sliced them open. The canvas doors slumped to one side, and Darius swept into the command center. Dyara struggled to keep up as he stormed through the entrance, past the mess hall and the Command Information Center (CIC) to the admiral’s quarters. There was another guard standing there. He straightened at the sight of their approach.
“What are you doing here?” the man demanded.
This time Darius didn’t bother trying to argue; he picked the man up and physically moved him out of the way, holding him in a mental vice with his feet dangling three feet above the floor. The guard struggled against Darius’s hold, but to no effect. Darius sliced the Admiral’s door open. “Hey!” the guard said in a strangled voice. “I need backup!” Darius squeezed him harder to make him shut up.
The lights were on in Admiral Ventaris’s room. He was up and busy strapping on his sword. “You didn’t have to tear the place apart,” he said. “I sensed you coming.”
“They have my daughter,” Darius explained.
“I know. I heard your conversation with the guards as you approached.”
Just then, the very same guards came rushing up behind Darius and Dyara. They drew their swords with a screech.
“Darius! Look out!” Dyara cried as she drew her own sword.
“Enough!” Ventaris boomed. “We’re all on the same side here. Darius, please release Adept Thebasian before you kill him.”
Darius glanced at the guard he held frozen in the air to one side of the door. The man’s face had turned blood red, and his lips were blue.
“Sorry,” Darius said, and released the Adept. The man fell three feet to the ground and collapsed in a heap, gasping for air.
“Now perhaps you can explain yourself a bit better,” Ventaris intoned. �
�You said they have your daughter. How do you know?”
“She’s not in her room. I used the ZPF to find her. She’s in space. On the Cygnians’ ship.”
Ventaris closed his eyes and took a deep breath. His eyes snapped open a split second later. “You are right, but she’s not the only one. Tanik Gurhain is with her.”
Darius blinked in shock. “Tanik is there? Why would he join the Cygnians?”
“That’s a very good question, but I have a bad feeling that I know the answer. We need to get to the CIC before it’s too late.”
Chapter 39
By the time Tanik came aboard the Nomad, the sabotage had been found, and the Cygnians were busy fixing it. As a result, he wasn’t the one they credited with saving their hides—Cassandra was. That won her a measure of trust and a tentative standing on board the ship, one which enabled her to roam the corridors freely. As for Tanik, he’d been allowed to stay aboard the Nomad, but only as a prisoner. He’d made a half-hearted attempt to convince Cassandra to leave with him and go back to camp. She refused, just as they had planned, and Tanik had refused to leave, too, so the Cygnians confiscated his sword and arrested him, taking him down to the brig.
Cassandra and Gakram stood outside a heavily-reinforced cell designed to hold a Revenant—though Cassandra wondered if it would hold a Cygnian Revenant. She stepped up to a holo panel on the wall of Tanik’s cell and waved it to life. They weren’t allowed to enter his cell to communicate with him directly.
Tanik appeared on the screen, floating above the deck with his legs crossed and eyes closed.
Broken Worlds- The Complete Series Page 58