“Tanik?” Cassandra asked.
His eyes snapped open and flicked to the screen on his side of the cell. “You came to visit me. How nice.” His voice oozed with sarcasm.
“How are you going to protect me now?” Cassandra demanded. “You’re locked up! This wasn’t part of the plan.”
“No, it wasn’t,” Tanik agreed. He uncrossed his legs and his mag boots yanked him to the floor with a metallic clunk. He went to the holo panel in his cell and glowered at her. “Who told you to tell the Cygnians about the sabotage?”
“I... you didn’t tell me not to!” Cassandra objected.
“I did. Indirectly, at least. I gave you our story. You were supposed to have joined the Nomad in order to accept Gakram’s invitation and fulfill the prophecy, nothing more. I was supposed to come and tell them about the sabotage, but only after I was forced to tell them in order to save your life.”
“Well, what’s the difference?”
“The difference is, now the Cygnians aren’t grateful to me for saving them, so they’ve locked me up, and if the Admiral ever figures out that you told them about the sabotage before I arrived, then we’ll both be liable for treason—me for telling you classified information, and you for relating it to the Cygnians.”
Cassandra gaped at him. “Well... we can still stick to your story when we get back. How will anyone ever know any different?”
Tanik scowled. “Indeed, just be sure that you do stick to that story.”
“You didn’t answer my question,” Cassandra prompted. “How are you going to protect me now?”
“I’ll figure something out. In the meantime, it would be best if you didn’t talk to anyone, about anything, except for Gakram.”
“Well, what do I do when we arrive at Cygnus Prime? What about the prophecy?”
The Ghoul guard who had accompanied them to Tanik’s cell glanced their way as she said that, the four red eyes of his helmet glaring.
Tanik’s eyes darted to that Ghoul, then back, and he smiled thinly at her. “I’ll figure something out,” he repeated, and fixed her with a meaningful look.
She took the hint and nodded hastily. “Okay.”
The guard stalked over to them on two legs, his massive head brushing the ceiling. He growled at Gakram. “We have to strap in.”
“We’re jumping out already?” Cassandra asked.
The Ghoul glared at her once more, then looked back to Gakram. “We have detected six squadrons of fighters incoming. Elder Arathos is going to try to outrun them.”
Gakram hissed and tossed his head. “Lead the way, master.”
* * *
Darius stood with Dyara in the CIC, watching his worst nightmare unfold. He was bursting with the urgent need to do something, but there was nothing he could do. Even if he took off in a Vulture right now, he’d never be able to reach the Nomad before they jumped away, or for that matter, before the fighter squadrons Admiral Ventaris had launched.
Revenant Sentinels with the rank insignia of Lieutenants and Lieutenant Commanders manned the various control stations in the room. The admiral walked from station to station, checking in with each of them.
“Flight Ops, how long before our fighters reach weapons range with the Nomad?” Ventaris asked.
“Fifteen minutes, sir.”
“And how long before the Nomad can jump?”
“They haven’t started spinning up their Alckam drive yet, but once they do, they’ll need at least twenty minutes to complete the warm-up cycle, sir.”
“Grak it,” Admiral Ventaris muttered. “Authorize your pilots to use whatever force necessary to stop the Nomad. We can’t let it get away.”
“Understood, sir.”
That hit Darius like a bucket of ice water. “Hold on a minute,” he said.
Admiral Ventaris glanced at him. “Yes?”
“You’re going to shoot them?”
“How else do you expect me to stop them from leaving?”
“My daughter is on board,” Darius said.
“I am aware of that, Acolyte.”
“I don’t think you are!” Darius thundered. “And I don’t think you care if she becomes collateral damage.”
“Be careful how you speak to me. You are not the Augur yet. And I assure you, we will do everything we can to capture the Nomad in one piece.”
Darius scowled at him. “And what if you destroy the ship? Then what? You’ll give me your deepest condolences?”
“Calm down and shut the hell up before I throw you out of the CIC.”
Darius clamped his mouth shut, but he could feel his eyes popping with fury. Blood vessels pulsed at his temples. Admiral Ventaris turned away and continued walking down the line of control stations.
“Comms, report! Any reply to our hails?”
“None yet, sir.”
“Warn them again. If they don’t power down their engines and submit to boarding, we will fire on them.”
“Yes, sir. It might help if we had a better excuse. Why are we boarding them if they haven’t even begun spinning up their Alckam drive?”
“It’s enough that we suspect they’re going to warn their people. If we waited for them to actually jump, it would be too late.”
“Yes, sir,” the comms operator replied.
Dyara came to stand beside Darius. She slid her hand into his and gave it reassuring squeeze. “She’s going to be okay. They’ll stop the Nomad before it jumps.”
Darius shook his head slowly, unconvinced. “I just don’t understand why she left. She knew about my visions. What could have convinced her to go? And why didn’t she say something to me!”
“She must have had a good reason.”
Darius arched an eyebrow at her. “And what about Tanik? What’s he doing there with her?”
“Maybe...” Dyara trailed off. “I’m sure they’ll have a good explanation when we speak with them.”
“Yeah,” Darius frowned. “They’d better.”
“The Nomad is spinning up its jump drive! ETA twenty minutes,” someone announced.
“Ops!” Admiral Ventaris bellowed. “How long to firing range?”
“Ten minutes!” the lieutenant at the flight ops station replied.
“That gives us ten minutes to stop them,” the admiral mused. “Arm the ZPFs.”
“The ZPFs, sir?”
“You heard me, Lieutenant!”
ZPFs? What are those? Darius had a guess, but he didn’t like it, and he needed to be sure. Reaching out with his awareness, Darius cast his mind toward Admiral Ventaris to get a feel for his intentions. He didn’t like the deadly resolve he found in the Admiral’s aura, so he pushed deeper until he was inside the Admiral’s head, surrounded by whispering voices and fragments of thought. Darius couldn’t see the admiral’s thoughts as much as he could hear and sense them. It was as if he had possessed the admiral’s body, and his thoughts were now Darius’s thoughts, too.
If our fighters have them pinned down with lasers, they won’t be able to drop their shields to fire back, so our missiles should get through... unless the Cygnians on board use the ZPF to deflect them. But if we’re using ZPF warheads, just one missile will be enough to take them out. No shield is strong enough to repel that.
Darius reeled in shock. You can’t destroy that ship!
What are you doing inside my head? Admiral Ventaris demanded.
Before Darius could formulate a reply, he received a violent shove that broke his concentration, and suddenly he was back in his own body.
The admiral rounded on him and pointed a finger at his chest. “Do that again, and I’ll have you executed.”
“You don’t care if you destroy them!” Darius accused.
“And you don’t care if everyone in the entire fleet dies, just so long as your daughter lives,” Admiral Ventaris countered.
“You don’t have to destroy them,” Darius replied. “You can board them instead.”
“Assuming we can physically catch up with them
before they jump away, which does not look like a serious possibility. Our missiles will be lucky to catch them, let alone our fighters.”
“Then follow them to Cygnus Prime! That’s where they’re headed, isn’t it?”
“Our entire battle plan is predicated on the element of surprise! One swift strike to cripple the Cygnians’ infrastructure and win the war. If we go to Cygnus Prime now, they’ll withdraw their fleets from Union space to defend their other worlds.”
“You never intended to threaten them,” Darius said. “You’ve been planning to wipe them out this whole time.”
“Of course I have! I’m not stupid. Why risk all-out war when we can cripple the other side and end the war before it starts? You need to stop thinking about yourself, and start thinking about the greater good. If your daughter has to die to save billions of lives, does that not justify her sacrifice? Besides—I’m not the one who sent her aboard the Nomad. I isolated the Cygnians aboard that ship for a reason. She’s the one who chose to join them. She’s chosen her side in this war.”
“You don’t know that. She could be a hostage.”
“Then why hasn’t the Nomad contacted us to make demands? What is the point of taking hostages otherwise? Face it, Darius, she went willingly.”
“Tanik, too?” Darius challenged. “Wasn’t he the brains of this entire operation? Why would he join the Cygnians?”
A muscle in Admiral Ventaris’s cheek twitched. “Hopefully, to bring your daughter back. If not, he may have betrayed us all even more deeply than she did. Now, stop wasting my time. If you can’t keep quiet, you’ll have to leave. There’s nothing you can do to help your daughter.” The admiral turned back to the officer at the flight ops station. “ETA to firing range?”
“Three minutes, sir, but the Nomad is now shielding itself, and they’re still trying to make a run for it.”
“Fire the ZPF missiles. There’s only so much they can shield.”
“Yes, sir.”
A jolt of adrenaline stabbed through Darius’s heart, and his legs began to shake. He had to do something! But what? His hand fell to the hilt of his sword and his gaze darted around the CIC to get a feel for his opposition. Even if he sneak-attacked the admiral and somehow managed to kill him, his officers wouldn’t call off the attack. Besides, he only had a few minutes to work with. The guards standing by the doors noticed his hostile stance, and started toward him.
“We should go...” Dyara whispered, and grabbed Darius’s arm in a warning grip. “You don’t have to stay here for this.”
“No,” Darius shook his head. “I do.”
He released the hilt of his sword and shut his eyes. He pushed his mind into the thoughts of the approaching guards, and told them to go back to their posts. There was a brief flash of confusion as they resisted, but Darius pressed harder, not taking no for an answer. He cracked his eyes open and saw the men walking back to the doors, their eyes glazed and staring, as if he’d put them in a trance. Darius couldn’t believe it had worked. He struggled to quell their suspicions and smooth away their doubts. Now he reached in a new direction—back to the admiral, and forced his way into the man’s thoughts. Ventaris immediately began shoving him out, but this time Darius pushed back as hard as he could. It worked. All at once the admiral’s resistance faded to a subtle pressure, and suddenly he was in control.
“Call off the attack,” Darius said, but it was the Admiral’s voice that he heard.
“Sir?” The lieutenant at flight ops turned to him with a bemused frown.
“You heard me, Lieutenant! Now! Before they open fire.”
“Yes, sir... fighters are standing down.”
“Recall them,” Darius said.
“They’re already on their way back, sir. Is there some reason for your change of heart?”
Darius thought quickly, coming up with an explanation on the fly. “I’ve just received new information via my ESC. It’s Tanik. He and Cassandra infiltrated the Nomad by pretending to be on the Cygnians’ side. He says it’s too late to stop them. They’ve already sent messengers ahead to Cygnus Prime, so there’s no point in destroying the Nomad.”
“But sir, we’ve been monitoring the entire system day and night. We have probes everywhere. We would have detected the jump emissions if any ships had left the system.”
Darius’s mind raced, trying to come up with an explanation for that. He took a gamble. “Not if they flew far enough away first and then executed their jump in the shadow of a large planetary body.”
“Maybe, but gamma rays are hard to miss, sir.”
“Stop questioning me, Lieutenant. I trust Tanik. If he says they sent out messengers, then they sent out messengers. We can figure out how they pulled that off later.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Comms, ready the fleet,” Darius went on, still using Ventaris. “Tell them to plot a course for Cygnus Prime and start spinning up their Alckam drives—and sound the evacuation. We’re all leaving for orbit immediately.”
“Yes, sir,” the comms officer said.
A klaxon started screaming from loudspeakers outside, and through smaller ones dangling from the ceiling of the CIC. The comm officer’s voice bubbled out a moment later. “General quarters, general quarters! All personnel to your transports. We are evacuating Cratus. This is not a drill. I repeat, all personnel to your transports. This is not a drill.”
Darius struggled to maintain his hold on the admiral’s mind, despite the constant pressure of his resistance. He released the guards by the door in order to focus more squarely on the admiral, and then he risked splitting his focus in order to take back control of his own body.
Dyara was shaking him by his shoulders. “Darius! What’s wrong? Answer me!”
He blinked, slowly coming back to his senses—literally. “I’m fine.” He glanced at the Admiral. Ventaris stood there, frozen, obviously still under his control. Darius instructed him to leave the CIC and head for his transport.
“I’ll see you all in orbit,” Ventaris said as he left.
Darius hadn’t even needed to put those words in the admiral’s mouth this time. Interesting, he thought. This was a looser form of control, but a lot easier to manage. The mental pressure from Ventaris’s mind remained, like the beginnings of a headache, but it was tolerable.
Darius followed Ventaris out of the CIC and Dyara kept pace beside him. “Wow,” Dyara breathed as soon as they cleared the doors. “That was really lucky.”
Darius looked at her. He couldn’t risk telling her what he’d done. Someone in the command center might overhear. He tried planting his reply directly in her thoughts instead.
It wasn’t luck. I’m controlling him. I made him back down. He jerked his chin to the admiral. Ventaris was striding purposefully down the hall to the front doors of the command center.
Dyara’s mouth dropped open and her eyes widened. Darius? She thought back at him.
Yes?
“You’re the one who made them stand down?” she whispered in a sharp voice.
“Quiet!” Darius snapped, and glanced behind them to make sure no one had overheard.
“Darius... this isn’t right. You can’t just take control of someone like that!”
I had no choice, he thought at her. I couldn’t stand by and let him kill her! Besides, the admiral was planning xenocide. You heard him. He admitted it! Now that we’re in control, we can look for a diplomatic solution.
Dyara shot him a skeptical look as they breezed out the front doors of the command center. It was chaos outside. The klaxons were louder out here, and the comm officer’s message played on repeat. Revenant soldiers ran about in squads, snapping orders at each other.
Admiral Ventaris cut right, heading for an open stretch of field beside the command center where a pair of Ospreys hunched in the grass.
“A diplomatic solution...” Dyara trailed off as they followed Ventaris to the field. “You mean like negotiating with the Cygnians? Isn’t that what got Cass killed
in your visions?”
Darius grimaced at that reminder. “Maybe if I negotiate for her, she won’t be tempted to try herself,” he said.
“Maybe...” Dyara replied.
But Darius wasn’t convinced that negotiating would work. Admiral Ventaris was probably right to think that the Cygnians wouldn’t back down unless they were already defeated. Darius shook his head to clear it. He shouldn’t be in charge. Taking over gave him a chance to save Cassandra. As soon as they arrived at Cygnus Prime, he’d find a way to rescue her and get the hell away from the fighting before they ended up dead. This isn’t our war, and we’re not soldiers.
Chapter 40
—FOUR HOURS LATER—
Cassandra watched the Nomad drop out of warp on the holo panel in her quarters. Gakram kept her company. They’d spent most of the past four hours sleeping after their lucky escape from those squadrons of Revenant fighters. Gakram had scoffed at the Revenants’ sudden retreat, saying that no Cygnian would back their prey into a corner only to step aside at the last minute and let them go. He’d suggested that perhaps the Admiral was afraid to actually start a war with his people.
Cassandra said nothing to that, but she’d been secretly disturbed by Gakram’s reaction. She was seeing a new side to him, and it didn’t give her much hope for negotiating a peaceful resolution. Maybe I shouldn’t even try, she thought. My dad’s visions can’t come true, if I don’t negotiate. And with Tanik locked up, he couldn’t defend her if she did. It wasn’t worth the risk.
“This is it,” Gakram growled. He turned his massive head to her. “Are you ready to fulfill your destiny?”
Cassandra swallowed thickly. “Right now?”
“Why not?” Gakram asked.
“Well, don’t you need to wait to take me down to Cygnus Prime or something? I mean, how am I supposed to talk to your Old Ones from here?”
“We will hail them over the commsss,” Gakram hissed. “We cannot delay. The admiral may follow us.”
“Ah...” Cassandra faltered for another excuse.
“Come,” Gakram intoned. “There’s no time to waste.” He got up and loped toward the door, and Cassandra slowly followed. She reached out with her awareness to find Tanik, hoping by some miracle to find him nearby.
Broken Worlds- The Complete Series Page 59