by Jean Johnson
“I’ll head back to my ship now, put on my formal Dress Blacks, and record my address to your people. You’ll have a clean copy of it within the next four hours. That should give you and your advisors plenty of time to figure out how best to present it after the Hellfire has left the system.”
He lifted his brows. “What, no direct orders on how to do that?”
She gave him a wry look. “I am still a mere mortal, Your Majesty. One lone woman with a huge task ahead of me, whereas you have thousands of advisors on your payroll. Use them wisely, and I won’t have to burden myself by doing their job for you on top of my own.”
“Should I salute you when you say things like that?” Emperor Ki’en-qua asked dryly, gesturing at her red-clad frame. “Whenever you go all Prophet-y instead of soldier-y?”
Ia chuckled, relaxing. “No, Your Majesty. I’m merely here to deliver a message. A series of messages, to save lives. I might get a bit zealous about it,” she admitted, shrugging with self-deprecation and a tough sense of humor, “but it’s the message that’s important, not the messenger. If you’ll give me leave to depart, I’ll go get started on helping ensure you remain firmly in control of the First Empire, exactly where Time says you should be.”
“By all means, go,” he ordered, gesturing at the door.
Rising, she bowed. “Thank you, Eternal Majesty—one more thing: increase your security slightly once my broadcast has been sent to your people. There is a five percent chance it’ll trigger some attempted anti-imperial attacks in spite of my reassurances, but it is nothing that well-prepared guards cannot handle.”
“My staff already has that in mind,” he reassured her. “But I’ll pass along the warning. Five percent is still a large number when it comes to one’s personal safety.”
CHAPTER 12
I think what saved the situation in the V’Dan Empire from boiling over was how quickly I and my crew departed the area and moved on to other things. The Admiral-General herself pointed out in my vidcall debriefing that it would indeed be more politically correct of me, a Terran officer, to be as absent as possible from the average V’Dan line of sight than to linger.
Since that fit in with my plans, I had no problems with her orders. I had other people to convince and plenty of enemy targets to pursue. Of course, some of them turned around and pursued me, too, but such are the fortunes of war.
~Ia
MAY 6, 2496 T.S.
ATTENBOROUGH EPSILON 29B
“We’re still not shaking them, Captain,” Nabouleh warned Ia. She was facing backwards in the pilot’s station, so her screens had an excellent aft-ward view of the frigate-sized Salik starship still in pursuit as they dodged through the debris of a small, disintegrating planetoid. “Whoever their pilot is, he’s good.”
“They’re not that good,” Kirkman snorted, glancing back from the comm station. “They’re less than a third our length, which means a small fraction of our mass. That gives them three times as much maneuverab—oof!—maneuverability in this mess.”
“Sorry,” Ia apologized, easing up on the sideslip, then dropped them down, throwing everyone against their restraint harnesses a second time. On the bright side, the other ship’s lasers only struck a glancing blow, while her own gunners managed to strafe the other craft despite the vector changes. The frigate’s hull, however, was holding up disturbingly well.
“Sir, why aren’t we making a run for it?” Private Balle asked her. “We still have enough hull integrity that—uff!—a straight run wouldn’t endanger the ship too much. If you give me a vector, I can plot us a course outta here.”
“Two reasons,” she told the navigator, dodging yet another chunk of tidally torn planetoid. “One, our pursuer will be given high esteem for lasting so long in this tail-chase against—ugh—us.” Her sharp maneuvers with the ship’s fields were bruising her own hide, too. “She—we’re being pursued by a female, a very dangerous sort of hunter-pilot—will be assigned to a new make of small, OTL-capable frigates, and attempt to pursue us for months to come. I can use that, since it’ll start to tie up Salik resources in the attempt to ambush us if they think they can follow us and predict our course and targets.
“And the second reason…we’re actually here to pick someone up, as well as fight the Salik.”
Silence followed that statement. Helstead, overseeing the gunner teams along with Nabouleh and Sung, voiced the thought uppermost on the bridge crew’s collective mind.
“…You’re mucking nuts, Captain. Pick someone up? Out here?” the lieutenant commander scoffed. “With respect, sir, this is a system flooded with hard radiation from three colliding red dwarfs and seven torn planets. The Salik—uff—resorted to remote robotics to do their ore mining here only because they’re desperate for untraced resources, sir. Even the Chinsoiy haven’t bothered with this place because the gravitational tides make permanent residence problematic.”
Something zipped across Ia’s screen. It swerved back toward the ship as she dodged another chunk of rock. “Well, something likes this part of space. All hands, prepare for a friendly boarder. I repeat, prepare for a friendly boarder, followed by a hasty departure from this asteroid-riddled hellhole. Brace for yet more maneuvers and some heavy acceleration. Captain out.
“Zedon, have engineering stand by with extra energy for the bridge, at my station,” Ia told the private, switching off the intercom.
Helstead twisted in her seat, frowning at Ia. “Captain, we’re not allowed to have boarders.”
Something bounced off their hull with the dull thump that said the shields had cushioned most of the impact. “Wow,” Sung joked from the main gunnery seat. “They actually fired a dud at us. It broke up on impact, though. Didn’t even bother the insystem shields.”
“It’s not a dud. It’s a tracking mechanism,” Helstead corrected him, scanner information flowing up her screen. “Tiny robots that will try to push through the shield fluctuations and find a niche they can crawl into, something that will shelter them from the riptide forces of FTL travel. I’d love to get my hands on the pirates that sold them that little piece of tech.”
“Whoa!” Zedon exclaimed, looking back at Ia for a split second before returning his attention to his screens. “That was weird, sir. Energy spike in the amidships hull, portside Deck 18, seven by thirteen. It was followed by a serious drain. Is that near those robot things?”
“Those struck aft starboard, closer to Deck 4,” Helstead dismissed. “Are we getting an attacker from port side, now?”
“Neither. It’s time to execute the ‘get the hell out of here’ maneuver,” Ia quipped, guiding the ship down and left. “Because that energy spike-and-drain is actually our boarder.”
“Star 29c is starting to flare,” Private Charity Balle warned Ia, checking the navicomp. “If we run-to-jump on this heading, the ion storm will wreak havoc with the remaining scanners. I can’t guarantee a safe transit to FTL.”
“Who said we were running out of here on FTL?” Ia asked. Lining up the ship, she hit the thrusters, shooting them forward. Pressed back into their seats, they left their Salik pursuer behind. Her chosen opening between the drifting chunks of rock was narrow, but long. It did require subtle shifts right and left, thwarting attacks from behind, but it didn’t take much to raise their speed to somewhere close to half Cee.
A swirl of her fingers swung one of the nose cones into position, and a flick shot a ring-shaped spark out in front, narrowing down as it raced ahead. Collapsing into a singularity, it whirled, ripping open a grey-streaked mouth that led into hyperspace. There was just enough room to dart the Hellfire into that dull hell-mouth before it swirled shut again. In its own way, the hyperrift itself wasn’t much different than the physics-greasing bubble of the FTL field encapsulating the ship; it was a bubble forcing open an artificial cosmic string, and it sucked them along for no more than three rattling seconds before it spat them back out again.
Slowing the ship, Ia checked their heading in the timestrea
ms, comparing it against the navicomp readings on her lower-leftmost screen. They were now past the heliopause of the system they had just left, so there was little chance of a rogue chunk of whatever being in their way.
“…We’ve reached interstitial space, Captain,” Balle announced, checking her screens. “No navigation hazards within detectable range. Please tell me we don’t have to do that again, because I’ll need a spacesick bag if we do.”
“We’re good for now, Private. Nabouleh, power around and prepare to take the helm,” Ia ordered.
“Aye, sir,” the woman agreed, reaching for the controls that unlocked her backwards-facing station.
“We’ve got another energy drain, Captain,” Zedon called out, tapping his screen to expand a wireframe view of the ship. “It’s now below us. It’s…coming this way?”
“Nabouleh, helm to yours in twenty,” Ia warned the third watch pilot.
“Aye, sir,” Nabouleh confirmed. Her chair and console clicked into place, allowing her to lock it and reach for the control glove. “Helm to mine in twenty.”
“Sir, it’s coming this way!” Zedon twisted away from the operations console. He didn’t glance at the right patch of floor, though. Two meters in the other direction, to the left, not the right, the plain grey plexcrete matting covering the floor turned liquid and silvery. It rose up slowly, forming first a puddle, then a curve, then finally a bubble.
“Gentlemeioas, this is our friendly boarder,” Ia stated, transferring the ship’s controls. “Everyone, this is Belini.”
“I have the helm, sir,” Nabouleh murmured, gaze darting sideways in little snatches at their guest. Not that there was any real need for her to navigate, safe as their deadheaded course currently was, but she dragged her attention fully back to her screen when the giant bubble just floated there, off to her left.
“Thank you, Yeoman. Continue on course for the moment. Meioa Belini, if you’d come over here,” Ia stated, addressing the overgrown, silvery soap bubble reflecting their bridge back at them, “I can transfer you enough energy to manifest physically. I think that would be far less disconcerting to my crew.”
The surface of the sphere shifted and roiled. But it was sentient, and it was polite, for it obediently drifted toward her left side. Ia stripped off the control glove and held out her left hand. Her right hand sought out the small hatch and the electrodes built into her console.
Touching a Feyori in reality was not like touching one on the timeplains. There, a Meddler was merely another mental presence, one shaped like a bubble of warm water. This wasn’t nearly that soothing. Her skin tickled and her nerves tingled, stimulated by the energies contained in that strange sphere. Adding electricity to the mix increased the stinging of the prickles, but Ia didn’t stop conveying energy until the bubble flashed and popped.
Skilled as she was, the Feyori didn’t even thump onto the deck as her Human-shaped feet landed. Bare feet, but she had shaped most of herself with clothes, if one counted footless leggings, a knee-length tunic, and a broad, waist-cinching belt as such. Short, blonde, and petite, she looked like a pixie. She also sounded like one, speaking with a light, sweet soprano voice.
“Thank you for the courtesy,” the Meddler stated, squeezing Ia’s hand before releasing it. Her fingers were warm and soft, and they slid free with a grace that said she was quite comfortable with a matter-based form. “I apologize for the delay. I wasn’t completely sure at first why you were hanging around so long after blasting all those mining drones. Then I realized who you were.”
“I take it my previous contact spoke with you?” Ia asked. Before she had encountered Meyun Harper, the Feyori had been the only ones she knew who could cloak some of their actions in the timestreams. She wasn’t entirely sure what the previous Meddler had done.
Belini leaned over the edge of Ia’s console, elbows braced on the edge and hands clasped together. “Indeedy. He’s admitted to a provisional factioning. And that you asked for a few names. Given what little I can see of the future…I’m afraid you won’t be able to reach the others before your Right of Simmerings is up. Not and convince them you’re a player and not a pawn. It looks like you’ll have to deal with me.”
Ia shrugged, not bothering to deny it. Helstead craned her neck, looking at the Feyori with wide aqua blue eyes. She wasn’t the only one. Belini glanced her way and smirked.
“I think I’ll be a topic of conversation for some time among your crew…but that’s alright. I like you Humans. You’re cute as far as matter beings go, and you’re endlessly amusing.” She rested her chin on her interlaced fingers, smiling at Ia.
“Sir?” Private Kirkman asked, glancing between the alien and his CO. “Is there a…reason…for her being on this ship? I thought visitors were strictly prohibited on this vessel by pain of Grand Treason. Er, Grand High Treason, now that we’re at war.”
It was Helstead who answered his question. She snorted. “There’s an obscure exception outlined in the rules and regs regarding the Feyori. It’s extremely difficult to make a damned Meddler do anything it doesn’t want to do. Not without a lot of psis pestering it to leave. The Captain could try to band us together to oust her, but there’s no guarantee of success…so having a Feyori on board doesn’t count against us.”
“That exception to the regulations would apply, yes, Lieutenant Commander, but this falls more under the heading of undertaking diplomatic negotiations in favor of the war effort,” Ia stated. “Not to mention it’s part of my carte blanche.”
Belini shrugged. “Like I said, you’re all so delightful to watch. Threatening to kick me off the ship with little bitty psis?”
“Even a bear can be driven off by a large enough hive of bees,” Ia pointed out, keeping her tone mild. She even managed a small smile for the pixie-like woman. “Still, I’m glad we amuse you. It’s good to keep a guest entertained.”
The pixie-shaped Meddler smirked and leaned closer, speaking with her mind instead of her lips. (If you really are the Prophet, half-breed, then you already know what I want, and that I know what you need. Open faction, so that you have protection to continue your Right of Simmerings…and personally tailored prophecies for me.)
(Open faction would be advantageous to me on many levels,) Ia returned, not denying it. (You’re one of the most powerful Meddlers positioned in Terran space. Though with you factioning me, Silverstone indebted to me, and Kierfando willing to accept me, all I’d have to do is manifest…which I could do with your help if you openly faction me. And yes, I do know what you want. It will be arranged for you at the right time and place.)
(Good. And nope, I’m not going to help you manifest.) Reaching around the transparent edge of her leftmost secondary screen, Belini bopped Ia lightly on the nose. (You’re the one responsible for achieving your own adulthood, little one. You’ll gain more respect if you don’t have Feyori aid.)
Ia wrinkled her nose. (Ugh, I know. So much for the shortcut…And please refrain from doing that in front of my troops. They need to know I’m both fearless in the face of a full-blooded Meddler on board, and respected by that Meddler. This is part of my factioning to my troops, matter-based though they may be.)
(Well, don’t expect me to salute you,) Belini retorted dryly. (I’m not Silverstone. I didn’t join the military.) She held out her hand. (So. We are in faction?)
(We are.) Gripping the offered hand, Ia sealed the deal with a wordless thought pulse.
Belini’s brows rose. (You know how to talk in the old ways, don’t you? A shame, but not more than half of us at most still do that. The only drawback to the Game is that we’re in some ways being influenced by our own pawns, even as we influence them.)
Ia sent another wordless pulse of energy, confirming it. Belini pulsed one back. It was a lot more complex than Ia’s, and made the younger woman’s head ache. Releasing her hand, Ia rubbed briefly at her temple, then lifted her chin at her main screen. “So where should we drop you off?”
“I need to stick ar
ound long enough to place my marks on your ship, so that the others will know it’s under my protection,” Belini stated, watching Ia shift to unclip her harness. “That means coordinating with your engineers so they don’t cleanse the wrong energy traces—via degaussing and so forth. Depending on whether or not they understand what they’ll be looking at, that could take one to five hours. By the way, did you know there’s a small homing beacon now attached to your ship? It tastes like mud. Salik machines tend to taste that way.”
It was Ia’s turn to snort. “Of course I know. My intent is to find it, deactivate it without destroying it, then reactivate it later on to lure the enemy into ambush after ambush.”
Belini grinned and leaned again, looking like a kid. “Excellent. You just might survive in the playing field of Feyori politics.”
Ia pushed out of her chair. “Whatever I may do with my abilities, I am Human first and foremost. My only goal is to save this galaxy. I have no interest in your Game beyond ensuring that it, too, will survive the coming cataclysm—but let’s take this to my office, where I will go over what you are and are not allowed to see and touch while you are on board. Please remember that I am strong enough to throw you off my ship.”
“Hey, I’m in faction to you now,” Belini countered, raising her hands in mock-surrender. “I also personally believe it’s a sweet enough deal, I’m not going to mess it up—you could even put me in the brig when I’m not being escorted around.”
Ia gave her a flat look. “You’re a Feyori. The brig wouldn’t hold you at all. I’ll escort you to engineering myself. What nearby system do you want to be dropped off at?”
“I believe your star charts call it Atteborough Theta something,” Belini dismissed, flicking her hand lazily.
“Private Balle, plot a course for Atteborough Theta 23. Yeoman Nabouleh, take us into FTL as soon as the navicomp has the course laid. Lieutenant Commander, you have the bridge,” Ia ordered.