by J. N. Chaney
They kept up their relentless pursuit. The squid ships hopped through Alcubierre space in seemingly random directions, albeit generally deeper into The Ghosts. Were it just the Gyrfalcon, or any other ON ship pursuing them, they’d quite likely have shaken their pursuers by now. But Bertilak’s ability to keep tabs on them with his scanners, even from inside an Alcubierre bubble, rendered their wild course changes moot. The Jolly and the Gyrfalcon were bloodhounds, locked onto the trail of their quarry and doggedly staying there.
“Hey, Jolly, check out the comm, anything above the gamma-band,” Mol suddenly said.
Thorn glanced at Kira, shrugged, and switched the comm to one of its higher channels. It immediately began to emit a rising and falling tone, alternately hitting thin, high peaks of sound, then plunging deep into a tonal abyss, before rising again. It almost sounded like a slightly discordant choir, filling the Jolly’s bridge with an eerie, ethereal sort of almost-music.
Thorn used his own comm to contact Mol. “What the hell made you go looking for that, anyway?”
“I didn’t. It was Trixie. She regularly scans the comm spectrum and happened to hit on that. Thought I’d share it with you.”
Kira shivered at the uncanny wail. “Gee, thanks.”
“Well, I thought, why should I be the only one to enjoy this creepy concert?” Mol said.
Bertilak reset the Alcubierre parameters for the next hop but stopped and looked at the viewscreen. “Have to admit, that sound definitely fits with the scenery.”
It did. Ahead of them sprawled a panorama of stars, some of them seemingly torn into streaks and swirls of incandescence. They lit vast columns of gas, making them glow like luminous pillars, shot through with nearly every hue of color from red to blue. Beyond the vast towers of ancient star stuff, the deeper parts of The Ghosts were hidden behind shadowy veils, immense clouds of dust, the carcass remnants of long-dead stars.
And against all of it, that warbling howl rose and fell, like the voices of actual ghosts, lost and crying out in their desolate loneliness as they wandered the terrible splendor of the nebula.
Thorn shivered. “That’s . . . unsettling.”
He was glad when they slipped back into an Alcubierre bubble, shrinking the universe down to a less sinister, much more peaceful place.
10
The Nyctus had given up. They hadn’t surrendered, but they’d obviously reasoned out that they weren’t going to shake Thorn’s little force. They dropped back into normal space on the edge of a titanic sweep of dust and gas that swirled around a big star, a red giant. Such an ancient star stood out starkly among so many brighter, hotter young ones, making Thorn wonder just how old it was.
“As stars go, it’s damned old,” Mol said. “Trixie figures it to be one of the oldest stars on record.”
“It probably doesn’t have long for this universe, though. I’d expect it to go supernova very soon, which is going to be one hell of a show. It’s also going to completely rearrange this nebula,” Trixie chirped.
“Now, by very soon, what do you mean, Trixie? How soon is very soon? Are we in danger here?” Thorn asked.
“I’d estimate it could collapse and explode any time between now and, oh, let’s say a million years from now,” the AI replied.
He glanced at Kira. “Well, that narrows it down.”
“I think we can afford to take the chance,” Kira replied.
Two of the Nyctus ships, the destroyer and the accompanying frigate, had come about. The frigate loosed a volley of missiles at extreme range. Mol clicked her tongue at that, skidding the Gyrfalcon from side to side as she prepared to jink and dodge. The ships’ point-defense systems should be able to stop them, but there was no sense taking chances.
“I’ve been wondering something. If they’ve got a fancy new drive, why aren’t they a whole hell of a lot faster than this?” she asked over the comm.
“We don’t know what this drive does, though,” Densmore replied. “For all we know, maybe it’s just more fuel efficient, or smaller, but not necessarily more powerful.”
“No. That’s not it. They’re not installed. They’re carrying them,” Kira said, eyes narrowed as she watched the two squid ships charge at them. “Glorified transports. This is a navy on the edge.”
“Edge of what?” Mol asked.
“Defeat,” Thorn said, nodding at Kira’s thinking. “Complete defeat.”
But he pushed his attention past the two attacking ships, at the receding bulk of the battlecruiser. Curious, he pulled out his talisman and crafted a ’casting, then he swept his magical gaze across the big ship.
Bingo.
“Mol, can you take on one of those approaching squid ships on your own?” he asked.
“Uh, probably. Why?”
“Because we’re not going to stop and get mixed up in a fight. Kira, Captain Densmore, and I will do our best to take out the destroyer, or at least disable it, then carry on. We’ll leave the frigate, and mopping up, to you.”
In answer to Kira’s puzzled look, Thorn gestured at the battlecruiser. “Like you said, a glorified transport. That ship is carrying the prototype drive. The crew are desperate to get it back to—I’m not sure where. There’s a squid base somewhere here in The Ghosts, but they seem hesitant to even go there.”
Kira looked at the tactical display, then closed her eyes. Thorn waited. After about half a minute, she opened them again. “You’re right. It’s that battlecruiser we want.”
“Then let’s go get it.”
Bertilak adjusted his controls, angling the Jolly toward the Nyctus destroyer. It immediately opened fire, pouring missiles into space as fast as it could shoot them. Bertilak wove the Jolly from side-to-side, up-and-down, spinning and gyrating as he raced them through the storm of incoming fire. Mol swooped toward the frigate, flinging the Gyrfalcon around just as hard. The two ships had to split their fire, trying to track two small, nimble vessels on different trajectories, while bracing themselves for the counterattack.
A missile detonated close enough to the Jolly to bathe her in incandescent plasma. A railgun bolt slammed into her somewhere aft, making Thorn glance back sharply. Alix and most of Tiger Team 3 was still back there. But he couldn’t do anything about that right now because he had a job to do.
Thorn narrowed his eyes at the destroyer, then gripped his talisman hard enough that he could feel the grit that seemed to perpetually cling to it scraping under his fingers. That familiar reek of burning filled his nostrils, and he used it as a focus for his thoughts. Magic streamed into the talisman, and through him. Gritting his teeth, he shaped it into a titanic extension of his own hand, a Hammer ’casting that reached out from the Jolly as they swept past the destroyer.
His gaze fixed on the destroyer, Thorn flung out his arm, then snapped his fist closed. Something slammed the destroyer hard, as though it had just flown into something solid. Then its near flank peeled back, a long strip of hull plating and structural members ripped from it as the Jolly raced past, Bertilak pumping shots into the stricken ship as they did. In his mind, Thorn hung onto the shredded debris as long as he could, keeping his fist tightly clenched until the Jolly had flashed by the destroyer and it fell behind them.
Thorn gasped out a breath and glanced at the tactical display. Bertilak popped open a window on the viewscreen, showing the view behind the Jolly as she sped on.
The Nyctus destroyer slewed aside, fishtailing like she skidded on unseen ice. A vast cloud of vented atmosphere trailed in her wake. A few seconds later, she bent just ahead of her drive section, then snapped into two pieces, trailing debris and bodies.
Thorn found the others staring at him, eyes wide.
“Well, there’s something you don’t see every day,” Densmore said.
Kira and Bertilak just nodded. Thorn dropped his talisman into his lap and slumped back in the Jolly’s co-pilot seat. “I will point out that it’s a lot harder than it looks,” he said.
“Well, considering I wouldn’t
even begin to know how to do that, you make it look pretty damned easy,” Kira said.
“Mol, how are you doing?” Thorn asked over the comm.
“Hmm? Oh, not bad. This asshole’s proving a little tougher than I thought, but I shouldn’t be too far behind you.”
While she spoke, Thorn checked out the Gyrfalcon’s progress on the tactical display. Mol spun and danced around the frigate, landing railgun hits and slipping in a missile shot at close range that delivered a devastating blow. Like the rest of the squid ships, the frigate’s return fire was haphazard and uncoordinated, as though every weapons mount just fired as fast it could in the hopes of hitting something. Mol just didn’t give them the chance.
Thorn switched his attention back to the battlecruiser. She was close enough, now, that they could see the damage she’d taken from Tanner’s task force. Blast marks scorched her hull. Direct impacts had left gaping scars and rents, some of them still leaking wisps of atmosphere. She was still a formidable ship, though, outgunning the Jolly by a big margin.
“So how do you want to do this?” Bertilak asked. “We can attack for sure, and probably eventually win. With you three on board, in fact, I’d say we’ll win sooner rather than later, but do you really want to destroy this ship if it has that drive on board?”
“No, of course I don’t,” Thorn said, then glanced around the bridge. “Any ideas?”
“Well, if you don’t want to destroy them, then you kind of have to make them surrender, right?” Kira said.
“Which means you need to give them a good reason to surrender. Something that will make it clear they’re a lost cause,” Densmore put in.
Thorn rubbed his chin for a moment, then nodded at the image of the battlecruiser. Bertilak had held back, keeping the range open, but the squid battlecruiser fired a defiant volley of missiles, anyway.
Thorn ignored them, trusting Bertilak and the Jolly to deal with them. Mol, too, since she’d finished off the frigate and was now racing after them.
“Kira, can you Join with me, and then the crew of that battlecruiser, enough to make sure they all know what’s happening?” he asked.
“I’ll give it a try,” she replied, closing her eyes. A moment later, Thorn felt the soft touch of her mind against his.
Done, she said. Her voice only whispered in the back of his thoughts, not as firm and assertive as usual. It was because, he figured, she was spreading her Joining across dozens of minds, a diffuse web of talent that was gentle but insistent.
Thorn grabbed his talisman again, wove magic into a ’casting, a Joining of his own, and hurled his consciousness across the void. He sought one Nyctus in particular—the battlecruiser’s captain.
And there he was.
He drove his awareness at the squid captain like a guided warhead. He encountered a thin veil of resistance from a shaman somewhere aboard the ship, but he slammed through it and carried on until the squid captain’s thoughts rang in his mind.
You have no hope of defeating us. Even damaged, our ship is more than a match for your puny little craft.
The words thundered in Thorn’s mind with bold hostility, but he could sense how brittle they were, how bleak despair echoed just under the defiant shell.
Whatever. We both know that’s not true. You might have us outgunned, but let’s face it, I can probably rip your ship apart all by myself, and there’s not a damned thing you can do about it.
We have powerful shamans on board—
Shaman. Singular. She tried to stop me from reaching you. Guess what? It didn’t work because here I am.
I refuse—
I don’t care. Refuse, don’t refuse, it’s going to come out the same either way. Again, you know it, and I know it. So how about thinking of your crew?
What do you mean?
You’re carrying a prototype drive. I want it. Surrender your ship to us, let us have the drive, and you and your crew can be on your way.
I don’t believe you. This is just an excuse to close in and destroy us.
That would be terminally stupid, wouldn’t it, since I just made it clear I want that drive.
A surge of rage flooded across the Joining. I will scuttle this ship before I let you—
Thorn slewed the trajectory of his magic. He reached out, grabbed the captain, and pulled. As he did, he momentarily altered the nearby hull, changing it from unyielding alloy to just the idea of unyielding alloy, but without substance. The captain swept through it, then Thorn let go, flinging the captain away from the battlecruiser and into space.
He shifted back into a Joining, this time with Kira, using diffuse connections she’d established with the rest of the crew as a conduit for his own ’casting. It was a whole series of weak links to the squids’ minds, but it was enough for his purpose.
Let me be clear. You do not let, or allow, or cause or permit anything when you’re in my sphere of influence. Does anyone else want to be adrift in the black, frozen and alone? The choice is yours, and I might add this is far more generous than I should be.
A long moment passed. Thorn could feel the consternation, bordering on panic. The final, black despair. The voice that finally spoke back was that of the shaman.
We surrender.
Excellent choice. Power down your weapons and prepare to have us come aboard. Oh, and if I find that drive has been sabotaged, every one of you will spend your last seconds choking in vacuum. Slowly.
An abyss of despair gave way to a reluctant, but final acceptance.
Thorn severed his connection to the shaman and backed out of Kira’s thoughts. She did the same, and they both sat for a moment, blinking at one another.
“Well?” Bertilak asked.
Thorn glanced at him. “Well what?”
Bertilak rolled his eyes. “What happened?”
Thorn just stared at him, confused, then understood. From his perspective, and Densmore’s, Thorn and Kira had merely sat in silence for a few moments.
“Oh, they’re surrendering to us.”
“You managed to convince their captain to stand down? Good work, Stellers,” Densmore said.
“Nope, I didn’t convince their captain at all. That’s why he’s now drifting away from his ship, somewhere off their port quarter. That convinced the rest of them to give up.”
Densmore’s eyes widened, and for an instant, her façade of cool, professional calm cracked.
“Remind me to never piss you off, Stellers,” she finally said.
He smiled at her. “If it comes to that, I absolutely will, ma’am, believe me.”
“This is the weirdest boarding action I’ve ever done,” Alix said, glancing at the squids standing nearby. She kept her rifle raised into her shoulder, alert. The rest of Tiger Team 3 did the same, forming a tight perimeter around Thorn, Densmore, and Kira.
“Oh, I don’t think our Nyctus friends here will be giving us any trouble,” Thorn said, glancing around. They stood in the battlecruiser’s depressurized hold, fully vac-armored up. The external hatch stood open, revealing the Jolly about a hundred meters away.
“Doesn’t look like much, does it?” Kira said, eyeing the prototype drive. It was essentially a cylinder, about five meters long and one around, with a few bulbous protuberances extruded from it here and there. Even the metallic sheen of its housing was bland, which told Thorn it was early in the production process.
“Again, it might not be much. We won’t know until we get a chance to test it,” Densmore replied.
One of the Nyctus stepped forward, its own vac-suit gleaming in the wan light. It was the shaman. She’d been plugged into their comm for the sake of easy communication. Alix aimed her rifle at the creature’s head, but Thorn waved her off.
“It is the pinnacle of our technology. If we had been able to get it into mass production, we’d be having a very different conversation right now. Probably aboard one of your ships, captured by us,” the shaman said, doing her best to sound rebellious.
Thorn, though, just ret
urned a derisive snort. “Yeah, yeah. And if my aunt had wheels, she’d be a bicycle.”
“I don’t understand.”
“You don’t need to. Although I will tell you this. Next time you decide to start a war, don’t. Just don’t.” Thorn turned so the shaman could see his face through his helmet’s visor. “You can take that to your leadership. If you ever cross us again, or even so much as threaten a human, I will see to it that your race is wiped from existence. To the last of you. Is that clear?”
The shaman said nothing but simply stepped back again.
“Okay, folks, let’s get this thing aboard the Jolly and head back home,” Thorn said, starting to ’cast.
Tanner actually grinned across the comm. Grinned. “Damned good work, Stellers. Same with you, Wixcombe. And Alys, I gather you were there, too.”
“You wouldn’t be the first Commodore I’ve told to bite me—sir,” Densmore said, grinning right back.
Tanner laughed. It seemed, though, he’d reached his quota of good humor, and it faded from his face. “What you didn’t do, though, was find any good reason to not ally with the Bilau,” he said.
Thorn sat forward and leaned toward the comm terminal. “Actually, sir, I think we did.”
“Alright. What am I missing here?”
“The Nyctus are done, sir. They’ve been defeated. That last fleet action was basically a death ride,” Thorn said.
“I can vouch for that, sir,” Kira put in. “I saw it in the minds of all the squids aboard that battlecruiser. They’ve given up. They’ve lost the war, and they know it.”
Densmore sat up. “I have to agree, Commodore. The squids somehow managed to get themselves into a two-front war against us and the Bilau. It was too much for them.”
“Just what would have happened to us if someone hadn’t gotten the Danzur on our side,” Bertilak added, giving Kira a sidelong look.
Kira shrugged in response.
Tanner tapped his chin. “Okay, those are good points. I’m going to go back to Admiral Scoville and suggest we reach out to the Nyctus, see if they’re willing to negotiate a cease-fire with a view to a peace agreement.”