«And now the others need to know,» she insisted.
“I agree. Which is why I’m making the announcement.” He waved at her thorax and let the right amount of hesitation trickle into his voice. “Do those scars hurt?”
Pri let her tendril drop. «Sometimes. The excitement of seeing our plan so close to fruition brings up old memories.»
He jabbed. “They won’t trouble you after tonight.” Gau pivoted to face the hangar. A phalanx of Embassy ships hummed softly in their own little circles of ship-pad lights, a pair of canisters strapped to the sides of each ship. Sand Sweeper was just strapping the last two to the Carnivore; Gau had wanted to carry his share, feel the weight of them in the feedback of his ship’s controls as he flew at the head of their small, deadly fleet.
“Good work, every one of you,” he said. “Now I’m going to tell you what it’s all been for.” His gaze took in the various forms of his team as they stood (or in the Buckyball’s case, floated) in a loose semicircle around him. “We’re going to Diego Two.”
The surprise that rippled through the group manifested in bursts of lightspeech, sharply inhaled breaths, widening eyes: alien reactions he’d had to train himself to read. For a second Gau missed the distinctively salty scent of Osk surprise, but he quashed the feeling down.
A Wurfren dipped its furry head politely. “We in Neo-Chicago already are. Why not the virus release here?”
“Neo-Chicago is Aival’s seat of government,” added Ven, a Baskar on the team. “A strike here would be far more damaging to the Terrans’ infrastructure. Diego Two is still influential economically,” he conceded with a nod to Gau, “but it hasn’t been central to the Expansion since crisis days.” After a beat, Ven averted his gaze as though he’d just realized to whom he was speaking.
Gau gave him an indulgent smile. “Precisely. The Terrans have forgotten how they crushed the insurgency in Diego Two. Forgotten the millions they murdered in Za.”
He passed his gaze over his hushed audience. “The Terrans start wars, then lament the loss of life. They ruin planets, then decry the ecological damage. They make alliances with Urd slavemasters, then claim they brought freedom to the Arashal.” He acknowledged Arkk with a jab. “They remember when it’s expedient, when it suits them, when they must change nothing; the rest of the time, they forget.” He let the pause lengthen. “We will make them remember.”
His assembled team erupted with chatter, tense and purposeful. The ranks parted as Arkk surged forward and laid a huge hand gently on Gau’s small shoulder.
«I’m with you.» Pri’s silent words burned. «What better place to give the Terrans a taste of their own weapon?»
Gau grinned, pleased she saw the same symmetry he did. “Diego Two is where the Gray Wars began. Tonight, it is where we will end them.”
20
A Drevl Char on Gau’s team, Mose thought as he watched the scene from the cockpit of his ship. Now that’s interesting. His speakers could only pick up Gau’s side of the conversation, but their easy camaraderie was enough for him to tell the two of them had been working together for a while.
Mose had encountered Pri’s species years earlier on Teluk, before he’d left for Olios 3: a rare population living outside the Expansion Front. There was even supposed to be a Drevl Char enclave on Skraal, though Mose wasn’t sure he believed that. These days, most of the Drevl Char still around lived on Terran planets, in tiny communities with extraordinary privileges compared to other non-Terran enclaves. It was a generosity motivated in part by the Expansion’s desire to curb any Drevl Char thoughts of retaliation. With their telepathic abilities, the Drevl Char would make the perfect spies and saboteurs; best to keep them happy. It obviously hadn’t worked.
Could that be it? I wouldn’t blame her if she’s out for revenge. Mose understood that better than anything.
The hangar doors opened into a smooth slit in the Embassy building’s glassy bulk. In the cockpit of the Carnivore, Gau eased forward on the controls, coaxing his ship through the opening. Even with the auxiliary thrusters firing, he could feel the difference the extra weight of the tanks made in the Carnivore’s handling. Gau maneuvered his ship up, down, forward, and back in small increments, tested the pitch and yaw to create new weight distribution data for the computer to integrate into its flight program.
One by one, the phalanx of Embassy ships glided into the air behind him. “All right,” Gau said into the open radio channel. “We proceed south along the coast until we reach the harbor districts of Diego Two. Don’t make the release until you’ve reached the harbor. The prevailing winds will carry the swarm over the rest of the city from there. Over and out.”
Each of the ships radioed back their affirmatives. Message received. Gau grinned as he fired the main engines and skimmed out over the city.
At the same time, another Osk lowered his ship by degrees through Aival’s darkening cloud layers. State-of-the-art Terran cloaking technology rendered Mose’s ship invisible on radar and no more than a slight shimmer against the clouds, but he didn’t want to risk the phalanx of Embassy craft spotting the wake of his ship’s passage. Tension squeezed Mose’s guts in a mesh of wires; though he kept his course steady, his hands trembled around the controls and the close cockpit refracted the acrid scent of his fear back at him. He would not let them spot him.
Not until he was ready.
The Carnivore cruised high above a quiet manufacturing district at the edge of Neo-Chicago. Through cameras embedded in the ship’s skin, Gau observed the few vehicles on the streets below with contempt. From this high above, they reminded him of needle worms milling around the base of a hive, moving along their predetermined pathways, totally oblivious of the death flying past above their heads.
A good thing, then, that this death is not for you, Gau thought at the unknowing residents of Neo-Chicago. He turned his thoughts to the canisters of Fate’s Shears, programmed by Pri according to his instructions. He recalled her words the first time he had floated the idea of hijacking the reserve supply of the nanovirus.
«Without a programmed schema, the swarm is inert,» she’d said. «The virus released in Za was specifically programmed to attack the reconstruction nodes of Osk alveoli nets. The supply held in reserve will not have been ... molded yet. Given the proper interface, I would be able to reprogram it. What would you want to instruct the virus to do?»
Do it to them. No hesitation in his answer. Have the virus do to the Terrans what they did to us. Then release the city-killer into Diego Two, he’d mentally added. The Gray Wars were about to come full circle.
Gau had started to relax into the easy rhythm of flying, secure in the knowledge of his followers’ phalanx keeping pace a few dozen meters behind, when something shimmered in his peripheral vision. There was no time to question the reflex that followed. His training took hold of him like an electrified vise; he killed the engines of his craft and it dropped, just as two shafts of white light sizzled through the spot where the Carnivore had been half a second before.
He fired engines, halting the ship’s fall a hundred meters above the street, and craned a glance at the exterior screens, where the cameras mounted along the Carnivore’s roof had located the source of the laser shot.
Seen from below, the ship was a black ellipse, tapering to points at each end. It was at least half as long again as Gau’s craft. Engines glowed red at one end, echoed by crimson landing lights that ran the length of its underside.
Gau choked down his shock. He spoke over the radio: “Status reports, now!” The reports came in over the band, each a second apart. None of the ships had sustained damage or been shot down. His radar map still showed the phalanx flying behind him.
The black craft was descending slowly, vulnerable belly exposed all the while, as if taunting Gau to take a shot at it.
He was more than willing to oblige. “New plan,” he snapped into t
he radio. “Maintain distance; I’m going to engage.” He opened up the Carnivore’s roof-mounted cannon, lining up the crosshairs at a promising spot on the firing grid his screen projected onto the craft’s belly.
As his finger depressed the trigger, the craft’s underbelly polarized silver and it disappeared in a cloud of mirror dust. The reflective particulate glowed a blazing white as it absorbed and dispersed the energy of multiple laser shots from the Carnivore. As the light dimmed, he saw the black ship still intact. Gau’s anticipatory smile slid off his face.
A shield. Of course. But Gau didn’t have much time to be disappointed before the black ship made its move.
It dropped to the same altitude as the Carnivore and twisted to the right in the same motion, hoping to catch him in his blind spot where the tanks strapped to his ship’s hull blocked his view. Gau released some mirror dust from spiracles in the ship, forming a protective cloud around the Carnivore, and keyed his own mirror shield.
He averted his eyes from the flash as the shield absorbed the first laser shot. He let the other ship hammer his craft’s defenses for a moment, as an idea formed in his mind with the rapidity of a static discharge.
One last shot from the black ship seared his shields, then Gau went for it. Spinning his ship right, he shot straight toward the other craft. The next white beam of energy went wild as the pilot was startled by Gau’s bold, seemingly suicidal action.
The sleek craft lurched to one side on its thrusters, so that the Carnivore missed it by millimeters. Cruising along the black ship’s flank, he slowed and turned, extending sharpened metal rods from a secret compartment in the side of Carnivore’s hull. Gau jerked the controls outward and up, aiming for the cockpit, but the ship’s pilot had extraordinary reflexes: minute engines glowed red along the black ship’s side, propelling it forward. The Carnivore’s claws missed the cockpit ... and hit the engines at the ship’s end.
The screech of titanium shredding like paper reached Gau even inside the cockpit of his beloved ship. He watched in satisfaction as Carnivore’s secret weapons ripped one of the dark ship’s engines completely out of its berth. The engine arced away on a plume of plasma and crashed to the street below.
The black ship gyrated wildly as its one remaining engine and pilot fought together to regain control of the craft. Almost casually, Gau took aim with his main laser, considering which part of the ship he would destroy. Finally, the beam of light sizzled forth, and the black craft’s remaining engine exploded in a cloud of superheated slag. Silently, Gau congratulated himself on his restraint; at first he’d been so annoyed at this interruption that he would have simply killed the pilot for interfering. But then he’d had a chance to think.
Gau was officially dead. He had no reason to believe that that status had changed. In fifteen years he’d had no word of anyone from Oskaran or any Osk enclave looking for him. But whoever was in that ship obviously knew not only his identity but also something they were willing to kill him for. Identifying and neutralizing this threat now took first priority.
As he watched the disabled ship plummet to the street many meters below, something happened that Gau Shesharrim did not anticipate.
Onscreen, the black ship’s haphazard descent seemed to slow—supported, he assumed, by more small auxiliary engines. Gau saw a hatch open in the underside and extend a flexible cable, its end ringed by small hooked teeth. A hooking cable, Gau thought disdainfully. He is trying to save his ship from sustaining any more damage. He watched as the unwieldy head swung around and launched itself upward. He couldn’t see the target from his vantage point. Then his disdain melted into alarm as his own ship bucked violently. The engines screamed as the Carnivore jerked toward the ground; the black ship was still falling—only now it was carrying him with it.
Gau rushed to prevent the inevitable, his hands dancing over the console keys—routing more power to the engines, jettisoning all ballast save that cargo most precious to his plan. His efforts came too late. The hooking cable had bound him to the defeated ship in less time than it took to think. At the last, the Carnivore’s crash compartments burst and enveloped him in a cushioning cocoon of inflated white rubber. He just had time to catch his breath before the ship slammed into the pavement at a hundred kilometers per hour, erasing every color but black from his mind.
Gau came to slowly, languidly, as if groping upward through thick mud. He was aware of a sound, or a series of sounds: sharp with a fuzzy crackle at the end. The timbre and pitch varied minute to minute as he listened, but its source and meaning eluded him. He felt as though he’d been unconscious for many hours . . . but as his head cleared and he realized what the sounds were, Gau knew only a few minutes had passed.
They were voices, coming in over his cockpit radio.
“Carnivore, come in! Are you still alive in there?”
“He’s not answering. The ship computer’s not letting me get in to check his condition, either.”
He could hear the fear in those voices, could almost smell the acrid tension over the radio transmission. The new voice that came over the radio was flat and robotic, a computer translation of Pri’s normally silent speech. The worry behind the flat tone was nonetheless unmistakable.
“Gau, this is Pri. The other teams saw you crash. If you’re still alive, please answer. We need new orders on how to proceed.” Crash? Gau wondered faintly. Memory began to return: a puzzle assembled in reverse order, starting with the very hardest pieces.
The black ship.
He sat up and screamed. His left arm hung loose below the shoulder joint, dislocated from the force of the impact. Every shift of his body seared the nerve endings with agony. The cockpit doubled in his vision, swaying sickeningly. He bit down the nausea surging up his throat, grasped his left arm and twisted it back into its socket. He nearly retched as the ball joint scraped back into place, but the pain immediately dulled to a tolerable ache.
Steadying his breathing, Gau took stock. A dislocated arm. A concussion. He would live. He pressed the button below the speaker, coughed once, and spoke into it.
“I’m here.” He was pleased and surprised at the strength in his voice.
“Are your injuries serious?” Pri’s translated voice again.
“No. Nothing that dealing with the pilot of that black ship won’t cure. What is the other ship’s condition? Can you tell?” There was a pause as the Embassy ship’s computer processed the signal.
“Moderate damage,” announced a choppier voice that sounded as if its owner had a thick tongue not suited for pronouncing consonants. “Hull is severely dented, both engines destroyed courtesy of our leader’s ship—”
“The cockpit?” Gau inquired eagerly.
“Intact.”
Gau thought carefully. The other pilot was probably alive then, and still a threat—a player lurking at the edge of the board. Their first move had disrupted his plan but not destroyed it. Gau’s next move was crucial: run or stand his ground?
Leaving an unknown enemy behind him wasn’t an option. Which left the move of confronting them. Cold satisfaction lifted his brain completely from the muddle of the crash. His thoughts were clear as a glass pane.
“We’re going to meet this ship’s pilot,” he radioed his followers. “Land your craft behind mine and exit them, but stay on guard and do not engage. This will be between me and the owner of the black ship only.”
Gau stood in front of his crashed ship, checking his matte black body armor. The Embassy ships his followers had hijacked sat parked behind the Carnivore. He’d crashed in an access corridor between two blocks of nanoassembly factories, their curved walls cocoonlike in the blue night-lights recessed into the pavement. Per Gau’s orders, the teams stood in wary huddles next to their ships, silent, hardly breathing.
A thin wind skirled through the street, bringing a faint odor of salt from the harbor as it rustled his dark mane. The blac
k ship lay heeled over on its side some twenty-five meters distant, one end a glowing red mess where he had ripped its engines away. He stood still, his followers a silent presence at his back.
Under that placid mask of readiness, Gau prepared his mind for the confrontation. He captured each errant thought swimming around the surface of his awareness and pushed them all to the very bottom of his mind, into a deep hole he had carved in himself, into the vacuum where useless thoughts went to be metabolized into useful action. After they’d all gone, fallen into the nothing, the upper part of his mind was left sterile and free of distractions.
He was ready.
As if on cue, the ship across from Gau and his followers began to change. Red lines drew themselves over the side of the ship he could see, joining into a square hatch. There was a boom as the airlock bolts on the hatch blew. Camouflaging smoke billowed from vents in the black ship’s hull, swallowing it in an inky cloud. Even as it spread, the smoke was being dissipated by the wind; if he squinted, Gau could just make out a smaller black shape within the obscuring darkness, a figure standing in front of the downed craft.
The nature of the pilot was still unclear, but Gau knew this was the moment. He took a deep breath through his nostrils and shouted across the empty space.
“I can see you over there, despite the smoke. I can only assume you are the pilot of the black ship.” His hesitation lasted slightly longer than he intended. “Who are you?”
A hand came through the billowing black cloud—a slim gray hand with delicate fingers, much like his own—and parted the curtain of smoke.
One of the traits that had served Gau well was his ability to absorb all the details of a specific place or thing and instantly analyze what the data meant and how he could turn the situation to his advantage. The smoke curtain parted—
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