“Come on,” she willed all those making decisions halfway across the galaxy from Atrux, “he’s not pointing his weapons at Ada. Let him run.”
“Got it,” Tomas said. “Weapons pointed at an Icarion research station in orbit around Icarion’s moon. Operations classified.”
Tomas leaned back in his seat, letting his hands go limp on the controls he’d been fiddling with. He glanced over at her. They locked gazes, and he nodded.
“He’s going to take out the station that made him,” he said.
“What’s on the other end? What’s he headed toward? It can’t just be the station. Those coordinates in my head, is he going there? Bero’s powerful, but he’s beholden to Newton just like the rest of us: For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction, so if he busts that station, where will he end up?”
Tomas shook his head, waving expansively over the display. “I have no idea. As far as I can tell, it’s all uncharted in that direction. And the coordinates you flashed me earlier from the chip aren’t that way, either.”
“So what? He takes out the station at the cost of flinging himself into empty space, to die a slow, degrading death?”
“Lavaux might order him destroyed anyway,” Tomas said.
“Lavaux is dead.” She paused. “Probably. Maybe.”
“Maybe?” Graham asked.
She waved at him to shush; the newscaster’s voice had lifted in pitch. She couldn’t see the woman reading the cast—all the cameras were centered on Bero—but she knew panic when she heard it.
The newscaster said, “My s-sources indicate that the ship appears to be siphoning power into its engines. Sources inside Keep Station fear the ship, called The Light of Berossus, may be preparing to engage in combat. The safety of the station, and Ada, are, of course, top priority, and tensions are high on the memory of the bombardment.”
“If they only knew,” Sanda said.
“Oh. That’s bad,” Tomas said.
“What?”
“Chatter indicates damage abatement protocols. Lavaux may not be calling the shots, but someone jumpy is.”
“They can’t just—”
On the viewscreen, Bero flared to brilliant life, knocking out the cameras in a blast of radiant white light. Sanda lurched forward, arm extended, as if she could do anything at all to stop what was happening.
“Report,” she demanded.
“Shit,” Tomas said. “Trying to find alternate feeds. Hold on.”
The light could have meant a lot of things. It could have been an attack, but it just as easily could have been Bero firing up his big engines and gunning for the empty black. She held her breath against the possibilities, tried not to snap at Tomas as his fingers danced across the controls, dialing up hundreds of news feeds and some not-so-public satellite imagery. A cackle hissed through the speakers. Tomas hit a button and pressed his earpiece in tighter.
“I’m into Prime secure feeds,” Tomas explained, then held up a hand to forestall her questions. He was listening. Hard. “No shots fired,” Tomas said. “No attack was made on Bero. Keep Station is running damage assessments, but it looks like Bero just took off.”
“Took off? Did he alter course? There was nothing out there, Tomas, you said so yourself. That’s a suicide run.”
“Trying Icarion primary channels now.”
An older man in an Icarion jumpsuit appeared on the screen, his eyes sunken and his collar yanked open and twisted askew. Over his shoulder, video of Icarion’s largest moon dominated. Streaks of fire blazed through its thin atmosphere.
The reporter spoke in grave tones, gaze locked on the camera. “A research station in orbit around Moon-One has been damaged in the blowback from The Light of Berossus’s engines. We do not yet know at this time if the damage was a premeditated attack by Ada Prime using our own ship against us. Officials have confirmed that the loss of the station was total.
“We do not yet have a death count. Damage to moon habitats is so far superficial, but all residents are advised to take cover in appropriate shelter…”
The viewscreen flickered, this time to the face of the first reporter, nothing but empty black space green screened in behind her where Bero had once been. “It’s gone,” she said, bewildered eyes wide, sweat sheening her forehead. “The Light of Berossus is gone.”
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I want to begin by thanking my husband, Joey Hewitt, who is my partner in all things. Whether he’s offering feedback, making me tea, or listening to me mutter about random facts, my writing, and my life, wouldn’t be half so rich without his support.
Thank you to the Murder Cabin Crew, Andrea Stewart, Tina Gower, Annie Bellet, Karen Rochnik, Marina Lostetter, Thomas K. Carpenter, Rachel Carpenter, and Anthea Sharp, for not yet killing me. I mean, uh, for your support and writerly friendship. Getting together once a year for a week of writing and scheming has been invaluable.
I am forever grateful to my local writer buddies who meet up with me for coffee, chat, and—eventually—work. Erin Foley, Earl T. Roske, Trish Henry, Laura Davy, Laura Blackwell, Vylar Kaftan, and Clarissa Ryan have all been instrumental in cheering me on.
And a very special thanks is needed to my editorial and publication team. To Sam Morgan, my agent, for his endless encouragement and good humor. To Brit Hvide for her razor-sharp editorial insight, and for geeking out with me over Mass Effect. To Kelley Frodel who is an absolute wizard at copy editing. To Nivia Evans, for her fresh set of eyes. To Sparth for his amazing artwork, and to Lauren Panepinto for her excellent art direction. And, of course, to all of those at Orbit who I have yet to meet. Thank you all.
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Photo Credit: Joey Hewitt
MEGAN E. O’KEEFE was raised among journalists and, as soon as she was able, joined them by crafting a newsletter that chronicled the daily adventures of the local cat population. She has worked in both arts management and graphic design, and has won Writers of the Future and the David Gemmell Morningstar Award. Megan lives in the Bay Area of California.
if you enjoyed
VELOCITY WEAPON
look out for
SPLINTERED SUNS
by
Michael Cobley
For Pyke and his crew, it should have been just another heist. Travel to a backwater desert planet, break into a museum, steal a tracking device, then use it to find a ship buried in the planet’s vast and trackless sandy wastes.
Except that the museum vault is a bioengineered chamber, and the tracking device is sought after by another gang of treasure hunters led by an old adversary of Pyke’s, the devious Raven Kaligara. Also, the ship is a quarter of a million years old and about two kilometers long and somewhere aboard it is the Essavyr Key, a relic to unlock all the treasures and technologies of a lost civilization…
CHAPTER ONE
Dervla, the planet Ong, the city of Cawl-Vesh
“Damn it, Brannan Pyke,” she said. “Where the hell are you?”
Dervla was standing at the only window, hands resting on the sill as she stared out at a maze of dilapidated rooftops. The metal mesh fixed to the outside was rusty and dented but fine enough to give a decent view, and to let late afternoon sunlight into the horrible hot compartment they had been stuck in for more than four days. But this was the kind of spartan discomfort you had to put up with on a job like this, especially when your employer was the staggeringly wealthy Augustine Van Graes.
You’d think that he might have booked us into someplace a little more upmarket, rather than this shoebox, she thought. Something about not drawing attention to ourselves, apparently…
So here they were on a desert planet called Ong, so far off the beaten track that Earthsphere was unheard of and the mighty Sendrukan Hegemony was known as the semi-legendary Perpetual Empire. As
for this stuffy rib-walled compartment, it was one of another two hundred stacked in a girder-and-platform structure situated in a down-at-heel quarter of Cawl-Vesh, a city suspended over a deep canyon by a catenary of titanic cables. Not what you’d call an exotic holiday destination. All they had to do was infiltrate the well-guarded Eminent District, break into a high-security museum and steal one specific thing from its vault. Except that inside the main vault was a bio-vault which only a bio-genetic key would open—which is why they were languishing, bored and baking, in this sun-trap, waiting for Pyke to show up with the key. And he was late.
For roughly the thousandth time Dervla wished she was aboard the Scarabus, enjoying privacy and a shower, but the ship was in orbit around Ong with dependable Oleg at the helm. Their only link with the ship was a chunky, scuffed and worn handset and it had been aggravatingly silent all this time… apart from the fourteen or fifteen calls Dervla had put in to the Scarabus, just to check on the current status.
She straightened and looked over her shoulder. Bunks jutted to either side while opposite the window was the door, made of the same scarred, stained metal as the walls. Kref and Moleg were off scoring provisions, but Ancil sat at the unsteady drum-table—made out of an actual old fuel drum—reading something on his factab. Black-haired and wiry, he had changed into some of the camoed fatigues found in Van Graes’ setup package which had been waiting for them on arrival, and somehow the new duds accentuated his skinny arms and narrow chest. Next to him on the table was a half-eaten bag of kelp-based snacks, a pack of cards and the handset. Dervla had barely taken a single step towards the drum-table when Ancil’s free hand snaked out and neatly swept the handset away. Without altering his seated posture, Ancil glanced up at her with a mischievous “who, me?” expression.
Dervla met his gaze for a second then leisurely held out her hand. “Give.”
“Won’t be any change in the ship status,” Ancil said. “Not in one hour.”
“Let me be the judge of that,” she said, snapping her fingers.
“And all this pestering will just make Oleg irascible.”
“Oleg? He’s a Kiskashin—he doesn’t get irascible, he doesn’t even get short-tempered. Peeved is about his limit, with occasional flickers of pique. Now, if you please…”
“Okay, look, Dervla—why not give it another hour? I know you can be patient if you want—”
“Better hand it over, Ans,” she said. “I’m starting to get irascible.”
By now her fist was clenched but Ancil was wearing that insolent smile, and about to come out with something guaranteed to pluck her very last nerve, when the door opened with a rough squeak and a diminutive cowled figure entered with a gun. The snouty features of an Izlak protruded from the hood and angry, beady eyes glared out as, with a raspy voice, the Ongian intruder said:
“Where is the stinking thief of precious things? The big walking stinkhill. Bring him out!”
The weapon jutting from its owner’s baggy sleeves, gripped by stubby, scrawny fingers, was a very old-style energy blaster. At the end of a scratched and worn barrel several beam coherence toroids were grouped right behind the emitter aperture which was aimed without so much as a tremor at Ancil. No one spoke and that seemed to infuriate the cowled Ongian still further.
“Speak! Reveal the thief to me…”
Dervla saw the bulky shape of Kref loom behind the angry intruder and threw herself towards the nearest bunk as a big meaty hand grabbed the Ongian’s head and slammed it sideways into the metal doorframe. At the same time Moleg had lunged out of the shadows behind him and twisted the blaster out of surprised and unresisting fingers. As the stunned and disarmed Ongian slumped insensibly to the floor, Ancil gave a slow handclap from behind the drum-table.
“What in the name of the Holy Nova have you two been up to?” Dervla said, getting out of the bunk she’d scrambled into. “No, wait—drag our visitor inside and close the door first. I’d rather not have an audience.”
Once the unconscious Ongian was laid out on one of the bunks, Dervla made Kref and Moleg stand side by side in front of the closed door. Moleg, a lean, middle-aged Human, managed to look innocently bemused, a demeanour that Dervla had come to recognise as thoroughly misleading. He was a brain-cyborged Human formerly known as Mojag, a close personal friend of their missing crewmate, Oleg. Mojag-as-was had kept a copy of his friend’s mindmap stored in his brain implant for safekeeping, but violent events less than a year ago had led to the copy of Oleg taking over from a traumatised Mojag. Over time it seemed that the two personas merged, causing he/it/them to adopt the name Moleg. Surprisingly, the real Oleg was stoically amused by the whole situation.
Dervla then turned her attention to Kref the Henkayan. Broad-shouldered, barrel-chested and wearing an anxious expression, he couldn’t have looked more guilty if he had been carrying a sign saying “I done it!” in big rainbow letters.
“Okay,” Dervla began. “What was it he said, again?—‘Where is the stinking thief… the big walking stinkhill’?” She gave Kref a narrow-eyed look. “Got something to tell me? I mean, I’m assuming that he runs a stall at the market and you lifted an item that belonged to him.”
“And got yourself noticed,” said Ancil. “Amateur.”
Kref frowned angrily. “That’s ’cos I couldn’t hide under the next stall the way you did yesterday!”
Dervla turned to regard a suddenly nervous Ancil. “Yesterday? Is this what you’ve been up to when you go outside, pilfering and pillaging your way through the local traders?”
“Ah, now, Derv, you’re blowing this up out of all proportion—”
“Really?” she said, pointing at the unconscious figure on the bunk. “Is that why he came here, looking for this pair o’ glunters? Did he think to himself, ‘well, now, I’ve been robbed, plundered and otherwise burglarised so what I really need to do is forget about it and go home’—or—‘I’m going to find out where these bandits are holed up then march in there waving a bloody gun around!’”
“Please, Derv…”
“… bloody unbelievable—cannot leave you alone for…”
“It’s not all their fault,” Moleg said. “After all, I was the one who made the wager.”
Dervla glared at him. “Wager?”
“The day after we arrived, while we were at the market for supplies I bet Ancil an Ongian quarter-brass that he couldn’t lift an edible from the pastry stall, but then he counter-bet me a half-brass that I couldn’t do it.” Moleg shrugged. “He lost that one.”
If looks could kill, she thought, I’d be a serial killer by now!
“Okay, then,” she said, struggling to stay calm. “Here’s a wager for you—I bet my left tit that we’ve got less than eight hours before Mr. Stallowner’s nearest and dearest start wondering where he is. Messages will be sent, questions will be asked, and at some point someone will remember how he rushed away after a honking great Henkayan who made off with his goods. Oh, and I also bet that the city council of Cawl-Vesh will demonstrate their disapproval of lawbreaking offworlders in the traditional manner—shackling us to rocks down in the canyon and leaving us for the sand-machine swarms to devour!” She smiled coldly. “Any takers?”
The three culprits began pointing at each other while calling out the others for mistakes, stupid mistakes and just stupidity, all in voices that rose steadily in both volume and anger. Then Kref said something sarcastic about Ancil, and Ancil came back with an insult in Henkayan that had Kref lunging at him and Dervla diving in to try to pull them apart while adding her own voice to the clamour. She managed to wrap both arms around one of Kref’s big, rough hands, which kept it away from Ancil. The other hand, however, was doing a pretty good job by itself and Ancil’s pasty face was turning red as the Henkayan tightened his grip on his neck. For a moment Dervla thought that she would have to free one hand so she could draw her weapon and shoot Kref—then suddenly Moleg was in among them, hauling himself up till he was face-to-face with the big crewman,
whereupon he yelled something in what might have been Henkayan.
The change was dramatic. Kref’s eyes widened as if in shock and he reeled backwards. Released from that colossal grip, Ancil slumped to the floor, wheezing and coughing. Immediately Moleg crouched down beside him, as if to check his condition.
“I heard it above all the bellowing,” Moleg said. He appeared to be rifling through Ancil’s pockets. “Just needed to break up the tussle, so that worked.”
“What was it that you said to… wait, heard what?”
Dervla paused when Moleg’s hand came up, holding the bulky handset which was giving off a repetitive warbling sound.
Everything changed. She could feel their eyes on her as she carefully took the handset, thumbed the connect and calmly said, “Yes, Oleg, what can I do for yeh?”
“Hello, darlin’, it’s your captain speaking!”
“Well, now, isn’t it nice of ye to drop by,” she said, mouthing “Pyke” to the others. “We were starting to wonder if you’d hired another crew or joined the circus or the like. Are you planetside or aboard the Scarabus?”
She asked the question as naturally as she could, and saw her own jittery nerves reflected in the expressions of the others.
“Neither. I got dropped off in the vicinity by a pass-through freighter and I’m in a grubby junker of an autoshuttle so I’ll be a few hours yet. Sorry I got delayed—ran into some unexpected obstacles along the way, but I got round them and took possession of the DNA we need. Everything okay with you?”
Dervla frowned for a second, then glanced at Kref, Ancil and Moleg and their generally dishevelled appearance.
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