by Scott Warren
“And you just couldn’t bear to see us go, you ugly fucking creeper. You’ve got an unhealthy obsession with humans, Bargult.”
“We all have our vices, Human Victoria.”
Her response was interrupted as an alert flashed on her command repeater. She thumbed the mute switch for the ship-to-ship circuit.
“Avery, what is it?”
“Photon Doppler. Superluminal contact, Vick. Outboard the star, Springdawn inbound!”
She looked at the First Prince, deep in a trance-like state as his mind continued to balance numbers that would have given her ship’s computer an aneurism. He needed more time.
Victoria took her finger from the mute switch. Before she could say anything to the chittering Grayling, the line shrieked and went dead. On the view screen she picked out the telltale sign of laser fire, and the smaller Grayling cutter detonate as the engine compartment was compromised.
“Thus ends Bargult …” she whispered. The Dirregaunt didn’t mess around.
“Incoming comm signal, Springdawn.”
“Put it on,” said Victoria. “I’m just Ms. Popular today,” she muttered.
She shielded her eyes as the Dirregaunt commander replaced her view of the ion cloud, the entire screen bathed in the glaring red light of the sun’s glow that her ship’s optical sensors had toned down. A moment later the view screen adjusted, looking so much like the red wash of a darkroom.
“Human Victoria,” said the commander of the Springdawn. No appreciable light-delay here, he was only a hundred thousand kilometers away, watching her spin helplessly through space from the bridge of one of the most advanced ships in the galactic neighborhood. Well within the range and scope of his laser batteries. Secondary bridge, she noticed, grinning. It looked as though Tessa Baum raised some hell. Pity she hadn’t killed the bastard, but Victoria knew it was her own fault she let the Grayling tag the Condor, Tessa couldn’t have stopped it by putting a bullet into Best Wishes.
“Commander, I must say, you’re looking somewhat worse for wear,” she said.
It was true, and not just as a result of the strange lighting. He appeared to be in some sort of fever fugue, the remainder of his bridge crew all seemed somewhat agitated as well. The Dirregaunt bared his mouthful of razor teeth at her.
“We had an accord, space walker. You fled with the First Prince. With my prize.”
“Hold on now, champ. You broke that pact when the Graylings fired on us. You should have kept your pets on a leash.”
“The Grah’lhin are dust. Their entire empire is worth less than dust. We both know the price I paid for my arrogance, and what you have taken from me.”
Victoria cast a side-long glance at her idle helmsman. The young woman shrugged back at her, just as much at a loss for his meaning as Victoria herself. On her screen there was a brief superluminal alarm as the Springdawn enveloped itself in a shell of warped space-time and shunted towards the Condor.
Tactical Alcubierre, she noted. Victoria considered it a success if they came out of FTL less than two thousand klicks off their target destination. The Springdawn was nothing less than a ballet dancer, gracefully leaping from point to point with near-perfect precision. What she wouldn’t give for that technology as she watched the dreadnought appear to grow rapidly on her screen, knowing the approach speed was skewed by her sublight perception. Even were her faster-than-light drive active, the Dirregaunt could slip ahead of her and shred her ship with ease.
“Even now, human Victoria, I am tempted to board your vessel and take my prize in person. Would such be folly? Two of your kind have taken so much from me. How many of these warrior caste do you have waiting, gnashing their teeth at the prospect of Dirregaunt flesh?”
“Come find out. How many Dirregaunt does it take to plug an airlock?”
A low, rasping growl hummed over the open circuit. “I am not quite so unwise, human. Whichever god or devil spewed forth your vicious kind will greet you now.”
“Wait,” she said, grasping for any tactic to delay him, “Don’t you want the fucking First Prince alive?”
“No longer.”
“What about Dutiful Heiress?”
Whatever Best Wishes had been about to say stammered and died in his throat. “What?” he demanded, still aglow with the thick, red light.
The Springdawn was so close that Red had reestablished two-way communications with Tessa Baum, and she had quite a few interesting things to say. Namely about the Commander’s extracurricular interests inside his command.
“Take a look in the corridor, Commander.”
Best Wishes shook. The human female on his screen warped and undulated as she spoke, at times resembling the faceless nightmare prowling his ship, at others bearing a passable and inexplicable similarity to his first officer. Hailing her ship had been a mistake. He should have fired upon her and been done with it. But the order was caught in his throat every time he tried to give it.
To his back was the long corridor they had come by, closed now. He turned away from screen. The door seemed to drift towards him, though he had yet to take a step towards it. He reached out to stop himself from colliding with it.
“Show me,” he growled.
His security officer looked at the remaining command staff, uneasy. “Don’t look at them, look at me,” he shouted. He hadn’t intended to raise his voice, but it had the desired result. The officer waved a hand in front of the control unit for the door, turning a thin slice of the alloy transparent.
The spacewalker loomed into view, startling his command staff back. Handheld masers raised. A red glint reflected in the highlights of the creature’s featureless black mask. The human warrior retreated, shoving a captive Dirregaunt in its place. A rough hand buried itself in the poor crewmember’s main, wrenching the face up to the transparent wedge. Modest Bearing stared back at him with lifeless eyes through the sealed door.
He recoiled. “No,” he said.
“Yes,” came the voice behind him. The human bitch. Best Wishes stumbled to the door, twisted leg aching, fists slamming into the hard alloy. Blood, almost black in the harsh red light, still soaked the mane of his oldest friend. Drips fell from matted strands of hair, from the vicious hole the spacewalker had torn in his throat. Bile dripped from his teeth as the corpse of his First Officer opened its mouth to speak.
“How far will you take us, Commander? How much more will you sacrifice?”
“We are at an end, old friend, there is nothing left to give. No further cost.”
“Is there not?” asked Modest Bearing, as his visage began to waver. His face narrowed, the mane became sleek and silken, the ears long and slender. Dead eyes filled with life and fear as the frightened face of Dutiful Heiress shimmered in the red light. His heart seized for a moment, tensing. Was she dead too?
“She’ll remain unharmed, as long as the Condor is allowed to leave the system.” The voice behind him again. What did she speak of? She could not leave, and she could not kill the dead a second time.
“Praetor guide me,” he whispered. “Prepare to fire.”
The tip of the human’s weapon was being shoved roughly into the back of Dutiful Heiress’ head, the creature clearly prepared to activate the weapon. He imagined one of those gaping holes spreading across her forehead.
“What have I done? Praetor, only my duty,”
I am beyond duty, now.
Best Wishes looked around the command center. No one was moving. “I said prepare to fire!” he barked. Slowly, the bridge officers began to move. He turned away from the door, muffled cries of panic muted by the thick alloy. Not even the human could get through that blast door. Outside the Springdawn he could clearly see the tiny speck of the human ship, spinning helplessly in the red bask of the ion cloud. On the screen its captain bared her teeth at him.
“You’d let her die?” she asked.
“She’s already dead, Human Victoria. You seek to take her from me twice? We are done talking.”
&n
bsp; “Shit, ok, fine, I’ll release her, show of good faith.”
The hunt is my faith. “End the communication,” he said to the Broadcast Officer.
“Wait!” shouted the human captain. Best Wishes cast her one more wary glance.
“If you won’t talk to me, at least talk to him,” she said. Her optical sensor shifted down, revealing a tall blue figure manning one of her crew’s stations. Him. Fury poured through his veins, his growls drowning the silence in the command center. The First Prince.
“Best Wishes,” said Tavram, First Prince of the Malagath Empire.
Tenacity? Admirable, yet each of the human captain’s gambits to dissuade the hunter had failed. Quite natural, such a primitive empire could not hope to contend with the likes of the Malagath or the Dirregaunt. The First Prince’s war had extended millennia prior to his birth, a burning swath of galactic stalemates that had watched countless lesser empires rise and fall in its duration.
Here, Tavram could begin to put an end to it. Here, he juggled the weight of stars in his mind for the Condor’s haphazard new emergency engine, and the weight of a war that had cost billions of lives.
“Hello, Commander.”
Best Wishes stared back at him through the optical recorders. Insane? Clearly. The physiological symptoms were painted upon his face, his posture, his voice. Whether the pressure of the hunt had driven him to madness, or some other ailment the First Prince could not say. It was then no wonder that the human, Victoria could no reason with him. Perhaps the Dirregaunt hunter had always been insane? It had been said that the daughter of boldness and madness was genius, the commander of the Springdawn was surely that.
“So,” hissed the Dirregaunt, “this is the face of a coward, hiding among the lesser empires. The human has kept you well hidden, but not well enough. You and your good shepherds go no further. I know not what brought you here, but no more blood will stain your hull.”
“Peace is why I am here, Commander. The purpose of my mission, armistice between Malagath and Dirregaunt,” said Tavram. The rattling numbers in his head wound down as he entered the data into the strange computer system of the Condor. He could activate the new emergency engine now, charge a singularity for a fraction of a second and use it to jump to Malagath space. They were so close now. But he stayed his hand, interested, ever the scholar.
“Peace?” growled Best Wishes, “From the murderer of millions? Where was your peace when the Sixth Fleet surrendered? Your broadside batteries cut them from the sky. Where was your peace when the Kossovoldt appeared in the Blackstar Nebula? Dirregaunt ships boiled as Kossovoldt plasma burned through metal and flesh, and what few escaped found the open net of your particle cannons waiting for them.”
“It has to stop somewhere, these old hates. Does it not matter that your superior turned on the Praetory? I was to meet the Lords of the Hunt. We, each of us, were betrayed.”
A quiet calm stole across the commander’s features momentarily, before the twitches and tics returned.
“We are a long way from the Praetory, Prince. The hunt now is you and I.”
Whatever madness had stolen reason from the Dirregaunt Commander would cost him his life. Tavram would have no better luck than the captain of the Condor with this madman. The Springdawn was close. So close that Tavram had figured the weight of the ship into the emergency engine calculations. Not mere child’s play, even for him. His brain still burned from the effort. He would have liked to forge the beginnings of a truce here and now, but the Dirregaunt Commander would not have it. Unfortunate? Truly. The word of Best Wishes carried more weight than he knew among the Malagath.
“So be it,” said First Prince Tavram as he activated the emergency engine.
The small ship went silent, lights flickering out and displays darkening as power was rerouted. Even the hiss of the ventilation quieted for a moment, before a high-pitched keen began to mount through the vibrating floor.
Before the main view screen went dead, Tavram watched the Springdawn lurch forward, twisting as the gravity field expanded. Its forward lasers blazed to life, the shafts warping around the building singularity in a multitude of curved, crawling lances. Behind the forward batteries Tavram could see the hull of the Springdawn buckle, rippling waves of alloy and composite tearing away among white geysers of atmosphere venting to vacuum.
The forward third of the dreadnaught sheared off as a cascade of debris fell towards the center of the artificial star. A final surge of power darkened even the main view-screen, and the keen turned to a thunderclap that shook the ship like a meteor impact.
The residual vibrations faded after a moment. The familiar growl of the Condor’s primitive interstellar drive emerged from the tumult and the total darkness. He could hear another sound behind it, the rasping breath of the Human, Victoria, and the squeak of skin on synthetic fabric as she released the death-grip on her command couch.
“Horizon jump successful; course looks dead-nuts for … not Kallico’rey. What do your people call that star you pointed us at?” she asked. How she could verify his course in total darkness, without power to the bridge he was uncertain. Tavram collapsed into the cramped chair of the navigation station. He felt as though he had run the circumference of a gas giant. The familiar pain at the base of his brain he associated with the void behind the void crept back to greet him.
“To the Malagath, it is called the Eye of Salvation,” said Tavram, massaging the top of his neck.
“No shit?”
“No shit, Human Victoria.”
Epilogue
“Whatever else happens, Captain Marin, I just wanted to say thank you. Thank you for keeping my daughter safe.”
Alice Wong was speaking to Victoria Marin’s back. The privateer captain was leaning against the window, watching the gentle rain patter the hardened glass. The colony of Ithaca had just entered the months-long wet season that would flood the deltas and fertilize the crops of the 400,000 citizens.
“Just Victoria, Madam Secretary. I don’t hold the notion of keeping my captaincy.”
Alice set down her coffee. “No? You brought back modern Malagath parts, not to mention a functioning emergency engine that one of their crew managed to assemble in your engine room.”
“Yeah, Tech Div ripped it out almost before we docked. The usual drivel about security and proprietary knowledge. In any case, I disobeyed a direct order to get it here. I provoked the Dirregaunt and took the First Prince home.”
“Strangely, no record of any such order exists, Victoria.”
Alice couldn’t contain a small smile as the gruff face of Victoria Marin turned toward her. She wasn’t fond of the woman, but she’d put a black eye on Samson by defying an illegal order he had coerced Alice into sending.
“It seems that my crypto account was corrupted, all records of outgoing FTL communications are damaged beyond repair. Unless you want to go out to Pilum Forel and print out a hard copy to bring back. As far as I’m concerned, you never saw the orders, and neither did Captain Jackson. And since the final decisions involving privateer command are up to State and Colony …”
The perplexed expression turned sour, “Sammy’s tampering in xeno politics now? That absolute asshole. I knew you’d never order us to hand over Tavram yourself.” Tavram? Just how familiar with the Malagath prince had Victoria Marin gotten?
“Unfortunately there’s no evidence of it, or of his influence in placing Huian on the Condor to use as leverage against me. You’ll be pleased to know that my daughter is no longer attached to your ship. She’ll be leaving Ithaca in a week for a navigator’s billet aboard the Clarke.”
“Huh,” said Victoria. She turned back to the window, looking out over the space port. The captain was silent for a time. She finally said, “If I’m keeping the Condor, I hate having my crew mucked with by politicians. Huian’s good on the pilot’s bench, she’s got a place if she wants it.”
Another brief silence passed as Alice Wong considered it. She wasn’t sure sh
e could handle her daughter permanently aboard a privateer ship, amid all the danger of a hostile alien galaxy. Piracy patrol, colony defense, and interplanetary drug interdiction weren’t glamorous, but they were safe. She opened her mouth to refuse Victoria, then stopped. Solicitations for privateer billets were rare in coming. Could she deny Huian such an opportunity?
“I’ll consider your offer and pass that along next time I see her, Captain. Now, between you and me, what happened at the Eye of Salvation?”
Victoria Marin took one last glance out the window, where a freighter was launching with supplies for the orbital station. She watched it rise upward, the low rumble of its engines vibrating the glass in its fixture. Maybe it was carrying supplies to repair the Condor, somewhere up there in dry-dock.
“You know it’s been over three years since I’ve seen rain?” she asked. She settled in to the chair opposite Alice with a grunt, sniffing at her cup of tepid local coffee.
“Not much to tell, Madam Secretary. We floated for three days before the Malagath picked up our distress call. Managed to get the maneuvering thrusters back so the spinning stopped making us all sick. They picked us up in this giant crate, made our colonial defense hulks look like one of my model star fighters. They kept us on that thing for another two days while they hauled the rescues and the First Prince out of system and checked the ion cloud. Not much left of the Springdawn, I guess. Just fragments, blown to every which hell”
“The Prince thanked us, before he left. Set some engineers to help with the repairs, under that rescue that built the drive, but we didn’t hear from him again after they took him off ship. When we were spaceworthy, they vented the compartment and kept us under close guard all the way to the star for a jump. Then the Malagath kicked us out as soon as we got power back to the Horizon drive. I half-figured Cohen would mutiny and try to jump ship when that Malagath girl finally said goodbye and stepped off the Condor. We made best time here, the Jenursa made sure the road was smooth I think. Got brought planet-side and I’ve been here near a week now.”