“Uh huh. Are you sure Dya is the one who should be in the psych ward?”
“I know she isn’t crazy. I just put her there to keep her out of trouble while we accomplish our mission. We still have to go to the Crucible. That’s the first step.”
“We? What makes you think I want to help you. Or are you going to lock me up, if I don’t?”
“If you knew what I know, you’d be begging me to help.”
Darius arched an eyebrow at Tanik. “And what do you know?”
“Your daughter, Cassandra, is alive, and she’s on the Crucible right now.”
Chapter 51
This time Darius couldn’t hold back the flood of emotions that surged inside of him. His eyes streamed with tears, and his chest ached as if it had been cut open.
“You’re lying!” He wanted nothing more than for it to be true, but he knew better than to believe a manipulative snake like Tanik.
“I’m telling the truth.”
“How did she escape Hades, then? I saw the planet! It was decimated by the Cygnians.”
“Don’t you remember? They evacuated the planet before they sterilized it. The Grotto was one of the first places they evacuated.”
Hope swelled in Darius’s chest, but he tried to keep it in check. “So what’s she doing on the Crucible, and how do you know she’s there?”
“She’s of the right age. As for what she’s doing there, she’s going to become a Revenant. In a matter of days she’ll be sent away for training, and you’ll never see her again.”
“You can’t possibly know any of that.”
“I can, and I do. Revenants can sense one another, even across many light years. Your daughter is untrained, but she has already been activated. It is hard to find hidden potential, but even harder to hide it once it has been revealed.”
“Fek you! How dare you use my daughter to manipulate me into joining your crusade! If you knew that my daughter was alive, you wouldn’t have let me waste so much time by going back to Hades to look for her. You would have just told me then what you’re telling me now. This is just a desperate last-minute attempt to get me on your side, and frankly, I don’t even know why you bother. I’m a barely adequate pilot, and almost certainly a dismal Commander. My contribution to your war effort won’t be missed.”
“That’s where you’re wrong, Darius. Without you, the Coalition will fail. And I didn’t stop you from going to Hades because I needed you and Dyara out of the way while I woke the rest of the crew. If you’d been here while I was waking them, you might have interfered with my plans and found a way to stop me.”
“Us interfere with you, the mighty Revenant? I don’t buy that. Unless you’re not actually as powerful as you claim to be...”
“I am not a god. I can still be defeated, and I foresaw that you would have found a way to interfere if I hadn’t allowed you to leave when I did.”
“So you can see the future, huh?”
“I can glimpse it, but only when it wishes to be seen.”
“Prove it.”
“That would be difficult. The future changes as soon as you see it. It is elusive, and dangerous to predict.”
“Well you seem to place a lot of stock in your visions of me.”
“Because those visions came to me unbidden. I didn’t go looking for them myself.”
“Then prove that you’re a Revenant. Make one of the crew come in here and dance around in their underwear.”
Tanik smirked. “I’ll do better than that. I’ll sneak us past a Cygnian fleet, right under the nose of a Ghoul King.”
“Really. And how are you going to do that?”
Tanik smiled. “You’ll see.”
* * *
Darius left the ready room weak and shaking from his conversation with Tanik, but he realized it wasn’t out of fear—he was shaking with hope. He couldn’t bring himself to believe even half of what Tanik had said, but he wanted to. He had to believe that what Tanik had said about Cassandra was true. He had to believe she was still alive.
Because of that hope, he spent the next two days tirelessly training his pilots, whipping them and himself into shape until they were passing every mission scenario that Tanik could dream up for them.
Most of the scenarios involved neutralizing an unknown quantity of external defenses around a massive ring-shaped space station, designated the Crucible. After neutralizing the station’s defenses, they would blast holes in its hangars and then escort transports carrying Marines, and Tanik himself, aboard the station. As soon as the boarding parties landed, Darius and his pilots would fly in circles around the station, waiting while the Marines went to rescue the kids on board—including Cassandra!—and while Tanik went to steal advanced Revenant technology from the heart of the Crucible. Once successful, they’d destroy the Crucible and jump away. Mission complete. It had gotten to the point where now they were succeeding four times out of every five, and with minimal casualties. Of course, there was no telling how accurate their simulations were.
Now, two days later, Darius actually felt like an experienced Vulture pilot, as well as a reasonably competent Commander. But he also felt intensely guilty.
Dyara had been locked up in the psych ward for the past two days and he hadn’t even gone by to visit her. He felt bad for plotting with her to bring Tanik down one minute, and then joining him in the next.
But what else could he do? Tanik was planning a mission to rescue Cassandra, among others, so why would Darius want to oppose that?
Maybe Dyara would understand, and maybe she wouldn’t, but more than anything, Darius realized, he was afraid that she’d give voice to the terrified whispers in the back of his mind—the ones telling him that Tanik was lying, and that Cassandra was really dead, after all.
Darius grimaced and shook his head. Visiting Dyara could wait.
He went to the wardroom to grab some food, and then back to his quarters for some much-needed shut-eye. Tanik had already executed the jump to the Eye, and they were due to arrive in just four hours’ time. He used his ESC to set an alarm to go off in three hours, and then climbed into his sleeping bag and fell into a deep, dreamless sleep.
An insistent trilling sound awoke him. He blinked the sleep from his eyes and checked the time. It was ten minutes before his alarm was set to go off, so what was that noise?
He saw the comms icon on the virtual HUD of his ESC flashing, and answered it.
“Good morning, Darius,” Tanik said. The man’s voice echoed strangely inside Darius’s head, rather than audibly as it would over regular comms.
“Good morning, Sir.”
“Suit up and join me on the bridge. Make sure your pilots are all standing by and ready to launch on my command. We’re about to reach the Eye, and if this doesn’t work, we’re going to have a fight on our hands.”
“Yes, sir... the bridge?”
“You said you wanted proof. It’s time you saw for yourself. Make sure you’re here by ten fifteen.”
“Yes, sir,” Darius replied, but Tanik had already ended the connection. Darius rubbed the sleep from his eyes, and climbed out of his sleeping bag. He put on his mag boots, and clomped over to his locker. There he found a clean girdle, helmet, and flight suit already waiting for him. The ship’s service bots were nothing if not efficient.
Darius dressed and put on his helmet, but raised the visor to not gag on his own morning breath. He ran from his quarters and down the corridor, stopping only briefly in the wardroom to grab a flask of coffee and two handfuls of ration bars, which he slipped into the magnetically-sealed pockets of his flight suit. He was too anxious to stand and eat a proper meal. All he could think about was getting to the Crucible and rescuing Cassandra.
Darius ran all the way from the wardroom to the bridge. He skidded to a stop in front of the broad double doors and nodded to the pair of Marine corporals flanking the doors. They wore bulky suits of power armor like the one Darius had found and used after waking from cryo.
&nbs
p; “The captain’s expecting me,” Darius said, between gasps for air. Even in zero-G, running was still tiring.
“We’ll need to scan you, Commander,” one of the Marines said.
Darius nodded and submitted himself to a security scan. A blue fan of light flickered out from one of the Marine’s palms.
The man hesitated, as if studying something inside his helmet; then the bridge doors rumbled open. “Go ahead, sir.”
Darius hurried through the doors and onto the bridge. Tanik stood at the Captain’s control station with his hands clasped behind his back, surrounded by glowing blue holo displays.
“You’re early,” he said, without even turning to see who it was.
Darius was getting used to that kind of eerie, prescient behavior from Tanik. He walked up beside the captain and said, “I didn’t want to be late.”
“Yes... you must be eager to see your daughter.”
“Yes, sir.” He watched as Tanik studied star maps on his displays, flipping through them one after another. After a few minutes of silence, Darius allowed his gaze to wander around the bridge. Officers were strapped into their acceleration harnesses, gazing fixedly at their displays.
“Warp bubble dispersing in thirty seconds, Captain,” the officer at the helm announced.
Tanik nodded. “Carry on, Lieutenant.” Tanik turned to Darius. “Commander, please step aside.”
“Sir?”
“I don’t want the Cygnians to see you standing there when I contact them.”
“Oh. Yes, sir.” Darius took two long steps to the side. “Is that better?”
Tanik pointed to an empty chair at the back of the bridge, to one side of the doors. “Strap in. We’ll be accelerating soon after we get clearance from the Cygnian Fleet to cross the Eye.”
“Right.” Darius glanced at the empty chair beside the Captain’s station, reserved for the second-in-command of the ship—which Darius supposedly was—and he wondered why Tanik hadn’t asked him to sit there.
Not wanting to make an issue out of it, Darius did as he was told and went to sit at the back of the bridge. He pulled out the two halves of his acceleration harness and locked them into place over his chest.
The officer at the helm spoke once more: “Warp dispersion in five, four, three, two, one...”
The featureless white warp disc ahead of them evaporated, replaced by a dazzling array of stars. The bridge’s wraparound holo panels made it a breathtaking sight—like standing in a planetarium back on Earth. Empty, star-dappled space stretched out endlessly in all directions.
No, not empty space, Darius thought. He could see a few dozen gray specks up ahead, hovering in front of a glassy-smooth black and blue sphere that looked almost like a planet, but for the fact that there were stars shining through it. It was like a giant bubble of water, floating in space.
“The Eye of Thanatos,” Tanik said quietly. “Lieutenant Neelson—”
“Sir?”
“Make contact with the Cygnian Fleet. Tell them that Captain Okara would like to speak with King Assuraga, and put him on screen as soon as you get a reply.”
“Yes, sir,” the Comms officer replied.
Darius frowned and shook his head. Captain Okara? He was just about to ask about that, when the snarling, brown face of a Ghoul appeared on the foremost holo panel of the bridge. All four of the Ghoul’s gleaming black eyes blinked, and then it spoke.
“Captain Okara,” the Ghoul said in a mixture of hisses and growls. It still surprised Darius that he could understand Cygnian.
“King Assuraga,” Tanik replied, bowing his head in deference.
“What a pleasant surprise to see you. I had begun to think that you’d gone to join the Revenants. Where is the metal one?”
“He did not make it, my King. We are doing what we can to repair him.”
“Ah, I see. There was a battle, then? Might it have something to do with the fact that a ship matching the description of the Deliverance was seen fleeing Hades after taking aboard two transports full of death-marked fugitives? You wouldn’t know anything about that, would you, Captain?”
Chapter 52
Tanik shook his head. “There were no fugitives aboard, my King. We sent those transports down to the surface to investigate the distress signal from the beacon drone. It turns out to have been a ruse, orchestrated by would-be insurgents on the surface of Hades. Gatticus and several others were killed in the subsequent fighting.”
“I see....” King Assuraga replied. “And it took you this long to return? It has been more than seven cycles since you left.”
“Yes, we had some technical problems on board while we were waiting for our transports to return from the surface.”
“I see.”
Tanik offered the Cygnian a smile that was twisted into snarl by his scars, scars left by another Ghoul a long time ago, but King Assuraga wouldn’t see that, or any other aspect of Tanik’s features. He’d see a perfectly normal smile on the face of the pretty young woman that he remembered as Captain Okara.
It took an immense amount of effort for Tanik to trick King Assuraga’s senses into seeing and hearing Captain Okara at the same time as keeping his hold on the Deliverance’s crew. His concentration was slipping. He needed to conclude this conversation quickly.
“We must transfer the refugees from cryo as soon as possible. Where would you like us to transfer them?”
“Bring them to me. The Crucible has just received a group of tributes, so the frozen ones will have to wait.”
Tanik nodded. Very well. “We’re in a bit of a hurry to get on with our diplomatic mission, so don’t be alarmed if our approach seems fast.”
Uncertainty flickered across the Ghoul’s face, and Tanik assuaged those concerns, smoothing them away like wrinkles in a piece of cloth.
“Very well,” King Assuraga replied. “I will be waiting for you.” With that, he ended the connection, and Tanik gasped. He blinked dark spots from his eyes, fighting back waves of exhaustion. He drew on hidden reserves of strength, using the source field to bolster himself.
“How did you do that?” Darius asked from the back of the bridge. “You were pretending to be someone else. Has that Ghoul never met Captain Okara before?”
Tanik turned to him with a smile. “You haven’t seen anything yet.” Turning back to the fore, he nodded to the officer at the comms. “Lieutenant Neelson—”
“Sir?”
“Have all hands secure their belongings and strap in. They have five minutes.”
“Yes, sir.” A moment later, Neelson’s voice rippled over the ship’s PA system. “All hands stow loose articles and strap in for maneuvers. This is your five minute warning.”
Tanik passed the time with his eyes shut, finding the minds that had slipped free during his conversation with King Assuraga, and reining them back in. When Lieutenant Neelson announced the one minute warning, he sat down at his own control station and secured his acceleration harness.
Neelson called out the last ten seconds in an audible countdown, and Tanik nodded to the Helmsman. “Lieutenant Fields, when that count hits zero, fire the thrusters, all ahead full.”
“All ahead full, sir? Are you certain that—”
“I am always certain, Lieutenant.”
“Yes, sir...”
All ahead full meant a sustained acceleration of five Gs, which would be hard to stomach, particularly since most of them weren’t wearing flight suits like the ones fighter pilots used, and none of them were wearing oxygen masks. Some of the crew might pass out, but that was the least of Tanik’s concerns right now. They needed at least an hour’s lead time on the Cygnian Fleet. As soon as King Assuraga realizes that the Deliverance is headed for the Eye, he’ll order his fleet to intercept.
Tanik had to maintain his grip on the Ghoul King’s mind long enough to fool him into thinking that nothing was amiss while the Deliverance was accelerating toward the Eye.
One hour. That was the minimum amount of time they
needed to neutralize the Crucible’s defenses, board it, rescue the tributes, and steal the Revenant artifacts that Tanik needed for his war.
Failing that... Tanik shook his head, unwilling to consider the possibility of defeat. They would succeed. He had foreseen it.
Chapter 53
Darius gritted his teeth. The immense pressure of acceleration threatened to squeeze the life out of him. Every now and then he actually felt his heart stop—only to feel it kick painfully in his chest once more.
“You’re going to kill us!” Darius croaked. But either Tanik didn’t hear him over the droning roar of the Deliverance’s engines, or he wasn’t listening. The rest of the bridge crew didn’t seem to be faring any better, but they endured the assault without complaint.
Time passed agonizingly slowly, with Darius lapsing in and out of consciousness. But then, suddenly, he was free and drifting like a soap bubble in the wind. He sucked in a greedy breath and almost screamed from the agonizing stab of pain that tore through his rib cage. A ringing silence fell as the carrier’s thrusters stopped firing.
“Blast it, Tanik!” Darius roared, not bothering to address the man by his rank.
“Scramble your pilots, Commander,” Tanik replied quietly.
Darius blinked. “What? Why?”
“Because we’re about to enter the Eye,” Tanik said, pointing to the massive, glassy sphere of blueish space in front of them. “As soon as we enter the mouth of the wormhole, the Cygnians are going to snap out of it and realize where we’re headed, and when they do, they’re going to follow us.”
Darius blinked. That hadn’t been in any of their simulations. “What are we supposed to do against an entire fleet?”
“We’ve got too much of a head start,” Tanik replied. “Only their fighters will be able to reach us. You and your pilots need to hold them off.”
“From inside a wormhole? Is that even possible?”
“Yes, but don’t stray from the Deliverance’s flight path or the tidal forces will rip you apart.”
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