by Webb, Nick
“Why send you?” Pike frowned.
“Who else could he trust?” Parees countered. “He has other assistants, and people who owe him favors, but you should never trust someone who owes you something—that’s what Nhean always says. And any member of the resistance would be more loyal to Walker than to him—and they’re too unpredictable.”
Pike surprised even himself with a bark of laughter. “Can’t argue with you there.” He was still chuckling as he took a sip of water. “Fanatics, the lot of them. Cultish.”
“And yet you still support Walker,” Parees accused. He gave Pike a look.
“She’s not just….” Pike sighed. “She’s more than what she seems now. You just see the choices she makes that are different from Nhean’s, but that’s not all she is. She cares about humanity. She wants what’s best for humanity. And in the end, the only way we’re going to win is with a fight. With Walker leading that fight.”
“And you’re sure you know what she’s fighting for?” The question was quiet, oddly calm. Parees was watching Pike.
“What the hell does that mean?” He was beginning to be truly angry—not least of all because he had no answer.
“Nothing.” Parees lifted his brows and looked away. “If you trust her, you trust her.” He looked sad, suddenly. “As you said, I only see a piece of her. Just like you only see a piece of Nhean.” He hesitated. “And you haven’t forgiven him for using the girl the way he did. Aboard the flagship above Mercury. Even though she told him to do it. Using her as the transmission vector for that virus. It could have killed her.”
Pike set the canteen down. His heart was hammering suddenly, and he could hear the whispers again, pressing against his mind…. “He used her like she was just a tool.”
“In the end, what else are we?”
“What?”
Parees started to laugh. His eyes squeezed shut and he rocked slightly. “The world is falling apart. What else are we except tools to try to stop it? Everything is falling into chaos, humanity is tearing itself apart, and everyone struggles against it—for what? What hope do we have?”
Pike watched him, wide-eyed. He’d never seen the man like this, but he’d seen enough people choking on their own despair in the stations. He knew what it looked like when the futility of everything snapped something inside a person.
“If we don’t have hope, what else is there?”
“Nothing!” Parees looked up at him, wild. “There’s nothing.”
“Exactly,” Pike told him. “You’ll die whether you have hope or not. You’d die even if you were on Earth and the Telestines had never come. You can look at everything and say nothing matters and there’s no sense in fighting, or you can try to hope for something, and struggle to make it real.”
Parees stared at him silently.
“I ran from it,” Pike told him brutally. “Because the people I wanted to save were already dead. Now I do what I can. I don’t like some of what Walker did. I don’t … I don’t always trust her, any more than I always trust Nhean. I don’t even always trust … the girl.” He let out his breath. “But I trust that doing something, doing anything, is better than doing nothing.”
Still, Parees did not speak.
“Giving big, dramatic speeches is not exactly my thing. I’m not very good at it.” Pike tried to smile, and the smile fell away when Parees turned his head, eyes closed. “Look. You didn’t like remembering where you came from. Zetian Station has a reputation as the … hellholiest hellhole in the solar system. You tried to forget, and now that you’re here, and you can’t. I get that. I feel the same way about Earth now. I wanted to go back so bad. But once I was there, all it brought back was … terrible memories. Terrible pain. Now Earth is the last place I want to be. But I guess … if there’s no hope, then why not try? If you’re sure you’re going to fail, what’s the harm in doing something? We’re dying out here. You can’t make it worse.”
Parees flinched.
“And if you want to find the drones,” Pike suggested, “I’d ask Felicia to get you to the Daughters of Ascension. Tell her to introduce you to Ka’sagra. She seems to trust her. If you’re a drone, if you’re still looking for orders, where do you go? To a Telestine. At the very least, it seems Ka’sagra is one of the good Telestines. If … there is such a thing.”
Parees lifted his brows, clearly skeptical.
“She’s not on Tel’rabim’s side, anyway,” Pike said.
“We didn’t know what side Tel’rabim was on until recently,” Parees pointed out.
“This is different,” Pike argued. “Tel’rabim just said he supported aid and ‘helped’ arrange it.” His fingers formed some air quotes around helped. “She’s actually here, working with us. Always has been. Always makes sure we get those food and medicine shipments, according to Felicia.”
Parees considered this. “Why doesn’t Tel’rabim shut her down?”
“Nhean doesn’t have an answer to that?”
“He didn’t explain it. That means he thinks I should be able to figure it out.” Parees lifted his thin shoulders helplessly. “But I can’t.”
“I guess she’s … I don’t know, she represents a lot of people in their society, I think. They haven’t killed us all, which would probably have been a hell of a lot easier.” Pike shrugged. “So there have to be people who back her—”
He broke off as he looked over. Parees looked stricken at the thought of genocide.
“I’m sorry,” Pike said awkwardly.
He waited for Parees to say something, anything, but the man did not speak, and at last, Pike pushed his trembling body up and hobbled out of the room. He did not look back. He wanted to give Parees what little privacy he could. Pike had run from his father’s memory and now from any route that took him close to Earth, but he had never escaped the reality of how humanity lived. Parees had, and now he was sinking into despair.
All of humanity was.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Near Ceres
Koh Rong
Nhean frowned at the screen and tapped a command.
The screen fuzzed white.
He dropped his head onto one hand, fingers kneading over one of his temples. Away from his estates on Venus, he was relegated to the Koh Rong, a ship he’d made little mention of to the members of the Exile Fleet. Walker was just as happy not to have him wandering around on her ships, and the rest were too absorbed by the new technology of Nhean’s fleet to care much where he was.
In this case, ‘where he was’ lay at a point between the humans and Telestine fleets as they advanced on one another, but above the plane of contact. He’d closed the viewscreen, finding that the distances that looked so manageable on his maps were dizzying to the naked eye.
He felt safer here in space than on the surface of a planet, helpless as the Telestine fleet advanced. Safer was better, he told himself. Careful was better. Still, the suite of technology he’d developed to make his ship almost invisible to detection was also interfering with the signals he was able to obtain from his network. He had to be at least somewhat close to see what was happening.
The picture finally cleared on his screen and he sat up straighter.
“Finally.” But his brow furrowed and he leaned closer, eyes tracing over the formation of the ships near Ceres. The Telestine fleet curved up and over like a giant hand, smaller ships making claws ready to close around the Exile Fleet. But where the Exile Fleet normally clustered, ready to burst away from one another and attack the Telestine fleet from the inside, now they hung in what appeared to be no formation at all. There was no backup and no shelter, and veins of older ships ran through the mass of the fleet like fault lines.
Did Walker not see what was happening? Was she unaware of how quickly the Telestine fleet was approaching?
Nhean stabbed at the comm screen and gave a hiss of annoyance when the channel wouldn’t open. Without speaking to her, he wouldn’t know if she’d received the message at all. He recorded the T
elestine fleet’s position and sent it unencrypted. They couldn’t spare the time for the encryption on his end or the decryption on the other. The fleet was heading into disaster.
He leaned back and drummed his fingers on the arm of his chair.
“Sir?” The pilot turned to look at him. “Should I begin altering our course?”
“Circle above the two fleets—above those fingers, but on our side of the battlefield.”
“Sir?”
Nhean took a deep breath and let it out slowly. Not for the first time, he wished he hadn’t sent Parees away. Parees would have understood this necessity.
“Something appears to be wrong with the sensor arrays on the fleet,” he said shortly. “If we have to intervene and serve as their eyes and ears, we need to be closer. Circle up, but bring us in. We’ll be out of the line of direct fire, with enough time to maneuver in the case of stray projectiles.”
Hopefully.
The woman’s face was pale, but she complied.
An FTL comm channel buzzed, but if Nhean hoped for a message from Walker, he was disappointed. It was Parees who was on the screen.
“I may cut out,” Nhean told him. “The fleets are engaging near Ceres.” At least Parees was safe enough, well on the other side of the sun from this battle. “What is it?”
“You need to come to Vesta.”
“What?” Nhean was, for a moment, completely diverted from the battle.
“Should I change course, sir?” The pilot looked hopeful.
“Not yet.” Nhean enunciated the words clearly and held her gaze for a long moment. Only when she nodded did he turn back to Parees. “Why should I come to Vesta?” Parees rarely asked for help, and even more rarely admitted defeat. If he was deviating from his mission to retrieve information and come back, there must be a reason.
“There’s a woman here you should meet.” The comm channel fuzzed out, and Parees disappeared for a moment. When the picture cleared, Nhean could see how exhausted the man looked. “She’s Telestine; her name is Ka’sagra. She’s the Daughters of Ascension representative on Vesta.”
“She’s not just a representative.” Nhean shook his head. “She runs the Daughters of Ascension.”
“I don’t think so,” Parees argued. His voice was distorted through the solar interference. “It must be someone with the same name. Why would she be someplace like this?”
“Why would a Telestine run an aid organization for the humans instead of letting us die out here?” Nhean asked. “She probably thinks the suffering of humanity is a good reminder of her divine mission, or however it is that Telestines think about their religion.” That was an interesting thought. “Has she told you anything about their religious beliefs? I know they’re a sect of some sort, but it’s—”
“I haven’t talked to her.”
“Then why am I supposed to go out there?” His temper was fraying rapidly. “Well?”
“There’s … a lot happening on Vesta. It’s important. I’ve found something out.” Parees looked around himself before leaning forward to speak. “The orders are coming from here.” He swallowed, almost a gulp.
“What? How do you know that?”
“I can’t—I can’t say here. It’s not safe in a transmission. You have to come here.”
Nhean was about to snap a response when Parees turned his head to look at something beyond the videoscreen. His jaw was far too sharp, and his eyes were set in bruised hollows.
And Parees had never asked something like this before.
“You think it’s important that I meet Ka’sagra,” Nhean said simply.
“Yes.” Parees was actually shivering, though sweat stood out on his skin. “She’s….” His voice fuzzed out. “—opposition to Tel’rabim,” Nhean made out.
He leaned forward, a useless gesture but an instinctive one as he strained to hear.
“—sympathetic to—”
“The signal is breaking up. Parees?”
“—new technology they shouldn’t give—”
“Parees?”
The picture appeared a moment later. Parees was stabbing at the controls desperately. “Just come out here.” He looked at the screen. “And let me go back to Venus. Please.”
“I’ll be there as soon as I can be.” Nhean tried to keep his voice smooth, but he was genuinely worried. He had never seen Parees so distraught. “Stay there. Tel’rabim knows who I am now. If he has found the estate, Venus may not be safe any longer. I will meet you on Vesta.”
Parees’s shoulders sagged. “Please,” he said again. Just that. Just the one word.
“Stay there,” Nhean told him. “Stay on Vesta.” He tried to soften his tone. “It’s only for a few more weeks.” Nhean considered the brusque utilitarianism transparent in this response. “I can’t afford to lose you, Parees,” he added, hoping to convey the concern behind his decision.
Parees looked down. He nodded jerkily.
Another comm line buzzed—the Santa Maria. Finally.
Nhean gave a sigh of relief. “I have to talk to Walker. Stay on Vesta. I will be there as soon as I can.”
Parees only nodded.
That would have to be enough. Nhean cut the transmission with a brief shake of his head and brought up the call from the Santa Maria. He frowned at the unfamiliar face. “Who is this?”
“Admiral Morgan.” The man staring back at him had sandy brows shot with white, and suspicious brown eyes. “You are Nhean Tang, yes?”
Nhean didn’t bother to respond to that. He raised an eyebrow. “Admiral Morgan?” The man must be in charge of the older ships now, though why he was on the Santa Maria Nhean had no idea. Had Essa forced Walker to demote Delaney?
Not his problem, and not relevant just now.
“Congratulations on your promotion. I need to speak to Admiral Walker.”
“Captain Walker is on the Cairo.”
“The Cairo is a scout ship, what’s she doing there?”
“She commands it.”
“I know that,” Nhean said, annoyed. “She controls the whole damned fleet, or at least the ships I’ve given her, which is why you need to put me through to her, your formation—”
“Captain Walker no longer commands the Exile Fleet.” Admiral Morgan’s lips curved in a satisfied smile. “I do. And if you’ll excuse me, Mr. Tang, I have a battle to prepare for.”
The call cut, and Nhean stared at the blank screen, dumbstruck.
Essa didn’t just take the Exile Fleet away. He took Nhean’s ships.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Ceres
Fighters
“Form up, and stay close.” McAllister resisted the urge to look around himself at the other fighters. They were all trained, he told himself.
They were also only a day off the adrenaline high of their first battle, and had never flown with the fleet packed so tightly before. Distances that looked big to the naked eye closed quickly in a battle, and it was easy even for a veteran to swing too close to another ship.
Why wasn’t the fleet spreading out? He clenched his hands and breathed slowly. His heart rate was too fast. He needed to calm down before the adrenaline got the better of him.
“Swing to port, Wing 3 to the outside.” He tapped the comm channel for the lead ship. “Santa Maria, this is McAllister. We need more specs to avoid friendlies. Which firing pattern will be used, Alpha or Sigma? What do we need to avoid?”
“McAllister, this is the Santa Maria. All ships will be firing full battery.”
McAllister muted himself as he swore. He couldn’t let himself get upset. Admiral Morgan was new. He didn’t understand battle dynamics the same way Walker did.
So why the hell couldn’t they have done a soft handoff of the fleet and let her command this one? His fighters were going to be relegated to the fringes of the battle, entirely unprotected.
“All wings, go to the outside of the formation and swing wide.” He tried to keep his voice steady and non-accusatory. “All ships wi
ll be firing full bore, do not get in the way.”
“Theo?” A private line. Tocks wove through the ranks of the other fighters to bring her ship alongside his. “Are you going to tell Morgan this is batshit crazy?”
“You know I can’t.” The words felt heavy as he spoke them, though. “There’s no time to talk tactics in the middle of a battle. The dice are just going to have to fall as they—”
The fleetwide channel lit up. “All ships, this is Admiral Morgan. Heading sent, advance on my mark. All batteries fire.”
They weren’t going to get out of the way in time. “Everyone pull up, hard!”
The fighters screamed into top speed as a beam of light shot underneath them as the Santa Maria fired.
“Son of a bitch!” Tocks screamed. To judge by her tone, she was about ten seconds away from ripping Morgan to shreds. Her private channel opened. “That almost took out Wing Five.”
He felt the relentless surge of anger as well, but he knew he could not give into it. Not now. They needed to stay sharp. “We all got out of it,” he told her simply.
“Those were fucking nukes, Theo!”
That chilled him. Why the hell were they firing nukes this early in the battle? They didn’t have many of those.
But he couldn’t give into it. “We’re good enough to get out of this. Let’s just make sure all this newbies get home too, okay?”
They were too far apart now for him to see her expression, but he saw the gleam of her mask. After a moment, she nodded silently.
Good enough.
They were still shooting up into nowhere, toward the tip of one of the massive, finger formations, and that gave him an idea.
“All right, everyone. Straight up.”
A swarm of Feathers was bearing down on them, spiraling like flower petals from the center of the Telestine formation.
“Get ready! Keep swinging hard, we’ll try to get them to catch their fighters in their own crossfire and—ah, shit.” A Telestine destroyer had emerged from the center of the cloud, arrowing down out of the tip of the formation. “Stay out of that carrier’s line of fire, whatever you do. You can not take a hit from that thing!”