Activating her comms, Tyra placed a call to the helmsman of the Veritus, the man she’d left with the conn. “Lieutenant Argos—”
“Ma’am?”
“Is our jump to The Holy City finished calculating yet?”
“Five more minutes, Captain.”
“Good. I’ll be right there.”
* * *
The Nexus
Lucien awoke to the sound of the door chiming. He got up from the couch where he’d slept, rubbing bleary eyes, and went to answer it.
The door swished open to reveal Lord Korvas and his cadre of shadow-robed slaves.
“Good morning—” Lucien began.
“How dare you greet me, concubine! Where is your master?”
Scrambling for an appropriate response, Lucien hesitated in the doorway.
“I’m here,” Addy said, walking up behind Lucien and rudely shoving him aside.
Lord Korvas gave a shallow bow, and Addy returned it.
“We must go,” Korvas said. “The separatists are waiting for us on Meson One.”
Lucien’s stomach growled noisily in protest. Were Faros supposed to be immune to hunger?
“We have not had the chance to eat this morning,” Addy said.
Korvas waved his hand to dismiss that concern. “Food will be provided for you on the flight down, and the negotiations cannot wait any longer.”
Addy nodded and half turned back to the sleeping quarters in their suite. “Brakos, Lesot! It is time to leave.”
Lord Korvas’s glowing green eyes narrowed at that, but he said nothing until both Garek and Brak emerged from the room they’d shared. They hurried over and joined Addy by the door.
Korvas nodded to Brak. “You call your slave by its name?”
Addy nodded in turn to Korvas’s four shadow-robed slaves. “You do not? How do you differentiate between your servants otherwise?”
Korvas’s eyes narrowed still further. “I do not need to differentiate. Their individuality is not important. If it were, I would allow them to show their faces.”
“I see,” Addy replied, offering a disapproving frown of her own. “I find that treating my slaves as if their lives matter compels better service. You should try it.”
“Perhaps I will...” Korvas replied, and his gaze flicked to his own slaves, as if considering the advice. “Please follow me.” Korvas turned and led them back along the circular walkway to the elevator they’d ridden up the night before. From there they walked through the lobby, and followed Korvas down the Nexus’s long, winding corridors.
Ten minutes later, they walked out into another cavernous hangar, a different one this time. Korvas led them to a medium-sized starship, and they proceeded up the landing ramp together, past a pair of faceless guards in shiny black armor. The guards turned and followed them up the ramp. Before they even reached the top of the ramp, it began rising with a pneumatic hiss, groaning under their combined weight. Dust swirled out from under the ship as grav lifts powered up, and a reverberating roar shuddered through the ramp.
Once they were all inside the airlock, Korvas keyed the outer doors shut and the inner ones open. He led them through a yawning cargo bay filled with metal crates and more armored guards sitting on bench seats to either side.
They reached a door at the far end of the cargo bay, and Korvas keyed it open. From there, they followed him down a long, straight passage lined with doors and branching corridors. Near the end of it a pair of ramps appeared—one leading up, the other down. The ramp leading up gave a glimpse into what might have been the cockpit or bridge, while the ramp going down showed a semicircular room filled with rows of seating.
Korvas descended the ramp to the lower room. Once inside, he turned to Addy and gestured to the empty rows of seats.
“Please make yourself comfortable, Lady Tekasi. I will have food sent down for you and your entourage.”
“Thank you,” Addy replied.
Korvas bowed once more and then left.
Lucien turned to watch him leave under the guise of examining his surroundings. The two black-armored guards who’d followed them up the ship’s landing ramp had taken up positions just outside the doors. As Korvas walked through with his slaves, the doors swished shut with a muffled boom, and Lucien turned back to the fore. A broad set of viewports spanned the semi-circular front wall of the space.
“I don’t like this,” Garek whispered.
“At least we all have window seats,” Lucien said.
Addy shot him a look, and waved a hand in his face as if to silence him. “We will be more than comfortable enough. It is a short flight to the surface.”
Her superior tone held a note of warning. She was still in character, and for good reason: most starships had internal surveillance systems, and if Korvas held any suspicions about them, he would be watching.
Garek nodded slowly and went to sit along the front row of seats, near the center of the room. Addy followed and went to sit beside him. Lucien waited for her to sit before taking a his seat beside her, thinking that’s what a submissive concubine would do.
Once he was seated, Lucien directed his attention to the view. He watched the transport hover up and slide out of the hangar. They passed through hangar shields with a faint shiver of exchanging energy, and then the star-field appeared, but those stars were almost as fuzzy and washed-out as they had appeared from inside the hangar. The atmosphere surrounding the Nexus made them appear as faint, twinkling pinpricks, vanishing into a thick white mist.
The view whirled around them as the transport turned, and then the rippled blue and white marble of Meson I appeared, looming large before them. The transport raced down into its atmosphere, and beads of moisture ran in rivulets along the viewports. Before long their acceleration and friction with the air made those water droplets evaporate instantly. The edges of the viewports glowed orange with heat as they plunged into Meson I’s atmosphere, and the surface of the planet grew progressively clearer and larger.
The doors to the passenger cabin swished open and four shadow-robed slaves came in carrying covered silver platters. They stopped in front of Addy and wordlessly uncovered those platters, waiting for a command. Addy pointed to the most appetizing meal of the four, and the slave holding it handed it to her. They gave Garek second choice, and then Lucien third, leaving Brak with the meal that everyone else had already passed over—a plate full of mushy-looking greens and a pale, roasted leg of some or other animal.
The slaves filed out, and Lucien ate his meal in silence—some kind of hot sandwich. It wasn’t bad, so long as he didn’t wonder what kind of animal was on it. For all he knew of the Faros, they ate sentient aliens.
The transport hit fluffy white clouds and began shaking violently around them. They didn’t feel anything thanks to the ship’s inertial management system, but the appearance of movement without the accompanying sensation of it made Lucien’s stomach churn.
Before long their speed dropped enough that the turbulence ceased, and the clouds parted, revealing the rippled blue surface of a planet-wide ocean below. The water shimmered in the sun, and Lucien spied a group of giant metallic spheres sitting half-submerged in the water. Floating cities? he wondered.
As they drew near, finer details emerged—viewports, decks, sensor dishes, comms receivers, and weapons emplacements—and the size of the spheres became apparent: each of them had to be at least several kilometers in diameter.
Near the waterline of the sphere a shielded rectangular hangar bay swelled ahead of them. The hangar grew rapidly larger as they approached, until it dwarfed even the giant hangar bays of the Nexus. With that, Lucien had to dramatically revise his estimate of the spheres’ size to at least a hundred kilometers in diameter each.
As they cruised into the cavernous hangar bay Lucien saw hundreds of wedge-shaped fighters crowding the deck, with larger rectangular and cigar-shaped vessels sitting between them. They landed beside one of the larger ships.
“These guys loo
k like they’re spoiling for a fight,” Garek commented.
Lucien had to agree. No wonder Korvas was so anxious about the negotiations. This crowded deck was a far cry from the Nexus’s empty hangars. But there was something else that had caught his eye—the fighters from the Nexus and the fighters in this hangar were the exact same type. Whoever these separatists were, they had Farosien ships.
The doors swished open behind them, and Lucien turned to see Lord Korvas standing in the entryway.
“It is time,” Korvas said. “Lady Tekasi?”
Addy rose from her seat, careful to mind the platter of half-eaten food she’d left at her feet. “We’re ready,” she said. Lucien joined her in standing, followed by Garek and Brak.
Addy led the way. When they reached Korvas, he turned and led them back down the corridor to the cargo bay. At the rear airlock they found two full squads of black-armored Faro soldiers waiting for them.
They all crowded into the airlock, and Korvas cycled the doors. Lucien peered between Addy and Korvas as the outer doors irised opened, trying to get a glimpse of the separatists waiting for them below.
“Lord Korvas,” a familiar, buttery smooth voice greeted.
It can’t be... Lucien thought.
The voice went on, “I’m glad to see that you’re taking our threats seriously. I was beginning to think a demonstration of our intentions might be needed.”
Wordlessly, the party started down the landing ramp, and Lucien saw the speaker, his suspicions confirmed. Addy sucked in a noisy breath.
It was Abaddon, but this one didn’t wear the glowing golden crown that all of the others did, and his robes were brown rather than gray.
“Who is this?” Abaddon asked, his glowing blue gaze flicking from Korvas to Addy and back again.
“Our negotiator, Lady Tekasi,” Korvas said as they stopped at the bottom of the ramp.
A horde of humanoid aliens from at least a dozen different species stood behind the Abaddon clone, all of them aiming gleaming black rifles at Korvas and Addy.
Abaddon’s gaze snaked from Korvas to Addy, and then to Lucien and Garek. His eyes were suspiciously narrowed. “How did a negotiator get here so soon?”
“The empire is more efficient than you think,” Korvas replied, lifting his chin.
Abaddon snorted and shook his head. His eyes slid back to Addy, and a sly smile spread on his lips. He glanced at Korvas, suddenly smug and gestured to a set of doors behind him. “Let’s get on with it, then.”
Korvas nodded and started forward, but Abaddon stopped him at the bottom of the ramp with a sneer and an upraised palm. “Not you.”
“As the duly appointed ruler of this system, it is my right to be privy to all negotiations.”
“It’s not up for debate,” Abaddon replied. “Consider it... one of my new terms.”
Korvas’s eyes flicked between Addy and Abaddon, as if he suddenly suspected that they might be in cahoots.
Addy turned to him with a reassuring smile. “Do not worry, Lord Korvas, I will convey the details to you as soon as the preliminary negotiations are complete.”
Korvas nodded sullenly, and Addy started forward. Lucien trailed behind with the others, and Abaddon watched each of them carefully as they passed by, but he made no move to stop any of them. That had to irk Korvas even more. He was not allowed to witness the negotiations, but even Lady Tekasi’s shadow-robed slave apparently could.
The ranks of humanoid aliens parted, clearing a path to the doors Abaddon had indicated. Lucien was just wondering if they would be allowed to walk through unattended when a blue blur and a brief gust of wind whipped by them.
Lucien blinked and suddenly Abaddon was there, walking beside Addy toward the doors, having run by them faster than their eyes could even register. Lucien remembered that the Abaddons and their elite warriors, the Elementals, were all bio-mechanical beings, capable of seemingly supernatural feats.
Just before they reached the doors, they rumbled open, and Abaddon led them down a broad corridor. Lucien glanced over his shoulder and saw Korvas glowering at them from the foot of the landing ramp. He also noted that Abaddon’s horde of alien soldiers remained where they were, their aim not wavering from Korvas and his guards. Either they already had standing orders to remain with Korvas in the hangar, or Abaddon had somehow communicated his orders to them telepathically.
Lucien’s gaze drifted back to the fore and he eyed the back of Abaddon’s bald blue head, wondering how it was possible for him to be fighting himself as the leader of this separatist group. Supposedly the original Abaddon maintained control of his clones through the Forge, so how had this one escaped his notice? And if one of them could, then how many others had done so? It meant that finding and destroying the Forge might not actually kill them all as Etherus had indicated.
Abaddon stopped beside a small door near the end of the corridor. The door slid open and he gestured inside to what looked like a conference room. “Please, take your seats.”
Addy nodded warily, and they followed her through the door. A long white table surrounded by black chairs sat under a gleaming, tentacled light fixture that was shaped like a...
Polypus.
Lucien blinked at the likeness of one of the extra-dimensional aliens. Addy and Garek both eyed it as they sat down near the head of the table. Lucien took a seat on the other side of Addy, while Brak remained standing by the doors.
Abaddon strode in, and the door swished shut behind him. He took a seat at the head of the table. Noticing their fixation on the light fixture, he nodded to it with a smile. “The seraphs are curious creatures, aren’t they?”
Addy tore her gaze from the light fixture to look at him. “Yes... shall we begin with the negotiations?”
Abaddon arched an eyebrow at that, and his smooth blue scalp wrinkled briefly. A moment later he replied, speaking in Versal, not Faro: “First, why don’t you start by telling me what three humans and a Gor are doing beyond the Red Line.”
Chapter 22
The Lost Etherian Fleet
Admiral Wheeler watched Faro ships streaming through the wormhole while her fleet circled in front of them firing bright green lasers. The enemy ships fell one after another, cracking apart in fiery bursts of light, but they just kept coming.
Buzzing clouds of wedge-shaped Faro fighters streamed from the larger vessels as soon as they emerged from the wormhole. The destroyers in Wheeler’s fleet flew headlong into those clouds, cannons blazing to keep them away from larger, more vulnerable battleships.
So far it was working, but with each new ship that emerged from the wormhole, the Faros’ line advanced. As Wheeler watched, the Faros’ lead ship explode, but two more took its place. They returned fire in tandem with missiles streaking from their bows and bright red laser beams stuttering out.
Their fire converged on a medium-sized destroyer—the Allegiance, and the faint blue glow of its shields suddenly vanished, replaced by gouts of escaping atmosphere as enemy lasers pierced its decks. Enemy missiles reached it next, flying into those holes. The Allegiance’s hull bulged and it glowed brightly from every viewport and seam. Then a split second later, it flew apart and the light faded, leaving a dark cloud of debris drifting in its wake.
“Admiral, we’ve just lost the—”
“I know,” Wheeler said curtly, cutting the sensor operator off. How many refugees had been crowded aboard that ship? How many more were going to die before this was over? She shook her head and gritted her teeth, watching as the enemy ships responsible for destroying the Allegiance both succumbed to answering fire from her fleet.
New Earth’s reinforcements were a week away, but what about Etherus’s ships? He supposedly had fleets tucked away somewhere, and he’d gone to speak with the Etherians about joining the fight. So where were they while her people were dying? And they weren’t just dying the temporary deaths of people who knew they’d be resurrected in cloned bodies. These were real, permanent deaths. With the loss of the Resu
rrection Center on Astralis, none of the refugees or crews aboard her ships had backups of their minds or consciousness.
Wheeler scowled. “Comms, why didn’t the Allegiance retreat as ordered?”
“They reported engine failure, ma’am. Enemy fighters must have scored a lucky hit.”
“Let’s try not to repeat that. From now on any ships whose shields drop below fifty percent are to rotate to the back of our lines.”
“Right now, that’s all of them,” Colonel Drask put in before the comms officer could reply. “And we can’t pull our destroyers and cruisers back without exposing our battleships to their fighters.”
Wheeler checked the contacts panel from her control station. Drask was right. The ships in their forward lines were all down below fifty percent shield strength, and as Drask had pointed out, they couldn’t have those ships fall back, because the larger vessels hiding behind them weren’t equipped to deal with enemy fighters and missiles.
She grimaced and shook her head. “So if we pull back our forward lines, their fighters will take out our battleships, but if we don’t pull them back, they’ll all be destroyed and then their fighters will take out our battleships, anyway.”
“That’s about the size of it, ma’am,” Colonel Drask replied.
“They’ve lasted eight hours so far. Given current rates of shield drain, how long before all of their shields fail?”
“Not another eight hours, that’s for sure,” Colonel Drask said.
“The colonel is right, ma’am,” the sensor officer said. “The enemy’s numbers have been steadily growing and based on current trends... we’ve got about an hour before we lose most of the ships in our forward deployment. After that, it won’t be long before we lose the rest of the fleet.”
Wheeler nodded slowly. “Comms, try sending another distress call to Etheria and The Holy City. Message reads: Our defenses are failing. Reinforcements needed urgently. Please respond.”
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