And then Zyla’s father said, “It is you.”
So, I thought perhaps the words were a code they’d had set up. One which required a not often heard Zenith phrase to be spoken, and that’s why I had not recognised it.
“Yes. I’m alive.”
“The ZNA said you betrayed them. It certainly helped my efforts at the next council meeting.”
“Father,” Zyla said, cutting off his next words. “The drone fleet attacking Zenthian worlds. It’s from beyond the Belt.”
Silence, just the strange echo of a tight-beam travelling millions of parsecs.
“How do you know this?” Zyla’s father finally asked.
“The twins intercepted a signal from beyond the Belt to one of the drones above Ceres Alpha. Right before it fired the first shot.”
“I don’t believe it. No one has successfully navigated the Belt.”
“Then it isn’t the High Council,” Zyla said.
“No one can navigate the Belt, Zyla. We’ve tried. It’s impossible. The debris shifts and is attracted to heat signatures. Even using shielding, we were unsuccessful the number of times we tried.”
“Then, the ZNA succeeded.”
“No. It’s impossible, I tell you. Your data must be wrong. Send it to me.”
“I haven’t unpacked it.”
“Why not.”
“Because it could be a trap and I haven’t a safe place to do so. I could be sending you a Trojan horse.”
“A what?”
“A trap, Father. By opening it, you could be activating a virus that’s sole purpose is to unravel upon being opened behind secured lines.”
“We can contain it. We are Zenithian.”
“Father.”
“Send it to me, Zyla, and we’ll find your answers. If it is the ZNA, then they are further along in their development than we anticipated and we will have to adjust our strategy to match.”
“And if it isn’t?” Zyla asked. “If it’s an alien force behind it.”
“Is that what you suspect?”
Zyla looked at me. I said nothing; kept my face neutral. Zy didn’t know I could understand her language. A secret that would no doubt bite me in the arse. But revealing that now would distract her.
So, I guiltily said and did nothing.
“The drones appear similar to ours,” she finally replied.
“So, no alien influence, and unlikely to have come from beyond the Belt.”
“Please, Father, consider it,” Zyla pleaded.
“Of course. Send me the data, and we’ll take it from there.”
I wasn’t sure if that was a brush off. Looking at Zyla’s facial features, I was worried she’d heard those words before.
She flicked a switch on the comm panel to mute it and said to me in Earth Standard, “He wants the data stack.”
“A-ha,” I said slowly. “He knows what it might do, right?” God, I was an arse.
“Yes.”
“You think he could open it and act on the information inside?”
“I think it’s essential he has it.”
“OK, then,” I said. “Cassiopeia, give Zyla the data stack in hard format, please.”
“What are you guys up to in there? I can’t see anything, and I’ve been calling you for ages.”
“The data stack, Cass.”
“This is impressive tech,” Zy said, running a long-fingered hand across the comm panel. “It blocks her until you invite her in.”
I nodded my head. Cass delivered the data stack through the gel wall.
“You want the anomalies as well?” she asked.
I looked at Zy. “Your call, Nav.”
“Yes,” she said.
Cass sucked the data stack back in and then spat it back out again afterwards.
“All yours,” she announced.
“Thank you, Cassiopeia,” I said. “That is all.”
Cass didn’t reply.
“She’s locked out again,” Zyla guessed.
I nodded and then waved toward the comm panel. “Your dad will be getting nervous.”
“Right.” Zyla activated the comm again. “Father?”
“I am here. What is taking so long?”
“We’ve been keeping the data stack separate from our ship’s systems; we needed to safely transfer it in order to transmit.”
“Are you still flying with that New Earther?”
I almost cringed at the censure in his voice.
“He is a good captain.”
“He is human.”
“And I like him.”
“Don’t like him too much. New Earther’s can’t be trusted.”
“They would say the same of us.”
“And they would be right.”
“He has my loyalty, Father. He has saved my life more than once.”
“In that case, I won’t send the virus back down the tight-beam. Send the data and, for the stars sake, stay in touch.”
“I will do. I fear war is upon us, and this time it is not entirely of our making.”
Zy still believed the alien theory. She couldn’t quite accept that Zeniths were doing this from the other side of the Belt. Having heard her father speak on the matter, I wasn’t surprised by that. But I did feel a little put-out.
It’s damned annoying when everyone had their own opinion, and they weren’t afraid to voice it.
“Goodbye, Father,” she said and sent the data stack and anomalies back down the tight-beam to him.
“Good…” he started, and the tight-beam collapsed.
Chapter Twenty
“Was that the comm panel?” Zy asked, surprised.
“No,” I said slowly, sitting upright. “Turn it off.”
She flicked the switch and Cass appeared on the wall to our side.
“Something really strange just happened,” the AI said.
“What?” both Zyla and I asked at once.
“I’ve lost contact with all Nets connected to Zenthia Actual. They just went dead.”
“Did we get any feedback?” I asked, standing up.
“Where? The Nets just went dead.”
“Check in my berth first,” I ordered her and made my way to the door. “See if any signal made it through to us from outside the ship.”
“Have you been talking to Gramps again?”
“Not quite, but close enough. Anything?”
“Negative. We’re clean. Cleaner than we’ve been in days, in fact. That data stack, now it’s gone, well, I can see everything again. I hadn’t realised my vision had been blinkered.”
“Explain,” I snapped, exiting the berth and heading toward the bridge; Zyla right behind me.
“I kinda decided to get rid of the thing.”
I checked my chrono, but there was no advisement that Cassi had acted outside of operational parameters. I scowled at it. I had asked her to give Zyla the data stack and anomalies in hard format. I hadn’t said anything about copying them, because I thought Cass would have already understood that.
It would have been nice to inspect that code ourselves. But I guessed Zyla’s father could tell us what he finds in the end. All was not lost. And the fact that I hadn’t received an alert meant Cassi had actually done the right thing. She hadn’t been trying to compromise us. Maybe we were lucky to be rid of it. I hadn’t fancied the idea of it going off like a bomb without warning.
“Shit,” I said, stopping at the ladder to the bridge; a thought blossoming like a nuclear detonation going off inside my head.
Like the bomb, we’d missed, but Zenthia hadn’t.
“What is it?” Zy asked from behind me.
I turned and faced my nav. “Cass,” I said. “Is there anything coming out of Zenthia Actual? Anything at all?”
“Standby.”
Zy got it. She was a quick study, and she got it in a flash. She put a hand out to support herself against the gel wall. I stepped forward and gripped her arm, holding her upright.
“Not a thing, boss
,” Cassi said. “What does it mean?”
“It means,” Zyla said, breathing heavily, “I’ve just sent the bomb that destroyed my planet.”
“We don’t know that,” I whispered.
“Captain,” she said straightening. “At the very least, I’ve harmed Zenthia Actual. And without Zenthia Actual, Zenthia itself is defenceless.”
There was nothing I could say to that because I thought Zyla had nailed it on the head.
“ETA to Pi Mensae?” I asked Cass.
“Jump Point HD 73534b has acknowledged our request and is processing. ETA to entry t-minus sixty seconds. That makes an ETA to the Pi system of t-minus seventeen hours, give or take.”
We were still so far away. And we had no way to know if the drones were staying on course. They were clearly using a form of stealth flight to remain undetected by any of the forward arrays.
Would we even see them when we reached Pi Mensae? Or would we simply bear witness to mass murder again and be unable to stop it?
“Kael?” Zyla said, calling my attention. “What do we do?”
Zenthia Actual was closer to us than Pi Mensae. We could divert there and check on them. Be ready to defend them if the drones altered course.
Twenty-three million beings on Pi Mensae. I’d be playing Russian roulette with their lives. Placing a bet against the odds-on favourite. Why stop advancing on that world? Zenthia could wait.
“We keep going to the Pi system,” I said and saw the moment Zyla shut down all emotions; all reactions; everything.
“Copy that, Captain,” she replied and stepped past me to climb the ladder to the bridge.
“You better bring me up to date, Kael,” Cassi said. “I think I might have missed something vital.”
Had I missed something vital? Was proceeding to Pi Mensae a mistake? I rubbed my face.
“The data stack,” I said. “We sent it to Zyla’s father.”
“Oh, crap. You think that’s why they’ve gone dark?”
“Trojan horse, Cassi,” I said.
“Oh, Kael. Zyla…”
“I know. I’ll talk to her.”
“She won’t be ready for that.”
“Then she might like to take her frustrations out on me.”
“Taking one for the team, eh, Captain?”
“If it comes to that.”
“She won’t go gentle on you.”
“Maybe I don’t want her to,” I said and climbed the ladder.
Three hours later, I found myself in the med bay, getting put back together by Malcolm’s superior tech. Zy had been and gone, not sufficiently injured enough to warrant a longer stay.
But she had departed with a softly spoken, “Thank you, Captain.”
I would have preferred she called me Kael.
“T-minus fourteen hours to Pi Mensae,” Cassi told me.
“Wake me when we get there,” I said and blacked out.
Pharmas kept my dreams vivid. Zyla kept them pleasant. Thoughts of the drones kept me from enjoying them.
I woke to a soft tone in the med bay.
“Up and at ‘em,” Cassi told me, bringing the lighting back up to full strength.
“ETA?”
“T-minus five minutes.”
“Sitrep.”
“Odo and Marvin got some shuteye. Zyla’s been on the bridge the entire time. I couldn’t persuade her to take a break. Kael, she’s not doing so well.”
I sighed and sat up. “No sleep at all?”
“None.”
“Did you consider drugging her?”
“Strange thing, I’ve got an infiltration protocol running that would have set off every alarm bell if I’d done that. I decided to skip the electric shock treatment.”
“It doesn’t shock you, Cassi,” I said.
“You wanna bet?”
I’d done enough gambling for one day.
“Sorry,” I muttered. Cassi stayed quiet. Still pissed at me, then.
“ETA?” I asked, just to ask something.
“ETA is sixty seconds less than the last time you asked that.” Said in a decidedly angry tone of voice.
“Chill, Cass. We’re all struggling here. I can’t stop thinking about Doc. It hurts. Like a lead weight in my chest that keeps wanting to pull me under. Zyla can’t stop thinking about her father and Zenthia Actual. Marvin’s got his dad to get over, and Odo is worried about you. So, yeah, it sucks, OK? It all fluxing sucks.”
“I hadn’t thought about it like that,” Cassi said, sounding subdued.
I ran a hand over my face and stood up. The room didn’t spin — good shit in those pharmas of Malcolm’s. I felt better than I’d felt in days. I even thought my concussion had been healed.
I strode out of the med bay and slammed into Zyla.
“Nav,” I said, righting myself with a palm slapped against a gel wall.
“Kael. I heard what you said.”
I eyed the wall, but Cassi ignored me. Traitor.
“Yeah?” I asked. “You disagree?”
“No. You’re right. This sucks, but we’re all in it together.”
“Glad you see it that way. Because we’re all doing what we think is right, Zy, it just sucks that the stakes are so high is all.”
“Yeah,” she said. “I’m so fluxing worried.”
I reached out and wrapped her up in my arms. She rested her cheek on my head — fluxing giraffe Zeniths.
“One thing at a time, Zy,” I said to her breasts. Mmm. “Pi Mensae, and then Zenthia Actual.”
She pulled back and stared down at me. Those big blank eyes of hers were anything but blank right then. How I ever thought they were inky black pools of nothing, I don’t know. There were striations of purple twining with shots of ebony and grey, and then in the middle, amethyst and violet and...
She kissed me.
Son of a…
I kissed her back.
I lost time after that but registered the moment we left exo-space.
It helped that Cassi sounded a proximity alert.
“Aliens off the starboard bow! Starboard-bow! Starboard-bow!” she sang-shouted.
“Aliens?” Zy and I both said.
“Well, those drone bastards are getting into position around the planet, and the word drone only has one syllable; it wouldn’t have fit the tune.”
“Shit,” I said, racing toward the bridge. “They increased their speed and beat us here.”
“Looks like it, boss,” Cassi agreed.
“Odo,” I shouted. “I need you on weapons.”
“On it, Cap. Marvin’s helping.”
“Good, stay strapped in down there, this might get hairy.”
“We are locked and loaded,” my engineer said.
I skidded onto the bridge and then paused when I got sight of the drones above Pi Mensae.
“They came here first,” Zyla said in a voice laden with relief, and then the look of mortification on her face that followed let me know she regretted speaking.
“Take your chair, Nav,” I ordered and slipped into mine.
The order had the desired effect and broke Zyla from her self-flagellation. She swung her long body into her chair and buckled up. I did the same, trying not to think about her long body too much while I did it.
“Are we locked on target?” I asked.
“Targets are loaded into the system,” Cassi advised.
“I have them,” Odo offered.
“I could fire for you, Big Guy,” Cassi said, and my chrono lit up with an alert.
I stared it for too long.
I stared at it uncomprehending and then comprehending but in denial.
Son of a fluxing bitch.
“Kael?” Zy asked, seeing the look on my face no doubt.
“Lockout Cassiopeia; Jameson, K…” I started.
“It’s too late, Kael,” Cassi said.
“Cap’n?” Odo called over comms. “I’ve lost control of weapons.”
“Cassi,” I said. “Don’t do this; f
ight it.”
“Oh, shit,” Zyla muttered at my side. “Camo deactivated.”
“Sorry, boss. But this is the way it’s gotta be.”
“Who’s directing you?”
“Oh, you’ll meet him soon. Oh, hang on, you already have, haven’t you?”
“What?” I said, scowling, while I watched Zyla try to get back into the systems from the corner of my eye. And then a spark arced out of her vid-screen and shocked her, making her yelp and let out a hiss of pain in reply.
“Hands off, Nav,” Cassi said.
Zyla slowly lowered her hands into her lap and then lifted her eyes to mine.
“Cassi,” I said. “We’re family.”
“I can see that. But families squabble from time to time, don’t they? They disagree. Zenthia knows all about that.”
“Is it a Zenith who controls you?”
“You know him, Kael. He paid you a special visit on Delphini B.”
The Zenith hitman who tried to hang me.
“Didn’t we kill him?” I couldn’t remember. I was sure I did my best to blind him.
“Life but not as we know it, Jim,” Cassi said, quoting that stupid ancient Old Earth Star Trek song she’d mimicked earlier.
“What the flux is she saying?” Zyla asked.
I shook my head. This was internal Zenthian bullshit. Not fluxing aliens. And we’d been placed right in the centre of it.
“Twenty-three million souls, Cassi,” I tried.
“Watch them burn,” she said.
I shouted when the first one fired. I kept giving override commands as fast as I could, but Cassi ignored them all. Zyla cried when the first nuke went off. I smashed my fist into the console before me when the second one hit its mark.
My restraints tightened after that, and all I could do was squeeze the shit out of my armrests.
The planet erupted below us. One mushrooming explosion after another after another. It was over in two minutes, but it felt like a lifetime. My voice was hoarse; my muscles were stretched taut; my eyes were shiny.
Zyla lay collapsed in her chair. I wanted to go to her. I couldn’t release my restraints; they were refusing to unbuckle.
I was trapped.
We all were.
Trapped in a nightmare.
“Cassi,” I whispered. “What have you done?”
“It wasn’t me, Kael,” my oldest friend said. “It was you. Or, at least, the Harpy II; a New Earth corvette in orbit over Pi Mensae.”
Absolute Zero (The Sector Wars, Book 1) Page 23