by Richard Fox
“Just admit you’re in over your head.” Arlyss levelled a finger at Gage. “You’re drowning. Step aside and one of your betters can take over.”
“No, Captain Arlyss.” Gage ground his knuckles against the table. “I have a plan, and bringing you all here was part of it.”
The deck rocked and the lights cut out, replaced moments later by red emergency lights.
“All part of the plan?” Arlyss asked.
“Actually,” Gage said, “it is.”
****
Ja’war—as Franks—felt a wave of satisfaction pass through him as the Orion shut down. The first of his bombs had knocked out the ship’s power. While the crew scrambled about to mitigate the damage, Ja’war slipped away from his engineering team and climbed up into an air duct.
As he hurried through the duct, the panicked shouts of crew were music to his ears. Confusion was his ally, one he’d leverage to the hilt for the next few minutes.
Ja’war felt a vibration on his forearm. He glanced down at a snippet from a security camera at a hallway junction near Prince Aidan’s quarters. An infrared image of a full team of armsmen and both Genevan guards formed a circle around a short figure and turned a corner, heading for a lift.
While the security around the Prince’s quarters was too strong for him to get close, he’d tapped into the ship’s firefighting systems and set up motion alerts. He didn’t have close surveillance on his target, but he knew any time someone came or went from the secure area.
Ja’war came to a join in the ductwork, where a small pile of clothes, badges, and an armsman’s shotgun waited for him. He’d found the armsman separated from the rest of his team in an air-locked segment of a damaged deck a few hours ago. Killing him and stripping him of all his possessions had taken less than two minutes, and the nihilum had removed all evidence of the body.
Armsman Second Class Horace had been listed MIA and assumed lost to the void during the last battle. Ja’war slipped on the armsman’s flak jacket and armored pads and scooped up his shotgun. Ja’war concentrated on the dead man’s baby face and his body morphed to match.
Swiping through the camera feeds around the Prince’s deck, Ja’war ignored the pack of security as it slowly made its way down the hallway.
There…a stout man pushed a covered food cart out of the other end of the corridor leading to the Prince’s quarters. Ja’war zoomed in on the cart, adjusted the infrared sensitivity on the camera, and found the blur of a small child crouched within the food cart.
“There you are,” Ja’war said. He bent an ear to a nearby grate, heard no footsteps or voices in the passageway, and dropped down with the bang of his heel against the metal. He pushed the grate closed with the muzzle of his shotgun and ran to a lift that serviced both the Prince’s deck and the auxiliary flight bay.
Touching a palm to the lift door, he waited for a vibration to hum through the metal, then removed an override fob Franks had and pressed it against the reader. The doors opened a second later and a rather surprised Bertram looked from Ja’war to the deck number on the lift’s control panel.
The steward gripped the food cart’s handle bar tightly.
“This lift is in use, sailor.” Bertram puffed his chest out and shooed the armsman away.
“Security emergency.” Ja’war stepped in and hit a deck number between their floor and the flight deck. He waited until the doors shut, then Ja’war racked the shotgun and aimed it at Bertram’s face.
“The food’s not that good,” Bertram squeaked. “Better in the mess…I swear—”
“Don’t. I know you’ve got the Prince in there.” Ja’war kicked the cart. “You want the boy to live? You tell me what ship you’re taking him to.”
Bertram put his hands up and backed away.
“No ship, just a brief walkabout. Kick the footy ball around on—”
Ja’war swung the butt of his shotgun around and smacked it against Bertram’s shoulder. The steward yelped in pain as the Faceless pointed the muzzle at the cart.
“The Orion is dead in space,” Ja’war said. “The Daegon will be here soon. Your miserable leader won’t let the brat die here, so he’s sending him to another ship. Tell me which one or you’ll both die right here, right now. The boy first, so you can hear that scream.”
Bertram was nearly hyperventilating with fear. Sweat poured down his forehead.
“You-you promise he’ll live?” Bertram asked.
“Of course.” Ja’war took in the steward’s features. His look wasn’t too far off the armsman’s, easy to adopt. His face began reforming.
“He’s going to the Gudar,” the steward said.
Ja’war stopped his transformation and brought the weapon up to Bertram’s face.
“There’s no ship in this fleet named the Gudar,” Ja’war said.
“Of course the Gudar is real. I was just on the Gudar when I Gudar. Gudar!”
A small hand snapped out from under the tablecloth that covered the cart and grabbed Ja’war by the shin. He looked down and saw an armored gantlet and felt the impossibly strong hold. Then the gauntlet grew larger as fingertips slid around his leg.
Bertram knocked the shotgun up as Ja’war pulled the trigger. The blast tore through the ceiling and set the Faceless’ ears ringing. The grip on his leg jerked him aside and sent the shotgun flying out of his hands.
Ja’war’s head bounced off the side of the lift and he crashed to the floor.
There was a groan of metal as Thorvald’s armor stood up, armor plates unfurling as it reshaped itself from a child’s size to adult dimensions. The light beneath the visor lit up an angry red as the armor slammed Ja’war against the elevator walls with a bang of metal.
Ja’war reached for a knife on his belt, but the armor grabbed him by both shoulders and pinned his arms to his side. Ja’war felt crushing pressure against his sides, then the bones in his upper arms broke with wet snaps.
The Faceless fought against a scream as the armor grabbed him by the throat and pinned him against the wall. With two quick blows, the empty suit shattered both of Ja’war’s knees.
Now he screamed, his voice modulating as he lost control of his voice box, his cry echoing victims from decades of assassinations across the stars. He tried to struggle, but his limbs were useless. His face reverted to its base form—pitch-black.
“I honestly expected better,” Bertram said, but not with his own voice. He buried his face in his hands for a moment, gave his face a twist, and Tolan looked up. “That’s twice, Ja’war. Twice I’ve beat you.”
Ja’war growled and spat at Tolan.
“You give me some useful information, this golem here will kill you quickly,” Tolan said. “Otherwise, it’s the void. The thing about getting spaced is that you know there’s no chance to survive. You just suffocate and wonder if any random ship will ever bump into your corpse. Wonder what they’ll think when they find you…”
“You’re a fake!” Ja’war hissed. “An insult to the craft. You think you have a chance against them? I’ve seen their fleets. Their armies. They’ll take every star and there’s nothing you can do to stop them. Better to serve…than die.”
The elevator came to a stop.
“Here comes my cavalry,” Tolan said. “Before you do it, know that as an enemy, as an opponent, I found you…wanting.”
The doors opened, and a team of armsmen and Thorvald raced down the passageway towards them.
“You became me. You got exactly what you wanted.” Ja’war cocked his jaw to one side, then slammed his chin against the armor’s grip around his neck. He locked eyes with Tolan and laughed—slowly and deliberately. Smoke rose off his skin and his body began disintegrating. Black skin flaked off his face and the rest of his body ripped away from his neck. Within seconds, a soot-stained skull lay atop the armor’s grip, then that collapsed into dust and evaporated.
Tolan stepped back from Ja’war’s remains and stomped his boots against the deck.
“You thi
nk Bertram will still want these clothes? The smell might never go away,” he said to Thorvald.
“You were supposed to take him alive,” the Genevan said. He removed his helmet and tossed it to the deck, where the cheap molded plastic bounced away.
“I believe we said ‘if possible.’” Tolan brushed dust off his sleeves. “I always suspected Ja’war had a nihilum tooth. They’re terribly expensive and have fail-safes out the wazoo. They’re impossible to extract.”
“You could have mentioned this when we were planning this operation,” Thorvald said, stripping off the fake armor on his arms and chest.
“Well, I didn’t think your shell could handle emergency dental work.” Tolan stepped around the suit of armor. “Dead is dead. Our problem is solved. Mission accomplished. Now, if you don’t mind, I’d like to retire to my quarters and celebrate my own way. Give Gage the good news—take all the credit you want.”
Tolan slapped Thorvald on the shoulder and made his way past the horrified armsmen as they watched the last of Ja’war dissipate.
“Impossible man,” Thorvald said. He placed a palm on the armor’s chest. +Ticino,+ he sent to the armor’s gestalt. +The Prince is safe. Well done.+
The armor’s helm snapped up.
+Threat eliminated,+ the gestalt replied.
+Yes. Follow me to Salis and Morgaten.+ Thorvald pulled his hand back, but the armor reached out and grabbed him by the forearm. The plates folded over Thorvald’s skin and the suit stepped toward the bodyguard. The armor flowed over him, twisting itself inside out and shredding his clothes.
The gestalt touched his mind, and he felt the AI’s true spirit—stoic and resolute.
+You will serve to your last dying breath. Your oath is true. I will have you,+ the gestalt said.
+Thorvald.+ The bodyguard gave his name.
+Grynau.+
Chapter 25
Wyman slapped his hands together, then pounded them against his thighs. His breath fogged inside his cockpit as a wan orange light crept through the stealth sheet over his fighter. The glow reminded him of a childhood vacation to Albion’s Sheppey Isles, where the sunsets seemed to last forever. The cold, cramped confines of his cockpit and the pinch of his flight suit told him he was anywhere but a vacation destination.
Only one screen on his control panel had power: his connection to an external wired communication network linking him to the rest of his squadron. He checked that he was indeed still connected to the antenna pointed at the fleet, then double-tapped Ivor’s icon.
“Briar…I’ve got a bad feeling about this,” he said.
Static hissed over the open line.
“Briar. Wake up!”
“Huh?”
Wyman heard Ivor slapping at her control panel and the rustle of her moving around her cockpit.
“I wasn’t sleeping. Is it go time?” she asked.
“Bullshit you weren’t sleeping. How the hell can you even manage to zonk out? I’m freezing my ass off over here.”
“Practice. God knows how long we’ll sit on this rock before something happens. Brass want us to hurry up and wait; least I can do something productive.”
“You’re the only person I know that thinks sleep is productive.”
“Maybe this’ll be nothing but a snipe hunt. Maybe we’ll end up fighting a running battle that lasts for days on end. Welcome to the war. If I give my brain a rest, I’ll be that much more alert when the balloon goes up.” The click of popping joints came over the line as she stretched. “I take it you have a damn good reason for waking me up.”
“I have a bad feeling about this,” he said.
“What part? The Daegon fleet hunting us or that to stay hidden, our thermal signature has to be so low that our cockpits are leaching the life out of us?”
“I hadn’t thought about that last part…What I’m worried about is if the Orion jumps out and doesn’t bother to tell us. We’re under commo blackout, no wireless transmissions. Got the one antennae pointed at the fleet. If the fleet goes bye-bye, how long are we supposed to sit here? In the dark. Freezing. Waiting for a message that will never come.”
“I’m sure the boss has a contingency plan. Our batteries will only last so long. Gage sent us out to lay an ambush, not to fulfill a suicide pact. This whole thing is weird. You saw him on Sicani. Gage seem okay when you left?”
“He got cut up pretty good by that pirate.”
“One of the techs said the primary flight deck did an emergency vent of its entire atmosphere on Gage’s order. Why? Would’ve hit the ship like an explosion. Old girl’s taken enough of a beating as it is,” Ivor said.
“Yeah, didn’t make any sense to me either. You think the stress is getting to him?”
“I bet he’s held it together better than any of the blue-blood officers. But the lockdown during slip transit, doing God knows how much damage to the deck with that emergency blowout, sticking us out here on a hope and a prayer…if this was peacetime, I’d be a bit skeptical.”
“It’s hard to make sense of anything. My grandpa told stories about the Reich assault on Albion back during the last war…this is different.”
“Hold up—Gage really got marked up by an actual sword? Tell me more, because I thought my last shore leave was out of control,” Ivor said.
Chapter 26
Barlow felt the deck shift as the Daegon battleship left slip space. He heard Tiberian bark off orders and the curt replies of the bridge crew. He’d listened to their language while huddled against the side of Tiberian’s throne but had picked up little. The words were long, convoluted. Some reminded him of the local dialects he’d heard around Nyarit worlds during a midshipman cruise many years ago. That Daegon and the Latin vulgate of Nyarit would be at all similar was a surprise to him.
“Dog,” Tiberian said, jerking Barlow’s chain.
The prisoner stood up, his head slung low. The pain torque sent a tiny shock around his neck, reminding Barlow that it was still there.
“Sire.”
“What is Gage doing?” Tiberian waved his hand toward the front of the bridge.
Within the holo wall, the Orion floated inside the long tunnel of asteroids, her hull canted to one side, a cloud of frozen water vapor trailing behind her, engines cold and silent. The fleet’s cruisers and battle cruisers accelerated down the tunnel and away from the flagship.
“The Orion looks dead in space,” Barlow said. “The damage is recent—very recent. Hull integrity is the highest priority for repairs.” The torque sent a jolt up the side of his face, but Barlow accepted the pain instead of providing more information. The torque’s effects were just as strong as ever, but Barlow had become more accustomed to its administrations.
“Which ship has the boy?” Tiberian asked.
“There is a code.” Barlow’s jaw clenched as the torque sent his left arm into a painful spasm. “We call it vermillion. Look for it in the telemetry data between the ships. Text is V-N-4-2-1-5.”
One of the bridge crew called out and a ring appeared around the Orion.
“The boy is still on Gage’s ship. Curious.” Tiberian rose to his feet, raised a hand over his head, then pointed to the Orion. The Daegon fleet shot forward, racing toward the Albion warship.
Barlow’s ears rang.
“Why keep the boy on a dead ship?” Gustavus asked.
“If Gage didn’t trust the other captains…but watch. A ship will double back and—” A frigate looped around and made for the Orion.
Tiberian traced a symbol in the air and lines appeared connecting the returning frigate to the Albion flagship and from the closing Daegon packs to the Orion. Barlow didn’t need to read their language to see the Daegon would be well within firing range before the frigate could flee with the Prince.
Pulses emitted from the asteroids forming the tunnel just ahead of the lead Daegon ships…and they began moving inwards, accelerating faster by the second. The cruisers altered their course, threading around the projected pathways as
the asteroids closed in on them.
The bridge crew remained deathly silent as explosives cracked the rocks into pieces, turning the crushing objects into a rain of fragments ranging from the size of fighters to small buildings. There would be no escape for the forward ships.
“You led us into a trap.” Gustavus drew his sword and struck at Barlow’s neck.
Tiberian jerked the chain and yanked the prisoner away from the blade’s edge as it whistled through the air. Barlow’s head bounced off the side of the throne and he raised his hand to ward off the next blow.
“Shortsighted as ever, child,” Tiberian said. “Sheath your blade or I’ll bury it inside you. This is my bridge, not yours.”
Gustavus flipped the sword around and slid it back into its scabbard.
“My regret to you, Uncle.” The younger man raised his chin slightly, baring his throat.
Asteroids crashed into the lead Daegon ships. Their shields held as the impacts knocked them off course. Explosions erupted within the avalanche and broken hull fragments joined the slew as the ships died.
Barlow considered how many men and women crewed those ships. Albion vessels of the same size carried nearly a thousand souls apiece. Tiberian remained impassive, almost contemplative, as a quarter of his force and tens of thousands died.
The ambush of asteroids ground to a halt between the Minotaur and the Orion, a scrum of broken rock and warships that meshed together in a roiling mass.
The Minotaur’s prow raised slightly, carrying it over the blockage and toward the still-motionless Orion.
“Too soon,” Tiberian said. “Gage sprung the trap too soon.”
“Why didn’t he wait for the Minotaur to enter his kill zone?” Gustavus asked. “He must know this ship carries high born.”
Tiberian’s eyes went to Barlow.
“The Commodore doesn’t care about this ship or you, sire, just the Prince. He activated the trap to buy time to get the boy away, not to hurt you for the sake of winning a battle,” Barlow said. He looked up at the holo wall and examined the situation as an officer and a commander.