by Natalie Grey
He couldn’t interfere.
She realized the guard was still staring at her. “You may go,” she said simply. She swept to her chair as he left, stretching her hands along the arms. Someday soon, she would be in her father’s office, in the high-backed chair that held controls for all the Yennai Corporation’s fleets.
For so long, she had been the favored child, and she basked in his approval.
However, lately, she wondered if she might hasten things along. Her father’d had a good life, after all.
And it was time for her to take her place at the head of the corporation. She would take out this human ship, then she would decide on her next course of action. She considered, then rang a bell. The servant appeared again, looking worried.
“Take my brother’s communication devices and scan the ship he came in and the one he used to get to Virtue Station,” Ilia instructed. “I want all communications brought to me.”
18
“This place is nice,” Barnabas said appreciatively.
Shinigami and Gar both gave him a look. The ship presently weaved through a veritable hail of projectiles and pulse weaponry, and preliminary scans showed that the building was rife with soldiers and larger cannons that were being manned and warmed up.
“Not the turrets specifically,” Barnabas said, rolling his eyes. “It’s just a nice building. Nice planet, too. Atmosphere?”
“Totally toxic to most life forms,” Shinigami reported. She paused for a moment, and there was the distant shudder of missiles launching. She brought their path up on screen before she continued. “One of the Yennai Corporation’s biggest technological breakthroughs is something they haven’t sold at all—it’s a type of force field they can modify at will. It can distinguish between different gases and keep them separate, which is what it’s doing around the palace. It can trap radiation, all sorts of things. They’d make a fortune selling the schematics, or even manufacturing it, but they’ve just kept it for themselves.”
“I can’t blame them.” Barnabas settled back in his chair. “When you’ve got good technology and a lot of enemies, you don’t advertise what you’re capable of.” He gave a grim smile. “Unfortunately for them, we’re rather farther ahead than most adversaries they’re facing, technologically speaking.”
“Is that your fancy, old-fashioned way of saying we’re going to bend them over a table?”
“Shinigami! Gar, do not look that up.” Barnabas pressed a hand over his eyes. “Where on Earth— You know, never mind.”
“Tabitha and Pete were—”
“I said I didn’t want to know!” Barnabas looked at the door into the rest of the ship. “It’s a pity I can’t get drunk anymore. I’d like to have a very large drink right now.”
Shinigami was still laughing when her missiles made impact. Of the seventy-four missile turrets, she’d found so far, she had taken out eighteen. She’d like to take out more, ostensibly because it would be better to get these taken care of before the larger cannons came online. In reality, it was because she liked to blow things up, and turrets full of ammunition blew up very nicely.
The avatar turned suddenly to the door. “Jeltor is asking permission to come onto the bridge.”
“Let him in.” Barnabas looked curious. He nodded to Jeltor as the Jotun came through the doors. “Jeltor. What can I do for you?”
“Believe me, I would not interrupt a battle to ask for a favor.” Jeltor sounded amused. “Though this is a far more…quiet battle than most I have been a part of.”
“Mmm.” Barnabas nodded to Shinigami’s avatar. “That is due to our pilot and gunner.”
“Finally, I get the respect I deserve,” Shinigami said, in a long-suffering tone.
Barnabas shook his head slightly. He looked at Jeltor.
“I have received more information,” Jeltor explained. “Some schematics came through. They’re of antiaircraft systems this base has in place, as well as our estimate of the optimal targets to take out to create dead zones.”
Shinigami looked at him through narrowed eyes.
“She prefers to blow up everything,” Barnabas clarified gravely.
“I’ll at least look.” Shinigami gestured for Jeltor to bring up the displays.
“You see here,” the Jotun said, pointing to a series of large cannons that were embedded in the walls near the center of the large compound. “These are shrapnel cannons. They’re becoming quite popular. They were invented by the Boreir Group.”
“You won’t be seeing many more of them then,” Barnabas murmured.
Shinigami snickered. She lit up the diagrams. “So, you want us to take out those six and land…where?”
“Here.” Jeltor walked over to the screen and pointed.
“Good call.” Shinigami nodded. She looked at Barnabas. “Agreed, Chief?”
Barnabas stared at the diagram with a slight frown on his face. He tapped his fingers on the arm of the chair for a moment.
“What if you took out this configuration?” He walked up to the screen and tapped on certain guns. Shinigami lit them up as he tapped, and a green overlay appeared to show the safe zone. He was smiling. “It works. Do that.”
“But that doesn’t make any sense,” Jeltor pointed out slowly. “With all due respect,” he added to Barnabas hastily.
“He’s right,” Shinigami added. “When you get to the top of the green zone, where are you going?”
Barnabas’ smile grew. He waited, arms crossed until Shinigami’s mouth opened in a little O of surprise.
“Ohhhh,” she said. “Oh, you sneaky bastard. I love it.”
“What?” Jeltor looked back and forth between them. “What are you planning?”
“You’ll see,” Barnabas and Shinigami said at the same time.
The compound was in chaos. Vedoon ducked under an ornamental arch and sprinted for the end of the courtyard. This place had been well-made, all right, just as functional as it was beautiful. When the proximity alerts went off, the shrapnel cannons embedded in the ground had sprung up and begun to arm. They needed soldiers to help with targeting and final authorization, but they could do most everything on their own.
Of course, most of them now had broken fountains on top. The place hadn’t been designed for multiple attacks.
Also, it was ridiculous to have a battle in a garden.
A missile hit the nearest cannon and blew Vedoon off his feet. He tumbled, feeling a few pieces of shrapnel hit his armor, then got up and ran. His helmet had cushioned the fall, so he didn’t need to worry about a concussion.
“Get away from the cannons!” His squad leader grabbed Vedoon’s arm.
“No! We have to get them all online!”
“They’re taking them all out!” Lolori was insistent. “Vedoon!”
Vedoon stopped, torn. Running for the shelters was the smart thing to do. There was a line of shattered cannons that proved Lolori right.
And yet…this was his chance to distinguish himself.
Their opponent made the decision for him. A missile struck one of the cannons up ahead, and the barrel flew off to strike an ornamental column. Vedoon tackled Lolori out of the way as chunks of stone and shrapnel from the cannon’s reserves rained down on them.
When Vedoon picked his head up, he thought Lolori was dead at first. The squad leader stared up with a look of horror on his face. Then he gulped slightly and pointed, and Vedoon turned to look.
“Oh, no,” he whispered.
The compound had been cunningly set up. There was a main portion with a high, golden dome and plenty of pleasure gardens. There was even a big audience hall for all the functions and parties that never happened here—Vedoon was still a little annoyed about that. It was made, in short, to look like the most important part of the building. There was even a tower that looked like it probably held the apartments for the Yennai family.
But none of the important things were in that building. Instead, they lay in one of the three smaller outbuildings. Th
e family’s apartments were located below ground, with a series of mirrored passageways to fill them with sunlight. There were reserves of food and water.
The tower that resembled a scanner tower held the family’s offices and conference chambers.
No one should know that. No one should have been able to figure out the layout of this place.
Then again, no one should have been able to find them in the first place.
But that damned ship hovered in the air beside the tower. It had taken out any cannons that could reach that part of the building, and there was no one to stop the people inside from doing…
What were they planning to do?
Vedoon didn’t know. All he knew was that they had to get there and stop these people.
“Come on.” He hauled Lolori up. “Call as many people as you can. We have to get to that tower!”
“No distress signals,” Shinigami reported. She had given her avatar a cape again, and it whipped in the wind from the open shuttle bay door. It was a nice touch, though Barnabas thought she’d look even more impressive if the cloak hung still, like a single figure untroubled by a hurricane.
“To whom would they send a distress signal?” He asked reasonably. “They have a damned army here already.” He spoke into the comm unit in his helmet.
Nearby, Jeltor fed codes to one of the outside windows to crack it open without them resorting to laser-cutting or missiles. Shinigami had been very put out by that but was appeased when Barnabas suggested that any servers that weren’t destroyed would be filled with data and schematics for her to play with.
Right now, however, she was frowning. “I don’t like it,” she insisted. “Tafa said this was a trap, and she definitely knows—being part of a family of assholes, right?”
Barnabas snorted with amusement at that. Jeltor shouted and waved when the window popped open.
“Keep scanning,” Barnabas told Shinigami. “If you see anything dangerous, we’ll get out of there. Until then…we’ll proceed as if these people had no idea their base could be overrun, and they’re going to be judged and executed.” He smiled and nodded to her.
As he ran and jumped across the gap, he could feel the familiar anticipation of a mission. These were very bad people. They were a source of evil and oppression in the quadrant. Once Barnabas brought them to Justice, the quadrant could go on as it was meant to.
He landed and rolled, with Gar and Jeltor right behind him. Jeltor had some combination of grav technology and a bunch of spring-loaded devices that helped launch him across the gap and balanced him as he did so. He landed with only the faintest squeak of metal and ducked the top of his suit in a nod to Barnabas.
“Where is everyone?” Gar asked.
There was a pause while they all looked at each other. Then Barnabas sprinted for the main room.
When he got there, he cursed. It wasn’t filled with booby-traps. No, everything about this place from the grounds to the barracks was maintained. They had probably kept it here just in case they needed it.
But this was definitely a gigantic decoy.
“Son of a traitorous whore,” Barnabas murmured.
You should get more creative with your swearing. “Son of a donkey-balled ass muncher,” for instance.
I’ll keep that in mind, thank you. Barnabas sank down to a crouch, considering. So what do we do now?
Well, I doubt we’ll find anything, but definitely, do see if you can get to any computers. And in the meantime, you have a few dozen soldiers headed your way.
And what do we do about that?
I was thinking—maybe a variant on one of our signature moves. Give me a few, and I’ll let you know if I can pull it off.
Barnabas smiled and went to find the servers.
19
Crallus had begun his career as a mercenary, and a damned good one. He killed with brutal efficiency, and he was known for his vigilance. He didn’t relax when on a job—ever.
So for the first few hours of their imprisonment on the Overlook, he paced and listened for the footsteps outside the door. He learned that patrols went by more or less every hour, though he was not yet sure if the variation was for the purposes of security, or due to laziness. He hadn’t seen them fight so he couldn’t make a good assessment of their character yet.
Yes, they’d looked very impressive, all fanned out around Ilia—but anyone could stand still and glower at people for a few minutes.
His mind filled with plans as he paced. If they came in for execution with anything less than ten guards, Crallus was fairly sure he stood a chance of escaping.
There was the Overlook, of course, which was just as much a danger to them as it was to him. He could surround himself with guards, since they wouldn’t want to shoot into the group. Or there was the fact that they wore plate armor, and he could sink his claws into the gaps.
Plus, he’d marked the route from the landing bay and had taken note of which doors had the green light to indicate a ship on the pad. If he could break free, he might be able to get to a ship and get away.
Uleq probably wouldn’t make it.
Crallus wasn’t sure how he felt about that. More accurately, he felt guilty about it, and he disliked the guilt. Uleq had gotten him into this mess, and there was no reason that Crallus should have to die just because he’d met Uleq Yennai first, instead of Ilia Yennai.
Uleq would die, that was just the way it was. He wasn’t the heir to the Yennai Corporation, and he made no secret about not accepting that. Ilia would have to be an idiot to let him live, and she wasn’t an idiot.
So he was going to die. Really, the only question was whether Crallus could survive.
But he felt guilty leaving Uleq to face execution alone. His father had left him to Ilia’s mercy, and surely the Torcellan patriarch knew what that meant.
Crallus clenched his hand and hissed a long breath out.
“Stop pacing,” Uleq said coldly from the side of the room. He had taken a seat on a stone bench that had been carved roughly out of the wall. We’re not getting out, his tone said. He wanted to be comfortable before he died. He had given up.
And it was clear that he hadn’t even considered trying to bargain for Crallus’ life.
All sympathy vanished. Crallus gave Uleq a long, hard look and went to sit, his mind pivoting in a different direction.
Namely, was Ilia Yennai looking for any new employees?
As if summoned by some otherworldly force, Ilia strode into the room. She had changed her robes to a deep purple, and she looked absolutely furious.
“How could you?” she demanded of Uleq, without even a pause for breath.
Uleq looked up with a sardonic smile. He expected this altercation, clearly. “Dear sister, let us dispense with all of this.” He kept his elbows resting on his knees. “Are you putting on a show for Father, pretending to look over my crimes and reach an opinion on whether or not you should execute me? Are you pretending to struggle over that possibility? We both know you’ll kill me eventually. Put on whatever act you like for Father, but do not make me play along.” He settled back, finally, and pulled his hood up so that his face was shrouded. With his arms crossed over his chest, he gave every indication that he was going to sleep.
Ilia, however, was not prepared to give up so easily.
“I’ve never pretended,” she hissed. “For years, I’ve anticipated the day I could have you killed. I never liked you. I never trusted you.”
Uleq didn’t move at all, and Crallus decided that the best thing to do would be to pretend to be a statue. He sat as still as possible and hoped Ilia wouldn’t notice him.
He’d be better off not serving her, either, he decided. This whole family was fucking crazy.
Ilia paced, shooting regular glances at Uleq. “I would have killed you even if you’d come back here and been the good little brother. We both know that.”
Although Uleq didn’t move, he chuckled from inside the hood. “Yes. We do.”
“S
o did you have to destroy the better part of a hundred ships in the meantime?” Ilia snarled. “What were you hoping to do? Destroy my legacy just for spite?”
“Surprisingly, no.” Uleq’s breath stirred the hood, but otherwise, he was motionless. “Your guess only makes sense if I were resigned to my fate. Which I was not.”
“Then why?” Ilia’s hands clenched next to her head as if she would tear at her hair. “We had word that Get’ruz Shipping was entirely destroyed in an engagement, but only now do we learn it was an engagement you sent them to. And Syndicate Yerr? What about them? We hear that their base has been destroyed.”
Crallus tried to blend into the background. Ilia didn’t appear to notice that the syndicate leader was sitting right in front of her, and he didn’t have any particular desire to get involved in this fight.
Uleq said nothing to this.
“Why?” Ilia screamed. Her voice was raw.
“Why?” Uleq pushed the hood back, and his face was flushed with fury. He shoved himself up. “Why? You dare ask that of me? I’ve told you a hundred times why. Because one ship was able to take them out. That’s how powerful the humans are. That’s why they need to be destroyed.”
“That’s why we can’t take them on!” Ilia yelled. “We don’t fight battles in fleets, not yet. We control from the shadows. We would have infiltrated their federation and—”
“They would never have allowed that,” Uleq voiced contemptuously. His tone dripped with hatred. “They have morals.”
“People who plead morals are just holding out for the right bribe,” Ilia snapped. She crossed her arms over her chest.
“Not. These. Aliens.” Uleq spat each word out. “They don’t allow just anyone into their upper ranks. They watch. They don’t take bribes. They don’t want money. They want to rule the universe. They want everyone to follow their Queen’s ways.” He pressed his advantage. “They would have found us, and they would have destroyed us. If you had mobilized all our resources against them when we first saw them like I told you to do when they were already engaged with other wars—”