Paladin

by Natalie Grey

  The Jotuns murmured to one another in alarm.

  “You shut them out once,” Gar said. “But any time they have, they can probably use to their advantage. Who knows what tricks they have up their sleeves now?”

  “Treasonous bastards,” the admiral rumbled. “We need time. We need to figure out where they’re going, how their cloaking works, how those damned impervious shields of theirs work, and we have no such time.”

  “There’s only one thing to do,” Shinigami said simply. “We need to get one of their ships and use it.”

  A good point. Barnabas nodded slightly to himself. If they’ve got any human colonies in their sights…

  Exactly.

  “It would need to be a carrier,” Commander Jeqwar said. “Or the Avaris. And that’s a damned risky mission.”

  “We wouldn’t want to send any more ships than we absolutely had to,” Shinigami proposed. “Just us, I would think.”

  “I’ll go as well.” Jeltor, who had been in close conversation with another Jotun, clanked over and ducked his mechanical body to the admiral. “My actions at their headquarters were part of what got us into this mess. I can help fix it now.”

  “You fought back after they kidnapped you,” the admiral rumbled. “What were you supposed to do? Hell, what were any of us supposed to do—stand aside while our politicians sold us out and frolicked in their cash?”

  Barnabas saw Gar’s faint smile. The Luvendi’s plan had been successful. By reminding them just how stacked the odds were, and why they were so stacked, he had lit a fire under the Jotun officers.

  It was genius.

  “They’ll pay,” Barnabas assured the admiral. “We’ll make sure every piece of incriminating evidence we need appears in your media. They won’t be able to keep people from knowing what they did. When this is over, they’ll hang.”

  The admiral nodded decisively. “Good. Now, what do you need, to find that ship?”

  “Anything you have that narrows down their location,” Shinigami said. “We know they must have a patch of fairly empty space because we’ve never figured out where their shipyards are, and with so much cargo going from place to place…a few more shipments of steel and electronics don’t stand out.”

  “We have a guess of where they are now.” The admiral pressed a button on his suit. “Fretor, this is Admiral Threton. Send the possible location of the Yennai fleet to the Shinigami. Yes, I’m sure. Yes, it’s me. Do it now.” He turned back to the group. “I certainly hope you can do this quickly,” he told them. “I have a feeling we don’t have much time.”

  “Agreed,” Barnabas said solemnly. “We’ll do what we can and do it quickly—and then strike together. Wait for our signal. We may need you sooner rather than later.”

  “We’ll be on alert. And…you were right.” The admiral shook his head. “Whatever we give Koel, whether it’s time or resources, he’ll use it against us. We have to strike soon.”

  22

  For two days, the Julentai hung in a field of rubble around a comet and waited while Chofal and Dretkalor camped out in the cockpit and assessed each ship that passed.

  They dismissed so many that Zinqued began to have fantasies of firing them both. First, a ship was too small, then too old, then too large, then too new.

  “Too new?” Zinqued demanded. If he had any hair, he’d have been pulling it out at that point. As it was, he was very tempted to stab himself in the eye just to make a distraction from all this insanity.

  Dretkalor and Chofal looked at one another.

  “Yes,” Dretkalor said finally as if explaining something to a very stupid toddler. “The Julentai is old and has very old components. If we try to add something that’s too new, it might break everything. The voltage standards have changed, among other things.”

  Zinqued suppressed a shriek and stormed off to find out if any of the new guards had figured out how to distill alcohol. He could use a drink.

  He was exceedingly surprised, therefore, when there was a shout from the bridge and Dretkalor sprinted down the hall in the middle of dinner to announce that they’d found it, they’d found the ship they needed, and everyone needed to get ready to fight.

  “I assume you don’t mean me,” Tik’ta said acidly. She had gotten progressively more and more annoyed at being shut off the bridge of her ship, and nothing Zinqued said about taking a vacation seemed to make an impact.

  She stomped off to the cockpit while Dretkalor waved the rest of them out of the room.

  “I can’t even finish my food?” Zinqued asked, annoyed. They would decide to attack now, those two. It just had to be during dinner.

  He would remember this when it came time to give out yearly bonuses.

  He muttered to himself the whole time he suited up in his armor and weapons. When he returned to the cockpit, Tik’ta had begun to warm up the engines and their prey was just in sight.

  Chofal and Dretkalor both laughed, but Zinqued swore. “That? That’s the ship you’re going to steal from?”

  “Yes,” the two of them said in unison.

  “It’s a bucket of bolts,” Zinqued said dangerously.

  “Look at the engines,” Chofal pointed out. “You only get that greenish tint from hyperwave propulsion. They tried to mask it, but once you know what to scan for, you can see they’ve got a good ship under there.”

  “And there,” Dretkalor added. “They’ve put false plating over the hull.”

  “And that’s not too new?” Zinqued was grumpy. He should have seen all of that. In fact, if he’d been a little less hasty, he would have. Now he looked like an idiot in front of his new crew.

  “Most of the hyperwave propulsion ships were built years ago and upgraded,” Chofal explained. “Their parts are very adaptable.” She smiled, looking almost wistful. “This is a jackpot. I could work on it for weeks. If we stripped off its power couplings—”

  “Chofal, focus. Have you forgotten that we’re going to be stealing a much better ship than this one?”

  “Oh!” She brightened visibly. “Right. Just wait till you see that one,” she confided in Dretkalor. “Absolutely beautiful. Just gorgeous. Every system—”

  “All right, everyone except Zinqued off my bridge,” Tik’ta snapped. “Go wax poetically about dream ships somewhere else.”

  Everyone else shuffled out. Chofal was too engaged in her monologue even to be shamed. They heard her chattering all the way to her bunk to pick up her tools and her spacesuit.

  Tik’ta rolled her eyes. “Neither of them ever stops talking, do they?”

  “That’s enough,” Zinqued admonished. It seemed like the sort of thing a captain would say. He didn’t want any ill feeling to spring up between his crew.

  Tik’ta sighed, but as their target drew closer, she needed to focus on that. Over the past few days, she had needed to learn the systems on the Julentai and hadn’t gotten the time she needed in the cockpit to learn them.

  Nevertheless, she had piloted similar ships. As their target passed by, she lifted the Julentai away from a piece of rock, flipped it, and slid under the other ship.

  There were many subtle and highly technical ways to steal a ship. The Julentai had none of them. What it did have was a broadwave transmitter that flooded all the ship’s channels with random data, an EMP pulse that knocked out the systems and allowed the Julentai to take hold of them, and multiple clamps that held the ship in place.

  Tik’ta gave a triumphant grin as she worked on the controls of the other ship. “Got it. They’re trying to get the engines back, though—get on board and stop them before they fly us back into the comet.”

  “Radio if you need anything.” Zinqued took off and made for the small bay on the bottom of the ship.

  It was an ingenious little design. An airtight compartment at the corner of the docking bay held a second airtight compartment that would slide down out of the belly of the ship, leaving a vacuum behind it. The air from the inner compartment was vented into the first, th
e inner compartment resealed, then opened into space. No precious air was lost, and the ship was safe from any breach.

  In the silence, the crew fired a cable down to the hull of the captured ship, attached themselves to it, and pushed off gently to slide along and cluster at the end.

  There was a similar compartment in this ship, and Chofal took the lead on opening it. She had to hotwire one of the panels in the end, and even then, it took two of the Brakalons to haul it open. Having braced themselves against the hull, they floated up.

  This was why they strapped themselves to the cable. It was all too easy to lose your footing at a time like this and wind up too close to the engines. Zinqued shuddered.

  He had heard stories he didn’t particularly want to remember, but each one was seared into his brain.

  They heard scuffling outside the compartment as they locked themselves into it and depressurized. They had to secure themselves with clamps because once they passed the hull, the internal grav systems kicked in. Nevertheless, they got the floor closed and their weapons raised.

  “Tik’ta, broadcast the message.”

  “Yes, sir.” She allowed it through on their suits’ channel as well:

  “This is the captain of the Julentai. We require two components of your ship. Your crew will not be hurt if they do not interfere. Your ship will not be vented, nor will it be rendered inoperable.”

  There was shouting. Zinqued pressed the button to open the door, and he and the four Brakalons rushed out and took cover, scanning the area with their weapons.

  The crew in the landing bay had decided to take his advice. They had their weapons on the floor and their hands up. One of the Brakalons collected their weapons and secured their hands behind their heads, and the other four guided Chofal toward the engineering bay. The booster would be there.

  The first attack came when they’d almost reached the engine room. A crazed Leath jumped out from one of the side corridors, brandishing a gun and screaming. He opened fire as one of the Brakalons tackled Chofal to the ground to shield her. The rest of them fired and their attacker crumpled to the ground.

  The captain waited for them in the engine room, much more sensibly pointing his gun toward the reactor itself.

  Everyone stopped. If the reactor were open, the captain would be dying quickly. If it were closed, which it appeared to be, it was unlikely that a bullet could pierce the casing. Unlikely…

  But not impossible.

  “I won’t let you leave us out here to drift!” The captain’s voice was wild.

  “You won’t be left to drift,” Zinqued said as soothingly as he could. He didn’t have any particular desire to die from radiation poisoning. “Our engineer needs your zero-point booster and your fruit bowl.”

  He pointed to the auxiliary photonic dish to make it clear what he meant. Though it was a precisely made and highly technical piece of equipment, it resembled a dish for fruit. It could be a bowl for anything, of course, but somehow the name had stuck.

  Paun had once told Zinqued that you could tell a good engineer by which technical terms they didn’t use. “And don’t trust any ‘engineer’ who calls that an auxiliary photonic dish,” he finished.

  That litmus test had served Zinqued well as he searched for a backup engineer for Chofal.

  The captain narrowed his eyes at them, and Dretkalor raised his rifle. His finger was conspicuously off the trigger.

  “You shoot our mechanic,” he said, “or that reactor, I shoot you. You don’t shoot anything, I don’t shoot you. You got that?”

  The captain hesitated, but at last he nodded, and Zinqued waved Chofal into the engine room.

  She worked cheerfully, chattering about the specifications of the ship—not so much to them as to herself. Not that they all understood much anyway. She didn’t seem to need answers, so the rest of them ignored her and kept their guns up, listening closely for anyone trying to sneak up on them.

  Defeated, the captain went to sit in the corner. He still had his gun, but he wasn’t pointing it at the reactor anymore.

  “Got it,” Chofal said finally.

  “Let’s move,” Zinqued ordered.

  They left quickly, Dretkalor’s gun still trained on the captain. The parts they had stolen were worth thousands, but true to their word—the ship would fly just fine.

  They got back through the halls with no surprises and collected the guard they had left behind in the landing bay. One crew member was laid out with a split lip. No one mentioned anything about it as they crowded into the airlock chamber again, though the guard took one of the guns that had been surrendered, a particularly nice sniper rifle.

  Zinqued didn’t mention anything about that. Their business was stealing, after all, and a crew that could get little things they liked was a crew that was less likely to mutiny.

  Their return to the Julentai was uneventful, and Tik’ta informed them the engines on their captive ship would not fire properly for two hours after they left, giving them plenty of time to escape.

  “They aren’t associated with any particular government,” she said. “If they had powerful friends, I think they would have made that clear. They’re probably gori.”

  “What are gori?” Dretkalor asked, with a frown.

  “So there’s something you don’t know?” Tik’ta arched a brow. At Zinqued’s look, however, she didn’t press it further and just sighed. “It’s a Torcellan word. They’re…high-class couriers, I guess you could say. Merchants will use them as go-betweens and entrust them with…well, messages, usually.”

  “They weren’t very keen to fight.” Dretkalor scoffed.

  “They probably didn’t have a message on board. And those stealth systems take some serious money to run. If they’re being paid, they’re probably running entirely dark.” She shrugged. “Maybe they worked for the Yennai Corporation, back when money was still flowing.”

  “There’s going to be a lot to harvest when they finally fall apart.” Zinqued smiled at the thought.

  “I wouldn’t count them out,” Tik’ta warned him.

  “She’s right,” Dretkalor agreed. “Everyone who’s met Mr. Yennai says he never gives up. Never.”

  Tik’ta looked pleased that Dretkalor had agreed with her. “See?” she asked Zinqued.

  Zinqued shook his head. “What does he have left to fight for? His children are dead, he’ll have no one to take over after him.”

  “Someone like him only ever wants one thing.” Tik’ta looked at him meaningfully. “More.”

  She turned back to her work and left Zinqued to go back to the engine room, frowning. Tik’ta had been spouting a platitude, nothing more.

  So why had he felt a chill when he heard those words?

  23

  “It’s known to run supplies into this sector,” argued one of the officers. “And it would make a good warning shot against the humans.”

  Everyone glanced over to where Koel sat enigmatically in his throne-like chair.

  Lotar knew just what Koel was doing. He had, most likely, already picked what he thought was the best position. However, to keep his officers from agreeing with him out of habit and to see which of them would come up with the solution he liked best—not to mention, to see if any of them would come up with a better solution—he kept his opinions on the matter to himself.

  It was a smart thing for him to do. Unfortunately, just because Lotar knew what he was doing and why didn’t make it any less scary.

  And he knew that Koel was waiting for him to say something. It had become clear over the past few days that Koel viewed him as a protege…or potential protege.

  Lotar just had to prove himself.

  The problem was that he was sure he knew what Koel wanted to hear, and he was terrified to say it. It was an effective tactic, but it was a cruel one, and he was afraid that Koel would actually take the suggestion if Lotar made it.

  Then Lotar would feel guilty. The thought of the operation made him want to cry.

&n
bsp; He faced the bleak possibility of saying nothing. It would take little for Koel to grow tired of him and shuffle him off to some minor ship. Lotar was sure he could deal with the whispers and the stares: poor bastard, he disappointed Mr. Yennai. At least he’s still alive, anyway. But the thought of disappointing Koel distressed him. There was something about the Torcellan, something almost hypnotic. You looked into his eyes, and you wanted to do anything, say anything, to please him.

  Which meant that Lotar wanted more than anything to give the suggestion that was on the tip of his tongue.

  “We don’t have good enough human targets yet,” the admiral said. “We continue to apply pressure to the Jotun. Once they’re forced by their government to pull back, we have one less enemy. We can decide what to do about the humans at our leisure rather than striking out randomly.”

  It was a much better suggestion than attacking the human cargo ships. Lotar found himself nodding.

  And yet…

  He bit his lip. He didn’t want to say this. He could just picture what would to happen if he did.

  “Mr. Venn.” Koel did not raise his voice, but everyone swiveled to Lotar. “Did you have a suggestion to make?”

  Lotar froze. The other officers looked at him with poorly-concealed distaste.

  He could do this. He just had to survive Koel’s disappointment.

  “I like the admiral’s suggestion,” Lotar said honestly. “Forcing the Jotuns to break their alliance with the human means that we can divide their forces more equally.”

  The admiral gave a confident smile. Even Koel’s new protege liked his plan.

  Koel said nothing. He looked at Lotar, and he waited.

  “Or we could strike the planet Devon.” The words were dragged out of Lotar’s chest. He couldn’t hold them back.

  Koel smiled thinly in triumph.

  “Devon?” the admiral repeated. “Where is that?”

  “It’s not in this sector, sir.” Lotar felt himself moving toward the table as if in a dream. He had said it. He had to follow through now. He brought up the reports he had written after combing through the Shinigami’s data banks. “It used to be known as Devon and is now called High Tortuga by the humans. They’ve made several very clumsy attempts to hide it.”