by Natalie Grey
The admiral blinked.
“What we’ve seen of their warning systems is impressive,” Lotar admitted. “It’s all second-hand, but most of the merchants who are usually able to get onto planets to supply black markets, cannot this time.”
He snuck a glance. Koel’s eyebrows had gone up at that. Lotar knew that Koel held the deepest respect for black markets, believing them to be a nearly infallible mechanism for breaking down any restrictions on trade.
Usually, he was right. In this case, the humans had managed to keep a lock-down on the planet.
“The humans were responsible for the destruction of some Yennai-affiliated groups on Devon,” Lotar continued. “They were working as mercenaries on the less populous continent. Apparently, the humans took exception to that. The details aren’t entirely clear.”
“Someone must know them,” Koel interjected.
Everyone else exchanged glances. He’d started to get impatient, and they were eager to see Lotar taken down a notch or two. No one liked the way they had squabbled without Koel saying a word, only for Lotar to speak up late and get all the credit.
I wish any of you were in my place, Lotar wanted to say. But it wasn’t really true—he’d be jealous if anyone else were to take Koel’s attention and win his respect.
“Another mercenary syndicate did know what happened,” Lotar explained. “At least, as far as I can tell, they did. They appear to have sent reinforcements.”
“Appear to have sent? Did you contact them?”
Lotar swallowed. “They’re all dead. Sir,” he added.
Koel thought that over, his eyes shifted to the darkness outside the windows. He seemed calm.
Then Koel said, not even raising his voice, “So the humans destroyed our affiliates. They sought out any of their contacts and destroyed those as well. Then they tracked those contacts to our headquarters and killed both of my children.”
The stateroom was entirely silent. No one, not even Lotar, spoke. Shoulders were hunched. Everyone tried desperately to disappear.
Koel stood and swept down the stairs. He looked at the reports projected on the table, his gaze ravenous.
“Uleq was right,” he said, almost to himself. “I did not listen when he told me how dangerous they were. I thought we could infiltrate them when the time came.” He looked up at Lotar. “You understand?”
Everyone else now looked grateful that they were not on the spot, and Lotar struggled to figure out what Koel meant.
“We must destroy them?”
“Yes,” Koel said. “But more than that, Lotar, we must admit our mistakes. The game of power is unforgiving. There is little room for errors, and no room to cling to them. I disregarded Uleq’s warnings. It cost me both my children.” His fingers tightened on the edge of the table. “I will not make the same mistake twice. When we go to Devon, we will go in force, and we will make the planet a barren husk. Before the fires have even died, we will find every human colony there is and destroy it. I wanted to make an example for the humans.” Now his eyes swept the room. “I see that is too dangerous. We will kill them, every one of them.”
He left the table without another glance, headed for the door, and from somewhere, the admiral drummed up the courage to call after him.
“Sir, what do we do about the Jotun fleet for now?”
Koel paused. The admiral shook.
Koel did not even look back. “Let them discover on their own that we will be at Devon. Make them think it is a small detachment of our fleet. We will crush them both at once.”
“Got it!” Chofal grinned as the device powered up. “And we’re good to go. Look at this beauty.” She jerked her head at Dretkalor. “Come on, teach it what it needs to know.”
“It’s not a pet.” But the Brakalon obliged, coming to sit in front of the device. He moved carefully to enter the various codes.
“Do you think it’ll work?” Chofal asked anxiously.
“Better hope so.” Dretkalor grinned. “Zinqued paid out the ass for them. Plus,” he added thoughtfully, “we’ll be a cloud of dust if they don’t.”
Chofal chewed her lip. But the Shinigami swam before her eyes, perfect and gleaming. Those engines, that electrical grid…
She had to get her hands on it.
“Come on,” she said to Dretkalor. “Let’s go tell Zinqued we’re done. He and Tik’ta were looking for the Yennai fleet. We can finally set a course to meet up with them.”
It’s worth noting, Shinigami said acidly, that we don’t even know what other ships are around us. Even I didn’t know that destroyer was there. And we don’t know how this one jumps around without gates.
I’m willing to bet that’s actually a set of decoy signals, Barnabas said. He’d been thinking a lot about this. I mean, we know they do this differently than we do. Differently even than the Jotun do. So I’m thinking perhaps in their systems, you employ a sudden cloaking technique, visual-based, and you just accelerate damned fast so that no one has a chance to crack the scanner cloaking before they realize where you’ve gone.
That’s a damned lot of effort to go to for a trick.
Hardly a trick. If you can convince people you’re gone, they generally stop shooting.
What I’m getting from this is, never stop shooting.
That’s the one. Barnabas snapped his helmet into place. Are we in place yet?
Close. For the better part of two hours, Shinigami had approached the Avaris, sliding slowly and inexorably through the fleet.
In their last engagements, and from the hacking she had experienced at their hands, she had theorized that the ships networked with one another to build a much more accurate grid of any known enemies. It was the smart way to do things, and Koel had been consistently and infuriatingly intelligent about all of this.
What all of this meant was that Shinigami had to be very, very careful to send signals to any ship that might sense her on its scanners. As the ships changed formation even while the fleet was in stasis, that had been a slow process.
She had managed it, however. Barnabas had told her that infiltration was more a game of patience than anything else, and that advice had proved invaluable. Together, they tracked fighter patrols and watched the formations changing, and now they were here.
She guessed Barnabas’ thoughts. You want to go down there and kill him, don’t you?
Yes, Barnabas admitted. Cutting the head off the snake isn’t always the answer, but he’s always been instrumental in holding this together. If we could take him and his top level out, a lot of it would be over.
Shinigami waited for him to say that he wouldn’t do it and eventually got worried. She peered through the cameras to find him climbing down the ladder toward the surface of the Avaris.
Barnabas. You know you can’t get through that many people on your own, right?
I know. His voice was subdued. I promised no heroics. It would kill both of us—and Tafa, and Gar, and Jeltor. And if we failed, there would be no one left who knew what was coming or had our ideas of how to stop it.
Shinigami said nothing.
It’s just difficult, Barnabas confessed finally. He paused as he helped Jeltor down onto the top of the ship. The two of them set off, two tiny figures on the top of the dreadnought. The temptation is always to go in directly and—we’re going in the correct direction, right?
Yes, Shinigami said, amused. I’ll mark the location on your helmet display.
Oh. I see it, yes. Like I was saying, the temptation is to go in directly. Finish it all. Believe it or not, I understood what the admiral was saying. Taking the time to make a good plan is difficult when you know innocent people might die in the meantime.
More innocent people die in the end if you do things the stupid way.
I know that. It’s a train-tracks problem, though.
What?
If you can direct the train to kill fewer people, but… You know what, not important. Suffice it to say, you are entirely correct from a logi
cal standpoint, but emotions are by definition not logical.
Scarily accurate. All right, you’re getting close. Set the crawler down?
Barnabas knelt and released a tiny, spidery-looking robot. It skittered up to something that looked rather like an open porthole and climbed inside.
“Come back now,” Shinigami told them.
“Did we really need to come here to do this?” Jeltor asked.
“Probably not, but you really seemed to want to help. Besides which, shooting a small robot at a dreadnought while both of them are traveling several thousand kilometers per hour seems like it has the potential to go wrong. Just saying.”
Barnabas snickered.
Picturing it?
Yep. He let Jeltor go up the ladder first. Are you getting any data yet?
No, but be patient. It won’t be long. We just have to hang here for a few hours—
In the middle of an enemy fleet.
Yes, that. Eventually, that little bugger will reach something useful. For now, I’m going to focus on making sure it doesn’t trip any security systems. I’ll tell you when there’s news.
Back in the hold, Barnabas stripped off his spacesuit and gave a regretful look at the reflection of his hair in the visor. He looked at Jeltor. “You’re lucky you don’t need a spacesuit.”
“I have to travel in a vat of water. I’m always in a spacesuit.”
“That’s a good point.” Barnabas set off for the kitchen. “We should find something to do for a few hours, until—”
He was interrupted by the sound of mechanical laughter.
“Shinigami?”
It was a few moments before Shinigami recovered enough to talk. “Oh, you are not going to believe this.” She was still cackling. “You are not going to believe this. Oh, this is priceless. They’re going to attack High Tortuga.”
“Which, if you’ll recall, was our greatest fear.”
“Uh-huh. Just come into the conference room, and I’ll show you their battle plan, though.” She was still laughing. “I can’t wait to show the Jotun fleet this. This is amazing. I’m going to see if I can get that crawler onto the bridge so I can see their faces when we get there and they see where they are.”
24
“She’s sure they’ve fucked up that badly?” Gar asked a while later. He sounded doubtful. He swung his arms to loosen them and watched as Barnabas warmed up.
At the edge of the room, beyond the mats, Jeltor watched curiously. Jotun tended to be a fairly insular species, and their reliance on powersuits meant any physical altercation could be fatal.
They could sling insults with the best of them, but they did not have physical fights.
Which was just as well, really, Jeltor thought now. When bipedal aliens fought, there was a certain grace to it. They could contort their bodies, and they could summon great power.
When two Jotun fought—as children sometimes did—it was just two bags of jelly slapping each other with thin, noodle-like tentacles. Not dignified. Not even impressive. Just sad.
Jeltor was, therefore, intrigued by Barnabas and Gar’s sparring.
“She’s very sure,” Barnabas said. “I made her stay to double-check. They have the battle plan, and they’ve ‘leaked’ information to the Jotuns to try to get them there as well. I’ll tell you, I had a hell of a time trying to get Admiral Threton to walk right into the trap.”
“It’s hard to blame him for that,” Jeltor said, scrupulously accurate. Admiral Threton had plenty of faults, to be sure, but this wasn’t one of them.
“Oh, I know that. But we know a lot more now. We know Koel’s plan.”
Barnabas continued to speak as he slid into motion. It happened so gracefully, in fact, that Jeltor hardly noticed it. He only realized what he saw a split-second before Gar went flying and slid into the wall. Barnabas wore a slight smile, lips curving in genuine amusement.
Jeltor saw the logic of it. The fight didn’t start when Gar was ready. One could never expect a fight to start predictably.
Barnabas charged for another attack, but Gar seemed to have taken the lesson to heart. He dove sideways at the last second and threw up one leg for a grounded kick. Barnabas doubled over, narrowly avoiding a faceplant into the wall. Gar launched himself up and drove one fist into Barnabas’ stomach.
Barnabas grunted in pain, but he didn’t lose his focus. He wrenched Gar’s fist before the Luvendi could withdraw it and used it to drag his opponent closer, directing a flurry of blows at Gar’s relatively unprotected torso and head with his free hand.
Gar, not to be outdone, swept his foot behind Barnabas’ even as the punches landed, and the two crashed onto the mats with a series of thuds that made Jeltor pulse in sympathetic pain.
They grappled, and their movement was so fast that Jeltor could hardly decipher the intricacies of it. He tried to assess it regarding their skeletal structure and musculature, but once he’d managed to understand how a particular move was made, he had invariably missed a few others that were just as impressive.
“Shinigami, can you give me security footage of this later? Slowed way, way down?”
Shinigami projected herself into the room next to Jeltor. “Why?” she asked curiously.
“Because I don’t understand any of it, but it’s fascinating.” Jeltor waved one mechanical hand at the proceedings. The two were circling one another again. “I’m beginning to think that Jotuns should learn to fight physically as a method of training for space battles.”
“That’s an interesting thought.” Shinigami considered. “I can definitely get you the footage. It must be hard to break down into useful data. I can see why you’re struggling if you don’t have…” She gestured at her projected body. “You know, limbs.”
“I wish I could see how the nerve impulses are working,” Jeltor said wistfully. “Where do the movements originate? How do the muscles contract?”
“Heads!”
Jeltor only just managed to get sideways in time as Barnabas and Gar hurtled into the wall at high speed, crashing through Shinigami’s hologram. Both of them, Jeltor noted with amusement, hunched over to try not to smash into her too hard. Instinct was a powerful thing.
Shinigami also found it amusing. She cackled and projected herself hovering cross-legged over the center of the mats.
“Rude,” she called down. “Make it up to me by fighting for my amusement.”
Barnabas glared at her, which gave Gar a good opening to punch him in the face. Barnabas responded with a flurry of kicks. He laid his torso back and lashed out with his heel, the top of his foot, and finally—picking his torso up slightly—punched his foot forward to send Gar flying.
Barnabas recovered a little inelegantly.
“Oof,” Gar grunted from the other side of the room. He pushed himself up with a woebegone look. “Just a moment. I need some water.”
Barnabas nodded. He looked quietly smug, as Jeltor had noticed he often did when he had done something sneaky.
Shinigami cocked her head to the side. “I’ve finished up an analysis on the Yennai cloaking if you want to give it a look, Jeltor. Between the Jotuns’ cloaking and what the Yennai ships seem to have, we should be able to secure a significant advantage in that battle.”
“I like the sound of that.” Jeltor nodded to Barnabas and Gar and clanked off down the hall.
“You kids play nice,” Shinigami said before disappearing in a puff of smoke.
“Why the smoke?” Gar asked. He stared up at the space where she disappeared.
“It’s how genies appear and disappear. With lamps.”
“Lamps?”
“Yes, because you rub the lamp and… This is going to take a lot of explaining. Genies are magic spirits who hide inside everyday objects, such as an oil lamp, and can be summoned out. They appear in a puff of smoke.” Barnabas looked at Gar’s awestruck face and remembered the most important factor. “Also, they aren’t real. It’s a myth.”
“Oh.” Gar rubbed his head.
“I thought I was going mad.”
“No, no,” Barnabas assured him hastily. He started stretching again. “So, how have you been? There hasn’t been much time to debrief since we encountered the Yennai Corporation and—”
Gar pushed himself up on his elbows. His eyes were narrowed. “Shinigami told you. Or was it Tafa?”
“I noticed you were a bit subdued,” Barnabas admitted. “Shinigami mentioned you were processing some things.”
“You could say that.” Gar looked down at his hands. It was still incredible to him that he could use them as weapons. “I’ve been thinking a lot about what it means to be weak, and what it means to be strong.”
Barnabas took a seat on a pile of mats, his brows raised.
“I hated weak people for a long time,” Gar explained. “Myself included. Weak people were vulnerable. They needed to be protected. I didn’t realize that I should hate the people who hurt them.”
Barnabas waited.
“And then I realized that it didn’t matter how I felt about any of it,” Gar said finally. “I just had to do the right thing. That’s been very…liberating.”
Barnabas considered this, intrigued. “I hadn’t thought of that,” he admitted. “You don’t have to feel any particular way, you simply have to do the right thing. I like that. I like it a lot.”
Gar smiled. “You do the right things for the right reasons, though. Someday, I hope to do that.”
To his surprise, Barnabas started laughing.
“You’re giving me far, far too much credit,” the man said. “Gar, you forget how old I am.”
“Old.” Shinigami’s voice echoed around the gym.
“Yes, thank you, Shinigami.” He gave Gar a wry look. “She’s right, you know. I’ve had centuries to make mistakes—and, most importantly, learn when not to say anything, so I appear mysterious and profound.”