Sage nodded. “We’re going in.”
“I’ve never navigated a wormhole that wasn’t on the charts and hadn’t already been explored by humans,” Zakota said, his mouth twisting.
“You’ll make history.”
“Huh.”
Sage couldn’t tell if Zakota was daunted or pleased by the prospect. Mostly, he looked grim, far grimmer than usual.
“I trust you’ll do a good job,” Sage said.
“Lots better than Asan, anyway. He’s such a rookie. He’ll have that Zi’i ship bouncing off the wormhole walls like a drunken svenkar trying to escape his kennel.”
Sage tapped the intercom, noting that the Scyllans hadn’t acknowledged his hail in any way. Not surprising.
“We’re entering the gate in less than a minute,” he announced to the ship. “Brace yourselves.”
He didn’t mention which gate. Hells, he wasn’t even sure what the numerical designation for the thing was.
Sage buckled himself into the command chair, something he rarely bothered to do. But he had a feeling this would be a bumpy flight.
The fire falcon and the captured warship flew in one after the other.
The familiar purple confetti filled Sage’s mind as he lost consciousness and control of his body. But then something less familiar happened, a painful jerk, as if his head were knocked to the side. Blinding white light flashed behind his eyelids, and he couldn’t escape it or shut it out. He felt like he was spinning in dizzying circles, faster and faster, and then with a final jolt, he seemed to hit a wall. Pain and blackness swallowed everything.
When he woke, that pain continued, throbbing in the center of his skull. His entire body was clenched, muscles rigid with tension, and he had to force himself to relax as he blinked and tried to get his bearings.
Gradually, the bridge came into view, along with Zakota’s back. He was slumped over his console, his face pressed into the controls.
Sage often woke before others when the ship came out of gate jumps, but his pilots were always awake and alert first, having never fully succumbed to unconsciousness as they navigated the ship through the wormhole.
With shaking hands, Sage unfastened his harness and staggered toward Zakota. The deck was flat, and the ship wasn’t making any ominous sounds, but he felt very off. He glanced toward Korta, and was surprised to see him tipped on his side, the hundred-odd cilia-like legs usually invisible under his boulder-bulk now exposed.
“Zakota?” Sage asked, his voice raspy.
He gripped Zakota’s shoulder and squeezed.
Beeps came from the communications station. Probably crew members from other parts of the ship wanting to check in. Hopefully, they only wanted to know why the trip had been rough and didn’t have damages to report.
Zakota groaned and lifted his head. “What happened?”
“You’re supposed to tell me that.”
“Am I? Damn.” Zakota’s pupils were large and unfocused as he looked around and then at his controls.
“Give me a report as soon as possible.” Sage looked at the view screen and the sensor display as he headed for the comm station. Both showed a fairly normal system stretched out ahead of them, if a large one. Two suns and at least two-dozen planets with more popping up on the sensor display as the computer probed farther outward.
Clacks came from Commander Korta, the equivalent of groans from him. His two tentacle-like arms with fingers at the ends gripped the edge of his console, and he heaved himself upright.
“You all right, Korta?” Sage read the reports coming in over the comm, then called for Ensign Dow, the usual night-shift officer for the comm station. It would take a half hour to answer all the messages, and he had more important things to do. Like figuring out what this system was and where in the galaxy it lay.
“I am… functional, sir.”
“Good.” Sage walked to his station. “I need some information about this system as soon as possible, including if there are any other gates leading out of it. Also, search for enemy ships.”
So far, the sensors weren’t showing any, but ships could be hiding behind those suns or those planets or in either of those asteroid fields that had popped up on the display.
“Yes, sir.”
“It was weird, sir,” Zakota said, sounding a little more like himself. “The first half of the wormhole was typical, and we were cruising through just fine.” He made motions with his hands to simulate the curving nature of those wormholes. “And then it got really rough, and at the end, I saw the exit hole, but it kept moving. Never seen that happen before. I had to keep adjusting our course to try and get out. Bounced off the walls a couple of times. Boundaries, is the technical term. We—where’s the Zi’i ship?”
Sage spun, looking at the sensor display and feeling like an idiot. He’d been so discombobulated that he’d forgotten about it.
“They were ahead of us,” he said slowly, grimacing at the display. “They should have come out ahead of us.”
“Where’s the gate?” Zakota asked. “Oh, way over there. Some energy force must have really propelled us—there they are!”
He tapped a control, and the gate came up on the view screen just as the Zi’i warship limped out of it. Sideways. And without any of the purple surge of energy that one usually saw around a ship as it flew out of a gate.
“That’s not how it’s supposed to go,” Zakota said.
Ensign Dow came on the bridge, and Sage pointed at him and at the ship. “I need you to comm them. See if they’re all right. Korta, any update?”
“There are no other gates in the system, Captain,” Korta said.
Sage grimaced, though he wasn’t surprised, since the system wasn’t on the Confederation star maps. Had there been other ways into it, exploratory civilian and military science vessels would have likely stumbled across it long ago.
“Lieutenant Coric confirms that our crew aboard the Zi’i ship is alive and well, if rattled, sir,” Dow reported.
“That’s good.”
“They’re damaged though and running on auxiliary power. Chief Hierax is looking into it.”
Sage nodded. Hierax could get the ship running. He always did. And even if he couldn’t, Sage could always abandon the Zi’i ship and return everyone to the Falcon 8. It appeared there was nobody in this system to play the captor-prisoner ruse for.
“Sir?” Korta asked, a higher pitch than usual to his grinding-rocks voice.
Sage had learned that pitch meant concern. Korta didn’t use it often.
“Yes?”
“The gate appears to be dead.”
“Dead?”
“Even when dormant, active gates put out a slight energy signature,” Korta said. “I’m not reading anything from this one.”
“We broke it?” Zakota asked, staring at the Zi’i warship.
“Possibly,” Korta said, “but I deem it more likely that it’s been broken for a long time, and that the Scyllans knew that. Perhaps the Zi’i did too.”
Sage stared bleakly at the dark gate.
“Usually, when the link is down, the gates are dead on both sides,” he said, aware of numerous defunct gates in the galaxy.
“Yes, sir,” Korta said, “but perhaps, since this one is still technically traversable, at least from one side, the built-in failsafes to prevent ships from being lost in the wormhole haven’t kicked in yet. The technology of the Wanderers is still much a mystery to us.”
“Am I correct,” Sage asked slowly, eyes still transfixed on the gate, “that there are no instances of humans ever having fixed a dead gate?”
“That’s correct, sir,” Korta said. “Though most gates are dead because of interstellar drift breaking the old wormholes. There would be no way to fix them without creating new wormholes, which is centuries, if not millennia, beyond our current technology level. However, there have been numerous attempts to fix 14 and 117, since those are known to have been destroyed by man-and alien-made explosions during various wa
rs.”
Aware of the gates, Sage said, “They were never fixed, despite many attempts.”
“That’s correct, sir.”
“Well, Hierax is just going to have to find a way to fix it, anyway,” Zakota said, twisting in his seat and looking back and forth from Korta to Sage. “He’s a miracle worker, right? And he has three of my luck talismans, one of which increases his crafting abilities. If anyone can fix it, Hierax can. Right?”
Zakota looked very much like a man in need of convincing. How he imagined Hierax would fix the gate when astrophysicists, engineers, and scientists who had spent their lives studying the gate system hadn’t been able to, Sage didn’t know. Not to mention that they would have no tools or spare parts to work with beyond what was on these two ships…
“If anyone can, Hierax can,” Sage said, because Zakota needed to hear it.
He just wished there were someone there who could convince him.
22
When Tala had all her patients in stable condition, including, thank God, Sage’s brother, she showered and had one of the ubiquitous Star Guardian steaks. If she ever came to work aboard this ship, she would insist on more creative menu options.
She smiled slightly at the idea of working there. Nobody had died on her operating table. She was sure the day would come when there would be somebody she couldn’t save, but the technology was fantastic, and it would be extremely difficult returning to an Earth hospital. If she could go home long enough to tell her mom that she was all right, and see to it that Mindy was taken care of, she could imagine a future here.
She ought to have found the battle and the craziness to be pure insanity, but she felt proud of herself for handling the stress and helping so many people. And they’d been fighting for a good reason. To protect humanity from aliens that wanted to eat them. And to get her people home. Even though this hadn’t technically been her battle, it had felt more meaningful than operating on people who were on her table simply because they’d made poor lifestyle choices for too many years.
Though she was tired, and probably could have slept, Tala was curious about what was going on—that last gate jump had left her on the deck. Several of the women had thrown up.
More than curiosity kept her up. She wanted to see Sage. It had been hours since that ship-wide announcement that they were going through a gate. She had no idea which gate they’d gone through or what their destination was now. Earth? Dethocoles to warn his people? Was the danger past? They hadn’t been fired on since the gate jump. She didn’t think. Admittedly, she’d been busy with her patients and might have missed major things happening.
Tala tried Sage’s cabin first, thinking he might be getting some rest if things had calmed down, but she wasn’t surprised when he wasn’t there. He would probably sleep in his chair on the bridge before leaving at a dubious time. Dedication to duty apparently ran in the family. She still couldn’t believe Orion had refused to be sedated while she operated. As if he could have grabbed his weapon and leaped off the table to fight further while his intestines were dangling to the deck.
She smiled at the memory, glad he’d finally allowed her to sedate him after he’d seen that Sage had arrived and could take care of things. Even though her focus had been on the operation, it had been nice hearing them banter with each other. Sage had spoken softly, gently, not in his usual cool, calculating, command tone. She imagined that not many people got to witness that side of him. Maybe not even Orion. They always seemed so stiff with each other.
The bridge doors opened, and Tala poked her head in.
Sage wasn’t in his seat. Neither was Zakota. A younger officer had replaced him at the helm. Korta was still at his station—did Alabasters not need sleep?—and Tala was on the verge of asking him where Sage was when she noticed the view screen.
They were flying toward a beautiful bluish-purple planet with dark green rings around it. The light of a sun gleamed orange behind one of its horizons, and another yellow sun burned in space farther away. Did that signify another solar system? Or were both of these suns in the same one? The view was amazing, but the pilot wore a grim expression as he eyed the screen.
Tala cleared her throat, and he looked over at her. Judging by his swollen cheek and a black eye, he had been in the battle in some capacity too. The whole crew seemed to be in need of her services, whether they had shown up in her sickbay or not.
“Is Captain Sage—Sagitta around?” she asked, thinking of that gash on the side of his face.
“In his ready room, ma’am.” He pointed toward the other door on the bridge, a single, unadorned one without a plaque or label of any sort.
Tala thought the young man might smirk knowingly, especially since rumors were going around now about her being the captain’s woman, but he only returned to contemplating the view. Well, she wasn’t exactly dressed like a woman arriving for a hot date. She had washed her clothes in the laundry while showering—that was another bit of technology she would miss, a machine that washed and dried clothes in three minutes—and she smelled clean, but her linen shirt and khaki pants weren’t exactly the things of men’s fantasies.
She paused in front of the door, not sure if it would be locked or if she should knock, but it slid open for her.
Sage sat at the head of a table that could seat eight, his chair spun toward a wall that held a porthole and a view screen, though he wasn’t looking at either of them. His elbow rested on the table, his hand framing his forehead and hiding his eyes.
Why didn’t anyone think that planet was amazingly beautiful and worth gazing upon? It was also visible through the porthole in here. The view screen held what appeared to be a diagram of the system, showing planets and the two suns. The system seemed huge and sprawling, at least compared to what Tala was used to from back home.
For a moment, Sage didn’t stir, and she thought he was dozing, but he lowered his hand and turned his chair to face her. He must have found something from a first-aid kit to squeeze on his gash because it was noticeably better than it had been a few hours earlier.
“Orion?” Sage asked, concern flashing in his eyes.
“He’s fine,” Tala hurried to say.
She’d sent a message earlier, to let him know she was fairly certain Orion would make it, barring complications from the reconstructive intestinal surgery the nanobots were doing. She’d closed him up and left them to do work that would have been impossible back home. Things could change, though, and she understood why Sage would be concerned.
“I came on pleasure, not business,” she added.
His forehead furrowed. Apparently, they didn’t have the expression.
“On pleasure, or for pleasure?” he asked.
“Well, you did promise me an apology.”
He smiled slightly, but his gaze slid toward the porthole, and she doubted sex was on his mind. She supposed she could wait. After all, he didn’t look like he’d showered. His gray-brown hair was tousled, a day’s worth of beard growth stubbled his chin, and his black fatigues were more rumpled than she’d seen them. He was more rumpled than she’d seen him, with an uncharacteristic slump to his shoulders. But as she considered him, she decided she found him attractive this way. Maybe more attractive than usual. He seemed more like a man than the intimidating captain. For the first time since she’d met him, he looked like someone who could use a hug. And he looked… huggable.
“I’m not sure I’d be able to give an adequate apology right now,” he murmured.
“Oh? Are you suffering from male problems? We call that erectile dysfunction and have pills for it.”
He made a choking sound as he looked incredulously at her.
“That was doctor humor,” Tala explained.
“It was abysmal.”
“Then I did it right.”
“I simply meant to say that I might not be good company right now. Though you did try to turn me into a woman earlier, so that may be to blame too.”
Tala snorted. “I’m sur
e that’s worn off.”
Despite his words about being bad company, Sage waved at the chair next to him in a vague invitation. “We came through a wormhole with a broken gate on this end. We can’t get back. And unless something is hidden extremely well, there aren’t any other gates leading out of the system.”
Tala considered the pretty ringed planet again, letting the words sink in as she walked over to join him. “So we’re trapped here?”
“Unless we can come up with something brilliant.”
“There’s no way to fix the gate?”
“No human ever has. The gates were here when we started exploring the galaxy. We’ve occasionally encountered ruins made from similar materials and with similar technology, left behind by the aliens who built the gates and left humans scattered on planets all over the galaxy—we call them the Wanderers. Everything they built is far beyond our level of understanding. To us, the gates might as well be magical.”
“I see.” Tala stopped beside him, but didn’t sit down. He was at the head of the table, and she didn’t want to take the position of one of his subordinates. Or maybe she just wanted to be closer to him than the next chair. She rested her hand on his shoulder. “I’m sure you and your clever people will find a way home.”
“I hope you’re right.” He rubbed his temple. “My job is battling enemies, not empty solar systems or ancient alien tech. I’m not—this isn’t a science or exploratory vessel. We might have a fancy job title back home, but we’re essentially soldiers.” He looked up at her. “I’m sorry. I usually keep my doubts to myself, so as not to worry the crew. I guess I’m tired.”
Tala squeezed his shoulder, feeling the hard muscles through his uniform jacket and once again remembering him in a tank top.
“I kind of like you like this,” she said.
“Dejected?”
“Humble.”
“I didn’t realize I was usually cocky. When I was younger perhaps…”
“Not cocky, but self-confident to the point of being irritating. I’ve known surgeons like that. They’re amazingly good at what they do, and I’d want them operating on me, but I’d beat myself with a wet noodle if I had to spend time with them.”
Sagitta: Star Guardians, Book 3 Page 20