Inherit the Stars

by Tony Peak

  A mirthless smile stole over Stiego’s face. “More than two hundred thousand insurgents have been eliminated, Rector. Internment camps have been set up as you requested. Their quotas, at the time of this message, were full.”

  The pang in Dunaar’s heart lessened as he stared out the viewport again. One of the tiny points of light out there was Terredyn Narbas. Sweat dripped down his chest, rolled down his cheeks. Any moment now, Kivita would lead him to his destiny.

  • • •

  “Where’re we going?” Sitting on the bench outside Frevyx’s bridge, Kivita coughed again. Blood speckles stained her hand.

  “To hopefully see Navon and the Thedes.” While she sealed the viewports and activated the light jump, Cheseia fidgeted. Did she know what she was doing?

  Frevyx shuddered and departed the Tejuit system.

  “You didn’t want him to do this, did you?” A knot of emotion strangled Kivita, knowing millions of miles now separated her from Sar.

  Cheseia stepped into the crew quarters and stripped down to her breechcloth. Lamps along the ceiling and floors winked out in the galley and bridge while Frevyx’s air chilled as the heating system relented its output.

  Kivita shambled to the cryo-chamber doorway and blocked Cheseia. “Did you?”

  Cheseia’s russet eyes burned into Kivita. “Your bridge mic was still on after I truly left Terredyn Narbas. When I boarded Frevyx to unload payment for the three humans, I unfortunately heard some of your . . . conversation.”

  “Yeah, so? Maybe I wanted something you’ve taken from me.” Kivita tried to straighten, but the pain in her stomach made her double over. She hacked up blood again.

  “You are so truly foolish and ungrateful.” Cheseia lifted Kivita as if she were a child, then leaned her against the medical cabinet. “You will speedily receive proper treatment once we reach our destination. I hope these thogens will definitely stop your internal bleeding.”

  Kivita swallowed the thogen powder after Cheseia spooned it into her mouth. Neither said anything. Cheseia’s bosom rose with sharp breaths.

  “How long have you loved him?” Kivita asked.

  They gazed at each other for a tense moment.

  “Certainly not as long as you,” Cheseia finally replied, face drawn with anxiety. “He surely knows my feelings. Which makes it tragically hurt all the more when I saw how he looked at you.”

  “I don’t need him. I don’t want him.” Kivita forced down a sob. No way in hell she’d cry in front of Cheseia.

  “He truly wants you.” Cheseia’s furred fists clenched. “Sar would definitely never have gone to Vstrunn, never gone to Umiracan, certainly never stayed at Tejuit, but for you!”

  Before Kivita could reply, Cheseia lifted her carefully in both arms and carried her into the cryo chamber. Running lights winked out in the corridor behind them.

  “I didn’t ask for him to,” Kivita muttered.

  “Sar told me you and I truly deserve better than him. If not for him, I certainly would . . .”

  “Jettison me out the damn airlock? C’mon, just say it.” Kivita glared.

  Cheseia stiffened and said nothing as they entered the chamber. The same cryopod she’d slept in with Sar awaited Kivita, hatch already open. As Cheseia set Kivita inside, the movement sent painful shockwaves up her right arm and left leg. Kivita gasped and tensed, which made her stomach throb anew.

  “Bet you like seeing me like this,” Kivita rasped.

  Cheseia gave her a flat stare. Her furred hands trembled over the cryopod’s console.

  Kivita started to say more, but Cheseia shook and closed her eyes. Before, she’d refused to believe anyone loved Sar as much as she did. Refused to admit the pain she’d seen in Cheseia’s eyes. Now, with Cheseia nearing an emotional breakdown, the truth shamed Kivita.

  “I’m sorry,” Kivita whispered. The thogens slurred her words, blurred her vision.

  “So am I. Soon you will truly understand.” Cheseia swallowed and shut the hatch. While Frevyx’s lights winked out altogether, Kivita glimpsed the Ascali wiping her eyes inside her cryopod. So she hadn’t wanted to cry in front of Kivita, either.

  As she closed her eyes, cold, black sleep stole over Kivita’s consciousness.

  In her mind, an ancient ship crash-landed on Susuron. Ocean waves rose and receded. Grains of sand as numerous as the stars sank beneath her naked feet.

  • • •

  Forgoing the gyro harness, Sar hurried into Terredyn Narbas’s pilot seat. On the console scanner, Frevyx made a light jump and vanished. He knew it would take Kivita and Cheseia one Haldon day to reach Luccan’s Wish, the Thede ship waiting just outside the Tejuit system.

  “I had to lie, Kiv,” he whispered, gripping the manuals. Sar had no idea when he’d really see her again, if ever. She wouldn’t have understood. Maybe he didn’t, either.

  Behind Terredyn Narbas, the Naxan merc ships had completed their examination of the pirate and asteroid debris. A Naxan voice came over the console speaker, but Sar muted it.

  Terredyn Narbas protested his commands, creaks and groans reverberating throughout the ship. Judging from the damage he’d seen while on Frevyx, Kivita’s old trawler shouldn’t even be together, let alone fly.

  While prepping the ship for a light jump, Sar reviewed his options. In no way could he follow Frevyx, at least not from Tejuit. The nearest systems—Wraith Star, Ecrol, Senul Tur, and Soleno—offered no refuge. Someone would follow, and he’d no idea how to disengage the Sarrhdtuu beacon.

  Orbital traffic scattered as a large Inheritor battleship and five battle cruisers formed an erstwhile blockade. Sar’s brow furrowed. Wherever he went, these bastards followed.

  Many Aldaakian craft, including the cruiser and its shuttles, had fled. What was Seul’s agenda, and why had she blasted those pirate ships? He believed Kivita when she’d claimed no deal had been made with the Aldaakians, but something was up.

  “Can’t do anything sitting here,” he muttered. With luck, everyone in the system had detected his beacon signal. The quicker he left and their enemies tracked him, the better chance Kivita and Cheseia had of making it.

  Terredyn Narbas was too damaged to pull off any fancy maneuvers, much less evade an airlock link. Sar ran several coordinates through his mind, rejecting each set in turn, until one set made him pause. The coordinates would lead just outside the Tejuit system, perhaps an hour in light jump. Sar had never remembered these coordinates before.

  Not until Kivita had kissed him earlier.

  Sar sealed the other viewports, keyed the coordinates, then hit the jump button. The ship shook, and red warning lights lit up the darkened bridge. The engine screeched. He held a breath and didn’t move. A full minute passed before the trawler shuddered into the jump.

  “Need some new equipment, sweetness,” he mumbled.

  Images of derelicts floating in unknown systems flashed in his mind. What had Kiv done to him? He’d managed to resist its flow during those wonderful moments before leaving the hive ship. Moments lost to him now.

  Terredyn Narbas’s engine groaned, and the entire ship trembled. Bulkheads popped with pressure changes.

  Sar ran to Kivita’s lockers and pulled out a breath mask and cold lamp just as the gravity changed to low-G. He floated off the floor. Grabbing the locker door to anchor himself, he put the mask on. A proximity alarm rang from the bridge. Sar braced himself for impact or disintegration.

  Nothing happened.

  Sar pulled himself along the bulkheads, using regularly spaced handles for such situations. With excruciating slowness, he reentered the bridge. Each breath came out long and deep, just like he’d been trained. Red and yellow warning lights bathed him in shades of terror.

  The console displayed a large asteroid field, hanging listless in the infinite space between systems. Sar unsealed the bridge viewports and
stared.

  Terredyn Narbas flew amid the interstellar rocks, with the closest three thousand miles away. He sighed, thankful the coordinates had been accurate. By all rights, he should have slammed into an asteroid.

  Sar almost laughed at his luck until a glimmer caught his eye.

  A small life capsule floated two hundred feet away from Terredyn Narbas. Its cylindrical golden-meld hull reflected distant starlight back at him. Unlike standard life capsules, this one emitted no beacon distress signal. He’d heard of only feudal ones with such a hull.

  “Must’ve been royalty,” he murmured.

  The console gave an awful beep.

  “Shit.” Sar ran a diagnostics check: the engine had ceased working, two-thirds of Terredyn Narbas’s thrusters were inactive, and he had life support for only eight Haldon days.

  With deliberate keystrokes he routed all the ship’s power to the cryo chamber and Kivita’s single cryopod. The console and terminal both darkened, the viewports sealed. Sar flicked on the handheld lamp and pulled himself along the handholds from the bridge.

  Terredyn Narbas floated dark, silent, and cold in the asteroid field.

  Sar’s breathing escalated. He might never be found out here. Millennia might pass, the engine power would deplete, and he’d die in cryostasis. Frozen forever like Niaaq Aldaar, the Aldaakian legend. The Inheritors would crush the Thedes, and Kivita would never know his fate. She’d spiral through space, running until her enemies found her. He wouldn’t be around to save her.

  Hyperventilating, Sar snatched after the next handhold. Quick, before he froze to death, before Kivita went too far and got herself in too deep and—

  “Stop, damn you,” he whispered to himself upon reaching her quarters.

  Sar took slow, deep breaths, casting the fears from his mind, willing himself to stop shaking. He’d known the risks. Known them when he’d squeezed Kivita’s hand. The lamp’s bluish-white beam lit up her quarters, illuminating clues from her life.

  It passed over glue-pen and Ascali claw graffiti, over placards of beefy males and buxom females. The beam came to rest on a placard of Kivita and her father. The child’s wide smile and hazel eyes hinted at the beauty Kivita would mature into. The man, though, looked nothing like her.

  He smiled as the beam revealed the chit he’d bought her freedom with at Tejuit. It had wedged itself into a crack beside the placard; a damned miracle the chit hadn’t been sucked into space.

  Utter darkness ruled the ship now. As a child he’d been frightened of the dark, whether the black void of space or the depthless fissures in Freen mines. Caitrynn had convinced him there was nothing to fear in the darkness.

  As he dragged himself into the cryo chamber, Sar’s eyes narrowed. When the Inheritors had conquered mineral-rich Freen, Caitrynn had been among those who resisted. She and her two children, almost teenagers, both died in the fighting. Her husband, stricken with black-mouth disease from mine work, had been executed by Inheritor soldiers afterward.

  He hesitated and shut off the cold lamp. In the dark, the faces of Caitrynn’s son and daughter stared up at him from a bloodied mine tunnel. Bullet holes smoked in their chests. Yellow paint covered their foreheads, placed there by Inheritor troops to mark a defeated heretic.

  “Damn you.” His whisper summoned the headless body of Caitrynn’s husband, cast onto a pile of corpses. Men, women, children.

  Sar’s face pinched and his chest sank in.

  Caitrynn still clutching a sword and pistol, her body sprawled over a burned-out Inheritor tank. The back part of her skull shattered open. Eyes closed, with a yellow-painted dagger shoved into her mouth.

  Raging, uncontrollable emotions surged through his being.

  He screamed at the darkness, the ship’s chilled, decaying air hurting his throat and lungs. He stumbled into the nearest bulkhead. Goddamn them! Gritting his teeth, Sar mashed the lamp’s button. Its light banished the darkness, erased the images from his sight but not his heart.

  Kivita might be able to end it all. Why else would everyone want her? A Savant like her could spread knowledge like no other. Send data to pinpoint and destroy Inheritor armies, coordinate assaults, direct battle fleets.

  The lamp’s beam flickered. Sar loosed a ragged breath and shook his head. Shekelor had been right after all.

  Like he’d told Cheseia once, she and Kivita deserved someone else. Someone free of darkness, whose heart didn’t have the chill of a vacuum.

  Sar eased himself into Kivita’s cryopod, shut off the cold lamp, and removed the mask. The cryopod’s hatch snapped shut. Cold air filled his nose and mouth.

  Caitrynn used to tell him stories—an older sister helping her brother cope with the hellish conditions in Freen’s subterranean mining society. Stories of a paradise world just outside the Cetturo Arm, where people never died, never slaved in deep mines.

  It was called Frevyx.

  Before closing his eyes, Sar hoped the Juxj Star would reveal it to Kivita someday.

  21

  Seul’s cryoports clamped shut and her spine went rigid. On the shuttle’s console display, the remains of several Aldaakian ships floated in Tejuit’s traffic lane. The two frigates had been the only Aldaakian military presence in the system—and Tejuit was a strategic cosmic crossroads, usually well defended by Aldaakian warships.

  With other fleets still recovering from the Sarrhdtuu attacks into Aldaakian Space, the path to her people’s worlds now lay open to the Inheritors.

  “Captain Jaah, the Inheritor blockade of Tejuit has made this war official,” Vuul said over the console speaker. “Aldaakian forces in the vicinity are on full alert. The Inheritors may strike at Aldaakuun, or even Aldaak Emtar, through the Aldaakian Corridor in the Terresin Expanse. However, I think they have other plans.”

  “Yes, Commander Vuul?” Seul gripped Kael’s shoulders while standing behind his seat.

  “Follow Terredyn Narbas. By your own report, the trawler was heavily damaged. It could not have jumped far.”

  “It is done—”

  “Captain Jaah? Your orders are now to destroy Kivita’s ship on sight. No chances can be taken.”

  The other Troopers aboard shared confused glances. Seul’s fingers dug into Kael’s chair.

  “It is done, Commander Vuul.” Seul took a deep breath, and her cryoports tightened. “Officer Kael, I want the Sarrhdtuu beacon trajectory from Terredyn Narbas.”

  Kael studied his console, thumbing a few keys. “Inheritor scanners will detect us, Captain Jaah. We’ve orbited the system for hours.”

  “That’s a chance we’ll have to take.” Seul had never fought the Inheritors, since the peace treaty had been stable since the Nebulon conflict years ago. Why would those humans do this? The Inheritor battleship seemed to be waiting for something, which bothered her even more.

  Seul exited the cockpit and paced between the launch tubes. Their shuttle’s energy dump could power them six light years, so she had to find Kivita—fast. Seul wondered whether she’d have let the human escape if she’d suspected Kivita’s importance on Umiracan.

  Something about that placard on Kivita’s ship still made Seul’s chest tighten. A father with his daughter. Both had looked happy.

  By the void, she wouldn’t kill Kivita. The human was the best chance of contacting the Vim—but Vuul wasn’t telling her something.

  “Trace found, Captain Jaah,” the female navigator said.

  Seul hurried back into the cockpit. “Where does it lead?”

  Kael frowned. “Captain, the trawler departed to unknown coordinates.”

  It was too easy, too clear-cut. Kivita knew about the Sarrhdtuu beacon on Terredyn Narbas, knew she’d be followed.

  “Captain Jaah, with your permission?” Kael asked, worry in his eyes.

  She had no choice. Vuul’s orders were for Seul to destroy Kivita, not fol
low her instincts.

  “Make the jump.” Seul returned to her launch tube. It closed over her, acting as troop carrier and cryopod. Inserts entered her cryoports as her polyarmor unlocked. The pilots keyed in the coordinates, shut the viewport, and retired to their own cryopods. The vessel shuddered, making the light jump.

  Seul tried to imagine what she’d say to Kivita. The redheaded woman was running from everyone. What did she really know? Seul wouldn’t use force to find out. Guns and blades had spoken too long for her people.

  A proximity alarm roused Seul from cryostasis, and the tubes retracted from her cryoports. She flexed her muscles and let her polyarmor lock in place, then opened the launch tube hatch. Gravity activated on board.

  The life monitor showed that she’d been asleep for less than an hour.

  Seul hurried from her cryopod, limbs trembling from lack of proper warm-up. Joining her, Kael opened the cockpit’s forward viewport. The shuttle had entered a wide asteroid field.

  “How did this happen?” Seul asked, while the other Shock Troopers roused from cryostasis.

  Kael strapped into his seat. “Look, Captain Jaah.”

  Outside the viewport, a hammerlike oblong shape floated five hundred feet distant.

  “It’s Terredyn Narbas,” the navigator said. “Scanners show low engine power, though the beacon is still transmitting.”

  Seul activated the console mic. “Kivita? This is Seul Jaah. We’re here to help you.” She avoided looking at her comrades. Vuul wasn’t around, and neither was his murderous agenda.

  No answer.

  “Kivita?” she asked again.

  Terredyn Narbas sat silent. What if Kivita had been injured when the pirates boarded her ship? Seul’s cryoports squeezed.

  “Captain Jaah?” Kael asked.

  Seul grabbed her helmet. “She won’t answer. Prepare to board.”

  As they neared Kivita’s ship, Seul left the cockpit and selected one squad. “I have point. Point Two, follow me once Auxiliary One has cut through the airlock doors. Flanks Three and Four follow. This is a rescue mission. I want all rifles and blades left behind. Batons only.”