by Tony Peak
“Captain, look,” one Trooper said.
Outside the cockpit viewport, the huge Vim derelict had broken into six parts. Before their eyes, each shard flew away of its own volition, until all six formed a circle dozens of miles across.
Hope thawed Seul’s chilled heart; then anger scorched it. Purpose tempered it into the hardest iron.
“Taak, alert the other surviving shuttles. We’re making an attack run on that Inheritor battleship. I have fire control.” She glared out the viewport. By the Vim, they would not kill her easily.
• • •
Frevyx veered toward the Sarrhdtuu battleship as warning lights blinked on the console. Sar ignored them and pushed the manuals again, then eased them to starboard. Frevyx dove and flew parallel with the battleship’s graceful, curved hull. Voices in the chambers behind the bridge rose in anger and fright.
“Keep them calm, Jandeel!” Sar called over his shoulder. A gravity flux gave his stomach a slight tussle, while Frevyx flew a few yards above the other ship’s hull. As long as he remained so close, Arcuri’s Glory wouldn’t dare fire on him.
Luccan’s Wish, its orbit degrading, glowed red from reentry.
Jandeel entered the bridge and clutched a bulkhead handle. “Some have gotten sick, but all are fine.” He looked out the viewport and jumped. “Sar, have you gone insane? If the Sarrhdtuu were to make a light jump right now, it would dislocate our hull and rip us apart!”
“Want to scare them even more back there? Dunaar won’t shoot at us, for now,” Sar replied. On the scanner, three blips closed with Arcuri’s Glory: Seul and the surviving Aldaakians.
“But what for? Sar, you are risking us all. How does this help Kivita?”
“Get Bredine up here.” Sar turned the manuals. Frevyx rose over a mound in the craft’s hull, then dipped along one of its crescent wings.
Jandeel left and returned with the bony Savant. Bredine’s hand and arm had been bandaged, and her eyes had stopped darting everywhere.
“Bredine, is Kiv still sending?” Sar pulled Frevyx up and began the same path he’d just flown over the Sarrhdtuu vessel.
“Hmm. Redryll, Redryll. Kivita is . . . building? Yes. Building, not sending.” Bredine sat beside him and pulled Jandeel close. “Hold me? But not like Redryll. Hmm.”
Jandeel sighed and steadied her. “What is she building?”
Outside the viewport, the Vim derelict had split into six parts and formed a huge circle. The wreck’s constituent parts shimmered with blue light.
“By the Solars,” Jandeel whispered.
Bredine absently ran fingers through Jandeel’s hair. “No. By Kivita Narbas.”
In all his salvaging years, Sar had never heard, nor dreamt, of such a sight. The six parts winked in sequence with each other like tiny blue stars. Despite his worry over Kivita and pain at witnessing the Thedes’ destruction, an old wonder crept into his heart.
Perhaps the Vim had arrived after all.
Whispers burst over the console speaker, then rose into shrieks. Passengers behind the bridge groaned and shouted, until Sar slammed the mute button.
“The Vim send!” Bredine cried. “Kivita keeps building!”
Sar gripped her hand. “Can you communicate with her? Maybe send your . . . thoughts, or whatever, to her?”
Jandeel’s eyes widened in understanding. “Frevyx’s transmitter. Sar, focus it on the band channel Bredine says Kivita is on. Then have her send something back. Let her know we are out here and want to help.”
Sar slid the transmitter terminal out to Bredine. “Do it.”
• • •
Kivita gritted her teeth against the raw signal slamming into her mind. Her lungs labored to breathe, and her heart thudded with effort.
Two Sarrhdtuu warriors lifted Kivita from the platform as it floated around Juxj’s interior. The ship’s humming grew in volume, filling her ears and vibrating her bones.
Shekelor clasped Cheseia’s arm while Zhara glanced about. Navon stared at Kivita, a renewed urgency in his eyes.
“Now you will see, Child of Narbas.” Zhhl’s coils clamped onto the platform’s edges, and the platform rose. The Juxj Star orbited her like it had when she’d first found it on Vstrunn.
The platform neared an octagonal ceiling where glowing green terminals shone from twenty feet up. Fleshlike stalks carted large jelly capsules into wall slots. A faint gray mist hung in the air, and greenish fog roiled around their ankles.
One stalk slithered onto the platform and stopped near Kivita’s feet. Its end opened up and shone a flickering light upward. Dunaar’s holographic form materialized in the light.
“Greetings, my child. You have led us on a grand journey to this sacred system. Do you know that I shall build monuments to what will take place here? The destruction of the Thede leadership, the defeat of albino infidels, and you, Kivita Vondir. Your holy mission is at last fulfilled.” Even through the hologram, she made out sweat running down Dunaar’s chin.
“Go to hell,” she replied.
Dunaar clutched a stone scepter in both hands. “Blaspheme while you still can, you filthy spacer slut. Once you have opened this Vim Portal, Zhhl will turn you over to me. Your talents must be passed on to the next generation of Inheritors. We will breed until I have one hundred Savants just like you, my child. Only they will not spread lies. They will spread the holy truth.”
“Yeah? I hope these jelly-filled shit cans do turn me over to you, because then I’ll—”
A coil cuffed her across the shoulders.
“You will focus now,” Zhhl said. “You will unlock the sequence in the Portal.”
Triangular terminals jutted from the wall, alight with yellow characters and symbols. Eight holograms projected onto the ceiling, displaying Juxj’s hangar, the tube chamber, and objects outside the craft. The Vim derelict had split and formed a circle, while Frevyx flew around the Sarrhdtuu starship. Three Aldaakian shuttles arced across the hull of Arcuri’s Glory.
The Juxj Star stopped orbiting Kivita and hovered before her face. Its red glow bathed the platform in crimson hues. Two warriors tightened their coils on her arms. Zhhl’s single eye split into two and stared at her with antediluvian maliciousness.
Still trembling, Kivita closed her eyes and tried to redirect the overbearing signal into the Juxj Star. She had nothing else to do with it, other than absorb it.
The data stream invading her mind stopped.
Kivita opened her eyes. A wave of consciousness spread from her brain, passing through Juxj’s hull and into the void outside. Every nerve in her body tingled; every hair on her head quivered.
All six parts of the Vim ship blinked blue once, then went dark. Kivita felt rather than saw it. The fabric of space and time wrinkled within the circle. Stars blurred. The gas giant stopped rotating. The other vessels outside Juxj hovered in midflight. Navon, Cheseia, and the others stood like statues on the platform. Only Kivita could move.
Only she could see.
The Portal flickered open, and a second data stream eased into Kivita’s neural pathways. She hugged herself and sighed as a comforting warmth spread through her body. All aches and bruises vanished; doubts and fears were extinguished like torches in a Susuron lagoon.
A thousand voices combined into one and spoke in her thoughts.
You have achieved what we had hoped. You have assembled the tools we left behind so you could find us. Yet you bring enemies.
The vista through the Portal took her breath and numbed her mind.
Dozens of yellow main-sequence stars made her squint. An undamaged, eight-mile-long Vim ship with a shimmering panel array waited. Six smaller, oblong craft flanked it. A planet with white clouds, blue seas, and green continents shone like a jewel on black velvet.
“Frevyx,” she whispered.
“My children, we have found
them at last!” Dunaar’s hologram cried.
A violet beam shot out from Juxj. One of the small oblong vessels burst into shrapnel and dust.
The warm feelings terminated with Kivita’s scream. Thousands of minds shrieked at being destroyed, then died away. Reality blinked back into her consciousness as the other vessels around Juxj moved again. Everyone on the platform wobbled and gasped.
Zhhl’s coils slapped the platform. “Engage.”
“What?” Dunaar asked in a distraught voice.
Juxj moved toward the Portal and a second violet beam scorched the larger Vim ship’s hull.
“No!” Kivita shouted. “You’re destroying life! You’re—”
The two warriors almost pulled her arms out of their sockets. Pain darkened her vision, muted her scream.
“I want my son, Zhhl. Now.” Shekelor morphed through the platform and appeared right before Zhhl.
Kivita’s eyes fluttered back open as two more Sarrhdtuu warriors dropped onto the platform, drew curved blades, and stalked toward Shekelor.
“He has contributed to this pair of Sentries,” Zhhl said in a booming voice. “Be content.”
“Zhhl, what are you doing? I demand to know! I will take action—” The hologram of Dunaar snapped off.
Juxj drew near the Portal, as did Arcuri’s Glory.
“Where is Byelor? I have given you everything, even my own body! Where is he?” Shekelor shook with rage.
One of the Sarrhdtuu warriors flipped open its carapace armor. A thin pale human male was clamped to the creature’s flesh. Tubes filled with green and yellow liquids joined human and Sarrhdtuu in symbiotic perversity.
For an instant, Kivita’s eyes met Shekelor’s. Though she despised him and all he’d done, sympathy and anger forced a word from her lips.
“Sygma!”
Stretching his coils, Shekelor ripped away the medical tape from the Ascalis’ mouths, then the flexi around their wrists. Cheseia and Zhara both sang a high-pitched note, rising in volume and clarity. Within a second it expanded beyond human hearing.
Both warriors released Kivita and stumbled. Zhhl’s coils balled up, its translucent veins clogging with green liquid. The warrior coupled with Byelor stumbled off the platform.
Throughout Juxj, hundreds of Sarrhdtuu warriors morphed from the walls and floor.
Shekelor grabbed a beam rifle from one of his pirates and fired, burning one warrior to green globules. Another warrior dashed aside three pirates with its coils. The sound of snapping bones and armor echoed in the chamber. Kivita and Navon ducked behind a triangular terminal as Shekelor fired again. A Sarrhdtuu flopped down, half its head sliced away. Dark jelly bubbled into the air and seeped into the platform.
“Engage!” Zhhl’s voice reverberated off the walls.
Juxj blasted apart another oblong vessel on the other side of the Portal.
Kivita closed her eyes and gasped as a tingling spread through her brain. Recalling the vision of Terredyn’s manipulation of Sarrhdtuu hull scrap, she focused.
Electrical impulses fired among the trillions of neurons cobbled together inside Juxj’s structure. All the green-rigged humans, all the biomass absorbed by the Sarrhdtuu, reacted to Kivita’s invisible call. The ship’s transmitter spat out all the data she’d learned from the Juxj Star and other datacores. Everything Navon, Jandeel, and the Thedes had taught her.
Juxj’s bulkheads warped and bent. Every tube ringing the walls opened. The beamer stopped firing through the Portal. As the Vim had intended, and as she’d discovered over Tejuit, Kivita’s mind and the ship melded into a flawless interface requiring no physical connection. Organic, biomechanical, and electrical networks fused.
She sensed every bulkhead, every rivet, every inch of hull, though a terrible weight seemed to mash her heart from the strain. All the tubes holding Kith opened. Green-rigged humans sloshed from their vats, loosing subalien moans.
With the Ascali twins continuing their song, Sarrhdtuu warriors reacted with sluggish movements. Kith, once held captive by the Sarrhdtuu, attacked with brutal strikes, splattering the walls with jelly. Green-rigged humans groaned and crawled from their tubes.
The platform rammed into the floor, tossing Cheseia and Zhara off it. Navon caught Kivita before she tumbled off. Shekelor and his pirates fought their way from the chamber, as Sarrhdtuu warriors resumed full functionality. Screams and gunfire filled the ship.
Kivita tried to hold control of the ship, but she cried out as pain stabbed into her skull. Navon held on to her. Violent, brutal movement passed in her peripheral vision.
Sar Redryll. Bredine Ov. Help them. The phrases sounded over and over in her mind. For a brief instant, Kivita visualized Sar’s trawler orbiting Juxj. Waiting for her.
“I have control of the ship,” Kivita whispered, as her brain sent the message back to Frevyx.
Use it to kill Dunaar Thev.
In one strike she could destroy the slayers of her mother, the Sarrhdtuu lackeys who’d used her. Through the Portal, though, the Vim didn’t return fire. No one closed with Juxj or launched assault shuttles. The yellow suns beckoned, and the large Vim ship still waited.
As chaos and death reigned around her in the gargantuan chamber, Kivita blinked. The Vim had wanted those in the Cradles to do more than just build starships and hone Savant talents to find them.
The Vim had wanted her to eschew violence. The lack of weapon technology in the datacores now became clear. The Sarrhdtuu had been slaves of their own greed, instead of slaves to the Vim.
“This is not the answer, Sar,” she mumbled. “This isn’t who I am now.”
Kivita rose with Navon, while the Kith ripped apart Sarrhdtuu warriors nearby. Green-rigged people limped about, gaping with childish wonder, and several walked into kinetic crossfire as Shekelor and his followers battered a path toward the hangar. Many pirate bodies lay broken or cleaved in two.
“Sar wants me to force Juxj to destroy the Inheritor flagship,” Kivita said, as she and Navon hid behind a shattered tube.
“How can you receive such a message?” Navon said. “I do not understand.”
Focusing on the code sequence, Kivita poured her will into it. The Inheritors deserved the chance to learn, as she had. Killing Dunaar would accomplish nothing. War would continue, with the Sarrhdtuu the only victors. But united, the Cetturo Arm could determine its own fate.
“I think everyone will someday,” she finally whispered back.
A tearing sensation gripped her mind. All breath left Kivita’s body, and her heart stopped for a moment.
Control of Juxj had been taken from her.
“They sharpened you well, Child of Narbas.” Zhhl’s sibilant voice permeated the entire ship. “Now I will use you against them.”
Juxj shuddered, and a violet beam shot out from one of its crescent wings and struck Luccan’s Wish. The Thede ship split apart, with entire decks turned into dust. The remaining sections glowed red as they plummeted into the gas giant’s atmosphere.
Kivita, recalling information about Sarrhdtuu ships from the Juxj Star, inserted her hand into a triangular terminal. Mucus-filled mouths whispered in her ears; blood ran like ice in her veins. A deep warmth spread over her flesh, which made the chilled sensation painful. She had the sudden urge to urinate.
“Child of Narbas,” Zhhl’s thick, sinuous voice tickled her ears above the sounds of fighting. “Interface with us. You will be given honors. You will deliver our race from tyranny.”
Kivita narrowed her eyes. “I’ve seen what you do. You stole what didn’t belong to you. Your greed is so great, you’ve almost destroyed yourselves!”
The Juxj Star floated toward her. Its red glow hurt her eyes, as data from it stabbed her mind.
“The Vim sealed their Portals so no one but Savants could open them with a datacore,” Zhhl said. Its coils lifted it
onto the wall above Kivita, where it split into three smaller versions.
“Maybe I should close it,” Kivita said.
The green-rigged humans all turned and glowered at Kivita. More Sarrhdtuu warriors exited the walls and ceiling. In the distance, gunfire grew faint as the last of Shekelor’s force met their doom. More than twenty Kith circled Kivita and Navon in a barrier of metallic flesh and bloody claws.
“You forget that you have no hope as your stars die. Either the Prophet of Meh Sat finds the Vim or the Vim show themselves before this Cradle undergoes multiple supernovas,” Zhhl said.
“So you threaten us with destruction to force your agenda? We’ll find those derelicts and reverse the process!” Kivita yelled.
“You forget who planted the Juxj Star on Vstrunn. You forget we replicated Vim datacores to serve our purposes. The gem waited a thousand years. Not all of its knowledge is constructive.” Zhhl’s words emanated from every Sarrhdtuu mouth, every green-rigged tongue.
The Juxj Star darted at Kivita.
Glimpses of destruction seared her sanity, and Kivita cried out as the full scale of Sarrhdtuu privations became known: beautiful worlds scorched to cinders, stars suctioned of their energy and going nova in heavily populated systems. Over and over again. Kivita wailed and sobbed, trying to shove the millennia of predation and destruction from her mind.
The Cetturo Arm was but the latest in a long line of Cradles the Sarrhdtuu had destroyed or subjugated. Thousands of worlds; billions of lives. All because the Vim had sealed themselves in a part of the universe the Sarrhdtuu could not reach.
Kivita had led Zhhl straight to them.
The images battered her brain like spike batons. Kivita fell on her hands and knees. The floating gem neared her forehead.
“Concentrate,” Navon said. “Remember the layers. Focus, attune, absorb.”
“It’s too awful!” she cried.
“Do not fight it!” he yelled back. Their eyes met, even as gray-green shapes rose around them.
“Wish I could have been a better student, learned more—”
Navon caressed her cheek. “You did, my queen.”