Nethereal (Soul Cycle Book 1)

by Brian Niemeier

  Craighan’s face dripped with sweat. The hulking ship could reach impressive speeds, but it accelerated slowly compared to the corvettes. The Exodus was only halfway to safe transition range when the Guild ships opened fire.

  20

  The dreadnaught reminded Malachi of a house strung with festival lanterns. Only these lights weren’t lamps, but elemental fires devouring the ship’s hull. His first barrage had crippled the target. The next would obliterate it.

  Nevertheless, Malachi withheld the order to fire. It was vital to complete tasks in order of importance, and the black shape that seemed to coalesce from the shadows of the debris field demanded his attention. The angular monstrosity reminded him of a decapitated insect still able to fly and sting in death. Its arrival made the vacuum of space seem colder against the Serapis’ metal skin.

  Bullets hit the bow like hot pinpricks, and Malachi saw that the Mithgar frigates were making a show of covering the dreadnaught’s limping retreat. “Engage the dreadnaught’s rearguard,” he ordered the port corvettes. Free of distractions, Malachi brought the Serapis about and set course to intercept the black beast.

  Jaren felt the deck beneath him shiver as the two corvettes barraged the Exodus’ starboard wing.

  “I’m losing flight stability,” Craighan said, a grimace contorting his face. “There's no choice. Return fire!”

  “Starboard fire control is down,” a gunnery chief reported. “No firing solution on that arc.” The bridge erupted in a cacophony of confused voices.

  While Craighan’s undermanned bridge crew squabbled, Jaren saw Nakvin take one of the gunnery stations that floated empty in the darkness. She quickly acquainted herself with the interface and entered her own firing solution. Jaren looked back at the window in time to see four incandescent spheres streaking from the starboard wing toward the attacking ships.

  Half of the projectiles sailed harmlessly off into space. The last two each struck a corvette, igniting a pair of tiny suns off the starboard bow. A tremor ran through the deck, and Craighan fell hard against the Wheel’s railing. Struggling to regain his feet, he glowered at Nakvin. “Those turrets are for orbital strikes.”

  “I improvised,” Nakvin said.

  “You committed a war crime,” Craighan gasped.

  “And you’re killing yourself up there.”

  The small stars that had consumed the corvettes winked out, revealing that the monstrous Guild ship was now close enough to read the name emblazoned on its hull. “Hard to port!” Jaren screamed.

  Craighan just leaned against the rail, his chest heaving.

  “All gunners open fire,” Jaren said, but the Mithgarders only stared at him.

  “The turret won't respond,” Nakvin said. “I think it’s overheated.”

  On the Wheel, Craighan bowed his head as though ready to vomit.

  Jaren shoved a gunnery officer to the deck and commandeered his station. He fired the energy cannon as quickly as the weapon could cycle, not bothering to aim.

  The Serapis pressed on, heedless of the errant shots. The convex discs atop its pylons radiated blue-green light. There was no visible emanation, but Jaren felt a wave of thick, prickly static sweep over him. To his horror, he saw the bridge stations going dark from fore to aft. He cast a desperate glance at the Wheel as the blackout overtook it.

  Craighan did more than regurgitate when the invisible wave hit him. He jerked bolt upright; every muscle racked with spasms. His once steely eyes rolled back till all that showed were the whites, and foam spewed from his mouth. It was the last Jaren saw of him before darkness enveloped the bridge.

  Jaren heard Nakvin's voice soar above the crew’s frantic chatter. The same song had lit the thuerg fortress, but now it had no effect.

  “What did they do?” Jaren asked.

  “I think they disrupted every Working on the ship,” Nakvin said.

  “Permanently?”

  “I don't know. The Workings might only be suppressed.”

  “Won’t that disable their weapons, too?”

  “We'll find out.”

  Jaren's frustration grew with every passing second, and panic gnawed at his mind.

  “Do not be afraid,” said an unknown voice. Jaren couldn't trace its point of origin, but it sounded like a ragged wind blowing through a cave.

  “Who’s there?”

  “I helped you free the prisoners,” the voice said. “I have been with you ever since.”

  “Fallon?” Nakvin asked. Her voice almost faltered over the name.

  “I was once called Vaun Mordechai,” said the unseen speaker, “though I am less certain of late.”

  “Why are you shadowing us?” asked Jaren.

  “You yourself summoned all to your banner who would defy the Guild,” said Vaun.

  “If you know anything useful, tell us now,” Jaren said.

  “I know only that your young steersman is taking matters in hand,” said Vaun.

  The lights returned so suddenly that all present covered their eyes—except for Vaun, who was revealed as a man of middling height in a mask and a grey cloak, and Deim, who stood triumphant upon the Wheel.

  Jaren understood what had happened, if not precisely how. Still, it was enough. “Get us out of here, Deim,” he said.

  The Exodus lurched forward, sending the bridge crew reeling. Jaren stared in disbelief at his junior steersman. The young man had already matched Craighan’s top speed, and the colossal ship was still accelerating.

  “Take us into the ether,” Jaren said.

  Deim gave no sign that he’d heard. The ship kept gaining speed. The young steersman fluoresced with a hideous golden nimbus. His face contorted with wicked glee.

  “Deim,” Nakvin said, “you have to stop!”

  The engines’ whine intensified until the deck shook. Deim was the brightest object in the room now: his flesh seemingly transfigured into sallow light. The bridge’s few spots of color inverted, signaling an ethereal transition. The pinpoints of starlight encircled by the window faded into a hazy, rose-colored oblivion.

  “He's taking us into the deep ether,” Jaren said, knowing that the universal medium turned solid at its greatest depth.

  Jaren had long since prepared for death. He found himself unprepared for the wonder that followed. It was another color shift, but not one caused by ethereal flight perpendicular to a gravity well. The colors didn’t invert. They were replaced with unknown hues.

  Deim screamed. Jaren saw the steersman’s feet hovering inches above the Wheel, his body convulsing as if shaken by godlike hands. He fell, and darkness reclaimed the bridge.

  21

  Nakvin hardly noticed when power was restored. By then she’d found Craighan lying at the base of the Wheel, his body bent at odd angles.

  An officer approached his fallen captain and asked, “Is he dead?”

  Nakvin knelt down to check and was assaulted by an odor that she’d last encountered during her medical residency: thawing frostbitten flesh. She nodded, unable to look away from the morbid spectacle.

  “What of his young successor?” asked Vaun.

  The question roused Nakvin from her daze. She dashed up the steps and found Deim lying at the middle of the darkened Wheel. The sickly golden sheen had left his olive skin. There was no acrid tang of freeze-dried flesh; only a trace of electrified air. His skin felt cold to the touch. To her relief, he was still breathing.

  Something tugged at the back of Nakvin’s mind. It took her only a moment to trace its point of origin. The Wheel was whispering a subtle invitation; tempting her to cast Deim aside and take his place. Shivering, she dismissed the alien thought.

  Deim's eyelids fluttered and slowly opened. “What are you doing?” he asked in a groggy whisper.

  “Making sure you're alive.”

  “Am I?”

  Nakvin scanned the haunted faces of the bridge crew before looking at the window. The view outside—once a black curtain pierced with stars; then a rose-colored mist—
had become a silvery twilit haze. “I hope so,” she said at last.

  Nakvin helped Deim descend the curving stairway to the deck below. Jaren came forward to meet them. His emerald eyes studied Deim skeptically. “Are you all right?” he asked.

  “I'm fine.”

  “Can you tell me what you were thinking back there?”

  Deim paused for a moment. “I just knew I had to get on the Wheel.”

  “What happened?” Nakvin asked.

  “I did it,” Deim said with a lazy smile. “I reached her.”

  Jaren's eyes narrowed. “Who?”

  Deim’s brow furrowed as though Jaren were speaking a foreign tongue. “The ship,” he said a bit too hastily. “I synchronized with the Exodus.”

  Nakvin squeezed Deim's arm. “Do you know where we are?” she asked.

  “Wherever it is, I didn't bring us here,” he said. “There was some kind of backlash. After that I was just along for the ride.”

  Jaren’s mouth gaped. “You mean we were flying blind?”

  “Not exactly,” said Deim. “I think the ship took us where it wanted to go.”

  Nakvin saw that the navy personnel had regrouped. A miserly faced man wearing commander’s insignia marched from their midst to approach the pirates. “You’ve confirmed the captain’s death?” he asked.

  “He’s deader than Zadok,” said Nakvin.

  The commander’s lip twisted as if he’d taken a bite of rotten fruit. “What was the cause?”

  Nakvin drew her robe tight around herself. “The worst case of ERIS I’ve ever seen.”

  “No,” said Deim. “The Wheel rejected him.”

  Nakvin was contemplating Deim’s statement in light of all the other strangeness when the commander turned to address the bridge. “This is a great tragedy,” he said. “The captain gave his life steering us from harm's way. The least we can do is continue the mission he made the ultimate sacrifice for.”

  Jaren stormed forward. “What mission would that be?”

  The commander’s brow creased over his small dark eyes. His thin lips frowned. “Civilian contractors will be informed of navy operations on a need-to-know basis.”

  “Who decides how much we need to know?” Jaren asked.

  “I’m First Officer Enric Stochman. Command passed to me at Craighan’s death.”

  “Craighan tried to strut in and take command,” Jaren said. “Look where it got him.”

  Stochman smoothed his jacket and spoke through white, gritted teeth. “This is still a Mithgar Navy vessel. As acting captain, I'm ordering—”

  Jaren shoved a zephyr in Stochman’s face. “No more orders,” he said. “Not from you. The navy wouldn't have this ship if not for me and my crew. I want you to consider that before excluding us from any more command decisions.”

  Nakvin felt tensions rise as the other officers crept forward, their hands on their sidearms. She moved toward Jaren but noted that Vaun kept his distance.

  The bridge intercom delayed the outbreak of violence. Nakvin bit her lip to keep from laughing when she recognized the voice on the other end. “Boss-man,” said Teg, “you hearing this? We got the sendings back online.”

  “I hear you, Teg,” Jaren said. “We were starting to miss you.”

  “Sorry I was MIA for a while. I thought you took the Shibboleth.”

  Jaren did laugh. “You mean you didn’t?”

  “A navy steersman brought us in the courier when he saw my fifty caliber tickets.”

  “Define ‘us’,” said Jaren.

  “Just me and thirty of our closest friends.”

  A vicious light shone in Jaren’s eyes. “If I can’t have my ship, I’ll settle for my crew.”

  There was a pause as Teg spoke to someone on his end. “Just so you know, me and the boys are in the armory. I like it here.”

  A smile touched the corner of Jaren’s mouth as he faced Stochman. “You’ve got command?” he asked. “I’ve got all the guns.”

  Stochman swallowed hard. “We'll be sure to consult you going forward.”

  “These numbers don’t exactly fill me with confidence,” Jaren said to Nakvin when she brought him the results of the ship-wide headcount.

  “They’re probably saying the same,” she said, motioning to the sailors gathered across the bridge.

  Jaren’s voice dripped with malice. “I bet you’re right.”

  He scanned the crystal tablet again. Though only a tenth of the Exodus’ navy crew had made it aboard, they outnumbered the pirates two-to-one. However, most of them were technicians; not combatants. And thanks to Teg's quick action, the Shibboleth's entire crew was present and accounted for. “Looks like we’ve got ourselves a stalemate.”

  Nakvin wrapped her arms around her middle. “Unless Vaun tips the scales,” she said.

  Jaren could hardly see the grey-cloaked stowaway standing alone in the far shadows. He couldn’t tell if Vaun was avoiding his shipmates or if they were shunning him. “He fought with us before,” he said.

  Nakvin fixed her silver eyes on Jaren. “And we still don’t know why,” she said. “I get the same feeling from Vaun that I got from Fallon—only worse.”

  “If not for Fallon, we wouldn’t have this job,” Jaren said.

  “Or be stranded in the middle of nowhere,” said Nakvin.

  Jaren looked back at the tablet. “If Vaun turns on us, we’ll deal with him. How’s our inventory?”

  “Huge. The hold’s fully stocked with foodstuffs, tools, and survival gear. Teg says the armory’s bristling with every hand and shoulder weapon a ship’s crew could want, and some they’d never even need.”

  “How about the water supply?” Jaren asked.

  “Mikelburg and a navy engineer went down to check. They found two parallel systems.”

  “Two?”

  “One carries fresh water, and some kind of elemental gel circulates in the second. They think it’s for industrial use.”

  “Is that all?” Jaren asked.

  Nakvin heaved a sigh. “Unless you want us to catalogue the silverware.”

  Jaren suddenly noticed how drawn Nakvin’s face looked; how her shoulders were sagging under her robe. “It can wait,” he said. “Stealing a navy ship out from under the Guild’s nose is a solid day’s work for any crew. Let’s call it a night.”

  “What about them?” Nakvin asked, nodding at Stochman and his men.

  “I’ll post a watch on the Wheel,” Jaren said, “just so no one gets the wrong idea.”

  Nakvin gave the looming platform a sidelong look. “I think it has its own ideas.”

  Nakvin shambled into her quarters. Her bed beckoned like a siren, but the day's weirdness had left an almost tangible residue. Her need to be rid of that cloying corruption overpowered the hollow ache of fatigue, and she proceeded directly to her cabin's private bath.

  Inside, Nakvin encountered a transparent tube running from floor to ceiling. It was more than wide enough to accommodate her, and the sliding door was equipped with watertight seals. A line of simplified ideograms stenciled onto the hatch invited her inside. Weary beyond coherent thought, she stepped into the cylinder. A clinical smell pervaded the interior.

  Nakvin was fumbling for the taps when she remembered her robe. Muttering a string of curses, she wrestled her way out of the priceless garment and the underlying slip, tossed them onto her bed, and sealed the door.

  Thus prepared, Nakvin resumed her search for the shower controls and found none. All she discovered was another set of pictograms showing a crude human figure standing behind a hollow square between two tall lines. The square disappeared in the second image, and in the third a perpendicular line above the figure's head bridged the two uprights.

  Nakvin's bleary eyes strained to tease some meaning from the cryptic designs. Only the Mithgar Navy could write instructions that a mind-reader can’t understand, she thought.

  A sudden gurgling sound drew Nakvin's attention to the stall's floor, which was perforated by hundreds
of small pores. The percolating noise grew louder as colorless sludge oozed up through the holes at her feet. She winced in anticipation of contact with the cold gelatinous mass, only to discover that the jelly was warm, which was somehow worse.

  Nakvin began a furious struggle with the sliding door as the goo rose to her ankles, but the hatch refused to yield. She loosed a guttural scream as the gel rose above her knees. Realizing the futility of calling for help from an airtight chamber, Nakvin's cry faded to a frustrated groan. She clung to the hope that the slime would crest below her head, but when it reached her shoulders, she drew in all the air her lungs could hold and closed her eyes.

  The gel did indeed cover her head, and Nakvin fought a wave of panic. She remained submerged for what seemed an eternity: the crackling of the entombing ooze drowning out her thoughts. Finally, the ordeal ended as suddenly as it began. The gelatinous tide retreated, leaving her wide-eyed and panting in the empty tube.

  Nakvin uttered a final, truncated cry before checking to make sure that the sludge hadn't left any lingering effects. It turned out that it had. Her skin was immaculately clean and soft, and her hair shone to match her robe.

  When the hatch opened, Nakvin burst from the torture chamber and dove into bed. She sat there wrapped in the bedclothes with only her face exposed until weariness overcame her.

  22

  The shuttle left the hangar, and Teg stared through the window at an infinite twilit sky that he could have seen just as well from the Exodus. Not that he objected to a scouting mission. With Craighan dead and no one else willing to take the Wheel, options for getting the lay of their surroundings were limited.

  Teg agreed that a pirate should join the navy scouts. He just wished that Jaren had picked someone else. The Mithgarders only paused from their trite conversations and nervous weapon checks to glower at him.

  “I’m reading a breathable atmosphere extending indefinitely in all directions,” said Ensign Durn, the shuttle’s pilot. The tiny craft swung about and passed under the Exodus’ massive wing.