Fear washed over Jaren. He stood transfixed, staring helplessly into the roiling black miasma. Two even darker points larger than head lamps marked the source of his mortal dread. Jaren wanted desperately to look away, but he lacked the power even to close his eyes. His mind rifled unbidden through a list of his greatest fears, but the sight that emerged proved far worse.
The black cloud parted, revealing the darker points to be empty eyes in a massive head that reminded Jaren of the skulls frozen into certain shunned cliffs on Tharis. Unlike those fossils, the monstrous form looming out of the darkness still bore ragged flesh. Rows of vertebrae poked out at intervals between scales the color of old bruises and the size of roofing tiles. Some of the scales and bones seemed partially petrified, as though they'd lain long in the silt beneath a prehistoric river.
The ancient beast fixed its eyeless gaze on Teg. Its maw opened, showing long rows of teeth like splintered human femurs. “You wear the baal's colors,” a chilling voice thundered from the decayed depths below. Fallon stretched his torn lips in a reptilian mockery of a smile. “I grant you the boon of preceding your liege in death.”
“Elena,” Nakvin whispered.
Fallon's cavernous jaws yawned even wider. A deafening inrush of air stirred the black fog and hinted at the ponderously huge frame hidden behind it. The dead beast's serpentine neck reared back, and fine tendrils of sallow mist flowed from between its jagged fangs with a familiar acrid scent.
I can’t believe it ends like this, Jaren thought. The sheer extravagance of his death replaced fear with bleak amusement.
Ugly yellow-green fumes blasted into the domed chamber, instantly filling the confined space. Jaren realized that he and his friends were no longer within that confined space. Somehow he, Nakvin, and Teg were standing in the corridor behind the undead behemoth.
Fallon seemed not to have noticed his prey's absence. He allowed the noxious vapor streaming from his gullet to dwindle and finally cease before sweeping the yellow fog with his hideous head in search of his victims' remains.
The devouring cloud parted to reveal a slight young woman in a white dress.
“Elena, no!” Nakvin cried.
The girl seemed not to hear. She advanced on the monster as if walking in her sleep. To Jaren’s astonishment, Fallon recoiled.
Teg started toward Elena, but Jaren held him back. The mercenary shot a frustrated look at his captain, who only shook his head.
The girl stood before the towering beast. Her rose quartz eyes stared straight ahead, open but unseeing.
In his effort to restrain Teg, Jaren had forgotten about Nakvin. She was moving before he noticed, and despite her crewmates’ screams of protest she kept running until she reached Elena's side. The Steersman took the girl in her arms, and they both folded to their knees.
Fallon’s tattered maw twisted in what Jaren could only call a smirk. The kost raised a foreleg like a gnarled tree over the huddling women.
The knowledge of what was about to happen sickened Jaren, but he couldn’t turn away. Elena blinked like a waking sleepwalker and looked upon Nakvin with sudden recognition. A single tear coursed down her cheek as she said, “Mother.”
Jaren barely glimpsed the joy and pain on Nakvin’s face before Fallon struck. Yet it wasn’t his claw that hid her from sight, but the light that shone forth from Elena. The prana that Sulaiman had drawn was a candle against the sun by comparison. The engine room and the hallway were instantaneously washed out in a blaze of purest white. Oblivion followed.
Nakvin felt her sense of self ebb as the Well’s power suffused her being. A bliss unlike any she'd known flooded into her soul, threatening to dissolve it.
All at once, Nakvin understood Ydahl's fear of Elena. The servants of the Void were terrible, but immersion in the depths of the Well was unendurable. Prana saturated her every cell, filling it to bursting with life. The sensation was breathtaking, but the danger behind the euphoria was even greater. She realized in one horrifying moment that the Well didn't have to stop at filling her. It could make her substance overflow—accelerate the growth of her flesh grotesquely beyond normal limits. In her blissful agony, Nakvin tried to find Elena; to make her stop the torrent of light, but she saw only brilliant whiteness and felt a searing ache in her eyes as their retinas were continually burned out and regenerated in rapid succession.
Amid her sweet torment, pity replaced Nakvin’s fear of Fallon. For a creature of the Void, exposure to such absolute radiance would be torture beyond imagining. Just when she felt ready to burst into incandescent flame, the light in all its awful beauty vanished.
Teg's vision cleared before Jaren’s, so he reached Nakvin and Elena first. The two women lay motionless on the deck, huddled in each other’s arms. Teg called their names and got no response. Taking Elena’s vitals would just waste time, so he checked Nakvin. She was breathing. He gently shook her.
Nakvin's silver eyes slowly opened. “Fallon?” she asked in a barely audible whisper.
“He's gone,” said Teg. “Swallowed enough prana to move ten million tons faster than light.” He glanced at Elena. “She saved us.”
Nakvin rose to her knees, took her daughter's hand, and gently kissed it. “I'm so proud of you,” she said. The girl didn’t stir.
“Is everyone alright?” Jaren asked in a wavering voice.
“Help me,” Nakvin said, threading her arms under Elena’s.
“She’ll be fine here,” the captain said. “It was a mistake to move her last time.”
Nakvin didn’t look at him. “You’d hate to lose your precious battery,” she said. “The wall’s torn down. I’m taking her out of this prison.”
Teg wordlessly touched Nakvin’s shoulder, prompting her to let go. Then he took Elena in his arms and carried her from the ruined chamber with Nakvin at his side. Jaren stood still as Elena’s cords brushed against his feet.
Not until Jaren had been alone for a while did his numbness give way to a tide of emotion. He stood in the rubble of the engine room, trying to puzzle out how he’d lost control.
“Hello?” Deim's voice suddenly cut in from nowhere. Jaren was still so disconcerted that it took him a moment to touch the sending stud in his ear. “Go ahead, Deim.”
“Something weird just happened,” the steersman said.
“Same here,” Jaren said with a sigh.
“Is Elena okay?”
“She’s fine,” Jaren lied. “Define ‘something weird.’”
“I was flying over hills and fields—stuff like that. Then everything went white.”
All the way up there? Jaren marveled. “I know,” he said. “I think we’re all right now.”
Deim's sarcastic chuckle caught the captain off guard. “We’re more than all right. As soon as I could see again, I was looking at stars—real stars.”
Jaren held his breath, afraid to even hope.
“I checked the charts to make sure,” said Deim. “Our current position is fifty light years outside the Temil system.”
Jaren's heart leapt in praise of whatever powers had just intervened.
“We're home,” the steersman said.
52
Randolph approached the bridge with a prisoner’s deliberate gait. Gambler's Fallacy wasn’t engraved on the dreadnaught's dedication plaque, but he silently condoned the epithet—anything to boost his men’s sagging morale.
The stench of burning metal stung the captain’s nose as he passed a technician mending the same power conduit for what seemed the hundredth time. All that remained of the young man's uniform was his dull grey trousers, and those grease-stained. Above them he sported a plain white shirt under a worn utility vest. The petty officer would've gone on report a month ago. Now, enforcing uniform regs seemed comically hypocritical. Indeed, the reflection confronting Randolph in the glazed bridge doors displayed illicit red stubble.
Randolph entered almost reluctantly. After months of work, the wheelhouse still looked much the worse for wear.
“Captain on the bridge,” Commander Dilar’s deep smoky voice rang out.
“Stuff the fanfare,” Randolph said. “We're not a navy outfit anymore.”
Dilar resumed his work, outwardly unruffled by the rebuke.
The captain slumped into his chair on its perch overlooking the Wheel. Consulting the tinted crystal screen set into his armrest, he skimmed the day's dispatches. Engine power was still at seventy-two percent. Randolph chuckled wryly. The chief engineer had told him as much ten minutes ago. A message marked priority: authorized personnel only contained an open call for all Mithgar Navy ships in range to join a supply raid on the Cadrys Yards.
“Good luck,” Randolph snorted under his breath.
It behooved every officer to master the art of multitasking. Though he focused most of his attention on the screen, Randolph noted the comm operator holding a furtive conversation with her superior, who ascended to the upper level and spoke to Dilar. The captain had no doubt that his first officer would soon pass the message to him.
“Captain,” Dilar said as he approached. “We have a situation.”
“Go ahead,” said Randolph, expecting a rehash of the Cadrys message.
“We've picked up the transponder signal of a ship from the Bifron group.” The commander's voice was skeptical, and his superior knew why.
“We were the only ones that made it out,” Randolph said.
“It could be a Guild ruse—a new tactic to hunt us down.”
The captain studied the deck tiles. Could the Steersmen be setting a trap? It was possible, but highly unlikely. The Guild always preferred the hammer to the snare.
“What ship was the code assigned to?” he asked at length.
Dilar swallowed before answering, “The Exodus, sir.”
Randolph studied his first mate’s solemn, dusky face. “This is no trick,” he decided. Rising, he went to the upper rail and called down to the steersman at the Wheel. “You’ve got that signal by now. Set an intercept course.”
“Good morning, Adept,” Geara said as she strode into Marshal Malachi's office. He begrudged the Archon’s ritual formality, but his adjutant never left until he acknowledged the morning reports.
Malachi glowered at the stack of papers she'd set before him today. Such were the vital duties of an Adept of the Fifth—his reward for smashing a so-called smuggling ring of pirates and rogue naval officers. Such morbid irony could only be savored.
Malachi valued no one's approval but his own, and he was ever his own harshest judge. The Caelia raid had been botched; badly. No matter that everyone else had ignored his blunder. The facts spoke for themselves. Peregrine had slipped the net again—this time for good—inciting a system-wide regulatory action in his wake.
The Adept's eyes rose from the reports to his adjutant's face, which still beamed behind her thin-framed glasses. “Thank you, Geara,” he said, his tone issuing a dismissal. The Archon departed in a swirl of black robes.
Alone in his sterile chambers within Ostrith's Guild house, Malachi browsed the reports and reflected on the perfect justice of his promotion. Remaining a Master Steersman with a field command would have been a lavish mercy compared to regulating Mithgar from his desk.
Regulation. Malachi invested the word with contempt. Never one for euphemisms, he saw the Brotherhood's conflict with the Mithgar Navy for what it was: a war. As in all wars, the victor had claimed the spoils. The Guild now clutched the First Sphere in its hands. A few navy ships had escaped to wage a scattered resistance. Yet here he languished; chained to a desk during a war he'd set in motion. His smarting pride reminded him of failure's price.
The field reports held nothing new. More enemy vessel sightings. Malachi had trained himself to immediately dismiss reports of capital ships. They had little hope of going to ground and would be dealt with in their turn. The smaller corvettes and frigates would spawn fresh outbreaks of piracy if left unchecked, and he spent all his considerable resources to prevent it.
By ten AM Ostrith Mean Time, every dispatch had been sorted and marked for the proper departments. Having performed his ritual obligations, Malachi started the work that occupied most of his day: thinking.
The subject to which he always returned, however hard he fought it, was the fate of Peregrine and his crew. The Gen's uncanny escape from his crowning blow made Malachi posit the existence of a fickle cosmic will bent on frustrating his every act.
In the end, the guildsman put no faith in higher beings. Yet the Bifron affair had made a lasting impact on his life. The seed planted at Caelia had taken root weeks later when reports of a monstrous black ship first crossed his desk.
The growing body of lore concerning the allegedly cursed vessel had begun with veterans of Bifron—both Steersmen and navy—and had since taken on a dubious life of its own. As purported sightings, tall tales, and figments had filtered into his hands, Malachi's interest had become an obsession.
He’d started a file on the popularly styled ship of the damned; kept not in his office, but at home. No two accounts quite agreed. Some saw a dread ferry come to take the bold and foolish to Elathan’s Hall or another of the Five Hidden Realms. Others whispered of Almeth Elocine’s return. Investigating these tales consumed the Adept’s free hours, but all amounted to misidentifications of known ships and celestial bodies, hearsay, or wishful thinking.
As he often had over the past few months, Malachi considered questioning the prisoner again. According to the little they'd gathered at Caelia, the man had been deeply involved in whatever uncouth business had transpired there. But interrogating him again would raise questions the Adept was unprepared to answer. Once again, Malachi resolved to take the hardest but often wisest course. He would wait.
The Gambler's Fallacy emerged from the ether at the edge of Temilian space. To Randolph’s relief, the transponder pulse was holding its position. Otherwise, his hobbled ship would never catch up to the signal's source.
“What's our position?” the captain asked his steersman.
“Six light hours beyond the orbit of the last planet and two light hours from the signal's point of origin,” she said.
“Can you see anything?”
“Negative.”
“Good,” Randolph said. “If we can't see them, they can't see us.”
“Orders, sir?” Dilar asked.
“Hold this position for now. We don't want to scare off whoever’s out there.” Randolph knew the absurdity of his statement. But he still commanded a dreadnaught, and his infamous quarry wouldn't wait to confirm his intentions before running—or fighting.
“Do you mean to let them make the first move?” Dilar asked.
“No,” the captain said. “We'll send our friends a message they can't ignore, provided they are who we think they are.”
A thin smile cut across the commander's dark, statuesque face. He bowed curtly and strode from the bridge at a purposeful clip.
Jaren stared out the bridge window into star-flecked blackness. The scarlet banners overhead flapped quietly in the currents of unseen air vents. Yet even the halcyon beauty of space couldn’t soothe Jaren’s divided heart. I went through hell to find my people, he thought, and they betrayed me. He pictured Avalon reduced to a hellish wasteland and felt a pang of guilt to judge the Light Gen worthy of it.
Still, the trip wasn’t a total loss. Jaren had left the Middle Stratum a fugitive. Now he’d returned in command of the Exodus. The black ship boasted enough power to engage an entire Guild fleet—at full strength. Still bearing minor but vexing damage and manned by a skeleton crew—which gained new meaning since some of them were dead—the ship was in no condition to challenge the Steersmen. Not with the Brotherhood's own monster lurking about.
The loss of cohesion among the crew was even more troubling. Due to Elena's plight and other outstanding grievances, the captain and his senior Steersman were barely speaking. Nakvin had dedicated herself to the exclusive care of Elena. Her daughter, Jaren reflected, though he had dou
bts about the girl's half-conscious revelation. If Nakvin had ever had a child, it was before she’d met Jaren, and Elena’s age made that scenario unlikely. The girl’s lapse into catatonia after confronting Fallon ruled out further questioning.
Jaren didn’t need to point out the dangers of flying about in a massive yet critically undermanned ship. A temporary retreat to a safer Stratum was discussed and even attempted, but to no avail. Perhaps the ship's less orthodox modes of travel required a combination of the right steersman and Elena’s aid. Moving between Strata had only been accomplished when Deim piloted and Elena suffered some sort of shock. Then again, Deim might’ve failed because he’s going crazy. Jaren thought. He suspected Vaun's hand in Deim's growing madness, but he feared to challenge the necromancer from a position of relative weakness.
Jaren winced as an obnoxious buzz entered his ear like a mosquito. He tried counting stars to keep his mind occupied elsewhere, and the diversion worked until the noise intensified into a grating feedback loop that had him biting his tongue to keep from crying out.
It’s probably no coincidence that Teg, Deim, and me started hearing this as soon as we got back, Jaren thought. The high-pitched whine came to all of them at once. It seldom lasted longer than ten minutes, but it occurred with greater frequency as time passed. Nakvin alone among the senior crew seemed immune.
Ordering the ship scoured from bow to stern had failed to reveal the source of Jaren’s torment. He’d learned that proximity to the hidden vault and its stone cubes magnified the pain, but he persisted in keeping the block holding his father's soul beside his bed.
Thank the gods for Eldrid, he thought. Though she’d balked at his offer to join him on the Middle Stratum, she’d adjusted to her new surroundings with graceful ease.
Nethereal (Soul Cycle Book 1) Page 35