Nethereal (Soul Cycle Book 1)

by Brian Niemeier

  “You did right to refuse Gelwin the tithe,” she’d told him more than once. That affirmation comforted Jaren when the cursed hum had conspired with his father's disembodied voice to keep him from sleep.

  Weary as he was, Jaren spent each waking moment racking his brain for a way to rally his crew, save his sanity, and wreak his vengeance on the Guild.

  “What’s that?” Jaren asked Deim as the noise mercifully faded. The steersman’s olive face looked as haggard as the captain felt.

  “I said there's a ship approaching from astern,” Deim snapped.

  “Give me a description.”

  Deim hesitated as though doubting what he saw. His voice softened when he said, “It's the Shibboleth.”

  53

  “You seem to have found my property,” Jaren said via ship-to-ship sending.

  “Interesting,” said a rich masculine voice on the Shibboleth's channel. “I was about to make the same observation.”

  He's Mithgar Navy, Jaren realized. That new wrinkle changed his plan. “I've already been through this,” he said. “The Exodus is my ship, and so is the Shibboleth. If you want to challenge either claim, you brought the wrong tool for the job.”

  The voice on the other end chuckled. “This isn't a challenge. It's a peace offering. We came here to talk.”

  “Suppose I just take what’s mine and jettison everyone aboard?”

  “That's your prerogative, Mr. Peregrine. Be aware that my friends may treat you in kind.”

  Jaren smiled. His debating partner was someone’s errand boy. The only discrepancy was the man's implied affiliation. If the navy wanted his attention, why hadn’t they sent a dozen dreadnaughts instead of an antiqued smuggling ship?

  The more Jaren thought about the situation, the less sense it made. He examined every angle, like a child turning a puzzle box over in his hands, but he couldn't see a catch. Who would send his own ship to lure him into a trap? It certainly wasn't the Guild’s style. He didn't think it was the navy either. Not officially. Only one option remained.

  Jaren squelched the Shibboleth's channel and opened a line to Teg. “Head for the hangar,” he said. “We might have company.” Then he resumed his dialogue with the other ship. “What's your name?”

  “Dilar,” came the reply, “Commander Ralt Dilar…”

  The man's speech pattern told Jaren that he'd been about to name his real ship before deciding to withhold it. “Feel free to come aboard,” he told Dilar; then he closed the channel.

  “Mithgar Navy,” Deim spat. “Say the word, and they’re vapor.”

  Jaren was shocked that the steersman who took such pride in the Shibboleth would offer to destroy his inheritance. “Stand down,” the captain said. “We'll at least hear them out before killing them.”

  Jaren sized up the guest seated across from him at the captain’s table. Dilar was tall, with almond skin and black, close-cropped hair. The grey uniform adorned with ribbons and rank insignia didn't convince Jaren of the man's military credentials; his manner did.

  “Before we begin, Mr. Peregrine,” Dilar said, “I'd like to extend my thanks for agreeing to meet under these circumstances.”

  “Captain Peregrine he is, sir,” Jastis corrected Dilar. The grizzled dead man, who’d shared Teg's escort detail with fellow Freeholder Trand, had taken conspicuous pride in Jaren's Avalon commission. “Has papers from the king, he does.”

  Dilar, who probably couldn't have named his last ancestor to live under a king, ignored the comment.

  “Whether you should thank me depends on what you say next,” Jaren said.

  Dilar began his tale without further preamble. “I am first officer of a vessel that was stationed at Caelia,” he said. “We attempted to repel the Guild raid.”

  “So you fought the monster,” Jaren said.

  Dilar nodded. “We were done for until your theatrics covered our escape.”

  Jaren's eyes widened. “How did you get clear?”

  The commander laid his elbows on the table and interlaced his fingers. “We flew into the debris cluster,” he said. “We knew that doing so would likely mean our deaths, but we also knew that death was certain if we stayed. The crossing seemed to take an eternity, though it lasted only minutes. Any longer, and we’d certainly have perished.”

  Jaren recognized the look in Dilar's eyes. It told him that those had been the most terrifying minutes of the man's life.

  “At first we were simply glad to have escaped,” Dilar said. “The full scope of our dilemma didn't sink in until we hobbled back toward Mithgar and met a group from the home fleet running in the opposite direction. We were lucky to meet them when we did, because we'd never have survived our approach to the planet. We regrouped with them and a few others at an uninhabited moon halfway to Keth. Only then did we find out what had happened.”

  Jaren had a question on the tip of his tongue, but Dilar continued before he could speak. “It was a tenfold realization of our worst fears. The Brotherhood had learned of the Bifron operation—not everything, but enough to justify what happened next. No diplomatic solution was attempted, and no warning was given. One minute everything was normal, and the next the home fleet was under attack by a Guild armada.”

  “And you felt like it was your fault,” Jaren guessed.

  “Our shame turned to anger when the Steersmen laid every regulatory sanction in the book on Mithgar, plus a few drawn up for the occasion. The Guild has usurped every government on the planet, and they show no sign of relinquishing power.”

  “How is the navy responding?” Jaren asked.

  Dilar leaned forward. “Most of our forces were disabled in the first wave. The Brotherhood pressured the courts to issue warrants on anyone who escaped. About half of the survivors went underground. The rest of us are mostly fighting alone. A few battle groups have formed here and there; then disbanded and reformed with new members. The resistance is still in its early, chaotic stages.”

  Jaren nodded, trying to conceal his discomfort as the ringing in his ears started again. “That's not unusual,” he managed to say. “It's only been a few weeks.”

  Behind Dilar, Teg winced. Jaren understood why. The hum had risen to agonizing intensity. Fortunately, the noise ended before Dilar’s stunned silence did.

  “Weeks?” the commander repeated. “The attack on Bifron was six months ago.”

  Jaren and Teg exchanged startled looks. Keeping time had been difficult without sun, moon, and stars; but their sojourn through hell couldn't have taken half a year!

  “What's the date?” Jaren asked. Dilar produced a palm-sized timepiece and handed it to him. He read and re-read the numbers on its crystal face, but they came up the same each time.

  Dilar’s face was only inches from Jaren's. “Now I have a question for you, captain,” he said. “Just where have you and your crew been?”

  Jaren thought that the balance of the discussion proceeded smoothly, thanks to his tactful silence regarding the Exodus' recent whereabouts. He told Dilar that experimental propulsion equipment had reacted with the Serapis’ suppression field, resulting in the Exodus being shunted to a far Stratum. Craighan had been killed in the process. Jaren handled the fate of the other naval personnel as delicately as possible, but Dilar obviously filled in most of the blanks himself.

  Jaren used Dilar's ignorance of the time difference between the Middle Stratum and the Nine Circles to his advantage, allowing the commander to form an image of tensions building over months. Still, he was amazed at how well Dilar took the news that his brother officers had met their deaths by execution in some forsaken corner of the cosmos.

  “I want to meet your captain,” Jaren said on the heels of that morbid revelation.

  Dilar arched an eyebrow. “Do you really think he trusts you enough?”

  “There’s plenty of mistrust to go around,” said Jaren, “but I think he’ll agree we should save it for the Guild.”

  Dilar left cordially, accepting the captured Courier in
trade for the Shibboleth. He promised to contact the Exodus soon to set up the next meeting.

  It had been a shaky start, but Jaren couldn't suppress his excitement. The original pirate resistance had ended at Ambassador's Island, but he took cruel satisfaction in knowing that the Steersmen had given rise to an even worse threat. The Exodus could do its fair share of damage alone. An outlaw navy with the black ship at its head would be invincible.

  Though he thought of the Freeholders as literally dead weight, Teg admitted that transporting rural passengers had fringe benefits. The aroma of roast chicken wafting from the tray he carried to Deim’s quarters numbered among those consolations.

  In honor of Dilar’s visit, the dead folk had slaughtered enough birds to provide meals for him and the vessel's living crew. Teg had eaten on the run, but he wasn’t alone in declining Jaren’s invitation to dine in the captain's mess. Nakvin took her supper at Elena's bedside, and Deim refused to leave his cabin, where he’d been spending every spare minute lately.

  Jaren had asked Teg to keep an eye on the increasingly strange young man. The swordarm soon noted Deim's habit of sneaking out of his room, leading him on midnight forays into the deepest reaches of the ship. He always lost his quarry in the dense maze of empty corridors, but he guessed at Deim's destination.

  Teg sauntered up to the steersman's door and knocked. He waited for about two minutes, listening to the monotone chanting that filtered into the hall. He thought at first that he’d caught the young zealot at prayer, but the meter and inflection of the muffled invocations seemed cold and harsh compared to his usual devotions.

  Teg took advantage of a break in the droning to knock again. This time, the door opened so quickly that he almost dropped his cargo.

  “Chicken,” Teg declared, lifting the cover to release a puff of nutty, savory steam.

  Deim stood in the doorway, stripped to the waist and unusually sallow, as the odor of incense overwhelmed that of his meal. His sunken eyes darted from Teg's face to the plate and back again, completing the cycle twice before he grabbed the dish with surprising speed and retreated again behind closed doors.

  Teg started to turn away, but intuition held him where he was. He stood listening at the door, expecting to hear only the sporadic tinkling of flatware, but within seconds, the eerie chanting started again.

  A number of troubling questions occurred to Teg. Why had Deim resumed his incantations so soon? Had he already finished eating? Teg doubted he had. Not even Mikelburg could have eaten a whole roasted chicken in thirty seconds. Was the steersman simply not hungry? If so, why had he snatched the poultry away so eagerly?

  Teg’s train of thought was interrupted by the damnable humming that had plagued him, Jaren, and Deim since their return from hell. The feedback only lasted a few seconds, but when it cleared he heard a startled shout from inside the cabin. Dispensing with tact, Teg defeated the lock and barged into Deim’s quarters.

  The main room was a shambles: furniture overturned; books and papers strewn everywhere. The cloying aroma of incense hung thick in the air and clung to every stitch of fabric. Deim wasn’t there, so Teg delved deeper. He found the steersman lurking in the head. Deim crouched with his tattooed back to the open door as he hovered over something on the deck—something with which he seemed to be wrestling.

  Teg peered over Deim's shoulder. The sight that met his eyes left him unsure of whether to laugh or scream. A chicken skeleton, minus the head and feet, stood under its own power upon the white tilework. The tiny carcass was moving—indeed, it doggedly fought the human jailor who strove to contain it inside the cramped room.

  Acting on a primal revulsion he couldn't quite explain, Teg grabbed Deim's shoulder and threw him backwards into the living room. He burst into the head and stomped on the reanimated chicken with all the force of his steel-shod boot. Teg felt a sickening crunch, and when he lifted his foot, the pitiful collection of bones lay still.

  Ragged laughter emanated from the living room, prompting Teg to regard its source with a cold, weighing look. Deim sat upon the trash-littered carpet, pointing at him. “I can make life from death,” he wheezed. “Do you understand? Life!”

  Teg grabbed Deim’s index finger. He pulled and twisted in one fluid motion that dislocated the digit in three places.

  Teg Cross had seen more in his time with Jaren’s crew than most men saw in their whole lives, and that had been before he'd gone to hell and back. But of all the oddities he'd witnessed, none had unnerved him more than the act he watched Deim perform then.

  The young steersman hadn't flinched at the violence done to him. Such a lack of response wasn't uncommon; especially among victims of psychological trauma, which Deim clearly was. Not so easily dismissed was the wicked gleam in his eyes as he held up the injured extremity—bent crooked as a Nesshin trader—and meticulously forced each bone back into place with an audible pop. The vicious grin never left the steersman's face as he quietly performed a procedure that often reduced hardened professionals to wailing children.

  As if on cue, the feedback loop sounded once more.

  Teg couldn't remember leaving Deim's quarters, but he was standing out in the hall when the noise subsided. He started back toward the captain's mess but decided against it. As far as Teg was concerned, nothing he'd just seen had ever happened. You can mind your own damned steersman, he thought as his hurrying feet sought the lounge with its spirits that no longer brought peace.

  54

  Jaren approached the infirmary as though entering a lion’s den. Nakvin had made the sick ward her private domain, devoting all her time to Elena’s care. He’d acquired a healthy fear of the Steersman’s anger during their long association. The strife between them was more volatile for remaining unspoken, and now he meant to break that silence for a reason that would surely gall her. So be it. He was captain of the Exodus. Nakvin was his best pilot, and he would order her as duty required.

  Jaren found Elena’s door open; the girl lying motionless in bed. He sensed at once that something was wrong. In his experience, a hospital room occupied by a gravely ill patient beeped, hissed, and whirred with life-sustaining machinery. Here, the quiet was deafening.

  He didn't see Nakvin at first, but as Jaren passed the threshold he glimpsed her standing against the left wall. Bathed in the shadows of the room, her white robes gave her a ghostly look. She faced the bed, yet stared at the ceiling. The woman wore such a desolate expression that Jaren almost forgot his wounded pride, but he stifled the urge to comfort her.

  “I'm taking the Shibboleth to meet Randolph,” he said. “I need you to fly it.”

  Nakvin closed her eyes and sighed. “Take Deim.”

  “We both know he can't be trusted,” Jaren said.

  “I don't want to do this anymore,” Nakvin said. “I don't care about the Guild or this ship. I just want everyone to leave us alone.”

  “You can't mean that,” said Jaren. “The Guild kept you like a prisoner for years, and they've hunted you every day since.”

  Nakvin gave Jaren a weary look. “Yes I can. There's pain enough in this sad, tired world. I won’t bring any more into it.”

  Jaren kept his face calm out of sheer will. He'd heard that parenthood changed people, but he never thought his closest ally would give in to such craven sentimentalism. “How can you be sure she's your daughter?”

  For an instant, the silver fire kindled in Nakvin's eyes again, but the spark quickly died, leaving her more haggard than before. “She told me.”

  Jaren swept his arm toward the bed. “You're basing this on her word? I’d have noticed if you were pregnant sixteen years ago.”

  “Would you?” Nakvin asked. “Base it on my word. Elena saved my life; all our lives. But the minute she needs your help, you disappear.”

  The accusation should have rolled off Jaren’s back, but it struck him like a slap to the face. “What can I do?” he asked.

  Nakvin sighed and moved to the bed. “I don't understand Elena's phys
iology. The Arcana Divines made her, so only Braun or Vernon can tell me what's wrong with her.”

  Jaren positioned himself across the bed from Nakvin. “Dilar said his ship was the only other one to escape Bifron. If that's true, then Vernon and Braun are either dead or in prison.”

  “Then ask Randolph what happened to them.”

  Jaren squeezed his eyes shut and hissed through clenched teeth. Instead of dispelling Nakvin’s hopeless fantasy, he’d only reinforced it. “Will you fly me to the meeting if I do?”

  Nakvin's desolate expression became a cautious smile. She knelt and clasped Elena’s pale hands in her own. “I’ll do anything to help her.”

  “We leave tomorrow at noon,” Jaren said on his way out.

  The dreadnaught resembled an oil refinery built atop a long grey box. Its stately bulk filled Jaren’s view as the Shibboleth approached the opening that split the huge vessel's bow like a grimace. Having received clearance to land from the spindly conning tower jutting upward from the stern, the privateer touched down inside the vast hangar.

  Jaren ordered Nakvin to stay with the Shibboleth while he and Trand disembarked. The young Freeholder had begged to join him, and Jaren had agreed out of necessity. Deim wasn’t fit for polite company, and Teg was needed on the Exodus to keep order.

  Dilar met the pirate and the dead man and gave them a brief tour of the Gambler's Fallacy. Repairs were still underway, making several sections off limits. Still, the dreadnaught was among the largest of ether-runners, and Jaren admitted himself impressed.

  The tour ended in the command level briefing room. Jaren noted that the constant sounds and scents of construction continued into the ship's higher decks. He wasn't surprised, considering the hammering that the Serapis had given the dreadnaught.

  “Gentleman,” Dilar said, gesturing toward a uniformed man seated at the conference table, “Allow me to introduce Captain Cly Randolph.”