by Timothy Zahn
But there it was. And with that, everything had gone to hell.
“Glad to hear it,” she murmured. “Thank you. Come on, everyone.”
She turned and headed back toward the heat-transfer ducts and the Wisps waiting for them there, Jeff and Kahkitah on either side. “What’s wrong?” Jeff murmured. “Nicole?”
“I don’t understand,” Kahkitah added, his birdsongs sounding confused.
“Later,” Nicole said. The numbness was gone, replaced by a swirling despair that threatened to strangle the breath and the hope out of her. “We need to find someplace private.”
* * *
Ultimately, there was only one place she could think of.
The image of Bennett’s face that had been floating over his marker earlier had disappeared, though Nicole knew that a touch on the pillar would bring it back. But she had no interest in reminding herself of her past failures.
“Why here?” Jeff asked quietly.
“This is like the Fyrantha’s basement,” Nicole said. “It’s the only place where I specifically called for the Caretaker and didn’t get an answer. I’m hoping that means he can’t listen in on us here.”
“Is Ushkai now our enemy?” Kahkitah asked.
“He’s not Ushkai,” Nicole said with a tired sigh. “The hologram—maybe that whole section of the ship—has been taken over by the Shipmasters.”
“How do you know?” Jeff asked.
Nicole looked closely at him. But there was no doubt or skepticism in his face or voice. He wasn’t disagreeing or distrusting her, but simply asking for her reasoning. “A couple of things,” she told him. “First of all, he started talking about the Number One Section and seemed surprised that I called it Q1. But he’s the one who told me to call it Q1.”
“Could he have forgotten?” Kahkitah asked.
“He’s part of a computer,” Jeff reminded him. “If computers start forgetting things you’re already in trouble. Anything else?”
“Yes: the Wisps,” Nicole said. “I suggested they were afraid to go into other sections of the ship, and he agreed. But that wasn’t true. The Wisps I brought from Q2 to Q1 said they couldn’t see anything past the corridor by the heat duct. But they never said anything about being afraid to go there.”
“Could he have misunderstood?” Jeff asked.
“Maybe,” Nicole said. “But here’s the big one. Did you ever let Allyce get within range of the Oracle part of the Q1 arena hive? Or could anyone else have mentioned our Setting Sun plan where the Shipmasters could hear?”
“No,” Jeff said. “I was very careful about that.”
“And the paintball work was all done under tree cover where they couldn’t see from their observation balcony?”
“Every bit of it.”
“I’d have heard if they’d come within view through the trees,” Kahkitah added.
“You and your spies?”
Jeff frowned. “His what?” he asked, frowning at Kahkitah.
“We’ll get to that in a minute,” Nicole said. “So there should have been no way they would know about the plan. Yet they had those Koffren all ready to go before we even reached the deadline for our battle. That means they must have known for at least a while. How did they find out?”
“The Caretaker said the Shipmasters could hear most of the ship,” Kahkitah pointed out.
“No,” Nicole said. “When I first met the Caretaker he said the Shipmasters controlled very little of the ship. I think whoever was speaking through the Ushkai hologram just now guessed where I was going with my questions and had to pretend they could see everything.”
Kahkitah gave a startled-sounding whistle. “You obtained the formula from him,” he said. “If he was under their control, then they knew.”
“Or if he wasn’t completely under their control, they could at least listen in.” Nicole hissed out a curse. “I’ve had the feeling ever since that meeting that there was something odd about him. I thought maybe there was some question he wanted me to ask, but now I’m thinking we were watching a battle between his control and the Shipmasters’.”
“Maybe it was both,” Jeff said thoughtfully. “Maybe he wanted you to ask if he was still free and independent.”
“Which suggests he might not have been fully under their control?” Kahkitah asked.
“Or maybe it isn’t that way even now,” Jeff agreed.
“None of which matters,” Nicole said. “The point is that if they can hear what we say to him, he’s useless. We can’t get information, and we certainly can’t ask him to do anything for us.”
“But how could this happen?” Kahkitah asked, sounding puzzled.
“We’ve made a lot of repairs in Q4,” Jeff said, rubbing his cheek thoughtfully. “Maybe some of that work got those two parts of the ship hooked up together again.”
“Which brings us to you,” Nicole said, looking at Kahkitah. “You and the rest of the Ghorfs.”
“The spies you mentioned a minute ago?” Jeff asked.
Nicole nodded. “We can start with Wesowee. He wasn’t really lost down in the Q4 basement, was he? He and others were searching for me. At your orders?”
“I give no orders to anyone,” Kahkitah said, his birdsong sounding studiously neutral.
“You’re splitting hairs,” Nicole said. “Okay, so maybe all you do is send a message and alert and someone else gives the actual orders. But then there was the whole Setting Sun thing. I wondered how you were able to collect the ingredients all by yourself while I was sleeping. But you didn’t, did you? You called in your buddies to help.”
“There was need,” Kahkitah said. “And you are the Fyrantha’s Protector.”
“And suddenly a whole bunch of other things make sense,” Jeff murmured. “Big, dumb, happy Ghorfs … only sometimes you have these flashes of insight or observation or deduction. Who are you, anyway?”
Kahkitah lifted his hands. “We are merely the Ghorfs—”
“No,” Nicole cut him off. “No more. Everything has changed, Kahkitah. We’re in for the fight of our lives, and we have to know where everyone stands.”
For a moment Kahkitah gazed at her. Then, he nodded. “We are an army,” he said, his birdsongs suddenly hard and cold and confident.
Nicole felt herself straighten up. “An army?”
“A small one only,” Kahkitah said. “And largely self-taught, with the guidance of those few who’d seen military service before being brought to the Fyrantha.”
“And your mission?” Jeff asked.
“To survive,” Kahkitah said. “To endure, and to watch, and to prepare. And, ultimately, to return home.”
“And your communication system?” Nicole asked.
“Our daily duties are to different work groups, as you know,” Kahkitah said. “But we’ve developed a private communication system that runs throughout the ship.”
“Something the Shipmasters can’t tap into?” Jeff asked.
“We believe so,” Kahkitah said. “We’ve been able to isolate it from the rest of the Fyrantha’s systems.”
“Really,” Jeff said. “That’s very interesting.”
“Why?” Nicole asked.
“Because whenever Bungie sabotaged things, the Fyrantha always told you about it so that we could fix it,” Jeff said. “If the Ghorfs isolated some system that’s supposed to connect to something else, the ship should have noticed and told someone to fix it.”
“Unless it didn’t want it fixed,” Nicole said.
“Why would it do that?” Kahkitah asked.
Nicole took a deep breath. “Because I think that, on some level, the Fyrantha’s on our side.”
“Against the Shipmasters?”
“Yes,” Nicole said. “I can’t help thinking about what Ushkai told me before, that the ship set things up so that only humans can fix it. Why do that?”
“Because it’s comfortable with us?”
“No,” Nicole said, a shiver running through her. “Because of
the other lie Ushkai told just now. The one that convinced me that the Shipmasters were controlling him. Remember I asked him if Earth was safe?”
“He said it was,” Kahkitah said.
“He lied,” Nicole said. “I saw it in the arena. But I didn’t realize what I’d done until everything was all over and it was too late to fix it.”
“What did we do wrong?” Jeff asked.
Nicole closed her eyes. “The Shipmasters are looking for slaves to run ahead of armies,” she said. “Slaves that can fight, or at least cost the enemy ammunition while they die.”
“But you didn’t show that you could fight,” Kahkitah said.
“No,” Nicole said. “We showed we can get others to fight for us.”
For a long moment no one spoke. “We don’t just run and die,” Jeff said at last. “We motivate. We persuade.”
“You lead,” Kahkitah said quietly.
“We lead,” Nicole agreed, wincing. “That’s got to be at least as valuable to the people the Shipmasters deal with.”
“Or more so,” Jeff said. “That changes things, doesn’t it?”
“Yes,” Nicole said. “It means we’re running on borrowed time. I don’t know how much the Shipmasters know about Earth, but I get the feeling it’s not very much.”
“Oh, they don’t know squat,” Jeff said with a snort. “Five minutes looking through a newspaper would have proven how violent we were. In fact, I doubt they even know where Earth is.”
“Yet they send the Wisps to bring more of you,” Kahkitah reminded him.
“They don’t send the Wisps—the Fyrantha does,” Jeff said. “As long as the ship has the coordinates it can send the Wisps to pick up new people more or less automatically.”
“Maybe,” Nicole said. “But even if that’s the case, it won’t last much longer. Now that they know Earth is worth something they’ll start looking, and sooner or later they’ll find it. We can’t let that happen.”
“So we stop it,” Jeff said. “You, me, the Ghorfs, and maybe a few others. We stop it, and we stop them.”
Nicole took a deep breath. This was happening way too fast.
Or maybe it wasn’t. Maybe she’d known this day was coming from the moment Ushkai first declared her to be the Fyrantha’s Protector. This day, and this decision.
The word the Fyrantha’s translator used for protector, he’d told her then, had two shades of meaning. There was Protector against danger from within, and Protector against danger from without.
Caretaker … and Warrior.
She gazed over the rows and rows of memorial pillars. Men and women who’d died so that the Shipmasters could once again turn the Fyrantha into a warship.
“Yes,” she said. “It’s time to fight back against the Shipmasters.
“It’s time to take over the Fyrantha.”
BOOKS BY TIMOTHY ZAHN
DRAGONBACK SERIES
Dragon and Thief*
Dragon and Soldier*
Dragon and Slave*
Dragon and Herdsman*
Dragon and Judge*
Dragon and Liberator*
QUADRAIL SERIES
Night Train to Rigel*
The Third Lynx*
Odd Girl Out*
The Domino Pattern*
Judgment at Proteus*
STAR WARS® NOVELS
Heir to the Empire
Dark Force Rising
The Last Command
Specter of the Past
Vision of the Future
Survivor’s Quest
Outbound Flight
Allegiance
Choices of One
Scoundrels
Thrawn
Thrawn: Alliances
Fool’s Bargin
COBRA WAR SERIES
Cobra
Cobra Strike
Cobra Bargain
Cobra Alliance
Cobra Guardian
Cobra Gamble
Cobra Slave
Cobra Outlaw
Cobra Traitor
Cobras Two (omnibus)
Cobra Trilogy (omnibus)
The Blackcollar
Blackcollar: The Judas Solution
A Coming of Age
Spinneret
Cascade Point and Other Stories
The Backlash Mission
Triplet
Time Bomb and Zahndry Others
Deadman Switch
Warhorse
Conquerors’ Pride
Conquerors’ Heritage
Conquerors’ Legacy
The Icarus Hunt
Soulminder
Cloak
Angelmass*
Manta’s Gift*
The Green and the Gray*
SIBYL’S WAR
Pawn*
Knight*
*A Tor Book
about the author
TIMOTHY ZAHN is the Hugo Award–winning author of more than thirty science fiction novels, including Night Train to Rigel, The Third Lynx, Odd Girl Out, and the Dragonback sextet. He has also written the all-time bestselling Star Wars spin-off novel, Heir to the Empire, and other Star Wars novels, including the recent Thrawn. He lives in coastal Oregon. You can sign up for email updates here.
Thank you for buying this
Tom Doherty Associates ebook.
To receive special offers, bonus content,
and info on new releases and other great reads,
sign up for our newsletters.
Or visit us online at
us.macmillan.com/newslettersignup
For email updates on the author, click here.
contents
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Books by Timothy Zahn
About the Author
Copyright
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
KNIGHT
Copyright © 2019 by Timothy Zahn
All rights reserved.
Cover art by Stephen Youll
A Tor Book
Published by Tom Doherty Associates
175 Fifth Avenue
New York, NY 10010
www.tor-forge.com
Tor® is a registered trademark of Macmillan Publishing Group, LLC.
The Libary of Congress has cataloged the print edition as follows:
Names: Zahn, Timothy, author.
Title: Knight / Timothy Zahn.
Description: First edition.|New York, NY: Tom Doherty Associates, 2019.|“A Tor Book.”
Identifiers: LCCN 2018047502|ISBN 9780765329677 (hardcover)|ISBN 9781429946551 (ebook)
Subjects:|GSAFD: Science fiction.
Classification: LCC PS3576.A33 K58 2019|DDC 813/.54—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018047502
eISBN 9781429946551
Our ebooks may be purchased in bulk for promotional, educational, or business use. Please contact the Macmillan Corporate and Premium Sales Department at 1-800-221-7945, extension 5442, or by email at [email protected].
First Edition: April 2019
for reading books on Archive.