by Nick Webb
“Pike.” Walker’s voice was urgent.
“Uh-huh?” He couldn’t look away from the sight in front of him.
“The fleet over Earth is ... dead.”
That got his attention. “Wait, what?”
“They’re just ... everything stopped.” Her voice was incredulous. “I don’t know how to describe it. It’s like ... it’s like....”
The bottom dropped out of Pike’s stomach. He looked over at the girl, still summoning information out of the Telestine computer grid.
Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, it had been in front of them the whole time.
“Oh my god. It’s the Dawning,” he said quietly. “The girl. She’s the Dawning.”
Chapter Thirty-Six
Earth’s Moon
Telestine Military Outpost
“You’re kidding me.” But from the hollow awe in Walker’s voice, Pike knew that she didn’t doubt it.
“We have to get her out of here.” Pike reached out to haul her away from the computer grid and froze. He didn’t want to interrupt what she was doing. If the fleet came back to life, they were beyond screwed. “I am getting her out as soon as I can. Can we hitch a ride in any of the carriers? The shuttle should fit—”
“Check your ship for coordinates for a rendezvous. We’ll meet you there.” Walker sounded eminently satisfied. “Right now? We have a fleet to take out. They’re sitting ducks. We can’t pass this up.”
“Walker—”
“We don’t have time for this.” She cut him off brutally. There was a noise, and he heard her voice, distracted, as she snapped at someone else. “I don’t care if he says the sun’s exploding, I don’t trust him. Pike?”
“Yeah? Is Nhean trying to contact you?”
“Not important. He says we shouldn’t be doing this.”
“Why?”
“I have no idea. Look, there’s another fleet inbound behind this one, coming from the other side of Earth’s orbital space—the new fleet seems unaffected by whatever your girl did. We need to take these ships out before the other ones get here. It’s a shame she didn’t take them down, too, but maybe when they get in range....”
Something niggled at the corner of Pike’s mind, but he could make neither head nor tail of it. Something wrong, something that didn’t quite add up.…
“I’m getting her out of here.” He knew better than to try to talk Walker out of something when she was determined. The woman was as stubborn as an ass. “I’ll meet you at the rendezvous point.”
The line went dead without a response and Pike reached out hesitantly to tap the girl on the shoulder.
“Hello?”
She shook her head.
“Look, I’m sorry I didn’t realize what you were. We have to get you out of here, though. Walker’s fleet is going to destroy the Telestine ships.”
She looked around at that, smiling. Evidently, this had been what she was trying to do on her own. She took her hands off the computer grid.
“We have to leave now,” Pike explained. “Did you hear the conversation? No? There’s another fleet inbound, and it’s not disabled.”
He looked around them, down the hallway, waiting for Telestine soldiers to show up at any moment.
Except they didn’t. What the hell was going on? This was too easy.
The look she gave him was affronted. She turned back to the computer panel, searching the surface intently. She shook her head. Her lips were moving. Calculating? Praying? They were moving too fast for him to be sure.
Whatever she was looking for, she found it. Her fingers moved in a blur, and she looked over at Pike with a question.
“Walker. Any change on that second fleet?”
“What?” There was a pause. “No, nothing.”
“Right.” Pike shook his head at the girl.
She slammed her fist against the computer, clenched her hands in the hair at her temples. She paced, considering, trying to make sense of it all, and Pike’s own sense of wrongness grew.
And then, suddenly, she had the answer. He saw it hit her—her face changed from confusion to….
Horror?
She grabbed his hand and took off down the hallway with surprising speed, nearly hitting the wall of the cross corridor at the turn. They pounded toward the ship, Pike’s breath coming harsh.
Still, no one stopped them. The base seemed to be empty. They turned again, panting, out of breath, before finally bursting back out into the landing bay.
“You know,” he managed, “this would be a real good time for you to start talking!”
The look she gave him was anguished, and he wished he hadn’t said anything. She hauled him into the ship and punched her hand down on the seal. Up, up, up—her hands waved him up the stairs, toward the cockpit.
Whatever the girl had realized, it was bad, he knew. He had to warn Laura. “Walker.” He was holding the earpiece to his head as tightly as he could. “Walker, you have to get out of here.”
The girl nodded at him.
“We’re finally taking these bastards down. It’s like target practice out here.” Her voice was fierce. “Whatever this is, it can wait.”
“It can’t, get out of there!” He skidded into the cockpit to take a seat and did a double take as he stared over at the girl.
She was curled into the copilot’s seat, staring up in horror. Her hands were balled into fists, and there were tears in her eyes. Overhead, formations of black Telestine ships—not feathers, but the other kind—were streaking past on their way back to Earth, toward Walker’s fleet supposedly beating the shit out of the dormant Telestine military.
And he knew.
“Oh, my god. Walker, Walker, listen to me. It’s a trap.”
“What’s a—how do you know?”
“It’s a hunting trick.” He looked at the fleet in horror as he pounded the button for a dock release. “You put out a lure—a chunk of meat, a worm on a hook. And then when your target is distracted....” He looked up. “That’s when you shoot. They planned this. This was how they were going to get us.”
The girl was nodding her head furiously. There were tears running down her cheeks and her eyes closed.
“Hey.” Pike reached out to shake her. “There’s a reason you can’t do anything with these other Telestine ships, right? The dark ones?”
She nodded.
“But we have to get away from them.”
From the look she gave him, they weren’t going to make it.
“Stay with me.” Pike’s fingers tightened on her shoulder. “I am not dying here like an animal in a trap. We are getting out of here, you hear me? Give me anything. Where do I go when we undock?” If he could undock. The ship wasn’t releasing. He gunned the engines and yanked, and the ship came free of the docking port with a mighty screech—he hoped he hadn’t ripped a hole in the hull. Soon, they were pulling free of the Moon’s weak gravity and swinging back around the horizon. Earth rose slowly above it.
The rendezvous point was halfway in between. He gunned the engines up to the limit of the inertial dampeners, watching as the velocimeter rushed up to dizzying speeds.
She pulled herself together, looked around. Earth was above ahead of them, slightly to the left. If he peered closely enough, he thought he could just barely make out the fireworks of Walker having a field day with the dormant Telestine fleet.
“Pike!” Walker’s voice.
“What?”
“Do you know a man named Charlie Boyd?”
Charlie? How in the hell…. “He was with me on the mission. He died in the labs.”
Walker blew her breath out in a sigh. “So he’s legit. Turns out he didn’t die—and there’s a freighter coming out of orbit, Rebellion piloted. If you can make it to their cargo hold, they can get you out of here. Apparently they can burn to ten g’s for some reason—they must have stolen Telestine inertial dampeners. They’ll get you to Mercury.” Her words were suspicious.
“Mercury?” Of all the godforsak
en planets in all the systems in all the universe….
“I’ll explain later. Just get yourselves the hell out of there. And Pike?”
“Yeah?”
“You protect that girl at all costs. She’s the best weapon we’ve got right now. We’ve already destroyed nearly half their fleet because of her, and … I want to destroy the rest. Keep … her … alive.”
His throat closed. On the sensor display he watched the non-dormant Telestine ships—the black ones—advance on Walker’s fleet. “Will do. Good hunting.”
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Earth, Upper Atmosphere
EFS Intrepid
The silver Telestine carriers tumbled gently below. After the first shots tore through the fleet with silent explosions of debris on the video feeds, it felt almost cruel to keep shooting. The ships were defenseless. There were sentient lives aboard.
She had kept shooting.
The first volley was for her sister, dying of an infection in the darkened hospital wards of Johnson Station.
The second was for Pike’s sister—a little girl who’d been hunted down and killed, not because she interfered with anything the Telestines did, but simply because she’d been born and dared to live free.
The third volley was for Delaney’s twin, a boy lost in the initial bombardment sixty years ago.
She recited the names every night, knowing how many she was missing. She listened to the soldiers when they spoke. Every indignity, every slow death, every shadowed gaze. She remembered it all.
And yet, if Pike was right, even this tiny victory had been a lie, a trap.
If she got out of this alive, there were going to be no nukes. Nukes were too quick, even their tiny uranium-gun-style warheads. Nukes were a mercy.
She was going to make it hurt when she took Earth from the Telestines.
There would be blood.
“I want a full carrier frontal spread formation. Maximum offensive area. Take out as many sitting ducks as we can.” She kept her voice crisp. “And all ships, acknowledge: the Dawning is on that shuttle coming in from the moon. There is nothing more important than getting it safely to Mercury.” Flawed or not, working or not, that girl was the best chance they had of getting into the Telestine weapons systems again. And maybe all their other systems. As soon as they plugged her into the new Telestine black fleet, they’d have a fighting chance of taking down the rest of the Telestine grid and wiping the aliens off the map.
“Yes, ma’am,” said several officers at once.
The black ships streaking toward them were entirely different than the dormant carriers. There was no mistaking the sleek look of everything Telestines made, but where the powerless carriers and their fighters were a breathtaking gleaming silver, the ships presently breaking out of the atmosphere as well as rushing toward them from the moon were a heavy, light-grabbing obsidian black.
“Those incoming carriers look deadly, but if they’re anything like these silver feathers, we can take them.” Delaney murmured. “But who has two kinds of carriers?”
Walker didn’t bother answering him. “All batteries fire when ready, alternate ammunition against the sitting ducks and torpedo countermeasures against the incoming hostiles. Fighters stay out of the firing lines, but focus on the smaller gunships.”
She watched on the screen as the fighters swung wide. Larsen had coded anything not moving as a target; the first fleet was green and unmoving; the second, red, and steadily moving to intercept.
“I’ll bet you there was never even anyone on those ships,” Walker murmured.
“These aren’t salvaged carriers.” Delaney was shaking his head.
“So?”
The conversation was forgotten—everyone flinched as an enemy warhead hit one of the countermeasures.
“That … was nuclear.” King looked up in mute appeal, face turning an ashen white. When the screens flickered with the EMP, her fingers clenched into fists.
“Their missiles are guided, ma’am.” Larsen was pale. “We have to get out of here.”
“We can’t,” Walker said simply. “Launch more countermeasures if you have to, increase the ratio two to one. Train some mass-driver ammo at any warheads that make it past the countermeasures.”
The ship was shuddering as isolated rounds streaked through the cover of their fire and the countermeasures, but the hull was holding for now.
“Remember what we are.” Walker raised her voice. She looked around the room. “We are a shield. We knew when this began that we might have to give our lives for this effort. Today, we shield the Dawning—a woman who might be able to work with our new fleet at Mercury to end the Telestine occupation. It is our duty to stand between her and the fleet pursuing her.”
There was a murmur of assent from within the bridge.
“As soon as we have confirmation that the ship is away, we will get out of here,” Walker promised them.
The murmur of assent was a little more emphatic this time.
“Good.” She nodded. “Delaney. What were you saying about the fleet?”
“Ah….” Delaney’s eyes were locked on the booms and flashes on the hologram. He tore them away with an effort. “Right. Building a fleet this large is not a small matter. Assume no lives were lost. Well enough. But this is a big sacrifice for them. You don’t just throw away capital ships like this. Something … deeper is going on here.”
Now Walker understood what he had been trying to say, and her frown deepened. The yelling—communications officers shouting headings to gunnery sergeants, engineers calling desperate commands up to the bridge—faded as she concentrated.
Delaney was right. The Telestines always came for treaty violations at once, with no trial and no waiting. They’d come for the Exile Fleet at New Beginnings as soon as Pike was on the surface. There was no way they could have built this sacrificial fleet—the bait—between now and then, and why would they throw it up into the atmosphere as a con and then bring in a whole new fleet to attack the Rebellion, when they could have simply fired on the Exile Fleet as soon as it arrived? They were missing something.
“There’s always the possibility that they thought we were better armed than we are.” Walker’s mouth twisted in a bitter smile. “They didn’t think our whole fleet would be just this.” There was a certain delicious irony to that.
“I don’t like it,” was all Delaney said.
“Neither do I, but it’s what we have to work with.” Her eyes caught a flicker of movement on the screen: one of the Telestine carriers changing course. “Larsen, they’re trying to get around us. Set us on a collision course.”
Ensign Harris did a double take. “A collision course, ma’am?”
“Chicken. See if we can get them to blink. To pull off first. And tell gunnery to keep launching countermeasures ahead of us. We don’t want to get out of our own shield.”
Harris knew better than to object. “Yes, ma’am.”
“The human freighter coming off Earth reports that they’re closing on the shuttle,” said Larsen.
“Keep me updated.”
On the hologram display, the Intrepid tilted and began to climb out of the gravity well. They were putting on speed even as the Telestine carrier did. It was banking higher and higher, trying to get around them.
“Stay in their face,” Walker called to Ensign Harris at helm.
“Yes, ma’am.” Harris’s tone was glum. The Intrepid had been her ship since she first joined the Rebellion.
Walker looked away from the woman’s pained face. Too many years as a shadow military, never engaging with the enemy—that was why they had this reluctance.
With luck, she wouldn’t have to fight it much longer.
“Ma’am, shuttle has docked in the freighter, and they’re making for the L1 Lagrange hiding place.”
“Good. Larsen, wait for them to hit six g’s and then get us out of here. Everyone disengage—disengage!”
“Ma’am ... they’re disengaging.” Larse
n was punching buttons. He looked over at the hologram.
Everyone looked.
“Well … that’s … eerie,” Delaney murmured.
New red dots appeared on the hologram map.
“They’ve launched satellites!” Larsen’s call was sudden, sharp. “Hard to tell, but … it looks like a new defensive array is coming online, countdown timer indicates....”
“Get out of here. All ships, hard turn and accelerate. Tell the fighters to go, we’ll pick them up when we can. Go! Everybody move!”
Inertia mashed them sideways and down as Harris obliged, pushing the Intrepid to the edge of her inertial dampeners. Walker hung on grimly, and tried piecing the puzzle together. A dead fleet as bait, another fleet engaging and disengaging, launching new satellites, a weaponized human girl that didn’t entirely work....
Not one single piece of this made any sense.
“Ma’am.” Larsen had struggled his way to her side. “Call for you. I think you’ll want to take this.”
With deep misgiving, Walker picked up the earpiece. “Yes?”
“You’ve touched off a civil war.” The voice was male. Light, but grim and emphatic.
“Who is this?”
“Your contact. Surely you didn’t think I’d keep using a voice scrambler now that you knew who I was.” There was annoyance there. “If you had listened to me, I could have kept you from doing this.”
“Doing what?”
“Come to Venus; I’ll explain there. I’m sending coordinates.”
The line went dead.
You’ve touched off a civil war. The words repeated over and over in her mind.
That wasn’t a bait fleet. That girl with Pike was … not the Dawning.
And whatever factional divisions existed among the Telestines, Walker had just chosen a side. And done its dirty work.