Night Song (The Guild Wars Book 9)

by Mark Wandrey

  “Rei’Shin.” The smaller guard bared his neck again, tilting his head further back to demonstrate how little he wanted to push the matter. “There are standing orders from our captain that any Human is to be killed or captured on sight. They have been a most deadly enemy in this contract. For your honor, we will arrest rather than shoot.” He wrinkled his muzzle, likely scenting both the number of Humans he’d need to take in and the mood of the Zuul who’d come screaming through a missile field with them. “Confiscate their powered armor immediately, before they can don them!”

  Neither A’kef nor I’kik, were she here, could force the captain of the Gheshu to choose another path that might endanger her ship while they were under attack. Veska felt the unfairness of it, for the Humans, but the way of things was irrevocable. Only the Kal’Shin, or a Hosh, could make any difference before A’kef spoke to the captain.

  She took a moment to be grateful Rex wasn’t here. He didn’t yet know enough of their ways to know when to bow to authority. Rather exciting, in certain moments, though potentially disastrous in a situation like this.

  “Makori, attend the Humans.” A’kef turned back and bared his neck slightly to the Humans. Would they recognize the honor and the apology embedded within? “I can’t stop you from being arrested, but you will be treated as honored enemies, and no harm will come to you.”

  Tucker, the senior officer of the squad, floated closer, his face red in Human anger. “Is this Zuul honor?” he spat.

  “You will live, so yes,” Veska replied. She could see he was considering, looking back into the assault shuttle where his men had all manner of weapons within easy reach. “Please, accept the situation until I can understand what is happening,” she asked. Something in her manner got through to him. Maybe all the time he’d spent with the young raised in their midst? She wasn’t sure, but he nodded slowly.

  Veska pricked her ears forward, glaring at the guards outside the assault shuttle to ensure they were internalizing those words. She would not have to explain to Rex why something had befallen his human clan when Captain I’kik had promised them safety.

  “Makori will stay with you until I have spoken with the captain.” A’kef stood at attention, though he offered no apology—such would be inaccurate in this moment, as A’kef had done them no wrong, and would right the issue as soon as he could.

  “Rei’Shin,” Veska said, unbuckling her harness, and understanding swept through the Humans’ translators. “May I join you in speaking to the captain?”

  A’kef regarded her for a long moment, then nodded. That she shared blood with the captain meant little in a clan, but the captain had trained her when she’d been a loose-limbed pup, and that counted for something.

  She flattened her ears to any protest the Humans could make—they would do no one any good—and breathed herself to calmness as she fell into step behind A’kef. She also flicked her tail at Makori, emphasizing that she moved to command while he herded Humans—she’d never claimed to be perfect.

  * * *

  “The Humans remain in lockup until the contract is paid.” The captain spoke without turning around. “They have been impressive enemies, and I take no chances.” She stood tall, watching the controlled chaos of her crew, the graying of her white fur catching the light in threads of unexpected brightness.

  “The Humans who came with us are not part of the contract and no enemy of ours.”

  “Do you know Humans so well, A’kef? How did you come to have them infesting your ship? I don’t remember I’kik being fond of picking up strays.” She twisted an ear back as though they were in casual conversation, and not in the midst of a fight that had already disabled the Paku.

  “They lost a ship, as we had lost you—”

  “I am hardly lost,” she interjected dryly, gesturing to the display in front of them.

  “And as you seemed to have gone missing in similar parts of the galaxy—”

  Now she turned, jaw dropped and tongue lolling in evidence of humor, but ears flattened and eyes sharp. “You bring Humans onto my ship and claim them as allies, when they are the same mercenary group I have been engaged against all this time? And you assure me they are no enemy of mine?”

  A’kef snapped his mouth closed, and Veska tucked her muzzle down, twisting to reveal her neck before she could catch herself.

  “Captain Nillab, Ja-Insho’Ze, they are part of no contract. I swear on my honor. They and the other Humans have no stake in being our enemies. They sought only to find their clan.”

  “Humans are not Zuul, youngling. Their mercenary groups are held together by credits, not bonds.”

  “I have not seen that to be true with these, honored Captain.”

  “She is correct. Their leader is father to several of his squad, and many of the mercenaries who have come looking have family missing, or family on the Humans’ assault shuttle.” A’kef had regained his balance and stepped forward to bring himself in line with her.

  “No contract, but family ties.” The captain snapped her jaw, not quite mocking them. “It gets better with every word from your face, Rei’Shin.”

  “They’ve made such ties with Zuul,” Veska said, and was rewarded by the captain pivoting to face her.

  “What, in the small time they have traveled with you on the Paku?”

  “No, of course not.” Veska twitched her ears in rejection of the idea. “The leader the Rei’Shin mentioned, he has raised five Zuul.”

  “He did what?” The scoffing noise the captain made lifted the fur on the back of Veska’s neck.

  “It was a contract before I was born.” Veska looked at A’kef, but he only nodded for her to continue. The captain was listening to her far more closely than she had to A’kef. “An accident of some kind, and the Zuul on contract left the pups with the Human mercenaries while they completed the contract. He raised them.”

  “A litter of Human-ish Zuul are your surety of these Humans’ good behavior.” The captain stepped closer to her, one ear turned back to monitor her crew’s smartly ordered actions.

  “The clan they’ve made between them is. Sei Isgono believes in it.”

  “Of Cho’Hosh?” The captain’s voice sharpened so abruptly, Veska nearly bared her throat again.

  “Yes.”

  “What clan do these pups smell of?”

  “They…” Veska again looked to A’kef, who only waited. “None that I know, honored Captain.” Intoxicating, on Rex.

  “Describe it to me.” Her dark brown eyes bored into Veska’s own.

  “They smell of Ja, and they are Joat, Jaf, Jal.” With every word Veska spoke, the captain leaned closer. Her gaze made Veska long to howl, though she couldn’t have said why. “I do not know their clan.”

  “You wouldn’t.” The captain raised her scarred muzzle as though scenting for the Earth-Zuul herself. “No one has in too long.” She turned on A’kef. “They are Krif’Hosh?”

  “That’s what their Human father said, but he didn’t know the weight of what he spoke.”

  “It’s not something to cast into the wind until you are sure.” The captain nodded in understanding, and lightning shot through Veska at the import of the words.

  A Hosh had been lost, unheard of in all of Zuul history.

  But…had a Hosh been found? From Earth, of all places?

  Slowly, the captain’s lip curled back in a triumphant snarl. Her metal-coated canines glinted in the warm light of the Gheshu, and she seemed larger than Makori.

  “Krif’Hosh has been restored to us.”

  “By Humans,” A’kef said, flicking his ears.

  “That does complicate matters.”

  * * * * *

  Chapter 3

  Silent Night Phoenix Dropship, E’cop’k System

  “Ripley, Ripley, you okay?”

  She slowly opened her eyes and let a low growl escape her muzzle. Bloody carnival ride, she thought. The dropship was spinning on all three axes. “Yeah,” she said.

  “
About time,” Flop replied. “Half my board is dead. How’s your engineering panel?”

  “Huh?” she asked. There were more than a few globs of blood floating around in the cockpit. By the feel of her head, at least some was hers.

  “Wake up, Private!”

  The barking order in both command voice and Zuul snapped her fully back to awareness. “Yeah, yeah, I’m here.” She blinked hard and focused on the panels. “My panels look good, except tertiary hydraulics.”

  “Good to have you back,” he said. “Find the resets for RCS, panel #2.”

  “On it,” she said and found the panel. “All of them?”

  “Yeah, throw the master reset.”

  She’d noticed most of the normally colorful display boards were out, as well as all three of the glass cockpit displays, and the pathetic Tri-V. Focus was returning, so she reset the requested panel. A slew of displays came back alive, then everything went dark again. “Breakers popped,” she said.

  “I noticed,” Flop said. She could see over his shoulder as he took the slate on his thigh board and flipped pages back and forth.

  “You’re not using your pinplants?”

  “Pinlink fried,” he said. “Either feedback or a nuke too close.”

  “Nuke?” she said with alarm, looking for the cockpit dosimeter. The computer tracked radiation exposure, but it was out. Ships usually had a couple of old-school dosimeters in various places, just in case. She found it, and the little physical needle was still in the green, though elevated.

  “We’re fine on rads,” he said, “I checked when I came around.” He glanced out the cockpit and shook his head. “Like being inside a cement mixer.”

  Ripley looked up as well and gasped. They were in a constellation of debris, spinning wildly along with all the junk. Most of it was smaller than them. “What’s all this?”

  “Parts of Paku, mostly,” he said.

  “Was it destroyed?”

  “Don’t know, but I don’t think so. I do think we took part of the hull with us in our non-conventional departure. Found a power routing,” he said. “Okay, follow this series of resets.”

  She listened and repeated back each instruction before flipping the requested switch. Nothing happened until she was done and then reset the master switch again. Like before, everything lit up, but this time they stayed alive. “Excellent!” she said.

  “Piece of piss,” Flop replied. “Stabilizing.” A series of thumps announced the return to life of the RCS thrusters. In just a few seconds, the dropship was no longer spinning and was facing a tiny, greyish dot in the distance. That had to be the dwarf planet; it wasn’t moving.

  The awkwardly-placed cockpit hatch, which was behind and below Ripley, creaked open. When she looked down, her father’s head was there. “You two up here playing funny buggers?”

  “Does it look like we’re wanking off?” Ripley said, but her tongue lolled out and floated in happiness at seeing her father.

  “We got it in wraps,” Flop said.

  “Why are you out of your CASPer?” she asked him.

  “No room to move around,” he said. “Small air leak back there; we wrangled it into place. How’s the ship?”

  “A little more fucked up,” Flop said, “but amazingly, everything works.”

  Alan nodded and held out a data chip. “Got this from Captain I’kik before we went woop woop.” He released it, and it floated up to Ripley, who caught it. “Navigational data and such, everything the captain could give us on the system in a nutshell.”

  “Dardy!” Ripley said and slipped the chip into her own thigh board slate. The computer hadn’t been one of the systems to return. It wasn’t bad—the Phoenix was fly-by-wire—but those computers were separate and tough as nails. If they went down, you usually didn’t have enough ship left to fly.

  Flop had been finishing his systems checks while Ripley talked to Alan. Every so often there would be a bump, or something would move. He finished and said, “Starboard rear engine pod will only translate to 82 degrees. Gonna make landing vertical a right proper cockup. Hopefully there’s some flat ground so I can go STOL. Better strap in, Skipper. Good chance if there’s any bad folks about, they’ll notice a big chunka debris stopped spinning.”

  “What about the Zuul shuttles?”

  “I’m keeping radio silence for now. Don’t want to run up a flag. We can hear you in the rear, but we can’t transmit back.”

  “Figured it was something like that. Get us to that dwarf planet; likely anyone in charge will be there.”

  “Right you are, Skipper.” Alan left and dogged the hatch. “Your pop is a good leader, doesn’t try to micromanage.”

  Ripley nodded. She’d sipped some water from her gear and popped a couple analgesic tabs. Luckily the stuff that worked on Humans also worked on Zuul, or they’d have had a tough childhood. She’d also been using her thigh board slate to go through checklists to get some more sensors online. All they had now was close approach radar and a rear-mounted thermal camera. Not much to fly a spaceship with.

  “Any luck on the sensors?” Flop asked.

  “Not yet,” she said distractedly.

  “Well, we’re gonna need them.”

  She looked up, and he was pointing to the side. Three tiny little sparkles were moving against the junk and stars. “What are those?”

  “Drive plumes. The speed they’re moving, must be drones. Hope they’re strapped back in, because here we go.” He brought the engines back online and applied thrust. “Better get ready for a scrum, kid.”

  “Bloody hell,” Ripley said as she grabbed the tactical headset. Then something occurred to her. “Hey, Flop.”

  “What?”

  “How come I never knew you spoke Zuul?”

  Flop chuckled while Ripley cursed as she struggled with the tactical headset. It was, of course, made for a Human’s round head, not her more elongated one. Her nose and mouth were many centimeters further away from her eyes than her Human friends and family. Luckily, she’d quickly learned ways to adapt it to her use way back when she’d first sat in a Phoenix seat. Probably a good thing it wasn’t a Wasp; their tactical headgear was custom made for each pilot.

  She tore the Velcro strapping open with a ripping sound, removed the strap that held the headset at the bottom of a Human’s head, and relocated it under her jaw. She pulled the eyepiece as far to the side as it would go, and the microphone as far forward as it would reach. It still wasn’t close to the end of her muzzle, forcing her to talk out the side of her mouth, but it was better than roughly the base of her jaw, where a Human might wear it.

  “Any day now, little doggo,” Flop said, doing a couple of practice rolls. “Performance is all fucked to hell. Must have lost a couple thrusters, too.”

  “Tactical coming up,” she said and flipped a safety before stabbing the “All On” button, bringing the Phoenix tactical board to life. She adjusted the eyepiece and the laser projector aligned, painting a gunsight picture on her cornea. Another good thing, Human and Zuul eyes were nearly identical, with the exception of her better near-IR vision.

  The Phoenix was armed with a chin-mounted 30-mm five-barrel chain gun, two enclosed ordnance bays, and a pair of external hard points, which could mount just about everything from stores to bombs. In this case, one held a pod of five multi-role programmable missiles, and the other a variable laser pod. The latter was from their Wasp stores, and not really intended for the Phoenix. She’d have to fire it manually, where on the Wasp it would be mostly automated.

  The tactical radar was also independent of the Phoenix’s own radar, but was intended to take data to aid in targeting. She’d be forced to hold it by the hand. She found the joystick and rolled her engagement area to starboard, where the incoming bandits were. The gun and radar followed suit, immediately marking the targets.

  “Mark three bandits at zero-eight-nine,” she said. “Range 544 kilometers and closing.”

  “They’re practically on top of us,”
Flop said. “Must have been skulking in the debris field and went active when I powered up.”

  “Engaging,” she said, and targeted with the laser.

  “Tough shot at this range,” Flop said. “Sure you don’t want to use the interceptor missiles?”

  “Drones are crazy maneuverable,” she explained. “Even at 500 kilometers, the missiles will take half a minute to reach target. They’ll be evading by then.” She painted all three drones and selected target priority, flipped the safety cover off the joystick’s firing button, and stabbed fire.

  The laser pod, capable of several uses, ramped up to full power and loosed a stuttering 5-megawatt beam of coherent light. It took 1.8 milliseconds for the laser to reach its target, slicing the first drone neatly in two. It had also taken the engagement radar 3.6 milliseconds to get a clear return on target, and another 1.5 milliseconds for the computer to energize the laser and send it down range. So the total elapsed time from her pressing the fire button to impact was just about 7 milliseconds.

  The drones also picked up the radar, identified it as a threat, and began to respond. They weren’t as nimble as a collimated laser, but they did have powerful, though short-lived fusion engines. The logical response was to pour on the coal. The targeted laser knew this as well and compensated. The first drone was, in the terms of a weapons system, an easy kill.

  The second stream of laser pulses followed the predicted path of escape for the second designated target drone. It was off by half a meter. The second drone wasn’t cut in half, but one of its carefully balanced spinbooms was sliced off. Under 600 Gs of thrust, and completely unbalanced, the drone ate itself almost instantly.

  The third drone was engaged, but now it was off by five meters. The stream of laser pulses passed through empty space. Ripley cursed. She’d known the interceptor missiles could have gotten all three, but it was very unlikely. Most drones were good at evading missiles. That was part of why drones were so expensive. If the drones had known the dropship was there, the Phoenix would never have seen them coming. They would have come in from a light second out, closing at 50 kilometers a second, and killed them in one pass. As close as they were, the advantage was with the dropship. So she’d gone for a couple clean kills where the odds were best.