by Rhonda Mason
Luliana cursed when the ship glanced off one of the wrecks, sending it spinning into a nearby rock. The shields held but the ship wasn’t happy.
::It’s the Mine Field:: Corinth said. He must have projected his mind voice to everyone because Tia’tan and Joffar shared a look that Vayne couldn’t interpret. Confirmation? Guilt? ::We have to stop moving!:: This time Corinth shouted so loud that Vayne winced.
“I do that and we’ll get pulverized,” Luliana said. “This field has its own motion.”
::You’ll bring the rooks down on us!::
Tia’tan’s gaze sharpened on Corinth with interest and Vayne knew. Coming to this Mine Field was no accident.
“You’ve been here before? What do you know about the rooks?” Tia’tan asked.
::Almost nothing. We skirted too close to the field on our way from Altair Tri to Falanar and got pulled in. The rooks nearly destroyed us. Did destroy at least one of the ships lurking in the field when we arrived. Tore it to shreds.::
Vayne growled and struck out at Tia’tan with his psi powers. He wrapped a tendril of force around her throat, squeezed hard enough to lift her off her feet and shook her slightly. “What have you done? You promised to bring us to safety.” The walls of the bridge crowded closer, tighter. She’d tricked him, trapped him…
Tia’tan choked and struggled, her eyes huge in her face. Another psionic sliced through his hold and she dropped to her feet, one hand at her throat. She stared at him as if seeing him for the first time, as if she hadn’t imagined him capable of violence.
She had no idea what he was capable of, what he’d done—especially when someone lied to him, manipulated him. His hands curled into fists. “Get us out of here. Now.” Psi power and rage thrummed through him, urging him to strike out at someone, anyone.
All of the Ilmenans raised their shields, including Luliana, who was plotting a nimble dance through the looming debris using the GUI in her headset.
“No,” Tia’tan said. She regained her composure and squared her shoulders. “This is too important.” She called to Joffar without taking her eyes off Vayne, as if by staring at him she could keep him back, hold him in place. “Any sign of the Radiant?”
“Nothing. No distress call, no life pods, no central core homing beacon.”
“You’re here about a ship?” Vayne laughed without humor, sweeping his arm in the direction of the viewport. “Look outside. I think it’s safe to say they didn’t survive this place.”
::We won’t survive if you don’t stop the ship:: Corinth added. ::Movement draws the rooks.:: He stepped beside Vayne, standing shoulder to shoulder, facing off with Tia’tan. Shielding emotions was still a challenge for Corinth, and behind the earnestness the boy projected, a tide of fear lurked.
“Stop the ship,” Vayne ordered. He barely resisted marching to Luliana’s chair and making his point more forcibly. “Whatever these ‘rooks’ are, Corinth clearly knows more than you. Do what he says.”
Noar flipped through screens at the navigation console. “There’s a large asteroid, er, whatever, at seventy-two, negative one hundred thirty, two hundred one that seems to have a fairly stable path.”
“I see it,” Luliana called. “I can shadow its movements, stick close. Maybe we can blend in as part of the debris’ typical motion.” She suited actions to words, taking them through some tricky flying before finding a more stable path beside the gigantic hunk of rock. “This is the best I can do, without having somewhere to land.”
Tia’tan finally drew her gaze from Vayne long enough to look at Corinth. “Will that do?”
The boy’s fear eased somewhat, at least enough that Vayne no longer thought it might bleed into his own mind. ::Slightly better. We need to get out of here.::
“First we need to get our bearings.” Tia’tan stepped over to Noar’s station without ever turning her back on them. “How big is the Mine Field,” she asked Noar, “and what’s our relative position within it?”
Noar summoned a 3D display of their immediate surroundings that hovered above his console. He zoomed out. The image got twitchy after a certain point, the coordinate axes warping, the scene bending and folding on itself. Noar zoomed back in then tried again, with the same results. The space around the ship mapped accurately in close scale. The greater the area he tried to map, though, the more indistinct, garbled and eventually nonexistent the image became.
“Navigation sensors damaged in the initial impact?” Tia’tan asked.
Joffar replied from his console. “I’m looking at the diagnostic report now—none of the sensors took damage. The hyperstream drive is a different matter altogether,” he added morosely.
“Reboot the sensor array,” Tia’tan told Noar. “The Radiant is here somewhere, we have to find them.”
::They wouldn’t have survived the rooks.:: Corinth said, gaze flipping from viewscreen to viewscreen, searching for danger.
“You did,” Tia’tan answered. “And the Radiant is far more advanced than any imperial vessel.” Her voice vibrated with tension. “They’ll be here.”
The sensor array came back online. When Noar tried to view a larger picture of where they were in the field the results were the same—impenetrable interference.
“We’ve got movement,” Luliana said. The left viewscreen zoomed in, picking out a shape that resembled a massive mechanical squid. Its black metallic body had blue lights dancing along its many flexible limbs and sparkling in greater concentration across its head. As Vayne watched, the ship—creature?—blinked out of existence, dropping out of sight and off sensors, only to appear again hundreds of kilometers closer. It seemed to curl around the fractured bow of a fuel tanker, limbs undulating, moving slowly, then it blinked again and appeared even closer, skulking in the cover of another asteroid.
“What the void is that?” Vayne asked. “Some kind of ship?” It moved more like a curious animal come to investigate a disturbance in its habitat, dancing between cover as it approached. The proximity alert went off as Luliana nudged them even closer to the rock they shadowed.
“Maybe they don’t see us.” Noar pulled his fascinated gaze from the viewscreen and checked the sensor display again.
Corinth shook his head, his mind voice pitched higher. ::It—they—know we’re here.::
The ship fell to silence as they watched the rook approach.
Vayne jumped when Luliana called, “We’ve got another one, approaching from the other side.” She put the image on the opposite viewscreen. This one was even larger than the first, dozens of times larger than the Ilmenans’ ship. “And a third, dead ahead.”
Shit.
The rooks circled, their trailing limbs tracing delicate patterns as they swam through space. They blinked in and out, traveling incredible distances in a second. Coming ever closer.
“We have to move,” Tia’tan said.
::No!:: Corinth took a step toward her.
“We can’t sit here like prey and wait for them to destroy us.”
::They’re attracted to movement.::
“What about energy signatures?” Tia’tan asked. “IR sensors? Who’s to say they can’t see us even now, no matter how still we are?”
::Maybe the Mine Field messes with those.::
Tia’tan shook her head. “I won’t gamble on that. Luliana, plot a course through the debris.”
“Which direction, though?” Luliana asked.
“Away from the rooks, with all possible speed.”
“You could be taking us farther into the field,” Vayne argued. “You don’t even know what the frutt you’re doing.”
Tia’tan gave him an imperious stare. “This discussion is over. Luliana—do it.” Tia’tan strengthened her telekinetic shields as she said it, shifting her feet slightly to give herself a more balanced stance, should he come at her again. Noar and Joffar said nothing as Luliana broke away from their hiding place and darted into the open.
The movement galvanized the rooks. They left off their circlin
g motions and came on, full speed, alternating blink-jumps with sharp zigzags, expertly navigating the debris field.
“They’re gaining,” Noar said, eyes fixed on the navigation console, and Joffar moved to the tactical station.
Tia’tan finally broke off her stare, apparently convinced Vayne wasn’t about to lash out. He wanted to. Everything in him revolted at the idea of leaving the fate of his newly regained freedom in someone else’s hands, and he had the irrational urge to strike out, as if that would help.
Luliana dove the ship straight down and the rooks gave chase. They came on faster than Luliana could maneuver.
Tia’tan’s voice cracked the silence. “Frag missiles. Hit the smallest one.”
“The targeting sensors are scrambled, and the lock drops every time the rooks blink out,” Joffar said, his fingers skimming over the tactical controls.
“Do what you can.”
The missiles launched, bursts of light that streaked toward the smallest of the rooks. Two missiles veered, clearly off target, and exploded against the wreck of a starcruiser, while another missile’s trajectory sent it impacting a jagged hunk of rock. The last missile flew true and hit the rook across the crown in a brilliant flash.
“They don’t have shields?” Vayne asked. In that case, the frag missile should have torn a massive hole in their hull. Or skin. Or armor, or whatever it was. Instead the rook seemed undamaged, and nothing in its movements changed. If the rook had any idea it had been blasted with a devastating payload, it didn’t show.
“Again,” Tia’tan said. “A full spread.”
Luliana tracked a crazy, spiraling course through the debris, cat-and-mousing her way across the field as Joffar tried to fix missile targets and the rooks grew ever closer. Joffar hissed in dissatisfaction, then finally launched the full spread of frag missiles.
They lost more than half of the missiles to careening debris. Joffar punched in course corrections as the remaining missiles flew, fighting against the field’s sensor disturbance to keep them on target. Three exploded across the rook’s crown in rapid succession, and the last two sailed through open space as the rook blinked out of existence.
Gone?
Vayne held his breath a heartbeat. Two. Then the rook reappeared, closer than ever and undamaged. The other two rooks caught up and were zigzagging a path that swept them out to the side of the Sicerro.
“I think they’re herding us,” Noar said from the nav station. From the looks of things, Luliana’s trajectory, initially as straight and short-lined as possible, was beginning to show a curve to the right in an effort to keep her distance from the rooks.
Tia’tan snapped out an order. “Prep the plasma cannon.”
“In this debris field? We’d be lucky to get a shot anywhere near one of them,” Joffar answered.
“Short bursts.”
Joffar nodded, already initializing the cannon. The ship cut too close to a rock fragment the size of a tiny moon and Luliana couldn’t get them out of the way of a ruined shuttle beyond it as they zipped around its curve, hitting the shield hard over the wing. Luliana looked too focused to curse, but the ship’s warning about weakened shield integrity had the same effect.
The plasma cannon let loose a belch of white-hot material in a stream. It shot a hole straight through a decrepit pleasure barge and scorched a streak of molten fire along the smallest rook’s side. The thing reared up like an injured animal and halted in place. Its tentacle arms flared out, two sliding over the plasma scar as if probing for damage. An eerie blue light built in the ends of each tentacle pulsed ominously as the rook swished back and forth in place.
“Now we’ve pissed it off,” Vayne said. The tentacle tips of the other two rooks began to glow with a matching blue light. “Correction, we’ve pissed them all off.” Blue lights shimmered down each arm, the pattern increasing in speed. Joffar fired several more bolts of plasma that the smallest rook easily dodged even as it retreated, then blinked out of sight for good.
One down? Vayne could only hope.
“Focus on the closer ones,” Tia’tan said, at the same time Luliana said, “They’re definitely herding us somewhere.”
“Not toward something, away from something,” Noar said. He expanded the 3D nav display as far as it would go. Along one side the dots representing debris disappeared in a well-defined curve, leaving blank space beyond. “It’s the edge of the field.”
“I’m trying to get there, they keep heading me off.”
“Designing a firing solution to give us some room,” Joffar said. A shot of plasma lanced into the side of the closest rook and it reacted with a flaring of tentacles. It blinked out of existence then reappeared right below them. One of the arms lashed out, striking straight toward the belly of the ship. Everyone not seated in the cabin was thrown as the tentacle speared through the shields with enough force to send the ship into a spin.
How the frutt?
Luliana struggled to right the ship and Tia’tan climbed to her feet. “Get us out of the field, then we’ll have enough running room to open a hyperstream window out of here.”
“No good,” Noar said. “That shot took out the hyperstream drive, and one of our sub-light drives is leaking fuel. If we get out into the open, we’ll be sitting ducks without the debris for cover.”
Joffar shot a round of plasma into the rook and it blinked out, dropping back. The other rook backed off as well.
“We can’t keep running,” Luliana said.
Joffar shook his head. “We can’t make a stand—the cannon doesn’t have enough juice to take out two of these things, never mind if the third one returns.”
“We need to hide,” Vayne said, hurrying to the nav console. “There, what’s that, a freighter?” Noar zoomed in. Looked like a mostly intact long-haul freighter, with row after row of open bay doors. “If we can disguise our movements long enough, we can slip into one of those bays and cut the power. We’ll cool right down off the IR scans, disappear from electronic grids, and our mass will blend in with that of the freighter.”
“And how are we supposed to shake the rooks long enough to duck into the bay unseen?” Tia’tan asked.
“Fake a crash,” Vayne said. “Fly us right by a rock, then unload all of the frag missiles at it in the same spot, simulating us hitting the rock and exploding.”
“That’s a terrible plan,” Tia’tan said.
She wasn’t wrong. But what else would work?
Tia’tan had five seconds to consider before a bolt of green energy so bright it left an after-image on the viewscreens streaked across their bow and blew the nearest rook into a million pieces.
Holy shit.
“It came from beyond the field,” Noar called, and Tia’tan nodded at Joffar.
“Do it,” she said. Luliana skimmed them by the closest piece of debris and Joffar launched the frag missiles in their wake. The remaining rook halted as the decoy payload exploded.
“Luliana—get us to that damn freighter,” Tia’tan said.
They slipped into a bay, clamped themselves to the floor and immediately shut down everything, leaving them blind and breathing shallow as the viewscreens blanked and the air circulation cut out. Tia’tan slid the viewscreen aside to reveal the actual glass at the front of the ship and a view out into the field. They didn’t need the magnification powers of the viewscreen to see the rook as it glided slowly by, blue lights shimmering beneath its ebony “skin,” the bow turning this way and that as if scenting.
Vayne stood frozen in place, unable to even twitch as the gigantic rook slid slowly by. Another bolt of green energy flew past, missing the rook by mere meters. The rook blinked out of existence. Three more shots followed in rapid fire, then… nothing.
::Now what?:: Corinth asked.
Now what indeed.
8
ISONDE’S TOWNHOUSE, FALANAR
Kayla woke that afternoon feeling curiously light. She hadn’t realized how much weight had pressed down on her ever sinc
e Malkor found her in the swamp. Its sudden absence left her buoyant.
Had Isonde woken only hours ago? Kayla’s future had shifted so dramatically because of that fact, it hardly seemed possible.
As she lay in Isonde’s bed, the reality of her situation sank in. She wasn’t free, at least, not yet. She’d have to continue her masquerade as the princess for the time being, until Isonde regained her strength. And then there was the threat of Bredard hanging over them all. She couldn’t leave Malkor and Isonde to face the repercussions of that blackmail alone. Still so much to do. At least now, for the first time in weeks, hope glimmered.
Kayla dressed with the well-learned precision of Isonde. Her hologram was firmly in place as she made her way downstairs for a quick lunch before returning to the rooms that housed the real Isonde.
Isonde remained in her medical pod, lying down as if even sitting was more than her body could handle at the moment. Her eyes, though, were as sharp as ever, and she busily interrogated Ardin on current events.
“I’ve missed so much,” Isonde said, frustration evident in her voice. That was Isonde, all right—all business. Not “Gee, I’m so glad I survived,” or “I really need to rest.”
“How are you feeling?” Kayla asked.
Isonde lifted a few fingers in a weak gesture. “Toble’s keeping me confined to this pod for at least another day, then it’s bed rest after that.”
“Much to her dissatisfaction,” Ardin said with a smile.
“I have too much to do to lie abed.” Isonde’s gaze sharpened on Kayla. “Ardin’s told me your true identity. I wish I had known.”
Kayla wasn’t sure if she meant “I wouldn’t have treated you with such scorn initially,” or “I really could have found a way to leverage that knowledge.” Kayla replied, “The fewer people who know, the safer I am.”
Isonde didn’t answer that directly. “Ardin’s caught me up on the Game and Trebulan’s TNV attack at the attempted wedding. Tell me everything you’ve done since—and don’t leave any details out.”