Empress Game 2

by Rhonda Mason

  25

  THE YARI, MINE FIELD

  Vayne couldn’t stand to sleep in one of the previously inhabited cabins aboard the Yari. Each—still filled with the dead crewmember’s few possessions—felt like a cross between a shrine and a tomb. Instead he camped out in his old cabin on the Sicerro. Everyone else had bunked in the Yari over the last week they’d been here, and the silence on the Sicerro suited him perfectly.

  Tucked away in his cabin on the Sicerro, Vayne did push-up after push-up while his demons rode him—hard. His conversation with Kayla played in his mind, and for the first time since being pulled into the Mine Field he felt a spark of hope that they could get out of this alive. Kayla would come through.

  Dolan’s whispery laugh invaded his thoughts. You’ve been here before, haven’t you? Waiting for Kayla to save you? Remember how it was when you arrived on Falanar? The hope? That painful, burning certainty dying away, slowly, oh so slowly being ground to nothing as she failed to show, day after day? Dolan’s enjoyment was thick on the words. I remember. Your faith in your ro’haar deteriorated one centimeter at a time. You gripped that fading dream so tightly. Then came the anger. First at her, for not rescuing you, then at yourself for doubting her. If a ghost could sigh happily, the sound shivered through Vayne. Those were the wonderful early days of our relationship, weren’t they, Vayne?

  The burn of tired arm muscles couldn’t drown out the words. Vayne switched his hand position from shoulder-width to making a diamond with his fingers and began his series of push-ups again.

  Killing Dolan once hadn’t been enough. The man deserved to die a thousand deaths, a million. One death for every gram of physical and mental destruction the kin’shaa had inflicted on them.

  It still wouldn’t be enough. Nothing could ever be enough.

  With his triceps ready to give out, Vayne switched to sit-ups. He willed everything away, every thought, every pain, every memory, and worked his body to exhaustion.

  Natali had been a master of that, preserving her sanity through physical exertion. Vayne’s older brother Erebus, Natali’s il’haar, had been captured along with them and the two were able to draw strength from each other. When she saw how terribly Vayne suffered without Kayla she had taught him the practice, had given him her own strength so that he could go on. She had, in essence, kept his insanity at bay.

  Though that seemed somewhat in question at the moment…

  Dolan had allowed them plenty of time to socialize with each other, which all of the prisoners did at first, plotting and planning an escape. An escape that never happened. Dolan probably got the biggest kick out of all their plans, the bastard, knowing as they did not how trapped they really were, how well prepared he was to hold them against their will.

  When the mind-frutting started to take its toll, Natali helped all the non-ro’haars with the ro’haar training. Giving them something to focus on, some way to reclaim themselves, since they were denied their own psi powers most of the time. He might not have made it through without Natali’s help and teachings.

  Then, of course, everything changed.

  Dolan had seen to that.

  The prisoners still had the freedom to socialize, but kept more and more to themselves, each trapped in their own private void, with a few exceptions.

  His mother had remained bright, untarnished in some small way. She was able to spend time with people without bringing her tortured soul into personal interactions. Maybe that’s why she had been Dolan’s favorite. At least, as long as she lasted, which, as it turned out, was not all that long.

  Then it was Vayne’s turn to be the favorite.

  Vayne collapsed to the floor, helpless against the memories. The rage closed in. A haze of pain descended, blinding him, and he wanted to strike out like a wounded animal. At anything. Anyone.

  Kayla will come, he told himself again. A mantra. I can escape this, with her help.

  Though what he hoped to escape was left unanswered for the moment.

  “Frutt it.” Vayne pushed himself off the floor and headed for a shower. As much as he hated the idea, seeking out someone else’s company might be the best thing for him at the moment.

  Cinni had returned with a hodge-podge of random parts and more fresh food. The crew’s excitement over her return—and the subsequent food—had driven him to seek out the silence of the Sicerro in the first place. By now some of the furor should have died down.

  After a shower, Vayne made his way to the commissary and what would be the remains of an admittedly delicious meal. The door opened on Tia’tan, Cinni and Ida sitting together, heads bent close, empty plates pushed aside. He effectively ended their conversation when he entered.

  Ida beamed. “You having emerged, somber one! Excellent!” She gestured to a place beside her. “Sit with us.” Cinni looked distinctly uncomfortable at the idea. Dark circles lay heavily beneath her eyes, and her lips looked sealed tight in a permanent frown that was half-sorrow, half-exhaustion. Her hand had the slightest tremor when she reached for her cup.

  Tia’tan neither encouraged nor rebuffed him. Instead she watched with her assessing gaze, studying each millimeter of him as if to gauge his mood, his stability. Wouldn’t she just love to know that his dead torturer had started speaking to him in his quiet moments. It was fan-frutting-tastic.

  Vayne scooped a portion of a fluffy casserole onto his plate, poured himself a centiliter of archan ale—a drink from home that could never be properly synthed on Falanar—and took a seat beside Ida. The captain grinned and hefted her own significantly larger dose of ale, clinking her glass to his. “Meal time is at its best today.”

  Cinni shifted in her seat. She glanced at him before returning her gaze to the casserole on her plate. Uncomfortable with him, or the conversation he interrupted?

  “How are the repairs to the engine coming?” he asked into the quiet after Ida’s greeting. He didn’t really need an answer. Corinth spent every waking second in the engine room with Gintoc, Gintoc’s assistant engineer Larsa, and Noar, working on the thing. His continuous stream of excitement and random updates to Vayne were a bit exhausting. At least his brother seemed to have forgiven him for leaving Kayla behind on Falanar, now that Corinth expected her to arrive any day.

  Vayne should probably force Corinth to work on his psi skills. It’s what Kayla wanted for him. But the boy so much preferred working with electrical and mechanical problems that Vayne didn’t have the heart to pull him away. He was almost jealous of Corinth’s happiness and excitement over the project, two feelings Vayne doubted he’d ever experience again.

  “Is quite well,” Ida said. “Gintoc is thinking the end is nearing.”

  “We’re still missing a few crucial components, though,” Cinni said, not looking up from her plate. “Our last raid on the manufacturing facility was a complete failure.” The last word came out choked. The girl blinked furiously against tears, her frown refusing to admit anything.

  Tia’tan patted her shoulder, and even Ida’s good cheer seemed to dim for a moment. What had he missed?

  Vayne sipped his ale, taking it slow on such a powerful drink. He’d come here for the distraction of conversation, instead he seemed to have stifled it. “How was the ride through the Tear?” he asked Cinni, for lack of anything else to say.

  Cinni shrugged in response to his question. “Same as always.” She removed a flask from her pocket and took a deep gulp.

  Back to silence.

  Over the last week, his questions about the Tear’s existence had been answered.

  Apparently the crew had been trying unsuccessfully to reach Ordoch with a mayday from the day the Yari went missing. At first, nothing had happened in response to their signals. Once they were out of the time eddy, however, and back in the normal flow, they noticed that every message sent out caused a tiny disruption in space. These were incredibly brief, gone almost before sensors registered them.

  As time went on, however, the microtears grew wider and lasted longe
r. The crew of the Yari was faced with a choice: stop sending messages in an attempt to be rescued and accept that they were going to die here, or send the messages, regardless of the tears, hoping against hope that they might someday reach someone.

  In the end it was no real decision at all. Ida refused to let her crew accept defeat. When they realized they needed to enter cryosleep to continue to survive, the ship was set to automatically send the signal out, adjusting the temporal and angular frequency minutely, using frequency-hopping and direct-sequence spread spectrum techniques. If a signal was ever returned, the ship was programmed to kick Ida out of cryosleep.

  With the physics of the Mine Field as broken as they were, the only way a signal could escape was to travel through a tear. Tanet hypothesized that the Yari had opened as many as sixteen billion tears over the hundreds of years, and one, finally, impossibly, opened into space to end at Ordoch.

  On Ordoch’s end, the tear had hollowed out a space underground, deep beneath an old manufacturing facility. The signal barely reached the surface. If the rebels hadn’t already been using that decrepit sector as a base of operations, it would never have been heard and the Yari would never have been found.

  By that point the tears were lasting much longer, and it was thought that the answering signal returning from Ordoch helped to maintain the current tear. The thing was by no means stable, though. The fluctuations could result in the collapse of the tear at any time, and the Yari would once again be cut off from communication. The odds of another tear opening on an inhabited world approached zero.

  No wonder the crew, with Ordoch and Ilmena’s help, rushed foolishly ahead with this ridiculous plan of restoring the Yari’s engine.

  The awkward silence in the room was getting to him. Vayne was planning his exit strategy when Ida thankfully came through.

  “Ghirhad your uncle, I like him.” She smiled, flicking her sea-green braid over her shoulder. “Much fun to be speaking.”

  He mustered a half-smile. Of course she would like his uncle. Ghirhad was almost maniacally cheery—a creepy state for a torture victim. Something about that ever-ready laugh sent chills right through Vayne.

  “And his knowledge of Ordoch history impresses. We are the best of reminiscers. Even we can engage Ariel to join. Sometimes.”

  “Must be nice to have someone else to talk to for a bit, about the things you all remember from home,” Tia’tan said.

  “Yes! Just so. Great grasp of history is his.”

  “Has anyone seen Natali of late?” Vayne asked the group. All three ladies nodded, though Tia’tan looked the least pleased about it.

  Ida said, “Following around me everywhere and noting all she sees. Learning of the ship.” Approval colored her tone.

  “She’s been grilling me about the rebellion and its progress,” Cinni said, before taking another sip from her flask.

  “Same,” Tia’tan offered. “Though on Ilmena’s side of things. Ilmena has been in contact with the rebellion on Ordoch since they reached out to us and Natali wants to know everything we’ve done to help.” Her voice soured a bit. “Which, apparently, has not been enough.”

  “What have you done?” Vayne asked. Tia’tan’s glare had him adding, “I’m curious, not trying to criticize. Honest.” The four Wyrd Worlds no longer warred, and they’d all become very insular, having little to do with each other aside from the necessary trade. In Ordoch’s case the isolation hid the partial collapse of their society. For the first time he wondered what the other Wyrd Worlds hid.

  Compared to the empire’s obsession with expansion and pushing frontiers, Wyrd Space had become stagnant.

  “Well, we’re not able to send supplies or manpower to Ordoch since the empire controls the airspace. After our initial period of…” Tia’tan cleared her throat a little awkwardly. “Of overconfidence in assuming the empire would be crushed after the coup, and our unwillingness to recognize the enormity of the situation, we got our act together.” She swept her bangs behind one ear, warming to the topic. “We’re focusing on refitting our ancient battleships. They’re little more than relics at this point, so it’s a massive undertaking. Our other focus has been developing a cure for the TNV.”

  “Excuse me?” He could not have heard that right. “You’re going to give them what they want?”

  “If they agree to leave Ordoch peacefully. Only then.”

  “Wouldn’t that prove that their aggression was justified?” Vayne shook his head. “What’s to stop them from coming back the next time they nearly destroy themselves?”

  Tia’tan leaned her elbows on the table. “I don’t give a damn what happens to the empire once they’re out of Wyrd Space. They can cure each other or kill each other, either is fine by me. I want Ordoch freed now. If the empire comes back again in the future,” she shrugged, “we’ll be more than ready for them. We won’t underestimate them again.”

  “The cure’s not ready yet,” Cinni added. “It may never be finished.” She made that sound like the likely outcome.

  Tia’tan waved that away. “We’ll figure it out. That’s Noar’s hope, at least.”

  “Your plans seem to differ quite a bit from Natali’s with regard to the empire,” Vayne said.

  “We’ve had our… disagreements.”

  Vayne tipped his glass in her direction. “Good luck with that.” Natali was an immovable object when she made up her mind. Not to mention the legitimate ruler of Ordoch. She outranked Tia’tan by light-years.

  Ariel entered the commissary, plasma bullpup in hand. She stowed the weapon by the door and headed for the remains of the casserole. It took no time at all for her to fill a plate.

  Ida laughed. “Already seconds?”

  Ariel spoke around a biscuit she’d taken a huge bite of. “Have to beat Benny or nothing.” She swallowed a bite down, then gave Ida a significant look. “You’ll want to be seeing how is Gintoc.”

  Ida’s smile slipped away.

  Ariel hadn’t mentioned the engine’s progress at all, only Gintoc. Was that intentional, or had he mistranslated again?

  Ida rose from the table, the solemn look on her face so at odds with her normal character that an inkling of foreboding crept into Vayne. As she reached to arm herself with a bullpup, he asked one of the many questions that still hadn’t been answered.

  “What’s with the armament whenever we leave the three main decks?”

  Ida’s gaze flicked to Ariel, then back. The navigation officer froze in the act of snagging a second biscuit.

  “Is protocol,” Ida said.

  Vayne stood. “No. I want an actual answer. All we’ve been hearing since we arrived is ‘is protocol.’” He looked at Tia’tan and Cinni, who were also getting to their feet. “Do either of you know?” Duplicate noes answered the question.

  “So, why do we have a protocol to carry weapons whenever we visit other decks? Why does the trip to the engine room make everyone so tense? Does it have to do with the stepa at es I’ve heard you mention?”

  All eyes went to Ida. She drew herself to her full impressive height, looking like the stern commander she’d been when the Yari launched all those centuries ago. “I am the captain. This is protocol. You will follow.”

  She left with those words hanging in the air.

  Ariel abandoned her plate and her half-eaten biscuit on the counter and followed after Ida. But not before claiming a fully charged bullpup from the weapons rack.

  26

  IDC HEADQUARTERS, FALANAR

  Malkor had been sitting in his cell for a day and a half now. Stewing for a day and a half. Cursing for a day and a half. Outside the sun would be hitting the horizon, announcing dawn. Down here the lights were still dimmed for the “night cycle.”

  They had placed him in the cell across from Janeen’s and left the electrical field fronting the cell set to transparent when they’d arrested him. Seeing her contorted and purpled body was eerily reminiscent of when he’d charged into Isonde’s room after Janeen’s at
tack and saw Isonde lying on the floor, stiffer than quadtanium, her nose and mouth smashed in, her face covered with blood.

  Isonde’s full-body paralysis had been the result of a severe allergic reaction to the toxin. Janeen’s killer must have injected Janeen with a massive dose of the toxin in her chest. That would have solidified the muscles around her lungs, making breathing impossible. It clearly spread to the muscles of her back as well, explaining the fixed upward arc of her spine.

  “Damnit.” Malkor stood at the front of his cell, hands fisted at his side, unable to look away from Janeen’s now empty cell.

  Even after they’d carried her body away he could see her, lying there, frozen in a futile gasp. The image was etched into his brain with the permanence of a tattoo.

  She hadn’t deserved to die like that. And she certainly hadn’t deserved to die for no other reason than to frame him for murder. Void. Was there nothing Vega and her allies wouldn’t stoop to?

  His first concern was for his octet. Had they somehow been implicated as well? He hadn’t heard any commotion of new prisoners being brought in, which was a small comfort. Hopefully they were merely suspended pending an investigation. How far their enemies would go with such an “investigation” was another worry entirely.

  He needed to get out of here.

  And Kayla? Had someone told her what happened? If so, he could imagine her sharpening her kris daggers and painting targets on pictures of Vega. There was little she could do beyond that as a foreign dignitary with no real power in the empire.

  He sighed with frustration and forced himself to look away from Janeen’s cell, stop visualizing her dead body. Pacing the narrow length of his cell didn’t help, it only made him feel more closed in, more trapped.

  I should have seen this coming.

  How Vega had learned of his visit to Janeen was a mystery. It had given her the perfect setup. Besides putting him away, it allowed InfoSec to confiscate all of his possessions, which included the hacked mobile complink he hadn’t destroyed yet, and datapads with all of Janeen’s notes. If Vega got her hands on that evidence she’d destroy it in a second. Same with the duplicates he had at his apartment.