by Nick Webb
“You sound so sure, Mr. Dorian. And I suppose you get to be the executioner?” Nhean glanced across the way, at Parees as the other man’s eyes glazed over somewhat. Was he ok? And then he recognized the look. The same faraway look that the drone had from the cell.
Dawn.
“Of course.” Dorian laughed. A sick laugh that sounded like he actually thought it was funny. “Just like they let me execute your friend.”
Schroeder.
Nhean’s fists balled up so tight he almost drew blood from his palms.
“What did he do to deserve that, Mr. Dorian?” He watched Parees across the hallway: he seemed to be preparing to do something. That meant it was Nhean’s job to keep Dorian distracted.
Right. Distraction. He slowly extended both hands out from the corner and stepped out into the intersection of the two corridors.
A broad smile spread over Dorian’s face. “Because. He was a traitor.”
“What in the world made Schroeder a traitor? He was a key member of the Funders Circle. Without his resources, without his company’s work, the Funders wouldn’t have accomplished half of what it has today. No Venus Sovereign Fleet. No Seed. Nothing.”
Dorian took a small step, then squared himself and brought his other hand up to steady the gun. “Because. He was working with you. And anyone who works with a traitor, is a traitor.”
“Wait—” Nhean had his hands up. “I thought you had to wait for the sentence? How do you know what the Circle will say?”
He grinned. “I already know the sentence, asshole. Did you really think—”
He never got the chance to finish. With what felt like a rush of wind, someone bolted past him, arms and legs flying faster than any human had a right to move.
Parees?
Except Parees was still to his right, down the other passageway.
Dorian swore, and fired. The bullet clipped the newcomer, but they didn’t even slow down.
It was the drone from the cell.
With a blur of fists and feet, Dorian was down. He scrambled for the gun that had gone flying out of his hands, but the drone kicked it away, and put the other foot on Dorian’s neck.
“Wait!” said Dorian.
Nhean was panting, knowing he’d only narrowly avoided a bullet to the head. “For what, Mr. Dorian?”
“For what? You … you need me! I know where they are right now. I can—”
“I’m sorry, but we don’t have time for this. Ka’sagra has everything she needs.” He made a motion with his head to the drone, who had turned to look at him with a blank expression. It was bleeding from its chest, and heaving. Its face was going pale. “Do it.”
The drone, its strength magnified by whatever Dawn was doing to it, brought its weight down firmly on Dorian’s neck in a sickening crunch.
Then the drone toppled over, wheezing. It choked out a few words as blood flecked its lips. “Hurry, Nhean. Hurry. Tel’rabim has almost found me.”
The drone died. Soon, Parees was right by Nhean’s side, pulling him along. Before he could even think to speak again, they were in the shuttle bay.
A single shuttle had been left with the engines on, spewing exhaust into the small bay. Nhean coughed, his tender throat sore already from being half-drowned, but he knew better than to slow down. At his side, Parees was in worse shape: his stumbling gait and bruised limbs appeared worse in the bright light of the bay. He looked so bad that Nhean tried to shift his gaze somewhere, anywhere, else—it reminded him of an expressionless Ms. Hollywood laying in her blood.
They left in silence, Nhean still peering over his shoulder for the signs of pursuit. How long did they have?
They were hardly away from the ship before the proximity alerts began to blare. The fleet was warming up its engines for acceleration.
“What the hell?” Nhean demanded hoarsely. “Where are they going? He looked to the opposite horizon. Did he see a glimmer there, the pinpricks of reflected sunlight glancing off the distant Telestine fleet? He would bet on it.
“Move,” was all he said. “We need to get going before anyone in their fleet realizes there’s a shuttle away. And come up with something convincing to say so Min doesn’t blast us out of space when he sees us coming.”
CHAPTER SIXTY-ONE
Earth, High Orbit
EFS Santa Maria
Bridge
The Aggy II arrived just as Dawn had told him it would. And when Rychenkov insisted, with raised fists, that they go rescue Dawn as well, it took a rather forceful push from her mind onto his to get him to relent, and to get the hell out of there. Out of London. Off Earth.
Tel’rabim is coming, and I can’t hold off his patrols much longer, she’d said, directly to both of their minds. Pike was used to it by then, but Ry still made a face. He looked like he was going to be sick.
So Gabriella flew them up to high orbit. The skies over Earth were remarkably clear, and once they were in orbit they could finally see why.
The whole Telestine fleet was massing in low orbit. Preparing for a fight.
And it was going to be a big one.
“Where’s James?” Pike asked. Gabriella said nothing, but gripped the navigational controls even harder. That was enough of an answer for him, and he shot Rychenkov a questioning glance. Ry’s only response was to look away.
The Exile Fleet had been apprised of their approach. A docking bay was open and a young officer brought them to the bridge at a run, where they found Min hunched over, arms crossed across his chest, watching the slow advance of the two fleets on one another.
“The Funders are … joining us. They’re engaging Tel’rabim’s fleet,” he said, before he looked up. Then he raised his head, and his face changed. “Thank God,” he whispered. His shoulders slumped as he stared at Walker. “I didn’t … ma’am, I thought you were lost, and Mr. Tang with you. An assault was the only thing I could think—”
“You made a good choice,” Walker assured him. She nodded to him, and her gaze flicked sideways briefly in thought. “And don’t get too excited about the Funder fleet—they’re not our friends. I’d wager they’re only attacking Tel’rabim on Ka’sagra’s orders. To distract and delay and give her enough time to do … whatever she’s planning.” She only looked around briefly as Rychenkov made his way onto the bridge. His arms were full of printouts, and from the sound of his breath, he’d been running at a flat-out sprint.
“The schematics Lapushka found,” he said, by way of explanation. He edged between the officers to put them on the desk and backed away again.
Walker was hardly paying attention. “And where is Nhean?”
“Here,” a hoarse voice said from the doorway. “The Koh Rong is taken, but we’re alive. Barely.”
Pike turned, and did a double take. There was more of Nhean’s face that was bruised than unbruised, and he was walking as if every part of him hurt. His hair was damp, as was most of his suit jacket. One arm hung oddly. It would have been disturbing enough, except for the fact that he was in far better shape than Parees. At his side, the young man was so battered and emaciated that he was unrecognizable to most of the crew.
Not Walker.
“I trust,” she said simply, “that you have good reason to bring that onto the bridge of my ship?”
Everyone turned to watch Parees, and the young man shrank back. He looked around himself in terror.
“We may need him,” Nhean said grimly. “Ka’sagra won’t try to work on him until she knows he’s missing, and she is with the Funders Circle fleet. I don’t think she’ll look for him for a while—if at all.”
“He still doesn’t need to be on my bridge,” Walker said coldly. “That thing—”
“I destroyed Vesta.” Parees said the words through cracked lips. “And shot Secretary General Essa in the head. Yes, Admiral, I did those things. But I have also seen more of Ka’sagra’s mind than anyone else here, and I think I will be better than you at finding a way to stop her now.”
“W
hat is her plan?” Min asked.
Pike answered before Parees could. “The bombs were hers, the ones that destroyed Vesta and Io. She’s going to use them to make the sun go nova.”
There was a dumbstruck silence on the bridge, and Walker pressed her lips together. Pike got the sense that she might not have admitted as much out loud, in front of the entire bridge crew. He was coming dangerously close to causing a panic.
“Tel’rabim knows,” Nhean offered. “If the Telestine fleet is engaging the Funders’, it means he’s trying to head her off. He must have realized where she was.” He looked away and his mouth twisted bitterly. “I should have realized. It was the one place I didn’t look. I didn’t see her influence among them until it was too late.”
“She’s been allied with them for a long time,” Parees said quietly. “Do you remember—at the start, they didn’t want you to spend so much money building a fleet. And then she told them to allow it, and to give additional money for it as well. She told them it would be important.”
“Yes, but why?” Walker demanded.
Again, it was Pike who had the answers, though he struggled to bring his thoughts into words. “A Telestine can remotely manipulate a drone, and they can also network easily with other Telestine ships. In order to make sure that her plan couldn’t be interfered with, she put some Telestine programming on human-built computers and gave them Telestine pilots. Daughters of Ascension pilots, specifically. Fanatics. They’re not vulnerable to mind control the way a drone would be, or The Seed virus. She’s the only one who can talk to those ships now.”
Min’s face went ashen. “She took ships from Larsen. Two of them. And we lost three missile frigates at Neptune.”
“They are all hers now,” Parees said. His gaze was far way. “Along with seven others that the Funders Circle provided her with. Twelve. She needed exactly twelve. They will be piloted by her priestesses, seeking ascension. They will already be on their way to the sun—the battle you see now is just to make sure Tel’rabim can not interfere. He thinks the battle is on his terms, but it is actually on hers. She lured him here—his entire fleet. And ours. Everything, every ship, every major player, is here, right now. She wants to be … thorough this time. In their home system, she was sloppy. This time she’s left nothing to chance. This time the nova will be initiated in a very specific geometry that will ensure complete and immediate destruction. It won’t be a nova. It’ll be a supernova. Almost immediate destruction for the entire solar system. There will be no escape, for anyone.”
“They’re iridium bombs, aren’t they?” Walker looked at him.
“Yes.” Nhean frowned. “How did you know that?”
“Doesn’t matter.” she said flatly. “What matters is that they use hydrogen as the catalyst.” She gestured towards the schematics and battle plans spread across the desk, evidence of Min’s attempts to understand the battle he was seeing. “It’s why the bombs at Io and Vesta were so destructive, compared to the ones that hit Telestine Denver and Tokyo. The ones on Earth were launched out in the open. Io’s and Vesta’s were buried deep, where there were high pressures of rock. And it just so happens that rock—”
“Has a very high concentration of hydrogen atoms,” Nhean finished for her. “She doesn’t need a catalyst, the bombs are the catalyst, and the sun is the fuel source. The biggest fuel source there is. I was so sure it was the catalyst she was lacking,” Nhean murmured. “Not the ships. Not the method of delivery. I never thought it would be the ships.”
Parees shuddered. “We don’t have much time.”
Walker opened her mouth, but Nhean cut her off. “Larsen is placed to intercept her, remember?”
“That’s why you really sent him, then?” Walker asked. “I wondered. He gave me some story about Tel’rabim, but it wasn’t that, was it? It was Ka’sagra.”
Min made a small noise, and Nhean and Walker looked at him with almost identical looks of misgiving. It would, Pike thought, have been funny if the same fear weren’t clawing at his insides.
“What?” Nhean asked wearily.
“I told you,” Min whispered. “Larsen only has one ship. He sent word—the Funders hacked two of his with The Seed and took them away. He only had the Arianna King left, and he asked for my help.”
Nhean went very still. “Tell me you sent them. Tell me they’re on their way.”
“He said he wanted them because Tel’rabim was planning to blow us all up!” Min’s voice broke. “Tel’rabim, not Ka’sagra! And Tel’rabim was right here. He was still assembling his entire fleet, he was sending messages to you about his plans for humanity after dealing with Ka’sagra—I figured Larsen was just wrong.” He looked around at all of them. “I thought that with the Telestine fleet gone, we’d have a shot at Earth, so I kept every ship here.” His voice was pleading. “And now Larsen only has one ship….”
He didn’t have to say the rest. There’s no way one ship can stop twelve. They all knew it.
There was a silence. Nhean sank his head into his hands. Walker’s eyes were closed. She looked far older than her years.
“I’m so sorry,” Min whispered.
“It’s my fault,” Nhean said. “I hadn’t wanted to tell the admiral who I was truly afraid of, so I didn’t tell Larsen, either. I told him it was Tel’rabim. If I had—”
“Regrets won’t help us now,” Walker said crisply. Her fingers white-knuckled the desk. “Larsen is our only hope. If he can take out her ships….”
“He can’t.” Nhean was shaking his head. He spoke the truth calmly, carefully. “There’s no way to get all twelve of them. The only way would be to disrupt Ka’sagra’s signal.”
“Do we even know if she has a signal?” Walker demanded.
“She’ll have built one in,” Parees said confidently. “She’ll be prepared to take control of the other ships if their captains have last-minute second thoughts about the ascension.” His confidence seemed to exhaust what little strength he had left, and he appeared to come dangerously close to collapsing where he stood. “She’s seen a lot of people have second thoughts,” he added quietly.
“To disrupt her signal, we’ll need to get onto her ship.” The words were soft. Nhean’s head was tilted. “Or so I would think.” He looked at Pike. “What do those schematics say, the ones that Dawn pilfered for us? Do you know?”
“She was working with networking,” Pike said helplessly. “But I don’t know anything more.”
Parees’s eyes drifted closed. He was clearly communicating with her. “She says we do need to get onto Ka’sagra’s ship. She can’t reach it. She can’t control it. Someone will need to take control from the inside.”
“She?” Walker questioned.
Parees opened his eyes. “The Dawning,” he said, as if it should be self-evident. “I’m in contact with her.”
“So we have to get onto that ship.” Walker looked like she had just received the worst news of her life. “She has a head start. The Telestines have FTL now on their ships, but unfortunately, given the events of the past week, I’ve yet to capture one and have my people reverse engineer the—”
Parees opened his mouth again. “What if we had FTL?”
The bridge went quiet.
“You … have FTL?” Walker asked him blankly.
“Me? No. You?” His gaze flicked between Nhean and Walker. Nhean wasn’t even sure if it was Parees talking, or Dawn. Maybe both. “Yes. The Dawning says it’s easy to implement, it’s very easy, actually. It’s just an adjustment to the Telestine artificial gravity equipment and realigning the phase envelope of the neutrino flux and—” He shook his head. “Not important. I can do it.”
“No.” Nhean’s gave a single shake of his head. “We’re not risking you.”
“Risking me?” Parees’s voice rose. “I’m going to die anyway if she succeeds.” He laughed bitterly. “No, I have to go. How else do you think you’re going to modify that signal?”
“Dawn,” Nhean answered bluntly.
“I can do it,” Parees insisted. He shook his head, as if he was momentarily confused—it must be confusing to speak both for yourself, and simultaneously for someone else. “She’s helping me, but she needs to stay down there in that control room underneath London to talk me through it—there are a lot of moving pieces on the board and she can only keep track of them from there. If you can get me onto Ka’sagra’s ship, the Dawning and I can try to take it down. Or rather, she can do it through me.”
There was a pause, and Nhean’s shoulder’s slumped. “Very well,” he said softly.
“And I’ll go.” To Pike’s surprise, he heard his own voice.
Walker looked at him sharply.
“I can’t defeat Tel’rabim,” Pike said, “but I make pretty good backup for sneaking onto a Telestine ship. Maybe even kick a little ass.” He was flexing his fists and grinning. “No really. I need this.”
To everyone’s surprise, Rychenkov stepped forward. “And I’ll take you.” He paused, and glanced over at Gabriella, who’d stood by the door, silently. “Do you agree?”
She pursed her lips. But nodded. “Yeah. I do.”
Ry nodded back, like they had just resolved a disagreement. Pike made a mental noted to ask what that was all about. But later. Rychenkov continued: “I’ll get you to Larsen’s ship. And Larsen is equipped to be able to get you onto Ka’sagra’s. The Aggy II is one of your fancy Venus ships, so I assume the engines are … upgradeable?” He turned to Parees. “Lapushka? Do you think so?”
Parees inclined his head. “Yes. Yes she thinks so.”
Ry slapped his hands together. “Then what are we waiting for? Let’s go stop the bitch trying to kill everyone.”
CHAPTER SIXTY-TWO
Earth, High Orbit
EFS Santa Maria
Shuttle bay
She’d followed them to the shuttle bay, where the Aggy II was spun up and ready for the mission. Rychenkov and Nhean disappeared up the boarding ramp, but Pike stopped before climbing up. He could feel her gaze.