"Frak, Liam," Tabby said. "Are you trying to get us killed?"
"Nick, you got me on this?" I asked, already sure Nick knew my plan.
He did. Smartest man in the room. "Copy that, Liam."
The cutters must have been in communication with each other, because the shots came at the same time.
"Brace." Marny's warning was instantly followed by impact to the hull.
"Damage report?" I didn’t wait for an answer, cut the engines, and tipped Hotspur into the drink.
The ship's inertial dampers absorbed most of the shock as we splashed down gracelessly, cartwheeling once and sending a wave of water high into the air. I did my best to track the enemy ships as they passed overhead, struggling to burn off the speed they'd gained chasing us down.
"No damage," Marny said. "At least from those blasters."
The impact with the lake's surface, while spectacular visually, was well within Hotspur's capabilities. Anino had wrapped the ship in layers of nearly impervious material that was more than up to shrugging off the wall of water I'd subjected it to. I switched off the atmospheric engines and thumbed up controls for our grav systems. Hotspur wouldn't easily sink on its own, so it was up to me to continue the fiction that we’d been shot down.
The water passing by the cockpit's armor-glass turned dark, the sunlight filtering out as we submerged past fifty meters. "You could probably stop here, Liam," Nick said. "I'm not even sure we need active camouflage."
I leveled us out at sixty meters and waited, wondering if any of the Belirand ships would follow us into the water, just to make sure we were disabled. "Everyone, take ten while we get filled up. I'm going below to make sure we're holding water."
"I'll come along." Tabby left her station.
"Ada, you have the helm," I said.
"I have the helm," Ada answered.
"Is there something going on between you and Ada?" Tabby asked, closing the hatch to the storage room where I was pulling up deck panels. "I replayed the data-streams of you getting her out of that box. It felt a lot like Prince Charming and Sleeping Beauty to me."
"You know she was pimping you around up there?" I said. "She wants you a little jealous. By the way, I could ask the same thing about the two of you."
Tabby shook her head. "That's dumb," she said. "We're just playing."
I found no trace of unwanted water and was pleased to see the influx of fresh water into our tanks. I turned to Tabby and pushed her against the wall, my hands coming to rest just above her hips where her waist narrowed. I leaned in so our lips were within millimeters of each other, but not touching.
"I'm not playing around with you, Tabby," I said, pushing my lips hard against hers. I pulled back as she brought her leg up behind mine and pulled me closer. "You might not have seen it, but it was Ada who gave me the confidence to come back for you. I didn't believe you'd have me. She reminded me of what you and I had. I'm not sure I would have figured it out without her."
"She did that?" Tabby asked.
"She did," I said. "She was trying to make you jealous up on the bridge."
"Rings of Saturn, but it worked," Tabby answered huskily, her hands tracing down my back before grabbing my butt. With a single arm, she lifted me with strength I'd almost forgotten she possessed. "I want you so bad."
"We have eight minutes until these tanks fill," I said, pulling at her grav-suit. She dropped me and quickly shrugged off her suit, allowing it to puddle on the deck at her feet.
"It's not enough," she purred, frantically pulling at my suit. "But I'll take it."
"We should really get some soundproofing for that room," Ada quipped, sticking her head out from the engineering bay across the hall as Tabby and I exited.
I shook my head. "Any word on the weapons?" I asked.
"No," Nick called from behind Ada, still out of sight. "And you need to see something."
"What?" I asked, avoiding Ada's eyes as I slid past.
Nick was on his knees holding a smoking tool with a tangle of wires and boards in front of him. "Look on the table."
I scanned the room and found a table with a pile of what looked like powdered glass on top of it. "Broken armor glass?" I guessed.
"No. Worse than that," he said. "It’s a quantum comm crystal."
"What the heck? Someone was on the ship?” There were no pieces left that were larger than a pea. Something else was strange about the scene. Around the pile of crystal shards, the table’s dusty surface had been disturbed. I enhanced the magnification of my HUD and pushed the small pile around with my finger. I couldn’t find any of the dust that covered all the surfaces in the ship mixed in with the crystal. “This happened fairly recently.”
I felt Tabby's hand on my waist as she looked over my shoulder. At the same time, Nick sat up straight, banging his head on the bulkhead. "Frak," he complained. "What do you mean?"
I flicked the magnified image to him showing crystal shards lying atop the dusty table.
"No dust except around the edges of the pile or right under it," I said. “
"One of us did this?" he asked. “That doesn’t make sense. You think Hambo would do something like this?”
"Can we look back at the data-streams?" I asked, knowing Nick would have been on that idea immediately.
"No. The recorders in this room were down," he said. “There are other things that have been bugging me. Fraxus isn’t in line with our original course. We’re fifty lightyears out of line with our original nav path. That’s too much for it to be an error.”
"But still in the Small Magellanic Cloud," I said. It didn’t feel like big news that someone had messed with our flight.
"Right," he agreed. "And there's nothing wrong with the weapons control circuits. I've patched around what I thought the problem was, but it's no good. I need access to the turrets from the outside."
"Not while we're submerged," I said. "Think that cutter is still hanging out, looking for us?"
"We do not detect an enemy presence," Jonathan cut in. "Sensor data is limited due to adverse conditions."
"How far can you see?" I asked.
"Several meters, depending on the angle of our visual sensors," Jonathan replied. It took me a moment to realized he’d taken my question too literally and was describing his android body. I hoped he’d figure it out soon because he was functioning with less capacity than my AI.
"Sensor range is limited because of the water and the rocks," Nick filled in. "A kilometer at best."
"Better than nothing," I said. "Close it up. We're getting out of here."
"Yup," Nick answered.
"Feeling better?" Ada asked, slipping into the pilot's chair next to me and holding her small fist in the space between our chairs. I smiled and bumped it with my own.
With deliberate slowness I lifted Hotspur from the depths of the mountain lake, then angled the ship and pushed forward with gravity repulsors. Hotspur had small, curled wings that were designed for flight on heavy gravity planets with thick atmospheres and they did well in water. We broke the surface at twenty meters per second and a dramatic spray.
"I have contact with one ship," Tabby announced. "It's one of the cutters."
"Can we scramble its comms? Jonathan?" I asked.
"We have indeed prevented the ship with designation Machinist Twelve from transmitting local communications via radio frequency," Jonathan answered.
"They're bolting," Tabby said. My AI adjusted the holo-projection to show the cutter as it burned hard, gaining elevation as it broke for space, a move I hadn't anticipated.
"Where are they going?" I asked, orienting on the small ship.
"Cap?" Marny said. "Where are you going? We need to get Peter and Joliwe."
"We can't let that ship get away," I said.
"That ship is running for safety," Marny said, "and we don't have anything to fire at it. What happens when it finds that safety? We're toothless."
I spun through the possibilities in my mind. Marny was obvio
usly conflicted in her tactical decision making. I understood her desire not to leave Peter behind. Maybe you could have said the same about me. Perhaps I wasn't overly keen to retrieve him, given his relationship with Tabby. I hated that I was questioning our motives. We were once a well-oiled machine, filled with trust, virtually reading each other's thoughts. As a crew, it felt like we were back to square one.
"Right," I finally agreed, backing off the pursuit. A prompt showing a navigation path back to where we'd originally dropped Peter and Joliwe showed on my HUD and I chinned acceptance, turning the ship as the data displayed. At only two hundred kilometers, it would take four or five minutes.
I didn't hit it quite as hard as I could have, perhaps dragging my feet. "Set down in that clearing," Marny instructed, highlighting a small opening in the snowy forest a small distance from the homestead. I wondered how weird it must feel for my friends as we passed over their home.
"Marny, can you organize the search party?" I asked. She knew the area and the nature of the Scatters much better than I did so she was the natural fit.
She pulled a video clip from her console and flicked it at me. "Won't be necessary."
I accepted with a nod and found a small group of Scatters diving into the forest, making themselves scarce, as was their namesake.
I turned the helm over to Ada and followed in Marny's wake as she rushed from the bridge to the galley deck, back through the energy barrier and out the airlock. "Slow down, Marny," I said, taking a moment to grab a blaster rifle from the armory. "We don't know the ground situation."
"Scatters wouldn't have been in that clearing if Belirand was near," she said, sticking thumb and forefinger into her mouth to let loose a sharp whistle. The sound was impressively loud.
"You think Peter missed Hotspur's landing?" I asked, looking at her skeptically.
A faint whistle sounded maybe two hundred meters north of our position. "Thank the stars," Marny breathed and ran in the direction of the sound. After a few meters, she seemed to remember she was wearing her grav suit and lifted off, accelerating.
"We'll be right back." Nick followed, turning to give me an apologetic look. "She's been worried."
I chuckled and walked a few meters in the direction they'd gone. Even with my suit's sensors tied into Hotspur, I was unable to detect any humanoids beyond Nick and Marny. After a few minutes, however, I caught a third, a fourth, and then a group of perhaps a dozen all at once.
In the lead, Marny walked with one hand holding Peter’s. They talked animatedly and while I could have listened in, I gave them privacy as I didn't expect the conversation was related to our mission. Nick trailed behind Marny and Peter, trying to pick up on what the normally skittish Scatters were saying.
Finally, I picked out Joliwe from the group and walked in her direction. "Do you have news of Prince Thabini?"
Her piercing green eyes bored into my own. "I was about to ask you the same. You have your warship. Why have you not rescued our prince?"
"Right. Angry elf it is. No. No rescues yet. I thought you might have some intel we could use."
She pointed angrily upwards. "The prince is being held in the black prison above the sky. He will be brought to Thandeka and executed for crimes against the kingdom."
"Do you have a time?"
"When the sun is directly overhead."
"You didn't know all this when we talked last," I said. "That's important information."
Joliwe wasn’t mollified by my response. "We do not have time to be standing around. You talked of rescue. Do you lie as all humans have before you?"
"No," I said. "You're right. We should go."
"We?" she asked, looking up at Hotspur tentatively. I suppressed a smile. Before seeing the ship, she'd been insistent about going with us, but she was clearly intimidated, something I learned made her a surly little elf.
"Tell your friends you need to leave and meet me on the ship. We were in pursuit of one of the cutters and broke off to come get you and Peter."
"I do not like your steel vessels," she said, "but I will do as you say."
I walked back to Hotspur and placed my palm on her belly, atop the security panel that would drop the cargo bay ramp. I wasn't about to explain to Joliwe the intricacies of negotiating an airlock if I didn't have to.
"Everything okay, Peter?" I asked, trying not to make things weird as he approached the ship, his mouth open wide.
"This is Hotspur?" he asked. "I've heard all about your ships, but this one is so … I don't even know what to say. Does it really fly above the clouds like Mother said?"
"That and more, my big friend. Come on in and we'll get you squared away." I followed his gaze to where Tabby stood at the forward bulkhead of the hold. He sighed, looking back at me guiltily. I felt like we'd been through the conversation too many times already and decided to throw him a lifeline. "Tabbs, you mind helping Peter select a vac-suit? Maybe get him one of Marny's old armored rigs? Hopefully it'll stretch out enough for him."
She nodded, giving me a confused look. I was done with the conversation. This was our new reality and we might as well get on with it. "I can," she said tentatively.
"Good. Joliwe, we're going to get you into another suit," I said. "It won't fly quite as nice as the one you had before, but you'll adapt. Just follow Peter and Tabby there."
"I will," she agreed.
"What do you say we get busy already," Marny said, smiling as she watched Peter and Joliwe fall in behind Tabby.
"What is it with you women? It's either feast or famine," I said suggestively, waggling my eyebrows at Marny as Nick joined us in the hold. He was all business and completely missed the innuendo. He jogged past us, swiping at the virtual displays on his HUD.
Marny grinned wickedly. "Good to know I've still got it, Cap. We're only twenty minutes behind that ship, what do you say we go find Joliwe's black prison."
"Not yet," Nick said on tactical comms. "I want to get a look at those turrets while we're on the ground."
I should have been on top of that. Weapons would be really nice. I turned to fly out of the hold when one of the Scatters held his hand up. "You will rescue the Prince of Thandeka?" he asked.
"I don't know," I answered. "The people who have taken him prisoner are dangerous. His existence threatens them."
"Take us to those who hold him. We will take his place," the Scatter said, gesturing to a half dozen Scatters who'd followed Joliwe and Peter out of the forest.
I shook my head. "They would kill you and still not let him go," I said. "It isn't the man they wish to kill. It is his ideas."
"Words? Why would one kill for this?" he asked.
His brazen innocence bothered me and I wanted to ask if he'd ever been in a heated argument with an asshat. In my experience, words could definitely get you to the point where you might want to do damage to someone. It was hard to imagine a society evolving so much that violent conflicts had been eliminated. I also wondered how a few hundred years of Belirand influence had changed things here.
"Prince Thabini believes Belirand should not be allowed to hurt the Scatter people," I said.
"We would rather die than hurt another being," he said.
"And Belirand has taken advantage of this," I said. "I'm not willing to allow them to kill your prince without at least trying to stop them. I don't understand why you, of all Scatters, who live on the mountain with the great maracats have forgotten how to defend yourselves."
"The maracat only kill to survive," he said. "We are more advanced than the maracat. We do not need to kill to survive."
"What I have seen does not look like survival," I said. "The Belirand invaders maim, rape and kill your people. Sure, you hide in the mountains so you don't have to look at it. What will Belirand do when they destroy Thandeka?"
"They will not destroy Thandeka. It is too large," he said.
"Not going to debate this with you," I said. "I just know that a maracat would not hide in the woods when its mate was be
ing attacked. In my view, you’ve missed an important lesson – a lesson I don't have time to explain."
I flitted up into the air to the Scatter's surprise, joining Nick next to the inoperable turret. "What's going on?" I asked. "Can you fix it?"
"I hope so," he said, pointing at a flashing display next to the housing of the turret. "Because I think we might have found more of Jonathan."
"Why up here?" I asked, finding Jonathan who was hunched over the turret, with an optical connection strung between his abdomen and a small port. "Why the turrets?"
"Turrets are insulated from the rest of the hull because of the massive electrical charge they disperse," Nick said. “The turret assembly’s circuitry is segregated. A better question is how did they get up here in the first place."
"A significant question," Jonathan said. "There was a moment when the virus replicated, that we experienced full understanding of what was to be. We understood the trap to be unavoidable, so we followed the terrible code as it spread across the ship allowing it to lead us to safe locations."
"You, being all devious, kind of makes me proud," I said.
"The virus on this assembly is resistant to that which freed us,” Jonathan said. “It presents the ship no danger due to the insulative nature of the turret design.”
“Can you break it?” I pushed.
“We are gathering data. It will take thirty-four of your hours for us to penetrate the virus’s defense,” he said.
“Really?” Nick asked. “How is it different from what was holding you?”
“The algorithms have adjusted to our presence,” Jonathan answered.
Nick narrowed his eyes and a familiar twist in his cheek muscle told me he was clenching his teeth. It was subtle, but for someone who’d read Nick’s face for years, it was a clear signal of irritation.
“We don’t have that kind of time,” I said. “Can you give me any blaster function?”
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