by Ben Hale
“You want to stay?”
Ero eyed the hull cracking at the side of the lowest cargo bay. The gravity drive had already failed, and the compressed energy was pulling the hull inward. The implosion would crush the Light of Everden, and the expansion would be large enough to consume the Gate.
“Just a few seconds,” Skorn said, and activated his holoview.
Malikin’s sneering holo appeared between them. “Ero and Skorn,” he said. “I have you trapped, and there’s nowhere for you to go . . .”
His eyes widened and his muscles contorted as he took in the empty ship and the shimmering World Gate. Ero enjoyed the transition of triumph to rage. Malikin had been chasing them for months and was about to fail again.
“I’m afraid we must depart,” Ero said.
“You cannot escape me,” Malikin growled with murderous rage. “I will hunt you to the end of the galaxy.”
“I know,” Skorn said.
Ero wasn’t sure what his brother was planning. The Light of Everden was about to implode, and Malikin—who was close enough to open fire on their position—was probably trying to jam the World Gate, but Skorn seemed content to remain in place.
The Kildor streaked across the snowy plain, so fast it kicked up a blizzard in its wake. Sleek and powerful, the ship was larger than the Light of Everden, and its weapons were powering up. Malikin had probably thought he could capture Ero and Skorn at his leisure, and wouldn’t know they had a World Gate on the planet until the last moment.
“Ero,” Skorn said, “do you mind reversing the gravity clamp on the Rising Dawn?”
Ero stared, and then burst into a grin. He was still tapped into both systems, so he opened his holoview and flipped the switch.
Malikin’s eyes widened and he barked orders at his command crew, the words bordering on a shriek. “Get us to orbit! Now!”
Skorn, a dark smile on his face, grabbed Ero and pulled him to the Gate. “Time to go, brother.”
Ero caught a glimpse of the Kildor as it banked upward, but it was too close to the damaged cargo ship, and had a small pleasure cruiser stuck to its upper hull. The gravity clamp reversed, connecting a leash between the mighty warship and the cargo ship. The Kildor was yanked downward, hard, just as one of the gravity drives imploded.
Ero ducked through the Gate, escaping the blast. He exited into the center of the City of Dawn, the sun on his face. Slaves milled about in confusion in the glass-and-white seracrete city, but Ero was busy picturing the Kildor struggling to escape the imploding ship. Hull sections would be ripped free, exposing interior girders. Malikin was probably having his face ground into the deck, struggling to curse Ero and Skorn. The Gate had already been sucked into the expanding vortex as the three tethered ships crashed into the snow.
“Flawless,” he said to Skorn.
Skorn smiled faintly. “I learned from the best.”
“Please don’t tell me you mean our father,” Ero said.
Skorn grunted in exasperation at the mention of Dragorn, their father, who was still imprisoned in Condemnation. “I meant you, stupid.”
Ero laughed and turned to watch the slaves. They had their secret harvest world, and now a core stock of slaves to augment. In a few years they could sell a thousand augmented slaves and make trillions. Once they rescued Reklin from the Burning Ghosts, there would be no one who could betray them. For House Bright’Lor, the future had never been brighter.
What could go wrong?
Chapter Five
Two dakorians patrolled the row of cells, counting the inmates. The corridor was dark and gloomy, with occasional lights set close to the ceiling in the distinctive pattern of an Ovgelin-class starship. It had once been serviceable, but had been on the ground for ages, its engines, light conduits, and cortex crystals stripped for parts. The rest had been retrofitted into a prison camp, with a central eating chamber and sixty cells per deck. Every night the dakorian guards counted the prisoners, making sure they had all returned from the labor fields.
They passed Reklin’s cell, pausing only to glance through the window cut in the plain seracrete plate to ensure he was asleep. Then they moved on, speaking in low tones. The moment they did, Reklin was on his feet. He slipped to the door and eyed the pair of soldiers.
Both were former Imperial military, but their youth suggested they had been either dishonorably discharged, or they had abandoned their position. The tattoo of a burning skull glowed on their shoulders, marking them as members of the Burning Ghosts, the most feared criminal organization in the Empire.
The two soldiers turned the corner, leaving the hall in silence broken by the occasional snore. It was the second head count of the night, and close to midnight. Reklin slipped to the crack in the wall to whisper into the neighboring cell.
“Niset. It’s time.”
“I can’t believe we’re doing this,” the krey said nervously.
“They won’t check again until dawn. It’s the largest window we have, and we can’t risk them searching our cells.”
“You sure your plan will work? I can’t see my wife if I’m dead.”
“It will work,” Reklin said. “We can do it together, and you can return to your family.”
Niset was one of the few krey Reklin had met that talked about his family like they were more than just allies. He actually cared for his wife and his several children. Reklin had heard House Ruath’Is was like that, but didn’t know for certain.
Reklin could hear the krey fidgeting. Niset had been on a ship captured by the Burning Ghosts, and he’d been taken to the planet of Arnock three months ago, taking the place of a human in the neighboring cell. Through a crack in the seracrete plating, Reklin had gradually gotten to know him. And four weeks ago, they had hatched a plan to escape.
“Let’s go,” Niset said.
Reklin nodded approval, pleased at the krey’s courage. Thin and wiry, the krey had suffered greatly in the glow fields. Harvesting the roots of the plant was backbreaking work, as was the crushing and refining process that turned the salve into the hallucinogen that dakorians tattooed onto their bodies.
Shifting a loose section of seracrete plating, Reklin reached into the cavity to retrieve what he’d found four months ago. The sparker wormed away from his grip, but he trapped it against the wall of the cavity and pulled it into the open.
The little creature fit inside his palm. Its belly was soft and its toes had small claws, perfect for digging in the soil on the planet. It was still young, but it had doubled in size from the day Reklin had smuggled it into his cell and begun feeding it scraps. He hoped it was large enough.
The animal’s distinguishing feature was its ability to generate a charge across its two antennae, a defensive mechanism against predators. An adult could stun a fully grown human or krey. More importantly, it could generate enough power to fry the substrates on a cortex crystal. The guards searched the prisoners returning from the fields every day, but apparently they had not considered the prospect of one smuggling a baby and raising it inside their cell.
The creature extended its two antennae to Reklin’s skin, sending sparks across Reklin’s bones. Ignoring the faint sting, Reklin approached his door and maneuvered the sparker so its antennae extended towards the locking mechanism. The seracrete plate protected it from intrusion, but the surge of energy leapt through the metal and burned the crystal beyond.
Reklin’s door emitted a soft click. Gingerly, he pressed against it until it swung open. He eyed the corridor, scanning for movement. Slipping out, he hurried to his neighbor’s cell and pressed the sparker against his lock. It too clicked open, and Niset entered the hall.
Thin and gaunt, the krey had the golden eyes of House Ruathi’Is. He wore the same dingy clothing as Reklin, his shirt torn and showing the scars of his labor. The leaves of glow plants were sharp enough to split flesh, as evidenced by a recent wound along his elbow. Another crossed his face and nose.
“A sparker?” His eyes widened as he spotte
d the creature in Reklin’s hands. “How did you get it past the guards?”
“Nestled it in a crevasse between my bones,” he whispered. “He was just a newborn.”
“Very clever, but where do we go from here?” Niset wrung his hands, his eyes flicking both ways in the corridor. “You claimed you could get us to a ship?”
“This way,” Reklin said.
He advanced down the corridor, fast and quiet. Niset tried to keep up, and every time he scuffed his boots Reklin winced. Reklin was the captain of a Shard team, an elite squad of dakorian soldiers that served the military. He was confident he could overpower two guards, but the noise would bring dozens more. Their only hope was to escape the planet before their absence was discovered.
At the end of the corridor, Reklin turned right, towards the meal room. Everything about the ship had been altered, leaving just the cavernous outer hull and the six decks. Bulkheads had been cobbled together with spare seracrete plates to form the cells.
They were on deck three and close to the bow of the ship, directly beneath where the bridge used to be. The sounds of snoring wafted across them, seeping through the dim corridor and merging into a buzzing cacophony. Occasionally someone coughed, and the sound of a boot on metal echoed across the level.
Reklin found a set of stairs, and instead of going down, towards the planet’s surface, he angled his way upward.
Niset glanced down the stairs and hurried to keep pace, doubt on his features. “If we go up, we’ll be trapped.”
“The bridge is up this way,” Reklin said.
“Please tell me you aren’t thinking of flying the Beast out of here.”
Reklin smiled at the name the prisoners used for the ship. On the outside, the faded lettering was emblazoned across the starboard hull. The Beast of. The rest of the name was too worn to read. Reklin had seen the lettering every day for six months as he’d trudged back from the fields, his arms scraped by glow leaves, his feet aching.
Sometimes Visika, the head of the Burning Ghosts, had him dragged into a room where his former captain, Gellow, used pain and interrogation techniques to get him to betray House Bright’Lor. They wanted the location of the augment world. But Siena was on that world, and she’d almost died to protect his family. He wasn’t about to betray her to the Ghosts.
Fortunately for him, the Ghosts still did not know what Siena had done to him, and it was his greatest advantage. For despite all the pain and fatigue and brutality, they could not take what he needed most.
His memory.
Siena had turned him into an augment in order to save his life at the Sovereign Crucible. Within the Burning Ghosts, it had saved his life numerous times over. He remembered every pattern of the guards, where they walked, and what they did. He could recall with exact detail how the guards searched the rooms, which were easily distracted, and which were bored. He knew the sections of the stairs that made sounds, and which were safe to pass. He’d even known how to raise a sparker in a cavity of a wall—including which nutrients it had needed to survive, and which made it sleepy when his cell had been searched—all because he remembered a mission briefing from seventy years ago, when another soldier had talked about his pet back home.
“Skip this step,” he murmured.
Niset followed his footsteps as carefully as he could. Reklin had already warned him to follow with exactness, as he’d memorized a silent path. Niset hadn’t questioned it, and why would he? Reklin had the status of a hornless, but he was obviously well trained.
Reklin paused at the top of the stairs and listened for approaching guards. He had only spent two days on the top deck, where Visika liked to meet with her prized prisoners. Two guards were coming, but their pattern was normal, and they passed and turned. Reklin then stepped into the open, ascended, and ducked into the bridge.
Conduits hung from the ceiling like vines, dangling where the seats had all been removed. The control panels were absent, and broken glass littered the floor. The forward window was gone, allowing a cool breeze to pass into the ship. Reklin picked his way across the floor and looked to the sky.
The planet of Arnock was hidden inside a massive nebula, the cloud of ionized gases a vibrant pattern of green, orange, and blue that was constantly illuminated with enormous waves of lightning. The nebula was being pulled into an expanding mass that would eventually become a new star in a few million years. For now, the nebula was a lethal cloud, capable of ripping even Heltorgreathian dreadnaughts to chunks of metal. Visika used it to hide. Gravity nodes hovered away from the planet, artificially preventing the nebula from swallowing the planet.
“What are we doing here?” Niset hissed. “This place is a wreck.”
“Do you know why Ovgelin-class starships were originally built?” Reklin asked, checking the floor where the captain would have sat.
“Does anybody?”
Niset was probably right. Ovgelin-class ships were ancient even by krey standards. Few knew much about them unless they had an interest in history—which Reklin didn’t. But he’d served with a dakorian named Pex, who’d loved starship history and had holos in his quarters depicting old ships. Reklin had seen his holo of the Ovgelin class once in passing, but with his memory augment he could recall it perfectly, right down to its biggest secret.
“They were mining cruisers built to navigate asteroids, which they would tow into open space for easier extraction of metals.” Reklin felt along the floor. “Because they usually operated at distant locations, they carried a formidable armament as protection from renegades, and a final secret reserved for the captain.”
He found the hidden latch on the floor and used the sparker to fry the tiny cortex. The creature, spent from the exertions, slumped in his hand, and Reklin went to the window. He set it on the outside of the hull, where it began to slide down the long slope to the ground.
“You’re letting it go?” Niset demanded.
“You’d rather I kill it?” Reklin asked. “It didn’t have any charge left.”
He knelt and pressed on the panel, which lowered and slid to the side with a satisfying hiss. It was just large enough for a dakorian, and he wormed his way down through the narrow tube to drop into a secondary bridge.
The secret room was small and had no other doors. Three seats were fused to the floor and faced a forward window that looked out onto plain seracrete, the back side of hull plating. Niset dropped down beside him, his golden eyes delighted at the discovery.
“The captain had a stealth escape vessel.” Reklin examined the controls. “Just in case the ship was taken. You think you can pilot us out of here?”
Niset recovered from his shock as he leapt into the seat. “You said it has stealth capabilities?”
“Some,” Reklin said. “It has a scanner disruptor built into the hull.”
“Then I bet I can get us into orbit. I don’t know how we’re going to get out of the nebula.”
“Don’t worry,” Reklin said. “In seventeen minutes we’ll have our window of opportunity.”
Niset cast him an appraising look. “If you knew how to pilot a ship, you wouldn’t need me.”
Reklin smiled faintly. “Like I said, we need each other.”
Throughout his military career, he hadn’t spent much time in a cockpit or bridge. He’d usually been preparing for an assault. Even with his memory augment, he hadn’t been able to cobble together enough memories to know how to pilot a ship safely. At least not yet. He kept a side eye on the krey’s movements as Niset closed the upper entrance and sealed them inside.
“Here we go,” Niset said, and the holo flickered to life above the bridge. “Looks like the gravity drive is down to seven percent power.”
“You think it’s enough?”
“We’re about to find out.”
The hull of the Beast opened like a mouth, the metal clanking. Loud enough to be heard. Then Niset brought up the drive and the ship unclamped. It slipped out the cavity, showing itself to be flat and disc-shaped,
with the window at the front and the ion cones at the back.
Muffled shouts came from inside the Beast, but Niset was already accelerating them up into the atmosphere, leaving the prison and the glow fields behind. Reklin guessed the Burning Ghosts had other ships in the system, but doubted they were prepared for a vessel to suddenly come up from the surface, least of all a stealth escape pod. They had a few minutes before they would be spotted.
“There,” Reklin said, pointing to the cargo ship gliding out of orbit. “Drop behind its engines so they can mask our profile. Then we can follow it out of the nebula.”
“Brilliant.”
Niset guided them towards the cargo ship and dropped them into its wake. Once a week it departed at a time that was probably supposed to be random, but Reklin had noticed a pattern in the schedule, and knew when the next shipment of glow was set to depart.
Ahead of the cargo ship, the gravity nodes activated and pulled the nebula open like a curtain. The ionized gases gradually separated to form a vertical gap. Ahead, more sets of nodes pulled it wider and wider, opening a single channel of safety through the deadly nebula. Reklin eyed the arcing lightning as they entered the tunnel.
“Sensors are being activated across the system,” Niset warned. “They know someone escaped.”
“They’ll probably search the space station first,” Reklin said. “I doubt they will think we are following their departing shipment.”
The tunnel of safety banked upward, and the cargo ship curved to follow. The path switched back on itself several times, and all the while, Reklin kept his gaze on the glowing propulsion at the rear of the ship. If it slowed down, it meant someone was calling them back, and Reklin and Niset would be trapped.
“Seven minutes until we are out of the nebula,” Reklin said.
“How do you know?” Niset asked, his voice equally as tense.
“I remember from when I came in.”
“You counted the minutes?”
“Didn’t you?” Reklin countered.
Niset grinned. “I was too busy wondering if I would ever see my family again.”