by Dan Schiro
“As do I, Vargas.” Typhus watched as the counter on the viewscreen neared zero. “But we must wait until the moment is right.”
Seconds later, the bleeding pastel colors of the ether route dissolved and Typhus’ unassuming cargo hauler emerged into a chaotic star system. The rocky planets and moons had been mashed into a ribbon of irradiated matter drifting in a lazy orbit around a blue supergiant star. Only one celestial body orbited the outside of the huge gravity well — a red-and-white gas giant that trailed a long, pinstriped plume as it rocketed around its massive sun.
“It seems that your stratagem was successful, my lord,” Vargas said with a satisfied sigh as he stared up at the viewscreen. “Congratulations.”
“Thank you, Vargas.” Typhus stared unblinkingly at the star system, a slight smile twitching at his lips. A few weeks before, the sky would have been crowded with the Union’s new Paragon-class warships and their sleekly updated fighters. As Typhus had hoped, all of the next-generation spacecraft had been called away to protect against his attacks. “It is merely the next step on the path to justice.”
Typhus accelerated toward the agitated gas giant, the cargo hauler’s bank of ion engines blazing bright white to drag their massive freight along with them. Minutes passed as they made their approach, and Vargas used the hauler’s upgraded sensor package to poke and prod the cloudy world slowly filling the viewscreen. Yet his investigations revealed nothing. The gas giant’s violent storms and erratic electromagnetic emissions were the very qualities that qualified it to protect its secret.
Eventually, Typhus threw the hauler’s ion engines into overdrive to plunge the ship and its cargo into the upper atmosphere of the gas giant. Tidal waves of hydrogen and helium whipped them and shook the ship with creaking vibrations, but Typhus pressed the navigation wheel forward with his huge hand. When he feared they might snap apart at the seams, they broke through the stratospheric storms into a layer of relative calm. A few thousand miles ahead, Typhus saw the Union’s clandestine military platform, Aphony Station. The spherical station had ashen armor plating scarred by exposure and long fins extending miles to stabilize it in the stormy skies. Aphony would have qualified as a marvel of modern engineering in its own right — if not for the ancient ship moored next to it.
“There it is,” Typhus breathed. “The ship of legend. Thegra’s Sword… it does exist.”
In all his spacefaring years, Typhus had never seen a ship quite as impressive and strange. According to the readings on the viewscreen, the vast craft measured 10 times the size of the Union’s largest Vanguard-class warship. It was perfectly spherical at its core but covered in bone-white spikes as tall as skyscrapers. In between the spikes, a single glassy eye as large as a military hangar bay gazed up at them from the center of the sphere. The vessel seemed to be of a single seamless piece, as if sculpted out of white stone and polished to a high shine. Thegra’s Sword looked more like a tremendous petrified puffer fish than any starship Typhus had ever seen.
“The Engineers didn’t do anything small, did they?” croaked Vargas.
“Do you see that, Vargas?” Typhus zoomed the viewscreen for a close-up of the silver manacite glyphs tattooing the stony flesh of the ship. “The old magic is branded all over it.”
“Indeed,” said Vargas hungrily. “It shall make a formidable weapon, my—”
A hail chimed on the cargo hauler’s control dash. “Hauler 142, you’re ahead of schedule. Please deactivate your engines and prepare for cargo transfer and refueling at the 1,000 mile mark.”
With a smile at Vargas, Typhus gunned the ion engines and surged toward the station. Warning lights flashed bright in the cramped cabin as a flurry of hails came through the hauler’s speakers. A stern voice warned them to power down and prepare to be boarded or destroyed. Typhus punched a button to kill the alarms and watched as a small flock of rapid-defense fighters swarmed out of the space platform’s steely mouths. For a few moments, he listened to the threatening hails from the station.
“The time has come,” Typhus growled.
“Project Cleansweep.” Vargas’ voice held a sick smile. “I have so been looking forward to it.”
Filling his massive lungs, Typhus flipped open the safety switch that had been hastily installed on the control dash. When he threw the simple switch, a sturdy cannon bolted onto the cargo ship’s bow deployed its carefully crafted ordnance. A single torpedo roared out and raced toward the oncoming squad of combat craft, exploding into a cascade of violet light thousands of miles wide. In the blink of an eye, the rain of neutrons swept through the attacking ships, washed over the Engineers’ huge spacecraft and splashed across Aphony Station.
Almost immediately, the angry hails from the space station fell silent. The oncoming fighters veered off and lost power, tumbling end over end out into the violent upper reaches of the atmosphere. Emergency lights blazed red on the long stabilizing fins of Aphony Station, but no more ships emerged to meet them. Quiet moments passed, and soon a grim smile twisted the dark vycart’s lips. A shame, Typhus thought, that he only had enough materials to fire Dr. Croy’s ingenious neutron cannon once.
Vargas cleared his throat with a creaky cough. “It seems to have worked, my lord.”
“Imagine it, Vargas,” Typhus breathed as he manipulated the controls to take them toward the moored Engineer ship. “A garrison of 3,000 SpaceCorps officers and 1,000 Union scientists, and we’ve liquefied every one of them. It may be the most effective act of pure warfare in all of history.”
Vargas’ compact body shifted beneath his dark robes. “Yes, and to imagine all of those eyes melting, all of those organs turning to butter in an instant… it’s art, my lord.”
Typhus glanced over, his lip curled to bare fang. “Make no mistake, Vargas. I take their lives in the name of blood owed. Once the vycarts have had their justice, I mean to rule the people of this galaxy, not exterminate them.”
Chapter 26
Orion took a deep breath and let his shoulders relax as he crossed the boarding tube to the White Heath. Dalaxa walked gingerly at his side, and Kangor and Aurelia followed with the malformed manowar Typhus had called “Little Brother” in tow. They had bound the lumpy biosynthetic with steel girders warped by Kangor’s great strength, and Aurelia maintained a gossamer-green force field around him in case he wriggled free.
They stepped aboard the Briarhearts’ refurbished gunboat to the whoops and cheers of the assembled troops. As Orion lifted a hand to quiet them, he noticed many of the smiling faces sported black eyes, broken noses or chipped horns. Luckily, the Briarhearts seemed to have come through the brothel brawl with nothing more than superficial injuries. When the applause died, Costigan and Reddpenning made their way through the crowd to meet them. Orion met Costigan’s dark eyes and gave him a slight shake of his head.
“That’s not the face of a man who just killed a super-terrorist,” Costigan said, a frown creasing his broad features. “He wasn’t there?”
Orion shrugged. “Not exactly.”
Murmurs passed through the Briarhearts, but Reddpenning shot a stern glance over her shoulder and silenced them instantly. “Do the four of you need medical attention?”
“Probably,” Orion told her vacantly as he peered over her shoulder. He watched for a moment as the crew of mercenaries slowly dispersed with their heads drooping and shoulders sagging. “Hey,” Orion snapped at them, stepping forward. “Hey!”
The mercenaries muttered and shot each other questioning looks, but big Zagzebski clapped his hands to bring them to attention. “Listen up,” he barked. “OG has something he wants to say.”
“That’s right.” Orion cleared his throat. “Look, first I have to say thank you.” Again he scanned the battered faces. “You put your bodies on the line when we mixed it up at Romp, and that made a difference.”
“What we get paid for, OG,” shouted shaved-pate Adler out in
the crowd. “Credits are all the thanks we need.”
“Credits by the truckload,” he assured them, his hands in surrender. “Certain three-eyed politicians with access to the galactic tax base have guaranteed that.” They laughed, a hungry gleam in their eyes. “And let me tell you something else. This is not a loss.” He shook his head emphatically, trying to convince himself as much as anyone. “Not yet. We have the Mad Thinker’s stealth ship, and if we can find just a fingerprint — physical or digital — it might be the thing that brings him down.”
“You heard him,” Reddpenning said, turning her flinty face to the Briarhearts. “Adler, you’re the expert, so you choose your bomb-sniffing team. When that ship is clean, I want two tech specialists with me to crack the central computer. Zag, you get the field agents geared up in full assault armor and get ready for a room-to-room search.” She clapped her hands sharply, and the well-trained mercenaries scattered.
“Wow,” Orion said with a smirk when Reddpenning turned back to them. “You are a whip.”
She tossed her dark braid over her shoulder. “Thank you.”
“And don’t I know it,” said her husband, feigning exasperation though his eyes beamed with pride.
Suppressing a smile, Reddpenning nodded at Aurelia, Kangor and their double-bound captive. “What about that… thing?”
“A good question,” Aurelia said, her voice strained. “I can’t hold this field forever.”
“Well, Dalaxa?” Orion said as the steel-banded creature jabbered and snorted, his twisted muscles straining. “You were the one who said ‘don’t kill him’ when he attacked us on our way out. Am I correct in assuming that was not a moment of mercy?”
“Of course not.” Dalaxa rolled her pink eyes and propped her hands on her hips. “There’s a possibility — so slim I hesitate to even mention it — that I could use ‘Little Brother’ there.”
“What do you mean?” Orion asked with a scowl.
“There might be a way to sneak into the manowar neural network.” Her lips tightened thoughtfully. “If we could attack their interconnected minds from afar…”
Orion nodded, understanding the broad strokes well enough. “If there’s a chance, we have to try. Be brilliant, Dalaxa.”
She shrugged, humorless. “I always am.”
“Kangor,” Orion said as he looked up at the big vycart. “You feel well enough to chaperone this little operation until — are we calling him ‘Little Brother?’ — until Little Brother is secure in the brig?”
“Of course,” he grunted, flexing his healing leg with a grinding noise. “I am nearly whole.”
“I’ll help you get started,” Reddpenning said, approaching Dalaxa. “I assume you’ll need to set up a techno-organic interface?”
Dalaxa seemed both shocked and pleased to find someone who spoke her language. “Well, yes…”
The four of them started for a port-side exit from the hangar bay, leaving Orion and Costigan alone in front of the boarding tube airlock. “And just what do you do around here?” Orion asked Costigan with a grin.
“Hey,” Costigan chuckled, spreading his arms. “I run the whole show. You know how it is. Blame for me, credit for everyone else.”
“Well,” Orion said as he stuck out his hand. “Thank you for hanging in there, brother.”
“Of course, of course.” Costigan gripped Orion’s tattooed hand firmly. “Plus,” he added as a smile wrinkled the edges of his eyes, “you’re making me rich with these cakewalk government contracts.”
“Cakewalk?” Orion crowed as he flung Costigan’s hand away. “And how am I making you rich? I’ve barely made myself rich!”
Costigan shot a glance at the peach fuzz on Orion’s head. “Maybe you’re spending too much on haircuts.”
“Listen here,” Orion sneered, “with your I-give-up hair. I could personally—” But Orion stopped short as an icy shiver ran through his body.
“You alright?” Costigan asked with a tilt of his head. “You’re paler than usual.”
“Just tired,” Orion lied as he tried to shake off the dark pall. “As I was saying…”
After Orion finished his thoughts on Costigan’s haircut, sense of style and questionable parentage, the two old friends parted ways. While Costigan hustled back to the bridge to oversee the search of the stealth ship from on high, Orion took a gravity lift up to the crew deck and went to his austere quarters. Finally alone, he tossed up his datacube and commanded it to contact Zovaco Ralli. A few silent moments passed while Orion waited for his cube to make the connection, and he wished Bully could have been there to greet him. Then an error code chimed, and a sequence of red holographic letters appeared floating above Orion’s datacube.
“No response?” Orion muttered. He scratched his jutting chin and tried to wrap his tired mind around it. Usually, if Zovaco was in session or otherwise publicly indisposed, Orion’s call got forwarded to a private message box. But “no response” meant his datacube wasn’t even connected to the datasphere, and Zovaco was always connected. With a shrug, Orion resolved to call back in a few minutes. Whatever was amiss with the network would be resolved by then.
He unclipped his smartcloak and unfurled it in front of himself, pleased to see that the blue-gray nano-fabric had shed every last drop of the manowars’ synthetic blood. His charcoal-colored kinetic bodysuit, on the other hand, would need its seams and textured surfaces scrubbed to remove the high-velocity droplets of biosynth blue that had struck him. Orion freed himself from his combat gear piece by piece and let it fall where it may, fully intending to call forth his spellblade and run through some meditative swordsmanship. Yet when he was fully disrobed, he made the mistake of sitting down on his thin, firm bed. Sitting down became laying back as Orion tried to calculate how long it had been since he had last slept — was it 36 hours, or 48? Before he knew it, he was sinking into senseless exhaustion.
He awoke in a fog hours later, the buzzer on his locked door sounding with a harsh static edge. He had been having a dream — somehow both erotic and terrifying — about a temba nubu woman beckoning him into clouds of purple perfume. Still disoriented, Orion clawed the coarse soldier’s blanket off his bed and wrapped it around his waist. When he pushed the button to slide his steel door aside, he found Dalaxa standing in the dim corridor.
“Dalaxa,” Orion grunted, still blinking his bleary eyes. “Did you… did you have some kind of breakthrough?”
She hushed him with a soft kiss, gently pressing into his half-naked body, but Orion pulled back. “Dalaxa, look. I think you’re amazing, brilliant, beautiful, but—”
She kissed him again, deeply at first, then many times in quick succession, breathing whispered words between. “Shut up, shut up, shut up. I need to forget about this, all of this, just for a little while.”
“Dalaxa.” Orion took her by the shoulders. “Seriously. I’ve been over this in therapy, and relationships forged in intense situations tend to falter when—”
She grabbed his face. “Orion, I’m telling you I need this. I need to forget who I am and what I’ve done. Please, just for a little while.”
Orion found himself powerless to stop. Ashamed, elated and scared all at once, he fell back into bed with a woman for the first time since Pozoia Tofana had seduced and nearly murdered him. When Dalaxa’s smooth, pale flesh was as naked as Orion’s own, Orion could tell she was more than a bit shy between the sheets. To his surprise, he found he was too after what had happened with Pozoia. Once they found a way to make their mix of human and s’zone biology work together, they made love gently and quietly, savoring the simple comfort of one warm body against another.
After, they laid in bed and talked, and Dalaxa tried to explain the progress she had made with Little Brother. Orion listened and wondered at the woman. He had tested in the 99th percentile of almost every IQ test he hadn’t tried to flunk, and she made him feel
dumb.
“So essentially,” Dalaxa summed up, “I built the best techno-organic interface I could in the White Heath’s med bay, but Little Brother’s synthetic cortex is protected by a sophisticated firewall program.”
Orion propped himself up on an elbow. “That you wrote?”
“That I wrote to be unbreakable.” She flopped back on the musty sheets. “I wrote a new program — sloppy, fast work — to try and crack it open.” She shook her head with a sigh. “We’ll see.”
Orion’s mismatched eyes flitted over her lithe body. “Do we have a shot?”
“A light-year long shot,” she admitted. “Even with the best quantum computing models — forget the outdated equipment here — it could take years to exhaust all of the access code combinations.”
Orion considered it for a moment, but another inexplicable shiver of darkness ran through him.
“What’s wrong?” Dalaxa asked, laying a hand on his chest.
“Nothing,” Orion said blankly as he sat up. “I need to call Zovaco again. Typhus wouldn’t have given up his ship, his crew, his harem, unless… unless he had some kind of end game in motion.”
He rose to search out his datacube in the dimness of his quarters, but coincidence intervened and the datacube started to chime and blink on the floor. Orion hesitated for a moment out of sheer surprise. Then he snatched it up, gave it a squeeze and tossed it in the air.
“Accept,” he said when the cube floated in front of him.
A holographic interface appeared, and Orion saw Alana Reddpenning’s worry-creased face. “Orion,” she said with a swallow. “There’s been an incident aboard the White Heath.”
“What is it?” Orion snapped into motion, gathering the pieces of his kinetic bodysuit.
“One of our new recruits, Biyamba…”
“The tall mystskyn girl, I remember,” he said as he jammed his arms and legs into the rubbery suit.
“She’s been stabbed.” Reddpenning’s brow furrowed with deep lines. “Killed. By whom, we don’t know.”