Lords of the Endless Plains, page 25
Which might be why the other two were surging forward on the flanks.
Goading him. Threatening another envelopment, which had caused that captain to flee them before.
Might even work.
The hull rang with wavebolt turrets firing as rapidly as they could cool, reload, and charge the next bolt. Slow, but faster than might be entirely safe, as you could set one off in the turret accidentally, blowing a scallop in the hull itself.
Hadn’t happened today, but usually it only occurred on ships that hadn’t maintained their gear properly.
Like old pirates. Not newly refurbished warships on their first raid.
Wavebolts raced inward from three sides. The Striker let loose with every turret and Omnipulsar it had, but they had to focus on the biggest wavebolts, ignoring the little ones.
Uly saw what Sterling had done. And approved.
Fire Diamond had turrets at either end of the hull, while Corsac Fox had a pair in a single turret forward. Slightly better rate of fire and accuracy. Especially when both fire as quickly as the second can go.
That second one snuck through, because someone hadn’t been paying attention.
It slammed into the flanking Electroshield Array, but had been tuned as a lance instead of a fist. Like a shiv slammed into someone’s kidneys, though the Auga wouldn’t recognize that image.
The entire ship rocked once, like a stone that had been kicked loose from soil. It even started to tumble, suggesting internal damage somewhere that was worse than it appeared.
“One of their Omnipulsar mounts just ceased firing,” Haydar announced.
“Power cut inside,” Sterling replied. “May have just lost half of his gyroscopes as well. All ships, one more full salvo then hold for defensive fire only.”
Uly caught himself short of intervening. That Striker didn’t look like it could take a full salvo. But at the same time, it was like stabbing someone to death with icepicks, regardless of all the vids where a starship suddenly exploded every which way like a Roman candle.
Four bolts got through, because all the turrets on Uly’s side of that ship stopped moving. Stopped firing. Stopped.
The ship was wreathed in multicolored fire for several seconds.
When the flashes of light cleared, Uly could see a tumble developing. And most of the exterior lights on his screen had gone dark.
Plus, plasma was venting into space like yellow fog.
“Nyri Station Prime, this is the Corsac Fox,” Sterling said firmly. “You will immediately launch all search and rescue equipment. We’re done and won’t bother them again, or you, so they will be safe. On my honor. However, time is of the essence. Ononguli Squadron, come starboard to zero-four-zero and elevate ten. Cease all fire save defensive engagement and stand by to rendezvous for departure.”
“But we could kill him,” an angry voice came over the line.
Uly didn’t bother trying to see who had transmitted. All of them probably felt that way.
“Starlight Relentless, we just did that,” Sterling announced in a cold sneer. “That vessel will require extensive repair work to ever possibly fly again. At this moment, they will have to work at keeping it from falling out of orbit and impacting the planet below. We are done here. Unless you feel like disobeying orders?”
Uly didn’t remember teaching Sterling that particular tone of voice. Must have learned it from Captain Winter, back on King Hewitt II. Or his mother, catching him with a hand in a cookie jar. Not normally appropriate, but this situation wasn’t normal.
“No, sir,” the man replied. “Maneuvering now.”
Uly nodded at Sterling when the young man looked up and seemed to come back from some high, distant place, eyes suddenly growing huge as he reviewed what he’d done.
He’d gone to war. And treated it like a professional, instead of the usual Ononguli raider berserker.
Like, say, Starlight Relentless.
Uly approved. He would need conductors like Sterling Huff.
And whoever else Suka Kuri might train up for him.
SEVENTY-SEVEN
Dan kept the Guezal prisoners in front of her. Her team kept guns vaguely aimed at them, regardless of how polite the seven were being.
They were in the corridor leading to the big ship Uly had wanted her to steal. Nobody else had appeared, but Yanouk had relayed that each of the six major arms only had one group assigned for cleaning duties. Someone would have to cross the center, and nobody on this station was armed.
Or suicidal.
“We’re here,” Nasrin announced as she came to an airlock. “Yanouk?”
The female apparently named Yeong-Suk walked right up to the airlock and tapped her wristband against the control mechanism with a thunk. A moment later, the airlock slid open, revealing the corridor inward.
Nobody home. Shouldn’t be anybody on the ship. Had they moved quicker, Dan figured that they might have not seen anybody, save for the one man who had awakened in the middle of his night and needed a potty break.
Luck, but Dan wasn’t sure if it was good or bad yet. Yeong-Suk probably wasn’t sure, either.
Dan would let Ethir sort the Guezal out when she got them to Uly.
“In,” Dan ordered, but Nasrin was already leading her team down the long corridor.
The ship was so big that they’d had to telescope an airlock arm nearly fifty meters merely to connect, despite the way it had been docked and snugged up against the side of the station itself.
Intended for long-term storage, perhaps measured in years. Because the Auga Empire was like that. Prepare relentlessly. Build and stage resources. Move everything slowly and deliberately into position.
Attack.
Uly had said that they didn’t understand jazz. Dan was finally starting to understand what he meant by that observation.
And how Uly intended to take advantage of it.
At the far end, Yeong-Suk opened the next hatch, then said something to Yanouk.
“According to her, that’s it for primary security she can help us with,” Yanouk relayed. “The ship is in a low-energy state, with engineers that monitor things from the primary station instead of locally, and only visited monthly for more advanced maintenance. It is, however, supposedly extremely automated.”
“Let her know we just stole an identical copy not all that long ago,” Dan smiled.
Ahead of them, Nasrin had boarded and taken control of a mud room. Or whatever the Auga called that space where you stored lifesuits and exterior gear. Lockers filled with tools. And suits of every size, though none of them would have the sorts of armor Dan required on her team for combat operations.
Good enough for workers.
“Okay, people,” Dan announced. “That airlock should have set off an alarm somewhere, so we do not have long before someone notices. Everyone to your stations. Yanouk, you and Katya swap places and bring your team and friends forward with me.”
Bodies got into motion. Soon, the ship would be in motion.
Then the Corsac Fox would be in motion.
SEVENTY-EIGHT
Ciah was glad that she had inherited a group of Khet men that Dan had already broken in for her. Back home, her lack of stature would have almost guaranteed that at least one of them would challenge her for her right to lead.
At the same time, every one of these men was at least a half-decade older than Ciah. Sometimes more than a decade. Old veteran troopers.
She had caught a few knowing glances of those sorts that meant breaking in a young new officer, which really did describe the situation. But Dan didn’t allow any hazing, and all these men were professional volunteers.
“In motion aft,” Ciah ordered.
She’d left her faceplate open in spite of how dry the air in here was, so she’d turned the mister on to intermittent to keep her gills happy. And let her smell and taste the air as they moved.
Not as good as a Mazhin. Nobody was as good as that, but Khet were probably the closest second place. Not counting Uly. He was kinda scary at times.
She started to jog, for no other reason than it would force all those long-legged men around her to do the same, when she frequently had to churn her legs to keep up with them.
And she was on point, because she’d moved before ordering. In the rear, Katya’s team was still adjusting, as they’d planned on storming the empty bridge with Nasrin and Dan.
Ciah led.
This ship was simply enormous. Two kilometers long, and most of that was those tremendous cargo bays. She went through an open hatch and marveled at the thing she saw, then realized that it was one of the plates to make up an Auga watchtower station, seen edge on.
And a meter thick, with twenty-odd meters of curve at the center, where it would assemble into a cylinder.
HUGE.
Well organized, though. The Auga did that. And did it with the efficiency of an accountant, which was what her parents had wanted her to be when she grew up.
Worse, she’d finished a degree in business with an accounting sub, but not gotten around to taking the certification test yet because you had to have so many years of practice as a bookkeeper first.
And all her spare time had been at the dojo, when her classmates had all been working part-time gigs to earn their hours.
Ciah figured she’d come out ahead. Dumb luck, but she’d lived up to the name she had taken when she was old enough to legally do it.
Troublesome Warrior Child.
She grinned. Behind her, the men had all fallen into a stomping rhythm as they matched her pace. Rear-facing cameras showed two lines of three each, quick-marching like this was a parade.
Ciah continued to grin and held her pace. They matched her.
For those veterans, it was a form of acceptance, because they’d apparently decided she knew what she was doing here.
And seven guns were pointed forward as they crossed, looking for the engine room.
SEVENTY-NINE
Yanouk had taken Yeoung-Suk and her cohorts under her wing. They spoke an obscure, regional dialect of Auga Common that Yanouk only understood because Suka Kuri apparently spoke everything and had insisted that she and Hiko speak it, too.
It was not impossible to learn from someone you shared no common language with, but it did make it complicated and make you prone to missing important sub-text.
Pantomime only got you so far, as Yanouk had learned.
And asked the Guezal a few leading questions, then sat back and listened to Yeong-Suk answer, as well as the five men and other two women.
Ethir would absolutely call them kin when he got to know them. And not in a bad way.
Mostly.
You never knew with Thogin, though The Cousins were Yanouk’s only exposure to the species in person. Books generally painted them as everyday folk, leading humdrum lives.
The Cousins had gone off for fortune or fame. And run into Uly eventually.
Like the Guezal might.
Purple fur, generally about a centimeter thick, though she recalled from somewhere that it might double that and grow an undercoat in cold weather on a planetary surface. Long-limbed bipeds of a fairly standard design.
She also remembered that they came from a high-gravity, barren, mineral-poor world that had many moons and was known for its archaeological wonders. The species had risen and fallen several times in ancient history, then been absorbed by the expanding wavefront of the Auga Empire, who had looted the antiquities for display in their own museums, even while treating them like second-class citizens of their own homeworld.
“How did you end up at Nyri?” Yanouk asked as she walked next to Yeong-Suk and in the middle of the others, with her team around that and Dan’s team trailing and watchful.
“They wanted the troublemakers as far from home as they could get us,” Yeong-Suk laughed. “The time served wasn’t going to be all that long. The problem was that after that, they’d drop us on the planetary surface and expect us to work. Or pay our own way home to Sector Four.”
“So a form of exile?” Yanouk asked.
“They’re good at that,” Min Choe spoke up, one of the older males in the group, though only barely thirty if Yanouk had gotten names and ages memorized correctly.
Yeong-Suk seemed to be the ringleader, though she was younger than most of the other seven. Smarter, too.
“Oh?” Yanouk turned to the male.
“Third time for me,” he nodded. “At this rate, I might see the entire Empire before I’m done.”
“We’re leaving the Empire,” Yanouk told them.
And watched all eight perk up, as well as a dozen armed killers around her watching the newcomers. Prisoners? Something.
“Where?” Yeong-Suk asked. “We originally thought you were pirates, hiding on some missed Auga world.”
Yanouk turned to Dan and got her nod before proceeding to explain it.
“We are leading an Ononguli raid to Nyri,” she said. “Then returning to that space for a brief time. Then elsewhere.”
All of them got big eyes, watching her.
“But we are so far from Ononguli Space,” Yeong-Suk whispered. “How? Why?”
“We belong to the forces loyal to the Corsac Fox,” Yanouk told them. “He is Human, like Commander Chastain here. His fleet contains many species, working in concert to thwart the Auga.”
“I’m in,” Min announced. “Tired of forced exile. Tired of Auga shitheads, too.”
That drew a round of agreements from the Guezal, all of whom turned to Yeong-Suk.
She seemed to be in charge of them, in spite of being young.
She did have the force of personality that the others seemed to lack. Leader, when the other seven were followers.
“All other species?” she asked.
“Even renegade Auga would be welcome,” Yanouk assured her. “Look at Commander Chastain’s combat team leaders. Human, Mazhin, Ononguli, Emro, Khet.”
These Guezal looked around with new eyes and some astonishment, but Yeong-Suk locked eyes with Yanouk.
“We could finally be free?” the Guezal woman asked quietly.
“Yes,” Yanouk assured her.
“I’m in,” Yeong-Suk nodded.
Yanouk smiled.
EIGHTY
Dan looked around the bridge of the ship she was about to cut out of storage. Drew had sent Yaqub Zobo with her to fly it, the young Khet having been originally trained on big cargo freighters before running off to a life of piracy at Lacium, then deciding he didn’t want to be a pirate after all.
At least, not like that.
His last name apparently referred to the purple petals of a Khet flower, so he always had a stripe of purple tape somewhere on the outside of his suit. Like now. And one across his back let her know who was in the pilot’s station, rapidly and precisely clicking things and making adjustments.
The air in here wasn’t stale, but had a metallic taste. Blowers on minimum. Heat down to the point she’d brought her own suit’s up for now. Maybe six degrees above freezing water. Coat weather, if she was in her usual uniform.
Dan made a note to talk to Omid about adding a heavy jacket to the usual uniform, for cold weather operations on a planet. Or for dress occasions.
Too much time on a ship, where you controlled the temperature at all times.
One more thing for her to make a decision on, so Uly didn’t have to think about it.
Chief of Staff.
“Yaqub, where are we at?” she asked after a few moments.
Yanouk had gotten all her people off to one side and seated facing inward, with instructions not to touch anything. The rest of the raiders were scattered about. Ciah and Katya had a group of engineers with them in case there were issues aft.
Yaqub was in charge of handling everything at this point.
He kept clicking things, then finally looked up.
“Nobody has noticed us boarding,” he said. “At least, nobody has asked what’s going on. That will change in a few minutes, when I trigger the docking locks to disengage and we start elevating out of dock. I’m taking a bit to get everything fully warm, instead of just running like hell with half my systems still off.”
“Wise choice,” Dan nodded. “They are hopefully all distracted by Uly and those ships.”
“My thought as well, Commander,” Yaqub nodded, then went back to his board. “Engineering, how long?”
“Three minutes and the generators will have stabilized fully,” someone replied from aft. “Engines are warming up and we’re running a test cycle on the Variable Pulse Spatial Generator before we activate it. Figure they have to see that happen and start asking questions.”
“Engineering, I don’t show anybody on this side of planetary orbit with guns,” Yaqub said. “As soon as the engines read green, let me know and then bring the Spatial Generator to full operations and charge it. Either it works, or we have to ask the Corsac Fox to come rescue us. Pretty embarrassing at that point.”
Dan grinned. All of them were professionals, and Uly had impressed on them that professionalism was the highest state of a navy. Let the Ononguli go be crazy. Or the Khet be business sharks.
Uly wanted you to do your job as well as you could, with an expectation that you’d figure out how to top that tomorrow.
Like he did.
And she was in command of yet another starship, in spite of hardly knowing anything. But she had the right people, one of whom was technically out of uniform because he couldn’t resist the purple duct tape.
Yaqub made up for it. Especially when he looked up at her.
“Sir, we’re ready to move,” he announced, looking for her to give the actual order.
“Unlock and engage thrusters,” Dan ordered, only because she’d stopped to look up what a captain was supposed to say at this point.
Wasn’t second nature, like with Uly or Drew.
But she was learning.
