Warp Wraith, page 26
Anguish and anger swirled together in Vondrak’s mind. First Kaizyn; now Krita. But more than any loss, he pondered the Wraith, and the unraveling of so many schemes if he wasn’t stopped.
“General Konrad,” Vondrak said, turning back to the officer, “release the Reserves from Aleister. Sweep north and finish this.”
The Legionnaire stiffened his spine, clicked his heels, and bowed. “I will go with them myself, My Lord!”
“General,” Vondrak called after the mortal as he led his aides from the chamber. When the officer paused and looked back, the vampire offered him a fang-filled smile. “Don’t come back without victory.”
A bead of the sweat that had been bunching at Konrad’s hairline slipped loose to slide down the side of his face and drip from his chin. “Sire!” He didn’t quite lead his subordinates at a run to reach the exit.
“Should we ready a transmission to Bahamut?” Vilan asked as the door slid shut at his peer’s back. “Surely, Count Ruthven needs to be made aware of...” he gulped as Vondrak turned his glower upon him “...of matters.”
“Indeed,” Vondrak rumbled. “Leave it to me.” He waved at the rest of them dismissively. “Now. All of you go!” With the last syllable roared, the rest of the humans did sprint to clear his sanctum.
Stabbing the hologram controls again, Vondrak brought back up the replay from the drone recording. Again, he watched his Get fall before the preternatural speed of the Wraith. Again, he scrutinized the killer’s movement and appearance, freezing the replay the instant before he raised his blaster to end the robot’s existence.
It is him. It has to be.
Malik.
And that could only mean that the Wraith’s next target would be the place where they’d held him after the betrayal and destruction of the Sacred Band—the place that it could be said they’d made him.
Jabbing another key, Vondrak growled, “Director Roaul, now.”
A staticky pause. Then an audible gulp. Then, “We...have lost contact with the Citadel, Sire.”
“What?!?!”
“We’re picking up random transmissions from the garrison,” the woman on the other end answered in a rush, “but the Director’s channel has gone completely silent.” Another gulp. “The, ah, the uprising appears to be completely out of control.”
“Call out my Palace Guard Company,” he ordered.
“Yes, Lord.”
The Shock Troopers charged with his personal service were handpicked for their particular devotion, not only to the Theocracy, but to him. He’d chosen Kaizyn from among their ranks for the Eternal Kiss. It had radicalized the rest further, each of them vying to demonstrate their fanaticism to him.
“Their orders are to re-assert control of the situation at the Citadel,” he continued. “If necessary, take no prisoners.”
THE HOLOGRAM WASHED out Callisto’s color, made him look like a specter, hovering over the projector in the Hardcase command post. “The blast opened up the bridge to vacuum,” he said in a drained voice, as if he didn’t believe the words he recited. “Force fields sealed it, but not before most of the command staff was swept out.”
Malik swallowed hard under his mask and looked at the floor as his guts knotted. “Everild?”
“He’s comatose in sickbay.” Callisto’s face twisted. The younger man stood on the Vengeful’s auxiliary bridge, still in his flight suit with a battered helm held under his arm. “Massive soft tissue injury, a dozen fractures, burns...” He winced and shook his head. “It’s bad, Mal.”
Malik glanced around the post at the Revenants and scattering of Hardcases present—noted that Edie and her immediate subordinates were absent, but didn’t have the energy to wonder why. The gazes staring back at him shivered with fear and, in a few cases, despair. The latter had worsened as Callisto had detailed the course of the fight in orbit. Can’t let that spread.
“Is there a chance for him?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” Callisto replied. “I don’t think the surgeons do. And he’s certainly out of commission for the duration.” He released a bleak sigh. “Most of Vengeful’s leadership team was on the bridge when it happened.”
Malik fixed the image of the younger man with his most stern stare, willing it to carry through the holographic medium. He’d prepared him for this moment. He’d prepared all his people, for that dread time when they might need to be the ones to carry on the flag.
“Then take command of the ship.”
“I have my own squadrons—”
“Assume command until Captain Brula returns,” Malik cut him off. “Leadership of the ships in orbit passes to Captain Venture on the Mauler.”
That last bit seemed to relax him, at least. “Aye, sir.”
“Damage to the other ships?”
“Restoration took some,” Callisto answered, “the others, light. We lost seven Slayers, though, with three more in repair bay—maybe one of those a loss.”
Malik folded his arms and did some calculations in his head. None of them returned with a satisfactory answer. It was a fact of life that the Revenants were always short on everything. But running low on fighters or ships had always simply meant retreat in the past. There was no retreat here.
“Brula will be back,” he said at last. “Any word from her?”
“None, yet,” Callisto replied. “Based on her last trajectory, she’d be making contact with their main force around now.”
“Keep me informed,” Malik said, “about that and Everild’s condition.”
“Of course.”
Malik let himself linger for a moment on the image of Everild in his mind. Damn it, Dom. There was no plan he’d made that hadn’t involved the old space dog. The Revenants were as much Everild’s creation as Malik’s—more perhaps. He’d taken the training and experience of the long-dead Imperial Fleet and remade it. When Malik had finally chosen their break from the formal Rebel Stars, Everild had supported it.
Malik had few friends. One of them stared out of the hologram at him, now. The other lay in a sickbay stasis tube, fighting for—and perhaps losing—his life.
“Make repairs,” he pressed. “Get some rest. And make certain we have patrols out and scanners set wide.” He paused meaningfully. “We can’t get surprised like that again.”
Callisto growled audibly. “It was a novel trick. High-g antimatter burn for what had to be hours. Then shutting down to bare power, hardly anything but life-support to preserve stealth.” He shook his head in wonderment. “Her crew had to be suffering. I’m impressed they managed the fight they did.”
“The rest won’t be counting on tricks,” Malik pointed out. “It’ll just be numbers. Make sure you aren’t pinned against Circe’s gravity when they arrive.”
“Yes, sir.”
Malik considered Callisto for a long moment, wondering if another hologram would soon be telling him of the younger man’s demise. He winced reflexively and forced the thought away. “Talk to you soon.”
“You, too.” Callisto vanished from the air after a deliberately sloppy salute.
Malik stared into the space where it had been for a contemplative moment before giving himself a shake and turning to the rest in the post. He found Ingrid instantly, leaned against table with her arms folded and ankles crossed. “Where are the Freedom Brigades?”
She popped up from her seat and approached the holo-projector, knelt beside it and punched a series of instructions into its controls. A map of the region around the Magvars materialized. Blinking icons slid south from the plains above them.
“They’re beginning to reach the gaps here and here,” Ingrid said, pointing to the passes where the mountain range bent north west. Her gesture shifted to icons speeding for Reyes. “Still a few hours away from us, though. And the first units that reach us will be in pieces, coming by hover trucks, the rest on foot.” She frowned at him. “Can’t risk the heavy transports, moving them closer.”
“A few more hours.” Malik considered it. “How about our friends to the south? It’s near dawn. Whatever attack they’d had planned doesn’t seem to be coming.”
“It appears so, Lord.” She exchanged a look with Hutch, monitoring her sets of scanner equipment. The other woman nodded in affirmation. “What transmissions we’re intercepting are a jumble. So are the engine signatures. Some have pulled back another couple kilometers. Seems like no one’s in command.”
A rumble escaped Malik’s chest. “No one is.”
The other onlookers joined his growl of triumph with smiles.
“See to the wounded,” he told them all. “See to our positions and supplies. We hold now until the Brigades arrive. It’s that simple.” Rumbles and more smiles answered him. “Alright, back to work everyone.”
The Furies broke up at that, the Hardcases lingering a little longer with questioning in their eyes. A spurt of anger lit Malik’s innards that Edie wasn’t there. But they went, too,
Ingrid rose from beside the holo-projector with a hiss of pain.
“Are you alright?”
She was working a shoulder in circles, but the swelling about her nose and the blackening beneath her eyes told the tale of her hurts even more pointedly. “I will heal,” she replied gruffly, though a wince crossed her bruises. “We sent a great many heroes to Valinar, last night, though.”
“I know,” Malik replied with as much gentleness as the mask would permit. “And I will sing the dirge with you and the survivors when the chance comes.” He crossed his arms, assessing the were-woman. “But we have much to do, first.”
She grinned ferally and the injuries suddenly didn’t seem that much. “Pay-back.”
“That, for certain.” He glanced over at the clutter of sensor equipment. “Hutch, where is Captain Sundown?”
The woman twitched a little, picking up on the hint of anger that got through the mask’s metallic tones. “I’m not sure, Lord.”
Malik eased off on the anger. “I’ll find her.” He knew now how to. Among all the auras in the rebel-held pass, hers would be the one that simply wasn’t there, a gap as obvious as a targeting reticle.
With a curt nod to Ingrid, he swept out of the command post, striding for the front door. Cloak billowing out behind him, he stepped into the night. The dark was acquiring the first hints of gray as dawn approached. A few stars lingered. Swirls of cloud bringing spats of snow whitened.
“What is it about her?” Ingrid called at his back.
Malik planted his foot with a crunch on frosted, battered paves and pivoted upon it to face her. She stood right behind him, had clearly followed and bristled now with that Fenreir hostility that was impossible not to liken to that of an agitated wolf.
“How do you mean?”
Ingrid took a step closer, stood right at his face. “She has driven you to distraction. I don’t think I’ve ever seen you like this.” Her bruise-marred face twisted. “And I’m sure I don’t like it.”
Malik snorted through his mask. “Is this jealousy?”
Ingrid flinched and Malik instantly cursed himself for the insensitivity. But she pressed on. “This is concern for the cause. We’re not here to embroil ourselves in their politics, especially not that of those Witches.”
“I know why we’re here, Ingrid.”
“Make sure you don’t forget,” she snapped. “The Fenreir have followed you across the stars because your way has always been True.”
“It remains so.”
She pressed even closer, her face nearly at his mask and her eyes locked with his. “She’s one of them, Mal,” she hissed. “She can’t be trusted.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” he retorted with anger he didn’t totally understand. “She’s been in this fight since she was a child!”
“She does not know herself,” Ingrid replied, “not truly. She is divided down the middle.” She shook her head. “You can sense it about her, can’t you?” Her eyes narrowed. “Or has your fascination blinded you to it?”
Malik stiffened and his voice went very cold. “Thought this wasn’t jealousy.”
“And what if it is?” Her hands drifted up to touch his shoulders—barely, as though he was icy enough to burn. “I have been yours, Malik.” One of the hands rose to brush the cheek piece of the mask. “I have seen the man behind all of this.” Her eyes shimmered and a tiny shake entered her voice. “I have believed in you, worshipped you—”
He grabbed the hand at his face and yanked it away savagely. “I didn’t ask you for any of that.”
“But you accepted it, didn’t you?” She pulled the hand from his grasp, stepped back from him. The violence of the motion had shaken a tear loose from her eye. “You may be our Lord,” she told him hoarsely, “but you do not get to tell me my heart.”
On most days, Malik grudgingly accepted the necessity of his mask—both its function and its obfuscation. But at that moment, he was truly thankful for the emotion it hid from the woman glaring at him.
“Sir!” a voice called from the porch front of the shop that had been converted into the command post. Malik tore his gaze from Ingrid to see Hutch perched there. “Transmission coming through from General Vier!”
Malik shot Ingrid a final glance before whipping past her, back to the building in a swirl of cloak. A couple Hardcases who’d been lingering on the porch and likely watched his exchange with Ingrid looked away hastily. Inside, Hutch was fiddling with her projector and a hologram was struggling to form over it.
The tangle of distortion knotted together into an image of Esli Vier. The older man looked weary, but almost giddy as he straightened the beret on his gray hairs. “Wraith, good to see you still there!”
Malik acknowledged him with a nod. “We’re hoping to see you here, soon, General.”
“I’m pushing them as hard as I can,” Vier replied, “but that’s not the reason for the call.” His grin made him look a decade younger. “Our contacts in Aleister and south of the Magvars are beginning to report in. We have word that the Aleister garrison is on the move. They’re emptying out the city and heading north.”
Excitement crackled along Malik’s nerves. “This is confirmed?”
“By several sources,” Vier answered, “all of them of the highest level of trust.”
“Then we will need your people through the gaps before then.”
“We’ll make it.” Vier’s enthusiasm cooled a bit. “But a fight south of the Magvars favors them. That puts them under the firing arcs of the anti-orbital batteries around the city and to its south. We won’t be able to count on support from your Revenants above without exposing them to that.”
“We just need to hold at the mountains,” Malik told him. “They’ll attack us there. They have to.”
“As you say.” Grinning again, Vier flipped him a crisp salute. “We’ll see you soon.”
Malik acknowledged it with bow of his head. “Good luck, General.”
The hologram vanished.
“You were right,” Ingrid said at his back. “It worked.”
He turned to face her, hadn’t realized that she’d followed him back in, but neither was surprised. The hurt of their exchanged already seemed to have faded. The chilliness of a fresh hunt limned her eyes.
“The Citadel is exposed,” he told her. “Prepare our strike team.”
“There’ll still be a garrison,” she replied. “Even if they won’t get help from the city.” A little of her moment of fervor faded. “And we’re hurting, Mal,” she admitted. “The Number Two Scorpiod is out of commission. We lost twenty Furies in the woods, more before that.” Her jaw worked and he realized it was infuriating for her to acknowledge what she said next. “I...don’t know if it’s enough.”
And the only place they could get enough was someone she’d told him not to trust—perhaps even hated.
But Malik knew what they had to do. “Then we’ll get reinforcements.”
CALLISTO STOOD OVER the medi-pod, looking down at the shrunken figure within it.
“Damn it, Dom.”
They’d shrouded Everild in a silvery, thermal blanket and applied bio-sealant over the burns on one side of his face before closing him in to let the pod work. The latter stood out like pasty scabs on his craggy, pallid features and did nothing to hide the bruising around his pinched-shut eyes. And the damned pod didn’t look like it was helping; it looked like a goddamned coffin.
“He’ll push through, Commander,” Marta, the ship’s chief surgeon said quietly from the other side of the pod. “He’s always been a fighter.”
Callisto nodded numbly. Telling Mal about it had been the worst. The cold bastard had barely reacted, as if it was nothing that the man both had relied upon so much lingered at the edge of death. As if none of us is really anything in his schemes.
He gave himself a shake. That was the shock talking. That was exhaustion and stress building up after hours without respite. He smiled feebly at Marta. “Thanks, Doc.”
A turn and several strides carried him from the sickbay. Emerging into the main corridor—one of two that ran parallel and the length of the battlecruiser—he winced at the stink of scorched metal and crisped electronics. A glance to his left showed him the blackened door to the turbolift; now cordoned off with caution tape and deactivated above this level. The explosions that had wrecked the bridge had decompressed many of the compartments in the dorsal spire of the ship. The only people up there now were repair and rescue crews.
Callisto’s nostrils flared, picking up a nauseating hint of something else: charred flesh. Grimacing, he turned and strode right, down the passageway.
Crew members passed him, coming and going. Some nodded or offered hasty salutes. A weight settled upon him as he acknowledged these with gruff nods. They were all looking to him now. And he’d never missed the rancid sweat stink of a Slayer cockpit so much.
A chamber opened up to his right and he took the turn, stepping into the auxiliary bridge of Vengeful, and its combat information center. Huge holograms rotated in its center, showing view of Circe, the Revenants’ ships, and the space a light minute out around them. Everild—the stubborn dog—should have been down here when those blasts hit the ship, letting its flag captain fight the vessel. But the man had always had to be in the thick of things.
