Home Front: A Space Opera Adventure (Star Kingdom Book 7), page 23
“Yeah.” Yas had already voiced his objections on the matter, so he didn’t say more. Besides, Jess wasn’t the one in charge of the ship.
She finished chewing and gazed at him as she drank from her water bottle. The light by the porthole was soft and played across the planes of her face, creating mysterious shadows here and there. There were a few other mercenaries in the mess hall, but it was late, and he doubted anyone would notice if they kissed. Not that they would. He’d given up on her ever falling for him. She was more likely to thump him on the shoulder and call him “Doc” rather than some term of endearment. Or even use his name.
“I really do mean thanks,” Jess said. “And not just for the burn. My headaches have been a lot better since you tinkered.” She waved over her shoulder toward her back. “I’m trying to be careful not to re-injure my spine by lifting too much, but I got so used to being able to pick up heavy things with my cybernetic side that I’m fuzzy on what a normal and appropriate weight is. I’ve tried lifting things with my other side, but it’s so puny.” Her nose wrinkled.
She probably didn’t mean for it to be cute, but it was, and he laughed.
“That’s how it is for us mere unmodified mortals. We’re all puny.”
“Maybe you can get some nice enhancements after we finish our mission,” Jess said. “With bigger arm muscles, you could lift large unconscious mercenaries without the assistance of tools.”
“I don’t mind tools. Tool use was how we developed large brains and separated ourselves from the apes. I’d rather see you get an upgrade to your spine. That would be far more useful than me getting cybernetic biceps so I could win arm-wrestling contests against mercenaries.”
“I’m a little scared of having more surgeries,” Jess admitted. “The last one was major and left me alive but messed up. And spines are somewhat important.”
“Somewhat. You could always retire from this job and do office work. It’s hard to fracture your vertebrae while sitting in a chair and composing messages on your chip.”
She grimaced. “Unless you’re so bored you fall out of the chair and break your back.”
An alert blared over the speakers, and First Officer Mendoza on the bridge called key personnel to battle stations. Yas didn’t see anything threatening outside the porthole, but he trusted the slydar detector had picked up a ship. Dubashi? The astroshamans?
“Guess I was wise to just get a sandwich.” Jess started to back away but paused, looking at Yas again.
He had been enjoying their banter and wished the night had gone on being quiet and uneventful.
“Thanks again for helping. For caring.” She stuffed her half-eaten sandwich into her coveralls pocket.
Yas was on the verge of pointing out that the robotic mess-hall attendant wouldn’t punish her for taking a plate to engineering, but she stepped in close, and he forgot to speak. She lifted her hands to the sides of his face. He froze, forgetting to breathe as he wondered if—
Jess leaned in and kissed him. It wasn’t the kiss of a friend or a colleague, but a mouth-open, tongue-teasing actual kiss that prompted thoughts of bedroom activities to stampede into his mind.
The deck shifted, gravity fluctuating as the Fedallah switched direction too quickly for the spin gravity to compensate. Yas might have gripped Jess harder—at some point, his arms had wrapped around her waist—and ignored it all, but she smiled against his mouth and stepped out of his embrace.
“They usually notice if I’m not at my duty station in a battle,” she said.
“Uh, yeah. Me too. I think.”
“They usually notice if you’re not at your station after a battle.” She squeezed his hand as she stepped away. “Coffee later?”
“Oh yes.”
Yas gathered his scattered thoughts, realizing he needed to get to sickbay and into a pod if he didn’t want to be thrown all over the place, but glanced at the porthole before leaving. A ship had come into view, a sleek, dark blue cylinder with what looked like circuitry all over the hull. An astroshaman ship?
The Fedallah was right behind it, so close that whatever camouflage the foreign craft had was no longer effective. The warship opened fire at its back end.
Aiming to destroy it? Without warning? The other ship wasn’t even trying to maneuver yet. The crew must not have guessed the Fedallah had obtained a slydar detector.
The astroshaman ship was tiny compared to Rache’s big warship. How could the captain not feel like a bully for picking on it? The other ship had shielding, and the attack didn’t blow it away, but it was hard to imagine them winning in a battle.
When Rache had spoken of convincing Moonrazor to repair the gate, Yas had assumed he meant to negotiate. Maybe blackmail or bribe but not blatantly attack.
With Yas’s thoughts of romance shattering into a thousand pieces, he rushed to sickbay. Before he reached it, the other ship fired back.
A surprising jolt flung Yas against a bulkhead. Whatever weapon that was, it had sliced right through the Fedallah’s shields. Gravity disappeared briefly, his feet flying free of the deck, and he caught himself before his head crashed against the ceiling. He lacked armor and magnetic boots, but he put up the helmet of his galaxy suit for some protection.
As he passed the last porthole before turning toward sickbay and the protected interior of the Fedallah, he saw the enemy ship firing back, strange pulsing blue bolts that widened and wrapped around the warship’s hull. Maybe Yas had made the wrong assumption about who would win the battle.
Alarms went off, and a computer voice warned of the hull being breached on the port side of the ship. As soon as Yas reached sickbay, he locked himself into a pod and pulled up a display of the battle. He was in time to see one of the Fedallah’s blasts slam into the side of the astroshaman ship. This time, its shields weren’t enough to fully repel the attack. The ship’s running lights went dark.
Rache’s calm voice came over the speaker. “Doctor Peshlakai, we’ve taken out the shields and possibly main power on the astroshaman ship. I’m sending over a boarding party to collect prisoners. Be prepared for casualties, possibly among our side and most likely among the astroshamans.”
Yas should have issued an obedient, “Yes, sir,” but he couldn’t help but ask, “Is Moonrazor among them? Did you fire because they wouldn’t agree to fix the gate?”
“I don’t know if she’s among them. We’ll find out. Rache, out.”
He didn’t know if she was among them, and he’d fired anyway? That meant there had been no negotiation. If Kyla Moonrazor was over there, she would be dagger-hurling mad.
Grimacing, Yas braced himself for angry patients… and pulled up what medical records he could find pertinent to treating astroshamans.
Casmir moved from the control room to the now-familiar manufacturing facility, completely and unfortunately bypassing the room Shayban had given him to sleep in. There wasn’t time for sleep.
He had Tristan, a handful of engineers from the station, and Zee and several other crushers helping him to retool the equipment once again. Right now, he was crossing his fingers that he’d figured out enough about the slydar detector to replicate it. Even loading the software onto another system was proving problematic—he’d encountered numerous security precautions installed by the original builders, designed to prevent anyone from doing exactly what he was doing. He’d ended up sending some of it over to Lieutenant Grunburg on the Osprey to work on while he tinkered with the hardware. He’d also sent all the specifications and the schematic he’d put together, figuring the engineers and programmers on the Kingdom ships could work on building their own slydar detectors if they could kludge together the necessary parts with what they had. At the least, they would have a head start on preparing the interface for their scanners.
Nalini came in a few hours into the evening and went straight to where Casmir and Tristan were working and deposited takeout boxes of hot food on a conveyor belt. That prompted Tristan to kiss her and proclaim his love for her. Casmir, had he thought she would appreciate it, might have done the same. Not only had she brought food, but she’d also taken over supplying and organizing the fleet he’d never expected to end up in charge of.
The only problem was that said fleet might end up being sent out of the asteroid only to help protect it. They could hardly fly off to hunt for Dubashi and leave the station with half its defenses.
I have a problem, popped up an unexpected message from Kyla Moonrazor.
Casmir held up a finger and stepped away from the others so he could concentrate. Is it me?
It’s your mercenary clone.
Maybe it should have alarmed or surprised Casmir that Kyla Moonrazor, a woman he’d met exactly once and very briefly, knew about his relationship to Rache. And likely who their progenitor was. But it did not. He assumed she could gather information as well as the best Royal Intelligence analyst, if not better. With all the cybernetic upgrades she had, she could probably surf the network like a data packet zipping around at light speed.
What’s he doing, and how can I help?
He’s captured the ship I left monitoring the gate. It has several of my people aboard. They and the ship are only there because you requested we deactivate the gate—I’m still waiting for the crusher you promised, FYI.
Where would you like him delivered?
To Rache’s ship to kill him. She sounded frustrated enough to strangle Casmir as well as Rache.
He grimaced. She’d only diddled with the gate as a favor to him. I’m not sure the postal service would be up to that.
He’s willing to return my people and my ship to me if I open the gate. Which I am considering. I’m not like that idiot Dubashi, who’s so obsessed with getting retribution that he abandoned his followers. Oh, he’s supposedly promised to take them to a new land, but he’s scarcely communicated with them in a year.
I’m surprised he has followers. Casmir noted how quickly her responses were coming back to him. Moonrazor couldn’t be far from the station. He hoped that didn’t mean she would join in with the mercenary attack. His base was practically empty of human life.
His main residence is in System Hydra, but yes, he has followers there and here. Or he did. While he’s been busy with his plots against the Kingdom, I’ve slid in and reminded them of the true ways of the astroshamans and that we care nothing of planets or pleasures of the body. Once we transcend to fully machine entities, we do not need the sun on our faces or anything except electricity to survive.
That’s what you’re doing now? Making the rounds and collecting his wayward acolytes?
The opportunity to do so, and the belief that Dubashi will soon be extricated from this existence, is what brought me to System Stymphalia.
You foresaw that? Through, uhm, divination? When he’d been in her base, he hadn’t seen evidence of livestock sacrifices or portents drawn in chicken entrails. But he had been sick at the time. Maybe he’d failed to notice the signs.
When your mind is like a computer, you find it easy to calculate odds and permutations. Thousands of possible outcomes and their likelihoods. Dubashi made two mistakes: going to war with the Kingdom and drawing you into his world. At that point, many of the outcomes veered out of his favor. There was a pause before she added, Though I admit, I hadn’t factored this damn mercenary into my calculations. Foolish of me. I should have realized the other clone could not help but play a role. Is it strange that I believe he’ll keep his word when he attacked my ship without warning? I hope he has some of your honor. I do not sacrifice my own, so I must open the gate. You have been warned.
Wait! Can’t you delay him? Or do you at least know where Dubashi is? Casmir imagined the prince with his ship full of rockets poised to fly to System Lion as soon as the gate came online.
I know where he is not. Like your mercenary clone, I also have an equivalent of your new slydar detector. I regret not installing it on my assistant’s ship. Then she would not have been caught by surprise. I did not realize that technology had become so widespread.
Casmir wondered how many mercenaries were coming to the station in addition to the ones the scanners could pick up. Soon, they might be close enough for the slydar detector to pick up. Maybe foolishly, Casmir was more worried about Dubashi.
If he’s not by the gate— Casmir intended to check with Rache to see if he could and would confirm that, —then where do you think he is? There’s nothing left of his base. The mercenaries know he can’t pay them, so they should be ignoring him now.
He’ll need ships to complete his invasion of your system. And I’m sure he still wants to kill you.
You think he’s coming here? Is that why you’re here? Or near here?
Am I? I’m certain you don’t see me, and I must go attend to the man using the lives of my kin to extort me.
Any chance you can let him out and then close the gate again?
It is not a light switch you can instantly flip on and off, nor do I intend to stick around indefinitely in this system to do your bidding. You have your warning, Professor. The gate will open soon. I’ll send instructions on where to deliver my crusher.
“Shit.” Casmir rubbed his head. He didn’t know if he was more alarmed that they were out of time when it came to the gate or that Dubashi might be coming here with the mercenaries or in the wake of the mercenaries—using them as a distraction?—to get Shayban’s ships. And maybe to get Casmir. “Better corroborate her story first.”
Thus far, Moonrazor had been fairly honest with him and even helped him, but he couldn’t guarantee that was still the case. She’d been irked by Rache’s meddling.
“So he’s the natural person to message for corroboration, right?” No, but he didn’t know who else he could try.
Rache, Casmir composed his message. You never let me know where to send your crusher. I hear you’re by the gate harassing astroshamans. Will you be there long enough for a postal ship to find you?
It took a while for the response, lending credence to the notion that Rache wasn’t near the station. Subtle, Dabrowski.
Aren’t you calling me Casmir these days?
I don’t know. You’re still calling me Rache.
Well, I know Tenebris isn’t your first name. I suppose I could call you David, but you haven’t invited me to.
This is true. What do you want? I already gave my post office box in System Cerberus to Kim.
Was he being sarcastic, or was that true? I can’t ship a crusher to Cerberus. The reputable mail services don’t deliver there. The crusher might be stolen along the way.
Are you telling me that one of your crushers couldn’t keep itself from being stolen if it wishes?
It might not wish. Zee has been relaying stories about you. Are you torturing astroshamans and forcing Moonrazor to open the gate?
Nobody has been tortured.
Just threatened with death if she doesn’t comply?
My doctor is treating the injured astroshamans. Nobody has even been killed. It’s time for the gate to be fixed, Casmir. Dubashi isn’t in the area—I checked. You’ll have to deal with him before he can get to the gate. I’m going through to finish my mission.
Casmir closed his eyes. No chance I can talk you out of it?
None.
No chance you’d like to be a hero instead of a villain? Fly to Stardust Palace Station and help drive off the mercenaries attacking us because Dubashi has manipulated them to do so.
Perhaps the Twelve Systems will one day consider me a hero for getting rid of Jager, Rache messaged.
Only if you can do it without assassinating him. Why don’t you kidnap him, handcuff him, and throw him in an anonymous extinct volcano with food and water to last him the rest of his life? Old Earth was full of conquered rulers being sent into exile.
Yes, and volcano exile is so much nicer than death. Please, should you ever be assigned to hunt me down, just shoot me.
You know I don’t like guns, Casmir replied.
But volcanos are okay?
They’re less permanent.
I’m busy, Casmir. Go find that deluded Miners’ Union prince. I don’t want to feel guilty about him getting through and detonating that rocket where it can harm our people.
By all means, let’s ensure you can sleep at night.
Rache didn’t respond. Casmir sighed. Maybe he shouldn’t have resorted to sarcasm. And maybe he should stop believing that deep down, Rache wanted to change his stripes and become… if not a good guy then a dependable ally. And someone who wanted to make the universe better instead of contributing to entropy and chaos.
Tristan touched his shoulder. “You all right, Casmir?”
“I’m tired, and I keep expecting too much from other people and from myself. I’m not sure either is realistic.” His left eye blinked twice.
“And I’m not sure you answered my question.”
“Nor am I.” Casmir yawned and rubbed his eye. It was a wonder his entire body wasn’t twitching and spasming.
“You should get some rest. Nalini says our new fleet will be ready to deploy in a couple of hours—and that we can’t delay. We need to fly out of the asteroid so we can help deal with the mercenaries if necessary—we’re hoping a display of strength will send them skittering away—before we can search for Dubashi.”
Casmir grimaced. “A mission that’s more important now than ever.”
He wished he could skip the posturing with the mercenaries and go straight after Dubashi. But if Rache was right, he might already be lurking nearby.
“Why?” Tristan asked warily.
“Rache has captured some astroshamans and is forcing their leader, Kyla Moonrazor, to repair the gate. She’s the one who originally deactivated it.”
Tristan took a minute to digest that. “Who was your source? Any chance it’s an unsubstantiated rumor?”
“Moonrazor told me, and then I checked with Rache.”
Tristan’s mouth drooped open. “You have… high-level sources.”
“I believe in going direct.”
