The spider and the fly, p.12
The Spider and the Fly, page 12
She blinked. “Surely the Sarafan had better security systems than that.”
“Considering that only a telepath could give the command, and considering that virtually all telepaths on a ship this size would be mind-linked a healthy amount of the time…” Markus shrugged. “I doubt they had many security breaches.”
Biting down on her lip, Jenavian touched the console. And to her pleasant surprise, it didn’t suck the life out of her. She felt an odd tickle at the edges of her consciousness, a whisper in the back of her mind. It wasn’t another lifeform, exactly, but it was definitely a presence.
“Just think about the doors opening,” he prompted.
She followed his suggestion, and the strange presence acknowledged her request. A low rumble echoed throughout the hull, and she knew that somehow the ship had listened to her.
“I think we’re in business,” he said, grinning. “That wasn’t so bad, was it?”
Jenavian stepped away from the console lowered her rifle at him. “Let’s get moving. You first.”
Markus sighed but did as she asked. As they walked she couldn’t help but feel that something had changed with him; he seemed calm, almost relaxed. She wouldn’t have described him as nervous before, but he was certainly a lot more cautious before he’d passed out. Perhaps the mere sight of seeing one of these ships fully powered up had made him giddy.
If so, he was going to be especially disappointed when she finally gave the order to blow it to pieces.
Two minutes later they passed through the open security door and into the ship’s massive laboratory. It was an impressive facility even if she didn’t recognize many of the instruments. The walls were lined with crystalline terminals similar to the ones they’d seen in engineering, and at the center of the room were four relatively standard med-tables that looked incredibly out-of-place amongst all this other psionic technology. There were also three more corpses.
“They’re not nearly as decomposed,” Markus commented softly as he knelt over one of the bodies. It was a youngish man, probably in his early twenties, and his head was twisted in a nauseating position. “The oxygen must have escaped from this section a lot earlier.”
“It appears he died in a manner similar to all the others,” Thexyl’s voice said. “Perhaps there is some voracity to the idea that inertial dampeners malfunctioned.”
“Perhaps.”
Jenavian stepped past him over to a large cylindrical case set against the opposite wall. Almost everything here looked completely alien to her, but she recognized a storage shelf when she saw one. “Is this where they’d keep the data crystals?”
Markus nodded and finally pulled his eyes from the body. “Yes, I think so. You should be able to open it.”
She found a release on the back and touched it, and several of the panels popped open. Inside were rows and rows of slender red and orange crystals.
“The red ones are empty; the orange ones have at least some data on them,” Markus said. “I don’t know if you want to take them all or not.”
“Might as well,” she said, tapping her belt and pulling out the containers she’d brought along. It would be a tight fit, but it looked like she’d be able to carry all of them.
“Jen, if you don’t mind, I would like you to head to the bridge once you’re done collecting,” Thexyl said softly into her earpiece.
She frowned. “Why? We got what we came for.”
“It’s possible there are more crystals up there, including the ship’s flight logs. I admit I’m curious to look at them.”
“We’re not here to sate your curiosity,” Jenavian growled. “We’re here to get these crystals and then get the hell out of here.”
He didn’t reply immediately, and she could visualize the pinkish ripples of confusion shimmering up and down his scales. She had no reason at all to be mad at him, of course, but she really wanted to get off this damn ship. And this time it wasn’t just her desire to get away from Markus—there was something else here, something tingling at the back of her mind…
But Thexyl was probably right. If the Hierarchy wanted the data from this ship, then they would surely want all of it. And a quick stop by the bridge wasn’t going to cost them anything.
“I’ll take a look,” Jenavian said after she finished putting the last of the crystals in her containers. She picked up her rifle and gestured towards Markus. “Go ahead.”
He made his way through the door on the opposite side of the room and led her onto the bridge. This layout she understood perfectly: two terminals on either side, one for a helmsman and one for a navigator, and the captain’s chair nestled directly between them. And in that chair was a middle-aged man’s body—a man who’d quite obviously been shot in the back. Tucked into the far corner on the right was a female roughly the same age, and a pistol was lying on the ground next to her.
“Apparently someone was upset with the captain,” Jenavian commented. “I wonder if that was before or after the rest of the crew died.”
Markus leaned down over the male body but didn’t reply. His face had gone pale, and his eyes were fastened wide.
“Friend of yours?” she asked.
“I can’t believe it,” he whispered. “It’s Foln.”
“Who?”
“Krucius Foln, the Damadus Project leader,” Markus explained. “He was supposed to be a brilliant psychogeneticist, possibly the best of his generation.”
“He was also one of the Sarafan directly responsible for the attack on Kalifax,” Thexyl said quietly. “He led the failed rebellion against the Sarafan leadership not long before the war started.”
“Yet they picked him to lead their research team?” Jenavian asked.
“I imagine they had simply grown desperate given how many of their people were infected.”
Markus nodded absently. “I wonder if the Koro Effect got to them. It must have driven her crazy and made her shoot him.”
“Her body exhibits much of the same blunt force trauma as the others,” Thexyl noted. “Foln’s, however, does not.”
“Telekinesis, perhaps,” Jenavian said as she reached down and picked up the ancient pistol from the floor. She’d never actually been able to hold one of these old psi-tech weapons before, and she wondered if she might be able to get it to work. “He could have thrown her against the wall after she shot him. Who knows, maybe he went on a rampage and murdered the whole crew.”
“Maybe,” Markus murmured, leaning down to the body. Clutched in Foln’s hand was another data crystal, but unlike the others this one was glowing a faint violet.
“Another storage crystal?” she asked.
“A personal log,” he corrected. “Perhaps he had time to record what happened before he died.”
“Sadly for you, you’ll never get the chance to find out,” Jenavian said, deftly swiping it from his hand. “Now if you’re quite done pretending to be a historian, we’re heading back to the ship.”
“I suggest you hurry,” Thexyl’s said, his voice suddenly tight. “Our sensors just registered another ship. It’s on an intercept course.”
Her heart skipped a pair of beats as she turned back to Markus. “Any idea what kind?”
“Yes,” the Kali said. “It’s a Dowd Destroyer.”
Chapter Eight
“How?”
Jenavian wasn’t sure if she’d actually spoken the word aloud or not, but her mouth hung open regardless. It didn’t make any sense. The Dowd shouldn’t have had any equipment capable of piercing the Manticore’s stealth systems, and they definitely shouldn’t have been able to detect the psionic emissions from the Damadus.
She clamped her mouth shut and clenched her teeth. Right now the how didn’t really matter—they needed to return to the Manticore and get the hell out of here. The Argaz and the rest of the Convectorate task force would still be several hours away, and they had exactly zero chance in hell of taking on a destroyer in a straight-up fight.
“Get back to the Manticore,” she ordered, smacking Markus on the arm with her rifle. “How fast can you spin up the drive and get us to the closest jump corridor, Thexyl?”
“Not fast enough,” her partner replied solemnly. “Destroyers are built for speed.”
Jenavian grimaced. “Well, do what you can. We’ll be there in a minute.”
“I’ll be in engineering.”
She and Markus took off in the fastest sprint they could manage while encumbered by zero-gee armor and a vac suit. She suddenly wished that she’d stripped him down to his jumpsuit when he’d lost consciousness rather than just taking off his helmet; standard vac suits were ridiculously restrictive, and it was slowing him to little more than a quick stumble. Her armor wasn’t the pinnacle of flexibility, either, but the motor servos in the joints let her move reasonably quickly when she needed to.
She could already hear the thrum of the Manticore’s engines powering up by the time they arrived at the now fully-clamped docking rig, and one glance back at the tac-holo confirmed her worst fears: the Dowd were almost on top of them.
“Where the hell did they come from?” Markus asked.
“The system is littered with thermal pockets and asteroids,” Thexyl replied over the com. To an outsider his voice was probably as cool and modulated as ever, but she could hear the tension in his words. Even Kali weren’t immune to fear. “It’s quite easy to mask an approach vector, assuming they were actively trying to do so. It’s entirely possible they merely got lucky.”
“I’m guessing they haven’t bothered hailing us,” Jenavian said as she shoved Markus down into the closest chair and then sat down at the helm. She doubted he would try to escape with the Dowd breathing down their necks, but she still didn’t feel like letting him out of her sight.
“No,” Thexyl confirmed. “The moment they noticed us they began jamming all transmissions.”
“As if we had anyone to call for help out here,” she muttered as she glared down at the engine status board. They definitely weren’t going to be able to get away in time; the drive needed at least another four minutes to heat up, and the closest stable jump corridor out here was almost twenty minutes away. “Any bright ideas?”
“I’m afraid not.”
Jenavian pressed her lips together as more sensor readings came back from the enemy ship. According to conventional wisdom, Dowd technology was generally a generation or two behind the Convectorate, but this particular destroyer was anything but obsolete. Three heavy disruptor cannons, a pair of Kolarn-class torpedo launchers, sensors that could evidently pierce their stealth systems…she had no idea when or how the Dowd had suddenly caught up, but this thing would easily be a match for a similarly sized Convectorate vessel. Even the Argaz, a full-blown battleship, wouldn’t be able to take it down without some wounds to show for it.
“What about you?” Jenavian asked Markus. “Do your terrorist friends have any tricks for dealing with the Dowd?”
He didn’t reply, and after a few seconds of silence Jenavian glanced back at him. He was completely frozen in place, his hands curled tightly around his terminal as he gaped out the forward viewport at the rapidly encroaching destroyer. In all the years she’d known him, even back when they were ten-year-old kids being screamed at by a Tarreen for the first time, she didn’t think she’d ever seen him truly afraid. But right now he looked like a man about to confront death…and surprised that it might actually claim him.
“I’ll try and put the Damadus between us,” she said once the Manticore had fully wheeled about. “Assuming it’s their first priority, they might stop to take a few shots at it and let us escape.”
“Wait, what?” Markus asked, blinking back into the present. “You can’t do that! There might still be other records on the ship, or some—”
“You’d rather us get shot instead?” Jenavian growled. “It’ll slow them down, and that’s all that matters.”
“It’s worth a try,” Thexyl’s voice came back over the intercom, though he didn’t sound particularly confident. She couldn’t blame him; as desperate as the Dowd would be to eradicate the Damadus, it wasn’t moving anytime soon. They’d surely bear down on a fleeing target first before turning around and finishing the job.
Clenching her teeth, Jenavian diverted all the power she could into the sublight engines, and the Manticore roared away in the opposite direction. The destroyer would still overtake them long before they could jump away, but she refused to just sit here and do nothing. Unfortunately, unlike their escape from Kalifax, there were no conveniently-placed mining stations for them to use as cover. At best she might be able to dip down into the moon’s thin atmosphere, but that wouldn’t accomplish anything other than taking away their maneuverability advantage.
No, hiding wasn’t going to be an option, and neither was running away. She needed to figure out some way to delay them…
“Ninety seconds to weapons range,” Thexyl reported.
Jenavian nodded, mostly to herself, and then glanced over to the rear display and the derelict ship floating between them and certain doom. To Markus, she imagined, the Damadus was probably more important as a symbol than an actual object. Human slaves and refugees across the galaxy always spoke of it in revered tones, almost like it was a religious artifact rather than a starship. It was their last desperate hope that humanity’s era of glory could yet be rekindled.
She’d always found their fascination rather pathetic. Here these people were wasting away in one rat hole or another and all they could think about was some mythical wonder cure that might one day save them. Perhaps if they’d focused more on their actual problems they’d have been able to crawl out of the sewers they lived in, but no, they would rather blame the Convectorate for their own failings.
Now that she was actually looking at it, though—now that the Damadus was a real thing and not some delusion conjured up by a broken slave—a part of her didn’t want to see it destroyed. Certainly not by the bloody Dowd.
“If it makes you feel any better, the Convectorate will hunt them down and destroy them for violating our space,” Jenavian said softly, turning back to face Markus.
He’d frozen up again, and just as she started to press him on it, the proximity alert warbled.
“It’s another ship,” she breathed, frowning at the tac-holo as the projection flashed with a new image. “And it’s almost on top of us.”
The vessel was easily the size of a heavy cruiser, but the design was like nothing she’d ever seen. While all Convectorate ships had a vaguely aerodynamic styling about them—some because they were equipped for atmospheric flight and the rest because of the psychological impact on most sentient species—this one looked more like an aberration drawn up by a four year-old. The forward section was essentially a giant metallic ball with the superstructure still plainly visible, and the starboard “wing” looked like a bent paper airplane. At a cursory glance she could identify parts from at least six different ships stitched together into a mangled whole.
“It’s not a Convectorate vessel,” Thexyl said unnecessarily. “The design isn’t registering in our database, but initial scans are showing a sizeable armament. It’s easily a match for that destroyer.”
“I think it might be a match for a couple of them,” she whispered. Even without studying the computer’s tactical analysis, she could make out at least eight separate torpedo launchers and twenty heavy plasma turrets. Two hangar bays drooped from its underside, which meant it was likely carrying a full squadron of fighters, too. She ran through a mental list of the independent groups who could possibly afford a ship with that kind of firepower, and there weren’t many options.
In this case, however, one was enough.
Jenavian glared at Markus as her stomach sank. “How the hell did you get the Mire a message?”
He tilted towards her, but he wasn’t smiling smugly like she’d expected. In fact, his face was about as expressionless as she’d ever seen it. “They’ll protect us if they can,” he said.
She ground her teeth together as his recent behavior belatedly made sense. He hadn’t been afraid—he’d just been waiting for his terrorist friends to show up…and hoping they made it before it was too late.
“They won’t make it to the Damadus in time,” Thexyl said gravely. “And all com channels are still being jammed.”
Jenavian glanced back over to the sensor display. The destroyer was only thirty seconds out of weapons range now, but without warning its forward torpedo launchers lit up—
“They’ve fired torpedoes at the Damadus,” she announced in shock.
“They’re not certain they can win,” Markus said solemnly. “So they want to make sure they destroy the ship first.”
Jenavian pursed her lips. Most destroyers that size ran with a crew of about four hundred, but she had a feeling that if there were a million soldiers on that thing the Dowd still probably would have been willing to go down in a blaze of glory so long as they could take the Damadus with them. Their backwards religion demanded that they wipe out all traces of the Sarafan, and they were nothing if not single-minded.
She watched helplessly as the shimmering torpedoes descended down upon the derelict ship behind them. The Mire cruiser’s batteries had started to fire in a last desperate attempt to destroy the warheads, but they were still too far out of range. A few seconds later a blinding flash lit up the rear viewscreen, and the Damadus, the last relic of a Dominion fleet that had once spanned the galaxy, was gone.
And through the debris came the black, dagger-like shape of the destroyer barreling towards them.
“Take us in towards the Golem,” Markus said, breaking out of his stasis and gesturing to the Mire ship on the projection. “They’ll cover us if we let them.”
Jenavian swore. As little interest as she had in flying anywhere near a Mire vessel, they had no chance of escape otherwise. The destroyer’s cannons were fully powered, and they’d be in range in less than twenty seconds.
