Starchild exile, p.11
Starchild- Exile, page 11
She woke up to a silent lounge.
Nak Skyreacher-Starchild-whatever was sitting in an easy chair, a book in his hand. He had saved her. And he had a nice face too.
She wiped her hands across her brow and then looked down at her clothing, feeling a sudden urge to look dignified in front of him. “Where are the others?”
“In their bunks sleeping.”
“How long was I out?” Her reality felt fuzzy.
“You woke up a couple isos ago if you remember. In total, it’s been about thirteen.”
“Wow.” She felt physically better. Still not great, but better. And her mood had improved. As long as she didn’t think about her new, unwanted role as the Prophetess or the nightmare her life had been for the last millos. “If I’m that close, I might as well go for the record.” And she did feel like she could still sleep more.
“What’s the record?”
“Fifteen.”
“Wow. I’m lucky to get five.” He laughed. “You feeling better?”
It felt good to have him laugh at her joke. Maybe she would somehow find a way to truly leave the nightmare of Building 13 behind. She sat up, squinting and bracing her shoulders as she did. “Yeah, and I’m ready for that soup you offered…”
“Right away.”
After he left, she began to hum quietly to herself. She felt better enough to feel a little bored, but her head still hurt and her body still ached. She felt weak too.
He returned after a few moments with a steaming bowl. She appreciated his kindness. She also still detected something… He seemed to be keeping secrets not only from her but from everyone, including himself. “I put a change of clothes for you there if you want them. I have showers too. And you can have your own bunk.”
“You keep women’s clothing aboard?”
He shrugged, as if he didn’t know where the clothes had come from. More likely he didn’t want to tell the story.
“Thank you.” She pulled her knees up and tugged the blanket tight around her neck. “How’s your ship?”
He carefully handed her the dish. “She’ll be all right.”
“So is now a good time to talk about surges?”
“You’re awfully curious.”
Because of her abilities, she had a deep interest in how surging worked. Bloody Wings were extremely rare, one per surge gate, they said, but if that were true, not all of them were accounted for. Maybe this was one of the missing ones. She’d been aboard a few of them in her life, but she’d never had an intimate discussion with one of their pilots. “I’ve only done interstellar surges on a few occasions, and each time I’ve been curled up inside a suitcase.”
He laughed a genuine, deeply felt laugh. “I bet you’d fit.”
Again, it felt good to hear him laugh at her humor. She put the spoon to her mouth and sipped the hot broth, holding her neck steady for her head’s sake. “Really, I am curious.” She felt awfully tired though too.
He smiled at her and leaned back in his chair. “First off, all surges aren’t equal. The distance matters a lot.”
She smiled when he said this, suppressing a laugh. She already knew that. She already knew a lot about the non-mechanical kind of surging, but she wasn’t ready to divulge that secret, so she masked her emotion as well as she could.
He noticed her reaction and squinted a question but then continued talking: “Imagine you’re about to jump off a cliff, and right when you do, it collapses beneath your feet. It’s the same with a surge drive—you need a stable surface beneath you. That’s why I slowed to a stop before we surged. It locks the motion of the ship and the planet while the drive calculates the surge. That was why we had to be holding still. Longer surges need much more stability, so you have to distance yourself from other gravity. Even the gravity of a nearby fighter is enough to throw it off.”
He did look somewhat dashing in his leather flight jacket—classic and roguish. As she thought this, though, she felt a slight blush and hoped it didn’t show on her face. “You couldn’t have just risked it?”
“Have you ever heard of The Scarlet or a Le Encor Gambit?” His eyes weren’t quite as large as Benton’s, but they had a calmness to them, as if he had everything under control, including the things out of anyone’s control.
“Sounds familiar…” But she felt like if she had heard of it before, it had been in another lifetime altogether.
“Le Encor had one of the Bloody Wings, till he surged too close to several other ships. It’s not the only incident, just the most famous because of how many people it took.”
“What happened?”
“No one knows exactly. Everyone close enough died. A surge spiral is something like a gravity well—because mass increases with speed. No one knows how he completed the calculations with all that extra mass though.”
“I’m not really following…” Maybe because the fog of sleep was pressing in on her mind. She let her eyes droop in what hopefully looked only like a prolonged blink.
“Normally if you lose your stability, you don’t surge at all—you can’t. The instability stops you. When your surge platform decays, the drive can’t complete the calculations. It leaves you powerless. But somehow he went through with it, like jumping off of nothing. The increase in mass caused him and the ships around him to spin into each other and vanish. They call it a surge spiral.”
“Where did they surge to?”
“No one knows. They never came out the other side.”
“They must go somewhere.”
“Cup’s…” He coughed, keeping some secret. “I’ve been trying to figure that out. The point is, I said we couldn’t surge because we couldn’t go interstellar. But back down on the surface, I had enough stability for a short jump, just enough to get us into the next canyon. Any Bloody Wing pilot knows the trick.”
“Hmm. I see. Why couldn’t you have just done a series of short jumps to outrun them?”
“Because, like I said, you have to stop during the calculations. It ends up being slower that just powering away with an atmosdrive. This only worked because we had another canyon to hide it.”
“I see.” She smiled and set the bowl on the floor. “Thank you. That was one of the best meals I’ve ever had.”
He grinned then glanced at the empty bowl. “You want more?”
“Not yet, thanks.” She laid back down, as the sleep set in like a heavy vapor—Building 13 had taken a great toll, and yet she still wanted to talk to him. “So you can’t surge close to a planet.”
“Not an interstellar surge. If you could complete the calculations, you’d take a chunk of it with you and surge into oblivion. Or infraspace. Or wherever it drags what’s left of you.”
She closed her eyes as she asked, “And do you think those fighters knew this—blocking our exit on purpose?”
“Yes. For sure. Especially Taiberos’s men. He’s obsessed with surge drives.”
She didn’t recall what was said after that.
* * *
She awoke to shouting down the hall.
The couch surface seemed blurry to her touch, and she felt worse again. She reached for the vial around her neck, but it was still gone.
As she stood, her shoulders scrunched, as if to brace her neck and the pain in her head. It was creeping around beneath her eyebrows. She stepped carefully toward the voices.
“She’s not staying in the ship.” It was Nak’s voice.
“But look at her.” That was Benton.
She came around the corner and took the two men by surprise. “I’m fine.” Their animosity crouched for a moment too, holding back. She held a knot of the blanket in front of her chest with one hand, and the rest swooped over her shoulders and then touched the floor. “What’s going on?”
“The zentisal drive’s been punctured,” said Benton. “That means even if we replaced the fuel, we couldn’t navigate through near space, but he won’t trust me to go get the parts.”
“It’s not like these are standard parts. I have to find something that will work, and I don’t know what that will be.”
“He won’t let me go, but he won’t let anyone stay here on the ship.”
Nak’s fists showed white on the knuckles. “That’s in the contract.”
“He doesn’t trust us,” said Benton.
“Of course I don’t trust you. Look what you stand to gain.”
“It’s not me I’m worried about.” Benton gestured at Kalhette but didn’t look at her.
Nak stared intently at his opponent: “It’s in the contract. No one is staying aboard.” His tone dropped lower than usual: “She can’t stay—not on my ship.”
Benton looked at Kalh and pointed a chopping hand her direction. “She’s not going to steal it.”
Nak wouldn’t look at her though. “I’m not giving her the option.”
She raised her voice over the argument: “It’s fine. I want to come.” It wasn’t true though. She wanted to be left alone, but she’d do it to keep the peace.
Nak faced Benton in a fighting stance, his jaw tight: “I stuck my neck out for you. Risked my ship.”
Benton aimed his retort directly ahead: “She’s in no condition—”
“—Benton!”
Both men finally turned toward her.
The way she tore off the blanket made its own kind of statement. “Let’s get moving.”
8. Taiberos
Taiberos felt filthy.
Like he had dots of blood splattered all over his face.
Only, of course, he did not. Because minds did not bleed.
Lord Admiral Dray’s only practically had.
But maybe it still would. They were far from done with him.
The process of breaking a mind could take many cycles. Unfortunately, Taiberos didn’t have many cycles: The woman and her accomplices might escape Toar at any time. Besides, patience was never one of his strengths. He needed to find them now. He needed to uncover their conspiracy, a secret Dray knew.
Although the torment hadn’t yet gotten the traitor to talk, it would soon, very soon. It had to. And it didn’t matter that they only had one life they could slowly scrape out of his body. He deserved all of it, for so many reasons, including the mess he’d recently made of the detention block.
Ironically, Dray had played a major role in Taiberos’s rise to power. Dray had appointed him the head of the Witch Hunters, a branch of government that didn’t report directly to the polls or to anyone really. Taiberos had used that power to create the Strand, which launched his political career. Taiberos would’ve owed a debt if Dray hadn’t become a traitor. But Dray turned his back on the PSD and its laws and people. For that, he deserved to have his mind split wide open and bleeding. That and more. Taiberos even planned to ignore the statutes on keeping the high quality acquisitions alive as long as possible.
That way Dray would be dead long before he could attempt another escape.
The only person Taiberos would’ve rather seen strapped to that table was Starchild. He was the real reason for the hurry. The difference, though, would be that once they captured him, real blood would be splattered.
And Taiberos would relish being drenched in it.
He walked up metal steps. The grating rung beneath his heavy boots. He had time to kill while Dray recovered enough for another round.
It still seemed a surprise that he’d been a radiance all along. What a thing to be hunting them while hiding the secret in yourself. What a hypocrite. What a traitor. It made Taiberos feel slight jealousy too. He despised the radiances and the unfair advantage their powers granted. It wasn’t right how they were just born into it. Truth be told, if he had a way to turn the tables and take that advantage as his own, he would. Only there was no way. At least, there probably wasn’t. And so he condemned them, and he hunted them, leveling the playing field for everyone else. And now Dray was one of them. Well, he would be leveled too.
A small retinue followed Taiberos, ready to jump at his whim—one of the perks of being the most powerful man in the galaxy. They waited outside as he entered the lavatory.
He went to the sink and looked at himself in the mirror. He had no blood on him, but he turned on the faucet anyway, soaped up and rinsed his hands, then splashed water on his face. That helped to push aside the filthy feeling, though it didn’t withdraw completely. It was stained into his own soul too deeply for that.
As president, he no longer wore military fatigues except occasionally when Shauu invited him back to the team for a particular mission, like when they captured the woman on Sream—he did, after all, have a gift for ferreting out radiances. Now he wore a jumpsuit made of metallic ribbing that glistened at the bulges. This was mostly covered by an expensive vest and armored leggings. A pair of glasses hung around his neck. A wire wound from behind his ear and vanished into his vest; this allowed him to stay connected to his underlings at all times.
He looked at his own stately gaze. His face was pale, hair becoming thinner, cheeks a little more plump than they ought to be. Despite these slight flaws, he still commanded respect. Not because of his appearance alone but because of his accomplishments, because of who he was. He’d earned this. He had worked hard, he had outshined everyone else, and so the citizens of the PSD elected him to preside—as simple as that.
And he had a right to be here.
He dried his hands and face, then led his retinue to the command deck in Building 2.
When he entered, the staff turned their attention to him, either overtly or discreetly. They physically straightened up as well. He’d recently reminded them of the consequences of relaxing. Apparently his leadership was getting through.
Taiberos tapped a pair of cybernetic fingers on one of the electronic consoles covered in glowing buttons and screens. “What’s the update on the escapee?”
A young major swiveled to attention. “The posters are up. Any nearby citizen who sees them will turn them in.”
“It’s not enough. I want seekers out there. Flood the canyons with as many of them as we have.”
“The seekers are already deployed,” said the major. “No reports so far.”
“They need to be in every twist and turn of those canyons.” Taiberos opened his gloved palm. “I want that ship in my hand within the next isochron.”
“Sir, those canyons increase the search area exponentially.”
“I want that ship. And I’ll get it with or without your help, major. For your sake, I hope it’s not the latter.”
The man choked out his reply: “Yes, sir.”
Taiberos hated to lose such a valuable test subject as the woman from Sream, but when he caught her—and he certainly would catch her—he would kill her. He had to show people the futility of freeing someone from the Strand. And yet there was more going on than he’d yet uncovered. Out of all the radiances at the Strand, they’d freed her specifically. That meant something. Something significant. She had ties to Solace. At the very least, he could start keeping a closer watch on that planet. Maybe it had something to do with the Hoff Mines. Ostensibly, because of her inherent value and the mystery surrounding her liberation, she was the objective, the reason for this hunt.
But Taiberos hated Starchild far too much to actually see it that way.
The president turned toward the rest of the staff on the command deck.
They looked at him warily, ready to jump at his whim and searching their minds for any detail they might’ve missed.
He tapped a cybernetic finger casually on the console. “Did you get the signature from that Bloody Wing?”
The PSD kept a database of these ships, noting the features, including the shapes, and they maintained the goal of eventually capturing them all. “They think they’ve narrowed it down to either one thirteen or one seventeen.”
“It’s one thirteen. Dammit.” The rage burned hot inside him, and his phantom limb tingled. One thirteen had been his own private ship. He turned toward the operator at the console.
“Sir?”
“Get me Admiral Watelle.”
“Right away, sir.”
After a moment, a voice came over the relay: “Admiral Watelle here.”
“Admiral, I want you to move the fleet into orbit and drop your seekers. We’re looking for Bloody Wing one thirteen. He’s hiding somewhere in these canyons.”
“Certainly.”
“How long since your pilots have trained in how to ground a Bloody Wing?”
“We keep all our regimens up to date according to your guidelines. My pilots deflected his last attempt to escape the system, and if we can find him we’ll do it again.”
“Mmm.”
It’s wasn’t enough.
Taiberos wouldn’t simply wait for an outcome. He never did. He’d not only make the next move but the next series of moves. He’d place all his pieces, making contingencies for contingencies and ensuring it came to one inevitable conclusion.
He waved a hand at the operator. “Get Shauu on the comms.”
“Yes, sir.” She tapped on the console and connected the relay.
This voice had a slightly higher pitch, smooth and poisonous: “This is Shauu.” Although he was a miin, he’d proven to be the most devoted servant.
“That woman we captured on Sream has escaped.”
Shauu said nothing and was probably the only living mortal who could get away with that.
“I want you to find out why she’s so important to them.”
“Of course.”
“I’m not talking about the articles either, this Prophetess business.” She’d apparently written some scathing critiques of the PSD for which her people revered her. “There has to be something bigger, considering how much this all must’ve cost.”
“I’ll find out what you need to know.”
And because it was Shauu, Taiberos knew he really would. He could track down anything. “Good.”
The major stepped toward Taiberos, his heels clacking as he stood at attention. “Sir, one of the seekers may have found your Bloody Wing.”
Taiberos restricted his smile. “Did they or didn’t they?”
“Well, it’s dark down there, and the footage isn’t great. It’s in octant seven, in Spearon Channel. A team of troops are preparing to descend now.”
