The pilot, p.15
The Pilot, page 15
“I’m sorry I put your children in danger,” I said.
Shyrax’s finger stopped on the console. A moment later, she stood up, though she didn’t face me. “The responsibility is mine. I am the Guardian of Shadow Ark and the Commander of The Last Horizon, I am their mother, and I am their queen. Every decision that led to their imprisonment was made by me.”
Some people would have reassured her, then, that we’d definitely get her people back. That we would recover Shadow Ark and everyone within and get our revenge.
I’d broken too many of those promises to make another.
“We struck quickly so our enemies wouldn’t have time to find another Zenith Device and bring it up to full power,” I said. “We weren’t fast enough. Next time, we will make better assumptions.”
Shyrax focused on the report she was preparing for me, returning to her project. “My brother will have more complete information on our target. We will crush a Perfected outpost, fulfill our contractual obligation, and kill any Perfected we can. But I must know something from you.”
One hand continued tapping on the console screen, but her other gripped the edge of a desk hard enough to deform the metal. “Will this contract with Solstice turn on us? Was I right to trust you?”
That was one of the main reasons I’d come down to accept Shyrax’s file transfer in person. She had only signed the contract because of her trust in my knowledge of magic. In me.
In terms of magic principles and Aetheric theory, there was no way the spell could work against its nature. Asking if the contract could be trusted was like asking if a plasma pistol could be trusted not to turn into a snake.
But she wasn’t asking about that. The people on the other end of the contract were the ones we couldn’t trust. Even if there were no loopholes in the contract, they would be looking to exploit its existence and its terms to maximum advantage.
“That is one promise I can make,” I said. “If they try to bind us with this contract in a way that will cost lives, I will break it.”
“You think the Zenith Processor and Solstice will have used a contract that can be broken?”
“Even so, I can do it.”
Shyrax gave every conversation one hundred percent of her attention, but she seemed even more intense at that moment. “Is this the overconfidence that got us in this scenario to begin with? Are you underestimating our enemies?”
“The contract we signed was not a function of a Zenith Device.” I spread my hands. “If we were dealing with Zenith Era magic or any kind of high-grade Aethertech, I wouldn’t be so certain. But I am.”
If Shyrax asked me how I would break the magic, I’d tell her, but I was wary of saying too much out loud.
We’d already said more than I would if I really thought Solstice had a microphone onboard, but some of the things the Voice of Solstice had revealed suggested an uncanny level of knowledge.
To be safe, it was better to hold certain matters close to the chest. Not if it meant losing Shyrax’s trust, though.
Her gaze flicked to the corners of the room for a moment, leading me to suspect she was thinking along the same lines, before she settled back on me again. “If you can break it, who’s to say the enemy cannot do the same?”
“They can’t do it with traditional Aetheric magic, but with a Zenith Device…” I shook my head. “I’m sorry, I can’t guarantee anything. As far as I know, Hallow Divide will develop the ability to sever contracts.”
“Solstice benefits from the contract as written,” Shyrax said. “It is in their best interests to keep their hostages unharmed, but I dislike counting on our enemies to do what is predictable.”
I still didn’t want to give Shyrax false hope, but I could give her what hope I knew there was. “For what it’s worth, I do believe they’ll uphold their end. There’s no reason not to. All they get from crossing us is a formidable enemy.”
“Unless they can eliminate us in one stroke,” Shyrax said.
“They used their chance to catch us with our guard down,” I said. “They will not find our preparations lacking next time.”
She looked back to her console. “Not mine. I hope you’ll ensure that the Sword and the Engineer are prepared as well.”
I pulled up some of the ship’s feeds on my consoles and sent them to Shyrax’s wall of monitors. Mell was working feverishly with thick glasses over her face and brown hair sticking to her brow, a tool clamped between her teeth as she assembled a Nova-Bot personally.
On the screen next to her, Sola moved from one fabricator to another, manufacturing ammunition. As we watched, she picked up a round that resembled a canister of glowing liquid, examined it with her green Lichborn eye, then loaded it into a pistol and fired.
A target exploded into blue fire.
“It seems like you’re the one who should return to your preparations, Captain,” Shyrax said dryly. She added a few strokes to her console and then sent me the file. “Your break is over.”
I accepted the file, but didn’t open it yet; Shyrax had stepped right into my trap.
“Monitoring the condition of my crew is a captain’s job,” I said. Then I took over four more of her monitors, which were replaced by live feeds.
Black-and-white versions of myself appeared on all four.
One was sitting in a circle of Aetheric symbols, negotiating with spectral rabbits. Another sat in the workshop across from Sola, enchanting a protection crystal. A third was sitting next to our ship’s Aether Core, manipulating a complex network of seals; that was the mechanism that preserved enough of the Aether to allow me to use all that magic in Subspace.
The final version of me was holding my wand and sketching spells over Mell’s white coat, which hung from a rack. Next up was Shyrax’s own battle armor, which had its own enchantments that I intended to reinforce.
“I don’t know if we’ll beat Solstice,” I said. “I can’t even guarantee we get our friends and family back. But I’ll say this: I wouldn’t want to be in our way.”
NINETEEN
While Subspace is very broad, potentially even infinite, we’re restricted on how far we can travel through it. There are mundane, practical concerns like fuel costs and Drive stability, but those aren’t the true limiting factor.
As you travel deeper into it, Subspace gets even stranger. If you can believe it.
Those are the natural borders we bow to, even more than the natural limits of our galaxy. At the edge of Alliance space, and thus one of the far borders of the galaxy, was a Perfected outpost investigating those very mysteries.
Our destination had originally been an official Karoshan research station, attempting to send probes deep enough into Subspace to cross the enormous gulf between galaxies. Since the Perfected had taken over, according to our information, the nature of their study had changed.
Shyrax slapped the side of the holo-projector on Horizon’s deck. “The inhabitants of Subspace. They follow alien laws of biology, so the Perfected have been researching their structure in an attempt to ‘improve’ themselves further.”
The hologram next to her illustrated her point with a picture of an incomprehensible, many-limbed horror that could only loosely be described as a living thing.
“I would prefer to reduce this place to space dust,” Sola said.
“We will,” Shyrax answered. “But our captors have given us an extra requirement. We must retrieve a copy of the station’s research first.”
“Easier to search when everybody’s dead.”
Mell leaned from one side to another, stretching her arms. “Can’t risk the computers breaking. And we can’t get in remotely, assuming they have any reasonable security measures at all. Have to get our hands dirty.”
“It’s entirely possible that Solstice doesn’t care about these files at all,” I said. “They may just want us to be seen attacking Perfected property. Most likely, they’ll benefit from the information, but they’re not too invested in our success.”
Shyrax gestured, and Horizon shifted the hologram to a map of the station’s layout. “But we will succeed,” she said. “We will complete our agreement to perfection, because to do otherwise will jeopardize the safety of my family and my people. The labs are in an isolated section of the station, which can be jettisoned in the case of a security breach.”
We’d all been given the information already, but the briefing was important to keep us synchronized.
Though Horizon didn’t seem to agree.
The World Spirit of The Last Horizon was drifting around the room in a crackling fury. The edges of her holographic outline flared to sparks of many colors.
“You don’t need any more talk!” she cried. “Now is the time for action! Do you want to keep the hostages waiting? Those we meant to protect could be suffering!”
Shyrax tucked hands behind her back and regarded Horizon. “Reconsider your words.”
Horizon flared brighter for a moment, and my own mood darkened in response. If she started a shouting match with Shyrax, I’d have to intervene.
As usual, though, Horizon deflated under the Commander’s stare. “My apologies. I’m only impatient to save my crew.”
“We share the same feelings,” Shyrax said. “Anger is only an asset to the degree that you can keep it contained.”
I cut ahead to the next part of the briefing. “We’re hitting the labs immediately. Hard and fast. Let’s put together what we know about the security measures, then we’ll talk about worst-case scenarios.”
Shyrax displayed a list of what we knew. “At least one Perfected in charge of the facility. A complement of fifteen fighters and one battlecruiser, six gun emplacements, and an unknown number of orbital security drones. The station shield is proximity-activated, and all Subspace approaches are warped to redirect our entry route.”
“We shouldn’t forget the blow-it-up plan,” Sola put in.
Mell threw up her hands. “If we don’t get the information, they kill the hostages! You really want to leave their lives to the Aether?”
“That’s not what the contract says,” Sola said calmly. “Good-faith attempt to get the information, isn’t that right, Captain?”
“If we genuinely try our best and fail, the contract will consider our side upheld,” I said. “The spell will bind Solstice to their side of the agreement. We want the information for our own reasons.”
Mell scratched the side of her head. “Yeah, it would be nice to know why Solstice wants it, and we want to see what the Perfected are doing too. But if that magic really works, then…we can’t fail, right?”
Shyrax and I exchanged glances.
“I have only listed the external security,” Shyrax said. “Internally, our information is less reliable, but we can expect certain measures.”
The hologram shifted to show long hallways with sealed blast doors and internal turrets.
Shyrax waved a hand and those vanished. “I’ll skip past the ones that we will bypass without effort and focus on those that have a chance of defeating us.”
Four devices appeared in the facility’s walls, highlighted in red. “Isolated Subspace Drive cores, set to rupture in case of a dimensional breach. We have to presume they can be remotely activated. There is also digital security to slow us down, and potentially to wipe the information in case of theft.”
“Worst-case scenario,” Sola said, taking over. “They could rupture the Drives the second we show up. They could have upgraded their security so all our investigations are worthless. Some of their captured creatures could get loose and do who-knows-what to reality.”
Mell tucked her hands into her pockets. “I can do worse than that. The whole station could be a decoy meant to trap us. They could have high-grade Aethertech that stops our teleportation.”
“Solstice could have warned them already,” Shyrax said. “There could be another active Zenith Device aboard. King Regent Felrex and all his top Perfected could be lying in wait for us with the entire Karoshan fleet.”
The game of ‘worst-case scenario’ had escalated beyond anything I expected, but since we were playing, I was going to win.
“This facility could be where they’ve sent Shadow Ark,” I said. “If we destroy the hostages as a result of our own actions, they won’t be in violation of their contract.”
They were quiet for a moment, but I wasn’t finished.
“One of you could have been bought by Solstice and could deliberately sabotage our operation. The ‘information’ we’re here to steal could trigger a curse that ultimately kills the hostages after we get them back. They could give back our hostages alongside a virus-bomb.”
Shyrax stroked her chin. “We should stop considering the worst case. We cannot afford the morale cost.”
“Blowing up the whole station is still a valid tactical option,” Sola reminded us.
Mell stared into the floor as though viewing all the worst options I’d described at once.
But she wasn’t as horrified as Horizon, who stared at all of us with quivering eyes the size of viewports. “I don’t want our journey to end here! We’ve just gotten started!”
I laid a hand on her shoulder, or at least the spot where my hand would rest if her shoulder had physical mass. “Don’t worry,” I said. “Worry makes you more likely to make a mistake.”
We came out of Subspace only a short distance from the Karoshan research outpost. Unlike most such outposts, it didn’t look like it was perched at the edge of a fathomless stretch of empty space, though that was its actual situation.
It was on the outskirts of a nebula, so its surroundings were beautiful. The outpost itself was a black box, similar to the enormous cubes that were Karoshan colonies, but this one was smaller and flatter; more of a rectangle than a cube, with a few extra little sections tacked on as though the outpost had been assembled from modular components.
The dark station hung with an incomprehensibly vast nebula cloud stretching out behind it like an endless rainbow, a shifting ocean of color that sparkled like a glimpse of the Aether itself.
We didn’t get to appreciate that view because, the second we were out of Subspace, we opened fire.
The Last Horizon surfaced into reality between a gauntlet of ships and gun emplacements. They were meant to question anyone that showed up, requesting access codes.
They didn’t get a chance, since we blasted them to dust with a volley of emerald weapons inside the first five seconds of our arrival.
A shield snapped up over the outpost, surrounding it with shimmering light like a translucent egg, but we didn’t intend to fire on that.
I completed my pathfinding spell just as the shield came up. “No magical countermeasures,” I said. “Teleporters.”
All four of us shone blue for a moment before reappearing inside the Karoshan research station.
At least, Mell and I reappeared. Sola and Shyrax were elsewhere on the station, drawing attention away from us and masking our goal.
We stood in a hallway just outside the laboratory, surrounded by featureless metal grating. Alarms blared the moment we appeared, and huge Karoshan guns on the ceiling swiveled to target us.
They fired on us, though we heard nothing more than the drumming of a stiff rain on a roof thanks to my thorough wards.
A thick airlock door slid down to block off the laboratory. That was the first part of the procedure to separate it from the rest of the station and jettison it into space.
I caught the door with telekinesis.
Mell marched forward, ducking to pass under the door and lifting it up another inch with one hand as she did so. Her decoy-bots were truly difficult to distinguish from reality by sight alone, even for someone who knew her as well as I did.
After securing the hallway behind us with a white, spinning spell-circle of binding magic, I followed her. As the one piloting the disposable robot body and the professional trained in data security, Mell took point.
There was another sealed door past the one I’d caught, and she had already lasered through it by the time I arrived. I stepped over the red-edged metal as I joined her inside the lab proper.
The facility looked more like a laboratory one might find in a bare-budget colony on an unsettled moon. The type of place where every inch of space was at a premium, so it was packed with equipment, consoles, monitors, boxes, crates, and the signs of hurried inhabitation: jackets tossed on the backs of chairs, mugs sitting out, half-full trash cans.
Everything was sized for Karoshans, so I once again felt like a child trespassing on a space made for adults, and Mell was crouched on a counter next to a station console as she released tiny Nova-Bots.
The silvery humanoids saluted her as they ran out. A moment later, their hands had collapsed into lasers and they’d begun cutting into the console.
She and Shyrax had determined this was the best way to steal the information. Rather than taking the time to sort through everything and take only what we wanted, we’d walk away with the entire computer’s memory.
The hard part had been identifying where the information was stored. Or it would have been the hard part if not for my pathfinding magic.
Most magical security is on the outside. People rarely protect from information-gathering spells cast within their wards.
Especially not a research station whose focus had nothing to do with the Aether.
The alarm and the automated guns cut off, and Mell glanced back at me, but she didn’t interrupt her work.
A moment later, an indigo-skinned Karoshan woman marched through the door with sharp fangs and a lashing tail. “The crew of—”
Three Nova-Bots popped out of hiding to fire at her.
I pulled out my Lightcaster and fired. A temporary enchantment I’d placed on the barrel copied every shot with the Mirror of Silence, so a barrage of plasma bolts flashed from my single pistol.
A personal shield appeared around the Perfected, shimmering with the precision of Aethertech and crawling with magical symbols. Each shot made a tiny ripple and pushed her back a fraction of an inch, but her expression was only irritated.
