Walter shook his head and sighed aloud. None of the metaphors were apt any longer. He had seen to that. Palan was in chaos. The loss of pretty much every ship in the system was nothing compared to the clan heads that had gone missing along with them. The pilot of their own ship had been right: None of them were heard from. They didn’t show up at Earth. They were just gone.

And now Junior Pirates were trying to be Senior Pirates. Outcasts were muscling back into old clans. And the coming of a second flood so soon after the last had been seen as an omen of sorts, a harbinger of more turbulent years ahead. Already, the meteorologists and armchair prognosticators were saying many more floods were on their way. What had been a slow year was now forecasted to be one of the most severe in centuries. They said it was a thousand year cycle, but Walter knew better. All it had been was a hack with the best of intentions. A program that had come with unintended consequences.

But unintended consequences were just a fact of life, Walter thought.

He let out another sigh and watched the kernels of food jostle, all of them going in circles.

The wheel of his cart set down and screamed, then rose back up, spinning idly and silently, if only for a moment.

Walter pushed his cart.

He had new prisoners to feed.

He figured he always would.

Part XXIII - The Bern Affair

“Nothing ends up where it began,

for it cannot survive its journey unchanged.”

~The Bern Seer~

40 · Near DarrinThe Present

On the fringes of the Darrin system, an unlikely fleet formed and found its footing. Manned by Navy personnel long in the tooth and short on combat experience, and Callite refugees with little time as even shuttle passengers, they came together and tested their systems in a rising cloud of confidence. They had already done something previously thought impossible: They had pulled off a raid on the most feared system in the galaxy and had walked away with a fortune in hardware.

And now, what the new fleet lacked in numbers—counting less than fifty craft total—they almost made up for in raw power. The arms and defenses in each of the ships had evolved in a system famous for warfare. A system that had reduced entire planets to rubble.

Inside one of these ships, Edison put the finishing touches on the last of the hyperdrives, giving it one-time powers similar to Parsona’s. He surveyed the changes a final time, screwed the side panel tight using an index claw shaped like a Philips head, and then left the engine room, waving good luck to the ship’s crew as he stepped through the airlock and returned to Lady Liberty.

••••

Once Edison was aboard, Anlyn waited for the hatch indicators to show a good seal and then decoupled from their last ship. As she peeled away, she felt an immense pride in him for modding two more of the drives than any of the other engineers. His extra efforts had helped keep the Darrin fleet on schedule.

Overall, Anlyn was more than satisfied with how well the plan was unfolding. Even counting the loss of two full raid crews, the mission to steal and assemble such an advanced fleet had gone surprisingly well. She spun Lady Liberty around to face the staging area where pilots were putting their new ships through their paces. Several groups were engaging in weapons-lock dogfights with other ships in their wing, getting used to how the craft handled and how many Gs the crews could take in their ill-fitting flightsuits.

Anlyn watched as a few laser bolts were shot off into the distance. She had given them permission to test fire the cannons, but had told them not to waste rockets. Meanwhile, navigators contented themselves with dialing through menu after submenu, memorizing the location of defensive routines and practicing with locking onto neighboring ships on SADAR. This also helped the other crews get used to the sounds of their new warning alarms so they wouldn’t startle as easily in real combat.

Anlyn kept Lady Liberty above the action and watched. She saw a few good things within the maneuvers, but much wrong. The three real Firehawk pilots Molly had rescued from the Carrier stood out immediately as being head and shoulders above the rest. Each had been given command of one of the other three wings, and two of the pilots rode with their natural navigators. Saunders had argued the crews be split up, spreading their experience between two of the other ships, but Molly had insisted they remain together. She had assured them that the strength of an old partnership was more than double the advantage of each person on their own, and the way she had said it prevented any serious debate from taking place.

Now, Anlyn could tell from the mock engagements that Molly had been right. Those two intact and well-trained crews were dominating in their sparring matches, and were already helping the others improve their own abilities. Anlyn watched for a moment, then thumbed her radio. “Wing Three Beta, you’re inverting your dive like you’re in atmosphere. Just spin in place and fire.”

“Copy,” the pilot radioed back, his voice strained from the Gs.

Anlyn watched the maneuvers continue, offering advice where it was needed. Now and then, she glanced at the clock on her dash, which was counting down the moment to the real raid. Soon they would be jumping straight back to Lok and beginning their clash with the Bern fleet.

She could hardly believe what was set to happen next. As Edison settled in the nav seat and began going through the systems checks, she thought about what she was about to do. Anlyn Hooo, young princess, former slave, rogue pilot. She was about to lead a ragtag group of the aged and infirmed against the very fleet that had nearly brought all their demises and had literally downed loved ones among both the Callites and Humans. She was about to go up against the true enemy of her empire, the shadowy figures of her childhood nightmares, the subjects of so much prophecy, hand-wringing, and empty pronouncements, and she was in charge.

The ridiculousness of it all made it seem as if it couldn’t take place, as if something must stand in the way to prevent that moment from arriving. Even as the clock on the dash ticked down to the final hour, Anlyn felt almost sure it would happen to someone else, or in a different lifetime.

Then she thought about that massive Bern ship up in orbit around Lok, the one Molly told her had taken out an entire Human fleet. She knew that if Parsona and her crew didn’t have that gravity machine taken care of before they arrived, then none of her worries, none of her pointers to the other pilots, none of it would matter in the least.

Anlyn wondered if perhaps that ship was the thing keeping all her dreams from feeling real.

••••

Cat prepared herself for the jump into orbit while Scottie and Ryn arranged the hyperdrive platform in Parsona’s cargo bay. She sorted through the four remaining buckblades, looking for the one with the most solid craftsmanship. Ryke, meanwhile, continued to try and talk her out of going.

“It’s suicide,” he told her for the countless time.

Cat smiled to herself. The grizzly old scientist had resorted to repeating an experiment while hoping for a different result. It was a sign of how much he must care for her that his brain had stopped functioning properly. She powered on the buckblade, plucked one of her blond hairs out of her ponytail, then swiped the invisible weapon sideways through the dangling strand. The bottom half of the follicle fell away, and the barest tinge of something burnt drifted up to her Callite nose. She powered off the blade and hung it from her belt.

“Look—” She turned to Ryke and placed both hands on his low, broad shoulders. “It isn’t suicide, so stop thinking of it like that. Hell, if everything goes to shit like I suspect, that fleet up there might be the safest place in the universe. And you know me, I’ll switch sides in a heartbeat if I have to.”

Ryke frowned, his lower lip disappearing into his beard.

“I’m only kidding,” Cat said.

She squeezed his shoulder and looked around the cargo bay for anything she may have forgotten. She had a little food and water, a pair of good boots, a radio, and a buckblade. She couldn’t think of anything else.

“We’re all set up,” Scottie told her.

Cat walked over to Scottie and Ryn. She reached out her hand to shake Scottie’s, but he just used the grip to pull her into an embrace. She reciprocated, foreign emotions swelling in her throat, making it impossible to swallow.

“You be careful, Cat.”

“I will,” she mumbled into his shoulder.

Ryn hugged her next, his powerful Callite hands slapping fondly at her back.

“Don’t hesitate to send up those missiles,” she told the boys. “Don’t you think on me and Molly—you worry about that fleet coming back from Darrin.”

“We won’t let you down,” Scottie said.

Cat pulled out of the hug and waved the boys back. She stepped onto the jump platform and sat down in the ready position, her arms wrapped around her chest, her legs pulled up in front of her. She looked up to Ryke to let him know she was ready and caught him wiping at his eyes. The tears that had snuck by glistened in his beard.

“Let’s do it,” she told him.

He shook his head sadly, but stepped to the relocated control console. Ryke glanced up one final time, his finger poised over the button, and seemed to want to say something. For Cat, it was the first and last time she’d known the chatty frontiersman to be at a loss for words.

••••

The jump happened in a jarring, disorienting flash. The cargo bay and her friends winked out of existence, and Cat popped out of hyperspace one meter above and two meters to the side of Molly’s hyperspace trace. The idea had been to follow her, but not precisely. With the modified hyperdrive they were using, two dangers were to be avoided: one risk was arriving in the middle of something solid; the other was the risk of arriving in the middle of Molly. To minimize both, Cat arrived higher than Molly’s head and in as tight a ball as she could manage.

It wasn’t tight enough, however, and the direction they’d chosen to offset proved unfortunate. Both of Cat’s feet and the entire length of one shin immediately occupied the same space as a solid metal wall. Molecules jiggled as their electrons made room for these incoming strangers, and the two elements fused into a new one—a living alloy of steel, a dying wound of flesh, or something of both.

Cat cried out in shock. It was the shock of pure raw pain. It was the rape of neurons.

Her body fell back, limp, bending at the waist.

She pivoted around the stuck bits of herself, her back slamming against the steel, her skull cracking against it just a moment later. Cat hung there, upside down, gasping for air. The pull of her weight against the invaded flesh heightened the experience. Through the haze of it all, she could see transparent walls surrounding her, like a cell, but with no sign of Molly or Walter. She could’ve jumped right on top of the trace coordinates and been perfectly safe.

But then, she would’ve missed out on experiencing all that glorious pain.

More of it lanced out of her foot, as neurons too shocked at first to respond finally kicked into gear. Cat ground her teeth as she hung upside down. Her lips quivered somewhere between a grim sneer and an ecstatic smile. She flexed her stomach muscles and hoisted herself up, levering off her trapped shinbone back into a semblance of the ball in which she’d arrived. Glancing down by her waist, she saw her radio had fused with the wall as well. Thankfully, the buckblade swung free from her belt. She pulled the weapon loose and powered it on, careful to keep it pointed away from herself. Working slowly, concentrating on not puncturing the steel wall in case the vacuum of space existed beyond, she moved the blade down across the surface of the steel with the invisible thread parallel to it. She slid the molecule-wide cutter through the top of her knee, hacking her shinbone in two. She watched the flesh part under the weight of her body, the blue insides revealing themselves as her flesh magically unzipped. She continued to cut, upset at having to do it, at having the painless blade move through her gloriously injured nerves, parting their connections to her brain. She would have preferred to hang there, enjoying the agonizing sensation a little longer, but Molly needed her.

So Cat cut herself free, slicing down to her ankle where both feet were taken off just before the heels. With over an inch of meat still to go, her weight did the rest and ripped what remained, tearing the flesh in two. She fell and slammed into the steel decking below, sending out a spray of blue Callite blood tinged with purple.

Cat lay perfectly still, groping in her mind for the throbbing ache, the sensation of hurt. She pawed at it with mental fingers even as she felt the roar begin to fade and slip through her numbed grasp. Lying in a pile of her own blood, chunks of her former body hanging above and dripping her vitality down the wall, Cat the Callite groaned with dismay at the end of the experience, the end of the welcomed and foreign pain, and the beginning of the cursed healing.

41 · Lok

Parsona flew herself low and fast, the buffeting wind of her approach flattening the grasses ahead and the flame of her thrusters leaving them smoldering behind. Over the horizon, the glow of dawn signaled an end to their short preparation time and the looming return of the fleet from Darrin.

Doctor Ryke rode alone in the cockpit, watching the instruments arrayed across the dash as the mighty ship piloted itself. In the cargo bay, Scottie and Ryn coiled hyperdrive wires, their climbing harnesses already on, carabineers and ascenders jangling as they worked.

“Are you sure you can duplicate what that Palan boy did with the missiles?” Ryke asked Parsona.

“I have total recall, Sam. I’m looking at Walter’s individual keystrokes right now. It’s a pretty clever hack.”

“That means you can arm them remotely, right?”

“I can, I’m just not sure yet if I’ll be able to, if that makes any sense.”

Ryke mulled that over. He wondered if he would be capable of doing what they were asking of Parsona. Would he be able to send those missiles through hyperspace? Could he kill his only child in order to save a galaxy? What about a universe—did that finally tip the scales? It was so easy to expect it from another when looking at the equation from without, but then . . . he didn’t know what it meant to have a child, or to be in a position to make that level of sacrifice.