Ruler of Naught (75 page)

Juvaszt glanced at Anaris, who shrugged fractionally.

“Navigation, after next tactical skip, new heading, 44 mark
272, prepare for skip, Deathstorm minus ten light-seconds. Weapons, status?”

“Skipmissile charged, all ruptors on-line... ”

The ship shuddered. The fiveskip moaned in a tactical skip.

“Skipmissile, glancing impact,” said Damage Control. “Minor
damage in forward third.”

“Destroyer signature, skipped, reading 145 mark 13.”

That was the first sign of Panarchist destroyers in the
battle around the
Deathstorm
, thought Juvaszt.
They must only have
the three.
And now the positions were reversed: he could move freely, unconstrained
by the need to defend Arthelion, while their maneuvering was limited by their
need to defend
Deathstorm
. That would make them much easier to kill than
destroyers usually were.

He raised his voice. “Navigation, new course... ”

o0o

Jheng-li tossed the smoggers around the corner. Bengiat
imagined them scuttling toward the Rifters, then bursting into thick clouds of
energy-absorbing particles, cutting down the efficiency of the plasma cannons.

Jheng-li slapped one of the Marines waiting at the corner.
Suza dived across the corridor, her armor deflecting the coruscant burst of one
of the cannons for the brief time she was exposed. Then she swiveled, and with
the other Marine Jheng-li had chosen for the splash-n-burn, triggered her jac into
the corridor. She aimed at the deck, creating a wash of intense heat that
rolled down toward the Rifters, under the clouds from the smoggers.

“... two... ”

Sniller stepped forward and lobbed the stun-bombs around the
corner. Their faceplates automatically filtered out the visual stutter-pulse,
the audio in their suits stopping down at the same time to save them from the
stunning ultrasonics.

“... one, go!” Bengiat launched herself into the corridor,
twisting in midflight, extending her arms toward the Rifter positions hidden in
the smoke and flipping her wrists palms-up. Plasma splashed off her armor in a
burst of radiance and she felt the little wasp missiles discharge as her
momentum carried her into the cross corridor. The coolant system of her suit whined.
Twin explosions slapped at the air as Amasuri followed. Two more explosions,
then silence.

She stepped cautiously back into the corridor. Nothing
happened. She moved forward, her jac ready. The smoke from the smoggers
cleared, revealing the cannons as twisted wreckage, surrounded by dead Rifters,
mostly in pieces, armor melted around cooked flesh.

“All clear. Let’s blow the hatch.”

The tac-comp flashed charge-points on her faceplate,
outlining the weak points in the sealed hatch onto the bridge. She motioned
Jheng-li forward; he slapped two hand charges onto the spots that his tac-comp,
too, was showing and stepped back.

“Clear.”

There was a muffled whomp, twin spurts of light, and the
charge casings fell away, revealing neat holes with blue-white edges. Bengiat
stepped forward, using her eyes-on to bring up a new setting in her armor. This
time, flipping her wrists ejected two stout hooks which she pushed through the
holes, along with a fiber-optic probe. A quick scan of the bridge revealed
nothing their armor couldn’t handle.

She retracted the probe. “AyKay, Mary. It’s show-time.” Four
Marines turned to hold the corridor, the rest poised themselves in readiness.

She pulled smoothly, reveling in the incredible
amplification of her strength lent by the servos, and pulled the hatch out of
the opening. Stepping back, she waited as the other Marines pounded past her,
yelling fiendishly with amplified voices that boomed from the bulkheads, then
threw the hatch down the corridor and followed them onto the bridge.

o0o

“Hit on
Babur Khan
,” said Siglnt.

The viewscreen flickered to extreme magnification, Armenhaut
saw plasma billowing from a glowing gash on the flank of KepSingh’s
battlecruiser before the big ship vanished in a burst of bluish light.

“Severe damage; he’s skipped. Enemy destroyer bearing 82
mark 66, 6.2 light-seconds, skipped, heading 234 mark 16.”

Armenhaut leaned forward, ignoring the sweat trickling down
his forehead as he scanned the tactical plot on his console that Lieutenant Commander
Rajaonarive was relaying to him. He ignored the main tactical screen with all
the new Tenno—
loony is a good word for it
, he thought. He’d ordered his
tactical officer to deliver him a digest view based on his best estimate of
enemy positions, plans, and probabilities. So far it seemed to be working
well.
Just like the sims
. He kept reminding himself of that.
Just
like the sims.

But the sims that he’d drilled
Flammarion
to
perfection with hadn’t covered an enemy with irreducibly interior lines of communication,
and weapons that made one destroyer a serious enemy instead of a nuisance. At
least he’d gotten his lances away in good order.

The main tactical screen flickered, and Armenhaut flinched.
It was taking Rajaonarive longer and longer to deliver the digest, despite his
earlier confidence. The strain was showing in the man’s increasingly hesitant
movements, something the rest of the bridge crew had noticed. Their movements
looked increasingly brittle.

Now Hayashi’s destroyers were harassing the
Fist of
Dol’jhar
, keeping it away from the
Deathstorm
.

“Emergence pulse, battlecruiser—” The moan of the fiveskip
modulated Siglnt’s voice as the
Flammarion
executed a tactical skip. “ID
Fist of Dol’jhar
, 34 mark 208, heading 65 mark 40... firing skipmissile...
coming about to new heading, firing ruptors...”

A few seconds later a gout of light erupted on the screen.
It flashed to a close-up, revealing a sphere of light expanding against the
stars, with the missile tube of a destroyer spinning away from the explosion.
Siglnt’s voice went tight.

“
Barahyrn
destroyed.” Then, “Skipmissile impact on
Fist
of Dol’jhar
, minor damage, engines destabilized, estimate back on-line
fifteen seconds.”

Another spark of light flared. “
Falcomare
hit. Severe
damage, skipped... ”

As Siglnt continued, Armenhaut caught up again. The fog of
battle had swept away the Panarchist defenders of the crippled ship and the
Arkadic Marines on board. Armenhaut hadn’t really believed that the
Dol’jharians would delay destroying
Deathstorm
just to keep the battle
going, and he’d seen nothing to change his mind. Now there was nothing standing
between the
Fist
and the destruction of the FTL comm that so many lives
had been sacrificed for already.

Nothing except the
Flammarion
.

The bridge crew saw it, too. Here and there faces turned to
him. But he saw no confidence in their eyes, only sick fatalism echoing his
own.

Anger burned through him, at his crew, at Ng, at Semion...
and then, with burning clarity, at himself.

I’ve failed them all.

The realization cramped his guts into an agonizing knot for
a moment as the fear of death rose up in him.

And evaporated.

It was almost comfortable to have no choices left.

“All ships to converge on
Deathstorm
to assist Marine
evacuation. Tactical, we’ll try for a shot up his radiants.” He snapped out the
heading that would take them in against the Dol’jharian battlecruiser.
“Weapons, status?”

“Skipmissile fully charged, all ruptors on-line and
tracking.”

Armenhaut quickly dictated a situation report. “Communications,
tactical full-sphere burst.”

Then, as the stars slewed to a halt on the viewscreen, “Navigation,
take us in.”

Aziza cowered behind her pod, shaking with terror, her jac
forgotten in her hand as the hatch ripped away and the Marines thundered onto
the bridge of the
Deathstorm
. Their amplified battle cries hurt her
ears, jac-bolts sizzled overhead, a console exploded, someone screamed, a
horrible sound that ended in a gurgle.

It was over in a moment. The surviving members of the crew, including
Captain Qvidyom, who’d dropped his jac almost instantly, were quickly rounded
up by the Marines, faceless in their bulky armor. Aziza could feel heat
radiating from the armor of the one who pulled her from behind her pod, the
only sign of the jac-bolt that had hit him.

Three of the invaders went directly to the Urian hyperwave,
glowing weirdly against the communications console. Tools extruded from their
gauntlets and began to gnaw at the fittings holding down the device. Another
began tracing its cable connections, while yet another went to the main
computer console and began working at it. Aziza watched in fascination, her
terror slowly subsiding, at the delicate whisker-like feelers that sprouted
from his suit.

“Which one of you chatzers is the comtech?” came a booming
voice. Aziza stared as the faceplate of the suit from which the voice issued
popped open, revealing the face of a woman who wouldn’t have looked out of
place in one of the fancy fashion chips her mother had been so fond of.

“Well?” said the Marine, her voice more human without
amplification.

“I am,” Aziza squeaked. Captain Qvidyom glared at her.

The Marine swiveled and stomped toward her, her armor
whining. Aziza snickered. She couldn’t help it—she knew she was on the edge of
a hysterical fit—but she had a crazy image of the woman in a fashion show,
stumping down the runway in her armor.
What kind of lingerie does the
well-dressed Marine wear, or is she naked in there?

“You know how to work that thing?” the woman asked as two
other Marines herded the others a short distance away and made them sit down on
the deck.

Aziza nodded, swallowing. The smell of burned flesh was
making her nauseous. The woman’s eyes scanned her face, her expression
softening slightly.

“What’s your name?” she asked, her voice somewhat less
brusque.

“Aziza. Aziza bin’Surat.”

“AyKay, Aziza. Where are the codes?” The Marine at the
computer looked up. “Can you identify them?”

“Yes.”

The woman pushed her toward the main computer console. Aziza
was astonished at how gentle her touch was, despite the heavy armor. “Help him
find them.”

She turned away as another Marine entered the bridge.
Qvidyom stared at Aziza, eyes full of hate. He mouthed an obscene threat at
her, shocking even for him. She shuddered and concentrated on the console,
stealing a glance at the Marine standing next to her. His face was craggy, his
expression tense.

As she worked she heard fragments of a conversation: “... can’t
pick us up, corvettes on the way... out of time... ”

“That’s it,” said the Marine finally, straightening up from
the computer. The console twittered and went dead, and he disconnected his
probe.

“Dyarch, we’ve got... ” A gargling noise from the front of
the bridge interrupted him. Aziza looked up to see a hideously burned figure
flop out onto the deck from behind a pod, moaning. She guessed it was Nigal,
though she couldn’t be sure; evidently the Marines had thought he was dead. She
hoped he soon would be. No one should suffer like that; unlike the captain and
his particular cronies, Nigal had been pretty decent.

As the Marines guarding the prisoners turned, Captain
Qvidyom rolled onto his side, reached for his boot, and jackknifed to a sitting
position, his hand cocked back. His arm jerked as the woman Marine reached for
him. Aziza shrieked as a knife sprouted from her shoulder.

“Chatz!” the woman shouted, took two long steps toward
Qvidyom, and lashed out with her foot. There was a wet crunching sound,
followed by a squelching thud as the Rifter captain’s head bounced off a
bulkhead and came to rest in the middle of the deck, staring upward. The eyes
blinked twice, the mouth worked briefly and was still as his headless body
toppled over, spouting blood all over the luckless Rifters around him.

“Medic!” shouted the woman, and then, “That’s it! We’ve got
what we came for. Prepare to evacuate, we’re going straight out.”

The bridge blurred around Aziza as the medic pulled the
knife out of her shoulder and packed the wound with synflesh. He slapped an
ampoule into her upper arm; the pain abruptly fuzzed away. Another Marine
strode toward her, shaking out a silvery bag. Aziza shrieked again and tried to
scramble away as they started to stuff her into it and the bridge buzzed into
darkness and whirled away.

o0o

“You have the freedom of Desrien. Make what use of it you
will.”

Lokri looked away from the small woman and around the
immense stone church with its elegant carvings, seeking the nearest exit. The
damn nicks had forced him along on this farcical pilgrimage, the devil knew
why. He would not stay to find out.

He had not expected a chance to escape nick 'justice,' once
he'd been identified. But that chance had been presented in this senseless side
trip to Desrien, and he did not intend to waste the miracle.

Lokri headed for the doors they had come in through. The
nicks were so confident in the mystery of Desrien that they thought he would go
back to
Telvarna
, back to Naval custody and certain death. Well,
anything Desrien had to offer would be better than that—most of the stories Archetype
and Ritual spread about the planet were about as realistic as a wiredream,
anyway.

Lokri saw Schoolboy and his father standing around; Lokri
sensed the Marine on his shadow. She probably had orders to see that they all
returned to the ship. Muscle memory ached with the absence of a hideout knife
or the comforting weight of a holster. He’d have to use his wits. He
considered some subject that would get the Omilovs talking, maybe draw the
Marine in. Lokri could slip away while Schoolboy was busy ranting about the
evil Rifters.