Inherit the Stars Page 7

  Cheseia steadied herself on the airlock handhold and kicked another Aldaakian back into Terredyn Narbas. One tried to fire a rifle at Cheseia, but Kivita rammed the Aldaakian’s shoulder with her own. The rifle’s green beam went astray, melting a lamp socket in the ceiling.

  “Check your fire—we need them alive! Point Two, rush the airlock with me!” the Aldaakian with the crushed faceplate shouted.

  Two Aldaakians jumped from Terredyn Narbas and grabbed hold of Frevyx’s airlock rim. Sar peeped around the corner and fired a kinetic pistol. The shot echoed in the airlock chamber, blasting off an Aldaakian’s hand at the wrist. The Aldaakian recoiled and drifted into the space between both ships.

  “Kiv, close the airlock!” Sar ducked back into the bridge as two beam shots melted holes into the corner where he’d taken cover.

  Kivita shoved with all her strength against the same Aldaakian, but he backhanded her. Scorching pain lit up her cheek and jaw. Scuffling, both of their polyboot sets loosened from the floor. The motion sent the Aldaakian spiraling toward Cheseia, and Kivita toward the airlock.

  “Dammit, the airlock!” Sar called from the bridge. Another green beam struck the corner, ensuring he remained there.

  Kivita floated before the airlock, her hand near the release lever. Kicking her feet out, she managed to move herself a few painful inches.

  “Surrender!” The Aldaakian female with the broken faceplate swung a shortsword at Kivita. The blade grazed Kivita’s left leg as her fingers brushed the lever.

  Cheseia shoved the ruined baton into the other Aldaakian’s faceplate. Green beams fired from Terredyn Narbas. One sheared off the life-support cover on the female Aldaakian’s back.

  A crack, then an earsplitting pop, reverberated in the airlock chamber. The release of oxygen and cryonic gas flung the female Aldaakian against Kivita.

  Kivita bumped into the manual-release lever as a final beam fired from Terredyn Narbas. It singed a bulkhead, raining white-hot sparks on Kivita’s back. Each nipped her flesh like a bee sting. An Aldaakian clinging to the airlock tried to reach inside, but the sliding doors crunched on his polygauntlet.

  Gravity returned to normal on Frevyx. Kivita hit the floor on her right side, jarring her bones. The female Aldaakian, still loosing cryonic exhaust, landed on Kivita’s legs. The cut on Kivita’s leg flared, and she sucked in a breath.

  Cheseia, still holding the baton handle, landed on her feet. The Aldaakian she’d been fighting crashed onto the floor, dead.

  “Clear the doors!” Sar yelled.

  Kivita glanced up. Three gauntleted fingers still wriggled in the sliding doors.

  “Back.” Cheseia aimed the dead Aldaakian’s beam rifle. With a short zap, she melted away the armored fingers. The airlock closed.

  Kivita lay in a stupor, the fire along her leg powering a new set of visions: schematics on a geothermal harvester. Deep-space asteroid mining. Technologies she’d never even heard of. She rubbed her forehead and tried to slide out from under the Aldaakian. Blurred colors swam in her vision.

  Furred hands shook her back to reality. “Kivita, we must truly leave the system. Strap yourself . . . Sar, she is certainly wounded!”

  Kivita sat up as realization stabbed her brain. Terredyn Narbas had been taken! With effort, she pushed the limp Aldaakian off her legs. The sword graze burned hotter. The spark burns on her back simmered.

  “No! Not without my ship! Damn it, Sar, don’t you dare!” Weak legs propelled her into the bridge with a mind of their own.

  Sar keyed in coordinates with flurried strokes, using his left hand. His right held the pistol—aimed straight at her. “No choice now. Strap yourself in.”

  “Don’t you . . .” Kivita suppressed a whimper and had to lean against the corner. “I swear I . . .” Every word sapped energy, stole her breath. Their eyes lingered on each other’s. The pistol in his grip didn’t waver. Her knees did, and she sank to the floor.

  Red and yellow warning lights flashed on Sar’s console. Outside the viewport, Terredyn Narbas drifted away, with three Aldaakian bodies floating around it. Kivita collapsed, her eyes still on Sar’s. He lowered the pistol and sighed. Was that sympathy in his face? He thought she was finished? She forced herself back to her feet, lips trembling with raw words.

  Over the curvature of Vstrunn, three small shapes grew larger. More ships had arrived. Fear clawed a ragged pit into her heart.

  “Damn you, Sar,” she whispered before pain, exhaustion, and anxiety sent her into darkness.

  • • •

  Sar turned away from Kivita as she plunked against the bulkhead and slid to the floor. Did she think all this was his fault? The console’s scanner beeped again. Three more shapes had entered beacon range, two large and one small. The latter was perhaps a shuttle. He keyed in jump coordinates of a last resort.

  “Cheseia? Brace yourself back there.” Leaning out from his chair, Sar tugged Kivita toward him, then lifted her onto his lap. She breathed heavily, eyes rolling back into her head. A cut ran across her left leg a few inches above the knee. A fresh bruise spread itself across her right cheek and jaw. Dozens of tiny holes on the back of her bodyglove smoldered.

  She looked dirty, pitiful, vulnerable. A little stringy from too much exercise and not enough decent food. He gingerly touched her lips.

  She was still more beautiful than he remembered.

  He pressed the jump activation button, switching Frevyx’s engines to light-drive mode. The bridge viewports sealed shut, and the entire ship vibrated. A short jerk glued him and Kivita to the seat as gravity fluxed a few seconds. Sar’s stomach knotted for a moment, then relaxed.

  Vstrunn and the other ships were far behind them. He wondered for how long.

  “Sar, hurry back here instantly,” Cheseia called from the airlock chamber.

  Sar rose and strapped Kivita into the chair. As his fingers wiped sweat from her brow, the image of a galactic arm filled with blue stars entered his mind. Sar had never seen it before. Touching her had never sent images into his thoughts before, either. He suppressed a shiver.

  “Sar?”

  He tore away from Kivita and hurried to the airlock. Scorch marks and dried slag pools marred his clean ship. Two Aldaakians in polyarmor lay on the floor, both of their faceplates busted open. One, a male, had a melted half baton shoved into the bridge of his nose. Polyarmor and glass shards crunched under Sar’s boots as he halted over the other body.

  Kneeling beside the prone figure, Cheseia looked up. “This one truly lives. She must have been their leader; she shouted orders to them after I roughly shattered her faceplate.”

  “And you?” Sar picked a glass shard from her silky mane.

  She nodded. “I am truly well. Kivita was—”

  “Grazed. We’ll patch her up after taking care of this one.” No point in saying anything to Cheseia about what he’d just saw. Besides, he didn’t need an argument with her now about old feelings for Kiv.

  The Aldaakian’s albino face bore sharp cheekbones, a pert nose, and thin lips. She lacked hair, even eyebrows. Sar had heard Aldaakians bred away all hair follicles through a strict eugenics program.

  “What do we actually do with her?” Cheseia shot him a narrow-eyed look. “I will not mercilessly kill her.”

  “Agreed. Time to ask her some questions.”

  They carried the dead Aldaakian into the second airlock. Sar sealed the inner door; they’d strip the armor and dispose of the body later. Cheseia poured bleach solvent over the blood pool where the body had lain.

  Together, he and Cheseia unsnapped the polyarmor’s locks, then pried it from the female’s body with a suctioning noise. While she moaned, Sar bound the Aldaakian’s wrists and ankles with flexi cables.

  Underneath the armor, she wore a skintight, blue-gray uniform. Cryoports along her body sealed with a small hiss. Each cryoport wa
s an inch in diameter, round, and rose above her smooth flesh half an inch. A flat stomach and toned musculature testified to rigorous conditioning.

  “Perhaps the Aldaakians truthfully hired Kivita after all?”

  Sar rubbed the stubble on his chin. “No, I believe what she said. Dunaar will—”

  The Aldaakian awoke with a grunt. Sar and Cheseia stepped back.

  “Stay.” Sar aimed the pistol.

  The Aldaakian said nothing, her white-within-azure eyes boring into them. Her cryoports shriveled, then widened.

  “Name?” Sar asked. Aldaakians, like humans and Ascali in the Arm, spoke Meh Sattan. Inheritors claimed the Vim had taught it to everyone.

  The Aldaakian glared at him.

  “We definitely do not sell captives into slavery, like the Inheritors do,” Cheseia said in low, smooth tones. She lifted the Aldaakian from the floor and carried her to the bench outside the bridge. “We truly will not harm you.”

  The Aldaakian still didn’t reply, though her eyes softened.

  Sighing, Sar ran a hand through his hair and holstered the pistol. “Ascali vocal tricks don’t affect Aldaakians. Secure her. I’m going to give Kiv a thogen dose; then we need to enter cryo. Got an Aldaakian pod this one can use, if she behaves herself. And answers my questions.”

  He entered the storage room and thumbed through the medical cabinet. Slings, cloth bandages, cold packs, blue tape, crushed thogen barnacles, and other items came under his perusal. He sighed again, deeper.

  “We surely saved her and the Juxj Star,” Cheseia said from the doorway. “Stop unnecessarily blaming yourself.”

  “Do all Ascali read emotions as well as you, and at the worst times?” He slammed the cabinet shut. “It’s not just her wounds bothering me, Cheseia.”

  “Then we should certainly go to Navon and the other Thedes. You could easily key in a change of course.”

  Sar shook his head. “Anybody following us will trace our beacon signal, and then all we’ve worked for—it’d be destroyed. Navon will have to wait.”

  “You certainly do this to be spending more time with her.” Cheseia turned and left.

  Snatching a thogen bottle, Sar stalked back into the airlock chamber. Cheseia hefted the Aldaakian over her shoulder and headed toward the cryopod chamber, her eyes flat.

  Sar blocked her path. “Kiv’s too headstrong, too young. Too foolish to evade the Inheritors for long. We’ll make her a better deal for the gem, and then we take the Juxj Star to Navon. Maybe I’ll drop Kiv near Tejuit, well out of Inheritor Space.”

  “How did a human manage to send such a signal?” the Aldaakian blurted, then fell silent.

  Sar faced the Aldaakian. “You want that Aldaakian cryopod for this trip, tell us your name. Your mission.”

  “You’re not Inheritors?” The Aldaakian’s accent lent her vowels a deeper sound.

  Sar grimaced. “Hell, no. Now talk.”

  “I’m Captain Seul Jaah of the battle cruiser Aldaar, under orders from Commander Vuul. The ship I boarded was sending a Sarrhdtuu signal. I was deployed to investigate.”

  “Why was Aldaar in this system?” Sar asked.

  “We were on patrol until a Vim signal emanated from a structure on the planet.” Her words held a note of awe.

  His frustration with Cheseia gave way to a strange chill. Sar disbelieved the Inheritor’s Vim religion, but since Kivita had found the Juxj Star and he’d touched her . . . No, Sar refused to think she could be a Savant. Dunaar would’ve killed instead of hired her.

  “What’s special about that?” Sar paced around the airlock chamber.

  Seul looked at him as if he were a dullard. “Now the Vim will come and aid us. We are ready to rejoin them against the Sarrhdtuu and these maddened Inheritors. You must turn over whomever took that gem to me. My people need to prepare for the Vim’s answer!”

  Sar shared a frown with Cheseia. “The Inheritors are my enemy, too. But Kiv comes with us.”

  “Enemies? You killed some of my Troopers—”

  “You attacked us first, remember?” Sar said.

  While Seul glowered at him, Sar’s mind churned. How had Kiv activated this so-called signal? He knew the prophets considered the Aldaakians heretics, but this was new to him. Could he convince the Aldaakians to join the Thedes against the Inheritors? He knew which planets to strike, which shipping lanes to cripple. The Aldaakians had battle fleets, legions of soldiers. Kivita might just be the catalyst he’d been searching for. It’d be hell convincing her.

  “I have answered your questions,” Seul said. “You’ll need to unbind me so my cryoports will be in the correct placement to take full advantage of cryostasis.”

  “Maybe. Situate her, Cheseia, while I doctor Kiv.” Sar walked into the bridge.

  Kivita still moaned in the seat harness. Sar knelt and pressed two thogen powder capsules through her lips. The highly addictive painkiller would make her sleep for hours. He undid the harness and lifted her over his left shoulder.

  In the cryopod chamber, Cheseia pointed a beam rifle at Seul and watched her enter the Aldaakian cryopod. Sockets extended from within the oval pod and inserted themselves into Seul’s cryoports. She hadn’t lied; Seul had to lie straight while all the sockets completed their insertions. Before the transparent hatch closed, Sar barred it with his hand.

  “I don’t have the resources to keep you under cryostasis forever, so mind yourself and your behavior. Might turn you back over to your kind soon as we can. We have a proposition you might like, about the Juxj Star.”

  Seul nodded, her stare blank. He let the hatch close, then laid Kivita in his usual cryopod.

  “Where is Frevyx truly taking us?” Cheseia asked. “The Inheritors will surely be expecting Kivita’s return.”

  Sar configured the pod’s stasis time. “The Ecrol system.” He put the pouch with the gem into the cryopod with Kivita.

  Cheseia set the rifle aside. “In the Terresin Expanse? We must certainly rendezvous with Navon instead. And why is she truly in your pod?”

  Sar met her eyes. “We have only three pods, and Ascali metabolism is higher than a human’s. I have to share it with her. Will you stop being so damn jealous?”

  “I will when you stop looking at her with truly joyed eyes.” Cheseia lay down in the octagonal cryopod.

  On his right, Seul had already closed her eyes. Aldaakians fell into cryostasis faster than any other race because of their cryoports. He wondered if they even had time to dream.

  Sar frowned and slid in beside Kivita. She snored lightly, like old times. After the cryopod hatch cover snapped shut, Frevyx’s lights shut off and the gravity reduced to zero-G. Groaning, Kivita clutched the Juxj Star in both hands. She must have pulled it from the pouch in her sleep.

  “Just what the hell did you do down there, Kiv?” he whispered.

  She pursed her lips, and her breath blew over his face as his eyes closed.

  9

  Dunaar stood before the bridge viewport on Arcuri’s Glory. In the distance, Terredyn Narbas flew into the Aldaakian cruiser’s hangar. The infidels were making this easier than he’d hoped.

  “All K-gun batteries are aimed and ready, Rector,” Stiego said. The other bridge staff sat in silence, sweat running down their faces. Red emergency lamps soaked everything in crimson shades.

  “Release the wreckage we brought,” Dunaar said.

  The forward cargo bay opened. With a burst of thruster jets, the remnants of three Inheritor craft spilled into space. Warped bulkheads and stiff, frozen corpses glided past the viewport.

  “Rector, we have the Aldaakians’ radio frequency.” Stiego’s right eye ticked as the bodies continued to float by.

  Dunaar used his deeper oratory voice. “Aldaakian vessel, this is Rector Dunaar Thev of the Inheritors. How dare you attack this trio of ships! And now you captu
re a trawler that is under contract to me? Surrender in the name of the Vim, or suffer dire consequences.”

  The speaker on the console crackled.

  Dunaar rapped the bulkhead with his Scepter. “Answer, or be fired upon—”

  “I am Commander Vuul, captain of Aldaar,” a cold voice broke in. “You are in violation of the Tannocci-Terresin Treaty. We have fired on no human ships. The unmanned trawler is outfitted with a Sarrhdtuu beacon. You have no claim here.”

  “I have the claim given to me by the holy Vim themselves.” Dunaar lifted his index finger, and a security officer fired the starboard K-gun battery. Three kinetically charged sabot rounds hurtled toward the Aldaakian ship.

  “One minute to target,” the security officer said.

  “Rector, we have Frevyx’s jump coordinates. Sar Redryll has headed into the Terresin Expanse itself.” Stiego’s holo monocle displayed a readout six inches from his face.

  “Either that heathen Aldaakian commander is lying, or Kivita was taken by Redryll,” Dunaar said.

  “Thirty seconds,” the security officer said.

  Aldaar’s black hull shimmered for a moment. A blur passed over the stars behind it; then the craft vanished. The three sabot rounds coursed through space on an eternal trajectory.

  “Track that jump!” Stiego shouted as he ran toward the nav officer’s console.

  “They will have trailed Frevyx.” Dunaar paced the bridge. If Bredine had been correct, Kivita had indeed found the Juxj Star.

  The console beeped, and the security officer spoke up. “Rector, the Sarrhdtuu wish an audience.”

  Dunaar hesitated. He had not expected them so soon. “I will communicate with them in my quarters.”

  After leaving the bridge, Dunaar activated the holo terminal in his chambers. Peasants couldn’t view such advanced technology. Only the prophets and their chosen could bask in the Vim’s former greatness and not be blinded.