Victorious Dead (The Asarlaí Wars Book 2) Read online

  “Here, I’m sending you a file. Look at the flagged section in super slow motion. Too fast and it will vanish.” She knew explaining it would take too long. Besides, Marli would demand to see it anyway. This way maybe Vas could cut her off from another shipboard hologram walk.

  “I’m sure—” Marli cut off as she obviously saw the two extra ships. They almost looked like echoes of the second and third attack ships, except that they were a little longer in the nose, and narrower in the body. They were like much larger and more vicious-looking Flits.

  “Damn it. Vas, lock down your communications and raise your shields and sensors. You have a ghosting computer, use it to look around. Maintain silence between ships until I say.”

  Marli cut the line.

  “You heard her. Lock everything down tight, and get everything we can spare to the shields. All of the shields.” Vas ran a quick scan, but nothing showed. Not that it meant much. No one had seen the ships earlier either.

  “Captain? I think I have an idea. Something Walvento and I saw.” Mac took over the front screen and a side shot of the Warrior Wench appeared. He narrowed in the focus and she saw a long shadow.

  “What the hell is that? And why didn’t you tell me?”

  “I have no idea, and I did. You said if it wasn’t going to blow up, to just give you a report.”

  Vas scanned in closer. The shadow was a single, long dark line, so solid she couldn’t make out any of the hull through it. Judging by the markings around it, it was following one of the larger tats on the side of the ship. The obnoxious, ostentatious gold markings tattooed on the side of her ship.

  “I think I have something,” Gosta said. He and Hrrru were working together at Gosta’s station. “The ghosting computer isn’t showing any hidden ships near us, nor the Monk, but it found something in that area Mac found.” The screen flipped and a new overlay zeroed in on the long dark streak.

  “Is that a ship?” Vas would have fallen out of her chair except she was gripping the armrests so tightly. As she watched, a long, shadow ship disengaged from the dark spot on the Wench’s hull. The dark line expanded briefly, and then snapped back. The shadow ship briefly solidified as it pulled completely away from the hull, and for that second, the shadow across the hull of her ship changed. Where it had been a dark mass, now a gaping maw appeared as if another galaxy existed there. Then both the ship and the breach on her ship went translucent again. The ship vanished from their sensors as it quickly got out of range.

  “Crap, crap, crap! What the hell is that?” Vas had never been so horrified. The shadow breach on her ship shuddered again. “Shut whatever in the hell that thing is down. Now.” Vas had no idea what in the hell was happening, or how whatever was happening was happening. But somehow ships that weren’t really here were coming off of her ship. Or through her ship.

  “Wench, we’re picking up a serious temporal-spatial anomaly coming off your port side. You need to drop speed now.” Marli’s second-in-command broke Marli’s own command about contact and while he was better at controlling his fear than Vas was, his voice said he wasn’t far from it.

  The Warrior Wench dropped speed. Luckily they weren’t in a gate at the moment.

  “We are aware of that, Monk. Do you or your captain have any suggestions?” The one time Vas would have liked Marli to butt in and silence was her only response. The communications cut off.

  “Captain, whoever is coming through has opened that breach again,” Gosta yelled.

  “How do we stop it?”

  “No idea, Captain.”

  Vas watched as a second ship started to peel away from the side of hers. She had no idea who or what they were. They weren’t the massive gray ships, but that didn’t mean they weren’t associated with them. She wasn’t even going to think what they could do out of phase like this.

  “One option. Mac, you’re with me. If Marli contacts us back, tell her I’m blowing that thing off my ship.” Vas yelled and ran for the lift. She tried to ignore the tiny window of time she’d have when both the breach and the ship coming through solidified—at least the tiny window she estimated she’d have based on the one that recently went through the process. Bathie took over the pilot sling and for once Mac didn’t even argue or question what was going on.

  “You’ve trained on the Fury simulations, right?” Vas punched the code for the landing bay.

  “Yes, but, Captain, we can’t shoot our own ship.”

  “It’s my ship, and yes I can.” They’d reached the landing bay and Vas ran and put on a flight suit. Mac still looked shocked but he silently got one on as well.

  “Two of us can’t fit in that thing.” He wasn’t questioning shooting their own ship anymore.

  “Yes we can, we did it before,” Vas said as she made final checks on her suit.

  “I am not riding in the trunk, Captain!” Mac stopped with his suit halfway up and his eyes huge. During the battle with the gray ships, in some distant part of the Universe that they’d never been able to find again, Mac’s Flit was shot out from under him. The Furies had a beam that could bring things inside, so Vas had brought him onboard the one she’d been flying.

  He still claimed to have nightmares from the dark, claustrophobic part of the ship she had to pull him into.

  “No, I don’t want to listen to you whining while I’m trying to shoot that thing off my ship. There is a small gunner port. It’s not needed since the pilot controls all firepower, but I’ve worked on switching it back and forth. You’ll fly, I’ll shoot. If I damage my ship, it’s on me, not you.”

  Vas had no idea why she thought this would work, but silence coming from Marli meant she had no other options. The super gate they’d blown up all those months ago had opened to another dimension and she had to assume this dark hole did as well. How and why it was attached to her ship, she had no idea.

  The Fury rocked as they climbed on board, and Vas prayed whatever was causing the rattles and shakes before would hold together one more time.

  “Captain, Marli is on the line.”

  “Put her through on private, but I’m not waiting,” Vas said as she finished the launch sequence and switched the comm to ship. She’d sat in the gunner area before, when she was repairing it during her downtime. It felt a lot more closed off than she recalled. Probably why it hadn’t been used in a few eons.

  “Vas, what is going on over there? Have they penetrated the hull?”

  Vas stopped in her prep. “What? Is that something that’s going to happen? Marli, what the hell is on my ship?”

  “They must not have yet. You would have noticed. I’ll make sure your man Gosta knows what to be looking for. I think I have been horribly mistaken, I have never been this wrong.”

  “What? What the hell is on my ship?”

  “I think my people are trying to come back from the dead. Those are Asarlaí shadow ships.”

  14

  M arli continued as Vas’s insides froze. “They can’t fully come into this dimension yet, but it is only a matter of time.”

  The Asarlaí. Terrors of the entire known Universe, and probably more worlds that fell into death and loss eons ago. Alive. And coming back.

  “How are they…crap. Okay, what can I do?” Fear wasn’t a close friend, and Vas couldn’t let it become so now. Heavy drinking might be needed later, if they survived, but right now this needed to be done.

  “Honestly, I have no idea. The shadow ships aren’t functioning well, as their breach shouldn’t be apparent at all. The Asarlaí used dimension breaches to attack their prey. I’ve never heard of a breach being anchored on a ship before though. Nor of them flashing solid like that—even briefly. Whatever is behind it is having serious problems coming through.” She paused. “I’m assuming you’re in that Fury I gave Deven? That’s going to be your best shot.”

  “So, my best bet is to get out there and shoot the shit out of the next ship and that breach the split second they become solid?” Vas finished her checkpoints. Her han
ds finally stopped shaking. She was never telling anyone about the shaking.

  “That’s about the only chance, and I have to be honest, it may not work. I don’t have anything faster than the Fury, but I’ll do what I can.”

  Vas tapped into the suit comm. “Did you hear that, Mac? We’ve got a heavy job out there. You got this, right?” She hoped he did. The timing was such it would be almost impossible to try unless she had someone else flying. And there was no one else who could handle it except him.

  “Those are Asarlaí? The rat bastards responsible for Jakiin’s death?” His voice was freakishly calm. If Vas didn’t know it was Mac cocooned in the pilot sleeve below her, she’d think it was a stranger. Jakiin had been his best friend. They’d joined her crew about the same time and Jakiin followed Mac on everything. Until he took off to save everyone and didn’t even say goodbye.

  Vas had wondered about Mac’s coping, but now all that anger and hurt was about to find a focus.

  “Yup. Them or their hench people working for them.”

  “I’ve got this.” His voice was so deep and deadly that Vas was proud. She would have made a comment, but he was in a zone and she needed him to stay there until they pulled this off.

  Or joined Jakiin in death.

  “Fury leaving the bay now. Gosta, warn the crew to secure everything. People, objects, everything. Also, keep checking the hull for breaches. Have a crew ready to launch Flits if need be.” She knew he’d understand that if she and Mac failed, the Flits’ crew would have to try and do something. Vas clicked off and sat back as Mac moved them out of the bay.

  From outside the ship, the shadow was even harder to find, which wasn’t good because it could have been on there for months.

  Then Mac changed the screen a few times, and the shadow came into focus. The thin, impossibly dark line exactly followed one of the larger tats on the hull. It was growing again, thinning out in color as it opened to another dimension. A new shadow ship was about to launch.

  Mac moved closer than Vas probably would have, but he had given her a perfect line of sight.

  “Good job, Mac,” Vas said as she opened up the gunner weapon console. Because of the more confined place, the weapons display wasn’t as impressive as in the pilot cage, but still, one had to admire the sheer number of missiles at her disposal.

  She took a deep breath. She’d love to have time to analyze the safest way to do this without blowing a hole in the side of the Warrior Wench, but judging by Marli’s reaction she didn’t have any time at all.

  The dark bulge was getting larger, and the misty shape was now developing the sharp edges of the shadow ship. Vas selected five of the mid-sized missiles. Too small, and they wouldn’t do anything, too big, and her ship would take a fatal hit. Even with their maximum shields up, a fully armed direct hit from a Fury at this range would take down just about anything.

  She reassessed the breach hanging like a fungus on the side of her ship. Then added three more mid-sized missiles.

  “Hold position,” Vas said, but knew she didn’t need to. Mac was a screw-up about a lot of things, but flying and fighting were not his problems.

  The shadow ship pulled away from the breach, and for a brief moment, she saw the ship as it must look in its dimension, deep blood red, with black lettering that she couldn’t read along the nose. The breach itself was even worse. A gaping maw of light and sharp, glaring, angles.

  Vas nearly froze, but luckily she was better trained than that. She slammed the release button and the missiles went for her ship.

  A number of things all happened at once. The Warrior Wench actually rolled away from the Fury, the shadow ship was still solid when the first three missiles hit and burst into pieces, and the Scurrilous Monk came closer and fired into the breach, augmenting the remaining five missiles Vas had fired and sending them all into the bright light of the other dimension an instant before it closed.

  Mac gave out a whoop a second before the Fury got caught up in a wave of debris and was flung backwards.

  “Get us stabilized, now!” Vas yelled, but she knew it was pointless. The rattling before was nothing compared to the death throes the Fury was doing now.

  “Vas! You must get—” Marli’s yell cut off, a flash filled the cabin, then blackness engulfed Vas.

  VAS FOUGHT AGAINST THE DARKNESS, but the world was fighting her. Her limbs wouldn’t move, for one thing. With a few choice words, she forced open her eyes to find a world gone mad. She was in two places at once. One, the more shadowy of the two, was a strange galaxy bristling with warships, all hovering around a golden binary star system. The other was the weapons pit of the Fury. Or what was left of it. She was hanging upside down, and judging by the sound her suit was making as air came through the processor instead of the ship, the Fury had some serious leaks. The tank on her suit kicked in when pressure inside the ship dropped. It would last a few hours but she had no idea how long she’d been out.

  “Mac, are you there?”

  “Maybe.” The gap of silence before that weak answer sent chills down Vas’s spine.

  “What do you see?”

  “That we blew the hell out of this Fury, it’s leaking air, and we have about five minutes on our suits.”

  Damn it, five minutes? They couldn’t have been out that long.

  “Nothing else?” Vas asked as she watched the shadow scene before her. Ships moved around and smaller ones docked to larger ones. None of them seemed to notice the Fury in the least.

  “Isn’t that enough?” The more he talked, the better he sounded. “I can’t raise the Warrior Wench or the Scurrilous Monk and all sensors are gone.” His swearing increased. “Access to all weapons is gone too, unless you have something up there.”

  Vas looked down. The entire weapons console was a pile of metal and wires.

  “You don’t see another…galaxy?” She knew she sounded crazy, but the other place seemed very real, although shadow-like. It was as if she was drifting in open space, without a ship around her, watching the comings and goings. There were no massive gray ships. But there was a hell of a lot of weaponry. Even on ships she couldn’t identify, they were all armed to the teeth.

  “Did you hit your head?” Mac said. “Never mind, I think we both did. We might even be dead right now. But no, I don’t see any other galaxy.”

  Static broke through the broken comms. “Fury, can you hear us?” The voice was faint, but a welcome sound.

  “We can, but the ship is shot to hell.”

  “We…it. Leaking fuel.”

  They were leaking fuel on top of everything else?

  “We have hull breaches all over, and less than five minutes of air in our suits. You’ll need to get us.”

  Nothing but static came back.

  “Mac, did you hear that? We aren’t dead, not yet any way. Do you have any control over the stabilizers at all?” Trying to figure out a way out while all the blood was rushing to her head wasn’t good.

  “I don’t think we have stabilizers anymore. Whatever we did, I hope it got rid of that thing on the ship. Even if they can save us, this Fury is done for.” Mac sounded like he was moving around. “Wait, I got the view up. Oh….”

  Vas gave him a second to finish his statement. He had just been blown up after all. “And what? I can’t see anything and I’m still stuck in my chair.” Her hands were numb from the way she’d been hanging, but shaking them brought little relief. She tilted her head to check what she’d be falling on. Nothing broken or jagged that she could see. She released the latch and braced herself for the fall.

  She tumbled out of her chair, but the artificial gravity gave out so she floated a bit. Luckily, the ghost images of the strange ships and star system vanished as soon as she was upright. Swearing, she pulled herself through the doorway to the cockpit.

  Mac still hadn’t responded but was busy trying to focus the screen. Most of the view screen was gray and full of static, but as she came closer, Vas saw what he was focusing on. />
  The entire side of the Warrior Wench was black.

  15

  “ Narrow in that view. I need to see what that did to my ship,” Vas said. Unfortunately, floating was a silent way to travel and Mac hadn’t heard her come down.

  His jump would have been more impressive if he hadn’t still been strapped in his chair. His scream was quite good on its own though.

  “Damn it, Captain! I mean, you startled me.” He looked flustered for a moment, then went back to fussing with a broken console. “This is about as good as I can get it.”

  Vas pulled herself closer, but it didn’t help much. A huge black blotch covered this side of her ship. It could have been that the breach got worse, digging into the Warrior Wench, or she’d managed to blow apart her own ship.

  “Are those pieces of debris I see floating around?” She tapped the corner where a piece of what looked like a wing was drifting by.

  “I think that’s us, Captain. Or what’s come off of us.”

  “Damn it,” Vas said as larger chunks bumped up against the outer camera. There was no way they were going to be able to get someone out here to help drag them in.

  “Warrior Wench, if you can hear me, with all this debris and leakage, we’re an explosion waiting to happen. You have to use the particle mover. Grab us both.”

  Precious minutes went by and still no comment from the outside. “Mac, I want you to put your suit on distress mode. Shut down everything you can, and you might live long enough for them to come get you.”

  “Only if you do too.” He folded his arms and glared.

  “I will, right after you do.”

  He tilted his head and arched his brow.

  Vas grinned. That was usually the look she gave him when he lied. “Look, I can’t. My suit regulator is busted. Besides, while I thought I’d go down on something bigger, it’s my job to go down with the ship.”

  “Not if I’m around,” Marli’s voice was heard right before her hologram-self appeared. “We couldn’t grab you before because of some horrific interference. It was as if your ship was halfway into the breach itself. But we can try now. I’ve got visual on both of them, and now”—she lay one translucent hand on each of them— “I have them. Go!”