Victorious Dead (The Asarlaí Wars Book 2) Read online

  Marli laughed. “Sorry again. This is your ship, I’ll just provide medical support. Follow my ship to Mayhira, and we’ll pick up our missing Deven then be on our way.” She nodded to the entire deck and vanished into the lift.

  Vas waited until the lift was gone, then held up her hands. “I know, a lot of stuff went on, I will hear about all of it. And yes, Marli can be difficult, but we need her right now. If it wasn’t for her and her ship, none of us would probably be here.” Vas caught Gosta’s look and realized that he at least knew how true that had been.

  Vas was sure Terel would have been listening in on the deck arrival, but Vas wanted to be sure. “Terel, I think you’re going to have incoming Marli and beds.”

  “Too late, Captain,” Pela, Terel’s assistant, responded. “The beds got here a moment ago, trapping Terel in a corner, but Captain Marli arrived and they are working things out.” She paused. “Once everything is set up there, you might want to come down here.”

  “Thank you, Pela. Keep them from killing each other and I’ll be there once we’re underway again.” Vas leaned against the command chair and called up reports that were filed while she’d been gone. The more serious ones—for example that breach on the hull that had invaded her ship—were shelved until later. It was no longer an immediate threat. But other ones could be processed quickly. For instance, Terel still wasn’t sure what Ragkor had been exposed to, but he was responding to standard radiation level-one protocols and was kept sedated in the med lab.

  She set the screen aside. “Gosta, we’re okay, right? I won’t move this ship until you tell me whatever in the hell happened while I was gone is clear.”

  Mac had already moved into the pilot sling and was prepping to engage engines. He stopped at Vas’s words.

  “Aye, Captain. Marli is a bit of a wild card, but she did help us. There was no way for either ship to pull you two out of the Fury for a few hours. Even when she did it, we wouldn’t have been able to—there was too much interference. And I’m working with her second-in-command to develop a way of detecting those shadow ships.” Gosta must have been dealing with Marli a fair amount in the hours Vas and Mac were out. He seemed unfazed by her. Which was good if they were going to be seeing more of her.

  “Warrior Wench, are you ready?” The voice of Marli’s second, Savan, came in, again without bothering to go through anything like normal channels. If they were going to seriously be in each other’s pockets for any length of time, Vas was going to have to set up a few rules for Marli.

  “Yes, we are ready. My nav officer and pilot await your direction and will follow.” Vas nodded to Gosta and Mac and both set in the directions the Monk was sending them.

  She hadn’t been worried about their trip back to Mayhira. Yes, they’d taken off on the run from the law, but no one should have connected the crazy drunk lady and a ship in outer orbit. After a more thorough look at the wanted poster, Vas figured as long as she stayed clear of that part of town, they wouldn’t spot her either.

  Mac engaged the engines, and Gosta looked like he was in his element, so Vas left Gosta with the deck and went down to make sure her medical officer hadn’t harassed the immortal Asarlaí too much.

  The hall from the lift to the med labs seemed surprisingly quiet. She only passed one crewmember and he didn’t seem freaked out or running away for his life—a good sign.

  The med doors opened, also to silence. Maybe not such a good sign.

  “Hello?” Vas looked around but the front area was completely empty. The space allotted to the med labs on the Warrior Wench was generous. The entrance area only held three triage bays and Terel’s workstation. It would have been ideal for a couple of giant med-beds. Definitely not a good sign that they weren’t here.

  Over half the med labs space was divided into smaller individual chambers which could be used for research or to house patients in need of long term care. Vas knew Ragkor was still in the far left chamber, soft medical lights shone through its open door. But the chamber to the right shone blindingly bright through the clear door and seemed to be the source of a silent battle.

  Vas waited a second or two, then pushed in the door.

  “Vas, please tell our guest, that these should be out there, or, even better, on her ship which can run them.” Terel was trying to push a bio-bed, the one with the pirate Deven Vas guessed from the tattoos she could see, forward. She was being held back by Marli who was only using one arm.

  “Marli, I have to agree. There is no room in here, and we’ll be picking up a third one. Where’s his bio-bed going to go?”

  Marli waved her free hand. “We won’t need it. We can start work immediately once we pick up our third. This chamber is more secure than the outer area.”

  “Who is this we?” If Terel was intimidated by Marli she wasn’t showing it. “I have no idea what to do, do you?” Terel was taller than Marli, at least in Marli’s current glamoured form. And, unlike most of the ship, Terel knew what Marli was. She still did a great job of getting in Marli’s face.

  “I don’t either. Isn’t it grand?’

  “Ah, crap,” Vas stepped forward and held out her hands to both ladies. “Marli is excited about this because it’s never happened before. Terel is freaked out for the same reason. This is my ship, correct?” Vas waited until both nodded. Terel’s was a bit chagrined but Marli smiled.

  “Fine. Marli, bring over the third bio-bed. I know you have it ready, I saw it. You’re just messing with Terel. Terel, I have to agree about the security. We have no idea what the hell went on with Deven, but we can’t let this get out to the crew, not yet. They’ll all notice when we get him back together. But this?” She pointed at the two bio-beds. “This can’t get out.”

  Terel still looked ready to fight, but nodded. “You’ll have to help me remove some of this equipment, before the final bed comes over.” That glare, flung at Marli, was warranted.

  Marli shrugged. “Agreed.” She went out into the main room to call her ship. And left the logistics to Vas and Terel.

  Vas understood that Marli took joy in poking people to get reactions. But she hoped she didn’t decide to go after Flarik this way. Terel’s people didn’t have the same long memories of Asarlaí atrocities that Flarik’s did.

  “I still don’t think having them here is a great idea. Not with everything that’s gone on,” Terel said as she shoved some large pieces of equipment, ones Vas had never seen used once, into the chamber next to this one. It was empty, but they might need to expand to Ragkor’s room as well.

  “We had a few rough hours there when you and Mac were out, and whatever in the hell that thing was on our ship started to dig inside,” Terel said with an added grunt as she forced machines together in a corner.

  Vas picked a likely looking extra bed and pushed it into the empty room. “How far inside did it get? Was it a virus from the breach or part of the breach itself?”

  “You’d have to ask Gosta on both accounts. We could see the Fury drifting, parts raining off of it. The scanners from both our ship and hers showed the shadow ship had blown up and the breach attached to us vanished. But it left behind hooks. Gosta spotted them first and asked Marli for help, but she first insisted there was no way anything could have been left behind. Gosta was able to destroy them, but it was touch and go for a bit.” Terel stopped pushing her end of the bed. “That’s a problem,” she dropped her voice, “Marli has been the only one of her kind for so long, she’s in denial about whatever is returning. Flarik almost had a complete breakdown when she heard there were shadow ships. I actually had to sedate her and send her back to her room. Yet Marli is missing things because she’s so sure the rest of them are gone.”

  Vas nodded. “Agreed. Whether they are truly her people or not, the fact remains they have a hell of a lot of the same skills and weapons. Having Marli on our side is a major plus, but not if she refuses to believe these are her people—or really good copies.”

  “Bio-bed, incoming!” Marli interrupted
them with her yell, giving Vas and Terel barely enough time to roll themselves out of the way before a shimmer appeared right where they were standing. The bulky bio-bed arrived an instant later.

  “There are a few things we need to work on,” Vas said then headed for the door. “Can you two play nice, or do I need to send someone to their quarters for a time-out?” She stood outside the door. Marli was focusing on hooking the newest bio-bed up to a linkage with the other two.

  “Oh, I don’t think you need to lock the doctor up.”

  “I wasn’t talking about her.” Vas gave Marli a pointed look, which she deliberately missed, and went down the hall. If anyone could hold her own with Marli, it would be Terel.

  Her comm pinged. “Captain, I’ve had a chance to look at some of the feedback from our drone experiment. You probably want to see this.” Gosta had his ‘excited but thinking others might be freaked out’ voice.

  Vas jogged to the lift. “I’m on my way. What’s our ETA to Mayhira?”

  “Twenty minutes from what I can gather. This is a very odd route. But we might not want to dawdle there once we pick up our lost passenger. This is kind of odd. Well, you need to see it.”

  Vas wondered why her crew seemed to feel the need for her to see everything instead of just telling her. Not only was she going to have to have a long talk with Marli, but with a few choice members of her own crew as well.

  Gosta wasn’t at his station, but he was standing over the one next to him. He was actually hopping back and forth like a kid waiting for a treat. Hrrru was sitting there and chittering in what had to be native Welischian.

  Either very, very good, or very, very bad.

  “What do you have?”

  “Captain! Good, good, you made record time,” Gosta said but immediately looked back to his screen. “Come close. What does that look like to you?”

  “A star system with an asteroid cloud and a few uninhabited planets.” Vas leaned in closer and read the population scans running along the bottom of the screen. “What does it look like to you?”

  Hrrru said, “These are our ship.” He turned around with a smile of fangs.

  The Victorious Dead had been stolen for all intents and purposes, chopped apart, and scattered. The scattering was done by a crazy group of religious zealots as a test for their up-and-coming acolytes. Vas also knew who stole it: an unscrupulous, and now very dead, ship repair guy named Skrankle. But she was convinced there was someone else behind it.

  The heart of the Victorious Dead was locked inside the Warrior Wench, even though they were still having problems accessing it. Besides that, they’d gathered three parts out of twenty when the pattern they were following broke.

  Vas narrowed in further. Yup, at least a few of the asteroids looked to be debris-covered lumps—just like the other ship pieces they’d found.

  “And we found this by accident? By sending the drone out?”

  Guilt didn’t hide well on some faces; Gosta’s was one of them. “Actually, Captain, I had an idea. That is…I’d heard a rumor about this belt.” He clasped his hands in front of himself and gave a nervous grin.

  She couldn’t get too mad. He’d found a lot of pieces of the ship, possibly all. Vas shook her head. “Well, that drone had to go somewhere, I suppose. Does it have mini buoys on it?” The drone they’d sent out had been captured on a job a few months ago, so if the jackass following them got itchy and destroyed it, it wasn’t a big loss.

  “Aye, it has two functioning ones. In its prime, that one came with…” Gosta’s explanation dropped off as he saw Vas’s face.

  “Tag the system with a buoy and get that drone far away from there. Or do you think it’s a good idea to point out where our ship is to someone who definitely has an agenda against us?”

  Gosta’s mouth dropped open. He clearly hadn’t even given that a thought. “Hrrru, move the drone to the Xalin system, let it drift around the moons over there for a while.”

  “Gosta, contact Home and give them the link for the buoy and the coordinates.” Vas headed for her ready room. “Have them get a crew together, a damn big one, and bring those pieces back to the secure shipyard in orbit.”

  Hopefully removing the coat of debris and managing to get the Victorious Dead back together would be a good focus for the crew back on the planet Home.

  When her beloved ship had first been stolen, Vas couldn’t imagine not wanting to be her captain again. But over the last half a year, she’d grown to appreciate the odd and gaudy Warrior Wench.

  There was still some down time before they started their retrieve-Deven program. In the mess of the past few hours, Vas hadn’t even gotten a chance to review the data from the buoy they’d picked up.

  In her ready room, Vas called up the specs from Ragkor’s little prize. Normally she would have asked Terel to review the scans, but her doc was still fighting with Marli over the Devens and Vas didn’t need to be in the middle of that again.

  17

  J udging by what Vas saw on the scans, Aithnea had been as wily as ever; in fact, possibly even more devious than she’d been when Vas ran with them, and that said a lot. Providing that the little bit of information the scans were telling her was correct.

  The former buoy was more spherical than Vas had originally believed, but its own systems made the shape difficult to discern even with the ghosting system. The scans Vas was looking at were the ones taken as it was moved into the holding bay.

  Fifteen minutes later, all Vas had been able to determine was that it was about as tall as Ragkor, so seven feet more or less, and was almost as wide across. And had more disguise, illusion, and masking software emanating from it than anything Vas had ever seen.

  The outer shell was made of Silverian talthin, a rare metal known for its durability in deep space. It was also expensive as hell and the amount used for the shell would have been about twenty times what the nunnery would have made in tithes over five years.

  One would think that if she spent that much money on protecting whatever was inside, Aithnea would have made it so that Vas could get inside.

  Vas sat back in her chair, and watched the scans unfold on her screen. Finally, she shut it off. She was missing the key, and without it those secrets were staying in that damn thing until Vas got frustrated enough to blow it up. With all the protections on the blasted thing, that would probably destroy the Warrior Wench instead.

  She shook her head. Aithnea had been one of a kind—anyone who could continue giving Vas problems after their death was uniquely skilled. A glass of rum was poured before Vas even thought about it. That was one change she made, pouring her drinks instead of drinking out of her flask. She’d started doing it after Deven’s death—he always said she drank too much.

  She swirled the warm amber liquid in the glass and, for the first time since the destruction of Aithnea and the convent, let herself grieve.

  She knew that in the Clionea way, the dead were not to be mourned, but avenged. But Vas’s own people did mourn the dead. And while Vas had left their way of life even longer ago than she’d left the nuns, she fell back into their ways upon occasion.

  Besides, when bad feelings were suppressed, bad things happened to the mind and body. Or so her mind-doc Nariel kept telling her. After the attack by Bhotia, and once all of the Rillianian monks were dead, at least the ones who had been on her ship, and things settled down, Vas had a small breakdown.

  Luckily, it had been contained by Nariel, Terel, and Flarik. But Vas came close to a complete breakdown in front of her entire crew. Having a time to grieve, cry, and remember—even a short one—was crucial right now. They’d be at Mayhira soon enough.

  That time passed far too quickly. Vas was finishing the last of her rum, when the comm buzzed.

  “Captain, we’re at the planet,” Gosta said.

  “I’m coming out. Stay on course and stay near the Scurrilous Monk,” Vas said.

  Hrrru had left the command deck to continue his searching for more evidence that a
ll of the Rillianian monks in the universe were gone. Vas wouldn’t be surprised if he’d also taken control of the drone. She didn’t care as long as it stayed far from their current location and away from anything relating to the crew.

  “My second says he’s narrowed down where the last Deven is,” Marli said as she came out of the lift. “Shall we try and pull him up here?”

  Vas was glad she’d had the drink. Grieving was one thing, Marli was another.

  “How close does your second have him tracked? If we’re off a tiny bit, we’ll pull up—as you called it—parts only.” The particle mover was a fussy machine; no way could it pull in blind. “Unless you think your machine can do better?” Judging from the way they were brought onto the Scurrilous Monk, and the ease with which they were sent over here, Vas knew Marli’s ship had a better system.

  “The tracking should be accurate. My second mutated the samples we had then did a wide and illegal scan.” Marli shook her head, then shrugged. “But I suppose not. A complete Deven might be able to handle being pulled up that way, but we’re not sure how biologically stable this one is.”

  Over the years of being a professional mercenary, Vas had developed a strong sense of what to worry about, and what was out of her hands. This was one of the latter.

  If Terel and Marli couldn’t save Deven, no one could.

  “How close can we put down? I want to use the shuttle this time,” Vas said and resumed her chair. “We can’t risk another use of the mover down there this soon.” Part of her fear of the particle mover was that there could be a trail they weren’t aware of.

  “I’ve got the tracking from the Scurrilous Monk. He’s fairly far out of the capital,” Gosta said.

  “Is he in one of the resorts?” Vas didn’t memorize the layout of most planets—unless they were going to be fighting there. But she knew this one had only a few outlying areas that surrounded the capital of Paolian.

  Marli answered from over Gosta’s hunched shoulder. “He’s in a swamp?” She tapped Gosta. “Is that correct?”