Victorious Dead (The Asarlaí Wars Book 2) Page 4

  Like the one she’d seen on Mayhira this one was Deven. Same face, same moves, same voice as he barked orders to someone still onboard.

  He came down the ramp and noticed her. The look in his sharp green eyes wasn’t a notice of recognition, but one of admiration. “I’ve got some berth room if you’re looking to get off this crap hole.” He gave her the slow look up and down, lingering over the important bits. The type of look Vas would have smacked right off his face, had she been being Vas right now and not some down-on-her-luck ship hopper.

  Definitely Deven’s voice, but with a bit of an accent. Hard to pinpoint where it was from though.

  “You the Captain, sugah?” She let her jaw relax as she spoke so the words sort of muddled together. Ironically, it was a trick Deven had once taught her.

  “I am now.” The grin he gave her was Deven, yet not him at the same time. It was the Deven she’d seen on jobs when he was acting. But this wasn’t an act. There was no way those sharp green eyes recognized her. “Newly promoted you might say. I could make it quite profitable for you to join us.”

  The level of evilness that showed in his face made her shudder. That was definitely nothing she’d ever seen on her Deven.

  “Now I don’t know about that. I might not want to go where you’re going.” Vas moved closer and ran her hand up his arm. The tattoos were not only real; they were professionally engraved. Small indentations carved out of the skin at the micro level. Extremely painful, and they took a while to complete.

  But he smelled like Deven. What the hell was going on?

  “You confused about what to do with all of me? I’m sure we can figure something out.” He bent down and grabbed her in a kiss. But it was rough and crude and made her miss her Deven even more. Vas tolerated it long enough to stab him with the hypo—then shoved him aside.

  “Now, I ain’t that kind of lady, boyo.” She still didn’t want to break cover completely, not until she knew who and what they were dealing with, but she didn’t have to be a simpering idiot either.

  The Deven clone snarled and grabbed her arm. She twisted out of it easily and kicked him in the balls. He folded around his midsection. She looked down at him in disgust.

  Her Deven would never have let her break free that easily and certainly wouldn’t have been slow enough for her to nail him like that. In a fair fight, she could best him about half the time. She hadn’t even been trying and he went down like a three-legged table.

  “Bitch, you don’t know who I am.” He was still in serious pain judging from his voice. Vas might have let her frustration show a bit more than necessary.

  She turned away and walked back to the storage area where she’d come down. The hypo would tell them who they were dealing with.

  6

  V as handed over the hypo as soon as she was brought on board. The first run-in with Deven had been shocking. She knew it was him and she also knew he had no idea who she was. But the encounter with this one was far worse. Her people believed that every soul had a good side and a bad side and that life was a constant battle to keep them in balance. The goal wasn’t to get rid of the evil. They didn’t believe good could survive without its counterpoint.

  Therefore, balance was imperative. The person she just saw was evil, not a bit of good to offset it.

  Vas didn’t know much about Deven’s past, but she had known him for more than fifteen years and had anyone asked her before her trip down to the space station, she would have said she knew him better than she knew herself.

  That was seriously in question now.

  How someone could sound like Deven, feel like Deven, and even taste like Deven, and be that vile she had no idea. She needed to get this figured out, and soon.

  “Is Gosta on board yet?” After handing Terel the hypo, Vas had fixed her clothing and was re-braiding her hair as she went to the command deck. Gosta was the closest they had to an expert on the particle mover, but he probably hated using it more than anyone did. Which meant he was taking the longer way to the ship.

  Which said a lot.

  “He’s coming up the ramp now. He wants to know if you wanted to save your encounter. He recorded it for you.” The pause in Ragkor’s voice told Vas he wanted to ask what had happened but was too much of gentleman to do so.

  “Tell him not unless he wants to spend a week in the brig.” Vas got to the command deck. “Actually, tell him to give it to Terel and Nariel when she comes out of hibernation, maybe they can get some clues from it.”

  She could tell Gosta directly, but knowing him he was already busy in his quarters tucking away all sorts of things, illegal and legal, that he wanted to keep hidden. She’d found in the past that it was better to give him some private gloating time when he came back from a trip.

  “Aye, Captain—”

  “Captain! Code red communication coming in.” Bathie cut Ragkor off. She had taken over Xsit’s station and looked suitably worried about the code.

  As she should. Code red communication was limited to official Commonwealth officers only. Since no one had heard anything from the official government for two months, a code red was even more disturbing than it would have been normally.

  “Send it to my ready room,” Vas said as she jogged over and palmed open the door. She had no idea what the call was about, but in some cases things were better coming to her crew through her and not raw and unfiltered. She needed to know how deep the shit was before she decided what to tell them.

  The screen behind her desk was running the Commonwealth logo, but it was an older version. One she knew. Anyone intercepting it would drop the line fearing they’d tapped into a real Commonwealth communication. Which was the idea.

  Vas hit the accept button and fell into her chair. Out of all the things she’d feared this could be, this wasn’t expected at all.

  The image of the room before her was familiar, yet changed with age. Nevertheless, she knew its walls and stairs without even looking. When Vas had first run away from home, after her late and unlamented brother’s attempts to sell her to a telepathic cult failed, she’d gotten booted off her first ship after a month. She had ended up working at odd jobs in a small town on the planet Gahrina II until one day a group of Clionea nuns came through on their monthly shopping trip.

  The Clionea were a warrior order. They followed their Goddess with strong religious practices. They also were some of the best warriors in the universe.

  The mother superior had seen something in young Vas, something worth helping. She’d offered her a job with a place to sleep and training. Vas spent the next two years with them.

  Then there had been a falling out, and Vas had fled for the space lanes, and except for one time, she had not looked back.

  Until now.

  The view before her was the Clionea nunnery, and it had taken some hits lately.

  The camera didn’t show any people, at least not at first, then the angle turned and Mother Superior Aithnea appeared.

  She was grayer than before, more lines on her lean face. But she still held herself proudly. Even though there was blood along her scalp.

  “Child! I was hoping my sources were right and you were still on that ship.” She held up her hand. “Watch what you say on here, beware the link is not completely secure. They won’t find you—we’ve made sure of that. As we go to our reward, we ask you to be witness.”

  A chill filled Vas. That last line was one the warrior nuns said when one of them was about to die. But it was never said as ‘we’, even if more than one was involved.

  “Mother Aithnea, what is happening?”

  The smile she remembered beamed back at her. “We have our time, we have our benediction. We have our enemies, and so do you. You will fight for more than you know, my child.” As she spoke, the camera changed to outside the monastery. Hundreds of armed troops, most of them clad in chillingly familiar black body suits, were attacking the outside. Then the camera moved through the inner courtyard where the nuns made short work of the
enemies who had been able to breach the defenses, but they were sorely outmatched by sheer numbers.

  Finally, the camera went back out even further and Vas saw at least five gray cruisers, like the ones they’d thought they had seen the last of four months ago. The ships were moving in closer as if being drawn to something in orbit around the planet.

  Vas knew what the mother superior was doing. During those two years of living with them, Vas had voraciously read all of the books in the place. Last Rites was a thin book. It described the best ways to take out as many of your enemies as you could in a no-win scenario. There was probably a buoy in orbit that looked electronically like something the ships wanted—something to pull them in close. Near enough to the planet for a last rite.

  “No! I can get there. We can help you!”

  “No, child, you can’t. This is our battle; it is our sacrifice to the goddess. Your battle is coming, and it will be far more destructive than anything you have ever faced. But while you fight, there is hope. Witness us.” The screen slipped to a view of the planet, a different one from when Vas had been a part of them. Not that surprising, since the order moved around. What looked like a nunnery was actually an old grounder; a specially designed ship that was made to land and create a safe place to live on a planet. They were old and no new ones had been made in the last ninety years. The gravonflex engines on those massive beasts were even slower than generational ships. But the nuns loved having a mobile temple.

  Vas fought tears. That would dishonor the goddess and what the nuns were about to do. She clutched the edge of the desk and finally nodded. “I witness and will spread the word.”

  “Done.” The camera panned back to the nunnery as the door exploded open. A dozen nuns fought to hold the attackers back, but they were losing. The view went back to the mother superior. She smiled, raised her eyes to the sky, and held up a simple device. Vas recognized it immediately—a deadman’s switch that would destroy their enemies as well as their own world. Aithnea released her grip and the entire screen went blank.

  Vas allowed herself a few tears but wiped them away quickly. She’d been foolish to think that just because they’d removed the Rillianian monks, that the invaders in the gray ships—the ones who were claiming to be bringing back the Asarlaí—a long-dead race of insanely powerful homicidal maniacs—would vanish. They’d slowed them down, nothing more.

  Aithnea wouldn’t have contacted her unless the attack on them was directly related to Vas and her crew. Vas would have found out about their deaths eventually, but it would be in passing, probably on some distant world. Not like this.

  Vas hit the comm. “Xsit, Bathie, Gosta, whichever and whoever. I need to know the exact location of that last transmission and I need to know it now. Gosta, back wipe the search. I don’t want any trace of what we’re looking for to be seen by any scans.” Since Gosta had downloaded an illegal copy of the entire Commonwealth library a few months ago, Vas was sure no one could trace the search. But after what just happened, that wasn’t good enough.

  Vas fast-forwarded through the final message, looking to see if any clues jumped out. Aithnea would have known that her messages, even heavily coded and disguised as this one was, would be scanned by the enemy. But Vas knew there would be a clue somewhere.

  She saw nothing. Nothing except the utter destruction of an entire way of life and the good people who lived it.

  Three more quick views and she finally saw it. The first pullout. In the front room, the greeting area. The camera focused on a map before going down to view the fighting. Vas captured the image and blew it up. The map was old, an ancient star chart long out of date. But Vas recognized the landmark stars and figured it out. The planet was Yholine, the Silantian ancient home world. A binary star world, once heavily populated, now little more than a refuge for those hiding from the Commonwealth.

  Vas felt the tightness in her chest ease. She couldn’t bring her friends back, but she could give their deaths meaning. Something far beyond the destruction of their attackers.

  “Captain, I think we have the system, or rather what was a system.” It was good to hear Gosta’s voice, even with such horrible news. “It’s out on the rim, and showing massive levels of radiation. Captain, I think their star went nova, but it was a young star.”

  That was a serious last rite. Aithnea was taking no chances. That was another thing that had been lost along with all those lives: the abilities and skills needed for a star-killer event. The Clionea nuns were the only ones left after the Asarlaí wars who could do that. Part of her thought it was a good thing that ability was lost, but not in that manner. Uncontrolled power like that was what helped the Asarlaí dominate and nearly destroy this sector of space a thousand years ago.

  And seeing that power in action, even though Vas knew Aithnea would never deploy it unless she had no choice, made Vas physically ill. She blew up an entire system to keep Vas—and what she and her people were going to do—safe. What in the hell could one captain and one crew do that was that important?

  “Thank you, Gosta. Map a route to the star system nearest to it, and go through a lot of different gates. I don’t know what being near there will do, but I need to be there.” She knew she was going to have to tell her crew, at the very least her command crew, what had happened. But she was still trying to process it.

  She hadn’t thought of Aithnea in years, but she’d always counted on her and the rest of her order being there.

  “Aye, Captain.” Gosta clicked off, and then clicked back on a second later. “Um, I’m not sure if this means anything, but there is a beacon in the center of the mess. It’s got an old code and an even older cloaking on it. But it’s there.”

  Tricky. Aithnea had shielded the device she’d used to draw the enemy ships in closer well enough to survive the blast. A shield so powerful it could survive an explosion that destroyed a star system. That technology was also now lost. Clearly, there was something she wanted Vas to have inside it.

  Her instincts were to race there and grab it before anyone else could. But that would mean exposing the Warrior Wench if there had been any surviving ships from the attack. “How are you seeing it? Directly? Or ghost?”

  Ghosting was an imagery system very few ships had. Outside of rumors of it being on top-secret military ships, Vas had never heard of a ship having the system. Like the particle mover, it was theory-only for most of the population. And like that bit of machinery, it was part of the Warrior Wench’s make up. It could see through most shielding and cloaking. Gosta had just discovered it, buried in the bowels of the ship’s tech, a few weeks ago.

  “Ghosting, Captain.” Gosta’s voice faded and she heard him clicking a few things on his console. “You can’t see anything at all with even the tightest scan in normal viewing.”

  Vas sat back in her chair. That was good, and it told her that Aithnea knew a bit about the Warrior Wench’s abilities. Considering how recently they’d found the system, chances were she knew more about the Wench than her crew or captain did.

  “Damn it, why did you have to die?” Vas said it under her breath, but her comm was still open and Gosta had sharp ears.

  “Captain?” There were a lot of questions behind that single word, but he wouldn’t push them on her.

  “I’ll fill you all in later, just follow my orders. I need to do some thinking.” She clicked off her comm this time. She actually needed to do some research, but there was no way she’d tell Gosta that. He was the best researcher in any galaxy she could name. But right now Vas needed to look into her old friends on her own. She’d see what she could find first, and then she’d explain it all to Gosta and the others.

  7

  V as remembered why she’d brought in someone with Gosta’s specialized skill set after the first half-hour of searching. She couldn’t find anything.

  To be fair, Aithnea was very good at hiding her big, lumbering city-ship when she wanted to. Vas tried tracking them down about a year after the falling out s
he and Aithnea went through and was unsuccessful. She had a sinking suspicion the fight had been a ‘kick the baby bird out of the nest’ issue. Unfortunately, Aithnea didn’t let Vas find her to ask her.

  According to Vas’s research, such as it was, the convent had been in hiding for the last six or seven months. Vas counted backwards and put the last time the nunnery had been in an established place at right before planet Lantaria had been destroyed by a fleet of unmarked gray ships. Vas counted the planet’s destruction as the start of whatever was now going on. But the further she looked, the more it appeared that things had been going into the crapper for a while.

  The last time Aithnea was in a trackable location was after Vas had been kidnapped, poisoned, and lost her ship, but before things got really bad.

  “Damn it,” Vas said, then hit the comm. “Gosta, Terel, Flarik…Ragkor, I need you all in my ready room.” Vas rubbed between her brows. She’d almost said Deven, something she’d stopped doing a month after they lost him. They needed to find out what was going on with these Deven copies floating around, but that was going to have to wait. This was bigger.

  Blowing up a star system was going to cause notice, even on the outer rim. They needed to grab whatever that beacon was, then get to Yholine for whatever items or information that Aithnea wanted her to have.

  Gosta arrived first, which was more based on motivation than proximity. Judging by his breathing he’d sprinted up from his quarters.

  Flarik and Terel arrived together, discussing something they dropped as soon as they came into her ready room. Ragkor followed right after. Actually, considering where he moved from as Vas watched Terel and Flarik come in, he might have been at the door waiting for the others.

  She so needed to find him an aid and rescue ship to work on. He was far too polite for this crew.

  Vas shoved those thoughts aside. Right now they needed to focus on getting all the information they could from the massive loss that just happened. After her command crew took their seats, she briefly told them of what she’d witnessed. Gosta seemed very interested in viewing the message, but Vas couldn’t sit through it again at that moment.