Victorious Dead (The Asarlaí Wars Book 2) Read online

  Vas looked at the screen. Bad image or not, it was clearly her. Luckily, they only had the fake name she’d given at the restaurant. She was more embarrassed about being caught on camera than someone using that to find them. They hadn’t been hiding the last few months, only trying to keep out of things.

  “That’s only a local wanted, right?”

  “Yes, Captain, and yes, I’ve already started creating a virus to wipe it out. It’s going to take a while, though.”

  Vas leaned back against her chair. She knew some captains didn’t like getting their hands dirty, and in the military most captains didn’t have a choice—they weren’t going down on away missions. Vas enjoyed them and she was looking forward to another run-in with this Deven.

  “Fine, send the first away team, and Mac.” She held up her hand before Mac’s scream of joy even got started. “Mac will be shuttle pilot only.” It took a few moments of going back and forth as to their plan, but once they found out that the empress’s people were all in a compound, a small former resort on the outskirts of town, they decided to make a pilgrimage.

  Of course, they still had to wait for Marli and her crew before they went anywhere. And wait for the crew outside her ship to finish removing the trackers.

  The finding of Asarlaí trackers got them to move even faster.

  “Xsit, I can’t wait much longer, and our people are almost done. Try to hail the Monk.”

  Vas settled back in her soft white command chair. This might take a bit. She almost flung herself out of it head first when Marli appeared a foot in front of her.

  “Good, you didn’t go far. But I can’t see your location.” She tilted her head and closed her eyes briefly, then opened them with a smile. “Ah, and you found our third piece. I have to say, I wish we’d found him first. This pirate one is trying to get himself spaced. Can you believe he broke out of his bio bed and tried to take over my ship? My ship?”

  Vas scrambled back into the chair, after taking a swipe through Marli to confirm to herself she was dealing with a hologram. A pushy one with enough strength behind it to appear even through shielding, but it was a hologram.

  “Why can’t you tell where we are?”

  Marli shook her head, and Vas swore she heard Mac swoon. “No, our friend did a number on the ship, or, rather, what he could get to. He took out our sensors as well as unloaded a large amount of my short-range weapons. We’re blind now until we can finish repairs.”

  “You have him under control though, right?” Vas shuddered as she thought of the dangerous man she’d left in the space station having the kind of power the Monk had.

  “Yes, yes, yes. He saw something he didn’t like,” she said with a smile, but then it dropped. “He shouldn’t have been as startled.”

  Vas guessed what she meant. Deven, the real one, wouldn’t have been disturbed by Marli’s real appearance. This Deven obviously had been extremely disturbed.

  “Given his recent escape, I’d rather we met over here instead of my place.” The hologram moved like a real person and headed for Vas’s ready room.

  Vas nodded and followed. She almost asked Gosta to follow, but changed her mind. They might need to bring up Marli’s real nature and while Vas did want her crew to know about it at some point, now wasn’t the time.

  Even though she knew Marli was a hologram it was still disturbing to see her cut through all of the consoles and vanish into her ready room.

  Vas detoured past Gosta’s station and dropped her voice. “Gosta, find a way to bump up our shielding against holograms.” Then she let herself into her ready room.

  Marli was sitting, but about halfway over from where the two chairs were in front of Vas’s desk.

  Vas went behind her desk, but shook her head. “Can you move your image either to the left or the right? That’s messing with my head right now.”

  Marli flashed her smile then scooted whatever chair she was sitting on in her ship over. “Better?” At Vas’s nod she continued, and that high-wattage smile dropped. “We have a problem.”

  Vas waited a moment, but Marli seemed lost in thought. “And? We seem to have a few of them.”

  Marli shook herself off. “Sorry. Yes, we do. Those ships I blew up were not Commonwealth, and they were specifically looking for you. They had orders to take the crew alive if possible, but to bring the ship intact to the outer Jhari system. The intact part was crucial. They could kill all of you if you fought, but the ship had to be fully intact.”

  Vas started to ask how in the hell she knew this, then she recalled how she was talking to Marli. “You spied on them as a hologram, I assume?”

  “Yes, and whatever shrouding program they have, it’s a damn good one. They had to drop it in stages, and it leaves them extremely vulnerable. I was only able to get onboard a few minutes before they appeared in front of you. My own ship had a hell of a time keeping up with them. Sorry we were a bit late.”

  “Could you tell who was behind them?”

  “Not at all. There are layers upon layers of commands. I doubt if the people we destroyed even knew who was two layers above them.”

  Vas let that float around. There was a chance that the Rillianians had more people than the crew she and her people took down a few months ago. Research indicated that wasn’t the case, and the rest of the Rillianian people were their usual planet-bound-and-loving-it xenophobic selves. Either way, the monks hadn’t had that kind of tech.

  The gray ship people were clearly the ones behind the attack on the nunnery. Vas filled Marli in about that, and Aithnea’s last rite. Marli nodded, but Vas felt she admired her. Marli had made herself immortal eons before her people imploded. Deven had once confided to Vas he felt Marli was longing for death—she was tired of all she’d seen.

  “Then there’s this fun tidbit,” Vas said as she called up Gosta’s images of the trackers and narrowed the screen down to the Asarlaí ones. “These were found on our ship less than an hour ago.”

  Vas had wondered how long Marli had been stalking around her ship—clearly she had a way to move around unseen, as there was no way those enemy fighters would have been okay with her hologram wandering around on board if they could have seen her. The look on her face gave Vas her answer.

  “What in the hell?” Marli pointed toward the screen and Vas nudged it closer.

  “These are yours, I take it?”

  “Not mine, that’s for damn sure. But they are knock-offs of the ones my people used to make. Are they still on your ship?”

  Vas clicked her visual monitor to the outside view; the three-person crew was still working on the hull. “Looks like. I’m collecting all of the trackers, but I told them to keep the Asarlaí ones separated from the others.”

  Marli nodded and stood. “I’ll be right back.” Then, in possibly the most disturbing of all of her moves this visit, she walked right through the hull.

  Vas kept an eye on the view outside from her monitor. She could clearly see her three people, but there was a vague ghost-like image drifting around them. From their reactions, or lack thereof, they didn’t notice her.

  A minute later, Marli came back in through the same wall. “The good news, those aren’t mine, or my people’s. They’re not relics, they’re recent builds made to look like relics. The bad news is they are excellent copies. Far beyond someone finding some old relics and deciding to reverse engineer them.” She watched the screen. “I’ll need to take them.”

  Vas folded her arms and rocked back. It looked like she was going to be more involved with Marli than she wanted, but they needed to define some boundaries. Of course, that was hard to do when the other person could take whatever they wanted.

  “I will need at least one,” Vas said and raised her hand when Marli shook her head. “I need to have my people work on this as well. Yes, you have more tech over there and you know what you’re looking at. But sometimes the ones who have less, find more.”

  Marli stomped around a bit, but walking through everything i
n her path sort of removed the impact. Finally she nodded. “Agreed. I knew I was in trouble the moment Deven mentioned you. He admires you too much for you to be easy. Just report what you find?”

  “I have never been easy, and Deven knew that better than anyone.” Vas grinned and leaned forward. “Will you?”

  “Most. There are some things no one can know, but what I can, I will. Now, what about our boyo?” She resumed her seat that almost made her look like she was sitting in one of Vas’s chairs.

  “We need to get the third one, and somehow put them back together. How in the hell did he come apart and do we know there are only three?”

  “Very good questions,” Marli said. “I believe it had something to do with his dying, his race, and something that messed with his genetic make-up in the last few years. As for the number, it’s a guess, but backed up by analyzing the samples I took from your doctor. Do apologize to her for me. Every marker was one third of what it should be in the Deven we had. And that sample of Terel’s had the same issue. We need to get all of them together.”

  Her answer caused more questions, ones Vas didn’t think they had time for now but would be following up on once things settled down. “Even though your ship is blind, we need to go after the Deven with the empress’s people before they move. Do you want to bring the other two over here and we take my ship?”

  Marli got up, looked off to her right, and vanished.

  “Really? You’re just going to take off?” Vas said, then came around and stuck her hand where Marli had been sitting.

  Then pulled it right through her as she popped back.

  “What? No. That was my second-in-command telling me that he’s regained full power to our ship.” She tipped her head. “And your people are all back inside your ship now as well. I will take my trackers once we get to Mayhira. I know a short cut. You can keep up, correct?” Without waiting for an answer, Marli vanished.

  “Damn her,” Vas said then ran out to the command deck. “Is everyone secure? We need to follow the Scurrilous Monk. She’s got a faster way back to Mayhira.”

  Mac had been out of his pilot sling but jumped right back. “She’s not riding with us?”

  Vas needed him to get over this crush. He’d had dangerous and stupid crushes before, but never at this level. “No. In fact, she even expressed doubt at your being able to keep up.” Not completely true and Marli probably hadn’t even noticed Mac was alive. But it might distract him.

  “Seriously?” He beamed. “That’s great! She’s horribly wrong, but that is great.”

  So much for him getting over his crush anytime soon.

  “Captain, do we want to lock up the trackers before we leave?” Gosta asked as the ship got ready.

  Vas sighed. There were so many things going on right now, she’d almost forgotten them. The trackers would have been disabled once they were put in the secure lined boxes. Nevertheless, she still liked the idea of sending the moron who’d used his own daughter to plant them on a bit of a run.

  “Leave the Asarlaí ones locked up, but put the rest in that confused drone we picked up last month. Send it on a tour of all the solerioum mines. Lovely planets those are on. Make sure it zigs around a lot.”

  The beat-up drone had crashed right in front of Mac on a job last month. He’d picked it up to try and fix, but it refused to fly right. It was only about eighteen feet across, the smallest space-capable drone around. But it was old and very badly used.

  Mac didn’t even look up when she mentioned sending it off.

  “Might I make a suggestion?” Marli the hologram popped back in front of Vas. “Maybe add a camera to the drone; it looks as if the one it had fell off long ago. Rig it to one of your stations and record who goes after it?” She flashed a huge smile at the command crew. “Oh, and we’re going to leave in five minutes, so I’d hurry.” She vanished again.

  “I’m on it, Captain!” Gosta yelled right before he vanished into the lift.

  “I didn’t even say to do that,” Vas said mostly to herself. It was sound thinking, although if it was who she thought, they’d just be getting pictures of her client and maybe his daughter. But there was always the chance that whoever sent those three combat ships was using the same trackers. And Vas had a few questions she’d like to ask of those people.

  Exactly four minutes later, Gosta was back on deck and his camera-loaded drone was heading out into some of the most desolate areas of the Commonwealth. He’d set up the empty station next to him as the drone watcher.

  At five minutes, the Scurrilous Monk blasted its drive and vanished through the gate.

  Vas almost fell over—she’d been in the act of resuming her seat—when Mac cackled like a madman and the Warrior Wench flung itself after the other ship.

  13

  “I do still give the commands here, gentlemen.” Vas stared both Gosta and Mac down. She agreed with both of their actions, but there was an image to uphold.

  “Aye, Captain.” Both voices echoed out, but neither sounded terribly contrite.

  Vas had a lot to work through right now, but the most time sensitive was Deven. Marli hadn’t really given her answers, but clearly his trick of coming back, and more importantly not all on one piece, was something new. That someone a few thousand years old had never seen it was terrifying.

  Would the person who came back, provided they could get him back, even be the same man she knew? The two they had access to were both degrading. What if there was too much loss for him to be her Deven? The one she’d fallen in love with?

  Normally, her solution would be to go find a bar somewhere and drink and fight all the tension out of her system. Sadly, there wasn’t time. Besides, bar fights hadn’t been the same since she’d lost Deven. When Ragkor first joined the ship, Vas had tried to get him to step into Deven’s bar duties.

  It had been a galactic-level failure. Ragkor kept trying to stop the fights, and he was big enough and skilled enough that he shut down most of her crew. Then he didn’t understand the backing your captain aspect and Vas had to actually hand over the payment for damages herself.

  Hiding in her ready room without Deven to vent to wasn’t going to work either. Especially since the thing she needed to vent about was him.

  The time back to the planet was ETA’d at a half-hour. Marli wasn’t actually taking a faster route, but she was taking a less noticeable one.

  She flicked open her comm and pinged the med lab. “Terel, any news on our boneheaded patient?”

  “Not really. I’m treating him for class-five radiation and made sure he stayed asleep. He should be fine eventually.”

  Vas nodded without even thinking about Terel not being able to see her. “Anyone run scans on the buoy?”

  “I did a surface scan, but kept it under decon. That’s why I made a level-five call. Nothing serious on it otherwise, and if bonehead hadn’t continued on with a tear to his outer suit he probably would have been fine.”

  Vas wanted to rip apart the buoy, then head to Yholine and find out why Aithnea sent her there. She wanted to be the one who opened that buoy up, but she knew she didn’t have time now. Deven was the priority. “Thanks, I’ll check back once we get our missing man back.”

  “Fine,” Terel said. “It looks like Marli’s planning on working over here. Some materials for a highly-specialized bio-bed appeared right before we jumped into the gate. Should I have it assembled?”

  Of course, Marli couldn’t bother to ask before she sent things over. Nor bring over the equipment through normal means. She must have a particle mover, or its twin, on her own ship. Vas wasn’t even going to check on the status of the Asarlaí trackers. As long as Marli left her one, she’d be okay.

  “Yes, if we don’t she might ship over an assembled one anyway—and who knows where it would end up.” The med lab was tight, not a lot of room for extra items.

  “Why here though? I have no idea what I’ll need to do. I don’t know what happened to him.”

  “I have a
feeling you’re about to learn.” Vas turned the comm off. She’d almost flicked it to ship-to-ship, to ask Marli what the hell was going on, but she knew she’d probably get a flip, non-helpful answer. Marli was doing what she saw fit—maybe at some point she’d explain it to everyone else.

  “Captain, I’ve been looking over the images that we took of those ships before Marli destroyed them,” Flarik spoke, but didn’t lift her head from her screen.

  Vas walked over to her station. There had been such a short gap of time from when they appeared and when Marli disintegrated them. Vas hadn’t thought about there being much information on the cameras.

  Flarik had slowed down the attack to such a level that at first Vas thought it was a frozen screen shot. Then the lead ship moved a tiny bit.

  “How many ships were there?” Flarik asked, but kept her head down.

  Vas peered sideways from Flarik to the screen and back. “Same amount that you’re seeing, three. You know that.”

  Flarik finally looked up. “Do I? Do we?” She flipped the screen so only the heat signatures showed. All five of them.

  “What the hell,” Vas found a few swear words she hadn’t used lately. “Put that on the main screen, side by side split of regular and heat.”

  Flarik did but she kept fussing with the image at her station.

  “Gosta? Mac? How many ships did we have out there?”

  Gosta looked up, then almost dropped the cup of solie he had in his hand. Only lightning fast reflexes kept it from going all over his console.

  Mac fell out of the pilot sling.

  “How can there be two ships we didn’t even see? Ragkor only expected three. Did Marli blow up those two invisible ships? Are they still with us?” Vas was pacing now. There was something wrong here—how in the hell did this technology even exist?

  She overrode the comm station and flagged Marli’s ship. “Marli? How many class-five attack ships did you blow up?”

  “Three. Were you not paying attention?”