Dominion (20 page)

•  •  •

Steven and Alis saw the Corps cruiser the moment they emerged from the wormhole. Steven was dizzy from the boost, so he quickly handed control of the
Nomad
to Alis.

“Rizzo?” he said. It came out sharply, like a high-pitched bark, and he cursed puberty, vowing to modulate his tones next time. Well, if there
was
a next time, for already the cruiser was turning toward them, its heavy cannon swiveling in their direction.

Rizzo appeared calm, however, and was quickly making adjustments to the weapons.

“Targeting,” she said.

Steven nodded at her, swallowing hard. I'm not even sixteen, he thought, what the hell am I doing?

“Three, two, one,” said Rizzo. “Targeting complete. We have a lock.”

On the screens, the nameless vessel turned green.

Steven swallowed again. Actually, wasn't he almost eighteen? A couple of years had already passed on this side of the wormhole, if the Cayth were to be believed; technically, he was nearly old enough to drive! In another parallel universe, he'd be old enough to have a pint, legitimately, with Paul down at the Bear Arms near his Edinburgh home. Maybe his mum would have joined them; she always liked a dash of lime in her lager.

His mum . . .

“Fire,” he said.

•  •  •

On board the
Gradus
, the rest of the crew was still assembling when the torpedo launched. Yallee had taken the copilot's seat and was maneuvering the ship to bring the new arrival under their guns. Their scanners had identified it as the same vessel that had fled into the wormhole over two years earlier.

Elvo, the duty weapons officer, was already at her post.

“Shields!” cried Waltere.

“Shields up,” confirmed Elvo. “But it's going to hit us.”

They braced for impact, but none came. The torpedo erupted in a burst of white light while it was still some way from them. In an instant, the
Gradus
lost all power. The only illumination came from distant stars, and the glow of the energy net that now surrounded them.

“All systems down,” said Yallee, but Waltere didn't need her to tell him that. He could see and hear for himself. Oxygen was their first concern. They needed to get emergency life support up and running, or they'd soon start to suffocate.

A wall of illumination appeared in the center of the cabin. There were no Others on the
Gradus
, but it didn't matter. The torpedo's functions were automatic: arm, fire, disable.

Decontaminate.

Waltere felt heat upon his skin, and then he felt nothing else at all.

L
ike all Illyri vessels, the
Gradus
was fitted with a Universal Docking Connector, allowing one ship to link with another. Alis brought the
Nomad
in under the UDC, and sent out an identifying signal to the shiny new cruiser, the electronic equivalent of a knock on the door requesting permission to enter. The crew hadn't been given time to disable the UDC before they were obliterated, and the ship's systems automatically unlocked the connector.

The cruiser was three or four times larger than the
Nomad
. Like most Illyri cruisers, it could be used to transport troops and equipment if required, and its bay was big enough to hold several motorized vehicles. The bay could also be adapted to provide temporary living and sleeping quarters for soldiers.

Alis remained on board the
Nomad
while Steven and Rizzo went exploring. A peculiar, ripe smell hung in the air. It took a few seconds for Steven to identify it as the faintest odor of charred meat, the aftermath of the decontamination process. No, not decontamination, Steven realized. Call it what it was: the torpedo had somehow incinerated the crew of this ship and then erased any trace that they had ever existed.

The first thing Steven did was to check the levels of food on board, fearing that the blast had destroyed everything biological. He felt a sense of relief when he opened the galley stores, for the ship had clearly been resupplied recently and the larder looked pretty full. Adjoining the galley was what looked like a greenhouse crossed with a science laboratory, where bacteria were being grown as a supplementary food source. That was all good. The Cayth had replicated more food based on their analysis of the
Nomad
's supplies, but Steven remained slightly wary of it.

A voice spoke into his headset.

“Steven?”

It was Alis on the
Nomad
, who'd busied herself with accessing all of the information and manifests that she could from the new vessel.

“I hear you.”

“You won't believe what this cruiser is called.”

Alis knew much of the Kerr brothers' history on Earth.

“Try me.”

“You've just boarded the K-Class Diplomatic Cruiser
Gradus
.”

Steven laughed.

“You mean, as in Grand Consul Gradus?”

“The same.”

“Wow, so they named a ship after him. I'm sure he'd be happy to know that.”

He found Rizzo already seated at the weapons system, assessing its firepower and defenses.

“It's much more advanced than the
Nomad
,” she told Paul. “We could start a war with this thing.”

“It's not just the weapons,” Alis added, from her post on the
Nomad
. “Its engines are at least a generation on from ours. It's faster, and more powerful.”

“Can we keep it?” asked Rizzo. She was bouncing up and down on her seat. “Can we? Can we?”

Steven couldn't tell if she was just pretending to be childlike, or if the possibility of so much new firepower at her fingertips had temporarily unhinged her.

“It's not a bad idea,” said Alis, “especially given what we have to do.”

Steven felt a pang of regret. He was fond of the
Nomad
. It had been through so much, and hadn't let them down, plus the Cayth had run diagnostics on it while it was in the bowels of their own ship, and the necessary repairs had been made in a fraction of the time it would have taken at an Illyri installation. But Alis and—God help us—Rizzo were right. They might be glad of the living space that the
Gradus
offered, and additional engine power and weaponry would never go amiss.

“Can we transfer the remaining Cayth torpedoes?” Steven asked.

“I did it once,” said Alis. “I can do it again.”

He looked around the cockpit. It was gleaming, although that might not have been unconnected to the recent decontamination.

“It is a beautiful ship,” he admitted.

“Paul will understand,” said Alis.

“We can leave him a note,” said Rizzo.

Steven might not have been in command of his own ship for long, but he knew when to go along with the wishes of his crew.

“Okay,” he said. “But I'll write the note.”

•  •  •

With all three of them working, it was only a matter of hours before the torpedoes were lying in the
Gradus
's weapons bay, and all necessary equipment had been transferred from the
Nomad
. Alis then downloaded the records of all communications from the
Gradus
to the
Nomad
, which provided a potted history of the civil war's progress. From what Steven and the others could tell, the Corps and its allies were now in control, but only within the Illyr system and a couple of outlying colonies. Beyond these, scattered Military forces were constantly harassing them. Alis was unable to find very much reference to Earth, though, apart from records of craft movements to and from its solar system, and there was no reference at all to the Others. This was a Corps vessel, but information about the creatures that dwelled in the heads of the hierarchy was still apparently being kept from the rank and file. A Securitat ship might give them a better insight, if they could capture one.

Now, with the transfers to and from the
Nomad
complete, it was time to send their old ship back through the wormhole. Steven was surprised at how emotional he became as he stroked the familiar control panel in farewell, before setting it to autopilot. He stepped through the port into the waiting
Gradus
, sealing the connection behind him.

“Ready, Alis,” he said, and again his voice didn't sound right to his ears, but this time for other reasons. They all watched as the
Nomad
grew smaller and smaller, a dot sucked up by the vastness of Derith. The lump in his throat was painful, and his eyes were hot. Stupid, he thought. She was just a ship, and it wasn't like he was sending her to her grave.

But still . . .

He waited a few minutes, staring at the point where the
Nomad
had disappeared, then turned away. He patted the hull of the
Gradus
. This was his command now.

“The first thing to do is come up with a new name for her,” he told Rizzo and Alis. “I'm not going to spend my days sitting in the belly of Gradus.”

They said nothing, probably because they were both singularly lacking in imagination, but he told himself it was because they reasoned it should be his decision, as their captain. For a moment, he considered naming it after his mother, but he wasn't sure that the
Katherine
had quite the air of threat he was seeking. Also, it immediately brought to mind images of fireworks, of wild Catherine wheels spraying circles of fire into the sky, which was definitely not what he wanted to associate with his new ship.

“The
Revenge
,” he said finally. “What do you think?”

“
Revenge
,” said Rizzo. “It's a good name.”

Alis nodded. It was decided.

Their course appeared on the window display. With this ship, they'd reach the first wormhole in less than fourteen hours. Steven didn't sit in the captain's chair, but instead assumed the pilot's seat beside Alis.

“You have control, sir,” she said, but unlike Syl, with Paul there was no teasing in her voice.

“No, you take her,” said Steven, and at last his voice was steady and strong. “On my command.”

A memory from his childhood came to him: the voice of his mother reading him a story.

“Second star to the right,” he said, “and straight on till morning.”

P
aul had only just stopped staring at the wormhole into which the
Nomad
had vanished, and was about to say something to Thula about the
Varcis
, when Derith bloomed again. Paul had momentarily forgotten about the time slip, so that hours on the other side of the wormhole were only minutes on the Cayth side. The ship grew larger, moving steadily on autopilot.

“Hey,” said Thula. “That looks like the
Nomad
.”

A Cayth scan immediately confirmed that it was. What's more, there were no signs of life on board. Paul felt ill. Something had gone wrong. Had Steven and the others been captured, or killed? Had the Cayth somehow turned on them after all? Yet Fara and Kal appeared as perturbed as Paul was.

“We're bringing the ship in,” said Fara.

There was a tense wait while they did so. As soon as the
Nomad
docked and a final Cayth scan had declared it safe and clear, Paul, Syl, and Thula entered it, with Meia hooked in over the coms link.

“Is that a
note
on the cockpit window?” asked Thula.

It was, and it was addressed to Paul. He wrenched it from the glass, unfolded it, and read it.

“Well, what does it say?” asked Syl.

Paul grinned.

“It says, ‘We decided to upgrade. Happy travels!' ”

Meia continued to work on the
Varcis
, with Thula helping her. Paul and Syl began examining the data that Alis had uploaded to the
Nomad
, while Kal and Fara busied themselves on the other side of the cockpit, adding the stream to the combined intellect of the Cayth collective, for they too wanted to explore the new information.

“Right,” said Paul as he and Syl dug into the task at hand. It took a while to untangle the web of data, deciding what was of use and what was dispensable, but once they did, it revealed a treasure trove. Aside from including the reports on the progress of the war received by the
Gradus
—and both Paul and Syl laughed at the irony of seizing a vessel with that name—the cruiser also maintained updated records of all Corps bases, and a registry of planned fleet movements for the months to come. Admittedly, the latter wouldn't be much use by the time the
Nomad
and
Varcis
were ready to go back through the wormhole, but it gave them a pretty good idea of the size and disposition of the Corps fleet, including two Corps ships, the
Satia
and the
Iria
, that were apparently in permanent stationary orbit over the earth, along with an unnamed third craft, designated only “SD.”

“A Securitat vessel,” said Paul. At least Steven would have an idea of what he would be facing when he eventually reached their home planet. “But it's not exactly giving us any info about what might have happened on the earth's surface.”

Syl, seated beside Paul, nudged him with her elbow.

“Try going backward,” she said.

“Backward?”

“Yes, see how far backward you can get in the records. Since we've been here over two days, try two years. See what was heading to Earth two years ago.”

He looked at her, confused, and then started to smile.

“Right!” he said. “Of course.”

Syl gave a superior sniff, then leaned close toward him.

“See,” she whispered into his ear, “I'm not just a pretty face.”

“No,” replied Paul, but her breast was brushing against his arm—not entirely by accident, he thought—and this charged touch robbed him of any other words he wanted to add. He turned to face her, wondering, and in response she snaked her arms around him, warm and strong, pulling him into her embrace. He let himself be held for a moment before he took her golden face in his hands and kissed her, at first chastely and then fully, passionately, on the lips, and then he found that he couldn't stop—he didn't want to stop. It was a kiss like he couldn't remember: desperate, deep, and intense with longing. Her mouth was soft and pliant beneath his, and he could have sworn Syl swooned. Or maybe he did.