Dominion (22 page)

But its destruction would be a secondary aim. Steven had learned enough from his tutors to understand how important the seizure of a communications hub might be. In war, information was the currency. With the right intelligence, a weaker force could always threaten the stronger. If the Military could capture and hold Passienne, even if only for a short time, it would be privy to all Corps communications until its enemies finally realized that the station was in hostile hands, probably when it failed to respond with the correct security protocols. At that point it would be time for the convoy to run, but not before blowing up the station.

Of course, the
Revenge
could have made its presence known to the convoy. It was out of range of the Military's weapons, and in theory they were all on the same side now. But Steven knew that if the Military captured the
Revenge
, it would never hand the ship back, and any hopes they had of reaching Krasis, let alone Earth, would be dashed. For the moment, they would have to evade their potential friends just as much as their enemies.

“First boost in two hours,” said Alis.

Steven thanked her, and he and Rizzo set about preparing the
Revenge
, making sure everything was locked down while running diagnostics checks for any potential weaknesses in the hull. They found none. The time spent doing nothing much at all beside the Derith wormhole had left the ship in pristine condition. It was like a car that had only ever been taken off the showroom floor for test drives.

By the time the checks were complete, they had arrived at the mouth of the Trimium wormhole. All information indicated that it was stable, so they weren't expecting a rough boost, but even a smooth boost was mildly unpleasant. They strapped themselves in, and Steven took the controls. Despite all the downsides, he still thrilled to the rush of being at the helm of a vessel while it was boosting. He had never been on a bobsled, or skied downhill at speed, but he imagined that the experience was mildly similar, except without the chance of complete annihilation.

Steven gave them the count.

“Preparing to boost in—”

The wormhole bloomed, but not for them. Instead the prow of a huge carrier breached space, suddenly blocking out the stars.

Steven heard someone start to scream and swear, and realized it was himself. He wrenched the controls to starboard, and the
Revenge
shot across the bow of the carrier, so close that they could see faces staring at them from windows. Then they were running along the carrier's side, its bulk to their left, racing for the Trimium wormhole once more.

“They're hailing us,” said Rizzo. “Their systems have identified us as the
Gradus
. They've sent us a security code, and are asking for the correct response.”

“Ignore them,” Steven replied.

“It's a Corps ship,” said Alis. “Systems identify it as the
Javin
.”

“I know,” said Steven. The
Revenge
was near enough to it for him to be able to read its name on the hull, but they were closing on the wormhole. Steven didn't even bother with the count.

“Boosting,” he called, and then they were inside. It was a messy entry because of the angle at which the
Revenge
had come in, and they bounced around a little at the start, but it was a short boost, and when they emerged they were welcomed by empty space. But the Trimium wormhole wasn't entirely stable; it had a massive gravitational pull on this side, and Steven had to put all of the Revenge's thrusters on full to avoid being pulled back into the wormhole.

The main difficulty was that they had now been spotted. Even though it was a carrier, the
Javin
was unlikely to be equipped with any craft big or strong enough to follow them through the wormhole. With luck, the
Gradus
might not yet have been missed, and their failure to respond to the
Javin
's hail might be put down to the urgency of avoiding a collision. On the other hand, it wouldn't take long for the
Javin
to establish that the
Gradus
was not where it was supposed to be, and the hunt for them would begin in earnest. Either way, the near miss at the wormhole would have to be reported, either to the station at Passienne, which was the closest Corps base, or via a small transmission drone sent back through the wormhole in the direction of the nearest beacon. If the carrier went to Passienne, it would be a problem for the Military convoy to deal with, but a drone dispatched through the wormhole would be theirs.

“We'll wait,” said Steven. “If they send through a drone, we'll blast it and be on our way. Rizzo, prepare to target.”

Drones moved fast, and were programmed to follow a nonlinear course in order to avoid just the kind of destruction that Steven intended. He didn't want one to slip by, forcing them to waste time giving chase.

The scanners showed no other ships within range, but Steven still didn't like hanging around at the mouth of the wormhole. He checked the cockpit time display. It wouldn't take the
Javin
this long to prepare a drone, which meant that it must have continued on to Passienne.

He permitted himself to relax, just as the wormhole opened and the
Javin
began to emerge.

T
hey were saved by Steven's reactions, coupled with the buffeting of the
Javin
as it exited the wormhole. Steven hit the thrusters as the prow of the
Javin
reappeared, but he headed toward, not away from, the carrier, and aimed for a spot below its keel. The
Javin
's forward scanners had already detected the
Revenge
's presence, but its first shots went wide as the big ship tried to recover its equilibrium. By then the
Revenge
was gliding along the underside of the carrier, where it was heavily armored but less well equipped with weaponry.

“Shields up!” Steven ordered, but Rizzo was already ahead of him. They both knew that, at this range, the shields wouldn't be much use against a direct hit, but it was better than remaining entirely undefended.

Cannon fire ripped past their stern, but Steven was now staying so close to the
Javin
that its guns couldn't come around at the correct angle for a clean hit, and also risked self-inflicted wounds if they continued to fire. Steven's intention was clear to his crew: he was making for the wormhole again, in the hope that they could slip through and start running on the other side. By the time the
Javin
came around for another boost, the faster, lighter
Revenge
would have put a lot of space between the two ships.

But the
Javin
's commander was no fool. A silver cloud spewed from the rear of the ship and scattered itself in the
Revenge
's path. The
Javin
was laying mines, cutting them off from a straight route to the wormhole. Steven spun the
Revenge
and, with no time to right the ship, they returned the way they'd come, but this time upside down, Rizzo doing her best to target the
Javin
's weapons as they came.

“Steven.” It was Alis. “We have to do something before they launch fighters.”

“I know, I know.”

It would take the
Javin
time to ready its fighters. They would have been locked down before the boost, because the last thing a carrier wanted was unsecured fighters rolling around in its bays, but as soon as the
Javin
was clear of the wormhole, its crew would have begun preparing craft for launch.

“We have the Cayth torpedoes,” said Steven. Unlike the weapons that had captured the
Nomad
and the
Varcis
, the
Revenge
's torpedoes had been programmed to activate immediately upon striking a target. Now was the chance to test them.

“One of them may not be enough to disable a carrier.”

“But two of them should be. Rizzo, ready torpedoes. Target the engines, understood?”

“Understood.”

“On my command.”

This would be the dangerous part. They'd have to put as much distance as possible between the
Revenge
and the
Javin
to ensure they weren't caught in the torpedoes' net. It would also mean running ahead of the
Javin
and then getting above it. Steven didn't want to risk another skim of its underbelly. By now its gunners would be anticipating the maneuver. Ahead of them was the prow of the
Javin
. Steven slipped in front of it, then turned to port and darted across the top of the carrier, almost skimming its bridge.

“Hangar bay doors opening,” Alis warned. “Those fighters are on their way.”

Steven commenced a near-vertical ascent, and the
Revenge
shuddered and bounced to the left as a shot hit its starboard side.

“Damage report,” he called.

“Minimal,” said Alis. “No hull breach.”

But that strike was bad news. It meant that the
Javin
's gunners now had their measure.

“The Cayth didn't give you a range on those torpedoes, by any chance?” Rizzo asked as the force of gravity pushed them back into their chairs.

“I didn't think to ask,” Alis replied.

“You know, in films robots are really logical and stuff.”

“I'm
not
a robot.”

“She's joking,” shouted Steven, wrenching the
Revenge
to port. Had he been driving a car, the move would have been accompanied by the screeching of brakes and the smell of burning rubber, just like back in Edinburgh when some likely lads stole a car and amused themselves by performing doughnuts until the police came. The
Javin
passed beneath them, and they saw the cannon fire tearing through the darkness toward them.

“Fire!”

“Torpedoes away,” said Rizzo, and they watched the Cayth weapons fly, leaving a blue blur in their wake.

Behind it, the first of the fighters was emerging from one of the
Javin
's bays.

“Rizzo.”

“I see it.”

She targeted the fighter with their cannon, staying slightly ahead of it so that it flew into the shots and was ripped apart. This was Rizzo in her element. If ever anyone had been born to blow things up, it was Rizzo. By the time the first ship had disintegrated, she had swiveled the guns to target the second, and destroyed it just as it exited, putting that bay out of use until the wreckage had been cleared. It still left the fighters in the other bays—all carriers were fitted with four—but it didn't look like the
Javin
had readied any of the others, and by then it was too late for the carrier. It had not attempted any evasive action when confronted with the threat of the torpedoes, probably on the assumption that its shields would be capable of dealing with any threat from one of its own craft, but this was Cayth technology. As before, the torpedoes seemed to explode before they hit their target, but instantly their nets spread, encompassing the lower half of the
Javin
. The carrier lurched, then slowly stopped moving, but disabling a small craft was a very different matter from disabling a massive ship, especially one that had not had sufficient time to clear the gravitational pull of a wormhole. Without the forward thrust of its engines, the
Javin
found itself pulled inexorably back toward Trimium. Its forward half started to rise, so that its bow was above its stern, and then its engines struck its own field of mines. A series of explosions erupted along its hull, igniting further blasts deep in the now crippled carrier. By the time the Trimium wormhole took it, the
Javin
appeared to be almost vertical, and was already on fire along most of its length. Its bow struck the lip of the wormhole, and blossomed into a fireball.

And then the
Javin
was no more.

•  •  •

An Illyri carrier had a complement of 2,500 officers and enlisted ranks. The
Revenge
had just annihilated all of them. There was no sense of triumph, though, no sense of relief for Steven, Alis, or even Rizzo. They simply stared dumbly as the wormhole closed on the destruction and loss of life they had wrought, until Steven finally spoke.

“Resume course,” he said. “We're done here.”

M
eia and Thula returned to the
Nomad
for the final briefing before departure. The
Varcis
was at last ready, and Paul had decided that it should be Meia's ship.

“I asked her if she wanted me to go with her,” said Thula.

Paul was surprised, and just a little angry. He needed Thula to pilot his ship, for neither he nor Syl had the skills to take control of the
Nomad
, and he had also grown close to the Zulu. He relied upon him, just as he relied on Syl.

“She turned me down,” Thula added.

Paul couldn't help but let out a deep breath of relief.

“Story of your life,” he said.

“I appreciated the gesture,” said Meia.

“Shot down, and patronized too,” said Syl.

“You are not helping, lady,” said Thula.

“It is not necessary for another to join me,” said Meia. “Also, Thula would then have knowledge of the Mech refuge. If we were captured by the Corps, I would be forced to kill him in case he gave away the location under torture.”

“Maybe it's better that you're going alone,” Thula concluded.

“Yes, maybe it is.”

The Cayth had promised to upload all that they knew of the Others onto secure servers on the
Nomad
and
Varcis
. When Fara and Kal returned—this time popping out of the wall fully formed—they confirmed that the task was complete. In addition, Fara told them, they'd inputted the location of a series of Cayth sentinels, and at least forty new wormholes.