MacLane's words rumbled. "Admiral, your racer is violating our airspace."
Chad answered in a guarded voice. "They're going to pick up Councilor Roca, Lady Ami, and Prince Kurjson. Their intent is peaceful."
"Then we will take them into custody," MacLane said. "Pending an investigation. I must warn you, however, that if that racer makes any hostile moves, attempts to evade us, or resists an escort, it will force us into more direct action."
Chad remained unruffled. "Check your sensors. It has no weapons."
I could almost feel MacLane swear. In volunteering to take an unarmed craft, Jinn and her team had left themselves defenseless. The court of public opinion was already grinding Earth's forces into metaphorical pieces. Although Earth might fire on the racer anyway, this would make it even harder.
Chad switched channels. "Secondary Opsister?"
Jinn's voice came out of the comm. "Here, sir."
"Any after-effects from the bottle?"
"One disposal unit is out. Otherwise, we're fine."
"Good." Chad spoke to the air. "Pharaoh Dyhianna?"
"Here," I said.
"Do you detect any problems with the racer?"
"Nothing it can't handle." Then I said, "Switching to
Lightning.
"
"Good luck," Chad said.
My mind flowed through the racer in a current of thought, spinning around circuit loops and swirling in molecular stews. The ship was hurtling through the lower atmosphere now, toward Sweden.
The Allieds hadn't fired.
Jinn sat ensconced in the pilot's chair, the lights on her gauntlets glittering blue, green, and amber. "Prepare for landing."
The rest of her team settled in. I submerged in a web made by repair nanobots in the structure of the ship. Jinn's commands flowed through my conduits. I felt the deceleration, the hull heating, and its flexing as it adjusted to optimize the racer's speed. Jinn clenched the arm of her chair.
Still the Allieds hadn't fired.
The racer shuddered as if a great hand had shaken it. But instead of fragmenting, the ship kept tearing through the atmosphere. I flexed my hull with relief as data flooded Jinn's nodes: the shaking came from a storm that raged in the thunderclouds surrounding the ship. We hadn't been hit.
The racer burst through the cloud cover. Land spread below in a patchwork of emerald green forests, dense with foliage, and pristine snow that draped the forest in every direction. The scene struck me at an instinctual level. I felt a deep longing, and with it a profound sense of loss. This was no longer home; we came here as interlopers rather than siblings.
The racer kept dropping, headed toward a rugged coastline with crashing waves and jagged spears of rock. Trees rushed toward us, a forest that appeared untouched by human hand. Jinn was holding her breath, though I didn't think she realized it. Still no attack. I could imagine the heated debates among the Allieds now, as they decided on a course of action.
We shot over a clearing, then skimmed more forest. We had to land soon; the racer couldn't slow much more without going into hover mode, which would make it even more vulnerable.
A long, open area came into view below. A road. Jinn angled so we were flying along it. Racers usually took off and landed vertically, but Jinn used this winding ribbon of asphalt as a runway, bringing us down until we were gliding over it like a hovercar. I doubted the Allieds could shoot now without endangering people in the area, not to mention destroying this spectacular countryside.
The road arrowed into a cluster of buildings rounded with snow. Needled trees heavy with more snow crowded around gabled houses. Jinn brought the racer down without even a bump, settling it in front of a large building.
Her team disembarked with smooth efficiency. According to the ship's computer, we were on the eastern edge of the Allied United Centre. Given the armaments ISC intelligence had listed for this AUC, not to mention everything we didn't know about, it was a miracle we had made it down in one piece. The Allieds must have disarmed their own defense systems to allow us passage.
As Jinn left the cockpit, I jumped into the biomech web within her body. It was normally impossible to maintain such a tenuous link over such a long distance. But the psiberweb boosted my mind, which already had a Rhon's unusual mental reach, and my decades of experience helped me optimize the link. So I held the connection, though just barely.
A group of people in heavy jackets and trousers were approaching us from the building. Another group had come out of the forest and was walking toward the racer. Jinn and her team waited with the ship. Most of them carried sedative air guns that could put a person to sleep, but no one had anything more threatening.
Jinn accessed her language nodes, drawing on their libraries to augment her fluency in Earth languages. She spoke three: Spanish, English, and Mandarin Chinese. She also knew something called
Pig Latin,
though for the life of me I couldn't see the point of that one. Maybe it was a code.
A man in a heavy jacket with a fur-lined hood led the group from the house. When they reached Jinn, he spoke to her in Skolian Flag, a language designed by our linguistic experts to provide a common tongue for our many peoples. It was one of the first languages our own diplomats learned.
"You're on these grounds illegally." He sounded polite but firm. "We will have to take you and the rest of your people into custody until we straighten this out."
"We will be happy to leave," Jinn said. "As soon as Councilor Roca, Lady Ami, and Prince Kurjson are aboard."
She didn't mention the three children; we had thought they were across the ocean in a country called
America,
but none of our sensors had found any trace of them. Nothing. Judging from the agitation that the Allieds tried to hide every time we mentioned the children, I suspected they couldn't find them either. If those children had a relation to Jaibriol III, he might have arranged for them to leave Earth before he appeared in that heart-whamming broadcast and declared himself Emperor of Eube.
"We would be happy to discuss the situation," the Allied man said. He indicated the house as if inviting Jinn and her commandos to tea. "If you will please come with me."
"Thank you." Jinn could actually be diplomatic when she wanted, though I suspected she preferred a good blast on an EM pulse rifle to negotiation. She sent a message into the link shared by her team:
Employ program C.
Four of the team joined her and the others remained with the ship. The Allied soldiers from the forest had surrounded the racer and were keeping watch on the ISC team. They tried to look neutral, but their expressions and body language revealed both wariness and curiosity. The situation intrigued them. Although everyone was armed, no one seemed inclined to shoot.
Jinn and her people accompanied the Allieds into the house. Inside, plush rugs and elegant paneling complimented wooden furniture upholstered in rich burgundy cloth. The Allied soldier pushed back his hood and invited Jinn to sit with him at a glossy table of deep red wood. As they settled into their chairs, he introduced himself as Mikael Fjeldssen.
Jinn spoke plainly. "Major Fjeldssen, the longer your people keep the Ruby Dynasty imprisoned, the less options you leave us."
"We have no wish to antagonize Imperial Space Command." He regarded her steadily. "However, we have concerns in regards to the intent of your fleet."
"Release your prisoners to us and we will leave," Jinn said.
"We have the matter of the psiberweb to consider."
Shall I tell him?
Jinn asked.
Go ahead,
I thought.
She met Mikael's gaze. "We already have a psiberweb, Major."
Although his body language subtly revealed the increase in his tension, he didn't show any surprise. "With the Pharaoh, yes? But can one person maintain the Triad that supports the web? I was under the impression that even with three people in the powerlink, the job was difficult."
So. He had done his security work. ISC kept very quiet about the need for a full Triad. It had worked well with Eldrinson, Kurj, and me; Kurj had strength, I had finesse, and Eldrinson had flexibility. After Kurj's death, Soz had joined the Triad. She had also had strength, a bit less than Kurj, but with more finesse. I needed them.
Jinn flooded Mikael with verbiage, trying to disguise how close he had come to the truth. "The previous web spanned billions of trillions of nodes, if you include the electro-optical, quantum, biomechanical, nano, and picowebs linked into it. Whether or not a web of that size could be maintained with less than a Triad is irrelevant. A new web can and has been created. So it serves no purpose to hold the Ruby Dynasty, either here or on Lyshriol."
His expression gave away nothing. "Certainly I will relay your message to my commanding officers."
Jinn leaned forward. "Our messages have been relayed for days now. We have come to take our people home."
"It isn't in my power to make such a decision." Mikael paused. "However, if you continue to flout our laws and security, you will force us to take steps we prefer to avoid."
Although his response made sense, his tone had an odd nuance. He was hiding something. It agitated him. He covered well, but not well enough. He didn't want us to make a certain discovery. But what?
Jinn parried with him a while longer, until finally they brought the negotiations to a close. Jinn even let Mikael convince her that it would be best if her team returned to our ships in orbit. His people would let her go if she left immediately, with an escort of Allied fighters. He gave her a cube with messages from various officials meant to mollify us. It even included a note from my sister Roca telling me that she, Ami, and Kurjson were fine.
The Allieds escorted Jinn and her people to the racer, and the entire ISC team climbed back inside. Allied fighters roared overhead, a subtle reminder that we should vacate the premises. The ISC team settled into their seats and Jinn took the cockpit.
Pharaoh Dyhianna?
she asked.
Are you there?
I shifted into the racer's computer system.
Right here. Do you have a fix on my sister?
Negative, ma'am. But we know she isn't in these buildings. My people scanned the area while I spoke with Major Fjeldssen.
I' ll double-check.
Using the racer's sensors, I extended my awareness. I kept nudging Allied stealth shrouds. They were well designed. Effective. A few even required a good bit of finagling before I slipped past them.
I'm not picking her up either.
We don't have time to search,
Jinn said.
We're already inviting trouble by taking these few moments to leave.
Damn. I was almost certain Roca was on the AUC. But where? The Centre covered hundreds of square kilometers.
Jinn, I'm going to extend into Kyle space and look for my sister that way.
Got it, ma'am.
Jinn linked the nav controls into the central processor where I resided now, directly connecting my search to the ship's navigation system.
Launching, the racer thought.
As we took off, I extended my mind, reaching for Roca. Had I actually been on Earth, it probably would have worked. But I was too far away, up in orbit on
Roca's Pride.
I couldn't find her even with the psiberweb magnifying my strength.
Our escort of Allied fighters continued to patrol the sky. When Jinn paused, hovering only a few meters above the trees, someone warned her to continue her ascent.
Then, faintly, I caught of sense of golden power.
Roca?
It didn't feel right. But we could delay no longer. I wove a thread from that distant mind into the racer's nav system.
Go.
The racer leapt into action, sheering above the forest. My extended senses detected one of the Allied fighters powering up a laser. Trees bent underneath us— and then we were dropping back down through them. The leafy canopy whipped us like a thunderstorm. We landed with a crash of falling branches—
And the Allieds finally fired.
They could have pulverized the racer. Instead they seared the forest around us, starting fires, blocking our escape. And guess what?
ISC had lied about the racer having no weapons.
They had disguised the system so well, even I had missed it. Jinn fired an Annihilator, a high-flux beam of anti-protons. Designed for space combat, it annihilated protons— with drastic results. In space, it could gut a large ship and demolish a smaller one. Fighters rarely used them in an atmosphere. The anti-protons interacted with air molecules, attenuating the beam while showering the ground with radiation and particle cascades.
The beam stabbed the sky in a brilliant column of white light, bending slightly due to the Earth's magnetic field. When the main flux of the anti-protons slowed enough to interact with the air, they reacted in a great burst of energy. The resulting annihilations created an intense ball of fire at the end of the beam. It dazzled the sky, blazing like a miniature artificial sun above the forest of Sweden.
