The Lazarus Particle (21 page)

“Not for Dell DeCoud, apparently.”

“Amazing.”

“Truly. That said, the very fact you risked so much to bring him back to us—we can never repay that.”

“I’ll second that,” Vichante added. He had been quiet for most of the exchange up to that point. “That said, if there’s anything we can do…”

“Sign us up.”

Vichante raised a brow at the only other person in the room who had been quieter than him to that point. Fenton the fugitive. His head was freshly shaved down to the pate, but still there remained the slightest trace of soft pink where a close round had grazed his scalp. Judging by the width, Vichante guessed something in the forty to fifty caliber range. Talk about dodging a bullet. And now here he was, bucking to throw himself in front of hundreds of thousands more. “Are you sure about that?”

“We’ve already talked about it. We don’t have anything to go back to. Whatever friends and family any of us had left have been told we’re vile, traitorous scum. We’re outlaws. Maybe not the sexiest outlaws…” Fenton shrugged. “We might as well be part of something, right?”

“Be that as it may, we usually prefer our new recruits bring a little something more to the table than casual apathy.”

“Well,” Ensign Cassel offered, “we did also bring you one of the most advanced pieces of military tech in the entire M-H fleet. The known galaxy, really. Dropped it in your laps, if you want to get technical about it.”

Soroya nodded. “An excellent point.”

“True, but there’s also the matter of the bounty on your heads.” Vichante tipped a brow, looking to each of them in turn and back again. “I say
heads
because I presume that by now it’s been extended to the rest of you.”

Fenton scoffed. “Are you really going to sit there and tell me no one would pay good money for your head on a plate? For your wife’s? Because I can think of a few if you can’t.”

“Easy, now.”

“Another excellent point,” Soroya conceded.

Vichante shot his wife a pained glare. The message was clear. She was being counterproductive.

For her part, Soroya glared right back. The message was equally clear. She would not allow her opinion to be suppressed, however contradictory it might be to his own.

“Have we sufficiently made our case, Commander? Madam Commandant?”

Vichante cupped his hands over his face, pulling them down slowly. “Just tell us something you can do for us that we can’t currently do for ourselves.”

“Well, for starters, we can make the Tyroshi forget all about you.”

Rishi narrowed his eyes. “Just like that?” he wondered.

“Just like that.”

“For how long,” Corliss demanded hoarsely.

“Long enough for you to evacuate the planet without risking any losses whatsoever. Hell, long enough for you to stay put and resupply first if that’s your fancy. But I won’t presume to tell you how to structure your itinerary.”

“Right. Just how to win our war.”

Fenton shrugged casually.

His mouth breaking into a wide grin, Vichante crossed his arms and sat back obligingly. “Alright. How do you propose to do that?”

“You’ve got nukes, right?”

“Of course we have nukes.” Rishi seemed downright offended by the very question itself.

“Only thing that keeps the scaly bastards at bay is the threat we’ll nuke the moons, irradiate the whole damn thing,” Corliss snorted.

“We do not have a reliable way to deliver them to their fleet, however. Everything we send past the No-Fly Line, they shoot down.”

“Stalemate,” Vichante concluded, spreading his hands.

Fenton raised an eyebrow as if to suggest the obvious. “Hmm, I wonder what proven method of running the blockade might be a useful vehicle for just such a priority delivery?”

Corliss barked out a gruff laugh. “You’d let us use the M-H yacht you all risked your collective asses to steal as a means to nuke the Tyroshi blockade?”

“We risked our collective asses bringing it to you, too,” Fenton reminded them. “They didn’t exactly give us a free pass through their blockade. Besides, the way we see it, you sign us up, it becomes your property. Part of your fleet to wield how you see fit.”

Vichante’s eyes widened just so as the substance of Fenton’s proposal dawned upon him fully. “You’re talking about manufacturing a shooting war between Morgenthau-Hale and the Tyroshi.”

And with that, Fenton let a small grin play across his lips. “That is exactly what I’m talking about, Commander, yes.”

Silence prevailed as the Irregulars traded discrete, knowing glances. Could they really countenance such a diabolical deception? Especially after condemning their enemies for employing one not so different?

Rishi was the first to speak up. “Alright, I’ll be the first one to say what we’re all obviously thinking: It’s genius.”

“Bloody. Fucking. Brilliant,” Corliss agreed, enunciating each word as if it were its own self-contained sentence.

“We win, they win, the Tyroshi lose…” Soroya shrugged demurely. “Yes. I vote yes.”

So there it was. Vichante found he did not disagree. Only one question remained.

“Who pilots the yacht?” he finally asked.

“That depends.”

“On what?”

“On just how vindictive you’re feeling.”

23 • B.F.B.

Tj Yeleyhi awoke slowly, her senses so muddled she was not even entirely certain she was technically awake. Darkness prevailed in the strange void she found herself occupying. Her eyes were open, of that much she was relatively certain, yet there was no light whatsoever for them to detect. Similarly, she was relatively certain she hadn’t been deafened, yet she could hear nothing and no sound came when she attempted to speak. Even her sense of touch had been, for lack of a better word, muted.
 

This was not the Aftermire she had prepared herself for just before Commander Harm shot her.

But if she was not in the Aftermire, then what? Some sort of purgatory?

She shut her eyes, attempting to will forth some sort of understanding…

Bit by bit, she managed to reconstruct the last few moments of her life. Confronting Commander Harm. Lifting his chin. Seeing the surprising life in his eyes. The vicious ambush that followed. Commander Harm’s hand around her throat, throttling the life out of her. Her pathetic, unforgivable plea. The endless, gaping black hole of Harm’s massive sidearm as he leveled it between her eyes…

And then his laugh as he lifted and brought the heavy barrel crashing down between them.
 

Which could only mean…

Alive.

She was alive.

The word flashed through her mind like a bolt of lightning, reanimating her to the reality of her situation.

But if not the Aftermire, if not purgatory, then what?

She thought back to her exchange with Gatz, suddenly making the connection.

Immersion chambers.

“Fascinating,” she said, her voice dissolving into nothing as she spoke. She knew the words had left her lips, but there was nothing to aurally confirm it.

She would have to recommend an inquiry into this brand of tech as soon as she was released from this unfeeling hell.

Or if, she thought balefully.

As if to punctuate the thought, a strange ripple fluttered through her body. A loud
snick-snack
startled her. The hatch suddenly began to open. The blade of light that knifed into the chamber and the two overlapping bursts of gunfire that followed threatened to overwhelm her reawakened senses.

As her sight slowly returned to her, her eyes resolved upon the cold, lifeless irises of one of the Irregulars.

Still, she waited. And waited. And waited. Yet no one came for her.

Slowly, she found the strength to crawl toward the door. Ease it open.
 

The further she opened the door, the more death and destruction was revealed to her. The deck was covered in bodies; apparently there had been some internecine dispute. Whatever the cause, Kerikeshaala: Ty Yeleyhi wasn’t about to question it. She scrambled to her feet, stumbling half-blind out onto the deck.

Even half-blind, though, she could hardly miss the sleekly appointed Morgenthau-Hale Courier Command Vessel.

Picking her way carefully toward the yacht, she failed to suppress the predatory grin creeping across her face. Somehow the Free Planetary Irregulars had snatched defeat from the jaws of victory. The realization helped to drive, to animate her search.

Soon she would be back aboard her ship, with the rest of her clan-kin, and she would rain all horrific hell down upon this pestilential little planet…

Finding the command chip to the Morgenthau-Hale shuttle took some doing. She had to search several of the bodies, all the while wondering what in the hell had happened, as well as guarding against whatever might come next…

Ultimately, the only answer that mattered was that she was free and capable of rejoining her fleet. They would wonder what had become of their Tj. Might even have appointed an interim fleet commander. That would be understandable, but also unacceptable.

She boarded the ship warily. She had taken a weapon off one of the fallen humans, but it wasn’t until the yacht’s landing ramp sealed seamlessly behind her that she felt truly secure. Even if she couldn’t get it off the ground, at least she had several inches of heavily armored hull between her and the Irregulars. Probably a fairly sophisticated array of weaponry, too, now that she thought about it.

But if she could get to the weaponry, then she could get to navigation, and
that
was first priority. After all, she had all the ordnance she needed to bomb this planet into nonexistence several times over orbiting thousands of kilometers above.

Seating herself before the helm, she took a moment to familiarize herself with the controls. Mostly laid out the same as a Tyroshi vessel of similar size and disposition, though perhaps not quite as intuitively. She frowned. Still, only a minor hindrance, and she wouldn’t be flying the vessel for long.

The command chip unlocked the controls. Within mere moments she had the celebrated Morgenthau-Hale ceramic engines firing at capacity. A bit further down her mental chain of command, she mused that miraculously escaping enemy custody in possession
of a rarefied piece of enemy tech should almost certainly qualify her for her ascendancy to Zj.

Optimistic, yes—probably even deserved—but wishful. She forced herself to focus on the here and now.

An alarm barked as a barrage of small arms fire clapped at the yacht’s backside; apparently whatever reserves the Irregulars had in their pocket had made it to the deck all but seconds too late. Tj Yeleyhi savored their untimely arrival like a fine wine, laughing merrily as she turned the yacht about. She broke the atmosphere less than a minute later, recalling the coordinates of her fleet’s last position and angling toward them.

Composed as she was, Tj Yeleyhi couldn’t help jumping slightly as the radio crackled to life.

“—And if you don’t bring that yacht back down, we’re going to fucking shoot it down! Repeat, this is Free Planetary ground control demanding immediate compliance—”

Tj Yeleyhi just smiled. If the Irregulars were truly capable of annihilating her from the ground, they would have already done so.

Before her, the veil of occupied space blossomed as she transitioned through the planetary atmosphere and angled toward her fleet. Mere pinpricks from her current vantage, but soon to be her salvation, as well as her vindication.

She tried several times, unsuccessfully, to hail her flagship. At length she discovered and managed to disable the encryption key, elementary as it was, before finally getting a response.

“Tj Yeleyhi? Is it really you?”

For a moment, she struggled to place the name of her successor. “Yes, Lj Zissidss, it is Tj Yeleyhi.”

“My Tj, how good to hear your voice again!”

“And yours, my Lj. As you may already have surmised, the exchange proved to be an ambush. The duplicitous, incompetent Oviddians could not control their revolution for so much as twenty-four hours. We arrived into the jaws of a well sprung trap. However, having engineered my own escape, I believe we are well positioned to inflict maximum punishment upon this planet as soon I reassume command. Over.”

Several moments passed before Lj Zissidss responded, his voice choppy and distorted.
“My Tj… I am… vised… ou ar… in pos… clear dev… on col… cour… with flee… please respond.”
The last two words came in perfectly, and then once again.
“Please respond.”

Kerikeshaala: Tj Yeleyhi tried to alter the course of the yacht, only to realize she had been locked out remotely. She tried to communicate with her fleet, to the same fruitless effect.

The comm crackled to life once more. The voice reaching out to her this time was not one she was familiar with.

“Kerikeshaala: Tj Yeleyhi, please respond. This is Free Planetary Base, over.”

“Free Planetary Base, this is Kerikeshaala. Do go on, over.”

“Tj Yeleyhi, by now you will have noticed we have taken remote command of your navigation and communications, over.”

“As a matter of fact, I have. May I inquire as to why? Over.”

“You are currently in possession of several high-yield nuclear devices. As I am sure you are aware, the vessel you’re aboard is quite capable of outmaneuvering even your most advanced targeting solutions.”

Tj Yeleyhi paused a long beat as she absorbed this information.

Beaten. She was well and truly beaten.

Or perhaps…

“Tj Yeleyhi? Over?”

“I suppose I have no other option but to commend your ingenuity. Well played, Free Planetary Base. You were a worthy foe. Over.”

Another pause, this time on their end. A new voice sounded over the comm a moment later.

“Die screaming, Tyro scum. Remember Shih’ra. Free Planetary Base, out.”

The comm abruptly ceased.

Tj Yeleyhi had several moments to contemplate her fate as her flagship loomed larger and larger in the yacht’s panoramic viewer. It was a gorgeous vessel, one she had commissioned and overseen the construction of herself. Tyroshi vessels were built to purpose based on individual need. All shared certain crucial elements of both form and function, but no two were exactly the same. Her flagship and all that followed were like a storm of swords aimed at the planet’s surface. Gracefully proportioned yet treacherously punishing if provoked. Even now, they were beginning to bombard the space around her with everything the fleet could possibly bring to bear. Plasma cannons, laser-guided missiles, ionic disruptors; yet, as promised, the remotely controlled shuttle had no problem dipping and dodging what would be a withering bombardment to any other comparable ship in known service. The combination of the advanced, ultralight ceramic engines and the skills of the pilot who had assumed remote control proved too wily, too unpredictable for her people to acquire a proper firing solution. Just as the voice on the comm had promised.