The Lazarus Particle (25 page)

Still, whatever the reason, whatever the manufactured justification, there was only one conceivable response.

“Lj Rejvollori,” he said as he resumed command, his voice measured but powerful. “Signal a fleet-wide alert to set course for the Tilghman Sector.”

“Sir.” Lj Rejvollori snapped to task quickly, stalking from one end of the command module to the next and back again as he spurred the helmsmen and various station chiefs to action. The young Lj was proving himself a fine addition to Soliorana’s command staff. If the nature of his vengeance didn’t require such a personal stake, he would have considered giving Rejvollori further opportunity to prove himself by commanding part of the retaliation.

But of course that was out of the question.

Perhaps some of the after-action clean-up, though.

Yes, that would be a suitable test of Rejvollori’s abilities.

“Ready to launch, my Zj,” the young Lj informed him. “On your order.”

Zj Soliorana smiled grimly. To battle, then. “Launch.”

Lurching into the Tilghman Sector abruptly, the helmsmen dialed in an approach that would give them maximum coverage for their targeting solutions in the shortest amount of time. No doubt some station personnel would still manage to escape, but that was unavoidable. Besides, what was the point of a crippling ambush if no one survived to fearfully report it?

“Receiving a transmission from Orbital Station
Tau
, my Zj,” one of the helmsman reported. “Audio only.”

“Patch it through.”

“Unidentified fleet,”
the transmission began,
“you have unwisely trespassed into the sovereign corporate space of Morgenthau-Hale. Per corporate courtesy, you will be given ten standard minutes to reverse course and make most haste to exit said space before your incursion is met with an armed response. Please respond to verify receipt of these instructions, over.”

Zj Soliorana smiled. He allowed several seconds to tick by until the comm sounded again.

“This is Orbital Station
Tau
to unidentified fleet, requesting receipt of instructions to remove yourselves from Morgenthau-Hale corporate space, over.”

“Fix firing solutions,” Zj Soliorana ordered. “Target the communications array first.”

“Orbital Station
Tau
to invading armada, we now know you to be of Tyroshi origin. We are also aware via our sensors that you are fixing firing solutions upon our facility. We feel compelled to warn you that if you fire upon this facility in any fashion, we will respond in kind. Repeat, if you fire upon this facility in any fashion, we will respond in kind, over.”

“Targeting solutions fixed, my Zj.”

Zj Soliorana narrowed his eyes. “You may fire when ready. Only the station itself. Not the escaping vessels.”

“Zj?”

“You have your orders.”

“Yes, Zj! Beginning bombardment of communications array…”

“Receiving fire from the station,” another voice reported seconds before the first vague trembles whispered through the flagship. Impact.

“Evasive maneuvers,” he replied coolly. “Continue prioritizing fire against the communications array. Instruct the rest of the fleet to fix firing solutions on the station’s weapons systems.”

“Understood.”

As the first of several coordinated salvos angled in upon the station, the flagship’s projection hub bloomed brightly with the colors of death and destruction. Zj Soliorana reveled in the splendor of it. He imagined Tj Yeleyhi in the Aftermire, silently approving of each and every precision strike that shredded the station in memory of her honor. Meanwhile, swarms of escape pods continued to flee from their host. That much he could not help. Nor did he want to.

There needed to be survivors. Witnesses.

“Communications array down, Zj.”

“Fix solutions upon the station itself. Aim for the reactor signature. No doubt it will be at the heart of the facility.”

“Signature already established, my Zj. Fixing solutions now…”

Zj Soliorana watched as his fleet unleashed the entire force of its arsenal upon Orbital Station
Tau
, their ordnance vectoring in savagely. An atavistic sneer spread slowly across his face as he beheld the destruction of the station one spectacular explosion at a time. The communications array had dematerialized in an entirely anticlimactic puff of splintered debris. The rest of the station broke apart much more satisfactorily. Plasma cutters raked the outer hull in long, gouging swaths, splitting open sections of the station like swollen grub sacs and disgorging whole clouds of the wriggling, pupae-like vermin within. Dozens of precision-guided missiles slammed into the main hangar deck, collapsing the airlock and creating a backdraft that immolated the entire hangar before being vacuumed out into space along with the charred remains of everything else. Railguns whumped soundlessly, bombarding the station with electromagnetically charged artillery the size of oil drums. Whole chunks pinwheeled off the orbital before exploding as if all part of some spectacularly bellicose fireworks display.

Four and a half minutes after the assault began, the station’s reactor went critical mass. What was left of the station was quickly ripped apart by a chain of massive breaches, explosions, and critical failures. All that remained afterward were the handful of escape pods still scrambling to synchronize and verify emergency jump coordinates.

The Zj had no sympathy for them whatsoever. They could burn in terrible fires or freeze in the cold recesses of space for all he considered his part in their fate. How they died did not matter so much as that they did. Every soul was one more weighted against the loss of an entire clan and the sheer, unrivaled power that would have come from the binding of their fleets.

Yet it would never be enough to settle the balance.

The deck rocked sharply beneath the Zj’s feet, staggering him. Klaxons squalled at the unheralded violation. Emergency lighting flared overhead, bathing the deck in neon orange. “Report!” Ndeeldavono barked, regaining his footing in time to avoid taking a header over the helm.

“Three Arbiter-class destroyers, my Zj! Perimeter defense forces, most likely,” the helmsman shouted back over the klaxons. “They’re targeting the engines!”

The deck rocked again, slightly more sustained.

“Return fire at once!”

“It will take a moment to reset firing solutions.”

“Other vessels maneuvering into position…” The communications officer was fielding overlapping reports from each of the fleet’s vessels, sorting and prioritizing and responding on the fly. “Damnit! They cannot fix solutions without risking our own vessel in the process.”

A series of sustained, guttural rumbles sounded through the very core of the ship. The explosions that followed radiated through the lower decks like a seismic event.

“We’ve lost power to one of the primary engine nacelles!”

“Order the others to return fire regardless of the risk! Tell them that is a direct order from their Zj!”

The rumbling subsided gradually, but Zj Soliorana was under no illusions. They had sustained serious engine damage.

“Lj Urena has a solution. Firing…” An anxious second passed before the communications officer added, “Indirect hit to the destroyer’s forward weapons array. Light to moderate damage.”

“Keep firing!”

The deck shook again as the destroyers made another raking pass of their engines. “Damage to another primary nacelle,” the helmsman reported.
 

“Tj Exxekorony reports seriously damaging a second destroyer’s sensor array. Surely this will affect their ability to target our—”

“My Zj!” the helmsman interrupted incredulously. “My Zj, they are retreating!”

With five quick steps, Zj Soliorana cleared the deck. Hovering over the helmsman’s console, he followed the slowly fading digital contrails identifying the course of each of the Arbiter-class destroyers. Each of the contrails was tacking away
from the Tyroshi fleet, their tales fading behind them.

In the blink of an eye, the destroyers vanished. The contrails followed a moment later, their pixels evaporating into the digital ether.

“They have jumped away, my Zj.”

Zj Soliorana allowed himself a moment for the thrill of battle to give way to the verve of command. “Report!”

“Primary objective destroyed,” Lj Rejvollori informed him. “All secondary targets have fled or were destroyed.”

Damage reports began streaming in. The worst damage was to engineering, though other areas had suffered minor damage or injuries as a result of the cascading explosions that all but shredded the first primary nacelle. He received these reports with conflicted interest. On the one hand, he was incensed by the severity of the damage inflicted upon his command vessel by the aged Arbiter-class destroyers, even more so by the manner in which they had ambushed the ambusher. He had been so obsessively determined with raining death upon the orbital station that he neglected to account for the pitiable defenses typical of such farflung installations.

On the other hand, he could not help but admire the bravery and battle instincts of the orbital station’s vastly outclassed perimeter defense fleet. They had capitalized on his oversight to the fullest, lancing in quickly and striking to cripple rather than kill. It took them little more than a minute, all told. Another pass, another deep cut, and they were gone. The strikes had been placed so efficiently, so precisely and punishingly, they were effectively stranded. Most likely it had been a diversionary tactic, but in so doing they had marked his command vessel.

In so doing, they had marked
him
.

The remainder of the fleet was largely undamaged. At his order, they assumed a phalanx defensive posture surrounding their wounded command vessel.

He would not be caught off guard again, no matter how damaged his ship nor wounded his pride.

27 • KALIFKA BAZAAR

“C’mon, Dell!”

“You’ve got this, man,
you’ve got this
.”

“One more! Just give me one more!”

Dell could barely hear the voices cheering him on over the sound of his pulse pounding in his ears. His legs shook, threatened to fold and betray him before he even attempted the last rep. Slowly, he began to let the weight down, bringing his knees back into his chest. Holding it while he gathered himself for the final push. Here was the real test. Every muscle burned with outrage, threatened rebellion and revenge. Now or never. Bearing down hard on his own jaw, eyes squinched shut and nostrils flaring, Dell fired his legs upward with one last burst of adrenaline to a chorus of raucous cheers and applause. Torrey and Breed were there immediately, quick to rack and secure the weight. That done, Torrey offered Dell a hand. He took it without hesitation, gratefully allowing his sister’s boyfriend to haul him onto rubbery, uncertain legs. Not that Torrey had any intention of letting him fall. Breed handed him a towel and a water bottle straight out of the cooler.

“I swear, you’re an animal, Dell!” Torrey clapped him on the shoulders, grinning broadly. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”

Breed nodded. “Me, either. It’s like you never even died, man.”

“Hey.” Alexia needled Breed with a sharp elbow to the ribs. “Can we not with that?”

“Sorry.” Breed rubbed his side gingerly. “My bad.”

“You did great, Dell.” She leaned in close to kiss his still-flushed cheek. “I’m so proud of you.”

“Thanks, guys,” he said, his breath still catching up with the rest of him. He took a sip of water from the bottle, toweled at his face. “So, what’s next?”

Torrey shook his head. “Nah, you’re done for the day, tough guy.”

“Aw, c’mon. I’ve still got more in the tank.”

“Good news for me,” a new voice sounded from the edge of the gym.

“Commander on deck!”

“Give us the room, people.” Commander Harm waited until the room was clear of everyone but the five of them before striding forward. Stopping before Dell, he took a moment to size up his protege before breaking into a toothy grin. “Now ain’t this one hell of a sight for some damn sore eyes,” he said, thrusting his hand out between them. “Put ‘er there, son.”

Grinning back, Dell took his friend and mentor's offered hand with gusto. “Damn good to see you, too, sir.”

“How are you feeling?”

“Hundred percent,” Dell said, and for a man who had been as good as dead not forty-eight hours earlier, he looked it. “Never better, actually.”

“It’s amazing, Commander. I’ve never seen anything like it,” Torrey said for the second time in as many minutes.

“Think you’re ready to get back in the saddle?”

Alexia blanched. “Commander, no…”

“Absolutely!” Dell said quickly, overriding his sister’s concern. He was practically bouncing on the balls of his feet at the prospect. “What’s the mission profile?”

“Resupply run.”

“How do we even have the capital for that after being blockaded for so long?” Alexia wondered.

“It turns out our fugitive friends are a bit more flush than we might have given them credit for.”

Alexia raised a brow curiously.

“The huntrex—Commandant Soroya’s sister—somehow hustled Morgenthau-Hale to the tune of a cool half-million bitcreds before they made their break.” He raised a hand preemptively. “Don’t ask me how. Point is, she’s agreed to loan us the capital we’ll need to resupply until we can get back into friendly space.”

Torrey whistled low. “Half a mil? Damn.”

“It’s good to have friends,” Breed added appreciatively. “Especially resourceful ones.”

“Well, I can’t say I’m altogether crazy about the interest rate, but otherwise I’m inclined to agree with you both.”

“Getting back to this run,” Alexia prompted. “It all sounds pretty routine. So, why do you need Dell?”

“Even with fresh capital, we’re still running on fumes, so to speak. We need food and fuel,
fast
. Given our position, that leaves us with one option: Kalifka Bazaar.”

Torrey drew a tight breath, rubbing at the back of his neck. “That place can get pretty rough and tumble from what I’ve heard.”

“It’s not ideal, granted, which is why you and Breed will be coming along as our security detail. The movement has friendly contacts in the Bazaar who can provide us with the volume of supplies we need to stay operational while we investigate the tactical benefits of this project Fenton Wilkes keeps going on about. As for Dell, he’s the only pilot I trust to get us out of there in a pinch if things go south for some reason.”