This Starry Deep (21 page)

Chapter 37 - Jonah

I KICKED THE STORAGE BOXES and looked at my family. “And you always think I over prepare for these things.” I reached down to unlock the first box.

“In general, you do. Days like today, that’s all right,” Shae said.

I tossed her a thinsuit that looked like mine. Same black with blue along the outer leg. The line vanished at about the waist and reappeared on the back, where it scooped up and over the shoulders. Down again across her chest, the blue faded out. Over her left breast was the standard five arrows in an upside down V, with SHAE in standard block letters under the crest.

She laughed, snatching the suit out of the air, and went to change. That left Mud. I reached out to hand him a suit of his own, crest and name in place.

“Dad, I have a suit,” he told me, not grabbing it. I sighed at him. This discussion again.

“Mud, you’re family.”

“I’ve never been part of your team. I have my own suit. It’s fine, Dad, really. I don’t need,” he waved at the suit I still held out for him, “the symbolic gesture.”

“Yeah, you do,” I said. “You are part of my team. We’ve never gone into full combat before as a family. We’re gonna do this right. As a team. Take the suit.”

“I can’t fade in that suit. I can in mine. I mean, look at that blue, it’ll mess everything up. Even if it was flat black I’d have some kind of chance, and…”

“Mud, you think I’m stupid?”

“What, no—”

“Of course the suit has your tech in it. The needles and all, though you know I hate them.”

“No other way for me to access the color shifts.”

“Doesn’t mean I like the idea. Either way, of course the suit has them. The blue is a default static charge, not a true color. It’ll default to this mode, think of it as a standby. But when you need to shift, it will, just like yours. Even the insignia will fade.”

“Put on the suit, Mud,” Shae said, coming back wearing hers. It felt good to see her in the colors. Real good. Made me feel twenty years younger in an instant. “We go as a family.” Mud nodded and went to go change. “As for you, soldier,” she turned to me, her face serious, “what was going on in your head that you thought we’d, all three of us, need this stuff?”

“Baby, this is just how I pack for trouble. Coming up here, all I knew was trouble sat just over the horizon. You were gone, I didn’t know where Mud was, but these are the ready boxes.”

“Your panic boxes are built for the whole family?”

“Yours aren’t?”

“Too many grenades to worry about proper attire.”

“Can I just hope we don’t have to blow ourselves up again today?” Mud said, walking back. He looked great, though he walked as if he was unsure of himself.

“No promises,” Shae said with a smirk.

I opened the second lock box and pulled out a bunch of chargers for my Acadian blaster and stuck them in pockets. One I slotted home in the gun. A full charge to start just made me feel better.

I pulled out some fresh sonic pistols for Mud and underhanded them to him. He caught each easily, affixing them to his suit with quick release hooks. I lobbed some packs after them and he nodded, sticking the battery packs in the pockets of his suit.

Shae snatched her own Acadian blaster out of the air when I tossed it to her. She didn’t like to use it, but they were handy weapons. Mud had never gotten used to it and hadn’t used one in too many years, which is why he didn’t get one. They weren’t a weapon to wield unless you knew them backwards and forwards. I added some extra detonation caps and grenades and the like to Shae’s load and closed and locked the second box.

I opened the third and Shae laughed, reaching in the box for herself. Mud groaned.

“I hate GravPacks, guys,” he said.

“We’re not gonna get close enough in anything else,” I said, handing him his pack.

“This is why we have ships. You can ride inside the transport instead of strapping it to your back, now.”

“Not as fast or hard to spot,” Shae said, grabbing extra air canisters from the box and checking their charge. “We’ll use both, I assume?”

“Of course,” I said, handing Mud extra air for his suit. “We’re gonna need every advantage we can find, Mud. You know how to use the GravPacks, you know why we prefer them.”

“I hate them,” he said, “they just feel…odd.”

“You get used to it,” Shae said.

“I never did,” Mud insisted.

Mills came up as I locked the third box and he told us the Tsyfarian ship would be docking soon. Hodges heard our plan and lined up completely against it officially, while not even trying to stop us. Good. That was the right move. The smart one. The Government needed to be able to deny their backing.

It would enrage the Hurkz to have agreed to something they thought was sanctioned only to be told it wasn’t. They’d cast blame and puff their chests and threaten all sorts of things. But they would not go to war. Not against humanity. The cause was obvious but deniable. The only thing they would have remaining to go after would be us. And we really didn’t care.

Maybe we should have. We were, Shae and I at least, getting old. When I thought Shae had been taken, it could have easily been someone like the Hurkz instead of Hodges’ stupid idea. Could we ever really retire and stop fighting and running if we also kept adding names to the list of people who wanted us dead?

Which brought me to Mud. What kind of life were we giving him? He was just starting out on his own, but he’d inherited the enemies of the family. I tried to think back to how long I would have survived if, back when I’d started, I’d been hunted by multiple species and marked for death. Probably not half as long as I had. Were we ruining his life?

No, these were an old man’s recriminations. I had a job to do. No time to let myself wallow in answerless questions. It was, instead, time to throw myself into the breach yet again and find a way through the darkness of the sky.

Shae caught my eye and nodded. As always, she knew exactly the pit I’d almost fallen into there. And as always, she stood there ready to pull me out of it. I loved her, more every day I knew her. That was true back when we first met and it was still true, graying and cresting decades together.

She was my constant. The thing I could always come back to. No matter how lost I felt out there, Shae would be exactly where I needed her, when I needed her. And to think I’d wasted all that time, fighting a war, trapped on planets and working my way back, when she’d been sitting right here.

“I’m sorry,” I said softly to her.

She understood exactly what I meant. Of course she did. I could see it in her eyes. She nodded at me slowly. “I know. You had a job to do. Don’t regret doing it well.”

“We’re too old to be doing this,” I whispered, moving to hold her to me.

“Aren’t you sick of saying that and proving it wrong?” she asked against my ear.

I laughed and let go as the Tsyfarian ship settled into the dock. It was a beautiful ship. Painted bright colors, like their fighters, it also had the same quad engine placement, except they were twice the size.

The ship just
looked
fast. Curved like a stretched egg, it sat in the dock and seemed almost wrong for sitting still. I walked up to it and ran a gloved hand along the side. The hatch opened and a Tsyfarian stepped out, bird helmet in place. He took it off with a slight hiss of escaping air and nodded at us each in turn.

“I am Chellox,” he said, holding a hand out to Shae.

We introduced ourselves and climbed on board the ship. The colors continued inside, the interior of the ship laid out brightly. Seats and storage compartments all sat about where I would expect them, with slight differences accountable to the species’ thought patterns. A personnel ship is still what it is, though, and we buckled in after a short look around and went over the plan again, in great detail.

Chellox grinned as he plotted our course. He loved to fly, and felt confident he could get us even closer than we’d originally planned without any problem. I discussed it with him and described the vectors needed - and speed changes required - for the sort of flight plan he suggested.

He just nodded and assured me it wouldn’t be a problem. Turning away from us and grabbing the controls again, Chellox eased us out of the dock.

“Mills,” I said into my headset, “got the other carrier ready to go?”

“Yes,” he said after a second’s delay, “someone will fly it remotely from here. It’ll catch up with you at target.”

“I really don’t think it will,” I shot back. “Either way, see you back here when we’ve achieved mission.”

“Good hunting, Jonah,” he said, and I clicked off.

Chellox took us out and hit the engines, hard. The internal gravity field reduced the effect, but even with it we were still slammed about like ball bearings in a washing machine. Chellox shot through space with the grace of a dancer and the angles of a pool shark.

Sitting in that ship, looking out the viewport as we dodged and needled our way through the fleets, I wondered how we’d had a chance at all against the Tsyfarians in open dogfighting. This ship was amazing and so was its pilot. Chellox did rolls and hairpin turns that would’ve taken me twice as long just to work out, and he did them with the smallest twitches of his hands.

“I’ve always wanted to fly free like this,” he said over his shoulder. “With the fleet, it’s always just formation and the occasional small skirmish. You, Jonah, you caused me some trouble, though.”

“When was that?” I asked, shrugging at Shae and Mud.

“Whose ship do you think you hung onto to invade our command?”

“That was you?”

“Flying under orders to search and go slow. Otherwise you would not have clung to me like a branch.”

“No,” I admitted, “I would not have. So you got this duty as punishment?”

“There was no punishment for being fooled by you. It was a masterful strategy. So simple that we never would have seen it. So we learn from it, instead of punishing for it.”

“Your people aren’t stupid,” Shae said.

“No,” Chellox laughed, “we are not. Still, it is good to be able to meet you, and your family. And to help both of our races.”

“And to fly until our stomachs leave our bodies?” Mud asked.

“And, always, that!” Chellox agreed with a laugh, and he spun the ship. We turned again and aligned with something unseen. Chellox hit the engines harder than ever and we shot forward fast enough that the only thing I could think of that would possibly outpace us would be a GravPack on full.

Scary speed. The ship didn’t feel it. No creaking, rumbling sounds from the hull or strange strain from the engines. This ship was simply built to go flat out like this when it needed to.

“Relax,” Chellox said, “we’re mostly a straight line from here to Hurkz space.”

Next stop, then: invasion.

Chapter 38 - Shae

I WOKE UP AND BLINKED several times to make my eyes come back into focus. We still rocketed toward Hurkz space. Hitting my restraint release, I stood and stretched slowly, doing basic small-room calisthenics. Even at full speed, which broke a few minor laws of physics, it would take about two days to reach Hurkz space.

The thinsuits could provide water and nutrients as well as dispose of waste for us, that wasn’t an issue. But you felt like you were living in a suit. So while we were on a ship, might as well take advantage of it. The Tsyfarian ship was well equipped. So we slept in shifts, just in case, and managed to not say much at all to each other.

That silence ended up being fairly normal for Jonah and I. In the middle of a battle we could be chatty as a way of diffusing tension. Before we left we would be all about discussions. But those dark hours, the ones spent speeding across a vast star field between deployment and action, we spent in silence.

Rest when you can rest, Jonah used to tell me, back when we first met. Back before we started fighting side by side and he would go off on missions and I would stay home and hope he would find his way back to me. So we did. Those precious hours or days between deployment and the mission became a time of quiet for us.

We slept. We worked out when we could. Double- and triple-checked equipment, went over maps, all of it. Whatever needed doing to ensure that you survived when everything went sideways. Because no matter how hard and careful you were, every plan went sideways eventually. When it did, you could die or you could be so prepared for life that you could manage regardless.

And so the time passed. Mud looked tenser the closer we got, but that only made sense. I wanted to talk to him about it, but it wouldn’t help. We both knew why, his father and I, and nothing we said would change the fact of it. He was headed right to the last place he wanted to be. But he had us, and he knew that too. We both had to trust that would see him through. That and his own natural ability to get a job done.

About halfway through the second day, Chellox flicked a warning light and told us to make sure we were awake and strapped in. Jonah looked at me and flashed me a grin. I returned it and then gave Mud a wink. He just nodded at me and checked his straps.

The turns and insane maneuvers started up again, not long after that. Chellox threw us around space hard and fast. As we entered Hurkz-controlled space he had to. A large part of this mission depended on us getting close before they knew we were here. Which meant Chellox had to stay at the extreme edge of sensor rage at all times.

That wasn’t easy when there were multiple ships to consider. His display flashed and he hissed at it, correcting course over and over. There was no way possible to avoid total detection, but Chellox flew us fast enough and moved in confusing enough ways that nothing picking up our presence would know quite what to do with it.

Soon enough we would have to abandon the ship and go to GravPack travel. Three of us, small as could be and moving quickly through their system, would be close to invisible. We just needed a ship to get us close enough. Technically we could’ve made the whole trip on pack alone, but Jonah’s knee wouldn’t take that sort of travel well, Mud hated it, and I was a bit out of practice. So instead, we cut down the time for that and left ourselves an escape ship just in case.

It also bought us time for the rest of the plan to kick in. The other ship, the human one, entered Hurkz space about the same time we did. It went a far more direct route, trying to be noticed. Along with it came recordings and normal activity to make the Hurkz think we were in it.

We needed it to fool them, but also to make them show us where we were headed. They gave it docking instructions toward a certain spaceport on a specific planet. That became our new goal. Chellox dipped and spun us far away from that location. We swung around again and made a few maneuvers that even I couldn’t quite follow. The Tsyfarians had certainly sent us one of their best.

We finally reached a good drop point and unbuckled.

“We’ll comm you when we need extraction,” Jonah said, reaching for the airlock. “Stay out of sight.”

“I intend to get far enough out that they won’t be able to find me,” Chellox said.

“But still close enough to meet up, I hope,” Mud said.

I laughed. “This is a bad place to hitchhike out of.”

“I’ll be there when you need me,” Chellox promised.

We entered the airlock together and readied ourselves as it hissed shut. A count of five and the outer lock cycled. Jonah jumped first, followed by Mud and then me, taking up the rear.

Open space greeted us with cold arms. My GravPack came online and the HUD flashed into life. I opened a short-range communications channel between just the three of us. It would only work within about six hundred feet, and wouldn’t bleed much signal at all.

“Free flight or formation?” I asked Jonah.

“Free flight while we get bearings. Formation for the ride in, and back to free a bit out. Sound good?”

“Sure thing.” I selected a few gravity wells and started off in the general direction of the eventual landing point. Mud wobbled a bit, selecting odd points, I’d guess, while he found his footing with the packs again. I figured he hadn’t used one since we last made him train.

We flew easy, a good distance apart but all in the same general direction for about ten minutes. Not going anything like as fast as we could, giving the decoy ship a chance to get closer. We needed to arrive at about the same time it did, or the plan could fall apart.

“That’s us,” Jonah said, and a request for formation flight came up on my HUD. I keyed acceptance and he took over my selections and controls. Mud, too. I could tell by the way his flight pattern synced up quickly. “We’re gonna burn hot for a while. Hold on,” he said. As if there was anything to hold on to.

We accelerated hard. My HUD showed me what we were doing, what points Jonah was choosing, and I could concentrate on my own body instead of flying. The gravfield around me constricted down when we went into hard flight and pressed all of my joints hard. It wasn’t a comfortable feeling, like being tightly wrapped up in blankets made of steel.

Jonah’s knee must be killing him, and his shoulder couldn’t be far behind. Mud’s eyes must have felt the pressure worse than ours, too. The packs were still the best way in.

Jonah dipped us around the dark side of the planet, scouting out satellites and other near-orbit debris. We caught sight of the decoy ship going in for a landing and Jonah cut into the atmosphere. We came in hard, flames licking around the shields that kept us alive. Jonah cut an angle that wouldn’t put us on the same screens as the decoy ship.

My selection screen switched down field resolutions to show my choices on a planetary level. Jonah flew us in hard, just under the speed of sound. This would be the point where we would start to show up on sensor arrays. Nothing to do for it but hope they didn’t put two and two together.

Chances were, we’d decided, that Slon would have us dock near the actual tech, just in case we were being upfront about making the trade, but far enough from it to protect himself in the event we were about to double-cross him.

The problem was we wouldn’t know where he actually intended to place the tech. Until we’d arrived, we didn’t know where he would have us land, even. We all looked around as Jonah did a fly-by. Mud keyed the comms with an idea.

“See that bunker?” he asked. “Fortified, near the spaceport, and guarded like the King lives there.”

“It’s a good option,” I said, “so is something underground. Harder to get in and out of.”

“Check your selection screens, both of you,” Jonah said. “I think you’re both right. The bunker has something massive under it. Too much space. So you build a fortress and then build a second under it. What do you think?”

I looked at the masses on my HUD and saw Jonah had a point. “Seems like a good bet.”

“So how do we get in?” Mud asked.

“Front door,” Jonah and I said simultaneously.

Jonah took us up and over hard and then cut us free of formation flight.

“Mud, you go in from the right. Shae, surprise from above. I’ll go in level,” he said, and he split off.

Mud looped around, his flight pattern much more stable now - he must have spent a bunch of the flight in going over controls in his head. I went straight up and stopped dead, holding there carefully.

Jonah leveled off, dangerously close to the ground, and started in, zipping between buildings and vehicles for maximum confusion. Mud circled and came in higher, from the right. As they moved, I targeted the ground and dove.

The planet came up to meet me fast, air rushing to get out of my way. I extended my shield a good ten feet, just in case, and soft-selected a ninety-degree turn, not keying it in but letting the selection hang there, waiting.

As the last second, maybe eleven feet from the ground, right above a set of guards, I broke hard right to cross Mud’s path. The guards dove for cover and Mud screamed by them. The combined effect gave them no time to work out what was going on.

From their point of view, something had almost fallen on them, turned impossibly, and then came back the other way within half a second. They didn’t even have time to reach for a radio before Jonah hit them full on. He came to a stop and Mud and I circled around, landing by his side. The guards lay on the ground, unconscious. Jonah had hit them with his shield as he barreled through them, hard enough to put them down for a while but not kill them.

The door in front of us was huge. Huge and solid. I could crack the lock, but it would take a while. Probably more time than we had.

Jonah took a look at it too, and he sighed. “Door knocker, I think.”

I agreed but didn’t want to. I could blow the hinges, but no, Jonah was right, it would use up too many supplies. We should get in as fast as possible. I dragged a guard clear of the door and Mud followed suit.

“What’s a door knocker?” he asked as he set down the last guard.

Jonah and I stood in front of the door, about thirty feet back. I motioned for Mud to join us. “Target your pack on the ground,” Jonah told him. “Anchor there.” I did the same.

“A door knocker,” Jonah went on, “is simple. With one hitch.”

“A hitch that will kill us, I assume,” Mud said.

“If you want to get technical about it, yes.”

“Dad…”

“Best way to do this,” Jonah insisted. “Now, target a pull on the door. Keep the ground anchor in place and then reverse the pull so you pull the door to you, instead of you to the door. The only problem is—”

“The door is going to come at us at roughly the speed of sound,” I finished. “When it pops, key a push on the door. If we time it right, the door will land clear of us. If we don’t, be prepared to jump.”

“Jump,” Mud said, “faster than the speed of sound.”

“Well,” Jonah said softly, “that’s why we want to do it right.”

I set up the selections and keyed them. The door and ground fought with my body as a focal point. I wanted to look and see how Jonah and Mud were doing, but couldn’t risk taking my eyes off the door. A second would make the difference here.

The door started to creak, buckling. The locks were ripping free and the hinges were coming out of the wall. It broke free and I keyed the push, trying to make the door stop. It kept coming.