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Chapter Four




“There it is.” Aiko pointed to a black speck rising along the vast expanse of the northern atmospheric retention wall. She checked her instruments. “Altitude is nine hundred kilometers and rising. It’ll crest over the retention wall soon, but we’re in position to match course and speed.”

Nathan had switched to his hard suit during their descent, which acted as a combination environmental suit and full body armor. Sure, the Dirge of Darkness was listed as unarmed, but a little extra prudence never hurt. A lucky shot could vent the breathable air in the Belle’s cockpit, or even trigger an explosive decompression, and that would end his squishy, baseline existence real quick.

“Let the thief know we mean business,” Nathan ordered.

“With pleasure.” Aiko toggled the commect to a standard Neptunian ship-to-ship channel. “Neptune Belle to Dirge of Darkness. You are in violation of Concord law and have been ordered to return to Port Leverrier. Note that we are in position to intercept you and have been authorized to use lethal force. Please respond.” She muted the line.

“‘Please’?” Nathan asked with a doubtful look.

“Never hurts to be nice.”

“Sure. Right after you mentioned lethal force.”

“Hey, I can be both firm and polite, thank you very much.”

The dark pip of the Dirge continued its ascent, giving no indication their message had been heard. It was close to the glowing top of the retention wall.

Neptune Belle to Dirge of Darkness. Again, you are ordered to return to Port Leverrier. Cease your ascent or we will be forced to open fire on you.” Aiko glanced over at Nathan. “You are ordered to respond to our hail.” She muted the commect. “Better?”

“Much.”

The Dirge flew above the top of the retention wall, its course unchanged. Nathan adjusted their thrust angle, bringing the Belle into a near parallel course with the two ships slowly converging.

“I get the feeling the soft approach isn’t working,” he said.

“Shall I give them a prelude to the hard approach?”

“Go ahead.”

“All right!” Aiko took control of the main gun. Her console lit up with targeting data, and she fired a three-shot burst that sailed past the Dirge’s bow and over the retention wall.

Not that hitting the wall was much of a concern. It’d take something on the scale of fusion bombs to even have a chance of punching through those, and that’s assuming an attack didn’t awaken ancient pentatech repair and defense systems buried deep within the walls. The Pentatheon had built to last, and the rare fools who tried to challenge their creations generally met bad ends.

Dirge of Darkness, this is your final warning. Either reverse course, or we start punching holes through your hull until you see reason. Your choice.” Aiko glanced over at Nathan again. “We’ve got enough ammo to do this all day.”

Nathan snorted.

The Dirge continued on its original course, and Nathan thought they’d have to squander even more shells in an attempt to force the thief to see reason, but then the Dirge’s thrusters lit up and it veered away from the Belle, heading over the retention wall.

“She’s running!” Nathan shoved the throttle forward, and g-forces slammed him into the seat. The Belle shot after the Dirge, passing over the thick, radiant top of the retention wall and out over Neptune’s natural weather. A cerulean storm thrashed against the far side of the retention wall, and the Dirge flipped over, then dove toward the swirling clouds.

The Belle cleared the wall, and Nathan pushed the ship into a steep dive. Soon, both vessels entered Neptune’s upper atmosphere. Harsh winds lashed at the Belle while the Dirge disappeared into the clouds ahead. He followed its descent, struggling to keep up as bluish swirls of hydrogen, helium, and methane blotted out his view. He checked his instrumentation to keep track of where the wall and the Dirge were, adjusted his course, and added even more thrust to their descent.

The Belle groaned and creaked as wind beat at its frame, but the venting fury of a small sun inside the reactor provided all the brute force they needed. Nathan fought to keep the ship on a relatively stable descent. They broke through the storm’s upper layers, and the lashing wind subsided a little.

“There!” Aiko pointed.

Nathan spotted the Dirge against a churning sea of pale clouds, right where Aiko had indicated. He gritted his teeth and adjusted his course. The Dirge was skirting dangerously close to the wall, and he brought the Belle in tight to match. He pursued the stolen ship like this for several tense minutes, mind focused, hands perspiring under his hard-suit gloves.

The two ships pierced deeper into Neptune’s atmosphere, the winds growing harsher as the air thickened. Nathan began to wonder how deep the thief would take this pursuit. He knew from experience the Belle could handle pressures seventy times greater than Neptune’s surface, but that was nothing compared to the crushing, suffocating depths of the gas giant. How desperate was this thief to escape, and how far would—

“Watch it!” Aiko warned.

The Dirge raised its nose, no longer cutting through the air with its aerodynamic front, but instead presenting its flattened belly. The maneuver turned the craft into a giant air brake, and its thrusters angled to decelerate it faster. Nathan shoved the flight stick to the side, veering clear of the other craft.

“Damn!”

The Belle overshot the other ship, and he twisted in his seat, trying and failing to keep track of the other craft. To one side, the retention wall ended, revealing the wide expanse of the shell band’s floor. Chandelier refineries sprouted from the underside at regular intervals, each extending into Neptune’s raging atmosphere like vast forests of building-sized blades. All except for the closest appeared as nothing more than vague, storm-shrouded silhouettes.

Nathan reversed thrust and pulled their nose up, and the Belle braked hard, its frame shuddering against the buffeting wind. He brought their course under control and craned his neck.

“You see it?” he asked urgently, searching above them for any sign of their quarry.

“No, I lost sight of it, too.”

The Belle came to a hovering stop underneath and beside the vastness of the shell band’s floor. Wisps of blue-tinged methane clouds whistled past the canopy.

“That thief couldn’t have turned back already.” Nathan steadied the ship, twisting this way and that in his seat, trying to catch a glimpse of the other vessel. “Right?”

“Don’t think so. We were keeping pace just fine until—”

“There!” Nathan pointed to a dark speck that curved underneath the shell band, slowing as it approached the nearest chandelier refinery.

“The Dirge is moving a lot slower now,” Aiko noted. “I could probably hit it from here. Want me to light it up?”

“Wait.” Nathan held out a hand. “Let’s watch and see where it goes.”

The distant craft slowed further, and Nathan permitted himself a cold grin as he realized the thief intended to land on the nearest refinery.

Chandelier refineries were integral to the gas giant shell bands. They not only provided the megastructures with a near limitless source of fuel harvested from the gas giants, but could also be settled, their vast surpluses transported for use elsewhere.

Vanishingly few chandelier refineries were occupied, though. Nathan couldn’t spot any telltale signs the Concord or even a private organization had set up shop in this one, which likely meant humans hadn’t set foot inside it since the Scourging of Heaven, and perhaps never had.

“You think the thief stole it without topping off the tanks?” Aiko asked incredulously.

“Doubtful, but I suppose anything’s possible.” Nathan shrugged his shoulders. “Doesn’t matter. Taking back a grounded ship is easier than the alternative. And, unless I missed my guess, the thief lost sight of us, too. That maneuver cut both ways.”

“What’s our move?”

“Let’s give our quarry half an hour or so to settle in.” Nathan gave Aiko a quick grin. “Give them some time to become comfortable and complacent. After that, we head in and grab the ship.”


The Neptune Belle hovered near the aerodynamic blade of a refinery that extended over two kilometers beneath the shell band, resembling a massive wing with air intakes lining the front. The open collectors funneled Neptune’s fierce winds into internal systems that separated the air’s base materials and let most of it pass through to exhaust ports along the back. The refinery fattened shortly after the intakes, then tapered off toward the exhaust ports.

The Belle eased closer to an inset alcove in the side of the refinery that should have led to storage vessels filled with separated gases. Most refineries followed a similar, predictable design. There were exceptions, of course, but this one seemed to adhere to recognizable patterns. If the thief had landed on this refinery, as Aiko and Nathan suspected, then the Dirge of Darkness would be somewhere inside.

All three Aikos waited in the Belle’s cargo hold, and Aiko-One watched the refinery grow larger through a D Deck porthole. A sudden gust of wind shoved the Belle sideways, and its landing gear scraped for several meters across the platform before the ship came to a rest.

“Like a feather,” Nathan grunted over their commects.

“It’ll do. Heading out.” Aiko-One keyed in her safety override to the ramp control vlass and hit the release. The hold yawned open, and Aiko-Two and -Six stormed out, rifles held high. Aiko-One unslung her own rifle and joined them.

Wind howled past the platform despite the protection provided by the refinery’s bulk. A constant parade of billowing, curling blue gas streamed past to one side, and a dark passage gaped wide on the other. It led deeper into the refinery and was easily large enough for the thief to fly through.

Aiko-One scoured her surroundings with the commando body’s acute senses, letting old instincts from her time in the Jovian Everlife take over. She appraised the immediate area with deadly seriousness.

<Clear,> she signaled her copies. <Sweep the interior.>

The trio proceeded in and fanned out. The interior lacked any form of illumination, and the refinery’s position under the shell band blotted out what little light Sol might have provided. She toggled on her commando body’s night vision, while Two and Six were forced to switch on rifle-mounted flashlights on their lowest settings.

Despite the cavernous space within the refinery, thick trunk-like pipes and massive storage globes broke up the interior, providing numerous places for a vessel like the Dirge to hide. She moved her way up the center while Two and Six followed the outer wall left and right, respectively. The occasional dim flicker of reflected light betrayed the thief’s position somewhere up ahead, though she couldn’t pinpoint the location with all the obstructions.

The path forward constricted due to the curving bottom of a spherical fuel tank, and she ducked her head and crouch-walked underneath it before emerging within the wider space on the far side. Snakelike motion along the floor caught her attention, and she paused and knelt.

What’s this?

She focused her cameras on the motion.

Ah. A hose. If this body had possessed a mouth, she would have smiled. And something is flowing through it. Maybe I was right about the fuel.

She crept along the hose and rounded a column over a hundred meters thick, then paused and crouched. The Dirge of Darkness sat on a wide, raised plinth beside the column, the hose snaking into its open cargo hold. Pale illumination from its interior lights spilled out.

<Ship sighted,> she sent, along with a mental image of her location. <Converge on my position but keep it quiet. Shut off your lights if you can.>

<Confirmed.>

<Heading your way.>

An unsecured, open toolbox in the cargo hold drew her attention, since it must have been brought out after the ship landed. She took the ramp up into the hold, then crossed the mostly empty space to a pair of fuel tanks built into the back walk, positioned on either side of a pressure door leading into the rest of the ship. Someone had patched up a pair of holes in the left tank, and she spotted evidence of ricochets elsewhere along the wall. The hose led to the patched tank.

A firefight during the theft? she wondered.

She checked the door but found the controls unresponsive with the cargo hold exposed to Neptunian air. An override code was required, and she didn’t have it. She could have tried forcing her way inside, but what if she inadvertently killed the thief? She didn’t know the bounty details, but the Concord generally frowned upon criminals being brought in cold except for the most violent offenders.

So, either the thief is inside or . . . Her gaze followed the hose out the cargo hold and down the ramp. Elsewhere, perhaps?

Two and Six arrived a few minutes later.

<You two, stay here,> Aiko-One ordered. <I’m going to see if this hose leads us to the thief.> She pointed to the pressure door with a thumb over her shoulder. <Only bust that down as a last resort.>

<Got it.>

<Good luck.>

She exited the Dirge and followed the hose back the way she came, then followed it further as it wound its way between several vertical pipes. She caught sight of that faint, flickering light once more.

There you are, she thought, zeroing in on the light source until she spotted the thief.

The woman had her back turned to Aiko while she struggled with the end of the hose. She wore a black hard suit and a curious helmet sporting a pair of ridges along either side of the top, both with built-in lights. The pistol holstered at her hip looked nasty enough to be a threat, though Aiko was confident she’d come out on top in a firefight.

“Freeze!” Aiko shouted.

The thief spun around, her pair of helmet lights momentarily blinding Aiko’s night vision. She toggled her visual mode, only to find the thief sprinting to the side, trying to circumvent the cluster of pipes Aiko had passed through.

Aiko sprinted after her. The woman was fast, but a Jovian commando was faster. She closed on the woman from behind and reached for her, but the thief ducked at the last moment, grabbed her outstretched arm, and yanked, forcing Aiko into an awkward forward stumble.

The thief then kicked one of Aiko’s legs out from under her, and the Jovian face-planted into the floor. She tried to grab the thief’s ankle, but the woman darted away from her grasp.

“Get back here!” she growled, rising to her feet. She took off after the thief, but not too fast this time. Corralling the target would do just as well.

She followed the thief back to the ship, where—

“Surprise!” Aiko-Two exclaimed, standing in front of the pressure door. She and Six switched on their rifle flashlights, and their beams converged on the thief, who skidded to a halt on the cargo hold’s ramp. The thief turned to sprint away, but Aiko-One came up behind her, rifle trained on her head.

“That’s quite enough!” Aiko-One barked. “Any more out of you, and I will shoot!”

For a moment, the thief lowered her stance, almost as if she intended to run for it, for what little sense that made. They had her ship, and perhaps that fact began to register over the adrenaline of the chase, because her shoulders slumped, and she shook her head.

“Hands up! Now!

The thief’s chest heaved as if she were letting out a defeated breath, and then she raised her hands.




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