Chapter Twenty-Two
Nathan led the way, retracing their steps through the factory and back to the landing platform. He wasn’t sure what they’d find there, but that was the only exit he knew of. His simple plan came into doubt the moment he laid eyes on the platform, visible at the far end of a long corridor lined with massive cylindrical machines.
“Smoke,” Rufus whispered.
“It’s still our best way out.” Nathan checked the end of the corridor through his rifle’s scope. “Something’s on fire up ahead, but I can’t tell what.” He lowered the weapon.
“Might have been the Jovians saying hello to the locals,” Rufus said.
“Maybe.” Nathan urged them forward with a wave of the rifle. “Come on. Let’s see what’s what.”
They found the wreckage of two or three pale ships strewn about the platform, itself scarred by explosions and gunfire. Flames crackled within the remains of their blackened, twisted hulls. Nathan walked out and surveyed the carnage with a frustrated sigh.
So much for taking one of their ships, he thought. Now what?
Joshua set the Black Egg down and shook out his arms and hands, then picked it up again.
Stick to the basics, Nathan told himself. Find the others. And then . . . then we’ll all think of something.
He stepped over to the edge of the platform, crouched, and dialed the rifle’s scope up to maximum magnification. Smoking pieces of the pale ships lay scattered about the pyramid’s slope, but he had a relatively clear view of their crash site. He raised the scope to his eye.
“No obvious signs of activity near the Belle. No other ships near it, and no one outside as far as I can see from this angle.”
“You think they’re in the forest?” Joshua asked.
“Maybe.” Nathan tracked his view over to the dark woods, hoping to spot a shiny glint through the bloodred leaves, but smoke and the dense canopy obstructed his view. He let out a frustrated grunt. “I can’t see anything through that mess.”
“Then what should—”
“Nate!” Rufus called out. “Look!”
“What’s—” Nathan began, but then a Jovian corvette hovered out of the smoke, approaching the landing platform with weapon ports open. “Get back inside! Hurry!”
He rose to his feet and sprinted for the factory interior. Joshua and Rufus didn’t respond quite so fast and lagged behind, but he soon realized it was too late. The corvette rumbled over their heads, spun around, and dropped down to cut off their retreat. Its landing gear strained from sudden compression, and metal screeched against metal as the ship slid a few meters before coming to rest between them and the deifactory.
The front of the corvette faced them, along with its open racks of torpedoes and turreted cannons. Nathan staggered to a halt and hesitated, knowing a gun that large could pulp the three of them in an instant. He checked to their sides.
“That wreckage!” he shouted. “Get behind it!”
Joshua and Rufus followed his lead, and the three of them hunkered down behind a warped hull panel that seemed thick enough to discourage incoming fire, if not actually stop a determined attack.
Nathan put his back to the plate and waited.
No attack came. Nor did he hear the rapid stomping of a commando squad.
He checked around the corner to find a single Jovian standing at the edge of the ramp.
A Jovian commando with a purple head, wearing a Neptune Belle jacket.
“Gentlemen, can I offer you a lift?” her familiar voice called out.
“Aiko?” Nathan stood up, looked at her, then at the corvette. “But . . . how?”
“We thought you might need some rescuing, though it seems you had most of that covered yourselves.” She pointed into the ship with her rifle. “Let’s get out of here before something else goes wrong.”
“Don’t need to tell us twice!” Nathan joined Aiko inside the ship’s cargo hold. The space was more cramped than the Belle, with two rovers and two small shuttles taking up most of the internal space.
Joshua and Rufus hurried in, and Aiko raised the ramp.
“Where’s Vess?” Joshua asked.
“In the cockpit.” Aiko keyed her commect. “They’re in. Get us out of here.”
The thrusters powered up, and the ship lifted off the platform. Nathan grabbed a handhold on the wall to steady himself.
“We should find a secure place to store this,” Joshua said, adjusting his grip on the Black Egg.
“And I should also help Vess with our exit vector,” Rufus said.
“You think it’s safe to leave?” Nathan asked.
“The Jovians managed to get in, which leads me to think so. But let me check the juncture, just to be safe. I doubt any of us want to be shot down again.”
“No kidding! Let’s avoid that.”
“There’s an elevator at the back of C Deck.” Aiko pointed down the narrow path between the vehicles. “Storage is on B Deck and the cockpit is at the front of A Deck. The layout’s pretty straightforward.”
“Thanks.” Rufus started down the path, and Joshua followed him.
Nathan waited until he was alone with Aiko.
“You came for us,” he said, smiling at her.
“Of course I did. Why wouldn’t I?”
“Well, I don’t know.” He leaned against the wall. “We were stuck inside a factory filled with hostile cyborgs. And then the Everlife showed up!”
“It’s not like I was going to head inside unarmed.” She rested her rifle on a shoulder.
“That’s . . . beside the point.”
“You think I was going to leave you inside there to rot?”
“Not if you could help it. But this is your last body.”
“Doesn’t matter.” Aiko paused, then shrugged. “Okay, it does matter. It’s been a while since I’ve been this afraid of dying, but we’re a team. There’s no way I’d abandon you if there was even the slightest chance I could get you out.”
“I know.” Nathan smiled again and glanced around the hold. “How’d you pull this off?”
“I asked nicely.”
“Uh-huh. Did your question involve gunshots?”
“A few.”
“Only a few?”
“I’m just that good of a shot.”
“Point taken,” he conceded, then chuckled.
“Oh, look at you.” She put a hand on his shoulder. “They roughed you up pretty good.”
“It looks worse than it feels.”
“You’ve got mud in your hair.”
She combed his hair back with her fingers, breaking through the dried patches of mud, then she repeated the process a few times. Nathan thought that would be the end of it, but she kept stroking her fingers through his hair at a slow, leisurely pace, over and over again.
He frowned at her. “Aiko?”
“Yes?”
“Why are you still running your fingers through my hair?”
“Shh. Don’t ruin the moment.”
“I’m . . . not sure what you mean by that.”
Rufus confirmed the local defenses were calm enough for them to pass through, and Vessani piloted the stolen corvette away from the Sanguine Ring. Aiko showed Nathan to a small washroom for organic prisoners, and he cleaned up as best he could before joining the others in the cockpit.
He rubbed his face and stepped past the pressure door. The corvette’s cockpit featured an unobstructed, forward-facing dome in front of side-by-side pilot and copilot stations. It reminded him of the Belle’s setup but with sleeker consoles and more vlass screens.
“We’re outside the danger envelope,” Vessani reported, turning halfway in her seat. “According to the Almanac, at least. Eleven hundred kilometers and rising.”
“All stealth systems are engaged,” Aiko added from the copilot seat. “If there’s another Jovian ship out there, they’ll have a hell of a time tracking us.”
“Good,” Nathan said. “We don’t need surprises like the last time.”
“Are we certain it was a Jovian ship that triggered the ring’s defenses?” Joshua asked.
“There’s no way to be sure,” Nathan conceded, “but I don’t see how it could have been anyone else. Either way, the important thing is we know the Everlife has taken an interest in the pentatech relic, and that’s going to complicate our lives immensely.”
“I wonder how long they’ve been tailing us,” Rufus said.
“Could have been a while.” Aiko patted her console. “This is a Star Dragon corvette we ‘liberated.’ They’re some of the sneakiest ships in the Everlife.”
“Not sneaky enough to fool the ring,” Rufus said.
“True,” Aiko said, “but more than enough to stay hidden from ships like the Belle. Assuming that first ship was the same pattern, they could have slipped in behind us at almost any time. Maybe even all the way back when we left Neptune.”
“Well, they’re not tailing us anymore.” Nathan crossed his arms. “There’s a good chance we made a clean getaway, though Vessani, I’d like you to take us through a few random course changes, just to be extra safe.”
“You’ve got it, boss!” She gave him a thumbs-up, and her tail twitched happily.
“‘Boss’? Where’d that come from?”
Did I miss something? Nathan thought. When did she switch from client to crew member?
“Sorry.” Vessani’s ears drooped. “Am I not allowed to call you that?”
“No, it’s just . . . Never mind.” He held up an apologetic hand. “It’s fine. You can call me whatever you want.”
Vessani smiled, and her ears perked up.
“That settles what we’re doing in the short term,” Aiko said, “but we still need to figure out the long term. Where do we go next?”
“I may be able to help with that,” Rufus said.
“Did you have any luck with the Black Egg?” Nathan asked.
“I did indeed.” Rufus flashed a knowing smile. “I discovered what the pentatech relic is.”
“Nice!” Nathan found the cleric’s smile infectious. “Well, what is it?”
“It’s like that Jovian apex said. The artifact is a creation of Pathfinder from the dawn of the Age of Communion. More specifically, it’s part of the Pentatheon’s star-lifting machinery. A statite, or ‘stationary satellite,’ that once held a fixed position above Sol.”
“Oh!” Joshua’s eyes widened and his face lit up. “Yes, of course! That makes so much sense!”
“It does?” Nathan asked, feeling like he was a step behind the others.
“Absolutely!” Joshua put a hand to his forehead. “Of course, the Jovians would take an interest! Why didn’t I see this until now?”
“None of us did,” Rufus said. “Though, I agree. It is rather obvious in hindsight.”
“Well, I don’t get it,” Vessani said. “What makes this piece of pentatech so special?”
“Because,” Joshua began, “in some ways, the advent of star lifting is what allowed humanity to flourish during the Age of Communion. All their great works required two basic resources—matter and energy—and Sol is flush with both. Even when you lump all the planets and habitats together, they’re nothing but a rounding error compared to the mass of a star. Sol contains well over ninety-nine percent of the solar system’s matter. Never mind all the energy it’s constantly pumping into space!
“The Pentatheon knew this and created great machines to harvest both resources. They constructed a swarm of solar collectors that orbited Sol, working in tandem with stationary star lifters.”
“Then the Jovians are after resources?” Vessani asked.
“I’m afraid not,” Joshua replied. “They’re after a weapon, all right. You see, the way most scholars believe the old star lifters worked is by exciting the surface of Sol with lasers, thereby causing the star to eject matter, which other machinery then collected. In fact, some theorize that’s where Mercury and its moons come from. Most of the matter ejected from the star would be hydrogen, with much smaller amounts of heavier elements mixed in. That leaves any star-lifting operation with a lot of excess gas, which the Pentatheon may have concentrated into Mercury. That may also explain why most of Mercury’s moons are so homogenous in composition. They’re originally giant storage bins for star-lifted construction materials.”
“You make an interesting point about Mercury,” Rufus said. “Some apocryphal texts refer to Mercury as having been broken apart long ago for resources before the Pentatheon reformed it as a gas giant.”
“Let’s backtrack to the part about the laser,” Nathan cut in. “How powerful a beam are we talking here?”
“Very powerful,” Joshua replied.
“Like, on the order of habitat-melting?”
“Almost certainly.”
“A tool and a weapon all in one,” Nathan murmured with a frown. “No wonder this machine piqued the Everlife’s interest.”
“It’s going to be bad news for everyone if the Jovians grab it,” Aiko said.
“One step at a time,” Nathan said. “Do we even know where this star-lifting statite is?”
“Not yet,” Rufus replied, “but I should be able to help us with that part. Now that I have access to one of the Black Eggs, I can commune with it to determine the statite’s position.”
“Your head doing okay?” Nathan tapped the back of his own skull.
“It is. No need to worry, Nate.”
“Just asking.” He gave the cleric a lopsided smile. “All right. Do your thing with the Black Egg and get us a heading.”
“Consider it done.”
“In the meantime, Vess, I’d like you to stay here in the cockpit. Keep making those course changes and watch our tail for any signs of pursuit.”
“You’ve got it.”
“Joshua, Aiko: the three of us will work our way through the corvette and take an inventory of what we have in way of supplies. Especially food, since this is a Jovian ship.”
“You’ve got it.” Joshua stepped away from the wall, ready to help.
“There’s one thing you’re forgetting, Nate,” Aiko said, unstrapping herself from the copilot seat.
“What’s that?”
“We need to give our new home a name.” She caressed the top of her console. “I was toying with the name ‘Stolen Dragon.’ What do you think?”
“Stolen Dragon, huh?” Nathan paused in thought, then shrugged his shoulders. “Works for me.”
Nathan took care of Beany first.
The old spice container and the cutting had remained intact through their time on the Sanguine Ring, though a touch of brown had begun to form around the edges of the uppermost leaves. He removed the adhesive tape around the top, careful not to peel any bark off, then transferred the cutting to a pitcher filled with water and ground up bits of a single prisoner ration. He wasn’t sure how nutritious the cutting would find the human food but assumed it was better than nothing.
He applied tape across the pitcher’s top to seal in the water and secure the contents for zero gravity, then he picked a cell near the back of C Deck and taped the pitcher to the wall.
“Will the light in here be enough?” Nathan asked Aiko, who’d helped him rustle up the supplies.
“Should be. The output can sustain florans, so Beany Junior should enjoy the light just as much.”
“Good to hear.” Nathan added one more strip of tape to hold the cutting in place, then handed the roll back to Aiko. “That’s about the best we can do under the circumstances. Hopefully it’ll pull through.”
“We’ll just have to wait and see.”
“Yeah.”
Nathan and Aiko joined Joshua by an open storage rack next to the cells.
“How are we set for food?” Nathan asked.
“Not bad.” Joshua stood up from between two precarious towers of ration boxes. “I’m not done counting, but I’d say the pantry is stocked with around four hundred rations. At three meals a day for the four of us that need them, that comes out to over a month’s worth of food.”
“That much?” Nathan glanced to Aiko.
“What can I say?” She placed a hand atop one of the stacks. “These Jovians came prepared to grab and hold organic prisoners.”
“They also stored some basic medical supplies,” Joshua continued, “plus pressure suits, and a few other odds and ends Jovians don’t typically need.”
“Lucky us,” Nathan said.
“Granted, the meal variety is severely lacking.” Joshua put his hands on his hips and glared at the stacked rations.
“I see what you mean,” Nathan said. “Looks like the same rubbish they served me on the Leviathan.”
“It is,” Aiko said.
Nathan licked his tongue over the front of his upper teeth, recalling the bland flavor of his meals on board the Leviathan of Io. The food had been nourishing, if not much else.
“At least it won’t be hard to stretch out our supplies, if we have to,” Nathan said.
“Why’s that?” Joshua asked.
“Everyone’s going to get sick of that food real fast.”
“There are worse problems to have,” Aiko said.
“True enough,” Nathan conceded. “Finish counting up the rations and anything else useful you find in there, then come find us. Aiko and I are going to sweep through the rest of the ship.”
“You’ve got it.” Joshua knelt back down, crossed his legs, and shifted another stack of rations over.
C Deck contained the ship’s organic “guest quarters,” atmospheric control systems, the reactor’s Torus Three, and the cargo hold. Joshua would cover the guest quarters, and the contents of the cargo hold seemed obvious enough at first glance, what with four support vehicles taking up most of the space, so Nathan and Aiko rode the freight elevator up to B Deck next.
“I’m surprised you’re letting Vess fly your ship,” Aiko said once the lift began to rise.
“Why wouldn’t I? She’s a good pilot, and it frees you up. Also, it’s not my ship.”
“Sure it is. I ‘salvaged’ it, and now I’m giving it to you. See? It’s your ship now.”
“I think the Jovian Everlife may take exception to your . . . let’s call it a liberal interpretation of salvage rights.”
“That’s a problem for another day. For now, it’s your ship.”
“Why weren’t you the one flying it in the first place?”
“I was busy with charging in to rescue you guys, remember?” She patted the chest of her commando body. “Between the two of us, I had the better chances.”
“Fair enough.”
On B Deck, they checked out the Jovian crew quarters, the ship’s persona safe, access to Torus Two, and additional storage compartments.
“Figures,” Aiko moaned, surveying the long—and mostly empty—weapons rack. “The commandos took all the good guns.”
“We’ll make do with what’s left.” Nathan pulled one of the larger pistols off the rack. He released the magazine and cleared the chamber, then turned the weapon over in his hands.
“Good eye. That’s a wyrmstake heavy pistol,” Aiko said. “Those’ll put just about anything on its ass, even a commando.”
“Nice. I think I’ll take one for myself.” He reloaded the weapon and returned it to the rack. “Between these and the rifles we brought on board, the three of us have more than enough guns to go around.”
“Don’t you mean five of us?”
“I know what I said.”
“It could be worse. Rufus and Joshua didn’t shoot themselves.”
“Yet.”
They headed toward the front of the ship and entered a cramped hallway lined with inert Jovian bodies positioned upright in charging alcoves. The bodies came in a variety of shapes and skin tones, some of them quite attractive.
“Can you use these?” Nathan asked.
“Sure can, but they’re all faces.”
“‘Faces’? What do you mean?”
“It’s slang for bodies intended for interactions with organics. Most of their specs are mediocre at best.”
“Makes sense, I suppose,” Nathan said. “The Jovians sent all their combat bodies into the factory.”
“We also have the pilot and copilot bodies, which are similar to standard commandos, though they’re a bit of a mess right now.”
“Riddled with holes?”
“Not that many. I was careful not to damage the ship.”
“What about the safe?” Nathan walked over to a red-and-gold panel inset into the back wall. “Anyone still inside?”
“Nope. I already cleared out the crew’s personas and backed up mine. Better ‘safe’ than sorry, as it were.” She paused, and when he didn’t laugh, she added, “That was a joke, by the way.”
“Isn’t that a bit cold?”
“Nah. They weren’t conscious, and the crew will have other copies. It’s no worse than me cutting your hair without permission.”
“My hair isn’t sentient.”
“Hmm.” Aiko tilted her head and ran her fingers through his locks. “Now there’s a thought.”
“Could you please stop doing that?”