Chapter 6
Jayce was certain he wasn’t dead. There shouldn’t have been that much pain in the afterlife. His whole body ached like he’d been working the haul nets for two days straight. The light shining through his eyelids was entirely too strong.
Something pawed at his face. His cheek and eye twitched from tiny pricks of pain.
Jayce groaned and opened one eye. A small, furry face looked at him. Bands of black, white, and brown fur radiated away from the cat’s nose.
It meowed at him.
Jayce groaned and tried to shoo the cat away but his shoulder and elbow felt like there was broken glass in his joints. Short legs patted at his face again.
“Hurghlebablaa . . .” Jayce shook his head, trying to dissuade the cat.
“Clubby, scram before he tries to eat you,” a gruff voice said. The cat scampered away on too short legs and into a duct covered by a plastic flap. “Where’d you find this one? He smells like fish.”
“Maru wasn’t going to leave an Attuned behind for the Tyrant,” Jayce heard the young woman say from somewhere behind him. Her voice hit his ears with the thump of drums. He wanted to curl into a ball and cover his eyes and ears, but not moving or talking was the only way he knew to stem the tide of pain. “Even one this . . . pathetic.”
“Well . . . if he wasn’t one of you he would’ve been splattered through the chamber. Glad I don’t have to clean it up,” the other voice said.
A klaxon sounded and all lights took on a red hue.
“Attention!” a high, reedy voice said. “It seems the Tyrant’s ship isn’t content to let us exit the system of our own devices. Battle stations! Should we need to repel boarders, judicious aim is appreciated. Happy ship, happy voyage.”
Jayce moved an arm and regretted it. He flopped onto his back and saw the young woman speaking to a man with his back to him. He was in thicker battle armor than hers; servos and actuators made up the helmet he could see. A compact coil blaster was held muzzle up in one hand.
“Of all the stupid—Did you tell them which ship we were in?” the gruff voice asked.
“They had their own Attuned down there. Maru wants me to do something useful with this one. Here.” The woman tossed the stone at him.
The other man swatted it aside. The stone bounced off a wall and spun on a glowing panel a few inches in front of Jayce’s face.
“Superstitious nonsense.” The young woman rolled her eyes and ran toward a wall. A door slid open to let her pass.
The man turned to Jayce. He wasn’t wearing a helmet; he was heavily augmented. Three-fourths of his face were dusky skin and one deep purple cyborg eye glowed from the metal. There was a click as different optic lenses cycled through the cybernetic eye socket. He bore a small badge on his Governance armor with several small stars in a single orbit around a pulsar; small text read governance protective detail in a scroll at the bottom.
“Well, you’re not actually hurt hurt.” He went to one knee and held a metal hand over Jayce’s face. A finger bent the wrong way and a filament snaked out of the open joint and stung Jayce in the side of the neck. “When you’re shopping for replacement organs and limbs, then you’ll get some sympathy from me.”
The pain faded away with each heartbeat.
“Herbablurb.” Jayce’s tongue drooped out of his mouth and touched the deck. An electric pinch snapped him out of his funk and he sat up with sudden wheeze.
“Yeah, it kicks at the end.” The soldier snapped the filament back into his finger. “I’m Gunnery Sergeant Dastin, Governance Armed Forces. Adept Maru wasn’t dirtside for more than a few minutes . . . you joined up with him that quick?”
“My name’s Jayce Artan and I have . . . I am so lost right now. Where am I? How did I even . . .”
“You’re aboard the Iron Soul, Governance navy special operations corvette—I shouldn’t have told you that.” Dastin rubbed knuckles against his chin. “You know how to use that thing?” He pointed to the stone in Jayce’s hand.
It was warm to his skin, the surface smooth to the touch, with cooler threads where the golden strands moved.
“Huh? When did I—”
The ship jostled.
“That didn’t take long. Come on!” Dastin grabbed Jayce by the arm and helped him to the door. Jayce stumbled and bounced off the doorframe and into the hallway. The ceiling had what Jayce thought were sea-kelp strands running down it. The bulkheads weren’t uniform, but organic and shaped into giant scales.
A pair of armored Governance soldiers hustled past them.
“You should’ve been at your station three minutes ago!” Dastin yelled over his shoulder.
Jayce glanced out a porthole. He broke free of Dastin’s hold and pressed his face to the glass. Outside the Iron Soul, Hemenway hung in the void. Pearl-colored clouds flowed over the glistening blue waters. He looked for the small island chains between the massive polar ice caps. Blinking lights of orbiting starships brought back memories of him and his mother watching the kindle-bug migration when he was a child.
“I’m in space. I’m actually in—Hey!”
Dastin grabbed him by the scruff of his neck with his cyborg hand and pushed him back down the passageway.
“Look, kid, I don’t know what your deal is, but Adept Maru said keep you alive, and as much as I respect—”
The ship lurched suddenly as blasts stitched against the hull. Short tears scarred the passageway, giving Jayce another glimpse of his home world. A milky film of shields partially obscured his view of the void as the hull resealed itself.
“Plasma impacts are painful. Who is responding?” chimed from speakers in the ceiling.
“You keep dragging your feet, kid, and you’ll get all the hard vacuum you want before you’re dead.” Dastin broke into a run, catching Jayce flat-footed. The soldier slid to a stop and slapped a palm to the control panel on a doorframe. The door slid open and Dastin shoved Jayce into the room.
The ship keeled to one side, throwing Jayce into a counter. His stomach hit the edge and he sprawled across the top, knocking coil weapons and ammo magazines all over the place. A scaly hand with auburn hair sticking out around the wrist slammed onto the counter in front of Jayce’s face.
He looked up at a reptilian with a blunted muzzle and a long beard. A crest perked up on its head. It spoke, but it was nothing but hisses and snaps to Jayce’s ear.
“Give him the old harness and get it quick,” Dastin said. “This is Eabani and our resident Lirsu armorer. Eabani, new kid. Jayce or something.”
Eabani hissed like a cat and bent behind the counter. Racks of coil rifles and battery packs filled the wall behind the reptilian. He slammed a coil pistol that had been knocked to the deck onto the counter with a snarl.
“Harness! No, he doesn’t want to holster a weapon there,” Dastin said as the ship bucked again.
Eabani snorted and banged around behind the counter. He tossed a dusty leather pauldron with a brass ring worked into the center at Jayce. It felt stiff with age and the Veil stone still in his hand hummed with power.
“What do I—”
Eabani slammed a palm against the counter and howled at him.
“Obviously not.” Dastin slipped a loop from the harness over Jayce’s neck, then fastened a line under his arm and over his shoulder. “Put your Veil stone in the emitter ring. It’ll probably stop energy blasts and high-velocity slug rounds. Your shield will fail if you take too many hits too quickly—then you’re easy pickin’s.”
“Like this?” Jayce pressed the stone to the ring and a puff of pale blue light glowed from the edge. The stone snapped into place without Jayce doing anything else. Slight pressure enveloped his body and there was a hint of ozone with every breath he took.
Eabani aimed a coil pistol at Jayce’s face.
“No! Not in here!” Dastin slapped the reptilian’s gun hand up. The alien replied with a dry laugh and more grumbling. “Doesn’t matter if I’m not any fun. Give him a weapon.”
Dastin went to a weapons rack and slapped a wire-frame gauntlet onto one forearm.
Eabani cocked his head slightly at Jayce, then tossed the coil pistol at his chest. Jayce caught it and stared at the weapon, taking in its chrome plating and smooth lines. There was a tug on the back of his harness.
“Got you tanked. Wait, you know how to use that?” Dastin asked.
“Point the part with the hole at the bad guys and pull the curvy part. Right?” Jayce held the pistol by the grip and put his finger on the trigger.
Eabani snatched the weapon out of his hand.
“You’re right, he can be a meat shield and that’s about it. C’mon, kid!” Dastin snapped his knuckles against Jayce’s chest. There was a pulse of light from the point of impact.
“Wait, I don’t even get a gun?” Jayce followed Dastin into the passageway and had to run to keep up.
“You’d be more danger to me and this ship if I gave you a weapon you don’t know how to use. So you’re going to do exactly what I tell you until we get away from the deads.” Dastin racked the slide on his carbine. “We’re going to secure the dorsal-point defense battery before the enemy can—”
The lights cut out and Jayce floated off the deck. Red emergency lights snapped on along the upper and lower edges of the bulkheads.
“Ah! Help! Help!” Jayce flailed his arms wildly as he went head over heels.
Dastin grabbed him by the collar and held him in the air.
“—before they can cut the power. They’re more efficient than I remember.” Dastin slid his feet against the deck; magnetic locks in the bottom of his boots kept him from floating around like Jayce. Jayce held onto a carry handle on the soldier’s upper back. He bobbed closer and farther from Dastin and he realized how all the fish he’d caught on a line must have felt.
They dashed around a corner and Jayce’s heels bounced off the bulkhead. Ahead, a pair of Governance Marines were stationed at a set of double doors.
“Gunny! Adept Maru reports a clamp assault inbound!” one shouted.
“They’ll attack here first.” Dastin slowed down.
Gravity suddenly returned and Jayce’s stomach lurched. His discomfort got worse as he fell flat against the deck. The shield pauldron softened the impact but the landing still hurt. A muffled blast from the point defense cannons on the other side of the door boomed over and over again.
“Who the hell’s that?” one of the Marines asked, indicating Jayce with a nod of his head.
“Maru picked up a stray,” Dastin said as Jayce got back to his feet carefully. The gravity field must not have been functioning properly as his feet felt heavier than the rest of his body and he was lightheaded.
A heavy bang stung Jayce’s ears. The three Marines raised their weapons toward the noise.
“Remember when you two were pissed we lost shore leave to overhaul the emitters?” Dastin flicked a switch on his coil carbine. Sparks spewed from the bulkhead farther away and began outlining a large oval.
“What—what do I do?” Jayce looked around for anything to help him.
“Stay behind us. I’ll dump you in the core with Uusanar soon as we deal with this problem,” Dastin said.
“Red sparks, light ’em!” one of the Marines shouted. An energy shield wavered in and out of view in front of them.
The breach point exploded into a flood of flame and shrapnel. Jayce covered his head with his arms as tendrils of fire snatched at him from beneath the shield. A wave of heat stung his arms, but the Veil shield held.
Coil guns from the Marines snapped in short bursts. Jayce looked up at the breach. Bullets sprang off an energy shield carried by a stocky creature with a flat triangular helmet. Its head was hunched level with its shoulders, onyx-and-bone-colored armor partially visible behind the shield as bullets struck it. The breacher moved slowly—every shot from the Marines punched it back—but the advance was steady.
More boarders were just behind the shield carrier.
“Spiker!” Dastin shouted.
“Spiker, aye!” the two Marines called back.
Dastin smacked a fist against his chest and a metal launcher popped out of his back and bent over one shoulder. A Marine gripped one hand to his forearm and the shield faded out. Dastin braced himself as a pointed metal rod fired from the launcher.
The projectile struck the boarder’s shield and stopped instantly. The spoke hung there, tip embedded in the face as the shaft began to turn. The Tyrant soldier grunted out a warning as a ripple spread through the shield.
The spiker pierced through and thumped into the boarder’s chest. He tipped forward, revealing a half dozen more boarders who had been just behind him.
Not all of them wore the skull masks. One’s face was exposed—nothing but decaying meat and glowing optics beat into the eye sockets.
“Frag ou—”
The Marine couldn’t finish his warning as a hail of fire broke through his shield and punched him off his feet. The grenade in his hand fell to the deck and rolled in front of Jayce. The grenade was a small sphere, just big enough for him to grip well with three fingers.
Jayce tossed it at the boarders. The explosive sailed over their heads and rattled around the inside of their moray assault pod. One in the back of the assault stack flinched away from the opening . . . but nothing happened.
“Keep firing!” Dastin shouted.
The maskless soldier dropped to all fours and raced across the deck, bouncing off the bulkheads and gripping them with clawed fingers. Coil fire struck him in the back and legs, but the impacts failed to register with the nightmare.
The abomination leapt at Jayce, and it snatched him off the deck and rolled them both into the bulkhead. Jayce took the brunt of the impact and found himself face-to-face with the boarder. Its skin was dead and gray; decaying flecks of skin hung like ghostly sails from the crude implants.
“New meat,” it hissed.
Jayce rolled an arm across his body and broke the hold on his chest. He struck the palm of his hand against the boarder’s jaw. Flesh smeared against his palm, leaving part of the boarder’s teeth and the bare bone of its skull exposed.
Its mouth hinged open and it mocked Jayce with a mechanical laugh.
“Hey!”
The nightmare’s head snapped to one side just in time to see Dastin’s boot heel kick it square in the rotting nose. Dastin pinned it against the bulkhead as it clawed at his leg.
Grenades were on the boarder’s chest harness. These all had faded red buttons on top. Jayce snatched one off, clicked the button hard, and felt it buzz twice hard in his hand. He threw it into the breach point.
“Wait. No!” Dastin shouted.
“No?” Jayce looked at the Marine, a look somewhere between confusion and fear on his face.
This grenade functioned as expected. The blast cracked the seal over the breach point and the assault craft wagged like a stiff flag.
There was a sudden breeze against Jayce’s body. The assault ship broke away and a hurricane of venting atmosphere carried Jayce out into the void. The body of one of the boarders bumped into him as he tumbled head over heels through space. He caught quick glimpses of the Iron Soul as water vapor in the ship’s air froze in the cold of space, sending ice flurries all around him.
Jayce managed a shout that echoed around him . . . which struck the last calm part of his mind as impossible as he was in the void. His tumbling slowed and he saw the Tyrant battleship in stark contrast against the north polar ice cap of Hemenway. It shrank ever so slowly along with his home world.
“What is this?” He looked down at his Veil-stone harness and saw it glowed brightly. There was a tug on his ankle and he looked “down” at the Iron Soul.
Maru was on the hull, one hand held out to him. Rich blue light roiled across his fingers and up his arm. Jayce remembered the Elman Fire he’d seen on the masts of fishing ships, a warning that a bad electrical storm was coming. The Adept was in his battle armor; the solid light under the plates crackled with brief static.
Maru reached his glowing hand back like he was drawing an arrow and Jayce hurtled toward him. The Adept pointed at the breach in the hull and Jayce flew through a weak shield membrane over the gap. He bounced off a bulkhead and skidded across the deck.
Dastin lifted a foot and stopped him.
“Were you trying to kill us all?” the Marine asked.
Jayce exhaled, his breath fogging in a cold he didn’t understand.
“I was . . . I was trying to help.” He waved behind him. “They’re all gone? Right?” He got to his hands and knees and felt something. He looked over at the rotting boarder, who was pinned to the bulkhead with another spiker. Its jaw clicked as it tried to speak.
“By the Depths!” Jayce scrambled to the other side of the passageway.
Maru landed in the passageway and put one hand to the side of his helm.
“Uusanar. Hull is clear. Get us out of here,” he said.
“It will sting to leave this close to the gravity well, but I’ll take that over a Tyrant battleship on our tail,” came Uusanar’s voice over the ship’s loudspeakers.
The prow of the ship reared up like a speedboat suddenly gunning its engines, and the view of the void through the breach changed to a kaleidoscope of smeared colors.
Maru marched over to Jayce, Dastin, and the incapacitated boarder.
“Nemal’s down,” Dastin said. “Ickena’s taking him to stores.” He aimed his coil gun at the boarder’s forehead. “I don’t like giving them mercy, but this is your ship, your mission, sir.”
“This one . . .” Maru squatted in front of the boarder. “There’s not much left of him, but I still feel a spark of consciousness in there. With enough time I could glean something of how a Tyrant capital ship made it this far from their home stars.”
“The blasted Syndicate gave them passage,” Dastin said. “They always do.”
“Not this far.” Maru shook his head. “Not with something so . . . obvious. I need answers. Can you secure it safely?”
“Yes, if you basket-case him for me.” Dastin scooted away.
Maru looked over the boarder. “They’re prosthetics, no pain receptors installed.”
He snapped his hilt off his leg and a short energy blade materialized from the hilt. Two swift cuts and the boarder’s mechanical arms and legs fell to the deck.
“Loyal beyond,” the cyborg rasped from a speaker embedded at the base of his neck. “Loyal beyond the Veil. For the truly faithful will never know death.”
“I will give you true peace as soon as I can,” Maru said to it. “Forgive me.”
Dastin grabbed the limbless cyborg by the back of the neck and pulled him off the spike and carried him away.
“Are you hurt?” Maru asked as he helped Jayce up.
“I don’t know why I’m alive.” Jayce touched the stone on his harness.
“Come on, let’s get you to Uusanar before anything else unexpected happens.” Maru put a hand on Jayce’s shoulder. A hand with only four fingers. “I will explain everything I can as soon as there’s time.”
“Is there time for me to”—Jayce shook goo off his fingers—“wash my hands? Please.”
“Mmm . . . indeed. You’ll need to know where the facilities are eventually. Follow me,” Maru said.