Beholder's Eye (46 page)

The bridge had been transformed for battle. The officers and crew in charge of operating the ship and its weaponry were suited and enclosed in force fields, each individual locked to his or her control panels. They could stay in those positions indefinitely, supplied with food, medications, and even waste disposal, allowing the
Trium Set
to keep her key functions alive under the direction of her crew even if significantly damaged.

The chairs and couches, as well as the chandeliers, were gone. In their place was a ringlike bench surrounding a much larger image projector than I’d yet seen. As we walked out of the lift, I spotted Skalet, complete in her battle suit, busy making final adjustments to the image glowing in front of her. She hadn’t engaged the bench’s field as yet; I assumed she was waiting for all of us to make our appearance first.

“Welcome,” Skalet called out cheerfully. She was in her element. Ragem touched my fingers, an unnecessary reminder of his continued suspicions. I only hoped he continued to trust my judgment of the situation. I had no wish to see what might happen if the impulsive Human decided to try and expose Skalet’s nature to her own crew. While I couldn’t imagine how he could do it, I put nothing past his inventiveness.

I needn’t have worried. Once Skalet brought the projector up to battle readiness. Ragem’s attention was as rapt as my own. He fumbled his way into the nearest spot on the bench and I dropped beside him, pulling my feet carefully underneath. The rest of the room dimmed gradually, until all that could be seen was what floated eerily before us, the rest of the bridge made up of isolated helmets, console lights playing over visors rather than faces.

Trust the Kraal, with their love of organized mayhem, to devote so much effort and creativity to being able to watch destruction unfold.

The ambush was laid out before us as though all had the ability of the Web to exist in space without ship or suit. Distances collapsed or expanded depending on Skalet’s momentary focus, a somewhat dizzying experience at first, her visor linked directly to the main display commands. Admiral Mocktap would have a similar system on her cruiser, the
Septos Pa,
but Skalet-memory was quite satisfied it wasn’t as state-of-the-art as this one.

For instance, Mocktap’s display would use symbols to show ship locations, and graphical displays to indicate any weaponsfire or defense. Skalet’s system did away with both. Her ships were represented by exquisitely detailed images of themselves, down to the ship names and clan colors along their sides. At the moment, three cruisers, including the
Septos Pa,
lay on the surface of the lifeless moon, engines semi-cooled but ready to fire up at an instant’s notice, camouflaged with the latest Kraal technology. Skalet had likely insisted on some additional precautions guaranteed to puzzle her techs, if not a fellow web-being.

Skalet drew our attention to where the other two cruisers hung in space, stationary with respect to the moon, if not the planet below. They were positioned as though guarding some treasure on the moon’s surface, a subtlety I thought completely wasted on our Enemy, but Skalet had been forced to play to her admiral’s view of the ambush as well as her own. Since the prize—Skalet—was supposed to be on the moon’s surface, there should be guard ships nearby and in sight.

The
Trium Set
was not visible in the present view. The moon stood between us and the battle field. Skalet hadn’t told me what her admiral had thought of this unusual caution on her part.
She fears it, too,
I decided to myself, applauding this rare sign of common sense in my web-kin. The
Quartos Ank,
and a deliriously happy Captain Hubbar-ro, had the glorious if unenviable task of relaying information around the moon between Mocktap and Skalet.

Skalet gave us a momentary look at the remainder of the system, designated Kraal 67B, an oddly dull little star with sixteen tiny planets. Only the one we circled, the third from the sun, had the mass to collect its neighbor eons ago and so possess a moon. The system’s ores were unremarkable; its location was inconveniently distant from the nearest shipping lanes. In sum: a lifeless organization of spinning rock. Members of the Kraal Confederacy fought over it constantly.

There was a hum as the restraint field kicked in, sucking us further into the bench. I put one hand on the surface behind me to take some of the strain as my back tried its best to fold over in response.
Something must be about to happen.
I glowered at Skalet despite knowing full well she couldn’t see me past the images.

The system-wide view began to shrink back down to specifics again, but not before Skalet had added two dots to the outside edge, one blue, the other red. The blue one preceded the red by the span of my hand, if I held it between my eyes and the image.

“The
Rigus,
” Ragem breathed in my ear.

“The Enemy,” I whispered back, unsure if raising my body temperature would do anything to ease the chill in my hearts.
Would anyone notice if I cycled into the Ganthor within this suit?
I wondered. It was so much braver.

INSYSTEM travel, apparently even for a web-being, seemed to take endless amounts of time. Ragem and I sipped liquid nutrients from bulbs passed to us by a Kraal crewman, and tried not to disturb Skalet or her busy staff with questions. When we spoke to one another, it was in quiet whispers. Gradually, as the dots grew closer, we didn’t speak at all.

Admiral Mocktap’s outlying cruisers, the
Unnos Ra
and the
Decium Set,
began to imperceptibly slide further apart, expanding the corridor Mocktap wanted to lure our Enemy through. Skalet-memory was confident; I, less the expert, saw no good reason it would prefer to pass between them. If I could swim through space, I’d circle around the planet and come up from underneath, taking advantage of the dark side of the moon. Still, Skalet’s judgment of its movements had been accurate thus far. She believed our Enemy would be desperate, exhausted beyond whatever caution it possessed by the
Rigus’
unrelenting pursuit.
She might be right.
I felt a stirring of tainted-memory and fought back my knowledge of its hunger for our flesh.

Voices rumbled through the darkened bridge. I strained the poor ears of this form, wishing at once to be Lanivarian, but couldn’t make out what was going on. “Relays from the
Quartos Ank
. The
Rigus
has spotted the two cruisers standing out from the moon,” Ragem whispered to me. He paused to listen. “She’s sending a repeating warning about the creature, asking for help in cutting off its escape from the system. The com-tech is asking whether to reply.”

I had no trouble hearing Skalet’s calm negative. The image enlarged, swooping down for an instant to check on the camouflaged ships on the moon’s surface, then rushing upward to focus on the emptiness where the attack might—should come.

Ersh,
I said to myself,
I really promise to behave in the future.

Abruptly, without warning, it was within the image, a brilliant blue teardrop hurtling toward us. I couldn’t believe Skalet had dared instruct the projector to represent the Enemy as that perfection—as us.
She accused Ansky of breaking the First Rule?
I thought with outrage. Beside me Ragem jumped. He knew that shape, if only as glimpses of my true self during cycling; here was confirmation, as if he needed it, of his worst fears about us.

Then I wondered what it could matter. The
Rigus’
crew, the refugees on the convoy, the Articans, the Kraal—all had or would see the real thing now.
Was it like this to them?
I asked myself.
Could they see how beautiful it was?

Skalet’s attention flashed downward; my stomach heaved in answer. Her timing was again impeccable: the hidden cruisers, led by the
Septos Pa,
were starting to rise up from the surface, accelerating every second. The detail on the image was so precise, I could make out the folded petal structures marking each of the trio of nightshades on the nearest cruiser, the latest and deadliest weapons the Kraal possessed.

They were also Skalet’s last choice, requiring as they did a massive recharging of energy after each firing. If the cruisers were reduced to the nightshades, they would lose much of their maneuvering speed.

The image zeroed on the
Decium Set.
Despite whatever her captain may have thought of the nature of his target, Kraal discipline held firm. Following the plans set earlier, the
Decium Set
pulled closer to the planet, turning to train the Kraal cruiser’s main weapons, electromag pulse cannons, on the approaching teardrop. Distances and trajectories were confused in this real time, false space image. Still, it looked to me as though the
Rigus,
following close behind our Enemy, would arrive dangerously within the path taken by any unspent projectiles were the
Decium Set
and its partner ship to fire anytime soon.

Apparently Ragem shared my fear. He strained as far forward as the restraint field allowed, as if to put him somehow closer to being able to warn his ship and friends. Then the
Rigus
suddenly veered, rising up and away from the coming battle as if running for her life.
She might have been.

There was no time to feel relief. Our Enemy hadn’t been distracted by the loss of its pursuer. Skalet had been right. It kept coming, aiming directly for the moon, following the drone’s false directions to the letter.

Mocktap sprung the trap.

The three cruisers from the moon’s surface surged upward: two, the
Octos Ank
and
Hexian Ra,
plugging the gap left between the
Unnos Ra
and
Decium Set;
the
Septos Pa
curling in behind to seal our Enemy against the side of the planet. In the imager, the enclosure looked textbook.

Nothing ever worked that way,
I warned myself.

The first hint of a flaw in Skalet’s trap came as four cruisers simultaneously fired their pulse cannons. The Kraal were experts. The targeting was coordinated between the ships, each positioned perfectly to avoid hitting each other, projectiles hammering outward in a blaze of energy, inertia dampers likely screaming within each ship as they compensated for the recoil. Skalet-memory provided me with a vivid recollection of the
whir-thwump
echoing in every part of the hull as the next rounds rolled down the barrels.

The image representing our Enemy disappeared in a pool of violent light and debris. It reappeared an instant later, the image updated by the sensor feeding to the
Trium Set
from the
Quartos Ank.

Our Enemy had thinned itself to almost nothing, allowing the projectiles to pass through its mass, some colliding with each other. In the pause before the next, likely as ineffectual, rounds could be fired, it reformed itself, moving almost more quickly than the imager could relay towards the ship that hadn’t fired yet, the
Septos Pa.

Skalet shouted orders. I heard Captain Longins voice replying. There was a boil of confusion on the bridge of the
Trium Set.

Meanwhile, the imager whirled closer to focus on the
Septos Pa.

Perhaps Admiral Mocktap made a calculated decision to sacrifice one of her own in order to stop what now seemed a more deadly foe than expected. A debate for military historians. All we knew was what the
Quartos Ank
’s sensors passed to the imager.

The nightshades of the
Septos Pa
unfurled, their hearts glowing green then red as the energy at their core built to climax. All three discharged in sequence, a snarl and a spit of white hot radiation the imager portrayed with artistically horrifying clarity.

All three bolts missed their adroitly dodging target, carrying on unimpeded to peel open the hull of the hapless
Octos Ank.
At the same moment, without slowing, our Enemy careened straight into the
Septos Pa,
shown as a collision by the projector.

Mercifully, Skalet hadn’t programmed it to show how a web-being could eat its way through metal and plas.

I reached for Ragem’s hand, not needing the imager to tell me what was happening at that moment on the doomed Kraal cruiser, as our Enemy feasted.

“GET out of here!”

If I’d thought the bridge of the
Trium Set
was bustling with activity before, I’d been wrong. Skalet hadn’t wasted a second. She’d ordered the
Quartos Ank
to relay a retreat order to the remaining Kraal ships, with a caution to the
Rigus
should it be still lurking in range.