Hammer of Time (The Reforged Trilogy) (9 page)

"You're going to lose them," Logan told him. "Give me the controls!"

"Do you have any idea how long–?" Duaal protested.

Another impact rocked the Blue Phoenix. Duaal steadied his ship with an effort and hissed through his teeth. He flipped a striped toggle and the other half of the cockpit lit up like a sky full of stars.

Before the secondary controls had finished powering up, Logan slammed down on the accelerator and the Blue Phoenix leapt into the close, crowded belt of satellites. Proximity sensors went from yellow to orange and then flashed red as they plunged into the autotraffic belt. Another coms relay flashed past, delicate dishes and long, sweeping antennae dangerously close to fatal entanglement with the Blue Phoenix's sensor spars. Duaal held his breath while Gripper actually shrieked in terror.

"Watch out!" he screeched.

Maeve saw the cold fire in Logan's eyes, the fierce joy of a hunting hawk. He had lied to Maeve. Her hunter
did
miss his Raptor. He turned the Blue Phoenix up on edge, the curved Sunjarrah horizon tilting dizzyingly. Maeve grabbed the doorframe and closed her eyes. The local gravity inside the ship was completely contrary to the view outside and it was making her stomach crawl up into her throat.

"There!" she heard Duaal shout. "There's the Oslain'ii!"

She forced her eyes open and looked where Duaal was pointing. He was right. Through the mosaic of metal and lights, there was a barely visible curve of shiny black and luminous violet. The Blue Phoenix slid from the dense field of satellites and dropped in behind the Oslain'ii.

The expensive Narsus ship rocked up to one side as the pilot saw them and started. But then the Oslain'ii pivoted to face the Blue Phoenix. A laser cannon blazed beneath the needle-like black nose and red light flared across the empty blackness, far too fast to react to. Logan jerked the Blue Phoenix into a tight spiral, but alarms blared deafeningly through the ship. A warning light flashed on Duaal's controls. He glared at Logan.

"If you can avoid getting me and my ship blown to bung, I'd sure appreciate it," he said. "What in the three hundred hells do we do now, Logan? The Phoenix doesn't have any weapons!"

"That's the compression regulator," Gripper cried, eyeing the flashing light on Duaal's panel. "I've got to get down to the engine room."

"No," said Logan. The Oslain'ii fired again and the Blue Phoenix shuddered. "You stay right here. What's the range on a mainstream router?"

"What–?" Gripper began to ask, but Logan dropped them into a heart-pounding roll, streaking after the still-firing Oslain'ii. The Arboran squealed. "Uh… About three hundred yards! Less if there's radiation…"

"As soon as we're close enough, you need to get onto their wireless."

"What? Why?"

The sleek Narsus ship arced over a long, blocky hauler so huge that both the Blue Phoenix and the Oslain'ii could have fit comfortably inside and continued their chase. The Blue Phoenix rose up and over the hauler just as the Oslain'ii flipped around and changed direction, shooting back toward them. Logan flipped the old cargo ship end over end, just out of reach of the hot red spray of lasers.

"I can see–" Gripper said. He broke off, juggling his computer. "No, we're out of range again. You need to stay close."

Logan swung the Blue Phoenix from side to side as the Oslain'ii loosed bolts of laserfire at them. Sweat matted his blond hair flat against his face. "This ship is slow," he told no one in particular. "Move, damn you…"

He sounded so much like Tiberius in that moment, but there was little time to miss the old Prian. The ships tumbled around each other, the Oslain'ii firing a near-constant barrage of molten red. Logan managed to keep out of the worst of it, but a dozen warnings blinked and blared in the cockpit.

"We can't keep this up much longer," said Duaal.

A passenger liner covered in a faceted grid of windows suddenly loomed up between the two ships. Faces stared out from behind glassteel, their indistinct mouths wide with shock. The Oslain'ii abruptly angled around and fired through the sharp fin that attached one of the liner's steering thrusters. The other engines flared and the whole huge ship began to spin right at the Blue Phoenix. Logan swore and pushed down on his control yoke.

Gripper was working thick fingers across the computer in his trembling hands. "I… I'm in, Freezer," he said, faltering. "What now?"

"Navigation system," Logan answered shortly. "Slave it to the Blue Phoenix's."

"Why? They don't need a tow!" cried Duaal. "They're trying to kill us!"

"Just do it!"

Logan yanked the Blue Phoenix up again. Maeve threw a hand across her eyes. They were pointed right at Sunjarrah's binary suns. The glass in front of Logan and Duaal swiftly polarized, turning the great burning orbs into flat discs of gray. By the time Maeve could see again, the Oslain'ii was close. Too close to miss. A pair of missile ports slid open in the black ship's sleek underside.

"Gripper…" Duaal said. His green eyes were huge. "Are you in?"

"Wait… wait…" Gripper moaned, biting his thick lower lip.

Logan's jaw was set. He stared at the Oslain'ii, facing down the other ship like an ancient gunslinger. There was movement barely visible in the missile bays, the deadly dark-within-dark strike of a night-hunting cat. The Oslain'ii was firing.

"Got it!" Gripper shouted.

Logan was already pulling back, the Blue Phoenix rising sharply away from Sunjarrah and the Oslain'ii. The missiles closed quickly, leaving trails of frozen propellant. Logan rolled the Blue Phoenix again and sent the old ship the opposite direction, into a plummeting dive.

"Duaal, jump us into the corona of one of those stars," Logan said in a flat voice.

"Their FTL system is faster than ours," Duaal reminded him, all in a breathless rush. "With their nav connected up to ours, the Oslain'ii will just follow us!"

"Into the sun," Maeve said, finally understanding Logan's plan.

Duaal punched up the coordinates. "Shit, there's a moon in our way… We hit that and we'll wish it had been the missiles."

"The other star then!" said Logan.

The Hyzaari mage swiped up another flight plan and sent it to the navigation system. Logan jabbed at the FTL button, his metal hand slamming into the plastic cover and shattering it as he pounded the command home to the Blue Phoenix's computers. The damaged ship screeched in protest, but the blue NI indicator flashed and the faster-than-light engines roared. Bulkheads trembled under Maeve's hands as she steadied herself. In a flash of multi-colored light, Sunjarrah, the missiles and the Oslain'ii vanished. Just for a moment, the soothing mosaic of superluminal flight washed over Maeve.

"Dropping!" Duaal shouted.

Light blazed through the cockpit, glorious golden celestial fire. Maeve scrubbed at her eyes, but could not wipe away the dark spots burning in her vision. The polarizing filter was no match for a star at this range. As if in answer to this blazing challenge, azure flames streaked across the Blue Phoenix's hull. Duaal's head dropped to his chest and he squinted at his instruments, tears streaming down his dark cheeks.

"The phenno is holding…" he said, then jumped to his feet, smashing his head against the low ceiling, but uncaring. "Wait, the Oslain'ii!"

Maeve shielded her eyes and stared through the blue glow. Yes, one of the dark spots in her vision did not move as she shook her head. It was Xartasia's ship, just a hundred yards off Blue Phoenix's right side but very nearly swallowed by the star's brilliant corona. No, not nearly… Without phenno, the other ship was burning, searing red and then white as heat and radiation seared the Oslain'ii. The black ship lurched once as the pilot tried to fly away, but within seconds, the black ship listed to one side and sank deeper into the star's corona.

Gripper's hands shook and his computer clattered to the floor. "I… Freezer… I just killed everyone on that ship, didn't I?"

"Yes," Logan said. He squinted after the vanishing Oslain'ii with hard eyes.

"They would have killed all of us," Duaal added quickly.

But the big Arboran ran, bumping and stumbling, away from the cockpit. Maeve could hear his sobs long after Gripper was gone. She took Logan's left hand. The illonium was cool to the touch, even as sweat ran down her skin. Maeve was shaking all over, but Logan's grip was steady. She kissed her hunter's temple once and then left to find Gripper.

"What we know is fragile defense against what we don't."

– Devros Vol, Dailon philosopher (52 MA)

Maeve sat silently beside Gripper while Duaal maneuvered the Blue Phoenix out of the star. She did not know what to tell her friend. She had killed before and not always in self-defense, as Gripper had today. But lives were gone, snuffed out like candle flames. The pain of that never dulled, Maeve knew. It honed itself against guilt and doubt to a razor edge.

They sat together on Gripper's workbench. Maeve rested her head against his broad shoulder. She wrapped a wing around the Arboran as he cried, but could do nothing more. Even if she knew what to say, Gripper could not have heard it. The engines in the room's center thunked and ground unhealthily. The Oslain'ii had landed several shots before the Blue Phoenix could escape. Repairs were going to be expensive, but at least they were still flying. That was more than could be said for Xartasia's ship.

Had she been on the Oslain'ii? Could Xartasia be dead? Maeve doubted it. Why would Calathan make a speech on his queen's behalf if she were on the ship? Xartasia – the White Queen – was somewhere else. Somewhere with the rest of the Devourers… With the Arcadians she had gathered from Mir and who knew how many other planets. A terrible thought occurred to Maeve, but she could not say it to Gripper. It would only compound the poor young alien's pain. She resolved to ask Logan about it later.

The intercom light flashed on and Maeve heard Duaal's voice, but could not make out a word he said. She slid from the workbench, went to the speaker and held down the button. "Please say that again. Louder."

She had to lean close to hear over the noise of the laboring engine. "We're heading back to New Hennor to get Panna," Duaal said, enunciating each word. "Should be there in about twenty minutes."

Maeve promised to be in the cargo bay by then to help retrieve the other Arcadian and returned to Gripper. "Do you wish to stay here?" she asked.

"Yeah," he said. He wiped his eyes and nodded. "I… I should start on the repairs, I guess."

Maeve embraced Gripper and made her way down to the cargo bay. Logan and Xia were already there. Maeve's stomach felt made of lead, heavy and toxic. "How many do you think were aboard the Oslain'ii when it burned?" she asked.

"Probably just the pilot," Xia said. "Why?"

"You do not think that any Arcadians recruited from Mir were on the ship?"

"No," answered Logan. "The Oslain'ii wasn't big enough. It was expensive, but meant for personal use. There's only room for maybe ten or twenty Arcadians, even if they crowded in. And that only works for a short flight. Calathan was only there to talk, I'd bet, to get them primed for the real pickup."

Maeve hoped that Logan was right. "That would mean that another larger ship must be nearby," she said. "Not far from Sunjarrah."

The Blue Phoenix landed suddenly and sent a jolt up Maeve's spine. Black carbon scoring streaked the viewport, obscuring the view until Xia opened the airlock. Duaal had set down not far from where they landed only a little over an hour before. It was darker now, a deep blue-green twilight, but there were the dilapidated settlement houses, the collapsing common building and the withered cornfield.

But there was something new. Several, Maeve saw when she stepped from the Blue Phoenix. Three banded police cars, with lights flashing on top, and a fourth vehicle that she didn't immediately recognize. It was only when Logan paused and frowned that Maeve looked again and read the letters stenciled on the larger, darker vehicle's side: CWAAF.

"They came!" Xia exclaimed.

"Gripper's call finally went through," Logan agreed. He did not sound pleased.

"Is this not what we wanted?" Maeve asked. "The authorities are here."

Logan's gaze remained fixed ahead. He stalked toward the compound. Maeve and Xia hurried to keep up.

The police had rounded up what seemed to be every Arcadian living outside New Hennor. The winged fairies huddled together beside one of the broken-down gray houses, surrounded by armed and scowling police. The Arcadians kept their blonde heads down and murmured to one another. Maeve was not close enough to make out the words.

Panna stood to one side, flushed in the flashing police lights and arguing with a tall Ixthian woman in a neat green Alliance uniform and a starkly white braid falling down her back. When Panna saw Maeve, she broke off and called out.

"Can you
please
talk to the lieutenant?" she shouted. "Tell her what happened!"

The CWAAF officer turned to Maeve, but looked right over the small fairy's head and nodded to Logan and Xia. "Good evening," she said. "I'm Lieutenant Xal. We came out on a disturbance alert, but the call was dropped before we arrived."