Nethereal (Soul Cycle Book 1) (47 page)

“Something weird just happened,” the steersman said.

“Same here,” Jaren said with a sigh.

“Is Elena okay?”

“She’s fine,” Jaren lied. “Define ‘something weird.’”

“I was flying over hills and fields—stuff like that. Then everything went white.”

All the way up there?
Jaren marveled. “I know,” he said. “I think we’re all right now.”

Deim's sarcastic chuckle caught the captain off guard. “We’re more than all right. As soon as I could see again, I was looking at stars—real
stars
.”

Jaren held his breath, afraid to even hope.

“I checked the charts to make sure,” said Deim. “Our current position is fifty light years outside the Temil system.”

Jaren's heart leapt in praise of whatever powers had just intervened.

“We're home,” the steersman said.

Randolph approached the bridge with a prisoner’s deliberate gait.
Gambler's Fallacy
wasn’t engraved on the dreadnaught's dedication plaque, but he silently condoned the epithet—anything to boost his men’s sagging morale.

The stench of burning metal stung the captain’s nose as he passed a technician mending the same power conduit for what seemed the hundredth time. All that remained of the young man's uniform was his dull grey trousers, and those grease-stained. Above them he sported a plain white shirt under a worn utility vest. The petty officer would've gone on report a month ago. Now, enforcing uniform regs seemed comically hypocritical. Indeed, the reflection confronting Randolph in the glazed bridge doors displayed illicit red stubble.

Randolph entered almost reluctantly. After months of work, the wheelhouse still looked much the worse for wear.

“Captain on the bridge,” Commander Dilar’s deep smoky voice rang out.

“Stuff the fanfare,” Randolph said. “We're not a navy outfit anymore.”

Dilar resumed his work, outwardly unruffled by the rebuke.

The captain slumped into his chair on its perch overlooking the Wheel. Consulting the tinted crystal screen set into his armrest, he skimmed the day's dispatches. Engine power was still at seventy-two percent. Randolph chuckled wryly. The chief engineer had told him as much ten minutes ago. A message marked
priority: authorized personnel only
contained an open call for all Mithgar Navy ships in range to join a supply raid on the Cadrys Yards.

“Good luck,” Randolph snorted under his breath.

It behooved every officer to master the art of multitasking. Though he focused most of his attention on the screen, Randolph noted the comm operator holding a furtive conversation with her superior, who ascended to the upper level and spoke to Dilar. The captain had no doubt that his first officer would soon pass the message to him.

“Captain,” Dilar said as he approached. “We have a situation.”

“Go ahead,” said Randolph, expecting a rehash of the Cadrys message.

“We've picked up the transponder signal of a ship from the Bifron group.” The commander's voice was skeptical, and his superior knew why.

“We were the only ones that made it out,” Randolph said.

“It could be a Guild ruse—a new tactic to hunt us down.”

The captain studied the deck tiles. Could the Steersmen be setting a trap? It was possible, but highly unlikely. The Guild always preferred the hammer to the snare.

“What ship was the code assigned to?” he asked at length.

Dilar swallowed before answering, “The
Exodus
, sir.”

Randolph studied his first mate’s solemn, dusky face. “This is no trick,” he decided. Rising, he went to the upper rail and called down to the steersman at the Wheel. “You’ve got that signal by now. Set an intercept course.”

“Good morning, Adept,” Geara said as she strode into Marshal Malachi's office. He begrudged the Archon’s ritual formality, but his adjutant never left until he acknowledged the morning reports.

Malachi glowered at the stack of papers she'd set before him today. Such were the vital duties of an Adept of the Fifth—his reward for smashing a so-called smuggling ring of pirates and rogue naval officers. Such morbid irony could only be savored.

Malachi valued no one's approval but his own, and he was ever his own harshest judge. The Caelia raid had been botched; badly. No matter that everyone else had ignored his blunder. The facts spoke for themselves. Peregrine had slipped the net again—this time for good—inciting a system-wide
regulatory action
in his wake.

The Adept's eyes rose from the reports to his adjutant's face, which still beamed behind her thin-framed glasses. “Thank you, Geara,” he said, his tone issuing a dismissal. The Archon departed in a swirl of black robes.

Alone in his sterile chambers within Ostrith's Guild house, Malachi browsed the reports and reflected on the perfect justice of his promotion. Remaining a Master Steersman with a field command would have been a lavish mercy compared to regulating Mithgar from his desk.

Regulation.
Malachi invested the word with contempt. Never one for euphemisms, he saw the Brotherhood's conflict with the Mithgar Navy for what it was: a war. As in all wars, the victor had claimed the spoils. The Guild now clutched the First Sphere in its hands. A few navy ships had escaped to wage a scattered resistance. Yet here he languished; chained to a desk during a war he'd set in motion. His smarting pride reminded him of failure's price.

The field reports held nothing new. More enemy vessel sightings. Malachi had trained himself to immediately dismiss reports of capital ships. They had little hope of going to ground and would be dealt with in their turn. The smaller corvettes and frigates would spawn fresh outbreaks of piracy if left unchecked, and he spent all his considerable resources to prevent it.

By ten AM Ostrith Mean Time, every dispatch had been sorted and marked for the proper departments. Having performed his ritual obligations, Malachi started the work that occupied most of his day: thinking.

The subject to which he always returned, however hard he fought it, was the fate of Peregrine and his crew. The Gen's uncanny escape from his crowning blow made Malachi posit the existence of a fickle cosmic will bent on frustrating his every act.

In the end, the guildsman put no faith in higher beings. Yet the Bifron affair had made a lasting impact on his life. The seed planted at Caelia had taken root weeks later when reports of a monstrous black ship first crossed his desk.

The growing body of lore concerning the allegedly cursed vessel had begun with veterans of Bifron—both Steersmen and navy—and had since taken on a dubious life of its own. As purported sightings, tall tales, and figments had filtered into his hands, Malachi's interest had become an obsession.

He’d started a file on the popularly styled
ship of the damned
; kept not in his office, but at home. No two accounts quite agreed. Some saw a dread ferry come to take the bold and foolish to Elathan’s Hall or another of the Five Hidden Realms. Others whispered of Almeth Elocine’s return. Investigating these tales consumed the Adept’s free hours, but all amounted to misidentifications of known ships and celestial bodies, hearsay, or wishful thinking.

As he often had over the past few months, Malachi considered questioning the prisoner again. According to the little they'd gathered at Caelia, the man had been deeply involved in whatever uncouth business had transpired there. But interrogating him again would raise questions the Adept was unprepared to answer. Once again, Malachi resolved to take the hardest but often wisest course. He would wait.

The
Gambler's Fallacy
emerged from the ether at the edge of Temilian space. To Randolph’s relief, the transponder pulse was holding its position. Otherwise, his hobbled ship would never catch up to the signal's source.

“What's our position?” the captain asked his steersman.

“Six light hours beyond the orbit of the last planet and two light hours from the signal's point of origin,” she said.

“Can you see anything?”

“Negative.”

“Good,” Randolph said. “If we can't see them, they can't see us.”

“Orders, sir?” Dilar asked.

“Hold this position for now. We don't want to scare off whoever’s out there.” Randolph knew the absurdity of his statement. But he still commanded a dreadnaught, and his infamous quarry wouldn't wait to confirm his intentions before running—or fighting.

“Do you mean to let them make the first move?” Dilar asked.

“No,” the captain said. “We'll send our friends a message they can't ignore, provided they are who we think they are.”

A thin smile cut across the commander's dark, statuesque face. He bowed curtly and strode from the bridge at a purposeful clip.

Jaren stared out the bridge window into star-flecked blackness. The scarlet banners overhead flapped quietly in the currents of unseen air vents. Yet even the halcyon beauty of space couldn’t soothe Jaren’s divided heart.
I went through hell to find my people,
he thought,
and they betrayed me.
He pictured Avalon reduced to a hellish wasteland and felt a pang of guilt to judge the Light Gen worthy of it.

Still, the trip wasn’t a total loss. Jaren had left the Middle Stratum a fugitive. Now he’d returned in command of the
Exodus
. The black ship boasted enough power to engage an entire Guild fleet—at full strength. Still bearing minor but vexing damage and manned by a skeleton crew—which gained new meaning since some of them were dead—the ship was in no condition to challenge the Steersmen. Not with the Brotherhood's own monster lurking about.

The loss of cohesion among the crew was even more troubling. Due to Elena's plight and other outstanding grievances, the captain and his senior Steersman were barely speaking. Nakvin had dedicated herself to the exclusive care of Elena.
Her daughter,
Jaren reflected, though he had doubts about the girl's half-conscious revelation. If Nakvin had ever had a child, it was before she’d met Jaren, and Elena’s age made that scenario unlikely. The girl’s lapse into catatonia after confronting Fallon ruled out further questioning.

Jaren didn’t need to point out the dangers of flying about in a massive yet critically undermanned ship. A temporary retreat to a safer Stratum was discussed and even attempted, but to no avail. Perhaps the ship's less orthodox modes of travel required a combination of the right steersman and Elena’s aid. Moving between Strata had only been accomplished when Deim piloted and Elena suffered some sort of shock.
Then again, Deim might’ve failed because he’s going crazy.
Jaren thought. He suspected Vaun's hand in Deim's growing madness, but he feared to challenge the necromancer from a position of relative weakness.

Jaren winced as an obnoxious buzz entered his ear like a mosquito. He tried counting stars to keep his mind occupied elsewhere, and the diversion worked until the noise intensified into a grating feedback loop that had him biting his tongue to keep from crying out.

It’s probably no coincidence that Teg, Deim, and me started hearing this as soon as we got back,
Jaren thought. The high-pitched whine came to all of them at once. It seldom lasted longer than ten minutes, but it occurred with greater frequency as time passed. Nakvin alone among the senior crew seemed immune.