Wings of Retribution (52 page)

“Oh.”

Athenais checked the logs, found the approximate time Rabbit had locked her in her room, and then went to the recovery data and entered the keystroke database.  It had every button ever activated on the ship, right down to the first day
Retribution
first left dock.  The database was an obscure tool that salvage teams reviewed in order to discover what had gone wrong before a crash.  Athenais found the codes she was looking for and glanced up.

“Got a pen?”

Staring, Fairy handed her one.

Athenais wrote the codes on the back of her hand and stood.

“What’s that mean?  D-2, C-1, D-1…?”

She went over to the captain’s panel and entered 8Q579K.

“Password accepted.  Greetings, Dallas.”

Athenais snorted and began entering new information.

“New password created, effective immediately.  New owner Captain Athenais Owlborne.  Personal preferences set.”

She peered at the map of the ship and highlighted Rabbit’s room.

“Localized quarantine now in effect in area 2B.  Manual overrides disconnected.”

Athenais slapped the case shut again and handed the pen back to Fairy.  Then she sat down in the pilot’s chair and deleted the recovery databases.  Satisfied her keystrokes couldn’t be traced, she brought up the autopilot and began examining their route.  As she had suspected, their destination lay in the Black.  She resumed autopilot and leaned back with a sigh.

“You…changed the codes?”

She peered at Fairy out of the corner of her eye.  The young pilot looked stricken, nauseous.

“If you’re gonna puke, go do it in the head.  I’d hate to have my ship stinking of vomit.”

Fairy was suddenly shaking all over, her face scarlet.  “You’re…you’re…”

“The new captain?  Yes, I know.”

“
You’re nothing but a selfish whore!
”  Fairy threw the pen into Athenais’s face and left.  As soon as she was gone, Athenais locked the doors behind her, irritated.

Some people were just sore losers.

Ragnar woke with his every fiber screaming, his head a pounding wash of agony.  It took several minutes for him to realize through the haze that something was poking him in the ribs.

“Someone’s gonna catch you,” a horrified young face whispered to him.  The boy lacked a tattoo, but something about his manner marked him as a Stranger.  Seeing Ragnar’s eyes open, the kid grabbed him by the aching fingers and started tugging.

Ragnar groaned and allowed the boy to pull him to his feet.  The mere effort of standing left him utterly exhausted. 
Hungry,
his fevered mind thought. 
Need to eat…
  He leaned against the vase, waiting for his head to steady.

“You sick?” the boy asked, giving him a squinting look.

“Food,” Ragnar managed.  “Need food.”

“Well, you know where the grand hall is,” the boy said, giving him an even more suspicious frown.  “They won’t let you in there if you’re sick, though.”

After three
yeits
in a row, Ragnar’s cells were screaming for sustenance.  He moaned and dropped his head, barely able to stand.  Remembering his family, he said, “I need a ship.”

“You a dockworker?” the boy asked, frowning.  “Wow.  Better get moving.  Mom says they’re pulling in a shipment of floaters today.”  The boy tugged on his hand and Ragnar stumbled.

“You
sure
you’re okay?” the boy asked.  “Your hand feels weird.  All cold and mushy.  Like seaweed.”

Ragnar pulled his hand out of the boy’s grip, willing it to retain human form.  It was a struggle, but he finally regained control.  His vision stabilized and he took a staggering step down the hall.

“Where are you
going?”
the boy cried, catching up with him.  “The docks are
that
way.”  The boy shoved him in the opposite direction.

“Thanks,” Ragnar muttered, suppressing the desperate, carnal urge to kill the boy.  He started walking and, after watching him a few minutes, the boy went in the other direction.  Ragnar continued down the endless hall, glancing out the seaward window.  He had to find a ship.  He moved to the other side of the hall, keeping his head down when several brightly-armored Warriors passed him.  When they were out of sight, he hesitated at a window, trying to get his bearings.

From his vantage on the third story, Ragnar could look across the tiny landmass and see the huge palace wall rising over the opposite horizon, completely circling the island.  In between, he saw no shuttle-pads, just crops, trees, and some ponds.

Apparently, all the people of Xenith lived in the huge walls together.  Ragnar glanced behind him, trying to judge the size of the corridor.  He supposed the roof could be big enough for a shuttle pad.  He glanced back out the window, staring up at the top of the huge structure on the opposite end of the island.  Forty stories or more. 

Ragnar slumped to the window sill, utterly exhausted.  His body hadn’t seen that kind of abuse since escaping Millennium.  Even then, he had Athenais’s food to rejuvenate him.  Here, he had no idea where to find something to eat.  In less than ten hours, his body would start eating itself.  From that point onward, it would
continue
to eat itself until Ragnar provided it food.

It was one of the side-effects of the
yeit,
one of the reasons why he only used it as a last resort.  Ragnar glanced up at the roof again.  What if he reached the top and there was no ship?  How many hours would it waste to search the entire wall?  He had to get his priorities straight.

Food.  First he needed food.  Morgan and Paul could wait.

But, since the entire structure was basically a forty-story circle, he had no idea where to begin.  Would these people eat together or separately?  Did they live in communal quarters based on class?  Were there markets or was it a socialistic society?  Were certain levels off-limits to certain classes? Would he have more freedom of movement dressed as a Warrior or a Stranger?  Which was more likely to be killed for a mistake?  He’d
seen
the Emperor throw the Warrior’s life around.  Were all classes like that?  Or were some more powerful than others?  There were the Priestesses…

But the Priestesses had looked more like prisoners than objects of worship.

Edging on delirium, Ragnar decided that Strangers would have the best access to food.  He just had to figure out where they made it.

“No, she didn’t let me out,” Athenais snorted, insulted by the thought.  “I let myself out.”

In the com camera, Rabbit went to the door, saw that the console was dead.  “Attie…”

“I want an apology, Rabbit,” Athenais said, lazily leaning back in her chair.  “I’ve changed the codes.  It’s my ship now.  I’ve assigned the little tramp cleaning duties.  In the kitchen.  Where she belongs.”

For the first time in at least a decade, she saw Rabbit’s Buddhist-schooled face draw tight with anger.  “Damn it, Attie!  This is
her
ship! 
I
paid for it, and I gave it to
her
.” 

So much for Zen,
Athenais thought, amused.  “I’m a pirate.”  Athenais grinned at him through the com.  “What can I say?”

Rabbit narrowed his eyes at her.  “We need her help, Attie.”

Athenais laughed outright.  “I don’t need her help.”

“Yes you do.  She’s a better pilot than you are.”

Athenais’s eyes narrowed.  “No.  She’s not.”

“She took out forty-one ships on Erriat.  The whole fleet. 
With
ground interference.  I gave her a two percent chance, even after seeing her fly.  Frankly, I thought I was just going to join you in Orplex, because nobody else alive could have done that.  Not even you.”

Her hands fisted on the arms of her chair.  Was he actually
serious
?  That whole show of awe had been
real
?  Was he delusional?  “I could have done it.”

“Face it, Attie.  She’s better than you.”

“Do you want me to turn off life support in there?” Athenais growled.  “You’re obviously not putting it to good use.”

“What’s Tommy doing?”

“The colonel is comparing maps of the Clover 4 system, looking for the best entry point.  We don’t want to give Juno any more warning than we have to, and if we can—”

“There’s a nice debris field nine minutes out,” Rabbit interrupted.  “Iron-based rocks approximately a hundred tons and above.  Three small planets orbiting between Xenith and the rock field will cover our approach.  From there, Xenith itself has three large moons, which should give us a decent place to hide on the final leg of our approach.”

Athenais sniffed.  “We’ll let Tommy decide.  He’s the expert here.  You just run a goddamn bar.”

Rabbit shrugged and moved to the wall under the camera.  All she could see was the top of his head.

“What are you doing, Rabbit?”

She heard a crash, followed by a thud and a ripping sound.  The camera went dead.  Athenais tried to switch views, but the other cameras in 2B were also malfunctioning. 

“Damn it, Rabbit!  A good closed-circuit costs several thousand credits!  I’ll be taking that from your hide, you prick.”

Rabbit ignored her.

“The power’s off, Rabbit,” Athenais said with a sigh.  “There’s no way to override.”

She heard some shuffling from the speaker, then nothing.

Athenais got up and threw the comset away in frustration.  She strode from the helm and down the hall to the kitchen.  Fairy was inside, drawing a bloated figure of a woman in some spilt flour.  She was in the process of painstakingly adding buckteeth and warts.  Underneath, it had ATHENAIS in capital letters.