The pilot took one hand off the steering column and grabbed Larken’s wrist; he pulled the mic away from the translator’s mouth. “You’re not gonna transmit anything to them, are you?”
“No, man! I’m just waiting for the Bern to get suspicious!”
“Calm down, both of you,” Cole said. He stepped up behind the translator and checked the strange-looking SADAR, which was a beehive of blips and odd figures. “Where does it show their altitude?” He glanced over the shapes on the screen, not recognizing any of them as numbers.
“Right there.” The pilot tapped the screen. “And that’s group one’s ship.” He indicated one of the blobs. “They’re going down soft by the looks of it. Not far from the Luddite camp.”
“Is that their camp there?” Cole reached over and tapped the screen.
“Only thing low enough,” the pilot growled.
“Well then, they aren’t going down near them,” Cole said. “I think they’re trying to land on them.”
The radio squawked with more rapid Bern. Larken turned to the pilot, his knuckles white around the mic.
“I think he’s right, sir.”
•• 5 ••
The trio of white-clad warriors shuffled down the corridor toward Edison and Anlyn, their courage seeming to have rallied as they raised the strange cylinders in their hands.
“Desist!” Edison roared once more. He berated himself for leaving his lance in the cockpit as Anlyn scooted safely around him. “Stay where you are!” he tried in Bern.
One of the Bern stiffened and pulled back on the alien ahead of him. “We’re taking over control of your ship,” he returned in Bern. “On your knees!”
Edison took a step back and growled at Anlyn to return to the cockpit. As she ran off, the three attackers surged forward, the one in the front bringing his empty hands up high as if wielding an invisible club.
Edison threw his feet forward and fell flat on his back, sending a shiver through the deck. He brought his knees up to his chest as some unseen thing whizzed through the air above him. Kicking out with his legs, he caught the figure in the chest and sent him sprawling back into the other two.
Something clattered to the ground nearby. Reaching forward to grab it—a metal cylinder of some sort—Edison paused. The bulkhead to the side of the device was sparking. A thin line of destruction streaked across the solid steel as the cylinder rolled across the deck toward him. Edison’s scientific thought processes kicked into high gear. He picked the thing up, keeping the laser end pointed away. He leveled the device at the three men.
Nothing happened.
Insufficient range, he figured.
He took a step forward, and the other two figures in white dropped their cylinders and raised their hands.
“We give up!” one of them said in English.
“Excellent maneuver.” Edison aimed the strange cylinder at the one who had spoken in Bern and switched to that language himself:
“Now, who in hyperspace are you people?”
•• 2 ••
Cole watched the blip on the SADAR, the one showing Mortimor’s ship descending toward the frozen wastelands of hyperspace. The pilot and translator were yelling back and forth, arguing about what to do for them, but it was mere background noise. All Cole could think about was what might have gone wrong with Mortimor’s group and how he should’ve been there with them.
He snapped himself out of the unproductive thoughts and looked around at the bickering crew. The raid was going to fall apart over this, he realized. Mortimor’s mythical status as leader of the Underground was now going to be a distraction rather than a motivating force.
Cole ran out of the cockpit and returned to the cargo bay. He tore open one metal cabinet and locker after another, looking through the ship’s supplies for anything resembling a gravchute, or even an old-fashioned glider. Every five seconds or so, he heard a soft pop as more people and gear arrived from HQ. The finality and awfulness of the raid, of using up what remained of the fusion fuel, of abandoning the Underground’s headquarters, it all dawned on him as a colossal mistake.
Someone grabbed him by the shoulder. Cole turned to find Arthur Dakura frowning at him.
“What’s the emergency?” Arthur asked. He looked annoyed to have been brought aboard out of order.
“One group is going down,” Cole said. He slammed a locker shut and flung open another. “And I’m going down after them.”
Arthur grabbed Cole’s shoulders. He pulled him away from the cabinet just as Cole started rummaging around inside it. “That’s a negative,” Arthur said. “Drawing any more attention will just threaten the other squads. Now, which group did you say is going down?”
Cole clenched and unclenched his teeth. “I told you,” he said. “Group one.”
Arthur’s eyes darted back and forth, searching Cole’s.
“Mortimor’s group,” Cole whispered.
•• 5 ••
Anlyn reached the cockpit and made sure the Bern ship was still holding position and that the fleet hadn’t adjusted itself around them. She grabbed Edison’s lance and ran back aft as the sounds of a struggle and a bout of yelling sent shivers of fear up her spine. She half expected to find dozens of Bern in the cargo bay by the time she returned, the illusion of another ship locked to theirs still lingering.
She entered the bay with the lance level, fully prepared to send its pyrotechnic fireworks into her enemy. What she found instead was Edison standing bold before the three figures, something in his hand aimed at them. Two of the figures held their arms in the air. The other clutched his stomach, in obvious pain, but still attempting to speak. His efforts were interrupted by the arrival of two more white-suited aliens running up from the rear, neither of them Bern. Anlyn recognized one of them as a Pheral, the other a Callite. Her head swelled with confusion; the Bern were not known to ally themselves with other races.
The original three held the new arrivals back, telling them in English to be careful. Edison roared at the two in the back to drop their weapons, which they refused to do.
Anlyn stepped beside Edison with the lance level, hoping it looked suitably fierce. “Which of you speaks English?” she asked.
“We all do,” the Pheral said. He pulled the white hood off his head, revealing his yellowish, mottled skin. “What’s a Drenard doing working for the Bern?”
“We’re not with the Bern,” Anlyn said, beginning to sense that this group wasn’t either. “This is Lord Campton, and I am Anlyn Hooo. We are members of the Drenard Circle and come as ambassad—”
Anlyn fell silent as the group of aliens sank to their knees, their eyes wide and mouths open. Weapons that had been held at the ready immediately moved into tucked positions of submission.
“Hooo of the royal line,” one of the figures whispered.
The one clutching his stomach seemed to forget his pain, his grimace morphing into a wide smile as he looked up at her and Edison. “We are members of the Drenard Underground,” the man said. “We are protectors of the rift, and we are honored to serve.”
Softly, one of the five began saying something, chanting. Others joined in.
Anlyn stood, welded to the decking in abject shock, just barely able to make out the words. They were the words of the Bern Seer. The collection of aliens were chanting the prophecy.
Edison and Anlyn turned toward each other, neither of them able to speak.
Edison lowered his weapon.
And rolled his eyes.
3 · Group Two
The steady flow of gear and evacuees into group two’s hijacked ship ceased for a moment. Marx and members of the Evac Crew stared at the empty space in the center of the cargo bay, their feet shuffling impatiently. Finally, the air popped, and a gravchute and set of jump gear appeared seemingly out of nowhere and fell to the deck in a jumbled heap. Cole rushed forward to his special delivery, ignoring the grumbles from the others as he passed. He pulled the chute and gear out of the rough circle of aliens and to an empty corner of the cargo bay. He began shrugging the gravchute over his white combat uniform as Arthur hurried over and resumed his protestations:
“If Mortimor was here to tell you himself,” Arthur told Cole, “even he would say you shouldn’t go.”
Cole nodded his agreement and shrugged the other strap on. “I’m sure you’re right,” he said. He could clearly remember Mortimor berating him for going it alone after two traitors in a hyperskimmer.
Arthur squeezed Cole’s arm and pulled his hand away from the straps before Cole could cinch them tighter. “I really can’t let you do this,” Arthur said, finally going for all-out force.
Cole grabbed Arthur’s wrist with his new mechanical hand and squeezed back even harder. “And I can’t let you stop me,” he said.
Arthur grimaced and let go. The old engineer and roboticist rubbed his wrist. “Ain’t that the dog biting the hand—?”
“I’m sorry, Arthur, I really am, but I can’t leave hyperspace without him.”
“And how do you plan on getting him back?” Arthur asked. “There’s no one at HQ to man a skimmer. Are you just gonna stay behind in hyperspace with him? Look, he’s like a brother to me, so I get where you’re coming from, but he specifically told me—he ordered me to keep an eye on you.”
Cole glanced down at the chute’s controls to check the battery levels, then looked up at Arthur. “I have to try something,” Cole said. “I can’t go back if we don’t. Molly would never—I’d never forgive myself.”
Arthur rested a hand on Cole’s shoulder, but his grip no longer felt as if it were meant to fix him in place. It was a clasp of understanding, of finally getting where Cole was coming from. He looked around the bay at all the commotion, at the supplies and people pouring through. A crate of powercells for the buckblades arrived with a sharp crack of air. One of the crate’s boards popped loose as it slammed into the deck, disgorging cells. A frantic swarm of activity ensued, attempting to clear the space before the next arrival. Arthur turned back to Cole.
“Listen to me, there’s no point in going if you don’t have a way back.”
Cole pulled the harness points tight on the grav suit and slapped the battery pack for good luck. “I’m taking care of my half by going down there. You got any ideas for the other?”
Arthur nodded. “Yeah, damnit, I do. But if Mortimor asks, you have to tell him this was all your plan. I had nothing to do with it.”
“Fine,” Cole said, smiling. “What is it?”
•• 5 ••
Anlyn and Edison stood together in the rear half of the Bern craft’s cockpit, leaning on one another, thankful to no longer be needed. Weeks of abject exhaustion had been peeled away by the adrenaline rush of being boarded by attackers, and then the relief of finding out who the strange men were. Anlyn knew of the Underground; she had heard whispers among her uncles of this distant band of rogues fighting for peace between her people and the Humans. She never expected in her wildest dreams to meet any of them, much less for them to know who she was. And now they had arrived, seeming like Bern attackers, several of them looking like Bern in every way possible, but proving to be saviors with their piloting expertise and ability to translate Bern and operate the radio. She and Edison finally had a crew to take shifts and allow them to rest.
None of the Underground members had resting on their minds, however. While two of the crew manned the cockpit, the remaining three worked to clear the cargo bay. Anlyn wasn’t sure how these people had arrived, but they were going to use the same trick to bring in even more of their comrades. The prospect of having someone take over for them, to go and sleep or shower or eat if she chose, made Anlyn’s head swim with relief. She rested her head against Edison while Len, the translator sitting in the nav seat, conferred with the rest of the Bern fleet. Anlyn looked up to Edison, sensitive to any sign of double-dealing, but he had his brow down and kept nodding, as if he agreed with what was being said. When the chatter ceased, Len hung up the radio and turned to the others, frowning.
“We’re eighth in line,” he said. “Our group commander is sending us the coordinates for the rift now.”
The tension of the past weeks melted out of Anlyn’s muscles. Not only did they now have extra crew to take shifts, there was actually an end in sight. An end to the snow, to the constant maneuvering, and an end to the stifling claustrophobia of being surrounded by a vast enemy fleet. Her skin positively shivered with the thought of leaving that place, but she had a difficult time reconciling her joy with the dour look on Len’s face.
“But isn’t that good?” she asked.
Len shook his head. “It doesn’t give us much time to get our share of people and supplies out of HQ, which means an extra burden on the others. Especially since—” Len turned to Douglas, the pilot. “One of the squads didn’t make it. It was Mortimor’s group, so we’re down to four ships.”
Douglas cursed under his breath. He shook his head. “So who’s in charge?”
“Over here? I don’t know. Arthur isn’t at HQ anymore—he jumped out of order. Everything’s gone to hell. What I do know is that the first group through the rift is temporarily in charge on the other side, so we need to focus.”
“Alright.” The pilot nodded. “Go tell the others, then. We need to get Ryke and his equipment up here. We’ll take the lead on the other side, which means closing this damn rift might fall to us.”
“What’s going on?” Anlyn asked. She stood aside as Len pushed his way past and disappeared aft. “You’re trying to close the rift? Will that stop the invasion?”