Born of Ash and Iron — Chapter 9
TWO WORLDS REPUBLIC SHIP ‘Firestorm’
/ / SO8_v-korb · Somari Eight / /
Captain Riley choked again, spitting warm liquid from his mouth.
He couldn’t see, and his lungs were burning. Riley spat more of the hot, copper-tasting saliva. The piece of phlegm landed on his face, with more warm liquid running with it.
Blood.
Riley tried opening his eyes, but everything was still black. In fact, his eyes were burning, but he couldn’t see.
He couldn’t talk with the bloody phlegm pouring into his throat, and something was restricting his arms and legs from moving.
Spitting again, he followed the clearing of his mouth with a yelp, “Help!” He couldn’t think of a better thing to scream at that moment.
The crushing weight against his chest shifted again, and a rumble along his back told him vibrations were passing freely through wherever he was lying on.
“Captain?” A weak call replied. “Riley?”
The sound of children laughing drummed at his downturned ears. He’d always had good hearing, better than even most other Eukary. It was no wonder he could hear his kids –
Wait.
His children weren’t here, no, they were in his childhood home on Feenly IV. He was going to bring them, save them from servitude to the Rew.
His wife-mate touched his hand, he’d recognize her touch anywhere. “Sheetha,” he said. “I’m coming home.”
The rumbling continued behind Riley again, driving his children’s laughs into screams.
“Sheetha!” Riley screamed, still trying to see through his broken eyes. “The children!”
The coppery blood phlegm in Riley’s mouth turned to ice in a flash, and Riley’s throat constricted.
A louder vibration suddenly ended with the weight on Riley’s chest and arms releasing, and he was free-falling.
His lungs burst as he went from drowning to suddenly sucking at vacuum for air that wasn’t there.
With his last thought, his last burning breath, he whispered, “Sheetha –”
TWO WORLDS REPUBLIC SHIP ‘Hound’ CAPTAIN READY CABIN
/ / SO8_v-korb · Somari Eight / /
Volm wasn’t sure why he’d raised his hand when they asked for volunteers to command the captured Destroyers, but he had.
If he was being honest with himself, it had probably been driven mainly by revenge. Volm had been in a highly irregular cross-species relationship prior to his incarceration, and when the politburo came for him, they’d shot his partner dead in the street.
Volm shook himself at the memory as he floated weightless in the captain's ready cabin located adjacent to the combat information center. The Hound had been fully powered down, including the gravity well, forcing their commonwealth tormentors to try to find them amongst the ice rings.
It had been Commander Jea’s idea, and frankly, it was brilliant.
Not only were there virtually no energy emissions, but their gravity well wouldn’t affect the surrounding ice rocks in the ring.
The fact that it meant Volm could nap with nothing touching his skin was a bonus.
“Commodore?” A voice crackled over his door intercom.
Volm hesitated. This was hardly a good time to relax, but sleep was likely to be a rare thing with an enemy actively hunting them. It was his own fault for volunteering. He let out a heavy sigh and then clicked the remote connection on his wrist computer. “Yes, Sergeant?”
Volm had tried to reassign the Pantheras that was acting as his marine sentry, but Alkora had refused to yield that naval tradition.
“Mister Green is here to see you,” the reply came over the small computer on his wrist.
“Very well, let him in.”
Volm had never been in zero gravity before. Even in the battle over Somari 6, with the beating the Hound had taken, the destroyer's gravity well never cut out.
Volm pushed off the ceiling towards his desk. He was still struggling with aim in zero gravity, but luckily, he was close enough to pull himself behind the desk and await his visitor.
The heavy metal lock on his door groaned as the lack of gravity put new stresses on the door that had always opened a specific way. Green floated in near the top of the reinforced frame, pulling himself around the lip; he had a grace in the air that Volm could only envy.
Fragments of insulation and broken bolts followed Green as he floated in.
Volm released the desk, allowing himself to float slightly. “Can you bat some of that debris out?” He asked, motioning at the flotsam that had followed Green.
“Absolutely, Commodore,” Green said, grabbing a couple of pieces in his large hands. “Apologies, sir, the CIC is littered with thirty years of discarded and dropped parts and twice that many years in dust and other fine debris.”
“Yes, when we first powered down the well, Sergeant Mehkie helped me remove as much of the particulate out of the air as we could.”
“Makes sense,” Green replied. “They don’t say ‘as sensitive as a Declanian’ for nothing.”
“Indeed,” Volm gave a knowing smirk. “Although I have it a bit worse than others, I suppose,” he said, motioning at the scabs on his arm.
Green grimaced and gave a nod, turning his attention back to his reason for his visit, “I have some good news, and I have some bad news.”
“Bad news first.”
“Oh, uh, it’s actually the same news,” Green replied as he pushed off the ceiling, closing the distance between Volm and himself. “It’s news that’s good, but also kinda bad.”
“Alright,” Volm said, nodding. “Go ahead.”
“We lost sight of Firestorm.”
Volm nodded. He was hardly surprised. That was, to some extent, the intention. “So,” he said. “The ice and rock must be an effective camouflage, but we’re now on our own.”
“Precisely,” Green said as he plucked another broken bolt out of the air. “We’ve been powered down long enough; we must be in the clear now.”
COMMONWEALTH DESTROYER ‘Antler’ BRIDGE
/ / SO8.i_v-korb · Somari Eight / /
“We’ve fallen inside Somari Eight’s Roche limit, Captain,” the junior astrogeographer, Robir, reported.
“Very good,” Captain Arsnetti rolled her shoulders, ignoring the grating way the uniform tugged at her skin. “Maintain our Keplerian orbit with the rebel destroyer.”
Robir shot a look at the nearby coxswain, trying to decide if he should speak up. “Uhm, sir, does that mean fire the thrusters?”
Arsnetti shot him a look that sank daggers into the young officer-in-training. She’d let him feel the heat, then instruct him. It was how her father had brought her up.
Holding his gaze, Arsnetti unbuckled her restraint. Floating free of the command chair, she pushed off towards the astrogeographer. “While a thruster blast would correct our positioning, it would also produce a flare so large they’d be blind to miss us, correct?
Robir gave a quick nod, then spoke, “The retro … uh, the RCS are compressed gas.” He nodded, pointing over to the docking pilot station. “We can adjust for drift with nothing more than a small inert gas venting.”
“Correct,” Arsnetti said, gripping the young man by the shoulder. “We’ll make a senior officer out of you yet.”
“Aye, sir!”
Arsnetti floated back, pressing her lips tight, and she reached out into her subconscious lattice. The apprehension of her bridge crew crashed in like a wave coming over a breaker wall. The lattice helped stop the raw terror from seeping in … but her crew was afraid.
Terror was difficult to describe in a traditional sense.
It was cold, but it burned.
It was hollow, but it had weight.
It was wild, but it was consistent.
Pinching at her cranial ridge again, Arsnetti opened her eyes, “Breath, people.” She smiled, pushing her own confidence back out against the terror.
They had been tracking the Rebel destroyer for hours. “We’ve already left the rebel Firestorm for dead, the Hound is next.” Arsnetti couldn’t wait to see the look on Fisker’s face when he would have to pin an accommodation on her chest. A Declanian chest.
“They don’t know we’re watching them.”
COMMONWEALTH CRUISER ‘Snow’ DETENTION DECK
/ / SO8.iv_o-sply · Somari Eight / /
Anton Kask couldn’t believe his bad luck.
He’d escaped the anti-piracy firing squad and found himself on Somari, the better of the two prison worlds. He helped overthrow the destroyer crews and escaped from that rock. He accessed one of the destroyer's pinnaces. But before he could fully escape, they found themselves embroiled in a battle over Somari 6. They survived that, only to have their ship suffer a critical explosion.
He almost made it away on the pinnace a second time, but a subspace bomb put an end to that charade.
And now he was back in chains.
Back in a Rhyno prison.
Anton wasn’t a hero, and he knew it. He was the thirteenth brood of twenty-six born to his mother, and the eighth in line. He found his own way in the galaxy at a young age, rather than disappear into a life of oblivion in a Eukary hive.
“What’s your name?” The dark skinned Orgrimp sitting across from him asked in a hoarse voice. His face and arm were exposed, blistered, and burst from whatever explosion or fire had saved his life from the subspace bomb.
“Kask,” Anton replied. “I was on the Hound.”
“I’m Et’oj,” the Orgrimp replied. “I was on Crescent.” He shifted slightly against the wall, moving his damaged skin away from the wall. “Ê ti rī,” he complained as he touched his skin gently.
Anton gave a smile as he lay his head against the bulkhead, “I know that one.”
“You speak Ekkari?”
“Just the curses,” Anton laughed, letting out a deep chesty cough. He was sure he’d burned his lungs in the explosion that had knocked him out. “You see what they did to that Cartolangious?” He asked as he twisted at his wrists, bound behind his back.
Et’oj nodded, “Smashed his translation box.” He shook his head slightly, then continued. “Called us rebels–” He gritted his teeth, “-that means death.”
Anton leaned forward; he knew the cell was recording everything, so there was little value in trying to whisper, “I was a pirate; it was only a clerical error that saved me from the firing squad the first time.”
Et’oj subconsciously moved back slightly from Anton. It didn’t bother Anton; he was sure Et’oj could smell death on him.
Cautiously, Et’oj moved closer again, conspiratorially. “What say you, we go out on our terms?”
Anton shook his head slowly. Snapping free the hand restraints he’d been working against, Anton pulled his hands out from behind him, “Or we hijack a pinnace and get out of here?”
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