Nethereal (Soul Cycle Book 1) Page 11

  Through the boarding tube and down the hauler's corridors, the sound of a grappler impact came clearly to Malachi’s ears. The noise almost distracted him from the grey-bearded man who came running out of the dark behind the Wheel.

  “Help me!” the wild-eyed fellow begged Malachi. “He doesn’t kill them!”

  The masked figure rose, drew an indigo-haloed blade from its cloak, and ran the raving greybeard through. Malachi felt caught in a nightmare as he watched the dying man’s skin turn bone pale. The victim’s last halting breaths sounded almost like hushed cackling. Instead of limply sliding from the blade, his body seemed to lose substance, becoming translucent as it darkened. Deranged whispers issued from the shadow that remained, and Malachi recognized the dead man’s voice.

  “Join us,” said the thing on the Wheel. “Gather in the dark with us, and laugh with us immortally.”

  Malachi once again made the signs of the Steersman's Compass. Like the great ships ruled by his Brotherhood, he vanished into the ether.

  17

  The raid wasn’t going as Teg had expected. Most couriers carried around fifty men. This one held only half as many—a number he knew because all of them ran screaming toward him as soon as the boarding tube opened. Even stranger, the guildsmen weren’t charging the pirates. They seemed to be fleeing something worse. “There’s room for them in Elathan’s Vault,” Teg told his men in defiance of superstition. “Hold the airlock.”

  In the thick of the slaughter, Nakvin sent a curious message: “The prison transport’s moving again.”

  Teg’s throbbing foot sharpened his tongue. “You deal with it. My hands are full.”

  “Sure,” Nakvin said. “I’ll detach the grappler and leave you without a fallback position.”

  A human Enforcer pulled the knife from his own belly and lunged at Teg.

  “Are you still there?” Nakvin asked.

  “Thankfully, yes,” Teg said after re-planting the blade in the man’s throat. “Something’s gotten into these bastards.”

  “Just try not to miss any this time.”

  “For the record, I didn’t miss any last time.”

  “Well someone’s on that freighter,” said Nakvin. “Ether-runners can’t fly themselves.”

  Teg ignored the affront to his professional pride and focused on the task at hand. When the heavy work was done, he ordered the airlock cleared and headed for the brig. The prisoners had better be there, he thought, or I’ll shoot Malachi from a torp tube without killing him first.

  Teg entered the brig to gruff cheers and scattered applause from twenty prisoners who stood reaching their hands through the bars. Only one remained silent, averting his wide and sullen face from his rescuer. “You have a mind to stay, Crofter?” Teg asked while picking the cell’s lock.

  “You got a long memory,” the gunner said. “This is the perfect time to pay me back.”

  “I've got all the time in the world for that,” Teg said as the cell door swung open. “What I don't have time for is talk.”

  The liberated pirates poured from their cells, howling for joy and revenge. Crofter crept past Teg as if expecting a sudden blow. When none came, he scurried from the cell block. Teg shook his head and followed the others.

  “I hate repeating myself,” Teg told Jaren. “So for the last time, the only bodies we found on that hauler belonged to three tin cans. And they were already slag when we showed up.”

  Jaren paced back and forth across the courier's bridge. “So it was a decoy?” He asked. “Like the prison ship?”

  “No,” said Teg. “Malachi pulled his death trap from a salvage yard. That hauler was still in service—ghost ship or not.”

  Though he hated to admit it, Jaren knew that Teg was right. The provisions and personal effects aboard the Sunspot proved that she’d left port with a full crew. But judging by her neglected state, the crew had abandoned her weeks ago.

  The mystery troubled Jaren less than it would have just a few days prior. It vexed him far more to be rescued by sinister forces that came and went on a whim, trailing the Void in their wake. Even worse, his dubious benefactors had probably aided Malachi’s escape. “It’s Ambassador's Island all over again,” he said under his breath.

  Jaren approached the Wheel. “Are you absolutely sure that every inch of this ship is clear?” he asked Deim.

  “The only place we didn't check was the hold,” said Deim. “I doubt Malachi's in there. Nothing that breathes could’ve survived in that vacuum this long, even with an aura.”

  Jaren considered ordering the hold searched anyway, but it wasn’t worth the risk. The breach had become a gaping hole since the Shibboleth had dislodged the Sunspot.

  The bridge doors parted to admit Nakvin, who’d just finished towing the hauler. A semblance of order had returned to her flowing hair. But dark circles underlined her eyes, which fixed themselves on Jaren. “Don't wear yourselves out looking for Malachi,” she said.

  “You don't think he's here?” Jaren asked.

  “He made off with the prison ship,” she said.

  Jaren furrowed his brow. “How did he get over there?”

  Nakvin's voice darkened. “I left the Brotherhood when I was a Journeyman,” she said, “but I learned enough to fear the Masters.”

  “Kelgrun’s training methods must’ve changed,” said Deim, “I hated him sometimes, but I was never afraid.”

  Nakvin cocked her head as though Deim were a child who’d asked where the ether was. “The Brotherhood is just that,” she said, “an exclusive fraternity. They don't hand out Masters' robes just for hearing lectures and logging flight hours. Even Masters might teach some Workings illegally, but they only share the best trade secrets with members whose loyalty is beyond question. ‘At one with the Guild; at one with the ether.’”

  Teg spoke up. “They can enter the ether without a ship?”

  “I think some of them can,” Nakvin said.

  “Didn’t stop you from blaming me, though.”

  Nakvin folded her arms. “Malachi still got past you. I’m just explaining how.”

  Jaren sighed. “We’re not leading Malachi's backup much of a chase with a Guild courier and a moth-eaten hauler in tow.”

  “Fair point,” said Teg. “Which one do we scuttle?”

  Jaren thought for a moment. “Deim will pilot the courier,” he said. “It’s the first installment of what Malachi owes us. Nakvin will take the Shibboleth, and you'll both tow the hauler between you.”

  Nakvin rolled her silver eyes. “I just manned the Wheel through a firefight. Now you want me to navigate that Bifron minefield with a derelict in tow?”

  Jaren knew that taking the Sunspot meant increased risk, but he couldn’t resist the urge to maximize his gains from Malachi’s defeat. Besides, the hauler’s possible connection to Ambassador’s Island raised questions that Vernon seemed well placed to answer.

  “I can’t trust anyone else with the job,” Jaren told Nakvin. “Let’s get underway before the Guild catches us bickering.”

  “Welcome back, Mr. Peregrine,” Vernon said when Wald showed Jaren in.

  Jaren shuffled into a cramped office lit as dimly as a Stranosi restaurant, but which smelled of synthetic fibers instead of zesty foods. Since the project supervisor probably could have claimed any room on Caelia, he supposed that Vernon liked his offices small and dark. In fact, Vernon’s Mithgar Navy connections and odd speech raised the possibility that he actually hailed from the First Sphere’s ancient Stranos region.

  Vernon stood. Underlit by the lone desk lamp, his face appeared even more corpselike. “You performed admirably,” He said. “Please extend my congratulations to your intrepid crew.”

  “I will,” Jaren said. “But I’ve got some questions first.”

  “We will gladly assume responsibility for the damage your ship sustained,” Vernon said with a dismissive wave. “Repairs are already underway.”

  “It’s not the Shibboleth I’m curious about,” said J
aren. “There’s a lot I can’t explain about the hauler we towed in. You seem like the man to ask.”

  Vernon’s gaunt face took on a jovial cast. “What gave you that impression?”

  “Two vanishing acts I saw in the last few days,” Jaren said. “First a man who says he works for you disappears an Enforcer squad at Ambassador’s Island. Then a hauler crew decides to bail out with no gear or provisions, but their empty ship turns up to save me from the same guildsman who ran the Island sting.”

  Vernon uttered a bemused grunt. “How did the hauler aid your escape?” he asked.

  “It rammed the courier’s hold.”

  “Is that all?”

  Jaren thought for a moment. “The courier was only carrying half the normal crew for its size,” he said.

  “Did the guildsmen behave strangely in any way?” asked Vernon.

  “They’d been whipped into a panic before we came on board,” Jaren said. “I don’t know if it was the hauler, but something scared them enough to try boarding us.”

  Vernon cocked his head to one side. “Are you familiar with the concept of Teth?”

  “Besides the ninth letter of the Gen alphabet?” Jaren asked, unable to keep from chuckling. “Isn’t Teth what the Void’s supposed to be made of?”

  “Teth is more than prana’s opposite,” Vernon said. “Midras’ cult held it to be the very stuff of evil, which could corrupt even a just man. The priests of Thera went further, claiming that the descent of the Well’s light reveals and guides the paths of all creatures. The inexorable dimming of that light—the flow of Teth—is the engine of fate itself.”

  Jaren’s amusement turned to disbelief. “So you’re telling me that evil has a will of its own, and it sent a ship to pull my ass out of the fire?” He shook his head. “Skip the mythology lesson. I’m just asking if you arranged the hauler.”

  “I assure you Mr. Peregrine,” Vernon said, “that neither I nor any agent in my employ aided your operation beyond our initial material support.”

  “That’s all I wanted to know,” Jaren said.

  Vernon resumed his seat and gestured toward the empty chair facing his desk. “Now that your curiosity about my role in recent events is satisfied, perhaps we can discuss your role in Project Exodus.”

  Jaren sank into the plush chair and set his boots on Vernon’s desk. “I want to see the shipyard,” he said.

  “Of course,” Vernon said. “Your request must be cleared with the foreman. Please allow us time to make arrangements.”

  “Sure,” Jaren said. “Get me my father’s notes while I wait.”

  18

  “You’d better come and see this,” Teg told Jaren, who’d been awakened by the mercenary’s knocking.

  Leaning against the jamb of his open door, Jaren rubbed his eyes and said, “The station had better be on fire.”

  “Even better,” Teg said. “A couple of ships just docked.”

  “How long since the last time?”

  “Four months. I’m heading down there to poke around.”

  “I’ll be right down,” Jaren said. He shut the door and staggered to his closet.

  Jaren’s time at Bifron had fallen into a cycle of routine. The shipwrights were most interested in his knowledge of Gen hull plating formulations, and Vernon consulted him with greater frequency as the project neared completion. Jaren was rarely allowed to visit the shipyard. When he was, his activities were confined to the foreman's office.

  Jaren wouldn’t have minded the secrecy had the administrators’ requests been less baffling. Braun, the perpetually nervous lead engineer, once sought his opinion of a raw materials estimate. Jaren noticed a few odd ingredients on the list, including tonnage quantities of solid ether. Though Jaren suggested less costly alternatives, Braun insisted on the precious “ether metal”. Another time, Vernon asked for a rare treatise on the shell excretions of prehistoric mollusks, forcing Teg to burgle the library of a Kethan Adept.

  Jaren finished dressing by belting on his guns—glad that the weapons ban had ended when he’d taken Vernon’s job. The administrators were eccentric, but something else made Jaren nervous. Bifron itself felt sinister, like an ancient battlefield or the scene of a brutal murder. That sense of unease grew each day, as though every shadow brooded with malice.

  Sometimes Jaren thought he heard faint whispering as he fell asleep.

  Nakvin seemed particularly affected by the unnamed pestilence, and she traced the time of its arrival to the day they'd salvaged the derelict hauler. Jaren was inclined to agree, though he kept his fears to himself. The strange state of distraction that had lately afflicted Deim compounded his worries. The normally sociable steersman now kept to his quarters. When he did emerge, he wandered as if dreaming.

  Jaren made his way to a platform overlooking the hangar. A cacophony of brusque voices and heavy equipment emanated from below as work crews unloaded a pair of ships that looked like oblong buildings with unfinished upper floors—Mithgar Navy dreadnaughts.

  “Quite a sight, aren’t they?” Teg asked as he leaned past the guardrail for a better look at the ships whose enormous size forced them to dock outside. Wide collapsible tubes allowed traffic to circulate between the hangar and the ships’ holds.

  Jaren joined Teg at the rail. “I was expecting a supply freighter or two,” he said. Looking down, he counted more than four hundred newcomers swarming over the dock. They wore the same uniforms as Caelia’s resident personnel: dark grey with red and black markings.

  “You were right about one thing,” said Teg. “They’re definitely bringing in supplies.”

  Jaren marveled at how the remote station—once as still as the Void—had become a hive of activity. The overburdened air filters failed to strain out the odor of machine oil mingled with sweat. Officers strutted about barking orders while enlisted men worked cranes and drove loading vehicles. By increments the dreadnaughts' holds gave up their trove of canisters and cargo containers.

  By the end of the day, Jaren decided that he didn’t like the dreadnaughts’ crewmen. After several attempted introductions, he found their shoulders decidedly cold and their eyes glinting with suspicion.

  The commander of the new contingent was a navy captain called Craighan. Jaren found him directing the supply operation and made a point of sizing him up. Despite his late middle age, the Mithgarder captain kept pace with men twenty years his junior. His greying blond hair was little more than a fuzzy halo around his head, and the deep creases trailing from the corners of his eyes gave testament to his experience.

  Jaren decided to greet his new colleague during a rare lull in the proceedings. “Captain,” he said with a slight nod.

  Instead of replying, Craighan continued studying the cargo manifest in his hand.

  “I’m Jaren Peregrine, captain of—”

  “I know who you are,” the Mithgarder said. He took a final glance at his list before looking at Jaren.

  “Just thought I’d introduce myself, since we’ll be working together.”

  “Introductions can wait for tomorrow’s assembly,” Craighan said.

  “Assembly?”

  “The general assembly prior to my inspection tour of the Exodus.”

  “I didn’t hear anything about—” Jaren began, but a situation across the hangar suddenly demanded Craighan’s attention.

  I know your type, Jaren thought. Craighan had the marks of a career officer as ambitious as he was disciplined. His command style would be unorthodox—the man’s presence at Bifron was proof of that—yet effective enough to keep the admiralty from branding him a troublemaker. Still, for all his eccentricity, the captain shared his men’s thinly-veiled contempt for the Gen.

  Late the next morning, Jaren and his crew boarded a shuttle bound for the Exodus. From Caelia’s dock, the ship looked like a colossal black wing with a trapezoidal bulge at the center. On approach, the main hull resolved into a pentagonal obelisk fused to a pair of elongated, five-sided pyramids that served as bac
kswept wings. The stern tapered into a sharp diamond that jutted between the wings like the tail of an ancient reptile. Its alloy skin gleamed like a fly's carapace.

  Jaren found the hulking mass of edges and planes aesthetically offensive, but he couldn't stop staring at it. The worst part was the enormous green circle at the center of the bow. The feature defied every convention and leered like an eye filled with evil intent.

  Jaren’s unease deepened when the shuttle approached the larger of two openings in the port wing. The apertures seemed no more than narrow slits compared to the huge pinion in which they were set, yet the opening accommodated several shuttles at once. Jaren imagined himself a tiny crustacean entering the maw of a whale.

  After the shuttle landed, Jaren and his crew filed out onto the cool, pearl-tiled deck. The pirates stood out among the hundreds of uniformed sailors like wolves amid a pack of purebred hounds. Yet all stood shoulder-to-shoulder before a simple stage draped in white linen.

  Craighan stood at a podium and greeted the throng with a crisp salute. After the thunder of several hundred sets of boots clicking subsided, Jaren realized that only he and his men weren’t standing at attention. Expectation charged the air like an electrical current.

  “Welcome, honored members of Project Exodus,” Craighan said, his voice magnified via glamer. “The admiralty send their support.”

  As Craighan's speech droned on, Jaren’s attention turned to his crew. Nakvin’s silver gaze turned inward when she wasn’t casting furtive glances at the Mithgarders. Teg fiddled with bits of wire, twisting them into the shapes of small animals. Only Deim seemed focused on Craighan, at least Jaren thought so until he realized that the young steersman wasn’t looking at the Mithgarder, but through him to some distant point within the giant vessel.

  They’re not missing much, Jaren thought. He could sum up Craighan's address in three sentences. The Guild had overreached their grasp. New Strata awaited those bold enough to challenge the Brotherhood's narrow view of the cosmos. The vessel in which those daring few now stood would be their ark of deliverance.