Nethereal (Soul Cycle Book 1) (15 page)

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 backswept 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.

Jaren joined in the applause that erupted at regular intervals, though he'd never felt greater misgivings about a job. The speech smacked so obviously of pandering that he could picture Craighan rehearsing it in front of a mirror on his way to Bifron.

“And more,” Craighan said when the latest ovation subsided, “
Exodus
will be the flagship of our victory!” Applause broke out again, stronger than before, and Jaren began to suspect that the speaker was going off script.

A mischievous glint appeared in Craighan’s eye. “This vessel will carry our banner to worlds undreamed-of. Should the inhabitants desire trade, we will oblige them. Should they offer resistance, we’ll oblige that as well!”

Applause failed to describe what followed. A deafening roar erupted from the sailors, yet their cheer carried for only a short distance before the hangar’s vastness consumed it.

When the line of senior officers behind Craighan rose to shake his hand, Jaren’s peripheral vision caught Nakvin frowning. He scanned the crowd and saw the closest ranks of sailors eyeing him with open disdain.

After the keynote address-cum-military rally, Jaren and his senior crew joined other select personnel on a tour of the ship. Lieutenant Wald led the small cadre of VIPs through a broad hallway that branched off into a cluster of winding corridors. Craighan strode confidently at her side as she led the group down one of many identical passages into the
Exodus
proper.

To Jaren, the main hull seemed a world apart. Whereas the hangar gleamed like marble, omnipresent gloom filled the inner corridors. The only light was a faint red glow seeping through the tangle of pipes, cables, and ductwork that crowded the walls and ceilings. A damp chill hung in the stagnant air.
What were you thinking?
he asked his dead father.

Jaren followed along as the tour passed various points of interest. Luckily, these destinations proved far more pleasant than the intervening spaces. Wald showed off the passenger quarters—sufficient in number to afford everyone a private cabin. Next came the officers' lounge, which featured a fully stocked bar. She led them to the vast cargo holds, larger even than the hangar, where supply crews were busily stowing a small city's worth of consumables. The tour ended at a wide hallway before at a set of double doors.

Wald turned to face the tour group. “My fellow officers, ladies, and gentlemen: welcome to the bridge.” The doors slid open as if by her word, and she motioned for the group to enter.

Two security officers stood at attention beside the doors as the assemblage filed through. Jaren tried to peer inside and saw only blackness ahead. Choosing the unknown over the dreary hallway, he fell in with the others.

The darkness didn’t diminish on the other side, but a number of objects were clearly visible
within
it. A double row of crimson banners, hanging from no visible fixtures, gave the only indication of a central path running from the entrance to the front of the room, the word being a loose analogy for such a surreal environment.

Jaren looked up at the banners marching across the bridge. All showed the black silhouette of the ship's hybrid mascot emblazoned on sanguine fabric. At the room’s far end, a single round aperture hung in the blackness. The debris field was clearly visible through the looming window, and the myriad pinpoints of distant stars twinkled beyond. Jaren knew that this wasn’t the huge green lens that had glared at him on approach. The
Exodus'
bizarre internal geography made orienting himself difficult, but he knew that the great eye stared from the tip of the bow several decks below.

A raised circular platform stood halfway between the window and the entrance. Craighan had stopped in front of it, and Jaren saw that the top of the dais was level with the large man’s shoulders. A small crowd of civilians—likely the project’s backers—clustered around the navy captain. When their chatter subsided Craighan began to speak, sweeping his arm toward the platform. “This is the Wheel,” he said, “the nerve center of the
Exodus
.”

Although he’d already guessed the dais' function, Jaren was taken aback by how normal it looked compared to the grotesquery surrounding it. The only unusual quality of the
Exodus'
Wheel was its size. Five steersmen could stand on the luminous disc with room to spare.

Craighan ran his hand along the platform’s edge. “Just like a standard ether-runner, the Wheel sympathetically links the steersman with all navigational systems.”

“How does it feel to pilot a rig this size?” someone in the audience asked.

The Mithgarder captain smiled. “Nobody knows yet, but I'll tell you tomorrow.”

The announcement struck Jaren like a fist to the ribs. Nakvin was the
Exodus'
first Steersman. Poaching her office took Craighan’s arrogance over the line.

Jaren's voice cut through the din of the crowd. “Was that the administrators' decision,” he asked, “or yours?”

Craighan's grin widened. He licked his lips and spoke to the gathering; not to Jaren. “The project supervisors oversaw the design and building phase. Their authority ends at the dock.”

“Who's in charge after that?” Jaren asked.

Craighan eyed him coolly, but his voice took on a sharp edge. “The Mithgar Navy contracted by the Bifron shipyards to complete this project. Now that construction is finished, this vessel will enter naval service.”

“I didn’t know this was a military operation.”

Craighan failed to stifle a burst of condescending laughter. “You weren't aware because it's not your place to know. We're a long way from Tharis, Peregrine. You might be a captain there, but here you're just another consultant. This is my command.”