The Lazarus Particle (36 page)

“Oh, you give us far too much credit, Ptsvy. It was the Commander’s gunboats who outran your patchwork fleet and pummeled your precious palace from above. We were there merely to draw you out.”

“Technically,” Orth corrected, “those were Ship Commander Trufant’s gunboats.”

Ndeeldavono shrugged. “Be that as it may.” Stepping into the cell, he made a show of kneeling to address Ptsvy at eye level. “Ptsvy, Ptsvy, Ptsvy,” he chided slowly. “We understand from our Lj you have been most uncooperative. That ends here and now. The time has come to talk, Ptsvy. Tell us how to access the tracking beacons you placed among the supplies you sold to the Free Planetary Irregulars.”

Even in his weakened state—or perhaps because of it—Ptsvy knew he held all the cards. A low, gravelly chuckle rose up from within his dwarfish frame. “Ptsvy knew you would come eventually. Ptsvy knew.” Lifting his head to meet Ndeeldavono eye to eye, he bared his gilt-edged teeth in a savage smile. “And now that you have, he shall be glad to talk, but only to tell you that Ptsvy’s final act of vengeance shall be to deny you your own.” Before anyone could stop him, Ptsvy tongued the inside of his cheek and bit down, hard. Almost immediately he began to foam at the mouth; the seizing began only a moment after, his tiny body thrashing about so violently it looked as if he were being electrocuted.

“No,” Ndeeldavono breathed. “No!” Scrabbling backwards, he pushed past Orth into the corridor. “Summon the medic at once!”

By the time the medic finally arrived, Ptsvy of Kalifka, Herald Prince of the Bazaar and All Its Minions, was dead.

Only the grin fixed upon his lifeless lips suggested otherwise.

“How?!” Ndeeldavono barked at the man with the iridescent eyes. In contrast to Ptsvy, he had been sitting calmly in the center of his cell when the Zj burst in, picked him up by the neck, and slammed him bodily into the bulkhead. “How was he intending to track the beacons?!”

The man tried to speak, only to devolve into an unintelligible gurgling.

“Do you expect the man to answer when you are strangling him to death, Ndeeldavono?” Orth called from behind him. “Give him a chance to answer!”

Ndeeldavono heard Orth’s words. They made sense on a certain level. Yet on another, wholly atavistic level, Ndeeldavono was tempted to keep going, keep applying pressure until the man’s strangely glowing eyes popped out of his head and could no longer fix him with that unnerving gaze. Why even bother with the dance? Why not just choke the life out of him here and now and be done with it?

It was only when Orth’s powerful hands grasped him from behind, yanking him backward, that he let go of the man. Without the Zj’s grip supporting him, the prisoner crumpled to the floor of the cell a gasping and hacking mess.

“Get ahold of yourself!” Orth hissed.

Had it been anyone else, Ndeeldavono would have separated their head from their shoulders without so much as a second thought. From Orth, however, the words had a sobering effect. He nodded, taking and holding a deep, steadying breath.
 

“Let me speak with him.”

Ndeeldavono’s eyes snapped open. Orth met him gaze for gaze. “Very well. You may try.”

Orth offered the prisoner his hand. “What is your name?” he asked once they stood eye to eye.

“Is Ptsvy dead?” the prisoner asked as he rubbed at his throat.

“Yes. He poisoned himself with some sort of capsule secreted within his cheek. Now, I would have your name.”

“Jobosk, sir.”

“Jobosk. I am Station Commander Knolan Orth of Morgenthau-Hale.”

“So nice to meet you, Station Commander Knolan Orth of Morgenthau-Hale.”

“So, you were Ptsvy’s manservant?”

“I prefer the term majordomo.”

“Forgive me. I would not knowingly deny you any due gravitas.”

“That is most appreciated, Commander Orth.”

“As Ptsvy’s majordomo, you were no doubt privy to the means by which he intended to track the Free Planetary Irregulars? Is this accurate?”

“I was. It is.”

“Will you disclose those means to Zj Soliorana?”

“I will not.”

“We have heard enough,” Ndeeldavono declared, turning for the door. “Flush him out the nearest airlock and be done with it,” he said to the waiting guard.

“But I will tell
you
.”

The sound of Ndeeldavono turning on his heel and marching back down the corridor preceded his sudden return. “What did he just say?”

Ignoring him, Orth raised a brow, indicating interest but not commitment. “Your terms?”

“I would have myself remanded into your custody, Commander, with promise I shall not be executed.”

“And?”

“That is all. I am quite certain you will find use for my unique skills once we become better acquainted.”

Orth turned to regard Ndeeldavono wordlessly.

“You would have him?” the Zj wondered.

“Well, he does seem quite certain I’ll find a use for him. Better than flushing him out an airlock, especially if it gets us the means to track the Irregulars.”

Ndeeldavono did not really have to consider the terms. Still, he made a show of it nonetheless. “He is yours,” he said after several moments of needless deliberation. “Consider him a gift to commemorate our remarkable friendship.”

“Thank you, my Zj.” Orth turned back to Jobosk. “As your new master, I would hope your first act in my service is not to make of me a fool.”

“Perish the thought, master. The beacon signature is as follows.” Jobosk rattled off a series of letters and numbers. The young ensign leading Orth’s technical contingent stepped forward, entering the string of alphanumeric characters into his flexpad. Several tense moments later, the ensign announced their people had acquired the signal.

“It’s there, sir,” the ensign said with obvious relief. “We have to get closer, though, or we risk losing it.”

“Inform navigation to set course for the coordinates they are about to receive,” Ndeeldavono said, stalking out of the cell into the corridor. “Make sure all batteries are primed and ready to alternate fire the moment we engage. We may only get one chance at this.”

36 • WAR GAMES

High above the test-tube planet of Eden Prime, opposing flocks of black Banshees shrieked to and fro through its empty skies. It was day five of flight school redux, and the pilots of Gold Wing had performed to such a high standard in their solo training that Dell and Ohana decided it was time to up the ante. The venue? None other than a classic aerial dogfight. It was all a bit pell mell, but it freed the pilots of the limitations of the first few days of training and allowed them to get a feel for what the Banshees were truly capable of in a fluid, if mock, combat situation.

“Break right, break right!”

“I got him!”

“Watch out, coming up on your six!”

The chatter was coming as fast and furious as the laser light tags that identified who had been killed or just grazed.

“Goin’ down!”
Alpha Three joked, stifling a laugh as he righted and reset his designation.
“Nice shot, Beta Seven.”

“Why, thank you, Alpha Three. Always nice for one’s work to be appreciated.”

“Caught a graze, good to go,”
Alpha Twelve added,
“but where the fuck is my cover?”

“Comin’ in hot!”
called Alpha Eleven in reply. His lasers strafed two of the Betas trailing his wingman with (mock) deadly effect.
“Woo hoo!”

“Shit-hot flying, Alpha Eleven. Nice job.”

“Looks like the Betas are regrouping!”
Alpha Three announced.

Amidst all the faux turmoil, Dell—Alpha Leader—had but a single target on his heads-up display. “I’m coming to get you, you know.”

“You just try, flyboy,”
Ohana—Beta Leader—taunted back through their private channel. He could practically hear the smirk on her face in her voice. It only made him want her that much more. Try as he might, though, he couldn’t get a fix on her. Every time he tried, she juked away as if in anticipation of his every move.
“Ha! That the best you got?”

“Whoever said that’s my best is a dirty liar,” Dell retorted. Throttling his Banshee into overdrive and zooming ahead of her, he flipped end over end and sent a volley of laser fire her way.

She laughed as she threw her Banshee into a nimble roll, curling around and throttling up so that suddenly she was chasing him.
“I’ve been called worse. You’re still going to have to do better than that!”

“So are you!” he said, dipping and dodging his way through a hectic volley of laser fire.

“Is it weird that this is making me kind of horny?”

“A little,” he had to admit. Focused as he was on not getting splashed, her ability to compartmentalize so easily did strike him as a bit unusual.

“Whatever. Win, lose, or draw, I’m so jumping your bones after this.”

“Noted.”

“Meantime, though…”
She juked left, then rolled right when he bit.
“You want me so bad, flyboy? Prove it.”
She all but cackled as she clicked off their private channel and dove straight into the heart of the mad scrum.

Damn right he wanted her. More than he cared to admit.

Plunging into the thick of things, Dell chased her through the bursts of laser light fire standing in for live ammunition, deftly weaving through the ever-shifting cloud of Banshees in pursuit of his sometimes lover, sometimes rival. Even in the absence of live ammo, however, the potential for real danger was high as the pilots of Gold Wing vied to outfly, outmaneuver, and—most importantly—outshoot one another. More than once, Dell’s proximity alert beacon warned him off an impending collision with only seconds to correct his course.

“Careful, Alpha Six!” Dell barked, back on the public channel now. “You nearly took a wing off!”

“My bad, AL!”

The timing of his run-in with Alpha Six proved costly. Ohana made the most of Dell’s distraction, executing a flawless skew flip turnover that brought her screaming back toward him, lasers blazing. Acting purely on instinct, Dell dove into a defensive spiral, narrowly avoiding a critical hit. The onboard computer registered one of her shots as a graze. It compensated for the lack of physical damage by handicapping his maneuverability by seven percent. The loss of maneuverability made the spiral that much more difficult to hold, but not impossible. A flurry of laser fire told him Ohana had corrected her course and followed him into the spiral. If he could just hold out for a few more seconds…

“I’ve got Beta Leader in my sights!”
the voice of Alpha Eight informed him.

“Wave off, Alpha Eight,” Dell ordered.

“But AL—”

“I said, wave off!”

“Copy,”
Alpha Eight responded.
“Waving off.”

The surface of Eden Prime’s largest ocean was rapidly approaching, filling the view in his canopy. He was going to have time this just right.

Less than one hundred meters from impact, Dell brought his Banshee out of the dive and fired his thrusters. Climbing steeply, he rapidly overtook Ohana’s own dive in the process. He didn’t have time to properly line up a shot as they passed within firing distance of one another, letting loose a wild volley to no obvious effect.
 

It was when she reached the apex of her chasing climb that Dell swooped in and caught her along her exposed belly with a precisely aimed strafing run.

“Son of a bitch!”
Ohana growled into the public channel as her heads-up display registered a series of critical hits in response to the strafing.
“Beta Two, take point!”

“On it!”

“That proof enough for you?” Dell taunted, tipping his wings as he sped on. With Ohana out of the picture, he knew he had the advantage over virtually everyone remaining. He could take on the rest of Beta Wing practically by himself, if he wanted to.

Except he never got the chance before the emergency recall was sounded.

“Emergency recall!”
Commander Harm’s voice bellowed over the public channel.
“Emergency recall! This is not a drill, repeat, this is not a drill!”

Dell switched to a private channel with
Liberator
. “Commander, this is Gold Leader. What’s going on up there?”

“Enemy fleet just jumped in, a big one.”
Dell could hear the ship’s emergency klaxons calling everyone to battle stations in the background of the closed channel.
“Get your people back up here on the double. We’ll do everything we can to clear a path for you.”

“Copy that, sir. Gold Leader out.” He switched back to the public channel. “Alright, folks, party’s over. We’ve got company upstairs and they don’t look like they came ready to play nice.”

“Gold Wing, form up on Gold Leader, pronto,”
Ohana instructed, automatically assuming the role of his wingman. Under the circumstances, he had no objections.

Gold Wing reached the outer atmosphere of Eden Prime in a matter of moments, her bright blue and white skies giving way to the otherwise empty system surrounding them.

Empty, but for the opposing fleets squaring off several klicks out. The enemy fleet was easily twice, perhaps three times as large as the Irregulars’. They were going to have to hurry.

“Let’s see how fast these babies can really go,” Dell muttered, throttling up to maximum thrust. The rest of Gold Wing followed suit. Soon they were speeding toward their mother vessel at a solid clip.

“Anyone got a make on that fleet?”
Gold Two asked.
“What are we up against here?”

“Some of those are definitely Morgenthau-Hale vessels,”
Ohana replied.

The enemy fleet’s lead vessel signaled the beginning of the battle in earnest when it opened up on
Liberator
with a cannonade of directed plasma fire that could only mean one thing.

“And that plasma means our friends the Tyroshi found us,”
Gold Three said.

“Morgenthau-Hale and the Tyroshi?”
Gold Two said, asking the obvious question.
“Since when are they allies?”

“Lock up the chatter,” Dell ordered. “We’ll talk corporate politics once we’re back aboard. First we’ve got to get there, though, so focus up.”