Dark Tempest

DARK TEMPEST

By MANDA BENSON

LYRICAL PRESS

An imprint of Kensington Publishing Corp.

KENSINGTON PUBLISHING CORP.

 
http://www.kensingtonbooks.com/

Chapter 1

Hijack

Be we not of Steel and Flame,

Of feeble flesh and bone,

With the stars’ pure light as ours to tame,

Surveying our dominion alone.

A deeper mind of infinite sight,

Crafts ice candles in the hungry night,

And we of fractious fear and flight,

Are entertainments for that dust-hewn might.

Our ephemeral strife, against such ancient jest,

Defines our saga: but a mayfly’s quest.

The onset of confusion was so sudden and intense Jed couldn’t remember what she’d been doing beforehand, nor form any speculation on what might have caused it.

She opened her eyes and got to her feet in one silent movement. The dull glow of console lights picked out the flight pattern below the span of the bridge window. Outside, the glittering starfields of the Perseus Arm spread before her like dewdrops in the
Shamrock’s
path. Only the dull murmur of its computer hardware and subluminal engine drive penetrated the ship’s interior.

Something was wrong. She couldn’t remember the course tensors. The atlas data came to her sluggish and vague when she tried to find them, and the
Shamrock
felt numb, like a limb that had been lain on for too long.

Jed pressed her fingers to the metal of the interface crown on her forehead, a thin band of silver circling from temple to temple an inch above her eyebrows. No, her connection was not at fault. The three tines remained in place, as they had been ever since being shot through her skull to bury their dendrites in her frontal lobe.

She went to the starboard side of the bridge’s window arc, and looked back upon the
Shamrock
’s flank, the bronze colour of its Teng steel hull dim in the starlight. The pectoral wing jutted toward the nebulous glow of the galactic center, and way back along the ship’s length, a faint plasma bloomed, a product of subluminal thrust. She saw it, she felt it, but none of the feedback she was receiving confirmed it.

The
Shamrock’s
bridge began to take on hostile dimension. This remote scene could have been anything, and Jed felt no connection to it. This ship could be the
Agrimony
, and she could be standing on it alone, with no control over anything.

Steel and Flame, why could she not work it out? Jed tried to steady her breathing, fighting down a swell of blind panic as all her instincts began to revolt. Her training did not allow her to lose her grip on her own vessel.

She plied the diagnostic computer for a status report on the engine and got no response, not even an error. It was as though the sensors and processing routines involved in the action had ceased to exist, as though a portion of Jed’s mind had been cauterised. The interior systems brought up the same result. At last she managed to trigger a response from the ventilation computer, and only then because its status had changed. The recycling vents in the starboard corridor were overcompensating. Carbon dioxide must be leaking from somewhere.

Jed scoured the
Shamrock’s
readings available to her for signs of a fault, but the data she could access were insufficient to form a conclusion.

She turned to face the distant, alien rear of the bridge. The main corridor beyond lay in Stygian shadow, a sparse line of dim red lights marking each wall. It could just be a burnt-out circuit, she told herself, some part of the interface control array. Or perhaps the ship’s carbon dioxide ballast was leaking, but as far as Jed knew, there was no access point to the ballast system in that location, and already her imagination ran riot.

She reached simultaneously to her belt for her neutron pistol and to the pouch at her side for a half-inch cube of conurin. The bitter, chalky taste made her grimace as she chewed, but already the drug reinforced her perception, heightening her own and the
Shamrock’s
senses.

She advanced to the corridor, one hand guiding her progress along the familiar wall surface, the other tensed and gripping the weapon.

As she passed the equipment store on the approach to the main airlock, Jed smelled a difference in the air. The grate of air through lungs made her start, distant but prominent in the silence of her concentration.

She crossed the corridor, passing the entrance to the equipment store and flattening herself to the wall behind the bulbous escape pod.

An intruder stood there—a male, tall and thinly graven in the weak starlight of the corridor viewport. Clothed in dark material, he had his back to her, hair tied in a silver line down his nape.

An icy terror ran through Jed’s blood, turning her limbs flaccid and heavy, and it took all her resolve to keep herself from falling or letting out a noise. She held herself in against the wall while she tried to regain herself.
Steel and Flame
, she reminded herself,
Steel and Flame
! This was not Mathicur’s way. The thought of Mathicur’s disgust at seeing her respond to this situation so was some reassurance to Jed.

She forced calm, measured breaths. The man had not seen her. If she could shoot him before he saw her she could finish this.

Jed raised her weapon to the still figure in the aft corridor, her concentration unbroken and intense. Her hand shook and the muzzle described crazy patterns in the air.

The scrape of a foot and a rush of air from behind—Jed tried to turn too late. A thick, meaty arm clamped around her neck and she fell backward onto the assailant. She plunged the gun back, but a hand twisted the weapon from her grip and it clattered to the ground. She breathed sharp gulps and strained her eyes to their limits trying to look behind her. The grip around her neck panicked her to the point of wanting to scream herself hoarse and lash out at everything within reach.

The tall man standing by the viewport had turned, and approached.

The man who had seized Jed—he must have been hidden in the equipment store—rearranged his grip roughly to pinion her arms behind her back. Clumsy, thick fingers dug into the insides of her elbows, and a powerful smell of alcohol masked a stench of sweat and urine.

“More there any of you are?” He shook her.

Jed cursed herself for her stupidity, which her training should have overcome had she applied it properly. She, an Archer of the ancient clan
hortica
, had allowed herself to be overpowered by a drunkard who couldn’t even speak properly.

Sliding his IR-UV bifocals from his nose, the tall man scrutinised Jed’s features in the starlight. The grey of his hair and eyes, the whiteness of his skin, and the black of his clothing made a monochrome image in the pallid light. Something distantly aristocratic lay in that countenance of high eyebrows and thin-lipped mouth—a man of the Blood.

“She’s an Archer. One Archer, one ship. Is that right?” When Jed did not answer, the man smiled slightly and said, “I see you speak nearly as well as Taggart here.”

“Shut you up, Wolff!” snarled Jed’s captor. “How know you that an Archer she?”

The man lifted his finger so the tip was a few inches from Jed’s forehead. “This piece of metal is a mind-to-machine interface of the greatest complexity. Only men of the highest Blood lineages can use it, and she’s of the Blood, it’s there to be seen—dark hair, pale skin, grey eyes and the wasted keenness of regular conurin use.”

Jed stared into the man’s face. After all her years of solitude, eye contact with another frightened her. He was bigger than her, he was very much real, and he was in her ship.

“Walk!” snapped the other man, and he dragged Jed about so she was facing back toward the bridge. She stumbled on, arms still restrained by his grip, and searching hopelessly for some flaw in their defense she might exploit.

“Cover her, Wolff,” Jed’s captor ordered the tall man. He handed him a gun and he held it against her right temple. “Now sit there.”

Jed bent her knees and felt for the bridge seating with her hands. The speaker revealed himself to be a squat, ugly-looking man with greasy curls of black hair hanging over his eyes, and a stubbled, heavy jaw. He was not of the Blood. “We kill her, should,” he said, glaring at Jed. She wasn’t sure whether his speech and coordination were attributable to alcohol, or if men of the lower castes typically behaved in this way.

“We can use her, Taggart.” The taller man set down a box and turned away to look at the bridge consoles.

“Ay.” Taggart’s face slowly creased into a lecherous leer. “For something.” He inclined his head, leaning his face forward to where she sat until his eyes were level with hers and his hot breath gusted on her face. Jed did not flinch, but a maelstrom of intimidation and fear started up inside her.

“The Archer’s ship does not work without the Archer!” Wolff pulled Taggart away from Jed by the shoulder. “We have little enough time here as it is.” He threw a sudden glance to the bridge windows.

“Where is the computer?”

“I shall find it.” Wolff handed his gun to Taggart, who pointed it at Jed. Wolff stepped forward to stand in front of the consoles. To Jed’s surprise and scorn, he bowed deeply before them, lowering his head almost to the level of his knees, but this didn’t compare to her alarm when she felt the
Shamrock
respond to him in a subtle, unfamiliar way.

“It’s here.” Wolff pointed to the access panel underneath the consoles.

Jed tensed as the shorter man glanced at the sloping consoles, beneath which the core of the hardware lay, the gun remaining in his hand and pointed at her. What he might do to the
Shamrock
could be worse, by far, than anything he could do to Jed herself. Within a few seconds Wolff had a panel off and was wiring in an interface unit. Flickers of rogue code ran through Jed’s ship.

The shorter man frowned. “It’s not responding. Sort it out, Wolff!”

Wolff bowed to the
Shamrock
again, and with a rising anger, Jed cancelled out whatever it was he was commanding it to do. The
Shamrock’s
senses were still not responding, but its mind remained hers.

“What are you doing, Wolff? I thought computers liked you said?”

Wolff’s shoulders gave way to a disparaging sigh. “It’s her.” He pointed casually at Jed, and Taggart’s hand and the gun’s muzzle drifted out a fraction as he turned toward Wolff. Jed sprang from her seat and threw herself at his Wolff’s back, putting his body between herself and Taggart’s gun. Her fingernails dug into his neck and she held onto him as he turned, using his motion to add force to a backward kick, catching the shorter man hard in the diaphragm with her heel. He doubled up and fell to his knees, wheezing.

The tall man had picked something up. He swung it over his shoulder and it struck the side of her head. Jed lost her grip and felt the jarring impact of her shoulder against the floor, before consciousness departed.