Polaris (18 page)

“WHAT IS IT?
JETH
, WHAT IS IT?”

He pulled away from the Axis and the chaos of thoughts in his head. He looked back at his mother, realizing she must have read the alarm on his face. “The ITA is here. They're putting the spaceport under lockdown.” He swung around and headed for the cockpit, adrenaline fueling his focus. “We've got to get out of here.”

“What are you doing?” his mother shrieked. “We need to get off this ship.”

Jeth looked back at her, mouth agape. “We'll escape on
Avalon
.”

“We can't.” Marian seized Cora's hand and began dragging her toward the door. “
Polaris
is stocked and fueled. We won't survive on
Avalon
.”

“I'm not leaving her behind. The ITA will impound her.” Once that happened, he would never get her back. He dove for the pilot's chair, determination blinding him, but he froze halfway as pain lanced through his skull.

He was powerless to stop it as Dax's mind filled his own.
Get out of here on
Polaris.
Finish the job.

Jeth tried to fight it, but the control of the Axis was too
strong. It wasn't like before—this was not a suggestion, but sheer dominance. Dax was willing him to obey, and he was too strong for Jeth to resist.

The moment he turned away from the cockpit, the pain eased and he regained control of himself.
Lizzie,
he thought through the Axis. By now she would be in a lift on her way to Sector 1. She might even be there already. It would take an eternity for her to get back.

I've got Lizzie and Milton,
Dax replied at once.
I'll hide them in the Underground. They'll be fine. Now go!

Once again, Jeth wanted to protest, but the Axis made it impossible. He gave in, telling himself that Dax would keep his word. The underground network of hidden passages and rooms inside Peltraz were vast, vital as they were to Dax's smuggling operations. The ITA could look for years and never find them.

Clinging to this surety, Jeth raced toward the door after his mother and Cora, stopping only long enough to grab his duffel. He whispered a quick good-bye to
Avalon
as he hurried down the ladder to the cargo bay and out into the spaceport. He didn't bother locking the door behind him. A lock wouldn't keep the ITA out.

No alarm was sounding in the spaceport, but a loud, mechanical voice echoed through the corridor: “By order of the Interstellar Transport Authority, under command of Admiral Saar, all travel to and from Peltraz Spaceport is hereby suspended. Repeat, all travel is suspended. The spaceport is under lockdown. . . .”

Jeth tuned out the voice as he sped down the corridor toward Dock 9, keeping pace with Marian and Cora. Sierra stood waiting for them by the open door into
Polaris
.

“I don't know how they found us,” she said as they came on board.

“Saar embedded tracer code in
Avalon
's nav system while we were on Nuvali,” Jeth said between pants.

Already pale, Sierra blanched whiter still. “I should've known.”

Jeth touched her arm, all the comfort he had time to give her. Through the Axis, he knew that the ITA was almost in landing range. They would have to fight their way out.

While Sierra sealed and locked the cargo bay door, Jeth headed for the ladder. A wave of vertigo swept over him as he went. This was the first Black Devil he'd ever been inside that wasn't
Avalon.
The similarities were strange, the differences shocking, almost offensive.

There was no denying that
Polaris
was far newer and in better condition than
Avalon
. Even the cargo bay was immaculate. No exposed wires hung from the ceiling, no water stains from busted pipes. The brig, located in the same position as
Avalon
's, was made of electrified glass instead of old-fashioned plasinum bars. Not that Jeth could see much of it. Barrels and crates, all carefully stacked and aligned, filled most of the bay from floor to ceiling. There were enough supplies in here to last a full crew six months in open space.

He should've been relieved at such a bounty, but all he
could think about was
Avalon
, abandoned and exposed only meters down from them.

Moments later, he arrived on the bridge. Aileen was in the pilot's chair with Remi sitting copilot beside her. There was no sign of Flynn, although Jeth was certain he was on board. Also on board were Perry and Eric, the former at the comm station and the latter at the nav. Jeth's stomach did a hard dip at Eric's presence. He hadn't realized he would be coming, too. He'd thought most of the slots would be Aileen's crew, but it seemed she either didn't have a full crew or they'd been caught away from the ship, same as Lizzie.

Jeth scanned the view beyond the main windows of the cockpit, unsure what to do with himself when he wasn't in charge. A line of ITA battleships hovered in the distance. Most of them were standard cruisers, except for one off to the right. Jeth had never seen a ship of its kind before. It was a massive dark-blue beast easily three times the size of the cruisers, and mounted with enough firepower to level cities. Jeth guessed it was the flagship of this ITA armada.
Saar's ship
.

“We're loose,” Perry said. “Get us out of here.”

Jeth strode over to the cockpit as Aileen began to pilot them out of the dock. “Shouldn't we be manning the guns? Or does this piece of crap not have any?”

Aileen made a noise deep in her throat. “We don't need guns for this. Just watch.”

Jeth gripped the back of her chair. “What are you going to do, sneak in between them?”

“Yep.” Aileen reached toward the pilot's control panel and engaged a switch to a system he didn't recognize. Seconds later he realized it was a cloak drive, of the type they'd been trying to buy for months.

“Easy now,” Perry said. “If you go too fast they'll see us.”

“I know,” Aileen said, glancing over her shoulder. “Anybody else want to backseat drive?”

“I'd like to front seat drive,” said Jeth.

Aileen scowled back at him. “I've got it, thanks.”

“We'll see.”

Sierra, who'd arrived a few seconds after Jeth, came to stand beside him. “What if the ITA was watching when you engaged the cloak? They might be monitoring all the ships by now.”

Aileen shook her head. “I'm willing to bet they're only concerned with
Avalon
at the moment.”

Jeth gritted his teeth, suspecting she was right. He probed the Axis, searching for information. Dax would have a better idea of what was happening. Sure enough, he saw that Saar's flagship was scanning
Avalon
at this very moment, searching for life signs. What would happen when they didn't read any?

“I think we'd better cover the guns,” Sierra said.

Aileen snorted. “I find your lack of faith disturbing.”

Sierra pointed out the window. “That ship is closing in on our position.”

Jeth followed the line of her finger, and sure enough one of the cruisers was flying toward them. It wasn't moving
at attack speed, but Jeth couldn't think of a single reason why it would be moving at all, unless someone had spotted their disappearance when Aileen engaged the cloak. And the closer they came to the cloaked the ship, the more likely Polaris's movements would show up on a scanner or radar.

“Slow us down, Aileen,” Jeth said.

“No, I've got to stay ahead of it. So long as we're steady it won't matter.”

“It's too fast,” said Sierra. She turned toward Jeth, a silent communication passing between them.

Aileen began to curse under her breath, the cruiser closing in faster now. “It can't know where we are. It's groping in the dark.”

Jeth winced at the way her voice shook—uncertainty not a comforting sign from the person piloting their escape attempt. Jeth considered just booting her out of the chair, but doubted his chances of success. Not with Remi sitting there, silent and hulking.

He turned to Sierra, touching her arm. “Can you jailbreak the proximity restrictor on the metadrive like we did at Nuvali?”

“Yeah, of course,” Sierra said, coming to the same conclusion that he had—the collateral damage to the ITA ships was worth it. Hell, Jeth thought he would even enjoy it.

“What are you talking about?” Marian said. She and Cora had been standing near the back, watching the scene unfold. “Even if you disable it you can't jump with so many ships in range.”

Sierra glanced at her. “Yes, we can. We did it at Nuvali.”

Marian's eyes widened then narrowed. “You got lucky then.
Very
lucky. The jump should've torn the ship apart. The only reason why it wouldn't have—” She broke off, her eyes flicking to Cora. She turned back to Jeth. “Let's try to escape with the stealth drive first before we risk it.”

Jeth gritted his teeth, wanting to argue, but he recognized that hard look on his mother's face. He glanced at Cora. Marian did know a lot more about Pyreans and metatech. If there was a danger, maybe it was best to make jumping now a last resort.

“I'll take the crow guns,” Jeth said, announcing it to the ship at large.

“I've got chase.” Sierra turned and headed toward the door while Jeth lowered the ladder to the crow's nest.

“Eric, you get starboard,” said Perry. “I'll get port.”

Jeth climbed the ladder into the crow's nest and sat down in the single seat. He switched on the guns, drawing comfort from the subtle electronic-mechanical sound as they began to heat up. Inwardly though, he hoped Aileen would keep it together, avoiding detection by the cruiser. A sly getaway would be better. Any fun he might've gleaned in a dog fight was cancelled out by the worries pressing in on him, about Lizzie and Milton, even Shady and Celeste, who had vanished to parts unknown inside Peltraz. If Dax had kept tabs on them, there was no indication on the Axis.

Jeth scanned the radar screen, his heart quickening as he realized there would be nothing sly about this escape. Two
more cruisers were closing in on their position, each from a different direction. Between the three of them, they would soon be able to detect
Polaris
's movements.

“Can't we use that weird blue-beamed weapon you hit us with on
Avalon
?” Jeth said through the comm.

“I wish,” said Aileen. “The Disrupter can't be used while cloaked, and it's a single shot. Takes minutes to recharge.”

Damn,
Jeth thought.
Stupid technology with its stupid limitations.

Sierra's voice broke in. “Nobody fire anything unless pressed. We'll be harder to follow cloaked if we don't keep giving our location away.”

Jeth expected Aileen to countermand the directive, but she didn't. The next second, she dropped
Polaris
into a hard dip, sending them below the current path of the incoming cruisers.

Jeth expelled all the breath in his lungs. The ITA must have detected the movement, the cruisers following after them with too much precision. He wrapped his hands around the crow guns but waited to fire. Sierra was right. The ITA would have a much harder time following them if they had only the scanner to rely on and not their eyes. Gunfire would create a target line.

Any second now,
he thought, bracing for the inevitable. But Aileen proved a more skilled pilot than he gave her credit for. She slowed them down hard at the end of the dip, nearly to a complete stop. The drop in speed rendered them invisible to the ITA cruisers again. Aileen held that pace until one of the cruisers was nearly on top of them, and then she
wheeled
Polaris
starboard into a hard spin and then up.

Over and over again, she played cat and mouse with the cruisers. She stayed close enough that they couldn't risk firing without hitting one another. It was effective for keeping them safe, but Jeth knew they couldn't keep it up forever or the rest of the fleet would be on them. They had to make a jump, risk be damned.

Do it,
Dax's command echoed through the Axis. Jeth winced. He hadn't even realized that he'd had his thoughts open to the Axis. Not that it would've mattered if he hadn't. Perry and Eric had heard the command, too.

Let me handle this,
Jeth said to them both through the link. Eric started to protest, but Perry's support held him back.

Jeth switched on the comm, signaling down to the chase guns. “You got me, Sierra?”

“Yes,” she came back at once.

“Jailbreak the metadrive. We've got to risk it. Tell my mother.”

“All right.” Determination hardened her voice.

Jeth switched off the comm and focused out the window once more. But a moment later the video screen on the control panel in front of him flashed into life. He stared down at it, brow furrowing.

The ITA emblem appeared on the screen and then cut to a man's face. Admiral Saar stared back at Jeth with his cold, dark eyes—small and snakelike. Deadly. Saar couldn't really see him, Jeth knew—this was just an incoming message, not a full comm link—but his heart rate ticked higher and
higher as fear began to spread through him. Once again, he saw Vince falling, blood blooming over his chest, the light in his eyes vanishing.

Saar began to speak. “This is Admiral David Saar of the Interstellar Transport Authority. We are seeking known fugitive Jethro Seagrave.” Saar paused, his expression going colder, if that were even possible. A ghost of a smile haunted his skeletal face. The silver tentacles of his implant only emphasized his thinness. He leaned closer to the screen, dropping the formality. “I know you are listening, Jethro. And I know you have what it is I'm truly after. Give it up now and I will spare your life as I did not spare your friend's.”

Hatred, as black as the space beyond the window, unfurled inside Jeth. Saar's speech was as much gloat as threat.