Treasure of Light (The Light Trilogy) (7 page)

When the tube stopped, Neil ran out onto the bridge into the midst of a half-dozen panicked officers all talking at once. Overhead, a three hundred and sixty degree monitor flashed data from every part of the ship.

Rich Macey, the red-haired communications officer, bent over his terminal, shouting, “Simons? Fritz?
Somebody
answer me! Transportation? What the hell’s going on down there?”

“Where’s Tahn?” Neil shouted into the melee, but no one paid him the slightest attention. “Goddamn it! Find your captain first. Nobody else matters now! Baruch’s responsible and we’ve got to …”

The door to the bridge snapped open and Halloway, panting from exertion, hauled Tahn into the room—he looked ill, staggering in her arms. His purple uniform clung to his muscular body in wrinkled bloody folds.

“Tahn!” Neil shouted. “What’s happening?”

Halloway eased her captain into his command chair before rushing for her nav console. Tahn struggled to keep himself sitting upright. “Ship’s status, Lieutenant?” he called to Macey.

“We—we don’t know, sir. We can’t—”

Neil stepped forward. “Is it true?” he demanded, bracing his hands on Tahn’s chair arms to stare wild-eyed into Cole’s tortured face. His gut tightened as he noted the vastly different sizes of the captain’s pupils.
“Is Baruch aboard?”

Tahn squinted, trying to focus on him. “What the hell are you doing here? Get off my bridge!”

“I want to know if he—”

The alert sirens went deadly quiet and the blood drained from Dannon’s head, making him feel faint.

With sudden dread, Tahn gazed around the bridge. “No … he can’t have—”

Yes, he can.
The truth made Neil sick unto death. He released the chair arms and straightened. Jeremiel had this ship. Dannon tingled from shock. So the crew in Engineering was dead. Jeremiel’s next move would be to tap into the Master Engineer’s damage control override circuitry, rerouting all major functions of the ship to his own console. The override programming stood as the fundamentally weak link of all C-J class cruisers. Through that system, one man could kill the rest of the ship.

But, no, no. Don’t think it! Tahn would find a way of incapacitating Engineering. It would be four against over three thousand trained Magisterial soldiers. Jeremiel may have captured the vessel, but he couldn’t hold it. All they had to do was bide their time until they could smoke him out. A giddy feeling of relief wound through him. Yes, they’d pry him out in the end. Baruch couldn’t hold a ship this large with a strike force so small.

“Captain!” Macey yelled shrilly. “I’ve—I’ve got decompression readings from all over the ship. We—”

“Gas Engineering!”

Halloway’s fingers fluttered over her console. Her voice came out strained, quiet. “Can’t. He’s rerouted control.”

“Bypass!”

“… Can’t.”

“Oh, God!” Neil screamed hysterically. Decompression wasn’t a part of Operation Abba! Jeremiel was evening the numbers! With all the locks open, he could completely decompress the ship in less than five minutes. He lunged for Tahn, shouting,
“He’s taken your ship. You fool! You let him take your ship!
You should have known he’d—”

Tahn pushed up to sway erratically on his feet. He slammed a powerful right cross into Neil’s mouth. Stunned and in pain, Dannon staggered backward, sobbing as he hit the floor. Jeremiel would kill him! From the corner of his eye, he saw Halloway’s hands flying over her console. She’d pulled up the cryptography library and frantically sought to delete file after file. The idiot! Couldn’t she see the pattern? She was already too late! He saw her screen flare,
Access Denied.
She tried something else.
Unauthorized entry.
Her fingers tapped another possible sequence.
Can’t retrieve clandestine files from this access route.
She made a deep guttural sound of frustration and slammed a fist repeatedly into her console. Then, in a violent move, she reached beneath her console and ripped a panel down, then fumbled with another card. The long-range communications link? Clever, it might take Jeremiel a few hours to figure it out—maybe longer if he got overwhelmed with problems. But would anybody out there be trying to reach them?

Someone screamed and Neil’s gaze riveted on the forward screen. Bodies tumbled from the
Hoyer,
scattering in the blackness of space like bloody ghouls just escaped from Aktariel’s legendary pit of darkness. They tumbled end over end, contorted faces seeming to stare directly in at those on board, pleading even in death for help.

Desperately, Dannon crawled for the nearest suit locker and jerked one out. He swiftly slipped into it.

“Halloway …” Tahn whispered, face ashen. “Carey … estimate casualties?”

“Approximately two thousand, seven hundred and fifty.”

“Which level did he seal. Seven?”

“Aye, sir.”

Of course, he’d sealed seven! Dannon slammed a fist into the floor at their stupidity. Cruisers possessed between thirty-three and thirty-four hundred crew members. Jeremiel might need those science specialists—but the others represented excess, armed baggage. Tahn slumped in his chair, body going slack; his head lolled back as he mumbled incoherently. Delusions?

“Captain?” Macey said, on the verge of tears. “What’s happening?”

On the screen, dozens of planetary ships surged toward the
Hoyer
and Neil abruptly understood Jeremiel’s plan. He’d adapted Operation Abba to make room for the refugees fleeing the destruction of Horeb. The scorch attack would have initiated a series of horrifying chain reactions. Soon, the planet would be writhing beneath major climatic upheavals.
That would give Jeremiel a ship full of loyal Gamants to do his bidding and they’d methodically search every inch of the
Hoyer
until they found him!

“Macey,” Tahn ordered. “Get me Engineering.”

Neil pushed back against the wall, shielding himself behind a console. The forward screen flared to life. Jeremiel’s hard blue eyes stared out at Tahn. He looked just as he had six months ago, blond hair and beard neatly trimmed. Dannon shivered involuntarily. His best friend for fifteen years….

“Baruch,” Tahn said. “Let’s talk.”

“I’m listening.”

At the sound of Jeremiel’s deep voice, Neil shrank in upon himself, soul withering. Happy, hurtful memories whirled out of the blackness of his liquor-laced mind. He felt like he’d been gutted.

Tahn shifted in his command chair, voice unsteady. “I should think… telling you we surrender is a Little redundant, but if you need to hear it—”

“I don’t.”

Neil got on his stomach and slithered across the floor, taking a path he knew lay below the visual range. He saw Halloway’s cold green eyes leveled on him, brimming with disgust. He headed for the door to the bridge conference room. From there, he could duck into one of the air shafts and when Jeremiel repressurized the ship, he could head for the tangled guts of the
Hoyer.
No one could easily find him there.

He heard Tahn ask, “What can I do to … save the lives of the rest of my crew?”

Jeremiel responded tiredly, “I want your cooperation. The people I’m bringing aboard are able, but not trained. Tell your science division to school my people and I guarantee I’ll put you off alive and well on the nearest Gamant planet.”

“I’m not sure that’ll be doing us a favor … but we’ll manage.”

Neil reached up and palmed the entry to the conference room, then scrambled inside and pounded the patch to close the door.

“Calm down!” He smoothed his black hair away from his eyes with shaking hands. “Jeremiel can’t hold the ship. Even after killing eighty percent of the crew, he’s going to have a hell of a time battling Tahn for control.”

He fought to force his breathing to return to normal. “All you have to do is hide long enough for Tahn to take his ship back.”

Locking his helmet down, he got to his feet and ran around the long table. Jerking off the air duct panel, he scrambled inside.

Harper put down the gold circlet of his com headset and watched Jeremiel cut the connection with the bridge. Baruch looked dead tired, drained of every ounce of energy that had kept them alive over the past few days. His blue eyes had gone dull, lifeless. He propped a trembling fist on the white console.

“Avel,” he said tensely. “I have to go meet the incoming
samaels.
There are two things I need you to do. First, I’ve set the ship’s scanners on maximum. All you have to do is use this board to search the polar ice cap for life. If you get confused, ask the ship, she’ll help guide you.
I want to know if Rachel’s still alive.”

“I understand,” Harper responded. “If she is, I’ll dispatch a
samael
immediately to get her.”

Just before Horeb’s civil war had flared, Baruch had sent Rachel Eloel in, undercover, to kill Horeb’s leader, the Mashiah Adom Kemar Tartarus. The Mashiah had taken Rachel to the polar ice cap just as the first battles began. She’d completed her mission the same day, killing Tartarus while he was in the middle of a broadcast to bolster his flagging troops in Seir—Harper and Jeremiel had seen the holo film of Rachel stabbing Tartarus in the chest. But no one had any idea what had happened to her afterward.

“Good,” Jeremiel continued. “Second, use a narrow beam transmission. Aim for somewhere around Pitbon. See if you can contact my fleet. If so, tell Rudy Kopal we’ve got another battle cruiser for him. Ask him to meet us at Tikkun.”

“I will.”

Harper watched Baruch go to the closest vacuum-suit locker and suit up. Though he’d begun repressurizing the decks, it would take another two hours to completely restore the life systems. Harper saw Jeremiel disappear into the dark hallway beyond and turned back to his console. He input a series of basic “search” commands and waited. A grid of the polar cap appeared on his screen, showing clearly the distinct topography of ice ridges and windswept plains. A barren foreboding place, the temperatures dropped to as much as a hundred below zero at this time of year.

“Oh, Rachel,” he murmured. “Be all right.”

While the ship searched for her, Harper accessed the communications panel again. He’d already assigned his most experienced people—refugees from the civil war and damned fine fighters—to land first and secure the bays. Two ships,
samaels,
were easing in now. They settled like feathers on the white tiles.

“Klausen? This is Harper. Be careful when you step out of that ship. Baruch suspects that another hundred soldiers managed to suit up before the decompression. They’re probably waiting for you.”

A pause. Then, “Affirmative, Harper. We’ll be ready for them.”

Harper looked back to the vast wasteland of ice and blue shadows at the pole. Bitter glacial winds swirled over the surface, kicking snow up to the dark star-strewn skies.

“Be alive, Rachel. We need you. We …”

He leaned forward suddenly. A red dot flared on the screen and began to flash. Harper let out a whoop of exultation.

“Got her!”

CHAPTER 5

Fitful, frightening dreams tormented Rachel Eloel. Wind shrieked around the ice cave where she lay, filtering through the narrow entrance to crust her white weather-suit and long black hair with snow. Half-conscious, she felt the fatal fingers of wind stroke her face in ghostly patterns. Her arms and legs had grown too numb to move.

She whimpered obliviously. Adom’s image came again, smiling innocently down at her, filled with love. Shining blond hair streamed over his broad shoulders. That vision soon melted into another—terrifying in its clarity. They stood in the depths of the polar chambers, watching battle scenes from the civil war rage across the wide screen. Adom turned and when he saw the knife lifted over her head, he backed away, stumbling into the screen.

“No,” he said softly, “Rachel, no….”

She plunged the knife deeply into his chest. Blood spattered his ivory robe in an irregular starburst. He sank to the floor, gazing up with all the tenderness, the boyish innocence that had always ravaged her heart.

“Rachel….” A red froth bubbled at his lips. “Hold me?”

She’d dropped to her knees and gathered him in her arms. “Adom, forgive me.”
Forgive me… forgive me….

Even in sleep, tears drained from her eyes to crust on her lashes. She rolled her head to the side, sending icy locks of waist-length hair slithering over the gritty floor like frosted serpents. Adom had never shown her anything but kindness and love—and she’d betrayed both. Ornias, Adom’s High Councilman, had promised revenge and she’d fled into the vast glacial wilderness of the pole, following the lee of the icy cliffs until she found the cave and took shelter. And she’d had strange, strange dreams of talking to God—Epagael—and of being visited by the wicked angel, Aktariel.

Dreams. Just the fantasies of a dying mind.

Somewhere, through the mists of sleep, she heard a soft footfall and felt herself float upward into a golden shimmering haze. The sounds of the chilling polar cap vanished as though they’d never existed and light played across her closed eyelids, fluttering, misty, moving, bathing her in heat. Her frozen limbs ached miserably for a time, then felt as though a million needles pricked them. After an eternity of pain and cold, warmth began to seep inside her and she fell deeper asleep, floating, just floating in the immeasurable ocean of light.