Treasure of Light (The Light Trilogy) (76 page)

An incapacitating rush of fear and sorrow brought tears to Rachel’s eyes.
Sybil. My baby.
She folded her arms tightly over her aching breast.

Tahn glanced at the com, then back to the
Hoyer.
He chewed his fist in indecision, then lunged for the patch. He quickly input a long sequence—scrambled? Secret?

In a voice as confident as God’s Himself, he said,
“Carey? One-eighty. Dive. DIVE!”

Carey stood nervelessly on the bridge, smoke choking her lungs, making her eyes stream with tears. All of her crew except Dannon lay strewn across the deck, probably dead. Dannon sat at his console like a tall, haze-enveloped statue.

Carey coughed, on the verge of retching. Smoke roiled so thickly she couldn’t see the forward screen. She stumbled back, falling into the command chair.

“Neil?” she choked. “Status?”

“Forward shields….” he coughed violently. “Holding!”

A brief thread of hope wound through her—then she heard the crackle of fire. Spinning in her chair, she saw a mass of flames spreading like a marmalade wall toward her, so hot it ran in a wave over the fireproof carpet, swallowing everything.

Oh, blessed God, we’re dead. Dead!
She’d been holding off, hoping some of the people on the floor still lived. “Neil!” She gasped a hoarse breath. “Helmet! I’m going to depressurize.”

With lightning speed, he reached down to the floor and gripped his helmet, fastening it on his head. Carey did the same and instantly decompressed the bridge. The swift sucking sound would have been deafening if not for the protection of their helmets.

Carey gasped deep breaths of the sterile, life-support air, watching the smoke disappear in a wash.
Now those people are gone.
Through bleary eyes, she saw Dannon fall forward over his console, coughing so hard he couldn’t straighten up. When he could, he shouted, “Carey! Shield two failing. Shall I divert power from weapons?”

She stared blindly at the screen. Purple arcs obscured their vision of other vessels. Suicide—either way. Without both forward shields, the
Hoyer
would be devoured. Without full power to the weapons, they’d be pushed back, back until their shields died anyway.

She started laughing, a rich slightly insane laugh. “Do you prefer it quick or slow, Dannon?”

He gave her a wild stare, then, as her meaning dawned, a smile crept over his face. “I’ve never liked things to drag out.”

She laughed harder, until she felt physically ill. He laughed with her, shaking his head. When the laughter began to change, to become husky with tears, she forced herself to stop.

“Dannon? You’re a hell of a fine officer,” she called. “Thanks.”

His smile faded, dark eyes wet and wide. “You, too, Lieutenant. Sorry we couldn’t have served together under different circumstances.” In a forlorn voice, he quipped, “So much for angels.”

“Indeed. Indeed!”

“By the way, what was that tete-a-tete he had with you when nobody could hear?”

She swallowed, taking a breath. It couldn’t possibly hurt to tell anybody now. “He told me to be kind to Jeremiel. That he’d been hurt enough.”

Dannon held her gaze for a second, then bowed his head, turning his face away so she couldn’t see his expression. He fumbled purposelessly with the petrolon frame of his console. “I knew there was something between you two.”

“Something much too brief,” she said through a long exhalation.

“Well,” he said barrenly. “I’m sorry God wasn’t on our side. Maybe if he had been you could have ….”

As though in a dream, Cole’s voice boomed all over the ship, deep, commanding:
“Carey? One-eighty. Dive. DIVE!”

She sat unmoving. He wanted her to back out of the maneuver, to swing behind the cruiser on their flank, using it as cover while they escaped. The other Underground vessels would have to provide covering fire to keep themselves alive. They were all dead anyway, but…. Her captain had given her an order.

“Dannon?” She sat up straight. “One-eighty. We’ll—”

“Negative!”

“What?” she demanded. “Do it!”

He laughed softly, as though truly amused by himself. “Negative. I know those people out there. Together we still have a slim chance of winning. Not much, I’ll grant you, but some.”

“But they hate you!”

“Well, that doesn’t really matter, does it? I still love them.”

“Neil, we can break free if we—”

“I’ve never felt more free than right now, Lieutenant.” He gave her an insolent smile and swung back around to his console.

Carey started to rise, to challenge him for the com, but a strong gentle voice penetrated her emotional haze. Almost as though she lay in his arms again, she could feel the tender movements of Jeremiel’s hands over her bare back, see the serious look in his blue eyes….
It means being free to fight for a cause you know is right, to fight with all your heart without ever expecting….

She’d never disobeyed Cole. “Belay that last order, Dannon. I think I understand.”

“Do you?” he asked. He gave her a flamboyant look, dark brows arching villainously.

“Yes.”

“Good. Then maybe you’ll understand this, too. I don’t need you here. It only takes one to handle this focused maneuver. Get out. Access one of the pods. Shove as many people in it as you can and go.”

Her heart began a painful staccato against her ribs. “Negative. I’m staying.”

“Get out, damn it! I’m telling you I don’t need you or anybody to carry this off! If you can get down to Transportation, you might be able to save everybody who’s still alive. I seriously doubt Jeremiel had time to teach the Gamants aboard about desperate emergency mechanisms like pods.”

“Neil, I’m not going to leave you to—”

“Blast you, Carey! There’s not a chance in hell that those cruisers will divert firepower to kill a jettisoned pod.
You might make it!
Go. I can hold the ship by myself. At least, as long as she
can
be held.”

He gazed at her through warm confident eyes. Through his helmet visor, she could see black hair hanging in drenched wisps over his pale face. Carey got out of her chair and walked to stand behind him, gazing at the forward screen. Waves of purple lanced shield two; it fluctuated wildly. It would be gone soon—and they’d be dead.

“Negative,” she said. “If I stay, that increases both our chances for survival. But I appreciate the offer.”

She lowered a friendly hand to his shoulder and he caught her completely by surprise. She was stunned by how quickly he pivoted, knocking her to the floor, his powerful body pinning her arms. She saw his hand flash over her helmet and felt, with a shock, the air vanish. She writhed against him, slashing out with her hands, trying to… to…

Cole slammed a fist into the wall. “Damn it, Carey. What are you doing? Dive!”

“She can’t,” Rachel murmured. She watched the screen through moist eyes. “When she switched sides, she meant it.”

He propped a fist against the portal. He felt as if he teetered on the edge of a precipice, about to lose everything that had ever meant anything to him. His ship, his best friend, his crew. “But the chances of them surviving are next to nothing.”

“She knows that. Everyone aboard will understand … except the … the children.”

Cole leaned his head against the wall. He looked down into Rachel’s dazed, hurt expression and he felt if he stayed in the shuttle another minute, he’d start screaming. More than that, he couldn’t bear to see the
Hoyer’s
death happen before his very eyes. He glanced one final time at the cruisers locked in a death duel and headed for the side door of the shuttle.

Stepping down to the wet leaf-strewn carpet of the forest, he sank back against the hull of the ship. He felt so empty, so barren inside himself he wondered what the future could possibly hold. A neuro center if they caught him. But he wasn’t going to let them capture him. And then, there were things he could do if they did, to keep himself out of the centers. He shook his head. He and Rachel would make a run for it, all right, but just where they’d go he hadn’t the slightest idea.
Well, you’d damn well better think about it.

“Soon,” he promised himself. He gazed at the dark forest around him. Mist twined through the autumn-dusted branches. The damp night air brushed his face with coolness.

Footsteps sounded inside the ship. He saw Rachel step down and sit on the gangplank—a strategic location—she could see him, Baruch, and the holo in the command cabin.

“Cole,” she said hollowly. “I just wanted to thank you. Gamant civilization can never—”

“Stop it, Rachel.” He thrust an arm out at the heavens. “If I’d been up there instead of down here,
I guarantee you
your daughter and my. …” He stopped seeing pain glaze her eyes. Guilt swelled in his gut. “I would have gotten the hell out of there, that’s all.”

“I know you would have. You don’t owe the Underground anything. I think Halloway believes she does.” In a voice violent in its softness, she said, “God’s to blame for all this. He enjoys our suffering.” She reached into her pocket and pulled out a dull gray ball on a long golden chain.

“What is that?” he said.

“A token from the pit of darkness. Actually, it belongs to Jeremiel….” She stopped and laughed softly, bitterly, as though chastising herself. “I wish I’d never laid eyes on it.”

She held it out to him and he took it. A faint blue light lit the center, as though some entity inside were probing him. Rachel sucked in a startled breath. Cole felt oddly hollow, cold. The light vanished almost as soon as it had appeared.

Tahn studied the stiffness of Rachel’s posture, the square set of her jaw, then he shifted his gaze to the fog twining in the tops of the trees. “Well—I’m astounded that after seeing what’s been happening on Tikkun you can still believe in a God. If He is up there, He certainly isn’t a friend of ours. Though, who knows, maybe He’s on the Magistrates’ side.” He glowered uncertainly at the
Mea.

Rachel nodded, twisting her hands. “Would you end the suffering, if you could?”

“Hell, yes.”

“No matter what it took?”

He shrugged, but he noticed how intently she watched him, as though hanging on his next words. He reconsidered the offhand remark he had been going to make. “It would depend on what ending it entailed.”

“If you could end it all—at once—in a moment.” She threw up her arms in a gesture of absolute and total annihilation. “Would you?”

“You mean would I destroy the entire universe to end it? Well, that’s one I’d have to think about for awhile.”

“I think about it all the time.” An eerie calm had possessed her—as though the probable death of her daughter had snuffed all the light in her life.

He frowned. “Do you think the universe should die to kill suffering?”

She tucked her fingers beneath her arms to protect them from the damp chill of the mist. Rocking back and forth slowly, she answered, “I don’t know.”

“Block 10 makes you wonder though, doesn’t it? How could a beneficent God allow such a place to exist?”

“Block 10 is proof enough that God isn’t beneficent.” Her olive skin turned a dull clay color. She wet her lips anxiously and looked up at him. “Do you regret helping us?”

With the toe of his boot, he turned over a clutter of dead leaves, watching their red and green edges shimmer in the light cast by the shuttle. “No, Rachel, I don’t regret a single moment of it.”

She started to say something, but she jerked around suddenly, looking at the holo. “Come on,” she whispered. Getting to her feet, she ran for the command cabin.

He shoved the
Mea
in his pocket and leaped into the shuttle behind her—fearing what he’d see—knowing the duel had gone on too long. Somebody’s shields must have failed, or their systems overloaded. A brilliant flash lit the cabin. He shielded his eyes, stopping in the entryway. Two Underground ships exploded, leaving Carey completely open. He watched in horror as the
Hoyer
dove, but not for the planet. It hurtled straight forward into the line of Magisterial vessels. In a moment of disbelief and desperation, the government vessels shifted their fire to the
Hoyer.
The remaining three Underground vessels shot out and away, accelerating for vault, vanishing into the blackness of space.

Cole forced a swallow down his dry throat. Kopal knew a sacrifice move when he saw it—Carey’d just saved the lives of a few thousand Gamant soldiers.

Tahn watched with tears in his eyes as the
Hoyer
exploded, the splash of light so enormous and violent, he knew instantly what Carey had done. Curiously, he studied the mini supernova that spread over the dark skies of Tikkun. Light rolled out in blinding waves, consuming every remaining Magisterial vessel in its wake. Carey had pushed the engines, nursed them until she knew one or more of the singularities was on the verge of evaporation. Then she’d made her move.

“Get down!” he ordered. Grabbing a stunned Rachel, he pushed her to the floor, covering her body with his own. The shock wave struck the planet like a roaring fist. The ground shuddered, tossing the shuttle back and forth before it ceased.