“What is happening?” Queen Steelflower demanded of the nearest guard.
“I do not know,” he replied truthfully.
“Find out,” Steelflower snapped, her Consort coming forward to her side.
The note of the alarm changed. Pilots to the dart bays. The ship was going to full battle alert.
A young blade of Queen Death’s, his hair pulled back in a single white braid, came hurrying into the chamber.
“What treachery is this?” Guide snapped. “We have come aboard your ship in good faith, and now you are attacking our ship!”
“We have done no such thing!” the blade replied. “It is the Lanteans! It is the warship of She Who Carries Many Things.”
“We will return to our ship immediately,” Steelflower said.
The blade swallowed. “I cannot allow that,” he said.
Steelflower drew herself up, her eyes fixed upon his. “Am I your prisoner then?”
His mouth opened and then shut. “No,” he said. “At least I do not think…”
“Then you will stand aside and allow me and my consort to return to our ship,” she said, and did not take her gaze from his.
Another blade approached, his steps swift on the floor. “Ardent, what are you doing?” His mind was hooded, his resolve firm.
“Queen Steelflower wishes to return to her ship, as the Lanteans are attacking us,” the one called Ardent replied.
“That cannot be,” the other said, and Steelflower felt a frisson run through her.
*Guide,* she said, a moment’s warning as the blade drew steel.
Chapter Thirty
Revenant
“I do not see how we are to do this,” Radek said quietly as the puddle jumper jinked, dodging madly around the fire radiating outward from the hive ship, trying to hug the surface of the shields as closely as possible.
“They’ll open the bay doors to let the darts out,” John said, his hands loose on the controls. There was no need to jerk a jumper. It moved like water, like his thoughts. Nothing had ever moved like it did.
The Hammond’s rail guns spat fire, but the jumper rolled beneath it, friendly fire missing by a few meters. In the seat behind Radek, Cadman swore. “They can’t see us,” she said.
John didn’t spare a breath to respond. He’d seen the dart bay opening, the first blue dots of launching flares. “There we are. Just like that, baby,” he whispered. The puddle jumper slipped between the oncoming darts, rotating 180 as she slid through the gaps in their formation, straight into the maw of the dart bay.
Metal rang on metal as the blade drew a long knife, but Guide was faster. His arm rose in a lightning parry, catching it on a dagger of his own before his queen, a quick twist and disengage sending the weapon flying.
Ardent drew in a sharp motion but did not advance, his face a study in confusion.
*Get them!* the senior blade shouted, *In the Name of the Queen!*
*So be it,* Steelflower said, and with a sweep of robe she drew as well, back to back with her Consort, dropping into guard as gracefully as a blade.
The drones charged, pikes at the ready.
Guide took the first, grasping the pike in both hands. Closed thus, struggling for the staff, his knife slipped into the drone’s chest. The drone staggered back stupidly, the knife standing out. The wound would heal, of course, but it would at least slow him down.
Guide brought the pike up sharply, the blunt end connecting with the second onrushing drone, sending him reeling, while the bladed back end connected with his legs, slicing through skin and muscle, dropping him to the floor.
Steelflower ducked beneath the first drone’s pike, coming neatly beneath his guard with a series of flashing blows. In themselves they would not have been much to his might, but with short dagger in hand they were blinding. Literally. He stumbled, clutching his face, a wound that would take days to heal.
Ardent cried out something Steelflower did not understand in the heat of battle, pivoting to take the fourth drone who rushed against Guide from behind while he was engaged with the fifth. Her kick caught him neatly in the back of the knee and he fell, the blade of Guide’s pike coming down across him.
*Get her!* the senior blade shrieked, and still Ardent hesitated. The last drone did not, but the butt of Guide’s pike caught him full in the chest, sending him staggering backwards into Ardent.
*You!* Steelflower shouted, whirling to face the senior blade. *You are the one calling for my death, a treachery that only the least worthy of blades would consider! Will you not stand against me yourself? Must you stand back, coward, throwing drones at me in a man’s place?*
His face was a study in dismay, and a slow green flush rose in it, but his hand was steady on a long knife.
*Yield to me or die!* Steelflower said, her mind cold and tight as a vise. It closed around him like claws, like nails digging into his flesh, her will sharp and battle hardened.
*I will not,* he dredged from some part of his being even as his knees gave way, even as he dropped to the floor in front of her, the knife still in his hand.
Her eyes did not leave his.
His face contorted as slowly, slowly the knife rose, rotating hilt foremost. His hands shook. His mouth twisted. With an exhalation, he plunged the knife into his own chest, falling forward upon it.
Ardent let out some strangled sound.
Steelflower turned about, blood a darker emerald down her embroidered coat. *Will you yield?* she said, and her voice was iron.
*I will,* Ardent said, and dropped his dagger, his eyes glittering with admiration and desire.
*That is wise,* Guide said. His breath came heavily in his chest.
*Are you injured, my Guide?* she asked.
His mind voice was tinged with wry amusement. *No. Only old.*
*If that is all,* she said. Her eyes swept over Ardent. *Stand aside and hinder me no more.*
*Yes, my queen,* he said, and his eyes fell in rapt confusion as her hand lifted to his cheek, leaving a trail of blood along his jaw.
*Very good,* she said. With the whisper of leather on silk Steelflower swept from the chamber, leaving Ardent alone with the injured and the dead.
They were pinned down almost the second they left the dart bay.
Bad plan, John thought. This was not working.
Blue streaks of stunner fire crisscrossed the corridor, flashes bright and solid enough to be almost blinding. There must be thirty or forty Wraith backed up. No matter how many they hit with gunfire, the Wraith could keep coming. John glanced back from where he crouched behind the farthest forward obstruction. Cadman was right behind him, covering Radek who could make himself very small and flat indeed against the wall, the reflection of stunner fire crawling in his glasses. Back, at the turn of the corridor fifteen feet away, now separated by a no man’s land of open space, Jennifer sheltered in a doorway, Ronon at her back. He had pivoted, firing shot after shot down the hall behind them toward Wraith coming from the other direction.
“This is not going to work!” Ronon shouted into his radio.
“I see that!” John shouted back. “You get an opening of any kind, you take it.” He glanced behind. “Radek, can you do anything with the wall panel there?”
The scientist was flat against the wall, an irised control panel almost under his elbow. “I do not know!” he said.
“Try!”
Radek worked his way around as John fired off another round of shots, scattering across the junction at different heights, Cadman covering him. Radek was swearing in Czech as he slipped a thin knife into the biotech circuits, prizing up a knot of fleshy cables like muscles. “I have no idea what these do,” he said. Another stun beam hissed past him, plowing into the wall inches from Cadman. With an oath, he plunged the knife through, severing strands.