‘I don’t believe you,’ she said.
‘It’s true. Mostly true, anyway, but the part about getting you and everyone aboard this ship safely to Terra? That part’s definitely true.’
She searched his face for any hint of a lie. She saw only sincerity, but that meant less than nothing. John Grammaticus was many things, but first and foremost, he was a liar.
‘You must be desperate to come to me for help.’
‘I am,’ he replied, and to see him so nakedly honest and stripped of subterfuge was so shocking she almost blurted out that she had absolutely no idea where Oll might be found.
But then she remembered all the pain he’d caused her, all the lies he’d told and, finally, how he’d left her buried under the ruins of the Khyber. She desperately wanted to ask why he hadn’t dug her from the ruins, but wasn’t sure she’d like the answer.
‘You hurt me, John,’ she said at last. ‘More than anyone’s hurt me. And I’ve known a lot of pain in my time.’
‘We all have, Liv,’ he said, reaching to take her hand.
She snatched it back.
‘Don’t call me that,’ she said. ‘That name’s not for you. Not any more.’
‘Is it for your husband?’
‘Yes. And my daughters.’
‘Daughters? Those girls?’
Anger touched Alivia, and she said, ‘Yes, those girls. I know they’re not my flesh and blood, but they’re mine. I’m their mother, because I’ve raised them. I’m their mother because I’ve kept them safe and because I love them. And that makes them my daughters just as much as if I’d carried them inside me.’
John nodded and pushed himself to his feet as a tremor vibrated up from the ground.
‘You’re right, I’m sorry.’
‘Keep your apology,’ she snapped. ‘Just go.’
‘So you won’t tell me where Oll is?’
‘I won’t,’ said Alivia.
Alivia’s head snapped up, and the real world swam back into focus as she felt a swell of nausea climb her gullet. She swallowed it down, and pushed herself upright.
‘Shit, we’re translating.’
She emerged from the maintenance conduit and ran back to the bridge. As she’d expected, the armoured door was closed, and the two armsmen still stood guard.
They tensed as she approached and she raised her hands to show she was no threat. She saw herself reflected in the gloss black of their visors, and smiled.
‘I need to see Captain Sulaiman,’ she said.
One of the armsmen stepped forward and said, ‘Your bridge privileges have been revoked, Mistress Sureka. Captain’s orders.’
His name was Burraga. She knew his name and that he had lost friends in the fight to escape Molech. Thirty-four years old, a career Navy man. Tough and by the book. She knew him, but not as well as she’d have liked, which made manipulating him difficult.
But not impossible.
John would have simply dominated the minds of both men with brute force mental coercion, but Alivia’s abilities were more suited to flanking.
‘Listen to me very carefully, we don’t have time for this,’ she said, weaving empathic manipulation into every word. ‘If we’re translating through the Elysian Gate, this ship is going to be an expanding cloud of radioactive metal and bodies soon. If I can’t convince the captain to alter his plans, then everyone aboard this ship is going to die. Do you really want that on your conscience?’
It wasn’t fair to put that on him, but it would provide the leverage she needed to get inside his head. Alivia exerted more pressure, once again wishing that the ability push came more naturally to her.
‘I know it’s not fair to put that on you, Burraga,’ she said, carefully enunciating his name, ‘but that’s where we are. You have to let me in. And you have to let me in now.’
‘I… I don’t… think that’s–’
‘We’re so close,’ she continued, carefully modulating her tone and drawing out his deep sense of honour. ‘We can’t die with Terra within reach. All the people we saved, the men, women and children? Don’t you want to help them? Don’t let them die in the void, killed by our own people.’
She reached deeper into his mind, a place of hard angles and unbending discipline wrapped around an honourable core. Alivia had felt his hesitation before he and his comrade marched her from the bridge. She amplified that feeling, helped it grow and swell, touching everything around it.
Alivia channelled the nascent hope and the desire to live she’d nurtured in everyone aboard Molech’s Enlightenment.
She let it pour into Burraga.
He nodded and made a quarter-turn to his right.
The butt of his shot-cannon hammered into the belly of his comrade. The armsman doubled up, and Burraga’s armoured knee cannoned into his face. The visor of his helm cracked and he collapsed to the deck with a groan of pain.
Alivia retrieved his fallen shot-cannon as Burraga entered the access code to the bridge door. The gun felt absurdly heavy, and though she was no stranger to weapons, she didn’t like the finality of them.
‘You’d better be damn sure about this,’ said Burraga as the door opened.
‘I am,’ promised Alivia.
To his credit, Captain Sulaiman seemed wholly unsurprised at Alivia’s reappearance. He sighed and shook his head in exasperation as she and Burraga swept inside.
‘I should have known you’d find a way to get back onto my bridge,’ he said.
‘What can I say? I’m persistent.’
‘And clearly persuasive,’ said Sulaiman, nodding towards Burraga.
‘I explained exactly what was at stake, and Armsman Burraga happened to agree.’
‘So what is your intent, Mistress Sureka? Is this a mutiny? Do you intend to replace me as captain?’
‘Of course not,’ said Alivia. ‘But we can’t translate through the Elysian Gate.’
Sulaiman turned to the viewing bay at the far end of the bridge and said, ‘Then I am afraid you have arrived a little too late.’
The wide bay displayed a riot of colours and maddening static.
Translation was messy; flaring warp corposant all but blinded a ship until it was fully clear, and immaterial energies clinging to the ship’s crenellated spires and gothic bastions kept its shields from immediately igniting.
Even as Alivia watched, the view began to darken to the void of space as the ship finished its transition.
Almost immediately, Magos Cervari’s station lit up with chiming blooms of noospheric indicators.
Threat markers, auspex sweeps, target acquisition runes.
‘Multiple contacts!’ said Cervari.
‘Identify,’ ordered Sulaiman.
‘So many…’ said Cervari. ‘Multiple capital-class assets, thirty plus squadrons of destroyers, flotillas of cruisers and gunboats. Throne, there is firepower here to conquer entire sectors!’
The viewing bay cleared enough that the numbers and volume of contacts Cervari was reporting could be rationalised. Even over the vast distances involved in a void engagement, it was clear to see that space around the Elysian Gate was awash with warships.
‘Yes,’ said Alivia, trying her best to sound calm. ‘That’s a lot of firepower aimed right at us.’
Glowing darts of capital ships were moving to bracket Molech’s Enlightenment with their grand batteries, and swarming packs of piquet ships were moving to intercept. Scores of torpedo sweeps blitzed the hull with ranging pings in preparation for launch.
Void-anchored gun platforms painted Molech’s Enlightenment with so many auspex returns it would be comical if their macro-cannon weren’t about to destroy them. Hunter-killer mines locked on to the ship’s hull signature and fired their one-shot boosters.
‘Emperor’s mercy…’ whispered Sulaiman, and Alivia gave him a sidelong glance. Clearly the words of the Lectitio Divinitatus were not confined solely to the refugees.
‘Can we get back through the gate?’
Sulaiman didn’t reply, his augmetic eyes fixed on the campaign-scale of the fleet arrayed before him.
‘They’re launching!’ cried Cervari, and the surveyor station blossomed with scores of torpedo launches. Squadrons of bombers scrambled into the void, knifing through space towards them.
‘Captain,’ she snapped. ‘Can we get back through the gate?’
He squared his shoulders and shook his head.
‘A Cobra-class destroyer is fast, Mistress Sureka, but it’s not that fast,’ he said, his augmetics flickering as they tracked the numerous incoming torpedoes arcing towards his ship. ‘In any case, making another translation so soon would tear us apart.’
‘Then can we stay alive long enough?’
‘Long enough for what?’
‘For me to ask a favour.’
‘A favour from whom?’
‘Doesn’t matter,’ snapped Alivia, dropping the shot-cannon to the deck and trusting that Sulaiman wouldn’t take the opportunity to blow her away. ‘Just… don’t let us die.’
Sulaiman marched swiftly back to his command podium and cricked his neck, fixing his gaze upon the incoming torpedoes, myriad weapon locks and swarming packs of ship-killing mines.
‘I cannot promise such a feat lies within my power, but I will try,’ he said.
Alivia smiled and said, ‘I have faith in you, captain.’
She closed her eyes and slowed her breathing.
No time for fancy mental compartmentalisation.
+Okay, John, you win,+ sent Alivia, hurling her psychic call into the void. +I’ll tell you where you can find Oll.+
Alivia’s words echoed in her mind, but she heard nothing in reply, not even a whisper.
The mass of her body shifted as Sulaiman fired the ship’s engines, the reactor burning hot as he manoeuvred the vessel hard.
Molech’s Enlightenment groaned as its battle-stanchions shouldered explosive torsion and compression baffles endured stresses they hadn’t felt in months.
+Come on, when did you ever give up this easy?+
The staccato warnings of incoming ordnance were distracting, and she tried to shut them out. A klaxon sounded and binharic proximity alarms screeched from wall-mounted vox-horns.
‘Impact in thirty seconds!’ announced Magos Cervari.
+Please, John,+ she sent. +Help us. Call them off!+
+You’ll tell me where Oll is?+
The breath burst from her at the sound of John’s voice in her mind.
+I will,+ she said. +As soon as we’re safely on Terra.+
+Tell me now. That ship’s going to be burning void debris in minutes.+
+Then you’d better work fast,+ she sent, snapping off the connection between them.
‘Impact in twenty seconds!’ announced Magos Cervari.
Sulaiman sweated as he threw the ship into sharp turns, burning the engines and manoeuvring jets harder than its Jovian shipwrights had ever intended.
Alivia felt the terror of the thousands of people in the cargo decks and transit chambers. Their fear surged through her as they wept and held tight to their loved ones, not knowing what was happening.
‘Ten seconds,’ said Cervari.
‘I am afraid I can run no farther, Mistress Sureka,’ called Sulaiman. ‘So if you have any miracles to work, now would be the time.’
‘I’m sorry, captain,’ said Alivia. ‘I’m all out of miracles.’
‘Five, four, three, two…’
Alivia squeezed her eyes shut, awaiting the pain and horror of a ship-death. She expelled the breath in her lungs, awaiting a sudden and explosive decompression in the hard vacuum of space.
The moment stretched.
One by one, the sirens, klaxons and binharic alarms ceased.
Silence fell across the bridge, the only sound the angry hissing of overheated logic engines, the groans of settling metal and her own laboured breathing.
Alivia unclenched her fists and peered into the shimmering starfield in the viewing bay. She tried to make sense of the corkscrewing contrails of aborted torpedoes and fading smears of light, all that remained of the incoming hunter-killer mines.
Thank you, John…
A bark of static crackled from the vox, making her jump.
‘Molech’s Enlightenment, this is Captain Vihaan of the Cardinal Boras. You are ordered to assume a coreward heading and come abeam of us at dead slow. You will follow my ship back to Terra. Any delay or deviation will result in your immediate destruction. Indicate your understanding of this order or we will open fire immediately.’
Sulaiman stared in open-mouthed wonder at Alivia.
‘How did you do that?’
‘Never mind just now,’ said Alivia. ‘Answer him!’
Sulaiman swiftly signalled his assent to the Cardinal Boras, and Molech’s Enlightenment swung around as Magos Cervari complied with Vihaan’s order.
Alivia sank to the deck, resting her back against the warm metal of a cogitator bank. She lay her head back and released a long, relieved breath.
She looked up as Sulaiman stood over her. His eyes were augmetic, but she swore she could see reverence in them.
‘Now I know why the people call you a saint, Mistress Sureka.’
‘I’m no saint,’ snorted Alivia. ‘Far from it.’
‘Then how did you do that?’
Alivia closed her eyes and said, ‘I made a promise I can’t possibly keep.’