THE REFORGED TRILOGY: BOOK 3 — HAMMER OF TIME
Chapter 6: Oslain’ii
“You need not carry a spear to fight for your king. Your trust and your loyalty are all I need.”
– Cavain a’Shae (11,978 MA)
“That’s Xartasia’s ship?” Xia asked. “Did she beat us here?”
Maeve shook her head. She didn’t know, but her heart slammed against her ribs and her pulse pounded a deafening drumbeat in her ears. Her chest felt too small for her lungs and Maeve found herself panting. For all the blood that she shared with Xartasia, it gave Maeve no better idea what her cousin might be doing. Was she inside that black ship?
“Gripper, call in the New Hennor police,” Logan said. He stood beside Maeve, right hand on the laser at his hip. “Get them out here and we’ll have the proof we need.”
“Yeah, Coldhand,” Gripper answered, his voice shaking. “I… I’m on it.”
A scattering of feathers sifted down from the sky as the other Arcadians circled, staring and calling out in their own language. There was a click and the black ship’s airlock light flashed twice, then turned green. Glossy doors slid slowly open and two shapes stood in the Oslain’ii’s blue-lit hatchway: one slender and winged, the other huge and shrouded in black smoke. A Devourer.
The circling Arcadians moaned and then drew together, rising higher into the pale Sunjarrah sky. Duaal’s green eyes took on the glassy, unfocused look that Maeve was beginning to associate with the young mage working on a spell. Logan tore his Talon-9 free and aimed it at the Devourer while Gripper stumbled hastily back, his com raised up to one ear. Panna and Xia stood together, the medic with unsteady fingers wrapped around her laser.
The Devourer’s Arcadian companion stepped out into blinding sunlight. The fairy wasn’t Xartasia, but a man in full and brilliantly sparkling glass armor. His lean body was wrapped with scarves beneath, as was Arcadian tradition, but they were sooty black slashed with scarlet like bloody wounds. His face was twisted and scarred across the brow and one cheek, turning his flesh into a knot of welts and lumps. The strange knight raised his spear skyward. Sunlight caught the glass and flashed brightly.
“Asi!” he called in Arcadian. Wait. “Your queen summons you, sons and daughters of the White Kingdom. Titania Cavainna, heiress to the throne, lives and calls you to her court! All who were born of the White Kingdom shall have a home with her.”
Maeve crouched and prepared to spring into the air, to fall on the knight in black and his oddly unmoving Devourer. But Logan knelt and grabbed her shoulder.
“Wait,” he said. “He’s talking. Fast, but that’s more than we’ve been able to get so far. What’s he saying?”
Maeve’s jaw clenched so hard that her teeth ached, but she had to admit that Logan was probably right. The knight in black was ignoring them entirely, focused instead on the flock of Arcadians overhead.
“He says that Titania is alive,” Maeve repeated. “And that she summons them to her.”
“The White Queen has tamed the Devourers,” the knight shouted and Maeve recounted. “They serve her now, my brothers and sisters. And in that service, our rightful and glorious queen summons you. She needs you! Together with our once-enemies, we shall restore the White Kingdom.”
“Wait, what does that mean?” Panna asked. “Is she going back to Arcadia?”
Maeve shook her head. She didn’t know. Now the other knight raised his face, squinting upward to gauge the effect of his words. Suddenly, Maeve recognized him.
“Calathan!” she shouted. “Calathan la Nyra! How can you stand beside one of those who destroyed our kingdom?”
Calathan turned to look at Maeve. There was recognition in his eyes, but no affection for the fellow young squire who had helped him up from the grass after a tourney match, who had shared an entire bottle of wine when they both lost their winners’ ribbons to the indomitable Sir Orthain Fyre and the royal consort, Sir Anthem Calloren. Rage twisted Calathan’s already maimed face and he leveled his spear at Maeve. Even the ribbons hanging from the haft of his spear were as black as her own hair.
“Maeve,” he snarled. “Twice now you have slaughtered my kin. You will answer for that!”
Twice… First Arcadia and then the Nihilists. That explained the black under Calathan’s armor and how he knew about her role in the White Kingdom’s fall. Behind Calathan, something pale flashed in the dark depths of the Devourer’s face. Teeth? Was it smiling?
“The littlest Cavainna.” The grating voice came not from the huge alien’s mouth, but issued from the swarming black cloud of nanites. “I’ve heard your name. Commander Dhozo tells us we have so much to thank you for…”
Calathan leapt at Maeve, spear leveled at her unarmored midsection. Laserfire sliced past her and struck Calathan in the chest, but splintered into harmless red light against his glass breastplate. Maeve jumped back to stand next to Logan, who was still aiming his Talon at the fairy. Calathan’s spear came down, slashing a deep line of rage into the packed dirt.
“Have you got this, dove?” Logan asked, bringing his laser up to the Arcadian knight’s face.
Panna screamed and Duaal shouted at her to get away from the Devourer. Maeve spun her spear down to a guard position.
“I do, enarri,” Maeve said. “Go!”
Logan spared Calathan a single cold look before sprinting away toward Duaal. Xartasia’s knight in black lunged, slashing his spear at Maeve’s wings. She knocked the blade aside with her own and leapt into the air. The crumbling old settlement spun beneath her, flickering like disturbed water with the shadows of the frightened, swiftly scattering Arcadians.
The Devourer was a seething pillar of black blades, flashing red and blue-white with Logan’s lasers and Duaal’s lightning. Maeve still heard Panna shouting again.
“Wait…! Come back!” she cried. “That’s your princess up there! She needs you!”
But no one seemed to be listening. Maeve had no time to spare for Panna or even her hunter fighting for his life below. Calathan vaulted into the air and arrowed past Maeve, forcing her to fold her wings and swoop beneath. He circled to make another pass and Maeve beat her wings hard, climbing. Calathan’s armor protected him from both laser and blade, but its weight and restricting plates made him slower.
Maeve arced and dove again, throwing all of her weight behind her spear. Orthain always told his young squire that it was the height of dishonor to aim for an opponent’s wings and force them to the ground. It was a cheap victory and hardly worthy of an Arcadian knight — but this was not the Morningfire Court and Maeve had given up her honor long ago. She could not afford chivalry when there were so many lives at stake.
Calathan had no honor left, either. He rolled and Maeve’s spear glanced off his curved pauldron. He thrust back with his own spear, aiming for the delicate membrane of her left wing. Maeve spiraled away almost too slowly. The point of Calathan’s spear raked her wings and several red-streaked feathers tore away. Pain burned a line along her injured wing.
The two fallen knights circled each other, trying to gain the higher position. Calathan’s glass armor reflected the flashes of fire and lightning and churning darkness below and Maeve fought the urge to look down. She parried Calathan’s spear again, but he used the momentum to spin the shaft and crack it against the crest of her flight-taut wing. Maeve ground her teeth and lost altitude as she wheeled to recover.
Calathan sang a resonating note of triumph. He shot at Maeve in a straight line, certain that his strike against her wing had slowed Maeve enough. But it was hardly the first time Maeve had fought with injured or even broken wings. Logan Coldhand knew nothing of Arcadian honor and had never hesitated to take advantage of the inviting targets. Maeve twisted and dove beneath Calathan’s head-on aerial charge. She beat her wings hard at the bottom of her dive and soared up behind him. Calathan was slow to turn, to break the swift, straight line that had been his gamble. Maeve brought her spear down and drove the blade through his back, into the unarmored spot between his wings. The glass slid past his spine and into his heart. Calathan shuddered, raining blood to the ground below as he fell.
Maeve banked sharply. Beneath her, the Devourer raged like a terrible storm between Duaal and Logan. It lashed at both men with scythe-like blades of glittering black, but the nanite swarm was thin, as tenuous as shadow. Duaal threw up one arm and the curved blade shattered like cheap glass against an invisible barrier. The sharp shards didn’t fall, though, but turned instead into shadow and flew back to the Devourer’s amorphous armor.
Ignoring a deep, bloody gash through his calf, Logan circled the alien monster as the nanite swarm shifted, accommodating the returning machines. He found a thin spot and fired a long burst of laserfire that burned through the Devourer’s thigh, driving him to one knee with a rasping bellow of pain.
Duaal raised both hands in front of him and then swept them down again. The nanite swarm sagged toward the ground around its master as though in a great wind, though Maeve felt nothing. Logan took aim as the Devourer’s face was suddenly revealed. It was wide and gray-skinned, with a grimacing, sharkish mouth full of sharp teeth. Even as he staggered backward away from the alien, Gripper’s shocked exclamation was clearly audible — the Devourer looked like some nightmare reflection of Maeve’s Arboran friend.
Logan fired three carefully aimed shots through the back of the Devourer’s exposed skull. The alien surged up to its feet, the holes through its head steaming slightly, and whirled in a wobbling circle to face Logan. Maeve dove, landing hard against the Devourer’s broad shoulders and bearing him down to the ground. The creature fell and lay still. Maeve leapt free as the black nanites billowed like smoke all around her. The uncontrolled machines twisted this way and that and then fell on the dead Devourer. Blood welled up from the hairless gray skin and then vanished as the nanites consumed their own master. Maeve stared in revolted fascination as the huge body vanished.
“What the hells–?” Duaal asked, gasping. “Are they coming after us next?”
Even as he spoke, the black machine cloud was turning an ashy gray. Dying? Logan grabbed her wrist and pulled Maeve back.
“We don’t want to be their next meal, dove,” he said.
Xia and Panna crept closer — but not too close.
“What was that? Some sort of self-destruct?” Xia asked.
“Probably a system problem,” Panna said. “Most cultures care at least a little about proper disposal of remains and wouldn’t want their armor eating them after they die. We already know that the Devourer nanotech runs on chemical energy. So I’m guessing that without someone to operate them, the nanites turn on the nearest power source. Their dead owner… and then each other.”
Gripper ran toward them, waving his arms and pointing.
“The ship!” he cried. “There’s still someone in there!”
As if in answer, the Oslain’ii’s open airlock slammed shut and the engines — sleek black bullet-shapes mounted under the backswept wings — roared. Duaal shielded his face from the sudden tempest of hot wind and broken pieces of cornstalk.
“They’re taking off!” he shouted over the noise. “Gripper, how far away are those police?”
“I don’t know! I’m still on hold,” the Arboran answered, brandishing his com.
“Get back onto the Blue Phoenix,” Logan called out. “You, too, Gripper.”
The hunter was already running. Xia and Duaal were close behind, Gripper bringing up the rear. Panna moved to follow, but then turned on her heels and bolted deeper into the wind-whipped field. Maeve shouted at her, but there was no time to go chasing after Panna. The Oslain’ii was already rising.
Reluctantly, Maeve leapt into the white Sunjarrah sky and dove after the others. By the time she landed and ran through the Blue Phoenix’s airlock, Duaal was vanishing through the door that led to the front of the ship. Logan took the stairs two at a time, shouting for Gripper to follow. The bewildered Arboran loped after him, pulling himself up over the railing.
“But I need to be in the engine room–!” Gripper protested.
“We need you in the cockpit,” Logan told him. “And bring your computer.”
Xia jabbed the airlock controls as Maeve bolted past. The fairy clipped one of her wings on Gripper’s planters, winced and landed on the fibersteel catwalk. She ran toward the cockpit, but her view was eclipsed by Gripper’s wide silhouette. He ran a crooked line as he juggled his computer from hand to huge hand.
Maeve staggered into Gripper’s back as the Blue Phoenix lifted off and then pivoted sharply. Even from the hallway, she could hear Duaal yelling at the Oslain’ii.
“Where the hells do you think you’re going, you Narsus lump of slag? Get back here and let the cops get a good look at you! Tell me you’ve got a plan for this, Logan…”
“Just shut up and follow them,” was the Prian’s curt answer. “As close as you can.”
Maeve and Gripper stumbled their way to the cockpit’s door as the floor pitched beneath them. The big Arboran nearly crushed her as Duaal pulled the Blue Phoenix up, knifing through a thin layer of clouds and high into Sunjarrah’s atmosphere. The planet spread out below, gently curved and smooth as far as Maeve could see. Above, the darkness of space was full of stars, celestial orbs of fire and the less impressive blinking green and yellow of planetary satellites. There were faster points of light sliding between them like shooting stars — other ships.
One of them slid past on the left, where Logan sat with his back absolutely straight and icy eyes narrowed. The ship was black and graceful, almost invisible against the darkness but for the stylish violet lights up and down its length. Duaal cried out and jerked on his controls, whipping the Phoenix around to face the Oslain’ii, but the black ship was already speeding past, silent in the cold emptiness of space.
“Damn, she’s fast,” Duaal grunted.
“That’s a Narsus Predator,” Logan said. “It can spin up the FTL drive in twenty seconds. If the Oslain’ii gets out of the system or above the stellar plane, it will be gone.”
Duaal slammed down on the accelerator and gave chase. The Oslain’ii dove, back toward Sunjarrah’s cloud layer, then up as the Blue Phoenix followed. Condensation streaked white along both ships’ hulls and then boiled swiftly away as they raced through the atmosphere. Temperature gauges flashed orange and the canopy flickered with azure light as spots of phenno ignited in the rising heat. Duaal tightened his hands until his knuckles turned white and pulled the old freighter up after the Oslain’ii.
“Get us closer,” Logan told him.
“I’m trying!” Duaal answered through clenched teeth. “But her engines are better than mine.”
“Um, why are we trying to get closer?” Gripper asked.
Logan didn’t answer. Maeve wondered what he had in mind, but now wasn’t the time to question him. Logan worked fast, intense and hard, and asking him why or how was only a waste of precious time. Maeve was having trouble enough just remaining upright as the Blue Phoenix swerved in pursuit. Duaal pushed the accelerator down to full, but the Oslain’ii was vanishing into the distance.
Logan leaned forward, watching and frowning. “They’re going around the autotraffic belt. We can catch up if we go through.”
“Through?” Gripper squeaked. “Shimmer, you can’t–!”
But Duaal was grinning, teeth bright in his dark face. He yanked the Blue Phoenix onto a new vector, smashing Maeve and Gripper into one another again in the narrow fibersteel corridor.
A stripe of strobing lights was coming closer outside, alarmingly close: the autotraffic belt, a band of latitude reserved for communications satellites and other computerized orbital objects. Maeve’s stomach lurched, but before she could say anything, Duaal was diving between the lights. Metal and flickering points of color flashed past, one of them so close that Maeve swore she could reach out and touch it… The Blue Phoenix shuddered and there was a shrill metallic squeal. A cylinder of rotating segments careened away, tumbling awkwardly end over end until it collided with a delicate cloverleaf cluster of relay dishes.
Duaal grimaced, pulling back and easing up on the throttle. Sunjarrah’s gravity pulled at the Blue Phoenix, slowing the ship and tugging the dented nose down planetward. Logan’s metal fingers scraped loudly over the screens and readouts of the powerless copilot station.
“Give me control,” he said.
Duaal spared a short, sharp look at Logan. Even in that fraction of a second, the Blue Phoenix drifted and Duaal had to wrestle it back on course. The Oslain’ii was barely visible through the lane of satellites, just a faintly shining spot of darkness. Duaal swore.
“You’re losing them,” Logan said. “Give me the controls!”
“Do you have any idea how long–?” Duaal asked.
Another impact rocked the Blue Phoenix. Duaal steadied his old ship with an effort and hissed out through his teeth. He flipped a striped toggle and the other half of the cockpit lit up like a sky full of stars.
Before the secondary controls had even finished powering up, Logan slammed down on the accelerator and the Blue Phoenix leapt forward into the close, crowded belt of satellites. Proximity sensors went from yellow to orange and then flashed red as the ship plunged into the autotraffic belt. Another coms relay flashed past, curving dishes and long, sweeping antennae dangerously close to fatal entanglement with the Blue Phoenix. Duaal held his breath while Gripper shrieked in terror.
“Watch out!” he screamed.
Maeve saw the cold fire burning in Logan’s eyes, the fierce joy of a hunting hawk. He had lied to Maeve — her hunter did miss his Raptor.
Logan turned the Blue Phoenix up on edge, the curved horizon tilting dizzyingly. Maeve grabbed the doorframe and closed her eyes. The local gravity inside the ship was completely contrary to the view outside and it was making her stomach crawl up into her throat.
“There!” she heard Duaal shout. “There’s the Oslain’ii!”
She forced her eyes open to look where Duaal was pointing. He was right. Through the mosaic of metal and lights, there was a barely visible curve of black and luminous violet. The Blue Phoenix slid from the dense field of satellites and dropped in behind the Oslain’ii.
The expensive Narsus ship rocked up to one side as the pilot inside saw them and started. But then the Oslain’ii pivoted to face the Blue Phoenix. A laser cannon blazed beneath the needle-like black nose and red light flared across the empty darkness, far too fast to react to. Logan jerked the Blue Phoenix into a tight spiral, but alarms blared deafeningly through the ship. A warning flashed on Duaal’s controls and he glared at Logan.
“If you can avoid getting me and my ship blown to bung, I’d appreciate it,” he said. “What in the three hundred hells do we do now, Logan? The Phoenix doesn’t have any weapons!”
“That’s the compression regulator!” Gripper shouted, pointing to a flashing light. “I’ve got to get down to the engine room.”
“No,” Logan said. The Oslain’ii fired again and the Blue Phoenix shuddered. “You stay right here. What’s the range on a mainstream router?”
“What–?” Gripper began to ask, but Logan dropped them into a stomach-churning roll, streaking after the still-firing Oslain’ii. “Uh… about quarter mile! Less if there’s radiation…”
“As soon as we’re close enough, you need to get onto their wireless,” Logan told him.
“What? Why?” Gripper asked.
The sleek black Narsus ship arced over a long, blocky hauler so huge that both the Blue Phoenix and the Oslain’ii could have fit comfortably inside and continued their chase. The Blue Phoenix rose up and over the hauler just as the Oslain’ii flipped around and changed direction, shooting back toward them. Logan flipped the old cargo ship end over end, just out of reach of the hot red spray of lasers.
“I can see–” Gripper said. He broke off, juggling his computer. “No, we’re out of range again. You need to stay close.”
Logan swung the Blue Phoenix from side to side as the Oslain’ii loosed bolts of laserfire at them. Sweat matted his blond hair flat against his face.
“This ship is too slow,” he told no one in particular. “Move, damn you…”
Logan sounded so much like Tiberius in that moment, but there was no time to miss the old Prian. The two ships tumbled around each other, the Oslain’ii firing a near-constant barrage of molten red. Logan managed to keep out of the worst of it, but a dozen warnings blinked and blared in the cockpit.
“We can’t keep this up much longer,” Duaal said.
A huge passenger liner covered in a faceted grid of windows suddenly loomed up between the two ships. Faces stared out from behind glassteel, a hundred mouths wide with shock. The Oslain’ii swung around and fired through the sharp fin that attached one of the liner’s maneuvering thrusters. The other engines flared and the whole ship began to spin right at the Blue Phoenix. Logan swore and pushed down on his control yoke.
Gripper worked thick fingers across the computer in his trembling hands.
“I… I’m in, Coldhand,” he said. “What now?”
“Navigational system,” Logan answered shortly. “Slave it to the Blue Phoenix’s.”
“Why? They don’t need a tow!” Duaal shouted. “They’re trying to kill us!”
“Just do it!”
Logan yanked the Blue Phoenix up again. Maeve threw a hand across her eyes. They were pointed right at Sunjarrah’s binary suns. The glass in front of Logan and Duaal swiftly polarized, turning the great burning orbs into flat discs of gray. By the time Maeve could see again, the Oslain’ii was close. Too close to miss. A pair of missile ports slid open in the black ship’s sleek underside.
“Gripper…?” Duaal asked. His green eyes were huge and wide. “Are you in?”
“Wait… wait…” Gripper said, biting his thick lower lip.
Logan’s jaw was set. He stared at the Oslain’ii, facing down the other ship like an ancient gunslinger. There was movement barely visible in the missile bays, the deadly dark-within-dark pounce of a night-hunting cat. The Oslain’ii was firing.
“Got it!” Gripper shouted.
Logan was already pulling back on his controls, forcing the Blue Phoenix to rise sharply away from Sunjarrah and the Oslain’ii. The missiles closed quickly, leaving trails of frozen propellant. Logan rolled the Blue Phoenix again and sent the old ship the opposite direction, into a plummeting dive.
“Duaal, jump us into the corona of one of those stars,” Logan said in a flat voice.
“Their FTL system is faster than ours,” Duaal reminded him. His words came out in a breathless rush. “With their nav connected up to ours, the Oslain’ii will just follow us!”
“Into the sun,” Maeve said, finally understanding Logan’s plan.
Duaal punched up the coordinates. “Shit, there’s a moon in our way… We hit that and we’ll wish it had been the missiles.”
“The other star then!” Logan said.
The Hyzaari mage swiped up another flight plan and sent it to the navigation system. Logan punched the FTL button, his metal hand slamming into the plastic cover and shattering it as he sent the command home to the Blue Phoenix’s computers. The damaged ship screeched in protest, but the blue null-field indicator flashed and the faster-than-light engines roared.
Steel bulkheads trembled under Maeve’s hands as she steadied herself. In a flash of multi-colored light, Sunjarrah, the missiles and the Oslain’ii vanished. Just for a moment, the soothing mosaic of superluminal flight washed over Maeve.
“Dropping!” Duaal shouted.
Light blazed through the cockpit, glorious golden celestial fire. Maeve scrubbed at her eyes, but could not wipe away the dark spots burning in her vision. The polarizing filter was no match for a star at this range. As if in answer to this blazing challenge, azure flames streaked across the Blue Phoenix’s hull. Duaal’s head dropped to his chest and he squinted at his instruments, tears streaming down his cheeks.
“The phenno’s holding…” Duaal said, then jumped to his feet, smashing his head against the low ceiling. “Wait, the Oslain’ii!”
Maeve shielded her eyes and stared through the blue glow. Yes, one of the dark spots in her vision didn’t move as she shook her head. It was Xartasia’s ship, just off the Blue Phoenix’s right side but very nearly swallowed by the star’s brilliant corona. No, not nearly… Without phenno, the other ship was burning, searing red and then white as heat and radiation engulfed the Oslain’ii. The black ship lurched once as the pilot tried to fly away, but within seconds, the black ship listed to one side and sank deeper into the star’s corona.
Gripper’s hands shook and his computer clattered to the floor. “I… Coldhand… I just killed everyone on that ship, didn’t I?”
“Yes,” Logan said. He squinted after the vanishing Oslain’ii with hard eyes.
“They would have killed all of us,” Duaal told Gripper.
But the big Arboran ran, bumping and stumbling, out of the cockpit. Maeve could hear his sobs long after Gripper was gone.
She took Logan’s left hand. The illonium was cool to the touch, even as hot sweat ran down her skin. Maeve was shaking all over, but Logan’s grip was steady. She kissed her hunter’s temple once and then left to find Gripper.
