The Revenants Read online

  They followed him to the bridge and waited while Gakram announced them to the pair of Banshee guards outside the doors.

  A moment later, the doors swished open, and an armored Ghoul appeared. His helmet was off, revealing a fearsome snarl. He pointed a long, gleaming gray claw at Tanik. “What is he doing here?”

  “He found a way to escape, Elder Arathos.”

  “And you did not kill him?”

  Gakram bowed his head. “Forgive me, master. He surprised me on my way here. The girl would not deliver her message without him.”

  “What message?”

  “This girl is the one who was prophesied to herald the return of the Destroyers. Tanik is her guardian.”

  The Ghoul hissed and tossed his head. “The girl does not fit the description. The one who was prophesied must have lived even longer than the Old Ones.”

  “And yet still be a child,” Gakram added. “Cassandra is that one. She was born fourteen hundred years ago.”

  “Impossible.”

  “She was frozen on her world, master, and only awoke recently. She is the herald.”

  Cassandra saw the Ghoul’s eyes glazed and staring off into the distance, as if deep in thought.

  “If what you say is true,” Arathos began slowly, “then she must speak to the Old Ones for us.”

  Gakram growled and tossed his head. “That is why I invited her to join us aboard the Nomad, master.”

  “And you were right to do so.” The Elder’s gaze fell on Cassandra next, and he bared his teeth at her. “I will open a channel for you.”

  Chapter 41

  “How long before we arrive in the Cygnus System?” Admiral Ventaris asked.

  “ETA thirty minutes, sir,” the officer at the helm replied.

  “Good. Keep me posted, Lieutenant.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Darius’s eyes were closing of their own accord. Holding his grip on Admiral Ventaris’s mind for so many hours had taken its toll. The closer he was to the admiral physically, the easier it seemed to be, but even here on the bridge, it was still exhausting. Darius wasn’t sure how much longer he could keep it up.

  Fortunately, he didn’t need to control Ventaris for much longer.

  Darius nodded to Dyara where she sat in a spare acceleration harness beside the doors to the Harbinger’s bridge. “I have to go,” he said.

  Dyara looked at him, her eyes full of concern and accusation at the same time. “Where?”

  I’m going to take a fighter and board the Nomad, he thought at her.

  By yourself? she thought back.

  He shrugged. Who else is going to come?

  Dyara’s mouth twisted into a bitter smirk. He could guess what she was thinking. Why go alone when he could make the admiral give the order for a whole team of Revenants to join him?

  But the truth was, he wouldn’t be able to trust the Revenants once he released his hold on Admiral Ventaris. Besides, he felt guilty for dragging everyone along on his personal crusade. It had seemed to make sense at the time, but he hadn’t been thinking very clearly. Now, having had the past four hours to reflect on his actions, Darius questioned his decision to send the entire fleet after the Nomad. They could be flying into a trap.

  Darius shook his head. It was too late to worry about that now. Hopefully Admiral Ventaris would be able to lead them to victory, or at least to a successful retreat. Darius pulled the release lever beside his seat and folded his acceleration harness aside. He stood up and turned to leave the bridge, only to find Dyara already on her feet and waiting for him by the doors.

  I can’t ask you to come with me.

  You didn’t ask. I’m offering.

  Why?

  More for Cass’s sake than yours.

  He nodded. That’s fair. But we could die out there. We’re going to be up against a whole destroyer full of Cygnians. Trained Revenant Cygnians.

  We could also die in here, Dyara thought back at him.

  “Thank you,” he whispered.

  “Sure.” Dyara waved the doors open and they ran down the corridor together. Darius struggled to keep up with her. His mental fatigue had begun to affect him physically, making it hard just to put one foot in front of the other. He hoped he wouldn’t pass out in his cockpit....

  * * *

  Cassandra stood before the holo panels on the Nomad’s bridge, staring into a darkened chamber somewhere on the surface of Cygnus Prime. Four sets of four black eyes glinted in the gloom. Jagged, gaping rows of teeth gleamed below the eyes, but that was all Cassandra could make out clearly. On her side of the transmission, Elder Arathos stood in front of her and slightly to the left, while Tanik stood behind her, and slightly to the right.

  “Who am I speaking with?” one of the Cygnians in the transmission demanded, glaring at them with pinching eyes. “You are one of us, yet you come to us on a human vessel. Explain.”

  Elder Arathos bowed his head. “My lord, I am Elder Arathos, a Revenant returned from the Eye.”

  Silence answered that declaration. “Then the Augur is dead.”

  Cassandra frowned at that. The Old Ones knew about the Augur? Tanik had said that the Augur had been controlling the Cygnians like a puppeteer, but if their leaders knew about him, it implied a more willful association.

  “Yes...” Elder Arathos confirmed, his voice trailing off uncertainly. “This human girl behind me is the herald foretold by the prophecy of the Destroyers. She comes to you with a dire warning.”

  A loud murmur of hissing and growling thundered through speakers on the bridge as the Old Ones reacted to that news. Cassandra couldn’t make out individual words, but she thought the general tone of their voices was confusion rather than shock or concern.

  As the noise died away, one of them spoke: “What prophecy?”

  Cassandra’s blood turned to ice and she shot Tanik a questioning look. He looked equally confused.

  Elder Arathos went on slowly. “The prophecy about the return of the Destroyers, My Lords...”

  “Have you lost your mind, Elder? Or are you trying to insult our intelligence? There is no such prophecy. And who are these Destroyers you speak of?”

  “I... I am sorry, My Lord, I must be confused...”

  “Yes. Are you certain that the Augur is dead? I sense a powerful hold over you. Who is giving you your words, Elder?”

  Cassandra’s brow furrowed, and she glanced at Tanik once more. You? She mouthed.

  Tanik shook his head and mouthed, No.

  “No one holds sway over me, My Lord. My words are my own. I must have encountered a false prophet during my time fighting the Keth. I apologize for wasting your time, but the dire warning remains: the Revenants are no longer under the Augur’s influence. A fleet of them is coming. They bring weapons with them, weapons that can destroy entire planets in an instant. They were planning a cowardly surprise attack to destroy all of our worlds at once. We came to warn you.”

  The Old Ones murmured amongst themselves once more. “What is the nature of these weapons?”

  “Explosive devices that use the power of the Divine Light. They are more powerful than an entire ship full of antimatter, and yet still small enough to be launched from a fighter.”

  “Are you certain these weapons are as powerful as you claim? Have you seen them used?”

  “They are, My Lord, and I have. It is what the Augur used to defeat the Keth.”

  “Curious that he never mentioned that in his reports... Did this fleet follow you here?”

  “I cannot say, My Lord. Perhaps.”

  “Then we will take the necessary precautions. Now, we would like you to prove that you are not under any influence but your own.”

  “How should I prove that, My Lord?”

  “Kill the human emissaries.”

  “As you wish.”

  Cassandra rocked back on her heels, and Tanik yanked her behind him just as Elder Arathos rounded on them and drew all four of his swords with an echoing screech.

>   “Shield yourself!” Tanik screamed, just as the bridge of the Nomad erupted in a deafening chorus of alien shrieks. Elder Arathos began glowing brightly in the light of his own ZPF shield, and all four of his black swords shined like frozen laser beams.

  Cassandra activated her shield and drew her sword at the same time as Tanik drew the two he’d stolen from the Ghoul guarding his cell.

  Arathos hissed at them and hunched down to their level. He held all four of his glowing blades out straight, preparing to skewer both her and Tanik at the same time.

  Just then, Cassandra caught a flicker of movement in the corner of her eye. Gakram was creeping up behind the elder, his chameleon skin blended perfectly against the dull gray of the Nomad’s deck.

  “They have us surrounded! Watch my back!” Tanik said.

  Cassandra turned her back to his, and saw three more Cygnians approaching from behind, glowing bright with shields and brandishing four swords each.

  Chapter 42

  The cockpit shuddered as the Vulture’s engines roared to life. Glowing holo displays and lights appeared on every available surface. The comms beeped with a message and a red light blinked. Darius checked the panel to see that it was from SF76-G1, Dyara’s fighter. He played the message and set all future messages from her to auto-play.

  “Darius. What’s the situation with your hand puppet? Can we expect friendly fire after we launch?”

  “I’ll hold onto the admiral’s mind as long as I can, but the farther away we get, the harder it’s going to be.”

  “That wasn’t much of an answer,” Dyara grumbled.

  “I’ll warn you before I lose control of him.”

  “Thanks.”

  Lights flashed down the length of the launch tube as doors parted in front of Darius’s fighter. An automated voice sounded inside his helmet: “Three, two, one—”

  Darius slammed into the back of his seat as the fighter roared down the launch tube and into space. Stars exploded into view on all sides. Cygnus Prime lay to one side. It appeared to be the size of a golf ball—red and brown with specks of blue that might have been lakes.

  The sensors chimed insistently, and the comms crackled with Dyara’s voice. “Kak... are you seeing this, Darius?”

  He shook his head. “No?”

  “Check your contacts panel.”

  Darius glanced at it and immediately saw what she meant. The Cygnian home defense fleet, comprised of several hundred capital-class vessels, was belching out Blade Fighters at a furious rate. By contrast, the Revenant fleet only had twenty capital ships.

  “We’re outnumbered,” Darius said as he found and targeted the Nomad. He banked toward it and pushed the throttle to three Gs.

  “Badly outnumbered,” Dyara gritted out as she matched thrust with him and followed him through the maneuver. Her fighter swept into view, all four of its thrusters burning with bright blue tongues of fire.

  “We can draw on the ZPF to shield ourselves. They can’t,” Darius said.

  “Yeah, but we can’t shoot through our shields. It won’t be long before the whole fleet is pinned down under fire. All we’ll be able to do is weather the assault. We need a different strategy. What was the Admiral planning to do?”

  Darius shook his head. “I don’t know.”

  “Well, what are you planning to do?”

  Darius couldn’t concentrate with Admiral Ventaris’s mind pushing constantly against his, trying to take back control. He heard the admiral’s bridge officers clamoring for attention, but distantly. It was all he could do to hold Ventaris back, respond to Dyara, and pilot his fighter. If controlling just one person was this hard, how had Tanik managed to control a crew of a thousand people after waking them from cryo?

  “Why aren’t we launching fighters?” Dyara demanded.

  “I...”

  “You didn’t give the order?”

  “Hang on!” Darius shut his eyes and cast his mind back to the Harbinger. Suddenly he was sitting on the bridge in the command chair.

  “Sir! We need to launch our fighters now, while we still can,” the lieutenant at the Flight Ops station said. He sounded distressed.

  “Sir!” The comms officer turned to him. “Our captains are still waiting for your orders. They’re getting impatient!”

  The pressure of Admiral Ventaris’s mind had become a loud, constant buzzing in Darius’s ears. He couldn’t think. He couldn’t...

  Suddenly all was silent but for the roar of the Vulture’s engines. Darius’s eyes snapped open. It felt like a crushing weight had been lifted. “I lost him,” he said. “The admiral is back in control.”

  “No offense, but thank the gods for that!” Dyara replied.

  The hairs on Darius’s neck stood straight up; then came the urgent squawk of an enemy target lock.

  “Dya, jink hard! Shields up!” Darius screamed. His fighter glowed dimly in the light of a ZPF shield. He stepped on the rudder pedals in a seesaw motion while hauling back on the stick. The rudder pedals activated the Vulture’s maneuvering jets to mimic the motion of an atmospheric rudder. The result was a climbing slalom.

  A split second after Darius began the evasive maneuver, bright crimson lasers snapped out all around his cockpit. Crimson was the color of heavy Union lasers. He wasn’t going to be able to shield too many of them. “The Harbinger is firing on us with everything they’ve got!” Darius warned.

  “No kak! I hadn’t noticed that!”

  “Keep juking!” Darius said through gritted teeth as a laser scraped his left wing with a hissing roar of dissipating energy. “The Nomad hasn’t launched fighters yet, so now is the time to board them.” The Nomad probably couldn’t launch fighters, come to think of it. It was a Union ship, and there wouldn’t be any Cygnian-sized fighters on board.

  “Who’s in charge here, you or me?” Dyara quipped. They’d agreed that she would take the lead in this rescue mission, at least while they were in their cockpits, but Darius wasn’t used to a chain of command.

  “You are,” he said, just as an enemy missile lock began beeping urgently in his ears.

  “In that case, activate your ECM and turn off your point defense turret before it gets you killed. That thing’s on auto. It doesn’t know we’re using ZPF shields. You don’t want all that energy back-firing into your own ship.”

  “Oh, kak!” Darius deactivated the turret and activated electronic countermeasures instead. The screaming alerts of missile lock warnings overlapped each other in a steady roar.

  “Good. Now juke like your tail’s on fire, because we’ve got sixty Hornet Missiles incoming, and I doubt our shields will hold against more than two or three.”

  “Sixty?” Darius echoed, and stared wide-eyed at his nav panel. Missiles streamed toward them in snaking lines from the Harbinger and the two cutter-class destroyers flanking it.

  “The admiral must really want you dead,” Dyara said. “You’d better start thinking about where we’re going after this—assuming we survive, that is. Something tells me we’re not going to be welcome on the Harbinger.

  Darius thought about it as he continued executing a randomly weaving evasive pattern. She was right, but they had more immediate concerns. The missiles were closing fast, and there was no way the ECM would be able to scramble them all....

  Chapter 43

  Elder Arathos engaged Tanik just as two of the other three Ghouls attacked Cassandra. Eight swords windmilled before her eyes, threatening to chop her into bite-sized pieces. There was no way to block them all, so she didn’t even try. She leapt straight over their heads, and used the ZPF to pull herself down behind them in the zero-G environment. Their barbed tails flicked reflexively toward her, the tips gleaming with deadly drops of venom.

  Cassandra limboed deftly away from one tail as it swept by just inches from her nose. She blocked the other with her sword, slicing the tip off and sending it tumbling away. The Ghoul screamed and rounded on her, its jaws gaping in pain. It dropped all of its swords, leaving t
hem drifting in the air, and lunged at her with claws and teeth flashing. Cringing, Cassandra thrust out her free hand to deliver a focused kinetic attack.

  The Ghoul tumbled away, and Cassandra blinked in shock. She couldn’t believe it had worked. As her opponent sailed past Tanik, he diverted one of his swords and slashed open the Ghoul’s neck. Black blood spurted out in a drifting wave, splashing Tanik’s face and jumpsuit. The creature howled in pain, thrashing and bucking as it drifted through the air. The second Ghoul rounded on Tanik with a loud hiss, and joined Elder Arathos in attacking him. Now Tanik was the one fending off eight blades at once.

  Cassandra sensed the third Cygnian, unaccounted for until now, creeping up behind her. She twisted around just in time to block slashes from two of its four swords. The sheer momentum of that attack sent her sprawling. Cassandra scrambled to her feet, backing away from her new attacker. As she did so, she caught a glimpse of the Old Ones watching on the forward holo panels.

  This is entertainment for them! Cassandra realized, just as she fetched up against one of the holo panels running around the bridge. She was out of room to run.

  Thrusting her free hand toward the advancing Ghoul, she delivered another kinetic attack, this time with a steady pressure. The Ghoul stumbled back a step, then sheathed one of its swords and held out a hand of its own to counter her attack. It was a standoff, but she had managed to stop the Ghoul from advancing. Now what?

  Her opponent snarled, pushing harder, and suddenly she couldn’t breathe. The Ghoul began inching toward her. Where is Gakram? she wondered, pushing back as hard as she could. It wasn’t enough. The Ghoul flourished its three swords, and its jaws yawned wide open, as if to swallow her whole.

  “Gakram!” Cassandra called out in a breathless gasp.

  A dark, blurry shape pushed off the ceiling and floated down, abruptly swelling with the light of the ZPF. There came a flash of glowing claws, and suddenly the pressure on Cassandra’s chest lifted. The Ghoul who’d been advancing on her was gushing black blood from where its trachea used to be.