The Oncoming Storm (35 page)

“True,” Scott agreed. “But I do have commitments . . .”

Kat studied him for a long moment, then sighed. “I will put two thousand crowns in the escrow account,” she said. “It will be released to you upon our safe return, no further questions asked. And we shall do our best to remain undetected.”

“Very well,” Scott said. “One thousand now; two thousand afterwards.”

“And you will add a guarantee of secrecy,” the XO added. “You’re not allowed to trade anything you might have picked up today to anyone else.”

Kat swore inwardly. She’d grown up among the aristocracy . . . and she’d never considered the possibility of betrayal. But it was far too possible. The smugglers lived in the void between the two interstellar powers, trying to play each of them off against the other. Scott might be loyal enough to his brother not to consider betraying him to the Theocracy, but there was no way they could take it for granted.

“Very well,” Scott said. “You will have exclusivity.”

He reached into his pocket, produced a datachip, and pressed it against his palm. There was a long pause as he worked silently, then removed the chip and passed it to Kat. She took it and scanned it with her own implants, discovering that there were five navigational files on the chip and nothing else. After a moment, she passed him the credit chip and pocketed his datachip. The smuggler smiled and rose to his feet.

“One moment,” the XO said. “What else have you heard about recent events?”

“Not much,” Scott said. “For once, the admiral’s office is very quiet. It’s quite suspicious.”

“Good,” Kat said. “Let us hope it stays that way.”

William couldn’t help brooding as they made their way back to the shuttle, then flew into orbit and returned to Lightning. His brother was a disgrace, both to the family and his entire homeworld. There was no avoiding the fact he’d made his fortune smuggling everything from guns to farming equipment—and probably slaves. William had no illusions about life on primitive farming worlds. There was no shortage of worlds that would be grateful if smugglers shipped in young boys and girls, children who could be taught how to farm. Or equipment they simply couldn’t afford for themselves.

He wondered, briefly, what the captain had thought of Scott, but she hadn’t said a word to him. Instead, she seemed almost meditative, perhaps contemplating the task ahead of their ship. Even if the navigational data was as good as Scott clearly believed, it would be difficult to sneak across the border without being detected. But they had no choice. Orders were orders—and besides, if they discovered an attack fleet preparing to launch, it would wake up the Commonwealth to the oncoming storm.

“I need you to review this data,” the captain said as they entered the navigational compartment. Lieutenant Nicola Robertson was sitting inside, studying the latest update from the weathermen. “If this is a safe course to use, we need to depart this afternoon.”

Lieutenant Robertson took the chip and slipped it into a reader. “Not a standard piece of navigational data,” she noted. “Can I ask where it came from?”

“No,” William growled.

The captain shot him a look, but said nothing.

“Interesting,” Lieutenant Robertson said. “This course would take us right through the Seven Sisters.”

William swore. “The bastard!”

The captain leaned forward. “But is it usable?”

Lieutenant Robertson hesitated. “If the data is accurate, there is a passage through the region,” she said. “But it wouldn’t be a very safe passage. I’d honestly not recommend sending an entire fleet through in a body. And a handful of mines could be used to close the passage permanently.”

William studied the display, thinking. The Seven Sisters—seven stars that orbited each other—projected an odd gravitational pattern into hyperspace. Smart navigators deemed the entire area impassable and refused to go anywhere near it, but smugglers would probably consider it an ideal place to meet and transfer stolen cargos in private. They could be almost assured of avoiding detection, even by border patrol ships. The sheer level of hyperspace distortion made any form of patrolling almost impossible.

“It might be doable,” he said, reluctantly. “But it will be very risky, Captain. A single mistake and we might be forced back into normal space or vaporized by a hyperspace flare.”

The captain nodded. “But they’re not guarding that approach route,” she said, slowly. “If we could get through the passageway, we’d be almost assured of a safe voyage to our destination.”

“But they might well be keeping an eye on approach routes to the star itself,” William mused. “We could be detected then . . .”

“That would prove they had something to hide,” Captain Falcone said. She smiled. It lit up her entire face. “There’s no point in guarding, let alone mining, the approach routes to a useless red dwarf star. The only reason for having guardships in place would be to protect a secret, such as a waiting attack fleet.”

She took a breath. “Inform the crew that we will depart in”—she checked her wristcom—“two hours from now. Once we are in hyperspace, we will set course for the Seven Sisters and try to thread the needle.”

“Aye, Captain,” William said.

She had nerve; he had to admit. There were experienced commanding officers who had been decorated for heroism who would have thought twice about trying to fly through the Seven Sisters, no matter the stakes. And her family’s position wouldn’t protect her from hyperspace storms if one lanced out and enveloped their ship. The number of starships that had survived a direct encounter with a hyperspace storm could be counted on the fingers of one hand.

“And then contact your friends,” she added. “Send them a message, update them on the general situation, and . . . suggest they speed up their preparations.”

“Aye, Captain,” William said softly.

The captain nodded. “How long do we have?”

It was the question, William knew. How much did the Theocracy know about what Princess Drusilla had known before making her escape? And did they know she’d been rescued by the Royal Navy? In their place, William would have assumed the worst when their destroyer failed to return, but how long were they prepared to hold out hope before drawing the correct conclusion? The Theocrats had to know that starships could rarely be held to a precise schedule. No one could predict when a hyperspace storm might blow up and push them dozens of light years off course.

He thought, grimly, of the reports from the debriefing. Princess Drusilla hadn’t been expected to know anything beyond how to look pretty. All she’d learned had come from sympathetic tutors and a handful of servants, many of whom had been stunningly ignorant themselves of anything more than the basics. The princess could neither read nor write, either in the Theocracy’s written language or Galactic Standard English. He honestly didn’t know any high-tech world that didn’t insist its civilians learn Galactic Standard as a second language.

But would the Theocracy expect her to know about their plans?

It was hard, very hard, to think like the Theocrats. William had grown up on a world where women were to be protected, but anyone who treated them as property would have rapidly come to regret it. Hebrides bred strong women. Who would want a shrinking violet when the rough environment demanded someone who could do almost anything a man could do? Even now, even with genetic enhancement, his homeworld had never developed a tradition of engineering women for beauty. They preferred strength and stamina.

But the Theocrats had considered Princess Drusilla a child. No, worse than a child; they’d considered her property. It was alarmingly possible that they honestly hadn’t realized she could think for herself, which might have explained why the princess and her servants had managed to steal a freighter. The security officers had been conditioned not to treat women as serious threats.

There might be an advantage for us in that, he thought as he saluted and turned to the hatch. Maybe they won’t take a female captain seriously either.

Putting the thought to one side, he headed for the bridge. Running through the Seven Sisters would be dangerous. It was time to prepare the crew for the coming ordeal.

“We are approaching the Seven Sisters,” Lieutenant Samuel Weiberg reported. “I estimate we will enter the passageway within twenty minutes.”

“Distortion levels are increasing rapidly,” Lieutenant Robertson added. “Sensors are at thirty percent efficiency and failing fast.”

Kat kept her face impassive with an effort. As a young girl, she’d tried to take up canoeing, only to discover her family forbade her to test herself against any of the really exciting rapids. Now, she felt something of the same attraction, mixed with a sick feeling in her gut. Her ship—and her crew—could be blown to atoms in a second, before they ever knew they were in trouble. And no one would ever find a trace of their remains.

They’ll never see us coming, she thought. If the navigational data was accurate, they could emerge from the passageway in a haze of distortion, then leave on almost any route they chose. It would require a stroke of very bad luck for any guardship to see them coming. But we might not make it at all.

“Keep us steady,” she ordered. She wondered, suddenly, if she should have updated her will. Her nonvoting stocks and shares would be reabsorbed into the family, but her trust fund would be distributed among her former crew—if they survived—and their families. “Take us into the fire.”

She linked into the ship’s sensors through her implants and recoiled. Giant flashes of lightning cracked through space, each one powerful enough to swat her ship as easily as a human would stamp on an ant. Great rolling waves of energy blazed round the gravitational shadow cast by Sister III, while flickers of energy pulsed between Sister IV and Sister V. It was a maelstrom far more powerful than anything produced by mankind, Kat knew. No one, despite some proposals, had ever managed to tap hyperspace as a source of energy. All attempts had been universally disastrous.

Look at us, the storms seemed to say. You puny humans. So smug and secure. You’re nothing compared to us.

Alerts flashed up in her implants as she disconnected herself from the sensors. Her heartbeat was racing so fast she found sweat trickling down her back. Kat forced herself to take a deep breath, then composed herself with an effort. There was a reason officers and crew were discouraged from peeking through the starship’s hull when they were so close to a hyperspace storm. Mentally kicking herself for her mistake, Kat gripped hold of her command chair and braced herself for the first hint of trouble. The hull started to shake gently seconds later.

“Picking up waves of gravity turbulence,” Weiberg reported.

The XO leaned forward. “Can you see the passageway?”

“Yes,” Robertson said. “But it’s very thin, sir.”

Kat took a breath. “Take us in,” she ordered. “Best possible speed.”

There was no point in trying to sneak through, she knew. The passage might be safe, at least when compared to the remainder of local hyperspace, but their mere presence would excite hyperspace and trigger more storms. All they could do was race through it as fast as possible and hope they outran any surges of energy chasing them. She studied the display, carefully edited by the computers to be as unthreatening as possible, then braced herself. The shaking grew worse a moment later.

“Storms are picking up,” Robertson reported. “But they’re not closing in on us.”

The shaking abated, just long enough for Kat to relax, then it rapidly grew worse. On the display, waves of energy seemed to be spiraling towards them, almost as if the passageway were intelligent and rejecting their very presence. But Lightning passed through into the passageway without further incident, finding safe space at the very heart of the storm. It wouldn’t last, Kat knew, but she relaxed for a long moment anyway. All she could do was watch and wait.

She tracked their progress on the display. They’d be passing closer to Sister VII than she would have preferred, but it seemed as though the navigational data was largely accurate and the passage was safe. But, behind them, storms were gathering. Kat wondered, in a moment of gallows humor, if the Theocracy intended to use the passageway to send their fleet into Commonwealth space. They’d lose at least half of their ships if they tried.

Another dull quiver ran through the ship, then a long series of tremors that had Kat bracing herself, praying under her breath in a manner she hadn’t used since her first exposure to vacuum, back at Piker’s Peak. The lights seemed to dim for a second, then came back to life, just before something hit the prow of the ship hard enough to shake the entire vessel. Kat felt stunned, then confused, then finally realized they’d rammed right into a gravity wave. A physical impact would have blown the entire ship to bits.

Ramming always works, she thought, remembering lessons at Piker’s Peak. But it’s hard to ram when both ships are under power.

“Incoming gravity waves,” Robertson snapped.

Kat snapped out of her trance. “Brace for impact,” she snapped. “All hands brace for impact . . .”