The cutting torch fell silent, its job done. A circular section of the door fell forward with a clank. Vossix felt himself wince as it fell. He steeled himself, then aimed his pistol over the top of the chair.
“I am required to command you to lay down your weapons,” he said. There was no reply. “Do so and you will not be harmed.”
This time his words were met with a series of low chuckles.
“Bold, I’ll give you that, trooper.” Lagoon leant through the hole in the door as he spoke, a stolen rifle gripped in his webbed fingers. “Seems like you’re a little outnumbered.”
The laughing grew louder. The resistance fighters were enjoying the change in power dynamic.
“You are never outnumbered when one with the Rhythm. Your heart beats with the force of millions.” Vossix had said it almost unconsciously, a phrase drummed into him through a lifetime of subtle brainwashing. “That said I was never one to stick that closely to scripture.”
“Lay down your weapon,” Lagoon said. “I’d rather not have to rush you.” Even with just the one defender, forcing their way through the door would result in some casualties. If he was honest with himself, Lagoon would love the chance to drop a trooper, but not at the cost of his men. Especially if it was avoidable.
“Fine!” Vossix saw his chance, tossing the pistol aside. He stood up from behind the chair, his primary arms raised in the air. “I surrender.”
“Wise.” Lagoon stepped through the doorway, followed by his men and an armoured marine. “Secure those stations. Get the cameras on, so we can aid the other teams.”
“Other teams? Wow, you’ve really planned this! What was that explosion earlier? Did you breach the hull?”
“Why do you care?”
Vossix’s mandibles chattered excitedly. “It’s just, stealing a Council ship whilst it’s under repair, its crew depleted, now I think about it is a little exciting. It’s just like something from The Approved Adventures of Missionary Mizath! I could imagine the missionary doing something just like it.”
“A comic?” Lagoon was caught off guard. “You think this is like a comic?”
“Well it is, isn’t it? So, what was that explosion.”
“We crashed a ship through the hanger doors.”
“See!” Vossix did an odd little hop, happiness forcing his limbs into motion. “That’s exactly something from the comic! Issue three thousand and ninety-two!”
“If you say so.” Lagoon nodded to one of his nearby fighters. “Watch him.” He spun towards another. “Get Orson on the comms.”
It was almost unbelievable. They had pulled it off, the ship was theirs. The Shield of the Valorous. Orson hated the name, but the others had protested changing it. It seemed the superstition that it was bad luck to rename the ship was a common one. Instead, they had shortened it. The Shield. It felt right.
The other sections of the ship had fallen soon after the bridge. Orson was pleased to see his marines had secured the reactor room not long after, overcoming fierce resistance. They weren’t first, but they weren’t last either and considering they had the hardest fight they had done well. The other groups had been largely unimpeded. A run-in with a pair of troopers had cost Kalk one of his men. It stung, but it was the only casualty on his side. All things considered, it was a startling success.
Sitting in his new captain’s chair, he watched the maintenance station getting further away on the view screen. The air was filled with a burning smell where a new door was being welded into place. There were a few minor repairs that needed completing, holes to be patched from stray shots or doors being blown through. Of course, there was one major repair the ship needed; the hanger Orson had crashed a ship through was out of commission. It wasn’t a major issue, a battleship of the Shield’s size had multiple hangers and he didn’t have enough ships to fill them anyway.
The plan had been to detonate the station, to blow it apart and leave no trace. Nguyen had come to Orson just before he had ordered the bombs to be set. She had a better idea.
Instead of leaving explosives, they had left a message, along with the surviving enemy troopers. A handful of them, including the one called Vossix, had offered to join the resistance. Vossix, in particular, had been in awe at what they had accomplished, though he kept comparing Orson to some comic book hero. That had been what had inspired Nguyen. Stealing a battleship was impressive, but openly striking against such a big target was even more so. A real, actual blow to the Council’s forces. It was the perfect thing to spread Orson’s message. The Knower of Truths was here, and they had won a real battle against the Council. It was the same logic as taking the communications stations but amplified a hundred-fold.
“Where to, sir?” Johnson said. He was sat at the navigation station. Orson had been rotating the positions of his staff, even having some marines work on the bridge. The more people who had been cross-trained the better. At least, that was true on the Gallant. The bridge of the Shield was much larger, and it was filled with the alien members of his resistance. Orson needed every hand he could get to run the battleship effectively, so the other ships had been docked in the working hangars, their crews getting to work aboard the Shield.
“That’s an excellent question, Johnson.” Orson hadn’t thought this far ahead. Taking the ship had seemed daunting enough, he hadn’t dared imagine what he would actually do with it. “First, let’s get out of here. In case someone comes looking for this ship.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
The atmosphere was so thick you could cut it with a knife. Michael had never liked that expression; it implied people were going around waving knives in the air during a tense situation. Despite popular opinion, that simply wasn’t a done thing, not even in south London. It had been a few hours since the Seeker had dropped out of jump space. Nothing had followed them into the jump corridor, no monolithic black ships with terrible gazes. The Seeker had hung motionless in space whilst its jump drive cleared the strange energies of jump space from itself.
Michael had seen the core of a jump drive a few times when the Sword had needed one of its drives replaced. It wasn’t what he had expected. Science fiction had taught him that faster than light engines were huge glowing towers nestled within circular chambers, a volatile device that seemed to fail in all the most dramatic moments. The drive core wasn’t like that. The grey box was made of hundreds of smaller cubes. They were constantly in motion, the smaller boxes rolling over each other like a wave. The core plugged into a cradle aboard the ship, allowing it to make the jump transition. The science of it was beyond Michael past that point. He was aware that the Sword’s set up, with two drive cores, was something that was considered impossible previously. It seemed to Michael he was always coming up against the impossible, in some way or the other.
“We’re good to go again,” Brekt said. He had left his chair, instead sitting on the floor beside it, leaning against the slight slope of the wall that separated the piloting section of the control room from the upper level. The gel chairs locked in their posture, and Brekt had just needed to recline a little. “Drive is showing charged.” He gestured towards the blinking hologram above his console.
“So, let’s get going then?” Michael said. He was pacing across the back of the room. He had tried to lie on the gel couch but had found his elbow sinking into the substance, his arm getting stuck for a few moments. Favouring being able to move over being trapped in the blue goo, he had gone fully the other way, walking nervously rather than relaxing. “Quicker we’re out of here the better, right?”