The Fool’s alarm joined them a few seconds later, as did alarms from all the ships on the docks around us. The racket was so loud I had to cut my speakers before I could concentrate enough to swirl my cameras for the threat that could possibly cause so much noise. Since everything was blaring at once, my money was on natural disaster. Earthquake, tornado, something like that. But the ground was still and the sky was clear. So clear, in fact, that I could see the enormous shadows blinking out of hyperspace into orbit overhead.

There were so many, it took me a second to realize that the huge shapes were xith’cal tribe ships. Dozens of them. That was all I had time to process before the alarms stopped, and in the silence, the deepest xith’cal voice I’d ever heard began to boom from every speaker on the planet.

CHAPTER 13

It sounded like someone was tearing a whole scrap yard full of junk metal in half. The xith’cal’s voice was rhythmic and sharp, clearly a command, but since I didn’t speak lizard, I had no idea what it said. But the sound wasn’t all there was to the message. My suit was beeping at me, dragging my attention to Montblanc’s emergency channel, which had popped up when the alarms went off.

I was immediately sorry. The xith’cal’s voice had been bad enough, but actually seeing the monster it belonged to made my insides flip-flop. The damn thing was huge. Not even normal lizard levels of huge, I mean he was the size of a tank. Even sitting, he towered over the warriors that flanked him on either side. The sight was so imposing that I actually had trouble dragging my eyes away to read the translated text scrolling across the bottom of the screen.

… surrounded in a blockade. We have destroyed the pathetic protections you called a defense grid and taken over all your emergency channels. Any ships attempting to flee will be destroyed before they can reach orbit. There is no hope of rescue or escape. You are now the cornered prey of Reaper, mightiest of all the xith’cal tribes, and what Reaper takes, Reaper keeps.

As the huge xith’cal finished, the warriors around him roared, and I began to shake in earnest. I’d never seen a picture of Reaper, but I had no reason to doubt the huge xith’cal was who he claimed to be, or that he was telling the truth. Reaper’s name was feared throughout the galaxy for a reason. If he said there was no escape, then there wasn’t. But even as my breathing started to speed up, I realized Reaper wasn’t finished.

But I have no interest in such weak hunting, the xith’cal said. There is still a chance to buy your lives back. Bring this female to me, and you may yet be spared.

My stomach shrank to a tiny ball of ice. No. He couldn’t be talking about—

My picture appeared on the screen. I was in my armor, walking through the hangar of the xith’cal asteroid. The shot had been enhanced to show as much of my face as possible through my downed visor. It still wasn’t much, but then, seeing my face wasn’t really necessary. My custom mist-silver Verdemont armor was a dead giveaway.

You have one hour, Reaper continued, his deep voice grating against my ears. If the female is not surrendered by then, I will destroy a city every ten minutes until your entire planet is burned to ash. This is the only warning you will receive.

The transmission cut off with a crack, leaving my picture blown up across the screen. I was still staring dumbly at my own face when Caldswell’s hand hit my back, shoving my four hundred pound armored body toward the cargo bay stairs. “Go!” he shouted.

I was about to ask him where when I realized he wasn’t shouting at me. He was yelling into his com, and Basil, who must have been on the other end, responded by firing the engine so hard the ship bucked. My suit took the lurch in stride. I didn’t even have to slow down as I shot up the stairs after Caldswell.

“You can’t be serious!” I shouted. “Didn’t you hear what Reaper said?”

“Why the hell do you think I’m in such a hurry?” Caldswell snapped, breaking into a run when he reached the hall.

“He’s going to genocide the planet,” I said, hot on his heels. Montblanc might not be a core world, but it was still a huge colony with close to a billion people, all of whom were going to die if I didn’t go to Reaper. “We can’t just run!”

Caldswell stopped like he’d hit a wall and spun around. “We can and we are!” he shouted at me. “Don’t you get it by now, Morris? Your plasmex bug is the key to preserving the whole of human civilization. You think I’m going to hand that over just to save one planet?”

I blinked at him, but the captain was already on the move again. “You want to be a martyr, you’ll get your chance, but not here. Now come on.”

I obeyed more out of habit than anything else. “We’re going to get shot down,” I said as we ran onto the bridge.

“Not if we get the lead out,” Caldswell replied, vaulting over the rail to land in his captain’s chair. “Speaking of which, why aren’t we up yet, Basil?”

“Getting there, sir!” Basil cried. The aeon was in his pilot’s nest, feathers puffed in agitation as he punched the engine controls with both feet and one wing claw. “We were still on the warm-up cycle when—”

“Just get us in the air,” Caldswell said, cutting him off. “Nova, get ready to jump on my mark. Morris, hold on.”

I hadn’t even realized Nova had followed us until I saw her strapping herself into her tall chair with one hand while the other began punching numbers into the hyperdrive. Halfway through she gave up and started typing with both hands, but her harness kept buckling, the straps clicking together on their own. Plasmex, I realized belatedly, grabbing one of the bridge’s many rails. Good thing, too, because a second later, Basil stomped the thrusters, and the Fool popped off the ground like a cork.

We weren’t alone. Despite Reaper’s warning, the air was suddenly full of ships as anyone who could scrambled to get off-world. We narrowly missed getting hit as another ship blasted into the air right behind us, and I had to hold tight as Basil rolled us port side, cursing at the top of his lungs.

“What did you do anyway?” he squawked, turning his head completely around to glare at me.

I opened my mouth to say this wasn’t my idea, but Caldswell beat me to it.

“Just get us out,” he ordered, buckling his harness.

Through the large windows of the redone bridge, I could see the ships all around us like an enormous school of metal fish. I couldn’t remember ever seeing so many ships in the air at the same time before. But as we got higher and the atmosphere thinned, the tribe ships came into view, along with the fleet they’d brought with them, and suddenly, our rush didn’t feel so big anymore.

“Sacred King,” I muttered, eyes going wide as my suit’s system counted the ships I could see. And counted. And counted. “Did Reaper bring his whole damn tribe?”

“We’re not going to stick around to find out,” Caldswell said. “Nova, I want a jump the second we’re out of the planet’s gravity well.”

“But, captain.” Nova’s voice was so tiny I could barely hear it. “I don’t even have the variables from the gate yet. We might—”

“Just do your best,” Caldswell said. “One-minute jump, just enough to get us out.”

“Yes sir,” Nova whispered as she resumed typing frantic equations on the hyperdrive screen.

“Thirty seconds until we clear the atmosphere,” Basil announced, his whistling voice frantic. “And … we’ve got a missile lock.”

“Dodge it,” Caldswell ordered. “We just need to get far enough to jump.”

Basil ducked his head and hit the throttle. I grabbed the rail as the Fool banked hard, sending the stars I could now see clearly through the window spinning. We’d barely moved when the white tail of a missile shot past, missing us by less than a foot. A second later, a blast wave rocked the Fool as the cruiser below us exploded. My stabilizer took the bump in stride, but I sank to my knees anyway, hugging the bridge railing for dear life. Above us, the glare from Montblanc’s sun had vanished, eaten by the enormous shadow of a tribe ship as it moved over our heads.

“Sir?” Basil said, his yellow eyes huge.

“Stick to the plan!” Caldswell ordered. “How long until we can jump?”

“Five seconds,” Nova announced, her dreamy voice strained to a tiny thread. “Starting spin up.”

As she said it, I felt the hum of the hyperdrive coil spinning to life, and not a second too soon. Above us, the huge dark shape of the tribe ship was firing on the escaping ships, shooting each one down with a volley from its thousands of missile batteries. I watched in a sort of horrified trance as whole waves of ships went down like sparks from a firework.

The sheer scale of the destruction was actually hard to get my head around. I’d never seen a tribe ship in action before. Now I finally understood why they were so feared. Nothing could stand up to that sort of firepower. The only reason we were still alive was because there were so many ships in the sky. Even a tribe ship took a few seconds to chew through that kind of target density. I just prayed a few seconds would be enough.

“Battleship coming up starboard,” Basil said, head swiveling toward the glowing icon of the huge red ship flying through the projected map that surrounded his station. “Fast.”

For the first time in this whole crazy flight, Caldswell paled. “Jump us now, Nova.”

“Jump in three,” she said, her pale hands hovering over the jump button as the coil spun faster and faster. “Two. One—”

The Fool jerked hard enough to throw me even with my stabilizer. My suit caught me with a roll, but I wouldn’t have cared if I’d face-planted. I’d never been so happy to feel the bump into hyperspace in all my life. But as I righted myself, I realized something was wrong. There’d been no flash, no feeling of leaving dimensions, and this was certainly not the hyperspace stillness. Exactly the opposite—the whole ship was shaking, and I looked up to see the sky fill with explosions as the tribe ship fired.

“What was that?” Caldswell shouted.

“Something hit the coil!” Nova cried, her eternal calm slipping. “It’s a line of some kind.”

“A line?” I grunted, rolling to my feet.

No one answered; they were all staring at the main screen. I looked too, and my stomach sank to the floor. Up on the monitor was a shot from one of the rear cameras showing our hyperdrive coil, or what was left of it. The delicate machine had been skewered by a giant barbed harpoon attached to a metal cable as thick as my leg. At the other end was a xith’cal warship four times the Fool’s size. For a moment we both sat there, and then the Fool shuddered as they began to reel us in.

Caldswell cursed and hit a red button on his console. A second later, the Fool’s rear cannon fired, but it did no good. The shell stuck in the battleship’s heavy shields like a splinter. Caldswell didn’t even bother with a second shot. He jumped out of his chair and started for the bridge door. “Prepare for boarding,” he announced.

That was music to my ears. Standing there, watching the fight in the sky, I’d been terrified. It had been so huge, so out of my control, but a boarding party was my game. Shooting xith’cal I could do.

But when I ran into the hall after the captain, Caldswell stopped and put out his hand. “Not on your life, Morris,” he snarled. “I didn’t just slag my ship so you could get shot by some rank-and-file xith’cal raider.”

“Don’t be stupid,” I said. “What am I supposed to do? Hide in the—”

A huge pulse went through the ship, and my suit went dark. For a moment, I thought it was a phantom, but then I realized I was getting too fancy. That was a good old-fashioned EMP. The lizards had fried our ship.