I drew in a breath and let it out. “Does he know now?”
“I’m waiting for a good time to tell him. Yoan sulked all the way here.” Her smile returned. “But he brightened when he saw the Lythion. He loves tinkering with the nanobot system.”
“You adopted it for your ships, after all.” I was pleased. Wedekind’s advanced designs were coming into their own, finally.
Saito nodded. “It’s sensible. It saves space. I should show you around, but Jai mentioned some unsettling things. We would much rather hear what is going on with you.”
Sauli came over to us. “And Venni is nagging me to let her see the others.” He rolled his eyes.
I put my arm through his. “Let’s go, then. We have things to tell you.”
—21—
It took time to bring Sauli, Kristiana and Yoan up to date. We took them into the map room, which functioned as a full-immersion 3D tank, and all of us stood around in a circle and gave each of our sections of the full story.
They asked a great many questions on the way through. Nearly all of them were practical questions, but even they, the most practiced team of engineers I’d ever come across, still asked the same unanswerable questions we had been asking ourselves.
What is this blue species? Is aggressiveness just their nature? What do they want? Where have they taken the crew of the Ige Ibas, and the other three ships? And what do they want with them?
Dalton halted the speculation. “It doesn’t matter what they want. And I don’t give a damn where they come from, except for how it will help me find them again. I want my son back. That’s all I care about.”
Fiori gripped her hands together, her expression strained, and remained silent.
Jai nodded. “A good point, and the reason we’re all here.”
Dalton drew in a breath, visibly forcing himself to relax. He nodded. “You’re right. I’m sorry. I appreciate that everyone is working on this.”
“A shitty reason to bring us all together,” Sauli added.
“Most of us,” Lyth murmured.
“Yeah, most of us.” Sauli grimaced. “Where is she, anyway?”
Lyth waved toward the star map we stood amongst. “Pick a spot.”
It occurred to me that if Lyth could find missing ships despite lack of documentation, then surely, he could keep tabs on Juliyana’s ship. Had he chosen not to?
Sauli rubbed the back of his neck. “Used to be, ex-Rangers outnumbered civilians on this ship. We could use her.”
“Sorry,” Lyth said shortly.
“We have two ex-Rangers and two ex-Shield,” Jai said. “And a great deal of exceptional expertise between all of us, most of it non-military. Each of us has learned how to survive and that is our greatest strength. There is no one else who can do this but us.”
“Yeah, but how do we do it?” I said.
Sauli smiled. “I know a way.”
We all looked at him expectantly.
“These blue buggers are stealing people. So, let’s give them some people to steal.” He shrugged. “Let’s give them us.”
—22—
Of course we argued about it. Kristiana insisted that Yoan go back to Darius and out of this. My instinct was to send the parawolves somewhere else, too. Yoan was hotly indignant and refused to leave. I’m sure the parawolves would simply not have understood why we were sending them away. In the end, everyone stayed.
We even took both ships.
“Of course we can take both. We must take both,” Jai said. “The blues attacked when two ships were stationary. We just have to give them a fat enough target to attack two ships again. This time, we have Sauli and Saito’s expensive runabout—”
Sauli snorted.
“If the blues even recognize it as a rich target,” I added.
“If they don’t, it doesn’t matter.” Jai’s tone was complacent. “With the Lythion there, they won’t be able to resist. You beat them once. If they’re truly aggressive, they won’t let that insult lie.”
“They’ll come out with their weapons on full charge,” Dalton said. “How do we stop them doing that again? We have to find a way to speak to them.”
“First, we must find them,” Jai said gently. “This will bring them out.”
“You’re banking on them knowing we’re there,” I pointed out. “What if they just happened to stumble across the other four ships?”
“Four that we know of,” Lyth corrected. “There may well be others.”
Jai rubbed his jaw. “We don’t know how to signal to get their attention. But none of the other four ships would have signaled in any way. They just happened to be in the same general area of space, so we must put ourselves there and wait.”
“It could be a long wait,” I pointed out.
Jai smiled. It had a nasty edge to it. “Colonel, if an enemy unit slapped your face for you, when you thought your team unstoppable, wouldn’t you watch them very carefully after that? Look for signs of vulnerability?”
“I would,” I said evenly. “I’d make it my mission in life, because that enemy unit would now be a threat I must reduce or disable.”
“Or eliminate,” Dalton said grimly.
“Or eliminate,” I echoed reluctantly, because that was just as true as any of the other possibilities. They’d called me the Imperial Hammer for a reason.
Jai nodded. “They don’t know where we are from, just as we don’t know where they are from. But we both know where each of us was. So let’s go there.”
We dusted off from the Wynchester platforms six hours later. It would have been sooner, but Sauli’s ship was still going through post-landing checks and resupply. Sauli’s captain, Baha Truda, spent money to make the turnaround as short as possible.
Venni stayed with the parawolves on the Lythion, and Lyssa extended the sandpit to accommodate the five of them. Yoan also stayed, donned coveralls and dived eagerly into the engineering compartments, watched over by
