Chapter Twenty-Five

R egi banked crest-ward in response to the warning Vk sent him. Weapons fire registered against the null-energy shielding on the belly of his craft. Vk called through the radio again, and Regi pushed the nose of his ship down and accelerated sharply.

It put him on a dangerous collision course with the other Gavd ship, the one where Ter and Dante had been taken against their wills. But he had to get close if he was going to pick off the Belfin mines congregating against the ship's hull. Trusting his instincts, Regi allowed himself to sail at the other ship until the last possible moment and then he fired his maneuvering thrusters to put his belly toward the ship before burning hot out of the other ship's path.

He'd set his targeting computer the task of blasting any mine it could without risking the other Gavd ship, and his ship fired off dozens of short energy bursts. A constellation of explosions lit up the port side of his fighter.

Regi opened communications to his Gavd ship's command structure. "Navigate the ship closer. Cover their vulnerable flank."

"We can't fly closer without exerting gravitational forces on each other," another Kowri answered.

"You have to protect their damaged flank if you want to save the ship. You can compensate for gravitational forces." Regi bit his tongue before adding it was the only way to save Dante. Perhaps it made him a bad person that his mind kept spinning back to thoughts of Dante being on that ship.

He should be worried about the Kowri children, the babies in their parents' arms, the families huddled in their quarters as the main life support failed. But as much as he knew he should worry about those individuals first, they were faceless and nameless in his imagination. The thought of Dante dying brought with it images of Dante's smile when he was amused or the haunted expression he would get when he would mention the horrific tortures he had suffered.

Regi's targeting computer took out another pair of mines before he fired his maneuvering thrusters to spin his ship about.

Vk called out another set of warnings and without even looking for the enemy, Regi sent his ship off at a new angle.

Six pirate ships had attacked, all with their escorting fighters. A Kowri ship could take a Coalition one. It could even handle two or three Coalition ships with no difficulties. But there were six, and the other Kowri ship was disabled enough that it was more of a hindrance than assistance. She was firing her batteries, but she couldn't maneuver, which meant that most of her weapons could fire if the pirates crossed her path. And they had learned to avoid that.

But worse, Regi's Gavd ship was now limited by its need to defend the other.

Regi took a spare second to check the coordinates of all the ships in the area. Space was littered with small fighters scattered like sand thrown across a wide rock. And his Gavd ship was not moving into position to better cover the other ship's damaged side.

"In the name of Divashi the Poisoner in whose oversized hand I stand, I call on you to move that ship closer and defend the flank," Regi snapped. It was the strongest statement an exalted could make, and it verged on the blasphemy of suggesting he could read the mind of his goddess and act in her stead. But he would not leave the crippled ship without defenses.

He expected another exalted to admonish him, but instead the ship released puff-bursts, inching the giant Gavd ships closer and making it more difficult for fighters to get between them and attack the vulnerable flank.

It also made it infinitely more difficult for Regi to navigate since he was now between the two behemoths.

He put on a burst of speed toward the gap before spinning his fighter around so he was sailing backwards toward the fight. He trusted Vk to give him some warning of any danger that might come at his aft side, and he allowed the targeting computer to take out a half-dozen more mines. Something inside the ship was pushing the mines off the hull, and Regi suspected Ter had something to do with that. He had been in enough battles with the Belfin weapons to know how to counter them.

The targeting computer took out two more mines before Vk warned him about enemy fighters approaching from the rear. Regi spun his ship around again, and one of his maneuvering thrusters issued a warning for low fuel levels.

Regi was lined up with the crest-ward side of the enemy fighters. They would have their strongest shielding there, but they would also have the hardest time returning fire from that position. Regi set off a volley of hard impact missiles.

At the last moment, the ships attempted to elude. One was successful; the other was not. The missiles tore into the canopy of the ship and the explosive pressure of atmospheric decompression sent it spinning toward Jeheni's Gavd ship.

Vk called a warning, and Regi corrected course again. Two more maneuvering thrusters issued their fuel alerts, and Regi searched for the docking query function. As a young Kowri, he had studied the fighters, certain that one day he would serve on the great Gavd ships, but that had been years ago, and he was no longer sure how to log a request for docking. He knew he needed to dock before more systems ran out of fuel.

He was searching for the elusive function when Vk reported another pirate ship moving in on his position.

Maneuvering should have been as instantaneous as breathing and equally automatic, but his mind had been caught for that one critical sudden second in the frustration of searching the unfamiliar Kowri systems.

His hands flew across the controls, but they didn't move fast enough. Before Regi could process his mistake, he felt the impact of enemy weaponry. His ship shuddered, and warning systems lit up the control panel in vivid pinks and purples and blues to illustrate the relative damage taken by the different parts of the ship.

Regi's hands were sure on the controls, but the ship no longer had the ability to maneuver. Firing thrusters sputtered and the ship drifted to one side before more weapon fire slammed into it. Regi's helmet hit the padded restraints as his body struggled to continue one direction while the force of weapon impact drove his ship in a different one. Vk called out yet another warning, and it was only the slight shrillness of the ending note of each word that hinted at her panic.

Regi knew his fighter was incapable of maneuvering, but his hands still danced over the controls.

The sluggish ship responded with a single thruster and his tail rose crest-ward before a third round of weapons fire sent him careening in a new direction. Every control on the board flashed blue and purple, and the helmet lights shifted towards purple to show that life support was now limited to the emergency supply within the suit itself.

Regi wasn't leaking atmosphere, but his ship was no longer able to generate oxygen. The stars spun past in a lazy circle as his ship drifted away from the battle. If the Kowri could win and if they could win quickly enough to send out rescue teams, Regi might survive, but at this point, his survival was not his primary goal. With each slow rotation of his ship, the battle drifted past his window in three or four second intervals. The Kowri ships were side-by-side, their superior weapons ripping through the enemy whenever they provided a vulnerable flank, but the pirates had learned the firing patterns well enough to avoid most danger.

The pirates were the gibuks biting at the legs and flanks of the pebafri, and in a battle of gibuk versus pebafri, the tiny gibuks would win. The pebafri's sole defense against such small but persistent predators was to flee.

Regi opened his radio channel and was inundated with dozens of flight commanders sending their fighters against the pirates. The Kowri pilots were superior, but Regi heard the panic in their voices when they encountered Belfin mines that could burrow through the skin of their fighters before the pilots knew they were there. Kowri were unused to fighting such tactics.

Regi knew that it was blasphemy to request his goddess to intervene, but there was a tiny part of him that hoped she would, even if he dare not ask it of her. Instead, he watched the Gavd ships stand back-to-back like two crippled pebafri flailing with hooves and fangs at an enemy they couldn't quite touch.

A flight of pirate fighters swooped in to take out a formation of Kowri, but without cause, the pirates began to flee back to their main ships. As Regi's small ship completed another slow arc, he watched shuttles and evacuation pods shoot off from two of the pirate ships like pollen in the breeze. The remaining four large ships swooped in to gather up as many individuals as they could.

Regi searched the data, but saw nothing on his controls to explain it.

"Support incoming. Support incoming. The gods' second blessings upon us," a Kowri called, their master code silencing all other voices.

Regi closed his eyes and imagined himself pressing his thumbs against his temples in supplication even if the spacesuit did not give him enough range of motion to complete the act. He studied the stars and the navigational charts and the few functioning readouts that still flashed their purple numbers as he searched for whatever support everyone else saw.

The blue-black of space was warped into a prism of colors before something the size of a small planet drifted out of the center of the field. The rounded shape soon gave way to a central tower and a tall spire crest-ward and a cluster of crystals belly-ward.

Only one type of ship that Regi had ever read about matched the description. He had never seen it. Few Kowri had. This was not a Gavd ship that would travel from world to world. This was not a ship one might ask for passage on or that conducted business or logged routes.

This was the sole remaining Retav ship. The massive disc-shaped structure was better described as an artificial planet than a ship. This was the pride of the Lord of Retribution. All communications went silent, and the crystals at the bottom of the Retav ship began to glow a vivid teal before energy bursts shot out like the sparks of a disrupted campfire.

Dozens of pirate ships exploded, their lives nothing more than flares against the black of space.

Regi's hair stood on end. This was not a Gavd ship in search of justice. This was the home of the Lord of Retribution. This was the embodiment of Kowri vengeance.