computer voice warned of the hull being breached on the port side of the ship. As soon as Yas reached sickbay, he locked himself into a pod and pulled up a display of the battle. He was in time to see one of the Fedallah’s blasts slam into the side of the astroshaman ship. This time, its shields weren’t enough to fully repel the attack. The ship’s running lights went dark.
Rache’s calm voice came over the speaker. “Doctor Peshlakai, we’ve taken out the shields and possibly main power on the astroshaman ship. I’m sending over a boarding party to collect prisoners. Be prepared for casualties, possibly among our side and most likely among the astroshamans.”
Yas should have issued an obedient, “Yes, sir,” but he couldn’t help but ask, “Is Moonrazor among them? Did you fire because they wouldn’t agree to fix the gate?”
“I don’t know if she’s among them. We’ll find out. Rache, out.”
He didn’t know if she was among them, and he’d fired anyway? That meant there had been no negotiation. If Kyla Moonrazor was over there, she would be dagger-hurling mad.
Grimacing, Yas braced himself for angry patients… and pulled up what medical records he could find pertinent to treating astroshamans.
Casmir moved from the control room to the now-familiar manufacturing facility, completely and unfortunately bypassing the room Shayban had given him to sleep in. There wasn’t time for sleep.
He had Tristan, a handful of engineers from the station, and Zee and several other crushers helping him to retool the equipment once again. Right now, he was crossing his fingers that he’d figured out enough about the slydar detector to replicate it. Even loading the software onto another system was proving problematic—he’d encountered numerous security precautions installed by the original builders, designed to prevent anyone from doing exactly what he was doing. He’d ended up sending some of it over to Lieutenant Grunburg on the Osprey to work on while he tinkered with the hardware. He’d also sent all the specifications and the schematic he’d put together, figuring the engineers and programmers on the Kingdom ships could work on building their own slydar detectors if they could kludge together the necessary parts with what they had. At the least, they would have a head start on preparing the interface for their scanners.
Nalini came in a few hours into the evening and went straight to where Casmir and Tristan were working and deposited takeout boxes of hot food on a conveyor belt. That prompted Tristan to kiss her and proclaim his love for her. Casmir, had he thought she would appreciate it, might have done the same. Not only had she brought food, but she’d also taken over supplying and organizing the fleet he’d never expected to end up in charge of.
The only problem was that said fleet might end up being sent out of the asteroid only to help protect it. They could hardly fly off to hunt for Dubashi and leave the station with half its defenses.
I have a problem, popped up an unexpected message from Kyla Moonrazor.
Casmir held up a finger and stepped away from the others so he could concentrate. Is it me?
It’s your mercenary clone.
Maybe it should have alarmed or surprised Casmir that Kyla Moonrazor, a woman he’d met exactly once and very briefly, knew about his relationship to Rache. And likely who their progenitor was. But it did not. He assumed she could gather information as well as the best Royal Intelligence analyst, if not better. With all the cybernetic upgrades she had, she could probably surf the network like a data packet zipping around at light speed.
What’s he doing, and how can I help?
He’s captured the ship I left monitoring the gate. It has several of my people aboard. They and the ship are only there because you requested we deactivate the gate—I’m still waiting for the crusher you promised, FYI.
Where would you like him delivered?
To Rache’s ship to kill him. She sounded frustrated enough to strangle Casmir as well as Rache.
He grimaced. She’d only diddled with the gate as a favor to him. I’m not sure the postal service would be up to that.
He’s willing to return my people and my ship to me if I open the gate. Which I am considering. I’m not like that idiot Dubashi, who’s so obsessed with getting retribution that he abandoned his followers. Oh, he’s supposedly promised to take them to a new land, but he’s scarcely communicated with them in a year.
I’m surprised he has