Afterburn Read online

  No, Burn had better things to do. Like die, and take a whole clutch of the bastard reptilian slavers with him.

  One of the gsteks had an excellent gunner on board; he walloped Burn dead on early in his second pass, rolling through return fire as if it were rain. That destroyed Burn’s primary engines. In turn he shunted over to the secondary engines, making the strafer shudder violently, and used the rest of the pass to blow up another four ships.

  As the last of the Hsktskt raiders scattered, Burn made the strumming sound that was ’Zangian laughter. “Not the rotflesh you thought I was, am I?”

  Burn flipped the strafer around to face the remaining eight ships. Hull stress from debris impacts and other, less accurate, displacer hits began to take its toll, but Burn ignored it, put the flight controls on programmed autoevasive and released his harness, allowing him to free spin inside StarFire’s sphere.

  Neuroclamp transmitters, designed to relay the slightest twitch of his muscles to the sphere’s central processor, shot out to encircle his waist, upper torso, and flukes. The largest n-trans attached itself at the base of his skull and snaked hairlike leads to curl around the outside of his haffets. The leads picked up the synaptic pulses along the nerve pathways of his brain. Through the n-trans web he was linked body and mind to StarFire.

  This was the part of prototype testing Dair had ordered him not to perform. You’re absolutely not to hardwire yourself to that blaster master had been her exact words when he’d argued with her about it. I don’t care how much more control it will give you, either. No one knows what that kind of hookup will do to a ’Zangian brain; even one as tiny as yours.

  Whatever size his brain was, it felt fine. Dair worried too much.

  StarFire’s console lit up and the sphere rolled wildly as Burn quickly tested the n-trans links. Autocontrol guided the strafer as it barreled back into the cluster of ships. One good shot would disintegrate the SeaDance around Burn, but for some reason the Hsktskt held their fire.

  “What are you, playing hard to get now?” he muttered as he whirled within the sphere, sending out a barrage of multidirectional pulse fire.

  A quick glance at his console revealed why the Hsktskt were being so coy: most of his engine’s coolant, regulant, and fuel lines had ruptured. The fuel wouldn’t ignite in airless space, and while the coolant might contaminate his liquid atmosphere, it had no effect on him. Without regulant, however, the stardrive would go critical within minutes. The stardrive’s core didn’t need oxygen to vaporize him, the strafer, and anything within ten kim of them.

  “So that’s why you don’t think I’m pretty anymore.” He retracted the sphere, dropped into his harness, and watched the raiders’ stardrives activating as they prepared to jump to light speed. StarFire controlled his complement of smartorps, but reprogramming their trajectory protocols took a few precious seconds. “Ah-ah-ah. Too late to swim back to your dams.”

  Before he fired the smartorps, Burn took a last look at the twin suns that provided light and heat for K-2. The binary amber giants, spinning together, forever caught in each other’s magnetic fields, glowed benignly back at him.

  They approved. He had fought well, and he would drag his enemies into the black with him. That was all that mattered. And Dair would remember him with admiration for this, his supreme sacrifice.

  “Duo, deep with you.” He hit the firing panel.

  The smartorps launched on invisible waves of pulse propellant, lazily heading for and then missing the raiders as they returned to the strafer. Just before they struck the reinforced cowling protecting the SeaDance’s stardrive, Burn released a pulse of victory.

  A blinding blue light filled his eyes.

  “End Program Pilot Trainer Solo Flight Nine-Seven,” a polite drone voice announced over the audio panel.

  The raiders, the SeaDance, the suns, the stars, and space itself disappeared from Burn’s blue-dazzled vision field. They were replaced by the strafer sim’s walls and, beyond that, the yellow mesh of the dimensional simulator’s projection grid. Purge valves opened, and the liquid atmosphere inside the narrow confines of the pilot trainer unit began to drain away.

  Burn stretched his cramped limbs before he disengaged StarFire. Because he had been breathing water for the training session, it took a moment to transition from using his gills to inflating his lungs. Spitting out the water made him cough a little, but breathing oxygen was no longer the chore it used to be. His SEAL physical augmentations allowed him to stay out of the water far longer than any unaltered ’Zangian male his size.

  SEAL biotech, however, did nothing to prevent him from being sucked out of the trainer by an emergency evac purge, which spilled him out to flop like a beached clafaereas on the yellow mesh floor of the simulation grid.

  Burn hated being dumped almost as much as he despised breathing air. As soon as he finished clearing his gills, he let Control know it. “I wasn’t in any danger!”

  “I think you are now, Sublieutenant,” someone said over the audio.

  K-2’s ship simulators had been designed by League Flight Academy instructors for two reasons. One was to allow pilots to practice tactical flight operations and procedures without risking valuable vessels in space. The other was to accommodate the unusual physiologies of the native ’Zangians, who, even with SEAL modifications, could only survive a maximum of forty-eight stanhours away from their native aquatic environment.

  Keeping K-2’s patrol fleet and its future pilots safe allowed quadrant to send its more mobile troops to defend the outer borders and serve at the front.

  The strafer sim was a useful piece of equipment, and felt so real that Burn could never tell the difference between flying real and sim, but he resented the way Control had terminated the training sequence. Until he saw the twenty other strafer pilots, all dripping wet and standing in a semicircle around his sim. They had stepped out of trainer units identical to his, and none of them looked in the least bit happy.

  Burn rolled a recessed eye toward Saree, Dairs’ wing lead pilot and presently second-in-command. “Land’s end, why are you all in here? I thought it was a solo mission.”

  Saree walked up, kicked him in the side, and then made an about-face and marched out of the envirodome.

  Once Burn caught the breath she’d knocked out of his lungs, he pushed himself up and separated his flukes to stand. By that time most of the other SEALs had followed Saree off the grid.

  “What happened?” Burn demanded of the two ’Zangian males left. “Why is everyone so angry?”

  “It may be because you blew up our ships and killed us,” Curonal told him. “All of us.”

  “I did not.” Burn felt highly indignant as he scanned the angry faces around him. “I killed all the damn lizards.”

  “We were the lizards, perceptive one.” Loknoth looked ready to take a bite out of him. “We had them cut off from the rear, until you went ’shrikefest with the blasters.”

  “But all I saw were . . .” Burn stopped and groaned. New hull technology allowed fighter strafers to change their profile in space and appear as any other vessel, from an indolent cargo freighter to an enemy scout ship. “You came in copycat on the second wave?”

  Loknoth looked at Curonal. “You can have him as your gunner.”

  “Do I truly appear that dim-witted to you?” Curonal asked Loknoth.

  Two other SEALs entered the simulator. The first, Onkar, was a heavily scarred former rogue male almost as large as Burn. Onkar had undergone recent augmentations to repair severe injuries sustained during a battle with Hsktskt raiders, and was still adjusting to them, but he was rapidly regaining his formidable strength and speed. Onkar wore his new subcommander’s rank on the collar of his dark blue flightsuit, but the glitter of his new promotion only enhanced the grimness of his expression.

  Onkar wasn’t happy. Which meant . . .

  Burn glanced at the smaller, more radically alterformed ’Zangian female accompanying the subcommander. Onkar’s mate and Burn�
��s cousin, Jadaira mu T’Resa, had been born a full-white ’Zangian, but had required transplants of human tissue and organs to repair plague-induced birth defects. Like her mate Onkar, Dair had recently suffered grievous injuries during her battle to save the war-displaced, cultish Skartesh species, only no one quite knew how or why she had recovered.

  Burn didn’t care what had saved his cousin’s life. That Dair was still alive was all that mattered to him.

  Whatever had happened to Dair had done more than snatch her back from death. It had physically transformed her all-white body, melding the DNA from her ’Zangian and Terran body parts. No one was really sure what she had become. Her now-silvery hide looked ghostly against her modified commander’s dark gray dress uniform, while her body was an eerie, graceful blend of half-humanoid, half-aquatic parts.

  Dair also looked mad enough to bite him. Several times.

  “Greetings, cousin.” Burn couldn’t fathom why anger darkened her almost-human face. It was just a simulation. “Why did you dump me out like that?”

  Dair strode up to him and, although he was twice her size and three times her weight, slapped him smartly on the snout. “Idiot. What were you thinking, targeting your own stardrive and blowing yourself to bits like that?”

  “Jadaira,” Onkar said. “Calm yourself.”

  A former rogue who had spent most of his life alone in K-2’s dangerous outer currents, Onkar never spoke much. When he did, he commanded immediate attention and respect.

  From everyone but his mate. “I’ll calm when he explains,” she said before turning to poke one of her modified fins’ strange new “fingers” into the lower vault of Burn’s chest. “Well? Why did you ignore my orders?”

  “It was useless to try to escape.” He gave her a reproachful glance. “You might have warned me that the pod was playing Hsktskt.”

  “So the lizards could turn around and obliterate them? I think not. You were supposed to play bleeding bait.”

  Burn scowled. “That would never have worked.”

  “Oh?” Her eyes glittered, all ghostly silver fire. “And precisely when did you become an expert on flight maneuvers and tactical engagements, you sludge-headed, bottom-feeding, worthless hunk of ’shrike bait?”

  “A half-blind pup could see the holes in that strategy.” Guilt made him glance at Onkar, who had lost an eye during a real skirmish with the Hsktskt. The doctors had replaced it with an Ylydii transplant. “Ah, no offense, Subcommander.”

  Onkar only shook his head and looked at the upper vault of the envirodome.

  “Don’t try to get him on your side.” Dair jabbed Burn again to draw his attention back to her. “I’m your commander. You answer to me.”

  Burn assumed a resentful, slightly hump-backed posture, one that would have been far more impressive in the water. “All right, I shouldn’t have disobeyed the order. But if the pod had been real Hsktskt, which is what they looked like, then my actions were correct.”

  “They weren’t. Yours weren’t.”

  “I couldn’t tell, and fifteen raiders would have obliterated a good chunk of the colony. I had to act on the threat.” He couldn’t resist rubbing the stinging spot on his face with one fin end. Dair smacked hard. “Anyway, I took out the three that were real and saved the day.”

  “By killing yourself and the pod, and turning twenty-one very expensive ships into a cloud of dust particles?”

  “Simulated dust particles.” He gave her a gentle, reassuring bump. “Now, why don’t you thank me for killing those ugly podling-eaters and assign me to fly Rescue Three?”

  Onkar made a sound suspiciously like a smothered groan.

  “Thank you? Give you a real ship? You’re lucky I don’t suspend you from duty!” Dair’s voice changed from irate to tympanic-membrane piercing. “If you think for one nanosecond that I’m going to let you pilot any ship for Bio Rescue when you insist on acting like a scar-hungry adolescent wrill-brained—”

  “Jadaira.” Her mate put one of his fins on her sloped shoulder. “Burn did react to a threat, as would anyone unaware of the copycat maneuver. We shall have to rethink that strategy.”

  The older male’s defense surprised Burn. They had never been friends, and Burn’s closeness to Dair had created a certain amount of tension between them. Since Onkar had mated with Dair, however, he had changed. He was still as possessive of her as ever, but now he seemed quieter and more thoughtful.

  “You’re supporting what he did?” Dair regarded her mate with narrow eyes. “Yes, I can see why you would, too. You’d have done the same stupid thing.”

  “In the same position, with the same readings? Yes.”

  “You, I let catch me and father my child. What was I thinking?” Dair turned and stomped out of the chamber.

  Burn waited until the door panel closed before he sighed. “You know, she used to be a lot more fun before she was saved from death by that omnipotent, miraculous force.”

  “She used to be on patrol, with you as her gunner,” Onkar reminded him. “Waiting for the pup, being grounded, and training you to pilot has not been easy for her.”

  “Easy?” Burn snorted air, making a rude sound through his gillets. “She’s put me in this trainer so often I should leave it filled and regard it as my second home.”

  “She is concerned for you.” Onkar reset the trainer’s controls and powered down the flight module array. “She knows, better than anyone, the risks you will encounter as a Bio Rescue pilot.”

  “I won’t encounter any if she doesn’t let me fly a real ship.” Which he coveted more than testing StarFire. “When is she going to quit acting like my dam and let me have one?”

  “When you earn the privilege.” Onkar gestured toward the door panel. “Come, it’s past shift end.”

  It was only a short distance from the Main Transport building to the departure station, where specially adapted glidebuses waited to transport the aquatic ’Zangians back and forth between the sea and the land-dwellers’ colony. As he accompanied Burn, Onkar signaled his mate several times via his wristcom.

  Jadaira didn’t respond once.

  She was likely more upset than she had appeared. Onkar had noticed how increasingly volatile her temper had become, and it was not only due to their pending whelping and the endless medical testing Jadaira had to endure. Too much was changing too fast, on the land and under the water, and as usual his mate was trying to keep a balance between both sides.

  Burn noticed Onkar’s fruitless attempts to contact Dair. “Blocking your relays, is she? She truly has her tail in a twist.”

  “Likely she does.”

  “So what can I do to chase her away from mine?”

  “Byorn . . .” Onkar hesitated as he tried to choose his words carefully. He was still not accustomed to casually conversing with other ’Zangians, or making observations about their emotions. The years he had spent swimming rogue had been silent, lonely ones. “Jadaira worries about you.”

  “I already have a dam to do that. I don’t need two.” The younger ’Zangian scratched at the side of his face. “What I really need is to get wet.”

  Despite the skin shielding worn under the ’Zangians’ uniforms, which allowed a thin layer of water to circulate over their sensitive hides, itching and flaking while out of the water was a common problem. While their skin cells sloughed off ten times faster than those of land-dwelling humanoids, Onkar suspected that Burn’s discomfort came more from his desire to avoid another rebuke. Particularly from the one male in the coastal pod who could still be considered his physical equal in the water.

  “What fuels Jadaira’s anger is her deep affection for you. You are more like a sibling than a cousin.” Onkar narrowed his recessed, bicolored eyes against the sunslight, which K-2’s atmosphere filtered to become a vibrant green. “I envy the closeness you share.”

  That seemed to startle Burn. He stared at Onkar for a moment before he finned regret. “I’m not trying to aggravate her, you know. Not deliberately.
She doesn’t understand what it’s like. What it feels like.”

  Onkar knew that Jadaira didn’t, and the problem was growing almost as fast as her young cousin. Colony doctors had discovered that SEAL technology accelerated the maturation process for some ’Zangian males. Burn was unusually large and aggressive for a male to begin with, and the onset of his adult hormones wasn’t helping.

  “You and I can no longer see the whole of ourselves in the water,” he said, reminding the younger ’Zangian of their size and power. “We males also have drives that Jadaira will never fathom or possess.”

  “Explain that to her. Duo knows, I’ve tried.”

  “It is something she can never know.” Onkar was glad of that. Some of the more aggressive needs he shared with Burn would have frightened his mate out of her wits. “Being the biggest and strongest among a kind does not entitle us to employ those advantages. More often than not, we must refrain from using them.”

  Burn grunted. “I do.”

  “Not as often as you could. When you fly, you must think as well as react.”

  “I do.” He ducked his head. “All right, thinking isn’t as easy as reacting. But honestly, Onkar—”

  He made the fin gesture for silence. “You have been a soldier for some years now. Firing on another vessel kills hundreds, sometimes thousands of other beings, but it is remote and unseen. Someday you will have to watch others die at your hand, and it will change you. Be prepared for it.”

  “I am. I mean, I will be.”

  “I do not mean your physical training. You have a fine mind, Byorn. Try using it instead of relying solely on your strength and aggression.” Onkar saw another ’Zangian approaching them and glanced at his wristcom. Still no return signal. This was worse than Dair’s usual sulk. “It seems I must go and retrieve my mate. I will discuss your training with her, but think on what I have said.”