Forsaken Skies Read online

  He sobered up again almost instantly when he saw where he was headed next. Thom had been thrown for a loop by a grazing collision and now he was falling out of the sky. Up ahead lay the broad disk of Geryon, a boiling hell cauldron of a planet. Out of control and spinning, Thom couldn’t fight the pull of its gravity. He was going to fall right into that mess.

  Geryon was a gas giant, a world with no surface, just a near-endless atmosphere. From a distance it looked like it was tearing itself apart from the inside out. It was banded with dark storms, nearly black, that hid an inner layer of incandescent neon. The buzzing red light streaked outward through every crack and gap in the cloud layer, rays of baleful effulgence spearing outward at the void.

  Lanoe barely had time to get a look at the planet before the yacht pitched nose first into its atmosphere. He burned after it, down into the topmost clouds. He tried to paint the kid again with the communications laser, not expecting a result. He didn’t get one.

  As he tore through the dark haze of the clouds he lost track of Thom altogether. Then suddenly the fighter burst through the bottom of a wisp of cirrus and Lanoe wasn’t in space anymore.

  On every side, tortured clouds piled up around him in enormous thunderheads, whole towers and fortresses of cloud with ramparts and battlements that melted away into mist every time he tried to make out details. Rivers of dark blue methane coiled and bent around waves of atmospheric pressure.

  The sheer scale of it was lost on him until he saw the yacht, a tiny dot well ahead of him. It shot through a streamer of mist that arched high overhead, but the streamer was just one tiny arm of a vast storm as big as an ocean on Earth. And that was just what Lanoe could see from inside the fighter, a tiny fragment of a colossal world of clouds.

  The yacht was out of place in that vast cloudspace. A mote of dust on the storm. It was still tumbling, end over end—the kid hadn’t regained control. Tiny shards of debris were still pouring off its shattered airfoil, like thin smoke that traced out the yacht’s spinning, tumbling path. Damn it.

  At least atmospheric resistance had slowed them right down—maybe Lanoe could actually catch the kid now.

  The green pearl in Lanoe’s vision blinked back into existence, surprising him. The comms laser had reestablished contact.

  “Thom,” Lanoe called. “Thom, are you there? Are you okay?”

  The kid sounded terrified when he replied. Breathing hard, his voice pitched too high. “I’m…I’m still alive.”

  “Damn it, Thom,” Lanoe said. “What were you thinking back there? There were people on that freighter. You could have killed them.”

  It took a long while for Thom to reply. Maybe he was just struggling to pull out of his spin. Lanoe could see his attitude thrusters firing, jets of vapor that were lost instantly in the dark cloudscape.

  When Thom did come back on the line he sounded calmer, but chastened. “I didn’t know that.”

  Lanoe couldn’t help but feel for Thom. When the kid had made a break for it, when he’d stolen the yacht and run for the nearest wormhole, Lanoe had followed because he thought maybe, somehow, he could help. To the kid it must have looked like there was a hellhound on his tail. “Get control of your ship,” Lanoe told him. Though honestly it looked like Thom had already done just that. The yacht had stabilized its flight, even with one damaged airfoil. The kid had skill, Lanoe thought. He had the makings of a great pilot. If he didn’t die right here. “You all right?”

  “I’m fine.”

  “Then let’s think about how to keep you that way. Slow down and let’s talk about this. Okay? First things first, we need to get out of this atmosphere. Let’s head back to the Hexus. I can’t promise people there will be happy to see you, but—”

  “I’m not going back,” Thom replied. “I’m never going back.”

  It should have been over by now.

  It should have been quick and painless. He should have hit that freighter dead-on and that would have been that.

  Thom realized his eyes were closed. That was stupid. You never closed your eyes when you were flying—you needed to be constantly aware of everything around you. He opened his eyes and laughed.

  There was nothing to see out there. Black mist writhed across his viewports. His displays were all turning red, but who cared? That was kind of the point, wasn’t it?

  Just fade to black.

  If only Lanoe would shut up and let him get on with it.

  “There’s no way forward here, Thom. If I have to shoot you to stop this idiotic chase, I will. Turn back now.”

  “Why would I do that?” Thom asked.

  “Because right now I’m the only friend you have.”

  “You were my father’s puppet. I know you’ll take me back there if I give you the chance.”

  “You’re wrong, Thom. I just want to help.”

  Thom leaned back in his crash seat and tried to just breathe.

  He was surrounded by expensive wooden fittings. His seat was upholstered in real leather. He couldn’t help thinking the yacht would make a luxurious coffin.

  Thom was—had been—the son of the planetary governor of Xibalba. He was used to a certain degree of luxury. He understood now how much of that he’d taken for granted. Nothing had ever been denied to him his whole life.

  No one had ever bullied him in school—his father’s bodyguards had seen to that. No one had ever said no to him as long as he could remember. But now Lanoe wouldn’t just give up. Wouldn’t just let him go.

  It was infuriating.

  Thom wondered why he didn’t just switch off his comms panel. Block Lanoe’s transmission. Maybe, he thought, he just wanted to hear another human voice before he ended this.

  Even if he didn’t want to hear what Lanoe had to say.

  “I was just your father’s escort pilot, Thom. I’m not here to avenge him. The Navy assigned me to work for him, but it was just a job. I never even liked him.”

  “I hated him,” Thom replied, unable to resist. Maybe he wanted to justify what he’d done. “I always hated him.”

  “Well, that’s in the past now,” Lanoe said. “As is my job—I don’t owe him anything now that he’s dead. I came after you because believe it or not, I do like you. That’s all. Please believe me.”

  “I can’t,” Thom said. “Lanoe, I’m sorry, but I can’t trust anyone right now.”

  Over the line he could hear Lanoe sigh in frustration. “Why’d you even do it?” Lanoe asked. “Why kill him? In a year you would have been away at university. Away from him.”

  “You think so?” Thom said. “You don’t know anything, Lanoe.”

  “So enlighten me.”

  Thom smiled at the black mist that surrounded him. He couldn’t think of a good reason to lie, not now. “I wasn’t going to Uni. I wasn’t going anywhere. He was sick. All that stress of his high-powered job just ate away at his heart. You know what they do, when your body gives out like that? They give you a new one.”

  “So he would have lived a little longer—”

  “You still don’t understand, do you? I wasn’t born to be his heir.”

  When you were rich and powerful, you didn’t have to worry about getting sick. You didn’t have to make do with an artificial pump ticking away in your chest, or taking immunosuppressive drugs for the rest of your life. You didn’t even have to worry about getting old.

  No, not if you had a little forethought. Not if you could afford to have children. Kids whose neurology was a perfect match for your own.

  The old man could have arranged for Thom to have an accident that left him brain dead. Then he could have his own consciousness transferred into Thom’s young, healthy body. It happened all the time in the halls of power. The legality was questionable but a lot of rules didn’t apply to planetary governors.

  “I was designed,” Thom said. “Built to be his next body.”

  There was a long pause on the line. “I didn’t know,” Lanoe said.

  “He had to die,” Tho
m said. In his mind’s eye he saw it all over again. Saw himself pick up the ancient dueling pistol. Felt it jump in his hand. The old man hadn’t even had a chance to look surprised. “Do you understand now? I’m only twenty years old, and he was going to steal my body and throw my mind away. Kill me. So I had to kill him if I wanted to live. And now I have to keep moving. For another thirty-six hours.”

  “Thirty-six hours?”

  “His doctors will have stabilized his brain, even if the rest of him is dead. They can keep his consciousness viable that long. If they catch me before his brain really dies, they can still go ahead with the switch.”

  “Let me help, then,” Lanoe said.

  Thom closed his eyes again. Nobody could help him now.

  He leaned forward on his stick. Brought the yacht’s nose down until it was pointed right at the core of the planet. Opened his throttle all the way.

  The yacht dove into a dark cloud bank, a wall of smoke thick enough to block Lanoe’s transmission.

  This would be over soon.

  A rain of fine soot smashed against Lanoe’s canopy as he dove straight down into the pressure and heat of Geryon’s atmosphere. The clouds whipped past him and then they were gone and he stared down into the red glare of the neon layer.

  He couldn’t see the yacht—it was hidden behind that shimmering wall of fire. He spared a moment to check some of his instruments and saw just how bad it was out there. Over 2,000 degrees Kelvin. Atmospheric pressure hard enough to crush the fighter in microseconds. The FA.2 possessed enough vector field strength to hold that killing air back, according to its technical specifications. Even so, he was sure he could hear his carbonglas canopy crackle under the stress, feel the entire ship closing in on him as the pressure warped its hull. His inertial sink held him tight in his seat as the ship rocked and trembled in the turbulent air.

  If the fighter was in that much distress, could the kid hold up at all? Lanoe had no idea what kind of defensive fields the yacht carried. It was possible that the next time he saw Thom the kid would be a crumpled ball of carbon fiber, tumbling slowly as it fell toward the center of the planet.

  Yet when his airfoils carried him rattling and hissing through the floor of the neon layer, he saw the yacht dead ahead, still intact, still hurtling downward on a course that went nowhere good. There was nothing but murk down there, pure hydrogen under so much pressure it stopped acting like a gas and turned into liquid metal. No ship ever built could handle this kind of strain for more than a few minutes.

  Lanoe didn’t know if even comms lasers could cut through the dark, swirling mess but then the green pearl in the corner of his vision appeared and he opened the transmission immediately. “Thom,” he said. “Thom—is this what you want? Did we just come here so you could commit suicide?”

  There was no reply.

  All over Lanoe’s panels, red lights danced and flickered. Lanoe couldn’t do this much longer and still hope to get back to space in one piece.

  He set his teeth and sped after the yacht.

  Everything shook and strained and groaned. The wooden veneer on the console in front of Thom creaked and then split down the middle, a jagged fissure running across his instrument displays. So close now.

  The carbon fiber hull of the yacht couldn’t take this pressure or this heat. The ship’s vector fields were the only thing keeping Thom alive. If they failed—or if he switched them off—it would be over before he even knew what had happened. The ship would collapse around him, crushing his flesh, his bones. His blood would boil and then vaporize. His eyes would—

  A sudden loud pop behind him made Thom yelp in surprise and terror. Broken glass splattered across his viewports and yellow liquid dripped down the front of his helmet. Hellfire and ashes, was this how it happened? Was that cerebrospinal fluid? Was his head caving in?

  No. No—the fizzy liquid running across his vision was champagne.

  Behind the pilot’s seat was a tiny cargo cabinet. There had been a bottle of champagne back there, put there by the old man’s servants for when Thom won his next race. Wine made from grapes actually grown in the soil of Earth. That bottle had been almost as expensive as the yacht itself.

  The bottle had been under pressure already—the added strain of Geryon’s crushing grip had been too much for it.

  An uncontrollable laugh ripped its way up through Thom’s throat. He shook and bent over his controls and tears pooled in his eyes until his suit carefully wicked them away. He had been scared by a champagne bottle going off. That hadn’t happened since he was a child.

  Scared.

  Fear—now that was funny. He hadn’t expected to be afraid at this point. Thom was no coward. But now his heart raced—he could feel adrenaline throbbing through his veins.

  He hadn’t expected to be scared.

  He looked out through his viewports at the dark haze ahead, at the center of the planet, and it was so huge. So big beyond anything he could comprehend.

  Suddenly he couldn’t breathe.

  “Lanoe?” the kid said. “Lanoe, I think I made a mistake.”

  Lanoe clamped his eyes shut. There was nothing to see, anyway, except the tail of the yacht. “Yeah? You’re just getting that now?”

  “I’m sorry I dragged you into this,” Thom said. The transmission was full of noise, words compressed down until the kid’s voice sounded like a machine talking. “Something’s gone wrong. Lanoe—I thought I could do this. But now—”

  “That’s your survival instinct kicking in. Self-preservation, right? Don’t fight that urge, Thom. It’s there for a reason.”

  “I think maybe it’s too late. Oh, hellfire.”

  Lanoe shook his head. The kid had some guts to have gotten this far, but what a damned idiot he was. “Pull up. Come on, Thom, just pull up and get out of here.”

  “I can’t see anything—I don’t even know which way is up!”

  “The Hexus. Look for the Hexus. Its beacons should be all over your nav display—latch on to them. Pull up, Thom. Come on! Don’t go any lower.”

  “I’m trying….My controls are so sluggish. Lanoe…I.”

  The green pearl kept rotating, numbers streaming across its surface. The connection hadn’t been cut off. The kid had just stopped talking.

  “Damn,” Lanoe said. He started easing back on his control stick. Fed fuel to all of his retros and positioning rockets, intending to swing around and punch for escape velocity.

  But then the kid spoke again.

  “I don’t want to die,” Thom said.

  Lanoe saw the yacht ahead of him. Its nose had come around, a little. The kid was doing his best. All of his jets were firing in quick stuttering bursts as he tried to check his downward velocity. If he could get his tail pointed down he could fire his main thruster and head back toward space.

  But the nose was swinging around way too slow.

  Lanoe saw why right away—it was that broken airfoil, the one he’d smashed against a cargo container. Airfoils were deadweight in space but in an atmosphere like this they were vital, and Thom was running one short. That was going to kill him.

  No. Lanoe wouldn’t accept that.

  “Listen,” he said. “You can do this. Take it easy, don’t waste any burns.”

  “I’m trying,” the kid told him.

  “Get your nose up, that’s the main thing.”

  “I know what to do!”

  “I’m going to tell you anyway. Get your nose up. Come on, kid!”

  The yacht had fallen so far down Lanoe could barely see it. How much longer would the kid’s fields hold out? They must be eating up all his power, just to keep the yacht from being crushed. That extra energy could make a real difference.

  “Thom—transfer some power from your vector field to your thrusters.”

  “I’ll be splattered,” the kid pointed out.

  He was probably right. But if he didn’t get his nose up, he was going to die anyway.

  “Do it!” Lanoe shouted. “Tran
sfer five percent—”

  One whole side of the yacht caved in. Lanoe felt sick as he watched the carbon fiber hull crumple and distort.

  But in the same moment the yacht swung around all at once and got its nose pointed straight up. Its main thruster engaged in a burst of fire and it shot past Lanoe’s fighter, moving damned fast.

  Lanoe’s own fields were complaining. He was used to the fighter’s alarms, its chimes and whistles and screaming Klaxons. He ignored them all. He sent the FA.2 into a tight spin until his own nose was pointing up, then punched for full burn.

  Ahead of him the wall of buzzing red neon came and went. The clouds of soot and dark blue methane. For a split second he saw blue sky overhead, pure, thin air, and then it turned black and the stars came out.

  Ahead of him the yacht burned straight out into the night, standing on its tail.

  In the distance, past the kid’s nose, Lanoe could see the Hexus. If they could just make it there maybe this chase could end. Maybe they could both come out of this okay.

  “Thom,” he called. “Thom, come in.”

  There was no green pearl in the corner of his vision. Lanoe came up alongside the yacht and saw just how much of it had collapsed. The whole forward compartment had imploded, all of the viewports shattered down to empty frames.

  “Oh, hellfire, Thom,” Lanoe whispered. “I’m sorry. I’m so damned sorry.”

  Chapter Three

  As usual, Valk had been left to clean up the mess.

  And this was a big one.

  Already the synthetic voices were burbling away with demands and threats. Centrocor owned both the freight hauler he had nobbled and the Hexus itself, and he had damaged both of them. Centrocor was a poly—one of the big transplanetary commercial monopolies that owned, de facto, this entire sector and all twenty-three of its worlds. They had much more pressing concerns than asking if there had been any casualties. The fact that Valk had saved some lives here was far less important than those barrels he sent spilling out into the void.