Page 85 of Defiant

“What happened?” I asked, careful not to get complacent, staying out of her direct line of fire. Talking to me could be a ploy to get me to let my guard down.

“War,” she said. “It got annexed by one of the many human factions trying to claim the galaxy. After that group collapsed, it became a pirate hub. Then another group took it, and they fell too. On and off over hundreds of years.”

“Makes sense, I suppose,” I said, flying down around one of the larger skyscrapers. “But why did it fall into disrepair like this? It’s got to be cheaper to fix it up than build another station.”

We flew out over the side of the station, lit by a distant sun that provided some twilight illumination. It left Evensong with deep shadow along one face, pooling like ink. We crested the edge of the station and headed toward the underside of the platform—which was covered in its own buildings, since up and down were matters of choice in a place with artificial gravity.

Here I was met with a daunting sight. Giant creatures, like tubeworms each at least a couple of kilometers long, undulating through the vacuum. They’d been sheltered from my sight by the platform, but each of these things was as large as a capital ship. There were dozens of them here, moving slowly through space.

I veered away with a jerk of my ship, and suddenly—now that I knew what to look for—I realized I’d been mistaken earlier. The space junk I’d seen upon leaving Brez…it included more of these things. Hundreds of them, swimming through the void of space.

“Scud,” I whispered. “What are those?” Space worms existed? Why hadn’t M-Bot told me about them when he’d dashed my hopes of finding sand worms!

“Damn, you’re sheltered,” Brade replied. “You’ve really never seen a vastworm before?”

“No.”

“An infestation like this is dangerous,” Brade said. “They can swallow ships. In a more populated region, the government would dedicate huge resources to exterminating them before they grew into what we have here. But out here…well, Evensong is old, abandoned. Nobody comes here. It’s basically just a blip on interstellar maps, with a warning attached. Jump in here, and you risk getting swallowed.”

Scud! The worm I’d turned away from had noticed me, and it was undulating after us. The thing didn’t seem fast, but it washuge.I doubted it could swallow a ship that was aware and alert, but it was still unnerving with that wide circular mouth the size of giant bay doors. Brade, of course, took some shots at me while I was distracted. One hit my shield before I managed to execute some decent dodges.

She chuckled softly, the sound coming in over the line.

“Why?” I demanded. “Why would the Superiority build a central hub here? I expected something as vibrant and populated as Starsight.”

“Yeah, well, that would be on everyone’s maps. Hard to keep quiet. The Superiority is all about making people ignore things that are secretly important.”

That was true. Warships pretended to be merchant vessels. Slugswere labeled as dangerous to ensure people were afraid to pick one up if they saw one. It was an understandable methodology, when you didn’t rule by military might but by the control of information. So, they’d situated their central communications hub in a place nobody would visit.

I found the view intimidating. All those worms out there, like maggots in a stew, floating and moving through space. Serene, yet deadly. Worse, as I outpaced the worm behind us, I saw another dangerous sight in the near distance: the Superiority fleet that Winzik had been gathering. Three huge carriers, the largest of the capital ships, along with two battleships and a half dozen smaller gunships and destroyers.

That wasn’t much in the context of a large-scale galaxy, but it was already a fleet that dwarfed our own. The enemy fleet hung in its own space with a number of dead worms, blown in half, floating nearby. The others seemed to be keeping their distance, as if they could sense where some of their kind had been killed.

“So, are we actually going to do this?” Brade asked. “Or are you going to just continue sightseeing? I have Winzik stalled for now. But that won’t last forever.”

“Brade—”

“You should know,” she added, “that I have a remote control device on your ship to let me take it over. Try to escape, and I’ll lock you down. Need proof?” She flipped my overburn on and off.

I gritted my teeth. Ihatedthe idea of my ship being controlled by someone else.

“So you can just lock me down?” I snapped. “You’ve already won, then.”

“I won’t use it,” she said. “Not unless you try to run or are otherwise defeated. No cytonics on my part either. Come on. Destroy me, and you can fly away—but as long as I’m here, you’re captive. Ready?”

“Get a little closer, and I’ll show you how ready I am.”

A protracted fight favored me, giving time for the drugs in my system to run out—so I probably should have been looking for a way to accomplish that. But as Brade approached, firing with twin destructors, I found myself not caring. Here was afight.Despite everything I’d been through, everything I’d learned, I was still a warrior at my core. Ihadto prove that I was better than Brade. The opportunity to get some measure of vengeance on one of my captors was all-consuming.

I dodged away from her weapons fire and soared alongside the ancient platform, passing abandoned rooms with tiny windows and cavernous docking bays, like eyeholes in a skull. Brade thought she could toy with me? Let me out of my prison to have some fun, then lock me back up when she was done?

She’d see.

When we had flown together at Starsight, I’d sometimes held back so as to not seemtooskilled; that would have been suspicious. Brade had seen me fly—we’d even faced off—but I figured she would probably still underestimate me.

Evensong’s sides didn’t have any buildings, just windows and docking bays, so I wove around to the bottom of the station. There I entered an ancient street, diving in among the buildings to see what Brade would do.

And scud, she was too smart to get pulled into such a tight chase. She stayed up above, where she could watch or outrun me. If I flew up and out, she’d have a good line of sight to shoot me down. So I flipped my ship around, nearly overloading the GravCaps—then boosted backward and stopped. Up above, she continued onward for a second, while I darted between buildings to my right. Being down this low might confuse her proximity sensors, making her lose track of me in the mess of ancient steel buildings.

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