I wanted to point out that Rathal was easily more than a thousand years older than her, but he shot me a desperate, quelling look and I refrained. She’d probably scold our hides off if I had anyways.
“Come. I am just about to make my ship-wide announcement or would you prefer to do the honors, Rathal?”
“Oh,” Rathal said, holding his hands up, “I don’t think that will be necessary. The crew would prefer your voice over mine anyhow.”
I snickered at the look Som’ae gave him and he elbowed me for my cheek.
“As you say.” She swiveled her chair around to face the view screen on the bow of the ship and tapped a few buttons on the raised half moon consul in front of her. Static crackled for a moment, and then Som’ae’s voice reverberated throughout the ship.
“Happy war tidings, denizens of Erral!”
Even from the bridge, I could hear the faint cheering from the rest of the ship. A Cutter was a small warship—think Corvette vs Cruiser—and this one had seen better days, cobbled together as it was, so sound traveled a lot easier than the fancier crafts. It probably didn’t help that half of the doors on this ship didn’t close or were stuck halfway open in some cases. Most of the ships in Erral’s fleet looked like they would shake apart the second their engines ignited.
Hell, even the small fighters I’d watched get loaded into the belly of the Cutter and a few of the dropships were rusted and not a single one of them were uniform. It was a Flight of mix and match ships that Rathal and his merry band of cutthroats had commandeered over the long years.
If I hadn’t known Rathal, it would have made me damn nervous to fly into a warzone on one of these garbage heaps, but the very existence of so many ships and the station itself in theface of the Unity’s might was a testament to not only the many pilots of Erral, but the engineers that kept the stolen vessels running. If they could survive this long raiding Unity starships, then I guessed we’d fare pretty well until the cavalry arrived.
“Long have we awaited the opportunity to strike at the heart of the Unity and their endless corruption. Let this be the end of them and the dawn of a new era! One where we are free of tyranny and deceit!”
The cheering echoes grew louder and even the bridge crew joined in this time.
“Our Rijiteran brethren have risen from the ashes at long last to take back their place in the galaxies. Finally, the truth we have known for millennia will be revealed to all! That the Unity history is false! That they are liars! Genocidist! War criminals! And we will have our revenge!”
I knew from talking with Rathal, that many of the citizens of Erral were descendants of those that escaped the fall of the Rijijteran Empire. The rest were refugees from years and years of Unity rule. Rathal had been diligent in making the real history of what happened to Ara’Ama and the Rijiterans readily available on Erral. There was even a museum of sorts that had holo reenactments, though I hadn’t had the time to go and see it for myself.
Som’ae nodded to the flight crew and the ship began to vibrate as the belly thrusters maneuvered us into position. The orange warning lights above the bulkhead doors of the hangar bay flashed and the computerized voice warned anyone outside to get clear before the depressurization.
“Battle stations, my children! We go to Tuanov to rid them of their Unity oppressors and from there, Stellios—where we will drive the spear of vengeance right into the Unity’s heart!!”
The air was vented out of the hangar.
“Depressurization complete, Premiere Som’ae,” one of the flight crew said from their station on the level below us.
Som’ae nodded. “Good. Open the doors. Prepare to Jump.”
An announcement blared over the ship.
Warning: Jump in thirty seconds.
Rathal hustled me over to chairs built into the wall just behind the Captain’s chair and strapped me in. I frowned up at him, confused. “Didn’t it take me like a week to get here? I didn’t think there were any jump points this close to the station.”
Rathal’s smile was smug as he strapped himself into the seat next to me.
“Of course you didn’t. It is a well kept secret only raiders are aware of. How do you think we get to so many Unity systems and back out again without getting caught?”
I still didn’t understand.
Rathal chuckled, waving his fingers at me. “I am of the Rijitera, my love. I remember their tech well. Do you know how the Mother ships can travel so far so quickly?”
I scrunched my eyebrows. “No. I don’t know a whole lot about them.”
He rubbed his hands together. “Mother ships create their own wormholes with Transition drives. It can rip a hole big enough in space time for a whole fleet to pass through or small enough for communications over vast distances, even dead spaces like here… or for a single raiding party,” he explained gleefully, his ears curling with satisfaction. “With a simple set of inputs, we can be anywhere and back out again before the Unity ever knows what hit them.”
Sonofabitch.
I narrowed my eyes at him. “You mean to tell me that that whole week spent recovering in a dingy cell on one of your trash ships was completely unnecessary?”
“Of course not, darling. That wasn’t one of my raiding parties. That was a smash and grab mercenary crew. Two completely different things. You think this magnitude of secret would have stayed that way if every single ragtag crew I hired knew about it? We’d have been found and destroyed eons ago. No. Only my raiding ships have the Transition drive and only those trusted crews know about them. Well… knew about them. Since the whole of the station is about to be let in on the secret.”
