The Red King - Michael A. Martin [6]
“How dare you—”
The ship lurched violently, its abrupt movement punctuated by the sharp cry of an alarm klaxon. Harn’s strident yet controlled voice blared across the intraship circuit. “Tactical alert! Drech’tor Gherran to the control room!”
Frane had never before seen his father move so quickly. Gherran used his tail and all four of his opposable-digited hands to vault across his desk and bound through the hatchway back into the control room. Not quite as physically robust as his father—he lacked Gherran’s extensive military conditioning—Frane followed more slowly, though he moved as quickly as he could.
Frane could see that his father had all but forgotten about him as he queried the members of his crew, each of whom worked at least one console with a fervid intensity. No surprise that he’s ignoring me, Frane thought. Duty always did take precedence over family, even when there weren’t any emergencies to deal with. Not for the first time, he wondered if Mother had taken her own life out of sheer neglect and loneliness.
The great cylindrical vessel rocked again beneath Frane’s bare feet, prompting him to turn to face the wide viewer that filled the forward portion of the control room.
The energy bloom was…changing.
“Report!” Gherran shouted to his crew as the room shuddered yet again.
“We’re being subjected to intense gravimetric waves, Drech’tor,” said the young male officer seated at the nearest console. The tip of his tail was assisting his hands as he hastily entered commands. “They’re coming from deep within the phenomenon.”
“Ship’s status?” Gherran queried.
“Our energy screens are compromised and failing, Drech’tor.”
The tendrils of multihued energy shown on the viewer were becoming more agitated and twisted, gnarled like the native scrub vegetation of the Coreworld of Oghen.
Frane allowed a fatalistic smile to cross his face. Perhaps the Sleeper truly is awakening at last.
He knew that if such was indeed the case, then his own petty family squabbles, as well as the suffering of every species the Neyel race had conquered over the past several centuries, would soon be rendered moot.
Is today the day when it all finally comes to pass, as the prophets of the ancient M’jallan races foretold?
“Hail the fleet, Subaltern,” Gherran said. “We’re withdrawing to a safer distance. I want to put another million klomters between us and the phenomenon.”
But before the subaltern could finish carrying out his orders, Frane noticed something else on the screen. Several dark, swooping shapes were approaching.
Unlike Father’s fleet, however, they seemed to be approaching from inside the now-roiling energy bloom.
“Drech’tor!” shouted another junior officer, this one a young female. “A number of ships are closing on our position—and their source is the energy phenomenon itself.” She shook her head in disbelief.
Gherran was facing the screen. Though his face was a grim, gray mask, he could not keep the surprise out of his voice. “That’s not possible.”
Frane felt equally surprised. Watching the approaching ships, he supposed his father was recalling old tales of the Tholian Devilships that had preyed on Neyel vessels many decades ago, before Ambassador Burgess had crafted a peace arrangement with them, before both sides had agreed to allow the interspatial fissures that had connected their two distant realms to close from simple disuse.
“How many ships approach us?” the drech’tor wanted to know.
“Several dozen, Drech’tor,” the subaltern said. “And I have detected directed-energy weapons signatures.”
A raptor’s smile cracked Gherran’s military impassivity as he cast a brief glance at Frane. “So. We face no sleeping god here, do we? We are up against a new wave of invaders.