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“He doesn’tusuallykill… but he’s sent a dozen ships away covered in holes… and he’s stolen from everyone he’s encountered. The technology on his ship would bring in…” He paused meaningfully, meeting Caligher’s eyes. “It’s incredible. There would be a bidding war to obtain that delicious tech.”
Caligher could see the lust in Morwong’s eyes. The physical, approaching sexual need to acquire the pirate’s ship. If the merchant were in better shape, he would currently be out there, trying to overtake the ship himself. No warnings of danger would have stopped him in his day.
“Sounds entertaining,” Caligher replied.Still could have sent this over a message.
The pirate’s reputation was well known. Robbery, extortion, and occasional bouts of brutal, senseless violence. The pirate was a talented inventor, though rumors suggested that he’d perfected the current language modules by cracking a few skulls. Astyanax hadn’t always been so hostile.
Caligher glanced at the photo on Morwong’s screen, noticing first that the pirate was relatively good-looking. Silver, icy patterns. Mute feminine coloration over a narrow,slightlymasculine figure.
“I’ll keep an eye out,” he said to Morwong, clearing his throat.
“You don’t mean inthatship. Do you want to die?”
Caligher grunted dismissively. There wasn’t much the pirate could do to effectively hurt him. Caligher’s carapace was impenetrable—and if the pirate got any ideas about breaking into Wingless, he would find an utterly bizarre, incomprehensible thing waiting for him.
“Don’t underestimate him,” Morwong said.
Is that what had Morwong in such a state? One pirate? It couldn’t be. “You have anything else?”
Morwong grew hesitant all over again. Finally,reluctantly,he said, “There have been new sightings of… a human vessel.”
Caligher woke up cold.
Dread overwhelmed him—roaring so loud he couldn’t hear Morwong speaking for a terrible, timeless instant. His body responded instinctively. Some fight-or-flight impulse had him compulsively searching the small, confined office for his nearest escape route—which was, of course, the door, yet he kept staring at it as if it might disappear before he bolted.
A powerful lurch of pain spasmed through him.
“…unconfirmed to this date,” Morwong finished.
“What?” Caligher asked.
His head was in a fog.
Morwong tilted his head, his crown-fins falling over the side of his shoulder. “Something’s different now,” he said. “The ship that was spotted hasn’t made contact. It flees all attempts to establish communication.”
“Where is it?” Caligher demanded.
Morwong grew tense. Their conversation was ripping up old fights they hadn’t had for nearly a decade. The wounds weren’t healed. If anything, they were worse.
“This ship isn’t the largest of our problems. It’s what we can’t confirm. News reached us from the Outskirts. Fromfarout.” His eyes grew with emphasis. “Exoplanet range. A whole swarm went missing.”
“Missing?” Caligher scratched out.
“The whole damn thing, hundreds of ships—gone.” Morwong looked furious. Whenever he was angry, the cracks in his carapace glowed like coals. Orange and deep, smoky red. But he was quick to tamper his glimmering anger down and simply seethe across the table. “No one knows where they went before they disappeared. No one knows what they saw. That many shipscouldn’thave been wiped out by the ship we’ve spotted, so it begs the question…”
“What did it?” Caligher finished for him. The humans would never sendone little ship. They knew what the Ternetzis would do to it.
They fell into silence, staring at the screen. The pirate and his crimes blurred in the noise pouring through Caligher’s head. Why did this have to happen now?
“Something big’s out there,” Morwong said. “We just don’t know what, or where.”
After demolishing as many human ships as they could, the Ternetzis had destroyed the human portals for good measure. Caligher had seen to it personally.
“How is this possible?” he asked.
Morwong’s eyes were grim. “We believe they have a jump point network hidden somewhere between the Outskirts and the exoplanets.”
Searching for small objects in that range was impossible.
