“Consideration. Complexity. The slip drive creates a phase shift sphere that extends one hundred meters from the drive itself. This encompasses both Foresight and any other matter within the sphere. This phase shift transports the matter outside the stack, the properties of which do not follow otherwise natural laws of physics. With the right algorithm, instantaneous traversal of the layer may be achieved.”

  “If that’s the case, why didn’t the Axon use that method of travel for everything?”

  “Confirmation. They did. Axon portals create a wormhole that serves as a tunnel between one place in the layer and another through the phase. Some Axon ships were also equipped with deployable portals, but they believed the technology was too dangerous to utilize directly.”

  “Is it?”

  “Affirmation. It is dangerous. But I did not let that stop me. The Hunger do not possess slip technology directly. Like with many things, they have gained the capability through conquest.”

  “You mean Kresk.”

  “Confirmation. The diask possess intralayer phasing as part of their natural order.”

  “It’s amazing that a living creature could have such a complex process as part of its innate abilities.”

  “Affirmation. There was a time when humans believed flight to be a complex process, and yet birds. Hahahaha. Hahaha. Haha. Sadness. The diask were once a peaceful, gentle race. No more.”

  “That is sad,” Nicholas agreed, craning his neck back a little more as Jennifer stepped onto the flight deck.

  “Suited up and ready, Captain,” she announced.

  “And looking sharp,” Nicholas added. “Max, pass the slip coordinates to Yasmin.”

  “Question. Will you activate the drive from this location?”

  “And destroy the planet? Are you crazy?”

  Max tilted his head like a dog. “Confusion. I believed—”

  “Gotcha!” Nicholas said. “Hahaha. Hahaha.”

  Jennifer laughed. Max straightened his head, but remained silent.

  “I’m joking, Max. But no, I don’t intend to execute the slip from here.” His smile spread a little wider. “I have a better idea.”

  Chapter 38

  “Attention Knights of the Round Table,” Nicholas said over Foresight’s comms. “This is your Captain speaking. You should all be secured by now. If you aren’t, you have ten seconds to find a seat and strap in. A quick briefing on our next steps while you do. Max has informed me that we can’t immediately slip to a layer with a well-positioned timeline. We’ll need to do a little hunting through the stack. Fortunately, it won’t be like looking for a needle, though that also doesn’t mean it’ll be one and done. First things first, we need to get past Koth’s blockade. I have a plan, and I’m confident the inertial dampening upgrade plus the G-force resistance of the USSF bodysuits will get it done. All you need to do is hold on tight and enjoy the ride. Arthur, out.”

  “Arthur?” Jennifer asked.

  Nicholas shrugged. “I thought it would be a nice touch.”

  “Don’t take this the wrong way, Captain, but you seem different.”

  “I feel different,” Nicholas admitted. “More focused. More determined. Not to say I wasn’t before. Don’t take this the wrong way, Jen, but you seem different too.”

  “I am. With everything we’ve been through so far, I realized it’s better not to leave things unsaid. To let people know how you feel because you might not get another chance. I didn’t even get to say goodbye to my mother. Or Luke.” She paused. “It makes me nervous to tell you this since you’re his father. I liked Luke. A lot. I don’t know. He never showed that kind of interest in me, but maybe he would have if I had told him how much I cared. And that I wanted to be more than friends.”

  Nicholas did his best to turn around to look at her past his restraints. “I’m sorry you didn’t have that chance. I think you and Luke could have been great together.”

  “Really?”

  “Don’t doubt yourself, Jen. You’re smart, courageous, loyal, respectful. What more could a dad want in his son’s girlfriend?”

  Her face flushed. “Thank you, Captain. It means a lot to me to hear that.”

  “You never would have heard it if you had left things unsaid.”

  “I’m glad I didn’t.”

  “Me too. Are you ready to rock?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Nicholas tapped on the navigation controls, using port side thrusters to push the starship out of the undersea crevice where they had hidden from Koth and the anti-gravity plates to let it drift upward. As soon as it was far enough above the terrain of the sea floor, he activated all thrusters and slowly opened the throttle. The ship surged forward through the water like a submarine, the abundant sea life no doubt rushing to get out of the way of the strange black fish.

  “Sensor range is limited until we break the surface,” he said. “We need to be ready for anything. Yazz, can you confirm all hands are secured?”

  “Confirmed, Captain,” Yasmin replied. “We’re all strapped in. I know you’ll get us through this, Nick.”

  “Damn right,” he answered. “Here we go.”

  Nicholas used the vectoring nozzles to push Foresight’s nose upward. Once he reached a sixty degree angle, he opened the throttle all the way, the hum of the thrusters audible as they roared to life. He could see the blue energy spewing from the thrusters on the rear camera feed.

  The lack of G-force compared to the acceleration surprised Nicholas. He had expected some reduction but not this much. Rather than being forced back hard into his seat, he found himself shoved more gently, the pressure on his body easily manageable without resorting to G-straining.

  “Are we even moving yet?” Macey asked. “Cause I don’t think we’re moving.”

  “We’re moving, Mace,” Nicholas assured her. “The thrusters are wide open.”

  “This is soooo much better,” Briar agreed.

  Foresight shot through the water toward the surface, clearing the nearly one thousand meters of depth in a matter of seconds. The G-forces increased as the ship exploded out of the water, the heavier resistance suddenly removed. Even so, it remained slight compared to unmitigated inertia.

  The sphere around Foresight expanded as the sensors returned to maximum range. Immediately, both Kresk and the gulth deployment still circling the area appeared on the display. Koth’s dreadnought remained in synchronous orbit above, while the alien fighters were spread out to cover more area around the original splashdown site.

  Nicholas activated the spines the moment they cleared the water. Still rocketing upward at an increasing rate of speed, Foresight’s blue ion trails licked out behind them for nearly a half a klick. The nearby gulth had no time to react before Foresight blasted past them, leaving them maneuvering to chase. The gulth at higher altitudes changed direction, synchronously adjusting their vectors to intercept.

  “Jen, I’m opening your access to the spinal control system. We can mark targets together. Take starboard.”

  “Copy that, Captain,” Jennifer replied.

  By joining forces, they were able to target more of the incoming gulth and do it faster, spotting nearly twenty of them in a matter of seconds. Nicholas triggered the spines, sending beams of energy lashing across the sky and into the alien fighters.

  Only two managed to evade the attack, the others breaking apart in mid-air as the beams sheared off their wings or split their fuselages in half.

  “Nice work,” Nicholas said, eyes shifting to the grid. There were still many more gulth surrounding them, but the surprising velocity of their launch from the water had left most of them trying to catch up, but it didn’t stop the bastards from bombarding them with plasma bolts.

  Given time to regenerate, the shields handled the brunt of the initial strikes with ease. Even so, Nicholas took advantage of the new dampening system to execute more forceful maneuvers. Foresight’s structure was more than capable of absorbing the extra stress, and they danced across the sky, ascending toward orbit.

  And Koth’s dreadnought.

  Nicholas could already see its large, dark shape on the forward feeds, getting bigger by the second. Koth had tried to stop them from leaving Earth. He had failed because they had managed to activate the slip drive just in time.

  Or on second thought, maybe they’d initiated the slip a little too soon.

  Koth had followed quickly after them, entering this layer before Foresight could exit. Instead of a protracted game of cat and mouse, they had wound up in the cat’s snare. It was a problem Nicholas believed he could fix.

  Timing was everything. Almost everything. Location had a part to play, too.

  “Max, Yasmin, what’s the most vulnerable part of a dreadnought from the exterior?” he asked over the comms.

  “Confusion,” Max replied. “Why would you—”

  “Standby, Nick,” Yasmin said. “I’m looking.”

  “We don’t have a lot of time,” Nicholas said.

  “Then you should have asked sooner.”

  “Captain,” Jennifer said. “Something weird is happening with the dreadnought.”

  Nicholas looked at the grid. The sensors showed an odd power surge near the area Max had called the dabboth. “What the hell?”

  “Information. Koth is preparing gun batteries. It will not take many hits to weaken Foresight’s shields. Hahahaha. Hahaha. Haha.”

  “Why didn’t he use the guns last time?” Nicholas asked, returning his attention to the forward surround as he maneuvered Foresight into a tight evasive pattern, swinging the ship wildly through the air like a small ship caught in wind-tossed seas.

  “Consideration. Perhaps he hoped to take you alive. To use you to get to me.”

  “Technically, he did use us to get to you,” Briar said.

  “Affirmation. Agreement. Hahaha. Haha.”

  Nicholas targeted two more gulth with the spines. Jennifer added three of her own, using the controls to mark the enemy fighters behind them. Five more ships turned to slag as beams shot from the tips of the spines, slicing through them like a scalpel.

  It didn’t matter how many gulth they destroyed. Like the trife, there would always be more.

  Let them come. He wasn’t going down here. Nobody else would die today.

  Foresight climbed higher and higher, rapidly approaching Kresk. Looking at the massive starship through the forward feeds, Nicholas could just barely make out the rough outlines of the gun batteries that had emerged from a number of the ridges on the vessel’s surface.

  “What kind of firepower should I expect?” Nicholas asked.

  “Beam weaponry, similar to ours,” Yasmin replied.

  “Appropriation. Technology stolen from the Axon.”

  “Great,” Jennifer said.

  “What about the weak spot? Not to be rude, but any day now, love.”

  “Saying not to be rude means you’re being rude,” Macey said.

  “Not now, Mace,” Nicholas snapped.

  “I’m not an expert in living starship physiology,” Yasmin said. “But it looks like there’s a major artery near the bow, along the hull about a quarter kilometer back. Here.”

  The schematic of the ship appeared on the HUD, the area in question highlighted and flashing.

  “Confirmation,” Max agreed.

  “Got it,” Nicholas said, sending Foresight into a corkscrew and triggering the spines again, taking out two more gulth. The enemy fighters were nearly all trailing them now, forming a swirling cloud at their rear.

  “Question,” Max said. “Captain, you are not planning to do what I think you are planning to do, are you?”

  “You’re the super artificial intelligence. I probably am.”

  “Consideration. This maneuver is extremely risky, especially at our current velocity.”

  “What maneuver?” Briar asked.

  “I’m aware of that. But we can’t have Koth following right behind us everywhere we go. We need more of a head start.”

  “What maneuver?” Briar repeated.

  “Consideration. It will take Koth’s Scry time to locate our destination layer after the slip.”

  “Will it take longer for him to staunch Kresk’s bleeding?”

  “Calculation. Affirmation. However, the reward may not be worth the danger.”

  “What maneuver?” Briar practically shouted.

  Nicholas ignored her. “We have to go that way anyway. We might as well try to hit him where it hurts while we do.”

  “Negation. There is another option.”

  Beams of energy lashed out from Koth’s dreadnought, nearly catching Nicholas off-guard. He swung Foresight to the left at the first hint of a power surge, barely dancing around the red spear. He swung the ship back like a pendulum as another beam split the air where it had last been. He juked upward and then plunged below the horizontal plane to avoid two more spears.

  But he couldn’t avoid them all.

  The next beam hit Foresight dead on, causing the ship to shudder and dropping the shields by nearly thirty percent.

  “Shit,” Nicholas cursed, barely avoiding another beam. This was going to be harder than he had thought.

  “Consideration. Captain, there is another option,” Max repeated.

  “It won’t slow him down enough.”

  “Potential. It could.”

  “No. Even if we get away again here, what about the next time? And the time after that? Sooner or later, he’ll catch up to us when we can’t afford it. We need to meet him on our terms. Right here, right now. That was your plan, right?”

  “Affirmation.”

  “Then we do it my way. Now let me focus on not getting us killed.”

  “Affirmation.”

  “Jen, you’re in charge of the spines. I need to get us through this mess.”

  “Copy that, Captain.”

  Nicholas’ eyes narrowed as his fingers danced across the keys, his thumb shifting in millimeter increments to guide Foresight through Koth’s bombardment. Red beams split the atmosphere all around him, flashing like lightning as the gulth sought to slice the ship in half. Every time a beam came close to one of the cameras, the feed would go dark, the blinding light too much for the sensors to handle. The loss of vision made it more challenging to navigate, though he was mostly reliant on Frank to estimate where the beams would strike based on the energy signatures from the dreadnought.

  Jennifer handled the spines brilliantly, conserving the energy for the shields and only lashing out with a single quill at a time. She only sent darts of blue energy into gulth that ventured too close or that managed to get a clean angle of attack on their tail. She had a natural affinity for the role that left Nicholas grateful to have her on board. Caleb was an incredible Marine, but Max had already indicated he was less than adequate as a pilot.

  Evading Kresk’s fixed batteries became more difficult the higher Foresight climbed, the proximity reducing the spread of the beams and leaving Nicholas to take a less direct tack. What surprised him the most was that the ship could maintain such high levels of energy output. He had assumed only the Axon’s Quantum Dimensional Modulator could manage the feat, but clearly he was wrong. Either way, the assault showed no signs of letting up.

  In fact, Koth doubled his efforts, his fighters spewing from seemingly everywhere, all of them deftly avoiding Kresk’s energy beams on their flight paths toward Foresight.

  “Captain,” Jennifer said nervously.

  “We’re almost there,” Nicholas replied. “We can make it. I’ve got everything—”

  The power suddenly went out.

  “—under control,” he trailed off as the seconds of total darkness ticked away. He didn’t need to ask what had just happened. He knew.

  And he was furious.

  Chapter 39

  Koth sat bent over on his throne, head resting in his hand, observing the chase through the senses of his gulth. The humans had impressed him when they made the decision to bide their time beneath the ocean waves, limiting his ability to continue the assault in a move toward ridding himself of the Anomaly once and for all. They had impressed him even before that, gaining control of a second ship, identical to the first, and using it to flee his Inahri warriors on the ground.

  The failure of his underlings had threatened to break his newly recovered calm, at least until he considered the influence of the Anomaly on the humans. As he had suspected, it had clearly arranged for them to come to its rescue. Then it assisted them by preventing his Inahri from overwhelming them on the ground. It had also provided the energy unit that allowed them to hold their own against his gulth.

  No doubt it was using them, as he had also suspected.

  Did they know what the Anomaly intended? The idea amused him. What had it told them to earn their trust? Or perhaps it hadn’t needed to do much. In that sense, his arrival in orbit here had been poorly timed. In their desperation to evade him once again, they would accept anything the Anomaly told them.

  None of that was of any consequence now. Both he and the Anomaly knew they couldn’t stay submerged forever, and patience was one of the many things in which he excelled. Biding his time on his throne was the simplest task of all. While some lesser life forms might consider inaction tedious, he welcomed the opportunity to let his thoughts coalesce.

  When the ship emerged from the water, the only thing that surprised him was its launch velocity. The associated gravitational forces from the inertia of the launch were well out of the bounds of human physiology, which left only two possibilities.

  Either the Anomaly had slaughtered the humans once it regained the slip-capable ship or it had provided an upgrade to the ship itself to allow them to survive the increased G forces.

  He understood the Anomaly well enough to know it didn’t care about humans for what they were, only for what they could provide. In that way, the Axon and the Relyeh had always been similar. They considered themselves superior to the rest of the species in the universe—the Axon in their technology, the Hunger in their evolution. It was little wonder they had been in conflict for thousands of years.