As they left the Reef behind them and soared out into space, the radar detected three blips moving toward their position. "Bogies!" Lethia exclaimed. "Coming up on our tail, seven o'clock."
"Oh come on," Ferral groaned. "Banner, can you tell what they are?"
His ghost said, "Hive fighters. Sensors show a tombship using an asteroid as cover one AU behind them."
"Can we outrun them?"
Banner sounded exhausted. His eye flickered on, then off again in Ferral's lap. "The port engine shouldn't be pushed past sixty percent. The heat will break the stabilizer panel loose again."
"Doesn't this ship have weapons?" Lethia exclaimed.
"I have a bolt cannon," Ferral replied, scowling at his instruments. "But this is a jump ship, not a fighter. No armor, no shields, only speed. And not much of that."
Lethia was a voracious reader. Her tiny house was packed with books on multitudes of topics. One of her favorite topics was the physics of space battles. Much ink had been spilled on the origin of the Awoken, and of all the things the colonists could have done differently as the Light and Darkness collided in the midst of their ships.
"Have we reached a stable orbit yet?" she asked.
"No," Ferral replied. "I have to burn the engines four more minutes. The Hive ships are moving to intercept us and I can't maneuver. Changing course now will slingshot us back into the Reef, and I don't have the fuel for another takeoff."
Lethia gripped her armrests and fumed, watching the three Hive fighters closing in. "Hey, ghost. Niki. Any suggestions?"
"A few," Niki replied. "Does the bolt cannon rotate?"
"Yes," Ferral replied, "but only forty-five degrees left and right. I can't shoot behind us." He looked at the ghost in his lap. "Ban, if only you were well, I'd suit up and give them a fight in free fall."
"Sorry," the ghost whispered.
Ferral gave Lethia a speculative look. "You're a Guardian. You could fight them."
Lethia opened her mouth to refuse. Then she looked at the bogies inching closer and closer. "I don't have a weapon."
"I'll loan you mine," Ferral said. "I have a grenade launcher that works in vacuum. But tether to the ship, or it'll throw you into space."
Lethia's nerve nearly failed at this thought. But it was fight or die, and after running helplessly from Taken, she was ready to fight.
When Lethia emerged from the tiny airlock, clad in a space suit that was too big, and lugging a bulky grenade launcher, the Hive ships were close enough to see clearly. They were black, jagged things like flying knives, lit with green running lights. Lethia was reminded of wolves chasing a deer - the jump ship was sleek and clean in comparison.
Her belt had a rope clipped to it that was hooked to a bar inside the airlock designed for that purpose. She checked it nervously. "I have visual contact," she told Ferral through the helmet radio.
"Fire at will," he replied. "Thirty seconds left on the burn."
The jump ship's exhaust burned away behind them in a glowing trail. Out here, the engines made no sound, but the ship's frame vibrated with their thrust. The Reef lay to the right, a great ring of rock and metal, encircled by layers of atmosphere and clouds. The Dreadnaught sat outside it, a horrifying spiky shape, half-hidden in the asteroid field's dust. That was where her Queen had died.
Lethia tore her eyes away from it. She and Ferral would die, too, if she didn't land these shots. She braced her elbows on the jump ship's roof, hooked her feet in the airlock's doorway, and aimed down the grenade launcher's sights.
In gravity, the grenade would travel in an arc. It was important to aim high. However, in zero-g, the grenade's inertia would carry it in a straight line until it collided with another object. Lethia carefully aimed at the nearest Hive fighters and squeezed the trigger.
The launcher fired the grenade, kicking back so hard that Lethia flipped over, sailed backward, and hit the end of her tether. The impact nearly cracked her spine. She clung to the weapon with one hand and tugged herself in on the tether with the other.
"Nice shot!" her ghost exclaimed.
She hadn't even had a chance to see if she'd hit. Now she looked up to see one of the Hive fighters spinning out of control, a plume of smoke trailing from its side.
The other two fighters lit with green light. Bright projectiles left them and darted toward the jump ship.
"They're firing!" she exclaimed.
"Ending the engine burn," Ferral said. "Get inside, Lethia. I'll try evasive maneuvers."
She clawed her way back inside the airlock and sealed the outer door. "I'm inside."
The jump ship whirled sideways. Lethia crashed into the wall and felt her arm break. She squealed in pain.
"Took two hits, avoided the rest," Ferral said. "You all right?"
"She will be in a minute," her ghost said. He appeared in the airlock with her, his blue eye glowing brightly. He played his healing beam over her broken arm, easing the pain, mending the fracture. Then he did the same for her back, where the tether had bruised it.
Lethia felt him heal her with awful mixed feelings. On one hand, this was part of being enslaved to the Traveler - eternally healing, never allowed to properly die. On the other hand - well, it was damn convenient to have such efficient healing in a fight.
"Thanks," she said stiffly.
Niki's eye light flicked into an upward V to create a smile emote. "You're welcome, Guardian."
"If you could shoot down the other fighters," Ferral broke in, "I'd be much obliged."
Lethia opened the airlock again, popped outside, and fired another grenade, managing the kickback better this time. The grenade missed, but made the Hive ships weave aside and fall behind. The third and final grenade destroyed the second fighter. The last ship wheeled and flew back toward the Reef.
"Almost to a safe jump distance," Ferral informed her. "Come back inside. You don't want to be in the airlock during a jump."
Relieved, Lethia worked the airlock, reentered the ship, and strapped into the copilot's seat, suit and all.
"Good job," Ferral said, holding out a fist.
Lethia stared at it. "What's that for?"
He gave her an apologetic look. "Oh. Reefborn. Right. This is called a fist bump. It's a ... gesture of mutual triumph."
She bumped her gloved fist into his, allowing herself a grin. "Mutual triumph."
Ferral reached to the top of the instrument panel and pushed a lever all the way down.
The stars blurred as the jump drive engaged. Thrust pinned them to their seats for a moment, grinding the breath from their lungs. Then the pressure abated, and they seemed to be standing still. The jump drive made a steady rumbling sound, but was far softer than the conventional engines had been.
"Love that relativity," Ferral said. "Earth is eight hours away, due to orbital differences."
"Do we have enough fuel?" Lethia asked, unstrapping her helmet.
"The jump drive burns glimmer," Ferral said. "I have plenty of that." He leaned back in his seat with a sigh and rubbed his eyes with a thumb and forefinger. "That was too close."
Lethia agreed, but didn't say so. She unbuckled and went in the back to remove the bulky space suit. As she returned it to its locker, Ferral called, "Could you grab my tool box? It's in the other locker."
She carried the heavy toolbox to the cockpit. Ferral opened it, rooted around inside, and produced a black roll of electrical tape. He tore off a strip, lifted his ghost's wrecked core, and began gently pressing another layer of tape over the leaking wounds.
Lethia's ghost appeared in a swirl of blue sparkles. "Poor Banner," he murmured. He swept his fellow ghost with a healing beam. Some of the Light stopped leaking out from under the tape.
"Thank you," Banner said, giving Niki a mournful look. "My core is crushed in such a way that it's cracked. I don't know if it can be fixed."
"They can fix anything in the Tower," Ferral said with forced cheerfulness. "Less than a day away, Ban. You'll make it."
The ghost's eye blinked up at him languidly. "I don't honestly know if I can, Ferral."
Ferral bit his lip and shut his eyes for a second, holding back tears. Then he silently tore off another strip of tape and applied it to the ghost's core.
Lethia sensed Ferral's grief and looked away. She didn't want to empathize with a Guardian. She also didn't want to feel sorry for a dying robot spawned by the Traveler.
Niki circled Ferral's hands, healing Banner again and again. Finally, Niki flew back to Lethia, shaking himself back and forth like a human shaking his head. "That's the best I can do." He floated above Lethia's left shoulder like he belonged there.
"Thanks," Ferral mumbled. He held Banner against his chest and bowed his head over him a moment. They whispered to each other. Lethia tried not to listen in, watching the instruments, instead.
"Do you all know each other?" she asked Niki quietly.
"We've met a few times," her ghost replied. "They saved me from a gang of Fallen, and I tagged along with them for a while. I'm glad, because it's how I found you."
And made me into one of your monsters, she thought. But she had to keep such thoughts to herself. Ferral might throw her out the airlock, and if he used that grenade launcher much, he was a lot stronger than she was.
Lethia curled up in the seat and rested her head against the wall. She dozed rather than watch the Guardian with his dying ghost.
"Stay with me, Banner," Ferral whispered. "You're stronger than this. We've survived so much."
"I'm trying," the ghost whispered, his eye light flickering. "I've lost so much Light, Fer. I'm cold. Niki's healing beam just goes right through me and doesn't stick."
Ferral tucked the ghost's little core in the crook of one arm and cradled him there. "Is this any better?"
"A little," Banner said.
Ferral watched their progress as the jump ship inched toward Earth. If only they could make it home. He'd seen the Tower engineers repair ghost cores before. Surely they could fix Banner. Surely he wouldn't lose him.
Lethia had gone to sleep in the copilot's seat. She had looked exhausted since she blundered upon them in that clearing - the weary, desperate look of a refugee. But she was so very Reefborn, with all the prejudices of her race. Why in the world had Niki chosen her? She'd been taught from birth to hate Guardians, mostly because the Queen did.
All Awoken were like that. Ferral had had the hardest time finding anything out about himself and the Dasa clan, simply because he was a Guardian. He was dead to them, and they refused to interact with him at all. He'd finally found some chatty servants who informed him that he'd once served under Prince Uldren himself, as one of his spy network. But Ferral had been killed in the line of duty. His family had mourned him and moved on. They would never forgive him for coming back as a Guardian.
Ferral took the rejection hard. No wonder the Vanguard forbade knowledge of a prior life. He had sat in his ship for a whole day, staring at nothing, not even speaking to his anxious ghost. Getting the call to assemble and fight the Dreadnaught had been a relief, because it gave him something else to think about.
Then the Taken had nearly killed Banner with a single well-aimed blow, and Ferral's priority became to save his friend however possible.
Banner gazed up at him, sensitive to his Guardian's moods, even as weak as he was. "You're still upset about the Dasas?"
"Of course not," Ferral said. Then he sighed and closed his eyes. "When you've been alone this long, you wish ... you hope for that connection to a legacy. I didn't spring out of the void - I was born. And ... Ban, I can't help coming back as a Guardian. I'm the same person. It just ... hurts."
"I'm sorry," Banner whispered. "We ghosts don't think about that when we raise our Guardian. All I knew was that you were perfect."
"I'm not blaming you, little light," Ferral murmured with a smile. "I'm the one who broke the Vanguard prohibition. And now I'm paying for it." He ran his fingers over the tape covering the ghost's core. "How are you feeling?"
"Weak," Banner said. "But less Light is escaping my spark. Plus ... yours is so near. It helps."
Ferral said nothing for a while, just watching their progress toward Earth and stroking the ghost's taped core with his fingertips. If his ghost died, he wouldn't be a Guardian anymore. But his clan still wouldn't accept him. He'd been dead eighty years. His mother was dead, and his father was the clan patriarch. His brothers and sisters all held positions of power among the Awoken, and were not pleased to see a dead sibling return to threaten their holdings. Once, Ferral had been the eldest. Now he was the youngest.
And there was a good chance that most of the clan had been Taken.
"I wish I hadn't looked them up," he whispered to Banner. "Now I don't know where I belong. The Vanguard? The Reef? Neither one will want me if I ... if you ..." He trailed off, unwilling to say it aloud.
"I've been thinking about that, too," Banner admitted. "If I don't make it. You told me once that you wished you could work in one of the weapons foundries. I think you should do that."
"That's assuming you don't make it," Ferral said. "Which you will. So it doesn't matter."
His ghost blinked up at him. "It never hurts to plan ahead. For instance. That Lethia girl told me I had enslaved you and threatened to kill me."
Ferral tensed and cast her a dark look. "She did, huh?"
"Her Reefborn prejudice is very strong," Banner said. "She despises her own ghost, too. I listened to them talk. Keep watch. She may go as bad as Dregden Yor."
"Dear Traveler, I hope not." Ferral cast her a sideways look, assuring himself that she was asleep. "Just a few more hours and the Vanguard will deal with her. They'll straighten her out."