“So, this is a Syn spacecraft.”

  “It looks no different than the interior of that rusting wreck,” Jakob said.

  “At least this one still flies.”

  Liz and Taylor helped Jakob stumble through the roughly hewn tunnel whose smooth walls evoked the architecture of a wasps nest. A faint sickly-sweet odor wafted in the heavy humid air. It was warm, but not uncomfortably so. Blue spheres embedded in the walls provided faint light. No doors or passages branched off from the corridor which ascended into a familiar domed chamber. Though smaller it was the same sort of throne room they had encountered on the Syncline wreck down to the intricate gilded murals of Syn Queens parading in profile across a star speckled backdrop. Agra stared at the black stone throne with distaste. A screeching noise interrupted the silence.

  “No, they cannot be in here,” The navigator shrieked with his clawed hands clamped his head in stunned horror as the four raggedy Syn soldiers wandered into the Queens chambers ahead of him with awestruck looks on their dopey faces. The horrified Navigator just about tore his head off when he saw the humans lowering Jakob onto the throne. It was the only chair in the room.

  “They must not, they cannot!” he pleaded as he nearly toppled onto his knees. Agra steadied him with a hand on his shoulder.

  “They can use it,” Agra said as she gestured onward, “Show me where you fly this ship. That is where I want to be.”

  “You want to join me in the vestibule?” the Navigator asked in disbelief.

  “You heard her,” Quintek snarled as he came up behind.

  “What’s his problem,” Jakob asked from the throne.

  “Agra where exactly do you intend to go?” Liz said as she set down her pack to retrieve more first aid supplies for Jakob. “We don’t even know if this ship can take us outside the system.”

  For a moment Agra seemed discouraged and she rephrased the question for the Navigator. Whatever he quickly chittered back to her as he recoiled from Quintek’s threatening gaze seemed to satisfy her.

  “We can go anywhere we want. I want to go where your people are.”

  “What about SMCAF Command,” Taylor blurted out, “It was the primary fallback position of the Orion. We could rendezvous with the fleet and tell High Command what has happened. Wasn’t that always the plan?”

  “We can’t go there,” Jakob groaned. He winced in pain as Liz peeled the fetid puss-soaked bandages from his festering shoulder wound. “The entire fleet, or what’s left of it, would be guarding the defensive perimeter. How are we supposed to get in without getting shot to pieces?”

  Taylor was about to speak up when the sudden violent rolling motion of an earthquake shook the ship. The rumbling sound of a titanic eruption in the frozen earth reverberated through the air as the room visibly tilted.

  “The Queens!” Quintek gasped as he shot a concerned look at Agra. He ran after her and the Navigator as they bolted towards the next door less passage leading out of the throne room.

  “What was that?” Agra demanded as the Navigator slipped into a chair at the center of the small windowless spherical room and activated a monotone red Syn hologram with a frantic motion of his hands. The 360 degree view that manifested around Agra and Quintek showed a massive fireball of fizzling plasma and falling debris radiated from the nearby hills. The last volley of plasma still streaked through the sky as the projectiles impacted the earth in splashing bowls of liquid fire. With clenching fists Agra realized that the Queens had destroyed the wreckage which had been the shattered cradle of her birth and where her mother had died. Her father’s grave was gone now too, reduced to a slowly expanding column of ash and pulverized stone which loomed above them. The ships responsible for the rapidly blooming eruption had already begun to descend through the gap torn in the blanket of wispy cloud cover.

  “They must have thought you were there,” Quintek noted with some relief.

  The Navigator in the meantime was frantically making preparation to get them into space. His feathers rippled with nervousness as he swiped through and gesticulated at the holographic controls in front of him. The ship thrummed to life as clumps of stone the size of small hills had begun to smash into the snow around them as the ground continued to ripple and shake. With a chattering beak the Navigator held his arms forward and raised his hands to lift the ship. Slight vibrations buffeted the craft as it rotated vertically in the air and blasted up into the sky in a flurry of wind whipped snow. The Navigator held his hands steady in the air in front of him as they ascended higher and higher through the clouds.

  “Agra what’s going on? Did we take off?” Taylor yelled as he stumbled into the cockpit. Any relief on his face quickly evaporated when he noticed the immense looming shapes of Syn warships hanging malevolently above them. An outline had begun to flash around these vessels as the Navigator hissed something.

  “They are charging up their weapons.” He told Agra urgently. Agra held on to the back of his chair with subdued concern.

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  “Can they hit us?”

  “This ship is not an easy target. It is too small and too fast.”

  “And it has you,” Agra pointed out with a touch of flattery. “Your Queen would not have picked you to fly it if you weren’t her best.”

  “Yes,” the Navigator exclaimed boastfully, “I’m the best. Let them try and hit us!”

  The Navigator jerked his hands to the side, putting the craft into an abrupt banking turn as the Syn ships lit up with their first volley of plasma artillery. Sparking balls of fire streaked the rapidly rotating holographic display as the Navigator spun the craft onto its back with an abrupt wave of his hands. Inverted, their craft plummeted back towards the snow blanketed horizon. Leaning forward with unflinching concentration the Navigator rolled the ship back upright and accelerated towards the surface of Altaire IV. As the fast-approaching ground blurred beneath them with dizzying speed the Navigator narrowed his eyes. Counting the seconds as the rocky outcrops ahead of him got dangerously defined

  The Navigator waited for the right moment to pull out of his little maneuver. Agra said nothing, sure that the Navigator knew what he was doing. She clutched the back of his chair and held on tight. Quintek and Taylor stood behind her in stunned silence as the Navigator narrowly avoided the ground and with a jerking motion bounced the craft back up into the sky with incredible speed. Piercing the air with a crack of thunder, rings of vapor exploded around the arrowhead shaped craft as it darted past another wave of descending Syn warships and up past the fading blue sky of Altaire IV. From here the planet was a curved horizon of white shrouded in a faint halo of air set against a black sea of stars. Agra realized with sudden terror as the last wisps of clouds melted away into darkest space that she was free as her father had intended.

  “Not free, not yet” Quintek interjected with hiss. He surveyed the thousands of enormous Syn ships gathered ahead of them with a cold vindictive stare. Explosions flashed between the clashing warships still too preoccupied with the battle to notice them. For now, they had a moment to gather their bearings as they passed unseen through the tumbling fragments of debris shed from the battle.

  “Not yet,” Agra said distantly. She placed a hand on the Navigators shoulder and spoke to her brother with supportive clicks of the sacred tongue. “You’ve done very well, I’m impressed. I’m sure you can get us past the rest and to where I want to go.”

  “Just tell me where,” the Navigator clicked hesitantly. His worried gaze lingered on the distant quadrant of space where his Queen was waiting for him. He had no intensions of betraying his Matriarch, but Devil behind him had been clever. She had positioned herself here to make certain that he kept his part of the bargain. Her Familiar, a mature soldier, had been bred for killing and that was exactly what she would have him do. The Navigator weighed his options with a nervous inhalation. For now he would take the Devil where she wanted to go. “I can take you anywhere you want to go Mistress.”

  “You can call me Agra,” she said with a dismissive chuckle. “That is my name. Do you have a name?”

  The Navigator replied first with confused silence then a beaky frown. When he turned she was there, her amber gaze studying him in a disconcerting manner.

  “I’m a Navigator,” he said self-consciously, “the Navigator.”

  “Very well Navigator,” Agra said with a warm caring expression. She slipped away, leaving the stunned Syn to talk with Taylor.

  “You said you knew where the other humans are” she asked. “Take us to SMCAF.”

  “Of course,” Taylor said confidently, “I can even point the way if our new friend has a galactic map handy.”

  At Agra’s request the Navigator brought up a galactic chart for Taylor to study. The complex spiraled mist of stars was far more detailed than any map drafted by human hands. Taylor pointed at one of the outer arms and asked Agra to have the Navigator zoom in. The Navigator watched intently as the Taylor pointed between a cluster of stars and looked to Agra for confirmation. He was not yet comfortable following the instructions of an impure race.

  “Take us there,” Agra said.

  “Tell him to hurry,” Taylor interjected with a wide-eyed expression as nearby Syn warships began to turn towards them.

  “They’ve noticed us,” Quintek chirped as plasma began to streak towards them.

  “They won’t catch us,” The Navigator replied as he finished the preparations to make the star crossing. He just had to give himself a few more moments.

  With focused resolve the Navigator spun the ship around in the streams of energy bolts beginning to explode around them. The blunt shape of the nearby warship jutted out from the display as the Navigator flipped upside down and hugged the turret barbed surface of the warship at incredible speed. Dodging the forest of antennas and defensive turrets the Navigator raced up the side of the hull with unflinching skill. He was pushing himself and the ship to its limits. Processing the blur of information in front of him with his wide unblinking eyes the Navigator felt himself dissolve into the seat and become one with the ship. Explosions erupted around them. He skimmed the bronze surface of the Syn warship as it was torn apart by deliberate volleys of artillery thrown by its neighbors. They would really do anything to destroy his passenger he though. He banked back into space in a cloud of sparks as the ship behind him imploded and pointed the sharp nose of his ship away from the battle following after him.

  The Syn looked one last time at the corner of the galaxy where his Queen was waiting and sadly accepted what he was about to do. Conscious of Agra behind him, the navigator pushed his craft through a depression forming invisibly in space ahead of him and watched as the holographic display abruptly cut to static.

  Lazily dangling her legs from the armrest of her throne, the Matriarch reclined with her face pointed up at the gilded ceiling of her domed chamber with closed eyes. Her mind was elsewhere, drifting through ethereal blackness where she could keep an eye on the others. Breathing heavily, her glossy well preened feathery down bristled as she sensed her sister’s visceral panic. Blinking her red eyes back into focus, the Matriarch sat up and laughed. She cackled hoarsely, kicking her three toed feet back and forth in sheer amusement at her sisters expense. It tickled her to see them so powerless.

  “So they have gone elsewhere,” her familiar said as he appeared beside her.

  “I know,” The Matriarch said with an unconcerned voice. She got up from her throne to caress and sooth her oldest and most trusted servant. “I would have been disappointed if she had come to us so easily. I trust our navigator will serve her well and take her where she wanted to go.”

  “Where would they even go?” her familiar asked.

  “Even I don’t know,” the Matriarch responded with a befuddled expression. “Wherever a Devil wishes to play. For now we will simply observe and patiently await her arrival.”

  “She will come to us?”

  “It is inevitable. Until then I want to see what she does next.”