Warp Nomads Read online

  Table of Contents

  Warp Nomads (Scythian Dawn, #2)

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty-One

  Twenty-Two

  Twenty-Three

  Twenty-Four

  Twenty-Five

  Twenty-Six

  Twenty-Seven

  Twenty-Eight

  Twenty-Nine

  Thirty

  Thirty-One

  Thirty-Two

  Thirty-Three

  Thirty-Four

  Thirty-Five

  Thirty-Six

  Thirty-Seven

  WARP NOMADS

  (Scythian Dawn Book 2)

  by

  P.K. Lentz

  §

  Copyright © 2018 by P.K. Lentz

  All rights reserved.

  §

  Cover and all art for Scythian Dawn by

  Aituar Manas

  https://www.artstation.com/aituarmanas

  One

  Encrypted S-wave transmission received 000087e66:718:0099612t

  Origin: Cruiser Draugan, coordinates unknown.

  Transcript follows:

  I am Arixa of Scythia, of the planet you know as Goros-3.

  I am the captain of a war band, the Dawn.

  Until recently, I was unaware that my planet and my race were subjects of the Jir, who visit whenever they please to devastate our cities and enslave our people. They do this to ensure that we remain forever beneath their heel, ignorant of what lies behind our skies.

  When the Jir last came to my world, the capital city of my people was to be razed. My Dawn and I stopped them. We boarded their ship. We killed its crew.

  The ship is ours now.

  We are not finished. We will inflict more damage upon the Jir. We will visit their homes and devastate them as they did ours.

  In this, we may succeed, or we may fail. All that is certain is that one day, one way or another, we will die. As you hear this, I may already be dead. It doesn’t matter.

  What matters are our deeds while we live. What matters are your deeds, you who hear my voice and learn the truth that a band of three hundred so-called savages stood against an empire and won.

  The Jir Pentarchy will spin a different tale. They will tell lies supporting their supremacy. Do not believe them.

  Less than a year ago, I didn’t know it was possible to cast my voice to the stars. I didn’t know there was anyone out here to hear. I cast it now as a call to arms. If you hear and believe, if you take up arms against unrightful masters who come to devastate and enslave, then I have done enough. My deeds will be immortal. The Dawn will be immortal. Its light will burn oppressors and shatter bonds.

  Whatever may come, victory or death, the Dawn has lit your path.

  Follow it, and show the Jir what savages can do.

  [Transmission ends.]

  * * *

  As she had done almost incessantly since the attack on the heavy cruiser Draugan, Yimri hummed an intonation Against Despair.

  The intonation was meant to suppress panic and calm the nerves. It probably had kept Yimri from taking her own life during the endless hours spent seeing visions in the darkness of the empty storage cubicle in which the Gorosian savages kept her locked until recently.

  Visions of the butchered bodies of friends and crewmates.

  The Gorosians had attacked the Draugan and killed them all. The vessel was theirs now. At first Yimri had held out hope that some Jirmaken troopers remained free and would reclaim the vessel, but as time passed and her captivity continued, hope faded. She sent and sent on her comms but received no replies. Now and then, a captor would come and toss slop into Yimri’s cell. What she didn’t scrape up of it floated in globs during subverse transit, intermixing with her own excrement. Upon the ship’s emergence into normal space, the mixture abruptly spattered on the same floor where her next meal was to be served.

  Yimri was one of a handful of prisoners the humans had taken. She knew not how many exactly, but she was sure that the number decreased with each day. Through the bulkheads, she could hear the shrieks as her fellow prisoners were tortured. Some screams ended abruptly. Death-cries.

  Doubtless, her captors had wanted her to hear.

  The hijackers had shifted the Draugan into the subverse. That was easy enough to tell by the lapse of artificial gravity, the blue tint and the amorphous warpshadows visible even in the dark.

  Yimri had no means of measuring time, but three Shifts had occurred since the boarding at Goros-3. Assuming the Gorosians always kept the ship in the Blue for the maximum allowable duration before the onset of hull decay and remained in normal space for the minimum time needed between Shifts, then something like twenty standard rotations must have passed since the hijacking.

  The Draugan was in normal space now, and Yimri was no longer locked in a dark cubicle eating shit and cringing at torture-screams. A few rotations ago, she had been upgraded to a cadet’s berth. It was not much larger, but it had a sleep-web, lighting and toilet.

  A Gorosian female had escorted her to the new accommodation after claiming to have interceded with her leaders on Yimri’s behalf. The female also began serving Yimri more and better food, letting her eat like a Jir instead of an animal.

  The Gorosian was hideous, like all of its kind. Yimri knew it was female because the female had said so. Human females evidently had lumpier torsos than males, a useless fact about a species Yimri had previously cared nothing about and now despised.

  This female had a crown of dark hair on the top of her head (probably the species’ most ludicrous affectation) as well as designs etched all over her smooth, exposed skin. Yimri felt sure the designs had not been present at the creature’s birth but rather added later.

  This Gorosian, and many of her fellow murderers Yimri had seen, dressed themselves in the underlayers of Jirmaken uniforms, which fit them on account of the fabric’s elastic quality as well as the two races’ basic structural commonality, both being two-armed bipeds.

  Like all her foul kind, the female reeked worse than shit.

  Also surely like all of her kind, she was a liar. Her ‘compassion’ was false.

  Yimri was not a brainless miftik. This ugly chigit was the Gorosians’ leader.

  Yimri’s faint inner sense of time told her that the chigit would soon return with more lies and lures. Yimri considered an ambush, ripping out the primitive animal’s exposed throat which appeared soft and vulnerable. If Yimri was lucky, such an attack might not be suicidal. She might escape and hole up somewhere until Sentinel recaptured the vessel—or destroyed it.

  Even if such an attack did cost Yimri her life, it would not be in vain. An enemy leader would lie dead. If the deed could somehow become known to her superiors, it might win her posthumous honor as a Hero of the Pentarchy.

  The chigit came, and Yimri dreamed of launching her surprise attack.

  Instead, she only trembled.

  Next time, perhaps.

  Bringing her stench in with her, the chigit entered the cadet’s berth carrying two meal packets and a water-pouch which she set near the narrow, lateral-opening door.

  The entrance shut behind the female. If it intended to stay and talk, perhaps Yimri might attack after all. She switched intonations and began to hum one for Resolve.

  From the far wall, which was not far away at all, Yimri’
s alien captor regarded her quietly for a few moments.

  “You know, don’t you?” she said. The savage spoke in a variant of Nexus which suited the vocal abilities of her species. Her speech was stilted and without nuance—clearly a fresh imprint. It mangled Yimri’s beautiful name. And the Gorosian’s voice was high and silly, like that of a child’s robotic toy.

  Thinking a moment, Yimri decided to engage in conversation, even though she hated this female and all her kind. Talking offered more time in which to commit to killing the ignorant chigit, which might let its guard down if Yimri seemed cooperative.

  “What is it I know?” Yimri asked.

  “That I’m not who I said I was.”

  Yimri said nothing. She ceased Resolve and resumed Against Despair. The chigit would probably kill her now.

  “My name is Arixa,” the female announced before answering Yimri’s silent suspicion. “How did I know? I saw how you looked at me. I’m learning to read your kind better. What is that low sound you all make? You can make it even while you’re speaking.”

  “Intonation,” Yimri answered dejectedly, maintaining Against Despair. “The tones foster various mental and emotional states.”

  “We have weeds for that,” the chigit Arixa said. “What state are you trying to enter?”

  Yimri didn’t answer. She posed her own question. “Why did you lie?”

  “Sometimes without lies, there’s no communication at all,” the chigit posited. “Why did you pretend to believe me?”

  “To stay alive.”

  “Without life, there is also no communication.”

  “Why keep me alive while you kill the others?”

  “You’re the only female,” Arixa answered simply. “Not that I can tell your sexes apart until you’re undressed.”

  “Likewise,” Yimri sneered, “if you didn’t have mounds on your front.”

  The Gorosian made her mouth curl hideously. This apparently meant she was amused.

  “Why were there so few females among your crew?” Arixa asked.

  “Fewer females than males choose the kemning of Sentinel.”

  “I have no clue what that means.”

  Silence.

  “Would you care to explain it to me?” Arixa asked.

  “Why should I do that?”

  “Like you, I made the choice to take up arms for my people,” Arixa said. “But my upbringing instilled something of the scholar in me, too. I can’t kill my inner scholar, so I indulge her. She’s curious. She wishes to learn.”

  “If you think I’ll reveal secrets that will help you to butcher us, you’re mistaken. I know nothing that isn’t common knowledge, obtainable anywhere.”

  “It’s not common to me.”

  “Because you’re savage.”

  “Correct,” Arixa said. “I’m savage. I choose to seek common knowledge from you instead of from systems that make no sense to me. But since you prefer solitude, I’ll go.”

  But the chigit made no move to leave. She knew. She knew that Yimri would talk, and feeling ashamed, Yimri did.

  “Sentinel is the bastion of the Pentarchy that encompasses the Jirmaken and other armed forces,” she recited. “At adulthood, every Jir must choose one bastion as his kemning, although most are set upon their paths much earlier.”

  “I see. What do most females choose instead of Sentinel?”

  “Advancement, Wealth, Enlightenment.... Origin.”

  “The first three I think I understand, but what’s Origin?”

  Yimri’s mind went elsewhere. To screams. “If I had refused to talk, would you have tortured me?”

  “I promise I won’t torture you.”

  The chigit made a sharp, breathy sound—a laugh?

  “But to be honest, I’ve broken many promises. My word to my enemy is never binding. Still, I won’t harm you unless you do something to make me change my mind. Will you tell me what Origin is?”

  “Origin is the supreme bastion of the Pentarchy,” Yimri explained. Her intonation Against Despair became one for Patience as she recited facts known to any child of Jira-II. “It wields veto power over all decisions unless the other four act in concert. Any Jir may choose Origin as his kemning, but unlike the other bastions, failure to pass Origin’s trials means death. The last four progenitors in my lineage were Origin.”

  “Why did you not follow in their steps?”

  “I wished to leave Jira-II and visit other worlds. The path of Sentinel is the surest in that regard.”

  Her choosing ceremony was not a sweet memory for Yimri. Her progenitors and many others had accused her of spurning Origin out of cowardice.

  “Hmm,” the hideous chigit trilled. “I wish you had visited my world for better reasons. We have things in common. We might have got along well.”

  Arixa knocked on the hatch. It slid open to reveal another Gorosian, a male brute who snarled at Yimri.

  Looking back as she exited, Arixa said, “If you’re careful, I may let you live for quite a while.”

  “Even if I die today, chigit,” Yimri said, “it gives me comfort to know that your destruction will follow soon after.”

  The human’s soft mouth-edges twisted up again. She said before the hatch closed, “For the sake of every living thing on Jira-II, you should pray that’s true.”

  * * *

  Outside the prisoner’s compartment, Ivar grimaced. “I don’t see how you can stand there and talk to one of those ugly pukes without smashing its face in.”

  “Before I lived in the dirt with you, I was raised in a palace,” Arixa said. “I learned to resist smashing faces.”

  “None as ugly as that one, I hope.”

  Together they walked the corridor. It was a luxury to Arixa just to walk now, even if it was on a metal floor walled on all sides. More often, on this strange voyage, their feet did not even touch the metal.

  Only one out of every ninety hours could they walk. The rest of the time they spent fastened to furniture or propelling themselves through blue-tinted air using handgrips.

  “I hope you’re not making friends with it,” the Norther said dubiously.

  Arixa answered, “Learning about our enemy. No more.”

  “Makes me nervous having them aboard.”

  “They’re locked up. As long as we don’t let our guard down, they can’t escape.”

  “It would only take one of their kind lurking in these tunnels to set them free. You killed half the prisoners with your jarnglof. Just finish off the rest and be done with it.”

  “I was testing the ironglove’s new capabilities,” Arixa said, speaking of the alien liquid metal which at her command could be made to flow out to encase her right arm. “The prisoners who remain could be useful in some other way, eventually.”

  Ivar scoffed. “You mean hostages? What value can this handful have after we killed—”

  “I don’t know!” Arixa snapped. “I’m doing my best, Ivar. Maybe they have vital information. Maybe they come from important families. Decisions aren’t easy in this place, and a wrong one can kill us all.”

  Ivar put a calloused palm on Arixa’s arm to halt her and draw her close.

  “You led us well in the world we knew, Arixa,” he said with sympathy. “You can lead us well in this one. Keep your eyes on what you do know, not what you don’t. Fuck these ugly creatures and what families they came from. It’s the Dawn that matters. Hold us together. If you don’t, it will all be for nothing.”

  He released her, and Arixa sighed. He had a point. Already shaken to its core by the extreme losses of capturing the Sagaris, what remained of the Dawn was crumbling under the strain of a tedious voyage into the unknown. She wanted to ignore that and look only ahead, for there was so much to learn and do in this changed landscape. But that meant taking her people’s trust and loyalty for granted.

  That was what men like her father the Shath did. Not her.

  As they resumed walking toward the orb ferry station which offered swift transport to
different areas of the vast cruiser, Arixa swallowed her pride and asked Ivar, “And what do you suggest I do to keep the Dawn together, Norther?”

  “We have an hour of this so-called gravity before we return to the Blue Hell, and you waste it chatting with a prisoner. Which forces me to waste it with you.”

  “No one is forcing you.”

  “Which forces me to waste it,” Ivar repeated sharply. He was ever her protector, whether she needed it or not. Mostly, she did not.

  “We have some steppe now,” Ivar said. “As frail an imitation as it is, it’s something. Most of the Dawn are there now. I want to be there. You should be, too. The only reason I can think of that you aren’t is that you’re afraid of them. But that would be crazy, since our beloved Captain fears nothing, least of all her darlings. Right?”

  “I love them, Ivar,” Arixa protested. “I don’t fear them.”

  “Of course not. But you might fear what they have to say, and fear not having an answer for it.”

  “I will have answers, Ivar. They just don’t come easily out here. Or quickly.”

  “Tell them that. Tell them something. Let them be heard. Avoiding them only makes things worse. If they don’t have you to listen to, they listen to each other instead. And, Wuotan bless ‘em, they’re not all that smart.”

  “What are they saying?”

  “They have complaints.” Ivar’s chuckle made it clear this was an understatement. “However bad things get, there are those of us you need never doubt: me, Matas, Dak, Tomiris. Plenty more. But others...”

  “Could turn on me.”

  It was a statement of fact, a danger which Arixa acknowledged but had chosen lately to ignore in the face of the overriding danger the Jir posed to Earth. But Ivar was right, of course. That was a mistake.

  “Turn on us,” Ivar corrected her. “You’ve never been the leader who sits in her silk pavilion. You’ve been in the dirt with us, to use your own words. That’s why we’re with you at all in this forsaken place. If the bridge of this ship becomes your silk pavilion—”

  “It won’t.”

  “Good,” Ivar said cheerfully. “Then shall we head for the dirt?”

  Two

  Zhi called it a Synthetic Environment Enclosure. Getting it working was one of the long list of tasks which Zhi had managed to accomplish in the hundreds of hours since the Sagaris’s departure from Earth.