[LEGACY VERSION] The Enemy of Time (Book 2 - The Kaireyeh Chronicles)

Chapter 33 - Edora

Edora Zivali stood wrapped in holo-displays on the bridge of the Teven Spar. Foremost in her attention were the comm screens of her fleet commanders, each on their own flagship, all currently shouting at her through her comm implant.

"--why are we at the Eddies? Was this a jump error, and why haven't you given us jump coordinates yet? I thought we were going to Pareen, I thought it held a Resistance stronghold--"

"--you said this was a Level 10 threat, we moved all of our fleets here on your intelligence, Edora, all of them--"

"--I thought we'd be meeting Landon's fleets in battle. That's why we're here, isn't it? To beat Kosef to it before he can join them?"

Edora held up a hand. It took a few seconds longer than she would have liked for them to quiet.

"Admirals," she said. "The threat we're going to face lies within the Eddies."

A threat she could not name except as the tightness of foreboding in her gut. She had to go in there. She had to take her fleets. Her dreams, every night, screamed at her to go in the Eddies.

Faces had crept into her dreams. Pale, ghostly faces, out of focus. Lights above her, a white room. Pain. And a bone-deep knowing that if she did not enter the Eddies, everything she'd built and worked toward would fall apart. All the strength of the worlds that she'd gathered in the last weeks--it would crumble if she didn't stay the course.

Edora glanced up past the lines of her holo wrap to the screens at the front of the bridge. Two of them held views of the Eddies ahead, through different filters. Kaireyeh levels around the ship from the unstable region were already high enough to make the crew nervous.

"Are you insane?" Admiral Seonu hissed.

Edora didn't think so. No, she couldn't think so. She had to be sane.

Seonu went on, "Are you saying the Resistance is based inside the Eddies? We can't travel in there. I'm not taking my fleets in there--"

Edora steadied herself on the problem at hand. One step at a time. "Your ships were slaved to mine on our last jump. That's why we are here now and not Pareen. When we--"

Uproar. Uproar was hard enough to weather in person, but it was like static at a distance.

Edora punched off the comm. She didn't have the time or patience for this--they would try to root out her virus slaving their ships to her commands, and they would, but not before she took them all into the Eddies.

Bile edged the back of her throat. She'd slaved the ships with the virus her dreams had given her--a modification of an information-gathering virus she'd found in a top-level Armada Intelligence archive. She could take them all into the Eddies--but she didn't want to go in there any more than her fleet commanders. And her dreams hadn't given her any instructions beyond the virus. She didn't have enough time to go back to sleep.

If she took her fleets in now, everything in her told her they'd be torn apart, ripped into a hundred different currents of Kaireyeh. They might emerge at some point, some ships might find a way out. But it wasn't likely. Space in the Eddies didn't exist in normal spacetime or in Kaireyeh, but a roiling mixture of both.

Edora wiped away her holo wrap to see every officer and crewer on the bridge pointedly focused on their work. Except for Roche. Jacova Roche stared at Edora with thin-lipped intensity.

"Admiral, may I have a word with you?" Roche asked.

Edora briefly considered. How much time did she have?

She decided she could delay, if only to wait for some other solution than jumping her entire fleet into what had to be suicide. She didn't have to worry about fleet-wide mutiny yet--the fleet commanders would keep their code-cracking tightly under wraps. They didn't want panicked crewers overthrowing their ships, either.

She had to trust the dreams. They'd brought her here. She had to. And she could not have Roche moving at cross-purposes to her.

Edora nodded and followed Roche around the bridge to the captain's office. The office looked barely occupied, even after the weeks Roche had been in command--there were none of the personal touches that had been here when this space belonged to Jonas Krayle. Roche didn't make things personal.

"Admiral," Roche said when the hatch shut, "with respect, why are we here? With these last two jumps toward the Eddies, the crew has grown increasingly uneasy." She paused. "We are not jumping to Pareen."

Edora smiled a thin smile. That was what she'd told Roche, along with the fleet commanders, when Roche had last asked.

"No," Edora said. "Pareen was plausible enough as an out-of-the-way base, but no. I'm taking the fleets into the Eddies."

A moment while Roche absorbed that, but only a short one.

"How?" Roche asked. "Are the fleet commanders in agreement with this?"

"Yes," Edora said. Roche didn't need to know about the slave-control program. "And the how of it is classified."

Roche took a breath. She was smart, a more keenly-aware commander than Edora had first hoped. Why hadn't Talina fallen for this woman, a good officer? That match Edora could have gotten behind.

Edora relented. "I'm still waiting on intelligence on how we'll enter the Eddies. As to what we'll find there--enemies of the Justice."

"The Resistance?"

"Quite possibly," Edora said. "Kalec has followed us this far with Kosef's fleets in tow--they will not want us to enter."

Roche's face went dark. "That's your intelligence? That Admiral Kosef doesn't want to you enter, so therefore you will?"

"You forget yourself, Captain," Edora snapped. "My intelligence is my business, and no, I would not take my fleets into the Eddies unless I knew--not just thought, but knew--that the threat to the Justice was extreme if I did not."

Roche stepped closer. "Admiral, I am in your command. I have watched you act with both cunning and what some might call instability, and I need to know, before I send five hundred of my people into that mass of Kaireyeh currents, that if I were to call the doctor here right now he would pronounce you fit for duty."

Edora glowered at Roche, but at that moment, an image of the pale faces in her dreams flashed in her mind's eye. She suppressed a shudder. She had to trust her dreams. They had always, always led her on the right course.

"Whoever destroyed Hale is in that region of space," she said. Not a certainty, but something she suspected. "All of my intelligence points there--yes, Captain, this was worth abandoning Aijas for."

Kalec Chevani and Iuri Kosef had their fleets not far behind her now, but she'd be in the Eddies before they reached weapons range in a few hours. If they followed her into the Eddies--that would be on their heads. They didn't have her dreams to guide them.

And she still didn't know how she'd navigate five full Armada fleets through the ever-changing currents of Kaireyeh in the Eddies.

"All right," Roche said.

Edora let out a held breath. She didn't need Roche's approval. Roche's obedience, yes--but Roche was willing to trust her on this. Someone in this fleet was willing to trust her.

Edora cleared her throat and straightened, smoothing out her uniform jacket. "To the bridge." They had to go now, while she still had fleets to command.

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