Jessica solar's Arc

Chapter 9 of 15

The diplomat had been talking for less than a minute when Jessica felt the deck shudder under her boots. Not an impact. A stutter. She knew the rhythm of her own power core the way she knew her pulse, and it was skipping. She glanced at the overhead where the clockwork fox spun its tail backward. The interference field was bleeding inward. Her own systems were drinking the static she had aimed at his recorders. "Keep talking," she said. She didn't look at him. She pulled the slate from her pocket and thumbed it awake. The core temperature bar was climbing. Containment ring holding, but the regulators were reading noise instead of signal. If the core tripped now, her lights died, her locks opened, and this man walked out with everything he had come to learn. A thump hit the outer hull. Then another. Not one impact. Many. Something was climbing her ship. Her comm hissed. Michael's voice came through the crawlspace grate above her head, low and fast. "Princess. I'm in the vents. There's things on the hull. Wolves. And men with cutters. The wolves are killing the men and the men are cutting through anyway." She kept her face still. The diplomat watched her over folded gloves. He had heard the thumps. He chose not to react, which told her he had known. "Michael," she said into the slate, quiet. "The fox. Slow the tail by half. Don't stop it. Half." "Half means he hears some of us." "Half means my core lives. Do it." She heard him scrambling in the vent. A small clang. The deck hum eased. The temperature bar leveled, then dropped one notch. The lights held. She looked up at the diplomat. "Your boarding party is early." "My escort," he said, "is not mine." "Then whose." He didn't answer. He didn't need to. The crimson faction had watchers on watchers, and someone had decided a private audience was too private. Jessica stood. She kept the crate between them. "We finish this later. On my terms, on record, or not at all. You'll walk out the way you came in and you'll walk out now." He rose. He inclined his head, the same measured bow as before. "Then we speak again." "We speak again." He stepped through the airlock. She sealed it behind him and killed the fox. Her lights steadied. The core held. She keyed the vent grate. "Michael. Stay up there. Draw everything you see. Every cutter, every wolf, every mark on their coats. I want to know who sent them." "Copy." A pause. "Princess. They're still cutting." She looked at the hull plate above her head. Sparks bit through a seam near the bulkhead weld. Her core was safe. Her ship was not. The negotiation was over. The siege had started.