(From Ashes) Prologue

Pride: From Ashes

Prologue

It had been a simple message. A brief pulse that would easily be mistaken as background noise by any but the most vigilant observer. Even if it were intercepted, the short and incomprehensible jumble of characters had no meaning without context. It was nothing. A systems glitch, a scrambled wave. That was 'squawking panic'. That was the message the Jupiter's Bolt had cast into the void.

ExT686sVC2

Explorer Team 686, vessel compromised in deep space, requesting protocol 2.

Protocol 2 was the most common panic squawk: the situation would call for after-the-fact investigation, rather than an active rescue. It had arrived at the Alliance's nearest border station several days after its transmission. There it had been decrypted and sent via subspace communications to Askarel, the closest Alliance planet with a command post. The Askarel garrison had assessed and sent it along to Verundi, the nearest world with a capital ship to spare. That chain of events had cost another few hours.

It had taken some effort to pull the mission data for Explorer Team 686. The unit's records were sealed. But panic squawks were taken seriously enough to work around that inconvenience. A few more subspace messages, this time to the administrative hub on Skotathyr. A few more hours.

Finally, a reconnaissance team had been dispatched to the signal's origin point. In the Calidar system they'd found nothing but trace wreckage, and the Drule station there reported only recent pirate battles. They'd been invited, under an obscure clause in the Deros Convention, to investigate the wreckage themselves if they wished. There hadn't been any sign of the 686's Vagrant.

Only then had anyone gotten around to notifying Colonel James Hawkins. He wasn't particularly pleased, but at the same time, what would he have been doing if they'd alerted him earlier? Sitting in his office poring over reports and not sleeping, that was what.

He was doing that just fine now.

Of course he'd lost people before. It was the nature of Explorer Teams—performing such precise and sensitive tasks meant occasionally, a team would simply disappear. Line units rarely had to worry about their people just vanishing without a trace. Every single time, it was difficult… and yet for some reason this one felt worse.

Was it the mission? Hawkins wasn't sure. The search for Voltron had never felt urgent, so it likely wasn't that. Another run-in like the one they'd reported at Kithran was possible, but it would have been the most… expected cause. If he really thought that was what had happened, his guts wouldn't be churning with unease.

No, it wasn't the Galra at issue. Perhaps it was the Alliance itself? Or more to the point, whoever was behind the pirates the 686 had uncovered. Sealing the team's records had been a precaution, not a guarantee. But that didn't make sense. The task force had not been able to hunt down the pirates—more support for an inside job. But they'd never been reported beyond the Rim. The other side of the Interior Expanse? It made no sense. And it wasn't as if the team had been submitting routing reports. Even Hawkins hadn't known they were moving through Calidar until after the fact, no traitor in the command structure could have targeted them.

No… what was bothering him was the most obvious thing, given the source of the message. The least likely thing, based on the unit's mission parameters. It was the Drules.

The offer to inspect the wreckage at Calidar made his skin crawl; the Ninth Kingdom hewed very carefully to the letter of the Deros Convention. They didn't tend to care much about the spirit. Such helpfulness was in itself suspicious, and if they'd had a hand in the 686's disappearance, the ripples could go well beyond their original task.

Are they going to make a move? With the Fourth, or without? Is the war we've been waiting on for decades about to start, or was this just some one-off… but why wouldn't they ransom them back if it was?

All of those questions were well above his pay grade. His job was to raise the alarm, and he'd done that first of all. Now… he just had to work through this damnable helpless feeling. Hawkins liked his job, in theory, but he'd never quite settled into being stuck behind a desk.

"At it again, huh?"

He jumped, then turned, a small smile crossing his lips despite himself. "How do you always sneak up on me like that?"

The tall man standing in the doorway chuckled, dark eyes glinting with sympathy. "Because you get as focused on your strategic reports as I get on my command console, naturally."

"You do make a convincing case."

Captain Takashi Shirogane—Shiro to his friends, Takashi to his husband—approached and put a hand on his shoulder. A hand that wasn't flesh and blood, but metal; he'd lost most of his arm fighting off a Galra raid several years before. The 686's mission had been of some interest to him, too. "You can't do this to yourself, James. You've gone over every record from the region… twice."

"And yet I'm no closer to any answers but the obvious." He sighed. "This feels different, Takashi. What were they doing there? Why the hell would the Ninth—the Ninth! Not even the Fourth, we expect this from them!—make a move like this? They're pretending not to have even seen the ship, there's no hint of its presence. That implies it was captured, not destroyed. And if they're outright abducting our people—"

"—James." The chain of logic was sound. Continuing to dwell on the unanswerable could only have one result. "You reported to intel and the Consulate. It's in their hands now. What more can you do like this?"

Hawkins paused, then looked at him and shook his head in quiet frustration. "You'd do the same if it were your people, you know."

"I know." Shiro squeezed his shoulder. "And you'd convince me to come home and rest, so I'd be ready when the answers come."

True. Reasonable. Painful, for certain, but… his eyes narrowed slightly. "Oh, I'll be ready. If the Ninth took my people as an opening salvo, I'll be going out there myself once the Consulate makes them spit it out, and I don't care if the brass approves it or not." The faintest hint of a smile crossed his lips. "And just for the record, if it comes to that… I'll need a pilot."

Shiro paused, then slowly matched his grin. "I might know someone."

*****

Of all the damnable insults to be added to injury…

King Zarkon looked up at the captured spacecraft. It was an impressive beast of a ship, from a technical standpoint; he'd read the intake reports. The Alliance's inferior technology prevented anything much larger than this craft from escaping atmosphere. That made this, something called a Vagrant, a particularly fine piece of engineering.

Usually Zarkon appreciated the work of his enemies, the way they made do with lesser minds and lesser tools. He wasn't in the mood today. They had preserved the Vagrant when it was captured; that was policy. Catalog the contents, lock it down in an auxiliary hangar, and have it ready to ransom back if the Alliance actually noticed it was missing. The crew? Oh, they'd been well treated, of course, but they had tragically been killed in a failed escape. They'd brought it upon themselves. Perhaps the Alliance should train their people better.

Of course, the crew of this particular ship had not failed to escape. It was a crippling shame and a diplomatic nightmare. The Ninth had expended resources well beyond what might be considered proportionate to hunt down the escaped gladiators, and still had nothing to show for it.

And then, their backchannel contacts with the Alliance had come calling. First the reconnaissance mission to Calidar. Now a thinly-veiled accusation of a Deros Convention violation, sent via the Seventh Kingdom embassy. The Seventh's ambassador had seemed damn near gleeful when she delivered it, as if she knew the bind the Ninth was in.

Telling the truth was out of the question. There were rules about the treatment of captives. There would be sanctions. Offering the ship was an option, but what of the crew? To say they'd died would be disproven if the gladiators made it back to Alliance space. Admitting they'd escaped was unthinkable—not to mention they would be obliged to stop trying to recapture them. Both meant the truth and sanctions anyway, as well as the insult going unavenged.

Only two possibilities served the Ninth's needs. They could recapture the gladiators, or they could hope for them to die on their own before reaching the Alliance. The second option was a fool's choice. The first was seeming more and more unlikely.

Taking an inconsequential merchant ship or two every gladiatorial season was not supposed to cause this many problems.

It wasn't the Alliance's response he was worried about, really. They had no sense of honor. They wouldn't go to war over such a small violation… they would demand some minor concession and let it go. It was the Drule Supremacy itself that would inflict harsh sanctions for even small missteps: the vindictive Fourth Kingdom, the usual victim of the Alliance's successes, would be only too eager to inflict penalties on anyone else stepping out of line. The kingdoms back in the home galaxy, for whom all these concerns were theoretical, would show no mercy. And the wave of conquest he'd been overseeing had stretched the kingdom's supply lines thin; they really couldn't afford sanctions right now.

Sometimes, Zarkon fully understood his son's hatred of politics. The difference was that he still meant to do his duty, rather than just whining about it.

"There you are! Xalinan told me I'd find you here. This issue doesn't need to concern you, you know."

The king startled, then turned. Approaching was a man who was the mirror image of himself, except he wore gold-trimmed battle armor rather than royal vestments. A war banner fluttered from his helmet, a simple marking that spoke of the highest station. This was the Grand Admiral of the Ninth Kingdom, Lord of the Armadas and Conquering Hand of the Throne: Zarkon's older twin brother, Daibazaal.

Together they had plotted their rise to power, eliminating any sibling that threatened their position. Together they had launched a new wave of conquest, expanding the borders of the Ninth to new and glorious heights. And together, it seemed, they couldn't hunt down a mere handful of upstart humans. "It's my concern until your people drag the gladiators back here in spiked chains, brother. It shouldn't even have been a problem. Maybe you'd like to remind the fleets that when they're carrying out actions against our treaties, they're to be certain to not allow distress calls!"

Daibazaal was more than used to dealing with his brother's temper, and waved it off calmly. "I've looked over the logs from the Scarborne Fist. All countermeasures were taken. Perhaps they'd reported their position beforehand… or perhaps they can't truly prove this ship was at Calidar at all."

That was useful information. Zarkon nodded. "I can tie the proceedings up with that. But that game ends the moment the gladiators reach them. Which is why they must not."

"Our tracker squadrons have their scent. The stolen Cor'velon was located at a Seventh Kingdom border world, but they were not aboard. The criminals who were captured with the craft said a band of humans fitting their description traded ships with them, and we have cast a wide net to seek the new vessel."

At the mention of the Seventh Kingdom, Zarkon had frozen, just for a moment. The ambassador's message suddenly seemed more ominous. Had the gladiators already reached the Alliance? Had the treacherous Seventh—no. No, backstabbing scum that they were, not even the Seventh would have aided such an escape. Not without trying to sell the fugitives back to the Ninth first, anyway.

"Brother?"

He snapped out of it and scowled. "Cast a wider one. I want all their heads impaled on the castle spires as a warning, and I want them as close to immediately as possible. Do you understand me?"

Daibazaal saluted. "As you command, sire!" Backing away a few steps before turning, he departed to issue new orders.

Looking after him, Zarkon shook his head slowly. A damned cargo ship. Ten slaves—seven slaves, really, at least three had had the grace and good sense to die. Such outsized complications for so few, primitive creatures. And every report only seemed to irk him more.

What else can go wrong?