The Complete First Season - Episodes 1-5

by J. L. Stowers

  “Oh,” Jag muttered softly. “This one doesn’t burn.”

  “I’m guessing it’s a more purified version of the drug. Sylvine said it was better.”

  “Sylvine, I should thank her. Where is she, anyway?”

  Dani exchanged a glance with Cruz. She wasn’t sure how Jag would react to the news.

  “I saw that. What’s going on?” Jag tried to push himself into a sitting position but ultimately didn’t have the strength.

  “We got the medicine from the Vaerians,” Dani explained.

  “You did what?” His eyes popped open again. “Now we’re negotiating with terrorists? What’d you give them?”

  Dani took a deep breath, puffing out her cheeks, and looked to Cruz once more.

  “Just tell me.” Jag sighed.

  “Sylvine traded herself to the Vaerians in exchange for the medicine,” Cruz signed.

  “Wait, what? You let her do that?”

  “We didn’t have another option,” Cruz continued.

  Dani was thankful he didn’t rat out her efforts to trade herself and continued to explain the situation. “Currently we’re being towed by two Vaerian destroyers back to their home system. The ship is too damaged right now to break free. We’ve sent out two types of communications in hopes that someone will come rescue us, but it isn’t looking good.”

  Jag looked overwhelmed and sleepy, his blinks growing longer and longer. “Mmmhmm.”

  “We’ll let you rest.” Dani gave his hand another squeeze before she slipped out of his grasp and his room.

  Cruz joined her in the hallway a moment later with a syringe of the medicine.

  Dani surrendered her arm to him without any argument. Jag was right; this version did sting less.

  “Hey, long-range scanners are picking up a ship.” Howard had poked his head out of the bridge and into the hall. “You two should get in here.”

  Dani and Cruz quickly returned to the bridge. Cassia and Zadria were both bent over Cassia’s station but parted as soon as Dani drew near.

  “It’s too small to be the Houston,” Cassia informed Dani.

  “It’s pirates,” Zadria announced.

  “How can you be sure?” Cassia peered over Zadria’s shoulder at her tablet.

  “No one else is crazy enough to come out here.”

  “Is that all the detail we can get?” Dani asked. There wasn’t much showing on the scan, just the energy signature of the engines, and even that was well disguised. If Cassia were any less talented, then they probably wouldn’t have picked it up to begin with.

  “For now, until they’re closer, and as long as they don’t—”

  “Where’d they go?” Zadria’s voice was panicked.

  “Well, either they were destroyed or they cloaked. I’m hoping for cloaked personally.” Cassia scooped a crying Carl up in her arms.

  “How long till they’re here?” Dani looked back out at the destroyers. Their engines had fired up once more, and they had resumed their flight back to their home system. At this point they were about halfway there, and if they got much closer, then any amount of help wouldn’t save them, as battleships would swarm them from the outposts ahead.

  “Based on the speed they were traveling when the sensors picked them up, not long.”

  “Then we had better get ready.” Dani seated herself and strapped in, the others doing the same. “Systems updates, Howard?”

  “About the same. Shields have regenerated nearly completely and engines are around eighty percent charged, but the amount of energy required to break us out of two gravity beams is far beyond their capacity. And, of course, no jump drive.”

  “Okay, I’ll need you to be ready to raise shields as soon as there’s any fire. I don’t want to take damage, and I don’t know whose side this ship is going to be on. We can’t raise them too early without alerting the Vaerians that something is coming.”

  “If they don’t already know,” Zadria added.

  “Right, well, I guess we’ll see.”

  The tension in the bridge grew with every passing moment. Cassia continued to scan the space around the trio of ships, looking for any abnormalities. Zadria sat, her eyes glued to her tablet, plugging away at something. Howard had prepared to activate shields and was essentially sitting with his hand poised over the key. Cruz was back at Jag’s station with the weapons relay around him, watching the numerous weapons screens before him.

  Dani herself was staring hard at the Vaerian ships, taking in every feature and looking for weaknesses. She watched the small Vaerian craft Sylvine had boarded as it returned to the ship flying on their right.

  “When things start getting crazy, Cruz, I want you to focus on the ship on the left. Sylvine’s in the other one.”

  Cruz acknowledged her with a nod as his eyes shifted, unblinking, to the screens giving the best view of the ship on the left.

  She and Cruz had been together the longest out of all of her crew. When they met, she was a fighter pilot fresh out of the academy, and he was a weapons specialist aboard her assigned vessel. For four years, they worked as a team to protect GC space, planets, and ships from the Vaerians. There had always been rumors about Cruz’s condition, but Dani never pressed him to relive what he had gone through when the Vaerians captured and tortured him for information. Maybe that was why they got along so well. All she knew was that before he was captured he had both his legs and a voice, and after he was rescued, a deep hatred for all things Vaerian replaced both of those things.

  She wondered how he was faring after discovering he had been working side by side with a Vaerian, Royal or not. If it bothered him, he wasn’t showing it. Dani herself didn’t fully understand the connection between Sylvine and the Vaerians they had been fighting for years. They seemed so different, though now that she knew more about Sylvine, there were also similarities she didn’t catch before: the reptilian-like skin, the intense fighting power.

  Dani shook her head and refocused on the ships ahead of her. Waiting for the battle to begin was always difficult for her. There was the build-up of tension, her heightened senses, the adrenaline, and then the waiting. Getting into the right mindset for battle was easy; staying there until it was time required an endurance Dani hadn’t quite mastered in the way that Cruz had. Her focus tended to waver, especially when there was much to think about.

  She took another deep breath, glancing quickly at the crew, who remained steadfast. She fed off of their focus and searched the Vaerian destroyer with her eyes once more. Their ships were industrial-looking and lacked the elegance of the Houston. They actually more closely resembled the GC’s warships due to the similar materials used in their construction. The GC had resorted to the cheapest materials they could get that would still hold up decently in battle. The duration of the war and strain on supplies had made the grab for these cheaper, more plentiful resources necessary. Unfortunately, they were the same resources the Vaerians needed for their ships.

  Without shields, the outer shell of the ships was easy to penetrate with either energy shots or ballistic ammunition. Osirion was armed with both. They couldn’t take on two destroyers by themselves—but with a little help, just maybe they’d live through this.

  Almost as if on cue with Dani’s thoughts, energy blasts fired from below the cavalcade and into the underbelly of the ship on the left, knocking out the gravitational beam.

  “Let’s do this!” Dani hollered.

  Cruz immediately began opening fire on the target ship, hitting many of their weapons systems before they activated their shields. Howard quickly kicked Osirion’s shields on at full power, and Zadria tossed her tablet onto the floor, accessing the ship’s systems to provide updates.

  “It’s Talon!” Cassia exclaimed, her voice shaking with excitement.

  “Best news I’ve heard all day.” Dani grinned. If she had to choose a pirate ship to work with, she would hands down choose Talon’s. “Make sure he knows who we are.”

  “Got it,” Cassia an
swered as she pecked away at her console.

  Held fast by the remaining gravity beam, Dani watched the systems carefully. She didn’t want to pull any more energy than she needed to away from shields and weapons by trying to fight the beam. The Vaerian ships weren’t gunning for Osirion anyway—at least not yet. They focused their fire on Talon’s ship, the shields absorbing the fire.

  “Target ship’s shields are already down to fifty percent, and it looks like at least a third of their guns got knocked out before they activated their shields,” Howard said.

  “You should fire on the second ship. They can’t run shields and the gravity beam at the same time,” Zadria suggested. “I doubt we’ll destroy it before they activate shields, so I’m sure Sylvine will be fine.”

  Dani hesitated a moment before deciding that the rookie had a valid point. “Cruz, do it, take out all the guns you can on the other ship.”

  Cruz rotated the weapons relay and opened fire on the ship holding Sylvine, taking all precautions to not hit anything that would cause a critical failure on board. He focused instead on the weapons farther away from the engines and other important systems. Two, three, four guns were now out of commission before the gravity beam disengaged and their shields activated.

  Osirion was free.

  Dani quickly grabbed the yoke and pulled her to the left, circling on the far side of the destroyer. Cruz retargeted the initial target ship and launched a full-energy attack at their shields. Shields were only able to absorb so much before they failed. The trick was balancing weapons power against their shields. Weapons had already dipped down to seventy percent power as the buildup of energy was released in an unrelenting barrage on the Vaerian destroyer.

  “They’re attempting to lock onto us with their weapons,” Cassia warned.

  Dani smirked. This was her favorite part. With a quick adjustment to inertial dampeners, Dani twisted Osirion to the side, flying the quick ship with ease and avoiding a lock from the destroyer. Osirion was much more agile than her previous ship, Alaska’s Vengeance, though it lacked the benefit of a fleet of fighter pilots. A quick pang in her heart made her think back to Peterson and the rest of her pilots before an energy blast hit and dispersed across their shields, snapping her out of her reminiscent moment.

  A quick glance at the screen showed that the hit knocked shields down by about seven percent. She didn’t want to take any more of those. With her focus renewed, Dani continued to carefully combine her evasive maneuvers with passes close to the ship. This allowed Cruz a better shot at their systems should the Vaerian shields fail prematurely, and it made it difficult for the Vaerian weapons to converge on their location.

  “Z, I forgot about Jag,” Dani called out. “Can you go strap him in?”

  “You got it, Captain.” Zadria scrambled from her seat and down the hall behind them toward Jag’s room.

  Dani exhaled loudly as she turned Osirion and climbed above the destroyer. She enjoyed having the advantage of a smaller ship, as she could easily outmaneuver the destroyer. Unfortunately, the extra mobility meant that their weapons packed less of a punch than she would have liked.

  “How’s Talon’s ship doing?” Dani asked as the pirate ship sped by them going the opposite direction, firing down on the destroyer.

  “They’re looking pretty good. They must have upgraded shields and weapons since we saw them last,” Cassia reported.

  “Our shields are at eighty-six percent,” Howard announced as another energy blast hit Osirion’s shields. “Engines are holding at seventy-seven percent, and weapons are down to fifty percent.”

  “The destroyer’s shields?” Dani asked as she continued her attempts to evade the attack.

  “Vaerian shields are—” Cassia’s update was cut short as a blinding flash erupted before them just as Zadria returned. The white intensity caused Dani and her crew to cringe and shield their eyes as it filled Osirion’s bridge before they plunged into darkness.

  The display screen was built to dampen such intense levels of brightness, so Dani was thankful that the solar shields were closed. If not, that flash might have been the last thing any of them saw.

  Dani squinted, rubbed her eyes, and blinked rapidly in attempt to normalize her vision. “What the hell was that?”

  The lack of answers caused her to attempt a glance around the bridge but the residue from the flash was overwhelming. “Z, where are you?”

  “I’m here,” Zadria answered from Dani’s side.

  “I can’t see anything—what happened?”

  “Stand by.”

  The few seconds it took for Zadria to speak again felt like an eternity.

  “There was some kind of detonation; we’re drifting away from the battle. It seems we weren’t the only ones affected. Hang on, I need to open the solar shades. Looks like the blast caused a power failure in a few secondary systems but they’re rebooting. Shields are still up. Life support, artificial gravity, engines, and weapons are all fine.”

  Dani waited, her vision improving as the minutes passed. She was soon able to make out Cassia and Cruz in their stations. “You guys alright?”

  Cruz quickly signed, “Yes.”

  Cassia nodded. “I think so. That was awful.”

  Howard merely grunted.

  The battle below them was at a standstill, no doubt due to whatever caused the flash. “It looks like all the ships are still here. I wonder what that was.”

  “Oh!” Cassia exclaimed, “The Vaerian shields are down, on both ships.”

  “Let’s get back in there then.” Dani grabbed the yoke once more, narrowing her eyes to squint away the last bit of blurriness.

  Osirion wasn’t the only ship getting back into the action. Talon’s vessel also sped back toward the fight. With the destroyer’s shields down, the pirate ship spit a series of small energy blasts, resulting in a line of explosions across the top of the target destroyer.

  “Incoming!” Dani shouted to Cruz as the destroyer’s bay doors opened and a handful of Vaerian fighters emerged.

  The small fighters were exceedingly quick. They unleashed a coordinated volley of energy shots at the pirate ship before turning their attention on Osirion.

  “I can’t outrun them, Cruz. I’ll do my best, but I need you to take out as many as you can.” Dani glanced at Cruz. His focus quickly shifted from the destroyer to the fighters, easily taking out the first three in the formation.

  “It seems their shields are down too.” Zadria sighed with relief.

  “I sure hope Talon shares his tech, because I want it. He always finds the good stuff first.” Dani laughed as she darted back toward the two remaining fighters.

  Cruz made short work of the small crafts before taking aim on the destroyer once more.

  “Hit them with a missile,” Dani ordered.

  Cruz launched a guided missile toward their engines. The large ship, unable to maneuver out of the way, took the full hit, causing a chain reaction through the aft part of the craft.

  “I’d say they’re out of commission,” Zadria announced with a helping of pride.

  Talon’s ship repeated the attack on the second Vaerian destroyer, the one with Sylvine aboard.

  “No!” Dani called out as the explosions tore through the ship, shearing away chunks of metal.

  Chapter 3

  “Get Talon on the line, now.” Dani was fuming.

  The solar shades slid shut, and Talon appeared on the communications screen. His ever-present boyish charm was undeniable, even in these circumstances, but Dani wouldn’t allow it to affect her.

  “What the hell are you doing? I needed that second ship intact.”

  The grin quickly vanished from Talon’s face. “Oh, this is one of those calls.”

  Dani rolled her eyes. “I have someone on that ship. I swear, if your recklessness results in her death…”

  Talon perked up and his grin returned. “Well then, sounds like we need to mount a rescue mission. Geneva, ready my transport.”
/>   “Geneva?” Dani recalled the name from her time in prison.

  The tall pirate woman joined Talon, peering at Dani. “Aren’t you supposed to be dead?”

  “Aren’t you supposed to be in prison?”

  “Fair enough.” Geneva shrugged before turning to Talon. “Ready when you are, my captain.”

  “Say, where’s my dear brother?” Talon angled his head as though it would help him see around Osirion’s bridge. “I haven’t heard any snarky remarks yet.”

  Dani hesitated, wondering if disclosing Jag’s condition would cease his cooperation. She needed Talon and his crew to pull off the rescue. There was no telling how many pissed-off Vaerians were standing to slaughter them as soon as they set foot aboard their damaged ship.

  Talon frowned. “Is he dead? I did see something on a GC broadcast, but something felt off about it.”

  “No, not dead,” Dani answered. “He’s here, just... incapacitated.”

  “Ah, faking his death. Perhaps I’m finally rubbing off on him.” Talon chuckled then stopped as he had another realization. “Is he the one we’re rescuing?”

  “No, not this time.”

  “I see.” Talon drummed his fingers on the arm of his chair. “Well, let’s get over there before reinforcements arrive. I like to leave the party before it really gets going.”

  “Agreed.”

  Dani stood. The second the screen blipped off. “Z, Cassia, Howard, I need you three to handle the ship and Jag. Cruz, you’re with me.”

  Cruz’s hesitation drew Dani’s concern. She recalled Sylvine’s ties to the Vaerians and Cruz’s hatred for them. “If you want to sit this one out, I can take Z.”

  “No.” Cruz stood from his seat, reaching down to make a quick adjustment to his prosthetic legs. “I’ll go.”

  The relief on Zadria’s face was a little too evident. Dani did a better job at hiding hers with a respectful nod to Cruz. He and Jag were the two she preferred to have at her side when shit hit the fan, but with Jag out of commission, Cruz was a far better choice than Zadria, at least until she had a little more experience under her belt.