The Alorian Wars Box Set

by Drew Avera

  Brendle grabbed the nearest console while Anki and Malikea strapped Deis to the table turned on the med cart. Accessing the same interface as the bridge, Brendle spoke, “Ship, I need you to run a secondary diagnostic on Deis. He is now in the med bay.”

  The crew of three looked down at Deis as the med cart scanned him, red and green lights shone up and down his body as it read all of his stats. Brendle watched the readout for what the ship might find. It came sooner rather than later. “Replicade AI is initiating class three first aid. There were no changes in status from moving the casualty, though next time a stretcher is recommended for moving a casualty with a head injury.”

  Brendle shook his head. He was relieved that Deis was getting treatment, but if there was further damage, it would have been his fault. No wonder Malikea thought I was trying to kill them.

  “Are we out of harm’s way?” Anki asked, stepping closer to Brendle while Malikea held Deis’ hand, whispering something in his ears, probably encouragement or a prayer, Brendle thought.

  “I have the ship’s AI flying us out of the debris field, but the interfaces are damaged from bypassing the protocols when we initiated the drive sequence. So being out of harm’s way is a relative thing. I do think we are out of range for the Telran to get a lock on us, especially with all the debris from the Seratora.”

  She stared at him, a look of hurt in her eyes, but she didn’t say anything.

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it to sound like that,” he said.

  She just shrugged and stepped back towards Deis and Malikea.

  Brendle stood there, biting his tongue and wishing he had put some thought behind his words before he brought up the Seratora. It was too late now, though. He looked at the console in the med bay. It had a lot of the same controls as the bridge, but he didn’t have a large monitor to use for tracking. Based on the heading, they were a short distance from Key Lourna which was a very good thing if they can make it there in one piece. The better thing would be to make it through Key Lourna in one piece.

  “I’m heading back up to the bridge. We’ll be approaching Key Lourna soon, so settle in and get strapped in. we’ll be flipping and pulsing the drive to reduce thrust. I’m not trying to slam on the brakes, but it’ll get bumpy either way,” he said.

  Anki and Malikea both nodded their heads, but stayed silent. Brendle stood in the doorway of the hatch and watched Malikea rub his hands over Deis’ chest, the sound of the medical scanner beeping in the background. He made eye contact with Anki for a brief moment; a tear rolled down her cheek and she looked away. That tear was because of me, he thought as he turned to walk away.

  He made his way forward and jogged up the ladder well into the bridge. The large monitor showed little residual debris from the Seratora which could mean anything, but he hoped it meant they were through the field and out of sight of the Telran. His hands gripped the control console and he made some quick calculations for approaching Key Lourna. There was a message from the AI on the projected screen. “Replicade and her crew are clear of ninety-eight percent of the debris scattered in the vicinity of the scheduled flight path.” It was something he already knew by looking at the monitor, but he tapped the screen clear and began taking control of the ship again.

  “Ship, I need to reduce thrust to enter a Service Station at the coordinates on the monitor. The Replicade is a little larger than most repair ships, but we need to make this happen. What course of action do you recommend?” he asked. Might as well take advantage of the situation if it’s available.

  The screen came to life with a new message. “Replicade AI does not advise taking prescribed course of action.”

  “Yeah, that’s not really on the table for discussion. We will be entering the Service Station; I just need to know how to do it without killing us.”

  “Replicade AI has no recommendations with greater than forty-percent survivability.”

  “Well, shit,” Brendle hissed. There comes a time in every man’s life when you have to go against the grain. It might not be the right way, but it’s the necessary way in order to learn and grow. Brendle had been at this point several times in life. Usually, the stakes weren’t as high, but the chances of the Telran catching up were too severe to not take the risk. Just because a computer designed to operate a ship within the confines of set parameters couldn’t see a way to pull it off, didn’t mean Brendle couldn’t fly the ship ass-first, doing somersaults into Key Lourna if he needed to. Of course, the forty-percent survivability was grating on him a bit, but they were dead either way if he didn’t try.

  He wiped the screen clear again and reverse dumped thrust. Somewhere outside the ship the engine’s vectoring shifted and produced all kinds of noise, if it could be heard in vacuum. Instead, he was met with a violent shake of the ship and a loss of gravity as the ship tumbled. Brendle lost his grip on the console and fell aft, or up, or whatever direction was relative as the entire space cart-wheeled around him.

  He kicked off the bulkhead and reached for the console, finding purchase with the fingers of his left hand. He used the reverse thrust to slow the ship down and waited for the Service Station to grab them. He had only used a Service Station like Key Lourna once, and the sensation was akin to what fluid must feel like being sucked through a hose. Orientation changes rapidly, something similar to gravity causes bodies not strapped down to ride against the outer reaches of the suction like a tornado drawing them up and out. He forgot that the last time he had used a Service Station he had been strapped into a bunk and had a suit on to keep the blood from rushing out of his brain. The memory of it came too late as he was hurled across the bridge and eaten by the darkness creeping through his mind as he lost consciousness.

  25

  Anki

  She found him in a heap on the deck. There was no blood, but that didn’t necessarily mean he was alive. It’s been a hell of a day to be on a ship, she thought as she knelt down to check for his vitals. His pulse was normal and the cold touch of her hand against his neck apparently startled him. Brendle jarred awake, his eyes wide with fear and confusion. “What happened?” he asked as he patted himself down. Must be searching for injuries, she thought.

  “I didn’t stab you,” she said, fighting back a smile, “I didn’t shoot you either,” she added.

  He looked up at her, the joke suddenly realized as he laughed painfully. “I know, but the last thing I remember was being thrown into the air and slamming against the bulkhead. I think I might have cracked a rib.”

  “Do you need to go to the med bay?” Anki asked. She certainly hoped he was man enough to take a cracked rib. Of course, she had given him a rather severe beating before and he had taken that with a bit more than his dignity intact. That fact still grated on her nerves so she pushed the thought away.

  Brendle rose to his feet and arched his back. He looked around, but for what she didn’t know. “We were burning hard with an elevated pitch, what happened?” he asked.

  Anki just shrugged. “I’m not sure. We felt the shift in pitch and assumed you had done it. Once the thrust leveled out the gravity on deck I decided to come see how things were going. That’s when I found you,” she said.

  “Hmm,” was all he said to that; instead, he moved over to the console and read the read-out. “The autopilot engaged somehow and took the strain off the ship. It’s a good thing too because all the force being applied to the ship when we entered Key Lourna could have torn us apart.”

  Visions of the Seratora erupting around her came to mind, but she fought it back.

  “Are we still being pursued?” she asked. The question felt heavy in the air around her.

  Brendle looked on the console and shook his head. “I don’t think so. I can’t imagine the Telran could make it through Key Lourna anyway.”

  “Where are we now?” Anki asked, the sound of relief in her voice was noticeable, even to her.

  He shrugged his shoulders before answering. His voice with a tinge of guilt said, “We�
��re in a dead sector. There’s no life supporting planetary bodies here. The ones that once existed were destroy by my people.”

  She held back the temptation to rest her hand on his shoulder, not because he didn’t need comforting, but because she knew he felt responsible in some way and the likelihood of his involvement scared her more than she wanted to admit. Anki wanted to say something, but her voice was caught in her throat.

  “I know you look at me like a monster, a killer. But that’s not who I want to be,” he said as he turned to face her. There was a single tear hugging each of his emerald eyes. She could tell it wasn’t from physical pain, but something personal, deep beneath his skin. “If I could take everything back, I would. I want to make a difference, to protect lives instead of destroying them. I think if nothing else, we can at least agree that we’re on the same side when it comes to that.”

  She watched him as his eyes lowered, the burden of what they had gone through finally finding a way to release itself in grief. “I can agree to that,” she said, barely louder than a whisper, when the console chimed with an incoming message. They turned to look at the monitor, Brendle wiping his eyes with the backs of his hands.

  “That’s strange, there’s a newsfeed available,” he said, shifting his hand across the console to pull up the feed.

  Anki moved over next to Brendle and watched the console change to a monitor. It was an image of Luthia filling the screen. She recognized the umbilicals sticking through the cloudy atmosphere surrounding the planet. What she didn’t recognize was the source of the newsfeed. “What is this?” she asked. She couldn’t hide the sound of worry in her voice.

  Brendle scratched his head nervously. “That is a video feed from the Telran, the ship that stranded me on the moon where you found me. You see these numbers along the bottom of the feed? That’s the ship of origin and the timestamp indicates it was sent several hours ago. I think jumping through Key Lourna may have affected our place in time. It’s an anomaly not unheard of, but I haven’t experienced it to this magnitude before,” he droned on, spitting out all kinds of information that didn’t pertain to the fact that she recognized the image being shown.

  “That’s my world,” she said, the quivering of her lips making her voice sound weak.

  “I’m sorry,” he said as the monitor lit up, showing the destruction of her world before her eyes.

  Anki screamed, but hardly any sound came from her aching throat. She watched in horror as devastation erupted, setting Luthia ablaze in an inferno of Greshian design. Everything around her seemed to fade away as her heart felt like it was being torn from her chest. It was the death of everything she had ever known. The Greshians found Luthia unprotected. They killed my world, they killed my father, she thought as she collapsed to the deck. There was nothing left to protect.

  Comfort was hard to come by on the Replicade. Everywhere you looked there was someone experiencing pain, either physical or emotionally. The hard truth was four people, from different worlds found themselves in an unlikely alliance, regardless of how temporary. This alliance forced them to see each other’s moments of weakness. Anki looked at the men in her company. The Greshian, the one with guilt so thick it almost defined who he was, yet without him they would be dead. The Lechun husbands, Deis and Malikea, two men lost in the dark who put themselves in harm’s way to protect strangers. And there she was, an orphan with no world left to protect. She had no tears left to shed as the Replicade drifted in the dark, the ship’s silence reflecting their own.

  Anki broke the silence. “If I would have stayed and fought, then maybe I could have made a difference.”

  Brendle looked up from his seat, his knees lifted to his chin and his arms wrapped around his legs making him look childlike. What he said was nothing like a child, though. “There is nothing anyone could have done to stop the Telran. The ship was designed to destroy planets and survive the attacks of a fleet of ships. Your ship, your navy, had no chance against a Greshian enemy.”

  His words sounded stoic, candid, and she knew it was the truth. Luthia had flooded their navy with the most advanced weaponry they could acquire, yet the only planets to survive Greshia had been the ones who bowed before the enemy. Luthia had never had the intentions of surrender. Their pride had killed them just a surely as the Telran had. Perhaps the government of Luthia had intended that all along. The idea of such a thing made her sick to think about it.

  “When Greshia destroyed Lechushe’ we thought our lives were over as well,” Deis said, breaking her train of thought. “We were lucky to have found this ship, to escape with our lives. But we have experienced guilt for surviving as well. It is not easy to live beyond the existence of your world, but we have found the means to cope with one another.”

  Anki watched as Malikea grasped his husband’s hand, squeezing it gently as a way to assure they were still alive so long as they had each other. At any other time it would have felt like gloating, but with them it seemed perfectly natural. Perhaps I just rationalized it in order to cope with the severity of my loss, she thought as she rose to her feet. She didn’t know why she stood, because she had no intentions of going anywhere, but Anki felt like she had to do something or she might die.

  Brendle stood next to her. When she looked at him, she could see words trying to form behind his lips, but they stood in silence, watching, waiting for the other to speak. When he finally spoke, Anki realized she had been holding her breath as she waited. “Will you come with me?”

  “Where?” she asked.

  “I don’t know, to talk,” he answered. He shuffled his feet in a nervous way as he waited for her to respond.

  She had nothing to say, and no motivation to form words to decline his invitation, if it could even be called that. She merely nodded, stood, and followed him from the bridge to the cargo bay as the numbing pain of emptiness gnawed at her heart.

  26

  Brendle

  Sometimes avoiding death relatively unscathed brought out the best in people. Other times it brought out the worst. For Brendle, he hoped his actions on the bridge of the Replicade were heroic enough to mask the severity and harshness of his words, though he had a feeling his words weren’t as loud as drawing his weapon on Malikea had been. The fact the other man had attacked him wasn’t as audacious as the fact Brendle was seconds from firing. He didn’t want to kill anyone. In fact, he hoped more than anything that his days of killing were behind him, but in the throes of trying to escape the snares of the Telran, he had been caught up in the moment, flinching from fear and needing to do something with the nervous energy. That moment of terror almost made him pull the trigger and it had nothing to do with the fact he had been attacked first. Everyone seemed to understand, but he still wasn’t ready to forgive himself. For Brendle, it didn’t matter that very few people could handle situations at that tempo, to know how the enemy would respond and be one step ahead of them. If not for Brendle’s effort, everyone on board would be dead, him included. But he took no solace in that fact. He was more afraid than ever because being so close to death showed him something he hadn’t known about himself. That something wasn’t tangible, but it felt real enough, at least to his heart. He could only hope to express what he felt in words that had meaning to Anki. She was from another world, and he could see in her eyes how much his presence scared her. Not for what he had done, but what his people had done to her world. The utter destruction of yet another world, another race, and his was the face that reminded her of that very fact.

  The cargo bay was the only place of relative privacy. For Brendle, he felt as if his entire world had dissolved while bringing the truth into focus at the same time. It was an awkward feeling, one he couldn’t put into words, though he wanted to try. For Anki, he knew there was nothing left to go back to. Her world was destroyed, her people gone save for a few refugees scouring their way across the galaxy and hiding from the tyrannical Greshian Empire. The fact she sat next to one of their kind and didn’t slit his throat said
just as much about his presence as it did her. Though he couldn’t help but wonder if her not killing him just for spite was a display of weakness in its own way. She owed him her life, but Brendle knew he owed her the same. If not for him, then she would not have crash landed on that lonesome moon, but she would have also been in the line of fire of the Telran, her transport would have been destroyed, and he would have died alone on that rock without ever having known her.

  The more he thought about it, the more he realized he had much to be thankful for. He regretted that thankfulness in a small way, because he knew she was hurting, feeling guilty for surviving. He imagined Malikea’s words were reverberating in her mind as she struggled to come to terms with her new scope of reality. Brendle wished he could take it back, to rewind the clock and try to change things for the better, but those thoughts were useless. He needed to give her hope in some way, but he couldn’t find the words, so they sat there in silence. He had lost count of how many times he wanted to extend his hand to her, to comfort her. He didn’t even know where those thoughts were coming from, but he recognized the ache in his heart for her as something more than whatever he imagined she thought of him.

  Brendle was growing frustrated with himself. He needed to act or to say something. Otherwise it was pointless for him to have asked her to follow him. He could only imagine what was going through her mind at the moment. He knew what the cause of pain was, but how it manifested itself was anyone’s guess. When he finally spoke, it was with the only thing he could think of to say. “Do you believe in the gods, or a god?” Brendle asked. Their bodies were close enough to almost be touching, his words a delicate whisper as if he was trying to keep them secret.