Kali's Doom

by Craig Allen

  Sonja thought of turning around to look but knew she never could. The damage to Cody’s body would have been catastrophic, and the sight would drive her mad.

  “Banshee One Eight.” Odin was calling in. “We read parts of your internal gravity have cut out. Are you all right?”

  Sonja didn’t know. If Cody wasn’t okay, then neither was she. This would make twice in her life she lost someone she loved—the first time because of the Spicans, who had wiped the atmosphere off the planet where her husband lived, and again with Cody, killed by toads who took out their internal gravity. Two men she loved dearly… gone, like that. The fact they both had died quickly didn’t change the fact they were dead and she was alone again.

  “Odin, we’re fine.” Cody stepped into the cockpit. “Sonja, can we get out in time?”

  Sonja couldn’t stop the tears from flowing.

  Cody put a hand on hers as she gripped the throttle. “Babe, I’m fine. Get us out of here.”

  She took a deep breath and nodded then checked her instruments, and her heart sank again. “I don’t think we have the right velocity. I might be able to get us into orbit, but…”

  Cody pulled up controls on his console. “Let’s push the power higher. Maybe we can get a little more and shove our way out of the black hole’s grav well.”

  Sonja nodded, but she didn’t think that would help. They had lost too much forward momentum during the minor power loss. Cody was alive, thank God, but he wouldn’t be for long.

  And neither would she.

  ~~~

  “Get in there, goddamn it!” Gaston shouted at his helm officer.

  “Sir, we would need to be at half flank to get there,” Johnson said. “Our velocity would be so high by the time we arrived that we could never escape the gravitational pull of the black hole.”

  When Gaston reached for the controls, Johnson grabbed a hold of him. “Sir, if we go in there, this whole ship dies.”

  Gaston stared at the hologlobe, furious. Johnson was right. At their angle, they’d just die along with the hopper. They could do nothing.

  But they weren’t the only ship out there.

  The Spican vessel launched another barrage of torpedoes at the three Kali ships holding the large sphere. The Kali ships managed to grase about half the torpedoes out of the sky, but the other half were more than enough. Torpedoes impacted the ships themselves along their aft ends. Their grav plates ceased glowing.

  The sphere came loose and tumbled toward the singularity below. The ships followed shortly thereafter. The gravity would crush everything into atoms. Further, thanks to the increased time dilation caused by the singularity’s gravity, the Kali ships would appear to fall more and more slowly. Those on board, if surviving that long was possible, would die quickly, but to the rest of the universe, it would take until the end of time for the debris to sink below the event horizon.

  The Spican ship continued on its course, accelerating past the black hole, and would soon pass the hopper.

  “Sir, I’m reading external grapples extending on the Spican vessel.” The sensor officer zoomed in on the Spican vessel on the hologlobe. “Six in total. Any one of them can easily hold the hopper.”

  Gaston returned to his command chair. The Spican ship’s velocity carried them in an arc past the point where the hopper was, then they would slingshot away from the black hole. But at the speed the Spican vessel was moving compared to the hopper’s trajectory, that would be like catapulting over a house to catch a baseball in midair.

  Gaston hoped the Spicans were good ball players.

  ~~~

  “There!” On the HUD, Cody pulled up the Spican vessel on an intercept course. “Can we make it?”

  Sonja raised an eyebrow. “Craziest intercept course I’ve ever seen, but we’ll make it. I’m changing our course to match theirs. If we can match their velocity more closely, they’ll have an easier time getting a hold of us.”

  The hopper shifted as the Spican ship hovered over them, her gravity drives glowing like miniature suns. Soon, the hopper was parallel to the Spican ship and closing.

  The comm chimed, and Cody answered. The Spican on the visual stared at Cody with one of its eyes. “When our claws grab your ship, you will shut down your drives.”

  The Spican’s statement conjured an eerie metaphor in Cody’s mind. The external grapples did look a lot like claws.

  “Understood,” Cody responded.

  The Spican ship was moving faster than the hopper, so much so that Cody wasn’t sure they could connect. The first claw reached for them and missed by about twenty meters. The second and third claws came closer by less, but not much less.

  “I’m going to try to get closer.” Sonja nodded toward the HUD, which showed the reactor redlining. “If we can. Coolant systems are about to go offline.”

  Cody didn’t know what else he could do, so he sat still, watching the fourth claw miss. The fifth one scraped the hopper, making a loud racket throughout the interior.

  Sonja notched the power up even higher on the reactor, and the hopper inched closer to the Spican ship. The sixth and last claw reached out for them slowly, as if it were about to pull a crab from a bucket. It wrapped around the hopper and locked down tightly.

  “Cutting main drive.” Sonja dropped the throttle to zero.

  The readout dropped below the redline then further into the safe zone. Alarms ceased, but from what Cody could see on the HUD, the hopper’s reactor was damaged and started to scram. Battery power came online a second later as the reactor shutdown completed, probably forever. He hoped they wouldn’t need to fly again.

  The hopper shivered, jostling Cody, then all was still. He switched to the aft camera, looking at the former neutron star. A tiny black spot, made smaller by gravitational lensing, sat where the neutron star used to be. Light, which was starlight that had barely escaped the gravitational pull of the singularity, haloed around the dark mass.

  “So much for the mine.” A thought occurred to Cody. He unbuckled himself and rose from his seat.

  “Cody, what are you doing?” Sonja grabbed his arm. “You can’t go back there. The gravity’s offline.”

  “I’m not.” He patted her hand. “I’m just checking our cargo.”

  The fifty kilograms of exotic matter remained strapped down inside its mysterious bubble about halfway between him and the rear hatch. If it had been farther back, the sudden loss of gravity might have caused the ex-mat to punch a hole through the hopper.

  He smiled at her. “Didn’t want this trip to be for nothing, did you?”

  She didn’t answer him as she sat with her face buried in her hands.

  “Sonja?” He reached for her. “Hon, we’re okay now.”

  She reached for him and held him tightly, shaking as she cried.

  Cody held on too. The viewing screen projected on the canopy showed the black hole growing smaller. The Spican vessel had escaped the gravitational pull, but he ignored that fact as he held her close.

  The tentacles on the Spican ship drew the hopper closer to its hull and pulled it inside. Outside the canopy was darkness for several seconds, then a reddish light lit up the hopper’s nose and a wall some ten meters ahead. The wall was rounded at regular intervals, as if the Spicans had made the bulkhead from bamboo.

  “They have a thing for red, don’t they?” Sonja asked.

  “They see largely in lower wavelengths.” Cody peered through the canopy, but he couldn’t see anything else outside. “They can’t see anything in the spectrum above green, and they barely see that.”

  “I guess I’ll keep my purple dress in storage.”

  Cody looked at her. “You have a purple dress? Why haven’t I seen you in it?”

  “I’ve been busy.” She pulled up a sensor analysis on the HUD. “I’m reading oxygen-nitrogen atmosphere outside.”

  “Same mix as Earth’s,” Cody said. “For our benefit, I assume.”

  The comm chimed, and text scrolled across HUD. “
Docking with the human ship will begin in one hour. We know it is customary to welcome visitors aboard.”

  Cody shrugged. “We might as well stretch our legs.”

  Sonja gritted her teeth. “Do we have to?”

  “We’ve been invited. They wouldn’t be angry if we said no, but they’d feel bad.”

  “Oh hell.” She slipped off her helmet. “Fine. Let’s go say hi.”

  She opened the cockpit door, which usually hissed as the hopper air matched the outside, but he heard no such hiss. The Spicans must have made the external pressure the same as that inside the hopper. Cody stepped down onto a floor that felt like sponges. He kept one hand on the hopper as he stepped around to the front.

  Sonja joined him, nearly falling at one point. “The hell is with the floor? It’s like I’m walking on a mattress.”

  “It’s consistent with the surface of their home world,” Cody said. “It makes it easier for their feet to grab hold of the ground and stabilize themselves.”

  Sonja chuckled. “At least there are plenty of places to sleep.”

  A voice echoed across the room. “If you desire rest, we can provide you with appropriate facilities.”

  Cody caught Sonja’s hand before she could reach for her sidearm. Cody wished she’d left it on the hopper, but it was too late at that point.

  Out of the shadows appeared the thick torso of a Spican. It ambled forward like a nimble spider, not in the clumsy gait Cody had seen when Spicans were on the Tokugawa. The Spican’s air holes and eyes were covered by an enviro-suit.

  Two more Spicans joined the first. They stayed a respectful five meters away from Sonja. Cody could feel her pulse pounding through her wrist. He squeezed her hand.

  “We do not require rest at this time,” Cody said.

  The first Spican seemed to consider that for a moment. Then its outer shell vibrated, and a voice box hanging on its frame translated. “Your mate was engaging in the human custom known as sarcasm.”

  Sonja’s face went red, and Cody smiled. He didn’t know if being caught at sarcasm was what embarrassed her or the fact that the Spicans knew about their relationship.

  “It’s customary when we are in unfamiliar surroundings,” Cody said. “But you have adapted our atmosphere well, and we appreciate it.”

  “We are pleased.” The Spican waved a tentacle at the wall, and a reddish image appeared. “Please relax as we proceed to destroy the last surviving vessel.”

  Cody blinked at the image. The reddish screen had blurry white dots across the background. In the foreground was a human-looking vessel, possibly of Kali design. It tumbled end over end, growing larger in the image.

  “They look harmless,” Cody said.

  “They are.” Sonja took a step forward, freezing when the Spicans each focused an eye on her. “Maybe you could let the ship go?”

  Cody wasn’t sure the Spicans would understand her because she’d asked a question and, furthermore, because it was vague. They were used to straightforward statements.

  The first Spican focused two eyes on Sonja. “We should destroy them now as they may be a threat later.”

  Cody started to respond, but a humming noise filtered through the room, strong enough to make his teeth rattle. The lead Spican touched its voice box then vibrated its outer shell, after which it touched its voice box again. “The leader of your ship will speak.”

  Gaston’s voice was piped in via an indeterminate source. “Spican vessel, this is Captain Gaston of the Odin. I request you leave the surviving ship be. I would like to interrogate the survivors.”

  Someone in the background said, “Twenty seconds to graser range.”

  On the holographic image, Cody could barely make out a red triangle surrounding the ship. It shimmered slightly for a moment then solidified.

  “I believe the captain is correct,” Cody said. “The ship’s survivors might have important information.”

  The Spican waved a tentacle back and forth. “Unlikely.”

  “They can tell us how they made the neutron star vanish,” Cody said. “I would think that would be important.”

  All three Spicans stood higher as their legs straightened. The situation with the vessel outside seemed obvious to Cody, but Spicans didn’t think things through until a crisis had ended—or if someone made a very good point.

  The Spicans gathered together. Each thrust a small appendage outward. The three appendages intertwined, and the Spicans locked in place, their eyes unmoving and their tentacles frozen. After a moment, they released each other and stood as if stunned.

  The lead Spican shivered then spoke. “We agree until circumstances change.”

  The reddish triangle vanished, and the vessel in the image grew smaller then veered off until the ship vanished from the viewer.

  Sonja grimaced. “Did they just…?”

  Cody could only nod. Spicans had the unique ability to connect their nervous systems. The three before him had become one for a brief moment, during which they exchanged ideas with each other directly. He and Sonja were among the very few humans to ever witness such a joining.

  The lead Spican stepped toward Cody. “We will make your stay as comfortable as possible, and there will be no more killing.”

  “Thank you,” was all Cody managed to say.

  Chapter Eight

  Cody stared outside the hopper canopy as the Spican vessel transferred the hopper directly to the launch tube of the Odin, which had just returned from salvaging the drifting Kali ship. He and Sonja had been inside for twenty minutes, mostly just talking. He still hadn’t worked up the nerve to ask her the question on his mind. Then again, after what they had just been through, he didn’t think this was the time.

  The grapple released them, and Sonja maneuvered the hopper to the tube, which grabbed hold of them at once. In seconds, they were inside the hangar bay of the Odin.

  Sonja stepped out of the pilot’s hatch, as did Cody. Joining her, he resisted the urge to take her hand. She still had a haunted expression. Meeting the Spicans, especially for someone who had fought them during the war, was disconcerting to say the least. But reassuring her in front of the enlisted would have made her look bad.

  Her distress vanished when the petty officer walked up to her. “Rough ride, ma’am?”

  Cody looked at the hopper. The grav plates had melted in places, and the hull itself had buckled near the rear hatch. He didn’t want to be there when the engineers looked at the power plant.

  Sonja shrugged. “I just hope they don’t take this out of my paycheck.”

  The petty officer snorted and shook his head. “Not my call, ma’am.”

  “If you can get the rear hatch pried open, the cargo will be inside,” Sonja said. “Not sure where to stow it, but I’m sure your superiors have an idea what to do with it.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” The petty officer gave orders to some crewmen, who went to work on the hatch, which had been welded shut somehow.

  “If there’s a chance of depressurization, the hatch self-welds,” Sonja explained.

  Cody whistled. “Good thing that didn’t happen to the cockpit hatches. They’d have to get a big can opener.”

  “What, you don’t want to be sealed inside a hopper, just the two of us?”

  He grinned. “I take back everything I just said.”

  He joined her on the lift, which lowered them to the main deck. She stood straight without holding the rails and without smiling.

  “How are you?” he asked.

  She looked away. “I almost lost you, you know.”

  “I’m not going anywhere,” he said. “I’m too obsessed with you.”

  She turned her lips inward, and Cody regretted bringing it up. At least in public.

  “We’ll talk later,” he said. “Besides, there’s something I want to ask you.”

  She eyed him, a smile on her face. “What would that be?”

  “Dr. Brenner?”

  Cody groaned as a crewman ran up to him. �
�Yes, what do you need?”

  “I need you to come with me, sir,” the crewman said. “We’ve got a prisoner, and the captain wants you there when we interrogate him.”

  ~~~

  Cody thought the Odin’s brig was identical to the brig of the Tokugawa, which was a much larger ship. He half wondered if smaller ships had rowdier crews. The Olympus Mons certainly qualified as rowdy though they didn’t have—or need—a brig.

  Gaston stood just inside the doorway leading to the cells. “Doc, we got a prisoner who won’t talk.”

  “Maybe he can’t,” Cody said.

  “Translation gear is up and working, so my techs tell me.”

  “I’m sure it is, Captain, but what I mean is maybe this toad doesn’t understand English.”

  Gaston shook his head. “He understood the commands given him by my marines. He’s just being stubborn.”

  Cody followed Gaston deeper into the brig. “I take it the ex-mat is secured?”

  “Yeah, we shoved it in a trunk somewhere.” He snickered. “We don’t have any protocols for dealing with exotic matter stored in a magical Antediluvian chamber. And I think that chamber is stronger than anything we could come up with anyway.”

  They rounded a corner, and the toad came into view. It sat behind a thick transparency that was supposedly unbreakable. At least, the last toad they had captured and placed aboard the Tokugawa never managed to escape. Then again, maybe the toad had nowhere to go.

  The toad stood as soon as it saw Cody. It wandered over toward a virtual viewer within its cell and punched in text with one of its claws.

  The speaker for all is here and now I will speak to you.

  That was what the fliers had called Cody. He wondered how well-known he really was among the people of Kali. He wanted to ask more about it, but his popularity hardly mattered.

  “You attacked us,” Cody said. “Why?”

  You are helping the Reed which holds us captive.

  “In case you didn’t notice, we hold you captive.” Gaston walked toward the transparency. “You could have run, you know, when you left your home world. You had a fleet of ships and could have gone anywhere you wished. Why didn’t you?”