So Close to Home

by Galen Surlak-Ramsey

  “Don’t leave!” I yelled.

  As soon as I opened my mouth, my lungs burned, and I doubled over in pain. A thin, greenish gas filled the air, causing tears to pour from my eyes and mucus to flow from my nose.

  Jack’s hand gripped my arm and pulled me along. “We’re almost there. Just head for the sound of the ship.”

  I nodded, half-blind, and forced myself to stay calm. We were seconds from escaping. We could make it. No, we would make it.

  I heard the all-too-familiar sounds of plasma and cannon fire from ahead. Nodari screeched somewhere behind us, and then came the heavy, repetitive sounds of a giant cannon. Thum. Thum. Thum.

  The blast from each of those shots threatened to shake my teeth loose. Not that I was complaining, mind you. I’m sure it was wreaking havoc among the Nodari ground forces.

  I tripped, and down I went. I hit the ground and struck the side of my head on something hard. Unable to move or think, all I could do was lie still and breathe air that felt like it was drowning my lungs in acid. My body started to spasm as I went into a coughing fit. I knew I had to stand, had to get somewhere, anywhere, but the world was too much of a painful, chaotic mess to do anything.

  Rough, furry paws grabbed my arms and legs. I screamed reflexively as I was hoisted over the shoulders of a Kibnali—who, I couldn’t tell. My vision was far too blurred to tell. But whoever it was, was going to get my undying thanks for a hundred years.

  The Kibnali ran, and I bounced on his shoulders. We ran up a small ramp, and once inside, he dropped me forcefully to the ground and yanked my head backward. A second later, my face was bathed in a cold spray that soothed both eyes and nose.

  I cleared my eyes with one hand to find Tolby standing over me, while Jainon carried Jack up into the dropship.

  “Are you okay?” he asked.

  “No worse than usual,” I said, looking over my battered and bruised body.

  “Good,” he said, hitting a large button that raised the ramp.

  “Did Okabe make it back?”

  “Literally ten seconds before you showed up,” Tolby said. He then hit another button and opened a comm up to the pilot. “We’re in. Give us nine before you dust off.”

  “That’s all you’re getting,” came a rough reply.

  With Tolby’s less than gentle pulling, I got to my feet and ran deeper inside the ship. A dozen Kibnali filled the seats that lined walls, with Okabe seated toward the front. A few perked up at my arrival but most ignored me completely. I had barely managed to strap myself in with the oversized harness when the dropship lurched upward.

  The ship rolled violently to the left, and I slammed against my restraints. As quick as we’d moved, it rolled back the other way before diving. Somehow, in all the commotion, Tolby managed to get the pilot’s attention. “What’s going on up there?”

  “Taking fire from an enemy cruiser,” came the reply. “Sit tight, and may the gods be with us.”

  Tolby reached up from his position and tapped a button. A holodisplay dropped down and displayed the view from the cockpit. At first, I couldn’t see much other than clouds below and a starry sky above, but when the pilot banked hard and whipped us around, I caught sight of a few bright streaks of plasma shoot by.

  “Where’s the Nodari ship?” Tolby said.

  “Almost a hundred kilometers to our rear,” the pilot said. “I think we’ll be out of range soon.”

  “Did any other ships manage to escape?”

  “I don’t know. Comms are still scrambled, but our 39th Flotilla is en route to reinforce,” he replied. “Hang tight. We’re clear of atmo. Hitting the impulse burners now.”

  Our ship lurched to the side one last time to dodge incoming fire before it surged forward with such acceleration, I doubt anything short of a black hole would have pulled us faster. Thankfully, the burst of speed only lasted a short while, and soon the pilot eased off the proverbial accelerator.

  “We’re clear, relatively speaking,” he said. “Sit tight. We’ll be docking with the Fury’s Edge soon.”

  Chapter Eleven

  The Return

  We jolted twice. Once when the shuttlecraft landed inside the hangar of Fury’s Edge and then again when the destroyer’s engines went into overdrive a moment later.

  I rushed to undo my harness and ran out of the shuttle along with everyone else. The hangar we were in had a low-lying ceiling with reinforcing ribs along the walls and ceiling. A large, shimmering force field faced rearward and offered a view of the planet as it shrank away. Because the destroyer we were in was configured in such a fashion, it also meant that the hangar gave a fantastic view of not one but three Nodari cruisers in orbit around the planet and that were currently pummeling it into submission.

  A bright beam came from the nearest cruiser, cutting through the dark void that separated us, and struck our ship. Klaxons blared, and our ship rumbled. Thankfully, whatever defenses the Fury’s Edge had seemed to hold, as we weren’t blown apart.

  “Dakota! Move!” Tolby shouted. “It’s not safe here.”

  I nodded and ran with the others down a corridor. The passages we raced through were tight, even if they were made for the Kibnali, who easily dwarfed my paltry height. Every ten or twenty meters there were bulkheads and fire doors. Junction boxes and pipes filled every spare bit of space along the ceilings and walls.

  I didn’t memorize the route we took. All I could do was focus on keeping up with the others and listen to the hard strikes of my feet hitting the metallic floor. It wasn’t long, however, before I’d followed Tolby right up to the bridge.

  The station of the ship was not what I expected. Whereas the halls had been tight and confining, the bridge itself was far more open, although that might have had something to do with the lack of personnel.

  We entered through one of three possible hatches that were set in the back. The entire thing was arranged in a semicircle with three control stations spaced evenly around in a triangle shape. Above, the ceiling had a shallow dome structure to it, and in the middle hung a circular array of screens that were currently displaying a myriad of information to everyone that was there.

  Only three Kibnali manned the helm. Two of them were at the computer consoles while the third stood in the middle of the bridge, face set with determination, and ears back. “Damage report.”

  “Shields stabilizing,” the Kibnali on the left said. “Warp drive currently offline due to uncontained energy surge.”

  The commanding Kibnali grunted. “Are they pursuing?”

  “Negative,” came the reply. “They’re more interested in the planet than us. I think we’re out of range of their weapons now, too.”

  “Good. Keep her moving as fast as she’ll go.”

  I felt my body relax now that we were out of immediate danger. I wondered what the Kibnali homeworld would be like and how the Empress there would treat us. But when I looked around and realized that while Okabe stood nearby, Empress and Yseri were not here.

  “Where’s everyone else?” I asked.

  The commander at the helm turned around and looked surprised to see me. “Who let these tailless creatures onto my bridge?”

  Before I could reply, Tolby took a quick step forward and presented the data card. “The data, Commander Ito,” he said, offering it up.

  Once Ito had it in hand and gave a short nod of approval, I repeated my question. “Where are the others?”

  The Kibnali’s eyes narrowed, and he growled. “Everyone and everything that needs to be on board is.”

  “What’s he talking about?” I asked Tolby.

  “This ship is headed back to Empress with Okabe and his research,” Tolby said. “We’re only on board because he wanted to give us a chance to escape.”

  “That’s right, and unless you want me to eject you out of an airlock, you’ll close that disgusting, tiny little mouth of yours and get off my bridge. Now.”

  “Empress isn’t on board?” Jainon asked, looking shocked, a
s if such a possibility could even exist.

  “The Empress is safe on our homeworld,” Ito replied evenly. “The one you refer to is a no one, and along those lines, you are a no one as well.” The commander turned and faced some of the Kibnali who had come in with us on the shuttle. “Get these things out of here.”

  They all snapped to attention and moved in on us. Tolby, however, held up a paw and they stopped. “There’s no need for any of this, Commander Ito,” he said. “We will go quietly.”

  “Then do so,” Ito replied. Though his voice lost a little of its edge, his eyes never left us until we were gone.

  Once outside and down the passageway, Tolby turned his face toward me. “We have no standing with them. Not even Empress,” he said. “We need to remember that. They have their orders, and those orders do not include entertaining us.”

  “You’re not concerned where Empress and Yseri are?” I asked.

  “I am, but picking a fight with him will do you about as much good as shoving a screwdriver into a hypercoil,” he said. “There are bigger things going on right now.”

  “Not for me,” I said.

  Jainon laughed, but it was not one born from amusement but from disbelief. “She’s more a member of the Royal Guard than you are, Tolby.”

  “Why? Because I refuse to have a fight that cannot be won?” he said without hesitation. “Only kits enter battle in such a wasteful fashion. Be smart, Jainon. Empress—our Empress—would want no less.”

  We stared at each other in the hall for a few moments before he started to walk and motioned for us to follow. “Come, we’ll find a better place to talk all this over.”

  Jainon, Jack, and I followed, albeit a bit reluctantly. Jack, of course, didn’t have much stake in this fight, but as for Jainon and me, we certainly weren’t about to let this go. We traveled the passageway a couple of dozen meters before taking a side hall and going through a fire door. At that point, we ducked into a small meeting room to gather our wits and process all that had gone on.

  “We’ll wait in here,” Tolby said as we entered. “That should keep us out of the way and out of trouble until we get to Empress Tamaki.”

  “What about our Empress? And Yseri?”

  “Hopefully they’ll get there soon, too.”

  “I guess,” I said, hating where we’d ended up and not being able to do a thing.

  I should clarify that last bit. While I didn’t like being stuffed into a meeting room with my concerns thrown to the wayside, I should mention that I was grateful that I wasn’t being tossed into the brig.

  The meeting room had a curved outer wall with a view of the outside, a modest table in the middle, and bolted chairs surrounding it. Above, ceiling lights hung from gray tiles, and while that was rather dull, the walls did have box gardens mounted with plenty of flowering plants and a few which had alien fruit hanging from vines. I couldn’t help but smile at that. Even on their warships, the Kibnali still made time to bring nature with them.

  “What now?” Jack asked as he plopped into one of the chairs.

  “I don’t know,” I said, sitting across from him. Everything had happened so fast, and I had yet to make sense of any of it. I found myself wondering how Yseri and Empress were doing. Not well, I was sure, assuming they were still alive. After a few moments of silence torturing my mind, I whipped out the data cube from the facility and began to sift through it mindlessly.

  “This is wrong,” Jack said. “I can’t believe I’m saying this—no offense Tolby—but leaving our own is wrong.”

  “I know,” I replied.

  “We should be down there fighting with them,” Jainon said. “Or at least trying to help them get off the planet.”

  I nodded and felt my throat tighten. I couldn’t fathom what sort of nightmare they were facing on their own. While part of me was glad we’d managed to get to the shuttle and escape, a bigger part felt guilty for being part of the ones who survived, especially since I didn’t even try to save them. All I did was run. I knew I couldn’t blame myself that much given all the chaos during the attack.

  With a sigh, I punched up the articles dealing with the underground Progenitor facility. I didn’t know what I was looking for other than hoping I could find something that would be of some use to those left behind. I figured maybe we could get some sort of communication to them, assuming the jamming stopped before it was too late.

  “Let me know if you find something,” Jainon said as she shut her eyes and pressed her paws together. “I need to meditate and regain my focus.”

  “Will do.”

  As I went through the records, Tolby paced by the window, and Jack moved around the table and sat down next to me. He didn’t say anything but quietly read over my shoulder.

  Twenty minutes came and went, and I had nothing to show for my efforts. There were a lot of mundane records I ended up sifting through, shipping manifests, and inventory. Frustrated at the lack of progress, I mindlessly flipped through a handful of records before moving on to a new section.

  Jack grabbed my arm. “Wait,” he said. “Go back.”

  “Where?”

  “Back to that one before,” he said, practically pushing me off my chair to get to the data cube. He was full of such energy, both Tolby and Jainon took note and joined us. Once the records were up, he grinned from ear to ear. “Look at that. I think we’ve hit the jackpot.”

  He had pulled up a partial listing for some ships that had come and gone from the Progenitor facility. It all looked straightforward enough, but I didn’t see what the excitement was all about. “I’m tired, Jack,” I said with a sigh. “What’s got you riled up? Because as far as I can tell, none of the cargo manifests list Nodari Extinction Device.”

  He pointed to a few lines at the top left. “They do list that though.”

  “What? Those are just arrival and departure times.”

  “I know,” he said. “But at least two of those ships left and returned on an earlier date.”

  Now it was Jainon’s turn to get excited. She leaned over me from behind, practically pushing my head into the table with her furry body. That wouldn’t have been too bad if she hadn’t been draped in armor, so the whole experience was far less snugly than I’d have liked. “He’s right,” she said. “These ships must be capable of temporal jumps.”

  “Unless you’re reading it wrong,” Tolby said.

  “I’m not,” Jack said.

  I rubbed my eyes as fatigue wore more and more on my psyche and then examined the records. A dozen seconds had to pass before I had to admit Jack was right. “No, he’s not reading it wrong. There are at least two separate ships that make these trips.”

  “Are they still there?” Tolby asked.

  I flipped through the logs some more. “I think so. Yeah, actually. They should be. Separate sides of the facility, but there are still two there.”

  “Next two obvious questions: Can we fly them, and do they work?”

  “I have no idea to both, but I do have this,” I said, raising my arm. “I’m willing to wager that if they’re still operational I can jack into one and get us out of there. Everything else the Progenitors have made, I’ve been able to use once I tapped into it. I don’t see why the ship would be any different.”

  Jainon slammed a paw into the table triumphantly. “Then we go back, find Empress and Yseri, and jump out.”

  “Hell yeah,” Jack said, standing. “And then we use that damn ship to go home and get my brother back.”

  At first, I thought Tolby was going to protest by saying something practical, a not so gentle reminder that we were headed back into the bowels of hell with not even a shred of a guarantee that anything was going to work. But he didn’t. He only made one minor point. “Okay, I say we give it a go,” he said. “But this ship will never turn around, and I don’t think they will give us a shuttle. It’s not really made for blockade running anyway. Since we need to land relatively close to the city, we can’t touch down on the opposite sid
e of the planet and walk. The battle will be over long before we get there.”

  “This ship is outfitted with four drop pods. We could all fit in one of them if Ito would agree to help.”

  “Worth a try,” I said. “What’s the worst he’ll say, no?”

  “Hopefully,” Tolby said before walking over to a panel on the wall and hitting a comm button. The call went straight to the bridge, and when the commander answered it, the background noise wasn’t as hectic as I’d thought it might be. “Commander, if we’re still clear of danger, there’s something you should see.”

  “And what might that be?”

  “It has to do with the Progenitors and the Nodari back on the planet,” Tolby said. “It would be easier to show you. Okabe should come, too.”

  A few orders were spoken to others that I didn’t quite catch, and then the commander returned to the line. “I have a moment, so when I get there, make it fast.”

  Less than a minute later, the commander and Okabe came striding through the door. Ito walked with purpose and kept a stern gaze on me with his dark, predatory eyes, but his stance was not nearly as aggressive as it had been when I got kicked off of the bridge. I can only imagine Okabe had some words with him outside in the hall. I’m not sure what else it would’ve been.

  “Speak,” Ito said, once he was in front of the table.

  “Take a look at these records,” Tolby said, motioning to the data cube. Once both he and Okabe had directed their attention there, Tolby gave them both a rundown of everything we had discussed.

  When he was finished, the commander shook his head, and in that moment, he sank my hopes completely. “I admire your dedication,” he said, “but this ship has to stay its course, and if you have firsthand knowledge of this new enemy, then you must stay on board and tell Empress Tamaki all that you know.”

  “Commander,” I said before anyone else could speak up. “There’s a Progenitor ship back on that planet. With it, we could find untold amounts of technology—technology that could be used to drive back the Nodari.”