Embers of Esper: A Sci Fi Adventure (Warden's Legacy Book 1)

by Tony James Slater

  He was definitely getting slower.

  He’d made one attempt to squeeze a few more details out of Tarri — she was vastly more eager to chat — but Kyra watched her niece like a hawk, steering her away from Tris and Lukas as though she might catch something. In the end, he decided that ignorance was probably bliss. If she told me the dominant life form on Esper was the t-rex, I’d still have to go down there.

  All five of them gathered in the docking bay, in full tactical gear — or various definitions of it. Kyra had overlaid her black flight suit with an armoured vest, then overlaid that with a hot pink denim jacket. Her niece had a less fancy suit from the Folly’s stores, but she’d also accessorised it with light armour and a long purple scarf. Even Lukas wore armour — an impressive fully-powered suit, though god only knows where he’d found something like that to fit him. Tris had a pang of jealousy; he’d fought beside the big man on several occasions, and had a healthy respect for his talents even without two-hundred pounds of steel exoskeleton.

  For himself, Tris had chosen a flexible one-piece outfit that, if meshed with its helmet, would allow him to survive in space for a short time. It had once belonged to his father; unsurprisingly, it fit him like a glove.

  For Ella, ‘full tactical gear’ amounted to a figure-hugging jumpsuit with a plunging neckline. It looked every bit as alluring as her negligée — and about as protective. Yet somehow Tris knew that it was festooned with hidden weapons. She’d once confided to him that she hadn’t gone a full hour unarmed since she was eleven years old. Which was a tad concerning, given that he was sharing a bed with her. She’d already volunteered to stay behind on the Folly as back-up. She didn’t work terribly well in a group environment, she’d pointed out, and was only a comm-call away if they ran into trouble. He was starting to get wise to these tactics, and suspected she had some project of her own to work on, but there was no point asking her about it. She was hard-wired to keep her secrets, and he needed her support more than he needed to ferret out the details.

  They made a last few preparations to the diplomatic shuttle, which Tarri had decided to call Pegasus. Kyra was deeply unimpressed with this mode of transport, specifically its lack of any offensive capabilities. As though to compensate, she’d filled the small cargo hold with rifles and powerpacks. Lukas carried over some of his personal effects from Nightshade, added a few crates of food in case they were forced to hide out on the surface, and clapped his hands with a sound like thunder. “The picnic’s in! I’d say we’re about done.”

  “Bring a spare shirt,” Kyra reminded him. “You’ve got a habit of losing them.”

  “Do we actually have a plan?” Tris asked her, shooting a sidelong glance at Ella. “This ‘need to know’ stuff is all well and good, but that’s something we need to know. You know?”

  Kyra cracked her knuckles one at a time before answering. “Okay, here it is. We sneak in under the radar. That’s the only choice we have in this tub, anyway. We’ll land near the city, and I’ll go in undercover to find out what’s going on.”

  Lukas cleared his throat. “No offence, but I’ve seen your idea of stealth. Last time we tried to sneak onto a planet, you started a fire that could be seen from orbit. Have you ever tried going undercover?”

  She gave him a look that promised pain later. “I’ve been a smuggler, a mercenary, and an agent of the Wardens since before you abused your first stethoscope.”

  The big man held his hands up apologetically. “Okay, let me phrase that another way. In all that time, have you ever successfully remained undercover?”

  She pouted at him.

  “Thought not. Sorry babe, you’re just too damn gorgeous to stay off anyone’s radar. For this job, you need someone like Tris; he looks too dumb to be an undercover agent. No offence.”

  Tris made a face at him. “Lukas, saying ‘no offence’ doesn’t automatically make anything you say not offensive.”

  “Aww! Sorry Tris. I didn’t realise you’d be such a big girl’s blouse about it. No offence.”

  With the shuttle ready to depart, Tris gave Ella a last peck on the cheek and joined the others in the cramped cockpit. There were four seats, but with Lukas in one of them, there didn’t seem to be enough air to go around. The ramp rolled up and Tarri took them smoothly out of the docking bay. The success of the manoeuvre was slightly undermined when she clenched a fist and muttered, “Yes!” under her breath.

  Countless stars wheeled around the canopy as she dived beneath the Folly’s vast shadow. They slid past one last patch of damage, surrounding the buckled door that led to Ella’s docking bay. This was the most blatant evidence that Askarra was helping to keep her secrets. Tris hadn’t bothered challenging his mother about it — by now, she knew that he knew. He also knew that she knew more than he did… it was as frustrating as it was confusing.

  As Esper grew on the Pegasus’ forward viewscreens, he could finally make out the narrow silver band that bisected the planet. This unique fortification was why the Folly was hovering way out in the solar system. Both Kyra and Tarri had been adamant that not even the massive battle station would survive a direct encounter.

  “It looks so delicate from here,” he said, still not convinced.

  “It’s pretty big up close,” Tarri pointed out. “It wraps around the entire planet.”

  “That seems like a lot of work for a bunch of guns.”

  Her face became animated. “It’s way more than that! It’s full of machines that grow our food, manufacture our goods… everything, really. And the outside of it is lined with solar collectors in between the gun emplacements. It runs a whole fleet of robotic asteroid miners, and another one of supply barges that take stuff down to the surface. It also simulates the moon from Old Earth, and helps to regulate our weather.”

  “Ahhh,” Tris nodded. “So basically, one Ring to rule them all?”

  She lifted a shoulder, completely oblivious to the reference. “Sounds about right.”

  As they moved closer, the ribbon of steel and glass took on epic proportions. Laser cannons bristled along its outer edge, and they did look impressive — somewhere between the Folly’s regular turbolasers and its ridiculous main gun. Only there were hundreds of them… maybe thousands.

  He let out a long, low whistle.

  As they crossed the megastructure’s threshold, he got an even closer look. Circular in cross-section, it was as wide as a football field. Through the biggest expanse of transparent material he had ever laid eyes on, he could see orderly rows of crops waving in their own private breeze. From this angle, fresh sunlight peeped around the curvature of the planet, bathing the plants in life-giving energy.

  “Is it all like that?” he breathed.

  “Not at all!” Tarri was playing tour guide again. “Some of it is factories and warehouses, waste treatments plants, all kinds of different facilities. Less than a quarter of it is active though, and that produces everything we need. The rest of it is dark.”

  “So you can’t walk all the way around it?”

  “Ha! You can’t walk there at all. It’s controlled automatically. There’s no way up there for people.”

  For a second Kyra looked like she was going to say something, but the moment passed and she glanced down at her display. “Here come your defence barges.”

  Tarri’s eyes narrowed. “No, that’s not right…”

  Kyra started tapping controls on her console. “What do you mean?”

  “The defence barges don’t move… and we should be passing them right now.”

  Kyra muttered a curse. “Are they always here?”

  “Always.”

  “So you’re telling me we could have come this way in Nightshade?”

  Tarri bit her lip. “I don’t know! Maybe.”

  Kyra cursed again, more vehemently. “And those are enemy ships racing towards our unarmed bathtub?”

  “I don’t know! Maybe.”

  “Goddamnit! This is why I never had kids.”

&nb
sp; Tris leaned forward to look over her shoulder. There were two blips on the display — both moving towards them at intercept speed. A second later, ID tags pinged up next to them.

  “Laugarren strike ships!” Tarri exclaimed.

  “What the hell?” Kyra grabbed her niece by the shoulder. “What do you mean, Lau—”

  And a long-range laser blast streaked past the canopy, tingeing the world red.

  “Help!” Tarri shrieked.

  Kyra lunged for the control stems, raising her backside off the seat so her niece could squirm underneath her. There was chaos for a few seconds, as the two women wriggled past each other, and then Kyra strapped herself into the pilot’s chair one-handed. Just in time, too — her first dive took them out of the path of a second blast, this one fired at significantly closer range.

  “Warning shots,” she said, “they would have hit us from there if they’d wanted to.”

  “They’re not comming us,” Tarri moaned, studying the console Kyra had been using. She jabbed a control. “Laugarren vessels, I’m ordering you to stand down—”

  “No!” Kyra slapped her hand across the comm, cutting it off. “Damn it! If these guys were waiting for us, they know you’re here now.”

  “Sorry! I thought—”

  “New rule,” Kyra snapped. “No more thinking!” She hauled on the control stems, throwing the ship into a roll. “You know what would be really nice about now? Some frikkin’ laser guns!”

  Tarri slapped the shields icon, which for once glowed a confidence-inspiring green. “We’ve got strong shields,” she said, though she didn’t sound too sure of herself.

  “Really? How many times have you been shot at?”

  The lack of an answer spoke volumes.

  Kyra twisted and turned through an elaborate series of moves, jinking left and right, diving, rolling and spinning at seemingly random intervals. Deadly beams of light strobed past on all sides, as the enemy pilots fired volley after volley towards them.

  “I’ll lose them in the atmosphere,” Kyra said, gritting her teeth and hauling on her control stems.

  “Will that work?” Tris asked her. He hated feeling so powerless.

  “You want the truth, or you want to feel better?”

  He decided not to choose.

  Pegasus shook as the shields absorbed a hit from behind. “Strong?” Kyra cast a withering glance at her niece, who was now curled up in a ball in the co-pilot’s seat. “I’ve had breath-mints stronger than these shields. Hang onto your shit ladies and gents, this is going to get rough.”

  The ship shook again, as if to prove her point, and a damage report flared to life on Tarri’s display.

  “Kyra! The main drive—”

  “I know! They’re trying to force us down.”

  The enemy craft put of a burst of speed, moving up to pace the Pegasus on either side. Kyra jinked them back and forth, but it was obvious they were outmatched.

  A dull thunk of something hitting the hull made them all glance around — then it was repeated on the opposite side.

  “Magnetic tethers,” Kyra said, peering through the side of the canopy. “They’ll reel us in if we let ‘em.”

  “What can I do?” Tris asked her.

  “Grab a rifle and roll the window down.”

  “They want us alive,” Lukas pointed out.

  “Yeah, well they’ll have to work harder than that,” she replied. “All strapped in? I’m blowing the airlock! One… two… THREE!”

  “No, wait—” Lukas pleaded.

  But Kyra’s fingers danced over the icons, and with a colossal bang the ship slammed sideways. Air gushed out, tugging at their skin and clothes. Tris glanced back to see cracks spreading rapidly across the side-wall of the crew compartment. A second later there was a deafening screech, as the entire airlock was torn free by the force of decompression. It must have smashed into the ship tethered beside them like a missile; a massive fireball lit up the sky, dealing the Pegasus another savage blow. Great tongues of flame reached in through the opening to blacken the pristine interior, as the last few things that weren’t bolted down went spinning out.

  A crunch came from the opposite side, causing their hull to groan in protest; collision with the second enemy vessel, which hadn’t been prepared for such a violent lurch sideways. The last tether came free as the ship peeled away, venting gas and shedding debris.

  Kyra kept control through the entire ordeal, her knuckles white on the control stems as she hauled them hard over. More alarms were blaring now, and Tarri had regained enough self-control to stab the appropriate icons, silencing them. A second later, pressure doors slid shut behind them, sealing off the cockpit from the rest of the ship. The shriek of air whipping past ceased abruptly, and Tris gasped for breath.

  “I can’t believe that worked again,” Kyra said. “That move’s going in my playbook.”

  “All my stuff,” Lukas moaned. “You couldn’t just blow the cargo bay?”

  “And lose the guns? I plan on surviving once we hit the ground, thank-you very much.”

  The ship was shaking, and the shields icon blinked red.

  “Are we going to make it?” Tarri asked, her voice an octave higher than normal.

  “Fifty-fifty,” Kyra told her, not relinquishing her death-grip on the control stems. “But I’m an optimist.”

  Tris sat back in his seat and cinched his restraints even tighter. They were in full atmosphere now, and Pegasus was shuddering as she bucked the turbulence.

  An ominous groan came from behind them, followed by the screech of tearing metal.

  Kyra looked at her display and winced. “That’s gonna hurt in the morning.”

  The clouds parted in front of them, revealing an endless expanse of green; their nose was pointed straight down into it.

  “Oh good, a nice soft landing,” she muttered.

  Lukas barked a laugh, but Tarri was clinging to the sides of her seat, eyes wide in fear.

  “We’ll be fine,” Tris told her, “your aunty is the best pilot in the galaxy. She’s done this tons of times.”

  The trees below were rushing up at an alarming rate.

  “Is that true?” Tarri asked.

  “Some of it,” Kyra said, gritting her teeth as she wrestled with the control stems. Their nose swung up slightly, but not nearly enough.

  “Are we crashing?”

  “Depends on your definition. Our main drive is dead, so I’ll have to improvise.”

  Tarri stared at her, aghast. “What does that mean?”

  Kyra was scrolling menus and tapping icons, with no effect. “We’ve lost our manoeuvring jets and have the glide characteristics of a dead rhinoceros, so it means we’re using the ground to stop.”

  “That sounds a lot like crashing,” Tris pointed out.

  “Everyone’s a critic.”

  Lukas looked at him and winked in a reassuring manner. “S’all good, mate. I used to crash for a living.”

  “Says the man who’s wearing body-armour the size of a small car.”

  Lukas hooked a thumb into his harness. “Want to trade?”

  “Hold onto something,” Kyra warned them. “Or don’t. I doubt it’ll make a difference.”

  “Trees!” Tris yelled, pointing at the mass of green foliage hurtling towards them.

  “Really? Where?” she dead-panned.

  The impact was enough to bounce the shuttle back up into the air, skipping them across the forest canopy for several long, jarring strides. Fresh alarms blared with each jarring hit, before they plunged through the foliage into the darkness below.

  Leaves whipped past, then branches slashed at them. Thicker limbs smacked into the hull, tearing chunks off in a chorus of shrieks and screeches. Then the ground rose up to meet them, and the last thought that went through Tris’ mind was that Kyra’s world was really quite pretty.

  At least she’d come home to die.

  TWELVE

  When Tris came to, he was hanging upside-down by
his harness. The whole ship was upside-down… at least, what was left of it. Some internal lights still worked, but the canopy was dark — probably embedded in the ground. He ached all over, and black spots were dancing in his vision. He tried to blink them away, turning his head to see the others. All three of them were still strapped into their seats. “Guys? Anyone awake?”

  Lukas gave a groan, and opened his eyes. Tarri dangled like a rag-doll, but Kyra stirred and glanced down at the crumpled roof. “Ohhhh crap. I feel like I just crashed into a forest.”

  Lukas actually managed a chuckle. “We can’t hang around here all day,” he added.

  Tris snorted. Their banter varied from savage to playful, but it was a welcome distraction from reality. Because reality was that he hurt in every place it was possible to hurt — and it was about to get worse.

  He ran his hands around the edge of his seat, trying to find something sturdy to hold onto. His fingers closed around a metal bar behind the headrest; it would have to do. Gripping it tightly with one hand, he began unbuckling himself with the other. As each strap pinged away, he sagged a bit lower. Then the last one went, and he swung free with a cry. The handle gave an ominous clunk and extended in his hand, dropping him another few inches — the sudden lurch dislodged his grip, but he was the right way up now and only had a foot of fresh air to fall through. He landed lightly, bruised knees absorbing the impact.

  Lukas craned his neck to look at him.

  “That was lucky.”

  “It’s my specialty,” Tris quipped.

  “No, I mean, that handle you grabbed was the ejection lever. It would suck to survive the crash, and then get mashed into the roof by your seat.”

  Tris took this philosophically — until he realised its other implications. “Wait a minute, you’re telling me there’s ejector-seats? Why the hell didn’t we use those?”

  “I didn’t know about them,” Kyra growled. “And our resident expert is still out cold.”