Renegade Empire: An Intergalactic Space Opera Adventure (Renegade Star Book 10)

by J. N. Chaney

  We would make it back to Earth. All of us. I would see to it myself or die trying.

  12

  After the disconcerting talk with Lucia, I didn’t want anyone to split up. Not yet. Fact was, we would eventually have to. A ship, or station-I hadn’t quite worked that out yet-the size of a planet was hardly something we could traverse en masse, and the narrow passageways left us at a disadvantage if we were attacked from one end—or worse, from both sides at once.

  Before I went off sending smaller teams through the halls of this place I wanted to know if we had stumbled across anything useful right from the get-go.

  As I’d ordered, Lucia stayed with her soldiers by the ships, keeping watch over our only means of getting out of this place, as well as our only means of monitoring the surrounding area for possible proof that we weren’t alone. She wasn’t happy about it, but she obliged me, and that was about as much as I could expect from her on any given day.

  Abigail, Freddie, Petra, and I led the rest of the soldiers up a stairwell Sigmond had picked up on his scans. Each stair was double a traditional size, as though this place had been built for giants.

  And perhaps it was, since Celestials were so much larger than humans. My thoughts raced with images of the scout we’d fought on Earth and whether the Celestials who’d once inhabited this place were the same size and stature. From what I recalled, it had been enormous, perhaps more than this space would allow. Did that mean the Celestials who had lived here were different?

  I wished I had more answers.

  The longer we were inside, the better the Cognitive’s range was getting. He’d gotten maps of a thousand-meter radius so far, and every second meant another few meters of mapped terrain. I certainly wasn’t going to complain about that. The more information we had, the better, especially of anything even remotely related to the enemy.

  I trained my rifle ahead of me as I cleared the stairs, my finger hovering near the trigger and ready to fire. The dim hallways had sparse lights every three meters or so—hardly suitable lighting to avoid an ambush, but the night vision in our visors made up for what our eyes couldn’t make out.

  The stairs ended in a hallway that stretched into the distance, disappearing behind a sharp curve. As far as I could tell, the walls were impossibly smooth, without a single crack or crevice to divide them into panels. A wide entryway blocked by a closed door was the only gap in the flawless wall in either direction. A small, discolored square was embedded in the wall by the door, nothing but a simple slab of gray metal a few shades lighter than the rest of the space around it.

  “I like their decorator,” Petra quipped. “Great sense of style.”

  I chuckled. “Might want to take a few cues. Bring this back home.”

  “Definitely.”

  Once I was sure the coast was clear, I stood in the hallway to give Dressler some cover while she did her thing and opened the door for us. “Doc, it’s your time to shine. Get up here.”

  The shuffle of boots over the stairs caught my attention, but with all the firepower at my back I didn’t turn to look. I needed to keep my attention trained on the hallways in case we got any surprise visitors.

  “Would it kill you to add a please every now and then?” Dressler said as she passed me.

  “Would you please open the damn door already so I don’t have to haul my ass up there and kick it down for you?” Lucia grumbled through the shared link, listening in from where she waited by the ships in the hangar.

  Dressler paused, staring off absently down the hall with a slight smirk on her face as she listened to the old woman. After a moment, she tilted her head toward me. “See, Captain?” Dressler asked dryly. “Lucia has manners.”

  “All right, all right.” I gestured toward the door, wanting to move this along. “Get to it, Doc.”

  Dressler stood by the pad as the rest of us kept watch. She shrugged the bag of gadgets off her back and rifled through them, pulling out wires and devices I hardly recognized. At least she was handy with all this nonsense because it didn’t make a lick of sense to me. The pad was positioned above us, forcing Dressler to stand on her toes and reach over her head. A slight grunt suggested she wasn’t pleased with the setup.

  “Bolin, anything going on down there?” I asked, shoulders tight in the tense and chilling silence of the pristine hallway. My body burned for a fight, my trigger finger itching to let loose on the first thing unfortunate enough to charge us.

  “Not a breath, Captain,” Bolin said, his voice as tense as I felt. “I don’t like all of us isolated in a stairwell, though. Leaves us vulnerable.”

  “Agreed. Everyone, get up here and fan out.” I locked eyes with Abigail and gestured down the other end of the hall, signaling for her to spread out ahead of the others. She and I would take point at the front of the line in each direction, giving the rest time to join us despite the vast bottleneck this created. “Siggy, keep an eye out for anything on the scans. Lucia, keep us posted on the device. It so much as shivers, you tell me.”

  “Obviously,” said Lucia into the shared link.

  “Yes, sir,” said Sigmond barely a second later, a bit more polite than the Descendant currently guarding our ships.

  “Interesting,” Dressler muttered, her shared link apparently still on. “Of all the—hmm. But what if—no. Huh, curious…”

  “I swear to the gods, Doc,” I muttered as I continued to scope the empty hallway before me. “You’re spending too much time with Hitchens.”

  “Stairwell clear,” Bolin said. I looked over my shoulder to find him at the top of the stairs, his rifle trained down the steps as his men flanked him.

  Everyone now stood in the hall, and I gripped my rifle tighter. It was the perfect place for an ambush, and if Dressler didn’t get that door open soon, we could all very well end the day with far fewer of us leaving this place than had arrived.

  “There,” Dressler said with the barest hint of pride in her voice. She kept her arms raised, still on the device. “Give the word, Captain, and we’re in.”

  “Is there anyone in there, Doc?” I asked.

  “None that I can tell, no,” she answered.

  “Lucia?” I asked, wanting to confirm. “Is the Union’s shiny new toy going off?”

  “Nothing,” the old woman said.

  “Traps? Detectors? Cameras? Anything?” I asked.

  “Confirmed, sir,” said Sigmond through the comm in my ear. “All current scans show no movement, sound, or heat signatures in that room or the surrounding hallways.”

  I took a deep and steadying breath. “All right. Leif, you and your soldiers take the lead. Lieutenant Rackham, follow with your men. Bolin, lead your guys in after Rackham, and the rest of us will follow. Dressler, stand by until I get to you. Let’s do this.”

  “Let’s see what we find,” said Dressler. Seconds later, the double doors slid open. In seamless fashion, the soldiers around me funneled into the room.

  I kept my back to them, trusting Abigail to secure the other end of the hallway as we both slowly backed toward the doors. “After you, Doc,” I said with a nod to Dressler.

  She swung her pack over her shoulders and obliged me, leaving only me and Abigail in the hallway. I gestured with my rifle for Abigail to follow the others, and once she was in, I finally joined the rest of them.

  The doors slid shut behind me, and I found Dressler by another pad near the wall. She typed furiously on her tablet, ignoring me and the world around us, so I decided to leave her to her business.

  Windows stretched along the wall to my left, the curved glass overlooking the hangar beyond. A row of screens covered the space beneath them, and I figured they might have been some kind of communications center once. The chairs were long gone, if there ever were any, and it was clear this space hadn’t been a communications center for a long time.

  The massive room was littered with medical pods, and most of them looked newer than the screens. The pods had sleek white metal instead of the
polished gray of everything else, and most of the glass lids were closed.

  I leaned toward the nearest one to find a puddle of metallic blue goop at the bottom. As I shifted my weight, the liquid shimmered, brilliant and beautiful, almost glowing with a light of its own.

  “What the hell is all this?” I asked, scanning the rows upon rows of identical pods. “I was expecting screens. Computers. A Cognitive, maybe. But this…”

  “How strange,” said Abigail, peering into a nearby pod.

  “More like unnerving,” added Bolin, his voice tense. “All this evidence of Celestials, and yet we haven’t seen a single one.”

  “Odd,” said Rackham, a strange and almost musing tone to his voice. I looked for the Union officer in the sea of identical suits, only to find him leaning over a pod nearby. He tilted his head toward me instinctively, and our gazes briefly met. As always, he wore that stoic and unreadable expression, and I wasn’t sure if he was doubting the existence of Celestials entirely, or if he’d seen something in his pod that I’d missed in mine.

  Dressler leaned over the pod next to me and tapped something on her screen. Her device glowed green, and the lid hissed as it released its pressure. Slowly, the glass dome lifted, exposing the contents inside.

  “Doc, that seems like a bad idea,” I said, lifting my rifle toward the pod on impulse.

  “Yes, yes,” she said, dismissing my concern with a few flicks of her wrist. “One moment, and we’ll know for sure.”

  “Well ain’t that a healthy attitude,” I said, backing away and giving the good doctor space.

  Down the row of pods Dressler was working on, one of Rackham’s guys smacked his fist on the one nearest to him. It rattled, clanking and groaning as the metal shifted under the force. Seconds later, the clear lid popped open.

  “What the hell are you doing, Tanner?” Rackham snapped, beating me to it by a fraction of a second. “You don’t know what—”

  “Everyone stay back!” Dressler barked. I tensed at the command, tightening my trigger finger on instinct and shifting my focus in her direction. She leaned over her own open pod, her eyes narrowed as she stared down at the blue goop. “This substance appears to be highly unstable. If this interacts with our suit or skin, it could easily and instantly decompose everything it touches.”

  “Then why are you leaning your head in it?” I snapped.

  “Because I am a professional,” retorted Dressler. “Unlike that gentleman over there,” she added with a disdainful glare at Tanner, who still stood by his open pod with a blank look on his face.

  “Close the damn lid,” Rackham muttered, gesturing at Tanner’s pod.

  Carefully, Dressler fished out a vial from one of the pockets in her suit and uncorked the top.

  “Oh, that’s a smart thought,” I said with a frown. “Let’s bring the unstable goop home with us. What could go wrong?”

  “We’re here to gather intelligence, Captain,” Dressler said dryly, never looking up from her work. “That includes intelligence and data of the dangerous sort, I’m afraid.”

  “I’m just saying maybe there’s a better—”

  A shrill scream interrupted me. It pierced through the comm link, painful and loud, and I grimaced on impulse as the sound nearly ripped apart my eardrum. I flinched, almost falling to my knees but recovering before I hit the floor. Even Dressler flinched, nearly dropping the vial into the pod, and I was amazed she managed to hold onto it without getting any of it on herself.

  “Siggy!” I yelled. “What in the hell—”

  Instantly, the sound dimmed, becoming quiet enough that I could think again. I wanted to rub my head, to ease the splitting headache that was already starting, but I could deal with a little pain. Adrenaline surged through me as I prepared for war, ready to fire at a moment’s notice.

  “Apologies, sir,” said Sigmond. It appears that Mr. Tanner ignored the previous order from—”

  “Get it off!” screamed Tanner, his voice still piping through the shared comm link at a reasonable volume this time.

  I trained my rifle behind me, trying to figure out where the sound was coming from, only to find Tanner still standing beside the open pod. He stared in disbelief at his hand, as the blue goo spread across his fingers like water in zero G. Smoke billowed from his fingertips as the substance ate away at him. He grabbed at his elbow, shaking it violently, sending drops of the goo flying. Everyone stepped back, out of reach as he tried desperately to get the slime off of him. He screamed relentlessly, and I figured that had to be the sort of pain that drove a man mad—for him to make that noise, he had to be in the purest agony.

  Tanner screamed bloody murder as the smoke got thicker, and he continued to wildly fling his hand around as he tried to get the goop off. Something fell from his good hand, and seconds later, the crack of splintering glass broke through the room.

  I adjusted my position to get closer and see what that had been, only to find a shattered vial at his feet.

  “What the hell is going on here?” I demanded to know. “Was he trying to take that back with him?”

  “Tanner, you’re going to be okay,” said Lieutenant Rackham, lifting one hand toward the soldier to try to placate him. “Remember your training. You prepared for pain. Get a hold of yourself, soldier!”

  “You did this!” Tanner screamed, his eyes dilating as he yelled at Rackham. “You did this to me!”

  “What are you talking about—” Rackham took a step back, genuine confusion in his voice. “You’re the idiot who tried to steal from—”

  “You and Brigham!” Tanner continued. “You and Vick! All of you! All of you!”

  Through a gap in the smoke, I saw white bone and bright red skin blistering through a hole in the suit. This blue goop had burned right through his suit and was eating away at his body. He had to be leaking oxygen like crazy. In just a matter of seconds, it would likely find its way into his bloodstream—if it hadn’t already.

  “Heavens above,” Abigail muttered, her eyes wide with horror at what we were all witnessing. Her rifle lifted, aimed for Tanner’s heart, and I felt like that was a good call. I wasn’t sure where this was going, but I knew it wouldn’t end well.

  “Rackham, get him under control!” I snapped. “Before this gets out of hand, you hear me?”

  “I hear you, Captain,” Rackham said quietly, lowering his gun as he began to take careful steps toward the Union soldier.

  “Captain Hughes, can we help him?” Freddie asked. “He needs medical attention.”

  “Abby, you have the med kit, right?” I asked, even though I wasn’t about to let her go anywhere near this guy.

  “Yes,” she said simply, narrowing her eyes as her finger hovered near the trigger on her rifle.

  “Hold your fire,” I ordered. “Maybe there’s something we can do. I don’t know how to stop the progression, but...” I groaned, not liking where my mind was going. “We might need to amputate—”

  “No!” Tanner screamed, smashing his head against the open pod door in what almost looked like an involuntary movement. The lid shattered from the force, its glass sprinkling over the ground beside the remains of the vial. The screen in Tanner’s visor cracked, and I figured that was probably another oxygen leak this man couldn’t afford right now. The rest of his helmet held up, though, and only the pod took any additional damage.

  “Tanner,” Rackham said calmly, lifting his hands once more to placate the soldier. “It’s going to be okay. You prepared for this. You know what to do when—”

  “It was you!” Tanner shouted, his voice shrill with madness and fear. Deep down, the man knew death was close, and it seemed like he couldn’t rightly handle it coming for him. Sweat pooled along his brow, running down his nose like he was in a sauna. “We have our orders, all of us, Rackham! But you couldn’t do it. You couldn’t—you can’t…” Tanner looked at me, a crazed expression on his face as his eyes slipped out of focus.

  I knew that look. I’d seen it before, and i
t never ended well for me or anyone involved. It was the expression of a man who had lost his mind. Who had seen things no one should see, done things no one should do. He was unhinged, and an unhinged man at the brink of his sanity was a dangerous thing.

  I kept my rifle at the ready, my finger hovering over the trigger. Abigail took a few careful steps toward me, holding her own weapon across her chest.

  Truth be told, Tanner wasn’t one of my men. He had tried to steal from me, and if he so much as lifted a hand against any one of my crew, he would be dead before he hit the floor. With the pain he was in right now, that almost seemed like a mercy he didn’t quite deserve, but I didn’t know his story. I only knew what he’d done here—and the risk he posed to my crew. In the end, that was all I cared about.

  “You know what they said, Rackham?” Tanner said, grinning madly as he gestured to the other Union soldiers nearby. They slowly backed away, their rifles aimed toward their fellow soldier, no doubt as wary of him as I was. “We were promised ships,” Tanner continued. “Promotions. Creds. All we have to do is bring back what you can’t. First one with a Celestial wins,” Tanner added in a sing-song voice. He lifted his still-burning hand, some of his fingers now gone. His suit hung open at the wrist, slack as it pulled and burned his skin in places, deteriorating more with each passing second. “Guess I win!” he said, laughing, and his eyes went wide. “I win! I win I win I win!”

  “Gods,” I muttered. “Everyone get back. Back!” I barked, tilting my head to make sure my people were clear of this steaming madhouse in the middle of the room. Abigail hovered nearby, stubborn and refusing to back down. “Abby, move!” I snapped, stepping in front of her to urge her backward with the others. I heard her hiss in frustration, clearly battling between obeying the order and her need to help, but she stepped back beside Freddie.