The Calypsis Project Boxed Set (Books 1-2 - The Echo-Alpha Duology)

by Brittany M. Willows

  “We’ll be out of here as soon as the dropship’s prepped and ready for Levian and I,” Alana said, threw a glance over her shoulder at the ship. Ayla had just descended from the portal on its underside and was drifting their way. “. . . And it looks like that would be now.”

  “Well, have a safe trip.” Knoble pulled her in close and wrapped his arms around her shoulders, then stepped back. “If we have even a little bit of luck on our side, then you’ll have some good news for me when you come back.”

  “Stay out of trouble, okay?”

  “I’ll try.” He laughed and patted her on the shoulder, waving his hand in the air as she and the Leh’kin ship commander turned and walked away.

  Though Alana’s last words to her stepfather had been spoken jokingly, she couldn’t shake the feeling that something was about to go drastically wrong.

  Maybe this trip really was a bad idea after all.

  It’s not like we can go back on this now—not when we’re literally heading out the door. This is way too important. Besides . . . we won’t be gone more than a few hours, she thought, trying to reassure herself. Everything will turn out fine, I’m sure.

  Chapter

  —TWENTY-SEVEN—

  1038 Hours, December 04, 2438 (Earth Calendar) / Shuttle Pod Pioneer, in orbit over planet Dyre

  “You look bored,” Dr. Chambers observed from her leather command chair, where she sat in front of the viewscreen twirling a gray stylus between her fingers.

  She was not entirely wrong. For the last couple of hours Kenon had been sitting here with nothing but his thoughts to keep him busy, and right now all he wanted was to get away from them.

  He couldn’t stop thinking about the mysterious bow he’d picked up in the ruins below the Deadlands. Where had it come from? Could it really be a piece of the old technology, still active and in such perfect condition? And the voice he’d heard when he drew near it . . .

  “You can take a look around if you want to,” Chambers told him. “You may find something in the back to be of interest to you.”

  Kenon considered that for a moment and then stood, nodding his thanks to the Doctor before heading into the aft compartment. The doors slid open and he froze when he saw what stood in the center of the room.

  A tall, cylindrical containment tank filled with fluid—and inside was a Leh’kin warrior. He had a mask pulled over his face, his eyes were closed, and he didn’t appear to be in any sort of pain. In fact, he looked peaceful.

  Although the sight was unsettling, Kenon approached the tank to get a closer look.

  “Aha, my sensors don’t lie! She really did give you permission to come in here, didn’t she?” Dr. Chambers’ AI materialized without warning on the pedestal by the doors, making the young warrior spin around suddenly.

  “Oh, sorry,” he said. “Gave you a bit of a fright, did I?”

  Kenon didn’t reply. If he had, he probably would have lied due to his embarrassment. This construct had a way of making him feel very uncomfortable, but perhaps that was because he couldn’t properly grasp the idea behind AIs.

  Orion was an entirely artificial being created by humans and composed of nothing more than countless strings of data—Kenon could understand that much. But what he couldn’t figure out was how this digital life form could have such a strong personality if that’s all he was—data.

  “What do you think?” Orion asked.

  “Of what?”

  “Of our friend here, the Doctor’s pride and joy.”

  “Why is he here?”

  “Well he’s not here voluntarily,” Orion said. “A few years after the war began we hired a team to put a couple of darts in his neck and knock him out, and when the job was done they brought him back to the lab for study.”

  “He is a test subject?”

  “The Doctor prefers to call him Peter.”

  “But he is a living being that you run experiments on, correct?” Kenon questioned.

  “Aye.”

  “That is—”

  “Nauseating? Cruel and disgusting?” Orion cut him off mid-syllable. “You are among a small group who would call it so. Mind you, most of those people are animal rights extremists who for some reason have decided to include genocidal alien warriors in their cheery basket of cuddly critters. No offense.”

  “We were misguided . . .” Kenon muttered. As if that is justification for the millions who have been slaughtered by order of the Queen.

  “You should be grateful that you do not have hundreds of lives tucked under your belt already. Your ship commander has killed thousands, as has Lieutenant Knoble. Believe it or not, my record isn’t clean either.”

  “Will he ever awaken?” Kenon couldn’t imagine what the Leh’kin warrior was feeling. Was he aware of what had happened to him, where he had been taken? Did he dream, was he experiencing something akin to death?

  Orion exhaled and tipped his head from left to right. “He may be brought out of his sleep in the coming days, or he may remain this way for the rest of his life. It depends on a number of things.”

  “Such as?”

  “Well– . . . Hold that thought a moment, would you? We may have a slight problem.”

  The AI’s avatar flickered and vanished, then reappeared on the console in the cockpit. Kenon hurried back to the fore cabin to find out what had interrupted their conversation, and through the viewscreen he saw the rounded body of a Drocain scout ship. It was moving slowly towards the shuttle, probably scanning the area.

  “He hasn’t seen us yet,” Orion said, sinking into Pioneer’s mainframe once more. When he spoke again his voice came through the speakers. “Commencing shutdown, taking all systems offline. Keep your arms and legs inside the ride at all times, and if you would so kindly, please refrain from making any unnecessary noise. Thank you.”

  When the artificial gravity generators went down, anything that wasn’t bolted down rose from the ground and drifted through the air weightlessly.

  Kenon grabbed onto the bar above his head to hold himself steady. Dr. Chambers was already secured; buckled into her seat. Knoble had tightened his grip on the back of her chair to keep from floating away.

  1150 Hours, December 04, 2438 (Earth Calendar) / The Silver Hall, Shindar State, planet Dyre

  Alana Carmen was, for the most part, a patient person. But right now, standing before the Empress of Dyre with Levian by her side, she couldn’t be more impatient. From the moment they’d dropped Pioneer in that sea of wrecked starships and set out for Shindar, she had been fighting her growing anxiety, trying to convince herself that the others were fine.

  But what if they’re not fine? What if leaving them there was the worst thing we could possibly have done? If the Nephera find them—if they take Kenon—then it won’t be long before the whole galaxy’s up in flames.

  Of course, she could be totally wrong. For all she knew, her stepfather, Dr. Chambers, and the young warrior could all be sitting in a circle on the floor playing a nice old game of cards whilst Orion acted as their guardian angel.

  “I ask that you reconsider, your Highness, for this could mean the difference between the survival of the Drahkori and their destruction,” Levian insisted. He may as well have been glued to the floor—he hadn’t moved even once since they’d arrived at the palace and it was obvious he wouldn’t leave until he’d changed Lisethea’s mind . . . or until he was dragged out by the guards.

  Adian Lisethea, the Empress of Dyre, was a particularly short Drahkori with skin the color of coal. She paced back and forth in front of the human and the Leh’kin Ship Commander, eyes unblinking and head held high. She was persistent, confident that her way was the right way. The problem was that she ruled by the words of Athenna—the goddess who’d banished their ancient technology.

  Lisethea had turned down Levian’s kindly-spoken request to retrieve their long-lost arsenal from the holds buried deep underground. And, as if it gave warrant to her decision, she told them the story of Athenna—tryin
g to make them understand exactly why the events of the Purge took place and how it had been essential to the continued existence of their race.

  But all Alana managed to gather from that spew of words was a load of political garbage that didn’t even begin to justify the barbaric acts carried out by the Drahkori’s ancestors.

  “When faced with a decision such as this, one often has to think it over multiple times before reaching a verdict,” the Empress said. “Levian ‘Nher, you too are a ruler, are you not?”

  “Future ruler,” he corrected her, then more sternly he added, “But this is irrelevant. War has engulfed your world and you choose your goddess over your own people. What Athenna did in her time may have been for the best, but the troubles she dealt with were not associated with war. The Drahkori were tearing themselves apart from the inside, and no one else is to blame.”

  Lisethea gave him a cold, hard stare. “If I do happen to change my mind then I will contact you. Now leave, please.”

  Levian bowed his head to her before turning and heading back to the entrance. Alana did the same and followed the Leh’kin warrior, glad that the meeting had finally come to a close.

  Let’s hope the Empress has a change of heart, otherwise this might be the last time we see Dyre in one piece.

  When Levian and Alana returned to the Legacy of Night, Lieutenant Jenkinson and corporals Bennett and Parker were waiting for them . . . and they were more than a little tense.

  Parker was constantly checking his data pad to see if anything new had popped up on the screen—a nervous habit he’d developed—and the other two were just being quiet and fidgety.

  “Alright, what happened?” Alana broke the silence as they strode through the hangar bay back toward the bridge. She couldn’t stand it anymore; she had to know what was troubling them.

  “Okay, it’s not a huge problem,” Jenkinson told her with calm reassurance. “Just a hitch. We didn’t want to bother you while you were in the middle of that meeting; I thought if we interrupted it might stick a fork in the plan.”

  Alana stopped and faced Jenkinson, grabbed him by the shoulders and met his gaze, practically begging him to spit it out. “What happened, Kurt?” Some people liked a bit of suspense in their life. She didn’t. “Please tell me it’s not about— Did the Nephera find them, Jenkinson?”

  “No, Carmen, nothing like that,” he said, pulling away from her. He put his hand on her arm, turned her around, and they carried on walking. “We received a message from Orion about thirty minutes ago. He said a Drocain scout ship scanned the debris field right where they were sitting and then left. He’s not sure if it picked up Pioneer’s signal or not but, on the off chance that it did, he thinks we should get back there as fast as we can.”

  “Then let’s move.” Alana quickened her pace, calling over her shoulder, “Keep that dropship hot, Ayla, we may need it again!”

  1238 Hours, December 04, 2438 (Earth Calendar) / Shuttle Pod Pioneer, in orbit over planet Dyre

  “Legacy on approach,” Orion announced over the radio. His holographic representation hadn’t made an appearance since the close encounter with the Drocain scout ship. He was probably too busy tending to the shuttle’s artificial gravity generator to be bothered with it.

  When Pioneer had undergone a complete shutdown, the rotary within the shuttle had ceased movement as well. But when the power was restored after the Drocain ship left, it had failed to restart automatically as it was supposed to.

  And poor Orion, smart as he was, so far hadn’t had any luck in getting the damn thing to move again.

  At least we can be thankful now that Levian ‘Nher is on his way here to rescue us . . . again. Lieutenant Knoble thought sarcastically, grinding his teeth. He was tired of being saved by his former enemy. Every goddamned time he saw that blue alien, a little voice somewhere in his head whispered kill.

  The Drocain Empire had annihilated entire human colonies and murdered his wife and daughter. They were mankind’s sworn enemy, and Knoble had treated them as such for a decade. It wasn’t something he could simply forget.

  Not to mention that this alliance isn’t even a week old.

  But despite all of that, his stepdaughter would still come up to him and plead with him to try and see Kenon and Levian in a different light. She was so sure that the two of them could be trusted—certain that they would never bring harm to her.

  Alana’s views had always been similar to those of Dr. Chambers.

  Chambers was convinced the Drocain were not all bad, and that in their eyes it was humans who were the evil planet-snatching vermin while they were the almighty protectors of the galaxy.

  “Incoming transmission. Patching it through,” Orion said.

  The speakers crackled loudly and the video feed from the bridge of the Legacy of Night filled the forward viewscreen. Alana’s relieved voice echoed inside the shuttle’s cabin, and Knoble could see her leaning on the command console beside Levian.

  “You guys all okay in there?” she asked.

  “Just peachy,” Lieutenant Knoble replied, wondering how the meeting with the Empress of Dyre had gone. He would ask her in person once Pioneer was back in the carrier’s hangar bay.

  “Good,” Alana sighed with relief. “Then come back onboard so I don’t have to worry about you anymore. Levian’s opening the bay doors now.”

  Lieutenant Knoble threw a look in Dr. Chambers’ direction and said, “Hear that, Doc? Let’s get this bucket on the move.”

  The Doctor accessed the shuttle’s control panel and speedily typed in a long string of commands, then hit the enter key.

  A standby window popped up briefly. The screen flashed bright red, then faded to black and died. Gradually, every button, switch, and panel went dark until the only thing remaining was the video feed from the Legacy of Night.

  “. . . the hell?” Chambers muttered as she smashed buttons, trying to get something to work for her. Nothing responded to her pounding, not a single key.

  “What? What happened?” Alana questioned, eyes flicking between the Doctor and Knoble as she waited for one of them to answer. Her gaze came to rest on Kenon, who stood by the wall clasping his left hand in his right, unsure of what he could do to help.

  “Just in case anyone was wondering . . .” Orion’s black-blue image rose up in front of Chambers with feathers falling from folded wings. “I am not responsible for this.”

  “I don’t care if this is your doing or not,” Chambers snapped at him, pinching the bridge of her nose with her index finger and thumb. She made a sharp gesture towards the console and demanded to know what was wrong with the shuttle. “Figure out what’s going on!”

  “Controls are offline, life-support systems are failing, and the engines are not responding to me, which is a rather serious matter. On the bright side, communications are still quite obviously in working order.”

  “I’m sending out a dropship to come and get you,” Alana said firmly, but as she went to turn away from the screen Levian stopped her. He took her arm and said a few words to her, too quiet for Knoble to hear, then pointed to one of the other displays.

  “Oh no,” the Corporal’s eyes grew wider and her mouth hung open. “. . . We were followed.”

  “Nepheran battlecruiser inbound, coming up on Legacy’s starboard side,” Orion warned.

  Knoble could see it advancing on them through the window—a gunmetal-gray ship just like the one he’d been held prisoner on . . . only much, much bigger. It was a goddamned leviathan—at least twice the size of the Legacy of Night and a whole lot more menacing.

  “We’re going to try and get this tin can moving again,” the Lieutenant said to Levian. “Hold them off for as long as you can!”

  “Slipspace rupture detected, one hundred and fifty meters behind us,” the AI construct reported. Even he was sounding apprehensive now. “It’s of the same nature as the portal we encountered on Calypsis; Nepheran in origin.”

  Dr. Chambers was losing her patience.
“Get me the coordinates for that portal. We need to know where it leads.”

  Orion carried on mumbling to himself. “Although this one is different. It appears to double as some kind of gravity well . . .”

  “Coordinates! Now!”

  “. . . Oh, that’s not good,” Orion breathed, then added with hesitation, “It leads into a sun.”

  1252 Hours, December 04, 2438 (Earth Calendar) / Drocain Assault Carrier Legacy of Night, in orbit over planet Dyre

  Alana stood, staring at the screen, cheeks burning hot and pulse throbbing in her fingertips. Her heart sank and she shook her head slowly in dismay, not wanting to believe what she’d just heard.

  Why would the Nephera go to such drastic lengths to destroy the shuttle? Why not simply blast it to pieces with their guns?

  They can’t know that Kenon’s onboard, she thought. If they were aware of his being there, surely they would send the shuttle someplace safe for one of their other ships to pick up instead of launching it into a sun.

  “I don’t suppose any of you would care to know which kill ball we’re about to fly into, would you?” Orion was still making jokes despite the situation, and it stung. He was probably aiming for comedic relief, but this wasn’t a good time to try to be funny.

  “We have to send a dropship out to get them,” she said to the Ship Commander. Her tone was calm but in truth she was about to burst into tears—proof that ten years in the military hadn’t hardened her up all that much.

  Levian did not look up from the console, and it was Kenon who replied to her.

  The young warrior came up to the screen. “That will not work. If you send out a dropship it will be pulled into the portal as well.” His voice quavered with fear.

  “If we don’t do something now, then you, Dr. Chambers and Lance are going to die . . . and I am not going to give you guys up that easily!”