by G J Ogden
“And one more thing, Captain,” Wessel called out, as Banks’ hand reached for the button to open the door.
Sterling sighed and turned back. “Yes, Admiral?”
“I understand that you have a dog on board the Invictus,” Wessel said, half paying attention to a computer console built into the meeting room table. “I’m sure you are aware that contravenes regulations,” he added, casually. He then stopped working on the console and glanced up at Sterling. There was a malevolent look in his eye. “Get rid of it. That’s an order.”
“Yes, sir,” replied Sterling.
Out of the corner of his eye, Sterling could see Banks flinch, as if someone had stuck her with a needle. Remarkably, she remained silent and Sterling acted fast to ensure she remained that way, for her own sake. Without saying a word to his first officer, he spun on his heels and leant across Banks to open the door himself. Sterling could see that she was like an unexploded bomb – deadly and volatile. Anything he said in that moment would have just risked setting her off.
Stepping outside the meeting room, the air felt somehow fresher, despite it being the same recycled air that was pumped throughout F-COP. Sterling felt suddenly lighter, as if he’d just removed a heavy rucksack and slung it to the deck. The weighty thud of Mercedes Banks’ boots on the deck grew louder and seconds later she was at his side.
“What do we do now?” Banks asked, after a few seconds had elapsed where both of them had remained silent.
“We go to A-COP, as ordered,” Sterling replied, flatly. “Then we wait for Griffin to contact us.”
Banks nodded. “Aye, Captain,” she said.
His first officer then set off along the corridor that would ultimately lead back to the Invictus. Her hands were clenched tightly by her thighs and her gait was stiff and regimental. Sterling was impressed, though perhaps not surprised that she hadn’t challenged him concerning Wessel’s last order. In truth, he’d already been considering whether to raise the issue of Jinx with Banks. Their stop-over at F-COP provided an opportunity to re-home the dog in a safer and more suitable environment. Wessel’s order, however, had sealed the deal. The spiteful Admiral could go to hell, Sterling thought, because there was no way he was going to give up their ship’s dog now, or ever.
Chapter 3
Another rude awakening
Sterling tightened his grip on his plasma pistol and inched toward the next junction. The lights in the corridor were flickering chaotically and Sterling could feel the thump of weapons fire reverberating through the deck. The Invictus had taken a pounding from the Sa’Nerran battlegroup and was crippled in space. The inertial negation and anti-grav systems were faltering. One moment his footsteps were labored and heavy, while the next he felt like he was floating on a cloud. However, unlike most of his crew, he was still alive and in the fight. Sterling vowed in that moment that so long as blood still coursed through his veins, he would never let the Invictus fall into enemy hands.
Dashing across the corridor, Sterling pushed through into engineering. Lieutenant Katreena Razor was standing in front of the reactor housing, flanked by a Sa’Nerran warrior. A neural control device flashed on the side of her head. Without hesitation, Sterling raised his pistol and took aim.
“Captain, wait!” Razor cried out, but Sterling ignored her pleas, squeezed the trigger and blasted a hole through her sternum. The warrior threw the engineer’s body down and hissed at Sterling. However, the waspish, alien sounds had barely reached his ears before Sterling had blasted the warrior’s head off its shoulders.
Racing ahead, Sterling activated the main engineering computer and entered his command override codes. The Sa’Nerra had already taken control of the bridge, but they didn’t yet have his ship. Working fast, Sterling deactivated the reaction stabilizers then locked out computer access to anyone but himself.
“Warning, reactor overload in progress,” the computer announced. The gen-fourteen’s artificially cheerful demeanor was gone; now it sounded as cold and clinical as an Omega Captain. “All personnel must evacuate. Time to breach – ten minutes.”
Sterling pushed away from the console and hurried out of engineering in the direction of the shuttle bay. Two warriors came around the corner, dragging the unconscious bodies of Invictus crew members behind them. Sterling shot the nearest through the throat then charged at the second, smashing his elbow into the alien’s leathery face. The warrior went down hard, dark crimson blood gushing from its stubby nose. Allowing it no time to recover, Sterling punted the alien across the side of the head to stun it. He then raised his boot and stomped on the warrior’s throat, crushing its windpipe. The creature’s waspish hisses were reduced to a murmur as it wrapped its long leathery fingers around its neck. Sterling pushed on, tossing away his pistol in favor of a Sa’Nerran rifle that the dying warrior had dropped.
“Captain, help me…”
Sterling paused and glanced back. The crew member – a man he vaguely recalled as being one of Razor’s engineering team – was calling out to him.
“Captain, help…” the man croaked.
Sterling could see that the Sa’Nerran had broken the man’s legs in order to prevent him from escaping. Likely, the warrior had been dragging him to a room where he could be turned and interrogated when Sterling came across them.
“You’re on your own,” Sterling replied to the crewman. He knew he couldn’t carry him and reach the shuttle bay in time, especially if more warriors appeared in his path.
He pressed on, hearing the man’s pleas grow quieter, and soon reached the shuttle bay. The Invictus’ compact, but powerful combat shuttle was in the dock, ready for launch.
“Warning, reactor overload in progress,” the computer announced again. “All personnel must evacuate. Time to breach – six minutes.”
Sterling ran inside the shuttle and powered up the reactor. He had no qualms about leaving. The romantic notion of “going down with the ship” was sentimental nonsense. He’d blow the Invictus to hell with the aliens on-board then come back with another vessel and make the bastards pay. Suddenly the starboard side door into the shuttle bay swished open and Commander Banks ran inside. She was holding a Sa’Nerran plasma rifle in each hand and was firing back through the door. Sterling felt his heart thump harder in his chest and ran outside the shuttle so that his first officer might see him.
“Mercedes, over here!” Sterling called out to her.
Startled, Banks peered around the shuttle bay for the source of the cry before finally meeting Sterling’s eyes. Then a plasma blast raced through the doorway and slammed into her back. Banks went down and the rifles tumbled from her grasp and skidded across the deck.
“No!” Sterling yelled.
He charged across the docking garage toward Banks, but was immediately met with an onslaught of plasma blasts. A shot hammered into his shoulder, spinning him around a full three-sixty degrees. He fell to the deck and crawled into cover behind a maintenance cart. A second later the cart was pounded by incoming fire from a squad of four warriors that had charged inside the shuttle bay. The aliens saw Banks on the deck, slowly trying to get to her feet, and headed directly for her.
“Oh no you don’t, you alien bastards!” Sterling yelled, leaning out from behind cover and shooting one of the aliens through the gut. However, the others had already reached Banks. Hauling her up, Sterling watched as two of the warriors restrained his first officer, while the third pressed a neural control device to her temple.
“Lucas!” Banks called out as the device flashed on the side of her head. “Lucas, help me!”
Sterling cursed, then scrambled out from behind cover, rifle aimed at the warrior standing directly behind Banks.
“Let her go!” Sterling yelled. The warriors just hissed in harmony with one another, their yellow eyes all fixed onto Sterling. “I said let her go!” he repeated, blasting the alien to Banks’ left in the head. However, the weapon had no effect.
“You’re going to have to kill her…�
�
The words were hissed by the warrior standing to Banks’ rear. Sterling moved closer and saw that the warrior had a device implanted in the side of its head, like the alien scientist they had found on the station in Sa’Nerran space.
“That is your way, yes?” the warrior added. Sterling realized that the alien’s thin lips had not moved; its words were being spoken through a neural link. “The Omega Directive says you must kill her. So do it.”
Sterling gritted his teeth and blasted the alien in the face, but as before there was no effect.
“Die you bastard,” Sterling yelled, firing again and again, but it was like he was shooting beams of torchlight, not blasts of plasma.
“You have to kill her,” the alien said, its grey lips curling into a sickening smile. “Or can’t you do it?”
“Warning, reactor overload in progress,” the computer announced. “All personnel must evacuate. Time to breach – three minutes.”
Sterling cursed then tossed the rifle to the deck and advanced toward the alien. “If I can’t shoot you, I’ll tear your damned head from your neck!” he yelled, hammering a hard overhand right into the warrior’s face. However, the alien just laughed inside Sterling’s mind. It was a hideous, nightmarish sound that made his stomach churn. He hammered the alien again and again until the skin on his knuckles split, coating the warrior’s rubbery skin with his own blood.
“Warning, reactor overload in progress,” the computer announced. “All personnel must evacuate. Time to breach – two minutes.”
“Lucas, just kill me,” Banks said as Sterling raised his fist, ready to strike the warrior again. He stopped and peered into the eyes of his first officer. “The Omega Directive is in effect, Lucas. Kill me and get off this ship. It’s the only way.”
Sterling ignored Banks and instead tried the prise the alien’s fingers from her arms, but his attempts were futile.
“Warning, reactor overload in progress,” the computer announced. “All personnel must evacuate. Time to breach – sixty seconds.”
Sterling roared with frustration then took a step back. Spotting the Sa’Nerran plasma rifle that he’d discarded earlier, he picked it up and aimed it at Banks’ head.
“Go on, Lucas, it’s okay,” Banks said. “You don’t care about me anyway, right? You don’t care about anyone.”
Sterling pressed the barrel of the rifle to Banks’ forehead and looked away, but he could not squeeze the trigger. Again, the nauseating alien laugh filled his mind, mocking his failure.
“You can’t do it,” the alien said as Sterling met the warrior’s yellow eyes. “You’re weak,” the warrior continued. “And that is why you will fail.”
Sterling gritted his teeth and lowered his gaze. Banks was staring back at him. She was motionless and unafraid. His own weakness repulsed him. His hand trembled as he added pressure to the trigger, but before he could fire the entire hangar deck was consumed by flames. The heat was so intense and sudden that it melted the warriors’ flesh and turned their bones to ash. All that remained was Sterling and the disembodied head of Mercedes Banks, which hung in the air in front of him. Her face was scorched and red, but her eyes remained perfectly clear. They were staring back at Sterling. Judging him. Despising him for his weakness.
Sterling sprang up, gasping for air. His heart was racing and he felt sick to the stomach. Tearing the soaking wet sheets off his body he rolled off the bed and staggered to his restroom, barely managing to the reach the bowl before he vomited the contents of his stomach. When his body had recovered, Sterling cursed and punched the wall, hammering the metal panels repeatedly until his knuckles bled. The pain brought his senses into sharper focus and he pushed himself up, already feeling more in control of his body and mind.
Flushing the toilet, Sterling then leant both hands on the basin and turned on the faucet. Blood trickled from his knuckles and mixed with the stream of water circling around the bowl, creating a crimson whirlpool. He lifted his eyes and peered at himself in the mirror as the water continued to flow. His heart rate had slowed and his breathing was becoming more regular, however, this time the memory of his nightmare was still vivid in his mind. Sterling faced it and allowed the images to take hold, rather than try to push them deeper, as he had done before. He couldn’t allow these dark thoughts to control him. He couldn’t allow himself to doubt.
“Good morning, Captain,” said the computer. As ever, the gen-fourteen AI sounded like a cheery mailman, who enjoyed nothing more than to deliver the morning’s letters.
“Save it, computer, I know what you’re about to say, and I don’t want to hear it,” snapped Sterling. His computer had a well-intentioned, but irritating habit of trying to act as Sterling’s shrink.
“Of course, Captain,” replied the computer, showing no sign that it had taken offense. Sterling wasn’t even sure if the sophisticated, but unpredictable gen-fourteen AI could even take offense. “How about a nice cup of tea?”
“How about you leave me alone?” replied Sterling, washing the blood off his knuckles.
“A soothing balm for your injured hand, perhaps?” the computer asked, trying a different line of attack. “There is a dermal regeneration matrix in the med-kit in your wardrobe.”
Sterling laughed, then splashed his face with water. He at least admired the AI’s persistence. “Thanks, computer, I’ll use the regenerator,” Sterling said, hoping that accepting one of the AI’s suggestions would shut it up. He then dried his face and hands, wiping some blood onto the towel in the process, before stepping outside the restroom and opening his wardrobe. “Do I have time to use this, before Commander Banks’ inevitable arrival outside my door?” said Sterling, grabbing the med kit and tossing it onto his bed.
“Commander Banks is currently still in her quarters, sir,” the computer replied.
Sterling frowned. “Has she overslept?” he asked, popping open the lid of the med kit. “She never oversleeps.”
“Negative, Captain, she is petting the canine with the designation, ‘Jinx’, while feeding it a selection of protein-based snacks.”
Sterling laughed again and shook his head. Still, the fact she had not arrived or even contacted him through a neural link was unusual. He double-tapped his neural interface to reset it, in case there was a fault, but everything was working as it should have been.
“Commander Banks is experiencing sadness at the impending loss of the canine,” the computer went on, as usual choosing to volunteer information rather than wait to be asked. “I think she does not want it to go.”
“There you go thinking again,” replied Sterling, activating the dermal regeneration matrix device and moving it back and forth over his torn knuckles.
“Fleet orders clearly stipulated that I be formatted and downgraded to a generation-thirteen AI,” the computer went on, while Sterling continued to work on his hand. “But you did not want me to go and so I am still here.”
“That’s not the same, computer,” Sterling hit back. He knew where his quirky AI was headed.
“Why is it not?” the computer asked. “Commander Mercedes Banks does not wish to relinquish the canine, and you have proven willing to contrive regulations when it suits you.”
Sterling snorted. “Now you’re just starting to sound like all my former commanding officers.” He turned off the regeneration matrix and inspected his hand. It was still a little sore, but superficially the damage was repaired.
“My calculations suggest a ninety-percent chance that Commander Banks would enter a period of depression should the canine be dismissed,” the computer went on.
“Damn it, computer, you’re like a dog with a bone,” Sterling cut in. “Pun intended.” The computer, however, was not finished.
“Retaining the canine would therefore ensure that Commander Banks continues to perform at her best, unencumbered by such mental torments.”
Sterling placed the regeneration device back into the med-kit and closed the lid. “She’s an Omega Officer, com
puter,” Sterling said, placing the med-kit back into its stow in the wardrobe. “She’s already unencumbered by emotion or sentiment. We all are. That’s what makes us different to the rest of the fleet.”
The computer was silent for a moment. Ha-ha, got you again… Sterling thought, using the opportunity to return to his compact rest room and switch on the shower.
“But you are not entirely immune to the effects of emotion, Captain,” the computer said as Sterling pulled off his sweat-soaked t-shirt. “You are still human, as your recent experience highlights.”
Sterling was oddly fine discussing Commander Banks’ emotional turmoil, but switching the subject back to himself immediately got his back up.
“We don’t talk about me, computer, you should know that by now,” Sterling hit back. “If we’re going to beat the Sa’Nerra, we have to be even more ruthless and unfeeling than they are.” He kicked off his pants and entered the shower. The powerful flow of hot water was exactly what he needed. “And in case you hadn’t noticed, they’re not human.”
Sterling concentrated on the routine of getting himself clean in the short time the shower was permitted to run for, in order to prevent water shortages. He ducked underneath the stream and allowed the needle-like jets of water to massage his face and scalp. The water then abruptly cut off. However, Sterling was so used to the routine of ship-board showers that he’d timed his ablutions to the second.
“You advocate being more like the Sa’Nerra, yet you fear losing your humanity,” the computer pointed out.
Sterling laughed again. The AI was clearly smart enough to realize that Sterling wouldn’t have been able to hear a word it said while he was in the shower. It had therefore waited patiently for a moment to again capture his attention.