Resurrection Dawn

by Marc Secchia

  “Under what circumstances?”

  He sighed. “I guess it’s time that you heard that story.”

  “You guess? You guess?”

  “Alo, calm down.”

  “I am freaking calm, Dad! Can you stop – this? Hiding, lying, evading and holding the truth like some kind of weapon over our relationship?” Waving a fist beneath his nose, she yelled, “Is this some stupid game to you? I have every right to know who my mother is!”

  “Sorry!”

  “Talk to me! Dad!”

  Dymand puffed out his cheeks. “Prisoner transportation.”

  “Prisoner what?”

  “Highly classified, kilo-kloms off the record, prisoner transportation to a secret experimental facility. I met her in my cargo hold.”

  Alodeé wheezed something unintelligible.

  He said, “Yep. Your darling Dad, eh?”

  I could use a few words. None of them remotely resemble ‘darling,’ mister!

  She pressed her shaking hands into her lap. “So, you absconded with a prisoner? What did she do, bat her eyelashes at you?”

  “Er … close enough. Her eyes were all I could see of her inside the prisoner pod. So no, it wasn’t anything as shallow as her legs or gorgeous behind – I only discovered those later on.”

  “Dad,” she gritted between her teeth.

  “Sorry. Storytime. Once upon a time, there was a dashing young space pirate …”

  * * * *

  Standard 1379.01.11.02 Cal Week 2. Azberm Prime.

  Dymand stared at the man lurking in the shadows. “Seventy now, seventy after.”

  “Deal.”

  The voice grated through a sophisticated modulator. Despite that the man thought his cover was inviolate, his onboard hypercomputer had already decoded his voiceprint, leading to several inescapable conclusions:

  One: Tazdroo Jem is richer than a Syrrabis gold mine.

  Two: He’s the most dangerous man on Azberm Prime. Fail and I’m dead.

  Three: This deal will get me out of a whole heap of trouble. If I can escape this system. Far from guaranteed.

  Four: What the hells makes this cargo so valuable? 140K creds is another word for insanity.

  He said cautiously, “Before we close the deal, what’s the run?”

  “Transmit the co-ords,” the voice snarled.

  The assistant, a Class 8 Mental Storage specialist, flicked a few links. “Incoming.”

  Dymand checked, fending off a couple more attacks on his vessel meantime. Eager mangids! Breaking in already?

  The man said, “What makes a cocky young Parsec Blazer think he’s good enough to make my cargo run? You as good as they say, boy?”

  “Better.”

  “Sir.”

  He shrugged. “This location doesn’t exist, sir.”

  “Trust me, you’ll find a facility there. Experimental. So classified it’s not even classified. You’re right, it doesn’t exist. The precise approach protocols will accompany our deal closure. Let me be clear. Discretion is not only advisable, it is mandatory – if you wish to live beyond your 24 years, Dymand Huzuki-shi-Katana. Is your ship fast enough?”

  “I pilot a 78-KAR Whisper Privateer, modified to my exacting specifications.”

  Dark men, in dark rooms, doing dark deals. Dymand bit back an urge to fidget. He would never have taken this contract, save that – well, trouble behind and even bigger trouble right in front of him. This deal stank past the Galactic Arm. No choice in the matter.

  Foolish decisions had consequences. The only question was how lethal they might turn out to be.

  “Acceptable,” the man hissed. “Fail me, or breathe a word of this and I will ensure you disappear, boy. You and all your relatives. And your entire home town on Suzazi Terrine. My reach is long. Now, you’ll find the cargo in your bay. One pod. Keep it alive, will you? Any other result would be … most unfortunate.”

  Live cargo? This deal just became ten thousand times stinkier. I’m not into Humanoid trafficking.

  As if he hadn’t given up his morals the moment he walked through that door.

  “Do we have a deal?”

  “When they get the cargo aboard. Your associates appear to be struggling to breach my systems.”

  “So they do.”

  “What can I say? I’m a private kind of guy. My bank –”

  “You’ll find the deposit in your undisclosed account at Sagon Galactic.”

  So he did, he saw on a finance update behind his retina screen. This much knowledge of his most private business was meant to be terrifying, and it succeeded in sending his heart rate zinging to the stars.

  He said, “Cargo doors open. Tell your associates not to touch anything else in there. It would be … most unfortunate.”

  The voice said, “Deal closed, Dymand?”

  “Deal closed.”

  “Good luck, hotshot. You’ll need it.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “My associates will escort you to your vessel. May I advise a rapid departure?”

  Having seen the incoming hostiles register on his shipboard scanners, Dymand had already turned to run.

  The friendly associates – 250-cent men in grey suits carrying an extraordinary amount of hardware, both hard and bionic – politely escorted him to a high-speed shuttle hidden in the base of Tazdroo Jem’s warehouse. They hurtled away, Dymand sandwiched between the pair of Class 3 hulks. En route, they informed him in very civilised terms what happened to people who might think of crossing or disappointing their employer. Yep. Becoming an unwilling organ donor really did not feature in his top ten. Nor did the grisly torture that would precede said donations.

  Rushing him right up to the heavily-cloaked vessel lying in a supposedly secret bay beneath Azberm Prime, Beefy Associate One growled, “We’ll lay down covering fire.”

  Beefy Associate Two added, “Run along now, boy.”

  Twisting off their left arms, they converted them into shoulder-mounted megablasters. Nice. Drawing his relatively dinky blast pistol, Dymand charged across the hangar floor toward his vessel. A wave of drones, jetpacks and manned sentinel armoured suits smashed through the far exit. Laser and plasma blasts from the incoming mercs splattered all around him. His new friends responded with a shattering series of shots, basically turning the far end of the hangar into a raging plasma volcano. Pleasing. Punching the start-up and exit protocols as he ran, he cursed as the friendly fire cut him off. Hurdle it! Roll! Leaping for the edge of his cargo door, he gripped it, wriggled over and closed the beast’s mouth all in the same movement. 25-cent gap? No problem.

  A smooth, long ovoid lay strapped down in his cargo bay.

  Never seen a prisoner wearing that much armour in my life. Two shell layers? Three – refined nanosteel, is it? Enough monitoring electronics to sink a ship. Good thing my cargo bay comes with all the mods, or my systems would be singing Tazdroo Jem’s tune right now.

  The prisoner transportation shell looked like a tactical fusion nuke.

  Rushing over to the faceplate, he peered within. A pair of luminous violet eyes snapped open and –

  * * * *

  Dymand paused. “Dinner?”

  Alodeé shook herself. Oh, Medic Tamanzi!

  “Cosy father-daughter chat?” she smiled. “You need to eat, Dymand.”

  He said, “Do you remember the first time we met, Tamanzi?”

  “Yep. You tried to charm and bribe me in the same breath.”

  Ooh. Eyebrow-hopper!

  “I protest,” her father complained, taking his tray of undoubtedly nutritious Infirmary food onto his lap. “I merely inquired if there was an expedited process available. Tamanzi was the medical rep for the Colony company, now sadly defunct having lost seven ships, I suspect. Overseeing the processing of the medical applications files for applicants.”

  “Following the blatant bribery attempt, he asked me to overlook certain flagged aspects of his wife’s med scans.”

  “Wife. Stron
g word,” Dad put in.

  Alodeé snorted, “Always someone dragging the conversation into the trash incinerator, isn’t there?”

  Dad mimed smacking her.

  “To this day, I’ve no idea why I went along with it all, you rogue.”

  He winked, “All part of the charm offensive. Or, you read our desperation. We were being hunted by the good guys, the bad guys, random bounty hunters and every government in the galactic sector. Exciting times.”

  Tamanzi said, “Meeting you two tipped my decision point. I’d been debating joining the mission for months.”

  “I didn’t know that.”

  “I guessed Samodeé was a bit of a misfit, like me,” the Medic said. “I could never have imagined how much coming to Resurrection Dawn would change her.”

  Changed? Or had all that potential been there already? Dad’s story needs to continue.

  After Tamanzi left, Dymand said, “Alright, on to the roll-your-eyes part.”

  Yep, like his eyes had just rolled to enjoy the Medic’s departure from his private room?

  She said. “Let me guess. Insta-love?”

  “No. Insta-connection.”

  * * * *

  The moment he gazed through the 5-cent thick, armoured glass into those violet eyes, he sensed … something. As if a switch had clicked on inside his mind, he understood her – a tang of her, like the mental equivalent of taste, say, or perhaps that frisson of recognition across a room multiplied ten thousand times.

  The young woman – around his age, he imagined – was trussed up in so much gear to control her breathing, her neck, her slightest movement, that all she could do was move her irises. Literally. This was prisoner transport on steroids. How dangerous?

  What the heck Class are you?

  Brilliance flared in the eyes as they popped wide. She understood! An understanding formed in his deepest awareness.

  You don’t know and they don’t either?

  Blink.

  I’ll take that for ‘yep.’ You know where you’re going?

  Blink.

  Know why?

  Blink.

  Images swarmed into his mind.

  Shaking his head to clear the mesmeric effect of her gaze, Dymand spun on his heel. “Later, girl. Gotta clear this rock. Stat!”

  A disconcerting awareness of incredible violet eyes lurked in the back of his mind as he slapped his systems into readiness in record time. Heck of a good thing he had shaved the departure sequence programming to the finest margins. As the blast doors above cracked open, he swung the ship aside, stowed the atmospheric stabilising wings and delicately backed it down the access tunnel.

  GRRAAABOOMMM!!

  Debris, flame and smoke filled the hangar. Nice to know Control had given his location away. Fat little bonus, no doubt.

  Punching the controls, Dymand reversed course and rocketed up between the massed fleet of ships – perfectly arrayed in his systems and in his mind – performing a slalom run for the ages. Blasts whistled past. Laser. Plasma. Shaped charges. Mines, torpedoes and missiles. Nothing but flames and smoke touched the 78-KAR Whisper Privateer as it made good, slewing away low over the residential zone. Dropping his anti-pursuit flak missiles in a lethal cocktail of surprises, he blasted away over the crimson canyons into the badlands beyond. Go for the skies? Not yet. Any delay would give them time to activate and shore up the defences, but a hasty launch could also be fatal.

  He stared at his readouts, slowly warming to the realisation that somehow, those violet eyes were adding shades of detail to his mind his sensors could not possibly be aware of.

  Thank you.

  Her warning had already kept them alive twice. Now, a third time. He froze. A quartet of Magi-11 Interstellar Class Destroyers waited for him behind the moons. Freak, these boys were serious. Hammer, gnat. No question about it.

  Are you reading my mind?

  Blink, deep within.

  Get out! GET THE FREAK OUT!!

  Chapter 11

  Standard 1301.05.18.30 Cal Week 19. Like a rocket.

  RUBBING HIS TEMPLES AS if the memory pained him, her father slumped back on his pillow. “I panicked. Like the rawest recruit. Alodeé, I feared –”

  “My mother was a telepath?”

  “Yep. You?”

  Ignore that. It’s impossible. “You feared she might control your mind?”

  “Check. I later learned she could not, or would not, but I cannot tell you how much that terrified me right then – almost got us killed. I mean, the pursuit came down on us like an Oraman photonic war hammer and I was a ranting wreck.”

  “I’d have been freaked out, too.”

  “Sure.” His fingers drew a ‘U’ on the blankets. “That’s why. Galactic and all sorts of fringe elements, I guess – have been trying to breed telepaths for centuries.”

  “Why?”

  “An army based on mind control? You’d rule forever.”

  “Canid-sucking poxurix!”

  “Yep. Just then, Mister Greedy over here put two and three together and realised that your mother happened to be the most valuable cargo in the Universe. That was also when I decided to steal her.”

  Only her Dad.

  Here’s an encouraging grin, you scoundrel!

  His black eyebrows waggled. “It took me a while to work up to the idea, given as I was fairly busy trying to stay alive.”

  * * * *

  When the pursuing fleet of over one hundred assorted vessels had finished a fruitless search and blowing one another up in the process, the government came up with a new idea. Planetary bombardment.

  All the warning he had was those violet eyes showing him the destroyers moving into position. They had forewarning; the rest did not. The powerful destroyers flash-roasted the entire badlands area, tens of kloms of it, in mere secs. Flames 500 mets tall. Earthquakes. Annihilation. The 78-KAR came screaming out of the edge of that inferno with every external sensor melted off of its smoking hull.

  Chasing the planetary rotation into the night, under full cloak, he flew them at top speed back over all the residential, pleasure houses and gaming dens of that miserable planet and then escaped off the undefended night side into the asteroid belt, where he applied full cloak and started the repair bots working.

  No heading for hyperspace in their condition. They’d never make it back again.

  Eventually, Dymand returned to the cargo hold to interrogate his captive. Starting with, “Thanks, but why are you helping me? I’m a merc for hire.”

  Nothing.

  I’m sorry, alright? I’ve never met anyone who can do this – have you?

  Blink-blink.

  We’re communicating in our minds?

  Blink.

  You’ve never – blink – he stuttered, I mean, seriously, have you never spoken to someone in this way?

  Blink-blink.

  Crazy! Just crazy! Clench the jaw. Think, man. Seriously, those eyes … the amount of armour keeping her in there … he must be insane. Let this creature free? She could probably wipe his mind or turn him into a slave.

  Or, would she? Violet eyes, emerald-green skin. Where in the galaxy could she be from? He’d never seen a Humanoid like her.

  I’d try to free you, but I’m afraid this system is set up to self-destruct at the slightest sign of tampering.

  Images of schematics filtered into his mind.

  Dymand gaped at his captive. You’re incredible, do you know that?

  Blink-blink.

  Are you controlling my mind right now?

  Blink-blink.

  He turned a sag of relief into a strut and a smirk, before realising that she could read him like a holo screen anyways. Ha. Those eyes crinkled at the edges. He had the distinct impression she was trying to smile beneath the layers of armoured nanosteel compressing her mouth.

  You know, I’m a rebellious sort of fellow. I can take a look, but my guess is that we’re not going to find a shred of evidence related to this experimental facility.
Forgive my cynicism, but I just don’t think that’s the kind of place a life ought to be lived, do you? No matter the money involved. Nor the number of Magi-11 Interstellar Class Destroyers that happen to be trying to vaporise us just now.

  Blink.

  Right. They needed a plan. Stat. Since he was already lost in those eternal violet depths, his thoughts naturally focussed on the essentials.

  Look, gorgeous eyes, chances we make it out of this alive are pretty cruddy, alright? Tell you what. If we work together and have the most incredible luck in the Universe and actually make good our escape into the untracked reaches of space, will you promise to love me forever?

  Everlasting pause. Blink.

  * * * *

  “Dad, you didn’t say that, did you?”

  “Eh …”

  “That’s a direct quote?”

  “Yep. I mean, she could have been a slug with 30 tentacles inside that shell. I had no way of knowing.” Alodeé chuckled in delight, clapping her hands. “You’d be amazed how you can fall in love with a pair of eyes over the course of 17 days.”

  “17?”

  “Mean designers. Most secure prisoner shell I’ve ever seen before or since. It took us mapping every dependency in all these redundant systems that kept her trapped inside and then custom-modding every repair bot I had to do certain tasks simultaneously and within highly precise time constraints, supplemented by certain telepathic blocks and a smidgen of pure trickery. One mistake and you wouldn’t be here talking to me. Can’t tell you how happy she was to get out of there. Told me I’m awesome and all that.”

  “Kissed you silly?”

  “Very silly. Until I suggested that she might want a shower. That was when she showed me the back of her legs – and fell over. Loss of muscle tone.”

  “Ouch.”

  “Yep. After that, we spent a year on the run before thinking we might try to find a colony, somewhere far from Galactic Central, where we could start a family of little green-skinned beauties.”

  “I see. That was the plan?”

  “Good times. Strange, crazy, wonderful times. I’d do it all over again just for the chance to have you in my life.”

  So sweet. Stretching out, she gave him a cuddle just for being her Dad.