by SD Tanner
“Put the kid down and get your hands up.”
Slowly unzipping his jacket his son’s dark and damp hair appeared. “He needs a doctor.”
The Navigator in the red and white helmet snorted while the other reached for his son. “He’s cute.”
Hoping they’d show mercy, a stream of words erupted from him. “He has a younger sister. Her name’s Sophia. His name’s Charlie. Their Mom died. She was shot. Now he’s sick and he needs your help. Please help him. I don’t care about me…”
Waving his hand, making it clear he wasn’t interested, the Navigator in the red and white helmet said sharply, “This guy’s dead and that kid has no chip.”
He didn’t want to let go of his son, but there wasn’t much choice. If he resisted then they might start shooting and he didn’t want Charlie to die. Feeling his son lifted from his body, he was left with a lonely coolness across his chest. The Navigator in the grey helmet was running a gloved hand across his son’s forehead, sweeping his dark hair from his face. “He has a pretty high temperature.”
“He’s got no chip. We’ll have to take him back with us.” Still looking at him, the Navigator in the red and white helmet asked, “Why are you reporting as dead?”
“System error?”
The speaker in the Navigator’s helmet picked up a loud sigh, amplifying the sound. “Shiiit. Nothing ever works around here.” Grabbing him by the arm, he pulled him towards the black truck. “We’ll take you both back.”
Climbing inside of the truck, he found himself shoved into a partitioned area. Joan was already sitting on the long bench, seemingly comfortable while she flirted with one of the Navigators on the other side of the mesh barrier. His son, unhappy at being handled by the heavily armored Navigator, let out a loud and disgusted wail.
Scooting along the bench, Joan held out her arms. “Give him to me.”
Taking his son through the door before it closed, she cradled him in her arms, making soothing noises until he grew quiet again.
“Is he yours?” One of the Navigator’s asked.
Before Joan could answer, a harsh voice cut across the truck. “No talking to the prisoners.”
The gate on their temporary prison opened again and a man was pushed onto the bench next to him. While he was still gently stroking his son’s forehead, the newly arrived man looked over at him. “Sick is he?”
“Yeah.”
“So, why have you been arrested?”
“My chip says I’m dead.”
The man was probably in his forties. He had a worried-looking face, but his eyes twinkled when he guffawed loudly. “There’s been quite the epidemic. Lots of people are dead nowadays.”
“Shut up in there!”
Leaning until he was close enough to the man, he asked in a low voice, “What do you mean?”
Despite his anxious looking features, the man’s eyes were alight with amusement. “The Guild are on the warpath, retesting everyone and killing anyone who has the wrong DNA.”
“You don’t seem worried about that.”
Banging his flat hand against the wire mesh, he shouted, “I’m not even a little bit worried.” Several Navigators turned to look at the man so that his face was reflecting in their visors. The man pointed an accusing finger at them. “Keep it up! You’re fueling the revolution.”
“I told you to shut up in there!”
On hearing the second warning, the man gave the Navigator a one-fingered salute, making it clear that he didn’t care what he said.
Although he respected the man’s courage it made him wonder if he was insane. “Are you trying to die?”
Speaking loudly so everyone in the truck could hear, the man stood up. “Nobody wants Dunk’s rules. They’re crap. We’ve all lost family to the enemy DNA, every single one of us.” The truck was moving at a reasonable pace, making the man sway as he leaned against the mesh barrier. Hooking his fingers into the mesh, the man thrust his face at the row of Navigators. “Is this what you want? Did you sign up to kill people or enemy aliens, whatever the hell they are?”
To his surprise, the man wasn’t told to shut up again. The four Navigators were sitting on the long bench on the other side of the mesh wall. Despite their identical and expressionless helmets, they appeared dejected.
With his free hand, he pointed at each of the Navigators. “Did you mean to be murderers or has Dunk warped you? Is killing your unborn baby, your niece, nephew, friend or neighbor worth the privileges you get for being Navigators? Is that what their lives are worth?”
When no one answered him, he pressed his face against the mesh. “There’s another way. Join the revolution. Be a force for good. Don’t be murderers.”
Finally, the Navigator wearing the red and white helmet launched onto his feet, banging his armored hand against the mesh. “Sit down and shut up!”
His words might have been blunt, but he detected an edge of uncertainty. Whoever the anxious looking man was, he’d gotten under their skin. Maybe he was right and there was a revolution underway.
Pulling at the man’s jacket, he tugged him back onto the bench. Leaning his head close enough to be heard, he said, “Tell me what’s been going on.”
CHAPTER SIX:
Sleeping Beauty
(Ark Three)
“Can you wake him?”
The Trachan passing for a doctor looked at him in surprise. “I don’t know why he’s asleep.”
He wasn’t sure why the Bombardier they’d found on board the ship was unconscious either. The nanobytes had welded his suit to the deck, feeding it with power. If he’d been anything other than a Bombardier he would have died, but needing little to survive the man was still alive. Well, at least his heart was still beating and he assumed that was a good sign.
After removing the man from the decking, he’d taken him back to Tracha in a Scorpion, leaving Tank and the fleet to look for the Bombardiers in space. It took considerable force to kill or injure a Bombardier, meaning they rarely lost one much less hundreds. There was a remote possibility that some might still be alive. When it came to managing the nanobytes, Tiana had an almost sixth sense about what they could do, so he’d asked her to stay with Tank. Looking down at the granite face of the only known survivor of the attack, he couldn’t understand what was wrong with him.
“No sleep.”
Turning, he was surprised Mariana was standing in the doorway to the room. “What does that mean?”
Her purple eyes were steady and she drifted into the room. Since joining them, she’d lost weight, turning her into a willowy figure. Her high cheekbones were sharply defined, making her eyes look even larger. No one had cut her wild, honey-colored hair and now it reached below her hips.
Running her strangely long fingers across his face, she looked at him from across the bed. “Mind broken.”
“You mean he’s brain damaged?”
Shaking her head, she continued touching the man’s head, stopping at times to probe deeper. “Fix broken.”
“We don’t know how to do that. The medics in CaliTech could probably help him, but…it’s not how they fix people on Tracha.”
When she looked at him again, her eyes were half-open and hooded. “You not for me.”
Mariana might understand their language, but her use of words was strange. “I’m not yours?”
“No.”
“Is that bad?”
Hesitating, she sighed. “It is true.”
He supposed he wasn’t hers, but he didn’t understand why she was telling him that now. The man on the bed was dying so her timing was off. “Okaaay.”
“Man important?”
Looking down at the Bombardier on the bed, he asked, “Is this man important?”
“Yes.”
“Yeah, he’s one of ours.”
“Belong to you.”
Unsure where she was leading, he nodded.
Moving to the top of the bed, she placed her fingertips on either side of the Bombardier’s hea
d. “For you.”
Her palms flattened so that she held his head in her hands, sighing deeply as she did. Her face twisted in pain, her lips parted and she began panting as if something was tearing her apart. It only took a moment and then she clutched her head, dropping below the top of the bed. Quickly moving around it, he found her lying awkwardly on the floor.
Dropping to one knee, he pulled her hands away from her head. “Mariana, what’s happening?”
Flipping her head back as if she could no longer control it, she gave him a wistful smile. “For you.”
The tension in her body ebbed away until she was slumping backwards onto the floor. He couldn’t call for a medic. There weren’t any to be had. Picking her up in his arms, he was shocked at how light she was. Placing her gently on the bed next to the Bombardier, he didn’t know what to do next. Not only did Tracha lack doctors, even if they had any they wouldn’t know what to do with Mariana’s species. Running his Bombardier vision across her body, he detected heat. She wasn’t dead, but she appeared to have joined the Bombardier in sleeping.
Before he had time to wonder why, someone groaned. “My head hurts.”
Spinning around, unsure which patient to deal with first, he was confronted by the Bombardier pulling himself upright. “Why did you just wake up?”
“Was I sleeping?” Looking around at what Tracha called a medical bay, his mouth dropped open in surprise. “Where am I?”
“Tracha.”
“How’d I get here?”
“We found the ship. You were the only person left alive. The nanobytes kept your suit powered.”
Looking past him at Mariana, he asked, “What happened to her?”
“I don’t know, but it had something to do with fixing you.” Torn between wanting to question the Bombardier and help Mariana, he wanted more information. “What happened on the ship?”
“It was a robot. We don’t know how it got onboard, but it tore us apart. C sent the Scorpions out looking for its ship, but there wasn’t one so she called them back.” He rubbed his eyes as if he were trying to fade a memory. “The robot blew a Scorpion in the docking bay and that set off a chain reaction. Then it had some sort of missile that wiped out the living quarters. When it got to the Bridge, it just blasted out the hull taking the crew with it.”
A tingling sensation ran down his spine. “Are you telling me that one robot took out the whole ship?”
The Bombardier’s shoulders rounded as he slumped forward. “Not just that. When it was finished it vanished.”
“How?”
“I don’t know. It just disappeared.”
CaliTech might be full of clever engineers, but even they hadn’t invented teleportation. “Maybe it self-destructed.”
“No way. I made it to the exit and there was no sign of it.”
“Did it get pulled into space?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Do you know where the robot came from? I mean, did it look alien?”
Looking up at him, the Bombardier’s upper lip curled. “No, it was covered in the same sort of skin as an Earth ship.”
Where he and Tank had only suspected Dunk Two destroyed the ship, the Bombardier had just confirmed it. Dunk Two made the first strike, succeeding in taking out a BattleRig with over two hundred crew.
“Son of a critter.”
Turning to look at Mariana, she was lying motionless, but breathing steadily. Gently touching her cheek, he leaned closer to her face. “Mariana?”
“Is she alright?”
“I don’t think so.”
“What’s wrong with her?”
Sighing deeply, he tried to understand what she’d done. The Bombardier had been unconscious and she’d asked if he wanted him back. It was when he’d said yes that she’d touched his head, seeming to take on the same injury. Is that what she’d done? Had she taken his injury to heal him?
“I think…I think she healed you.”
“How did she do that?”
“I don’t know, but you were unconscious and now she is instead of you.”
“Maybe it’s a coincidence.”
Turning to give the Bombardier a disgusted look, he replied, “Don’t be dumb.” Flicking his hand at him, he added, “And get up. You’re not wounded anymore and we’ve got work to do.”
Swinging his legs from the bed, the Bombardier stood until they were face to face. “What about her?”
Looking down at Mariana, her honey-colored hair was framing her pale face. She looked so fragile it was hard to believe she’d taken on such a devastating injury and survived. He wanted to take care of her just as she’d saved his Bombardier, but the Trachans couldn’t help her. Everywhere he turned, all roads kept leading him back to CaliTech and Dunk Two.
Feeling his jaw harden, he turned back to the Bombardier. “I need to take her to CaliTech, but we’re not on speaking terms.”
“What does that mean?”
“We’re going to war.”
CHAPTER SEVEN:
The Reluctant King
(Ark Three)
Thirty thousand Bombardiers and Navigators were standing facing the podium. Their dark colored armored suits were in sharp contrast to the brilliant silver beneath their feet. Clustered together in groups, they all carried weapons with loaded packs by their side. He and Tank had formed seven Battalions, each one with twenty BattleRigs. Every rig carried thirty Scorpions. The BattleRigs were lined up behind the troopers, loaded with as many weapons and armaments as they could carry. Several enormous supply ships sat behind the heavily armed cruisers, ready to follow them in space.
BattleRigs used Heavy Ion Particle beams fired as pulses to punch through a ship’s armor, frying any electrics they hit. Particle beams dispersed in space like lasers, but the heavy ions slowed the rate of movement, giving them a much greater range. They also carried large railguns and a variety of seeker missiles. They used the nuclear missiles to attack other battleships or planets and swarms of mini-missiles for widespread damage. Scorpions were fitted with standard pulsed particle beams for close range fighting and sixteen ship-to-ship seeker missiles.
The excited chatter of thousands of troopers rumbled around him. Acting as if they were going on a picnic, they were waiting for him to order them to war. Truth was, none of them had ever been to war. Dunk Two might claim they were at war with the enemy aliens, but no one had ever seen them until recently. All of his training in the Navigator Academy had been theoretical, not grounded in anything real. Even his trainers had been born during peacetime, so none had ever fought any sort of battle in space or on Earth.
All he needed to do was order them to their ships and the war would begin. Tank leaned his head close to his. “What are you waiting for?”
He didn’t know how many troops he would lose in the fight, but he wouldn’t see this many soldiers when they returned. Would he lose half of them or all? Dunk Two had killed over two hundred of them without putting a single one of his own soldiers at risk. He was clearly better prepared than they were, using his technology to do the heavy lifting.
“We have to be prepared to lose.”
“Nobody wins in war.”
That was probably true, but nothing he could say to inspire his troops. They needed to believe they were on a worthy mission, otherwise why would they be willing to die? Dunk Two had something they all needed in some way. For most of the troops, all they wanted was to be allowed to go home. The Trachans needed the cell manipulation to continue their species. Mariana was still unconscious, in desperate need of medical help. Tank was still holding a grudge against Dunk, and he wanted to free Earth of Dunk’s rules.
“I’m not a killer, but I’m leading them into a war.”
“You’ve never been tested so you don’t know what you are.”
“That’s my point.” Giving Tank and unhappy look, he added, “I don’t think I’m qualified to do this.”
His blunt confession was met by a roar of laughter from Tank. Slapping
his shoulder so hard that he rocked slightly on his feet, Tank gave him a wide grin. “Do you think a man is taught to fight?”
If a man couldn’t be taught then he’d wasted five years of his life at the Navigator Academy. Seeing his questioning look, Tank added, “You can be taught how to use a weapon and to kill someone, but that doesn’t make you a killer. Most people only kill in self-defense. It takes a special sort of asshole to make the first strike.”
“Dunk Two already did that when he wiped out our ship.”
Tank nodded. “Yes, he did because he’s just that special.”
He was well aware that Dunk Two had no conscience. “What’s your point?”
“Do you want to be King?”
“Of what?”
Tank waved his arms at the troops that were restlessly waiting for him to speak. “Do you want to rule the Universe?”
It was a strange question, which he answered without thinking. “No. It’s…it’s a lot of work.”
Slapping him hard again, Tank nodded enthusiastically. “And that’s why you should be King.” When he looked at him in confusion, Tank grinned again. “You don’t want the job. You see it as hard work because it is. Once you’re the boss then people look to you to make decisions, solve their problems and keep them safe. But that doesn’t feed your ego, it just wears you out.”
“What’s your point?”
“Someone has to take charge, Ark, and it can’t be any of the Dunks. Your grandfather conceded to Dunk and look where it got us.” Sweeping his arm at the thirty thousand troops, he spoke earnestly. “If they hadn’t become Bombardiers then they’d be at the mercy of the Dunks, just like their families still are. They became Bombardiers because Dunk’s rules made it the only logical choice.” Shaking his head, he looked at the ground as if he were remembering things he’d never shared. “You don’t need to be like your grandfather, you need to be more than he was. Ark wouldn’t kill Dunk, but if he had we wouldn’t be here now.”
“Are you saying this is my grandfather’s fault?”