by J. N. Chaney
“Score is 1-1!” someone called out.
“Get him, Beni!” another bellowed.
I thought they miscounted, but I quickly realized that Beni had a puffy eye that would likely turn black. It must have happened while Rackham and I were talking.
The two men resumed circling. Beni tried to drop his guard again, but Alrich had caught on to the move and didn’t fall for it. I could tell from the little changes in Alrich’s stance that he was planning another. The Sarkonian saw it too and tensed, readying himself for it. His right fist jerked a little and his left foot moved forward a fraction.
When the Eternal moved in, Beni swung out with a quick jab. There was some power behind it and it would have been a good hit had it landed. Using his right hand, Alrich grabbed Beni’s wrist and yanked the Sarkonian into a spin. It was a simple but effective action that allowed Alrich to sweep the legs and put Beni on his back.
“2-1!”
Alrich stepped back and let Beni regain his feet. They continued to trade blows while Rackham and I watched. It was interesting to see two different cultures’ ways of fighting. Beni favored a mixture of Sarkonian street and dock fighting, something I’d always appreciated for its raw methodology—quick jabs and powerful strikes that just kept coming, designed to wear an opponent out.
In stark contrast, Alrich was measured. He observed and reacted, his moves practiced and sure. Instead of landing punishing hits, the Eternal opted for precision—well aimed blows that were designed to cause maximum damage with little effort. Both equally dangerous, the pair was more evenly matched than I’d initially thought. When they broke apart, Leif’s man only led by two points.
Sweat ran in little rivers down their faces and backs. Exhaustion was starting to set in, as evidenced by the heavy breaths both dragged in by the lungful and sluggish movements. Beni rushed forward, going low. For a moment, I thought he would get under the albino’s guard, but Alrich stepped in and crouched. The elbow he threw caught the Sarkonian in the solar plexus. Beni let out an oomph noise and stumbled back.
Another cheer erupted, but it only seemed to come from the part of the crowd with Union and people from Earth. The Sarkonians present stayed silent, their arms crossed. They booed when Alrich held out a hand, offering to help Beni to his feet. The smaller man went red and yanked his arm back. It must have seemed like an odd response to Alrich, who was unfamiliar with Sarkonian customs. They were well known for not showing weakness to anyone, not even their own ranks. Or maybe especially their own ranks.
I should have predicted what happened next. A Union soldier taunted one of the Sarkonians, who didn’t take the insult too kindly. It only took one shove, then both men were rolling around on the ground trading punches.
“That’s our cue,” I told Rackham.
He nodded and pushed through the crowd with me, yelling for them to break it up.
Soldiers snapped to attention at the sound of his voice and made a path for us. Most of the commotion died off before we reached the brawling pair still rolling around on the floor. They didn’t seem to notice the change in atmosphere and continued to grunt and thump each other. Together, Rackham and I grabbed one each and hauled them off of each other. Rackham had the Union soldier in hand, leaving me with the Sarkonian. The man jerked one of his elbows back, catching my jaw.
The force of it brought my head back and I cursed. “Knock it off, godsdammit!”
That finally got through to them and they both stopped struggling. Upon seeing my face, the Sarkonian—Rahal, his uniform said—paled slightly. “Captain Hughes! Sorry, sir.”
Since his temper had waned considerably, I let him go. “This isn’t what we had in mind when we called for team training,” I said in a gruff voice, making sure it carried to the room. “Instead of using this time to pummel each other, try learning.”
“We’re sparring,” said an anonymous voice in the back of the small crowd.
“You’re fighting,” I corrected. “And I’m willing to bet that none of you got shit out of this except a quick thrill and a few pairs of socks.”
There was shuffling among the soldiers and more than a few guilty faces.
Rackham glared down at his man. “Lewis, tell me how you would defend against your opponent based on what you saw today.”
The man gulped. “I’m not sure, sir.”
All business, Rackham turned away in disgust. “We have three nations here and a hell of a lot of fighting experience. If you’re against each other, you’re not thinking about the Celestials. From now on, all training sessions will be assigned. You will learn to work together.”
The room had gone still when we finally walked out. When the door closed behind us, Rackham grinned. “Been a while since I got to give a dressing down.”
I chuckled. “Well, Rackham, you ain’t lost your touch, I’ll give you that.”
As we walked, he took out his data pad and gave it a few taps. Grinning, he passed it to me. “You too, Hughes.”
The pad had a video feed queued up. At once, I recognized it as the training room we’d just vacated. Alrich and Beni were back in the middle of the circle, but the ring was no longer cheering. Instead, they watched intently as Alrich punched slowly at Beni. He stopped midway and retracted his fist. Beni mirrored the move, and I studied the pair. It took a second for me to grasp what they were doing.
“They’re teaching each other,” I said, impressed. “Not bad at all.”
The corners of Rackham’s mouth tugged up and formed the first genuine smile I’d seen in a while. I returned it with one of my own and gave the lieutenant a friendly slap on the black.
Somewhere outside a system I’d never heard of, Tartarus hurtled through slipspace. I watched from an observation room that Carl had recently revealed to us. We originally thought Tartarus didn’t have any, but its architects had built them for some unknown reason. It didn’t quite fit for me that they would have created the room for simple pleasure.
I’d never been in a slip tunnel this massive before. They always emitted a low level crackling sound that could be heard if you strained your ears enough. This one, however, fairly roared, the sound barely filtered out by the Tartarus’ thick metal hull. The deeper you went within, the more it was drowned out, but it could still be heard, like a raging storm outside a building. The dancing green walls rose up and curved out of sight. I couldn’t see the bottom because the tunnel was the size of a planet to accommodate our vessel, and the window was situated roughly in the middle of it all. Not even Titan could have created one of this size.
Aside from just its size, the tunnel itself seemed different, too. The familiar green lightning storm still raged on, but in concentrated sections that leapt around, the rest made up of a murky haze of what seemed like purple smoke and fog. I didn’t know much about the science behind slipspace, and normally I didn’t really care, but now I wondered what Tartarus had done differently to create such a place and whether we were even traveling through the same slipspace at all. As I stared out into the green haze, I began to see what resembled another layer, almost like an invisible wall between us and the outer reaches of the tunnel. It was almost like we were inside a bubble—one that had been stretched to the absolute limit, if such a thing were even possible. If that was true, was it possible to break it? If so, would we ever want to?
Previously, when we’d seen this new kind of slipspace, Abigail had said it was beautiful, and Dressler had commented that it was a curious change. Lex would have appreciated this as well, I mused. The kid had a curious mind, and I figured this would have her glued to the glass.
The image of her walking away dejectedly stuck in my thoughts again. I wasn’t much on feelings, but I did miss the kid. Even the goat, if I was being honest. Maybe not when it ate my clothes and made a mess though. Still, it made me feel better to imagine the animal soothing her in our absence. I still couldn’t help feeling a little guilty at the way we had to leave without saying our proper goodbyes. Couldn’t dwell on
it though, and Lex was the most adaptable kid that I’d ever met and I knew she’d bounce back.
Intending on getting back to work, I took one last look out the view port and froze. “What the hell?”
A disturbance in the tunnel wall caught my attention. I leaned in too fast, almost smacking my face on the glass. The anomaly disappeared but I kept staring, unable to believe my eyes. For just a moment the haze had cleared, and I’d seen something...else. Solid shapes, tall and sleek, almost like towers.
But that was impossible.
“Carl,” I snapped.
The Celestial Cognitive materialized beside me. “Yes, Hughes?”
“Did we just pass by a planet or something?” I asked, trying to rationalize what I had just seen. We must have passed through a system with a colonized world. Maybe a thin spot in whatever slipspace was made of. What else could it have been?
“One moment,” said Carl.
I waited impatiently, scanning the tunnel wall in case it happened again, but all I saw was the emerald lighting.
“There are no planets near our present location,” Carl said after a few beats. “While we are in slipspace, we are travelling through a dark region of normal space and have been for at least the last half hour.”
“Can’t be. I just saw…” Not wanting to sound like an idiot, I trailed off. “I saw something.”
The Celestial flicked his wrist in answer. The view port became a display. It was a feed of the room we currently occupied. I appeared in it as well, standing there looking out at the tunnel. “I matched the time of your reaction to our location at that exact moment,” he explained. Another image formed next to the feed, this one depicting our course. Carl pointed at our position, which was clearly marked. “This region is largely empty. The nearest star to that location was here, approximately.”
Carl pointed again and a new marker showed up.
“How far is that?” I asked.
“Over five light years,” Carl answered.
“Are there any populated planets in the system?” I asked.
“I’m afraid not, Hughes. None of the star’s orbiting bodies are in the habitable zone and none have been terraformed or colonized. One of them is made of burning ice, the rest are—”
“Burning ice?” I cut in. What fresh new hell was that?
“I’m afraid so. As I was saying, the rest are equally inhospitable.” He paused and flicked his wrist again, returning the view to the swirling slip tunnel. “May I ask what you saw?”
I lifted a shoulder. “Nothing, I guess. Just my eyes playing tricks on me.”
“That might be,” he said. “Still, if you would indulge me, perhaps I could be of more assistance.”
Beyond the window, slipspace slid by, looking the same as it had before. Finally, I gave up and turned my attention back to Carl. “It was some kind of”—I paused, trying to remember the details—“like a city, maybe. I saw towers, I think.”
Even though Carl was a Cognitive, I half expected him to laugh. Instead, his eyes flashed with interest. “Could you describe the structures?”
“Tall and silver, with a glass dome,” I said. “Why?”
Carl flicked his wrist and brought up an image. It looked like a sketch someone had drawn on a datapad, judging from the lack of symmetry. And it was almost exactly what I’d seen in the tunnel wall: several towers rising out of a plane, surrounded by lightning and haze. “That’s it,” I confirmed. “But how did you get that?”
His brow furrowed slightly in what I assumed was a Cognitive’s perplexed expression. “You are not the first to describe such a phenomenon,” he stated.
“Are you saying Celestials have seen it?” I asked.
“That’s correct,” he replied.
I waited for him to go on, but when he didn’t, I continued. “Well, what the hell is it?”
“I cannot say,” Carl admitted. “Sensors have never been able to detect it.” It seemed to rankle the Celestial that he didn’t have an answer.
“You said others have seen it,” I said. “How many?”
“One other,” he replied. “And when the individual’s claims could not be substantiated, they were dismissed.”
“I guess we can’t exactly ask them either.”
Carl smiled and dipped his chin cordially. “Indeed. They are long deceased.”
“Maybe you can check the archives in your spare time for any other offhand mentions of something like this,” I suggested.
Carl clasped his hands together and dipped forward a little in a quick bow. “I shall do that. Anything else, Captain?”
I decided to put the strange image aside for now and move on to more pressing issues. “Were you able to locate anything in the Archives that could help with our Athena problem?”
“Unfortunately not. While capsules are noted, there are no—” He paused mid-sentence and his eyes flickered. “Pardon me, Captain. It’s time to check communications again. Excuse me while I open a rift to take us out of the tunnel.”
While he did that, I tapped my comm. “Siggy, we’re about to hit the next S.G. Point. Are you ready to transmit?”
The Cognitive appeared next to me. “I am, sir.”
A few minutes later, Tartarus exited into the calm of normal space, and Carl relaxed.
Sigmond froze temporarily, likely processing the transmission to Earth. I had to imagine it took a toll on his matrix considering how far we were from home.
“Any updates?” I asked, staring at his golden aura.
Before he even answered, I knew something terrible had happened. The Cognitive’s usually relaxed features were drawn tight.
“What is it, Siggy?” I asked.
He frowned. “It’s Lex, sir,” he finally told me. “She’s missing.”
5
“What do you mean, missing?” I barked out. My mouth had gone abruptly dry at the news and the words wanted to stick in my throat. I had to have heard that wrong.
“It appears that Lex missed class this morning,” Sigmond informed me, shattering any further illusions.
“Oh. That’s not really a big deal,” I said, dragging a hand through my hair. For a long, shitty second, I’d envisioned the girl hurt or kidnapped again. Clearing my throat, I continued. “I did it all the time as a kid and I turned out alright.” I grinned at the Cognitive, but he didn’t smile back.
“This is different,” he replied, too grave for my liking.
“Look, she’s probably off somewhere with her goat,” I said.
Sigmond frowned and waved a hand at the viewing window.
Hitchens’ face filled the display, his large jowls wobbling as he spoke. “Captain Hughes, we have a situation here. Lex has disappeared. She was supposed to spend the night with a friend after you left. It’s not uncommon for her to do so and come to class with her companion the next day, only this time she did not arrive, and her friend tells me she didn’t stay over.” The words tumbled out of his mouth almost too fast to decipher. “A search of Verdun has proven fruitless.”
The professor paused and moved out of the way as another familiar face came into view.
Karin.
“Captain, we’re still searching, both with groups and the tech at our disposal,” the woman explained. “We will continue to do so. However, it is my belief that she is no longer on Earth. Our next scheduled transmission is in two hours. If anything breaks before then, you’ll know about it as soon as you drop out of slipspace.”
The display went blank.
I stared at it for a long moment, unable to comprehend what she’d just told me. This couldn’t be happening, not again. And we were too far away to do anything about it. If Lex was indeed no longer on Earth, it might take a lot of time to determine where and how she’d been abducted. I couldn’t imagine anyone with the balls to try stealing her again, but I wouldn’t discount the possibility.
“Get the main crew to the Star,” I ordered. “And get a transmission going with Hitchens or Karin on the b
ridge.”
Then I was gone, running for my ship.
Sigmond used Tartarus’ emitters to keep up with me, his form flashing in and out of sight as I raced down the hall. “Right away, sir,” he said as he blipped out of existence and reappeared around the next corner. “They have been alerted.”
A dozen scenarios whipped through my head as I booked it through the ancient Celestial ship. The first revolved around the Sarkonians and the Union. It wouldn’t be the first time they’d tried to steal my girl from me. If either of them had broken our treaty to take the kid, I’d show rain fire and death on whoever was responsible.
With anger quickly mounting in my eye, I sprinted the rest of the way to the Renegade Star.
I didn’t stop running until I hit the Star’s bridge. To my relief, Abigail was there, along with Octavia. Both women looked terrified and murderous, a sentiment I currently shared. Shaw stood with them, concern etched into the lines of his face.
Hitchens was already connected via holo and he looked more beside himself than I’d ever seen before.
“Everyone else is on their way,” Abigail said. She broke away from Octavia and came to me, an almost feral look in her eyes. “We have to find her, Jace.”
“I know,” I said. “We’re going to. Siggy, see if you can interface with Earth’s systems and do a sweep with the drones.”
“Stand by, sir.” The Cognitive disappeared again. That kind of task would no doubt take a great deal of his concentration, such as it was.
“Sir, if I may,” began Junior.
“Not now, Junior,” I snapped. “Status, Hitchens.” It took some doing to think with rationale instead of barking out orders to turn return back to Earth.
“She still hasn’t been found. Captain, I don’t know where she could be.” He sounded frantic, his words coming out so fast it was hard to separate them. The skin of his face jiggled from the motion and the area around his eyes was creased with worry.
“We’ve been gone nearly 16 hours, Hitchens. What the hell happened?” I started pacing the room, anxious to keep moving.