by Regine Abel
I wanted more time to properly court her, show her the beauties of my world, and discover the ones from hers. I wanted to touch her belly as our daughter grew in her womb and stimulate the psionic mind of our unborn child to strengthen her and our bond. It saddened me to know her Korlethean psionic powers would be stunted without me. Korlethean children developed most of their powers, and especially telepathy, during pregnancy, and needed to make a mental bond with their sire the moment they drew their first breath. Lyra’s psionic mind would seek mine in vain. And without me mentally communicating with her on a regular—ideally daily—basis, she would grow without basic psionic combat, defense, and communication skills, just like all the other Veredians sired by a Korlethean.
Had Saren not shunned her as a child, Kamala’s psionic strikes would have been deadly. And instead of hurrying now to the training room hoping she wasn’t almost done, I could have simply told her telepathically that I was on my way. A few of the Veredian Titans had actually managed to achieve some level of telepathy. From my years observing them, I knew the Praghan children regularly communicated that way among themselves. I suspected the Dervhen twins also could do it. Looking back, I wished I had gotten involved in the Titans’ training from the start. The things we could have achieved with them… Eryon had been right all along. We’d been too blind.
Hindsight is a bitch.
And now, I was out of time.
My steps quickly took me to the training room. The door swished open before me, and I barely managed to dodge a shot from a Guldan Warrior’s blaster. It hadn’t been aimed at me but at my goddess of a mate, moving around the simulation with the grace of a dancer, the speed of a zorak, and the lethal precision of a krillik’s strike. Celesium sword in one hand and her blaster in the other, she slashed and blasted the holographic enemies generated by the military grade Hunter Program installed in the room.
Thanks to the advanced artificial intelligence of the program, the enemies made smart use of the natural covers found within the room and attacked their target in a coordinated fashion using both swords and blasters. Anytime they landed a hit, Kalama would get zapped through one of the neural patches on her skin—assuming she had put them on. I couldn’t tell with her Tuurean armor covering her from head to toe. But, knowing my woman, my gut told me she wouldn’t take the easy way out and would have used them. Judging by the armor her chosen enemies wore, she’d selected one of the highest difficulty levels, which meant the pain from the zaps would be near realistic, and therefore excruciating. The program was impossible to beat as an increasing number of enemies would join the fray until their target became overwhelmed. The AI would then immediately stop the simulation.
I was curious to see how close she could get to my record or if she would beat it. As long as I didn’t link into the program, the enemies would ignore me. But I couldn’t remain still for long, dying to experience fighting side by side with my mate. Hugging the walls, I made my way to the armor and weapons stands. It took me longer than usual to get into my combat suit, too mesmerized by the sight of my woman in action.
After a few rapid stretches to warm up, I linked into the program, hoping Kamala would forgive me the intrusion. A few of the Guldans attacking her peeled off to refocus their attention on me. My mate didn’t balk, moving aside to make room for me at the strategic position she’d taken to combat the onslaught. Kamala loved to battle. She radiated joy, excitement, and a sense of ultimate power. Even getting nearly beheaded by an opponent had her emotions spiking with thrill.
Minutes into the fray, my awe and affection for my soulmate only grew further. Kamala was a true protector and the perfect teammate. She didn’t welcome me trying to fight for her but loved me fighting alongside her. We quickly found our rhythm, one going into offense while the other covered defense and vice-versa. Although it was our first time battling together, we naturally knew how to move around each other, not getting mutually in our way, but flowing through our steps as if in a perfectly choreographed dance.
I had seen the recording of Amalia’s Confirmation Ceremony. When Guldans had raided it, Kamala had used her armored braid to catch and reel in the attacker before impaling him on her sword. I’d also heard of nasty spikes protruding from the braid’s armor, tearing to shreds the hand of enemies who thought to hold onto it to yank her head back. And while I’d finally got to witness these moves firsthand, I hadn’t expected the following one.
We were nearing our breaking point with the onslaught soon to overwhelm us when, in a concerted attack against Kamala, one of three Guldans managed to knock her sword from her hand. Without missing a beat, my warrior goddess shot one of them in the face. Simultaneously, she whisked her head sideways making her braid whip to her front. The instant Kamala’s fingers closed around it, the front end hardened into a spear which she thrust into the second Guldan’s gut. It pierced all the way to his back, then a string-like blade lifted from each side of the braid, cutting him in half. Flowing into the movement, she spun around and kicked the third Guldan in the face. He stumbled, nearly falling, but before he could do so, Kamala slashed his throat with the bladed tip of her braid.
If not for our enemies being holograms that disintegrated upon death, we’d be standing on mounds of corpses and drenched in blood. But as it stood, our own bodies would soon be hitting the ground as, outgunned and outnumbered, my mate and I both began getting zapped an increasing number of times as our enemies managed to land a few hits and blows.
The program suddenly shut down just as the ship was violently rocked as if by an explosion, nearly knocking us both to the floor. Kamala deactivated the visor of her armor to cast a confused glance my way, worry oozing out of her. Breathing heavily, muscles burning from my recent efforts, I opened my mouth to ask the AI what was wrong when two more tremors shook the ship in quick succession. My blood turned to ice as red lights hidden in the corners of the ceiling began blinking.
“Status?” I asked the ship’s AI while rushing out of the room.
“Secondary Engine A is no longer functioning,” Tia said with her usual dispassionate voice. “There is a hull breach in Engine Room A. The heat in Engine Room B is reaching critical levels. The temperature in the Main Engine Room is above normal and rising.”
What the fuck?
“Contain the secondary engine rooms A and B and shut down the Secondary Engine A,” I ordered, running to the bridge with Kamala hot on my heels. “And run ship-wide diagnostics.”
“Unable to contain the secondary engine rooms A and B. Systems not responding. Shutting down Secondary Engine A,” the A.I. answered.
A quick glance at the scanner embedded in my armband confirmed there were no other ships in our vicinity, and we hadn’t sustained any direct attack. So what the fuck had gone wrong?
“Diagnostic completed,” the AI said as we entered the bridge.
“Display,” I ordered, bewildered by the number of alarms blinking on the ship’s status map.
A quick look at the report had cold sweat running down my back.
“Sharaz take me,” I muttered, disbelieving.
“What in Gharah’s name happened?” Kamala asked, the same shock I felt plain to see on her face.
“Computer, reactivate the cooling systems in all engine rooms and reduce the oxygen levels back to normal,” I ordered, while assessing the extent of the damage we had sustained and in how critical of a state we were actually in.
“Negative. The override command prevents me from complying.”
My stomach dropped, and a sense of dread washed over me as an understanding I didn’t want to believe took root in my mind.
“What override command?”
“Override received through encrypted com from the Imperial Agency’s High Command,” Tia said in her emotionless, synthetic voice. “Orders received stated: ‘Disable and lock all security systems. Disable all critical warning systems. Disable cooling systems in all engine rooms. Double oxygen supplies in all engine rooms. Disable com
systems and block all incoming or outgoing messages. Lock access to all rank five commands.’”
“Damn him to the darkest pit of Sharaz’s lair,” I snarled, my blood boiling with fury.
I had known Daleus to be a snake, but I’d never believed he’d go to such extremes. Then again, he had to know I’d expose him and his spy to the rest of the Quorum. I’d expected some sort of foul play and triple checked the ship for any virus or any form of tampering. It shamed me to admit I’d been outplayed, never having expected he’d convince someone holding one of the highest roles at the Agency to abuse their power in such a way.
Without the cooling systems working, the additional oxygen would make the engine perform even more, and overheat until it either started a fire, blew up, or both.
“I need to do a manual override,” I said to Kamala, my fingers flying over the holographic keyboard on the ship’s navigation board.
Kamala nodded and, walking up to the monitors, she flicked through the camera feeds from the engine rooms. Under different circumstances, I’d have been both impressed and worried by how easily she figured out how to operate it, despite it all being written in Korlethean.
“That’s a really bad breach in the engine room,” Kamala said with an amazing calm. Despite the worry emanating from her, my mate’s years of experience on the battlefront shone bright as she remained cool, collected, and focused on the task at hand. “How long before you can get the containment fields up?”
“I don’t know. It might take a while to crack through all of these commands,” I said, honestly.
“I’ll go set up a temporary one, then. You focus on shutting down Secondary Engine B before it blows up, too,” she said, turning towards the door.
“It’s too dangerous for you in there!” I exclaimed, catching her forearm.
Kamala smiled, closed the distance between us, and gently kissed my lips. “Aleina let me on this ship because Eryon had a vision of me alive and well long after this mission. So, don’t worry about me. Let’s just make sure you also make it out alive.”
My stomach knotted painfully at my woman’s words. If she only knew… Schooling my features, I released her with a conceding smile. She winked at me and turned around. The armored visor of her suit reformed around her head as she hurried out of the room.
Heart aching, I turned back to the board and frantically worked on regaining control of my ship.
CHAPTER 13
Kamala
As soon as I opened the door of Engine Room A, the internal display of my visor lit up with multiple warnings. My suit’s temperature regulators immediately kicked in as a wall of heat slapped me. My boots clamped down on the dark-brown metal plates of the floor to help me resist the vacuum effect of the fractured wall on the opposite side of the damaged engine. Aside from the darkened shell, it appeared intact from this side, but no doubt had a gaping hole on the other where it had ejected the parts that had damaged the hull.
Although it would have been more efficient to walk up to the fissure and apply my power directly there, battling the suction from space would make my work harder. Furthermore, the whining sound of the metal hinted the breech might stretch further. If and when it did, standing anywhere near it would likely mean giving my sorry ass a free tumble in the endless void of space. Sure, my suit would protect me, but that would only last so long with little chance of anyone scooping me up in time.
Placing my palm against the wall next to the door, I sent a neural command to the nanites in my suit. First, they slightly cooled the surface of the wall just enough to keep my skin from burning on contact, but not so much as to deplete the energy I would draw from the heat to fuel my power. Then they unraveled like a disk around my hand. To everyone else, the disk looked like a device with some kind of technical purpose. But in reality, it mainly served to deceive prying eyes into believing exactly that, so they didn’t realize it was psionic powers doing the work. Its second purpose, as in this case, was to protect our hand from being exposed to a potentially hostile environment by creating a protective shell around it while our naked palm touched the surface we needed to push our power into.
Shifting my vision, I stared at the damaged wall. A ghostly, gridded silhouette of the missing parts appeared before my eyes, showing me exactly where and how to temporarily mend what was broken. I loved working with inert material. The shapes were always so much simpler and straightforward, unlike living tissue that twisted and folded in on itself, with tiny threads going in every direction and complex connections that made it a slow and painstaking process.
“I’ve shutdown the secondary engine in Room B,” Xevius said over the intercom. “Working on the containment field.”
His voice startled me, but I welcomed the news. “Acknowledged. Great work!” I said before turning my attention back to my task.
I pushed my power into the wall, feeling it travel through the metal panels of the room, racing towards its destination. It wasn’t as strong as when I could use my power without my armor on and could therefore draw on every form of energy surrounding me. Still, the squares of the gridded, ethereal outline of the hole began filling. Halfway through, the metal groaned, and a massive tear expanded from the original breach.
Despite my magnetic boots, the air vacuum all but tore me off the floor and sent me flying across the room. If not for the engine between me and the gaping hole on the other side, I would have been tossed right out into space. Instead, I crashed violently against the damaged husk of the engine. Even with my armor padding me and absorbing the brunt of the impact, I got the wind knocked right out of me. Half-stunned, I vaguely heard Xevius shouting out my name over the intercom, having certainly felt the tremor and seen my predicament over the monitor. But I couldn’t worry about him right now: the very real threat of my self-prophesied ship-less trip through space had become far too likely.
I tumbled over the engine. Blindly grabbing at anything, my armored hand miraculously closed around one of the broken edges of the damaged section of the engine. With my feet floating behind me, I used the enhanced strength of my armor to pull my body closer to the wrecked machinery. Despite that assistance, the muscles in my arms burned from the strain, having too recently overexerted myself in the training room. Summoning all the energy I could muster, I forced my body to fold, lowering my legs until the magnetic pull of my boots drew them back to the floor. Thankfully, my suit auto adjusted to these new conditions and increased the magnetism of my footwear to compensate for the greater suction.
“Hang on, my mate!” Xevius shouted over the com. “Just a few more minutes. I’m almost there.”
Beneath the calm and reassuring tone of his voice, I could hear the underlying fear for me. I was freaking out, too, but I needed to keep my wits about me. With one more push, I lowered my body to the floor. Through neural command, I ordered the nanites to reduce the magnetism of my boots just enough for the vacuum to drag me to the breached wall, before I ordered them back to maximum strength. Leaning against the wall, I placed my palm on it and pushed my power into the gaping hole again. This time, with such a short distance to travel, my power restored the wall in no time at all, although if felt like an eternity to me.
The hole finally closed with a whistling sound, and an eerie silence filled the room, but for my labored breathing and my blood rushing in my ears. I remained seated on the floor, my legs stretched out in front of me, and both arms dangling by my side, feeling completely drained. The medbots in my suit went to work, the tingling sensation interspersed with tiny pricks as they injected me with me whatever they deemed necessary to maintain my body in optimal operating condition.
I scrambled to my feet and cast a satisfied glance at the glowing patch of wall I had created over the hole. Even with the considerable strain on it, the patch would hold for at least a couple of hours, maybe even three without me having to replenish it. Hopefully, Xevius would have the containment field up any minute now.
Without me, he would have died.
We weren’t out of trouble yet, but with the secondary engine no longer overheating, my repair should buy Xevius the time he needed to regain control of the ship… I hoped. However, as much as I loved that my presence had saved him, a million questions raced through my mind. Did Eryon insist on me joining the mission because he knew this event would occur? What else had Eryon seen that he hadn’t told me of? Did a high-ranking officer of Xevius’s agency try to murder him to prevent my mate from presenting the report that would initiate the civil war his Aunt Venya had foretold? If they tried to kill him now, what kind of welcoming committee would await us on Korlethea? Did the Quorum order this hit or did one of the agents take it upon himself to eliminate a threat to the stability of his home world?
My footsteps echoed loudly in the empty corridor made glum by the silently blinking red lights as I headed for the bridge. The door opened, revealing my mate still typing feverishly on his keyboard. He turned to look at me over his shoulder, fingers still flying on the keys. I couldn’t quite put a name to the emotion on his face, which mixed gratitude, relief, sorrow, and something else I couldn’t quite define. He smiled then turned back to pursue his task.
“Don’t ever scare me like that again, woman,” he said in a stern voice.
I chuckled and walked up to him. Brushing his long hair aside, I placed my hands on his shoulders and gently massaged them while looking at his progress regaining control of the ship on his monitor. He purred, bending his head slightly to give me better access, without slowing his work.