by Tristan Vick
“Revenge, then? That’s it?”
“What?” Onelle scoffed. “Were you expecting a more civil send off? Sorry, to disappoint, empress. But I got from you want I needed. Your brawn and strength. Too bad you’re not half as smart as you are strong.”
Jegra had to think about that last insult for a moment. Then she shook her head. “It is too bad.”
“What is?” Onelle asked, confused by the vagueness of Jegra’s response.
“I was going to help you kill Lord Emperor Dakroth. Now, you’re all on your own.”
“Oh, I guarantee you I’m not alone. Who do you think hired those bounty hunters that caught up with you at Mardok?”
“But…” Jegra announced, confused, “they said that the Nyctans had hired them.”
“I instructed them to say as much. As long as Dakroth thought that the Nyctans were actively hunting him, then he’d react just the way I expected he would. By using you to save his neck and then lead me right to his secret shipyard.”
“Let me guess,” Jegra said, taking a cautious step toward Onelle. “You didn’t cross paths with Ishtar Bantu on a mundane return trip home. You stuck your nose where it didn’t belong and he sicked his dog on you.”
“Very good, Your Majesty,” she quipped sarcastically.
“I found where he was building his fleet and I decided to cripple him. I was midway through planting the explosives when his pet assassin found me.”
“You’re lucky to still be alive.”
“I’m not as innocent as I look. A stun grenade took her down and I made it out alive. However, I only managed to destroy a small section of the facility at Cordova. But, you know, you count your blessings.”
“This whole time you were playing his mistrust of the Nyctans against him.”
“Of course, I was. Dakroth is a fool. All he cares about is power and prestige. And the might of the Nyctan Empire threatens that. Once I’m off this rock, I’ll be able to finish what I started.”
“That’s all fine and well,” Jegra said, rubbing her chin inquisitively. “But aren’t you forgetting something?”
“Like what?”
“Like who’s going to push this rock off the cliff.” She eyed Onelle’s petite frame as if to suggest it wasn’t likely that the compact Bre’lal woman had the necessary strength to accomplish the feat.
Onelle grinned and pulled out a small remote control. She then aimed it toward an unassuming patch of smooth rock on the top of the bluff and hit the button. The air wavered like a mirage, and suddenly a large container appeared.
“On one of our salvage hunts, I found this.” She tapped the button again and, with a few flashing lights and a mechanical click, the crate automatically opened. Inside was Jegra’s Knight armor.
“That’s my power armor,” Jegra said, taking another step closer.
Onelle stiffened and trained the blaster on Jegra and shot her a look that warned her not even to try it. “I think you mean my power armor,” she corrected. “I decided it was probably best to keep my discovery a secret until I had a use for it. Now, as you can clearly see, I have a use for it. What I no longer have a use for is you, empress.”
The blaster fixed on Jegra, Onelle began to squeeze down on the trigger.
Jegra’s fighting demeanor came on and took her over as if by instinct. She dug her toe into the rough dirt and shot a spray of sand and pebbles into the air, momentarily blinding Onelle.
Without pausing for Onelle to react, Jegra made a mad dash toward the edge of the cliff. Some of the rigging extended beyond the cliff’s edge and she took a desperate leap, reaching out for a loose vine.
The instant she leapt into the air, a blast scorched her right shoulder. She screamed out as she felt her flesh sizzle and blacken just as her hands made contact with the vine. Gripping tight, she swung out and back around. A second blast severed the vine and she began to plummet towards the cliff’s edge. Luckily, her momentum flung her across the gulf.
Jegra clenched her jaw as she smashed into the rockface about fifty feet below the bluff’s edge. Gripping tight to the contours, she stuck the landing. But her impact was forceful; pieces of rock broke off and she began to fall, skidding roughly down the surface. About another fifty feet, she managed to clasp onto a large fragment of rock jutting out from the side of the cliff.
Dangling in the air, she clutched the overhang by one arm and looked up to see Onelle peering over the ledge at her. The green skinned woman aimed her blaster downward and let off several shots.
Jegra cringed, her eyes squinting shut, as she fully expected the laser bolts to hit her. Being under the overhang, however, provided enough protection to safeguard her from the blasts. A couple of shots impacted the rock but did little damage while several other shots just buzzed by her.
Opening her eyes, Jegra looked around and let out a big sigh of relief when she realized the shots had missed their mark. She reached up with her other arm, gripped the overhang with both hands, and then started to swing. Once she had her momentum going, she swung her feet up toward a fissure in the rockface.
Although it was difficult, she managed to wedge her left foot into a crack in the cliffside. With a grunt, she pulled herself toward the wall and rested there for a moment.
There was no way that Jegra would be able to climb the hundred odd feet back up to the top of the cliff before Onelle suited up and kicked the boulder free. Looking down, Jegra ran through every possible action; none of them ended with her getting off this rock.
Stuck on the side of a cliff, betrayed by someone she thought was her friend, she let out an annoyed huff. That’s when she heard the cry of the pteranodon and looked down to see the winged dinosaur circling about a hundred feet below.
“Not you again,” she lamented. But even as she gazed apprehensively down at the winged lizard, an idea came to her. An idea that might just allow her to get off this godforsaken rock after all.
19
The fighters of the Galliforn Space Defense Front thronged the Shard like a swarm of killer bees. The long cylindrical vessels had ram-shaped bows; their curling horns wrapping around and flowing into the robust architecture of the vessels gave them a distinctly phallic appearance.
Aboard the command deck of the Shard, Captain Lianica Blackstar tensed, arms clasped tightly behind her back, as she waited for a response from the Galliforn fleet leader. After what seemed an unnecessarily long time, the comm system crackled and the communiqué came through.
“You’re in restricted space,” a gruff voice came from the other end. “You have precisely sixty seconds to explain yourself.”
“This is Empress Alakandra’s personal cruiser and we are in need of your assistance.”
The other end went silent for a moment and Lianica watched from over Lieutenant Brei’alas’s shoulder as the numbers of the digital clockface on the lieutenant’s console incrementally ticked down.
When it came down to the last five seconds, Brei’alas looked up at the captain and shot her a panicked look. If this didn’t work, it’d be her head on a platter. Then the clock struck zero. A hush fell over the bridge, and after another few moments of uncertainty, the comm crackled, startling Brei’alas.
The same gruff voice as before grumbled, “What seems to be the problem?”
Brei’alas let out a pent-up sigh and whispered, “See, I told you it’d work.”
Lianica nodded approvingly, and then shook her arms and wiggled her fingers to loosen up and help relieve the tension she’d built in anticipation. Once she got her blood flowing again, she replied to the leader of the Galliforn fighter squad. “I feel it’s my duty to be up front with the Galliforn High Command. Although our ship is in working condition, we’re a bit rudderless at the moment, so to speak.”
Another long paused seemed to signify he was relaying orders directly to his superiors before responding. But, eventually, the disgruntled voice returned. “Explain what you mean.”
“We’re headed to the rift tha
t verges on the Outer Rim, an area known only as Dark Space. I’m afraid we do not have an up to date navigation chart for this region, and since we’re on a rescue mission and we are in desperate need of your noble assistance, I thought maybe, if you would be so inclined, you might—”
“Denied,” the voice abruptly replied, cutting her off before she had finished making the request.
Shocked by the abrupt dismissal, Lianica looked out across the faces of the bridge crew and then back at the display of fighters taking formation outside. “Then, may we at least—”
“No,” the voice barked before she had even finished the question. Then there was a static crackle as the comm was cut and all communications were promptly severed.
Lianica huffed in annoyance but reined in her temper. She opened her mouth to try another approach when a warning shot flashed and the ship rattled.
The comm channel opened up again and the lead fighter announced, “You have exactly one hour to make your repairs and leave the system. If you do not leave Galliforn space once the allotted time is up, we will destroy your vessel.”
With that, the small swarm of ships pulled back, giving the Shard some breathing room.
“So much for diplomacy,” Lianica mumbled to herself.
“Captain,” Brei’alas finally spoke, taking a little bit longer than usual to build up her nerve to address the captain. “What are your orders, ma’am?”
Lianica thought about it for several moments and then said, “Spool up the slipstream drive. They may deny us access to their hyperspace navigation charts, but I guarantee you they don’t have a ship in their fleet faster than this one.”
“Ma’am, if we cut through their system blind, we could risk colliding with a cargo vessel, a heavy cruiser, or an asteroid field in hyperspace transit. The Shard is tough, but not tough enough to survive a head on collision with objects of that density,” Lt. Commander Barrion informed his captain. Lianica nodded and paced the floor as she mulled over the new information.
As the highest-ranking officer on the bridge after the captain, it was his duty to provide the captain with alternative options. He looked over at Brei’alas who seemed to have garnered the confidence of the captain with her quick thinking and quirky, albeit enduring, personality.
Never mind her tepid demeanor and diminutive voice, a trait not so common among the Dagon people, who prided themselves in posturing and word games, demonstrating their dominance in any given occasion. Brei’alas was different.
But Lt. Commander Barrion knew one thing, her way wasn’t to be confused with weakness. She was anything but weak. She was bold and assertive herself, even if it took her a few minutes to build up to it. And she never gave up. That was what made him so attracted to her.
“That’s a risk I’m willing to take,” Lianica finally said, stopping in her tracks. Noticing the expressions on the faces of the crew, she cleared her throat and added, “Need I remind you that the empress’s life is at stake?”
Brei’alas shook her head. “No, ma’am,” she replied almost by habit. “We’re with you. One-hundred percent. Besides, the odds of a collision are astronomical. Right?” She turned to Barrion for support.
He cleared his throat. “Uh, right. Astronomical.”
Brei’alas’s reassurance did little to assuage the hesitancy of the crew making a blind jump through Galliforn space. But when she caught the captain smiling at her and giving her a single nod of gratitude, her entire soul filled to the brim with happiness.
They had two options. Make many short jumps, using long-range scanners to map the sector themselves, always knowing that the Galliforn armada would be hunting them, or they could just take the risk of traveling blind.
Neither option was optimal, but Lianica knew the sector was desolate enough that long range scans hadn’t shown any signs of star-faring species. As such, flying blind should, technically, be no problem.
At the same time, however, there was the off chance that they could bounce into an asteroid belt or get too close to a super-nova, and that’d end their trip real quick.
“Set course to the Outer Rim,” Lianica ordered, finally having made up her mind. “Maximum speed.”
“Yes, ma’am,” the navigations officer called out, and he carried out his order. Once he typed in the coordinates, he let the computer crunch the numbers and then nodded, giving her the okay.
“Engage slipstream drive.”
A loud reverberation sounded, like a massive hydro-electric coil running down, and then the ship gradually stretched and time slowed. The silver vessel went from the shape of an elongated raindrop to the shape of a needle and, then, in a flash of light it vanished from space.
The sudden disappearance of the gleaming vessel sent the Galliforn fighters scrambling about as they took evasive action, half expecting a new cloaking technology or some other classified weapon. By the time they realized what had happened, it was too late.
The Shard was not only gone, but was tearing through Galliforn space at three times the speed of light. And it was, most certainly, faster than any ship currently in the Commonwealth could go. All but for, perhaps, the Skywend, of which the specs were classified.
Although the faint possibility of a collision weighed on her mind, it wasn’t enough to deter her from the mission.
Lianica knew from her training at the Academy that if a ship collided with something in hyperspace, it would merely result in falling out of hyperspace as a collection of fiery wreckage.
But traveling through the Stream, as they called it, was like becoming a supercharged particle in a particle accelerator. A collision in the Stream with something traveling at roughly the same speed and energy, or that had an immense density, would ultimately yield enough explosive energy to collapse space and form a black hole. Not exactly an ideal way to go out, albeit painless, but, also so unlikely as to be virtually impossible. At least, that was the gamble, at any rate.
Anything else that got in their path, small fragments, rogue meteors, derelict ships and the like would be vaporized with minimal damage to the vessel. With the new self-healing microphase korridium hull, the Shard could quite literally brush up against a small moon and come out the other side unscathed.
The moon, however, would be pulverized. It’d be like firing a rail gun through a watermelon. There’d be very little left except a sticky pink residue creating one massive mess.
The interesting thing about slipstream technology was that it was so aptly named. The Stream naturally flowed around high-density objects, so, planets, stars, black holes, and, yes, even large moons could be easily avoided. Any massive gravity wells were automatically diverted.
It was like water slipping past a large rock in a creek. As such, colliding with any heavy celestial bodies was highly unlikely. And colliding with large asteroids or ships was even less likely still, simply due to the vast distances in space.
If the Shard really were the size of a needle, it would be like flying the needle through the whole of the ocean without hitting a single plankton. Meanwhile, large fish like sharks, giant squids, and whales were avoided simply by their mass.
Everything else could potentially get in their way. But then again, they weren’t traversing the whole of the intergalactic medium. They were merely navigating a small part of it, making it even more unlikely that they’d collide with anything at all.
In the end, Lianica figured if she steered clear of any of Galliforn’s main worlds and populated moons, they’d be safe. If she was wrong, then so be it. But whenever her gut instinct and statistical data aligned, she knew the risk was nominal. And what she knew now was that they would make it to the Outer Rim in just a matter of hours. Jegra’s life depended on it.
Three hours later, as Brei’alas finished her shift for the day, she waited in the lift for Barrion. When the captain stepped in instead of her lover, her giddiness immediately faded and she stepped to the side. “Captain.”
“Lieutenant.”
As the l
ift started, they tried not to look at each other but eventually caved in and gave one another glances. Catching a look simultaneously, they both looked away again, embarrassed.
“I just wanted to say, good work today,” Captain Blackstar said.
Brei’alas smiled. “Thank you, ma’am.”
The awkward silence returned and they rode in tense quiet until the lift finally lurched to a halt and the doors opened.
“Well, this is me,” Brei’alas informed Lianica.
Lianica merely nodded and made room for Brei’alas to step off comfortably. Just as the doors began to shut, Brei’alas turned to say something, but it was too late.
“Never mind,” she murmured to herself as the doors clamped shut before her.
Turning back around, she headed to the rec-lounge where she found Barrion waiting for her. He had already ordered dinner and drinks. Blue Targadian Lobster boiled in saltwater and then saturated with butter, a tossed salad with a nice red wine vinaigrette dressing, and a side of Dagoni honey spread for a basket of freshly baked rolls.
“You remembered!” Brei’alas said, leaping up into Barrion’s arms and kissing him. They quickly pulled away and glanced around the room to see if anyone had seen their little display of affection. Safe, he turned back to her and said, “You bet. Happy Birthday, Brei.”
Unable to wait, she sat down and began digging into her meal. Every bite was accompanied by a moan of pleasure. It got to the point that Barrion was forced to put down his utensils and laugh.
“Are you all right?” he asked with a chuckle.
“I’m more than all right. Why do you ask?”
“Because every mouthful sounds like an orgasm,” he laughed.
“It’s just sooo good,” Brei’alas said, her mouth full of lobster meat.
Desert was chocolate cake with chocolate frosting and Brei’alas could hardly move. Seeing that she had a smidgeon of frosting on the corner of her mouth, Barrion leaned in and brushed it off onto his thumb. Sucking it off, he smiled at her as she gazed dreamily into his eyes.