Turning its attention back to the gathering of boys, the riwwr made a loud roar that quickly quieted any remaining small talk still emanating from the crowd. “I am Commander Creull, executive officer of the Nepenthe. Listen carefully, for I shall only say this once. You have all volunteered as candidates to become part of our crew. If anyone wishes to back away, do it now—walk back up the path and be gone from my sight.”
Looking around, the boy could see nobody had moved. They were all desperate to leave this godforsaken planet.
Creull’s yellow eyes narrowed. “Good, so none of you are cowards. There are about fifty of you present, but I shall tell you only one will be chosen to join us, perhaps even two at the most.”
Several groans and curses erupted from the throng of tough, desperate children.
Creull roared again, cowing the crowd in front of her. “Silence! These shall be my terms. You will have to fight for it. Upon my signal, you shall all battle one another until only one remains standing. No killing is allowed. No weapons are allowed. If anyone should be foolish enough to disobey what I just said, then I shall rip your head from your spine. Get ready.”
All the kids within the crowd turned and began to stare down at each other. A few of the youths gathered themselves into small groups, hoping to fight the others as a team before they fought each other. The two kids he had seen in the market turned to face him, and the boy knew they were sizing him up.
Creull tilted her head upwards towards the dusty sky and let out another roar. “Begin.”
Like crazed animals, the crowd of children turned on each other, punching and kicking, sometimes even biting in order to beat their respective opponents into submission. After a few seconds, several boys could no longer take it, and they turned tail and fled back up the path. High-pitched screams of rage and pain filled the air.
Rod and Lucky converged on him, and the boy knew he would have to take them both on. The two marketplace lads tried to outflank him, and he reacted by rolling sideways, right in between two other youths beating on each other. Rod was unable to get around the second set of fighters, and the boy made his way back to where Rod’s partner was, delivering a wicked kick to Lucky’s kneecap when the other boy turned to face him.
Lucky fell to the ground sideways, screaming in pain. The boy quickly kicked him a second time, aiming for the bridge of his nose and shattering it. Rod’s partner screamed for mercy before blacking out. With Lucky out of the picture, the boy turned to face Rod, who had just made his way back to face him again. Rod was able to land a blow to the side of his face, which caused him to stagger, but the boy somehow recovered, blocking the second punch with his forearm before hooking Rod’s elbow and locking it straight.
The boy shoved Rod’s shoulders back while twisting his arm, breaking the other boy’s elbow. Rod cried out as his legs gave way, and the boy kneed him in the face for good measure. Stunned, Rod collapsed in a heap in front of him. He had taken out two in as many minutes.
Creull continued to observe silently from the top of the platform. She had instinctively got down on all fours, as if ready to leap up and pounce on someone. The general melee had thinned out the crowd of boys; most of them lay on the ground, grappling with each other, trying to break bones to disable their respective opponents. Some of the beaten ones writhed helplessly in the dust, crying out for their mothers while clutching painfully at their fractured limbs.
Several minutes had passed, and the boy had beaten about a half-dozen opponents already. Even though he was somewhat shorter than the other kids his own age, his speed and determination more than made up for his seeming lack of size. Despite his nose being broken and a tooth knocked out, the boy was still in the fight. Having just beaten his last opponent into unconsciousness by slamming his face onto a small boulder, he slowly got up and looked around.
Standing a few paces away was a taller boy he soon recognized. Benno Holmes was a former leader of a rival gang, until his group had been killed off as well. Unlike him, Benno was on the cusp of adulthood, and a faint stubble was already evident on his bloodied chin and torn upper lip. Since they were the last two still on their feet, both boys began walking towards each other.
With his opponent standing head and shoulders above him, the boy knew he stood little chance of winning in a stand-up fight. Benno could take a lot of damage, and could easily break any part of his body the moment they grappled. He needed an edge.
Just as Benno closed to within striking distance, the boy leaned sideways, grabbed a handful of sand, and threw it into the taller boy’s face. Benno yelled out in alarm as he tried to get the dust out from his eyes. The smaller boy landed a flatfooted kick on Benno’s stomach, but the latter only grunted as he took the blow in his stride. Just as he tried to punch Benno in the chin, the larger boy spun to his side, locking his arms around the boy’s neck and forcing him down to his knees.
“I’ll kill you,” Benno whispered in the boy’s ear while gripping his arms in a sleeper hold.
The boy groaned as he tried to free himself, but Benno was too big, too strong. The pain was making him black out. He’d already lost, but he flailed his arms, hoping to grab onto Benno’s face and tear his eyes out before he lost consciousness.
Without warning, Creull leapt off the platform and stood in front of them. Her roar instantly made Benno slacken his hold.
“Enough,” the executive officer of the Nepenthe said.
The boy fell to his knees, nearly hugging the ground as the air traveled back into his lungs. He coughed for a long minute while trying to regain his senses.
“Congratulations,” Creull said. “You were the last two still standing, so I have decided to include both of you in the crew.”
Benno grunted. It was his way of saying thanks.
“Don’t thank me yet—your trials are just beginning,” Creull said, pointing towards another trail leading up towards the cleft of rock where the shuttlecraft had landed. “Go up to the shuttle.”
Benno turned and began making his way up the path.
The boy slowly got up. His throat still hurt and he was barely conscious, but at least it was a victory of sorts.
“I decided to accept you because you showed great courage against an opponent who clearly outmatched you,” Creull said. “What is your name, youngling?”
“Duncan,” the boy said. “Duncan Hauk.”
6 Crossroads
The Nepenthe left Far Tortuga’s high orbit a few hours later and proceeded towards the system’s nearby shadow zone. In order to include the chief engineer in the meeting, Captain Dangard had decided to hold the gathering at a bulkhead near the main engineering section. Only the senior officers of the vessel were present.
Commander Creull uploaded her report into the ship’s AI while her left hand gripped one of the handholds along the wall. She hated to float around in zero-gee. “Two full shipments of tungsten are in the holds and awaiting manufacturing. I also recruited two spacer cadets; their details are included in the report.”
Captain Dangard turned to look at his chief engineer. “Will the tungsten be enough?”
At first glance, the chief engineer resembled a large, pale six-legged lizard with a stubby tail encased in a cyber-harness. The nytini had evolved from a low-gravity world shrouded in perpetual twilight, and when in the presence of bright illumination they wore special goggles over their six eyes that were evenly situated along the sides of their beak-like snouts. With their love of technology, many members of this species naturally gravitated to becoming starship techs.
Chief Engineer Viniimn of the 23rd Percentile flicked out a forked tongue while he remained tethered along a nearby wall. It was a common habit amongst his species. “Depends on what you want, Captain. It’s more than enough to replenish our gauss cannon ammo. Is there anything else you need?”
The captain nodded. “Yes; how many additional lancer missiles can you build?”
Viniimn thought about it for a second as his personal AI in
terface did some quick calculations. “Another two hundred, which would bring our total inventory of lancers to eight hundred.”
Dangard licked his lips. “Good. Make it so. How are our carbon stocks?”
“We should have a good amount since our holds are mostly full,” Viniimn said. “What do you have in mind?”
Dangard seemed to look off into space. “Mass drivers. Enough to move a half-dozen class-six asteroids. Can you give them the same AI as the warbots?”
“Not a problem,” the chief engineer said. Masters of cybernetics, the nytini were prime manufacturers of neural interfaces and exoskeletons; it was said the moment a nytini youngling was born, the child would immediately be fitted with a personal exoskeleton to enhance their strength and expand their knowledge through tutorial injections via their neural com-links. Nytini were firm believers in AI, and provided a lot of technological expertise to the Union.
Lieutenant Garrett Strand floated in the lower part of the deserted corridor. “Captain, if I could ask, what do we need the mass drivers for?”
Dangard gave him a wry smile. “To move asteroids, of course.”
Strand resisted the urge to snort.
The captain placed both palms up. “Alright, it was a lousy joke. The truth is, we’ll need them when we meet up at the rendezvous with the ones who hired us.”
Strand raised an eyebrow. “This brings me to another question: who did hire us?”
“I don’t really know. It was a synthetic who approached me, and they paid half the money right away.”
“You’ve never met this synth before?” Strand asked.
Dangard shook his head. “Nope.”
“But he knew you were the captain of this ship,” Strand said. “It means he’s got intel on you.”
Creull turned to face the young lieutenant. “What are you getting at?”
“Look,” Strand said. “We got hired and paid for what was to be a routine boarding job. All of a sudden we went up against a Star Force heavy cruiser, and now we’re knee deep in some sort of classified black ops affair.”
“That’s why I intend to find out more about the one who hired us,” Dangard said. “We’ll head first to the Kolob system and get some intel over there, then we decide whether to hand over our prisoners or not.”
Strand narrowed his eyes. He couldn’t believe the captain had accepted the mission on such a vague premise. “I don’t like this. I think we ought to put it to a vote right now.”
“We need to get more information first,” Dangard said. “Once we figure out why these two women are so valuable, we’ll put it to a general vote for the crew.”
Strand clenched his jaw but remained silent. He was thinking of putting it to a vote at that instant, but decided not to for the time being. Unlike the various militaries of the major factions, the Nepenthe followed a form of democracy; the captain had been duly elected and held absolute authority, especially during battle. Anyone could fight a duel over disagreements or even against a superior, but Creull made sure no one messed with the captain, for she always stood by his side and would fight anyone to the death if challenged.
The captain raised an eyebrow at Strand.”Since you haven’t answered, I take it you’ll go along with this plan of action?”
“The crew are starting to ask questions,” Strand said. “We gotta tell them something, at least.”
“They’re asking questions because of you, Lieutenant,” Creull said. “Why did you disobey the order not to talk with the prisoners?”
Strand bit his lip. He figured they would find out eventually, and expected some sort of upcoming punishment, but were they going to sacrifice his spacers for what he had done? “The subject didn’t want to eat, so all I did was talk to her a little and gain her trust.”
“You were prying,” Creull said. “Going against a direct command.”
“The conversation just happened to drift that way,” Strand said. “What was I supposed to do? And anyway, I have no clue what this is all about. I’m sure the rest of the crew would like to know what we’re fighting for.”
Creull roared in anger. “You will know when we decide it’s time to tell you, not before!”
Dangard raised his hand. “Alright, I will disclose to you what I know, and we’ll lay this out to the entire crew in the next general assembly. Zeno has been able to partially decrypt the hidden files in Dhara Hayer’s implant chip.” He turned and gestured at the synthetic to continue.
Zeno was floating nearby, and he finally began talking. “Yes, our analysis indicated Dr. Hayer sent frequent encrypted communiqués to Kolob, and the others in her secretive project did likewise. It is highly probable that all the collated information we need is there.”
Strand pursed his lips. Kolob was in Union space, and a major transit area. The system had a gas giant and multiple asteroid fields with attending stations, all serving as a hub for the galactic com-link network. “Kolob is a big system; how do we pinpoint the exact location of this intel we need?”
Dangard gave him a confident smirk. “You’ll be deploying your strike team undercover. We’ll need to either hire or take another ship and place a small unit to infiltrate one of the networks in the main space station.”
“Based on what I could find, it seems the Science Institute has a sort of communications center somewhere in Azusa Station,” Zeno said. “We infiltrate and then extract the information we need from there.”
Strand let out a deep breath. “It will have to be a very small team. We’ll be going through a lot of security checks just to get to the station. Where will the Nepenthe be?”
“Near the far edge of one of the shadow zones at the other side of the star system,” Dangard said. “We’ll stay close to the dark matter clouds, which should mask most of our heat signature. If need be, we can cause a major distraction should we decide to fire up the thrusters.”
Viniimn flicked his tongue. “The moment the Nepenthe reveals itself, the panic she’ll cause will bring the entire system to a standstill. What we can do is commit a mass driver or two and push a few of the asteroids we find in Kolob, say on a collision course with each other. It ought to create enough of a distraction without having to reveal the ship.”
“Good idea,” Dangard said. “We’ll go with that plan instead.”
Strand crossed his arms. “Sounds okay so far, but I’m still in the dark with regards to our prisoners. Dr. Hayer hasn’t said a word since we captured her.”
Creull held up a stubby hand and retracted her claws. “Why do we not just interrogate Hayer? I’m sure a bit of pain will do wonders on her current noncompliance.”
“Several reasons,” Dangard said. “I’d like to get her on our side, for one. Secondly, I don’t think she realizes what they have in terms of the girl’s true capabilities.”
“Yes,” Zeno said. “Based on the forensics we did on her AI chip, it seems Dr. Hayer merely believes the juvenile is special in some way since Maeve Lindros survived an artifact discharge while still a baby in her mother’s womb.”
Strand raised an eyebrow. They had not given him the summary. “What?”
“I sorted through the report for a bit, but I’m still in the dark with all this,” Viniimn said. “The summary stated this Maeve was the only survivor when an antecessor artifact her parents were working on exploded?”
Zeno nodded. He found these human gestures mostly useless, but they seemed to add weight when making a point during conversations. “Correct. Dr. Hayer thinks the child is the key to unlock something, but she does not fully know what. Maeve’s parents died, and she was transplanted to an artificial womb, where they studied her. She was kept in a lab until adolescence before her attempted transfer back to Earth. Dr. Hayer’s theory is that the power of this artifact somehow resides within Maeve’s body, but she does not know what it does.”
“The Institute’s database in Azusa Station has all the classified files on every artifact being studied in Union space,” Dangard said. “If w
e can figure out which artifact this girl was exposed to, then we can make a determination as to how valuable she truly is.”
Creull narrowed her eyes while glancing at the captain. “What about our contract to deliver this youngling? We’ll be late to the rendezvous point if we do this.”
“It can wait,” Dangard said. “I want to find out what this Maeve is truly worth first. When the representative of our employer briefed us, they said to expect an armed escort. None of us anticipated going up against a Union heavy cruiser, but we prevailed because we were prepared. The other fact is that Dr. Hayer was willing to kill her own ward to prevent us from taking her. This tells me she’s more valuable than this contract we were given suggests.”
“Still a pretty good contract if we forego Kolob and just deliver the goods as promised though,” Viniimn said. “And we already got paid half of it.”
Strand looked away and stared out into space. He figured if they put it to a vote now, the majority of the crew would take the easy way out and hand the two prisoners over. He felt sorry for Maeve, for he had begun to take a liking to her.
Dangard sighed. “It’s not about greed, even though this is our chosen vocation. I just have a feeling this girl is the most valuable thing in the galaxy, and we could get a lot more than the contract’s current value.”
“But we would break our bond,” Viniimn said, his lisping, syrupy accent obvious. “No one will ever offer us another contract again.”
“We are within our rights to break contract,” Dangard said. “No liner ever gets escorted in secret by a heavy cruiser. Every agreement we make, the employer must furnish us with accurate details as to what the opposition is fielding. If someone has broken the contract, it’s the ones who hired us.”
“Statistics-wise, we still have a high chance to get more contracts in the future,” Zeno said. “The aims of the various factions in this galaxy change all the time. We’ve been hired by both the Union and the Concordance many times before, even when they knew we worked for the other side at one time or another.”
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