Energize (From the Logs of Daniel Quinn Book 1)

by Thomas R. Manning

  All I could think about was the number of aliens he killed and his careless attitude toward life. I pushed myself up to pursue him, but fell in a dizzy haze before I could take a single step. All I could do was watch as his ship, nothing but a giant blurry spot to me, took off into space.

  Meanwhile, a voice in my head kept asking, What the flux am I supposed to do now?

  TWO

  “You have sustained hearing loss, Captain. There will be bruising on various parts of your body from being flung by the explosion and your ankle has been sprained, but otherwise all injuries are minimal.”

  We were back inside the bistro. I couldn’t hear the medical droid speak, obviously, but a screen on its chest flashed the diagnosis to me. I nodded to him as I jammed my fingers in my ears, attempting to clear out a blockage that wasn’t there. The ringing in my head was a raging battle between a high pitch noise and a constant ringing.

  Shortly after the explosion and Granak’s escape, Tress came to investigate and found me lying on the ground with blood oozing from my ears. He helped me walk back into town, which I had to admit was impressive, especially considering I threatened his life less than an hour ago. I later learned that only two other aliens survived, though both were missing appendages, while I got away with a twisted ankle, a few cuts and bruises, and the hearing loss.

  Tress didn’t understand the concept of hearing loss and as such he felt it necessary to blabber on about how sorry he was for the position he put me in. The medical droid was kind enough to type out Tress’s apology to me, though I wasn’t terribly interested. All I could think about was how fluxing stupid I was for landing on this forsaken rock of a planet.

  Two disposal droids were bagging Damon’s body. The image of him being shot replayed in my head, and as it did I noticed things. Both Tress and Damon came looking for me, but Granak only killed Damon. At first I thought the barriers stopped him from killing Tress, but if that’s the case Granak wouldn’t have told me his job was completed. Didn’t Damon say something about their planets being in the same solar system? If that’s true, Damon was marked before he even left his home planet.

  If I knew I was going to die, but I had to find someone, how would I pass on my information? Find a partner to deliver the message I couldn’t. But Tress didn’t know anything unless he was lying to me. Then I remembered the faint energy signature coming from behind him.

  “Tress,” I tried to say, but not hearing my own voice was jarring. I must have screamed at him, because he jumped as I spoke. I grabbed his hips and spun him around in a circle, then reached into his waistband and pulled out a metal, rectangular object.

  An electronic memory drive. Damon Derringer you smart son of a bitch, I thought.

  Tress screamed out something, but I couldn’t even read human lips let alone alien ones. I pointed toward the medical droid and typed on the keyboard.

  “This drive can record and contain memories and files. I use something similar to record logs on my ship. Damon must have known someone was following him,” I said. Tress’s eyes turned pale blue, but I didn’t know what that meant. I reminded myself to ask Al what the color combinations within a Restra’s eyes meant.

  The droids finished the containment process for Damon’s corpse. They loaded him onto a large hover bed and the droid closest to me turned and spoke to the medical one.

  “Where would you like the body?” The words on the screen said to me.

  “Um, come again?” I typed.

  “You are the only other human on the planet, Captain. You are granted all rights to the corpse and are required to transport it off Karth.”

  “Flux.” What the hell was I supposed to do with a corpse on my ship? I didn’t know this man or where he came from. What were the Karthans going to do about the various remains of aliens around the docking gate? Call their native planets and request a pick up?

  “We do not understand your use of language, Captain. If you are unable or unwilling to remove the corpse, we do have the option of vaporizing it.”

  I nearly said yes just to have it finished, but my conscience took over. This man traveled far to find me, and to leave him on this barren rock would be a disgrace to whatever legacy he may have held back home. But maybe his memory drive would tell me where he came from. Would it be such a bad thing to return his body to his family?

  “No,” I typed. “I’ll take him. Deliver him to the Kestrel Belle, docking platform thirty.”

  “Yes, Captain. In regards to the Leondren, we are still willing to hold our terms of the contract.”

  “Forget it,” I said. “That lunatic spent no effort killing a dozen aliens at the dock. Just pay me the original fee.”

  “His attack on our dock escalated our need to capture him,” the droid typed. “If you will pursue and apprehend the Leondren, we will not only pay you $3 million Earth dollars, but we will submit favorable Starcade ratings to your account.”

  “Ratings . . . as in plural?” The Starcade is an intergalactic bulletin board for mercenaries, rogues, and anyone trying to work outside the law. It’s a simple system where you apply for a job and, depending on your rating and reputation, you’re either hired or you’re not. Often times I was looked over because of my low rating. Give me a smuggling or courier job and I had no problems getting it done, but a lot of Starcade jobs required assassinations, forms of violence, and outright murder. I wasn’t comfortable with that and I lost a lot of job opportunities because of it.

  If the Karthans were willing to make this new deal, I wouldn’t just have a ton of money to spend on the Belle and myself, but my Starcade rating could rise high enough to earn me better jobs with better pay. How could I turn that down?

  But I would have to face Granak again. If another face off situation arose, did I have any chance of winning? For all I knew he was halfway across the solar system by now on his way to a new job and target.

  “I agree,” I typed. “But I want an advance of my original payment.”

  The Karthans agreed. Now I had the money I was originally promised, with more on the way provided I take down Granak. If I never saw him again, it would be no different to me. Something in the back of my mind told me we would meet again, though.

  An hour passed as my cargo was loaded. The medical droid was able to manufacture a serum compatible with human biology and the ringing in my ears slowly faded, but was replaced by bleeps and bloops of the computer in front of me. I could hear Tress muttering something, too. But my hearing wasn’t completely restored and everything sounded as if it came from across the room.

  The Karthans cleaned up the mess Granak left behind while I checked over my weapon and armor and signed the new contract for them.

  “Captain Quinn,” the bistro’s service droid announced. “Your cargo has been successfully loaded and your ship has been cleared for departure.”

  “It’s about time,” I muttered as I stood. Tress followed suit. Stars above. I didn’t even think about him, but obviously I couldn’t leave him stranded. I still felt guilt over threatening his life, but maybe I could make it up to him. Damon mentioned Tress lived in the same solar system, so I could drop him off on his home planet on the way.

  “Doratu no ja!” I said sternly to him. Listen to me! Finding the right words to say in his language took me a while, but I managed to roughly say, “You follow my rules on ship. You lock door to your room if there is trouble. You leave ship if we need to abandon. Understand?”

  He nodded his head violently.

  “Ta!” Yes.

  Get a grip Daniel, I thought. He’s a frightened teenage Tristain. It’s not like he’s a cold, ruthless, assassin who seems to befriend you only to betray you later.

  Oh wait, that was my last passenger.

  The docking gate was ruined when we approached it. Entire sections of the surrounding wall were missing, cut out in the shape of Granak’s sonic shockwave. I walked past it and wondered whether the ground I stepped on was actually dirt or dusted remains of the
fallen aliens. Somewhere in dock, a number of ships were now up for grabs without a pilot to captain them. The thought nearly brought me to tears. Being a captain myself, I was affectionate of my ship.

  I found her right where I left her; the Kestrel Belle. The model was an antique design—only a handful of Kestrel class cruisers remained afloat in space—but she was nimble and quick. She resembled her namesake, the falcon. The bow ended in a sharp point which faced downward like a beak, the midsection was elongated and smooth, and the wings curved outward with the slingspace turbines attached at their backs. Her color was supposed to be dull silver, but various sections on the belly and starboard wing were bronze-colored plates that had been fused to the original hull to repair damage.

  Two carrier droids that prepared Damon’s body hovered down the ramp to my cargo bay.

  “Cargo is secure, Captain,” the one on the right said with a faint sound of Karthan language still audible behind the droid’s voice. “Don’t forget our agreement. Deliver the Leondren criminal to us, dead or alive.”

  “I haven’t forgotten,” I told them.

  When I stepped onto my ship all the stress and worry of the day slowly evaporated. I was home. The Belle was a three-deck ship. The cargo bay was the size of a miniature warehouse and was the only way to get on or off the ship. Technically there was an escape hatch outside the bridge, but I could never get the fluxing thing open. The ladder at the end of the cargo bay led to the second deck of the ship, which held a very empty and cobwebbed armory. From there you could gain access to the third deck, engineering, and the first deck with the bridge and crew quarters.

  I made checking the cargo my first order of business. The Karthans surprised me with the research they conducted on our species. Damon’s remains were placed in a crude coffin built with some type of sandstone. Belts and braces latched it firmly in place. The Karthans were a damn mysterious people, but they knew what they were doing and they treated their visitors with respect.

  Everything was set. With Tress and me onboard, I pushed up the lever to the bay doors. The mechanisms creaked and moaned as the door closed. The natural lighting and humidity of Karth disappeared, replaced with the Belle’s artificial life support systems.

  Tress followed me as I climbed the ladder’s cold metal rungs. Deck plates clanked as we walked across them onto the second deck. From there we climbed the stairs and walked down the corridor towards the bridge. I stopped at the first door on my left and tapped it with my knuckles.

  “This here will be where you stay,” I said to Tress. As my hearing improved, my Restran language flowed smoother than before. “There are a handful of beds. Choose whichever one you want.”

  The familiar sounds and smells of the Belle made me smile as I left Tress to inspect his new quarters. I walked through the small arch onto the bridge and closed the door. It was the size of a large closet with three chairs and stations. The left station was used for tactical and security purposes like weapons and shields. The right was main operations, where maps were reviewed, courses were evaluated, and engineering and other ship statistics were calculated. The center station was for navigation—my station—though the two consoles that surrounded it also connected functionality with tactical and operations. In front of the chair was a silver globe; a navigational sphere, or navsphere as I came to call it, which controlled the ship.

  I sat. The familiar texture and shape of my chair melded with my body. I cleared my throat.

  “Al, you there buddy? Time to wake up,” I called out. A number of indicator lights on the right console flashed blue and red, and I heard a deep computerized voice come from the speakers around me.

  “Captain, may I remind you that because I am a machine, I do not sleep. The correct term would be ‘hibernate’ or ‘standby’.”

  Stars above, Al, I thought.

  “I am relieved to see that you are not harmed, sir,” he continued. “I detected the explosion at the space dock. Before we continue our discussion, I feel I must warn you—”

  “Yes, Al,” I interrupted. “I know we have a passenger on our ship. Activate passenger protocol immediately.”

  The protocol was designed to keep Al a secret from any and every passenger I took onboard. He was the most advanced computer intelligence humanity had ever created and he had been installed on my ship so I could keep him safe. There were people out there like Sarah King who would, and did in fact, kill to acquire this technology. As long as we had passengers, Al and I would only communicate by text unless, like now, I isolated myself on the bridge.

  “CAPTAIN,” Al typed out on my front console screen. “THAT IS NOT WHAT I MEANT—”

  There was a loud knock at the door. I stretched to open it for Tress, who poked his head in with his antennae shifting from side to side.

  “Captain Quinn,” he said. “Who are you talking to? I heard two voices coming from this room.”

  Oh flux.

  “SIR, THE RESTRA PASSENGER CAN DETECT ME SPEAKING, EVEN BEYOND THE BRIDGE.”

  I sighed. I guess passenger protocol wouldn’t be needed then. I deactivated it. I considered that Tress’s antennae were used as his primary sense, but I never thought they’d be so strong as to hear past a thick metal bulkhead. I introduced him to Al.

  “Ra chintu comp?” Tress said. A living computer? Al was the one who had been teaching me alien languages for the last year, so I wasn’t concerned with him translating the question.

  “In a manner of speaking, yes,” Al answered back in Restran. “I am an advanced mechanism with the potential to learn and grow as I absorb new information.”

  Depending on the level of interest Tress showed, this conversation could keep them busy for hours. I took hold of his shoulders and eased him into the communications chair. I buckled him in and returned to my seat to fire up the thrusters.

  “What is your primary function?” Tress asked Al as I flipped a couple of switches to ignite the main engine core. The Belle began to tremble as if it were anxious to get back into space. The navsphere, a silver ball with directional angles and numbers, hovered in front of me, its magnetic charge at maximum. I placed one hand on it as I used the other to grab the thruster lever.

  “I serve mankind, more specifically Captain Daniel Quinn on his various missions throughout the galaxy,” Al explained. “I process data, control the Kestrel Belle during autopilot mode, and I am programmed with a subroutine that allows me to provide council to humans in times of strife.”

  I snorted at that comment, never pegging Al as a psychiatrist. He was a good listener, though, I had to give him that much.

  “I must admit I rarely get the chance to converse with other species,” Al continued. “If I am correct, your home planet Tristain has similar atmospheric conditions to human worlds, does it not?”

  “I, uh, suppose so . . .” Tress said hesitantly. “Are you capable of operating a ship without a human to command you?”

  He changed the subject about his home planet. Interesting, I thought.

  “I am more than capable of handling ship operations. In fact, I would find it more accurate to say the Captain cannot operate the ship without me.”

  “Har har,” I muttered, though he was telling the truth. Cruisers like this operated best with a handful of crewmates, namely an engineer, a communications officer, tactical officer, and the captain. Al covered three of the four.

  I activated the dorsal thrusters. They fired and slowly lifted the Belle into the air. Outside my shield window the town of Karth shrank away. I spun the navsphere to the left, turning the Belle towards the sky, and then transferred power to the aft thrusters. We launched upward and the dull blue color grew darker and darker until finally we cleared the planet and saw nothing but the vast reaches of space.

  The reason I joined the Earth Star Alliance years ago was to explore space and meet new alien cultures. After I was betrayed by commanding officer Sarah King and was locked up, I thought space would be my prison. Now I did everything I could t
o make it my freedom, but those days seemed few and far between when I was given missions like this one.

  I set an automated course out of the solar system and engaged. Once we achieved a safe distance from inhabited planets, I could launch the ship into slingspace, a speed faster than light. I pulled out Damon’s memory drive from my pocket.

  “Al,” I said as soon as there was a break in his conversation with Tress. “I want you to download this and replay all information”

  I plugged the drive into an open access port on the console to my right.

  “Yes sir,” Al said. “Processing . . . There appears to be audio and video files, twenty-four of them to be exact.”

  “Can you determine which file might have the most pertinent data, anything about a request, or orders, maybe something about danger?”

  The room was silent except for Tress and my breathing. I didn’t get a chance to learn what planet Damon came from, but I searched for Tristain on my star maps. Sector by sector the computer searched. I set my feet on the console and rested my hands behind my head.

  A holographic image of Damon Derringer appeared in front of me and I nearly fell out of my chair. He wore the same suit as when I saw him—he must have recorded this message right before he found me.

  “Captain Daniel Quinn, my name is Damon Derringer. I regret to admit that if you’re watching this recording then I am most likely dead. I come to you now under grave circumstances. The planet Terra, my home, has been at war with its sister planet, Gaia, for 55 years. Millions of people are dying and I am asking you to help save our worlds.”

  Apparently my plans were going to involve one minor alteration.

  THREE

  The war between Damon’s home planet of Terra and its sister planet Gaia has been waging since before he was born.

  “Captain,” Damon continued. “In the last two years, our planets decided that too much blood has been spilled, and thus a peace council was formed. Twelve of the highest ranking government officials signed a declaration in pursuit of a cease fire, one that would benefit both worlds and usher in an era of prosperity. But now the council is in danger. As I speak, members are being targeted for assassination, proof of which I obtained at great risk. This memory drive contains all the information you will need, as well as encoded passwords for my database on Terra. You must travel with haste and make contact with Harold Scott, commander of the Sentinels, the Terran security force.”