by Geoff North
“Don’t do this, Laris,” the Captain answered.
“I watched them die… all of them.”
“It isn’t too late for you, son. Step out of that fighter and walk away.”
“We weren’t ready. After all this time…we weren’t ready. We never should’ve left Earth.”
“You may be right, but it doesn’t justify what you’re trying to do now.”
“Something has to be done. We can’t let them get away this.”
“We’re working on it. The Pegans will have our reply soon enough. Get out of the fighter.”
“My wife was four ships down the line from me. There’s nothing left of her now. I can’t let that stand, Captain. I won’t. My thumb’s on the missile switch and the safety’s off… I’ll do it.”
The line went dead. Another ten seconds passed before the green atmospheric shield activated. Moments after that, the doors started to rumble open. Laris throttled the fighter up and took her out into space.
Chapter 21
The multiple images on the bridge’s main viewing screen had coalesced into one giant video of Laris Bear inside the cockpit of the stolen fighter. “At least he’s giving us a view of what’s going on out there,” Argus commented.
Tor looked grim at his station. “He’s going to let us watch him die.”
“Get back inside, Laris,” Sulafat ordered. “We’re preparing to jump away any moment.”
There was a pause as they watched him steer the fighter towards a cluster of Pegan ships. “I’ve been listening to you and Gacrux over the line, Captain,” he finally answered. “These fighters of ours are also equipped with close to light speed drive systems. They may not be able to sustain DMP movement for as long as Ambition, but the principal of stalled protons and cold restarts are about the same.”
Everyone on the bridge saw him set the fighter controls to auto. He was on a collision course with ten of the Pegan vessels. Laris’s fingers continued working on the fighter’s main control panel. Sulafat leaned forward in his chair. “No. He can’t seriously be considering it.”
“Considering what?” Argus asked.
Nash answered. “He’s overridden engine safety and shut down his fold drive with active protons still in the chamber.” One of the enemy ships fired and blasted the starboard wing of Laris’s ship clean away. Nash continued speaking dispassionately. “He no longer has control. The DMP column has become structurally unstable.”
“He’s recreating what’s happened on Ambition,” Sulafat whispered.
Laris’s ship was tumbling out of control towards the Pegan vessels. His hand reached for the engine restart button. “This should buy you all some more time,” his voice crackled over the speakers.
Sulafat tried one last time to talk him out of it. “Don’t, Laris. Please… come back home.”
Laris’s finger pressed down on the button. “Make the best of it.”
The main viewing screen went white. Bridge officers covered their eyes until the brightness winked out seconds later. The view from Laris’s cockpit had been replaced with one of the remaining drone cameras orbiting Ambition a few kilometers away.
“My God,” Tor said, “he’s created a collapse event.”
A red pinprick in space was all that remained of Laris Bear and his stolen fighter. The Pegan ships he was headed towards were being pulled into the gravitational disturbance. One by one, all ten were sucked inside.
Sulafat looked to Nash. “How far are we from it? Will Ambition be pulled in as well?”
“Unlikely, Captain. We’re two-hundred twenty kilometers away and it’s already closing in on itself. As far as black holes go, Laris’s was quite small and short lived.”
Sulafat spoke through the line still open to Propulsion. “Did you see that, Gacrux?”
“Yeah,” he responded quietly. “We saw.”
“What are the odds of us collapsing in on ourselves when those DMPs begin moving again?”
“I’m not much of a betting man, Sully.”
“That good, hey?” The remaining Pegan ships had begun to give the travelers from Earth a wider berth. They would close back in soon enough, Sulafat figured. Ambition had proven itself to be a legitimate threat—dangerous enough to be destroyed completely with a dozen more similar explosives that had take out fighter garage 1.
A young officer at the nav-helm station interrupted the conversation between his Captain and Gacrux. “I’ve plotted a course that should take us just past Pega’s second moon, Mantus.”
“Thank you,” Sulafat said, nodding at the man. His face was familiar, but a name escaped him. We could all be dead in another minute. I should know what to call him. “Gacrux… Initiate cold restart in thirty seconds.”
Chapter 22
Hadar was no longer trapped on a rectangular metal surface. He was seated in a chair of some kind, but unable to move his arms and legs. He could wiggle his fingers and wriggle his toes, but nothing more. Hadar tried to move his head from side to side. It wouldn’t budge an inch. His eyes worked, however. He could just make out small bars of shiny steel in his peripheral vision. Something was attached to his skull, he could feel the pressure of more alien metal pressing into the skin of his forehead. Hadar tried to scream but could only manage a choked rasp. There was something wrapped around his neck, holding him even more securely in place. It was difficult to breathe. Panicking would only make things worse. He closed his eyes and breathed deeply through his nose. Easy. Steady and slow.
Hadar felt the pounding in his chest begin to subside. After ten more seconds, and after he felt reasonably sure he wouldn’t try and scream a second time, he opened his eyes again. The room was dimly lit, but he could at least make most of it out. The walls, and what he could see of the ceiling and floor, were sickly yellow. There were three more chairs arranged in a crescent formation in front of him. They were ugly things of metal painted dull black. Most of the paint had worn away on the arms leaving dirty blobs of shiny grey. There was no curvature to the seats and backs, no sense of artistry, and even less consideration to comfort.
Hadar moved his eyes to the left and saw a door. It was open a crack, but all he could make out beyond was blackness. To the right was a table littered with strange items and vicious looking little tools. One of them looked like the drill that had been used to dig inside his temple. Hadar moved his eyes away quickly before the panic had a chance to set in again.
Behind the empty chairs was a view screen. Spiking lines of white and grey danced across a background of solid black. Hadar could hear the soft hiss of static through hidden speakers. He continued breathing steadily through his nostrils, attempting to rein in his fear. The smell inside the room was alien and unpleasant.
“Hello?” The restraint around his neck made it difficult to speak, but Hadar worked his way through it. “Could someone please loosen this thing? It hurts and I can’t swallow properly.”
A light appeared through the slit of open doorway. Hadar bit down on his tongue and wished he hadn’t said a word. That little grey-headed thing would burst through any second and run for his table of toys.
The little alien did appear, but it wasn’t running. Behind it were two more grey beings. They loped across the floor, long arms hanging past bulbous knees, and sat in the chairs facing Hadar. He kept his eyes on the small one as it crawled up into the last vacant seat closest to the table of surgical instruments.
“I want to go back to my people,” Hadar insisted. “I want to go home.”
“Home,” the being in the middle repeated. “You want to go home.”
An image appeared suddenly on the view screen before Hadar could reply. It was an ancient black and white video of men at war. Hadar remembered seeing similar videos as a child back in school. These were people from Earth fighting each other to the death. The footage was grainy, and the speed seemed unnatural, almost too fast. There was no sound, only the grisly images of men shooting and stabbing.
The alien spoke again in
an oddly muffled tone. “This is your home. This is where you wish to be.”
Hadar tried to shake his head but the bars and straps made it impossible. “I don’t want to be there… That was a war. It happened a long time ago. Earth isn’t like that now.”
The little alien wagged a long finger at him. “Earth has always been like that. We have many images, many recordings of your civilization through the ages.”
The being to his left spoke for the first time. “And now you bring your savagery to us.” Hadar watched the thing’s mouth while it spoke. The tiny black slit never moved. There were no lips. “You were warned. Our people told you to stay away.”
It wasn’t speaking through its mouth, none of them were. The muffled sounds were coming from the view screen speakers, or they were being received telepathically into his brain. Hadar could feel the fear returning, and there was no fighting it this time. He jerked his entire body forward in a futile attempt to stand. They watched him struggle with their black, emotionless eyes. “Let me go! Let me go! I… can’t… breathe!”
The little alien slid down off his chair and went to the table. It grabbed a syringe and headed towards Hadar.
“No! Don’t! Don’t touch me!”
It punched the needle into the center of his throat and Hadar’s tongue went instantly numb. A warmth entered his chest and stomach. It spread trough his lips and cheeks, his arms and legs. Hadar’s fingers and toes ceased to wiggle. A feeling of complete serenity overtook his brain. He began to breathe slowly once again, the fear wiped away. He remained fully conscious and aware as the alien climbed back up onto its chair.
The being to Hadar’s left spoke into his mind again. “There. That should calm you. Do you feel better? Will you be more cooperative?”
“Better,” Hadar answered calmly. He wasn’t sure if he was talking out loud or if the words were appearing in his mind. “I will cooperate.”
The images of men wearing primitive helmets and charging through trenches of mud with barbaric weapons changed on the view screen. In its place were clouds. Hadar was looking down at them from above. One of the clouds at the picture’s center suddenly rose up, pushing all the others away in a massive discharge of energy.
“What is this?” One of the aliens asked.
“Hiroshima,” Hadar answered calmly. “Nagasaki maybe. It could even be the beginning of World War 3—when the North Koreans attacked Seoul. I’m not sure.”
“A nuclear weapon exterminates eighty-thousand of your kind, and you’re not certain which city was wiped out?”
“How could I possibly tell? It happened centuries ago. Dozens of cities were nuked back then.”
“Dozens.”
Hadar could feel the disgust in that single word. It had come from the small one. “I wasn’t responsible. I wasn’t even born on Earth.”
“But the ship you travelled on is equipped with similar weaponry. You do have weapons capable of destroying on a planetary level, do you deny it?”
“No, I don’t deny it,” Hadar said. “But your people threatened us. They said they were going to end our existence.”
“We have been monitoring your civilization… picking up your signals. Your people are dangerous. We tried warning you to stay away.”
The screen was now displaying ancient videos of men on horses. They were wearing silly hats and firing side arms into the sky. More men with paint on their faces and feathers in their hair were firing back with bows and arrows.
Hadar tried defending his species. “It isn’t all real. You’ve misunderstood us from the very beginning. Not all these pictures are actual events. Some of it is fiction.” He struggled to try and make his captors understand. “These videos were pretend… created to entertain my people.”
“You pretend to kill one another for entertainment? Your people watched these images and derived pleasure from them?”
“It isn’t what you think.” Hadar closed his eyes. “We aren’t like that anymore.”
“No,” the little one answered inside his brain. “You’re worse.”
Chapter 23
“Cold grav restart in ten seconds.”
Sulafat and his bridge crew sat in silence as Gacrux started the final countdown. The Pegan warships were moving back in towards Ambition. Let them come, Sulafat thought. At least they’ll die with us if this doesn’t work.
“Eight… seven…”
Argus Cor announced a final warning throughout the ship. “All hands prepare for fold drive initiation.”
“Six… five…”
“It has been a pleasure, Captain.”
Sulafat looked down at Nash. “What?”
“Working with you. It’s been an honor.”
“Four… three…”
“Yes, likewise… an honor.”
“One…”
An invisible fist punched Captain Sulafat in the stomach. He lurched forward in his command chair. Stars swam before his eyes. A moment later he was gasping for air, clutching at the armrests. “Re…” He cleared his throat and tried again. “Report.”
Gacrux’s voice over the speakers came through sounding as shaky as the Captain’s. “Cold restart successful… no damage detected in the DMP column. It worked, Captain… We travelled faster than the speed of light… considerably faster for at least a minute.”
A minute? It seemed like only seconds to the Captain. The image onscreen answered his next question. They had jumped back out of fold drive and were in close orbit around the Pegan moon, Mantus. Considerably faster indeed. Over a hundred and fifty million kilometers in sixty seconds. The moon’s dark cratered surface revolved slowly before them. “Pull us back, we’re in too close.”
The young officer at navigation double-checked his figures. “Everything appears to be in order, sir. We’re orbiting Mantus at eighty-four thousand KPH, distance from surface is twelve hundred. Auto-nav safety kicked in just as we fell out of the fold.”
“Put another thousand kilometers between us and that rock, … uh, what is your name again?”
“Kalin, sir. Kalin Aurig. I was transferred to bridge position during your long walk.”
Well that explains that. I can’t be expected to know everybody’s damn name on this ship.
“Mantus’s gravity field is exceptionally weak, Captain,” Nash pointed out. “Remaining in a low orbit could keep us out of Pegan sensor range for awhile.”
Sulafat nodded. “So long as the belly of this ship doesn’t scrape along the rim of a crater, we can stay where we are. Reduce speed by half and keep the moon between us and the planet. That should buy us a bit more time to recover.” He stood and stepped down from the raised platform. “Keep an eye on things up here, Nash. I want to see what’s left of my quarters.”
Chapter 24
“Talk to me, Kella.”
“Wha… whas you want… me to say?”
Hail smiled weakly at her. “Anything. Call me a kid. Tell me I’m a shitty fighter pilot. Just stay awake a little while longer, okay? Help’s on the way.”
“You’re a… terrible liar.” She tried to smile back but only one corner of her mouth rose up. Her half-closed eyelids drooped down a little more. “Don’t worry about me… Can’t feel a thing anymore.”
“We’re getting out of this together, Kella, and that isn’t a lie.” He shook her gently until her eyes opened wider. Kella’s normally dark complexion had turned waxy grey. Perspiration lined her forehead and collected in the pockets of her sunken cheekbones. The bleeding had stopped, but she required further medical attention that wasn’t available in the tight confines of their broken fighter. Kella needed water and a steady supply of breathable air. Bee’s oxygen was running out faster than Hail expected.
“What’s that?” She struggled to sit up in his lap. “What are… those lights?”
“There aren’t any lights, Kella. It’s just you and me.” He brushed back some of the damp hair stuck to her forehead. “I told you to keep talking, not start hallucinating.”
“Not hallucating.” Kella lifted an arm with considerable effort and rested it on Hail’s shoulder. She pointed out beyond the canopy cover. “Out there… I see lights.”
Hail twisted as best he could with her weight on him and saw three shimmering beams dancing off the gorge wall to their right. He craned his head back a little more and saw the concentrated lights heading down towards them.
“We can’t stay here.” Hail placed Kella’s helmet back over her head and helped her sit up. He reached for the emergency medical kit and found a roll of sealant tape within. The hole in Kella’s spacesuit wasn’t irreparable. When he was sure the tape had covered enough of it to hold a pressurized seal, he placed his own helmet on and released the canopy cover one last time. “I’m not going to let them take us out that easy. Come on, Kella, get moving!”
Something bright smacked into the rock wall next to them. Smaller chunks of rock and black sand rained into the open turret. Kella groaned as Hail hoisted her up under the armpits onto the fighter’s remaining wing. A second blast tore the discarded canopy cover into pieces as they jumped down to the ground and rolled away. Hail covered Kella’s body with his own as more debris fell around them. “Get up! Get moving!”
“Where?” Kella asked as she struggled to her hands and knees. “Where you… expect us to go?”
“Down into the dark, deeper into the gorge!” Hail knew it was only delaying the inevitable, but he was going to fight for whatever life was left to them for as long as he was able. He picked her back up and the two started staggering away from the ship. More alien fire struck into Bee’s rear thrusters and the surrounding rocks.
“The ship,” Kella gasped. “Blow the damn thing… to bits.”
It took Hail a few seconds to realize what she was getting at. Destroying Bee would seal their fate on Oread, but blowing it up at the right moment would definitely finish off the aliens trying to kill them. He took a hold of his side cannon and aimed it with both hands at the underside of Bee—right where the remaining bit of rocket fuel would be sitting in its tank. He fired and the energy burst ricocheted off the crumpled metal. The canopies may have been crap, but the shells of Ambition’s fighters were made of tough stuff. He fired again—Bee remained stubbornly intact.