by Joe Vasicek
“Let us see, let us see.” His fingers flew across the keyboard, and strings of data flashed by too fast for Aaron to make any sense of them.
“When you did lose her?”
“About four standard weeks ago,” Aaron answered. “Not long after the Imperials took over the system.”
Jason clucked and shook his head. “I am sorry, friend. I see some records of male prisoners captured, none of female.”
“Check the rosters,” said Mara. “Perhaps they’re keeping her off the record.”
It took several nerve-wracking minutes for Jason to look, but in the end, he leaned back and shook his head. “I am sorry. There are three women only in brig, none like you are looking for find.”
“Let me see them,” Aaron demanded.
Jason shrugged and complied. Three of the holoscreens flashed to show live images of the cells with the women in them. Two were middle-aged, and the younger one’s hair was blonde, not black. Besides, none of them had dark skin or the distinctive henna tattoos that Aaron remembered so well. They could have faded somewhat, but he doubted it.
“Are any of those her?” Mara asked.
“No,” he answered, straightening up. “Come on, let’s look somewhere else.”
It took them the better part of an hour to search the rest of the ship. They started in the crew quarters, but it soon became apparent that they wouldn’t find her there—not alive, at least. Several squads were searching the rooms for bodies, and they’d found quite a few. The living quarters had been vented during the battle, and only one junior officer with the presence of mind to hole up in his shower unit had managed to survive. They checked among the bodies, but thankfully, she wasn’t there.
“Do you think she’s in the medical bay?” Aaron asked. They were getting closer, he could tell.
“Hold on, let me ask,” said Mara. She touched her helmet earpiece and hit a few keys on her wrist console. After chatting for a bit, she shook her head.
“Sorry. Phoebe says they have only outworlders there. Besides, the place is crowded. We don’t want to get in anyone’s way.”
Aaron’s heart sank. “Where else could she be?”
The search went on for what felt like hours, perhaps even days. Aaron’s initial hopefulness soon wore thin as room after room turned up with nothing. Throughout it all, though, Mara stayed with him. Even when it was clear that she was tired, she refused to stop and rest.
“Hang on,” she said, stopping him outside the door of a large utility closet. “Call from Jason.”
“What does he say?”
“He says he’s got something we might want to see.”
Before she could finish, he took off running. She soon caught up to him, though, and kept an easy loping pace alongside him. The corridors on the Starfire were long, and by the time they arrived at the brig, Aaron was already short of breath.
“Hello, my friends,” said Jason. He smiled but only patted them on the shoulders this time. “Come here, come here, I think it is which you have wanted to see.”
He pointed to the readout on the main screen. Aaron squinted.
“What is it?”
“It’s a roster of the ship’s escape pods,” said Mara. “Looks like most of them are still here.”
“Most, but not all,” said Jason. “You see? Five have already launching.”
“That’s not unusual, considering the battle. Where are they?”
“Ah,” he said, grinning as he pointed a finger in the air. “Of these, four are launching in last two hours. But fifth, if mission clock is correct, it is launching before Starfire makes first jump.”
Aaron frowned. “You mean, it jettisoned before the battle?”
“Before battle, yes. That is what clock is saying.”
“We don’t know that that’s her,” said Mara. “It could have been another escaped prisoner, or perhaps a deserter.”
It’s her, Aaron decided. It has to be.
“Wherever she is, she’s nowhere on this ship,” he admitted. “We would have found her already if she were.”
Mara nodded. “That, or someone else would have found her. I’m sorry, Aaron.”
“Sorry for what?”
“That she’s gone.”
He shook his head. “Hey, don’t be so sure of that. We’ll find her—I know we will.”
“And what if she’s dead when we do?”
At that moment, Commander Noah’s voice came on over the loudspeakers. He said something about taking command of the Starfire, then went off on some explanation that Aaron didn’t quite catch.
“What did he say?”
“He says that as the highest ranking officer to survive the Aegis, he is taking command of the ship until the Council relieves him.”
Aaron considered telling her that he already understood as much, but remembering their discussion in the storage container, he held himself back. Better to let her explain it all to him than to cut her off.
“We don’t have enough manpower to run all the stations, but we do have enough to run the basic ones. Consequently, he’s taking us into Colkhia to assist the Flotilla.” She paused, considering her words. “The most recent transmissions coming out of the system indicate that the battle has turned into a stalemate, with the Outworld forces taking control of Colkhia IV’s primary moon. If we arrive in time to reinforce them, it could shift the balance of power and force the Imperials to retreat from the system altogether.”
Aaron’s heart leaped. It seemed too much to hope that defeat could turn to victory, but if it really could—
“When do we jump?” he asked.
“About ten minutes,” Mara answered.
He grabbed her hand. “Then let’s go.”
“Go where?”
“To the bridge.”
* * * * *
The command deck of the Starfire was a mess. Most of the bodies had been cleaned up, but streaks of dark blood covered the floors and walls. The bullet holes and scorch marks got thicker the closer they got to the bridge, with doors blown out and holes punched through the bulkheads from parallel corridors. The fighting on this part of the ship had been severe.
Aaron tried to ignore it, but he couldn’t help but feel his muscles tense and the edges of his vision begin to blur. After the battle at Bacca, though, the carnage didn’t have quite as much power to shock him. As for Mara, if she had any reaction to it, she didn’t show it.
They arrived at the door to the bridge and palmed it open. Inside, Commander Noah stood beside the captain’s chair, helping one of the other pilots make some adjustments to her station. Displays and control panels graced the walls, with upper and lower decks for the various officers and technicians. Several of the displays were riddled with bullet holes, however, and a couple of the panels were blown out. No one seemed to be alarmed at the smell of smoke in the place. Apparently, that was something they’d already cleared up. Aaron guessed there were around twenty seats and workstations in the room, but only half of them were occupied.
“Ensign Deltana,” said Noah as he entered the room. “You’re alive, I see.”
“I thank you, Commander,” said Aaron. “Where you need me?”
Noah nodded in greeting to Mara and glanced around the room. For a second, Aaron wondered if he would just send them away—after all, the others seemed to have a pretty good handle on things without them. Then he glanced at the ragtag bunch of soldiers in the room and realized that the commander was running the battleship on a hope and a prayer. He could use all the help he could get.
“Ensign, I need you to take the helm. Can you do that?”
Aaron’s eyes widened, and his mouth slowly opened. Commander Noah said more, but he was too stunned to catch it.
“The commander asked if you would take the helm,” Mara translated. “Is that all right?”
“But I don’t know how to fly a battleship!”
“No one here does, and recon needs another officer. Can you do it or not?”
&nb
sp; Aaron’s heart hammered against his ribs, and fractals began to cloud the edges of his vision, but he nodded. “Yes. You’ll help me with the controls, though, right?”
“Of course. I’m not going anywhere.”
Mara translated, and Noah ushered them over to the helm. After replacing the corporal who had occupied the position previously and making space for Mara to sit next to him, Aaron took a deep breath and surveyed the controls. They actually didn’t seem all that different from the Medea, just scaled up with a couple of extra displays and dozens of additional indicators. The tricky part was that there were so many of them.
“I might need some help finding some of these controls,” he told Mara. “If I tell you what I need, can you find and point them out to me?”
“Will do,” she said simply.
“Apollo, do we have the jump coordinates?” Noah asked.
“Yes, sir,” said Apollo, pilot of the Paladin-3. “Sending to helm now.”
The coordinates appeared on a screen to Aaron’s right. He toggled the starmap and looked around for the indicators on the energy reserves, but couldn’t find them. As his vision began to cloud, the labels swam in front of him so that he could barely read any of them.
“What do you need?” Mara asked.
“The reactor levels. Where are they? Damn, it’s hard to find anything on these controls.”
“Ensign Deltana,” Noah asked, “are we ready for jump?”
Mara pointed to a series of green lights just below the throttle for the main sublight engines. “There.”
“We are, yes,” said Aaron.
Commander Noah took his seat in the command chair. “Then prepare to jump on my mark.”
“Prepare to jump,” Mara translated.
Aaron gripped the flight stick and put a hand on the switch for the main jump drive. As he did, he couldn’t help but wonder what Isaac would think if he could see him now. From a second-rate star wanderer to pilot of a battleship. No doubt his brother would be shocked beyond belief. The thought made him grin, even though his vision barely cleared.
“Engage,” said Noah.
With another deep breath, Aaron flipped the switch.
At first, nothing happened. He frowned and glanced at the switch, thinking at first that he’d flipped the wrong one. But then, a low rumbling sounded in the bulkheads all around him. It gradually grew in volume, oscillating at regular intervals, until it was loud enough to drown out all the other noises on the bridge. The pitch rose, too, making Aaron’s hair stand on end. It took almost fifteen full seconds for the drive to climax, but just as it became almost unbearable, Aaron’s stomach flipped, the room seemed to turn itself inside out, and then they were through. The drive purred into cooldown as new data began streaming across all of the feeds.
“Where’s the nav-computer?” Aaron asked, then realized that astrogation was Apollo’s job. He glanced over at the other drop-ship pilot, who was working frantically at the controls. Everyone suddenly began talking at once, filling the room with more noise than the jump drives. Above it all was Noah, issuing a host of new commands, but he spoke so quickly that Aaron couldn’t understand him.
“Nav-computer?” Mara asked.
“Never mind. Just—there it is,” Aaron said, pointing to the scanners. His vison swam as his stress began to rise, but he forced himself to shut out all the noise around him and focus on why he was here. The henna girl—his brother—and yes, even Mara. They were the ones he was fighting for, the ones he had to hope for. Any fear he had for himself began to fade as he focused his thoughts on them.
The fog retreated to the edges of his vision, clearing his mind enough to accomplish the task at hand. Their new coordinates came up on the sidebar, and the map of the system automatically overled on the screen. From the looks of it, they’d come out of jumpspace just above Colkhia IV’s moon, at the very top of the gravity well. They’d need to make some adjustments, though, if they wanted to enter a stable orbit.
“Commander Noah,” he said. “What course you want?”
But Noah was busy giving orders to the other men. Several of them worked furiously at their stations, while others waited for their orders just like Aaron.
“It looks like we showed up in the middle of something,” said Mara. “Look!”
She pointed at the scanners, which showed hundreds of starships in the space immediately around them. They showed up as gray points. The recon officer evidently didn’t know which ones to classify as friendly, and which ones to classify as hostile. The ones above the gravity well, though, were coming in fast.
“Commander Noah—”
“Maintain position,” said Noah. “Comms, begin transmission on all channels!”
Immediately, the room grew silent. Aaron didn’t know whether to maintain position relative to the moon or the incoming ships. It seemed the wrong time to ask, though, so he selected a heading toward them and began to bring the battleship around. From the looks of it, it would take some time for their course to fully adjust.
The computer chimed, and Commander Noah spoke firmly and with authority. Aaron couldn’t catch every word, but he could tell that it was directed toward their enemy—whichever group of ships that was. There was a firm possibility it could be all of them.
“What’s going on?” he asked Mara.
“Commander Noah is sending a transmission across all channels,” she said. “He’s announced that the Starfire is now under Outworld control and has ordered the Imperial forces to surrender.”
Several seconds passed. The tension in the room grew almost palpable. When Noah stopped and the transmission cut, everyone started talking again at once. It was chaos, with no one knowing what to do or quite how to do it. Aaron certainly didn’t.
“It’s a bluff, and they know it,” Mara muttered. “They’re going to come down on us and finish us off before we know where it’s coming from.”
Motion on the scanners caught Aaron’s attention. As he peered at it, a grin slowly spread across his face.
“Then what’s that?” he said, pointing to the cluster of incoming starships.
“What’s what?”
“Look!”
As they looked, point after point winked out. The field above the gravity well thinned, leaving virtually none of the ships that had been there just a few moments previously. The computer chimed again, and Noah called for silence. A visual transmission came on the main bridge display.
“Welcome, Commander Noah,” said Admiral Tully in her spotlessly white uniform. A look of immense relief filled her face as she spoke, saying something about him arriving just in time. When the transmission cut, the whole bridge erupted into cheers.
“What’s happening?” Aaron asked.
“I don’t believe it,” said Mara. “The Imperial forces are withdrawing from the system. It looks like—”
“We won!”
Without thinking, he laughed and gave her a big hug. She pulled away from him almost immediately, but not without a smile.
“It’s over, then? The battle’s over?”
“It looks that way. But the war … The war is just beginning. The Imperials won’t let this defeat stand. They’ll come back in greater strength than we’ve seen before. But I suppose that doesn’t matter to you. You only joined this fight to find that girl.”
Aaron thought about it for a moment. The henna girl—he definitely wanted to find her soon. Even more, he wanted to find his brother and make sure he was all right. But then he thought about Fourth Platoon, how long and hard they’d fought together and how many of them had died. His brother’s words about fighting for the freedom of the Outworlds came back to him, and he knew he couldn’t abandon the cause.
“You won’t get rid of me so easily,” he said. “I’m in this with you for the long haul, however long it takes. When the Imperials come back, we’ll be ready.”
She looked at him as if he were an idiot, then smiled even wider. “I guess not, star wanderer. Or should I say
‘Ensign’?”
“What does rank matter among friends?”
“Fair enough. You want to raid the officer’s lounge when all this is over? I could use a stiff drink.”
“Yeah,” he said. “I think I do.”
Book III: Strangers in Flight
Cold Awakening
At first, Reva had no perception other than a vague sense of falling. It was neither dark nor light, neither cold nor hot, and she couldn’t tell whether she was the one falling or the world all around her—if you could call it a world. Time, space, and consciousness were all beyond her immediate awareness. And yet, the void filled her with a strange restlessness, as if something important were about to happen—as if she were about to experience rebirth.
Short streaks of multicolored light flashed past her as she fell, stirring her to awareness. She had a very distinct and powerful feeling that she was going somewhere. In a few moments, she would find herself in a strange place far from home, and she had to be prepared for anything. The thought seemed so important that she held onto it like a lifeline as the flashes grew in length and intensity. Her mind began to stir, her consciousness to awaken; time and space unfolded before her mind, and the void gave way to darkness.
Cold darkness.
She gasped, and the air felt like knives. Her whole body burned like fire and ice, as if her heart were pumping poison through her veins instead of blood. She arched her back and fell into wild convulsions.
Hot steam bathed her body, seeping through her skin like a healing balm. There wasn’t enough of it, though—not nearly enough. She gasped desperately for breath, filling her lungs with the blessed warmth. The convulsions stopped, and her muscles turned to water. She slid to her ankles just as her stomach began to heave.
The next few moments passed in a blur. A sharp hiss filled her ears, followed by voices speaking an unfamiliar language. Hands reached out to her, touching her all over. She gasped again, tears streaming from her eyes as she vomited cold bile from her empty stomach. It was more than she could bear. All she could do was surrender to the pain and hope it didn’t kill her.