by Jerry Aubin
As hard as he tried to prevent it, Zax’s body flinched ever so slightly at the mention of Kalare’s name. Rege grinned when he observed the involuntary movement.
“Hold for orders.” Rege lowered the communicator and moved in closer to Zax. “Thank you for just confirming those are your friends who we’ve captured. We’re about to take over the Ship for good, and we’ve been given orders to take prisoners rather than kill any more Crew to build goodwill. I’m very tight with our leader, though, and I’m confident she’ll be OK with making an exception for the person who killed my brother. Since you’ve already told me you don’t know who actually stabbed him, I guess I’ll be forced to have our people execute both cadets.”
Zax’s emotions roiled at the outcome of his earlier lie. In trying to protect Kalare, he had actually made it impossible to save her. Zax didn’t know if he would have been capable of issuing Aleron a death sentence by falsely identifying him as the killer of Rege’s brother, but in hindsight he wished he had left that option open. Instead, the untruth had only served to paint him into a corner.
Rege brandished the knife once more as he leaned in closer to Zax. “Or maybe I should have them brought here. I can take their two lives with the same blade that took two lives from my family. Seems like that would be nice symmetry, don’t you think? You say you blacked out and didn’t get to see my brother die, so we can make sure you’re conscious for these two deaths. You really should get to witness what happens when a knife is jammed in to the back of someone’s neck. See how the spark of a life gets extinguished with a simple twist of the blade. Watch how the blood pools on the deck while the body cools and stiffens. What do you think, cadet, does that sound like a good plan?”
Every muscle in Zax’s body tensed. None more so than those in the hand which grasped the invisible mini blaster. He exulted in the thought of how easy it would be to save Kalare by simply killing the civilian before he could exact his revenge upon her. Zax was on the verge of lifting his arm to take the shot when Sergeant Bailee called out.
“There’s nothing you can do, Zax!”
Anger clouded Rege’s face as he turned and closed the remaining distance between him and the Marine with the blade in his outstretched arm. The sergeant held the civilian’s furious gaze without flinching in the face of impending death. At the last second, Rege flipped the blade so that he held it by the upper portion of the hilt. He smashed the butt of the handle into Bailee’s temple with punishing force. The Marine crashed to the deck unconscious.
Zax was now entirely on his own with the civilians, but the sergeant’s words echoed in his mind. The Marine knew there was something Zax could do in the situation. He could use his hidden weapon to kill Rege before the civilian issued any further orders and hopefully save Kalare in the process. What the Marine must have been trying to tell Zax was that there was nothing he should do. The irony was not lost on Zax as he unpacked Bailee’s directive. He was supposed to not shoot an insurgent and spare two Crew because he actually needed to save it for killing a different Crew member.
Rege strutted back towards Zax. “Where were we? Oh yes, I was asking you whether you wanted to have your friends brought here so you can see what it looks like when someone dies by the blade. How does that sound?”
The pull weight of the blaster’s trigger pushed back against the muscles of Zax’s finger. His outward appearance remained neutral while his inner dialog was as riled as the most storm swept planet. He attempted to calm himself by envisioning how the one motion of raising his arm and firing the blaster would kill Rege and end the threat on Kalare’s life. The civilians had been told to spare their Crew prisoners, and Zax fought to convince himself that would remain the default action of the people on the other end of the communicator who held her.
Some part of Zax knew there was something wrong with that logic, however, and kept his arm plastered to his side. Yes, he could dream that removing Rege from the equation would prevent the civilians from killing Kalare, but he had no way of guaranteeing that outcome. Perhaps, he worried, they would still kill her simply out of spite.
A more likely scenario surfaced from the maelstrom of his thoughts. He believed that killing Rege would most likely protect Kalare from the immediate threat, but concluded her salvation would be short-lived. She, along with almost everyone else on board, was slated to die within mins once the Captain vented the Ship and ended the revolution. The only thing that could stop that outcome was if the civilians tortured the Boss so effectively he cracked quickly and provided them access to the FTL engine. They would then hold its possible destruction as the ultimate chip in the negotiations and force a halt to the Captain’s plans. Kalare wouldn’t get vented into space, but she would be stuck on a Ship controlled by civilians. If Rege exemplified the grudges and hatreds that underpinned the civilians’ actions, there was a torturous existence awaiting the Crew under their command.
Zax released his finger from the trigger in resignation. There was no good outcome available for Kalare. The only thing which made sense was keeping the existence of his weapon secret and holding out hope it would be used to accomplish his original mission. It was impossible to guarantee his friend’s safety, but at least he could offer his own life alongside hers in an effort to save the Ship and its Mission from the civilians. In a final act of defiance, he turned away from Rege so he would not be tempted to change his mind by the man’s self-satisfied facial expression.
“Don’t you turn your back on me, boy!”
Zax heard the knife clatter to the deck and the civilian’s pounding footfalls approach as he roared his disapproval. A fist crashed into Zax’s right kidney and he fell forward to the deck on his hands and knees. He gasped, not from the searing pain, but from the realization he nearly lost his grip on the precious blaster. He curled into a ball and cradled the invisible weapon close to his body. He glared up at the civilian as he fantasized about taking two shots in quick succession—one to kill the Boss and save the Ship from civilian control and a second which would extinguish Rege’s miserable life. He sought solace in the desperate hope the Boss might appear before Kalare could be delivered to Rege. That dream was quickly dashed as the civilian looked down at the screen of his communicator and spoke.
“Look at how late it’s gotten. You and your Marine friend have made me waste a lot of time, cadet, right when things are about to get really interesting around here. Now I’m not going to be able to take care of those other two myself.” He keyed the communicator. “Kill the two cadets. Make sure it’s painful. Rege out.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
She's in for the surprise of her life.
Zax choked back an anguished scream. He refused to give the civilian the satisfaction of seeing the pain he had caused. Zax closed his eyes and fought to calm down. All he could envision was the suffering being visited upon Kalare. His friend, his dear, dear friend, had just heard her death sentence announced and was likely experiencing its excruciating delivery. Zax had lost the chance to save her but silently vowed to avenge her. If the civilian was still in the compartment when the Boss appeared, Rege would also be dead before the Omega’s lifeless body hit the deck.
“What the hell’s going on in here, Rege? I told you I didn’t want any more violence!”
Zax recognized the voice. He opened his eyes and looked at the hatch to see Imair enter the compartment. He noticed all of the civilians stand straighter—almost as if they were Crew snapping to attention in the presence of an Omega. She smiled benevolently at him.
“Hello, Zax. I’m certainly not surprised you managed to find your way here.” She glanced at Sergeant’s Bailee’s unconscious form. “I had a feeling we had a shadow in ChamWare when I was with you earlier. It makes perfect sense for the sergeant to show up and try to interfere with my plans, and he’d need your navigating skills and tunnel access to make that happen. We never had an opportunity to test out that mist device before today, but I know my engineers will be thrilled to learn it w
orked as intended.”
Zax struggled to reconcile what he was seeing and hearing. His confusion must have been apparent because Imair grinned even more broadly.
“I can see you’re puzzled, Zax. I’ll be happy to explain and answer your questions in a moment, but I need to take care of a couple items first. Rege—hand me that communicator.”
Imair took the comm unit proffered by Rege and fiddled with its controls for a moment. She started to speak and Zax was astounded to hear her words emanate from the vid screens in the room. It wasn’t her actual voice, but rather the disguised one he had heard when the civilians first took over the Engineering compartment. Zax had indeed recognized the speaker when he listened earlier because it was someone he had heard repeatedly for the past year.
“Greetings, everyone. It’s been a while since you last heard from either me or the Captain. My apologies. We thought at the time we had an agreement in hand which would allow us to end these hostilities, and I had hoped to report more progress by now. Unfortunately, final resolution has taken longer than planned. Regardless, I’m now confident we’ll be able to end all of this unpleasantness one way or the other in a very short period of time. Please expect to hear back from me soon.”
Imair looked down at the communicator and manipulated its controls once again. The Captain appeared on one of the vidscreens. Since it was only one screen and not all of them, Zax assumed it was a private channel and not being broadcast to the entire Ship. The Captain looked up and frustration filled her voice as she spoke.
“What exactly was that announcement supposed to mean?”
Imair grinned as she replied, even though it appeared to only be an audio channel on her end and her visage was not being transmitted.
“I’m not sure what you could be upset about, Captain. If anything, we should be the ones annoyed by all of your delays. We are almost halfway to your 240 min deadline, and you have not yet delivered on some of my demands we had agreed to. For instance, why haven’t the environmental controls been transferred to Engineering yet?”
Hearing Imair say it was nearly 120 mins since her last announcement made Zax remember the Captain was in her final preparations to vent the Ship. He could see the Crew moving frantically all around the bridge behind her on the screen and tried to imagine what it would be like to kill nearly ten million people with the push of a button. Zax closely watched the Captain’s expression and was duly impressed at how she gave away nothing. She held her hands out in a pleading gesture.
“Look around me—we’re doing our best. I’ve got everyone scrambling, but there was so much damage from the bombs and it’s causing us problems. I’m confident we’ll have some good news to report in just a few more mins.”
Zax thought he caught a glint in the Captain’s eyes with her last sentence. Imair’s tone and expression did not change as she responded.
“Regardless, we’ll have some new developments on this end as well in that timeframe. I encourage you to remember who’s in charge right now, Captain. Our control is about to become even more solidified, and I would hate to see you break your word and not honor your earlier commitments. There will be severe consequences for noncompliance.”
Imair delivered her last words with grave sincerity and cut the connection. She turned to Zax.
“That woman thinks I’m an idiot. She’s in for the surprise of her life. You must have a million questions for me, Zax, but I only have a couple of mins available before I need to finalize our takeover. Ask your most pressing one first.”
Zax actually had only one thought at that moment, and he locked eyes with Imair. “How could you kill Nolly?”
A dark cloud passed over Imair’s face, but her countenance soon shifted back to her typical neutral expression.
“Really, Zax? I give you an opportunity to ask me anything, and that’s the best you can come up with? I’m disappointed in you. I’m sorry to hear he died as that was not my intent. It was critical that I distract you folks for a while after I took off with the Boss. I only wanted to hurt him, but I’m not much of a marksman and felt with only one shot I needed to aim near center mass. I regret taking the life of a child, but I believe even he would agree it was a small price to pay in order to preserve the future for untold billions of civilians by putting an end to this Ship’s insane Mission.
“You came close to really screwing up our plans, Zax. Freeing the Boss and then helping to kill the Chief Engineer took away our best chances of capturing the Ship. Thankfully your group did exactly what I anticipated and went to Waste Management. The real value of all your strict Crew training, as far as I’m concerned, is that it leads all of you to act very predictably. I took a big chance by putting myself at risk to track you down and infiltrate your little traveling party, but I did so with the confidence I was almost surely guaranteed to succeed.”
Imair looked over at the open hatch in response to the sound of a group approaching and smiled. “Rege—help the cadet to his feet and grab a blaster. I want to bring him along with us to the FTL compartment so he can witness first-hand the end of the Crew’s command of this Ship.”
Zax used his empty hand to brush away Rege’s assistance and followed Imair’s gaze as he got to his feet. His heart began to pound furiously as he watched the Flight Boss enter the compartment.
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
What have you done?
Zax’s body tensed as he surveyed the situation. A half dozen civilians poured into the compartment alongside the Boss, and the man calmly spoke with one who walked beside him. The Omega looked exactly the same as he had when Zax last saw him. He expected the civilians to have been torturing the officer this entire time and was perplexed when the man did not appear to have been abused the way the Chief Engineer had earlier in the day. He could not in a million years imagine what might have caused the Boss to break faster than anyone would have anticipated, but the civilians must have done something truly dreadful if Imair was so confident she was about to gain access to the FTL.
There would be no hesitation this time. Kalare’s murder had cemented Zax’s resolve to complete the mission Sergeant Bailee had assigned. His finger tightened on the trigger. He casually turned so his right arm would be pointed directly at the Boss when he lifted the blaster for his shot. As he did so, he made a mental note of Rege’s position. The civilian was standing less than a meter away on Zax’s right side. He was laughing having just awkwardly caught a blaster by the barrel which someone tossed to him. Zax would have to move quickly if we was going to get off a second shot and kill the civilian, but he felt confident in his abilities.
Zax stared at the Boss and casually lifted his arm to fire the kill shot. Time felt like it slowed painfully, but Zax feared attracting unwanted attention if he moved too quickly. The Omega stopped speaking with the woman next to him, and his eyes swept the compartment as he entered. His gaze paused for a moment and he raised his eyebrows slightly when he saw Sergeant Bailee’s body, clad mostly in ChamWare, lying unconscious on the deck. The Boss’s head continued to turn and his eyes went wide as they met Zax’s.
“The cadet has a weapon!”
The Boss’s words echoed through the compartment as the officer hunched down in an effort to shield himself. Zax was confused as to why the man would endanger an outcome he had to expect and should actually desire, but in the end it didn’t matter. By ducking the Boss only hastened his demise as the movement placed his head into the same plane as Zax’s arm. He pulled the trigger for the kill shot.
Zax’s leg erupted in blinding pain. The limb had shattered from the force of Rege wielding his blaster like a club and smashing the weapon’s stock against it. The impact threw off Zax’s aim by a few millimeters just as the trigger fully engaged. His shot bounced harmlessly off a bulkhead as Zax crashed to the deck once again. He finally lost his grip on the blaster which became visible as it skittered away.
Imair berated the civilians before the blaster shot had even stopped reverberating.
Rege moved to pick up the blaster and smiled as it went invisible in his hand. He held it up for everyone to see.
“This is how we missed it. Looks like the Marines have some tricks we weren’t aware of.”
Imair shook her head ruefully as she held out her hand for the weapon. Rege handed it over and she tucked it into the waistband of her pants in the small of her back. She spoke quietly with him while the activity level in the compartment increased markedly. A group of civilians approached the closed hatch and started to pick up the crates of explosives which were stacked there. One held it open as the others carried the boxes into the compartment beyond.
Zax laid on the deck and silently wept. Not from the agony of his leg, but from shame. He had failed. In everything. Kalare was dead and the Boss was alive. His friend was gone and soon all hope for the Ship would be as well. He felt a hand on his shoulder and looked up into the eyes of the Flight Boss.
“What have you done?” Zax hissed through his tears.
“I’m sorry, Zax,” the Omega whispered. “I don’t expect you to understand. I couldn’t let you kill me, though I respect you immensely for trying. I hope you’ll some day look back and see why this was all for the best. You’ve accomplished your duty today, Zax, better than I ever would’ve dreamed.”
Zax was overwhelmed with an urge to spit in the officer’s face. The man was allowing the civilians to win and appeared to be doing so without any semblance of a fight. Why had Zax sacrificed so much to try to save the Ship and protect the Crew if its second highest ranking officer was willing to just up and quit? Imair appeared over the Omega’s shoulder and pulled the man up by the arm before Zax could act on his disgust.
“Come on, Boss. Time to deliver my prize like you promised. Let’s go visit the FTL.”