Stars of Charon (Legacy of the Thar'esh Book 1)

by Sam Coulson

  I woke up face down on a cold steel floor. My chest was pounding. I shook off the haze and tried to sit up, but I found my hands were tied together under me and my feet were bound. There were several smears of red-black handprints on the floor beneath me. Dried blood. I gasped, only then did I notice the stench of death and rot. The stink was so thick I could taste it and my eyes watered. I gagged.

  I heard a series of quick thuds and a muted explosion. The floor below me shook, and then world pitched sharp to the right. I slid across the floor, slamming my right side against a wall, no, it was steel. A bulkhead.

  Less than a second later something hit my left side.

  I groaned in pain as I rolled over to see what had struck me, it was Ju-lin. Her hands and feet were bound like mine, and she had a bruise on her forehead, but seemed to be breathing normally. There were two blackened marks on her shirt where she had been shot, I looked down and saw two similar marks on my own chest.

  “Stunners,” she grunted, her eyes flickering open. “You alright?”

  “I’m alive,” I said. “I think.”

  “A joke? That’s good.” She grunted. “At least you’re not going all terrified on me.”

  She rolled over and spun around on her back, leaning forward into a half-sitting position to look around.

  “Where are we?” I asked.

  “Best guess?” she said. “I’d say we are in the main hold of the Carrack.”

  The ship shook violently. A siren sounded for a few seconds and was silenced.

  I pulled myself up to lean with my back against the bulkhead. The cargo hold was large and filthy. There were blast scars and blood splatters on the wall. On one end was a large cargo bay door, the other was a closed hatch leading further into the ship.

  “Those weren’t human,” I said, afraid to ask the question.

  “Not completely,” she said as she pulled herself across the floor toward a computer terminal next to the hatch. “Those were Draugari.”

  Every Draugari raid and attack that I had read about on the Slate, and every tale I had heard the colonists tell about the Draugari ended in swift and brutal death. “But I thought the Draugari don’t take prisoners.”

  “Today they did,” she said. “Who knows, maybe they just didn’t have time to kill us on the surface. Look at the blood on the walls. We’re not the first people to get locked up in here. Maybe they’re saving us for dinner.”

  The ship lurched with another series of explosions, the engines thundered in response. This time I managed to grab a cargo strap to keep from sliding across the floor. Ju-lin wasn’t as lucky; she slid the length of the empty hold, slamming against the cargo door with her left side.

  “You alright?”

  “Yeah, just fine,” she groaned and she started working her way back across the hold, this time she was clumsily gripping the handholds. “They must either have not expected us to wake up, or didn’t think of us as much of a threat, or they would have done more to secure us. I need to activate that terminal and find out what the hell is going on. See if you can find something to cut these bindings.”

  There was a loose coil of thick canvas cargo strapping mounted on the wall. It looked like it was the same stuff they had used to tie our hands. A scattered pile of trash was sliding around the floor, some packing foam, a shoe, and several ceramic shards that looked like they could have once been part of body armor. I looked closer, the shards were small but they could be sharp enough. I turned and pushed off from the wall, sliding toward the debris.

  “Got something?” Ju-lin called, she was nearly back to the console.

  “Maybe,” I said as I fumbled through the pieces, too small, too dull. The third piece sliced the tip of my finger as I picked it up. I couldn’t get in a good position to use it to cut my own hand bindings, so I began using it to saw at the bindings on my feet. “This should work, but the straps are thick. It won’t be quick.”

  “Well, hurry,” she said dryly as she reached up to a cargo strap to pull herself to her feet next to the console. She looked from the terminal to the cargo strap and back down to her feet. If she let go of the strap, another hit would send her tumbling across the room again. “Well hell, now what?”

  The cutting was agonizingly slow. Twice I lost my grip and had to fumble to recover the shard. I was only halfway there, and could tell that Ju-lin was getting impatient.

  I looked back up to see that Ju-lin had bitten down on the strap to stabilize herself as she began to work the terminal controls with her bound hands. There was another jolt as the Carrack took fire and pitched again. Ju-lin made a muffled cry followed by a stream of unintelligible curses. She was red faced and wild eyed, but her bite held.

  Finally, the strap on my feet came loose. I struggled to my feet and hobbled toward Ju-lin. She spit out the cargo strap and took ahold of it with her hands to steady herself.

  “Sonuva—” she stretched her jaw.

  “Here.” My hand still bound, I reached my arms up over her head and brought my arms down around her shoulders, drawing her close.

  “What the hell are you trying to do?” she spat. “This is not the time, and it is definitely not the place.” She didn’t struggle or try to move out of my arms, though.

  I kept hold of the ceramic edge with my left hand, and grabbed the cargo strap with my right, securing her against the wall.

  “Oh,” she said. “Sorry, I thought that you were—”

  “I figured this would be easier, now get the terminal going.”

  She continued to work the controls. The screen changed several times as she scrolled through the ship’s logs and systems. Finally a three dimensional locator grid appeared.

  “We’re in low orbit now. Looks like those two Celestrials are on us. No sign of those two Draugari Slires. Either the Celestrials took them out, or they buggered off.”

  We heard another eruption of rapid fire from somewhere on the forward decks. One of the Celestrials signals blinked out and disappeared.

  “The good news is it looks like now the Draugari are winning,” she said.

  “The bad news is it looks like the Draugari are winning,” I replied.

  “Boy you ain’t kidding,” she said. “See if you can get my hands free.”

  She shifted in my arms to turn her back to me and bring her hands closer to mine. Her hair tickled my face. A new sensation. I was amazed that even in the stench of the cargo hold, her hair managed to smell sweet like the blue flowers that grew along the edge of the fields back on the colony. I shook the strange thoughts from my head and worked to get the ceramic edge in position to start cutting her bindings.

  “So, no chance you know how to fight?” she asked, her voice was calm and conversational.

  “Fight?”

  “Yeah. Thought not.”

  The ship took another hit, a series of explosions rang somewhere above us.

  “The power systems took a hit,” Ju-lin said.

  For a few seconds there was complete silence, and then a few clicks and a hum as the lights came back on. But the deep hum of the engines did not. There was one more series of thuds as the attacking ship came around again, and then another burst of fire from the Carrack’s guns, followed by a triumphant yell from the cabin above.

  “The scope is clear,” I said nodding down at the terminal. “They must have gotten the last Celestrial.”

  “Yeah, and the engines are silent,” she responded. “We’re just drifting in orbit. Let’s hope they focus on fixing the ship before they come to check on us.”

  With a final slice I finished cutting through Ju-lin’s bindings, freeing her hands.

  “Ahh, finally,” she ducked down and slipped out from under my arms and hopped away easily on her still-bound feet. “At least the artificial grav systems are still working. Here hand me the shard.”

  She took the piece of armor from me and quickly got to work cutting through the bindings on her feet.

  “A little help?” I said, holding u
p my hands.

  “You can’t fight, remember?” she asked. “My feet are more useful than your hands. Priorities.” She didn’t sound sorry at all. “The ships dead in the water, you can let go of the cargo loop.”

  I’d forgotten that I was still gripping the strap on the bulkhead. I took a few steps, stretching my arms.

  “Okay, let’s see what we have,” she said looking around as she worked on freeing her feet. “They took all my gear, what do we have, the spool of cargo cable, maybe we could use that for something.”

  They had taken her gear. My thoughts went immediately to the memory card and I began to panic. I checked my pocket; it was still there tucked safely away. There was noise in the forward cabin, doors opening and closing and muffled voices.

  “What’s that?” I said, a small blip had appeared on the edge of the scanner. “Another Celestrial ship?”

  “There we go!” Ju-lin tossed the last of the ties aside and leapt to her feet. “What is it? Oh, no, that’s not Celestrial, maybe it’s one of the Slir-no, wait, that’s an Earthborn signal designation.”

  “Someone sent for help?”

  “We’re too far for help. It has to be from the surface.” Her hands flickered over the controls. “I’m glad they didn’t lock out this terminal, let’s hope they aren’t watching the scopes. Wait, the ship is broadcasting a signal.”

  She hit a few keys and a stream of characters crossed the screen.

  “Coded?” I asked.

  “Yeah,” she tried to access the message and the system prompted her for a key. She typed in a series of numbers whispering “Oh, please, please.”

  The message decoded: L.M. en route. Ackno and Disab Scans.

  “Dad,” she smiled.

  “Lee’s coming?” I asked. “Is he going to attack with the shuttle? Can he do that?”

  “No,” she answered as she accessed the ship’s system control. “It’s just an interplanetary shuttle, no weapons. It’s designed to perform satellite maintenance and dock with orbiting craft.”

  “Dock?”

  “Yup,” she said.

  She typed: J.L.M. Ackno, mak’n nois, be quik.

  “But won’t they see that message?”

  “The Draugari use their own communicators, something in their helmets. They won’t be monitoring our coms, especially with the power plant offline and the Celestrials out of the way.”

  With that, Ju-lin entered another series of commands. The screen began to flash scanners offline.

  “Alright,” Ju-lin said, still typing furiously on the keyboard. “As long as they aren’t looking out the windows they won’t see him coming.”

  “And if they do?”

  “It’s our job to make sure they don’t,” she answered. “And to make enough noise that they won’t notice when the docking clamp locks.”

  “How are we going to do that?” I asked.

  “We’re in the cargo bay. Through that hatch and up the access tunnel is the living area. Seats, beds, kitchen, the usual. From there if we continue to the foredeck we will pass through the airlock where the docking collars are, and then the cockpit in the front.”

  “Okay,” I responded. “You didn’t answer my question. We’re unarmed and hurt and they are eight feet tall and heavily armed. And my hands are still bound.”

  “Yeah. No time for that,” she tapped the controls and the access hatch opened, revealing a ladder. “Aside from a few access panels, there isn’t much in the living areas that they would need to get to for them to bring the main power back online. Most of that will have to be done through the main controls in the cockpit, so that’s where they all should be. We can probably find some weapons that we can use to hold out and get their attention long enough for dad to make his approach.”

  “And if one happens to be accessing one of the panels?”

  “They won’t be,” she said with certainty as she stepped toward me, looking at me squarely in the eyes. “Look, I know you’re new at, well, at everything. But listen to me clearly right now. If we do nothing, my Dad dies, and then we die.”

  I looked around the room at the blood-stained walls and took a deep breath, doing the best I could to calm my nerves. For a second, I was glad my hands were still bound, that way she wouldn’t notice them shaking.

  She turned abruptly and started climbing carefully up the access ladder. I followed close behind, using my elbows to augment my still-bound hands to climb. She paused at the access hatch at the top, looked down at me and nodded. Bracing herself against the side of the narrow access tunnel, she lifted both hands, easily twisted to unlock the hatch and slowly pushed it open.

  The room above was quiet. After taking a slow survey of the deck, she nodded to me and climbed silently to the top and hopped out, setting the open hatch down silently on the deck.

  I followed her up, pulling my torso up onto the deck on my elbows so I could look around. The living area was a long room segmented into several parts. We came up in what looked like a small kitchen area. There was a half stack of rations tucked cleanly in a transparent compartment on the wall. A few steps away was the foredeck access door which Ju-lin had said would lead to the docking lock and cockpit. The aft section was dark. The lights must have been blown out. I could see shadows of four sleeping pods mounted on two-on-a-side against the bulkheads. I wondered when and where the poor crew had run into the Draugari. And how long they had suffered before they were killed.

  I reached up awkwardly, still trying to climb up out of the access hatch. Midway through the last heft of pulling my torso up to the deck, my foot slipped on the ladder. I slid back with a thud and a grunt, catching myself with my arms at the shoulders with my legs dangling for a moment as I fought to regain my footing.

  “Quiet!” Ju-lin whispered as she moved to help me, and then she froze, her face white. “Shit.”

  I turned my head to see a pair of white eyes glowing in the darkness of the aft compartment just past the sleeping pods.

  The Draugari made a low growl as he moved slowly toward us. He was tall enough that his figure took up the entire passage. As he drew nearer, I could see his armored suit and hear his rebreather slowly and evenly drawing the air in and out. I recalled that the Draugari do not breathe Earth standard atmosphere and wore rebreathers with nitrogen infusers.

  He took another step and his hand went to his belt, drawing out a long, black blade.

  The sight of the weapon jolted my survival instincts. I once again pushed off, trying to climb out of the access hatch. With a final heave I pulled myself up onto the deck with a flop. I turned around. I was between Ju-lin and the Draugari, my hands bound, completely helpless.

  I heard Ju-lin shuffling around behind me as he approached.

  He looked at her and made a noise that sounded like a cross between a growl and a laugh, and then turned toward me, flipping the knife around in his hand, preparing to deliver a downward killing blow. I tried to move away, but with my hands bound, I slipped to the floor again. I rolled onto my back as he took another step. He lowered himself to one knee and brought the blade up for a downward slash.

  There was a blinding flash and I felt a fire burn on my chest, I screamed in pain and rolled over. Then I realized the burning was just that, burning. I looked down to see a tiny glowing metal cinder on my chest. I shook it off. There was no knife wound. There was no Draugari.

  “Close one,” Ju-lin stepped over and offered me her hand.

  I took it and stood up. I began to ask what had happened when she held up her other hand: her plasma torch. “Sorry there, I think a bit of the splashback hit you.”

  “You got him?”

  “You could say that,” she said nodding back toward the sleeping pods.

  I took a step to look around the kitchen countertop to see the Draugari lying several feet back from where he had been. His chest was now concave, blackened and smoldering; the air was thick of the stench of cooked flesh.

  Doors were opening somewhere behind us tow
ard the cockpit.

  “They heard,” I said.

  “Get some cover, back there behind the sleeping pods.”

  “Can’t you just shoot them?” I asked.

  She shook her head. “One shot is all I had.”

  “Damn,” another door opened behind us as we scrambled deeper into the ship. Ju-lin and I slid into the darkness, each crouching behind sleeping pods on opposite sides of the deck.

  The door opened and the first Draugari slowly walked in, he had his blade in his right hand and a gun in his left. I took a long look, he was built like a human, though taller, with broader shoulders and a barrel chest. His arms and legs were a patchwork of black armor. Though his shape and movements looked human, his rough skin and luminescent white eyes were undeniably alien. He saw the opened hatch and paused, then called out. He took another step and saw his fallen comrade.

  “Un’chan!” he called behind him as he slowly walked toward us, peering into the darkness.

  Two more Draugari appeared behind him to answer his call, all three with weapons drawn. They were huge, menacing, and fearsome.

  Ju-lin was breathing heavily beside me, but I could see her hands were still steady.

  The lead Draugari stopped on the far side of the sleeping pods, looking side to side. He made another sound, and there was a grunting response. With a sudden thrust he punched forward with his knife hand, slamming his fist against the far end of the sleeping pod that Ju-lin was hiding behind. Neither of us was prepared for the strength of the blow. It broke the sleeping pod from its mounting, sending it flying forward into Ju-lin. She screamed in pain as it struck, pinning her against the rear bulkhead.

  Without thinking, I stepped between Ju-lin and the Draugari.

  They made another sound, eerie and unsettling like a chirping baby bird being smothered by a pillow. I realized they were laughing.

  “Un’ta’pa” he replied back and made a slight bow as if in salute, and then he began to advance.

  With my hands still bound, I looked anxiously around for a weapon, a tool, anything I could use. I saw a lever down by my feet to my right, under the remaining sleeping pod. It wasn’t much, but it was a chance.