by Sam Coulson
The Draugari stepped forward, going around the remaining sleeping pod that I had been crouching behind. One more step. He took it. I turned and kicked the emergency release lever-the locks on the sleeping pods disengaged and they tumbled onto the Draugari, knocking him to his right against the bulkhead.
He cried out, but I suspect it was more out of anger than pain. With a snarl he lifted the pod and it aside. He rose to his feet.
There was another cry, this one was pain. One of the other Draugari behind him dropped to his knees, and then the other. Smoke was rising from their backs. Behind him I saw Lee, still in his colonial jumpsuit, holding a laser pistol.
Lee was quick, but the lead Draugari was quicker. Before Lee could make his third shot, the Draugari was moving swiftly to the side and returning. The Draugari gun made a loud pop as it fired. His first shot flew high over Lee’s head, sending sparks of slag.
As Lee returned fire, the Draugari leapt to the side with startling agility, Lee’s shots streaked harmlessly through the dank air. The Draugari’s second shot struck Lee in the shoulder, sending the laser pistol flying from his hand. The Draugari dropped his gun, and advanced toward Lee with his long, jagged blade drawn.
Before, I had stood up between Ju-lin and the Draugari without a thought. Maybe out of fear, maybe it was out of duty. But as I heard Lee cry out in pain and held his shoulder, his eyes wild with desperation, something in me changed. What I did next, I did out of savagery.
“Come and get me!” Lee hollered at the oncoming Draugari.
Without hesitating, I bounded with two steps and took a wild leap at the Draugari, throwing my weight at him from behind. Unprepared for such a wild attack, I knocked him forward. As he fell, his flailing hand struck the galley table, sending his blade sliding across the floor. The Draugari roared in pain as he flipped over to grab me. He didn’t need his knife to kill me, I was certain that he would be able to rip me limb for limb if he caught me. I kicked back against him, making a desperate face-first dive across the floor.
I heard Ju-lin scream a warning.
He was on me in seconds, kicking my side and sending me rolling onto my back. He threw himself on me reaching for my neck, but I had found what I wanted. As he came upon me I thrust his knife upward at his neck with both hands. The blade pierced the soft spot of his armor, slicing through his respirator, sinking into the soft tissue.
The Draugari gasped for breath, making a sickening bubbling sound. The light of his eyes flickered once, twice, and then faded to black. As the life left him, I felt a surge of energy coming through the handle of the knife. It began as a soft tingle, and elevated to a throbbing pulse. It spread from my hands and filled my whole body, coming in intense waves. With each wave my vision clouded. I saw ships. I saw worlds. I saw faces, Draugari faces. I felt joy. I felt fear. I felt agony. I felt a deep and ancient longing.
In the last moments, I saw myself through his eyes. I shared his last thoughts. My throat burned with pain. I felt a surge of fear, of shock, and then, at the end, regret.
Chapter 12.
“The Charon is our immortality. Upon death, we are able to pass on the core of ourselves to another so that knowledge and experience is preserved. It is a moment of connection, and the fleeting moment of our lives and deaths where we are no longer alone. The spirit of the passing mingles with the spirit of the one still waiting to pass, and there is peace.”
I looked down at my teacher. My hand shook.
“Do not be afraid Eli. My Charon is the gift I offer you, the last thing I can teach you. I have told you all I have to tell, and my life has passed its course across the sky. I am weak now, and old, so very old.”
“I do not know what to do,” my voice was strange and distant.
“There is nothing to know, all there is, is the doing,” he responded, slipping the knife into my hand. “Now, quickly, before my time passes. The greatest loss in the universe is a Charon that slips away unmet, and mine will soon be slipping. So strike, Eli, strike now, and live well.”
My head was spinning and temples throbbing. My throat burned, I am choking. I gasped for air. My throat was clear. I could breathe easily. My mind swam with strange and new images, an old Draugari handing me a knife, a filthy pile of rags in the corner, the rush of a kill and the satisfaction of feeling my enemy’s warm red blood rushing over my hand.
The world shifted, Ju-lin and Lee were standing above me. The Draugari’s body was off to the side. I still held the Draugari’s knife, and my hands were soaked in blood. Not the warm red blood from my memory, but cool purple blood of a Draugari.
“Those were his memories,” I gasped.
“What?” Lee looked down, his shoulder was blackened and bleeding, and was leaning on Ju-Lin to stay standing.
“I saw myself. I saw me kill me, ur, I mean him,” I fumbled.
“You saw yourself?” Ju-lin was startled.
I fought to regain my mind. I was myself.
Eli.
Human.
Mostly.
I looked again at the Draugari. Lor’ten. His name came to my mind as easily as my own.
“We need to get control of this boat,” Lee broke in. “We can sort this out later. Lin, help me get to the cockpit.”
I nodded. Without thinking I flipped the blade in the palm of my hand, it cut through my bindings with a whisper. The hilt felt natural in my hand, as if it were an extension of myself. Ju-lin eyes were curious as she watched me. She looked like she was about to say something, but then turned to help Lee toward the front of the ship.
I started to stand up, but stumbled back to my knees. “I need a minute, my head is still spinning.”
“You don’t have a minute,” Lee barked back.
“That’s not your head,” Ju-lin called back over her shoulder as they passed through the hatch. “It’s the ship!”
The ship? I stumbled up to my feet, using the bulkhead to steady myself. We were spinning, and it was getting faster. Warning lights were flashing along the floorboards. I absently slid the Draugari knife into my belt, and stumbled toward the hatch. I felt a brief surge of rage as I passed the bodies of the other two dead Draugari. I heard their names in my mind, Jen’tak and Kel. I shook off the thoughts and hurried to follow Ju-lin and Lee.
“Hell no I can’t,” Lee grumbled as I entered. “Not with this arm. Get strapped in, you take the stick.”
Ju-lin opened her mouth to respond, but he silenced her with a look.
The cockpit was much larger than I had expected. It was broad with a long and angular viewport that afforded an amazing range of visibility. At the edge of the viewport were three seats with command controls. I struggled to maintain my orientation as we spun faster and faster.
“Eli, take the seat on the right, that’s the engine control,” Lee called. “Get me to the nav station.”
We were in a flat spin, and picking up speed and losing altitude. Alarms were sounding everywhere. I came forward to help Ju-lin get Lee into the seat on the far left. Once he was seated and strapped in, I made my way to my seat, and Ju-lin slid into the captain’s seat. There were control pads on either arm of my chair, and as I sat, a holographic heads up display appeared floating in the air around me. Almost everything was flashing red.
“Okay, Eli, your control pad,” Lee instructed. “You will find an engine control status, what does it say?”
I looked at the control pad and tried to call it up, but it wasn’t responding. Whenever I tried to enter a command, a strange symbol appeared on my display.
“I can’t,” I responded. “The controls aren’t responding. It’s asking for an access code.”
“Well, boy, try it again,” Lee hollered back.
The spinning was getting worse, completing full revolutions once every three seconds.
“No, Dad,” Ju-lin shouted over her shoulder. “We’re locked out. I can’t read it. Pull up your display.”
Lee pawed at his controls with his good hand.
&nb
sp; “I can’t read the symbols,” Ju-lin said desperately. “Did the Draugari do something to the ship’s computers?”
“Sa’cara,” Lee said, his voice flat.
“What is Sa’cara?” Ju-lin responded.
“That’s what the Celestrials call it,” Lee replied. “A booby-trap. Sometimes when the Draugari pirate a ship, they install a failsafe tied to their own life signs. If the Draugari crew is killed, the ship goes into a self-destruct sequence.”
“Okay,” she answered as she looked over the controls. “How do I override it?”
Lee didn’t respond. Another series of alarms started flashing. Artificial gravity systems were failing.
“Dad! How do I override it?” Ju-lin repeated. Her voice was shrill and frantic.
“We don’t,” Lee responded flatly.
“Then we need to get back to your shuttle,” Ju-lin unlatched her belt.
“Not in this spin, there is no wa-” Lee’s words were cut short by a loud pop and grinding sound. A field of debris flew from the ship. I saw the shuttle floating free, every rotation I caught a glimpse of it, sliding off into the horizon.
“There is no way that the shuttle’s docking clamp will hold,” he finished.
The force of the spin pushed me back in my seat.
“We’re hitting the upper atmosphere,” Ju-lin said. “We’ll burn up without the heat shields in place!”
“Eli,” Lee broke in. “You said it was asking for an access code?”
“Yeah,” I responded. “It says right here.”
“No it doesn’t,” Ju-lin yelled back. “It’s in, what is that written in? Draugari? It’s not Common.”
“You said you saw his memories,” Lee said. “And now you can read Draugari? Nobody in the Collective or the Protectorate has ever translated it.”
I looked again, only then did I realize that the letters weren’t in Common.
“I don’t know what the hell just happened back there,” Lee said. “But, you need to think, and think hard, boy. What is the code?”
I stared at the screen. I could read it. But I couldn’t think of the code.
“We have less than a minute before the atmo burns us into nothing!” Ju-lin called.
As if to emphasize her point, I saw the blur of an explosion in the distance. It was Lee’s shuttle burning up in the atmosphere.
“I don’t know it,” my voice was shaky. “I’m trying to remember, but I just don’t know.”
“Don’t think about it,” Lee called back. “Just enter the code.”
“I don’t know what it is!”
“Elicio,” Lee’s voice was suddenly low, calm, even soothing. “Don’t think. Just type.”
The evenness of his voice helped to melt my panic. It was smooth, reassuring, and fatherly. Without another thought, I put my hand on the keypad and typed in a series of eight digits.
“Emergency power back online!” Ju-lin yelled triumphantly. “Dad, the heat shield!”
“Heat shield up, stabilizers up in three, two, one!”
With a sudden and violent jolt, the ship stabilized and the spinning stopped.
“Systems coming back online,” Ju-lin said. “I have basic flight control.”
“Well done kid,” Lee looked over at me. “I am not sure what the hell happened back there, but that’s twice you’ve saved our lives.”
I looked down at my hand, still stained with Draugari blood. Lor’ten’s blood. My blood.
“Engines,” Ju-lin broke in. “Main engines are offline, I don’t have enough power. Eli! Status?”
Roused from my thoughts, I looked down and focused on the engine controls.
“All four main engine thrusters are damaged, power reserves at seven percent,” I called back. “System says we have enough power for a ten second burst at twenty percent thrust from the primary thrusters.”
“That’s not enough to get back into orbit,” she responded, her voice shaky as she handled the controls trying to keep the ship steady as we continued to plummet.
“That’s not enough,” Lee agreed. “Not nearly enough. And it looks like my shuttle took off some of the hull plating on the number three thruster. If we fire the main thrusters even for that long we’ll burn her out.”
“So what do we do?” I asked.
“We can’t go up,” Ju-lin responded.
“We go down,” Lee answered. “Lin, keep the nose up as best you can, we can use the maneuvering thrusters to angle our descent.”
We had passed through the upper atmosphere; I could see the sea and green hills through the clouds below us.
“I’ve never landed anything this big before,” Ju-lin said.
“You aren’t going to land this either,” Lee responded. “We’re going too fast, and we’re going straight down. Nose up!”
Ju-lin cursed as she fought the controls, “I just lost lateral maneuvering thrusters. All I have is pitch.”
Cracks started appearing across the viewport as we broke through the top of the cloud cover.
“She’s not designed for this kind of descent,” Lee broke in. “Our angle is too steep. Nose up Lin, nose up. We’re going to hit the ground head first!”
“Nose up,” she repeated softly. “Eli, you say we have ten seconds of burn?”
“Yes, but your dad says it will burn up the engines,” I responded. “And wouldn’t that just send us down faster?”
“Nose up,” she gave me a sideways glance. “Full thrusters on my mark.”
“Three thousand meters,” Lee called. “Lin-”
“Trust me dad,” without another word, she engaged the remaining maneuvering thrusters and pulled up hard on the stick. The cracks spread around the viewport as the ship struggled against her commands, but then, with a swift flip, the ship turned. The maneuvering thrusters weren’t enough to alter our descent, but she had flipped us a full 180 degrees: cockpit toward the sky, and engines toward the ground.
“Mark! Thrusters full!” she called.
I flipped the thrusters to full power.
Behind us, the Carrack’s four engines fired their last. At first, there was no effect. Two, three, four seconds passed.
“Fifteen hundred meters!” Lee called.
“Six seconds left on the burn!” I called.
“Seven hundred!”
“Come on dammit,” Ju-lin muttered.
“Three hundred,” Lee said. “Rate of descent decreasing.”
The Carrack shook violently and her structure groaned as her thrusters fought against our momentum and the planet’s pull.
“Two hundred!”
“Two seconds left on burn!”
“Fifty meters!” Lee announced.
“Descent slowed to twelve meters per second!” Ju-lin called triumphantly.
I looked out the cracked viewport. I could see mountains on the peripheral. They seemed to hover there, still in the air.
“Six meters and holding!” Lee called.
There was one last cough and the engines fell silent.
“Hold on!” Ju-lin yelled.
For a second, a hundred tons of steel hung still in the air, mere meters above the surface. The ground below was blackened from the last gasping burn from the engines. The air was full of smoke and the smell of sulfur. And then, after a breath, gravity regained her hold, and finally pulled the Carrack crashing down to the surface.
Chapter 13.
The Master’s backhand slap sent me flying wildly across the room. There was a loud clank when I hit the deck and I felt the sharp grates press painfully against my bare back.
“Incorrect form, Lor’ten!” The Master spoke abruptly to me without looking. “A Draugari warrior must never lose focus!”
I bowed low. My cheek stung and something on the floor was digging into my back, but I didn’t move. I’d learned weeks ago to stay where I am until the Master releases me. Some of my ribs were still sore from that beating.
The Master continued his lessons. Kal, Jen’tak and
Tren didn’t flinch or break form, and nobody else made the same mistake I had. I was glad that they had learned from my error. As the Master says, one misstep is an accident, two missteps is a pattern. Your enemy will use those patterns to destroy your clan.
It was a good lesson.
I watched as the rest of my cadre continued to follow the Master’s maneuvers, thrust, feint, and parry. All with empty hands. It will not be long now; we are all almost of age. Soon we will travel to our clan’s bladestones where the elder warriors will hand forge blades of our own. Blades that we will carry in honor until death.
When I came to, I was suspended upside down, still strapped into my seat. I looked around the smoky air and saw that the cockpit of the Carrack was still mostly intact. Over half of the viewport was shattered and missing, and the several of the display panels were shattered, but the main structure had held firm. A testament to Earthborn engineering. Ju-lin had managed to slow our descent before we crash landed, but that last brief freefall had been more than the haggard ship could sustain.
I reached up, grabbing my shoulder straps firmly, and clicked the emergency release. I had intended to use the straps to swing down gracefully, but it didn’t quite work out that way. I ended up face down on what had been the ceiling of the now overturned ship.
I groaned.
“That has to be the sorriest way to land a ship I’ve ever seen,” Lee grumbled.
“Any landing you can walk away from, right dad?” I heard a click and a soft thud as Ju-lin landed easily on her feet next to me. She had a cut above her left eye and fresh blood smeared across her cheek, but she was smiling.
“So it would seem,” he responded. “Lin, I’m proud of you.”
From the corner of my eye, I saw Ju-lin hiding a proud smile as she looked up at her father as he hung from the ceiling, still strapped into his chair.
“Come on, get to it,” he barked as his face was turning red, I wasn’t sure if that was from the sentimentality of the moment, or blood rushing to his head. “Both of you get your asses over here and help me get down.”
It took a little work, and a lot of cursing, but we got Lee back down and made our way through a hole in the shattered viewport and out into the sun. Once we were clear of the wreckage, we dropped to the short, dry grass, exhausted, and looked back at what was left of the Carrack.