by G J Ogden
The fighter then seemed to accelerate away from the anomaly, almost knocking Hallam off his feet before the mysterious force suddenly vanished.
“That wasn’t me,” said Ruby, answering the question Hallam was about to ask. “I’m reading pockets of intense gravitational pull building up all around us. We need to get away from that anomaly, or we might end up getting crushed.” Without waiting for a response, Ruby engaged their main engines and started to accelerate away from the ripple in space. “I’m going to need a few minutes to reset the Shelby Drive and plot a new course back to the hideout,” Ruby added while starting work on the calculations. “But I, for one, think it’s high time we got back.”
“I suggest we avoid travelling too close to the main bridge routes,” added Dakota. Her tone was somber and Hallam sensed there was a reason behind her warning.
“Why do you say that, Dak?” Hallam asked, though he was slightly fearful of the answer.
Dakota turned her seat so that Hallam could see her computer screen. “Because that ripple in space is what used to be the bridge connecting the rogue world to Vesta,” she said as Hallam examined the visual scan of the anomaly on her monitor. He could see that Dakota had calculated the path of the anomaly through space, and determined that the end point was in the asteroid field, close to Damien Doyle’s personal planet.
“What happens when that anomaly hits Vesta?” asked Ruby, who had been listening in.
Hallam and Dakota met each other’s eyes again. Like Dakota, Hallam had seen Dr. Rand’s analysis of the alien star system – the mythical thirteenth bridge world that had been destroyed sometime in the distant past. As such, he already had a pretty good idea what would soon become of Vesta.
“Let’s just get this data back to the doc as quickly as we can,” said Hallam, choosing not to speculate, since he also knew he didn’t have all the answers. However, his gut told him that this was the start of something bad. He glanced across to Ruby, who was looking unusually ill-at-ease, and added, “I have a feeling that life on the bridge worlds is about to get a whole hell of a lot more complicated.”
19
Cad Rikkard’s boots had splatted into the mud, even before the rear ramp of his fighter had lowered fully. Oblivious to the numerous potential dangers in the swampland, Cad charged across the clearing toward Draga’s downed ship. The black cloud billowing out above the destroyed complex had obscured the planet’s silvery moon, further darkening the already gloomy surroundings. As such, Cad was unable to see inside the cockpit to know if Draga was alive or already dead.
However, the encroaching darkness was not Cad’s only obstacle. His progress toward Draga’s fighter was further impeded by bizarre fluctuations in the planet’s surface gravity. One second, he felt like he could leap across oceans, while the next, simply placing one foot in front of the next was arduous, even with the power-assistance from his armor. In a similar way, tree branches swayed chaotically, some reaching skyward, like sunflowers, while others drooped low, as if weighed down by invisible fruits. Cad had no explanation for any of it, but he knew that the longer he stayed on Doyle’s rogue world, the greater the risk was that he’d never be able to leave.
Reaching Draga’s ship, Cad climbed up onto the hull alongside the cockpit glass, which was still intact. He could just make out Draga inside, though with the rain lashing down on the fighter, he couldn’t determine her condition. Bizarrely, only a few meters away from the fighter, there was no rain at all, as if a giant umbrella had been opened over a large part of the clearing. Then, further away, he saw a patch of rain that was flowing upwards. It was like some sort of drug-induced hallucination, but one that would never wear off.
Drawing his armored fist back, Cad hammered a series of powerful strikes into the glass canopy in an effort to punch through and reach Draga. Blow after blow landed solidly, each strike cracking the glass a little more, until both the canopy and Cad’s armored gauntlet were smashed. Tearing the remaining shards of glass free, Cad slid inside the cockpit. There was a pungent smell of burning electronics, and Cad saw that all of the consoles and flight controls had exploded, as if they’d been struck by one of the atmosphere’s frequent bolts of lightning. Ignoring the damage, he dropped down beside Draga and grabbed her shoulders. He then tried to rouse her, shaking her more violently than was wise, considering the mercenary’s obvious injuries, but the adrenaline surging through his veins meant that any measure of restraint or subtlety was impossible.
“Draga!” Cad yelled over the crashes of thunder overhead. “Draga, wake up; we have to get out of here!”
Draga’s head lolled forward and her eyes opened slowly. Blood trickled out of them like tears, streaking her normally jet-black lightning-strike eyeliner with red. She blinked the blood away and finally saw Cad hunkered down beside her.
“Get out of here,” Draga said, sounding angry that Cad had come back for her. “The planet is tearing itself apart.”
Cad shook his head then tore open Draga’s harness, breaking the buckles as easily as breaking bread. “I give the commands,” he hit back while trying to peel Draga out of her seat. “The Blackfire Squadron is me, you, and Alexis. It’s all three of us, you understand?”
Draga seized Cad’s wrist and forced it away before ripping back a piece of her fractured chest armor. Cad’s narrowed eyes looked down to see a dozen jagged spikes of metal impaled into Draga’s chest and sternum. He gritted his teeth and tore off his gauntlets, pressing his hands to the wounds in an attempt to stem the flow of blood, but he already knew the injuries were too deep. Blood continued to pour out of the punctures in Draga’s flesh, coating Cad’s hands with her dwindling life essence.
“Cad, go…” said Draga, her voice growing weaker, though it was no less determined. “I’m dead, and you know it.”
Cad roared, smashing his bare knuckles against the broken and burned consoles, cutting his skin and blending his own blood with that of Draga’s.
“The medical pod in my ship can treat these wounds,” Cad insisted, turning back to his companion. “You have never given up without a fight,” he added, purposely trying to anger Draga and spur her on. “Fight for me now!”
“And you are not one to give in to sentimentality,” replied Draga, her voice crackly and weak. She pressed her head back into the seat and her hand slipped off her chest, but still she held Cad’s eyes. “You cannot save me,” she added. Her hand then slid onto Cad’s and she gripped it weakly. “But there is something you can do,” she went on, using the last of her energy to imbue her words with steel. “You can avenge me. You can make sure that Knight and Wulfrun learn their place.”
Draga’s words had given Cad strength, as he had always drawn strength from her. He cursed his own weakness. The last thing Draga Vex should see was the same Cad Rikkard she had fought with and respected for years, not the mawkish shadow of that man that had entered her cockpit. If Draga was to die, she would die as she lived – fearless, ruthless, and without compassion. Cad would honor that, and honor her dying wish.
Cad pulled away from Draga and rested his blood-soaked hands onto his thighs. “I will never stop until Knight and Wulfrun lie at my feet,” he said, his voice now stripped of all emotion except rage. “Then I’ll take down Doyle and Rand, and all of the others, even if it means letting the bridge worlds crumble, like this miserable planet.”
Draga’s blood-stained eyes remained open and flickered for the briefest moment, but she did not answer. Then her head fell to her chest and her body slumped forward. For the longest time, Cad had believed Draga Vex to be invulnerable. She should have died a hundred times before, yet somehow, she had always battled on. Now, death had finally claimed her.
Cad rose to his full height inside the smashed cockpit and peered up through the rain at the strange column of energy that pierced the atmosphere, pulsating with light, as if it were alive. In the distance, he could see mountains being torn from the ground, like weeds being uprooted. Rivers flowed across the horizon,
like long, wispy clouds, while entire valleys were flattened, as if trodden on by the boot of a godlike giant. Cad drank it all in. If there was such a thing as the end of days, this almost certainly marked the beginning of it, he told himself. Yet every ending spawned a new beginning. Even if the bridge worlds died, Cad Rikkard would still be left standing. And that, he realized, was all that really mattered.
“We all die eventually,” Cad said out loud, repeating the words Draga had spoken to him, only hours earlier. He looked back at Draga, filled with a renewed sense of vigor. The end of the human race was approaching, and there could be no greater victory – no greater measure of his superiority – than to stand atop the ashes as the last man alive.
20
Cad Rikkard reattached his still functional left gauntlet, replacing his smashed right one with the gauntlet from Draga’s armor. He then picked up Draga’s dead body and climbed out of the destroyed cockpit, dropping down into the mud with her in his arms. With Cad’s attention now focused on his surroundings, he was suddenly aware of deep, guttural growls emanating from the tree-line surrounding the clearing. Then one of the reptilian beasts he’d first seen underneath the complex slowly crept out of the marshlands, close to where Cad’s fighter waited for him, engines still hot. Cad continued toward his vessel but barely made it another three steps before two more of the beasts slunk out of the shadows and blocked his path. Glancing behind, Cad saw a fourth approaching from his rear, stalking around the side of Draga’s stricken vessel like a hungry wolf.
Cad set Draga’s body down into the mud and drew his Black Prince sword. The blade of the weapon may have been fractured in half, but it was still sharp and deadly. Combined with the power of his armor, Cad trusted that it would be enough to penetrate the beasts’ thick skins. He knew that a fight was the last thing he needed. If he was going to escape the rogue world’s collapsing gravity well, time was of the essence. However, so much fury had amassed inside him that Cad had to find a release, like opening the valve on a pressure cooker. He was under no illusion that slaughtering the creatures would sate his bloodlust for long. However, it would be enough to banish the emotional aches and pains that were aggravating his physical wounds. And he also hoped that violence would act as a tonic, curing him of the sentimentality that Draga had so despised.
Spinning first to face the creature to his rear, Cad kicked off from the muddy ground and leapt into the air, raising the broken sword high. The creature reared up, brandishing one of its long, claw-tipped arms to defend itself, and Cad brought the blade down hard across it. The creature’s severed limb splashed into the mud moments later, and the beast roared and backed away, cradling its mutilated appendage. Hearing the heavy thud of footsteps in the mud, Cad turned to see another of the beasts charging toward him, its snarling mouth baring rows of dagger-like teeth. With no time to move, Cad dug in his heels and raised his arms, using the strength of his armor to resist the creature’s attack. The impetus of the charge drove Cad backward as the beast gnashed its teeth against his armor like a rabid dog. Cad grabbed the creature by the throat and threw it down into the mud, using its own momentum against it. The beast thrashed out its claws and Cad felt one of the flailing limbs slash across his face, cutting deep gashes into his cheek, but it only compelled him to tighten his hold. Quickly, the creature’s bellows turned to strangled gurgles as Cad crushed the monster’s windpipe. Eventually, its limbs stopped flaying and its alien snarls fell silent.
Cad pushed away from the dead creature and spun around to see the remaining beasts stalking closer. Both were larger than the two he’d already slain, and both moved cautiously, displaying a level of primitive intelligence by attempting to lure Cad away from Draga’s body. However, Cad stood his ground, sword gripped tightly in his hand, blood dripping from his gauntlets like sweat. Suddenly, one of the creatures surged forward, attempting to hook its claw into Draga’s chest and drag her away, but Cad caught the limb and pulled the beast closer, sinking the broken blade into its chest. The second then charged, and Cad threw the dying body of the first into its path, knocking the creature onto its flank. It roared, either with pain or frustration, and quickly righted itself before again trying to circle around Cad. However, Cad merely mirrored its moves, step-for-step, keeping himself firmly between the beast and Draga’s body. Finally, the creature grew impatient and darted at Cad, but a flash of the fractured Black Prince sword sent it scurrying away, blood weeping from the cut to its muscular shoulder. The creature snarled again and bore its teeth, but whatever intelligence the beast possessed was enough to know it was outmatched. Jaws still snarling, the creature began to step away from Cad, its dark, unblinking eyes fixed on the mercenary’s own. However, Cad had no intention of granting the beast mercy.
Raising the broken blade of the Black Prince sword high above his head, Cad ran at the creature and slashed at it with near frenzied aggression. Seconds later, both of the beast’s powerful claws lay bleeding in the mud. More roars of anguish merged with violent ripples of thunder, but Cad was not finished. Lunging forward, he carved a deep gash into the beast’s throat, then spun lower and opened its belly, as if gutting a fish. It fell, moaning softly, but Cad would not put the creature out of its misery. It would suffer, as Draga had done, and as Hallam Knight and Dakota Wulfrun would soon suffer too.
Cad stood amongst the carnage, flashes of lightning dancing off his now scuffed and muddied armor, and sheathed the broken sword. Returning to Draga’s body, he lifted her out of the mud and carried her into the hold of his fighter. Setting her down gently on the deck, Cad closed the ramp behind him and headed into the cockpit. Dropping into the pilot’s chair, Cad briefly looked out at the arcing rainbow of energy that seemed to be growing wider and brighter by the minute. In the distance, he saw the mountains that had been uprooted soaring high into the sky, alongside a rising swirl of rippling magma. Few spectacles were able to leave Cad in awe, but the sight of the planet in its final death throes was something he knew he’d never forget.
Suddenly, the fighter shot upwards, but Cad had yet to engage the vertical lift thrusters. Outside the canopy, he could see the dismembered bodies of the beasts rising alongside him, along with rocks and boulders and streaks of muddy swamp water. Cad grabbed the controls and engaged the main engines, pulling up hard, but it was like the ship was attached to massive elastic bands, tugging it in a dozen different directions. To his right, he saw a lake flowing upwards like a waterfall in reverse, and he turned toward it, hoping to ride the gravitational anomaly skyward, like a glider aircraft catching a thermal. The fighter continued to be buffeted like a kite in a storm, but eventually, Cad made it to the rising water and again pulled up hard. The acceleration was like nothing he’d experienced before, at least not inside an atmosphere, and he found himself pulling eight earth-standard g-forces in a matter of seconds. Cad’s hyper-advanced combat armor compensated for the acceleration, squeezing his blood back into his core to keep him conscious. Alarms were wailing inside the cockpit, but Cad’s vision was too blurred to read the damage report, not that there was anything he could do about the warnings even if he had done.
In what seemed like the blink of an eye, Cad’s fighter had surged into space and was rocketing away from the giant anomaly. His vision cleared as the acceleration reduced, and he looked back at the phenomenon in amazement. It appeared to extend into the infinity of the Darkspace, like a never-ending comet’s tail. However, a quick sideways glance at the crumbling planet was enough to convince him that he’d long outstayed his welcome at Doyle’s clandestine rogue world.
Cad powered up the Shelby Drive and cut the main engines. He then pulsed the thrusters to get one final look at the dying planet before it was gone forever. Chunks of the shadowy world as large as moons had begun to fracture into space. Some were expelled like bullets, while others that drew too close to the anomaly were squashed into singularities in less time than it took to snap a finger and thumb.
Cad hastily entered the reciprocal co
urse to jump back along the established bridge to Vesta before he was hit with the gut-wrenching realization that the bridge was no longer there. The anomaly was all that now remained of that conduit through space. He cursed and brought up the star chart to calculate a new route back to the bridge worlds, grateful more than ever for his upgraded fighter’s ability to create its own temporary bridges.
Suddenly, a huge fragment of the planet was expelled into space toward him. It quickly fractured into billions of pieces, as if struck with the force of a million atomic bombs. A collision warning alarm rang out inside the cockpit, and Cad saw that the maelstrom of disintegrated rock was hurtling at him at a phenomenal speed. Cursing again, Cad pulsed the thrusters to spin the fighter away from the planet and burned hard in the opposite direction. However, even at maximum thrust, he couldn’t hope to outrun the rapidly approaching swarm.
“Collision warning, contact in ninety seconds…” the ship’s robotic voice announced in a calm and measured tone that reminded him of Draga’s own unflappable character.
Cad hammered his fist into the arm of the chair and yelled, “Not now, damn you! I am not finished yet!”
The universe may have already reclaimed Draga, but Cad refused to let it take him until he’d had his revenge. Focusing in on the navigation computer, Cad punched a sequence of coordinates from memory into the Shelby Drive and ran the calculation. If he was right, the coordinates would spit him out again a million kilometers from the planet. This would be a safe enough distance – he hoped – to allow him enough time to calculate the far more complex bridge back to Vesta or one of the other worlds. Considering what he’d just witnessed, Cad couldn’t be certain that Vesta had not also suffered the same fate as the planet crumbling in his wake.