by D. J. Holmes
Divar suddenly appeared from behind a crate. It had been resting against one of the walls in the shuttle bay and it looked like Divar had hoped Draxler would forget about him. When his eyes locked on Sarah’s he shrugged. Sarah understood, you can’t blame a guy for trying. It had been a long shot, Draxler was hardly going to forget his two most important slaves, even at a time like this.
“Let’s load up,” Draxler said once it was clear who was coming with him. In total twelve pirates, Draxler, Sarah and Divar were in the group standing beside the shuttle. When two other slaves who had survived the battle stepped forward Draxler raised one of his six legs and pointed a claw towards them. “You two stay here, I don’t need any more mouths to feed.”
As both of the slaves stopped midway towards Draxler, Sarah wasn’t sure if she saw fear or relief on their faces. Though she had spent nearly two years on Lady Luck, she still wasn’t close to knowing what all the facial expressions of each race meant. In this instance, she guessed it was a bit of both.
“Angrave has already packed up the shuttle with everything we need,” Draxler said as he turned back to his new crew. “Let’s get on board.”
Deciding she didn’t want to be left behind, Sarah turned to get into the shuttle. She grabbed one of Divar’s arms and dragged him with her. If she had to board a damaged Elder warship with a ruthless pirate, she wasn’t going to do it alone.
Once they were all on board, Angrave shut the shuttle’s boarding ramp. He then made his way to the pilot seat. “I think I’ll handle this mission,” he said to Sarah. Sarah didn’t look at his face, she and Angrave had never seen eye to eye. Ever since she had replaced him as Lady Luck’s pilot, he had gone out of his way to make her life miserable. She had learnt it was best not to antagonize him.
As the shuttle’s engines hummed to life, Sarah made her way to one of the passenger seats, sat down and strapped herself in. Divar followed her and sat down beside her. “I can’t believe we managed to score a hit on an Elder warship,” he whispered to her.
“Nor can I,” she whispered back. “It all happened so fast, I can barely remember what we did.”
“Hardly we,” Divar said. “I was just along for the ride, you were the one who lined us up on that frigate time and time again. Where did you learn to fly like that?”
“Nowhere,” Sarah replied, confused. “I’ve been a slave all my life, I’ve hardly been taught anything.”
“Well, you are a hell of a natural,” Divar said. “I’m just glad you are here. We’d all be dead without you.”
Both slaves ceased whispering as Draxler shuffled over beside them. To Sarah’s discomfort, he sat in the free seat beside her. After strapping himself in he leaned in and whispered into her ear, “Don’t think I don’t know what you did. You’ve been holding back your skills all this time. I’ve never seen anyone fly a ship like that before. If we get out of this, I’m not going to go so easy on you. I will expect much greater things in the future.”
Sarah didn’t bother trying to deny it. She knew she had been holding back to prevent Draxler being too successful in his raids. As she realized what Draxler’s words meant, her shoulders slumped. She could no longer help those who fell under Draxler’s guns. Now she would have to fight with all her abilities or Draxler would torture her unceasingly. Maybe we’ll all die on the Elder ship, Sarah thought with a glimmer of hope.
“We’re coming up on the Elder frigate,” Angrave said, bringing Sarah’s thoughts back to the present. Despite the fact she hated flying for Draxler, she longed to be connected to the shuttle’s helmet interface so that she could see what was going on around her. To her relief, Draxler pulled out a portable view screen that he had connected to the shuttle’s computer. On it she could watch as the shuttle approached the stricken frigate.
Carefully, though far slower than Sarah would have, Angrave matched the frigate’s velocity and roll. Then he brought the shuttle closer and closer to the large hole one of Divar’s hypervelocity missiles had blown into the frigate’s side. “There’s no sign of a force field,” Angrave said, sounding confused.
“This is almost too easy,” Draxler replied. “Suit up in your vac suits,” he said louder to the rest of his crew. “Angrave, turn the shuttle around and orientate the rear shuttle door towards the damaged section of the cruiser. We’ll jump across and see if we can find a way into the rest of the ship.”
As they had flown towards the frigate Sarah had thought their situation couldn’t get any more terrifying. She had been wrong. Having spent most of her adult life on a planet’s surface, the space flight she had taken with her mistress when she had been captured by Draxler had been her first time in space since she had been taken from the slave markets of Kashal. Going back into space had scared her, being attacked by Draxler’s pirates hadn’t helped things. The last two years had eased her discomfort somewhat. Though in all that time, she had never carried out any extra vehicular missions. To her, even the thought of jumping from one starship to another was the very definition of madness.
“Should I stay here?” she asked hopefully.
“Certainly not,” Draxler chuckled as he showed Sarah his teeth. “If something bad is going to happen to me out there, I want you to be right beside me. You’re not getting out of this so easy.”
Suppressing a sigh, Sarah unbuckled herself and moved towards the back of the shuttle where the vac suits were stored. After searching through some of them she found one that looked like it would fit her. It was too big and the suit had four arms, but it would at least protect her from the cold vacuum of space.
Angrave lowered the shuttle’s rear ramp soon as she signaled that she was in her suit. As space came into view, Sarah felt more at ease. As she peered beyond the Elder frigate she realized that jumping into space wouldn’t be too dissimilar to putting on the interface helmet.
“Move out,” Draxler ordered. Hesitantly one, then two and then three pirates jumped off the shuttle and thrust themselves towards the frigate. Angrave had brought the shuttle to within thirty meters of the frigate and it only took the pirates a handful of seconds to cross the distance. As they slammed into the damaged sections of the frigate they grabbed onto whatever they could to stop themselves from banging off the frigate’s hull and bouncing back into space. Each one had a laser blaster slung over their shoulders and as soon as they locked the magnetic plating in their boots onto the frigate’s hull, they whipped their laser blasters out, ready for trouble.
As the next wave of pirates jumped across the gap to the frigate, Sarah took a moment to survey the alien ship. It was like nothing she’d ever seen before, beautiful almost. Its long angular lines were disrupted by hundreds and possibly even thousands of pimples that spiraled round and round the ship in a mesmerizing pattern. Whatever the ship was armored in, it gave off a faint silver tint that almost sparkled as starlight from distant systems reflected off it. The only mar to the ship’s beauty was the large hole one of Lady Luck’s missiles had ripped into its side.
A faint movement caught Sarah’s eyes. As she looked more closely, she was shocked to see the edges of the hole in the ship were shrinking. The ship is repairing itself, but how?
“Eh... Draxler,” Sarah said. “Have you looked at the edge of the ship? Look what it’s doing.”
“Elder technology,” Draxler said, sounding just as awed as Sarah felt. “I’ve heard rumors of such things. We need to move fast.”
Instead of waiting for Sarah to jump towards the Elder ship, Draxler picked her up and threw her across the gap. For a couple of seconds, sheer panic gripped Sarah as she lost all sense of gravity and spatial awareness. Then the Elder frigate loomed large in front of her. Desperately she reached out and grabbed onto a piece of wreckage protruding from what had once been a bulkhead. Pulling herself into the broken innards of the frigate, she shoved her feet against a wall and activated her gravity plates. With a clink, her feet latched onto the metallic surface. Closing her eyes, Sarah took a series of deep bre
aths to try and still her racing heart. You made it, you made it, she repeated to herself.
Chapter 4
Clunks to her left and right alerted Sarah to the fact that Divar and Draxler had landed on either side of her. Looking around, she guessed they were standing in what had once been a large circular room. More than half of the room was missing as it had been blown out into space. As her gaze swept over what was left of the room, she spotted what she was looking for. “This way,” she said over the COM channel to Divar and Draxler. “I think.”
Pushing Sarah to the side, Draxler made his way towards the doorway she had pointed to. Just before he walked through it, he pulled himself up short and took out a portable scanner. Gazing more closely at the door, Sarah saw what had caught Draxler’s attention. There was a faint shimmer across the doorway.
“Strange,” Draxler said. “It looks like a force field and some of the readings I’m getting from it suggest it is, but it’s like nothing I’ve ever seen before.”
Reaching behind his vac suit Draxler pulled something out of the utility belt. With a flick of his claw he threw the small metallic object at the door. When it hit the force field Sarah expected it to bounce back towards them. Clearly the force field was in place to seal off the damaged sections of the Elder frigate and prevent the whole ship from depressurizing. Instead, the object flew right through the force field, sending a ripple of small waves through it.
“A one-way force field,” Draxler said in awe. “Who would have thought of such a thing?”
“I’ll bet there’ll be more surprises inside,” Divar suggested.
Sarah nodded, she had no doubt he was correct.
“Hizar, Qualeck, get over here,” Draxler ordered after stepping back from the force field. “This is our entry point, you two lead the way, the rest of us will be right behind you.”
As Hizar and Qualeck eagerly moved towards the doorway. Sarah wasn’t sure if they were foolish or just obedient. If the Elders had designed a one-way force field it was probably to let any repair teams working on a ship’s hull easily re-enter the ship. If this was the case, it was highly likely the force field was still designed to keep out intruders. It could just as easily disintegrate the two pirates as let them onto the ship.
Nevertheless, both pirates moved forward with their laser blasters raised. Without even stopping to see what would happen to the ends of their rifles, both forced their way through the doorway. When they got to the other side, they turned around and waved to Draxler. Seeing they were unharmed, he motioned for the rest of his crew to head through.
“Spread out and search the ship,” he ordered once everyone was inside. “Sarah, Divar, you two are with me.”
As they walked through several corridors with Draxler in the lead, Sarah quickly felt like she was becoming overwhelmed. There were far too many interesting things to look at. The corridor itself was larger than any on Lady Luck. The floors seemed to be extremely smooth, so much so that she had to watch her step, lest she slip. On the walls and even on the ceilings there were all kinds of images of planets and cities. Sarah had only visited a handful of inhabited planets. None of them had even come close to resembling the ones in the images she was looking at. One planet had an entirely artificial ring around it. The sheer scale of it was mind boggling. Three of the other planets looked like one city covered their entire surface. Others had massive structures that reached up from the planet’s surface and out through its atmosphere into space itself.
“What are these images? Sarah asked.
“The Elder Homeworlds I’m guessing,” Divar answered. “As far as I know, no one has ever visited an Elder homeworld.”
“I guess today is our lucky day,” Draxler answered. “Take a good look. I doubt you’re ever going to see one in person. Look at the level of defenses around them.”
Up to this point Sarah had been taken aback by the sheer scale of some of the structures in the pictures. As she studied them more closely as they passed by, she saw the unmistakable shape of battlestations crisscrossing the upper atmosphere of the planets. In some of the images there were fleets of Elder cruisers and larger warships she didn’t have a name for.
“No wonder no one has ever tried to stand up to the Elders,” she said as it dawned on her just how powerful they were. Almost everything she heard about them had been second, third or even fourth hand. Though she had recognized the Elder frigate when it had appeared, she had never actually seen one in person before.
“No wonder indeed,” Draxler said. “At least until today. I still don’t know how you did it but I guess Lady Luck lived up to her name.”
Sarah had no answer to that and silence descended on the group as, for another five minutes, Draxler wandered through the ship aimlessly. Twice they came across large puddles of goo. The first one Draxler stepped in before he realized what it was. The extra lubrication on the ship’s floor almost caused him to slip and fall on his face. After a series of expletives, he managed to regain his balance and proceeded to wipe the goo off his boot. “What the heck?” he asked as he bent over to look more closely at it.
“It’s organic,” he said after he scanned it with his portable scanner. “Though what its purpose is, I have no idea.” Shrugging, he continued searching the ship. When he came across the second puddle of goo, he carefully avoided it.
“Aha,” Draxler said as they stepped into a large circular room. In the center was what looked like a throne. Sarah had never seen the interior of an Elder warship before so she didn’t know exactly what an Elder command chair would look like, though from the throne’s position in the room she guessed this was one.
“Whatever happened to the crew, it doesn’t look like they survived the missile detonation,” Divar said.
“No,” Draxler agreed. He was carefully making his way towards the central chair. There were several more puddles of goo he was trying to avoid. “If there were any Elders left, they would be on the bridge trying to repair their ship.”
“Then who was overseeing the repairs we saw happening to the damaged sections?” Sarah asked.
“Beats me,” Draxler said. “Maybe we will come across one of them injured somewhere. I’d love to take an Elder prisoner. Think of the secrets we could get. For now though, I’m happy to have the bridge to myself. Let’s see if we can’t figure out some of the controls.”
Putting action to his words, Draxler moved towards the center of the room and sat down in the command chair. “It fits,” he said as he bared his razor-sharp teeth in a smile. “Sort of anyway. It will do for now. I’m guessing that’s the pilot seat.” He pointed towards a smaller but similar looking chair in front of him. Above the chair there was a large upside down bowl like object. All sorts of cables were attached to it that reached into the ceiling of the room and disappeared. Though the bowl didn’t appear to be an interface helmet, it looked like something similar.
“We don’t know what that thing is,” Sarah protested. “Or what it will do to me.”
“There’s only one way to find out,” Draxler slurred with a smile. With one hand he reached over to one of his other arm’s wrist and tapped a couple of buttons on a portable command console.
Waves of pain washed down Sarah’s spine. Struggling to stay standing, she nodded towards Draxler. Smile widening, he tapped another button and the pain ceased. “Get to then,” he said.
Tentatively, Sarah moved towards the pilot’s chair. When she got right in front of it, she looked around carefully to see if there was any kind of manual input. Lady Luck had a series of joysticks that a pilot who couldn’t handle an interface helmet could use. There was nothing like that nearby. Peering up, she surveyed the bowl like object. Though she was terrified by the thought of what the machine might do to her, she knew she had no choice. Slowly, she lowered herself into the seat.
At first, nothing happened. Relief flooded through Sarah. Maybe it only works for Elders, she thought hopefully. A sudden whizzing noise from above her head caused her
fears to come bounding back. Looking up, she saw the half bowl was descending toward her head. Alarmingly, as it descended it reformed and shrunk. The part of Sarah’s brain that wasn’t gripped by fear was fascinated by how quickly the metallic looking object was able to change its structure. It looked very similar to how the outer hull of the ship had been repairing itself. Just before it came down over her head, she realized that it had reformed itself to perfectly fit over her.
With no time to figure out what that meant, she froze in place, hoping the helmet wouldn’t crush her skull. Continuing to descend, it moved down until it cut off her vision. It stopped once it had covered the front of her face to just below her nose, while at the back it reached right down to her shoulders. For a couple of seconds nothing happened. Then the entire helmet seemed to shudder as it clamped down on her forehead and neck. The sudden movement made Sarah jump and squeal. Her squeal turned to screams as something shot out of the helmet and pierced the back of her head. Through the pain, Sarah could feel something borrowing through her skull and directly into her brain.