“We’re not trying to shut anything down,” Ethan explained. “We just need to cut the power so we can gut the conduit. Then it’ll be large enough for us all to fit through.”
“Then we have free reign of the ship,” Ford finished, catching on.
“I know for a fact the armory has a J-tube access point,” Rick interjected.
“Perfect,” Ethan said, straightening up. The pain in his chest had completely dissipated in the last few moments. “That’ll be our first stop.”
“Titan in the room here,” Jess piped in, holding up a finger. “Who’s going through the conduit to disconnect the power?” Everyone looked at each other, awaiting a volunteer. Quickly, all eyes returned to Jess – marginally the smallest person in the room. She huffed. “I hate you guys.”
The mere sight of Jess wriggling into the shaft, barely able to move, sent shivers of claustrophobia down Ethan’s spine. Five minutes of struggling later, she had shimmied a meter towards the junction. There was no communication with her beyond the muffled grunts she sent as status updates, and quickly her audience disappeared. Each of the captives set about doing something – anything – to keep themselves occupied. Ethan took to a game of cards with Rick, Ford, and Naomi Shepperd, a fellow member of Raptor Squadron.
“Where’d you get cards, anyway?” Naomi wondered, taking a seat.
Rick split the deck and began to shuffle. “Hid them in the mattress. Started stuffing things in there as soon as the Naldím started locking us up. Luckily they’re not very good at raids.”
“You think they would’ve taken a deck of cards?” Ethan wondered.
“They were taking everything. Can’t leave us with something we could use to take back the ship,” Ford answered, cutting in and cutting the deck.
“If you could take back the ship with a deck of cards, you could do it without the cards,” Rick scoffed.
Naomi scanned her cards. “In any event, nice save.” She paused, glancing at the bare table between the quartet. “Didn’t happen to stuff any chips in that mattress, did you?”
“We can bet swab shifts,” Ethan suggested. “We used to do that on Dawn.”
“You’re a lieutenant,” Ford argued. “You don’t have to swab the deck.”
“I will if I lose. Not that I will.”
“Tough talk,” Rick said, raising his eyebrows. He tapped the table. “Check.”
“Check.”
“Open half a shift.”
“Raise you one.”
Rick began to lay down the river. It was looking to be a terrible hand for Ethan, but before he could do anything about it, the lights went out. Someone let out a startled gasp. Ethan threw his cards blindly on the table. “That’s Jess.” Feeling his way to the access point, Ethan leaned in to the passage and shouted down to their rescuer. “Nice work, Jess!”
She took a second to respond, clearly out of breath. “I still hate you.”
“We love you too.” Ethan extracted himself from the panel and called out to Ford. “Got a light?” The sputter of an igniting lighter served as his answer, filling the room with pale orange light.
They immediately set to work, undoing the clamps around the fiber optic bundles and pulling them free from their housings. Each cable threaded through the access point was torn loose from the system by the more burly among the escapees, making the shaft centimeters wider with every passing moment. Before long, Naomi and Rick were able to cram into the shaft, moving down to each end to disconnect the cables from their other junctions and make the process of removing them easier.
Two sweaty, unrelenting hours later, the shaft was stripped bare, its contents draped across the rearmost bunks of Barracks One, and the fugitives were making their escape – Rick and a team of marines bound for the armory, and everyone else moving to meet up with Jess.
Heading the second team, Ethan found Jess nestled in the junction she had been tasked with reaching, fiddling with another access port. “I’ve got a few door controls here,” she explained as Ethan approached. “If I’m right, these will get us as far as the med bay.”
“What about the tube bulkheads?” Ethan asked. He sidled along the passage to make room for the dozen others trailing behind him.
“You have to open each one at the source. The only other controls are on the bridge.”
“So, unless the Naldím know we’re in here, we have free reign over the tubes?”
“Right.”
The last of the prisoners filed into the J-tube, and Ethan turned to address them. “First things first,” he whispered, suddenly aware of how well his voice carried through the tubes. Anyone at a nearby port would hear them. “We have to get our comms back. That way we can locate the captain without accessing any control panels, which I’m sure the Naldím are watching.”
“Sounds like a plan,” Naomi agreed. “But do we know where they’re keeping our comms?”
“Depends who took yours,” Ford answered. “They just stepped on mine, but I saw some others getting piled up in the research lab.”
“Which is right next to the med bay,” Jess noted.
“How convenient.” Ethan nodded at Jess. “Unlock the doors. Ford and I will get over there and grab the comms.”
“Valdez, Sanjay,” Ford barked, bringing two marines to the front of the queue. It was a tight fit, as even the stripped tube was barely two meters across. “You’re with us.”
With his impromptu squad behind him, Ethan led through the bowels of Vengeance.
Peering through the intermittent portholes, Ethan could see that the ship was remarkably empty. He had assumed it would be crawling with Naldím, but they were scarce enough that the squad made it most of the way to the med bay unhindered.
Exiting at the nearest junction, Ethan almost collided with a lanky Naldím sporting a bladed rifle. Ethan stopped dead, holding his arms out to halt his squad mates. The Naldím’s back was turned but was so close Ethan hardly dared move. Slowly, he backed away, retreating behind the corner again. He looked at the marines for a solution.
Valdez raised a finger, apparently volunteering to make the kill. Before Ethan could object, he swept up behind the Naldím, clasped his hands firmly around the alien’s skull and jerked it sideways.
Valdez had not even completed the maneuver when Ethan, remembering pulling a similar move himself once, ran up to pull the marine away from danger. He was too late. The Naldím’s head twisted with ease, and he quickly rotated his body to match his new orientation. Valdez froze, unsure of what went wrong, and paid the price.
Hot blood splashed across Ethan’s face, blinding him. He could hear Ford and Sanjay rushing forward and tackling the Naldím but could do nothing to help. Slowly, he wiped the blood from his eyes and blinked himself back into the moment. The Naldím was on the ground, overwhelmed by the combined fury of the two marines, his weapon abandoned at his feet. Ethan didn’t stop to think. He seized the weapon, extended the blade, and rammed it through the Naldím’s throat.
“Damn,” Ford grunted, getting to his feet. He wiped a gob of lime green blood from his cheek. Before Ethan could apologize for not stopping Valdez or the Naldím, Sanjay had brushed the dead marine’s eyes closed, muttered a quick verse, and pulled him to the side of the hallway.
“Let’s move,” Sanjay said, carefully avoiding eye contact with Ethan and Ford. The latter nodded in agreement. Ethan gave no response but followed silently after them.
The Traitor
[Translated from Kel’klesh]
“What state is the array in? I do not wish to linger here longer than I have to.”
“It is operational, though limited in its capabilities. We believe there are more frequencies we have yet to access. We cannot leave until we have them.”
“Of course. I fully intend to follow our orders. I simply do not intend to enjoy them. Now, what of the prisoners?”
“Quiet. Their wills were broken the moment we boarded this ship.”
IMS Vengeance Bridge Audi
o Log
The alien station featured prominently in Rebecca’s mind in the hours following their departure from it. She wanted to stay, to study it further, but that was not the task she had been assigned. The Phantom flew ever further into the Expanse, hunting the Naldím who hunted the mystery ship.
As silence settled back over the ship, older thoughts also found their way to the forefront of Rebecca’s consciousness. Both Prasad and Eve’s reprimands played over and over, and each time they drew her to the same conclusion: something happened to her – on Voyager Dawn, she was sure – that had subconsciously forced her into this new, uncomfortable mindset. But she could not pinpoint the event.
Luckily, with the ship on such a dead heading, Rebecca had plenty of time to think. Most of her thought process involved wandering the cramped halls, occasionally stopping to check on a system or the slumbering crew. She avoided Eve entirely; the ship was large enough that with only the two of them operating it, they rarely crossed paths, and Rebecca preferred it that way. She had a sneaking suspicion Eve was growing to loathe her bald-faced weakness. For the three days since departing the station, then, her only sounding board was Cam. He was not much help, but she tried every few hours nonetheless.
“Statistically, I am unable to assist you in your current predicament,” Cam said by way of greeting the next time Rebecca entered his chamber.
“Statistically?” Rebecca muttered. She wandered behind the disembodied head and studied the network of cables running from it to the wall. One of them seemed to be pumping blood.
“You have engaged me in conversation nineteen times since our introduction,” Cam explained patiently. “Of those nineteen occurrences, seventeen have been to seek advice regarding your emotional well-being. I have not been able to alleviate the issue in any of those encounters. Statistically, you are here to discuss your emotional problems, and statistically, I cannot help.”
“Aren’t you an optimist,” Rebecca jibed.
“As a machine grounded in fact and logic, I would identify myself as a realist.”
Rebecca ignored him and pressed her agenda. “Can you read me the tactical report for the Voyager Dawn Event?”
Cam had read her the report twice already, each time failing to mention anything that she could identify as the beginning of her downward spiral. Machine that he was, though, he answered without complaint. At the end of his monologue, Cam tacked on his own addendum. “I performed further research on post-traumatic stress disorder while reciting the report for you, Agent Winters.”
“And?” Rebecca asked impatiently.
“Given that you have failed to identify a specific episode as the origin of your distress three times now, I have come to the conclusion that your case is the result of long-term exposure to emotional pressure. The prospect of impending death, perhaps.”
“I’ve faced worse odds before,” Rebecca objected. “And I wasn’t afraid.”
“Your deployment on Draconis Prime is indicative of that,” Cam agreed.
“Exactly. Voyager Dawn was no worse than Draconis,” Rebecca cut in. “The only difference was…” She trailed off, the realization hitting her like a huey.
Cam waited only a moment for a response. “Agent Winters?”
“The difference was the people,” Rebecca whispered, more to herself than Cam. She hated herself for not seeing it sooner – for eight months she had been exposed to people that treated her like one of them, not the specter of death that she was. They had rubbed off on her, gotten her comfortable in their environment, and the return to the solitary life of a Wraith was too much of a shock. That had to be it. And she knew where it all started.
“Ethan,” she breathed. A flurry of conflicting emotions tore its way through her heart. She hated Ethan for starting her on this path, and at the same time loved him for being the first to make her feel welcome and to accept her for who she was. Even Sloane had never made her feel so much like a person.
Rebecca turned back to Cam. “Where’s Ethan Walker?”
Cam pulled the information up instantly. “Lieutenant Walker is currently serving aboard the IMS Vengeance, en route to investigate the alien installation per our request.”
“He went back to the Navy?” Cam affirmed her statement, rhetorical though it was. Rebecca could hardly fathom someone as stubbornly innocent and naïve as Ethan returning to the war after he had so readily tendered his resignation. Rebecca shook her head clear of the thought; there were more important matters at hand. “What’s the Vengeance’s ETA?”
“Unknown. They ceased all transmissions five hours before entering the Expanse,” Cam said, entirely undisturbed by the fact.
“Why?”
Before Cam could answer, Eve cut in over the PA. “Blizzard to the bridge. Comm from the IMS Vengeance.” Rebecca looked between the PA and Cam.
“Guess we’ll find out.”
Eve supplied no preamble, activating the transmission as soon as Rebecca stepped onto the bridge. It was barely intelligible; bits of dialogue caught up in a storm of static, but one thing was clear: whoever was speaking was not human.
“Kel’klesh?” she guessed. She had listened to enough on Dawn Six to recognize the sound of the Naldím’s language.
Eve nodded.
“But I thought this was coming from the Vengeance,” Rebecca said. She knew what it meant, that Kel’klesh was being broadcast from a human ship, but she wanted desperately not to believe it.
Eve nodded again. “I can send for another ship to investigate the array.”
“It’s not about the array!” Rebecca burst out. She quickly contained herself, ignoring Eve’s judgmental stare. “We have to rescue Vengeance.”
“We can’t turn around. Not now.”
“We can and we should,” Rebecca corrected. “This is the same tactic they used on Dawn Six: capture a valuable hostage to demoralize the opponent.”
“Walker was a valuable hostage?” Eve asked incredulously.
“I… yes. He was. Everyone was valuable.” Rebecca averted her gaze. “But Vengeance is even more valuable. It’s the rallying cry.”
“Then the fleet will come to save it.”
Rebecca’s fingers twitched, brushing up against the butt of her pistol. “They’ll never get the message in time. We have to do this.”
“I won’t let you turn this ship around.”
To Rebecca’s astonishment, Eve snatched her pistol off her belt and trained it on Rebecca’s head. Then something even more unexpected happened. In one practiced motion, faster than even Eve could react, Rebecca drew her own pistol, leveled it, and squeezed the trigger. The deafening crack of the bullet striking Eve’s helmet combined with the sinister snap of the weapon bounced across the room and cascaded down the halls, filling the entire ship with the sound of Rebecca’s betrayal.
Eve was down in an instant. Her helmet was more than enough to prevent the bullet from passing through, but less than a match for the sheer force of the impact. She was out cold, and would stay that way for a long while.
Finger still wrapped tightly around the trigger, Rebecca looked down at Eve’s crumpled figure, wondering what had just transpired. Her arm felt completely detached from the rest of her body, with a mind and a vendetta of its own. It was a familiar feeling, much like the many times she had let training and instinct override her conscious mind, but there was something else to it as well. Something darker.
But she couldn’t dwell on it now. She had to act fast. Shaking her head free of the encroaching darkness, Rebecca locked Eve away in an empty cryo chamber, next to the sleeping body of Agent Kahlo, and returned to the bridge to pilot the Phantom back out of the Expanse. With no crew to distribute the workload, powering up the systems and charging the compression drive was no easy feat, but her desperate desire to rescue the Vengeance spurred her on.
Only once the ship was well underway did Rebecca return to Cam to explain the situation, ready to shut him down if he disapproved.
“I admit
, Agent Winters, I do not see the logic in our current course of action,” he replied after Rebecca had updated him.
She waited for him to say more, to override her and commandeer the ship, but he left his objection at that.
“You don’t object?” she asked cautiously. It was possible the thought of mutiny had not come to his mind.
“I do not approve, but your vital monitors indicate increased activity in the ventral pallidum and heightened levels of vasopressin.”
“What is that supposed to mean?”
“I may not feel emotions, but as I have said before, I remember what they are like. You are feeling love, Agent Winters, and I cannot do anything to stop you when love is your motivator.”
The Revolt
The Naldím have a penchant for terror. Regardless what the sociologists say about their torture guns having some religious basis (which I think is complete bullshit), it’s clear their entire war machine is built around instilling unparalleled dread in the enemy. We may have the numbers and the firepower, but my soldiers are so scared of fighting the Naldím that frankly I’m surprised the entire division hasn’t deserted. Not that they have anywhere to go out here.
Excerpt, IMS Taiwan Marine Lieutenant Hillary West, Personal Log
“Wait, so we went to all that work to get the comms, and we’re not even going to use them?” Ford said, a little louder than usual. His voice echoed through the tube.
“Not in the traditional sense, no,” Ethan said, hoping his own, quieter voice would encourage Ford to lower his.
“We have no idea what sort of signals the Naldím are watching out for,” Rick explained. “But last I checked, the bridge still had a running log of all comms. They’ll pick it up if we make too much noise.”
“Then we don’t make too much,” Ford argued.
“Too risky,” Ethan countered. “We do this the old-fashioned way: use the comms’ clocks to time our movements, and lights to signal each other.”
“Like savages,” Jess elaborated.
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