The Mercenary's Dawn

by L P Peace

  ‘Vrok, that was fast,’ Dairon said. Keral looked at him, confused. ‘They’re boarding.’

  ‘Vrok, that was…’ Keral looked at Dairon and shook his head. ‘Yeah, right. I am not giving up my ship without a fight. You know where the females are?’ Dairon nodded. ‘Get them, meet me back here in a few minutes. I will bring the human.’

  Dairon slipped out of the room and ran to the lift, getting out on the floor below, passing through three intersections before he was pressing the control on their door.

  ‘Niada, Idila, it’s Dairon. Let me in.’

  The door opened to reveal Idila, the Mvari, standing there. Her eyes were wide, her W-shaped pupils expanding with fear.

  ‘Where’s Niada?’ Dairon stepped into the door.

  ‘Coming,’ a voice called as another volley of shots hit the ship, throwing them around like puppets.

  The heat blast tore up the hall towards him, preceding the fire by seconds. Dairon launched himself inside the females’ room and hit the door control. It slid shut, allowing a blast of heat to scorch his skin and throwing him and Idila to the floor, before shutting the flames out.

  Dairon heard a panicked cry. Ignoring the pain across his chest, face and arms, he looked up and saw Niada lying on the ground several fenth away, huddled, hugging her knees and shaking. Beside him, Idila was muttering to herself.

  He pulled Idila towards him and rubbed her back. At first, the Mvari stiffened, frightened by the intrusive touching. A moment later she relaxed in Dairon’s arms. He looked back at Niada.

  ‘It’s okay, Niada,’ he called to her. ‘We’re going to be okay.’

  ‘I vrokking know that. What’s going on?’

  ‘The Cealin are attacking the ship,’ he said. ‘I’m taking you back to Invictus.’

  They heard the blast move away from them. A moment later, the ships fire suppression system activated, filling the room with jets of gas.

  Niada and Idila were standing behind them. He held his hand up, indicating they stay where they were and opened the door. His hand hovered over the control. The corridor beyond was on fire, but the suppression gas descended from the ceiling, releasing a cooling vapour, dousing them until there were a series of small, avoidable fires scattered through the hall.

  Dairon looked out. The way he had come was obliterated.

  ‘Dairon, Keral can’t get to you.’ Deyuul’s voice was a welcome calm in the hellfire. ‘He’s got Kyle. He’s putting him in an escape pod. I’m coordinating with him so that he can release the pod while you do a fly-by pickup.’

  ‘How are you talking to him?’

  ‘The Protectorate is slightly telepathic. Not a lot, but enough to open communication between us.’

  ‘Deyuul, you are the best,’ Dairon whispered.

  ‘Who are you talking to?’ Niada looked at him like he was crazy.

  ‘Telepath friend,’ he tapped his temple. ‘We’re going straight down to the docking bay.’ He told the two females.

  ‘Kyle?’ Niada’s voice was a mixture of panic and outrage.

  ‘We’re picking up Kyle,’ he promised, ‘in an escape pod after we’re out.’

  Niada’s mouth thinned to a grimace, but she nodded.

  Dairon didn’t have a gun. He led the way into the corridor and looked around for something suitable to defend him and the females with. Several roughly broken bars lay scattered across the hall, having been blown out of the fractured walls by minor explosions. He picked one up and swung it a couple of times. It had a decent heft to it. Niada and Idila did the same, copying his swinging action. He nodded in approval, and they continued on.

  ‘Niada, watch our backs.’

  ‘Got it,’ she whispered.

  They jogged up to an intersection ahead of them.

  The Adalia was huge. Each hallway disappeared around a corner, curving away and out of sight.

  ‘Do you know where there’s another lift?’

  Niada pointed to the corridor ahead.

  ‘Keep as quiet as you can,’ he whispered. Idila bowed her head once in acknowledgement, and Niada nodded.

  Leading the way, Dairon ran on the front of his feet, keeping his steps as quiet as possible. The corridor curved to the left ahead of them, so they moved flush against the left wall, allowing the hall to unfold before them. So far, there were no signs of the Cealin.

  When the lift came into view, it was clear.

  ‘Everyone else seems to be off fighting the Cealin,’ Dairon said, striding to the lift and hitting the call button. He moved to one side. ‘Behind me.’ Niada and Idila moved to the opposite side, both raising their makeshift weapons, reading to attack. Dairon smiled, impressed they were ready to fight.

  The doors swished open, but no one was inside.

  Dairon waited until the two females were inside before taking position in front of them. ‘Aft docking bay, no stops.’

  There was a moment of inertia as the lift took off, shooting towards the back of the ship before it dropped down several levels. As the lift decelerated, Dairon stepped forward and waited for the doors to slide apart.

  There were several Cealin ships in the docking bay, with one standing directly in front of the lift, his back to him. A rifle-type weapon was slung across the front of his body.

  He began to turn as the doors slid open, but Dairon was quicker. He stepped out of the lift, swung the bar down on the Cealin’s head and picked up the rifle from his unconscious form on the floor.

  Dairon looked around and saw three Cealin moving towards him, rounding their weapons on him. He got off two shots, hitting one, who fell to the floor and missing the other two before he was forced to find cover.

  Niada and Idila ran from the lift and hid behind several stacked transport crates, out of sight of the Cealin. Dairon joined them and walked across to the opposite edge to peek out, quickly dodging a shot which struck the wall behind where his head had just been.

  ‘That Cealin’s a good shot.’ Niada’s eyes were wide, her chest rising and falling quickly.

  ‘Calm, Niada.’ Idila placed a tentative hand on her.

  ‘How the vrok am I meant to calm?’

  One of the Cealin had stopped advancing to help the downed one.

  ‘You’ve seen Cealin before?’

  Niada nodded. ‘We’re acceptable vroks to them because we’re gold.’

  A shot hit the wall behind them.

  ‘Does anyone know where he is?’

  Niada and Idila shook their heads.

  ‘Right, did you see my ship?’

  Niada nodded.

  ‘I’m going to draw his fire. You run for the ship. I’ll take care of him and be right behind you.’

  They hesitated a moment, but when they looked at him, their faces showed their resolve.

  Dairon passed them both and looked out. The Cealin was headed towards him. He nodded at the two females, smiled a charming smile, then stepped out and fired at the Cealin.

  The Cealin fired back almost immediately. Both of them missed.

  Dairon kept moving. A moving target was harder to hit after all. Unfortunately, it also made targeting harder. The two fired at each other ineffectually as Dairon tried to compensate on each shot.

  The Cealin sneered, dropped his gun and ran at him. Dairon fired three shots, but the Cealin dived on him. Dairon’s gun clattered to the floor under the sudden assault from the pale alien. His fists seemed to be everywhere, hitting all of the half-Kuyon’s vulnerable spots until he felt like tenderised meat.

  Dairon hit back at the Cealin’s face, stomach beneath his ribs. Anywhere he might be vulnerable. But it wasn’t slowing the Cealin down.

  The Cealin collapsed, a sudden weight on top of him. Dairon groaned as he pushed the Cealin off and looked up, seeing Niada stood over him, her bar hanging on the down-swing. Behind her, Idila was standing over the downed Cealin with his rifle pointed at him. His hands were up in surrender.

  Dairon nodded at the Aavani. ‘Let’s get on my ship,�
� he said, noting the embarrassing high notes.

  Niada offered him a hand and helped him to his feet.

  As he passed, he swiped up the guns, passing them to Idila and Niada as they ran towards the ship.

  ‘Manta rays on Earth are the same shape.’

  Dairon could hear his mother's voice like it was yesterday. He did every time he saw the ship from the outside.

  The pale lemon sun was high in the purple sky. It was summer, and the seeds of the fields drifted lazily in the soft breeze. The ship was lifting off, his fathers flying off to do a job and leaving Danva and Kadya Desares to look after them while they were gone. They had arrived the night before with their son Makios. Dairon noticed that Invictus had no jet propulsion like Makios’s family’s ship. He asked why, so his mother sat down in the long grass, Dairon tucked into her lap while Alethia and Makios played nearby and told him all about Invictus, how it had been designed to have no waste, but the manufacturers had excelled and accidentally created a stealth ship. How his fathers managed to snap one up before the embargo came down. Why it had an Earth name.

  ‘It used to be called Ae’vadai in your fathers’ language,’ his mother said. ‘It means unbeatable. But they gave up their whole lives to rescue your sister and me. They asked me to choose a new name, Invictus seemed to fit. It means undefeatable,’ she said in answer to his unasked question.

  Almost eleven years after their deaths, Dairon still missed them so deep it cut.

  They boarded the midsize ship and Dairon led them to the Bridge.

  The ship was black on the outside, better to hide in the darkness of space. Inside was a different matter.

  The Erathan had been built as a mid-level private ship. The insides were comfortable and warm and over the years Tessa had been the matriarch of the family. She added touches to it, touches Dairon and Alethia were loathe to change. The ship was all narrow walkways and low ceilings. They were covered in black lacquered wood from the Kuyon homeworld, which his mother had decorated, bringing her own style to each room. The rooms were decorated in fresh greens and blues, yellows and greys and lavender blue in the main cabin because it was her favourite colour. Neither Dairon nor Alethia had the heart to redecorate, and Dairon couldn’t bring himself to move into the main suite. Old carpets, some threadbare in places, muted their footsteps as they hurried to the Bridge.

  The door opened to admit them as they approached. Being a yacht, there was a large sofa curved around a table set at the back wall. Dairon could almost see him and Alethia sat there, their fathers at the controls while their mother was in the mess cooking.

  He pointed at the sofa and crossed the bridge, taking the controls of the ship as he slipped into his chair. A note on his panel told him he’d been approved for launch. He turned on the ship and hit Makios’s jerry-rigged quick start. For emergency use only. This definitely qualified.

  ‘Strap in,’ he commanded as the ship ran through the macros, starting the engines, running through the checks and giving him green lights across the board.

  He launched, passing through the forcefield with ease and out into the depths of space.

  Outside was chaos.

  Protectorate fighters were being herded, disabled and captured by the vastly superior Cealin forces. The ships were being tugged to a waiting Cealin Battlecruiser? Dairon wasn’t sure, but it was colossal, three times the size of the massive Protectorate ship at least.

  Niada gasped behind him. He heard Idila swear. The three of them sat watching the battle for a moment, awestruck at the sheer magnitude of it.

  ‘Deyuul, talk to me,’ Dairon called out, sure his friend was listening.

  ‘Keral’s waiting on the starboard of the ship.’ Deyuul’s voice filtered in through the battle, drawing him back from the maelstrom of emotions that rushed over and through him, his senses battered by the chaotic information of the fight that rushed from all sides. ‘He’s waiting on your word.’

  Dairon headed towards starboard. Now he could be useful, instead of sitting ineffectually on a ship while his sister was in danger.

  ‘Deyuul, can they see us?’

  ‘Negative, not on sensors. Though the pilots of the fighters might see you.’

  ‘Let me know?’

  ‘Affirmative,’ the Uunda answered.

  Invictus rounded to the starboard. The chaos here was worse than on the stern.

  Two Protectorate fighters were taken down in the battle as he passed. The remainder were being hauled to the Cealin battlecruiser.

  ‘I’m here.’

  There was a pause before Deyuul’s voice slipped into his mind.

  ‘He’s releasing him.’ There was a moments pause. ‘Now.’

  An escape pod jettisoned out of the side of the Adalia and into Deyuul’s path. Dairon moved to intercept. The cargo bay was empty. Good job. He purged it of atmosphere and opened the bay doors wide before swinging around to catch the pod in the Invictus’s arse. He watched on the aft cameras as the escape pod closed the distance.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Niada called out.

  ‘I’m performing a mid-flight pick up,’ Dairon said, his voice eerily calm.

  ‘You’ve done this before?’

  ‘Err, I’ve seen it done before.’

  The controls of Invictus responded as he made tiny, incremental adjustments. He had to be precise, or the pod could ricochet off the back of the ship, or worse, if it hit the right place, it could take the engines out, leaving Invictus floating in enemy territory.

  Hitting a few buttons, the viewscreen showed a countdown of the closing distance between them. Dairon’s hands adjusted on instinct, correcting for trajectory. His eyes glanced from the counter to the image on the screen. It was only several hundred feet out and growing larger.

  Niada leaned over his shoulder, her breathing shaky in his ear as the pod hit the five-hundred-fenth mark.

  ‘Niada, back up a little, please. You’re distracting me.’

  ‘Sorry.’ She disappeared.

  Three-hundred fenth. Dairon held his breath.

  Two fifty. Two twenty. Two hundred.

  Something obscured the aft camera for the briefest of moments. When it was gone, so was the pod.

  Dairon, Niada and Idila stared, speechless, as a retreating Cealin vessel came into view, tugging Kyle’s pod to the battlecruiser.

  ‘Deyuul—’

  ‘I saw.’ The Uunda’s voice was aghast.

  ‘I have to get out of here before—’

  ‘Wait,’ Deyuul snapped. ‘Keral just jettisoned. The ship has fallen. Can you get him?’

  ‘On it,’ Dairon said, watching the small pod enter the field, and turned the ship.

  ‘Can you run interference on anyone who sees that.’

  ‘Yes.’ Deyuul’s voice was taut. Dairon knew he was blaming himself for not doing the same for Kyle.

  Dairon sailed past the pod and, cargo bay still wide open, he slowed to match its speed.

  There was a thunk as the pod landed.

  ‘The Cealin have the rest,’ Deyuul said.

  Dairon closed the cargo bay doors and, with a heavy heart, set off for the gas cloud.

  Following the instructions Deyuul sent to his mind, Dairon sank beneath the bilious clouds of gas and set a course that would take him and their cargo straight to the Tala and the Uunda inside.

  There was something profoundly calming about Deyuul.

  The docking ramp extended. The ships locked. The docking bay doors opened and suddenly Deyuul was there. Dairon breathed again.

  Beside him, Keral stared, his mouth open in shock. ‘Apologies,’ he said. ‘I have never actually seen one of your kind before.’

  Deyuul’s facial muscles eased. It was the closest he got to a smile.

  Dairon took a moment to take in the Uunda objectively. He had to admit, he looked terrifying. If Dairon hadn’t grown up knowing him, he might have reacted the same way.

  Dairon and the Uunda were comparable in height, nearly the sa
me height as the Protectorate.

  The Uunda, like Dairon, was a blue-grey colour and he had black eyes. But those two features were where the similarity ended.

  Deyuul didn’t have irises or sclera; instead, his eyes were a series of pupils, it made them glitter like a many-faceted black jewel. The Uunda didn’t move his eyes around to look at people. If you were facing him, he usually had you in at least one pupil. His skin was striated with silver markings, which were thousands of tiny hairs that fed environmental information back to the Uunda’s brain.

  He was naked, except for a loincloth which he wore in concession at his crew’s insistence. Deyuul’s race had inverted genitalia, so he didn’t see the point. There was a hunch on his back that were four folded appendages which, when unfurled, acted like legs and took the Uunda from his almost seven-fenth height to well over ten fenth.

  Besides those very alien differences, Deyuul’s body, legs and arms were like Dairon’s until the knee, where he stood on digitigrade feet.

  The Uunda bowed his head to Keral.

  ‘It is quite all right, Protector.’

  ‘Are they still out there?’

  Deyuul paused and tilted his head as though he were listening to something in the next room. After a few moments, he nodded.

  ‘We need to get down to the planet,’ Keral said. ‘We need a plan.’

  ‘I have one,’ Deyuul offered.

  Dairon nodded. ‘Go ahead.’

  ‘Makios’s ship, Tala,’ he said for Keral’s benefit, ‘is fast. Your ship is stealthy. We send Tala out of the cloud, and it FTLs out in full view, attracting a chase. The Cealin will never catch them,’ he said dismissively. ‘A ship that large takes too long to heat up its FTL drive, and I can easily interfere with the Cealin attempting pursuit.’

  Dairon and Keral nodded in agreement.

  ‘While Tala is distracting the Cealin, we go deeper into the clouds. We leave the gas giant from the other side and carry on to the planet.’

  Dairon looked at Keral, who was considering the plan in silence. ‘Sounds good. Can Tala head to Amaran space and get help?’

  ‘With a message from you so they don’t get arrested, yes.’

  ‘Of course. You with us?’