“Tarlen, this is Kelli, the head nurse. Kelli, Tarlen is from Greblok,” Nee advised them, and her eyes sprang wide.
“I’m sorry…” She didn’t elaborate, and Tarlen only nodded his understanding.
“Kelli, please begin the process,” Nee said, and Tarlen took a seat, not wanting to be in the way. The two moved with practiced care, and a few minutes later, the figure on the bed began to move, slowly at first, then a little more panicked.
“Let’s give him something to calm him,” Nee said, and Kelli pressed a few keys, the man settling quickly.
Nee raised the bed up and shone a light into the man’s dark eyes. His mandibles clicked together, his nasal slits opening and closing as he searched the room.
Tarlen didn’t feel scared by the man, only intrigued, and he stood, moving to the end of the bed. He raised a hand in greeting, and the man attempted to copy him. His hand only lifted halfway, the glowing binds around his arm stopping him short. He clicked more when he realized he was confined to the bed but didn’t panic like Tarlen might have expected. They locked gazes, and the man leaned into his pillow, starting to click more.
“Doctor Nee to the bridge,” Nee said into the console.
“Starling here. Go ahead, Medical,” the commander’s voice said.
“He’s awake and talkative,” Nee told the bridge.
“Ask Constantine Baldwin to join you. I understand he has translation programming,” Starling said.
“Good call. We’ll begin the process and update you when we learn anything,” Nee said. “Constan…”
Tarlen jumped as the AI appeared, flickering at first, then remaining solid.
“You have need of me, Doctor?” Constantine asked.
Tarlen had never seen anything like it before, but had heard about Constantine from Vor. It was amazing. It looked like a real man, younger than the captain, even though the computer software held the memories of the captain’s grandfather. It was all a little confusing to Tarlen, but he assumed he’d encounter a lot of that after leaving the surface of his home planet.
He’d never considered what was out there beyond his own world with any more than a passing thought. He was meant to work for his father one day, keeping books for businesses. That was his life mapped out, and now that had been flipped upside down. The possibilities of his existence had exploded, but only on the deaths of so many.
As excited as he was about these new things he was witnessing, he wished he could trade it all to be home with his family, eating at the dinner table and sharing their days with each other. That would never happen again.
More sharp clicks emerged from the patient, startled at seeing Constantine appear, and Tarlen snapped out of his daydream.
Kelli walked over to Tarlen, standing between him and the patient’s bed. “Come on, Tarlen. I’ll show you around. Let’s let them work.”
“I’m going to show him a series of images…” the AI was saying as the door shut behind Kelli and Tarlen.
Tarlen couldn’t wait to learn where the man and his people hailed from.
____________
Treena was never tired. It was both a blessing and a curse. There was something therapeutic about growing weary and preparing for bed. She used to have a routine of cleaning her teeth, taking a steam shower, and drying her hair before brushing it. Part of the reason she’d kept her hair short was from the memories of her mother always nagging her about brushing it religiously.
There was technology for this, but her mother claimed it wasn’t the same thing. She recalled crying while her hair was aggressively brushed as a child, and the moment she was old enough to choose for herself, she’d cut her hair short with her own scissors. Her mother was so angry, but her father had calmed her, saying it suited her round face.
Treena stared in the mirror, running a hand over her vessel’s hair, and even though her fingers were lined with sensors, nothing felt right. She’d never feel wind against her face like she once had. Never taste a cup of coffee with the same effect. She’d never be in a relationship again – which suited her just fine, since he’d died while she’d been spared, for some reason.
There was no room for love in her heart any longer. Not without Felix.
“Bridge to Starling,” the voice carried through her room speakers. The signal for the Statu vessel had vanished seven hours ago. That might have meant that Brax Daak had been killed, but his tracker was imbedded deep within his humerus bone. They would have had to vaporize him to destroy it, which wasn’t fully impossible.
She sighed, shutting the lights off in the bathroom, and tapped the console. “Go ahead, bridge.”
It was Ven speaking. “The captain has requested you join us. We’ve encountered… an anomaly.”
“I’ll be right there,” she told the bridge, and grabbed her uniform, staring at the orange collar. Something was off about this mission. The ship had taken three years to build, and that had been rushed, but to throw together a crew so unfamiliar with one another, and end up at a site attacked by the Statu, was incredible.
If she hadn’t been there with Thomas on the call with the Concord’s Prime and Admiral Hudson, she wouldn’t have believed they could be so cold and callous about the entire thing. Treena hated disobeying rules, but she smelled something afoot, and knew they were doing the right thing. This needed to be explored.
Perhaps if they’d been given more information on the call, she would have understood the reasoning for the orders, but they were disregarded without so much as a brief explanation. It rattled her cage, and she was glad Tom had felt the same way.
She donned her uniform, glancing briefly at her real body before leaving for the bridge. She arrived a few minutes later to find the captain huddled over a helm console with Ven and Reeve Daak.
“What did I miss?” she asked. It was one of those times she was glad she didn’t need sleep. She’d been on the go for the last twenty-seven hours and had been about to take her first break. Reeve looked at her like she expected Treena to have purple bags under her eyes but didn’t say anything when she saw a fresh-faced commander in front of her.
“Take a look for yourself,” Thomas Baldwin said, pointing to the viewer. The viewer was zoomed in a hundred times, the image ever-so-slightly out of focus, but the picture was still clear enough to decipher.
“It’s a wormhole,” Treena whispered.
Ven peered up at her. “We’ve been following their trajectory, and this is where the signal vanished.” He nodded to the viewer. “Actually, that is where it disappeared, to be more factual.”
“They traveled into the wormhole,” Treena said.
“Can that be done?” Thomas asked Reeve, who was sitting in Zare’s second helm position while the Zilph’i woman was relegated to the edge of the bridge.
Reeve was typing away at the console, muttering inaudible words as her fingers flew over the screen. “I don’t know, Captain. I mean, we’ve seen wormholes before, but none have ever been deemed stable enough to travel through.”
“But the theory is sound,” Treena said. She’d heard a lot of stories of distant races using wormholes as trade routes, but no real empirical proof had ever been recorded and stored within the Concord.
“The few we’ve found inside the Border were small and short-lived. There have been records of twenty-three active wormholes outside the Border, and the one the Concord investigated turned out to be a dangerous quasar,” Reeve said.
“That’s not entirely true,” Ven said.
“What do you mean?” Tom asked, arms crossed over his chest. He was frowning, and Treena almost saw the options rattling around his brain as they stood side by side.
“The Zilph’i have attempted to travel through a wormhole,” Ven said.
This was news to Treena, and evidently to the rest of the crew too, judging by the surprised looks on their faces.
“Impossible. Why wouldn’t the Concord know of this?” Reeve asked.
“Because it was an Ugna
vessel, and we don’t fall under the umbrella of the Concord,” Ven said, almost with a hint of distaste. Treena initially thought the man might be offended that he was forced to work aboard a Concord vessel, but working with him over the last few days had squashed the assumption. He seemed as dedicated as the rest of the crew, only a little more withdrawn and mysterious.
So much of the Ugna was unfamiliar to the Concord, and Ven wasn’t forthcoming so far on details. Perhaps time would help him grow comfortable enough to share the real him. Maybe Treena would share her reality with them as well… eventually.
No one spoke, waiting for Ven to continue. He clued in and kept talking. “We have our own vessels, mostly for exploration. There’s a lot to see out there, and the Ugna don’t appreciate having others dictate the mission mandates. We create our own. You see, if I hadn’t been selected to join Constantine, I’d be heading my own ship in our compact fleet,” he advised them.
“If that’s the case, why have we never heard of this fleet?” Reeve asked, her red eyes shining brightly as she stared at the albino man at the helm beside hers.
“Because I chose to keep this information to myself. Even now, I’m breaking trust by telling you,” Ven said.
“But you’re on our crew, part of the Concord,” Tom said.
“Yes. One of many gray areas, sir,” Ven said.
“What about the wormhole?” Treena asked, wanting to arrive at the crux of the story. One thing she knew about the rifts in space was that they were often unstable. If the Statu had taken their captives through this one, she didn’t want to hesitate long before following after them.
“It appeared forty thousand light years from the Border, possible millions of Standard years ago. We found references to it in ancient texts from a long-dead race. The Ugna often study extinct cultures, in an effort to learn how to sustain the Zilph’i forever. It was a century ago that the rumors of the wormhole grew to more than that. We found the exact coordinates,” Ven said, and Treena leaned in. She glanced over at Tom, and he was doing the same thing.
“What did you do?” Tom asked quietly.
“We sent a vessel to explore. Their mission was to traverse it, and head home from the new location, should they be unable to return through the wormhole,” Ven told them.
“What was on the other side?” Treena asked, feeling like she knew the coming answer.
“That’s undetermined.” Ven averted his gaze and stared toward the rift in the viewer. “The vessel never returned.”
“Great.” Reeve slapped a palm on the console in anger. “What are we going to do? We have no idea what will happen if we attempt to fly Constantine through this thing. Are we certain the Statu even took this route? There are other explanations.”
“There’s another possible account,” Tom said. “The Statu knew this wormhole was here, and they led us to it, destroyed our tracker right near it, and kept moving through normal space, figuring we’d assume they’d traversed the wormhole.”
Reeve’s face went pale, and Treena set a hand on the woman’s shoulder as she stood behind Reeve’s station.
“I don’t buy it,” Reeve said. “I think they took the opening.”
Treena watched the image, noting the strange distortion in the center of it: a perfect circle beckoning their vessel toward it. She was stepping across the bridge, moving for the center of the viewer without even thinking about it.
Treena thought the chief engineer was right, and she turned to tell the captain her opinion when the doctor’s voice carried onto Ven’s console.
“Bridge, you’re going to want to hear this,” Nee said. Treena could tell something was wrong, because the normally upbeat man’s voice was strained and tense.
“Go ahead, Doctor,” Tom said.
“We’ve managed to get our friend talking,” the doctor told them.
Tom tapped the console hard with his pointer finger. “Damn it, Nee. We don’t have time for games. Spit it out!”
Silence.
“Doctor, I’m not…” Tom started, but was interrupted.
“He claims to be Statu, sir. He says they’re Statu.”
Thirteen
Another two days passed aboard their new hell. Two more of the Bacals had died overnight, and even though they had someone who professed to be a healer in their group, without supplies, there was nothing that could be done to prevent the deaths.
Brax was exhausted, having slept only a matter of hours. He was being foolish by pushing himself to the edge, and he finally lay down, closing his eyes to sleep. The room was filled with groans and hushed conversations.
At any given moment, there was a child crying, a soothing female voice, and a shouting man, almost without fail. Brax had stopped three fights from escalating, and Penter another two. The entire group was under a lot of duress, and Brax didn’t blame them for being scared and frustrated. They’d witnessed the destruction of their homes and were now crammed into a terrible space with nothing but a barrel of water to sustain them.
No one knew where they were headed or who their captors were. Brax did, but he didn’t tell the Bacals; not that it would do any good. They hadn’t been involved in the War and might not even know who the Statu were.
Brax attempted to push all thoughts from his mind and concentrated on an image of a flame. He watched the orange ambiance flicker as if a light breeze was rustling inside his head. He could smell the wick burning, feel the heat from the tiny piece of fire. All that existed was the flame. The Flame is life. The words from the Code echoed as he repeated the mantra, concentrating on the image.
His body relaxed, and the noise around the room dissipated into nothingness. He was the only thing in existence, along with his flame. Sleep took him after a few more deep breaths.
Brax awoke to being shaken, and he reached out, clutching his attacker around the collar, cocking his other fist back to strike hard and quickly.
“It’s me! Penter!” the man hissed, and pressed his finger to chapped lips. “Something’s happening. You’d better get up.”
Brax sat up, hearing none of the familiar cacophony of the passengers. It was nearly silent. “What is it?”
“I think we’ve landed,” Penter said.
Landed? Already? That was too soon. Brax had expected the ship to carry them for weeks, at least. If they were only a few days out, they had to be within range of the Concord. That could be good news.
“None of the bastards have lowered from the ceiling yet?” Brax asked, standing and stretching his spine. It cracked in two spots, and he swung his arms around, easing the tension in his shoulders.
“Not yet,” Penter said.
“What are they going to do with us?” It was Abbil, the woman Brax had first encountered. Since then, she’d taken a special interest in helping Penter and Brax with the other passengers.
“Only time will tell, but I suspect they won’t be welcoming us like long-lost friends,” Brax told her. She pulled her long dark hair back, using a piece torn from a sleeve to tie it away from her face. Abbil appeared ready to fight, but Brax didn’t think it was a battle any of them would survive.
“Be cautious, Abbil,” he warned her, and she nodded.
“Thank you,” she told him.
Brax ran a hand over his head; dark hair was poking from his pate. “For what?”
“Everything,” she told him quietly.
Penter was already moving through the throngs of his people, and Brax followed the guard, Abbil trailing behind him until they reached the water barrel. If they’d landed, it was likely their captors would be joining them very soon.
People were beginning to talk amongst themselves, and Brax thought he heard a loud sound through the noise. He raised his hand. “Can everyone be quiet for a moment?” he asked loudly, and the talking ceased instantly.
Bang! There it was again: a loud concussive sound. The ground shook slightly, and he was fully aware they were feeling the aftereffects of a pulse frag being deployed. It might have
been from the room beside them.
“Everyone, listen to me. They are about to return to this room. No one dare attack them. If I’m right, they’ll kill us upon any provocation,” Brax said. The Statu had abducted a lot of people, and if they were on the huge warship, which he was sure they were, they might have thousands, even tens of thousands of Bacals on board. Killing one or two rogue groups would be effortless on their part, especially if you took their own muddled history into consideration.
Brax had studied the War more thoroughly than most cadets, and he was aware how eager the Statu were to send their own people to their deaths in battle. That meant life, especially that of their enemies, was of little consequence to the destructive race.
“What makes you say that?” Penter asked.
“That noise. I think that was the room over, and it didn’t sound like a friendly arrival,” Brax said as the ceiling began to spread wide. The lift lowered again, and he urged the nearby people to step away. The platform held twenty or so armed guards this time. They each wore the familiar armored suits from the War.
They’d learned those details at the Academy. They even had samples of the uniforms for the cadets to play with. Brax could recall the day he’d learned each suit had a mechanized device the Callalay had dubbed a Scrambler. If the Statu inside the suit lost vitals, it depressed into their skin, scrambling their innards into a gooey mess. It disgusted him then, and staring at the faceless suits, it still made his own skin crawl.
They were varying heights, none much taller than Brax would be inside a matching suit. With the helmets and boots, a couple were pushing over two meters in height. He stood nearest the armed soldiers, standing his ground, but not appearing threatening either.
“Where are we?” he asked the lead guard, not expecting an answer. There was no successful communication with the race on record. None of the pleas to barter or make peace had been accepted during the ten-year duration of the War. Not once.
Baldwin's Legacy: The Complete Series Page 13