The Last Stryker (Dark Universe Series Book 1)

by Alex Sheppard

  “You didn’t know Habardein from before, did you?” Captain Milos asked, fixing his sharp green gaze on Ramya’s face.

  “No, of course not, I don’t know him,” Ramya said with a vehement shake of her head. She hadn’t planned on telling them a few things, among them that the man was so angry with the crew he had decided to withhold all information about Sector 22. But now, annoyed by the way the men—mostly Ross—questioned her, she decided to come clean. “He didn’t tell you because he didn’t like you. He said you wouldn’t let him contact anyone or let him off the ship. Why wouldn’t you? He probably has a family somewhere he wants to talk to.”

  Ross crossed his arms and glared. “What a thankless bastard. We saved him, hauled him out of that wreck, and now he—”

  “We didn’t intend to torture him, if that’s what you think,” Captain Milos said abruptly to Ramya, cutting Ross off. “Since we were thrown out of the SLH, some of our own communication systems aren’t working so well. Our long-distance transponders are messed up, so the next best way was to dock and use a public transponder to contact the Confederacy. Nikoor was not on our flight path; we simply docked here because it was the nearest space port from Sector 22.”

  Ramya felt an awkward tug in her throat. It was surprising how candidly the captain spoke of everything that had happened, as if he owed her an explanation. He didn’t have to, yet here he was explaining his actions to a girl he barely knew.

  “I couldn’t let him off the ship until we had reported our findings to the Confederacy. As soon as Admiral Kanaa heard of this incident, she wanted us to leave Nikoor quickly and get to Alameda. She said everything we found in Sector 22 had to be brought to the GSO HQ. No one could hear about this until the Confederate Space Command had a good look at what we had picked up.”

  Ramya’s mind raced to connect the dots. Not too long ago, she had suspected the captain of smuggling. Thinking about that now made her insides twitch with guilt. In reality, the captain was following a direct command from Admiral Kanaa, the top officer of the Confederate Space Command. Ramya had heard a lot about Kanaa—the woman had a reputation of outstanding intellect and strict principles. However, the order of absolute secrecy she had imposed on Captain Milos troubled Ramya somehow.

  “That’s why we had to contain the pilot,” Ross said before sighing noisily. “Only the crafty bastard gave us the slip and got lost in the alleyways. Where did he think he was going?”

  “To Trysten Kiroff obviously.” Ramya couldn’t stop the sarcasm from crawling all over her voice and as could be expected, the commander’s jaws hardened.

  “Rami,” the captain said, “tell us what this man, Habardein, said to you. Please don’t leave out anything.”

  One thing she was definitely going to leave out: the part where he called her Trysten Kiroff’s daughter. Habardein had since slipped into a deep coma, and if she wasn’t going to bring the topic up, no one would ever know. Besides, it was irrelevant information anyway.

  Ramya related the rest of the conversation she had had with the wounded man about the missing Strykers and his fear of the Locustans. As she spoke, the captain’s brows bunched, and by the time she had finished Ramya thought she saw his eyes flash a few times. Ross however had paled considerably.

  “So, Trysten Kiroff was running a research and manufacturing base in Sector 22,” Ross went over the information Ramya just shared. “They were building fighters using Locustan technology when something went wrong. Something or someone destroyed the research center and the entire GSO fleet. Habardein thinks the four other Strykers did it. But why?”

  Ramya didn’t know how to answer that question. The captain didn’t stir either. He seemed to have drifted into deep thought and he now sat stroking his chin. Something seemed to have thrown him off, because for the first time since Ramya had boarded the Endeavor, he looked angry.

  “What did he say about the spindle again?” Ross asked Ramya.

  “Nothing really. He was fading by then.”

  “Must be related to the Stryker we have in the hold.”

  “That’s what it sounded like to me.”

  “Captain,” Ross said, suddenly excited, “should we check that out?”

  “No,” the captain said so vehemently that Ross fell back a little. The sharpness in his voice was hard to miss as was the grimness etched on his face. “Leave that craft alone.”

  “But—”

  “It's an order.”

  A dim-faced Ross took a step away and then another.

  “We need to hand it over to the Confederacy as quickly as we can. We’d be lucky if we can without incident,” Captain Milos said.

  Ramya wondered what worried the captain so much. Was it because of the Locustan technology used in the Strykers, or was it because the Stryker belonged to her father? She hesitated a second and then decided to ask him.

  “Trysten Kiroff would come after us, won’t he?”

  The captain looked at her, his worried gaze quickly turning mirthful. “He could come after us, but only if he finds out we have his toy. He doesn't know that yet, does he?”

  It was the way his eyes twinkled and the words he used that made Ramya’s insides squirm. Why did he ask her if Trysten Kiroff knew of the Stryker? How could she know if he knew? Was the captain hinting at her relationship with the senior Kiroff, or was it simply her fear jumping into conclusions?

  “I wouldn’t think so,” Ramya said, forcing herself to stay calm. “Unless he has a gazing ball or something.”

  “Right,” the captain said. A faraway look had descended on his eyes. He rubbed his knees the way Ramya often saw her grandmother do after she had been sitting a while. Then he abruptly lurched forward and rose. “I’m not worried about Trysten Kiroff,” he said in a low voice, “but I’m worried about what he’s been doing with Locustan tech.”

  The captain strolled to a bookshelf and started fiddling with a pair of shiny leather-bound books. Ramya caught Ross looking fixedly at the captain. The commander chewed his lips as he observed the captain, and Ramya could easily guess why. The captain knew something, clearly something worrisome about Locustans, especially having fought them for years during the Locusta-Vanga war.

  It had been a vicious war. Ramya was a child when the skirmishes began, and Ross had to be fairly young himself. Most of Ramya’s knowledge of the war had been from history books and from the stories her grandmother told her of her grandfather. Grappa Abelei Kiroff had been a starship captain who could have easily avoided the Locusta-Vanga war on account of being too old. But even though he was seven years beyond the age limit to be automatically summoned to the battlefront, fifty-seven-old Abelei rushed to command a starship. His was one of the first fleets to reach the frontlines that stretched along the Fringe. His was also one of the first ones that were eviscerated by the Locustan waves.

  Ramya recalled what her Gramaman often said of Abelei’s final message to her: “It’s an unending sea of tiny fighters, Otis. Their dark, shiny bodies ripple like a wave in space, a wave of death ready to obliterate anything that comes in their path. It’s a swarm like nothing else the Confederacy has ever seen, and looking at it right now, I know I’m not going to survive it.”

  Ramya fought the shudder in her spine, willing it to not spread across her whole body like it always did when she thought of Grappa’s last words. He must have been scared. He fought and must have died bravely, but those were words of someone who was staring certain death in the face. The Locustans were a terrible nightmare, and that they retreated when they did was a stroke of fortune and nothing else. Had the Anomaly Point not collapsed, cutting off access to the Mehulian Quadrant, the Locustans would have kept on coming.

  “Do you know what made the Locustans so fearsome?” the captain asked, strolling back to his couch with a dilapidated book in his hands.

  “Their numbers of course,” Ramya replied, recalling her numerous history lessons. “That there were millions of them in every wave and they never seemed to
die out.”

  The captain nodded. “Yes, that’s part of it. They came in incredible numbers to begin with. On every front, we were facing millions of fighters. They were small but they outnumbered us one to one hundred. When a swarm attacked, our biggest battleships fell within minutes. The Locustans’ power is in their collective strength. But that’s not all.”

  “Their regenerative power was an issue also,” Ramya said eagerly.

  “More than just an issue. On their colonies, Locustans are said to breed in massive hives. They are said to be manufactured. They inject a piece of Locustan DNA into an organic shell and a new Locustan in hatched within days. There’s little time wasted in incubation, and since the Locustans mature fairly rapidly, a Locustan fleet can be raised quite quickly.”

  But that was not all either, Ramya knew. Even outside their colonies and during war, the Locustans bred. They seized enemy soldiers, people in the Fringe settlements, and turned them into organic shells on-the-go. While the Locustan army advanced, behind them their worker drones injected Locustan DNA into every organic thing they could get their hands on. The Locustan army was virtually endless and indestructible.

  “They made Locustans out of our people too,” she said gloomily.

  “But, Captain . . .” Ross spoke suddenly, if a little hesitantly. “Why are you worried about that ship in the hold? Even if it had Locustan tech, it doesn’t mean it has a live Locustan in it.”

  Captain Milos shook his head and rose once again, busily leafing through the book in his hand. It was a volume wrapped in brown leather and the pages were yellowed and pockmarked. Ramya tried to peek at the name, but the faded letters on the cover escaped her.

  “The Locustan ships were an integral part of their hive, Ross,” he replied, his voice fading. It was as if his thoughts were drifting. “They were not simply made of dead metals and synthetics like ours; they were all biomechanical. We didn’t understand them then, but they seemed to have minds of their own. After the war, a faction in the Confederacy wanted to research the technology. But—”

  “But the Locustan ships were all destroyed, weren’t they?” Ramya asked. Recorded history said that everything Locustan was annihilated, including every Confederacy settlement the Locustans touched. The Fringe was said to have been an inferno for years.

  “Obviously not,” Captain Milos said, clearly referring to the Stryker. “I’d told them. I told the Confederacy to destroy it all, but they weren’t willing to give up the chance to research Locustan technology. I grew tired of fighting my own people.”

  Was that the reason the legendary Terenze Milos quit the Confederate Space Fleet?

  The captain continued in a heavy monotone. “Now I see they didn’t listen. They played with it. And now—”

  A loud beep almost made Ramya jump. It was the captain’s comm, she realized quickly. The captain quickly turned on the comm.

  “Captain,” Fenny’s sharp voice filled the room. “Someone’s hailing us.”

  Captain Milos’s brows furrowed. “Hailing us? Here in the SLH?”

  It was indeed unexpected. The technology of the SLH had few disadvantages, the prime of them being a lack of outside communication while a ship was inside it. Apparently, someone had overcome that problem.

  “Yes, sir. It’s a Lord Wultoph Aristide looking for the captain of the ship.”

  Fenny’s words sucked away Ramya’s insides in a heartbeat, leaving an enormous black hole. Chill, like frost spreading from the tips of her fingers and toes, rushed fast and furious to envelop her heart in a never-ending freeze.

  Ramya knew that name well. Too well perhaps. Wultoph was her father’s right-hand man, a lesser lord with rights to half a planet. Why was he here? What did Wultoph want with the captain? Was he calling for the Stryker, or had her father found out that Ramya was on the Endeavor?

  Fear clawed into Ramya’s heart leaving her breathless and devoid of hope. Did it have to be this way? Of all the ships in this galaxy, this was the one she had to pick? She wondered what fate had in store for her. Dragged out of here by her father, shamed and broken forever . . .

  No! That couldn’t be.

  Captain Milos turned off his comm and frowned.

  “Isn’t that Trysten Kiroff’s flunkey?” Ross said. “What could he want?”

  “The Stryker,” the captain replied.

  “How does he know we have the Stryker? We haven’t told anyone but the Confederacy.”

  The captain pursed his lips and shook his head. He and Ross headed to the door with the captain leading the way. As badly as Ramya wanted follow them out, her feet didn’t budge. It was not until Captain Milos had walked out into the corridor that Ramya forced herself up on shaky legs. She was not a moment too early.

  “You coming with us?” Ross asked.

  The captain half-turned to reply. “No, she doesn’t need to. You should go take some rest, Rami.”

  “I’ll go check on Sosa then,” Ramya muttered. Wobbling a little, Ramya followed Ross out of the captain’s chamber.

  14

  As soon as she was out of the men’s sight, Ramya bolted, careening through the dull gray corridors that did not seem any more comforting than the colorless thoughts swirling in her mind. She wrapped her arms around her torso to stave off the chill. It hadn’t felt half as bad when she’d boarded the Endeavor, but now the ship seemed like a gigantic cold storage. On top of that, she was aching all over from the Pterostrich attack.

  Ramya barged into the med-bay a minute or two later. Sosa was reclining in her chair in her nook of concoctions. The Norgoran looked at peace surrounded by bottles with colorful liquids. A large black box sat on the table in front of her. Next to it was a jug of blue-and-red Pax Serengis—Sosa’s favorite drink, and at the moment, Ramya was mighty happy to see it again.

  Sosa opened her eyes as Ramya entered and the corners of her mouth crinkled a little. She reached for a goblet from the shelf nearest to her and slid it across the table toward Ramya. Then she pushed the Pax toward her and gestured for Ramya to take a seat.

  All without a word, which was strange but good. Ramya was in no mood to talk to anyone either. She grabbed the goblet and poured herself a generous serving of the Pax. She knew Sosa was squinting at her, but she didn’t care. Ramya gulped down a big sip of the bittersweet liquid, and a flood of warmth immediately washed away the all-encompassing dread inside her. Tedious thoughts gave way to colors of hope.

  Nothing was lost yet. She had to keep on hoping. She was going to escape her father. She had to.

  Ramya eased into a chair and took another long sip. Across from her Sosa had closed her eyes again. What Sosa was doing? Meditating or simply taking a nap?

  She half turned to take a look at the sick man at the far end of the med-bay, noting the outline of his form through the transparent decontamination tent that Sosa had erected around his bed. Other than the incessant blinking of the CHS and various other monitors hooked to the man, all was quiet.

  Until the black box on Sosa’s table crackled to life. Ramya jumped and spilled a few drops of Pax from her goblet on her sleeve, making a bright purple patch on the green fabric. Damn! This was a brand new med-bay uniform Sosa gave me, Ramya thought irritably as she wiped the stain with vigor.

  “Easy, child,” Sosa whispered from across the table. “It’s just a garment. We have more.”

  That was easy for her to say. She was not the one running away from Lord Paramount Trysten Kiroff whose long shadow was turning out to be harder to outrun than Ramya had expected.

  The black box crackled again and Fenny’s voice drifted in. “That’s the Aristide channel hailing us again, Captain. Should I accept?”

  “Yes,” the captain said gruffly.

  The warm fuzziness that had drifted over Ramya’s senses disappeared in a blink. She sat up straight like a spring uncoiled.

  “Are you eavesdropping?” Ramya whispered, pointing at the black box, which she now realized was a sound transmitter that was hoo
ked up to the Endeavor’s COM. Ramya knew Sosa functioned in her own swashbuckling ways, so she didn’t question the legality of the snooping arrangement.

  “Shhh . . .” Sosa raised a slender green finger to her lips. “We need to hear this. This is that skunk Kiroff’s handiwork. All of it. Everyone knows this Wultoph guy is Trysten Kiroff’s lackey. Now let’s see why he’s calling Terenze. Will be an interesting conversation.”

  Indeed. Ramya reached for her goblet. She was going to need a lot of help to get through this. It wasn’t going to be easy discussing that skunk again.

  A couple of sips later, Ramya leaned back into her chair and closed her eyes just like Sosa. All of her senses were focused on sounds as her heart braced to hear Wultoph.

  “Lord Wultoph Aristide,” Captain Milos’s greeting floated out of the transmitter. The communication channel was open and working, Ramya deduced. “What makes you seek us?”

  “Captain Milos,” said a voice that Ramya had heard many times before. Wultoph Aristide was always by her father’s side, like a shadow, almost like an extension of him. The Wultoph Ramya remembered was always quiet, calm, and collected. At the moment though, Wultoph sounded a surprised. “The Terenze Milos? I . . . this is unexpected.”

  “Good to see you again, Wultoph.” The captain sounded sharp, cold. “When I last met you, you were just a boy trying very hard to get into the Space Fleet. I recall they kept rejecting you and your father was most disappointed.”

  The box stayed quiet for a long time. In her mind’s eye, Ramya could see Wultoph squirm at the captain’s jab.

  “Didn’t expect you to be running a freight ship,” Wultoph said at last, and Ramya didn’t miss the telltale dip in his voice.

  “Don’t tell me you forgot to read the Endeavor’s manifest, Lord Aristide,” the captain said with a dry chuckle. “If not you, I wouldn’t expect such carelessness from your superior. Or perhaps he’s slipping?”