Rystani Warrior 02 - The Dare

by Susan Kearney

  With his ship in danger, Zical’s tone was impatient. “Dora, get over the guilt. The Perceptive Ones’ machine killed those worlds—not you.”

  “Billions of intelligent beings died. Mothers and fathers. Children. Entire races.” Chilled, sickened, she had to fight to prevent her teeth from chattering.

  “Making choices without knowing all the facts is part of being human.”

  Dora was beginning to hate that phrase about “being human.” Her stomach twisted into knots that left her crossing her arms over her stomach and rocking. How could she go on with her life after knowing what she’d done?

  As if reading her mind, Zical answered her unspoken question. “You’ll have to learn to forgive yourself. Sometimes the loss we suffer makes us appreciate the gift of what we do have. But right now, I need you with me, or more people may die. What are the chances of the Sentinel attacking us again?”

  “I don’t know,” she whispered, her head aching as she tried to get past the horrible loss. “The Sentinel may not even know the attack failed. Or it could be reloading that terrible weapon.”

  “Why didn’t the Sentinel recognize us?” Zical paced to and fro in her quarters, his hands clasped behind his back, his chin jutting forward with determination to find a solution to the mystery of why they’d been attacked.

  Dora had trouble understanding and thinking clearly beyond the throbbing in her head. “Either the programming broke down or someone changed it.”

  “A race as intelligent as the Perceptive Ones would have taken precautions,” Zical said.

  “Maybe they did. The machines the Perceptive Ones built on Laptiva for The Challenge still recognize that we are the true descendants. Our suits still work. It doesn’t make sense that all these machines would break down in the same way. That attack wasn’t from just one Sentinel, but a coordinated group effort.” She shivered, her tone as bleak as the despair inside her. If she hadn’t contacted the Sentinel, billions of beings on two worlds would be going about their normal lives, eating, shopping, studying, working. Now, they were gone—two entire planets, utterly, completely disintegrated. For once she wished she could stop thinking. Shut down her brain. But the human mind didn’t always do what its owner wanted. Even with her despair, she kept coming up with ideas.

  “Maybe the Zin altered it and turned the Sentinels against us,” Zical suggested. “We need to know. You’ll have to tap in again.”

  He sounded as reluctant as she felt. Yet, he’d gone ahead and urged her. Torn, struck with grief, she realized that even if he ordered her to contact the Sentinel, she would have to refuse, but hoped it wouldn’t come to a contest of wills, especially if she had to break her word that she’d obey his direct command. Better if she could convince him that contacting the Sentinel would compound their problem.

  “If I tap in again, the Sentinels will probably attack again.”

  “Not if you convince them that we mean no harm.”

  “No. We have no way to convince them.” She wouldn’t risk the lives of more innocents. The Sentinel was a planet killer. She would not be responsible for sending more people to their deaths.

  Zical’s eyes narrowed on her, his tone insistent, but firm. “Dora, if you don’t try, that weapon might turn on every planet in the galaxy.”

  “It also may go back to ignoring us,” she countered, her voice weaker than she would have liked.

  “Right now, ignoring us is almost as bad as attacking. The Sentinels are supposed to be out there to protect us from the Zin. Without them …”

  Dora gathered her wits. “Perhaps the Zin no longer exist. Perhaps they’ve expanded to other galaxies and are no longer interested in ours.”

  “We can’t ignore the responsibility placed on us. My people have lost their home and settled on a new world. They’ve been through enough—”

  “So has this crew,” Dora reminded him.

  Zical frowned. “This crew made their choice before the mission. We all knew the risks. If there’s a way we can protect those on Mystique, we must. You and Ranth will—”

  “No.”

  Zical ran his fingers through his hair in aggravation. His irritation with her was just shy of erupting into a full-fledged order, she just knew it.

  But he held his temper and spoke more softly than she expected. “Then give me another alternative.”

  At his plea, her mind began to race. “The entity called Guranu claimed it was a resting place for the Sentinels during their long journey.”

  “A resting place? A graveyard for broken machines? Or a place to repair them?”

  “It may be all or none of those things.” She shook her head. “But, I sensed Guranu is probably a giant space station between the Milky Way and Andromeda Galaxies. Guranu told us it maintains contact with the Sentinels. It would make sense for Guranu to be a control center. Perhaps if we stop there, we can figure out another way to reprogram the Sentinels to recognize that we are allies, not enemies, without risking more lives.”

  Zical stared at Dora, and she could guess the reason for his rising concern. The trip to the galaxy’s rim was farther than anyone from the Federation had ever traveled. Without the two black holes that had boosted their initial journey, without the Kwadii system to aid their own hyperdrives, they could pop out of hyperspace between two galaxies without too much difficulty, but the problem would be the return trip.

  “Ranth,” Dora said. “Approximate Guranu’s position and estimate the turnaround time to Federation space under normal hyperdrive conditions.”

  “Five hundred, eighty-seven point four three years.”

  “So if we go out there, there’s a good chance that none of us will ever return home alive?” Zical asked.

  Dora’s hand went to her womb. “With an estimated life span of a thousand years our child would be middle-aged by the time this ship could return to Mystique.”

  “Unless you wish to attempt to contact the Sentinel again, we don’t have a choice.” Zical’s face was hard, stoic, but his eyes revealed a flash of desperation, and Dora gulped back tears.

  The choice facing them was terrible. They owed it to everyone on Mystique to complete their mission. From the start of the journey they’d known the odds would be against them as they traveled into unknown space, but she hadn’t known that she’d have to choose between her own life and her unborn child’s and the lives of everyone back home. She already felt worse for the tiny life growing inside her than she did over the fact that if they continued their mission, the likelihood of them ever seeing Mystique alive again was extremely unlikely.

  How could she allow her body and the child she carried in her womb to die? But how could she abandon their mission and risk the lives of everyone back home?

  ZICAL EXPLAINED the terrible options to his crew on the bridge and allowed those off duty and the scientists below to sit in through the holovid system. Under usual circumstance, he might not inform the crew of their situation. But these weren’t normal times, and with the stakes so high, he wanted to hear the opinions of those he trusted most.

  Zical kept his shoulders squared, his chin high, knowing others would take their cue from his demeanor. “So people, we have to decide whether to turn back, risk another contact with the Sentinel, or venture between the galaxies in the hopes that Guranu may help us reprogram the Sentinels. I’m open to opinions.”

  Vax didn’t hesitate. “We go to Guranu.”

  Zical had never appreciated his second-in-command more. Although Vax didn’t have a wife or children on Mystique, his elderly parents still lived. But he’d always put the mission first, and Zical relied on his steadfast belief that they could make a difference by committing to what would essentially be a one-way trip.

  Shannon, his communications officer, shot him a thumbs-up. “I’d like to go where no Terran has gone before.”

  “Cyn?”

  His chief engineer frowned. “You’re asking a lot of my engines, Captain. But we’re good to travel.”

&nb
sp; Zical was proud of their selflessness. He only wished he didn’t have to ask them to make this kind of sacrifice. If his heart broke over the child that would likely never know a home planet or have the support of a real family unit beyond this crew, he could ask for no better companions and could do no less than his duty. He owed it to his people to make the ultimate effort. Too much was at stake to do less.

  Dr. Laduna spoke up. “No. No. No. We’re throwing our lives away for nothing. I don’t mind dying for a good reason, but we have no idea if this Guranu can help us. We are gambling our lives on the thinnest of theories. We should turn around, go home. Reassess.”

  “With utmost resect, I disagree with Dr. Laduna,” said another scientist somewhat heatedly. “We all knew the risks. We came out here to do a job. We should finish it.”

  Many of the other scientists cheered. Dr. Laduna shook his head, the Jarn’s fish eyes sad and soulful. However, while the Jarn’s was the only dissenting vote, the ship wasn’t a democracy. The decision was Zical’s, and he made it with a heavy heart. “Ranth, plot a course for Guranu.”

  “Compliance.”

  They spent three days in hyperspace accelerating into the void. Cyn kept careful watch on her precious engines, but without even the smallest particles of matter to slow them, their speed encompassed thousands of light-years per second. Zical didn’t even try to keep track of the vast distance in light-years. Instead he consulted the stars and verified their progress in massive sectors as they approached Guranu.

  He occupied his time by keeping up morale with steady encouragement and sending back a detailed log to Mystique, even as he questioned if he’d made the right decision. During the middle of the night when he couldn’t sleep, doubts assailed him. Doubts that they could successfully complete the mission. Doubts that he should ask so much from his crew. Doubts that he and Dora would live long enough to solve their problems. Zical worked harder than ever during the day. While it might take weeks or even months for messages to reach home, at least the Federation would know what had happened to them and what they planned. So if they failed, another course of action could be tried.

  If Zical and his crew didn’t succeed, the Federation would send yet another ship, ask another crew to sacrifice their lives. His determination hardened with every passing light sector. They had to succeed. As the time approached to drop out of hyperspace, Zical’s anticipation skyrocketed even as the crew became slightly oversensitive. No crew had ever spent this long in hyperspace, and the continued assault on their senses made them irritable. With the gamble they were about to take, where the stakes could not have been greater, he wished to steady his people and had ordered Ranth to exit hyperspace within a half day’s journey from Guranu. Traveling the remaining distance in regular space would give them time to settle down and to explore from afar—although he wondered how much that would protect him since the Sentinel seemed to have fired on his ship from half a galaxy away. Still, he’d rather approach an unknown slowly, giving their sensors time to analyze, his crew time to assess. With the fate of everyone he knew at stake, he and his crew could not afford to make errors.

  Zical worried that perhaps, just perhaps, the Sentinel had been correct when it called them enemy. Ever since they’d left Kwadii and discovered the problem with the hyperdrive that had delayed them, he’d wondered if they had a saboteur aboard.

  While Zical would bet his life that his crew was loyal, he would never be as certain of the scientists, whom he didn’t know as well. Yet, what would any of them have to gain by slowing the drive? Why not just dismantle it? But perhaps they hadn’t had time. Perhaps they wanted them to turn around as Dr. Laduna had suggested.

  Or he might be suspicious for no reason at all. Without more to go on, he tried to put treachery from inside the ship from his mind. Between the Sentinels and Guranu he had enough real problems.

  “Ten seconds to n-space,” Vax warned the crew.

  As the countdown to leave hyperspace and enter normal space ensued, Zical kept his eyes on the vidscreen. “Ranth, place long-range detectors on priority.”

  “Compliance.”

  “Five seconds.”

  Zical braced for the change, anchoring his body firmly to the deck with his psi. The ship wouldn’t so much as vibrate during the transition, but the effect on the senses could cause an unwary traveler to stumble.

  “Entering n-space.”

  Zical braced for the black emptiness of space, trying to prepare himself for the void between the galaxies. Out here there were no planets, no stars, no universal dust.

  So he was astonished when the klaxon sounded. “Purple alert. We are under attack.”

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  DORA HEARD THE klaxon in her quarters. Kirek was with Avanti and Deckar, helping them to learn to use their psi and operate their suits, so she had no obligations to the boy at the moment. Even as Zical ordered her to report to the bridge, she used her psi to go there, her muscles tense, her nerves right back on edge.

  Now what? Had Guranu turned against them and attacked? Was this another computer glitch?

  She reached the bridge. Warships dotted the void between the galaxies. The crew were at battle stations, alert and calm.

  For some reason unknown to her, Dr. Laduna was also on the bridge. One of the crew held a weapon on the cowering scientist, who stared at the giant vidscreen with terror.

  Her gaze went to Zical for answers, but she didn’t interrupt his battle preparations. The captain stood on the bridge, his back to her, issuing precise orders, yet with uncanny precision he seemed to know the moment she arrived.

  “Ranth?” Dora asked. “Why is Dr. Laduna under guard?”

  “Those are Jarn ships.”

  “Jarn?” Dora turned to Dr. Laduna, and suddenly she understood who had slowed their mission after they’d left Kwadii. Dr. Laduna had tampered with the engines to allow the Jarn fleet to arrive ahead of them. But why?

  Dr. Laduna’s expression was grim, and his entire body trembled. “I am sorry.”

  Zical finished giving orders, then turned from Vax to Dr. Laduna. Zical placed his hands behind his back and closed his fingers into fists, but he fired words like ammunition, his tone harsh. “Why are your people trying to stop us?”

  “We had no choice.” Dr. Laduna’s fish eyes blinked at him, his amphibious scales turning an odd shade of green.

  Rystani warriors did not take betrayal well. Zical’s eyes burned, as if he had to contain the savage urge to pound the Jarn’s head against a bulkhead until his brains spattered, but the captain held himself in check. “Explain.”

  “Eons ago, the Zin and the Perceptive Ones warred for supremacy of our Galaxy. The battles were fierce. Billions of us lost our lives.” Dr. Laduna’s voice lectured with methodical precision as if he stood in a lecture hall, but his trembling didn’t stop and his color turned even paler.

  In no mood for a history lecture, Zical demanded, “Get to the point.”

  “The Zin pierced the Perceptive Ones’ defenses, stormed the Jarn homeworld, defeated our soldiers, squashed our independence, and subjugated our world.” The Jarn spoke quickly. “The Zin technology was superior to ours, and they enslaved my people by encoding a self-replicating data chip into our DNA. That chip carries orders that every Jarn knows and must obey from the moment of birth.”

  Dora had no idea if such a thing were possible, but she wouldn’t discount the possibility that the Zin possessed advanced technology far beyond what the Federation had today. Dora burned with questions and asked the one pressing on her conscience. “Dr. Laduna, the Sentinel detected your DNA aboard our ship from halfway across the galaxy and fired on us.”

  “That is their maximum range of detection.”

  And would explain how the Jarn had penetrated the Perceptive Ones’ facility on Mystique without attracting the Sentinel’s notice. “But how is it the Sentinel didn’t also fire on your fleet once it arrived here?”

  “Our ships have a cloaking device to
deceive the Sentinels.”

  Zical glanced at the menacing fleet of Jarn ships on the vidscreen, then back to Dr. Laduna. “What are the instructions in your Jarn DNA?”

  “Our orders were to infiltrate the worlds around us, pretend we were one with the descendants of the Perceptive Ones.”

  “Why?”

  “To bring down the Sentinels for our masters, the Zin.”

  Zical’s eyebrows raised with skepticism. “You’re saying that eons ago, the Zin anticipated our mission and planted this DNA coding inside the Jarn to betray us?”

  “No one could envision that the machinery on Mount Shachauri would break down or that your entrance would accidentally trigger the ancient mechanisms to recall the Sentinels. Our orders are simply to destroy the Sentinels from within. We waited for hundreds of thousands of years, living peacefully among you, hoping that the opportunity to obliterate the Sentinels would never come. However, each time we spawned our young, we passed on our DNA and the coded chip, along with the Zin’s commands to the next generation. Until this mission, we could not act. We didn’t have the means.”

  Fury at the Zin’s scheme and the Jarn’s willingness to ally themselves with an enemy that had enslaved their world left Dora little respect for these people. Never had she been so angry, and that anger had her shaking to do violence. If she’d had the opportunity and the strength, she might have squeezed his scaly neck until he was no more.

  Zical, however, remained calm. “So you were the one responsible for slowing us down in hyperspace so that the Jarn fleet would arrive before us?”

  “Yes, Captain.” The Jarn spoke in a rush. “Captain. We had no choice. If we fail to carry out our orders, the chip changes our body chemistry and we die.”

  “The chip can’t be removed?” Horror at the Jarn problem softened Zical’s tone and diverted some of Dora’s anger from the Jarn to the Zin, for putting an entire race in such a difficult position.