Into the Void

by Nick Webb

  “Captain Mercer, thank you for coming.” The smarmy man extended a hand and led Jake into a small group of politicians. He tried to keep the names straight with the faces, but after the tenth introduction, Jake was hopelessly lost, so he kept smiling and shaking hands, saying “pleased to meet you,” and “the pleasure is mine, congressman,” more times than he could count.

  Before long he found them shepherded to the Opera House entrance and was soon in the vast hall where hundreds of small round tables piled high with food and alcohol had been set up. At one end of the large, spacious, marbled floored room was the entrance to the performance hall itself, and the walls leading up to it were lined with white marble pillars, massive frosted windows, and busts resting in small alcoves between the columns. It was like a huge temple dedicated to the arts.

  After half an hour of introductions and a press of people coming at him with half-shouted questions about Old Earth and the Empire and the state of galactic affairs outside the Void, Jake felt like leaving, or at least escaping to one of the tables and stuffing his face with the gourmet food and washing it down with the sparkling beverages in the wine glasses set out. Maybe a little bubbly would make the socializing a little easier….

  “Welcome, friends, to the Ashari Opera House,” began the Prime Minister, who had struck a glass with a serving knife. “And we welcome our guests,” he turned to Jake and his officers, still surrounded by a throng of people, and raised a glass. “Distant cousins from Old Earth. We welcome you, and hope your brief stay with us will be mutually beneficial and informative.”

  Jake had been watching the reactions of the dignitaries he’d met, and while most of them were perfectly polite, and even excited that the crew of a battleship from Old Earth had visited them, many wore expressions of distaste and deep concern, questioning him about the Phoenix’s capabilities, her itinerary, where they’d come from, and what the circumstances were of their arrival. Jake tried to give vague answers, but the level of detailed questioning from some troubled him.

  And at the Prime Minister’s toast, he saw that many did not drink, but instead kept him fixed with their distrusting gaze. He supposed that the purpose of the social call was to help set some of these dour-faced politicians at ease. Surely a political move by the Prime Minister who needed the support of these people, who was yet at the same time indebted to Jake and the Phoenix for saving the small Sons of Oberon fleet several days ago.

  But even with the warm welcome, the meaning was clear: leave as soon as possible. That was also the political message the smarmy old politician was trying to send to his party faithful: that he was doing everything he could to get rid of the Phoenix, and return Oberon to a safe, non-threatening military posture. Having a massive state-of-the-art battleship docked in their city was not the message these people wanted to send to the Vikorhov Federation.

  Jake wanted to shake his head in disbelief. The fact that these people were more concerned to not piss off the aggressors than with their own defense was maddening to him, and yet all too familiar from his time in the Resistance forces. The battle over Dallas three years ago might have gone very differently had all the nations of Earth united in the face of evil. But instead some of the larger nations dithered, and even conspired, and as a result Dallas burned.

  Jake grabbed a glass off the table nearby and raised it up towards the Prime Minister and cleared his throat. A quiet hush fell over the hall.

  “Thank you, Prime Minister, and you, leaders of Oberon, for your hospitality and understanding. As you know, our vessel has suffered damage over the past few weeks from skirmishes with the Corsican Empire fleet, in a war we did not ask for. And while I am grateful for your help, I am also mindful of your desire to stay hidden and,” he paused, choosing his words carefully, “uninvolved in the violent affairs that too often consume the galaxy. I assure you that we will be on our way very shortly, as soon as we effect certain repairs that your government has so graciously offered to assist with.”

  With that, he raised the glass again and swallowed the clear liquid—a fragrant, fruity wine with moderate alcohol content. He didn’t immediately recognize it, but didn’t care. He reached for another with the hope of getting just a touch drunk.

  Mercifully, the reception did not last long, and before he knew it they were being ushered outside, where amid the dozens of columns supporting the portico there was another crowd of dignitaries hoping to get a glance at the off-worlders.

  Jake smiled, and wondered when the endless stream of government officials would finally deplete and they would be able to return to the Phoenix.

  Three quick cracks rang out.

  Jake spun around to Ben, thinking that maybe the sounds were gunfire. The look on Ben’s face confirmed Jake’s instinct, as did the crowd of people all around them scattering, ducking to the ground, and screaming.

  Five more shots in quick succession rang through the air and Jake darted towards a column. People ran in all directions. Complete pandemonium engulfed the front steps of the Opera House. Jake glanced down at the ground and saw a familiar face.

  Drusilla Vale, the Chief of Staff to the Prime Minister, lay dead just two meters away, blood dribbling from her mouth down her unmoving cheek.

  CHAPTER SIX

  THE MASONRY NEXT TO JAKE’S head exploded as the bullets showered them and he shoved Anya to the ground, tumbling down onto her. Out of the corner of his eye he saw others sprawl out onto the ground, some with blood streaming from their chests or arms, but in the confusion he couldn’t make out who was hit and who was just ducking for cover.

  Anya shoved him off. “Who the hell is it?”

  Jake twisted around on the concrete, searching for the source of the gunfire. In the midst of the crowd of crouching and prostrate people a handful of masked men were running away from the columned entrance to the Ashari Opera House towards the street.

  Towards the group of motorcycles he’d seen earlier.

  Two of the men struggled with a third person in between them. The one on the left hit her with his firearm over the head and she slumped forward into the arms of the other.

  Po.

  “They’ve taken Po,” he said, tensing his muscles as he prepared to spring after them.

  Anya grabbed his arm. “Don’t even think about it. They’ve got big guns. You don’t.”

  “Try and stop me.” Without waiting for an answer he sprang up. He watched them toss Po into a waiting car, and several of the masked men jumped on the bikes and sped off north around the corner.

  He ran, but instead of running towards the street, he ran diagonally up the stairs towards the Opera House, kept to the left, skirted around it, and sprinted down the grassy hill towards the street on the north side of the building.

  He just might make it. And as he jumped off the concrete retaining wall separating the hill from the sidewalk and street below, he sincerely hoped the bikes were gravitic-assisted.

  Sprawling, kicking, soaring through the air, for an instant his mind flashed back to the arroyo in San Bernardino that he’d tried to jump not one month ago. He’d nearly been far more injured than he actually was, and Po had chided him for days afterwards.

  As he flew through the air towards the bike and its rider, he wondered what she’d say to him right then.

  Jackass, most likely.

  He slammed into the side of the bike, which jolted for a moment before stabilizing itself. Good—the thing was grav-assisted. Using the momentary stability of the bike to his advantage he grabbed at the rider with his left hand and yanked as hard as he could, pulling himself up onto the seat at the same time.

  The rider never knew what hit him, and he landed hard on the pavement, rolling to a bloody stop several seconds later. But Jake didn’t have time to watch—the bike jolted again and someone grabbed onto his torso.

  He whipped his elbow back to knock off whoever had jumped on.

  “Cool it, Mercer,” came Anya’s voice in his ear.

  He gripped t
he handlebars and revved the engine, thrusting the bike forward at an ungodly speed. “Grace! What the hell are you doing?”

  “Rescuing Po! What the hell are you doing?”

  He nodded and sped up even further, searching the traffic up ahead for the black car Po had been thrust into. There was no sign of the car, but two more of the same blue motorcycles wove in and out of traffic just ahead of them.

  Without even a glance at the velocimeter he knew they were well over 150 kilometers per hour, and they screamed past the cars going the same direction as them, bobbing left and right through the steady stream of vehicles.

  “Pull up alongside one!” Anya shouted in his ear.

  He nodded, and within moments they’d nearly caught up to the closest motorcycle.

  Shots fired. He whipped his head around and saw two more bikes coming up swiftly behind them, flanking them on the left and right. Each rider brandished a handgun.

  Jake swerved, just in time as another bullet whizzed past their heads and shattered a window of a car next to them. The car’s driver braked hard and Jake darted ahead of it and came up right behind one of the blue motorcycles they were chasing.

  Anya swung a leg up onto the seat and underneath her and tensed her muscles to spring. She yelled in his ear. “Ready!”

  He closed the last meter between them and the other bike with a flick of his wrist on the accelerator, and in a flash Anya sprang off the seat, soared through the air and slammed into the other rider, who’d turned at the last second only to catch a face full of Anya’s fist as she landed behind him. He swerved wildly, trying to shake her off, but instead of trying to throw him off the bike she reached to his side, pulled the gun out of his holster, held the muzzle up to his head, and blew his brains out.

  The rider slumped forward, a sticky mess, into the motorcycle’s controls, and shoving the gun behind her into her pants she heaved the body off and grabbed at the handlebars before the bike spun out of control.

  Jake nodded his approval at her, and pointed up at the other blue bike, which had accelerated ahead of them. He thumbed towards himself, then back at their two pursuers, indicating he’d take care of the ones in the rear, though how he had no idea.

  Traffic behind them had slowed to a crawl to avoid the body of the fallen rider and the car with the shot-out window, so he gripped the accelerator, speeding up until he’d passed another dozen cars or so, watching as Anya gained on the bike ahead. In his mirror he saw their two pursuers mirror his moves through traffic.

  Up ahead, he spied a large cargo transporter pulling a caravan of massive metal bins. He swerved towards it and passed it on the right, and waited until the two pursuers trailed him.

  The one in the lead aimed his gun straight at him.

  Right before the man fired, Jake accelerated and swerved in front of the cargo transporter. He could almost feel the bullets fly past his head—even over the roar of the wind the cracks from the discharges hurt his ears from the close proximity.

  The cargo transporter braked, as expected, but Jake continued left, past the carrier, and braked himself such that the vehicle shot past him on the right and a horn behind squealed as another car swerved to avoid him. He cranked the accelerator to maximum, and flipped the grav-assist switch, which would boost his acceleration up past a sane level.

  With a roar of wind, he angled right and shot past the cargo carrier, once again on its right, and came up right behind one of his pursuers, whose head was still cocked left watching for their quarry to emerge from the cover of the front of the carrier. The second rider was just ahead of first, and Jake hit the accelerator one last time, shooting towards the one in front. Right as he passed the trailing rider, he cranked hard on the front brake.

  Here goes nothing.

  The front tire locked, and before the bike began its inevitable flip he stood up on the pedals and sprang off, flew through the air, and slammed into the front rider’s back. Out of the corner of his eye he noticed that his own bike did just what he’d hoped—it flipped through the air, landed, spun around, and smashed into the second rider behind them.

  But in front of him the other rider had twisted his arm around and aimed the gun straight at Jake’s head.

  He ducked. The gun fired, and he vaguely felt hot steel graze his shoulder. With a roar he reached for the man’s hand holding the gun and pulled it even further over his shoulder, pointing the muzzle away from himself. The man fired several more times. With the gun right next to the left side of his head he wondered if he’d ever hear out of that ear again. He yanked even harder. The rider twisted and lurched his body left to get the arm up and over his head for better leverage, and Jake made his move.

  Squeezing the body of the bike tight with his thighs, he let go of the man’s right arm with his right hand and grabbed his throat, while holding onto the gun with his left hand and pulled. The rider fought to stay on the bike, and in the struggle Jake released his grip in the throat, balled his fist, and smashed the man’s face before reaching down, thrust a hand under the man’s right leg, and heaved it up and over, taking the rider with it.

  Jake held onto the gun as the man fell, who skidded and rolled across the pavement off the highway.

  He groaned. His left shoulder throbbed. With a grunt he shifted forward into the driver’s seat and clutched the accelerator with his free right hand and the bike sprang ahead. In the distance he could see two more blue motorcycles swerve in and out of traffic. The buildings around them grew taller as they plunged deeper into the city, and up ahead of them in the sky he could see the Phoenix still docked gracefully at the top of the spaceport.

  He wondered if the authorities were going to respond. How long had it been since the shooting? Three minutes? Four? Did Dezreel City even have emergency responders?

  The question was answered as he heard the ring of sirens and in his mirror he saw the flashing lights of gravitic squad cars descend from the sky towards the fallen rider behind them.

  Dammit, don’t they know Po is up ahead?

  He sped in between a line of cars, counting the meters down between him and the other two bikes. One of them was Anya, of course, and he watched as she aimed her gun at the other, but the rider swerved and disappeared behind another truck.

  He pulled up alongside her, pointed to himself, and yelled, “Po!” She nodded in agreement, and angled her bike to get another shot at the other rider, who’d slowed a bit and aimed his pistol at them.

  “Go!” she shouted, and braked a bit to get out of the line of fire as Jake twisted on the accelerator and shot forward.

  He sped towards another clump of cars where he thought he’d seen the black vehicle the men had tossed Po into, but as he wove among them he saw he was wrong, and blazed ahead past several more before he saw finally it.

  It was exiting the highway, speeding away down the ramp towards a run-down neighborhood. More like a shanty-town, with rickety tin corrugated roofs and walls patched with scraps of whatever sheet metal the obviously destitute residents could find. Jake swerved around another cargo transporter and leaned into a hard right curve, just barely making it onto the off-ramp.

  The black car acted as if they’d seen him, and it squealed away down the road the ramp had merged onto, before turning sharply down another sloping road that descended into the shanty-town. Jake merged onto the road, and leaned into another sharp curve to avoid a truck coming the opposite direction, horns blaring.

  The sound pleased him, oddly enough, as he realized he could still hear out of his left ear—the one that had caught the brunt of the earlier discharges, but before he could appreciate the moment further, he realized the black car had turned yet another corner, plunging deep into the slum and out of sight.

  He swore and coaxed the bike to go faster, weaving in and out of the slow cars on the two-lane road, lined with steaming food carts and loudmouthed salesmen hawking their wares. Pressing down on the rear brake and thumbing the gravitic stabilizer he slid the bike into a nauseatin
gly tight curve around the corner of the intersection where the black car had turned, and he barely caught a glimpse of it as it turned left down another street, leaving a trail of destruction in its wake for it had clearly run up onto the sidewalk in several places. He grimaced at the sight of several bodies splayed out among the wrecked vendor tables.

  The traffic was completely stopped on the street due to the confusion, so he followed the black car’s lead and hopped up onto the busy sidewalk, swerving frantically to avoid the pedestrians jumping out of his way. A table of fruit with a small group of people huddled next to it completely blocked his path, and seeing no way through the traffic on his left, he grit his teeth as the bike smashed right into the vendor display, sending the bananas, apples, and oranges flying and the table into shards of wood.

  Bursting through the wreckage he leaned hard on the left handlebar and swerved into the stopped traffic, threading around the cars and coming out into the street the black car had escaped to. He watched in dismay as it barreled down another sidewalk without regard for life or property.

  Eyeing the sidewalk on the right, he saw it: his chance to catch up. But it would be crazier than his stunt earlier on the highway where he’d jumped from one bike to the other.

  He sped down the sidewalk and, springing from the pedals but holding on tight to the handlebars, he yanked the bike up a foot to land on the start of a brick wall that lined the sloping walkway. As the street and sidewalk descended next to him, he drove straight across the top of the narrow wall until he came to its end, jumped again, and landed roughly on one of the gently sloped corrugated roofs of the houses lining the street.

  The bike jolted along the roof, wheels bouncing up and down with the corrugation. His heart raced. As the street descended, so did the houses, and when he came to the next he let the bike drop down two feet to the roof below and sped along that until he jumped to the third. Glancing down below he watched the black car barrel down the sidewalk.