The Empty Warrior

by J. D. McCartney

  The bridge, normally quiet, now made a sepulcher at midnight seem lively. The crew seemed to be holding their collective breath. Only occasional chirps from the instruments could be heard and, fearing that each was the harbinger of the sudden appearance of a Vazilek ship, they jangled Valessanna’s nerves for an instant each time their sound waves impacted her ear drums. She checked the virtual console hanging before her. Over six minutes had passed; the course change was more than half way to being complete.

  She alternated her gaze from her own monitor to the viewscreens to the crewman seated at the sensor station. She waited for him to flinch, startled by one of their pursuers going sub-light and coalescing into a ship on his threat board. But the man never budged. He sat like a stone before his monitor, intently studying the readouts.

  Nine minutes had now gone by since they had dropped to sub-light speed. The turn was nearly complete. Valessanna caught herself anxiously clicking her molars together with rapidity, making a tapping sound in her head. She forced herself to relax the muscles of her jaw, before the anxiety she was exhibiting became detectable by the crew.

  Eleven minutes passed and still no Vazilek ship appeared. There were only a few degrees left to turn. Valessanna’s knee bounced above an overactive foot. Finally Busht’s voice broke the silence. “Commencing stabilization burn,” he said. The movement of the stars across the viewscreens slowed; then halted. “Course change complete. New course forty-seven point four by two twenty-seven point eight. Navigation, do you concur?”

  “Analyzing vector,” Abblehoff answered. “Request thruster control,” he added a few moments later.

  “Thruster control transferred to navigation station,” Busht intoned dispassionately.

  “I have thruster control,” Abblehoff announced. “Final alignment commencing now.” There was a pause as the last tiny adjustments to the ship’s course were made. Then Abblehoff spoke again. “Ship alignment well within parameters, passing thruster control back to maneuvering.”

  “Maneuvering accepts thruster control,” Busht acknowledged. “Ship is secure. Velocity point nine nine four. Request permission to accelerate to point nine nine eight.”

  “Permission denied, engage the deep drive,” Valessanna ordered curtly. She had not gone this far without using the mains only to leave a trail at the last moment.

  Busht cast a glance over his shoulder at her, raising an eyebrow as if to inquire what Arkhus would say about engaging at this velocity.

  Valessanna nodded slightly in acknowledgement and, seeing that all other eyes were forward, mouthed two unspoken words to Busht: “Fuck Calese!” He smiled slightly, turned back to his console, and punched up the drive. With a buck and a bone rattling jerk, Vigilant again disappeared beyond the light barrier.

  Less than ten minutes later a Vazilek ship went sub-light near the spot where Vigilant had begun her course change. Its sensors sprang to life, probing a vast spherical area around it and finding nothing save one of its own that lay almost directly astern, nearly at the limit of its sensor range, and on an identical course.

  A third ship appeared, this one directly ahead, again at the fringe of where the first ship’s sensors could penetrate, and again on exactly the same heading. Even as the forward ship activated its sensors the hindmost ship winked out, accelerating to a position ahead of the other two where it would slow to search again. Seconds later the first ship, now the last in line, did the same. The Vazileks would continue this maneuver for days, piercing down the corridor of Vigilant’s last known vector, determined to track down their wounded quarry. It would be nearly a week before they accepted the fact that the Akadeans had escaped.

  Within seventy-two hours Vigilant entered orbit around a small planetoid in a binary system. Her contingent of robot laborers was dispatched to the surface, where they immediately began working ceaselessly in the nearly non-existent and oxygen-free atmosphere to locate, mine, and refine the raw materials that would be necessary for the ship’s repair. Fabrication of the myriad parts, supports, fasteners, circuits, servos and even the replacement robots that would be required to set the ship to rights was to begin in a few short weeks. Vigilant was months from leaving for home, but the big ship was no longer in imminent danger.

  Aside from the few people who, clad in environmental suits, shuttled back and forth to the surface to oversee the machines, the crew remained on board with nothing but time on their hands. Even a large majority of the engineering staff would have little work to occupy them until the finished parts and supplies began to arrive. A sense of ennui set in immediately and everyone began looking for stimulating pastimes to keep them busy until the ship was back under way.

  This was normal, but the pace of the crew’s search for relief seem hurried to Valessanna, almost certainly an aftereffect of their brush with death in the aberrant system. They would amuse themselves with sports, games, artistic pursuits, and ultimately sex—lots and lots of sex. Having experienced many long layovers in her career, Valessanna frowned on much of the libertine intimacy that would inevitably come to fruition in the near future. It was like being in charge of hundreds of Abblehoffs, but there was nothing she could do about it. She had not the power to ban fraternization. Arguments, spats, and jealousy among the crew always created problems for a commander on long, deep space missions, but having an idle crew cooped up in orbit for months was a recipe for chaos. It would not be long before security would have to be stepped up, hearings would need to be held, and fines would have to be levied.

  It reminded Valessanna of her days in the Cartographic Corps. It never seemed to matter how careful they were, when the corps had ten ships leap frogging each other through uncharted space, eventually one would suffer some sort of mishap or need to stop for repairs. Usually it was not serious, but nevertheless the whole expedition would be held up until that one ship could be made spaceworthy. From there it never failed, tensions within each crew would build until finally emotions boiled over somewhere. There was nothing to do but deal with each outbreak as it occurred.

  But there was another unwelcome chore that she needed to attend to before worrying too much about the crew’s status. Headquarters had to be informed of their situation. As soon as the ship was in orbit and the necessary orders given to set the repair process in motion, she retreated to her quarters and locked herself in.

  “Vigilant,” she ordered, “activate voice messaging, commander’s presence only.”

  “Voice messaging active, Captain, commander’s presence only,” the ship dutifully repeated back to her.

  “Connect my personal console with a drone, please. Level three security, for my eyes only.”

  “Drone interface active, direct access enabled. All systems access prohibitions in place. The drone is ready for programming.”

  “Thank you, Vigilant,” she said. She stepped over to her desk and took a seat before her virtual console. “Highest encryption level to my console please, for decryption at UPH only. Label the message urgent and address it to the police high commissioner. Record at my command.”

  “Encryption level five enabled at commander’s console, message tabbed as urgent for Commissioner Uthele Burkeer,” the ship confirmed. With that Valessanna began to speak, and as she did so her words appeared before her, hanging in the air of the virtual monitor.

  From: UPV Vigilant, Valessanna Levontan Nelkris, commanding

  To: Union Police High Commissioner Uthele Burkeer

  Greetings Commissioner Burkeer,

  Vigilant has encountered serious difficulties on our present deployment. We have been attacked by three Vazilek raiders while on duty in the Sol system and are badly damaged. The mission crew is lost, as are seventy-eight other crew members. I strongly suspect the Vazileks in some manner gained foreknowledge of our intentions or at least our destination. I suggest discretion in all further communications. We are making repairs at a secure location and will not be under way for at least eighty to one hundred days. Once spaceworthy, we will
proceed to the shipyards at Sefforia for more extensive repairs, possibly a refit.

  In addition, Pilot Willet Lindy extracted a gravely injured aberrant from the planet during his search for survivors among the mission crew. While said aberrant is still aboard, he is quarantined, unconscious, and under the care of Dr. Merco Beccassit, a specialist in these matters. I understand that this will be seen as a highly irregular occurrence, but I feel it must be said that the initial contact with the aberrant came under the most desperate of circumstances. Pilot Lindy believed that the man would not survive without immediate treatment in our facilities, and thus felt a moral obligation to take what he considered to be the only humane, albeit illegal, option available to him at the time. I shall submit further details and explanations upon my return.

  Faithfully,

  Captain Valessanna Nelkris

  Valessanna reread the message several times. At length she decided it was sufficiently vague to give headquarters a good idea of why their return would be delayed without disclosing the ship’s position or putting her career in any greater jeopardy than it had been put in already. Although there was little doubt that so laconic a message concerning such momentous events would ignite a firestorm of concern and irritation in the high commissioner’s office, she still thought it preferable to dispatching a lengthy missive. If she was to be forced to defend her actions, she would much rather be able to do it in person, and after lengthy preparation. She was sure to have plenty of time over the next few months to make whatever provisions she was capable of for the defense of what seemed to be her indefensible position. At last she ordered the drone’s recorders enabled, looked gravely into her monitor, and read the message aloud. She replayed it, erased it, and rerecorded it three times before she was satisfied. At last she uttered the order to encrypt her visage and words and store an inex-pungible copy in the guts of the drone.

  “Vigilant,” she commanded, “program a random course for this drone, taking it back to police headquarters, with six course changes, and display it at my console.” Almost immediately a holographic star chart with an extreme zigzag course laid out through it appeared above her desk. “Please program the drone to wipe its memory of its point of origin immediately after release and its previous heading after each course change, and then launch it.”

  “Programming complete; the drone is away,” the ship affirmed. Valessanna sat back and sighed; she was glad to have the task behind her. But only a few minutes later she had a sudden urge to summon the drone to return, to reconstruct the message, to include more information, and to change her demeanor while recording it. But it was to no avail; the message drone had already enabled its own tiny deep drive and was well beyond any recall.

  PART TWO:

  THE

  PRISONER

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN:

  Awakening

  He lay flat on his back, still respiring in that soft and measured pattern that was the mark of a rested and serene sleeper. His eyes were tightly closed; the lids felt as if they had been cemented shut while he slept. The sweet, syrupy fatigue that saturated O’Keefe’s brain was so deep and so inviting that he could not bring himself to take the step of forcing his eyes open, despite the tangerine confirmation of daylight glowing on the back of their lids. At the edge of his consciousness, there hovered a dull sensation of having slept for a very long time, perhaps even into the late afternoon. And he was thirsty, incredibly thirsty. The tiny breathes he took scraped down his throat, the parched condition of the tissues there unmatched by any hangover he could recall.

  Behind the craving for fluids lay the vague impression of a dream interrupted, but despite his attempts to summon recollections from the recesses of his mind he could not now remember what it was he had been dreaming. At last the realization that something very much out of the ordinary had occurred slowly crept into his brain. He tried to remember. What had happened last night? Abruptly, recall inundated his consciousness like a flood. My God, he thought, the lake, the explosion, the fire. Where was he?

  His eyes snapped open, then shut with a wince just as quickly. Too bright. There was light, brilliant light, everywhere about him. Good Lord, he thought. This is it; it’s the bright light coming at me. I’ve died. He tried to move his arms but could not feel them. He searched for sensation and found none below the neck. He had obviously left his body and was on his way… where?

  But he was thirsty. A person wouldn’t have a parched throat on the way to the Pearly Gates, would he? It simply wasn’t a heavenly sensation, at least not by O’Keefe’s standards.

  Oh my God, no, he thought, an alternative possibility springing to mind. Panic flashed across his brain. Doing his best to remain calm, he attempted to reason logically. He was simply not that uncomfortable. As far as he could tell, there were no vultures tearing strips of flesh from his liver, no flames searing away blackened skin. Desperately needing a drink of water was hardly the most rapturous feeling in the world, but it was a far cry from the tortures he would have expected from a hellish afterlife.

  He began to squint, very slowly allowing more and more light to seep into his pupils until at last he could look around almost normally. He was in a bed, in a room. A white room. An exceedingly white room. A hospital room. It had that look of cleanliness and sterility that marked it as that; it could be nothing else. O’Keefe had been in a lot of hospital rooms. It was not an unfamiliar setting. But this one was strange nonetheless. There was nothing around him save the bed—no chairs, no window, no curtains or blinds, and no medical paraphernalia of any kind. He could clearly see the ceiling above him, but it was hard to tell how far away it was or where it met the wall. It seemed to be the source of the light that filled the room, yet there was no visible fixture or recess where bulbs might be hidden.

  Even the bed was an oddity. It was unlike any hospital bed he had ever lain in. There were no restraining bars running down its sides, no incline or recline controls, and no call buttons anywhere that he could see. Besides the white linens and blanket that covered him there was only an austere hood that rose from the head of the bed and curved upward out over his forehead. It had the shimmering brilliance of highly polished porcelain with a long, curving rectangle of glowing iridescence implanted across its interior.

  As he studied the apparatus, it suddenly occurred to him that he could focus on it, yet it was only inches from his eyes. It should have been nothing but a blur without his glasses. He raised his head, putting his chin to his chest, and looked down at the blanket where it was folded back, just below his armpits, and found he could easily see the individual fibers running through the fabric. Not only had his vision improved, it seemed to be more acute now than O’Keefe could remember it ever being.

  As he lay pondering his eldritch awakening, an attractive young woman wearing a white, clinging jumpsuit entered the room through a pocket door that had previously been only an outline on the wall. She was petite, O’Keefe guessing her to be at least a foot shorter than his six foot five. She had long, brown tresses gathered behind her neck and flowing down to the small of her back. O’Keefe was certain she was a nurse, but she looked more like a college girl spending her summer employed at some beach resort. Her tan was deep enough to put any California surfer to shame.

  She inadvertently glanced at his eyes and started slightly when she saw that they were open. A small, girlish yelp of shock and surprise escaped from between her lips. Her own eyes widened to saucer size as both her hands flashed to her face, covering her mouth. But in an instant she regained her composure, dropped her hands into intertwined fingers at her waist and poured forth a short stream of lilting, almost poetic syllables that were absolute gibberish. The language sounded vaguely Asiatic but was sprinkled with something akin to French undertones. And somehow O’Keefe understood every word.

  “I’m so sorry,” she had said. “I was not expecting you to be awake; it startled me. May I get you anything?” She looked into O’Keefe’s face and smiled warmly, revealing
teeth that were perfectly aligned and nearly as white as the hood at the head of his bed. He could not help but grin broadly back at her.

  “Water,” he croaked.

  She looked at him quizzically, her brow furrowing; she obviously hadn’t understood what he had asked for. Searching for an alternate word O’Keefe was surprised to find that he knew many, several of which he could not remember ever using. He chose one and tried to say it, but the pronunciation felt thick and unfamiliar on his tongue. It elicited another puzzled look from his small caregiver. He tried again, and a glint of recognition spread across her face.

  “Water?” she asked in confirmation, still using the strange language that O’Keefe was so surprised to understand. “Are you thirsty?”

  O’Keefe nodded emphatically.

  Beaming another huge smile in his direction, one that revealed dimples in both her cheeks, she raised an index finger in the air and waved it lightly at him, saying, “I’ll be right back.” She hurried from the room, leaving O’Keefe bewildered, but nevertheless feeling considerably better about the setting into which he had regained consciousness.

  When she returned she carried a plastic squeeze bottle with a straw protruding through the top. “This is not water,” she said sweetly. “This is a hydration compound. But it is very tasty. Here, try a bit.” She put the straw to his lips, and he sucked greedily at it. The liquid inside the bottle was indeed pleasing to the palate, tasting slightly of sweet, fresh lime juice, and he pulled a large gulp of it into his mouth. As he tried to swallow, an irresistible urge to cough seized him, and the half-suppressed hack sputtered some of the liquid over his cheeks.