The Lost Aria (Earth Song Book 3)

by Mark Wandrey

  “Nothing,” Var'at hissed as they jogged.

  “Nada,' said Aaron.

  “Shit, they must know the shuttle is there.” As they rounded a corner beam weapons tore at them from the front this time, confirming her fear. In moments fire was coming from three sides. They were in a kill box. The three forced their way into a mostly collapsed building. Vampire weapons fire ripped into what was left of the structure threatening to bring the crumbling walls down on them.

  “This really sucks,” Aaron grumbled as he set the beamcaster to one side while reloading his partially expended Enforcer. Var'at was laying out his only extra magazine and using both independent eyes to survey firing points. They were getting ready to make a stand, but Minu knew if they did that here it would mean their lives. Five to one odds in poor cover was a recipe for a massacre.

  As her friends prepared, Minu snatched at her pack and removed a little reinforced case. A couple quick taps and two little glittering dragonfly bots were hovering before her eyes. “Search and destroy,” she ordered, “attack east, non-present biologicals. Rendezvous one kilometer east, targets of opportunity. Attack in one.”

  “Good call,” Aaron said but she could see the hesitation in his eyes. The two bots were unbelievably valuable assets and she was going to expend them as a diversion. He was verifying the handguns readiness and slinging the beamcaster. For this run the Enforcers would let him move faster. Even Var'at was slinging his powerful rifle in favor of one of the powerful handguns, loaned to him by Aaron. It looked ridiculously huge in his thin clawed hands, but Minu knew the reptilian was anything but weak.

  “Here we go,” she said, and a second later the two bots gentle buzzing turned to a scream as they used their tiny hoverfields to rocket away. A second later they heard the miniature energy weapons firing and the hideous cries of the surprised Vampires. “Move!” she said and they were out the door.

  She thought for a second that they were going to make it. They came around two corners, their weapons held at ready but encountering no resistance, and there was the shuttle squatting in the remnants of a residential building. She spotted the two Vampires crouched to either side of the shuttle just as they fired. Both energy beams struck her full in the chest.

  Minu saw a brilliant blue flash of light as her personal shield absorbed the blast, an attenuated particle beam. Var'at and Aaron's shields both sparkled as excess energy splattered around her. She felt more than heard her shield disengage, the capacitor full, it was no longer useful to absorb incoming fire, but would instead explode should that happen. She was just raising her Enforcer when the second shot hit her full in the chest, just above her solar plexus. I'm dead, she though.

  The impact was direct now, without the shield, and she was smashed to the ground as if she were a howler kicked by an angry farmer. Her arms flew up before her and she ludicrously grabbed at Aaron as she fell, but he was already a meter past her and firing at one of the Vampires, unaware of her fate. Pain, shock, and physical force were all she felt as she was slammed brutally to the ground. The back of her head smacked the ancient roadway with a thud.

  “If I'm dead, why can I still talk,” she gasped through clenched teeth. The pain was from the physical blow and the fall, not from her chest. She looked down, lifting her head to see how bad the wound was. Other than a slight smoking of her uniform below her breasts, there was no damage at all. And then Aaron and Var'at were there, each grabbing an arm and dragging her into another crumbled building. Minu just managed to get her right arm free enough to grab her dropped Enforcer as they got her out of the line of fire.

  “How are you still alive?” Var'at asked.

  “Gee, thanks,” she coughed. They left her in a sitting position against the wall where she used her left hand to feel the back of her head; it came away with a smear of blood. “And to answer your question I don't know.”

  “The faraday armor could not have absorbed that much damage,” Aaron said, his gun booming at a trio of Vampires making a run at their hiding place. Var'at joined him and all three were down. “At least not without some damage. I've seen them work.” He reloaded his gun as she felt her chest. It was a little sore, like someone had punched her, but other than that there were no aftereffects.

  “The ship,” she said suddenly, “it replaced my uniform.”

  “Like your arm,” Aaron said, firing a couple quick rounds, “nice upgrade.”

  “Remind me to be sure it does that with all our uniforms, and comes up with something for the Rasa.” Var'at nodded his thanks. “Unfortunately I don't know if we will live long enough to benefit.” He'd laid aside the empty Enforcer and had his rifle out again, burning through ammo at a ferocious rate. The only hope with a Vampire team was to stop them before they started a rush. If they got going, the only solution was to kill them all, or die.

  “At least twelve left,” Aaron said. Minu reloaded her Enforcer and checked magazines. Unless the enemy was cooperative, and their marksmanship exceptional, there was no way. Maybe if she hadn't gotten shot. Maybe. Minu struggled to her feet just as Var'at spoke.

  “Here they come,” Var'at barked. Minu accepted her gun back and they all pushed up against the broken walls and fired as fast as they could. The Enforcers just lacked the accuracy at more than a few meters. Aaron fired his dry and tossed his last magazine to Minu as he swung his beamcaster around. The cumbersome weapon fired with a frustratingly slow cycle rate. Var'at's magazine ran empty and he worked with feverish intensity to swap it out. At least seven of the snarling Vampires reached their cover and began to run up the walls, preparing to fire down on them.

  If we just had a couple Shock rifles, Minu said silently as she shot the first one who reached the top. Var'at cut two in half, and Aaron burned another down. The remaining three leveled their weapons.

  Crack, crack, crack! All three Vampire’s chests exploded, their sickeningly red eyes bugging out in surprise before they rolled down the wall to gasp and slowly die. Minu looked down at the bodies then up at the wall, not knowing what to expect. Outside the sound of a brief but intense firefight raged, and then silence. They all looked at each other, eyes wide, except Var’at of course, and waited with weapons at the ready.

  Nothing happened. After a few minutes of tense quiet they peaked out around the doors in a quick snapshot. Again, nothing shot back. Minu spotted at least two bodies across the street and Var’at reported another pair. Aaron said he could see quite a few weapons hits around the area. What was obvious was that the Vampires had been neutralized.

  They spent a minute sweeping the area and eventually came to a full count of dead Vampires. Every one of them except the ones Minu and Var’at shot were dead from beamcaster wounds. All from behind or the side, and all well placed. “Real experts,” Aaron noted.

  “Absolutely,” Minu agreed.

  “Some other species’ scout team?” Var’at wondered.

  “Not likely,” Minu said. “They would have just let this play out and waited for the carnage to finish.”

  Not wanted to waste any more time, she got them moving back towards the shuttle. As they got closer, Minu breathed a sigh to see the doors still secured, and both dragonfly bots hovering outside, and apparently unharmed.

  “Shutdown,” she instructed as she held out a hand. The team all piled inside with Minu and Var’at covering the door’s closing as Aaron got the impellers spun up.

  “Power’s up, defenses working, lifting off.” Aaron worked the controls and they were airborne.

  During the short flight back to orbit Minu took one of the dragonflies and used her tablet to download its internal memory. They’d killed one Vampire and injured another before sweeping towards the shuttle. She was about to put it away when she saw a notation in the bot’s log. “One target bypassed”. She looked at the log entry one more time before storing the tablet and putting the bots away properly.

  Minu looked up to see they’d already left the atmosphere and the Kaatan was getting closer. She
fell into the seat and sighed, her chest hurting a little bit. She closed her eyes and thought about the log entry. Target bypassed. There was only one possibility. Whoever rescued them had been human.

  Chapter 9

  February 17th, 522 AE

  Planet Midnight, Galactic Frontier

  “This is not a logical course of action,” Pip complained again. As soon as they'd docked and she'd explained the situation on the Rasa home world he'd come out against it.

  “You are a biased opinion,” Minu said and tapped her head where Pip's skull was metal instead of bone.

  “That has nothing to do with it.” She cocked her head at him and he made a face. “Okay, very little to do with it. Yes, I am skeptical about the Rasa being grateful in any way. Var'at and his people have been faithful and in lieu of the discovery that they could have called down their people on our heads at any time, his loyalty is not in doubt. But the rest of his people cannot be counted on to react in a similar manner.”

  The tiny ship’s mess hall was full with five humans and the six Rasa. But everyone needed to hear this, and Minu didn't want to waste time and the CIC, the largest space in the ship, was difficult because of the zero gravity. She'd already wasted precious time explaining to everyone else about the fight with the Vampires, and the orders for her to return home. “If that is your only concern, it is duly noted.”

  “There is more,” he persisted. “The ship’s power most importantly.”

  “I've been watching how we consume power. About one percent up and down from super-light speed. That leaves almost five percent when we reach Bellatrix, no biggie.”

  “That's cruising at two thousand times the speed of light. At that speed the Rasa home world is almost two months away, our time, nearly three their time.”

  Var'at shook his head. “There is no way my people can hold out three months. They will be lucky to survive one.”

  “Exactly my point,” Pip said, nodding. “To get there in one month will require almost maximum speed, five thousand times light speed.”

  “Do we have enough power to get there?”

  “Sure, but only about four percent reserves after we arrive. That leaves damned little to get home.”

  “But enough,” Minu pointed out. Pip sighed and nodded reluctantly.

  “Can we refuel somehow at the Rasa system?” Ted asked. Minu looked at Pip, it was a good question.

  “If we find a power source, probably. I haven't tried to figure out how to do that yet.”

  “What about draining all the extra EPC we have with us?” Bjorn suggested.

  “We left with a reserve of twelve percent. Reserve mind you, no main power. To create that reserve would require us to drain every EPC on Bellatrix, at least a six month planetary supply of power.”

  “That is insane,” Aaron barked. “What is it with the Concordia and power? You'd think it was just lying around in puddles or something.”

  “It probably was once, a long time ago.” Ted's theory on the rise and fall of the Concordia was well known to many of them, Pip in particular who had helped him refine it. Minu found herself more and more in complete agreement with them after finding the ghost fleet and the hundreds of abandoned war ships. Her personal theory was a war as the catalyst for the decline of the Empire.

  “We'll deal with that when the time comes,” she told them. “Let’s head to the CIC and get underway.”

  In the CIC they'd already made the transition to faster than light, she hadn't even noticed while walking down the hallways. The fact that the ship could so blatantly violate such a basic law of physics was a little disturbing. “You'd think we'd feel...something,” she said as she sat in her captain’s chair and looked at the quickly growing multiples of light speed on her display.

  “If we did feel it, it would be the last thing we felt.” Pip's disembodied voice drifted through the CIC.

  “How many Gs should we be pulling?” asked Aaron.

  “Two, three,” said Ted and Minu thought that wasn't too bad, “million.” She swallowed hard, an image of her body turned to strawberry jam against the wall of the CIC.

  “So how come we aren't squished?” she asked him.

  Pip paused for long enough to make Minu think he was ignoring her, and then he spoke. “It can't be explained with words.”

  “Then how?”

  “Only math. You aren't prepared for that level of physics, and quantum physics.”

  Minu almost chastised him for being inappropriate once more, but held back. He was just being truthful, if painfully so. Their speed passed two thousand times the speed of light and continued to climb towards the maximum five thousand. “Why only five thousand? Why not a hundred thousand.”

  “I can't explain that,” he admitted, “the ship builders installed that as a governor. No faster, period. I get the feeling exceeding five thousand times the speed of light would be somehow...bad.”

  Minu changed subjects. “Can we power all four shuttles for the operation on the Rasa home world?”

  “No, the power drain is too much. We can power a second shuttle and use the first one with its remaining power.”

  They spent a few minutes talking over what she wanted to do as the other crew worked to put the ship into what Minu called 'cruise control'. Eventually, one at a time, they began to leave until only Aaron, Pip and Minu remained. Minu and Aaron were discussing each taking a shuttle and Aaron was insisting Minu spend some time with him learning what he'd absorbed from his one drop to a planet in the pilot seat. Without them realizing it, Pip finished his work with the ship’s computer, unhooked, and left them alone. When Minu looked over to ask him a question, he was gone, and she was suddenly aware she was alone with Aaron. Despite their almost daily run together, this was different. They hadn't been alone like this since they were lovers. Fuck it, she thought.

  “I guess we need to talk,” she said.

  “Probably a good idea. I was getting bored just staring at a screen with nothing to do.”

  “You set me up with Pip?”

  “He didn't have a clue. By the way, you know he jerks off all the time?”

  This isn't happening to me. “Yeah, he told me the other day.”

  “It’s like Pip, at ninety years old. I had an old uncle who got like that. He said it was because he was old and didn't care, I think it was because some wiring didn't work right anymore.” Minu nodded thoughtfully. It made sense. “You've been dodging me for a while.”

  “I know.” She took a deep breath, wondering if she could do this. “I love you too.” In a moment they were both up and in each other’s arms, Minu crying against his chest, feeling his tears falling on her head. “I'm sorry, I'm sorry,” she kept saying over and over, her chest heaving with sobs.

  “For what?”

  “For keeping it to myself for so long.”

  “I never did anything about it either,” he said, gently pushing her away to look at her. She couldn't meet his gaze, looking down at his stomach instead. He took one finger and gently lifted her chin so she had to look him in the eye, just like that first night together. It wasn't hard, despite his massively muscled body he was only a couple centimeters taller, something that Gregg never gave him a break over. “I've loved you since the day we met,” he admitted, his eyes shining. Minu felt her heart melting. “When you were hit with that gun down on the planet I thought I was going to die.”

  “And that is part of why I haven't pursued this all that time! Christian was safer,” it was Aaron's turn to look away, “you know how hard it was to hold him and see you in my mind?”

  “Really?”

  “Yes, you've had my heart almost as soon as I got yours. But as your boss, your superior Chosen, how could I take the chance of putting this between us?”

  “You're assigned to training, I'm a scout. It just means I can't be directly under your control.”

  “You are now.”

  “Only because we're breaking the rules.”

  “Good poi
nt. Other Chosen do this; I guess maybe we can too.”

  “So now what?”

  “Well, why don't we go back to my quarters, and we'll take it one night at a time?”

  “I can't hide this from everyone,” he said and she felt a little nervousness, “I won't send out emails to all the Chosen, but I will be proud of being your boyfriend. You can't lie about that kind of thing.”

  She took his strong hand into hers and they floated towards the door. “I'm proud to be your girlfriend too.”

  Chapter 10

  February 18th, 522 AE (subjective)

  Deep Space, en route to the Rasa Leasehold, Galactic Frontier

  The entire ship knew about the new sleeping arrangements by the end of the next day. Minu barely made the morning briefing as scheduled in the CIC, and when she arrived it was with Aaron hand in hand, both laughing and her blushing as she thought about the night of lovemaking. No one said anything about the new development. Bjorn gave her a wink and Ted a look that said he was still available. While Cherise managed to give her a smile, Minu did not miss the fact that her eyes were red and puffy. She made sure to tell herself that her old friend deserved to have an explanation of the situation, at the very least. Only the Rasa failed to notice anything. They didn't have romantic attachments, or even sex the way humans did, if Minu understood their species correctly.

  It was the same day that Minu entered the galley late after working a simulation in the CIC with the Rasa until after the normal lunch time. Cherise was there, eating quickly, and looking upset when she saw Minu. It was obvious that she'd planned her own lunch time to avoid Minu, and her plan backfired. She instantly tried to get up and leave.