by Tristan Vick
“Doors are sealed,” he said.
“It won’t hold it for long,” Cassera said. “Nothing ever does. It’s why The Knights of Caelum are the most feared warriors in the system.”
“For your people, maybe,” Raven said. “The Seyfferians have a treaty with the Nyctans.”
“Well, why don’t you just open up the door and tell him that,” Cassera snapped.
Raven shot her a less than amused look. Then, turning to the larger control panel, she brought up the ship-to-ship communications.
“Skywend, this is the freighter Reventón. Do you read me?”
“We read you,” Skuld’s voice answered.
“Is Gyllek there?”
“I’m here, Captain.”
“I know it wasn’t a top priority until now, but I need you to get that long-distance phase transporter up and running. And fast.”
“I’m on it,” she said. “One LPT coming right up!”
“I’ll assist you,” Skuld replied over the comm. The sound of the Skywend’s bridge doors swishing open and closing again could be heard in the background.
“What’s going on over there?” Emperor Dakroth inquired in a serious tone.
“We ran into a little trouble,” Raven answered.
“A Knight of Caelum,” Jegra said, wanting to add to the discussion.
“A Knight?” the emperor echoed. “What’s it doing on a derelict freighter? Unless…” his voice cut off.
“Your majesty,” Cassera said, leaning over the console. “If this is an ambush, we’ll be getting company any minute now.”
“I’m bringing the Skywend closer to you,” the emperor, replied.
“You’ll do no such thing!” Raven barked. “If a ship drops out of hyperspace and blows us out of the sky, you’ll be taken out along with us. Stay your distance. The transport is our best shot.”
“Um, about that…” Jegra said thumbing over her shoulder. “You might want to make it a rush order.”
Everyone turned in time to see a glowing spot on the blast door. Soon enough, molten metal began dripping to the floor.
“He’s cutting through,” Kregor said in a stunned voice.
“That’s what they do. They hunt and kill. And they don’t stop. They never stop,” Cassera said, shooting everyone a grave look.
16
Molten steel dripped onto the floor. A hiss of steam shot up as the hot tangerine-red glowing metal met the cool surface of the freighter’s plating.
“He’s still coming through,” Jegra informed the group, even though everyone was standing right there with her, watching the door with equally timorous gazes.
“Raven to Skywend. How’s it coming on that transporter?”
Gyllek responded with a mumble, as though she had a flashlight in her mouth. “I’m about to start up one pad.”
“Only one?” said Cassera in a shocked tone.
“It was easier to bypass the power relays into just the primary unit. Otherwise it would take a week to build this thing back up to its proper working order.”
“But that means you can only transport us off this boat one at a time,” Cassera complained.
“It’s better than nothing,” Kregor said with a grunt, folding his arms across his chest. He was growing tired of Cassera always badmouthing his crew. Raven held up a hand and gestured for him to ease back and he huffed and turned and went to the corner where he perched on the edge of a dead navigation panel.
“The hole is getting bigger, you guys,” Jegra said. She stood in front of the entrance and watched; that was all she could do for now. And if the Knight got through, she was the only one with the strength to subdue it, if only temporarily.
“Gyllek,” Raven said, her voice wobbling. “Any day now would be just fine.”
“I’m doing my best, Captain,” she replied.
“On that you can rely,” Skuld added. “I can vouch for the girl. She’s working magic like you’ve never seen before.”
“I can see him now,” Jegra said.
Everyone looked over. The hole wasn’t big enough for armor that size to pass, but big enough for a small child or animal to run through.
“Dragonian, hand me your blaster rifle,” Cassera ordered, extending her hand toward Kregor.
He gave her a sharp glance and then looked over at Raven who shook her head in the negative and he went back to ignoring the Dagon.
“There’s an open shot!” she said, turning to Raven.
“You can’t take down a Knight with a hand blaster,” Raven said. “Their armor is too strong.”
“But we might be able to slow it down,” she insisted.
“Or you might just piss him off more,” Raven shot back.
Gyllek’s voice came over the ship’s comm. “Captain, we’re ready to bring one of you aboard now.”
“Cassera,” Raven said. “You go first. It’s better if a Dagon isn’t here when he gets through.” She nodded at the Knight, who was churning his sword as though he were mixing butter instead of steel.
“I’m not leaving Jegra alone,” Cassera snapped.
“Fine,” Raven replied, letting out an annoyed sigh. “Since there’s no time to argue, Kregor, you get over to the Skywend and prep the ship to jump out of here at the slightest sign of trouble.”
“Affirmative,” he said with a nod. Then, stepping out into the middle of the room, he said, “Ready when you are, Gyllek.”
Out of nowhere came a yellow beam of light with bright sparkles swirling about in it. It engulfed Kregor, and then his body broke up into a million small fragments and he disappeared in the swirling vortex of light. With that, the beam faded and he was gone.
“Captain,” Kregor’s voice came over the comm after a moment. “Made it back safe and clear. I’ll be on the bridge if you need me.”
“Gyllek, beam me over next,” Raven said. With that the beam of light wrapped itself around her and she began to phase. She looked over at Jegra one last time before she disappeared.
“You go next,” Jegra urged Cassera.
“There’s no way I’m leaving you here alone with that thing,” she said, nodding at the gaping hole in the doors and the gray metallic Knight peering at them through its narrow, menacing, visor.
“I’m not asking,” Jegra said with a smile.
“Fine,” Cassera replied, reluctantly agreeing to be the next to transport out of there. “But if he gets in here, don’t engage him. Just, I don’t know, try and stall him somehow.”
“I’ll see you soon,” Jegra said with a warm smile. She then leaned over and swatted Cassera on her butt.
“You bitch,” Cassera teased, smiling back at Jegra.
The beam of light surrounded Cassera and she dissipated in a flash of bright particles. The beam slowly faded again and she was gone.
Jegra turned to face the entrance. It was just her and the Knight now.
The Knight didn’t even wait for the door to cool. He walked right under the molten steel and onto the bridge. As he passed under the doorway several drops of molten metal dripped on to his armor. But it slipped right off as though the armor was frictionless.
“My name is Jegra Alakandra,” she said, inching back slowly. “You may be interested to know,” she continued, trying to stall the Knight, “the name Alakandra was a present from my captor, Antor of Thessalonica. He’d made me a galactic passport for my travels and had asked me what I wanted for my name. Since I was still technically his slave at the time, getting to pick my own name was a big deal for me. Alakandra sounded powerful. Like a female Alexander. And it complimented Jegra nicely too. Jegra, as I later found out, was simply the Dagon translation of the Earth name, Jessica. That was my name before my life in the arena. Now, I just go by Jegra Alakandra. You can just call me Jegra, though. What’s your name?”
The Knight, who had paused to listen to her, started toward her again. His boot clanking on the cold metal floor of the ship as he approached her.
Jegra stepped back,
but her EV suit clanged against the cockpit’s control panel. She was between a rock and a hard place, so to speak.
The Knight’s visor flashed red as it came to a halt directly in front of her. She gazed up at it as it came to a stop directly before her. Their suits were practically touching, when a sparkling golden beam of light came over her.
“You’re standing too close to it,” Gyllek shouted into the comm. “I can’t get a lock.”
Jegra looked up at the Knight and said, “Sorry about this.” She threw forward her palms and shoved the Knight as hard as she could.
The Knight’s bulky armor flew back like a cannon ball. With a sudden impact, it tore off what remained of the blast doors as it burst through and crashed into the opposite wall. The back wall managed to catch him, but not before flexing and bending like a catcher’s mitt.
Sparks rained down on the Knight from where the ceiling paneling had collapsed. As he got up, a bulkhead came crashing down.
Not letting a pesky thing like a gigantic support beam stand in his way, he raised his plasma sword and brought it down hard. A thin, orange line appeared on the steel beam as his sword passed through. Then it fell in two.
As metal clangored to the floor, Jegra spoke into the comm, “Now would be a good time.”
The beam of light came down again and snatched her away from the freighter. She felt a dizzy spell, then her consciousness seemed to disappear for a moment. It felt strange, like being unconscious after a brutal K.O. but, somehow, she was still aware of her surroundings. The next thing she knew, she was standing aboard the Skywend.
“You made it!” Skuld cheerfully chirped as he reached up and helped Jegra step down off the platform.
“Thanks,” Jegra said. Then, looking down at Gyllek, who had the floor panel off and was digging through wires and circuit boards, Jegra added, “The both of you. Thank you.”
“It’s our duty,” Skuld replied, his optimism never fading for a moment. Gyllek, a woman of few words, merely nodded.
Jegra smiled at them as she pulled away and into the corridor. Dashing all the way to the bridge, she practically stumbled into the room. Everyone looked over at her.
“You can take that thing off now, if you’d like,” Kregor said, glancing at Jegra still in her EV suit.
“Oh, right,” she said, and she began unfastening her helmet.
“Here, let me help you with that,” Cassera said, offering a helping hand.
“I’ll do it,” Kregor said, stepping in front of her and cutting her off.
She scoffed and stepped back, folding her arms in dissatisfaction. The emperor simply raised an eyebrow at the bit of drama.
Raven plopped down in the pilot’s seat and hit some controls. “Shit,” she growled.
“What is it?” Emperor Dakroth asked.
“The freighter just sent out a coded distress call.”
Jegra finally stepped out of the spacesuit and helped Kregor tuck it away in a rear storage compartment. She had on her black stretch suit with yellow lines. As they bent over together, their eyes met.
Raven called out to the crew. “Buckle up, ladies and gents. We’re about to have company.”
A thunderous boom rattled the ship as a giant Nyctan frigate jumped into the system just above their starboard bow.
“That thing is huge,” Cassera said.
“The Dreadnaught was bigger,” Dakroth bragged, leaning in to see the Nyctan ship out the starboard window.
“Gyllek, Skuld, please tell me you have the FTL prepped and ready.”
“Thought you might ask that,” Skuld’s voice came over the comm. “And the answer is—”
“Yes, Captain,” Gyllek cut in. “It’s the first thing I did the moment you all departed the ship.”
“All right,” Raven said taking the controls. “Making the jump now.”
She jammed the throttle of the FTL all the way to maximum and the ship’s FTL wined like a supercharged electric engine. Then everything seemed to momentarily slow down to a crawl, the stars stretched, and they snapped into hyperspace with a bang.
“What are the odds that they can track us?” Jegra asked.
“It’s impossible to track a ship through hyperspace,” Raven said. “But who knows what that Knight was doing the whole time we were exploring the freighter? He could have somehow hacked our coordinates.”
“I don’t want to take any chances,” Dakroth said. “If we jump into the orbit of Cordova and minutes later the entire Nyctan fleet shows up, we’re doomed.”
“I’ll personally send a subspace transmission on ahead to Zira Ha’ppek and have him meet us with his frigate in orbit of Cordova. If the Nyctans do jump in after us, I’d prefer to stack the odds in our favor and face them two to one.”
Raven nodded and Emperor Dakroth headed off to his quarters to make the call in private.
“How long until we reach Cordova?” Jegra asked.
“Approximately, eighteen hours,” Raven answered, after taking a quick glance at the readout of her navigation display.
She turned and smiled at Kregor, who looked at her with an inquisitive glance. She nodded toward the door, as if to suggest they get out of there. But just then, Raven cleared her throat and called out to her officer.
“Kregor, I need you to run a full weapons check.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he said. He turned to Jegra and mouthed the word, “Sorry.”
She smiled and shrugged. Turning to leave, she grabbed Cassera’s hand. “Come on,” she said. “I’m thirsty.”
Several minutes later, in Jegra’s personal quarters, Cassera arched her back, her sweat dripping down her blue, naked body as she lay on Jegra’s bed, and screamed out in ecstasy.
Jegra buried her face even deeper between Cassera’s smoldering thighs. This caused Cassera to squirm uncontrollably. Another several minutes of bliss went by and, finally, Jegra came up for breath.
“Told you I was thirsty.”
“When you said you were thirsty, I thought you wanted to hit the open bar and get some drinks with me. I didn’t think you meant you wanted to do this.”
“I needed the distraction,” she said, sliding up Cassera’s body. She kissed Cassera’s stomach, and chest, and neck until she came to her lips. She paused and let her eyes linger for a moment, and then her mouth plummeted and crashed into Cassera’s lush lips.
They shared mutual moans of sensuous delight and Cassera reached between Jegra’s thighs and found just the right cadence to make her squirm. And she didn’t stop until Jegra groaned with pleasure. Turn around was fair play, after all.
Jegra fell onto the bed next to her and then placed her cheek on her hand and stared into the yellow eyes of her blue-skinned lover. “You realize this is the first time we’ve been together without him, right?”
“I can’t believe I ever let that son of a bitch inside of me,” Cassera lamented, letting out a deep sigh of regret.
Jegra raised an eyebrow. Something was up between Dakroth and Cassera, and she was curious to find out what it was. “You want to talk about it? About whatever that was between you and Dakroth this morning?”
Cassera looked at Jegra for a long time and then closed her eyes. “I can’t,” she said.
“Is it why you’ve been so bitchy lately?”
Cassera gave Jegra a bitter-sweet smile. She wanted to tell Jegra everything. Tell her what Dakroth was plotting, what he had in mind for her, but she couldn’t. Worse than this, however, was that if they deemed her a threat to the Dagon way of life, Cassera would have no choice but to kill Jegra. And she didn’t want to do that. Because, for the first time in her life, she was falling in love.
“Let’s just say because he claimed you, we can’t … what I’m trying to say is…”
“Yes?” Jegra probed.
“I can never be your … what I mean to say is … I think I’m falling for you.”
“I love you too,” Jegra replied without a second’s hesitation. And she quickly silenced Cas
sera with a long, passionate, kiss.
A single tear seeped out of the corner of Cassera’s eye as she fell into Jegra’s warm embrace. There had to be an alternative, she thought. Jegra wasn’t the inferior species she had believed. Crude, sure. Lacking in manners and social grace, yes. But at the genetic level, everything about her human DNA was so advanced. So evolved.
The real threat wasn’t to the purity of the Dagon race. The real threat was the superiority of human genetics, specifically, a single gene that Cassera had found lying dormant in Jegra’s genetic code. A gene that, if activated, would allow humans to procreate with sixty percent of the known species in the known galaxy.
That was the real threat to the Dagon empire. Human ascendancy and the rise of a mixed-race empire that stretched across every single system. A genetic code so proficient in its ability to rewrite other species’ genetic makeups that it would take root like a pernicious weed.
As for Jegra’s peculiar ability to rewrite a Dagon’s DNA through physical contact, it was likely just a fluke of Jegra’s strange transformation. Not all of her powers had fully manifested yet. Cassera found signs that the growth serum Jegra had been injected with over a year ago was still affecting her. She was, for lack of a better term, a work in progress. But what she’d eventually turn out being was anybody’s guess.
And that’s why Cassera had been so upset. Emperor Dakroth wanted a progress report on her findings. But if she shared them with him, in all likelihood he’d order Jegra’s extermination. And she didn’t think she could live with herself if she was forced to kill Jegra. Not now. Not after all they’d been through.
17
“Shit,” Jegra yelped, tumbling out of bed naked. She was rudely awoken by a loud blast and the ship shuddering violently. There was another blast and Cassera’s naked body rolled out of bed and landed on her.
Cassera’s eyes shot wide open as the ship jolted again. This time the ship’s alarm started blaring. Looking down at Jegra’s face, she asked, “Think we should get dressed?”
“You read my mind,” Jegra replied.
Both women scrambled to their feet and dressed as fast as they could. Once they’d gotten themselves presentable, Cassera turned to head out. Before she got out the door, however, Jegra caught her arm and stopped her.