The Pathfinder Trilogy

by Todd Stockert

  [“Yes!”] he heard his brother respond. [“Try moving in front of those desks and computers, there’s plenty of room there!”]

  Now the Crasel were dropping down from above to join him, and Adam moved swiftly back across the room in response to his brother’s suggestion. Additional, sporadic bursts of gunfire broke the sudden silence, causing Adam’s colleagues to spin and fire back at the enemy soldiers trying to fight their way inside the large chamber. But there were at least four ground level entrances to watch over, and the enemy numbers were growing steadily larger as more and more of the station’s soldiers were alerted to the unexpected problem in their midst. Adam couldn’t fire in more than two directions at once, and the limitation was proving to be a dangerous one while standing in the center of such a large chamber. Under normal conditions, he would have been a sitting duck. With things happening so quickly, he noticed the soldier with the grenade launcher almost too late, and – swearing with all the fury of a soldier – he expanded his personal defensive shield around the six men surrounding him and prayed to God it would hold up under additional duress. Then he stepped in front of all of them and used his body to shield theirs.

  The explosion of several grenades at point blank range was booming and deafening, but the majority of the blasts, fragmenting metal and resulting shockwaves were thankfully absorbed and instantly disbursed by his personal defenses. Even so, Adam heard a grunt of pain and something warm and wet sprayed against the side of his face. That was all there remained time for, as thankfully, a glowing golden sphere appeared around them and pulled them gently away from the center of the conflict.

  Aboard the Ali Rinai…

  All seven men reappeared in the starboard cargo bay next to the lone quashing weapon, but Tran Wuu slumped immediately to the ground with a serious neck wound. Adam cried out excitedly and shoved the two former prisoners away from him and dropped to his knees. He slapped almost fanatically at the med-kit attached to his left leg, deactivating its stealth shield and pulling it free. Unfortunately, a stray grenade fragment had completely missed Wuu’s body armor this time around and instead bit deeply into the right side of his neck. The Crasel soldier was bleeding profusely, and the initial spray of his blood was still dripping down the side of Adam’s face. “No!” Adam screamed loudly, grabbing a fist full of gauze from his medical kit and pressing it hard against Tran Wuu’s newly opened wound. The material proved to be not nearly enough, forcing Adam to tear off his Admiral’s jacket and then his shirt.

  Behind him, Cren Hollis reached over toward his left bicep and yanked out another piece of metal. “If that doesn’t hurt, I don’t know what will!” the big man thundered angrily. He tore off a part of his left sleeve and pressed the dark black fabric hard against his wound.

  [“Adam, you have to calm down!”] Nori screamed at him mentally. Her presence in his mind overpowered even the sound of those around him, all of whom were now busily discussing Tran Wuu’s swiftly deteriorating condition. [“We’ve got Doctor Simmons here, and she can guide you through the first aid process, but you have to slow down long enough to LISTEN!”] she chastened sharply. The word ‘Doctor’ registered firmly in his mind and snapped him back from the tunnel vision that had completely governed his actions since his initial leap from the balcony in the Kuth bio-lab.

  As though he didn’t have enough problems, his earwig crackled suddenly to life. “I’m told you made it back all right,” said Snee Vasten suddenly, his voice vibrant in Adam’s right ear. “The guards outside of the cargo bay noted you have injuries… Dr. Marj is already on his way.”

  Glancing desperately at Tran Wuu’s grim faced expression while listening to Dr. Simmons advice, Adam maintained pressure on the makeshift bandage he had formed using carefully torn strips from his undershirt. But the Crasel also heard Vasten talking to him, and Cren Hollis grabbed him by the arm and guided Adam away from their fallen comrade. “Vasten needs you… your SHIP needs you,” he emphasized sternly, shoving his friend gently toward the exit hatch. “We’ll watch over our brother for you. Go and do what must be done.” Already Janney Stox and Arte Kasik had replaced Adam and were working hard to stem the flow of blood.

  Adam nodded dumbly, for the first time feeling the full weight of command actually burdening his broad shoulders. He reached up and touched the transceiver, activating it. “Are there any other vessels in this area?” he asked cautiously. “Has anyone discovered our presence here?”

  “No,” replied Vasten smoothly from his position in Command. “You can bet on at least a few warships patrolling nearby, but the transmission you initiated over there is absolutely dominating their transceiver’s CPU capacity… they will be unable to transmit a coherent message until it ends.”

  “How long will that take?”

  “Another five minutes or so should allow it to finish up, but we’re running out of storage space. The amount of information in that facility’s database is ridiculously large and our maximum capacity by comparison…”

  “Irrelevant,” Adam snapped, standing helplessly in the corridor just outside the cargo bay. “My friends are monitoring that transmission and will also have a copy of all information, even after our database is full.” His thoughts drifted to the immediate problem for a moment, and he gritted his teeth firmly. “Does that station have weapons of any kind?” he wondered curiously. The Zaketh physician appeared suddenly from behind him and elbowed his way past him into the cargo bay. Adam stared after him, still heartbroken over this newest injury to the very first real friend he had made after entering the war zone.

  “I wouldn’t recommend that we get any closer and find out.” Vasten’s tone sounded remarkably snide, but he was deadly serious and his response spurred Adam to action. “We’ve been giving them every reason in the world to hate our guts on sight.”

  “We have ship-to-ship missiles aboard this vessel, right?” he asked sternly, remembering a stray inventory report and the contents listed upon it.

  “Yes. Although when ships like ours have them, we tend to use those very sparingly here in the Wasteland… usually in only the direst of circumstances. Like the quashing weapons, they are almost impossible to replace without a solid foothold world and manufacturing capability to rely upon.”

  “Make an exception. Target everything we have at those racks of quashing missiles and fire,” ordered Adam without the slightest bit of hesitation. “We won’t get another chance to take them out. And once that transmission from the facility terminates, bring us up to half speed and transit this vessel to our safe location, using as many interim hops as you deem necessary.”

  “Aye, sir. Consider it done.”

  With business fully attended to, Adam made his way back into the cargo bay where Tran Wuu was lying flat on his back with a large pool of blood beneath his head. He was still breathing, but in so shallow a manner that Adam felt his heart lurch another notch downward. Calmly and gently he knelt next to his friend and picked up his weak hand and held it tightly. Wuu’s eyes opened briefly and he smiled upon seeing his friend. “I am so sorry,” Adam told him with a shameful glance to one side. “I promised that I would keep you safe.”

  “You kept… your promise,” insisted Tran Wuu with a weak smile. “I should have perished days ago, and you gave me more time to live… to really live… and to see that there will be a future for my family.”

  Adam stared at the deck plating, emotions he had thought to be fully under his control suddenly threatening to boil over from within his tightly wound, anxiety-ridden chest. “I promised to keep you safe,” he repeated futilely, unable to cope with the sudden approaching loss of a close friend. “My shield… I had it set to maximum… but with six extra people, it just wasn’t enough.”

  “You have kept me safe, Adam Roh,” countered Wuu softly, smiling with parental authority as though admonishing a small child. He continued to grin despite his terrible wound and scrutinized the face of his friend. “Your actions and leadership have allowed me to remain
a warrior until the very end, to die as a soldier protecting the best interests of my people. Without you I would have perished as a lonely prisoner only days ago in some filthy corridor. You… have shown me that the clans can work together, that we can overthrow those who have oppressed us throughout my entire lifetime. It will all finally end… with you!”

  The more he smiled and objected to Adam’s shame, the worse Adam felt. Emotionally he was strung out farther than he had ever been, and Thomas’ voice in his head warned him that he was close to an emotional overload. [“RELAX and calm down Adam,”] Thomas stressed firmly. [“Breathe deeply. There are things in this universe that you cannot control, not even with all of the advantages we have given you. Your shield was never designed to protect more than one person for any given length of time… it’s a miracle that more were not fatally injured. We were all lucky… your implant was able to leech the extra energy it needed from the overhead power cables connected to those radiation emitters you destroyed. If it hadn’t, Tran Wuu would have a lot of company.”]

  Tran Wuu reached up unexpectedly with his left hand and grabbed Adam’s free hand. He guided it over to the other hand and pressed something cold and metal against the Captain’s palm. Glancing down at the object, Adam noticed that Wuu had at some point removed the steel mesh necklace – the one with the paired crescent moons on its surface – and was attempting to give it to him. “No,” he objected immediately, at first pushing the hand away firmly. But Tran Wuu was insistent, and persisted with his weak efforts until Adam finally nodded and accepted the necklace. “This was given to you by your wife,” he reminded Wuu sternly. “It is generations old, an irreplaceable object and a symbolic part of your family.”

  “Return… please return this to her,” said Tran Wuu with a satisfied smile. Blood pooled at the corner of his mouth and rolled down his cheek. “When your people arrive to set my family free, give this to her and tell her that I did not let her down… that I didn’t let any of them down and that they will always have my love.”

  Adam nodded firmly in response. “I will. I just don’t think they will agree that your sacrifice was worth it.”

  “I believe… I know that this sacrifice… was worth it,” coughed Wuu, turning his head and spitting out a mouthful of blood. He turned back to face Adam with a determined expression. “If I had been one of those two men sitting in those chairs… waiting for my turn… waiting to be irradiated…” He trailed off for a moment, shifting his gaze to the two malnourished prisoners standing next to the Crasel. Both of them appeared to be elated, relieved and thoroughly confused at the same time. “If it had been me sitting in one of those chairs, I would have wanted us to intervene and save me from so terrible a fate. We can’t save everyone, but today we saved two who would have otherwise died. That is honor.”

  “I don’t know how I can possibly go on without you,” Adam told him honestly.

  “There are still… more innocent lives to save,” Tran Wuu reminded him with a wan smile. “Tell my wife that I love her deeply… tell her that I will wait for her… wait as long as necessary… in the afterlife.” And then his eyes glazed over and his head rolled awkwardly to one side. Shaking his head with despair, the Zaketh Doctor gently closed Wuu’s eyes and then stared helplessly at the deck plating for a long, precious moment.

  “Bru Marj, isn’t it?” Adam asked the Doctor curiously, watching him nod in response. Placing a comforting hand on his shoulder, Adam smiled weakly. “You did everything you could Doctor Marj, we know that.”

  “The wound was too big, the loss of blood too fast…”

  “I know Doctor,” said Adam softly, wishing fervently that he had chosen to act less impulsively now that consequences he could not avoid had finally caught up with him. He had forgotten that, even though he was virtually invulnerable, the others were not. And Tran Wuu had just paid for that mistake with his life. “I was there when the grenades went off. I know.”

  Even with the words of his friends, both present and those who were very far away, to comfort him, he still found himself temporarily inconsolable. With tears streaming from his eyes, he abandoned the cargo bay and headed back out into the corridor so that the soldiers who served under him would not see their Captain cry. No matter how he sliced it, he just couldn’t imagine how he was supposed to succeed in the Wasteland when he couldn’t even accomplish something as simple as keeping Tran Wuu alive. He had never imagined having to complete his mission without the Crasel soldier by his side. The thought of doing so without him was unimaginable at present, and he tried to banish the very thought of it from his mind.

  Denial, his subconscious mind stabbed back at him in a blunt accusation. It is the first stage of the grievance process… of dealing with death.

  He considered heading up to Command, which was really where he should be, but he was physically drained and emotionally spent. Instead he touched the earwig transceiver lightly. “Roh to Vasten, are you there?”

  “Affirmative. No worries. We took out most of the quashing missiles, and I targeted the ones with active warheads first. Our attacks continue to stymie the Caucus and will no doubt draw a heavy response. However, as we are currently moving through a series of transit hops it will be difficult for them to pin us down… at least for a while.”

  “Do you need me up there?”

  “No. Get some rest. You did great on the station, even if you lost a man. We really took it to them today.”

  “Thanks. My quarters are still filled with Deek’s remains and haven’t been properly cleaned, so I’m going to find an empty cabin and crash there for a few hours. Call me if anything new surfaces.”

  “I will.”

  When he finally located an empty, isolated room with a small cot in it, he locked the door and lay down on the bed. Then he stared up at the ceiling and sobbed uncontrollably until his friends back home gave up trying to reassure him and simply activated the sleep-inducing properties of his implant. Mercifully he slipped temporarily away into the comforting land of slumber.

  And then he discovered once more that dreams could pursue him even there as well.

  PROJECT WASTELAND

  Pathfinder Series: Book Two

  Chapter XIII: Aftermath

  Aboard the Ali Rinai…

  The pain from the DNA injection procedure was agonizing to say the least, causing Bok to scream repeatedly as he lay helplessly on the hospital bed. Seconds ago, a large device had lowered steadily from its resting position against the ceiling. Dozens of carefully prepositioned needles touched the Kuth soldier’s skin and then, as the device continued moving downward, pierced his flesh. The needles were thick and hollow, carrying an electric current along their length as well as humanoid DNA within. At first the electrical stimulation was mild, but as soon as the Doctor was certain that Bok’s vitals were stable he increased the intensity by a factor of ten. That was generally the point where a patient lost control of himself before beginning to scream uncontrollably. It was enjoyable for the Doctor to watch, but Bok glared angrily in response while swearing repeated oaths to destroy both the physician and his family. It wasn’t the pain that bothered him as much as the humiliation, especially the loss of control over his bowels.

  When the process finally terminated, after what seemed like an eternity but was more like two minutes, the overhead contraption retracted up into the ceiling, where technicians working on the floor above would be quick to refill the syringes attached to the needles. Then a moving belt would slowly rotate the needles into their new positions for the second application. Bok was already turning over onto his stomach, eager for the next stage of the process to begin. Supposedly this was to be the last of the treatments he would undergo, but this was the same thing he had been told at least three times previously. In total, Bok estimated that he had undergone this procedure at least ten times now, and he was not looking forward to any more of them. “It all hinges on you,” his contacts in the Caucus would tell him repeatedly. “Your concentration a
nd focus, along with the natural instincts of your body, are all needed working together in order to initiate a transformation. If your mind and body cannot control a shape shifting consciously, we are left with little choice but to continue injecting additional DNA from the donor humanoid into your body until the process becomes natural for you.”

  Again the ceiling contraption came down and Bok felt needles pierce his body again. The raw burn of the electricity actually felt hotter this time around and he screamed at the top of his lungs while lying in his own filth. The claws on the ends of his fingers dug into the thick, tough fabric comprising the medical bed and he focused on that action, tearing through the reptilian leather and leaving long gashes in their wake. The toes on his feet were curled, claws unfortunately facing up. He was not allowed to move his legs in the slightest, not even if tearing apart the couch with his feet would make the burden easier to bear. If the needles failed to deliver their DNA injection and electrical stimulus in the precise, proper manner, the procedure would be repeated over and over until the attending physician was thoroughly satisfied. The exact positioning of the needles changed with each subsequent procedure, based on a detailed analysis of his body and the results of testing from previous treatments. His voice failing, every muscle in Bok’s body stiffened in response to the ferocious stimulation.

  And then it was over.

  He watched the device retract and begin its upward journey, sorely tempted to leap on it and savagely tear its internal mechanism apart. But then, this was part of his Caucus initiation, the repeated application of extreme discomfort that tested his ability to bear pain and keep secrets. He turned over and sat up, resting for a moment and simply breathing deeply through his mouth, tongue lolling and drool running from both sides of his mouth. With a savage upward curl of its jaws, the Doctor tossed him a dark brown towel. “You know where the showers are,” he declared sternly. “Wait about eight hours for the latest injection of DNA to circulate through your system and then try once more to transform. It’s going to happen any time now, I assure you.”