by Trevor Wyatt
“You need me alive, Jeryl,” Veld said quickly. “Without me as a valuable hostage, you will never be able to escape.”
Taking deep breaths, Jeryl’s vision began to clear.
The fucker. He was right.
Chapter 24
Jeryl’s whole mind was engulfed with rage—the kind of rage he hadn’t experienced since the Earth-Sonali war. How could one person cause him so much anger and heartache?
Jeryl struggled with Mary and Kaia, growling deeply.
“I don’t need you at all now, do I?” he asked, his face contorted in a frown. He was already envisioning himself cutting up Veld with a blade, relishing how it would make him feel to slide it on Veld’s body and hear him scream out in pain.
Veld didn’t have a reply for him. He lost the smirk on his face and became serious, looking at the two officers at Jeryl’s side.
“Not so smart now, are you?” Jeryl asked. He struggled with the demon of rage that Veld had created within him as he spoke. He knew he could break off from Mary’s grasp easily. He wasn’t so sure about Kaia though. She was a security operative; she had more training in hand to hand combat than he did. He wasn’t sure Kaia would help him. Maybe if he called out to Tira, she would help him destroy Veld.
Jeryl wanted Veld exterminated from the Tyreesian gene pool. He wanted Veld to watch as Jeryl destroyed every single thing the interrogator held dear. He wanted Veld to feel a hundred fold of what he’d made Jeryl feel. He wanted to give Veld a taste of his own bitter medicine—only this time it would be concentrated to the tenth degree.
Veld must have noticed all that in Jeryl’s eyes.
“Do not think you can harm me and get away with it, Captain Montgromery.” Veld’s face turned defiant—as if he had the right to talk to him, after destroying his ship, instantly killing fifteen members of his crew.
Jeryl glanced at the officers at his side. “I’m your Captain and I hereby order you to let me go.”
Kaia glanced at Mary, who was higher in rank than her for instructions. Mary, who still held Jeryl said, “Sir, are you sure about this?”
Jeryl glared at her.
She let him go immediately. Kaia was more reluctant but she, too, let him go.
Veld pushed back, sliding along the wall to the corner upon Jeryl’s approach.
“I can kill you right here and no one’s going to stop me, you little piece of shit,” Jeryl said.
Veld squirmed. “You have codes. Protocols. The Armada does not harm its prisoners.”
“Those laws only work in Terran Union space,” Jeryl replied. “Good thing we’re not in Terran Union space.”
“Hand me your gun, Kaia,” Jeryl commanded, never taking his eyes off Veld to look back at Kaia. He stretched out his arms and Kaia placed her weapon in his hands.
Jeryl checked the settings. It was on stun mode. Then he aimed it to Veld’s face.
“Let me tell you a secret, Jeryl,” Veld said. “The only reason why you have made it this far is because I am alive.”
“That’s exactly what someone in your position would say,” Jeryl replied. “Have you got no dignity? Can’t you die with honor?”
“A dead man has no honor,” Veld clapped back. “See, my father is extremely powerful. He commissioned the construction of this space station. He made me the ultimate leader here. That means my safety is a priority. But the moment my safety is threatened, the guards will have to hazard a rescue operation, which will be brutal for you and your crew.”
“More brutal than it has already been?” Jeryl asked. “You fucking destroyed our ship!” Jeryl railed, sticking the rifle forward.
Veld stretched forth his palm to block the path of the weapon’s release.
“You’ve caused me heartache for the last time, Veld,” Jeryl said in a resigned tone.
Veld’s eyes watered, and even his third eye began to move from side to side within its eyelid. Jeryl took this as a prescient sign that he was going to kill Veld.
“See you in hell, Veld,” Jeryl said, “and I hope your guards come so we can kill them too!”
Jeryl pulled the trigger. The kickback sent the rifle going up. The slice of air slammed Veld against the wall, leaving a massive dent on the bulk head. Veld collapsed to the ground, limp.
He’d hoped that he could resolve his inner turbulence through violence, but Jeryl’s anger still stormed in him, even as he stared at Veld’s motionless body. He felt no sense of relief. No trace of peace in his feelings. None at all.
Jeryl felt a hand touch him. He glanced over his shoulder. It was Kaia. He handed back her weapon, and she took it from his hand and stepped back.
Jeryl sighed. No matter what he did, he could still feel the heat in his heart. The Seeker was gone. Jeryl had never lost his ship before. He’d known it well for over a decade.
For more than ten years, he had commanded it, right from when it was a small ship with less than a hundred crew members to when it was retrofitted, expanded, and toughened and now had a crew of more than three hundred men and women of the Terran Armada.
Many times, the Seeker had been battered and crippled, but it had never been destroyed. It always came back through repairs, and Jeryl never had to change ships because the Seeker was indestructible.
Now, the ship that stood by him through thick and thin was gone. The feeling of loss and grief was overwhelming. The Seeker had always held a huge part of his heart.
Jeryl had never known that he was this attached to his ship. He could never have guessed that he would feel this way if the Seeker was taken away from him.
He turned to the view screen to see the mountainous burning pile of bulkhead along with human flesh. Jeryl felt like a volcanic eruption occurred in his heart, fire raging through his veins. He closed his eyes to contain his anger, but his heart kept racing.
“You don’t have to look at it, sir,” Mary said.
Jeryl heard her hit a button on the station.
“It’s okay, sir,” she said. “You can open your eyes now.”
Jeryl complied. The view screen was switched off, while the subdued neon-like light in the room was turned on.
“Call in Tira,” Jeryl said to Kaia.
Kaia stepped out.
“How can you be so calm, Mary?” Jeryl said.
“I’m anything but calm, sir,” Mary said. “I figured only one of us gets to show our fury. And you’re doing well for both of us, sir.”
There was a tense silence.
“We’ll make him pay somehow, sir, I promise,” Mary said. “Now that we don’t have a ship, it has become expedient that we dispatch of him. Just not now…we’ll wait until we secure our exit from this ghastly place.”
Jeryl nodded. He agreed on dispatching away Veld as soon as he wasn’t usable anymore. But Jeryl thought about it and decided he didn’t want to dispatch of Veld so immediately. First, he would make him suffer for a long time. Death would be too easy for Veld.
Kaia entered with Tira.
“Sir, it’s all gone,” Tira said the moment she walked in. She sounded distraught. She walked straight to Jeryl and into his arms.
At first, Jeryl was surprised. He patted her lightly before she withdrew from him, blushing terribly.
She had a hard time meeting his eyes after that. “I’m sorry, sir.”
“It’s alright,” Jeryl said.
Addressing the three women, he said, “We need a way off this station. We need to come up with a plan before the Tyreesians figure out a way to get Veld out of our clutches and then swarm us.”
“Are there any shuttles in the hangar?” Kaia asked Tira.
“No,” she replied. “And that’s a bad idea. There are Tyreesian warships orbiting the space station. They’ll shoot us out of the skies before we can engage our FTL drives.”
“What if we engage it from within the space station?” asked Mary.
“No, that’s too tricky,” Jeryl said. “And it’s too dangerous. Too many of us have died. I can’t take an
y more unnecessary deaths.”
“We don’t really have more options, sir,” Mary said. “This mission went south the moment we were captured. We’ve been reduced by more than half. We’ve been tortured, shot at, and drained emotionally. I say we take whatever chances we have and get the fuck out of here. The Armada is probably searching for us now. We did send out a distress signal.”
Jeryl shook his head. “It didn’t go out,” he said, much to Mary’s disappointment. “They let us think it went out so we wouldn’t fight too much. They intercepted the signal and made it seem as though our message was being broadcasted.”
“So, no help is coming?” Mary asked, dismay on her face.
Jeryl nodded.
“What if we take the Tyreesian ship?” asked Tira. “It’s already powered up. It’s in good condition. It’s the same as those vessels orbiting the station. Plus, it’s the same ship that crippled the Sonali vessel and brought us in. It might be Veld’s flagship.”
“How do we fly it?” asked Kaia.
“How hard could it be?” Tira said. “No harder than piloting a Tyreesian shuttle out of here, I bet.”
They all glanced towards Jeryl.
“Well…it’s worth a shot,” Jeryl said. “Let’s do it.”
Chapter 25
“Five ships just entered the system, Commander,” Adachi cried out. There was a huge amount of tension in her voice. Ashley saw the beads of sweat that lined on her forehead from her peripheral vision. They would be in deep trouble if they couldn’t figure out a way to ensure the survival of the crew and secure an escape vector for the Seeker.
Adachi operated the primary terminal of the weapons control. Like the main work station which was run by Sef, the weapons control was a holographic-based computer system. It was intuitive tech, and adjusted to the user’s level of competency. It didn’t help that they had to rely on a tablet to translate all the Tyreesians commands, but they weren’t doing that bad.
Ashley and Adachi’s skills weren’t on the same level as Sef’s. But luckily for them, Sef was able to fool the main systems into thinking Ashley and Adachi were expert level operators with a sickness that hampered their abilities. As such, they had full access, though with a few limitations. Ashley didn’t mind, as long as she could aim the weapons and fire on the ships that were approaching.
“What do you want to do, ma’am?” Adachi asked.
“Where is the team, Sef?” asked Ashley. Her priority was ensuring everyone got on the ship and got out of there alive. It was beginning to look more and more like they were going to engage the weapons system.
“They just took control of the hangar,” Sef replied. “They lost a lot of people.”
“Can you tell who?” Ferriero burst in. He was manning the second weapons station. His machine was slaved to Adachi’s, so he could only fire the weapons that Adachi allowed. For now, Adachi was allowing him to use the missile system, while she used the lasers.
“Unfortunately, I cannot,” Sef said.
Ashley glanced at Ferriero. She knew he was worried about Tira Avae, the beautiful ensign who assisted Captain Montgomery. She could tell that although they were madly, hopelessly in love; they might not want to admit it to each other. Still, she saw the way they looked at each other even when they were on duty. Ashley would recognize that look anywhere—she used to have that look for Jeryl.
But now things had changed. When she looked at Jeryl or even thought about him, it brought her unbearable heartache. She wasn’t sure if she would be able to get over the torture incident.
“Don’t worry, Mr. Ferriero,” Ashley said. “Jeryl didn’t choose Tira as his personal assistant just because of her good looks. If there are only a few who can make it out of this, Tira would be one of them.”
Ferriero blushed.
“Thanks, Commander,” he said, avoiding Ashley’s eyes.
Jeryl liked his CNC crew to be disentangled, especially from each other. This was why when Ashley discovered about Tira and Ferriero’s fling, she confronted them about it privately. After a lot of interrogative questions, they finally admitted their relationship to her and begged her not to tell the captain.
Ashley agreed, remembering how her relationship with Jeryl made things even more efficient for them and the people around them. They wouldn’t have made some of the decisions that ended up being in the favor of the Armada if they hadn’t been together.
Now, all she could hope for was that wherever Tira was, she was keeping her head in the game and not thinking about Ferriero.
“Ashley?” Adachi called. “What do you want to do about the approaching ships?”
“Sef, can you scan the ships? I want to know if they have their weapons systems online,” Ashley said.
“I’d say they do, Commander,” Adachi said. “That’s an attack vector they’re on. They wouldn’t be making an attack approach if their weapons were offline.”
“I can confirm that their weapons systems are indeed online,” Sef replied.
At that moment, Jeryl’s communication came on to ask if there was a bomb on the Seeker. The question should have terrified Ashley because it suggested that Jeryl was in imminent danger, but it didn’t. It meant that whatever spark she had for Jeryl—that thing that made thoughts of him occupy her mind all the time—no longer existed in her. It somehow had been tortured out of her mind by the bastard, Veld.
“Sef, scan the Seeker,” Ashley said. “Find if there’s a bomb.”
Sef inputted the right commands in his console. The response came up positive.
“I can confirm that the Seeker is rigged to explode,” Sef said. “The trigger is the main power drive. If the Seeker’s engines are turned on, it will blast.”
Adachi glanced back at Ashley in terror. “The Captain will need to use the palm scanner by the engineering access on the ground deck. That would automatically turn up the power drive…”
“And destroy the ship,” Ashley said, while she shook her head. “Fucking Tyreesians,”
She relayed this information back to the captain.
“Adachi, I want you to bring the space station’s defenses to full power,” Ashley said. “We will have to take those ships down if the Seeker wants to make it out of here in one piece.”
Adachi replied immediately, “Weapons systems coming online.”
Sef turned to glance at Ashley. Through the transparent faceplate of his breather, she could see the look on his face.
“What is it, Sef?”
“The lead Tyreesian ship is hailing us,” he said, “and I am also reading several other ships approaching this area at maximum FTL speed.”
Ashley swallowed hard. “Can they fire on us?”
“They could, but it wouldn’t be wise,” said Adachi. “We’re closer to the inner ring and all control centers are connected. If they take us out, they’ll be damaging the other control centers. And our shield are at the maximum; it’ll take their combined firepower and a lot of time to break through.”
Ashley nodded. “Prepare to engage the automated defense systems. I want you to point those ships as hostiles.”
“I’ll have to bypass the protection systems,” Adachi said.
Ashley knew what she meant. These systems were also standard features on all Armada ships to prevent friendly fire, especially in the event of a fleet battle.
“Can you do it?” she asked.
“I think I can,” she replied. “I’ll need a moment.”
“You have less than one minute,” Ashley said. “I want you firing as soon as possible.”
She turned to Sef. “How long before the approaching ships get to the system?”
“Ten minutes, give or take five,” he replied.
Adachi walked away from her station and stood right beside Sef before the view screen.
“Accept their hail,” she said.
Immediately, the screen dissolved to show the face of an incredibly hefty Tyreesian with huge features. Ashley couldn’t tell his height
, but he had a very well-developed upper body and hands that looked like paws. From the looks of it, he wouldn’t have a hard time strangling the life out of any human.
“What? A woman?” the Tyreesian said. His voice was very thick, like he had a viscous liquid down his throat. His snout was visibly moist, making Ashley wonder if he had caught the flu. Then she wondered if aliens could even catch a flu.
“I want to speak to the human in charge!” he demanded.
“Well, you are,” she replied with confidence, her hands clasped behind her back.
“Is this true?” the man blurted at Sef, who apparently was being broadcasted by the camera.
Sef didn’t speak. He only nodded and inched away from view.
“So, what can I do for you?”
“I demand to speak to Captain Jeryl Montgomery so I can discuss the terms of his surrender,” he said. “I am Commander Greeve and I will treat him with honor.”
“By torturing him?” Ashley spat. Then she laughed. “I think not. Why don’t you cut off your attack run and I won’t bring all this station’s fire power to bear on you.”
The Tyreesian’s eyes widened. “You would not…”
“You have five seconds to comply,” Ashley said.
“Weapons system ready,” Adachi whispered. “Engaging on your command.”
Ashley nodded her understanding.
“I demand to speak to Jeryl!” he boomed again. “I will not be dictated by a …”
“Woman?” Ashley said, cutting him off. “Four…”
“What?” the Tyreesian said.
“Three…”
“Are you counting down?” said Commander Greeve.
“It appears so, Commander,” Ashley replied. “You have a decision to make. Two…”
“I refuse to negotiate with a—”
“One.”
“—a lowly, good for nothing woman who knows nothing,” hissed the commander.
“Too bad for you,” Ashley replied. “Engage.”
The space station trembled as several cannons fired. By now, the ships had come within range of the space station’s defenses, but were still too far to fire back.