by Joe Vasicek
“I don’t care if it looks like an admission of weakness,” Reva shot back at him. “Gulchina was all about strength and intimidation, but I am not. What I say to one of you, I say to all.”
She turned her attention back to Levan, whose hands were shaking as he burned the engine at full throttle.
Levan, come back. It’s not too late. Come back to us, and all will be forgiven.
Listen to her, Jebe reached out with her. You’re a fool if you think Gulchina will show you mercy.
We know you can hear us, Tomas added. Turn the ship around and—
Levan screamed and pounded his head against the bulkheads. The pain jolted Reva out of her trancelike state, even though she could only feel a fraction of it through the link. She rubbed her head and prepared to try again.
“Captain,” said the lieutenant. “Gulchina is coming over the horizon.”
Reva peered at the holographic viewscreen just below the forward window. It showed them coming up on the Starfire’s orbit, with the Starfire itself cresting the horizon.
“I’m getting a signal from them,” reported the comms officer. “They’re hailing us.”
Don’t worry, Jebe thought to her. We’ll keep trying with Levan.
Reva nodded and sat up with her back straight. “Put it on-screen.”
The viewscreen flickered and showed an image of Gulchina, sitting in the command chair on a bridge that was at least twice as large as the Temujin’s. She stared at Reva and narrowed her eyes.
“Reva Starchild,” she said, her voice low and dangerous. “I don’t remember leaving you in command. Where is Commander Wolf?”
“He’s dead,” said Reva matter-of-factly. “He betrayed us both. In the conflict that ensued, I killed him and assumed command of the Temujin.”
Gulchina narrowed her eyes. “Why did you alter your orbit to evade us?”
Sweat began to form on the back of Reva’s neck, but she did her best to ignore it.
“When you arrived, it wasn’t clear that it was you. We took evasive maneuvers to—”
“Don’t lie to me, girl. The only fleet capable of flying to this system is mine.”
Shit! Reva thought. She’s catching on.
“As for Commander Wolf,” she said, ignoring Gulchina’s point. “I regret to inform you that the commander instigated a mutiny. He tried to have me executed, but I managed to convince those still loyal to you to accept my command.”
“Lies!” Levan screamed. He stopped banging his head against the bulkhead and furiously worked the controls on the outrider’s comms system.
“It appears that not all of my men share your view of events,” said Gulchina. “One of your outriders is trying to hail me. What can I expect them to say?”
Reva’s stomach fell. “I honestly don’t know,” she admitted. “But Gulchina, I—”
The transmission abruptly cut. Panic began to grow in Reva’s mind, amplified by the fears and apprehensions of her men.
“What do you want us to do?” Isaac asked.
“Levan will come around,” Reva whispered. If he doesn’t…
“Captain!” Levan shouted as Gulchina’s image flickered across his screen. “Captain Gulchina, it’s you—thank the stars!”
“Give me a full report, Private. What has the imposter done?”
“She’s gone crazy, Captain! Absolutely crazy! We tried to capture her, but—”
“Calm yourself,” Gulchina ordered. “Start at the mutiny with Commander Wolf.”
“There was no mutiny, captain! The bitch killed Commander Wolf and hijacked one of the outriders, with some help from Issa. We shot them down, but not two dayshifts later we got a distress signal from the crash site on the planet. Went down to capture them, and that’s when it all went wrong!”
Reva bit her lip, her heart racing and her hands trembling. Levan, she cried out telepathically. Please don’t do this, Levan.
“Aagh!” Levan shouted, clutching his head.
“What is it, Private?”
“It’s the bitch—she’s in my head! She’s in all of our heads! She’s infected us with something, some kind of alien mind control. I can’t get her out!”
Gulchina raised an eyebrow. “Mind control?”
“Yes, Captain—yes! Blue lights, voices in the dark, mother-queens, and TAKE US TO THE STARS. She took over the whole ship. There’s not a single soul who isn’t under her control.”
“Are you quite sure of this?”
“Yes,” Levan cried, tears streaming down his cheeks. “Please, Captain, make it stop! Make it stop!”
For several moments, Gulchina said nothing. Levan broke down like a child, falling to his knees in front of the display.
“Thank you, Private,” Gulchina said. “You have been most helpful.”
The transmission broke.
“Captain!” said the officer at sensors and comms. “I have a missile launch from the Starfire!”
“No,” Reva whispered, tears coming to her eyes. She stared at the orbital map on the main display, which showed Levan’s outrider advancing several klicks ahead of them.
“Prepare for evasive maneuvers,” Isaac interjected. “Arm the countermeasures and get ready to run.”
The men looked from her to him and back again, confused at the sudden change in command. Do as he says, Reva ordered.
Levan stared at the screen, all but weeping. The voices from the Temujin had stopped, but he could still sense them watching him, judging him, condemning him. Above all the rest, he could feel the sad disappointment of the mother-queen, Reva. Well, Gulchina would soon show that bitch! The first missile was already away, and—
Alarms blared, and the lights flashed red. Levan glanced at the screen, and his eyes went wide.
“Cap—”
Levan’s outrider exploded with a brilliant, soundless flash. The shock of his death hit Reva like a blow to the stomach. She slumped back in her chair, while all around the Temujin, men staggered and fell. It took them several moments to recover—precious moments that they didn’t have to spare.
“Captain!” the comms officer shouted. “Gulchina is launching missiles—dozens of them!”
“Activate weapons and countermeasures,” Reva ordered. “Evasive maneuvers—get us as far from the Starfire as you can.”
The men were still winded from Levan’s death, but they recovered quickly and turned into an efficient fighting machine. Individually, each one only knew how to accomplish a handful of tasks, but by working telepathically, they were able to bring the Temujin’s weapons and countermeasures online faster than they ever had before. With an efficiency born of experience, all Reva had to do was point them in the right direction and let them take care of the rest.
Your orders, sir?
“There’s no way we can go up against the Starfire and win,” she said. “Keep your distance and buy us enough time to get away.”
“Captain, Gulchina is hailing us again.”
Reva swallowed. “Put it on screen.”
The viewscreen flickered, and Gulchina’s face appeared. Her eyes were colder than Reva had ever seen them.
“What have you done to my men?”
What’s our ETA on the jump drives?
ETA is zero. We’re already at minimum charge.
“What are you talking about?”
“Don’t play games with me,” said Gulchina. “I have my entire corsair fleet and the most powerful battlecruiser this side of the Coreward Stars. Stall for time, and I’ll scatter your ashes across the surface of this world.”
The jump beacon projects a wide enough bubble that we have to jump at least .2 light-hours to escape.
Damn! That means we need at least another… let’s see…
Forty-five minutes?
At least that long.
A new volley launched from the Starfire—far more than was necessary to destroy them. On the sensors, the missiles arcs began to separate into multiple trajectories. A new volley launched from the
Starfire—far more than was necessary to destroy them. Reva gripped her armrests and tried not to count down the seconds until the first wave reached them.
“Levan told you I was controlling him, but that isn’t true. What is true, and what drove him to madness, was the telepathic link that we all now share.”
“How do you know what Levan told me before he died?”
You mean before you murdered him.
“I have the capacity to see through the eyes of all my men,” Reva answered. “And they can see through mine. We can also share our thoughts, because we are telepathically linked into a single collective consciousness.”
Gulchina’s nostrils flared, her rage seething beneath her carefully controlled countenance.
“Explain.”
“The birthright, Gulchina. Do you remember your own words about our destiny among the stars? On the surface of this world, I made contact with an alien intelligence, exactly as you said we one day would. That intelligence has melded with me, and with the minds of all of my men. They have accepted me as their captain and their mother-queen.”
Wait, those missiles aren’t targeting us.
No? Then what’s the target?
Several of them have separated, and are arcing toward the planet. Judging from the trajectories—
Reva’s eyes widened, and her heart skipped a beat. “Stars of Holy Earth,” she exclaimed. “You’re carpet-nuking the planet!”
“Indeed,” said Gulchina, her expression dangerously cool. “Levan warned me of this alien intelligence that has corrupted you. By your own admission, this is the source of your power.”
“Gulchina, you can’t,” Reva begged. “There is life down there—intelligent life! If you destroy it—”
“You are my greatest disappointment, Reva. I had hoped to share everything I had with you, but instead, you stole it from me. That will never happen again.”
The transmission cut. On the screen, the ships in Gulchina’s fleet spread out into an attack formation, moving to intercept the Temujin. The first of the nuclear missiles detonated, flashing as it sent a silent shock wave rippling across the surface. Sweat pooled on the back of Reva’s neck, and her arms began to shake.
“Your orders, captain?” said the lieutenant. He and other men looked to her expectantly, their attention focused. Her next decision was a matter of life and death.
“Can we stop those nukes?” she asked. Even as the question escaped her lips, she already knew the answer.
“Unlikely, sir,” said the weapons officer. “We might be able to intercept a few, but not enough to make a difference.”
“The Starfire and Tamerlane are launching drones. Repeat, the Starfire and Tamerlane are launching drones!”
“We have thirty-five minutes to jump.” Any less, and the jump beacon will suck us back.
“We don’t have that much time,” said Isaac.
An idea occurred to him. Reva, if we destroy the jump beacon, we can jump out immediately.
“Where is the beacon?” Reva asked, sitting up at once.
“It’s about a thousand klicks away, just cresting the horizon,” said the comms officer. “But Captain, if we target it, what’s to stop Gulchina from activating another one?”
“We’ll have to make it look like we aren’t targeting it,” said Reva. “Evasive maneuvers, but bring us within projectile range as quickly as you can.”
“Got it!”
On-screen, the drone swarms raced to intercept their trajectory. The Temujin pitched wildly, and the bulkheads shook as the engines came to life. The g-forces pressed Reva against her seat, but the dampers absorbed the worst of the sudden acceleration. With the enlisted men safely in their high-gee coffins down below, there was little risk of their maneuvers causing injury.
“Engaging countermeasures,” said the weapons officer. The wuft-wuft of plasma-fire mingled with the engines’ roar.
The drones are almost in range. Shouldn’t we launch our own?
If we do, they’ll be left behind when we jump out.
But if we don’t, we’re going to get thrashed.
Out the forward window, Star’s End filled the view as the Temujin nosed down, dropping to a lower orbit to accelerate. Missiles arced below the horizon and exploded in brilliant, silent flashes. The fireballs were magnificent, the shock waves tremendous. They lit the world with a hellish orange glow as if it were on fire.
MOTHER?
Reva could feel the alien consciousness pulsating with an emotion somewhere between fear and sadness. She tried to reach out to it, but it was like trying to embrace the wind. What had once been a single monolithic entity had shattered into a thousand disparate fragments. And at the edges of the collective, she could sense the coming worldfire.
Pain stabbed at her mind like the edge of a red-hot knife. She gasped and buried her head in her hands, but it struck her again moments later. Her men staggered, and the comms officer fell to the floor. Outside the forward window, the worldfire continued to rain down on the planet below.
MOTHER.
“Stop!” Reva screamed, but the pain was too much for her. She fell from her chair and curled into a ball, trying in vain to make it stop. As the agony of the worldfire swallowed her, the voice of the alien consciousness grew fainter and fainter. She reached out to it one last time before the darkness swallowed her.
* * * * *
“Hold your course!” said Isaac. “Stay strong!”
Reva collapsed onto the floor, but there was nothing he could do to help her now. The drones were already upon them, lighting up the sky with laser-fire. Surprisingly, the countermeasures were holding quite well, though it was only a matter of time before they were completely overwhelmed. Whether they could hold until the jump beacon was within weapons range was anyone’s guess.
The greater threat was the worldfire burning the planet—and with it, the alien collective that bound them all together. All around the ship, men staggered and fell unconscious like Reva. Isaac himself could feel the pain as it threatened to overwhelm him. Only by sheer force of will was he able to hold on.
“The Tamerlane and Ogedei have launched missiles! Repeat, the Tamerlane and the Ogedei have—”
“Our aft laser-star has taken a critical hit. We have a breach in our defenses!”
“Hull breaches imminent on decks one, three, and—”
The surface of the planet lit up with nuclear fire from one end of the horizon to the other. Shock waves propagated through the cloud layers like ripples in a pond, and the shock of the destruction hit them all like a sledgehammer to the skull.
Isaac fell to his knees, clutching his temples. The churning of the ocean against the fortress of his mind suddenly began to boil with fervent heat as the sky turned to fire. Great clouds of steam rose all around him, instantly scalding everything it touched. As the outer walls of his fortress began to crack, he exerted all his strength to build them thicker, bury himself deeper, keep himself as far from the raging inferno as possible.
What’s happening?
Stars of Earth—
Help us!
Closing his eyes, Isaac reached out to those still holding onto consciousness and extended his telepathic defenses to them. The worldfire burned like the surface of the sun, but deep inside his fortress, the last few members of the crew were able to hold on.
We’re running out of time. The countermeasures can’t hold.
Where is the jump beacon? Is it in—
There it is!
In the control room just below the bridge, Tomas assumed the weapon controller’s station and got a targeting lock on the beacon. He cleared a path through the drone swarm with a burst of plasma-fire and launched a missile.
It’s away!
Jump now! Jump now!
No, we have to—
We have a hull breach on deck three and an incoming missile barrage in five seconds! JUMP!
Somewhere outside of his mind, Isaac felt his stomach fall as the bulkheads of the
Temujin began to close in on him. A wave of nausea passed through all of the remaining crew, and perspective shifted as the universe seemed to turn inside out. The humming of the engines rose sharply in pitch and intensity until the ship itself seemed ready to burst, and then their stomachs settled, perspective returned, and the engines settled back to normal.
Isaac responded by vomiting across the floor. Alarms still blared in his ears, and the worldfire still burned in his mind. Somewhere, he could see Tomas and the others responding to the hull breach on deck three, but that meant very little to him. The scanners were empty—he’d seen that through the eyes of the comms officer just as he passed out—and that meant they were safely away from Star’s End.
As the worldfire cooled and the assault on his mental fortress began to subside, he could hear the fading cries of the alien collective. Instead of speaking with the roar of a mighty ocean, its voice was barely louder than the whisper of the wind. It was dying, and Isaac knew that this request would be its last:
Take our children to the stars.
As the voice faded into the silence of eternal sleep, strength returned to Isaac’s mind. He reached out through his telepathic defenses, opening the door to his mental fortress to see what was outside. Instead of an ocean, there was now a desert—a vast empty wasteland devoid of life or moisture. The lonely wind howled off in the distance, and the skies were devoid of clouds.
Reva?
He blinked and opened his eyes, snapping out of the desolation in his mind. The alien collective was gone, burned in the terrible worldfire, but he was still connected to the others—could still see through their eyes, and feel their thoughts and emotions resonating through his own. Reva was unconscious but still alive, as were the others who had fallen when the worldfire had begun. He knelt by her side and laid his hand on her shoulder.
“We’re alive,” he said. “We’re safe—at least for now.”
But even if she were able to hear him, he knew that the words would bring her little comfort.
To the Stars
They’re gone, Reva thought, hardly able to believe it. An entire alien race destroyed by one madwoman’s rage.
Even so, she knew that that wasn’t entirely true. The consciousness’s last request still echoed through Isaac’s mind, and through his into her own: Take our children to the stars. She was one of those children, as was everyone on the Temujin. Through the symbiotic melding that they all now shared, they were the last surviving remnant of that extinct alien race.