“There—you see?” He waved toward the viewports with one hand. “Gone!”
“What’s left of the ship’s weapons?” Falcon asked the officer who stood nearby, ignoring Condor.
The officer cast a nervous glance at his commander, who frowned but nodded.
“Blast-cannons at one-third power. Missiles and mines completely depleted.”
Falcon and Condor eyed one another.
“Our first priority,” Hawk stated as he stepped somewhat between the other two, “must be to repair and replenish this vessel’s weapons. Because I very much doubt that was all—”
Before he could complete his sentence, Hawk was interrupted by the tactical officer.
“Another contact, sir,” he called to Condor, who seemed in reaction to deflate a little.
“How many?” the blond man asked, almost wearily.
“…Just one, for now.”
Condor brightened. “Same kind of ship?”
“Affirmative. But not in an attack vector.”
Condor frowned. Somehow that was even more disturbing.
“What’s it doing?”
“Signal coming in,” the communications officer reported. “Universal translation code.”
All three of them looked to the comm station expectantly.
“They’re requesting a truce,” the woman at that station reported. “A parley.”
Condor looked at Hawk and Falcon, puzzled.
“Is that—that doesn’t seem right,” he said.
“No,” Falcon replied.
“Wait,” Condor said then. “Of course.” He laughed. “This must be their flight leader. He probably held back from the attack and now, with his squadron gone, he’s scared. Maybe his ship was damaged in the fight. He can’t get back home. Wants to discuss terms of surrender.”
“What is the pilot saying?” Hawk asked the comm tech.
“…Nothing.”
Condor grinned.
“Then allow him aboard.”
“That’s a mistake,” Falcon growled.
“I tend to agree,” Hawk said. “We don’t know—”
“We know all we need to know,” Condor said. “The guy wants to come aboard, and we need to know more about them.” He laughed again. “And perhaps we can take his ship apart while he’s here—learn a few things about how they evaded our first strike, and so on.”
Condor would not be dissuaded, and so the little ship passed into the same docking bay where Hawk’s ship rested. After it had settled to the deck and the atmosphere had been pumped in, a circular hatch formed on the side.
Hawk nodded as he watched on the display. “Same as the creatures I fought,” he said, seeing the alien that emerged. Tall, black, hideous, and insect-like—there was no mistaking them.
“I would not allow it any further inside the ship,” Falcon advised, the human portion of his face creased with concern.
Condor gestured to one of his nearby techs. “Have you scanned that ship? The pilot? Any weapons?”
“Nothing, sir,” the tech replied.
“Nothing you can detect,” Hawk stated. “But I’ve fought them—one on one.” He jabbed a finger at the creature on the display. “They have biologically-engineered weapons. For instance,” and he pointed at the creature’s cylindrical-shaped left arm, “that thing is a disintegrator cannon.”
Condor reacted with a start. He grabbed the intercom microphone and clicked the link open.
“No weapons beyond that point,” he called down to the creature. “You’ll have to stop right there and disarm. We will—”
What happened next astonished and somewhat sickened all of them. The insect creature stopped and stood unmoving on its rear two legs for several moments. Then it reached up with its long, deadly, curved-blade right arm and brought it down with a savage blow against its left, severing the limb just above the elbow.
The disintegrator-weapon arm dropped to the deck in a growing pool of ichor.
“That,” Condor observed when he could speak again, “was… something.”
“That’s one word for it, I suppose,” Falcon growled. “Definitely took the word ‘disarm’ literally.”
“Its weapon is its arm,” Hawk pointed out again. “That was the only way for it to ‘disarm.’”
“It must truly want to parley with us if it was willing to do that,” Condor said, staring at the creature on the display.
Falcon half-shrugged. “It was stupid. Or…” His voice trailed off as he seemed to be considering something.
“You’re not going to let it out of the docking bay now, are you?” Hawk asked, keeping his eyes on the creature.
Condor considered that.
“It does still have the cutting arm,” he noted, before drawing his twin pistols from their holsters. “But I have these. And I know you two gentlemen are surely more than prepared for—”
“It’s moving again,” Hawk pointed out.
The creature was nearing the doors leading out of the hangar deck.
“Stop,” Condor called over the intercom.
It did not stop. It reached out gestured with its cutting arm and the doors opened.
“How did it do that?” Condor said aloud, mystified.
“Biological tech,” Falcon explained. “It can’t easily be identified by mechanical scanners, because until it’s used, it looks like some sort of normal organ or physical process.”
The creature was shuffling along one of the corridors now. Condor ordered his men to fall back while he considered what to do.
“It really has me curious now,” he told the others. “I want to dissect it—and its ship.”
But before the conversation could continue further, the creature apparently arrived at the location it was aiming for. It stopped in the corridor and leaned over, and dark fluids spilled out from the stump of its left arm. They formed a steadily growing puddle on the deck.
“Oh, that’s disgusting,” Condor said, watching.
“We have to evacuate,” Falcon growled.
“What?”
Hawk nodded. “Yeah, I think he’s right. I have a bad feeling.”
Condor scoffed and stepped quickly down from the command dais. He strode across the bridge and through the doors, the other two Hands on his trail.
“Not a good idea,” Hawk called after him as they went. Falcon said nothing, but his unhappiness was palpable.
They hurried along the winding corridors of the ship until, rounding a turn, they could see the alien creature perhaps twenty yards away. The pool of fluid surrounding it was quite large now. They halted.
“What are you doing?” Condor called out. “You wanted a parley, and I granted it.”
The creature looked up at them, its clusters of red eyes blazing clear hate.
“We need to evacuate,” Falcon said again, quietly but forcefully. “Now.”
Condor ignored him, still staring at the creature. “Have you nothing to say to us, after all this?”
It emitted a hissing sound, then slumped lower to the deck. The fluids mostly formed a circular pool beneath it now, but traces were trickling away. One long trail ran almost to the Hands where they stood. Falcon stooped and sniffed at it. He nodded.
“You—your kind—infest our universe,” the creature managed to vocalize in somewhat recognizable words. “You… must be… cleansed.”
“Condor,” Falcon all-but-shouted, grabbing the tall man by one arm and yanking him around furiously, “these chemicals are combining to form an explosive. They’re going to blow!”
To his credit, Condor only stared dumbly at Falcon for a split second before the light came on in his eyes.
“When?” he demanded.
“Any second!”
Condor raised both hands, arms stretched out to each side. Lights flared all around, at first clear and bright, then swirling into many colors. The swirl of colors moved away from Condor and passed down the corridor until reaching the alien. There they halted, surrounding th
e insect creature.
“How are you doing that?” Hawk asked, watching in fascination. “What is that?”
“I’m manipulating quantum threads,” Condor replied. “Perhaps I’ll explain it in detail later. If we live,” he added.
The swirling sphere of light changed quickly to an almost solid sphere, green in color, opaque.
“Will that be enough to hold it?” Hawk asked, bracing himself.
“You’ll be one of the first to know,” Falcon replied.
Condor leaned forward, arms extended, concentrating on solidifying the sphere.
With a muffled but very loud sound, the chemicals detonated.
The sphere changed instantly from green to red to deep purple. But it held—barely.
The shock threw the Hands to the floor, causing Condor to lose control of the sphere. He managed to prevent it from disintegrating first on the side facing them, but this effectively converted it into a shaped charge that blasted through the deck with horrendous force.
The ship shuddered. More explosions followed rapidly, even as the Hands sought to rise.
“Major damage to all systems,” a technician reported over Condor’s comm link. And then, before anyone could respond, the tactical officer’s voice cut in. “More ships approaching! Same type, but…”
“What?” Condor demanded, on his feet again, ears ringing.
“There are dozens of them, sir!”
Hawk faced Condor, eyes intense. “We have to abandon ship now.”
Condor looked away, but he was nodding.
“Hawk’s ship is in the hangar,” Falcon pointed out. “It will hold perhaps a dozen, at least for a short time.”
“No,” Condor said. “I don’t trust it to keep me—us—alive against a whole fleet of those things.”
Hawk looked at him in puzzlement.
“Well, unless you have another magic trick you can pull out…”
“Actually, I do,” Condor told them. Some of his self-assurance crept back into his demeanor. “You wanted to learn more about my new weapon? I believe the time has come to show you.” He motioned back down the corridor. “This way.”
“A weapon?” Hawk called after him, following along behind Falcon. “We need more than a weapon! We need a way out of here!”
“Exactly,” Condor replied.
They emerged into a broad, high-ceilinged room, one side of which was nearly filled with a very unusual collection of machinery. None of the pieces, ranging in size from smaller than Hawk’s pistol to almost as large as Hawk’s ship, seemed to match one another. It was as if they had been gathered from all over the galaxy, from dozens of different civilizations. Neither Hawk nor Falcon had a chance to study any of it very closely, however, because Condor had apparently already activated one of the larger modules by remote and now a bright swirl of light was forming in the center of the room.
Hawk hesitated a moment, reached down and drew out a small communications device. He opened a link to his ship.
“Get out of here now,” he ordered it. “Get to safety if you can. I will track you down if and when I am able.”
The ship started to argue but Hawk stifled it. “I’ll be okay. It seems I’m leaving via an alternate route,” he reassured it.
The swirl of light brightened and almost solidified. Now it formed a disk perhaps a dozen feet high and across.
The ship shook violently. Various members of the crew, at Condor’s command, had abandoned their posts and were lining up outside the door.
“This way, gentlemen,” Condor stated grandly, gesturing toward the swirling disk of light. “Greater wonders await you.”
“I’ll settle for just staying alive a bit longer,” Falcon replied.
Hawk reached out and stopped Condor. “Before we go through, and just in case this… whatever it is… doesn’t work—tell us the truth. You’re not actually a Condor, are you? You were never a Hand.”
The blond man glared at him angrily for a split-second, but then he softened and actually laughed softly.
“You’re correct,” he told Hawk. “I was never a Hand.” He gestured around them. “I did all of this myself, with no help from any all-powerful computer mind to support me. But,” he added, “Ask yourselves this question: Without the Machine behind you now, are you two any different?”
Then, with a smile and a wink, he stepped through and vanished.
The ship shook again, roughly. They could all tell it was about to come apart.
Eyeing the brown-clad crewmembers, Falcon leaned in close.
“The man makes a valid point—you know?”
Hawk’s face was lined deeply. He shook his head. “I don’t know if it means we should trust him more—or less.” He looked up and met Falcon’s eyes. “Not to mention what it says about us, and why we’re here now.”
Falcon snorted and, grasping Hawk by the shoulders, spun him around to face the shimmering disk. “That’s an easy one, my friend,” he chuckled. “We’re not here now!”
Falcon propelled Hawk through the portal, then followed him into the circle of light.
The last member of Condor’s crew made it through just before the ship exploded.
2: Raven
They were taking no chances with her.
Raven had awoken from the knockout gas attack to find herself bound almost mummy-like, covered neck-to-toe in broad, flat bands that held her completely immobile. She lay on her side on the floor, staring across the room she now occupied and taking in every detail, even as she probed the ropes as best she could for any weaknesses.
From her odd vantage she could tell very little; only that she was in a very large room with white plastic-looking walls and high ceilings. The translucent, glowing panels that comprised the ceiling over her were something on the order of thirty meters up. Banks of unfamiliar equipment ran along the sides of the room all around. It was all sort of eerie in appearance; half-melted and with shimmering lights beneath the surface. A quick rummaging through the stored memories of her previous lives confirmed it—the equipment looked like nothing she had ever encountered before.
Some time earlier, a cluster of troopers had entered the room, green-clad Shrike leading the way. She had conducted a brief conversation with someone via holo display, but the angle had been wrong for Raven to see who she was speaking with. Whoever it was, they held enough authority to cause Shrike to speak to them in respectful tones, if somewhat unhappy ones.
“…my decision that it was the safe thing to do. Clearly it was a Hand’s ship and therefore represented a threat. And since she would have found us anyway—”
A man’s voice coming through a speaker had interrupted her.
“You could have simply blasted her ship when you first identified it.”
“I thought another Hand might prove valuable, if it could be turned.”
“A Raven? You seriously thought to sway a Raven to our side?”
The slender blonde woman had emitted a miniscule sigh of frustration.
“I did not know she was a Raven until she came out of the ship.”
A pause, then, “Very well. We will speak more of this soon. We will be coming through after dinner.”
The monitor had gone black and Shrike had all but stomped out, her retinue of guards hurrying to keep up.
And that was how things had stood for the last hour or more, while Raven lay seemingly forgotten.
Finally Shrike reappeared in the doorway. She walked over and stared down at Raven, several of her soldiers behind her.
“I’m sorry for your rather uncomfortable condition,” the woman in green said. “But of course everyone knows, or should know, how dangerous a Raven can be. So we have to be very careful.”
“Who are you people?” Raven asked. “Why are you pretending to be a Hand?”
“Pretending?” She frowned, looking away for a moment, and seemed to deflate a little. Then, “I don’t think of it that way,” she said, more to herself than to Raven. “I suppose it depen
ds on how one defines a Hand.” Regaining some of her forcefulness, she strode confidently, almost majestically around Raven’s incapacitated form. “I have all the abilities, all the talents of a Shrike. In effect, I am a Hand.”
Raven scoffed.
“Just not a Hand of your Machine,” Shrike continued. “I am free to do as I wish.”
“Free? That’s not how it sounded a little while ago,” Raven pointed out. “It sounded like you have a boss every bit as dictatorial—every bit as in control of you—as the Machine would be.”
Shrike frowned at that. “I have chosen the path I follow now,” she said. “Unlike you.”
“I serve the greater good of all life in the galaxy,” Raven shot back. “Whom do you serve?”
Shrike’s frown deepened.
“I’ve done my best to keep you alive thus far,” she barked. “You should show me some gratitude.”
“Release me and you may experience my gratitude in full.”
Shrike emitted a sound full of frustration and anger. She backed away, hands on her hips, glaring at Raven.
For her part, Raven cursed inwardly at her own mistake. The woman had nearly gotten close enough… and then Raven had pushed her too far. A foolish mistake, unbecoming of her role.
After a couple of seconds, Raven spoke again, this time softening her tone somewhat.
“If what you are doing is in any way beneficial to the greater good, then perhaps we need not be antagonists,” she said. “Leaving aside your status as a Hand—which is, in any case, not for me to judge.”
The woman who claimed to be a Shrike looked back down at her. The lines on her face eased a bit.
“What are you saying?”
“I am saying there could be room for cooperation between us, if you would but share with me your plans so that I might determine if I could support them.”
The tall, blonde woman moved a few steps closer, and her expression now morphed to ambivalence bordering on hopefulness—further proof to Raven that this woman was no true Hand. She continued to eye Raven, weighing the odds.
“I am sorry I allowed my initial reaction to your identity to poison our relationship at the start,” Raven added, hoping she wasn’t now pushing too far in the other direction.
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