Endless Sky (An Island in the Universe Trilogy Book 1)

by Greg Remy

  The other line crackled, and Kappa quickly set himself upright. Then it went silent again. He relaxed and lazily extended a leg onto his console and set the other atop it. Kappa stretched his arms over his head and waited. After a few minutes, the call clicked and a harsh, merciless voice spoke through his speakers.

  “Yes?”

  From the one word, Kappa could sense such disdain in it, such power and such ire, an ineffable scorn, as if each microsecond was too much to waste on the plebeians. Kappa quickly leaned forward to the microphone.

  “This is Kappa.”

  The voice on the other end callously hissed, “I know.” There was a pause and it smoothed out. “What of the two?”

  “Oh, much better than the two.” Kappa waited, primed for that teaser to perk up Mr. Achan. He realized though it was probably in vein. “I’ve located and retired a ‘Doctor Saknussemm,’” he said confidently.

  There was a momentary static. “Do you have the body?”

  “Yes sir. Though, it sustained a bit of… suction.”

  Mr. Achan’s voice remained unmoved. “Bring his corpse to the lab.”

  “Yes sir. The other two continue to be mobile. Orders?”

  “Dispose of them. By any means you deem necessary.”

  To this, Kappa smiled. It had been a long while since he was granted such autonomy. Moreover, it had been a long while since he had the opportunity to use Bessie. Kappa bent low and retrieved her from under his seat, placing her in his lap. An open kill order. He walked his fingers along her massive polysteel barrel with wandering thoughts.

  “Well…,” Mr. Achan broke in, his voice now returning to its original sin, “...keep hunting!” The slamming of the speakerphone made the speakers of Kappa’s ship send out a loud shrill note. He winced and then shrugged his shoulders.

  Kappa eyed the private craft he’d been tracking on long range scanners. It looked to be headed toward a spaceport not too far from the one it had set out from. He ignited the thrusters and stared out the cockpit window as the stars around him bounced and then began to drift faster and faster around his ship, like droplets on the windshield of a speeder bike. He approximated they would be there in six hours. He would be there in three. Perhaps there was time for a drink. He tipped his brimmed hat to the space beyond. He’d have this job wrapped up before sundown.

  Chapter 20

  The Witching Hour

  Zoe did her best to rinse off in the parsimonious lavatory. Upon returning to the cockpit, she sat with a slump next to Darious, who was focusing all his energies on the controls.

  “The ship does have an autopilot,” she said and then turned her attention to the view of outer-space. After some time, Zoe spoke again, continuing to stare outward, “When we were young, darkness was quite an unnerving thing. And you know what? It wasn’t the dark per say, it was the unknown it represented. The unknown is always so unjustifiably scary.” She turned to Darious. “It’s black out there. As black as it gets.” She then added lightheartedly, “but, the ship can maneuver just fine on autopilot.”

  “Yes captain,” he said without shifting his eyes from the console.

  “No. No. Today, you are the captain. Captain Darious.”

  Darious succeeded in putting the ship in autopilot and looked over at her, his expression easing. He smiled, and they exchanged a quick hug.

  “So, Captain Darious,” said Zoe, “how long ’till our arrival?”

  He turned and fumbled with the controls for a moment. “Five hours, 14 minutes.”

  “Good. Darious, I’m going to take a nap. It’s been one hell of a day.” Zoe’s stomach started growling. “Actually...” she licked her lips. “...let’s see if we can find something to eat first.”

  With the ship speeding steadily on course, the two made their way to the dining area of the private spaceliner. Zoe spotted plates and handed one to Darious while proceeding to rummage through the cabinets.

  “Ooh! Mashed potatoes!”

  Zoe grabbed three vacuum-sealed bags and plopped them on her plate. She tossed another on Darious’. He was busy reading the labeling on a package of mixed beans. She stuck out her tongue.

  “Ugh. Nope.”

  Zoe pulled the package from his hand and tossed it back in the cupboard. She then pulled out a large silver package in the shape of a ‘T.’

  “This is what you want,” she said, nodding emphatically.

  Darious held up the package and turned it over. It was without markings.

  “What is it?” he asked.

  “Steak.” Zoe smiled broadly. “Oh ya. Nuke that baby for 2 minutes in that oven over there and you’re good to go.” She pointed to a small appliance on the counter. He looked over at it and then paused, looking down. He seemed to be hesitating for some reason. “What’s wrong?” Zoe asked.

  “Well,” Darious stiffened up. “I’ve never had a steak.”

  “What!? Oh Darious. Oh, Captain Darious, you’re going to enjoy this!” She took the package from him, popped it in the oven and set the timer. She snapped her fingers. “Needs sauce.” She shuffled through the open cupboard. “Oh yes.”

  Zoe picked out a small glass bottle with a screw top and handed it to him. Darious inquisitively examined it. There was a cartoon animal with hooves on the label, posed with its rear legs kicking high in the air and a shocked look on its face. Flames were shooting out from its buttocks. Zoe couldn’t help but smirk at Darious’ utter confusion.

  “Guess what it is?”

  “I... I have no idea,” said Darious. “I did not know a creature existed that could propel flames from its underside. Why have a picture of such a grotesque beast on food rations?”

  Zoe couldn’t help but chuckle. “Rations, no. This here is hot sauce, a topping for your steak. And that there,” she pointed to the animal, “is a donkey. Farting fire.”

  He looked down at the bottle and over at her several times. Zoe was adoring his expressions. He would curl one eyebrow up in deep thought, then look at the bottle, stare at it for a few seconds, and then come back to her with that same perplexed look. Zoe burst out laughing.

  “Okay. Okay,” she said, “Put a dab on your finger and taste it.”

  Darious did so and his eyes began to widen further and further. His face turned a light shade of pink. Then, a smile started forming. It broadened. His white teeth slowly began revealing themselves, sparkling with glee.

  “Oh yes,” Darious said with an equal glint in his eyes. “That is good.”

  The oven beeped once. Darious carefully removed the package and opened it via the pull string, liberating the steak from its broiling chamber. Mouthwatering aromas of freshly roasted meat filled the ship. Next, Zoe heated the mashed potatoes and the two sat down for a proper meal in the front cabin.

  Darious doused his meat in the hot sauce and carved it into large portions. With each new forkload, sounds of elation escaped from him. Zoe also hungrily ate, using a ladle to spoon mushy masses into her mouth. They ate together in silence, though for Zoe, this mute moment said more than any words could have. She looked at her plate, at Darious, at the Jackass Hot Sauce, and out at space. She was happy.

  Five hours later, the pair reached Port Auborne. Darious was at the helm with Zoe coaching him through the docking procedure. As copilot, she had plotted their landing vector, checked over the spaceliner’s docking systems for any potential issues, scanned for space debris, and sent out a broadband beacon with their landing credentials. Zoe had found a parking spot near her ship’s docked location.

  “Careful. Careful,” she said slowly as Darious manually shuffled the ship into its final anchor position. He eased the craft forward and backed it off again, over and over. It rocked back and forth, as if it were a boat on water, until he had it aligned just right. “Perfect.” Zoe leaned over him and flipped a number of switches. A loud clamping noise echoed and then the craft was completely still. “And we’re here.” As they got up, Zoe noticed Darious take up the half-empty hot sauce a
nd pocket it. She smirked. Zoe held out her hand as he lowered his hood, and the two entered the passageway together.

  To her, and most certainly Darious’, relief, they came upon only little resistance in the hallways from other travelers and were soon entering into her ship. Zoe closed the hatch and exhaled a deep sigh of relief. Darious took off his sweater and did likewise.

  “Home sweet home,” she said, leaning on the hatchway. Darious nodded in agreement. Zoe left the central chamber and took up her captain’s seat. She wriggled in the familiar crevices and relaxed low in the chair.

  From here, Zoe wasted no time. She flicked her wrists out and began initiating the flight procedure. Darious took his post as the mechanical docking couplers released the tiny craft. While system checks were autonomously ticking off, Zoe slowly turned the ship around, outwardly facing away from the port. Alarms suddenly blared bloody murder and her console lit up with red warnings. Zoe quickly looked at her screen and saw her ship had been locked on.

  “Port bow, 300 meters off!” Darious yelled.

  Zoe looked out the cockpit window and saw in the lower corner, a small ship. It was hard to make out. The craft was dark—very dark against the backdrop of space—blending in with its celestial surroundings. Blending too well. Zoe immediately initiated prompts for circumrotating maneuvers. As the unidentified ship came forward, she could make out its tinted, grinning cockpit window.

  “Port bow, 250 meters!”

  Zoe continued squinting at the vessel. It had no markings. The belly seemed to be the whole of it. Connected atop was a pair of wings bending low around it, with the wingtips splitting into multitudinous razors. To Zoe, it looked like some sort of space bat, if there was such a thing. It had such a menacing look about it. Zoe had her fingers on the console, ready to engage thrusters. Why was it engaging them? Where had it come from?

  Darious declared, “100 meters. It is now stationary!”

  The two crafts stood in the dead of space, staring at each other; one backed against the space station, the other with infinite freedom behind it.

  Zoe opened a channel and hailed the ship. No response. Her skin began to feel prickly as she continued to leer at the ship. Darious came over next to her and peered out at the craft. He was about to say something when another siren went off and he spun back around, reading from his console.

  “Thirty-six additional lock-ons!”

  Zoe saw now, under the wings and close to the belly of the craft, the outlines of many rockets and an assortment of ordinance hardware. Blue lights began encircling each as they came online.

  Zoe suddenly remembered where she had seen that craft, or one like it anyway. It was a Drak-9 interstellar fighter—a retired military vehicle for special operations, capable of flight speeds much faster than her ship and much, much faster than the light she was observing it with. There would be no outrunning it.

  “Darious,” she called back through a storm of typing. “I’m engaging the Middle Finger Protocol.” She could hear Darious take a deep breath in. Zoe pressed enter and the power levels of her ship momentarily dipped as the high energy pulse charged and was shot toward the Drak-9. Staring out, Zoe was hoping with all her consciousness it would work. Just a second later, the resulting effect was apparent.

  The Drak-9 violently jerked from its stationary position and completed a series of rapid twirls in place, somersaulting over and over. Zoe was sure glad she was in her ship and not in that one. A sudden bright spark flashed from within its window and the spinning craft came to an abrupt halt, completely dead. A puff of smoke expanded out from the ship and dissipated in space, causing it to drift slowly out from the port and away from them.

  “Old tricks are the best ones,” said Zoe. As the paralyzed vessel floated away, she got a good look at the engines on its stern side. “Wow,” she said lowly.

  When Zoe had first decided to construct her own craft years ago, she had researched many vessels. She knew the engines of the original Drak-9s well. This was something far beyond those. Zoe flipped several toggle switches above her. Seeing the danger was over, as the ship was completely disabled, she swung her ship about and brought the two cockpits eye to eye.

  Zoe and Darious leaned in close to try and make out its interior. It was dark on the inside due to lack of power, though she could see a faint blinking red light in the corner, signifying emergency systems were still online. Suddenly, a man dashed forward at the cockpit window, striking it with his head and fists. Zoe and Darious jumped in near terror. The man’s eyes narrowed as he fixed his gaze on them. He grabbed the rimmed hat on his head, flinging it away and continued banging closed fists to the glass. His mouth opened wide and shut many times; Zoe almost thought she could hear his furious shouts through the vacuum gap of the two ships.

  Zoe blinked. Damnit. He must have been tracking them since their last encounter. With a few keystrokes, she probed the exterior of his ship and found a small array of antenna at the junction between the two overbearing wings. She smirked; if the man in the cowboy hat did not like that last trick, he would definitely not like what she was about to do. Zoe engaged thrusters and propelling her craft forward, ignoring the proximity alerts. She ignited secondary boosters and pitched her craft upward just before impact, grinding the hard, metallic underside of her ship against the antennas, pulverizing them to dust. As the grating sounds resounded in her ship, she fired all thrusters to full, sending the Drak-9 into a mad horizontal spin, and she blasted off into deep space.

  The rush of escape had sparked the joints around Zoe’s body, but soon her lips began to slide downwards, and her heart bottomed out. She looked at Darious who had an equally sour expression on his face. Zoe knew the same thought had undoubtedly connected them: They were in deep.

  Chapter 21

  Good Thing No Little Ones Are Present

  “Damn fucking hackers! Fucking damnit!” Kappa smashed his forehead into the window toward the deviant ship. A meteor of a punch flew forward and flattened against the cockpit windshield. “Fucking mange of the... the garrh!”

  Kappa’s enraged words crumpled into unintelligible sounds and guttural rumblings as he pounded more fists into the window. The two of them stood there, just staring at him, like deer caught in terawatt excimer headlights. He grabbed the hat off his head. “Fucking damnit!” Kappa crushed it in his hand and threw it away. “You fucking hackers!” He continued mashing his fists, each blow sounding with dull tinks.

  The woman, Zoe, was now typing. Kappa paused, staring at her. She would kill him now that he’d been rendered powerless. It was over.

  “My hat?!” he cried and looked to where he had thrown it in his fit of rage. He picked it up, dusted it off and replaced it on his head. Now he could die.

  Just as he finished adjusting the pointed rim forward, there was a shock to his ship, rocking it backward and causing him to lose his footing. Kappa quickly spun around on his hands and knees, looking out the window, and was blinded by the sudden burst from an exceedingly bright rocket blast.

  “Ahh!” he yelled as his vision was seared white through closed eyelids.

  In confusion, he scrambled to his feet, covering his eyes. Then, as if thrown by an invisible opponent, Kappa was suddenly hurled sideways. The ship had been spurred into a wild spin. Kappa’s fluttering, flustered flight through the cabin abruptly ended with his gut wrapping around a structural beam. All the air from his lungs was immediately expelled. He wheezed and attempted to release himself, but the centrifugal force was too much. Pushing with his arms, Kappa was only able to slightly ease himself off, allowing breath to partially return, but was unable to fully relief himself of the horseshoe posture that had him pinned. He let out a half-breathless yell. The bright light was gone now but the blurriness and stinging sensation lingered in his eyes. His stomach was compacted and now disorientation filled his senses as the breakneck spin continued.

  Oh, he did not feel good. With minimal gravitational stabilizers, with minimal everything for that
matter, there was nothing to slow the spin.

  “Ugh.”

  His stomach writhed; his mind whirled. With another aggressive push, Kappa released himself from the beam and collapsed next to it, falling flat on his back against the wall of the ship. His stomach heaved once more but he forced the bile back down.

  “Fucking. Hackers,” he choked.

  Kappa strained to look down at himself. He couldn’t even make out his own booted feet through his burning eyes. What a rodeo this turned out to be. He let his head go limp and it slammed against the metallic wall. He allowed the spinning to overtake him.

  “You. Win. For now.” Kappa shut his eyes and let the blackness come.

  It was some time later when Kappa awoke to the feeling of being lifted up from his backside. As he opened his eyes, he hit the floor. He let out a surprised yelp and strived to get to his feet, stumbling as the rotational forces continued to draw him outward. The ship’s revolutions had slowed; perhaps it had grazed something. He sure felt sick. Holding his midsection, he slowly made his way to the rear of the ship, toward the computer bank. He had to assess the damage those two mooncalves had caused and then assess his options.

  Damn they were determined. Smart too. How long had it been since anyone had put up any resistance? And stealing corporate documents... who did that sort of thing anyway? This was the first time he had come across someone who’d done it. All he ever dealt with nowadays were drunks who pissed off some suit at Pantheon. Wasn’t the galaxy big enough for everyone to just leave everyone else the fuck alone and go about their merry little way?

  Kappa slumped next to the computer terminal and took in several long-needed breaths. The spinning could last for days if he didn’t get the ship properly started, or worse he could crash into the port, and who knows where it was. Surely that would happen before anyone bothered to stop and help him.

  He bent low and felt around for the latch on the wall. With a push of his thumb and a mechanical click, the drawer opened, and Kappa began sliding out the ship’s central processing core. It was an open-top black module containing many vertically aligned boards. He immediately smelled the distinct odor of newly soldered connections and grimaced. No longer did he feel the pains of his stomach; it was now the box that received his full attention. That smell was not good. Once the core was fully extracted, he delicately brought it down to the floor, continuing to hold it with one hand. Peering in, Kappa could see scarring along the inner walls, no doubt from an overloading of the ship’s electronics. He muttered several short curses. Reaching in, Kappa removed one of the rectangular boards. He held it up to the dim glow of space, complimented by an intermittent red light, and his face creased inward. The intricate circuitry, originally green, was now brown with black streaks strewn throughout it like petrified lightning. He turned it over; the same etchings were present on the other side. The computer board suddenly gave way in his hand, crumbling into countless tiny bits and pouring through his fingers like grains of sand. Wisps of ash went up into the air as the ruins settled on the ground.