by L. E. Thomas
“Yes, sir. Sir? Isn’t an outlet mall a little public for a private meeting?”
“We know we are being monitored. A pubic place is better right now. We think these actions are being carried out in small teams less likely to make a scene on a dark world. Talk to your contacts in person.” He glanced at his watch. “You will arrive in the middle of the night. Do not let them know you are coming. By the time you meet with the agent at the rendezvous point, it is my hope we will know more about these attackers. Questions?”
Austin thought about the threat to Earth, wondering if the pirates had bigger ambitions than terrorism. “Sir, is it possible Earth is being softened up for an attack or, maybe, an invasion?”
Pierce turned his head back and laughed. “Seriously? I heard you had impressed the officers on Tarton’s Junction, but it obviously wasn’t because of your studies.”
Austin frowned. “Is it really that hard to believe?”
“If you knew how many observation posts are scattered throughout Legion space,” Pierce said, rubbing his chin, “you would never raise the possibility of an invasion in Quadrant Eight. The only way a task force could even try it is by curve hopping through our space. There isn’t enough power in a ship for a curve of that distance.”
“So it’s not even possible?”
Pierce kept rubbing his chin, gazing into the holographic map still hovering over the center of the room like a spirit. “You shouldn’t worry about these things. The only way it’s possible is to use a way station to boost your range—they’re like beacons. But no one could afford that except the military and even that hasn’t happened since the last war. I think it’s safe to say Earth won’t be invaded.”
Austin shook his head. “And they said the Titanic wouldn’t sink.”
“Okay, moving on. Chief Sharkey will accompany you on the trip to Atlanta. No Star Runners are to travel alone while this crisis continues. Get your mother, your friend, meet the agent. Dismissed.”
Sharkey snapped a salute and pulled open the door. Austin looked at Pierce and saluted. Pierce nodded and turned back to his work.
They marched down the stairs and into the common area. The other officers still stared into their computers. One typed and chewed on his fingernails. The Brazilian officer nodded as they strolled across the room.
“Who are all these people?” Austin whispered.
“Tizona is a safe place,” Sharkey said softly. “Some are officers who have no contacts or family here on Earth are reporting to campuses across the globe, coming in to be safe until command figures out exactly what is going on. Others are here to work during this emergency.”
“I see.” Austin looked at Sharkey. “And what do you think is going on?”
“I don’t like speculating.”
A blue Tizona golf cart awaited them outside the Terminus Building. Austin moved to the front seat of the cart and held onto the side of his seat. Sharkey launched the cart away from the building, sending gravel spitting backward. Austin grabbed the bar for support, so he didn't tumble onto the Grand Lawn.
"Chief?” Austin paused a moment to consider his words. “Has something like this ever happened?"
Sharkey took a deep breath as he negotiated a turn into the wooded path. "The action is usually far from Earth, but command has placed everyone on high alert. No one has ever targeted Legion personnel on a backwater like Earth, at least not on this scale. Honestly, that is all we know. However, it appears Star Runners are being targeted throughout Quadrant Eight, not just on Earth."
"Who would do that?"
He sighed and shook his head. "Anyone. Zahl Empire. Pirates. It has happened before in the Quadrant, but long before my time. Class was thankfully not in session when we received word. I am glad. It is a real pain evacuating campus and dealing with parents."
"I'm sure."
The cart squeaked to a halt outside the main gate. Four Tizona blue sedans parked side-by-side in the lot in front of them.
"We going to drive all night?" Austin asked.
Sharkey rolled his eyes. "Well, they certainly don't fly."
*****
It took an hour to reach the long stretch of Interstate 16 amid a world of endless pine trees broken by gas stations and fast food restaurants. Sharkey spent his time engrossed in a tablet, furiously typing and swiping through documents while Austin drove. Austin tried to listen, but had to focus on the road. Driving the car felt strange after doing nothing but piloting a Trident fighter. By the second hour in the car, weariness drifted into his mind. His thoughts wandered in the silence.
"Bathroom break," Sharkey barked, his voice pounding through the silence like a jackhammer. He leaned over. "We could use some gas, too."
"Yes, sir."
"No need for that 'sir' crap anymore, lieutenant. You outrank me and you earned it."
"Yes, sir."
Sharkey laughed. "You know I was hard on you in school, but you understand now."
Austin thought of the hours Sharkey spent yelling at all of them, of the time he spent providing the survival training. "I do."
"Your training is what helped you do what you did to save Scorpion and Talon."
Austin looked at him. "You heard about that?"
"The entire navy in Quadrant Eight heard about that." Sharkey gazed out the window. “We are all briefed on the latest incidents with the Tyral Pirates. That’s a situation that just keeps getting worse.”
Austin felt his chest tighten at the mention of the pirates. “They all need to be destroyed.”
Sharkey snorted. “I couldn’t agree more. You know where they are?”
“Of course not.”
“Well, that’s the problem.” Sharkey made a clicking sound with his tongue. “Still, you scrapped with them up close and personal. What was it like?”
Austin heard Rodon’s taunting voice over the gamma wave replaying in his mind. He nearly had the pirate leader, even fired on him despite the disadvantage of carrying Ryker and Nubern. His adrenaline pumping in his veins. The final bolts crashed into Rodon’s ship, ripping apart metal. But he escaped. Some on board the station thought Austin should be granted a kill for the effort, but there was no proof. Rodon was still out there, waiting.
“Frustrating,” he finally said. “I should have had him.”
“Don’t worry about Rodon,” Sharkey said, folding his arms over his chest and reclining the seat backward. “He’ll get what’s coming to him.”
Austin shook his head. “But how does he keep doing this?”
“You have no control over what he does. You can only control how you react. Right now, we are going to save your mother and friend.” Sharkey shrugged. “Let’s worry about the task at hand and that task is making sure you don’t fall asleep at the wheel. Let me just say I’m grateful you saved an old friend.”
“An old friend?” Austin blinked. “You mean Nubern?”
"I served with Nubern years ago during his first command."
"You were a Star Runner?"
He nodded. "Until I lost my leg."
"Your leg? What?"
"Wonders of robotics, lieutenant. One of the reasons I don't leave campus often, so I appreciate this diversion even if it is for unfortunate reasons. I took this assignment to help younger Star Runners when I was no longer cleared to fly."
Austin frowned. “Forgive me, sir, but security chief seems to be quite a demotion from a Star Runner?”
“It wasn’t easy losing my wings, sure.” He stared out the window. “But you can’t risk a robotic limb failing during a dogfight, either. They offered me other positions, but I wasn’t interested in being around the fleet when I couldn’t fly anymore. It’s fine. I enjoy what I do.”
Austin stared back at the road. If Sharkey was ever wounded or needed medical assistance, the discovery of an artificial leg would certainly turn heads in an emergency room.
“May I ask how, sir?” Austin asked, his eyes flickering from the road to Sharkey’s artificial leg.
Austin swallowed, his eyes fixated on the lone road.
“The Zahl interceptors are fast, faster than anything you’d believe. They swept in like a wave, crashing into our picket ships. I was on alert status and launched. Bogeys filled the space around Lian like a fiery meteor shower. Never seen anything like it before or since. I did what I could, but they blasted me out of the sky. The ship came apart. A piece of metal ripped my leg to shreds. I had to eject and woke up on our ship. Nubern saved me.”
Austin exhaled. “He’s a good man.”
“The best.”
Austin had never heard anyone speak of a conflict with the Zahl Empire, only read about it in his required text. He didn’t know Nubern had faced off against Zahlian forces.
He shook his head.
“Once we retrieve my Mom and Kadyn, how do we know who to meet?”
“We are scheduled to meet with an EIF agent for further orders and those guys can disappear in a crowd like no others. I have some instructions in my tablet. Remember, we’re on strict radio silence—that includes internet. Make sure what you have is offline.” Sharkey frowned. “Whole world’s upside down right now, so I’m taking things one hour at a time.”
“I understand,” Austin said, his stomach growling.
"Let's get gas at the next stop," he said. "We need to move and get some coffee.”
Up ahead, the massive lights of the interstate highway exit illuminated the black sky. Austin leaned forward over the steering wheel.
“I never thanked you, chief.”
“Me?” Sharkey asked. “Why?”
“Your training. I wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for you.”
Sharkey laughed. “No charge, Stone. I get off campus so rarely. I wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for you. We’ll call it even.”
CHAPTER FOUR
A crash woke him. Josh’s joints popped as he folded his sore legs beneath him and propped against the damp wall. His teeth chattered. He clenched his jaw to stop and strained to decipher the chaotic sounds echoing through the halls. Men shouted in unfamiliar languages, the voices coming closer.
"What's that?" he whispered.
"They are coming," Delmar answered, his gravelly voice grim.
In the weeks since his arrival, the nearby area had been relatively quiet other than the guard bringing the same, inedible slop of slithering mucus. Machinery occasionally rumbled in the distance. Several times, Josh wondered if the pirates had buried them in this underground cavern to leave them for dead. But the green slop-carrying pirate continued bringing food, so Josh had nothing to do but wait.
The gate to his cell shuttered and slid back slightly into the rock. A voice barked in another language. An order apparently, but he had no way to know for sure. Josh hesitated before moving towards the opening, his muscles wrenching with each movement. He poked his head through the door as a turtle would inch out of his shell, straining to see through the darkness. The smell of human waste and garbage hit him.
A metal object hit his forehead.
"Darak!"
Callused hands rough as sandpaper clamped on his throat. He gasped for air, felt his lungs ignite like a match. His vision darkened. A metal object forced its way onto his skull, sharp fingers pressing into his neck and head. The razor-sharp edges of the metal split his skin, blood trickling down his forehead and cheeks. The salty taste of blood-tinged his lips and tongue. Another cylindrical object thrust into his ear. He cried out, but his voice drowned in a sea of shrieks.
"When I tell you to rise," a familiar voice cooed in his bleeding ear, "you will do so."
Josh nodded, not really understanding why or if anyone could see his response in the darkness. The mechanical fingers pressed into his skull, the grip tightening. Ignoring the pain, he risked a glance at his surroundings. Other prisoners lined the dark corridor. The crowded walkway stretched wide enough for two men to stand beside each other, but the ceiling seemed to be about six feet high. Every prisoner in the corridor was equipped with this strange metallic object. The silhouette looked almost spider-like. Guards in loose black fabric roamed the hall, keeping their rifles aimed low.
This was it. This was the moment of his death. Delmar was right. The pirates had no need for them. He prayed for his parents never to know his fate, better they thought he drowned in the Pacific Ocean. But Kadyn, oh, how he wished he had said more to her during Austin’s games or during any of the times he stared at her without speaking. He would never know if any part of her felt the same way.
A sound escaped the hallway like a vacuum.
"You have been equipped with a translator to assist with today's duties," the voice said in his ear. "You should all be able to understand me. Raise your hand if you understand."
A dozen yards to his front, a prisoner kept his hands down. A nearby guard kicked the prisoner's leg.
"Raise your hand!" the guard yelled.
When the prisoner did not comply, the guard pressed the rifle to the prisoner's head and pulled the trigger. The laser blast filled the tunnel with a red flash. The prisoner tumbled to the ground, twitched twice and fell still.
"Now, the rest of you should know the device you wear is also for security. At my command, this device will crush your skull, effectively ending your service to me. Some of you here may already know me as Dax Rodon, but you shall only address me as sir or master.”
Josh's blood boiled. He bit his bottom lip, closed his eyes and took a deep breath.
In all his months on Tarton’s Junction, the Tyral Pirates had been lurking in the shadows. The name of Dax Rodon lingered in the whispers of officers, caused the worried looks of the experienced Star Runners, and magnified the grumbles of mechanics working to repair the Tridents damaged during these hit-and-run raids. Dax Rodon had been leading them, growing bolder with each passing month.
And now Josh was his prisoner.
"Today,” Rodon said, “you will empty an acquired freighter and then strip it. Half of you will be sold off or killed by the end of the day. The best workers will stay. Guards! Move our workers into the hangar."
With an agonized murmur, the mass rose and charged forward. Josh felt hot breath on his neck from the man behind him. The guards packed the prisoners in tight like cattle. His body swayed on the uneven surface of the tunnel's floor.
"Stay close to me!" Delmar whispered in front of him.
After whispering to the voice in the darkness, Josh looked at his only companion for the first time. Delmar’s head was shaved, his ripped, white robes covered in a gray muck. The smuggler’s tall, lanky body moved like a living skeleton.
"We work together, and we survive this," he hissed.
The group snaked through the dark tunnels lit only by crude flashlights. The guards hit stragglers with the butts of their rifles. Those unfortunate enough to trip and fall seemed to receive the worst treatment. Trying to block out the sounds of suffering, Josh kept his eyes on the back of Delmar's head. The spider-like object attached to him, leaving streaks of blood on his temple and neck.
The tunnel opened into a large cave illuminated by fluorescent lights hanging from the rocky ceiling. A metal floor littered with spacecraft and scrap metal stretched for hundreds of yards. At least a dozen stolen Trident fighters had been parked in no discernable pattern, each fighter a desecrated memorial to a fallen Star Runner. Josh glanced to his left, then to his right, and gasped.
The cavern opened on both sides to reveal an asteroid-packed star field. A massive hunk of rock spun slowly in his view. Beyond, asteroids stretched into infinity. So the Tyral Pirates hide in an aste
roid field? He saw no nearby planet or moon of any kind, just the blackness of deep space. At least he was certain the pirates hadn’t taken him to another planet. However, how far had they transported him? Was he on the other side of the galaxy?
"Move it!" a guard yelled, smacking Josh in the back of the head.
A battered merchant freighter took up the majority of the makeshift hangar. Laser blasts scorched the hull. The base of the cavern had been covered with steel grates; some pirates dumped tools down into the second level. Enough space had been cleared to fit the freighter. Jagged cracks covered the freighter's hull, the metal blackened and burnt. A hole opened into the freighter near the bridge.
That must be how they took the freighter, Josh thought. Just like they had with the Sabre.
Tyral Pirates swarmed around the freighter like ants. Josh saw no control tower or crew quarters from his vantage point at the base of the hangar. If he could send a distress signal somehow, perhaps he could limit his stay.
"These passengers should be sorted," Rodon's voice hissed in his earpiece. "All able-bodied men and women will be sent with Tatos on the left of the hangar. The sick, elderly or otherwise useless will follow Simex on the right and be led to the airlock for release."
Josh gazed off to his right. The airlock door was the size of a two-car garage. Rodon planned to force the innocent passengers in there to die. He clenched his teeth. He had to do something.
"You are brave," Delmar whispered without turning around, "but ultimately foolish. Do you really think you could take them all?"
Josh surveyed the hangar. At least twenty heavily armed guards stood in multiple locations throughout the hangar, all focusing on the line of prisoners.
He leaned closer to Delmar. "We have to do something."
"We are,” Delmar said. “We are surviving. We will stand, but today is not the day."
The freighter’s cargo bay doors slid open. The first two passengers rushed out with steel crowbars cocked back in attack position, ready for battle. They yelled, unleashing the battle cry of civilians who had never been in a fight. A flurry of laser blasts ended the rebellion before it began, the guards laughing as they murdered the innocent. Josh winced and wanted to turn away, but remained focused on the grisly scene before him. The two doomed passengers fell to the hangar floor with a dozen candle-size fires burning on their bodies. The closest guard stepped over to the men and fired a shot into each man's head.