Kharmic Rebound

by Yeager, Aaron

* * *

  Inside the remains of the yacht, Gerald fought in the dark against the forces that threatened to crush him against the wall. A missile explosion had thrown the powerless vessel into a spin. Fumbling about, he managed to get the final clasps done on the pressure suit he’d pulled out, and the helmet sealed shut with a hiss.

  Suddenly, there was light again in the cabin, casting shadows over the undetonated warhead penetrating the room like a blade. The light gathered together, and then he was in two rooms. It was as if with one eye, he was seeing the inside of the yacht, while with the other he was looking into Trahzi’s room back on the Kalia Greir. It made his head spin, and no matter how hard he shook his head, his vision wouldn’t clear.

  “Dyson? Dyson, get it together,” the ghostly image of Ilrica standing next to him said.

  “H... how are you...?”

  “You humans wouldn’t get it. Just pretend it’s magic and stay focused, okay?”

  He blinked. “Okay.”

  “We’ve got to get you out of there before you’re blown to bits, but Trahzi here tied herself into a knot of feelings. I need you to do that sensitivity crap of yours and talk her out of it.”

  Ilrica touched some control on her neck and suddenly Trahzi was sitting next to him as if they were together in the same room.

  “We... can’t move...” Trahzi said softly.

  * * *

  Back on the Kalia Greir, Ilrica instinctively dove to one side as a lightning bolt shredded the bulkhead where she had been standing.

  “Whoa! What the heck are you doing?” she asked as she turned towards Zurra, standing in the doorway.

  “The Duchess was right,” Zurra said, her eyes dark. “You’re using shadow tech. You’re working for Lyssandra Bal.”

  Ilrica clenched her teeth. “Ah, perfect. I should have known this... Okay, look, I’m not working for the pirates. I’m working for the Bertulf. Bal’s people just installed my implants.”

  Zurra prepared another bolt in her hands. “Lyssandra Bal doesn’t just hand out shadow tech. The only reason she’d give some to you is if the Bertulf had joined with her.”

  At the image of Gerald kneeling next to Trahzi as they talked Zurra released the bolt. Ilrica jumped in front of them and caught the blast in her glowing claws, holding onto it as it slowly dissipated.

  “Look, I’m telling you, the Bertulf aren’t working with her. Faelan came to them and said they had been at peace too long. They just want to return to the old ways, get their hunting grounds back. That sort of thing. They don’t care about killing the old ones, and they haven’t joined with Bal. If they had, they would have told me.”

  Suddenly Ilrica’s tall ears shot straight up as she sensed something. “What? That’s impossible.” She ran over to a porthole and looked outside.

  * * *

  Just as the two fleets met, space pinched and fell in on itself at the center of the Alliance fleet, creating a Bertulf wind tunnel, larger than any that had been seen before. Four Alliance ships were twisted to pieces in its wake and the eddies before it stabilized.

  There was a moment of stunned silence, then a thousand drone warships poured out, firing into the Alliance vessels with savage abandon.

  * * *

  Aboard the Hexton, Admiral Greir and Nathers were thrown to the deck as explosions rocked along her midsection. The drone ships poured volley after volley into her armor, stripping it away faster than it could be shifted from other sections.

  “I count one thousand, seventy-two additional contacts,” the sensors officer called out over the screams of the bridge crew.

  “Impossible. Signal a full retreat!” Admiral Greir ordered.

  “We can’t sir, the necass nets are fully deployed. No ships can leave the area!”

  Admiral Greir’s face went white.

  “Oh no.”

  “She’s trapped us in with her,” Nathers realized.

  * * *

  Everything became chaos. Lyssandra ordered the pirate ships to break rank, flying in amongst the Alliance ships, so close at times the tips of their cannon barrels nearly brushed up against one another. Alliance ships, fearful of hitting their own, fired back reluctantly and hesitantly, whilst the corsairs attacked with reckless abandon, their muzzles glowing red hot even in the cold of space as they poured volley after volley into everything around them.

  The drone ships did the worst of the damage. Even when their armor was stripped and their weapons destroyed, they attacked, ramming themselves into Alliance craft and detonating their aether drives. Spheres of swirling purple and gray popped in and out of existence amidst the swarm of vessels, dragging metal, energy and sailors into them before evaporating into nothingness.

  The host of ships dancing with one another like a flock of birds, the lances of light streaking out in all directions in the darkness, the blue ion trails of torpedoes, the delicate petals of ruptured aetheric engines. From a distance it had a quiet beauty to it, like a blossoming of color, but for those trapped within, it was a pure nightmare.

  * * *

  Back aboard the Kalia Greir, Zurra and Ilrica squared off against each other while the image of Gerald spoke to Trahzi.

  Zurra glanced out the porthole, her face dark. “Looks like this little cold war just heated up. You’re an enemy to the Alliance and a traitor.”

  Ilrica bared her fangs. “Oh, those idiots,” she thought. “What are they thinking?”

  There was an explosion on Gerald’s end and his image tumbled end over end until Ilrica could compensate.

  Ilrica held up her fist. “Look, there isn’t time for this! Right now we’ve got to help Dyson. We can work out our allegiances later.”

  Zurra rubbed her red eyes and dropped down into a fighting stance. “My father is head of the Core-Worlds Sub-Federation, which exists to oppose the Bertulf military expansion. If you are working for the Bertulf, then you are my enemy as well.”

  Another explosion rocked the ship. Ilrica threw out her hands. “Are you crazy? Are you seriously doing this now?”

  “...What’s more, I won’t let you save that monster. He deserves to die a thousand deaths for what he did!”

  Ilrica furrowed her brow. “What?”

  Zurra exploded into a cloud of pink dust, filling up the room and the corridor. Ilrica coughed and waved the mist away from her face, too surprised to react. By the time she realized what was happening, it was too late. Millions of tiny Zurras, each smaller than a speck of dust, were invading her body.

  “You still don’t know who Dyson really is, do you?” the legion of tiny voices asked in unison inside her ears.

  They burrowed into her skin, zapping her nerves and slicing into sensitive membranes. They entered her bloodstream, puncturing veins and shredding cells. It felt like a million tiny paper cuts all through her body. It was the most overwhelming pain she had ever felt. Every pain receptor in her entire body came alive all at once. Ilrica’s vision blurred out. Her entire being was being dismantled from within. Distantly, she could hear someone screaming. It was a blood-curdling sound of exquisite agony. It took her a moment to realize that it was her.

  Ilrica swiped her claws, freezing time, but the invaders were inside her, and accelerated right along with her. In her world of grey, she staggered out into the hallway. Her throat was being throttled from the inside, her lungs were filling with fluid, but the worst damage was being done to her crystronics. The back of her neck sparked and whimpered as the delicate crystal devices were attacked by a thousand tiny cracks into their structure.

  “GET OFFA ME!”

  Ilrica slammed her fist into her palm and gravity inverted. The pink particles were drawn out of her in all directions, pulled away by the powerful necass she created. Once they were all yanked free, color bled back into the hallway, and Ilrica reversed the process, forcing all the Zurras back into a single blob. Millions of voices screamed, then thousands, then hundreds, finally they compressed down to a single voice.

  Ilrica cle
nched her fist and Zurra collapsed into a tight sphere. She struggled and fought, but she was too heavy to deform her body out of that shape.

  Ilrica fell to her knees, her black blood dripping to the floor from countless tiny wounds. She seemed to be absolutely drenched in her own blood, and she retched on the floor to clear her lungs.

  “Nasty little amoeba...”

  * * *

  Gerald fought to keep his sense of vertigo in check. His body told him he was spinning, but his eyes told him that he was sitting beside Trahzi in what seemed to be half her room and half his cabin at the same time.

  “...It’s happening again, Gerald.” Trahzi admitted, holding the puppy close. “We are afraid for the well-being of Little Trahzi, and we cannot control that emotion.”

  “So, don’t control it.”

  Trahzi looked up at him in confusion. “What?”

  “You heard me. Don’t control it. Use it. Follow it.”

  * * *

  The door to the lavatory slid open and Ilrica stumbled in, barely able to stay on her feet. The tight ball of compressed Zurra floated between her bloody hands.

  “Put me down! What are you doing?” Zurra managed to ask as she struggled.

  “What I always do with toilet monsters,” she said, dropping the ball down into the toilet. “I flush them.”

  Zurra screamed in rage as the waste system cycled. A heartbeat later she was ejected from the ship out into the void of space.

  Laughing at her little joke, Ilrica fell to her knees, then collapsed to the floor in a bloody mess.

  * * *

  The image of Gerald began to fade away as Trahzi looked at him. There was an explosion and she was thrown against the wall. The puppy yelped in distress and Trahzi became even more frightened for her safety. Through the porthole she could see that one of the ships protecting them had been destroyed. A corsair ship dropped into view through the gap in the armor plates that had been created, its cannons charging for another volley.

  “Don’t try to control the feeling,” he repeated as he disappeared. “Use it!”

  The ship fired straight at her. The puppy yelped. Trahzi’s black eyes came alight.

  “NO!”

  Trahzi put out her hand and the beam slammed into her barrier. The bulkhead before her peeled away, but the air rippled before her, absorbing the blast. She created a bubble of fire around herself and the puppy, locking in enough air for the little one to breathe.

  “You will NOT hurt Trahzi!” There was power in her voice, deep power. She opened her mouth and released a beam of white-hot plasma that struck the corsair ship, melting through its armor and puncturing through the hole. The entire ship bulged from within, then her beam exited out the other side.

  Trahzi glanced behind her to make sure the emergency systems had sealed off the breach, then flew out into space, trailing fire behind her.

  “You will not hurt her,” Trahzi yelled, creating a ball of fire in her hand. She threw it out into space where it detonated between a trio of pirate ships, shredding them to pieces.

  “We will protect her!”

  Trahzi created a long whip of flame and snapped it out, slicing a corsair destroyer in half. A volley of missiles hit her bubble of fire from behind, but the energy was absorbed. She flicked her whip around, destroying the wing of fighters that had attacked her.

  “Because we love her!”

  Trahzi looked out at an enormous corsair battleship bearing straight down at her. Fearlessly, she charged straight at it, surrounding herself in fire like a comet.

  “Because we are her mother!”

  She slammed into the battleship, puncturing straight through shield, bulkhead, framework, and engine, bursting out the far end without even slowing down.

  * * *

  Zurra flew silently through space. Ships wordlessly exploded, beams of energy passed by without a whisper. It was somewhat surreal.

  Her pink form splatted against the side of the Hexton, seeping in through the seams in the armor plates. She worked her way through cracks in the bulkhead, penetrating deeper and deeper into the ship, until finally bubbling up through a crack in the deck and reforming herself right in front of a stunned Admiral Greir.

  Zurra gave a terse salute and introduced herself as a medical officer bandaged up the Greir’s head. “Admiral, there is a Bertulf spy onboard the Kalia Greir. I believe she is responsible for signaling in the drone fleet.”

  Admiral Greir turned to the security station. “I want the Kalia Greir boarded at once. Send in the shock troops. She must not be allowed to escape alive.”

  Zurra rubbed her darkened eyes, and forced the hurt back down before it could bubble to the surface again.

  * * *

  Gerald watched out through the porthole as a corsair frigate fought its way over and took a bead on him. He could see straight down the cannon barrels as they powered up.

  “Oh boy.”

  Gerald ducked down. A futile gesture, but what else could he do? The corsair fired a beam of blue energized particles that struck out at his crippled ship.

  He closed his eyes, but no explosion came. For a second he wondered if he was already dead. After all, they say you never feel the one that gets you.

  When he looked up, he realized that the yacht was surrounded by fire, but it wasn’t burning. Ahead of him was Trahzi, who tore the ship in half with her bare hands, flinging one piece off and striking a stricken corsair fuel tanker, while the other piece collided with a trio of drone ships and shattered them.

  She turned around to face him, silhouetted by the explosions behind her. She looked fiercer than he had ever seen her, but a gentle smile was on her face, a tenderness in her eyes, and a softness to her expression.

  Her face lit up, her countenance bright. “Gerald, we understand.”

  A squadron of pirate ships fired upon her. The shots simply bounced off. In return, she released a blast of energy so big that it engulfed all six destroyers completely. Their darkened silhouettes within the flames disintegrated as if they were nothing more that sand sculptures blown away in the wind.

  She smiled in complete elation and hugged the puppy close. “We have never been this strong before.”

  Laughing for joy, she created enormous hands of fire, grabbing onto a pair of pirate cruisers like they were nothing more than bath toys. She slammed them together, then threw the remains into a wing of drones, smashing them to pieces.

  “We have never been this powerful before, not even when all of us fought together!”

  Almost as if she were showing off, Trahzi focused her powers, and released a blast of white-hot fire thousands of feet across. She swept the beam from one side of her all the way over to the other, catching and destroying hundreds of drones and corsairs in her attack. The space before her became a raging inferno of burning ships and exploding craft.

  * * *

  The Uragiri rocked to one side, smoke pouring out from a ruptured station.

  “What’s happening out there?” Lyssandra asked, rolling herself to her feet.

  “We just lost contact with a third of the taskforce.”

  “What?”

  “That Trahzi is tearing us apart,” Erusal reported, clutching a broken arm. “We can’t possibly win this.”

  Lyssandra walked over to the holo-tank. Even zoomed out to display the entire battle, the location of the Trahzi was immediately apparent. Whole attack wings were disappearing around her as she moved through the swarm, destroying pirate ships with startling ease.

  Erusal whimpered, but Lyssandra grabbed him by the collar. “Stop fretting, we’re not done here yet. The ArchTyrant and I always suspected that the Trahzi would one day turn on us. He had a contingency plan in preparation, it just wasn’t ready for the battle of embers, but it’s ready now.”

  She turned to the smoking engineering station. “Activate the Ooinaru Juu-san!”

  The nose of the Uragiri split in two, forking out into a pair of rails. Her engines engaged in rev
erse and dark energies gathered between the two rails, creating a sphere black against ever the blackness of space.

  * * *

  “Take her down!”

  Boarding troops kicked in the door to the bathroom, weapons readied as they ran inside. They could see the bloody stain on the floor where Ilrica had fallen, but her body was no longer there.

  “Fan out, find her! There’s nowhere for her to go!”

  * * *

  Trahzi spun happily through space, giving the puppy a little kiss on the head as she rammed right through a stricken carrier, snapping it in half. The puppy, for her part, only yawned sleepily as her mother caused the space around her to boil with flame, incinerating a wing of corsair fighters as they tried to make their escape. Gerald was towed behind them in what remained of the yacht, pulled by a chain of fire like some kind of pet.

  Trahzi was in complete relief, as if she had passed through a long dark tunnel and come out into the light. “We can feel it. Everywhere. It saturates every cell in this body. Flowing through it, directing it, prioritizing it. It is wonderful!”

  She came upon a squadron of corsair raiders, pounding into the Hexton and her escorts. Trahzi slapped the giant vessels aside, their frames disintegrating and flying off into space as clouds of debris.

  She appeared before Gerald inside the yacht and handed him the puppy. “You were right, this is intoxicating.”

  She reappeared in space and grabbed the nose of a battleship with her bare hands. Plunging herself straight through it, she turned the mighty vessel inside out. As it exploded behind her, she spun around, arms outstretched, her head thrown back. “Already we feel completely addicted to it!”

  A beam of energy, misfired from another part of the battlefield, struck out at the yacht. Trahzi appeared before it and caught the energy, absorbing into her hands. “This is it, isn’t it?” she asked, her face basking in complete joy. “The power you spoke about. The power of love. This is what you feel when you fight to protect those you care for.”

  Gerald gave the puppy a kiss and looked down. Beneath them was the swirling blackness of the Bertulf wind tunnel. Trahzi thrust out her hand and all the pirate ships in the area disappeared in a flash of blue flame. When they reappeared, they were gathered together in a tight little cluster before her.