by Adam Quinn
She slid both weapons across the floor at high velocity.
Marissa caught the blade with the top of her foot, kicked it into the air, grabbed its handle with her right hand, twirled her wrist to slice that limb free, and stabbed Mantradome in the arm.
“Ah!” Mantradome cried out, squeezing the trigger of her pistol. The bolt lanced across the room to strike the wall.
Most of the Firestormers launched a heat stream assault at Taylor’s group, but the TKG soldiers blocked it with a few of the Project Firestorm machines. Other Firestormers turned toward Marissa, who was quickly slicing herself free. Taylor sprinted under the flying machinery and heat streams toward her. The Firestormers fired. Marissa flipped backward over the device they had strapped her to. Heat streams reduced the front of the device to slag. Taylor upended the floor plates beneath those Firestormers, sending them tumbling to the floor, and telekinetically retrieved her slugthrower pistol.
Mantradome stumbled away from the scene, dropping her sidearm as she frantically used her good arm to press something against her ears. “Activate suppression!”
A grating, excruciating noise blasted through the room. Sheer surprise paralyzed Taylor for a second and sent her crashing to the floor, but when she picked herself back up, she found that her SX-7 had reduced the noise to a tolerable level. Looking back at her friends, she saw that while they were still on their feet, they looked pained—as she had hoped, their armor provided protection from the sonic weapon, though apparently not total protection. Her own suit did not seem to be able to entirely eliminate the noise either, and enough was leaking through to disrupt Taylor’s focus.
Two Firestormers blasted her with blankets of superheated air. Her already-protesting SX-7 began to crack under the stress, and more of the noise bled through. She fired her maneuvering thrusters just in time to slide out of the way of two spiraling heat streams, dodging behind a sturdy-looking machine.
A channel of heat energy on the same scale as a sear gun cannon ripped through the machine, throwing her onto her face. Her slugthrower pistol clattered out of her grasp, but she managed to grab it before activating her main thrusters and soaring up and over the Firestormers. Her team had scattered across the room, some retreating out into the stairwell, allowing the Firestormers to focus on her. Dozens of streams of heat sliced past her, but enough slammed into her back to take out both main thrusters. She landed on the platform housing the ship’s control consoles, rolling to a rest against the foot of one. The noise was mind-numbing, and Taylor had to keep blinking her eyes to prevent her vision from doubling. The Firestormers were coming up the stairs, and Taylor lacked the focus needed to use any kind of telekinesis. She pointed her slugthrower pistol at them and pulled the trigger.
It gave a little click. She had never actually put any ammunition in it.
Taylor dropped the useless chunk of metal. A pair of Firestormers stalked up the stairs toward her. She only hoped that they would kill her instead of converting her into a slave like Saifan.
Once the Alliance got me, they performed some procedure on my brain that removed most of my telekinesis, but enhanced my ability to manipulate heat energy, Saifan had said, and then put in my implant, which allowed them to control my body remotely from computers aboard the Frankenstein.
Computers. Aboard the Frankenstein.
Taylor pulled Harrison’s elongated datacard from its compartment in her SX-7, turned, and plugged it into the Frankenstein’s control console.
The lights and displays on the control consoles went out, then the room’s lighting—only faint starlight illuminated the scene. The Project Firestorm machines powered down.
The SSD noise stopped.
Every Firestormer collapsed.
“Good work, Taylor,” Harrison said.
“Did you get what you wanted, Harrison?”
“These people keep sloppy records, but I’ve copied what they have down to—”
“Then turn the lights back on and don’t speak to me again.”
“My apologies.”
The Telahmir team reactivated the bridge’s lights, then the Frankenstein’s command consoles. Taylor pulled herself to her feet—as did Mantradome, seizing her sear gun pistol.
“You alien-loving Meltian fr—”
Brook casually shot her with an incapacitator.
“She doesn’t deserve that.” Saifan’s livid expression blazed through his semi-transparent visor as he stalked toward Mantradome, the beginnings of a heat stream in his hands. “She doesn’t deserve to—”
“Saifan!” Taylor said.
He stopped to look up at her.
“Leave her. The Meltian Republic will take care of her and all her ilk soon enough.”
“But she—”
“Which do you think will cause her to suffer more?” Taylor asked. “Being put on trial by a bunch of alien-lovers or being killed painlessly in her sleep? Which do you think she would choose?”
Saifan gave her a long, hard stare. “Fine.”
“Hezekiah,” Taylor said, “how much time do we have?”
They might have taken control of the carrier, but they still had to carry out the necessary orbital strikes to complete the plan.
“Hezekiah?” She turned when he did not answer to find him staring at the Project Firestorm machinery surrounding them.
“The writing on these machines. It’s… not standard Galactican,” Hezekiah said.
Taylor followed his gaze. She had realized that the machines were exotic at first glance, but now she realized they were… alien. She had seen a lot of cutting-edge laboratories during the Order War, but these machines and instruments would be out of place there as much as here. Hezekiah, however, was not pointing out the machines themselves, but rather the writing that adorned them. Taylor was no linguist, but it was obvious at first glance that the characters on those machines belonged to the only language in the galaxy aside from standard Galactican that still had a large number of exclusive users, mainly due to the sheer xenophobia of its native speakers.
“Kaleknarian,” Taylor whispered.
“What?” Harrison sounded like he was going into shock.
Taylor felt as if she were standing on a tiny island that was rapidly eroding under her feet. The Alliance hated Meltia just for having a culture that accepted non-humans—Mantradome had just called her team “alien-loving Meltians”—so there was no reason in the galaxy why their mothership should have a single character of the Kaleknarian language, much less an entire laboratory full of it. A laboratory which even the MRSIS did not know about.
Taylor moved closer to the machines. Perhaps there were standard Galactican translations that would make the situation clearer. Instead, she found that she recognized at least one of the words that appeared regularly on the machines.
It was the Kaleknarian word from her dream.
“IES team, listen to me.” Harrison sounded like he was on the verge of panic. “Abandon the old plan. Bring the Frankenstein directly to the 6th fleet. All other objectives are irrelevant.”
Taylor barely even heard him. There was no question in her mind now that those strange dreams had been a lot more than dreams. She didn’t pretend to understand a tenth of them, but she knew that whoever was behind them—whoever somehow devised a way to contact her telepathically across the stars—wanted to tell her two things.
One, that the “Drive Makers” were in danger.
And two, this Kaleknarian word.
But what was the point? Maybe it was that the Alliance and the Kaleknarians were secretly working together. The thought alone was terrifying—with the resources of the Kaleknarian Empire and the depraved science of Project Firestorm, they could truly make something that was a threat to the galaxy.
“To answer your question, Taylor,” Hezekiah said, “the 6th fleet just arrived.”
The rest of the team moved to man the Frankenstein’s control consoles.
“We’re too far out,” Brook said. “We’ll h
ave to flip closer to the planet to launch our missiles without the Kaleknarians intercepting them.”
“Wait!” Taylor said. The Kaleknarian fleet was much closer to Trascion than the Meltian one—if the Kaleknarians really were allied with the Alliance, then taking the Frankenstein there would be akin to handing it back to Mantradome.
“Are you listening?” Harrison demanded. “Flip the Kaleknarians. Flip Trascion. Bring your vessel immediately to the 6th fleet. That’s an order, Ghatzi!”
“Director,” Joseph said, “you do not have the authority—”
“Don’t lecture me on authority, Moore, this is a matter of Meltian Republic security, and—”
“Director!” Joseph roared.
Taylor’s team looked to her for a signal. If she gave the order, they would flip the Frankenstein to the 6th fleet, guaranteeing the destruction of the Alliance, and guaranteeing that no more of her friends would die on this ship. The Kaleknarians and the Meltians might fight it out—or they might not. Either way, Taylor would not be culpable—she was just following orders, letting the chips fall as they may, putting her faith in the powers that be to decide whether there would be war or peace.
The same “powers that be” who were responsible for the Anniversary and Treaty Day Attacks, the crash of the Kindred Spirit, and Hezekiah’s almost-death.
Taylor retracted her SX-7’s visor, peeled the MRSIS ceiver off her skin, and snapped it in half. “Set a course for Trascion.”
“Yes, ma’am!” Marissa manipulated her control console.
Hezekiah stepped up to a different console, discarding his own ceiver. “I’m circumventing the fire control center… and feeding the coordinates from the Jacobins to our targeting systems.”
A holographic globe popped up over Hezekiah’s console—Trascion—and a dozen red dots appeared on its surface.
“Nice,” Taylor said. “Make sure the Jacobins sent out that message telling everyone that they’ve taken over the Frankenstein.”
If the Kaleknarians were aligned with the Alliance, they would know someone had seized the Frankenstein, so it was important that they were led to believe it was the Jacobins, rather than, say, the Meltian Republic.
“They’re broadcasting now,” Hezekiah said.
“Flip drive ready,” Marissa said.
“Go!” Taylor said.
The strings of the seventh dimension flashed into view for barely a second before being replaced by Trascion looming large in front of them. Hundreds of bright streaks blazed forth from the Frankenstein, diving toward various locations on Trascion’s surface.
“Missiles away,” Hezekiah said.
“The Kaleknarians are moving to engage,” Marissa said.
Kaleknarian countermeasures caught a few missiles mid-flight, but not nearly enough. Their spiny destroyers accelerated toward the Frankenstein.
“Multiple targets destroyed,” Marissa said. “The hothuxix base, control center five, control center nine, control center sev—”
“Looks like our fleet’s coming too,” Brook said.
The MRS Ingenuity came into view first, every bit as imposing as it had been back at the Battle of Meltia, but now gleaming with advanced weaponry and sporting stripes of bold Meltian red. Three cruisers and three carriers arrived in a hexagonal formation behind it, each flanked by destroyers and frigates, and a few flotillas of light cruisers and missile ships rounded out the fleet.
They added their firepower to that of the Kaleknarians.
“We’re taking a lot of fire,” Hezekiah said. “Should we flip away?”
“What’s our shield power?” Taylor asked.
“Sixty percent of max power and drop—wait!” Warning lights lit up Hezekiah’s console. “We’ve lost our shield!”
“What?” Marissa elbowed Hezekiah aside. “Alliance pave-scrapers sabotaged us!”
Of course. The Firestormers were down, but the Alliance’s thugs still had control over most of the ship, including the shield generator, and they had to realize by this point that Mantradome had lost control of the ship. And unlike the fire control center, the shield generator could not be “circumvented.”
Boom!
Taylor actually felt the carrier shudder under the impact.
“We lost our flip drive!” Brook said.
Taylor felt a trickle of fear. The Frankenstein was going to be destroyed. Even if the entire Meltian fleet switched to protecting them, they could not stop the Kaleknarians now. All the innocent Firestormers they had incapacitated were going to be killed because their comrades in the shield generator either did not know what they had done, or were fanatic enough to want to die rather than be captured—but Taylor could not think about that now. She had to try to save those whom she might have a slight chance of saving: her team.
Taylor found the ship’s communications console and punched in an address she remembered from the previous night’s conference call. The communications channel opened, but video was not coming through for some reason.
“Taylor?” It was Ambassador DeGuavra’s voice.
“Ambassador, we’ve lost our flip drive, and the Kaleknarians are going to tear the ship apart!”
“Sit tight,” he said. “I’ll send someone for—”
Boom!
Her console shut down. Their communications equipment was gone—or, more accurately, the Frankenstein’s communications equipment.
“Joseph!” Taylor said, before remembering that they had destroyed their ceivers—though Hezekiah still had the device JP had given him. “Hezekiah, use your transceiver, open another channel to the Ingenuity!”
“I’m trying!” he said.
An ever-increasing barrage of rockets and sear gun fire tore into the Frankenstein’s hull. It was a big ship, and a military-grade one at that, but it could not keep taking hits forever, and the Kaleknarians were not about to stop. The bridge switched to emergency power.
“We need to get to a lifeboat!” Saifan said.
“There’s no time,” Taylor said, “and the ambassador told us to stay here.”
“How in the galaxy is he going to rescue us if we stay right here?” Saifan asked.
A Meltian gunboat soared in front of the Frankenstein’s viewport, twirling in a tight aileron roll. As it spun, a squad of Meltian Guardsmen in full battle armor was hurled toward them by centrifugal force, trailing silvery cables. The Guardsmen smashed feet-first through the viewport, and one of them grabbed Taylor around the waist. Her eyes went wide, but she was too stunned to do anything as the cables went taut, yanking the Guardsmen and their passengers out of the Frankenstein.
For half a second they soared through space, the contents of the Frankenstein’s bridge—including Mantradome and her Firestormers—spilling out into the vacuum. Then they landed in the Meltian gunboat, oxygen flowing mercifully over them.
They sped away from the Frankenstein.
Saifan weakly removed his militia helmet. “Oh.”
Taylor leaned back against one of the gunboat’s interior walls, breathing in and out. They were safe. The hothuxix leader was dead, as was Mantradome—Saifan had gotten his wish after all. It was unfortunate that the Firestormers had to die, but nothing could be done for them now. At least, if they were anything like Saifan, they would consider it a merciful release from their slavery.
One of the Meltian Guardsmen knelt in front of Taylor. “Ma’am, Director Harrison has indicated that you promised him the location of a Jacobin facility.”
Naturally, Harrison would not allow something as trivial as a near-death experience to delay him getting Taylor’s end of the bargain.
“Here.” Hezekiah offered up his transceiver, which he had somehow managed to hold onto. “Everything you need is on this device.”
The Guardsman accepted the transceiver.
Taylor looked at Hezekiah, too drained to verbally ask what she wanted to know: whether this outcome was what he was hoping for, and thus whether he was right to put his trust in her, despi
te his misgivings.
Hezekiah must have been tired as well because he responded with a simple nod.
Cherran watched from the circular platform overlooking the MRS Ingenuity’s fleet bridge as a series of explosions ripped the tattered hull of the MRS Frankenstein into tiny pieces that would burn up as they fell into Trascion’s atmosphere. The display he was watching switched to a view of the Kaleknarian fleet, which had ceased its fire now that the Frankenstein was obliterated. The Meltian fleet’s senior officers had been highly skeptical when Cherran first brought Taylor’s plan to them, but they had come around pretty quickly when Harrison obtained Altez’s approval back on Meltia, and it looked like it was working out pretty well.
“Meltian Guard Spec Ops Team oh-oh-one has returned to the hangar,” an Ingenuity officer reported. “Admiral Ghatzi and her team were recovered; zero casualties.”
Cherran pumped his fist. “DeGuavra, one; Kaleknar, zero. How’s it looking on the ground?”
“All targets have been destroyed, sir. The Trascionese collaborators have been liberated.”
Lauderheist slapped Cherran on the shoulder. “Looks like your crazy scheme might actually be working. Why don’t you call them up and seal the deal?”
“It’s not my scheme,” Cherran said, “but thanks. Ms. Wei, are you ready?”
Shuping was not fluent in Kaleknarian—few non-Kaleknarians were—but her connection to the interplanetary network enabled her to get translations near-instantaneously, and she had been brushing up on her pronunciation the entire trip.
“Whenever you are, Cherran.”
“All right, can somebody open a communications channel—on one of the big screens, please?” Cherran steeled himself. All the cards should be in his favor: the Kaleknarians were being chased out by their own collaborators, but Cherran’s fleet had helped destroy the ones responsible for it, and a couple of Harrison’s ships were on their way to root out the Jacobin base that had been a thorn in the Kaleknarians’ side since their initial invasion. Still, he only had one chance to get it right. Cherran felt Shuping’s eyes on him; she seemed to be more convinced than ever that he was a statesman on the same footing as his father, come to deliver them from this new war.