Cydonia Rising

by Dave Walsh

  “Oh my,” Jol’or said. “Truly a visceral scene, wouldn’t that be?”

  The posturing between the two came across as fairly ludicrous to her. Make no mistake, the issue here was that Katrijn was there and valuable to Jol’or, but it was unclear what Jace was doing outside of trying to be a hero. She quickly surveyed her options and the decision was simple—to stick by Jace. He was a goofball but he clearly didn’t have any intention of using her for his own gains. Plus, she knew she could take him in a fight if she needed to.

  “It doesn’t need to be, Jol’or.” Jace was sweating. “I liked our business relationship the way it was, didn’t you? Now I’ll have to go to your competition, hell, might even put you out of business.”

  “Oh, of course.” His laughter rang throughout the hangar. “I’m afraid of our business arrangement falling apart. Our relationship was always such a fond one, wasn’t it?”

  At this rate she wondered if they’d simply talk themselves to death. Jol’or had still not ordered his goons to attack and Jace had probably never shot anyone in his life, both showing hesitation, maybe even remorse over this encounter. While she saw that Jace’s bark was fine, she had doubted if there was any bite to him at all. No doubt he had spent time practicing at a range or in his cargo bay, but shooting a live person was a lot different than shooting at crates. Katrijn flashed back to the first time she had to pull the trigger at another person and cringed, slowly walking around to Jace’s side, her hand on the hilt of her blade, ensuring that her movements were obscured.

  Her heartbeat was starting to pick up and the situation was sharply coming into focus, the details converging into a whole. The distance between her and the nearest guard was small enough to allow her to attack him before anyone could react and from there, she had a clear path to the rest of them. She couldn’t reach her gun, but the guard closest to her only had a loose grip on his gun and his stance told her he was nervous. He was so focused on Jace that he didn’t notice her shuffling toward him. They wore full armor but weren’t Cydonian, meaning they didn’t have any enhancements to worry about. Cydonians generally didn’t want to give anyone else any sort of advantage unless they had to, even most of their own people didn’t have all of the available augmentations.

  Katrijn took one final breath before her body sprung into action, a well-oiled machine acting on muscle memory from years of training, swiftly spinning out from behind the guard closest to her, holding the blade of her knife across his throat from behind and using his body as a shield. Her mind slowed, everything moving in slow motion like the tactical view on a display. The guard struggled, her grip on his neck and around his chest firm while the three other guards turned toward her, guns pointed at her.

  “What the…” she heard Jace mumble.

  A shot rang out, the heat of the shot nearly burning her face as it narrowly burned by. So much for negotiations. One of the guards was rushing at her, her eyes briefly closing while the blade of her knife slid effortlessly over the throat of the guard in her hands, cutting through the thin layer of his jumpsuit like a warm knife through butter. His body violently twitched in her arms, forcing her to drop him to the ground in a bloody heap. She took the gun from his hand and pushed him into the oncoming guard, knocking him slightly back. Katrijn spun toward the guard, burying the knife into the shoulder joint. That was a weak point in their armor, where the chest plate connected to the shoulder pad, and her blade struck in between the plates and didn’t stop until it hit bone.

  The man screamed out, dropping his gun while Katrijn pulled the knife out, spun back the other way and felt her knife glide over his throat while the other two were taking up defensive positions. Jol’or was standing there in disbelief while Jace ducked behind the eave of the door. She squeezed the trigger twice in quick succession, the first missing, the second one catching a guard on the shoulder, his body slamming back against the wall. The last was on a collision course for her when she saw him freeze and drop, smoke emanating from his back.

  Jace was standing in the doorway, a look on his face like he had gone into shock. “Get back into cover, you idiot!” she shouted, and he scurried back behind the door only to realize that Jol’or was the last one left standing. Katrijn slowly walked toward him, knife in her left hand and gun in the right. “Now I’m going to get aboard that ship with Jace here and we are going to take off. No problems, no knife shredding up the eccentric, you got it?”

  “Oh, this truly is quite the…”

  “Fuck off, Jol’or.” Jace was standing in the doorway, menacingly pointing the smoking gun at Jol’or’s face.

  “You’ve done quite a number on these guards here, I’m sure we can chalk this all up to a misunderstanding.” His hands were in the air, signifying his surrender. “We can go back to my compound and talk about where we all go from here, because this scene is not going to clean itself up and…”

  “God damnit, Jol’or!” Jace shouted, firing off a shot at his feet, causing the Cydonian to jump in fear. “Shut up!”

  “Okay, okay,” Katrijn could see the tension in Jace’s face. “Let’s just get out of here.”

  “Not the best idea I’ve ever heard.” Jol’or shook his head, outstretching his hand slowly toward them only to quickly jerk it back and cry out in pain. Jace was shaking his head, gun smoking yet again.

  “I told you to shut up.” He moved in closer, gun still trained on the Cydonian, who had crumbled to his knees, grasping his hand in pain.

  “Was that really necessary?” She rolled her eyes at the macho display.

  “He’s a Cydonian—a high-ranker at that—he was gonna try one of his tricks out,” Jace shrugged. “Plus, I wanted to shoot him.”

  “Whatever.” She shook it off, making a mental note that he was able to act quickly when he had to. “What do we need to get out of here?”

  “Just need to make sure that the docking clamps aren’t locked down.” He cocked his head toward the control panel in the corner and drove his elbow into the neck of Jol’or, his body crumpling to the ground in an ornate heap. “If you can take care of that, I’ll get her up and running. We can be out of here in no time as long as nobody else crashes this party.”

  “Alright, good.” She ran over to the panel, her fingers gliding over the controls, pulling up the lock commands.

  “Where’d you learn how to…”

  “Go!” she shouted, the respect starting to wear thin.

  Jace

  The pressure was mounting and they had to get out of there fast, Jace realized, his fingers fumbling over the Pequod’s ignition sequence. They would have to get out of there in a hurry, which could possibly be a problem. The Pequod had the ability to cold burn, but the automated defenses on Cyngen were that of legend, which could cause a problem. He cringed when he thought back to the maintenance schedule and the stuff he had neglected. If there was ever a time for the Pequod to be in tip-top shape, it was now. The very thought of the ship stalling out while trying to escape made him cringe. That was the worst case scenario, he reminded himself, brushing the hair out of his eyes while he worked.

  “Why aren’t we gone yet?” Katrijn ran up to the cockpit, strapping herself into the co-pilot's chair and locking it down into position, preparing for a heavy-g burn.

  “It doesn’t work like in the vids,” he said, cycling through the systems that he needed at full power. “Just a few more seconds…”

  “We need to go!” she shouted. “We—you—just shot Jol’or and I get the impression he’s not too happy about that.”

  “Strap in,” Jace yelled, his voice carrying over the alarms blaring in the cockpit and punched the ship forward; it lurched through the hangar toward the doors.

  “Why aren’t those doors open?” She turned to Jace, who could feel her eyes burning into him. “Why aren’t they open?”

  “I don’t know.” He was panicking himself, sending through the command to override the doors. “It’s not opening!”

  “We are about
to hit it, do you have any firepower aboard this hunk of…”

  “Not really!” he shouted, the doors rapidly approaching. Jace had been on Cyngen so many times and had a cache of override codes just in case he found himself in a situation like this, but they were a few cycles old by now. He continued to punch in number sequences, his fingers dancing over the numbers like their lives depended on it. One after the other, each sequence led to nothing but silence. “Shit shit shit!” he said, punching in one last number; with the door just meters away, a groan came from the doors and they miraculously parted with just centimeters to spare before the nose of the ship was about to make contact.

  “Oh my gods,” Katrijn let out a deep breath and relaxed back into the chair next to him. “Is it always like this with you?”

  “You mean magical?” He couldn’t help but feel the wave of relief and was grinning wide. “I guess so. Now we just gotta get out of orbit and hope to hell that he didn’t send any ships after us.”

  They both sat silent while Jace maneuvered out of the underground caverns and they emerged toward the surface, the light from the sun almost blinding him. “Easy enough.” Jace let himself take a breath, keeping his eyes on all his displays. A klaxon blared loudly throughout the cockpit. “Now we just have to hope that…fuck!”

  “What?” Katrijn looked over at him, helpless, being pressed into the chair by the increasing gravity.

  “Automated defense cannons,” he said, seeing them move, pointing toward the ship. “Gods damnit!” He tried to send through overrides without much hope of finding the right one in time. Their luck might have run out. “Things are going to get a little bumpy!”

  “Ugh,” she said, but he didn’t have time to placate her.

  The cannons were within range and the automated klaxons on the Pequod were blazing warnings of imminent destruction. Jace was doing everything in his power to try to disable the defenses, but it was clear that it was a fruitless endeavor. Now was the time for drastic action—those cannons were going to fire no matter what and they had to not be in the line of fire. The ADCs were attracted to heat signatures, usually, as long as no one was manning the guns.

  “Can you push a button when I tell you?” Jace turned to Katrijn. “I have to know right now! Right now.” He unbuckled his straps and started pulling himself out of the chair, feeling gravity tugging him violently back toward the chair. “We’ve got forty seconds before those things fire.”

  “Okay,” she said.

  “When I tell you.” He pointed down at a large red switch while struggling to stay on his feet. “You kill the engines. Just flip this. It’s the dead switch, everything goes off at that precise moment, then, when I tell you, you’ve gotta flip it back, alright?”

  “I guess, but won’t we fall into—”

  “We’ll have some momentum, it should be fine,” he swallowed hard, stumbling to the doorway, almost tripping over his unsecured books all over the floor. “I hope.”

  He sprinted down the hallway, the floor shifting under his feet and trying to throw him into the walls. The ship was ultimately pulling him down toward the cargo bay while it climbed through Cyngen’s skies, which is where he wanted to go, but it felt like the ship was trying to pull him into its maw like he was being swallowed by a whale. He stopped fighting, allowing gravity to guide him to the cargo hold. Every time the ship buckled, it hurt, sending him flying into the cold steel walls, the bumps, and bruises accumulating on his skin. Things would be a lot worse if he didn’t get to this in time.

  Jace finally fell into the cargo hold, clawing his way to Katrijn’s lifepod. The pod was a lot bigger than the usual one and had its own HyperMass reactor aboard it, meaning that it would give off the heat signature of a small ship. He slapped his hand onto the cargo bay door release, setting off the the alarms while the suction of air coming from the door opening started to tug at his clothing. The cargo bay was empty after offloading Jol’or’s shipment, leaving just a few of his personal crates and her lifepod.

  The pod was roomy on the inside, but he didn’t want to get caught inside it. There would be time to rest if this plan worked and he could somehow force the pod to activate and jettison it from the bay at just the right moment. Jace powered up the pod, getting its reactor up quickly and tapped the holoscanner on his hip. “Punch it, now!”

  “Got it,” she squawked over the line, and he felt the sudden drop in gravity while he braced against the doorway of the pod. Jace pulled up the controls and set for the engines to burn it right out of the hold in five seconds. He took a deep breath and dove out of the pod, fighting through the shifting gravity while the ship was quickly losing altitude. With a flip of a switch the magnets in his boots activated, his feet clamping onto the floor while the rest of his body was heading toward the bay door. There was a crate secured to the floor in front of him and he had to get around it, only moments away from those engines burning in the cargo bay. Jace deactivated the magnets and leapt for the crate, quickly activating them again and his feet clomping down once again, his back slamming hard against the crate. A sudden burst of heat filled the bay and the sound of metal scraping on metal was deafening before he felt a suck of air and the pod was clear.

  “We’ve got a problem!”

  “Hold on!”

  “We have 30 seconds until impact! We’re gonna crash!”

  “Just hold on!” he shouted back, knowing that it was going to be close. He peered around the crate out of the hold, feeling the heat and the pull of the air, glad that he remembered to wear his boots with the magnet attachments. The pod raced off toward the surface only to explode into a ball of vapor and fire. “Punch it now!” he shouted. “And for fuck’s sake remember to take the stick and pull up!”

  “Okay!” she shouted back, and he heard his ship’s engines sputter back to life. They were already warmed up and hopefully the cooldown for the ADCs were long enough for them to break into orbit without being shot up. The ship quickly lurched and he felt the gravity pulling him back toward the crate. The new problem confronting him was that he had to get those doors shut or he’d burn up before they ever got off the planet.

  “Just keep pulling up,” he shouted, unable to hear his own voice. “The course is already set in so the ship should handle the tough stuff!” He awkwardly stomped his way toward the control panel for the door, the unbearable waves of heat from the engines and the atmosphere assaulting him from all angles. “Just get us the fuck out of here!”

  His hand reached out and grasped onto the base of the panel. He pulled himself up until his hand was within distance of the panel when a violent shake came over the ship and he was thrown off. “Fucking hell!” he shouted, pulling himself back to the panel and finally slapping his palm down on the controls, the doors slowly whirring shut. “Oh my gods,” he leaned back, catching his breath, still feeling the gravity threatening to crush him.

  “Are you okay down there?” her voice cut through.

  “I’m fine.” He was panting, trying to crawl back to the crate. There wasn’t a crash chair or couch down in the cargo bay, so he’d have to hold up against the crate while they burned out of the planet. “Just keep going before those guns come back on line, alright? Don’t stop.”

  “Aren’t you coming up here? I can’t drive this thing on my own!”

  “You’ll be fine,” he reassured her, not entirely believing that himself. “Just make sure you don’t drive it back toward the planet or into another ship or something. The pull is too much, I’ll be smashed into a wall if I come back up, I’ll have to weather the storm down here.”

  The line stayed silent, which was for the best while he pressed his back up against the crate, feeling the acceleration pressing him hard into the crate like he was going to break through it. He’d always had a chair or a crash couch behind him while handling this amount of g-force, and the wooden crate felt like he was being mashed up against an ancient torture device. He gritted his teeth, reminding himself that the burn wouldn’t las
t much longer, or if they were too slow to breach the atmosphere, they’d be blown to pieces by the ADCs.

  Just when it felt like he couldn’t take anymore, the pressure stopped and Jace found himself able to breathe again, the air filling his lungs back up. The sudden lack of pressure only accentuated how bad he was hurting, his back and ribs feeling like they had just been crushed. They most likely were. “We good or is this the afterlife?”

  “We’re out,” she confirmed. “You coming up here or what?”

  Jace took a deep breath, feeling a few pangs of pain in his side but it didn’t feel like anything was broken. “Yeah.” He was trying to catch his breath. “I’m just gonna stop in the med bay first and, uh…” He pulled himself over to the control panel in the cargo bay, cycling through controls before he found the one for the gravity generator, switching it off and feeling the sensation of weightlessness overcome him. “I’m turning the gravity off for a bit, that was a rough one. Just make sure nobody takes us by surprise for the next few minutes, alright?”

  “Where are we going, anyway?”

  “The ship is programmed to head to Helgun.” He turned off the gravity controls in his boots and felt himself starting to drift up, the pain subsiding a bit. “It’ll take about five days to get there once we jump, but I gotta patch myself up first.”

  “Alright,” she said. “I’ll just keep watching this nothing.”

  “Good.” He felt the relief wash over him. “Nothing is very, very good.”

  011. The Chase

  O'Neil

  Report,” O’Neil felt the familiarity of his tone take him by surprise. Those years aboard the Omega Destiny as the captain only seemed like a distant hazy memory to him. Instead, his life on Andlios was all-consuming. Loren’s image appeared before him from the cockpit of a ship, his face illuminated by the displays.

  “Things got pretty crazy down there, Old Man.” Loren was wearing a sly smile. “I had to do a bit of cleanup to make sure your girl didn’t find too much trouble, but damn did she leave a mess.”