by Tony Healey
The Naxor ship separated from the side of the Defiant. Following a jolt, the smaller ship drifted away to gain some distance. The Chief could make out the star field beyond.
She sighed, then bent down to pick up her welding torch.
Gunn was glad the Commander hadn’t turned back around at the last minute. If he had, the Chief knew her resolve would have broken.
Time to patch a hole, she thought.
3.
“We’ll up the dose. I’m seeing some improvement in the swelling at the back of your brain stem. If we can get it down even more …” Dr. Clayton said hopefully.
“I get you,” Jessica said.
“We will try and combat this, Jess,” Clayton said, a hand on her shoulder. “I’ll do everything I can.”
She reached up and patted his hand. “I know you will. Now stop fussing.”
Jessica got up from the medical bed and stretched. Dr. Clayton handed her the cane. He signalled to Nurse Munoz that he was leaving sick bay with her.
“I’ll walk with you,” he said.
“Doctor, I’m not very fast,” King said.
“A good thing I’m only after a slow stroll then, isn’t it?” Clayton said.
They walked into the corridor, side by side.
“Ship’s a catastrophe,” Jessica said. “I’ve never seen her in such a state.”
“The Chief’ll fix her up. You watch,” Clayton said.
King shook her head. “I think this time she’s beyond the abilities of even the Chief. I don’t know …”
“What’s that?”
She stopped, leaned on her cane for support. There were no other crew members in either direction, yet Jessica lowered her voice. “Nothing seems to go right for us. We don’t catch a break. I don’t know how to stop this family from suffering.”
To her surprise, Dr. Clayton broke into a wide smile.
She frowned. “What’s so amusing?”
Clayton shook his head, still smiling. “It’s nothing, it’s just … I once heard your father say something just like that.”
“Oh?”
“Years ago. Before you came aboard. The ship took a beating in the Dujua Conflict.”
“I know of it,” Jessica said.
“She was in a bad state. Like now,” Clayton said, indicating the wires and shattered plastic that littered the floor. “And Captain Singh came down here to see to the wounded. I had my hands full; I can tell you.”
“What did he say to you?”
“He said, ‘I hate to see my family suffer like this,’ and I really got the sense that he truly felt that way, Jess. The ship was the home, and the crew, the family. And it broke his heart to see either in pain,” Clayton said.
“You ever heard the saying ‘Sometimes you can tell your bartender things you wouldn’t tell your doctor’?”
“More often than you’d think,” Clayton admitted. “Listen, Jess, things will pick up. And I don’t think we’re doing all that bad. The family is hurt, but they’re holding together.”
Jessica nodded. “True. I’m sorry, these are my private concerns. I shouldn’t voice them to anyone, let alone my doctor.”
Dr. Clayton laughed. “Right this minute, I’m your bartender, remember?”
“What advice does my bartender offer me then?”
“Everything will sort itself out,” Clayton said in dead seriousness. “Get through today. Tomorrow can wait.”
Jessica started walking away. “Profound, doctor,” she said over her shoulder.
Clayton watched her go. Under his breath, he said, “You’re welcome.”
Then he went back to the sickbay.
4.
CLLLLAAAANNNNGGGG!!!!
The high-pitched wail threatened to split his head in two.
“Beautiful, is it not, Captain?” General Carn asked him. “It has a certain … melody.”
Hawk peered through misty eyes. He found it increasingly hard to focus. The electrical current the General continued to use to torture his prisoner had taken its toll. With each long, painful burst, Hawk grew more tired. With each long, painful burst, he grew more tired.
Carn patted the side of Hawk’s face.
CLLLLAAAANNNNGGGG!!!!
Captain Nowlan cringed at the sound. He hung from chains, his feet dangling above the floor. It was scarily familiar to a time previous when the General had shown his own unique hospitality towards Hawk.
“Good Captain, I do believe you weaken,” Carn said with a chuckle. He moved away.
In front of Hawk there was a stand, a round device clamped to the top. It had a set of lights on the front, turning in a hypnotic spiral. Below it, a cone. The source of the god-awful sound Carn was intent on subjecting him to. Hawk’s mind was hazy, shocked from the bouts of pain inflicted at the hand of the Draxx General. And the sound.
“What are you doin’ to me?” Hawk asked weakly.
“You do not appreciate the sound?”
Hawk shook his head. Closed his eyes from exhaustion. “It’s not my favourite band, pal, that’s for sure …”
Carn turned slowly around. “Humour. A human fallacy. You think that making light of your situation will help.”
Hawk didn’t have the energy to argue. He hung his head. Sweat dripped from his hair.
“History repeats itself, does it not Captain?” Carn asked, amused. “I believe we have been met like this before, the two of us. Perhaps this time the message will sink in.”
That brought Nowlan around a little. He looked back up, anger flashing in his eyes. “You’ll never break me … never!”
With a simple nod of Carn’s head, one of his subordinates threw a switch. Raw electricity coursed through his veins, burned his muscles, made his bones hot. His teeth slammed together so hard they threatened to shatter from the force. Hawk screamed through clenched jaws until the breath ran out of his lungs. Spittle poured from his mouth.
Then the power was gone. Pain flooded through him in waves, and Hawk found everything falling into the distance. He slipped into unconsciousness and back into his own painful memories.
* * *
He was back in his ship, Speedy And there was Carn’s own fighter, zooming towards the huge Union construction array.
“He’s makin’ for it,” Hawk reported into his headset. The two fighters flying either side of him acknowledged his report. “Yuh two hang back. Pick up any stragglers. I’m takin’ him myself.”
“Captain -” Striker started to say.
“That’s an order!” Hawk spat. He pushed Speedy down to follow Carn’s vector, and increased to full thrust to close the gap.
Carn swept beneath the construction arrays, a spidery network of engineering grids used for constructing Union starships and space stations. Though Hawk knew the General’s interest didn’t lie with ships and stations. What he was after lay at the end of the arrays: Project 6.
Carn dove in among the arrays, ducking in and out of jagged white framework, and Hawk matched him move for move. Hawk managed to fire off a few shots, but they were little more than a warning, nowhere near the mark.
“Dammit!”
“Hawk, come in please, Hawk,” the familiar voice of Admiral Schaffer issued from the comm.
“Hawk here.”
“Kid, we’re having a hard time tracking him with the turrets. Unless you stop him before he gets there.”
“Yuh sir,” Hawk said. He performed a barrel roll, then a dive to duck away from a warhead Carn shot his way. It whirred past, missed him by inches. “I’m tryin’.”
“I have the Wermach en route to defend the project, but it won’t get there before he does. If he fires on it …”
Hawk sighed. “I won’t let that happen.”
They left the last of the arrays behind. Carn rocketed towards Project 6, a diamond-shaped machine about a hundred feet tall. It had a swarm of construction bots surrounding it, working back and forth. The end of the arrays cradled it at both ends, held it in place as it was wor
ked on.
A small squadron burst free from around Project 6, a group of four fighters.
Carn obliterated them in seconds. Hawk fired on him, barely able to register the sight of the fighters bursting into flame.
A familiar voice broke through to his comm.
“I don’t think so, Captain.”
Carn levelled out, fired a single shot at the Project. But it wasn’t a warhead or an energy bolt.
A probe? Hawk asked himself.
It attached to the Project, clamped onto its side. Bright flashes of white light rippled away from it. And then, seconds later, the Project disappeared.
* * *
Hawk chased the General into a Jump. His computer locked onto Carn’s ship, to match its movements. When Carn dropped to a normal speed, so too did Hawk.
Then he wished he hadn’t.
He saw the Project floating beneath a massive Draxx warship, in the process of being slowly dragged inside the behemoth’s hold. Several other Draxx ships floated behind it, and fleets of Draxx fighters swarmed back and forth.
Before he could react, two grappling hooks shot from the bow of the warship and clamped onto Speedy.
Hawk shook the ship from side to side, but it was no use. The grapplers pulled him in towards the warship.
* * *
“I know this world,” Hawk said. The huge viewport in front of them looked out over Minich VI. It might have, once, been a beautiful world. A paradise.
It looked as though it had been bombarded, ground to dust, beneath the boots of the Draxx.
“One of many who dares defy us,” Carn said.
After arresting him, Hawk was sedated until they arrived at Minich. They flew him down to the surface to face questioning. At first he wondered why they’d gone to all the trouble. Why not torture him on board?
Only when he saw the view outside did he understand.
Project 6 stood against the horizon.
“My guards will take you to the interrogation room. I do hope you will be co-operative.”
As the Draxx foot soldiers led him away, Hawk looked back over his shoulder. “Don’t bet on it, pal.”
* * *
“Again. The detonation sequence of your … super weapon.”
“Never,” Hawk spat.
“Do you not grow tired of this? Tired of the pain?” Carn asked.
Hawk shook his head. “Don’t feel nothin’.”
The General laughed, signalled to the Draxx in the corner. “Then let us begin again,” he said.
Pain shot up Hawk’s spine like a rocket. It coursed through his veins, leaked into his muscles. His fingernails burned. He screamed through gritted teeth, his jaws clamped down hard.
Carn let him rest. “I am not without mercy, Captain,” he said.
Hawk looked up, and despite the agony he laughed. “You’re a funny guy, you know that?” He watched his own reflection in the mirror of Carn’s mask. Battered and bruised, a mere shadow of his usual self.
The General signalled the Draxx. “Again,” he said.
* * *
They let him sleep. But only a couple of hours passed before the General returned to the interrogation room. Not that Hawk had gotten much rest. The chains dug into his wrists, cutting tight into the flesh.
“Are you ready to tell us?”
Hawk stayed mute.
“I see. Then you leave me no choice. My time is short, and grows shorter by the hour.”
The General strapped a device over Hawk’s head, fastened it under his chin. When he switched it on, Hawk felt a heavy, warming sensation in the middle of his head. As if it was microwaving his brain.
“Since you are proving difficult to break, and I no longer have the time to indulge in my own enjoyment, I am forced to resort to more … extreme … methods,” Carn said.
Now the sensation in his head felt like an itch.
“What’s it doin’ to me?” Hawk croaked.
The General walked back and forth, his hands clasped behind his back.
“So you can speak,” he said with relish. “It is an extractor. It will take from your brain that which I desire. However, the process is a little intrusive, to say the least.”
Hawk grimaced as the itch became a niggling pain. His head felt hot as if it were cooking from the inside out.
“The detonation sequence.”
“Get lost.”
“What is the detonation sequence?”
Hawk strained against the chains holding his arms. If he could reach his head with his hands, he would have held it to keep it from blowing apart. “I’ll never give it to yuh.”
“The sequence.”
“Shut … up …”
Already it got hard to speak, to answer back. As if his brain were running slower than usual, confused by something burrowing into it.
“What is the detonation sequence?”
“No.”
Carn shrugged. “It doesn’t matter if you will or you won’t tell me. I am merely directing your mind to think of the secret you’re trying so hard to hide. The extractor will follow that line of thought until it reaches the truth.”
“No good …” Hawk said, grimacing.
“Tell me. The detonation sequence of the device. I must have it.” Carn took hold of Hawk’s head, held it firm in his gloved hands. “Tell me!”
Hawk couldn’t speak now. Cymbals crashed in his ears.
And then it was all over. Carn removed the device. The pain stopped.
“Good,” Carn said. He patted Hawk on the side of the face. “So long, Captain.”
Then he left.
Hawk fainted from exhaustion.
* * *
A loud bang woke him. He looked up to see Union soldiers in the room.
“What the -” he started to say.
A marine nodded a greeting at him. “Captain.”
Hawk recognised him, but he couldn’t think of a name. His mind was hazy, slow, numb. He didn’t need any medic to tell him his brain had been damaged in some way from whatever Carn did.
“One moment sir, we’ll have you out of there.”
Hawk hung his head, relieved. The chains were cut, and where he would have collapsed onto the floor he was caught by friendly hands.
“Okay, let’s go,” somebody said. They carried him out of there. His feet dragged along the floor.
A distant explosion shook the ground. Dust fell from the ceiling.
“We gotta hustle,” a voice said.
They ran. Soon they were outside, then across a flat surface. Hawk looked up, registered the sight of a Union transport awaiting them. Marines stood outside it, waving them on.
They clambered on board, then the transport lifted into the air.
“Hold on Captain Nowlan, we’ve got a battle cruiser waiting in orbit.”
Hawk looked up to find a familiar face peering at him, however he couldn’t place it.
Everything was … garbled.
“They took something from me,” Hawk said. “They took something …”
Just then an immense boom shook the craft. The air shattered around them. Everyone rushed to the viewports to see what had made it. Hawk peered over from where he sat, unable to move. He could just make out what they were all looking at.
A huge mushroom cloud lifted into the sky, and at the same time, the horizon was spreading, the ground coming apart. Then they were over the cloud layer and it was lost from view.
* * *
Days later, in the medical bay of the battle cruiser, Hawk received an unexpected visitor. Admiral Schaffer walked in holding a bottle of scotch in one hand and two glasses in the other. He sat on the edge of Hawk’s bed and poured them each a glass.
“Here you are kiddo. After what you’ve been through, I think you’ve earned it.”
Hawk broke into a lopsided grin. “Thanks.” He sipped the scotch, thankful for its familiar burn down his throat.
Schaffer looked around. “I’m not sure the, uh, medics will appreci
ate it, but I do have some say around here. How you feeling?”
Hawk shrugged. “Much better now. They say my brain showed signs of trauma. But the worst of the damage has healed. If they’d pumped any more electricity in me, I’d have cooked like Kentucky fried chicken.”
He lifted his hand, showed where all of his fingernails had dropped off.
“Yikes,” Schaffer said.
“Yeah, so …”
“Well, if it wasn’t for the tracking device installed on Speedy we would never have located you,” Schaffer said.
“Yeah, thank God for that.”
Schaffer took a hit of his scotch. Hawk sensed news coming, and not the good type.
“They took something from you. You kept saying it. The detonation sequence?”
Hawk locked eyes with him, nodded slowly. “I think so.”
Schaffer got up, motioned for Hawk to follow him.
He did so, slowly, in his hospital gown with the glass of scotch in his hand. He walked with Admiral Schaffer to a wide viewport on the other side of the medical bay.
“For obvious reasons we referred to it as Project 6, top secret. But its true purpose was as a weapon of ultimate destruction. Somehow the Draxx learned of its presence. We’re still trying to determine the means by which Carn transported it from one sector to another,” Schaffer explained.
Before them lay what was left of Minich VI. It took several minutes for Hawk to fully comprehend what he was seeing. The planet had been shattered in two, its atmosphere escaping into space.
“Unbelievable isn’t it? Project 6 was a planet cracker. That’s what we call it. Designed to cut a planet in half. Of course, we never intended to test it on an inhabited world.”
Hawk turned away, slung the scotch down his throat. He felt Schaffer’s hand on his shoulder.
“You okay kid? It’s not your fault. Nobody could’ve fought that machine off forever, you know.”
“I will avenge them,” Hawk said.
Admiral Schaffer patted him on the shoulder. “And you’ll get your chance, son. I promise you.”
Hawk went back to the view of Minich VI. Before he could say no, Schaffer had the glass out of his hand and filled again. Hawk sipped it.
The fire hit his belly. He knew it would never leave, not till justice was served.