by Tony Healey
Two Naxor foot soldiers lifted their weapons and fired at him. Hawk ducked behind a bulkhead as the gunfire struck the wall a few inches to his left.
“Should’ve brought a pistol!”
The moment they paused, he was moving again. He leapt out, lifted his legs and rebounded off the bulkhead opposite. His momentum carried him through the air, and he crashed clumsily into the two soldiers, knocking them to the floor with him. They scrambled over him, but they spilled off of him as Hawk shoved himself up. One of them let loose a battle cry and Hawk slammed his kataan into its open mouth. The other one attacked him from behind, took hold of his head and yanked it back. Hawk just managed to pull his sword free of the dead Naxor and stab behind him into his other attacker.
Covered in Naxor blood, he dashed toward what he took to be the shuttle bay, following three Naxor dressed in what could only be pilot’s gear, sleek black helmets tucked under their arms as they ran.
Time to get out of Dodge, he thought as the huge ship quivered underfoot.
7.
The warheads erupted over a wide area, disintegrating whole sections of the battleship’s hull. Instant erosion that left it exposed immediately to the harsh vacuum. Naxor crew were sucked out into space, clouds of debris and frozen atmosphere rushed past the Warrior as she continued her onslaught of the larger ship.
It should have been impossible, and indeed it would have been had they not had the experimental weapons at their disposal.
Use what you’ve got, King thought. That’s what Captain Singh – Dad – told me once. Use what you have at hand and make the best of it.
“Commander, bring us around to their rear. Fire a couple of those directly into their engine exhaust.”
“Aye.”
He made the Warrior turn in a wide circle around the stern of the battleship, until they faced the massive engines. He locked on to their white-hot centres and fired.
The explosion was immense and blinding. It rocked the Warrior until King thought she might break apart.
“Back away, back away!” she yelled. Commander Greene did his best to reverse back from the battleships engines.
* * *
General Carn grabbed whatever was nearby. It just happened to be a bulkhead jutting out from the wall. He staggered against it as the battleship fell to chaos. The deck started to tilt backward, the ship lifting at the nose as her engines died.
“Extensive damage to engines, multiple hull breaches on most decks,” the status report came from somewhere to his left. He didn’t bother to look in the direction of the speaker. Carn looked up at the viewscreen.
“Have you located the monolith yet?” he shouted.
A moment later. “On screen now, General.”
A map appeared, overlaid across the full width of the screen. It showed the artefact nestled amongst thick jungle. Surprisingly there were no defences guarding it, no signs of civilisation anywhere near.
It was all he needed to see.
This ship, he thought. It’s just a tool. What matters is down there. The master pyramid.
The deck still lifting crazily, Carn didn’t say another word. The bridge was in a state of craziness, all hands attempting to wrestle back control of the mighty vessel. Not one of them noticed when the General slipped out of the exit at a near run.
* * *
The battleship had stopped firing and so too had the Warrior, for the moment. It seemed unbelievable that they’d managed to inflict so much damage in so short a time.
“Their ship’s dead,” Greene said. “And for once we’re doing fine.”
Jessica patched herself through to engineering. “Chief? How’re we holding up?”
“Better than the last ship I was on.”
It’d been meant as harmless patter, but Jessica still felt a pang of discomfort at the thought of the Defiant going down the way she did. And if she felt as though she’d failed everyone, how did the Chief feel? After all, the Defiant was her baby. Repaired and patched together with band-aids more times than she cared to remember, usually under Chief Gunn’s watchful eye.
“I know what you mean, Chief,” King said, dismissing the little stab of guilt in her heart at what she’d led her crew into in the past. What she’d asked of them.
“Everything’s holding up,” Gunn said. “She may be old and full of dust, but this ship’s strong and has it where it matters.”
“Rather like another ship of her time I once knew,” Jessica said with a smile.
The Chief chuckled over the intercom. “Yeah, Ma’am, me too.”
“Keep me posted of any changes, Chief.”
She closed the channel.
Dolarhyde looked up. “Captain King, I have Hawk on the line. Shall I put him on speakers?”
She nodded and exchanged looks with Commander Greene.
The Texan’s voice was barely a whisper, but it was clearly that of Hawk in a highly excitable state.
“Cap! Hey it’s me, Hawk. I’m hidin’ out in the shuttle bay till I can get my mitts on a ship and blow off of this tub,” he said. “But I got somethin’ to tell yuh. I ain’t alone.”
Jessica frowned. “Be clear, Captain. What do you mean? Members of the crew?”
“No, no, no, I mean the General. Old buzzard’s here. And he’s gettin’ into a shuttle. I think he’s ditchin’ ship.”
She smiled. Finally, a chance at grabbing Carn.
“Are there other ships there, Captain Nowlan?”
“Yuh. Another three. I’m about to try and nab one.”
“Make sure you get one,” she ordered. “We’ll follow.”
Jessica connected with engineering once again. “Yes?” Lieutenant Belcher said.
“Lieutenant, what’s the status of the cloak? Still operational?”
“Aye. Will we be needing it?”
“You bet. Prepare to divert power to the cloak.”
She closed the channel.
“Good idea,” Dolarhyde said. “I did wonder how we’d get past the inhabitants of that planet and their need to enact revenge. They’ll be on their way up here, no doubt, to take advantage of that ship being disabled.”
Commander Greene steered them beneath the listing battleship. “Yeah, and I for one don’t plan on staying up here to see what happens when they spot us.”
“Commander, activate the cloak. Let’s drift but prepare to punch the engines once Hawk gives us word.”
“Aye.”
8.
Hawk watched from his hiding place as the General carefully lowered a large mottled egg into the back of one of the shuttlecraft. He then slid into the pilot’s seat. The shuttles were for two passengers only, seated side by side. A pilot and a gunner. They were like two separate pods connected by the bullet-shaped engine in the middle. Carn activated the little ship, and the hood slid shut over him.
That was when Hawk moved. With the General’s attention now fixed on the matter of getting up off the deck and out the hangar bay doors, he dashed to the nearest shuttle and dived in.
His eyes darted over the controls to find the activation switch. He knew he only had seconds before the hangar was purged of atmosphere and the doors were allowed to open. If he couldn’t get the canopy down by then…
“There!” he said with a grin and slapped the switch. The shuttle rumbled to life at the same time as the canopy slid over him and sealed shut with a whoosh of air. He watched out the cockpit as General Carn’s shuttle lifted and seconds later the hangar bay doors opened to reveal a corner of space over a bright, blue planet.
“Come on come on come on,” Hawk muttered. He grabbed the stick and swung the shuttle around. Carn slid through the gaping exit and he hurried to close in behind, though keeping a respectable distance.
He left the battleship behind and followed the General into the upper atmosphere.
* * *
Dolarhyde nodded, holding the comm. piece to his ear. “Hawk is in pursuit. He’s activating his tracker now.”
Jes
sica pointed at Commander Greene, who merely nodded in compliance. “On it,” he said. “Pursuit course. Full thrusters.”
“Activate the cloaking device,” Jessica ordered. “And try to keep up, Del. We can’t lose them.”
Commander Greene shook his head as he brought the Warrior to full thrust, tearing toward the planet as fast as she could without going to Jump speed. “Always trust the driver,” he said.
The alien planet rushed to meet them as they left the field of battle behind, the nose of the Warrior glowing red-hot.
9.
Hawk followed the General into the cloud layer. Visibility cut to barely anything, he had to rely on the crude sensor display before him. It showed the General as a green dot – a friendly – several clicks in front of him. And Carn was steadily dropping altitude.
Definitely moving toward a target on the ground somewhere near here, Hawk thought.
The clouds gave way to jungle terrain populated here and there by some of the tallest, thinnest trees Hawk had ever seen. Up ahead he could see Carn’s ship still dropping toward the ground. Hawk picked up speed to close the gap.
“Hawk to Warrior. Hope yuh not too far behind, folks. Mirror face is gettin’ ready to land.”
“We’re right behind you, cloaked,” Dolarhyde’s voice came through. “Just keep up with him, Captain.”
* * *
“With the vegetation this dense, will we be able to land, do you think?” Jessica asked.
Commander Greene shook his head. “No. And I don’t think we’ll have the time to scout about for a clearing, either.”
“We’re racing the clock.”
“Yeah,” Greene said. The trees sped past beneath them in a green blur.
King got up out of the command chair. “Then we’ll have to do this the old fashioned way. What’s it like out there?”
Dolarhyde checked the adjacent station. “Standard atmosphere. Slightly higher pressure. One gee of gravity. Won’t take long to equalize.”
Jessica nodded, flicked the comm. by the chair. “Chief, Lieutenant Belcher… get yourselves up here please.”
* * *
General Carn raced ahead, clawing closer and closer toward the tree canopy as he neared his target. Hawk checked his readings, then when he glanced back up he saw it. A little triangle on the horizon, coming up fast. Getting clearer, bigger, darker. Not just a triangle against the sky, but the tip of a pyramid.
“Warrior, Hawk. Better hurry. And be ready to move. I see the artefact.”
10.
Hawk circled above the pyramid as he watched Carn land in the green bordering the pyramid, like a moat, from the encroaching jungle. He didn’t wait for the General to spot him – if he hadn’t already – and selected a site on the opposite side.
His shuttle settled in the long grass with a slight bump and Hawk didn’t waste any time clambering out and using the ship as cover. He peered up at the sky.
“Come on!” he whispered.
* * *
“It’s been a long time since I piloted a ship,” Chief Gunn said as she took over from Commander Greene at the pilot’s station. As they passed each other, their eyes caught and they lingered there for the briefest of moments.
“You’ll do fine,” he said to her.
They kissed, and as he pulled himself away, she grabbed his belt and yanked him back in. “Be safe.”
“I will.”
Jessica was already heading out the door, leaving the bridge in the temporary command and care of Chief Gunn and Lieutenant Belcher.
“Hurry, Commander,” she said.
She broke into a run down the hall, conscious of the slight numbness in her calf muscles and the uncomfortable knot working its way into the bottom of her back.
Not now, she willed it. Please.
* * *
A shot ricocheted off the side of the shuttle, followed by its thunderous report. Hawk flinched as General Carn took a few more shots at him, peppering the facing side of the shuttle with blast holes.
In the quick glance Hawk managed from behind the landed ship, he saw the General firing with one hand. Under his other arm, he held a big egg.
“General! We know what you’re going to do!” he yelled from behind the craft.
“And yet you are powerless to stop me!” came the reply. “History repeats itself. Yet again.”
The General looked up at the sky as the unmistakable rumble of a starship engine blasted the ground from above. The trees blew this way and that. Hawk looked up but couldn’t see a ship.
The cloak, he thought.
When he looked back to where the General had been standing, the space was empty.
* * *
The door opened, warm air rushing into the ship. Commander Greene tossed the jump cables out over the side of the landing ramp, fastened as they were to the aft bulkhead.
They each took one, attached it to their belts and walked slowly backwards to the lip of the ramp.
“These are tied on tight, right?” Jessica asked him.
Greene nodded.
“Only one way to find out,” Dolarhyde said.
Jessica swallowed. “I hope she flies this baby straight…”
They all went at the same time, allowing the clips in their hands to do the work and slide them down the cables toward the ground. By squeezing the clips together they were able to slow their descent several times so that their landing was a little softer. It was old fashioned, and only ever taught in the Academy as a last minute resort. But here they were, decades after passing their basic ‘Descent From A Non-Stationary Vehicle’ course, and doing so perfectly.
Jessica unclipped herself and looked around. She spotted General Carn’s ship straight away.
“Where’s Hawk?”
“Come on,” Greene said, running ahead and pulling his weapon from its holster at the same time. “He’ll be on the other side.”
Captains King and Dolarhyde followed.
11.
“Where did he go?” Greene asked Hawk.
“Dunno. Fella was there one minute, then he just disappeared.”
Dolarhyde pushed ahead of them to examine the exterior wall of the massive pyramid. After several minutes, Jessica urged him on.
“Any luck?”
Dolarhyde held up a finger to her as he concentrated on trying to find the familiar groove. And then –
“Got it!” Dolarhyde cried. He bent down, ran his finger upward along the seam and then stepped back as the entrance to the pyramid opened before him.
Jessica breathed a sigh of relief. “Thank goodness…”
Dolarhyde turned to them, bathed in the intense white light from the pyramid’s innards, and grinned. “Finally. We’re here.”
A shot rang out. Dolarhyde’s expression changed from delight to one of surprise. He looked down at his sternum, at the ruby red blotch spreading across his clothes. The former Captain staggered backward, steeled himself for a moment, then toppled to the side into the grass.
“NO!” Jessica yelled. She ran to his side as the mountain sealed itself back up. She fell onto her knees beside him, and lifted his head.
His eyes stared up into the sky.
“Captain Dolarhyde! Stay with me!”
She heard the others crowd in around her.
Dolarhyde’s eyes grew pale, misty. Perhaps it was merely the light blue of the sky reflected in their glassy orbs. Or it could have been the colour draining out of them, their inner light fading away.
His face grew ashen. Blood gushed from where his hands clamped over his midsection.
“So beautiful,” he whispered, his voice quiet as the sigh in the wind. “And I can see it.”
Tears spilled down Jessica’s cheeks. She was sobbing and couldn’t help it.
“See what, Captain? Stay with us.”
“I . . . I…” he stammered in a breathless voice. “I… see the light.”
He died there in the grass, right in front of them. With trembling hands, she
leant over and closed his eyes.
“Jess…” Greene said. “We need to get in there. Stop him.”
She couldn’t move.
Commander Greene yanked her up by the elbow, and her training kicked in. She wiped her eyes, found her resolve. Managed to control her grief enough to find the same groove Dolarhyde had used to activate the doorway. And sure enough, it opened for her.
Carefully the three of them stepped inside . . . and the moment they crossed the threshold of the pyramid, everything changed.
12.
“Whoa,” Hawk said. “Any of you feel that?”
Greene held his head. “I don’t feel right.”
Jessica looked about for General Carn, but he was nowhere to be seen.
“Where is he?”
Hawk went on ahead, his kataan at the ready. The inside of the pyramid was the same as all the others. Pristine white, almost clinical in its sterility.
Jessica looked back at the still-open entrance, and felt the breath catch in her lungs.
“Del…”
The Commander turned around too.
Dolarhyde wasn’t there.
“What the . . .” Greene managed to say. “Where is he?”
“I believe I can answer that,” a female voice said from within the pyramid. They both turned back around to see Hawk staring at a woman. She stood there, dressed in a Union uniform.
“Dana!” Jessica said in disbelief.
The former crewmember of the Defiant broke into a wide smile. “Hello Captain.”
“You’re really here,” Jessica said, touching Dana’s arms and shoulders to test her physical presence. “Not a spiritual being or anything like that?”
Dana shook her head. “Really here. In the flesh, as they say.”
Commander Greene had turned back to face the entrance, and the patch of grass outside where only seconds before Dolarhyde’s body had lain.
“Dana, can you tell us what the hell has happened? General Carn was in here, now he’s gone. Captain Dolarhyde was killed right out there,” she said and pointed to the spot. “And now his body’s vanished.”