by Tony Healey
Dana sighed as she readied to tell them what she knew. Hawk came to stand with them as they listened.
“When the General ran in here, he managed to change the timeline. But not in the way he wished,” she said.
“What d’you mean?” Greene asked.
“Well, as you may have already guessed, he wanted to head back to humanity’s past and wipe them out. But the devices are not built for that purpose. There are certain safeguards, and it wouldn’t allow him to wipe an entire species from history. However, it did allow him to choose another part of the timeline to visit. And that’s where he’s gone.”
“So . . .” Jessica urged.
Dana licked her lips. “Captain this is going to be hard to accept, but . . . your timeline – our timeline – doesn’t exist anymore. It’s all been changed. General Carn destroyed the Defiant before she could get pulled into the black hole that sent her to this galaxy. He left his former self stranded there, along with Hawk, and then assisted the Draxx in taking one system after another from the Union.”
Greene’s eyes filled with panic. “So Meryl . . .”
Dana shook her head slowly. “I’m sorry Commander. You’re all dead. We’re all dead. The Defiant was destroyed shortly after leaving the starbase.”
Greene stepped back, against one of the consoles lining the huge room, then slid down to the floor, his face blank, eyes pale with shock. The entrance to the mountain slid shut, sealing them in.
Jessica looked to Hawk. “Captain, if you wouldn’t mind,” she said and indicated the Commander.
“Yuh, sure thing,” he said and walked to where Commander Greene sat. “Hey fella . . .”
Jessica turned back to Dana.
“How do we fix this?”
“The only way you can,” Dana said. “Go back to a point in time where you can counter the General’s attempts at destroying the Defiant. It’s your only hope.”
13.
Jessica knelt in front of the Commander.
“Del.”
He shook his head. “I can’t believe it.”
“Del, listen to me.”
“I can’t believe she’s gone. Wiped out.”
Jessica snapped her fingers in front of his face. His eyes shifted to gaze into hers.
“Listen to me! You need to snap out of it! We can fix this. But I need you. We can save everyone,” she said.
Commander Greene nodded once. “Sure.”
Jessica stood. “Del, why don’t you let Hawk find you something to drink in here.”
Dana cleared her throat. Jessica saw she now held a tray of drinks, somehow miraculously conjured from thin air.
“How . . .”
Dana put a finger to her lips. “It’s a secret.”
* * *
They drank and started to feel a bit better about things. But there were many questions, and Dana did her best to answer them.
“So why weren’t we effected by the change in timeline?” King asked her.
“Because you were in here. It might sound unbelievable, but these artefacts stand separate to time and external forces. They are literally invincible.”
Hawk thumbed back in the direction of the entrance. “And Dolarhyde?”
“Still on the planet where you found him, no doubt,” Dana said. “After all, you were never here to pick him up.”
“And this thing will let us go anywhere we choose?”
Dana nodded.
“But we only get one shot.”
“Yes. Because there are no pyramids in our own galaxy, there would be no way of trying any of this again. One chance, Captain, to restore things to how they were meant to be and stop him. Rebalance the books.”
Jessica drank.
“And, uh, why are you here? Have they kept you prisoner all this time?” Greene asked her, finally coming back to himself. The thought of being able to fix everything was what had done it for him. To sort out the mess they’d gotten themselves into. To stop the Chief from dying along with the rest of the Defiant.
“They have transferred my body to a state of pure energy,” Dana explained. “This is the form I have adopted for now, and as you can see it is quite real. But should I want to change, I have only to will it for it to happen.”
“So yuh not human anymore, eh?”
“I guess you could look at it like that,” Dana said. She laughed. “Sorry. It’s just that I was thinking I’m really ‘More Than Human,’ you know, as the saying goes.”
“That doesn’t freak you out at all?” Greene asked.
“Not at all. It feels natural. It feels right. You should try it, Commander.”
“Uh huh.”
Captain King folded her arms. “So, we’re lost in time. What do we do?”
“I have a plan,” Dana said. “And although you’ll only get one chance, if you can pull it off, you might just be able to stop the Defiant from getting stranded in the first place.”
14.
It took about half an hour for them to flesh out the plan, working with Dana to perfect it.
“Seems good to me,” Greene said. “I don’t see how anything can fall through.”
“Well, it can,” Jessica said. “We can fail. That’s how it can fall through. But it won’t.”
“There’s only the four of us,” Hawk said.
Dana held up three fingers. “No, only three.”
“Huh?”
“I cannot come. They have other work for me. It seems that the ancient minds of these devices want to correct some problems with their programming. And they realise that they’re desperately in need of a spokesperson, of sorts, to converse with the natives of whatever planets they’ve been left on.”
“I can think of a problem, a pretty big one,” Jessica said. “If you’re not coming with us, who will control the machine? Dolarhyde was our man, but of course…”
She didn’t have to say it. Though Captain Dolarhyde was, right now, on the surface of that planet, they’d still watched him die in front of them. That reality had been overwritten, but it was real to them. As real as his body going lax in her arms as she held him in his final moments. As real as the light leaving his eyes . . .
“Captain, you will know. It’s all there,” Dana said and tapped her own forehead. “Everything you need is in there already.”
“I’m afraid I don’t share your optimism.”
Commander Greene stood next to Jessica and put his arm around her. “We have faith in you, Jess.”
“Don’t get soppy on me,” she warned.
15.
They joined hands, Jessica in the big white chair at the centre of the room, Hawk and Del in front of her, holding her hands and each other’s to form a rough triangle – pyramid – of their own.
To the side, Dana watched them. Jessica noticed the woman starting to fade.
“Where are you going, Dana?” she asked her, a little panicked to be left to her own devices. “You’re leaving already?”
Dana smiled. “Have faith in yourself. You’re doing it right now.”
She faded from view completely. Jessica couldn’t help but swallow from fright. Everything grew bright around them, until the beam of light in which they stood omitted all else. It absorbed them.
“You’re doing it!” Greene said with a big grin. Hawk was staring up at where the indeterminate roof of the structure had to be.
Jessica looked up. The light became a white mist through which they ascended. Now she understood Dolarhyde’s last words.
Together, holding hands, they became one with the light . . .
PART TWELVE
ENDGAME
1.
In his journey back, General Carn held on tight to the Queen’s egg. It jittered and vibrated under his arm, moving with the new life growing inside of it. Regardless of whatever else happened, the egg would be his proof to the Draxx Queen that what he said was true. After all, there was only one place you could get a Royal egg…
The intense light lifted him,
turned him over and over. He revisited his tumble into the black hole and to what happened before that. The events that led up to it. In a way, it was all relevant, considering his plans had had to change. The artefact would not allow him to wipe them out.
Well, so be it.
But what had happened before would play into his plans as they stood now . . .
* * *
General Carn targeted the group of craft in his scanners and sent his orders through the stealth communication circuits. The two ships following his lead acknowledged with similarly silent signals.
He increased his speed. Once he closed the distance to the enemy, he would spring the trap.
So, their intel had been correct after all: a Union task force led by Captain Gerard “Hawk” Nowlan was systematically destroying their replicant production facilities, a strategy he respected if not appreciated.
But he couldn’t allow that to happen. They’d lost too many foot soldiers to unending battlefields like Massa E Kym. There was no way they could afford to lose the ability to quickly produce more. A ready-made battle force of unthinkable possibilities was an extremely valuable asset.
He locked onto the craft at the rear of the group as he came up behind it, and signalled his own ships to fan out. Under no circumstances were they to open fire until he’d already done so.
The General considered himself a true man of war, though man was the loosest possible term. In another life he’d once been like a man, it was true. But like the blacksmiths of a bygone age, he’d been reforged by the fires of chaos into something new entirely, a deadly weapon, tempered for war.
And now, like an arrowhead formed from molten steel, he was headed for his target. Carn’s hand braced against the firing trigger. Wait… wait… wait…
He fired.
Red energy bolts tore free from the front of his fighter. His stream of fire struck the back of the small Union craft. “Yes…” he whispered with pleasure as it exploded.
Now the two Draxx ships would perform a pincer movement to pick the other ships off. However, unlike the custom design of his own ship, fitted with the latest in stealth camouflage technology, the other two could not fire while cloaked. Their energy banks could not handle the vast amount of energy required for both acts, leaving them open to attack.
He watched from the side of his cockpit as the lead Union ship climbed away. The little ship spun on its axis. As it came up behind the Draxx vessel it let loose the cannons at its front, firing in rapid succession.
The Draxx ship was no more.
Carn brought himself to a standstill, to see what would happen next. However he hadn’t counted on two things. The first was that the stealth technology was not entirely without flaws. It reflected a fraction of the ambient starlight. Perhaps not noticeable to the average observer. But at the right angle…
The second was that his enemy would have the eyes of his namesake. And those hawk-like eyes spotted the subtle shift in light as Carn’s ship drifted on the currents of space.
Hawk’s fighter swung to the right. Then, without warning, it fired on him. The powerful bolts struck him dead on.
Circuits blew as the cloak failed. Carn ignored it. He threw the ship into overdrive and rocketed forward. Immediately he fired two warheads at Hawk’s ship. Hawk ducked out of their way, and they went hurtling through the pocket of space he’d occupied a second before.
Carn hurled his ship into a seemingly impossible barrel roll that evaded every one of the bolts Hawk fired his way. The swift response of his limbs was unnatural in its cool fluidity.
The other Union ship took out his last wingmate, burst the ship like a metal balloon.
That’s enough. Time to leave.
As Carn turned, he unleashed a single warhead on the small Union ship. It didn’t have time to react, and its radio chatter over his comm. system was immediately silenced.
He sped away. Immediately Hawk tried to close the gap.
Carn hailed the pursuing vessel through the comm. He didn’t need to identify himself. As the saying went, they were well met.
“General,” Hawk said.
“How did you know?” Carn said with mock innocence in his trademark silvery voice.
“It looked like your type of ship, to be honest,” Hawk said.
Carn chuckled. The last time he’d had cause to laugh was when he had Hawk on a slab torturing him, back on Mephisto Mara. But that was months ago. Nowlan had obviously regained his strength and confidence since then. Of course, the purpose of the torture had not been to kill him. That would have been swift and clean.
Uninteresting.
The key had been to find his weakness, find his pain threshold and slowly break through it. Tease it open wide enough to exploit it. If that Union rescue force hadn’t arrived to free him, the General might have succeeded in finally breaking him in two . . .
“Well, I have to say, your own ship suits you the best,” Carn said.
“Oh yeah? And how’s that?”
Carn checked his readout. “It’s small.”
Hawk fired a warhead. It fell short of Carn’s ship, although the explosion behind rocked the Draxx vessel from side to side.
“I’d have thought you’d know better than to waste your precious ammunition,” Carn said.
“Just a taster for you, General. Now how’s about we stop this charade and get you under arrest,” Hawk said.
Again, Carn laughed. He keyed several controls. There was no time to plot an exact course. If he waited any longer, he knew Hawk would close the distance between them and blow him out of the sky. What Hawk had probably guessed was that in disabling the stealth systems of the enemy ship, the battle had also damaged the ship’s energy shielding. Carn was a sitting target without it.
Well, not for much longer.
“You are confident, human. I’ll give you that. Anyway, it’s been pleasant enough but I grow tired of your company.”
General Carn pushed the Jump Drive lever forward. The stars burst forth around him and he was gone.
* * *
He exited in the path of a black hole. With the immense speed of his mighty ship, Carn failed to brake in time to slow down. He tore straight toward the eye of the swirling singularity. There was no wait. No slow tumble into the prospect of nothingness at its centre.
If the General believed in a God, he’d have sworn by one as his ship got sucked in like flotsam down a plughole. There was no panic. No fear. The methods taught to him so long ago to control his emotions kicked in again.
He was still. At peace.
The edges of the black hole slipped past, and he descended into the eye.
Into the void.
He expected the crush of unthinkable forces, but it didn’t come. Instead he found his mind opened like a flower, and every thought he’d ever had was released like dandelion seeds on a breeze.
He wandered.
Worlds and systems he’d seen. The star he’d called Sun in another life. A planet, small and covered in water. Blue skies. Dusk and dawn through blankets of cloud.
He remembered what it was like to have hands — real ones. And to touch with them. To really feel, with natural, biological skin.
A battle raged below his feet, and when he looked down he saw a war zone. Fire, blood, screams of agony. Explosions. Misery.
It was in this battle that he had ended. That he’d been pushed away. But war, a force of nature in itself, was not yet ready to let go. It pulled him back, breathed new life into his body. Made him return from death, reborn with hatred to fulfil the bitter and twisted torments of his masters.
And now, he felt himself come back together. The darkness fell to the side. He opened his eyes, expecting the blazes of hell that surely awaited him. But there were only stars. And a bright blue nebula.
Perhaps next time, he thought.
* * *
His ship tumbled through space, powerless. Every circuit blown, life support failing.
That’s fine, he though
t. I don’t need it anyway.
He reached under his seat and activated the emergency beacon that would signal his presence to any Draxx forces within twenty light years.
Carn caught movement from the side of his cockpit. He looked in time to see Hawk’s fighter zoom past. For whatever reason the human’s ship still had minimal power, at least. He tensed, wondered if Hawk would do an about face and make a visual reconnaissance of the area. With his own ship dead in the water, it wouldn’t show up on any immediate scans, but if he was seen…
His fears were rendered moot when Hawk’s fighter limped away toward the nebula.
He doesn’t realise I’m already here, Carn thought.
He watched Hawk go, then settled in for a long wait. The temperature in his cockpit dropped dramatically, the air grew thin, but it was of no matter. The General could stand exposure to the void itself for several days before it would have any real effect on him.
He closed his eyes and drifted away, deep in meditation.
* * *
The ship rocked from side to side. It broke his state of mental tranquillity. Carn opened his eyes to find himself staring at the back end of an enormous vessel. He could tell straight away that it was Draxx in design. His ship bucked in the eddy from the vessel’s engines.
They’re here to collect me, he thought. And then he saw Hawk’s fighter fly underneath and away. Seconds later, an enormous explosion blasted from the front of the gigantic ship, and it visibly lost power. The engines and lights died and it listed to port.
He knew immediately that the passage through the black hole had knocked out the larger ship’s power and, with that, its shields. For Union weapons to render such a critical blow, with one hit, they’d picked their moment well.
Once more, he waited.
An hour later, there were signs of power again on the gigantic ship. It righted itself and seemed to have recovered from the hit that Hawk had delivered to it.