by Aer-ki Jyr
“Oh?” Riax asked, glancing around. He hadn’t seen one four days ago when they’d briefly hid out here.
Ella swam over to the swells, nearly disappearing inside the churning water. Her head ducked under then came up a meter to the left, clinging onto the side wall. She reached a hand out over the edge and tapped the overgrowth, resulting in a dull thud. “It runs downs the length of the falls into the maintenance walkways within the ship.”
“Not so secluded then,” Riax commented.
“I did some reconnaissance. The maintenance areas are under heavy security, with the only access corridors to the city blocked by checkpoints. Everything else is mostly deserted, with lots of concealment handy. I think we’re about as safe here as anywhere, and the maintenance tunnels have facilities to sustain the workers, so we won’t need to go aboveground again.”
“Nice,” he commented, sitting down on the edge as Ella swam over to him. The pool was essentially a deep cylinder, with no curvature to the base, and the Cres swam up to the edge, planting her blue fingers on the rim to hold herself in place.
“I think if we stay out of sight for a while the Nevari will show their hand,” she said, looking up at him. “They’ve been spotting us too often for eyes alone. I think they have some other way of tracking us.”
Riax glanced up at the opening in the greenery above the pool, then back down to where Ella had been hiding underwater. “Aerial surveillance?”
“I haven’t seen any yet, but the Nevari are known to use small handheld devices.”
Riax dipped a hand down into the water. It was warm. “Should block thermal scans.”
“That was my thinking. I can hide out here indefinitely, and you should be able to come and go through the maintenance shaft.”
“We can hide out here indefinitely,” he corrected her. “But for now I’m going to stay on the lookout. If they have drones in play I might have been followed.”
Ella frowned. “You’re saying you can breathe underwater?”
“Same way you do, just not as efficient.”
“Did we get that from you?” the Cres asked.
“Other way around,” Riax admitted. “We copied your ability and added it to our genome.”
“Really?” she asked, surprised that a Human would emulate any other race.
Riax shrugged. “We got tired of drowning.”
A quizzical look crossed Ella’s face. “Are you serious or joking?”
“Serious,” Riax said innocently, crawling off into the greenery to keep watch.
Ella wasn’t sure if he was being sarcastic or not.
WHETHER ESCAPING DETECTION by the drones or a lack thereof, the Human and Cres didn’t see any further sign of their pursuit through the rest of their jumps and the intermittent layovers. It was possible, Riax considered, that the Nevari thought they’d left the ship at the first or second layover. If that was the case, they should be home free. If they were still lying in wait then the hunters were probably under the impression that they meant to ride the jumpship all the way to Cres territory, which they were, and would attempt to find them again when they tried to get off. That meant there was no way to know whether or not they were out there, or how many of them, if they were.
Riax emerged from the maintenance shaft and leaned down over the pool as Ella swam up to meet him from her hiding spot below.
“We entered the Gravis System about twenty minutes ago,” he reported, handing her a thin tube of sugar-rich goo that he’d appropriated from the foodstores in the maintenance area. “Give it a few hours more then I think we should see what the security is like.”
“Should be minimal,” Ella said, her lips just barely above the surface of the water. “They don’t charge for leaving the ship.”
“I’ll bet the Nevari left at least a few eyes behind. We’ll have to scout the exit before we try boarding.”
“It won’t matter once we’re on the surface,” Ella reminded him. “A third of this system’s population is Cres. Once we’re out of the Yiori kiosk we’ll disappear for good.”
Riax nodded, then his face went slack.
“What is it?” Ella asked, pulling her head all the way up out of the water.
“A disturbance . . . that direction,” he said, pointing forward within the ship.
Ella reached out her mind but got nothing. “I don’t feel it.”
“It’s small, multiple minds, but localized. Panic,” he said, sitting back on his heels as he looked into the greenery and his mind extended beyond. “About where I’d guess the bridge would be.”
“Oh no . . .” Ella whispered.
Neither one of them said anything for a long time, they merely waited for the heavy end of the hammer to fall. Riax kept scanning the ship telepathically, as did Ella, but his range was superior to hers. Eventually a swell of agitation began to form on the port side of the ship, which then spiked into an adrenaline/fear cocktail that he was well familiar with.
“The ship has been boarded,” Riax said quietly, barely audible over the churning water. “Firefight on the port side.”
Ella immediately ducked underwater and swam to the opposite side. She pulled her smooth, blue-skinned body up and over the edge of the pool in one graceful motion, then grabbed her clothes from under a bush and began to dress, wishing that she’d brought a weapon with her. By the time she got her left shoe on a shipwide broadcast broke through the organic din.
“Attention passengers: Call to general quarters. The ship is currently under attack and has been boarded by enemy troops. Security forces have been dispatched to repel the boarders and are engaging them as I speak. All passengers should take shelter within their quarters or any nearby building for their own safety and to give our own forces clear lines of fire.”
The Captain’s voice hesitated, then added, “If any armed passengers wish to assist in the security measures, report to the nearest security station to volunteer.”
“That’s a bad sign,” Ella said, pulling on her other shoe. “There must be a lot of them.”
“Sit tight,” he told her. “I can sense ships nearby. I don’t think we’ll be getting off for a while.”
“Are they Cres?”
“Unfortunately no,” Riax said, stating the obvious.
“I don’t understand. We should have a defense fleet on station to prevent this. Unless . . .”
“We need a sensor feed,” Riax said in agreement. “Let’s go.”
Ella walked around the perimeter of the pond and slipped into the maintenance hatch following Riax. They climbed down a long ladder that ended in a small alcove off the main maintenance walkway, which was currently deserted.
Any guesses? Riax asked.
Information center. They should have a system holo on display.
Lead on.
Ella put her hand on his arm briefly as she passed him by and jogged off down the walkway. Riax silently fell into step behind her.
WHEN THEY CAME to one of the ‘surface’ exits from the maintenance area it too was deserted. The guard station was left empty and the promenade outside was completely devoid of pedestrians.
This way, Ella told him as she lurked as close to the wall as she could. Sounds of a distant firefight echoed ominously through the empty streets, but she could sense many fearful minds in the surrounding buildings, barricading themselves inside.
The curvy streets offered ample cover, but made navigation annoying. The information center wasn’t more than 500 meters away but thanks to the city’s design they ended up having to travel more than a kilometer to get there.
The street opened up into a wide side alcove, set into a cave-like arch with short stairs around the perimeter leading up into smaller booths for different functions. In the center of it all was a circular pillar about a meter tall with a slew of holographic planets and their highl
ighted orbits around the system’s central star. A small green arrow represented the location of the jumpship.
There were a scattering of small red icons around the system, marking other ship locations, but over 90% of the red dots were clustered around the green arrow.
Ella stepped forward and toggled the public access controls, zooming in on the jumpship’s location. She took a step back and looked up, her throat tightening in horror.
There were hundreds of enemy ships circling the jumpship, with tiny icons moving from them towards the Utgara, indicating more boarding ships.
You recognize the designs? Riax asked.
Nevari, she answered, not believing how much of their fleet they’d committed to tracking them down. She tore her eyes away from the hologram and looked at the Human.
We’re not dead yet, he said, motioning for them to leave.
We should go back to the waterfall, she suggested, glancing down the street towards the sounds of weaponsfire that were growing louder, yet fewer in number. If they’re boarding the ship that means they’re looking for something to retrieve, otherwise they could just blow the entire ship away. If we can stay hidden long enough a Cres support fleet will arrive and drive them off.
That’s where I’m heading. Any idea how long that will take?
There’s no way we’d tolerate that fleet in our space. Depending on how long they’ve been waiting here, it could be minutes or days away, she said as the last of the weaponsfire died out, ostensibly as the security forces were overrun.
Hurry, she urged, breaking into a full run.
Chapter 34
WHEN THEY CLIMBED back up the maintenance shaft and emerged atop the waterfall, both telepaths noticed a considerable presence of minds beneath them. Riax crawled through the vegetation and stole a glance at the park.
Hundreds of Nevari in red battle armor were clustered in groups across the grounds. Apparently the enemy had decided to use the wide open spaces as a staging area. Riax’s enhanced eyesight spotted several streams of reinforcements pouring in, while small fireteams of six to eight soldiers each were being dispatched in waves elsewhere into the ship.
You said this all started at the dig site, Riax said as he crawled back into the opening by the pool. “What exactly did you report back over the interstellar comm?”
“We sent regular updates, why?”
“This is way too much effort to pick up some pieces of our technology. There has to be something more to it.”
“They’re after you now,” Ella reminded him.
“Are they?” he challenged. “How could they have known I was the cargo? Moreover, how did they even know you had cargo after you pulled your disappearing act?”
Ella shook her head, hearing more and more distant death screams. “You still don’t understand how valuable anything from you is. There are races that would, and have, fought wars over the smallest Human discoveries. If they can reverse engineer even the slightest amount it gives them the power to conquer, and they will stop at nothing to gain that power.”
Riax shook his head. “Did you report my existence before you left?”
Ella hesitated. “I’m not sure. I didn’t handle the communications.”
“Do they,” Riax said, pointing through the brush, “have the technology to intercept your signals?”
“I doubt it.”
“Someone else is behind all this. They’ve thrown up too large a web to track us, and now they thrown down the heavy end of the hammer inside your own territory. They’re desperate to stop us from reaching your people, why?”
“I don’t have any answers for you,” Ella said apologetically.
“The galaxy has changed since my time, so I need you to think. When you were at the dig site, when did the heavy hitters start showing up? Before or after you found me?”
“After,” she said immediately. “But there were already other archaeological teams on the planet at the time searching for more ruins.”
“Did you make any shipments of technology before you discovered me?”
“Some of the smaller pieces we sent back almost immediately.”
“Did they make it through?”
“The ship made it out of the system without incident. Beyond that I don’t know.”
“Did your other shipments make it out?”
“No, we made only one other attempt, at the end. The ship was captured in orbit.”
“Transport or warship?”
“It was our last warship.”
“What class?”
“Destroyer. We also had a cruiser in orbit at the time. It was destroyed during the battle.”
“The enemy fleet,” Riax pressed. “Stronger or larger?”
“Much larger,” Ella said with a small note of pride. “There are only two races that can match us in strength, and both operate on the other side of Cres territory.”
Riax stared at the ground beneath Ella’s feet. “Then they’ve been after me from the beginning. This whole campaign has been to find and stop me. Someone out there is monitoring your communications, and when they heard that you’d discovered a living Human in stasis they set all this in motion to keep me from getting in the clear.”
Riax closed his eyes and concentrated for a moment. He reached for the mental trigger that he’d implanted earlier as a wash of more mental death screams flowed to his open mind. Many were dying across the ship . . . too many for combat alone to account for.
When he opened his eyes Ella saw, as well as felt, an intense anger building inside of him.
“They’re not searching the ship,” he said, his voice a bit darker. “They’re killing everyone they come across to draw me out. If they don’t find me they’ll search the bodies, hoping for a lucky shot. When they come up empty they’ll search the ship level by level, bringing in specialized scanners and flooding the ship with troops . . . and they won’t stop searching until I’m found. The only reason they don’t destroy the ship to kill me is because they can’t leave without proof.”
Ella’s eyes narrowed and she began shaking her head as his anger began to spike. “Don’t even think about it.”
“If they want a Human, then they’re going to get one,” he declared, standing up. “Hide here until I come back for you,” he said, walking two steps forward and pulling aside tree branches to get to the opening of the waterfall, intending to jump down and attack the assembled troops.
Riax never got that far. Ella jumped forward, looped her arms around his waist and pulled him backwards with her into the water. He reflexively twisted about, trying to break her grip but it was no use, for she’d already let go of him and circled around above, kicking him lower and lower in the pool until he touched bottom.
The Human set his feet and tried to right himself, blowing a mixture of water and air out of his nose as Ella darted around to the side and knocked his legs out from under him, then rolled him over and face-planted him to the bottom of the pool with a knee on his back and held him there.
More annoyed than anything, Riax used his superior strength to push up off the bottom a third of a meter, but it did no good. Ella simply released him to float up a bit, then when his hands left the surface she knocked him back down again. If she’d just made it into a wrestling match then he would have won, even underwater, but the Cres wasn’t going to let him get that advantage on her and kept herself out of his grip, repeatedly pinning him to the bottom.
We . . . can’t . . . lose . . . you, she telepathically yelled at him, throwing every word like it was a heavy rock.
I’m fully healed and can handle myself, he yelled back, keeping a telekinetic hold on his nose so it didn’t get flooded with water again. He still had a bit stuck in his airway thanks to the surprise dunking.
There are over 500 of them down there. . .
They’re small, Riax argued ang
rily.
Their weapons aren’t.
I can take them if you’d just let me up, he said as he stopped struggling.
Even if you could, what then? There are probably thousands more already in the ship, and even if you somehow managed to kill every single one of them, we’re still surrounded by a warfleet. And if all they need is proof of your existence, you killing their boarding parties would be all the excuse they need to tear the ship apart. Then we’re dead for sure.
We can steal a ship, one of theirs if we have to, or we can hole up deep inside the ship and let them blast the rest of it to bits. Your reinforcements can dig us out later.
Well that’s brilliant.
This ship is too big to just blow up. You have to tear it apart piece by piece.
And they’ve got the guns to do it, she argued. The only way to keep them from using them is for you not to be found.
They’re killing every single person on the ship! he scolded her, still feeling the crescendo of death screams as the strike teams made their way throughout the jumpship. Sitting here is the one thing I’m not going to do.
Barely visible in the clear water a ripple of concussive energy began to form around Riax’s body. Moving the water to get to Ella was going to be difficult, but he was strong and angry enough to try. He gathered additional energy in his center and began pooling it on his back ready to release when Ella’s fist punched him in the side of his ribs.
A large wave pushed water up and out of the pool, soaking the plants around and pulling some dirt into the otherwise clean tank with the backflow, but both Ella and Riax remained at the bottom, with the Cres repining the Human to the flat floor.
Stop it! Ella screamed/pleaded with him. We need you alive. You hear me? We need you, badly. You don’t know what this galaxy is like. We have to fight everyone just to stay alive. There are no honorable races, every one of them is out for themselves and if we aren’t the strongest we all die.
Your technology, your teachings make us strong. You are the reason we have survived when the others did not, but it isn’t enough. That’s why we search for more of your technology, not only to enhance our strength, but to keep it out of the hands of others and protect ourselves. We have so many enemies that if they sense even the slightest weakness, or gain the smallest advantage, they will strike relentlessly, wearing us down until we have nothing left to fight with!