Rogue Starship: The Benevolency Universe (Outworld Ranger Book 1)

by David Alastair Hayden

  “Ow, get off me,” Oona muttered.

  The tether that had connected her to Kyralla must have snapped when they landed in the van, because it was lying in two severed parts between them.

  Siv crawled off her as the van’s doors slammed shut.

  “Sorry.”

  “Silkster, you could have brought the van up to meet us instead of—”

  “Watch and learn, sir.”

  Silky pulled up a window in Siv’s HUD showing the view above them. Siv watched his beloved skimmer bike, engines overloading, streaked toward one of the reaper skimmers. A bright flash followed as the bike exploded into the skimmer. Reapers, engulfed in flames, fell from the sky, their skimmer crashing on top of them. Fortunately, the road below was clear of traffic.

  Siv crawled toward the front seat. Oona sat up, rubbing her head groggily. Kyralla was already sitting, leaning her back against the inside wall of the van. She might have been awake, but she wasn’t at all with it. She was clearly more than a little dazed and confused.

  “Nice work, Silky.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “But the bike only took out one skimmer, and there’s still the starship.”

  The van rumbled as it climbed up then bounced down, nearly touching the smooth road below. A pop went off behind them. An ion blast, he hoped.

  “Taken care of, sir. Unless the military has messed with defense systems they barely understand…”

  “Huh?”

  Silky pulled up video shots from a satellite feed as well as from the van, showing a small explosion on the base.

  “Was that the missile you were so desperate to fire?”

  “Indeed, sir. And that was ten seconds ago. Now, get in the driver seat and witness the full extent of my genius.”

  Silky was even more full of himself than normal. He supposed that was the result of having given him the go-ahead to do what he thought best.

  The van rocked back and forth, making it hard to move forward. Siv fell once and bumped his head as he climbed into the driver’s seat.

  “I’m not taking the girls to the Shadowslip.”

  “I have respected your wishes, sir. The van is untraceable. I’ll explain it all as soon as we get the chance for long discussions of topics diverse.”

  The van took a hard right just before the gates to the military base, just ahead of nervous-looking soldiers with plasma rifles and a single assault cannon trained on the van, and on the reapers in pursuit. They didn’t fire at either group, further confirming Siv’s theory that the military had been paid off.

  The skimmer van careened one way then the next. Speeding up, slowing, speeding up again. Ion shots spattered into the earth and roadway around them.

  Kyralla leaned over and vomited.

  “Want me to take control of the van?” Siv asked.

  “I loaded a piloting routine, sir.”

  Suddenly, a swirling stream of blazing lights, dozens of them, each the size of a large cat, stormed up from the spot Silky had struck with the missile. Despite the distance and obstacles in between and the roaring of the van’s engines, Siv heard them buzzing and howling like giant bumblebees with fireworks strapped to their backs.

  “Ah, good old automated Hornet-7 defense drones,” Silky said. “Gotta love ‘em. You know, they just don’t make them like they used to.”

  “I’m certain they don’t make them at all.”

  “Too true, sir. And they may not know what they are, or that they even had them. Their existence is highly classified.”

  “So how do you know about them?”

  “Sometimes, sir, it pays to have been a special forces chippy in my youth.”

  Outside of the buzzing and the roar of the van’s engines, everything had gone quiet. The reapers had stopped firing at them. In fact, the two skimmers had abandoned their pursuit and were fleeing back toward their starship, which was turning around. Apparently the reapers knew something about the Hornets too.

  “Silkster, how do the drones know the bad guys from the good guys? After all, we’re the ones that kicked the hornets’ nest.”

  “Actually, sir, your bike targeted the base. But as for telling who’s who, I took care of that.”

  “How?”

  “Well…I’ve never brought it up, sir, because it’s never mattered before, but I can send short-range, burst-pulse signals over a specific channel used exclusively by military special forces.”

  “You can?”

  “Only in tandem with the ScanField-3 Sensor Array. We function as a team, sir. Package deal, you know?”

  “And you’ve done this before?”

  “Alas, until now, sir, I’d never had the opportunity to light up a target for a missile launch, much less a Hornet swarm. When you work with an Empathic Services agent, an archaeologist, and a thief, it really doesn’t come in handy much.”

  “So the sensor pack allows you to ‘paint’ targets for these Hornets to strike?”

  “Indeed, sir. So I took the liberty of painting the reaper starship and their skimmers. The drones will know them as enemies, and they’ll do the work they do, unless the military recalls them in time, assuming they even know what they are and how to control them…”

  “So we’re safe?”

  “We are mere innocents traveling in an unmarked van, sir.”

  Two explosions boomed in the distance. Siv checked the feed and saw the two reaper skimmers burst into flames. The scattering of debris that rained down on the city was nothing more than tiny fragments.

  The Reaper starship turned and burned toward orbit. The Hornets zoomed after it. The starship wasn’t nearly fast enough. The Hornets struck, penetrating the ship’s force fields and hull as if they were nothing more than tissue.

  “Nevolence!” Siv exclaimed. “What are those things?”

  “Force-shielded, double-hulled diamondine drones sheathed in plasma flames, sir.”

  Weaving their way through metal and shields with ease, the Hornets shredded the Reaper starship within mere moments, and a massive explosion, blue-white infused with pink streamers, erupted in the sky over the city.

  Large flaming chunks of starship plummeted toward the ground, only to be intercepted by the Hornets, who seemed to understand the importance of minimizing damage to the city below.

  “Holy Terra!” Siv shook his head. “Those things have to be the most powerful weapons in the galaxy.”

  “I wouldn’t go that far, sir. The Benevolence deployed many weapons of dreadful power during the Krixis Wars. The Hornets were but one of them, and their use was primarily defensive due to their limited range and short lifespans. The largest military base on every planet in the Benevolency has at least one launch of them. Otherwise, only Dreadnaught-Class Battle Ships and select special forces cruisers, like the one I served on, had access to them.”

  “How do they continually burn plasma like that and travel so fast?”

  “Alas, the Benevolence didn’t make the likes of me privy to such information.”

  “I’m sure someone has broken one open by now.”

  “No one that’s opened one has lived to speak of what they saw, sir. Even the spent ones will detonate if tampered with. And yes, in case you’re wondering, I sent a message to the military base warning them that would happen.”

  “Good work, Silkster.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  The buzzing Hornets zoomed back toward the base, returning to their resting place. As far as Siv could tell, none of them had failed during the attack against the Reapers.

  “We still have to escape the city.”

  “Indeed, sir. Sensors are detecting seven military spy drones tailing us, along with five from unknown sources, plus we’ve got three news media flights filming us live. And I’m certain both the police and numerous military units will be in pursuit soon enough.”

  Oona climbed into the passenger seat beside him. “What now?”

  “We run hard, we run fast.”

  “
It’s not going to be easy to get away, is it?”

  Siv gave her a sad smile. “I’m afraid yesterday was the last easy day of your life.”

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Siv Gendin

  “Sir, you could send the girls away in the van and return to the Shadowslip. You could tell them Kyralla kicked your ass and threw you out before they escaped.”

  “You know they can’t escape without my help.”

  Silky sighed. “I know, sir.”

  “Admit that you want to help them as much as I do.”

  “I want a lot of things, sir. Most of all, I want you to live a long, prosperous life.”

  Siv laughed. “As if.”

  “What’s funny?” Oona asked.

  “Something my chippy said.”

  “Silky? My chippy Artemisia has been telling me all about him.”

  “Has she?” Siv replied. “Silky, what all did you get up to while I was out?”

  “Nothing that wasn’t necessary, sir.”

  “Enact the We’ve Gotta Make a Run For It protocol.”

  “You got it, sir.”

  The van took a sharp right turn, leaving the parklike suburban outskirts, and zoomed back into the city.

  A moaning sound issued from the back of the van, along with another retch.

  “Kyra’s sick,” Oona said.

  “I’ve heard,” Siv replied. “She’ll be okay, though.”

  “Yeah, I know.”

  “You alright?”

  Oona nodded. “I don’t get motion sick.”

  “Not at all?”

  “It seems to be a part of my special abilities. The landing knocked me a bit woozy though. Why didn’t you get sick?”

  “Training, and it doesn’t bother me as much as some people. Probably because my mother’s parents were both spacers.” He winked. “That and I had a cushion for my landing.”

  Her deep, dark eyes scowled at him. “I think you nearly cracked my ribs. They’re sore!”

  Siv twisted around in his seat. “Kyralla? You okay back there?”

  She looked at him and winced. “I…will be.”

  “I need you up and able,” Siv said. “Things are going to get a bit tricky soon.”

  She felt the back of her head and her hand returned with blood on it. “It might take me…a while before…”

  She leaned over and vomited again.

  “Kyra!” Oona exclaimed. “You should’ve told me you were hurt!”

  “We did the best we could with the landings, sir. Their chippies aren’t used to adapting antigrav settings as their bearers jump off buildings and such.”

  “Stay put,” Siv said to Oona as he leapt out of the seat. He knelt beside Kyralla and examined the back of her head. She had a cut, but blood loss wasn’t her problem. A nasty concussion was. He was surprised she was conscious at all.

  “Your sister’s right. You should’ve said something.”

  “You were driving,” Kyralla moaned.

  “Silky’s got that under control.” Siv reached up into a compartment near the ceiling and drew out a medical kit. “Besides, he’s a better pilot than me anyway.”

  “I’ll remember you said that, sir.”

  Siv opened the kit and removed a large, full-dose medibot injector. “This should reduce the swelling in your brain, and the pain, and clear your mind. It won’t take the place of rest, though.”

  Kyralla’s eyes were wide, locked onto the injector. “That stuff’s worth half a fortune! Uncle Pashta keeps…” She frowned. “I’ve only ever seen a few of them before.”

  “The Shadowslip spares no expense in these extraction vans. They also bill us when we use medibot injections…which means no one ever uses them unless they’re dying. But since I’m not going back…”

  He pressed the injector against her skin and tapped a button. The medibots entered her bloodstream and went immediately to work.

  “When I was a kid, these were cheap. Every house had a bundle. The doses weren’t watered down either.”

  Siv stumbled as the van made a sharp left then weaved between traffic. Kyralla almost gagged again.

  “That feeling should go away soon.” He placed a small square bandage against the spot where she was bleeding. The bandage expanded and knitted through her hair and onto her scalp to seal over the cut.

  “This world…it must seem so broken to you,” Kyralla said.

  “Depressing is the word I prefer. I was frozen in a near utopia, and I woke up in a crime-ridden city with extensive poverty and failing social systems.” He sighed. “The worst part was waking up without my dad…without knowing anyone, except a few distant cousins in retirement homes.”

  “It’s my job to fix that,” Oona said.

  “Poverty and crime?” Siv asked.

  “No, all the galaxy.”

  Siv shook his head and chuckled. “And how is that?”

  “Well…I’m not sure…yet.”

  “So you’re the hyperphasic messiah, but you don’t really know how that works or what it means?”

  “After I undergo my awakening,” Oona said, “I will understand my purpose. If I survive. Many of us are born, but few reach my age. Very, very few survive the awakening. Those who do have little sanity remaining…if any.”

  “It’s a cheery life for her,” Silky mused.

  “Hey, wait a second!” Oona nearly hopped out of her seat. “How do you know I’m a hyperphasic messiah?!”

  “You wouldn’t believe me,” Siv replied.

  “We believe a lot of things most people don’t,” Kyralla replied. “We haven’t had a choice.”

  “Well, okay, but I warned you.” Siv patted Kyralla on the shoulder, awkwardly, and stood. “My dad told me in a vision I had while dying and then again in a dream. He told me that there was a hyperphasic messiah on Ekaran IV and that I needed to protect her. I’m supposed to get you off-world and…” he shrugged “…take you to a priestess of some sort.”

  Oona’s eyes flared, and she clapped her hands together. “Oh! Your guardian amulet. Did it belong to—”

  “My father? He gave it to me when he was dying. It’s an Ancient artifact he found, which is really all I know about it.”

  “He…he must have been a true guardian,” Oona muttered. “And his spirit is still connected to the amulet.”

  “His spirit?” Siv climbed back into the driver’s seat. “You’re telling me my dad’s soul is…is in this amulet? That’s ludicrous.”

  “Open your mind to new possibilities,” Oona said.

  He stared at her dubiously.

  “I don’t know that it’s a soul,” she said. “Maybe it’s more like a memory.” She shrugged. “I only know what I’ve studied, and what I’ve had to work with isn’t much more than speculation. I’d have to survive my awakening to tell you for certain.”

  “You’re not like any fourteen year old I’ve ever met before.”

  “She didn’t have a chance to be a normal girl,” Kyralla replied. Her voice dropped to a whisper. “Neither of us did.”

  “Artemisia says Silky was your father’s chippy,” Oona said, “but that your father’s knowledge and experiences are locked away.”

  “Talking behind my back, eh?”

  “Sorry, sir, but it does speed things along, don’t you think?”

  “That’s true,” Siv told Oona.

  Kyralla joined them, squishing into the passenger seat with Oona, who shoved back at her grouchily.

  “None of this will matter if we can’t escape,” Kyralla said.

  “We’ve lost the media crew for the moment, sir.”

  “I have a contingency plan in place for this sort of thing,” Siv said.

  “For kidnapping messiahs and making a run for it?” Kyralla asked with a snort.

  “Mine is a strange line of work. Speaking of which… Oona, there’s a compartment in front of your knees. There’s a lot of stuff we don’t need in there, so you’ll need to dig around. But you should find several f
ace masks that can be used to alter our appearances. I’ll have Silky tell your chippies what to do with them. I have to warn you, they’re not very good ones. They’re only going to work at a distance. Up close, most anyone will realize it’s a disguise.”

  Siv fiddled with the hardwired meltdown system on the van, getting it set just right. The system was manual because it was the sort of thing you didn’t want to risk getting hacked.

  Oona pulled the masks out, handing one to her sister and one to Siv. She held hers up, pinched between two fingers, looking at it as if it were dirty.

  “Go ahead and put them on. I’ll let you know when it’s safe to take them off.”

  “We’re nearly there, sir.”

  “Enable full pulse jamming when ready.”

  A faint, high-pitched whine emanated from his sensor pack. It made Siv’s skin crawl, and he gnashed his teeth. Kyralla cringed and Oona threw her hands over her ears.

  “What the heck is that?” Kyralla asked.

  “I’m jamming the spy drones following us,” Siv said. “It will confuse them for… Well, it will knock any civilian drones out. The military ones won’t be thrown off for long. But it should buy us the time we need.”

  The van careened around a corner, hit max speed, turned another almost immediately, climbed one story in altitude, and sped toward a wall. The girls cringed, but a second-floor garage door dilated open a moment before they struck. They skidded to a stop and bumped into the far wall. The door slammed shut.

  It was a small, private garage space that Siv rented under an alias and had never used before.

  He triggered the meltdown sequence, drew a plasma pistol out from under the seat, and leapt out of the van. “Let’s go.”

  While both girls climbed out, he systematically fired plasma shots into the garage door, destroying the controls and the opening mechanisms. It would buy them another few minutes.

  Using his nearly spent antigrav for a boost, he hopped up onto the van. “Follow me.” He reached up and tapped a tile on the ceiling, and a trapdoor fell open.

  He hoisted Oona into the next garage up. Kyralla disdained his help and crawled up on her own. He paused a moment to admire her backside.

  “‘Nevolence, sir! I think you have better things to focus on at a time like this.”