by Charles Nall
“Yes, it did.”
“Well, I will bid you farewell. Thanks for your hospitality, sir.”
“My pleasure, sir.” Devereaux saluted Trachis.
The President returned the salute. “Until next time, Captain.”
Hopefully there won’t be a next time. Good riddance, Devereaux thought to himself. The imp actually seemed to agree with Devereaux’s sentiment.
Devereaux smiled. “Until next time.”
June 8, 0271 AC – 16:20
Hangar 4, USS Empyrean
Edge of Galactic Union Space
Arnold’s Peregrine streaked by the sails that were unfurling over the aft section of Empyrean. The rear of the warship looked like a blooming flower. Sails were “unfurled” when collecting the particles necessary for hyperspace travel. When the sails were not necessary the sail mechanisms would collapse the sail into a smaller profile. Typically parts of the sail would enter into the ship itself, while other pieces would fold along the side.
Arnold rendezvoused with the rest of his squadron and tapped some commands into his fighter’s console.
“War games initialized,” the computer announced.
Beta Squadron flew by the front of Empyrean.
Alpha Squadron hovered over the warship’s aft.
Jinx called over the fighter link, “Let’s kick Beta’s scrawny little chicken-shit asses. Let’s show them why we’re Alpha.”
Juke laughed. “Calm down, my dear.”
“You ready for these war games?” Striker asked.
“I guess so!” Arnold replied.
“You better not be one of the first three to go down, Arnold,” Jinx said. “I got some credits riding on you surviving at least that long.”
Arnold chuckled. “I’m not planning on going down.”
“Well that’s a horrible thing to say to a lady.” Jinx laughed. “I’m going to score every single kill out here. You boys won’t score any, but that’s nothing new for you guys. You have always had trouble scoring.”
“Very funny,” Striker replied sarcastically.
“Here they come,” Ox said.
Alpha and Beta were about to have a mock dogfight to hone their skills. Their fighters were not equipped with live rounds but with harmless laser weapons instead. If a laser hit another fighter, the computer system would relay that information to the rest of the fighters detailing the amount of damage that was probable with a hit in that location. If significant damage would have actually occurred, the computer would shut down the fighter.
It was a battle to figure out which squadron was superior. Ever since Arnold joined Alpha, these mock battles were always close and competitive. Shepherd said it was because of the close skill of both teams. The rest of Alpha said it was because Arnold was a bad pilot. Whatever the reason, Arnold was determined to survive these war games.
The squadron leaders did not get involved in the battle but flew alongside their respective squadron. Razor was the new squadron leader of Beta and glided alongside them in his Peregrine. Elijah “Ghost” Shepherd kept a watchful eye on his squadron as he skimmed by the rear sail system of Empyrean.
Fish was hung over and was selected as the odd man out; he wasn’t able to compete in the war games today.
Grizzly, Striker, Jinx, Juke, and Ox clashed against Crash, Hash, Syndrome, Sprinkler, and Beaver.
The two fighter groups entered into weapon range. Arnold fired a “mass driver” toward one of the fighters. A laser beam shot toward the “enemy” fighter. A sensor detected the laser impact on the fighter and calculated the speed of a typical mass driver round. The computer system decided that the “enemy” Peregrine was moving too fast, the mass driver round would have missed.
There were many different strategies in the war games. Some strategies suggested that trying to dodge every shot was the best way to win. Other strategies suggested ganging up on one of the fighters. Others suggested splitting up and each fighter focusing on their own target.
Arnold quickly figured out that Beta was focusing on him.
Arnold tried to evade as many of the shots as possible while returning fire the best he could.
The sensor on his computer detected what would have been a mass driver hit to Arnold’s wing. The computer disabled the thrusters on that wing.
His fighter started to spin out of control towards Syndrome’s fighter.
Although the weaponry was fake, there was a real danger of starfighter collision. Arnold scrambled on the controls and managed to correct himself, narrowly dodging Syndrome. As he passed by Syndrome, he unleashed his would-be rotary cannon into the cockpit area of Syndrome’s fighter. Syndrome’s fighter slowed down and became unresponsive. Direct hit.
Arnold continued to dodge weapon fire until he realized most of the beams were coming from his own squadron. There was only one Beta member left “alive.” He fired a mass driver that “connected” and “destroyed” the fighter.
There were three Alpha Squadron pilots left, Arnold included. This was the best performance in the war games he had ever pulled off.
“Nice flying out there, hoss,” Ox said.
“Yeah! That bitch Syndrome owes me money now!” Jinx exclaimed.
“Did I hear that right, Jinx? Are you gambling?” Shepherd asked over the link.
“No... No sir,” she replied.
“Good. The Confederates may allow a bit of gambling on their ships, but last I checked this wasn’t a Confederation ship,” Shepherd pointed out.
“Yes, sir...” Jinx sighed in defeat.
“Great job, Grizzly!” Striker said.
“Thanks, it was all you guys!” Arnold said.
“Well, it wasn’t Jinx, she got taken down first!” Juke said.
“Shut the eff up, I don’t want to effing hear it!” Jinx screeched. “You went down too!”
“Eventually. I actually took part in the battle, though,” Juke said.
“Whatever, asshole,” Jinx said.
“Let’s play nice, children,” Shepherd said. “Alright, that’s enough. Let’s head home.”
The “destroyed” Peregrines came back to life.
The squadrons headed back to their hangars.
June 8, 0271 AC – 21:20 Local Time
USS Empyrean
Edge of Galactic Union Space
Jacob wandered down a corridor. He came to an intersection. He spotted Trevor walking down one of the other halls. Trevor was carrying a thin box under his arm. Jacob jogged up to Trevor. “Hey, man! I thought you had a bridge shift?”
“Hey,” Trevor replied. “Lance took my shift. Thank god. I just realized that today was me and Ryn’s six month anniversary.”
“Wow, it’s been six months already?”
“Yes, and she loves keeping track of the time,” Trevor said. “I completely forgot. She was hinting strongly yesterday about it. It finally hit me this morning. She’s not working today, I’m heading to her quarters to surprise her.”
Jacob pointed at the gift. “And that’s a gift?”
“Yeah, just picked it up. Last-minute sort of thing.”
Trevor and Jacob continued walking down the corridor.
“Can I ask what you got her?”
“Someone’s nosy. It’s—uh... nightwear. You know what, never mind,” Trevor said.
Jacob laughed. “Lingerie? Isn’t that more a gift for you?”
“I suppose. She likes it. Come on, don’t you get your girl lingerie sometimes?”
“Sharon looked at me weird when I bought her some.”
“Different strokes for different folks.”
“I don’t want to hear anything about your strokes.”
“God, Jacob, get your mind out of the gutter.”
“You first, buddy.”
Trevor walked up to a door. “Well, here’s her quarters. Now scram, Jake. It’s my time to shine.”
Jacob smiled. “Happy anniversary.”
“Thanks, man.” Trevor placed his hand on a handpri
nt scanner near the door.
“Oh, she let you set up your handprint to open her door? How romantic.” Jacob smiled.
“Shut up, Jacob, I told you to get going.” Trevor laughed.
The door swished open. Jacob stared to turn to walk away, but then he heard a series of panicked screams emanating from Ryn’s quarters.
“Ryn?!” Trevor darted into the quarters.
Jacob followed Trevor inside.
A man wearing all black was standing in the center of the quarters. Ryn was on the other side of the intruder. She brandished a large steak knife. Her lip was bleeding from a wound.
“What the hell? Who the eff are you?!” Trevor threw the lingerie box to the side.
The tall man turned. He was wearing a mask over his face. “You weren’t supposed to be home. That complicates things,” he said.
Jacob recognized the voice. He couldn’t believe it. He ran to a computer panel on the wall and attempted to link with security. It didn’t appear to be functioning; the intruder had possibly disabled it.
The intruder laughed. “Did you really think that would work?”
“Get away from her!” Trevor yelled.
“How unfortunate,” the intruder said. “I was not expecting to have to kill all three of you.”
Ryn let out a primal scream and bolted toward the intruder. She stabbed the steak knife into his back. The intruder calmly grabbed Ryn by her hair and tossed her into a wooden table in the room, shattering it.
Trevor charged the intruder. Trevor pummeled the man with his fists. The intruder ignored the assault and punched Trevor square in the face. Trevor staggered backwards.
“Stop, Jaxon!” Jacob pleaded. “Please!”
“So you figured it out,” the intruder growled.
The man took off his mask and threw it to the side. The intruder was Jaxon Knight.
Jaxon shoved Trevor out of the way and approached Jacob.
“It’s over!” Jacob said.
“It is beginning,” Jaxon said.
Blood began to trickle out of Jaxon’s nose.
Jacob pointed at the trickle of blood. “So is that it? You have an imp inside of you? That somehow makes me feel better. I know Jaxon would never do this!”
“Jaxon would. He was just spineless!” Jaxon, or whoever it was, laughed. “I gave him the confidence. I’m surprised you know about us. But then again, I do know a lot about you.”
“About me?!”
“Oh yes. It gives me an idea.” Jaxon said as blood trickled out of his nose.
“Let Jaxon go! Get out of his head!” Jacob yelled.
Jaxon smirked. “You do realize that if I decide to vacate this host, your friend will die? Do you want Jaxon to die?”
“No! You are lying!”
“I am most certainly not.”
“We’ll figure something out! We’ll stop you! We’ll stop all of you!”
“You cannot stop us. We are legion.”
Trevor stumbled over to Ryn and checked on her. “Ryn, Ryn, are you okay?”
She held the side of her face. “I think so...”
“Jaxon, you are stronger than this. You can fight it!” Jacob said.
Jaxon laughed. “No, he cannot.”
Jacob slowly backed away. “Jaxon, please.”
Jaxon coughed. “I’m so sorry. I can’t—I can’t... I can’t stop this.” The imp resumed control and laughed. “He is mine! He is weak!”
“Let him go!” Jacob roared.
“If you insist,” Jaxon said as blood poured out of his mouth and nose. “No! Please! No!” he yelled. A sudden look of terror went across Jaxon’s face.
A black, slimy creature slithered its way out of Jaxon’s mouth. The creature had small legs sprouting out of a long body. Jaxon’s eyes rolled back into his head. His lifeless body collapsed onto the ground.
The creature leapt towards Jacob. It happened so fast, Jacob didn’t know what to do.
Trevor looked back in horror.
The imp landed on Jacob’s face. It stung Jacob in the chest with a stinger from its tail. Jacob couldn’t feel anything. The imp forced its way into Jacob’s mouth and began its journey into Jacob’s brain.
And then Jacob got a sense of something. He felt something else. He felt confusion and then horror. Finally he felt pain as blood poured from his mouth. Jacob coughed and coughed and finally the imp fell out of his mouth onto the ground. It curled its legs up like a dying spider and began to twitch.
Jacob glanced over to Trevor.
“What the eff?!” Trevor shouted.
Jacob felt extremely dizzy.
He fell face-first onto the ground.
Everything went black.
10
May 17, 0271 AC – 15:25 Local Time
Bridge, Madcat-2
Hyperspace, Contested Space
Edwin stared at the viewscreen on the bridge of Madcat-2. Other members of the crew were elsewhere. He stared at the foamy, bubbly brown gasses streaming by the corvette. Hyperspace warped and curled. There were no stars, just a bright blue background that went on forever.
“It’s something else, right?” Knave climbed up into the bridge and made his way to one of the seats.
“Yeah, it really is. I didn’t get to see any of this back on Delphi Prime. It’s hard to believe. We’re moving so fast.”
“We’re not, really. We’re just in a different plane of the universe, where going a few kilometers here translates to many more in normal space.”
“Weird. How does this all work?”
“I’m not an engineer, but there are exotic particles in hyperspace, they come from black holes or some shit. I don’t know,” Knave said. “Anyways, they generally only exist in hyperspace, but they sometimes find their way into standard space through the fusion process of stars. We pick them up in our sails. We stuff them in a storage bin and when we want to get to hyperspace, we warp space with our hyper-drive, fire those exotic particles at the warping until they ‘link’ with the particles in hyperspace, wait until the beam is fully saturated, then tear a hole in space. Gravitational pressures are outrageous in this realm. The hyper-drive has to create a gravitational field of its own to stop the pressure from making us a pancake.”
“That still doesn’t make any sense.”
“Alright, it’s magic.”
Edwin laughed. “Oh. Okay.”
The corvette hit a patch of turbulence and trembled.
“And what was that?” Edwin asked.
“Probably passed over a star or a planet, well, the correlating position in normal space. Oh, I mean, a wizard did it.”
“I’ve heard that if enough turbulence hits you, you get knocked back into standard space.”
“That’s true, as long as the drive providing the conduit is up to snuff, anyways. If there is a malfunction, there’s a good chance the turbulence will just knock you out of your conduit and then the aforementioned pancake will occur.”
Edwin stared out into hyperspace. “I don’t want to be a pancake.”
“Don’t worry, Russell is an excellent magician. I heard one time that the Mad Cats encountered a dimensional explosive and he somehow managed to stay in hyperspace.”
“Dimensional explosive?”
“Hyper-pulse dimensional explosives are weapons that warp space and send out hyper particles. Any starship in that correlating point in hyperspace typically gets knocked out of hyperspace. When that happens, shields, at the very least, get knocked offline. All forward momentum ceases when you get knocked into normal space and you become a sitting duck.”
“I need to show Temira this. I wonder if she has ever seen hyperspace.”
“Oh, still seeing her?”
“Yeah, I...” Edwin blushed. “Things are great, thanks for your help there.”
Knave smiled. “No problem.”
Dome 4, Chryse Planitia
Mars
Orion Confederation Space
“I found you. Back to the fight
er, eh?”
Riko was sitting in the cockpit of the Kitsune. “Yep. Come here, I’m almost done.”
Zebediah walked up the fighter. “With what?”
“The communications board was fried on atmospheric entry. I replaced it with a compatible one I found. I hope there’s enough battery charge to get the communication system working.”
Zebediah climbed up some boxes that were placed against the broken fighter and then sat down in the back seat. “Wait, you could possibly get a message off Mars?”
“If this works, yes,” Riko replied.
“So you found that board at Dome 5?” Zebediah asked.
“Yes.”
“Do you want to talk about that yet?”
Riko slammed the panel shut. “There’s nothing to talk about.”
Riko powered the Kitsune’s systems on. The fighter’s electronics hummed.
She looked at the small display. “I got a little charge. Let me see...”
“Listen, if you want to talk about it...”
“Zebediah.”
“Yes?”
“Can people really change?”
“Yes, they can.”
She was silent, working on the computer of the Kitsune fighter.
Zebediah sighed. “Dome 5 is not pretty right now. There was a power vacuum. There is lots of in-fighting.”
Riko was silent.
“Do you know what happened to Raj Sarin?” Zebediah asked.
She ignored him. “There, it’s online.”
“Look, I’ve heard things. It’s okay.”
She stared at the display.
He continued, “Yes, people can change. Everyone can change but not everyone will. Some people fall so far off the deep edge there is no coming back and they refuse their own salvation. Ultimately, the horrible, horrible truth is that some people don’t want to change. Some people wish to live in sin. They only change when they are forced to, and it takes only a small nudge for them to fall back into their old self. That’s not real change.”
“Will the Slicer ever go back to his old ways?”
“The Slicer is dead,” Zebediah stated.