Eclipse: Book Two of the Dark Tide Trilogy

by Dayne Edmondson

  “She can’t fight four at once,” Kimberly said. “She’s good, but she’s not that good.”

  “Aye, but what can we do?” Corbin asked.

  “Something ill advised,” Kimberly said, grabbing a rifle from a dead Marine and moving forward. “Help her.”

  “Hey, lassy, do yeh have a death wish? Let the Eternal handle them.”

  Kimberly ignored Corbin and moved closer to one row. She took aim at the Krai’kesh commanders. What if she fired while they were distracted? Did their void shields require their conscious direction or was it autonomous? The commanders had to have some control over the shields.

  The first two commanders swung their double-sided bladed staffs at Isabelle, one swinging high and the other swinging low.

  Isabelle leapt in the air at just the right moment and lay completely horizontal as the staffs slid above and below her but missed her. She landed with a roll and tossed a throwing knife at each of the commanders. The first commander blocked the throwing knife but the second knife caught the second Krai’kesh in the leg at an unprotected seam in the armor. The commander stumbled.

  He looks distracted to me. She fired. A beam of light connected with the commander’s rear armor and caused it to glow orange. Before they could react, Kimberly set the rifle to full auto, turning the single beam fired in a burst into a stream of laser fire which would quickly drain the battery, and focusing the solid beam of light on the rear carapace of the commander, cracking it as the carapace turned red then white. A few more seconds and the carapace had melted away, exposing the flesh beneath. The beam blackened the flesh and the commander screamed in agony before falling to his knees and then crumbling forward dead.

  Isabelle spared a glance for Kimberly. She nodded her thanks before carrying a staff strike from the second commander.

  The third and fourth original commanders were now upon Isabelle. She was surrounded by a triangular blockade.

  Isabelle smirked. “Let’s even the playing field, boys,” she said.

  The three Krai'kesh swung at once, one up high, one down low and one right in the middle. Kimberly almost covered her eyes to prevent herself from watching but forced herself to watch. The blades passed through Isabelle's body and at the exact moment they were all inside of her, the weapons turned to mist and as did the Krai'kesh commanders. Moments later the mist faded to nothing and both Isabelle and the three Krai'kesh commanders were gone, leaving only the Federation forces to face the continuing onslaught of skitterers. What if they had more commanders? Kimberly shook her head. Better not to dwell on that.

  A minute passed, during which two more security guards died, and Kimberly was ready to call for a full fighting retreat. However, a cloud of black mist formed at the front of the embassy entrance. Kimberly held her breath.

  Isabelle appeared, causing Kimberly to breath a huge sigh of relief. “That should hold them for a bit.”

  “You didn’t kill them?”

  “I killed one of them and imprisoned the other two within the shadow realm.”

  “You can do that? How?”

  “By taking these from them,” she stretched her arms to the side and a double-bladed staff materialized in each hand. “I realized that their staffs are the source of their power. Without the staffs…”

  “They can’t shift,” Kimberly finished the sentence.

  “Yes.”

  “Behind us!” Baillidh shouted. “More skitterers! They’ve got us surrounded!”

  “Shit,” Isabelle said. “I feared they would find a way. We can’t fight on both fronts.”

  “Maybe we don’t have to,” Corbin chimed in. “You can use the rest of my explosives to barricade the entrance to the embassy, then we can face the ones behind us and head toward the docking bay.”

  Isabelle nodded. “Do it.”

  Corbin set down his backpack and withdrew a grenade. “This baby is packed full of explosives,” he explained. “All I gotta do is put this grenade in it,” he said as he armed a grenade, “and…oops,” the grenade slipped out of his hand into the backpack.

  “Throw it!” Kimberly shouted, suiting action to words and grabbing the backpack. She spun and whipped it back toward the front entrance. Just in time for it exploded less than a second after it hit the broken blast door. Kimberly and Corbin were blown backward by the blast, the heat so intense Kimberly felt as if her hair were on fire.

  Isabelle was untouched, having turned to mist at the moment of explosion. She passed them as they sat up, shaking off the ringing in their ears. “Quickly,” she said.

  Easy for her to say, Kimberly thought. She consulted her implant and it informed her no bones were broken and her skin had not been pierced or burnt. The ringing faded from her ears. She held out a hand for Corbin.

  He took it and got to his feet. “Oy, thanks for that, lass. We coulda been blast marks on the wall had ye not thrown that backpack in time.”

  “I’ll add it to your tab,” Kimberly said, using a phrase her father used to say to her.

  “Oy always pay my debts, I do,” he replied.

  “Let’s hurry.” Kimberly and Corbin caught up to Isabelle, Baillidh and the remaining Marines and security forces. They faced half a dozen skitterers but seemed to be winning and the six skitterers lay dead by the time Kimberly got a clear shot.

  Kimberly took a tally during the brief pause. Three Marines and five security guards left from the original group. The Krai’kesh knew how to take their toll.

  The group made their way through the empty corridors of the embassy toward the private docking bay. Roars in the distance indicated more Krai’kesh had entered through whatever secret entrance they used to get in and were closing on them from behind. The docking bay was around the corner…Kimberly ran into the back of Corbin. “Oof,” she said. “Why did you stop?”

  “I dunno. I jus’ ran into this oaf in front of me,” Corbin replied.

  “The welcoming party has arrived,” Isabelle said.

  Kimberly pushed her way to the front of the group. At the end of a hallway, in front of a pair of blast doors which led to the hangar bay, stood Sloane. At his back waited a dozen skitterers and at each side stood a Krai’kesh commander.

  "Ah, welcome, Lady Thorpe. I have never had the pleasure of making your acquaintance," Sloane said.

  “I take it this is the worm Sloane?” she asked Kimberly.

  “The one and only.”

  Isabelle raised her voice to make it carry down the hallway. “I see you are in bed with the enemy, Agent Sloane. If you surrender I promise you a fair trial. Kimberly believes you may be innocent. She claims you may not be doing this of your own free will.”

  “Ah, I got that impression of Agent Hague during our short time together. Always seeing the best in others. So naïve. What do you think, Lady Thorpe?”

  “I think I hate the name ‘Lady Thorpe,’ it makes me sound like my mother. I think you were not the victim - you were the mastermind of all this. How does that sound?”

  The mastermind? But his sister said he had been blackmailed. Unless… “You blackmailed your own sister,” Kimberly blurted out.

  Sloane smiled. “Through my associates, yes. I have slight regrets, for I had to make it appear as if I were the victim to avoid suspicion in the event she reported me to the authorities. I had her convinced.”

  “What did the Krai’kesh offer you?” Isabelle asked. “Eternal life? Riches? Power?”

  “Why? Would you like to ascend, Lady Thorpe?”

  “The only place you’re ascending is to some gallows when you are found guilty of treason, Sloane.”

  “That is quaint that you believe you will make it off this station alive, Lady Thorpe. You see, while you were fighting my minions I was moving some sensitive equipment into place designed to stop you in your tracks.” His grin grew wide. He withdrew a remote from his pocket and hit a button.

  “No, no, no,” Isabelle muttered under her breath.

  “What is it?”

 
; “An interdiction field. Magic nullification. I can’t shift and God knows how many skitterers are coming up from the rear.”

  That was our backup plan to evacuate. Now our only way off this station is through them. “Where is the generator? What is its range?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Baillidh,” Kimberly snapped. “Can you trace the origination point of the nullification field? Pinpoint the source so we can destroy the generator?”

  “I’m on it,” Baillidh said, whipping out his datapad and tapping on it. He frowned. “It’s coming from within the docking bay.”

  “They must have captured the docking bay,” Kimberly said.

  “Prolly assaulted through the docking bay,” Corbin said.

  “Ah, like fish in a barrel,” Sloane said. “Milling around not realizing they’re already dead. I will take great pleasure watching you each die. Especially you, Lady Thorpe.”

  Isabelle breathed a sigh. “This is the moment of truth. Fight or flight.”

  “Wait,” Baillidh said. “I’ve hacked into the embassy security system. I can open the outer docking bay doors and then open the blast door in front of us.”

  “They’ll be sucked out,” Isabelle said.

  “But so will we,” Corbin said. “Not tryin’ ta be the wet blanket or anythin’.”

  “Not if we time it right,” Kimberly said. “It’s worth a shot.” She looked at Isabelle.

  Isabelle nodded. “Do it. We’ll buy you the time or die trying.” She looked at Agent Sloane and raised her voice. “That is your weakness, Sloane. Your arrogance. It will be your undoing.” She held up her blades in a fighting stance. “These fish have teeth.”

  Please hurry, Baillidh. She withdrew her sidearm.

  Sloane laughed. “Kill them,” he said, waving his hand in a dismissive gesture.

  The Krai’kesh skitterers moved forward. The FIA agents and remaining Marines and security forces fired at them as they came. Kimberly felt a moment of deja vu. It always came down to this.

  “Got it!” Baillidh shouted. “Docking bay force field is down and the bay is venting atmosphere. Twenty seconds until full de-pressurization.”

  We might not live that long. She fired again at the first Krai’kesh to reach their lines. Isabelle intercepted it with her blades, meeting its claws in mid-strike and shoving it backward. The Krai’kesh tried to strike at her head with its mandibles but Isabelle bent backward and the mandibles passed above her. She twisted in the bent over backward position and fell forward toward the floor but tucked and rolled away. She leapt to her feet and turned to parry the follow-up blow by the creature.

  A second Krai’kesh joined the fray but a Marine rushed forward and blocked their strike, holding them off long enough for Isabelle to dispatch the first creature and come to their aid.

  “De-pressurization complete,” Baillidh shouted above the din. “Opening blast doors.”

  “Hang on everyone!” Kimberly shouted.

  The blast doors opened without fanfare. A tremendous gust of wind accompanied a force trying to pull everyone and everything out of the blast door into what was now the vacuum of the docking bay and the void beyond. Kimberly felt a moment of satisfaction as she watched the shock register on Sloane’s face as he was sucked out into the void. Her satisfaction was short-lived, however, for she then had to grab onto a seam in the wall. A security guard flashed past her. The Marines remained where they were, having activated their magnetic boots.

  The skitterers flew through the door, slamming into the Krai’kesh commanders and carrying them away.

  “Close it!” Kimberly shouted above the roar.

  Isabelle grappled with the remaining single skitterer. She kicked it but lost her balance and flew out into the docking bay.

  “No!” Kimberly screamed, reaching out a hand as if to grab Isabelle.

  The blast doors slammed shut a moment after Isabelle passed through.

  Kimberly fell to her knees, numb. All that just to lose an Eternal.

  A mist appeared in front of Kimberly forming into a shape. Kimberly braced herself for a Krai'kesh commander but felt relief wash over her when she saw Isabelle's face. "Isabelle!" Kimberly exclaimed. "You're alive! How did you survive?"

  Isabelle’s face appeared more pale than it had been earlier, but even as Kimberly watched her color was returning. “The nullification generator was sucked out by the void. I was exposed to void momentarily, but my nanites are healing it, and I shifted away.” She smiled. “I see you were worried about me.”

  Kimberly wiped a tear from her face she had forgotten she had shed and nodded. “Just a little bit.”

  “Oi don’t mean to break up this little reunion, huns, but shouldn’ we be headin’ out now?” Corbin asked. A roar echoed from the way they had come. “Oi think we’re gonna have company.”

  “Yes, everyone hold hands,” Isabelle commanded.

  The handful of Marines, security guards and remaining FIA agents all joined hands and Isabelle shifted them into shadow space. They drifted through shadow space at the will of Isabelle and appeared on the Federation cruiser in orbit around Crossroad Station. “Welcome aboard the Intrepid,” Isabelle said.

  They stood in the docking bay of the Intrepid, where crowds of people exited transports and milled about. The evacuees from the embassy. Kimberly noticed other transports too, non-Federation transports. Had other citizens from the station evacuated to the cruiser also? “It looks like a few more people than we thought had the same idea,” she said.

  “Aye, lass, lookin’ a bit crowded it is,” Corbin agreed. “Good thing I ain’t claustrophobic.” He looked up at Baillidh. “Wha’ ‘bout you, I.T.?”

  “I used to sit in a cramped apartment all day working on my datapad,” Baillidh said. “Small spaces don’t bother me.”

  “But I bet people do,” Corbin jested.

  Baillidh gave him a look and shook his head.

  “You three with me,” Isabelle said, pointing at the three remaining FIA agents. “Captain, see to your Marines and get the security guards settled in.”

  Kimberly and the two guys followed Isabelle toward the bridge of the cruiser. They passed through winding corridors crammed with refugees. The sterile smell Kimberly associated with ships was absent, replaced with the smells of body odor mingled with blood. They passed the door to the med bay. Stretchers lined the cross hallway which led to it, filled with wounded people. “The Krai’kesh wasted no time, did they?” Kimberly said.

  The door to the bridge swooshed open as they approached. The captain of the ship turned toward them, his graying hair complementing his blue eyes. “Ah, Deputy Director, I see you made it safely off the station. We were worried when we saw unidentified vessels enter the docking bay and a short while later witnessed bodies hurtling out. I suspect that was your handiwork.”

  Isabelle gave a tired smile. “It was a narrow thing, but we survived, Captain Marchenko. What is the status of the station?”

  The captain shook his head. “Private transports and escape pods are jettisoning left and right, ma’am. Every channel is filled with chatter from people requesting aid. The shadow gate was shut down, as you requested, but the natives are getting restless, as the saying goes.”

  “Have any taken offensive action against our ship yet?”

  “Not yet, but we’re monitoring an amassing of vessels with merchant identifiers on the far side of the sector. We believe they are preparing for a strike against us.”

  “The merchants, at least some of them, have been working with the Krai’kesh, so it is likely some of those ships could have Krai’kesh aboard. What is the ETA of the interdiction fleet?”

  “One hour, last I heard.”

  “Not good enough,” Isabelle said.

  “Ma’am, they can only go as fast as their shadow drives allow.”

  “Then I guess I have to give them a boost.” Isabelle looked to Kimberly. “I’ll be back, I’m just going to help speed the interdiction fleet alon
g.”

  “What do you want us to do in the meantime?” Kimberly asked.

  “Keep the captain in line, no offense, Captain, and manage the refugees. But above all, keep anyone from going through that shadow gate, no matter the cost.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Kimberly replied. She watched as Isabelle shifted into shadow space and disappeared.

  Chapter 14 - Calm Before the Storm

  Martin sat back in his chair, relaxing for the first time since the battle began. The final Krai’kesh capital ship shattered and split into pieces as a dozen railgun projectiles slammed into it from all around. It was odd the Krai’kesh had not tried to flee like they had before.

  “All Krai’kesh signatures are gone, sir,” Zigana reported.

  Martin allowed himself to smile. “Praise God for that. Let’s move out of the shadow of the moon and head for the planet. I want to see my family and pick up our Marines and pilots.”

  “Yes, sir, changing course.” A warning beep tweeted. Zigana frowned. “This is strange, sir. We are detecting a large gravity anomaly at the edge of the system. We only just detected it. It appears it was obscured by Eligar VI.”

  I knew it was too good to be true. “Show me.”

  The sensor grid appeared and focused on a point near Eligar VI. Waves rippled across the grid, reflecting gravity waves. “Something large,” Martin speculated, “to be creating its own gravity like that. Is the Supreme Tactical Commander aware of this new development?”

  “Yes, sir, I have notified them.”

  “And?”

  “No reply yet.”

  “Open a channel to the Nightblade.”

  “Yes, sir.” Moments later the channel opened.

  “This is acting Admiral Martin Rigsby hailing the FSS Nightblade. Do you copy?”

  “We are reading you loud and clear, Admiral Rigsby,” the Supreme Tactical Commander said as their image appeared. “What is your intention?”

  “I wish to speak with the Supreme Commander.”

  “The Supreme Commander is otherwise occupied.”