The Smuggler's Ascension: Dark Tide Rising

by Christopher Ingersoll

  Kristof swore again as he looked from the door to the advancing troops and made a gut wrenching call and shot the chains that held the door aloft, causing the door to slam back down into place. Kristof watched as Max appeared at a small window and began pounding on the door, his distress at being cut off from Kristof apparent in his face.

  “Run, you asshole!” Kristof screamed at his friend before activating his personal shield and beginning to fire at the incoming troops. His fire was joined by two others, he saw, and he found Subat and one last member of Alpha Team with him still.

  The three of them began a running firefight with the Clovani troops, who did not have the benefit of personal shields. Kristof lost track of the number of men he gunned down as they ran, but for every one he shot down four more seemed to take his place. His shield flared repeatedly as enemy shots found their mark. Eventually, the shield failed on his last team member’s armor and he took a shot to the leg, spinning him to the floor.

  “Go!” the trooper yelled to Kristof and Subat.

  The trooper continued to fire as he waved Kristof and Subat on. Kristof knew the whole exercise was futile. Soon they would have to surrender or die. He was about to call for surrender when his and Subat’s shields also failed. The hail of laser fire that followed them trained in on Kristof, but Subat flung himself in the way. Laser blasts struck Subat’s exposed backpack and detonated the power cell there. The cell hadn’t had the energy to power the personal shield any longer, but it contained enough energy still to explode with enough force to throw Subat for fifteen feet.

  Kristof rushed to Subat where he fell and dragged him behind a large piece of machinery. Taking a couple of grenades from his belt, he tossed them back along the way they had come. The plasma explosions that erupted moments later ceased all laser fire as the enemy either burned or fell back as the passage was temporarily blocked.

  “Father!” Kristof cried, his heart breaking even as he could feel Anasha’s sudden pain through the link they shared and knew she had sensed what was happening.

  “My…son…she comes…for me…” Subat whispered with a mysterious smile before the light faded from his eyes. Kristof howled with a pain he had never known, even as he felt Anasha’s scream from lightyears away. Tears blinded his eyes as he held Subat’s body.

  Below them an open foundry pit of molten steel bubbled. In a moment of clarity, Kristof remembered the Su’Tani tradition of burning their dead in honor of the Gods, in particular to their own Goddess of Knowledge and Visions, and vowed that the Clovani would not sully his father’s body. Lifting Subat’s lifeless body gently, Kristof carried him to the railing, and after a quick silent prayer, dropped him still form over the edge. Subat’s body burst into flames upon making contact with the molten steel, before quickly disappearing beneath the bubbling red liquid.

  Kristof checked his power packs and saw his rifle was almost dead, and his shield was already dead. The plasma fires were receding nearby, and he began firing the moment he saw the troops advancing again. The troops came slower now, sensing that he was now trapped. Kristof’s wounded trooper was quickly dispatched as they came. Finally a shot found its mark and struck his left arm with thunderous force, spinning him to the ground hard.

  Struggling to free his blaster from his belt, Kristof watched as a dark robed woman approached from behind the troopers that now surrounded him. Her face was hidden from him, but he could feel a sense of malevolence emanating from her like nothing he’d ever felt before except in his dream. Suddenly he knew where the dreams and memories of his father had come from.

  “We’ll have no more of that,” the woman said, indicating his half drawn blaster, and amazingly lightning erupted from her hands to arc through his right arm painfully. As the lightning continued to arc through him in excruciating waves, his last thoughts were that he had not seen lightning quite like that since he had seen Death himself in the Abyss, in what seems ages ago now.

  And then he knew no more.

  ~Interlude 2~

  Max pounded on the door before him, creating huge dents in the metal as he watched Kristof and Subat run off with the last trooper still trapped on the other side, followed by a hail of laser fire that chased them out of sight. Kristof’s last shouted command came back to him after a few moments, and he lifted his gun once more and commanded the remaining troops to move out.

  The rebels took the lead as they progressed deeper and deeper into the moon. Max walked on autopilot, his thoughts far away as he went over everything that had happened again and again, looking for something that he missed that could have saved them all. Nothing came to him, however. Their enemy had planned the trap well.

  Other thoughts ran through the android’s head as well, new thoughts that did not have words with them. With a start, Max determined that these new thoughts were not thoughts at all, but rather feelings and emotion. Rage figured prominently among them, as well as worry for his friend, especially after hearing the two loud explosions a time later.

  Silence followed the explosions, and Max could only hope that Kristof and Subat somehow found a way out of this mess. Hours passed as the remaining team continued further and further into the shaft. No signs of pursuit came to them as they went, so Max finally called a halt so the humans could rest for a bit.

  These new emotions confused Max as he tried to analyze them. They defied his logic processors, however, leaving him just as confused as before. He didn’t understand the nearly uncontrollable need to smash things around him in this dark, abandoned shaft. His first instinct had been to ask Kristof about it, but the memory of his loss brought with it new feelings of emptiness and regret.

  Max would have turned these new emotions off if he could, but they came seemingly from nowhere and he could not rid himself of them, not matter how many processors and memory cells he tried to switch off. It was no wonder humans were so infuriating some times, he thought to himself.

  The team moved out, content to let Max set the pace and trusting his vision in this black hole better than their own equipment. It was true that Max could see in several different wavelengths at once, so their choice was logical. Max tried to hold on to that logical thought, but the emotions kept intruding.

  The team lost track of time in that abyss, but Max knew that two days had passed by the time they neared the end of the tunnel through the moon. They had been lucky to find an old, abandoned rail cart large enough to hold the remaining team and the rebels. Max had pushed the cart himself, and soon they had traveled through the moon at a good pace as Max went tirelessly hour after hour.

  “We are close enough to the surface to send out a transmission now,” one of the troopers reported after checking his gear.

  “Send a two second coded burst,” Max ordered. “Let us hope the Phantom has made it through alive and lingered per the emergency plan, or we will be in for a very long wait to get home.”

  ~17~

  Anasha screamed as she felt her father’s death, and she fell to the floor in tears as Sabine rushed to her side. The sense of loss and emptiness where her father’s presence had always been was suffocating. She could also feel Kristof’s pain and despair through the link they shared, and she felt and saw through Kristof’s eyes suddenly as he lifted her father’s body, said a final prayer, and then released him to the fires below.

  Fear gripped Anasha’s heart as she realized the deadly peril Kristof was still in. She could feel a darkness approaching him. When the lightning struck him moments later, however, it was Sabine’s screams of pain and despair that filled her mind. With sudden clarity, Anasha realized that not only had Sabine felt the lightning striking Kristof through their shared connection and through the crystals they all wore, but the baby had chosen this moment for an episode as well.

  The tiny Queen fell to the floor in a heap as Celeste rushed to them. Anasha said a silent prayer for forgiveness as she forced herself to shut out Kristof’s pain as she knelt beside Sabine. Tears filled her eyes as she fought to save
Sabine from the crushing waves of darkness, cold, and pain that had engulfed her stronger than ever before. There was a strong sense of malevolence to the darkness too, something she had never felt so strong before and she again doubted that it was from the baby.

  Celeste took Sabine’s head in her lap and placed her hands at the tiny Queen’s temples as her eyes closed in concentration. Anasha sought Sabine through the darkness, but, even though their shared connection and the crystal, Anasha was unable to find her. She screamed in frustration as she searched and searched, but the darkness had become almost a solid entity that fought her and kept her away.

  “The baby,” came Celeste’s thoughts in the darkness. “You must seek the child now, not the mother, quickly before both are lost.”

  Anasha paused and took a deep breath to try and center her spirit before once again entering the dark cold that had engulfed Sabine’s soul. The dark did not seem to fight her so much, now that she was not seeking Sabine directly. She still felt as if she were swimming against a strong current, but she slowly felt herself drawing closer to the baby beneath Sabine’s heart.

  The darkness began to grow dimmer and the resistance less as Anasha pushed her way through to the place where the child’s soul rested. Suddenly there light all around her as Anasha felt herself in the baby’s presence truly for the first time. She realized two things at once then. First, the baby was immensely powerful, more so than they had ever suspected. And second, the baby was for sure not the source of the darkness threatening to suffocate Sabine after all.

  The glowing soul of the baby was warm and bright, and Anasha felt a sense of wonder at its presence. She realized the child, while having sensed her before, had never seen her like this either. She felt probing tendrils of thought surrounding her and caressing her soul.

  “You are Mother and yet not Mother,” came the thought to her head, and Anasha marveled that the child could speak and communicate already.

  “No, little one,” Anasha responded. “I am the mate of your mother, we are bonded, her and I, soul to soul.”

  The glowing soul of the child seemed to consider this for long moments.

  “Welcome, Mother,” the child said finally, and Anasha felt her heart glow with joy even as it broke for her father and Kristof.

  “Why do you cry?” the child asked curiously.

  “Because your Mother is in great peril,” Anasha replied evasively, as tears filled her eyes again, “And your father is in great peril, too.”

  “I cannot see Mother beyond the dark when it comes,” the child said, its glowing soul’s light pulsing thoughtfully. “Why is this?”

  “You do not call the dark to you?” Anasha asked, wanting to confirm what she had first suspected when finding the baby.

  “No, the dark comes on its own. It makes me afraid,” the child said.

  Anasha thought furiously now, wondering what could cause such a thing if it had not been the baby as they’d thought all along. With sudden understanding, she remembered where she’d seen and felt such darkness and cold before. The memory of Death’s touch returned like a nightmare.

  “Do not fear, my child,” Anasha said at last. “Together, we can drive this darkness away and save your Mother.”

  “How?” the child asked curiously.

  “I can show you,” Anasha said as she reached out to the glowing soul of the child.

  The touch of the child’s soul was unlike anything Anasha had ever felt before. The vast sense of wonder about everything was dwarfed only by the power the child possessed. Anasha felt it hard to even come to terms with it, so she did not try. Instead, she began to show the child how to form a sphere of light around itself, and then make that sphere bigger and bigger until it began to push the darkness away.

  Even as she showed it, Anasha sensed that the child had done it until she could sense Sabine once more. Suddenly Sabine was there with them, looking on in wonder at the soul of her child. Tears of joy filled the tiny Queen’s eyes as she reached out to her child.

  “Mother,” the child whispered happily, and Sabine wept in joy as she reached forward to caress the soul of her child.

  “I will protect you now, Mother,” the child spoke again, happily. “No more bad darkness.”

  “Oh, my precious baby,” Sabine cried.

  “I’m sleepy now,” the baby whispered, and suddenly Anasha found herself thrust back into herself with frightening speed.

  She moved slowly, finding herself laying on the floor next to Sabine, her hand on the Queen’s stomach. Sabine looked down along the length of her at Anasha and wept tears of mixed joy and sorrow. Anasha quickly slid up to Sabine as Celeste moved away, allowing the two women to be alone. They fell into each other’s arms and wept together. The joy of seeing the baby’s soul together was tempered by Kristof’s loss.

  Anasha reached out and searched as hard as she could for a sense of Kristof. She could feel that the crystal he’d had upon his finger was destroyed somehow, so there was no sense of that. Seeking and searching, she finally found at last a spark of him and wept anew. His spark flickered like a candle in the wind, yet it remained strong even as enormous waves of pain emanated from him.

  “He’s alive,” Anasha cried at last. “He’s in such terrible pain, but he’s alive.”

  Anasha lost all sense of control then as her grief overcame her. Kristof’s pain was enormous, and the emptiness where her father should have been was threatening to suffocate her. She felt Sabine cradling her head in her lap and stroking her hair as her own tears fell, and Anasha wept with large, heaving sobs.

  She knew not how she ended up in bed, Anasha only knew that she came to her senses a while later wrapped in a blanket with Sabine still holding her. She could hear the tiny woman crying herself, and Anasha turned to pull her into an embrace. Fear was writ on her face as Anasha took in her reddened eyes

  “We’re getting him back,” Anasha said darkly, “And someone is going to pay for this.”

  Sabine nodded, some strength returning to her as she struggled to compose herself.

  “Is…?” Sabine started to ask, afraid to know the answer.

  “Yes,” Anasha said, her grief threatening again.

  “My father is dead.”

  ~18~

  The corridors of the ship were filled with their usual hum, but today it sounded almost like music to his ears as Korvan made his way towards the Vengeance’s detention center. His plan had worked almost to perfection, and his traitorous brother was now in custody. Watching his brother’s unconscious body brought on board had been a joyous moment, even though Korvan’s overzealous troops had almost killed his brother at the end of the chase. Better still, Emperor Clovan had very been pleased as well at the news. Korvan found the rank of full admiral sat very well on his own shoulders.

  Today Korvan meant to gloat as the Vengeance made its way back to Clovani Prime. Kristof had been confined to a detention cell since being brought onboard, strung up in gravity binders like a side of beef. It was a truly uncomfortable experience, one all officers in the Clovani military endured during training as part of their anti-interrogation training. Kristof had received the same training, Korvan knew, which made the prospects for the next two days all the more fun. He wondered how long it would take to break his brother’s spirit, and if he had enough time.

  The detention cell opened and Korvan was assaulted by the smell of blood and burned meat. The center of the room featured Kristof suspended from the floor by two shackles around his wrists connected to an antigravity orb, his bare feet just inches from the steel deck beneath him. The guards had stripped him naked before suspending him, the nakedness meant to foster feelings of helplessness. His left arm bled slowly from where the laser bolt had struck him in the upper bicep.

  The wounds to Kristof’s right arm were the ones that elicited the burned smell, however. Korvan had seen the lightning that the Dark Priestesses were able to wield before, but he’d never seen the damage it inflicted up close before.
The skin of Kristof’s right arm was hideously blistered and blackened from elbow to finger tips. The remains of a ring were melted into one finger, the stone that had been in the ring a blackened, shattered mess.

  Consciousness did not seem to come easily to Kristof’s current condition, Korvan noted, though it was not surprising. That surely would not do for what he had planned, however. Motioning a doctor forward, he watched as Kristof was inject with a powerful stimulant that would bring him awake and keep him awake. He watched as Kristof groaned in pain and his eyes began to flutter open.

  “Leave us,” Korvan ordered curtly, and the room cleared.

  “Korvan?” Kristof whispered weakly, his voice full of pain, as his eyes slowly focused.

  “So you do remember me, dear brother,” Korvan said spitefully. “I’d feared that you may have forgotten me after you betrayed the family all those years ago.”

  “What madness has father filled your head with?” Kristof asked weakly even as the pain of being suspended wracked his shoulders and added itself to his other pain.

  “Honor and duty to one’s family is not madness, brother,” Korvan said darkly. “But I suppose you never understood that, did you. You and your high-minded ideals and superior attitude, always thinking you were better than us. You abandoned us! You abandoned ME! TO HER!”

  “Karina,” Kristof said mournfully and let his head sag forward.

  “So you really do remember her as well. Do you remember how she used to torment me when we were young, how she would torture me?” Korvan spat. “What do you care? You didn’t then.”

  “I’m sorry, Korvan,” Kristof whispered, his voice full of pain and sorrow. “I wanted to take you with me, but father wouldn’t allow it.”

  “A likely story,” Korvan spat. “I know you never loved father, just as I am sure you’ve told yourself lies all of these years to justify your treachery. Speaking of father, I hope you enjoyed the memories and nightmares my associate sent you. I’m told she is quite skilled.”