The Smuggler's Ascension: Dark Tide Rising

by Christopher Ingersoll

  Kristof remained silent in his shackles, but Korvan could see the emotional pain that flashed through his brother’s eyes and wondered just what those nightmares and visions had shown him.

  “The Emperor wants information from you before your trial,” Korvan went on. “Tell me about this new super weapon that the Puranni have. I don’t believe in the fairy tales that have been told of what happened the day my father was murdered.”

  “Father was killed by his own blind hatred,” Kristof spat painfully. “He received nothing more than what he deserved.”

  “LIAR! DON’T YOU DARE BLAME MY FATHER!” Korvan screamed. Grabbing a short whip studded with electrodes from a nearby table, Korvan whipped Kristof’s chest and back, watching as each strike ended in an electric shock. The lashes, along with administering an electrical shock with each strike, also began to leave long, bleeding cuts and burns in Kristof’s chest and back.

  Kristof’s screams were piercing in the enclosed room, but Korvan didn’t care. He’d come to extract his pound of flesh with interest while he still had the chance, and he no longer cared about interrogating Kristof for information on the Protectorate. Once they reached Clovani Prime, the Emperor would take Kristof from him. Korvan found himself sweating when he stopped.

  Kristof was no longer conscious, despite the drugs he’d been given. His chest and back bled from dozens of cuts, and he was no longer breathing, as a pair of doctors rushed in unannounced and lowered Kristof to the floor where they worked frantically to restart his heart. After a moment they succeeded and Kristof gasped for breath before returning to unconsciousness.

  “See that he stays alive,” Korvan ordered as he left.

  ~19~

  Sabine’s rage was palpable, a living breathing entity that threatened to consume the conference chamber as the assembled group watched the monitor. The image showed a parade in the capital city of Dresana on the world of Clovani Prime. The announcers had billed the parade as a celebration for a war criminal at last brought to justice. The centerpiece of the parade had set everyone in the chamber on edge, mostly because they feared the Queen’s response.

  The sound now off, they watched as Kristof Anders rode in the back of an open truck, arms suspended over his head, as he was paraded nude before the people of Clovani Prime. He was thankfully unconscious, Sabine thought, as she took in the burnt arm and mutilated torso and back of her husband. There seemed to be blood everywhere, but the announcers had been quick to confirm he was alive and would stand trial before she’d ordered the sound cut.

  Anasha sat to Sabine’s side, eyes no less furious at the sight before them, though she also seemed thoughtful and calculating, Sabine thought. She watched as her blond hair wife took in every detail of Kristof, the truck, the route, the city around them. Surely Anasha was plotting something, Sabine knew, and hoped that her beautiful wife would be open to what she herself had in mind.

  “Prime Minister,” Sabine called angrily. “I want a diplomatic dispatch sent to Emperor Clovan immediately demanding Kristof’s return.”

  “Your Majesty,” Rossada said as he turned to face the Queen. “The Clovani have already issued a communique to all worlds that Kristof Anders is to stand trial in seven days’ time for war crimes, and that any attempts to free him or interfere will be considered a further act of war, as the ‘criminal’ was apprehended invading Clovani space again.”

  Before Sabine could unleash the violent tirade of expletives she’d had planned, General Mannis stepped forward quickly to head her off.

  “Your Majesty, please, we must move carefully here if we wish to avoid an all-out war with the Clovani,” the General said, and Sabine’s heated retort suddenly went cold as she turned her eyes upon the General. “Surely your husband would not wish a war on his behalf.”

  “War, you say?” Sabine said menacingly, as a white hot corner of her mind awoke. “There will be no war, General. I will burn Clovani Prime to its core if I must to get Kristof back. War? No, General, I will kill every single Clovani with my bare hands if I must until their blood…”

  Anasha pulled up her now feral Queen short and gave her a long hard look that spoke volumes. With great effort, Sabine reined herself in and returned to watching the screen. It broke her heart to see Kristof hanging there, lifeless, but she couldn’t look away. Anasha finally turned the monitor off, but it did not stop Sabine from staring at it. The images would be burned into her memory forever.

  “General,” Sabine said softly, that bright corner of her mind still pulsing. “I’m initiating the first stages of the Firestorm Protocol.”

  “Your Majesty, you cannot be serious,” General Mannis said, paling and clearly shocked.

  Sabine gave the General and every assembled military commander and member of the royal families an icy stare that caused everyone to take a step back. Anasha stood behind her, clearly on her side no matter what, which she appreciated. She also knew that Anasha did not know what Firestorm was, however.

  “The man on that screen that you all seem to have written off as lost is my husband,” Sabine said to the group as her fire began to burn high once more. “That man has already given his life once for the entire Protectorate, and we will not allow him to do so again. Every single person on every single one of our worlds, and countless more, owe that man a debt that we can never repay. That will not prevent us from attempting to repay that debt, however. You have your orders, General Mannis, so either obey them or step down.”

  Sabine’s stare was steel as she awaited the General’s reply. She may have only stood not quite five feet tall, but in that moment she seemed to stand a hundred feet tall to the assemble group. Finally, General Mannis bowed his head in ascent.

  “The Firestorm Protocol will commence at once,” the General said weakly. “It will require seven days to prepare the system.”

  “You have four, General,” Sabine ordered with no room to argue. “On day five the storm will be unleashed.”

  “Four days, Your Majesty,” General Mannis surrendered.

  Sabine did not wait for the room to clear before she stormed out with Anasha close behind. The General’s resistance had not been unexpected, yet it had angered her anew until she thought she might burn the palace down from the heat of it.

  “What is the Firestorm Protocol?” Anasha asked as she matched the Queen stride for stride towards their apartments.

  Sabine waited until they reached the quiet of their apartments before answering. Certain things did not need to be known throughout the palace before they were ready, and she was unsure how much to tell her beautiful wife as the white hot corner of her mind continued to pulse.

  “Firestorm was a weapon my father had come up with during the first Clovani War when my grandmother had been kidnapped by the Clovani,” Sabine said, before deciding to not tell Anasha the whole truth about all the weapon was capable of. “It is a patterned orbital bombardment system designed to… incapacity the planet below in a time of war.” Sabine left out the details of just how the planet was incapacitated, the bright corner of her mind urging secrecy.

  Anasha stood with her mouth open as the full scope, as far as she knew it, of what Sabine was setting into motion came to her. “Did it work?” she asked quietly. “Was the planet incapacitated? Did it help in the rescue of your grandmother?”

  “It never got to the point that it was deployed,” Sabine answered just as quietly, her energy and fire from the conference room fading. “My grandmother was rescued by the Su’Tani, and then my father married my mother, and you know the rest.” She surprised herself with a weak giggle at the thought of her parents together.

  “How do you plan to get Kristof out then,” Anasha asked, intrigued now. “I had some ideas, but surely you have some thought for the extraction if you’d put this kind of a plan into action.”

  Sabine went to Anasha and knelt before her as the taller woman gazed down at her and she looked up into the woman’s eyes. As always, she was mesmerized by the way the bl
ue of Anasha’s eyes seemed alive, like the motion of waves on the ocean. She found herself wanting to drown in those eyes and remain there forever. Anasha caressed her cheek and returned her loving stare just as warmly.

  “First we need H.O.P.E,” Sabine said softly as they gazed at each other.

  ~20~

  High above Purannis, standing at the edge of a docking bay and looking out through the blue tinged force field, Anasha took in the beauty of the planet below. It was a majestic view that should have inspired poets to write and painters to paint, but in that moment all the view did was inspire fear in the pit of her stomach. Sabine’s words came back to Anasha as she took in the view, and she silently cursed the tiny Queen she loved.

  H.O.P.E. she’d said. It was a word that should have been inspiring, like the view before her, but Anasha knew better. H.O.P.E. actually stood for High Orbital Powered Entry and was the equivalent of a high altitude parachute jump, only initiated from outside the atmosphere of a planet. It was an infiltration method used to gain entry into heavily guarded planets. The personal shields of each jumper would take the heat of reentry, and the brief flashes would be dismissed by any who saw them as debris burning up in the atmosphere.

  The plan was fine on its merits, there was just one thing Sabine hadn’t taken into account when she’d told Anasha what she wanted her to do. Sabine did not know that Anasha was afraid of heights. So here Anasha stood, in full gear for a practice jump, and she found herself sweating and weak in her knees, a feeling she absolutely hated feeling in herself. Fear was not normally something she accepted in herself and she was trying mightily to banish it.

  Behind her, a door to the hanger opened and an officer of the station’s crew hurried towards her. Anasha felt relief for the distraction, then silently chided herself for that. The fears of the jump would not so easily be banished, they would simply wait for her attention to return.

  “Commander Undani,” the officer called as he approached. “I need you to come with me immediately.”

  “What has happened, Lieutenant?” Anasha asked as she removed her suit’s helmet, suddenly worried about what could have happened now.

  “We have a ship on approach,” the Lieutenant said quickly. “Her transponder says it is the Phantom.”

  Anasha’s hope jumped, but there was no sense of Kristof near, and she quickly brought herself under control again. She knew Kristof was on Clovani Prime. She followed the officer through the station until they reached a control center above one of the station’s emergency landing bays. In the distance she could see a pair of small tug drones leading a battered black ship towards them.

  It was definitely the Phantom, Anasha saw, having been around the ship frequently. The communications array had been destroyed and the ship was leaking plasma from one of its engines, but it was mostly intact though badly damaged. As the ship landed in the bay below, Anasha waited impatiently as the deck crew extinguished the burning plasma leak and sealed it.

  Finally, rushing below Anasha, saw the boarding ramp lowering and Max appeared. Overjoyed at seeing the android alive, Anasha rushed to Max and hugged him tightly. She could feel the android patting her back awkwardly, and she laughed in spite of herself. Stepping back, she could see Max had taken a bit of damage himself, but none of it disabling at all.

  “What happened, Max?” Anasha asked suddenly, desperately needing answers as other members of the crew and Kristof’s team slowly made their way down the ramp. Medical teams from the station came rushing towards the ship along with more engineers.

  “It was a trap,” Max said simply. “We were already too deep in the mission when we learned the Clovani were there. Subat said they were targeting Kristof directly, so we kept running, but we couldn’t get out.”

  “But you did get out,” Anasha pointed out.

  “Kristof found a way, as he always does,” Max said, his voice full of sorrow, “But the Clovani caught up too soon, and he sacrificed himself for those of us that got through and he stayed to hold them off. I am sorry, Anasha, but your father was still on the other side when…”

  “I know,” Anasha said softly, stopping Max short. “He’s dead. I felt him go.”

  Max moaned sadly before continuing. “At any rate, those of us that were left made our way through the moon and called in the Phantom for a pick up. The Phantom had taken heavy fire after the trap was sprung. Somehow they had flooded the area around the moon with radioactive particles that let them find the ship. We lost the long range comm systems, and the hyperdrive was damaged. We had to jump home in stages, then pause along the way to allow the hyperdrive to cool. That is why it took us so long to return.”

  “How many made it back with you?” Anasha asked.

  “Seven of our team,” Max said sadly. “We lost all of Beta Team, and five members of Alpha, and seventeen crew on the Phantom. Has there been any word of Kristof?”

  Anasha filled Max in on all that had happened while he had made the trip home, then stepped back as the android unleashed a vile string of curses and punches at the air around him. It struck her how much Max was like Kristof, and Sabine for that matter. All had fiery tempers and rather questionable vocabularies when angry.

  “We must do something!” Max demanded suddenly.

  “We are,” Anasha replied. “That is why I am up here, actually,” she said and filled Max in on Sabine’s crazy plan. The plan called for Anasha to lead a team of Su’Tani Special Forces from the Royal Garrison on the orbital jumps and land in the capital of Dresana, and then seek out and extract Kristof. Anasha would need to go, since she was the only one with any hope of locating Kristof in time. Max volunteered to go immediately, as Anasha had known he would as soon as she had seen him.

  “Thank you, Max,” Anasha said gratefully. “I’m going to need all of the help I can get.”

  “Damn straight,” Max agreed. “I would go anyway, even if you had said no.”

  Anasha laughed and invited Max to make the practice jump with her, finally admitting her fear to someone else. Max kindly agreed to join her, and even managed to do it in a way that didn’t make fun of her, she was glad to hear. She was having a hard enough time getting started without having to deal with ridicule as well. Though maybe anger would help, she thought for a moment, but then decided that wasn’t the type of motivation she ever cared to see for anyone.

  In what Anasha felt was an obscenely short time, she once again found herself taking in the view of the planet below from the edge of the hanger deck, this time with Max beside her. She reminded herself that she had made these jumps before, but it did little to lessen her dread. Getting started and taking that first step off the station had always been the hardest part.

  Checking her helmet seals and onboard computer systems, Anasha saw Max doing the same. While he technically did not need the helmet to survive, the rest of the flight suit was not designed to be operated without it. She realized she was checking her systems for a third time when Max came to her and took her by the wrists and stopped her. Anasha was annoyed to see a slight tremor in her fingers, so she clenched her fists tight.

  “You will be fine, you can do this,” Max said gently, surprising her with his tenderness. Anasha whispered a thank you and turned back to the horizon before her. Taking a deep breath, she unclenched her fists and stepped to the edge of the deck a foot away from the force field.

  “Control,” Anasha said, cueing her radio with her thumb, “Two ready to commence H.O.P.E jump from bay 1216. Confirm.”

  “Confirmed, Bay 1216,” came a response over the radio, “Jump will commence in sixty seconds. Good flight and happy landings.”

  Anasha cursed the overly happy crewman as the hanger bay went dark, leaving only the light of the force field and the planet beyond. The sound of the hanger bay depressurizing followed, and Anasha’ heart rate climbed with the sound. Moments later the force field deactivated along with the artificial gravity.

  Anasha nodded to Max and they activated the thrusters in
the suits together and sped towards the planet below. Once the flight was under way she felt her fear ebb as the task at hand took over, as it always did. The planet grew slowly before them as they descended at a rapidly accelerating rate.

  Their shields came alive seconds before they met the outer atmosphere with a bump, and then the turbulence of their reentry at twenty thousand miles per hour began. The suit’s flight systems took over control so that she did not begin to tumble wildly as the shields began to glow with the heat of ionized gases as they passed.

  Anasha began to enjoy herself with the trill of the ride now that her fear had receded. The turbulence continued to buffet her as they passed out of the ‘burn zone’ as it was called, where their shield would be lit up light meteorites. The course to their landing zone appeared on her helmet display and small speed breaks deployed to slow their meteoric descent as their shields flickered off.

  The fear returned briefly as they passed through the base of the clouds and the ground became visible, but Anasha quickly banished it as she saw the Capital City in the distance approaching fast. Small wings deployed between arm and body, as well as her legs, to give her greater control and maneuverability as she made small corrections to her course after disengaging the auto pilot feature.

  As Anasha sped over the city and between taller buildings, she began deploying more speed breaks to bleed off speed, and when she saw her landing zone she deployed her chute. Her landing was smooth as she hit the ground running, chute and flaps automatically retracting into the suit and suddenly she was stopped. Her heart was racing and she was breathing heavily as the adrenaline rush slowly faded.

  “You did very well, for a human,” Max commented from her left as she slowly removed her helmet and laughed. “I don’t think Kristof ever made a jump so well,” he added.