The Smuggler's Ascension: Dark Tide Rising

by Christopher Ingersoll

  Anasha had given him another worried glance as she passed the torn apart armored vehicle, but Max was dedicated to the cause in full and would see his friends home safely, no matter what. One processor suggested that he should not take such pleasure in his killing of the enemy, and he considered it as they ran and fought on towards their extraction. In the end, he muted that processor so that it would not become a distraction. He would have time enough later to consider everything once his family was out of harm’s way.

  All that mattered to Max now was getting Kristof and Anasha off of Clovani Prime safely. He would kill everyone on the planet if that was what it took. Enemy troops continued to appear, and Max and the team gunned them down. Kristof remained unconscious on the stretcher carried by the remains of his own team as Max stayed on point now, placing himself between anyone that would seek to harm his friends.

  ~27~

  Kristof felt at peace for the first time in days. The pain and the delirium had receded enough to know that Anasha was near as he emerged from his protective mental shell. He could feel her presence similar to when she’d come to him on the edge of the Veil, a soft glowing light in the dark, and in a way she had saved him again. He’d been very close, he knew, to losing the last of his strength and passing through the Veil. Whatever had been injected into him had helped bring him back, but it was Anasha’s loving presence that had truly saved him.

  In the distance he could feel Sabine coming nearer at a rapid rate that could only mean that she was in hyperspace. He got the sense of rainbows surrounding her and he smiled to himself. His loves were intent on fighting for his life again, he found, just as they had fought Death once before. The thought should have made him happy were he not so afraid for them both, but especially Anasha at the moment.

  There was a growing sense of something dark looming ahead, a darkness he had felt before, and the words of the Phoenix God returned to him. The war had begun, which meant that Death’s agents were on the loose. Kristof suspected he had already met one of Death’s minions, as images of lightning filled his memories. The dark robed woman on Dorcanus had reminded him of Death in many ways, though he could not pin any one feeling down at the moment.

  As one thought of Death led into the next, Kristof suddenly realized that it was Death’s touch he’d felt within Sabine during each of her dark seizures. He reached out for her then as fear gripped his heart, since he’d not been able to help her during the dark episodes while in captivity. The remnants of the crystal ring were still fused with his finger, dead and useless. Even if the ring had survived, his delirium would have prevented him from being any assistance to his tiny wife.

  What he found when he touched Sabine’s spirit calmed his fear, however. There was no sense of Death’s touch any longer within her. What he did feel, though, was the warm glowing light of his son protecting her from Death’s darkness. His son. It was such an amazing thought that his own spirit began to glow in joy.

  Of all the things that Kristof had thought to be over the years, a father was not one of them. After growing up the way he had and the life he had lived, he’d often feared what kind of father he would be. Now, though, with the love of Sabine and Anasha as his guiding lights, he no longer feared the prospect of being a parent. He was eager for it. He just had to survive the next few hours.

  The sense of impending danger and darkness reasserted itself, and Kristof began to fight against the drugs he’d been given. Whatever they had injected him with, however, was very potent and he could not lift his consciousness above where he’d already attained. So he looked within. He’d been the ak’Sun Su’Tani once before, he prayed the power would come to him again in his time of urgent need. It wasn’t there, though.

  Something else had taken its place, Kristof discovered. The power of the ak’Sun Su’Tani had been warm, inviting, and filled with life. This new power was cold and hard as steel, the total opposite of what he’d felt as the ak’Sun Su’Tani, but it was not like Death’s power that he’d felt before. This power had more of an implacable feel to it, utterly relentless and without mercy but not evil in and of itself. It was a weapon to be harnessed and no more. From the silent depths of his soul a voice whispered to him, ‘Utani’van’Morto’, and he knew what it was he’d sensed, and he tapped into it now as he felt that darkness approach to threaten his rescuers.

  ~28~

  They ran and they fought, drawing closer and closer to Team 2’s designated area, and Anasha only prayed they would get there in time now. Their time was almost up, the fleet would be there in less than thirty minutes. She was exhausted, too, the adrenaline spike from earlier having run out. As they paused for a breather while they waited for an armored tank to go by in its search for them, she took a small syringe from a pouch at her belt and shot herself in the thigh with a very potent stimulant to keep her going. She knew the crash in a few hours, should they all live that long, would be extremely hard and even a bit painful. It would be better than crashing from exhaustion now, though, she thought to herself.

  With the tank now out of sight, Anasha signaled for the group to move out. They were all tired now, she knew, despite the adrenaline and stims. All except Max, of course. The android seemed to want to gun down every patrol that passed them by. The rage in his face at finding Kristof in his present condition had not lessened appreciably. Only his deep set programming to follow orders in combat situations seemed to override his free thinking and keep him in check, if only barely. She had watched the android commit some truly terrible violence in their mad dash to escape. He had even wanted to attack the tank moments before until Anasha had ordered him to stand down,

  Suddenly, Anasha got a sense of impending danger moments before lightning arced out from a roof top ahead of them and struck down her leading group of troops in a flash. Two Su’Tani troops fell to the ground dead, their bodies smoking from the lightning strikes, as three more staggered away injured. The lightning was unlike any she’d ever seen before, and yet seemed familiar at the same time. Her remaining troops immediately opened fire at its source when they saw the figure upon the roof top, but their blasts either went wide, or stopped short as if the figure had a shield around it.

  It wasn’t normal lightning, they all sensed, and the Su’Tani troops linked their minds as they had been trained and erected a force field of light just as another volley of lightning struck. The shield held back the lightning, but its draining effect was awesome to feel as Anasha found herself breathing hard from the effort of maintaining the shield. They wouldn’t be able to stop many blasts like that, she thought, as she searched frantically for some way to take out the dark figure.

  To her horror, Anasha suddenly saw Kristof rising from his stretcher, somehow awake and free of his restraints, and walking towards the robed figure and out of the protective sphere of light. She screamed his name, but he seemed not to hear as another volley of lightning quickly sought him out. Anasha screamed again in terror as the lightning neared its target. What she saw next was astonishing and left her speechless.

  The lightning had stopped short even as Anasha was screaming in dread. What happened seemed an impossibility, because Kristof seemed to grab ahold of the lightning in his hand and use it to pull the robed figure from the roof top with a hard yank. The figure let out a scream moments before it crashed to the ground with a sickening thud. Kristof walked to the crumpled figure slowly, body coiled to strike should it move.

  Anasha ran after him, all caution thrown to the wind, and reached Kristof just as he reached the robed figure. It was a woman, she saw, whose hair was a pure white while her eyes were black as jet. She recognized her as one of the shadow priestesses rumored to have been around the Clovani Emperor for the past few years, a member of the Gau’dran’Seti cult of Death worshipers.

  “How?” the woman whispered painfully. “You are not the ak’Sun Su’Tani any longer.”

  “No,” Kristof told her darkly. “Tell your Master when you see him in a minute that the Utani’van
’Morto has come, and his time grows near.”

  With that, a cold red fire erupted from Kristof’s hand and enveloped the Dark Priestess, and her screams were short and full of pain before her body shriveled into dust and was gone.

  “Oh my god,” Anasha muttered in shock. “Kristof, my love, what in god’s name was that?”

  Anasha’s question went unanswered as Kristof’s eyes rolled back into his head and he immediately began to sag as the power’s fire ebbed and disappeared. He would have fallen had she not quickly caught him. The rest of the team was there quickly as she laid him down and saw that he was once again unconscious. Tears ran down her face at seeing him so lifeless.

  “His heart stopped!” the medic cried in alarm and immediately started resuscitating Kristof as another member of the team rifled through the medic’s pack and brought out a small stimulator that he quickly attached to the base of Kristof’s skull. Anasha cried as she watched the device send electrical shocks into Kristof’s brain stem to try and restart his heart, causing his body to twitch violently with each shock.

  Several long seconds later Kristof gasped for air, but remained unconscious. The team quickly bound Kristof back into the stretcher and began to move out. Max had to shake Anasha to break her out of the paralysis she’d fallen into at seeing Kristof die and come back before her eyes. Once shaken, she quickly regained her senses as her and Max ran to catch up with the rest of the group.

  In the distance, Anasha saw that Team 2’s location was finally within sight with their escape ship, but they were taking fire from multiple locations. It wouldn’t be long until the Clovani sent in air support now, Anasha knew. Their time to go had come, she only prayed they had enough time left. With a war cry, she and her team rushed into the firefight with Kristof and their injured and dead slung between them.

  ~29~

  The Queen’s Honor dropped out of hyperspace and her lasers, new EMP weapons, and missiles immediately began to fire on the unsuspecting Clovani ships and space stations in orbit above Clovani Prime. The rest of the fleet arrived on time as well, and within seconds the space above the planet was a madhouse of fighting ships. Sabine saw that Admiral Raekis and General Mannis had planned the assault well as orders were issued with crisp efficiency, and in no place did the battle seem to be going against them.

  The Puranni fleet had come five hundred ships strong, giving them an easy two to one advantage over the Clovani’s First Fleet that typically remained in orbit above the capital of the Empire. The rest of the Clovani fleet was stretched thin throughout the Empire after their massive loss of ships the year before. Now the Clovani were in danger of losing their hold on their Empire entirely as the Puranni fleet decimated their forces high above Clovani Prime.

  “Begin scanning for our recovery team’s signal,” Sabine ordered, and Admiral Raekis’s team immediately complied. She hadn’t mean to preempt the Admiral’s issuing of the order, but she was impatient to hear Anasha and Kristof’s voice. The Admiral understood her impatience, she was sure.

  Shortly before dropping out of hyperspace, Sabine had felt Kristof suddenly and very clearly, unlike she’d ever felt him before. He had felt strong and powerful, and then the sense of him had just as suddenly disappeared. She did not know what it all meant, and she could bear the unknown no longer. If she could reach out and pluck them off of the planet herself, she would have done so in an instant.

  “Concentrate fire on the Vengeance,” Admiral Raekis ordered after issuing the command to search for the rescue team. Off in the distance Sabine spotted the enemy dreadnaught, which was much smaller than the Queen’s Honor and faring badly from the surprise attack. Kristof’s brother’s ship, she knew. The brother who had captured Kristof and brought about so much pain and death. Sabine blamed Korvan for what would soon occur here, as well.

  “Admiral,” Sabine called and waited on Admiral Raekis’s undivided attention. “Initiate Firestorm Protocol deployment.”

  “Yes, Your Majesty,” the Admiral replied, apparently shocked that this part of the mission was to proceed when the fighting was going so well. Going to his personal command station, the Admiral issued a series of commands through the screen. “Phase One deployment has been initiated, Your Majesty. Firestorm Pods have been launched from the Honor and from the Archangel and are moving to their designated coordinates.”

  “Very good, Admiral,” Sabine replied as she felt a cold pit forming in her stomach, not one of the baby’s supposed episode’s this time, but a cold pit of her own making because of what would soon happen. Second thoughts began to creep into her thinking, but that bright corner of her mind insisted the plan was necessary for the safety of her people, so she pushed her doubts away.

  The Clovani ships in orbit were suffering horrible damage when the ground defense lasers began to join the firefight. Admiral Raekis gave the order for the new EMP mass launchers to fire on the planet. Similar to the mass launchers that the Clovani used to fire iron core asteroids at a planet, the EMP mass launchers sent massive electromagnetic pulses at the planet’s surface, knocking out the weapons. Their non-lethal nature had made them exempt from the laws governing typical mass launchers. The only area of the planet not targeted was the capital of Dresana, so as not to accidentally hit their rescue team’s ship.

  “Signal from the rescue team detected!” a communications officer shouted excitedly. “We have a Clovani assault shuttle on approach from the planet below and asking not to be fired upon. They are transmitting the proper codes for our group.”

  “Get them on screen!” Sabine ordered loudly, rising from the command chair as she spoke. Moments later, Anasha’s tired and dirty face appeared on the screen.

  “Your Majesty, we’re coming in hot,” Anasha yelled loudly as alarms blared in the background of the shuttle. “There is a group of fighters hot on our tail. Any help would be appreciated before they shoot us down. We also need a med team waiting with crash carts and gurneys, we have dead and wounded with us, some critical.”

  “Kristof?” Sabine asked, fearing the answer after hearing the word dead.

  “He’s alive, but only barely and he is in very bad shape,” Anasha answered and managed a smile at seeing Sabine’s relief. “We’re two minutes out if you can get those fighters off our asses.”

  The image went dark then, and the flight controllers directed squadrons of fighters to assist the team’s shuttle. On the tactical screen, they watched as the fighters pursuing the shuttle were rapidly dispatched. Once she was sure Anasha and Kristof were now safe, Sabine decided the time had come to end the conflict.

  “Admiral,” Sabine said, her smile now gone and her thoughts replaced by that bright fire within her mind. “Initiate Phase Two if you would.”

  “Yes, Your Majesty,” the Admiral said sadly.

  Moments after giving the commands, a live image appeared on the main monitor of Clovani Prime as well as a digital icon for each of the thousands of pods that had been launched by the dreadnaughts as part of Phase One. Each pod was actually a cold fusion bomb, rather than the EMP weapons that she had led Anasha to believe, each capable of leveling a huge area. Once the command for Phase Two was given, the pods slowly began descending towards the planet below. At a height of one thousand feet from the surface, the pods detonated simultaneously. Clovani Prime’s atmosphere ignited with the rest of the planet’s surface in a spectacular fireball, making the world look like a small sun momentarily, before fading away in seconds. What remained was a dead, lifeless planet.

  Silence had fallen over the bridge as the implications of what had just happened sunk in with everyone, until the needs of the space battle that was still raging around them drew their attention back. More than a few shocked looks were directed at the Queen from time to time. Sabine ignored them as the bright corner of her mind fell silent and she began to comprehend the full extent of what she had just ordered.

  “Extraction team is on board,” an officer announced, though no longer joyously as they’d
all been moments before. Many eyes were upon Sabine still as she listened to the announcement, barely hearing it at first. Admiral Raekis came to her and shook her gently to break her out of her momentary stupor.

  “Very good,” Sabine said softy, as she started to feel the horror of what she’d just done to the depths of her soul. “Admiral, take us home.”

  “Yes, you Majesty,” the Admiral replied just as quietly.

  Sabine turned and left the bridge with her guards in tow. All she wanted in that moment were her loves, the rest of the universe could do what it wanted from that moment on. The lift ride to the hangers seemed to drag on forever before opening up on a small area of chaos. Calls for this piece of medical equipment or that rang out as she looked for Anasha or Max in the madness.

  Anasha found her first, and Sabine realized she’d been walking and seeing the injured through new eyes, the eyes that saw combat and its result up close and personal. It made what she had just done to the Clovani hit her heart even harder. Anasha seemed to sense something was terribly wrong, and Sabine knew that her wife had not seen the death of Clovani Prime, nor had she learned about it yet.

  “Where is he?” Sabine asked quietly, her voice sounding a thousand miles away to her own mind.

  “They took him straight to the Med Bay to get him stabilized, he’s in vary bad shape,” Anasha said before she grabbed Sabine’s arms and made her stop walking. Tilting Sabine’s head so she could see her eyes, she asked “What is it, love? What’s wrong?”