Blackstar Command 1: Prominence

by A. C. Hadfield

  Brenna stiffened then. Only she and Kendal knew this. She wanted to ask Sule how she knew, but it would achieve nothing.

  Sule smirked at her and jabbed her again with the drug. “We’ll talk again soon,” she said. “In the meantime, you’ll rest and think about things. I’m sure you’ll come to the right decision.”

  Brenna tried to tell Sule to jump out of an airlock, but her lips were numb, and her voice came out scratchy. She lost the feeling in her limbs. Her head started to spin.

  Two shrain entered the room and unclasped her from the chair.

  She was too weak to resist. Sule mocked her as the others dragged her back to her cell. On her way back, she noticed a human in engineering clothes come out a door in one of the hallways. Despite the drugs, Brenna used all her attention to remember the location.

  They shoved her into her cell. She noticed that Lutes was no longer there. She guessed he had refused to help after all. Behind her, the door slammed shut, and Brenna fell to the bunk as the darkness again claimed her.

  Chapter 16

  Bandar, Kai, and Senaya kept to the side streets and under cover as much as they could.

  The city had suddenly become empty, all pedestrians and gyrocrafts finding somewhere to hide. A citywide siren blared but was drowned out by the Host destroyer’s engines. It had fired its great energy weapon just once, taking out one of the spires that Kai had guessed was the main communications systems.

  As yet, no ships had come to the city’s defense.

  Kai had tried to raise the alarm and contact Lopek, but their message wouldn’t get beyond the planet’s relay. Without a means to warn the Coalition, it was unlikely anyone would know the Host were here.

  They stopped for a moment inside an abandoned supermarket. It was dark inside and cold. Bandar's holomap gave off a slight blue glow, and Kai wondered if that would alert the Host of their presence.

  “They must have had an agent already on the planet,” Kai said. “Just like on Haleedez and the others.”

  “It’s not too surprising,” Bandar said, scrutinizing his map. “If it’s a war they’re gearing up for, then finding the Blackstar would be a priority to them as much as it is to the Coalition. The plan remains the same. We find Maio and get the hell off this rock.”

  Senaya had her twin laser pistols in her hands. “I’ve got a really bad feeling about all of this. It feels like a setup.”

  “My mother wouldn’t have got us involved if it were a setup,” Kai said.

  “But what if she didn’t know? What if there’s a mole in the GTU? What if Lopek’s been turned?”

  “Unlikely,” Bandar said, gesturing to his holomap. “You two need to remain calm. This is not unexpected. Here, we can get to Denson’s location in a few minutes if we follow this network of alleys. I suspect he uses this route himself. It’s well hidden from the rest of the city’s main thoroughfares. Follow me, and stay focused. If you see anyone suspicious… you know what to do.”

  With that, Bandar bustled to the rear of the supermarket. Kai and Senaya followed, guns armed and ready. They left the back entrance of the building and entered the delivery access alley. Bandar followed his map as Kai and Senaya covered the front and rear.

  Kai's heart thumped hard against his chest. Everything that moved felt like danger, and he nearly fired on more than one occasion. On closer inspection, it was just the shuffling movements of hobos crawling under their makeshift shelters and various-sized vermin looking for their next meal.

  The thrum of the destroyer’s engines had dissipated but was still just audible in the distance. Along with the sounds of rockets being fired.

  “Sounds like the city is finally putting up some resistance,” Senaya said, but no one else spoke. It seemed as though word from the Coalition had started to get around and there was at least some effort being made to protect the Coalition citizenship. It would mean nothing if they couldn’t complete their mission, though.

  After a further tense few minutes, they came to a crumbling, three-story apartment block. Bandar led them up the fire escape and across the walkway until they came to apartment fifty-three. Without waiting, Bandar kicked the door in and entered.

  Kai and Senaya followed in behind him, covering his flanks.

  The place stank of engineer’s grease and soldering compound.

  A human male wearing a small brass scope over his right eye stumbled into the front room from one of the side doors. Lank brown hair stuck to his sweaty face and the engineer’s boiler suit he wore looked as if it hadn’t been washed in a decade. In one hand he held a soldering pen and in the other what looked like an artificial muscle with wires and a chip attached to one end.

  “Who are you?” he asked, looking annoyed at being interrupted.

  Bandar didn’t hang around. He swung the butt of his rifle against the man’s head, knocking him to the ground before standing above him, weapon aimed at his genitals.

  The man’s scope had smashed to the floor, along with the soldering pen and the parts. He held a hand to his head and grimaced against the pain.

  “Ouch,” Senaya whispered. “I’ll watch the front door … this is becoming a pattern.”

  Kai kept an eye on the only other door to the right of the room. He left the interrogation to Bandar, who was clearly more experienced at this than Kai.

  “Raniel Denson?” Bandar asked.

  “You here on Griston’s behalf?” he said, still grimacing.

  A kick to the balls made the man wheeze.

  “I asked you a question,” Bandar said.

  “Yes… Yes, that’s me. Hell, my name’s on the door. You didn’t need to—”

  Bandar pressed his foot against the man’s balls and leaned in, the rifle touching his throat. “I’m going to ask you one question. If you don’t give me the answer I like, I’ll spray the remains of your head across this carpet. Nod if you understand.”

  The man was crying at this point, and Kai wanted to reach out to Bandar, tell him to go easy, but the man nodded. “What do you want from me?”

  “Drey,” Bandar said. “Lexis Drey. Where is she?”

  He raised a shaking hand and pointed to the door from whence he had come. “In there… just be careful, she’s…”

  Bandar nodded to Kai. “Go check it out. If he’s lying, tell me.”

  Denson’s eyes grew wide. “Why would I fucking lie?”

  “We’ll soon see.”

  Kai did as Bandar requested. The room was cramped, filled with a surgeon’s bed and accompanying trays and wheeled cabinets. A silver tray with a variety of tools lay over the bare stomach of a woman attached to various pipes and tubing.

  He shivered in the chilled air, pulled his jacket close to his body and approached the Lantesian woman. Even with her eyes closed, he knew right away it was Marella Maio. Ever since he had read the datapak, he’d had her face in his mind. She was beautiful with her short-cropped dark hair and delicate, pointed chin that seemed at odds with her full lips.

  She had fine almost fur-like hair on her skin as the usual for her species.

  She blinked once and then stared at him, their eyes locking.

  “Hey,” she said, calm as the low tide. “Do I know you?”

  She scrutinized him for a long moment and reached a hand up to his face. He made to step back, but something stopped him. Her hand was cold to the touch, but she was gentle and traced the line of his jaw. “I know you,” she said, her voice almost a whisper and the bridge of her nose wrinkling.

  “I think you've got me confused with someone else—or the drugs you're on are affecting your judgment. Listen, we need to get you out of here. The Host is here for you."

  “Me?”

  “You are Marella Maio, right?”

  “Yes," she said. "And you… you're…" Her forehead scrunched, and her eyebrows lowered as she strained to identify him. He wanted to explain who he was but remained quiet to see if she would confirm it herself. That would, after all, prove she knew his fath
er.

  “Go on,” he prompted. “Who am I?”

  She remained silent for a few seconds. A dark shadow of a past memory flickered across her face before settling into complete recognition. “You’re Kendal’s son. You’re here for the Blackstar.”

  “Yup, got that right,” Kai said.

  “I expected someone from the GTU,” she said, “as soon as I heard about the Host attacks. They’ve been trying to trace your father and the Blackstar for years.”

  A noise of struggle came from the other room, and she winced as she tried to sit up. She lay back before looking down at her bare stomach. That seemed to have dragged her out of compliance mode. "What's going on? Where's Dr. Denson?"

  “Doctor? He’s no doctor. What did he do to you?”

  “Got me free of the Circus, that’s what. Took out an ID chip…” she trailed off when Senaya stepped into the room.

  “Is it her? Bandar’s going to shoot Denson…”

  “Yeah,” Kai said, and then shouted out to Bandar, “It’s okay, he’s telling the truth. We’ve found her. She’s had some work done on her.”

  A moment later Bandar pushed Denson into the room ahead of him, his rifle pushed into the guy’s back. Senaya and Kai moved around the bed to make room so that they were all now surrounding Maio.

  “What have you done to her?” Bandar said.

  Denson wiped his eyes with a trembling hand. “She wanted it,” he said. “Tell him, Lexis, tell him I didn’t mean you any harm.”

  With that same level of calm, Marella looked up at Bandar. “It’s true. Dr. Denson helped remove an ID chip.”

  “Why?” Senaya asked. “And what kind of ID chip?”

  “A tracker—a brand,” Maio said, casting her eyes away as though shamed. “A group here called the Circus… offered me work. But it wasn’t the kind of work I would have accepted if I knew what they…”

  “It’s okay,” Denson said, finding some backbone. “You don’t have to tell them anything.”

  Bandar raised the rifle to the man and put his finger on the trigger.

  “Put the guns down, and let Dr. Denson finish his procedure and I’ll be happy to tell you anything you want to know,” Maio said. “I knew eventually the Coalition would send for me. I just wish it was better timed.”

  Bandar stepped back and lowered his rifle. “Go ahead. Make it quick. We don’t have much time.”

  Denson stepped forward to the bed and slowly, methodically removed the tubes and pipes. He checked the stitches across her stomach and then with an electronic device scanned across her body. When it chirped, he smiled at her and said, “You’re all clear. No more trace of the Circus’s tech. You’ll be sore for a while, and there’s risk of infection, but as long as you don’t do anything crazy, you should be fine. They won’t find you now.”

  He helped her off the bed, and she got dressed in a sleek one-piece black suit and fur-lined flight jacket.

  “Thank you, Doctor,” she said, wincing as she stepped around the bed. She planted a kiss on his cheek and then stared at Bandar. “You didn’t have to hurt him,” she said. “I know who you are and why you’re here. I would have come willingly.”

  “I couldn’t take that chance. You’d know that if you knew me.”

  “Wait,” Senaya said. “You two do actually know each other or not?”

  “We do,” they both said in unison.

  Bandar explained, “We met once. I was returning from a battle with Kendal when we ran into her at a bar.”

  “I was finishing up a semester of studies,” she added, smiling as though remembering their meeting fondly. Kai couldn’t imagine any meeting with Bandar to have been a pleasant one, but perhaps he wasn’t so bad back then.

  “Please,” Denson said, “can you all just go? I don’t want any part of whatever this is.”

  “Yes," Marella said. She looked over Kai's shoulder out of the window. "We ought to do just that. There's a group of Host soldiers coming this way, and I'm assuming they're after you lot."

  “After you, actually,” Bandar said. “They’re here for the Blackstar.”

  Marella just nodded. “Of course. Okay, Mr. Trace, do your thing and lead the way. Oh, I have a gyrocraft on the roof. We might do well to take that.” She then looked over her shoulder to Kai. “It’ll be a tight squeeze, but I’m sure you won’t mind, will you…?”

  “The name's Kai. Kai Locke," he said. "And this is my friend Senaya. Now that we all know each other let's get the hell out of here."

  “Nice to know one is considered important enough to be rescued by Kendal’s boys and their wee friend. The roof ladder is out here and to the left.”

  Senaya gave Kai one of her looks and mouthed, “Wee friend?”

  Kai shrugged and followed Bandar and Marella out of the room, gripping his P&G.

  A quick glance out of the window showed a group of four soldiers scanning the street below with a device. One of them looked up, and Kai shifted back out of view. "They're coming," he said. "We better get a move on."

  That spurred them on to race through the apartment, out of the rear door, and up the escape ladder to the roof. Marella was telling the truth: she did have a gyrocraft, and it would be a tight squeeze. The small vehicle was made for three Parsephites, who were traditionally slighter than humans.

  Bandar took the pilot’s seat and Senaya the copilot, leaving Marella to sit almost on Kai’s lap in the back.

  “Well, this is more comfortable than expected,” she said, giving Kai a quirky smile over her shoulder.

  “How can you joke at a time like this?” he said, moving her so that she was straddling his thigh rather than sitting directly on his crotch. This would give him a better angle if he needed to shoot, he told himself.

  “When you’ve escaped the lunatics in Circus, one tends to gain a new perspective of things.”

  “It was that bad, eh?”

  “Yeah… kinda.” She looked away, ending that line of questioning dead in its tracks.

  “Strap in,” Bandar said as he fired up the engines and the rotors started to spin. “We’re going to have to go about this without ceremony.”

  He wasn’t lying. The hatch they had just come through flew open, slamming onto the roof. Out stepped four Host soldiers, all human, all mean-looking with their dark green and gold uniforms, shaved heads, and combat visual overlays that gave their eyes a mirrored surface.

  “Oh crap,” Senaya said. She twisted in her seat and raised her twin laser pistols.

  With his right arm, Kai pushed Marella down and to the side as he aimed his P&G through the open window with his left.

  “Go, go!” Kai shouted as he pulled the trigger.

  A burst of fire blasted from the barrel. The recoil compensation could only do so much, and the powerful rifle hit back into his shoulder.

  Senaya fired off two volleys of laser blasts.

  Their fire forced the Host soldiers back into a defensive position behind a large air-condition exhaust. They split into teams of two on either side and returned fire as Bandar lifted the craft into the air.

  Two rounds struck the bottom of the hull but didn’t penetrate.

  “Armor upgrades,” Marella said, clinging onto Kai as they banked hard away from the building and down into the narrow alley between a pair of terraces.

  The Host soldiers ran to the edge of the roof and aimed, but Bandar's flying brought them hard cover, and they were away safely.

  When they had navigated the narrow alley, Bandar brought them higher but remained just a dozen meters or so from the flat surface of the warehouse district.

  They were soon heading back to the Piercer, having already flown over the droid market.

  The city streets were abandoned apart from a squadron of Parsephus military speeding toward the outskirts in their hover tanks.

  In the far distance, one of the spires, engulfed in flame and smoke, came crashing down.

  “We’re nearly there,” Bandar said, bringing the gyrocraft
up and over the circular landing port building. Ships of all size were taking off, escaping from the ensuing chaos, and he had to navigate quickly to avoid a crash.

  “Oh, come on,” Senaya said, slapping her hand against the dashboard.

  “What is it?” Kai said.

  Bandar brought the craft lower and circled their landing pad.

  The Piercer, to Kai's horror, was nothing but a smoldering pile of twisted metal and debris. Kai's face flushed red, and his heart pounded against his chest. A sweat broke out on his neck. The rage threatened to boil over. He suddenly felt claustrophobic and wanted to push Marella off him, but there was no room.

  “Alternative measures required,” Bandar said.

  “And you better make it quick,” Marella added, pointing to the window on her side of the craft. A Host plane, a twin-cannoned in-atmosphere attack vessel, was quickly approaching, the heavy guns on its wings spinning up.

  “They’re going to blast us out of the sky,” Kai said. “Bandar, get us low.”

  “Thanks for the tip, kid, I would never have thought of that.”

  Kai opened his mouth to protest the sarcasm but was cut short with the sound of cannon fire. A spray of rounds struck the side of the gyrocraft.

  This time, the armor didn't withstand the assault. Alarms and flashing lights blared. Smoke billowed from the rear of the hull.

  The engine, however, was still intact.

  Bandar took immediate evasive action and brought the craft down toward a landing pad occupied by a fifty-meter-long P-class Jettech cruiser. The chromed sleek arrow reeked of wealth and opulence. Still, it wasn’t beyond providing cover.

  Bandar navigated the small craft between the cruiser and the landing terminal, walloping the deck. They skidded a few meters before coming to an abrupt stop.

  Kai's head crashed against the roof. He crushed Marella into the window.

  Senaya screamed but remained in place, the straps on her copilot's seat holding her tight. Bandar punched a flashing red button on the dashboard, and the doors exploded away in a shower of sparks.

  “Get out and head for the transfer tunnel,” Bandar yelled, rolling out of the craft onto the landing pad and raising his rifle to the sky. “I’ll cover.”