Exile: Arc

by Jack Lance

  They heard the chopping of the blades grow close on the far side of the fence, and then blocking the view the heletank swung around, searching with its beams.

  Jayne watched it beyond the spinning red lights, and then Arc who was also staring at their age-old jailor.

  “I hope they didn’t change the codes.” Arc smiled over his shoulder.

  “Eh?” Jayne said, then grabbed Arc’s arms tighter as he stood the bike up and then pulled away.

  Arc accelerated the bike through the gulley toward the edge of the roof. The bike hit one of the diagonal supports and jumped up and out away from the citadel, over the bright light below.

  The bike’s front wheel landed on the first of the heletank’s rotor blades, and growled out as the power was choked from it. Arc and Jayne bounced from the seats and toppled forward through the narrow space between the two sets of blades. As they dropped against the top shoulder of the aircraft Arc grabbed the front of the heletank’s chain gun protruding from the rear wings, and then grabbed back at Jayne’s wrist with the other hand as she fell down below him. The spinning bike struck wheel first against the wet fuselage and bounced over them, and then fell away to the bright distance below.

  The heletank span fast suddenly, realizing what they had done. Arc held tight to Jayne as she was dragged behind, and then Arc felt an electric charge building in the metal chain gun beneath the palm of his hand.

  It was powering up to fire, and would tear his arm off if it did, and so Arc looked around for a way to go. A small oval indentation in the side of the fuselage was the door into the beast. It was within jumping distance of the wing and so Arc twisted a leg around and pressed from the revving guns. He leapt across the gap tugging Jayne’s wrist hard behind, and snatched at a thin indentation, hooking his fingertips onto the tiny ledge. There was enough gap under it to hook his fingers inside, and so Arc used the leverage to drag himself up to the door.

  “Grab hold of me!” Arc yelled, and Jayne grabbed around Arc’s thighs, freeing his other hand.

  He began thumping around the door with his free hand, searching for the panel to the keypad. The heletank twisted left and right a few more times and then seemed to stop, as if trying to think of another way to solve its problem.

  After a few heavy thumps a small metal door opened, and Arc dragged himself up to it and looked in at the Lantian number pad as the rain pelted against his face. His fingers flicked over the numbers recorded as the entry code in the deep hack he’d done during the first escape, where he’d procured so many trusted codes. He entered it and the door slid aside, blowing a disgusting lived-in odour over his head and shoulders.

  He dragged Jayne up and pushed her through the hole as she tried to say something.

  Just then at the moment Arc watched her disappear into the grotty space, the heletank tipped on its back so it was pointing at the sky.

  Jayne stumbled against the walls then fell down to the back of the compartment within.

  The rotors suddenly stopped turning and folded together, and retracted to a slot in the top of the wings. The wings dipped down slightly and then a set of huge jets at the back roared and began thrusting the heletank up through the clouds.

  It was attempting to shake them off, or perhaps kill them by taking them up into the high atmosphere. It worked at first, and the sudden tug of inertia caused Arc to slip from his grip on the door. He fell back along the fuselage, grabbing a hold of a protruding light casing at the last moment. He held on in a tight grip as the heletank accelerated upwards, and began to feel his fingers slip against the wet plastic.

  Jayne had regained her bearings now, and leaned out of the open doorway, and reached down with her thin arm toward him.

  Arc looked at her curiously for a moment then grabbed her tiny wrist and began pulling himself up to where he could grab the door himself. Once he had he pushed her back inside with force and then dragged himself in after her.

  Arc could feel the thinning air in his breath and dived to the controls, shutting the door tight.

  There was a slight hiss from different points around the black interior as the atmosphere was automatically restabilized to be breathable by its pilots.

  Now there would be no more hostility toward them, as they were designated as pilots whether the heletank liked it or not.

  They looked at each other where they sat at opposite sides of the narrow compartment. Then Arc stood up and helped Jayne to her feet.

  Although standing perpendicular to the horizon the artificial gravity held them to the compartment floor. They walked through to a confectionary-caked cockpit, and sat in the two seats that were there.

  The ground could be seen upside down, slowly shrinking as the heletank pushed higher through the sky.

  The heletank arrowed gradually up through the clouds, and through a network of thousands of drones that scanned the craft with green beams of laser, and recognizing it, gave a series of clunks and allowed it through. They passed through two more similar grids and then after a few minutes more they had soared up and out of the atmosphere.

  The curve of the planet below had now taken on its more circular shape, covered by a film of glowing mists in blue gradients below the new night sky. It gradually receded away behind them, becoming like a marble in the eternity of space, with the majestic landscapes of the white planet and the darker patchwork of storm clouds over it losing their features to the naked eye.

  “There.” Arc said and turned a few dials, making the heletank alter its course toward the grey space station, that sat in its place at the foot of the eternity before them. “If the rest of those warbirds see us flying to the Shadow Sec ship they’ll tear us to bits.”

  “Oh Hells.” Jayne said while rubbing her sore wrist. “Look at them all. How can we ever get away from here?”

  The surrounding orbit was filled with troop carrying mother ships from Earth-space. They glistened harshly as they caught the raw sunlight, with colossal fuselages spiked with weaponry and enormous missiles.

  “Try not to worry.” Arc smiled at her. “We’re just an innocent killing machine flying about in orbit.”

  She laughed uncontrollably for a moment, then fell silent and stared out over the distant expanse of stars.

  The heletank slid steadily through the silence of space toward the glistening white cylinder of the weather station, with its long arms slowly spinning balls of weather surveillance equipment.

  They watched it grow and then move over them as they flew to the main docking port beneath. The heletank stopped under the hole and then rose up through it to a dusty old bay. It rocked to the side over one of the landing pads and then lowered carefully into it.

  They heard the hiss of the tiny door open behind them, as if it were saying “Now get out”.

  They went to it and jumped down to the stone floor of the bay, and looked around at the two main exits. One was a large hall reaching off for a long way, with countless lockers on either side. The place seemed to have been designed for a large community of station workers, although now the place was totally automated. Dust had settled on everything and could be seen clearly blowing across the cold stone floor in the light breezes.

  “That way.” Jayne said pointing to the other exit, a series of teleport pads in a low ceilinged room behind a wall of glass. Within the glass were embedded light displays reading information from a diagnostic of the parked vehicle.

  They walked through a doorway in the glass and to a teleport pad, finding it without light or power, and Jayne said “Is it still working?”

  Arc shrugged and glanced back at the heletank through the glass, and the diagnostic information on the window that said, among other things that heletank was almost out of fuel. The end of the diagnostic spiel read “Departure in progress”.

  They heard the heletanks blades unfurl and begin turning and walked to the window to see.

  The heletank powered up again and lifted into the air, and slowly spun to face them. It shone its rainbow
targeting beams over them briefly then shut down all of its lights.

  Suddenly the chain guns span into life, and the opposite side of the window was pounded by a barrage of hot bullets.

  Jayne staggered back in shock while Arc stared at it momentarily and then turned, and ran past her.

  He jumped up onto the teleport pad, trying to stay calm, while the assault on the window behind him suddenly tore a fissure along it.

  Jayne ran to him and screeched “Come on, we have to do something!”

  “Computer?” Arc shouted at the ceiling, and waited hoping for response.

  There was no response, and again the another crack tore along the window under the strain of the gunfire.

  “Computer? Take us to the bridge!” Arc tried again.

  “Which bridge do you require?” the empty feminine voice of the ships computer replied.

  “I dunno!” Arc yelled frantically. “Astro Navigation…or…”

  “Compliance!” it said happily and the pad below glowed light blue.

  A moment later they were standing on a pad at the corner of a tall hall.

  The enormous room was illuminated by the meagre light coming through two huge sets of windows, one at the front of the bridge and a slightly narrower set at the side, behind a gully on the opposite side of the floor space to the teleport pad.

  More lights flickered on slowly in the ceiling above, as if they hadn’t been called on for decades. They fully lit the grand hall that would at one time bustled with the activity of science and navy personnel, before it had been relegated to weather service for a remote prison colony.

  Within the grimy pit of the gully a bright blue light glowed and then above the empty hall space an archaic hologram of the galaxy hissed and flickered into being. It span slowly with every possible star available to be zoomed in on and selected for travel. The stars were colour coded by importance to the Eclipse Empire, with Cequodus controlled colonies coloured a mustard yellow, and all other Lantis dynasties coloured lime green. The other millions of races that made up the empire, and all of their power dynasties within were colour coded differently and in different shades. Uncharted territory around the galactic edges, and other, smaller empires within remained white.

  Jayne sighed and stepped down from the pad, and followed Arc across the floor toward the huge windows at the front, that looked out over the orbit of Narcosia.

  “Show me Narcosia. Authorization Delta Epsilon Gamma Gamma.” Arc snapped his fingers at the hologram and Jayne watched as the view gushed through the billions of stars toward an uncharted star close to the upper edge. It zoomed right into the solar system until the view stopped at the planet and moon that they could see much more clearly through the bridge windows.

  “I knew we were somewhere around there.” he grinned.

  Arc snapped his fingers again in the air at the hologram and turned to the long line of navigation controls below the tall glass wall. He stepped closer to them, and looked at Jayne, who was staring out over the world they had come from.

  “If we don’t get any further, I’ll die happy enough. I actually feel normal for a change.” she muttered.

  They watched the heletank fly off and down toward the planet.

  “Ah.” Arc said, choking up slightly and wagged a finger at the beast. “I didn’t think it would do that. I thought it would just stay where you parked it.”

  “Did we need it?” Jayne said looking at him.

  Arc scanned over the control panels and said “Well, let’s see shall we?”

  He looked around for the communications desk, and found it a little to the left. He stood over a hovering microphone that was easy to miss if you weren’t looking at it. The button below opened a line that would typically be heard by anyone listening anywhere in the solar system.

  “I hope they made it, and encrypted these comms.” Arc said looking over at the Shadow Security ship in orbit a little further out. “Otherwise this will be like waving a red flag to those bulls.”

  Jayne stared at him wide eyed with a raw look about her like she’d had enough excitement for one day.

  Arc depressed the button and leaned at the hovering silver rod.

  “Hello? Anyone? This is err... Aaron Bailey. Repeat Aaron Bailey. Pick up!”

  The surround sound speakers crackled and then the voice of Flynn Randall came through.

  “Bailey? Thank God!” he said. “Everything’s done at this end. How are things going at yours?”

  “You won’t believe the kind of day I’ve had.” Arc said. “Are the cannons ready? You need to have them primed or the shots won’t be fast enough.”

  “We were hoping you could help with that. None of us know how do work the ships weapons.”

  Arc smiled and said “Are you sure there’s nobody there that has experience on a starship bridge?”

  On the bridge of the Indus Lynx, Randall stared out over space at the weather station, and then looked at the others who were listening behind him.

  “I dunno.” he said, slightly curious.

  “I know ship systems.” Dane Angell said pushing past Farnon, and Randall looked at him in slight shock.

  “We have someone, yes.” Randall said, suspicious of some sort of unseen deceit.

  “Superlative.” Arc said back, and grinned at Jayne behind him. “Reverend, I need you to do one more thing before it. I have Jayne with me. She’s fine, but needs a drink and a good night’s sleep.”

  Arc listened to the celebratory sounds from the background.

  “Can you get a teleport lock on her?” Arc said and paused, looking at her.

  She shook her head slightly, and then Dane spoke over the line “Yes. I have her locked in.”

  “Bring her through.” Arc said, and watched as the space around her was sliced away by glowing light, and then disappeared through a rip in space, swapping the sliced areas over.

  As she disappeared, Arc saw a black creature slaking around the wall quickly, and then stop. He snapped out the gun and aimed up as it looked down through the hissing hologram of Narcosia.

  The air swapped from the bridge of the Indus Lynx smelled of cigarette smoke, and seemed a world away from the cold empty bridge of the weather station.

  Arc and the last of the sheriffs froze, face to masked face.

  Jayne appeared on the bridge of the ship behind them all, on the short ramp leading up to the back area. Thom ran to her and held her by he shoulders, unable to find words to say.

  She smiled at him briefly and gently nudged his hands away.

  “Not now, lover.” she said and walked past him to the window.

  The others patted her and said their hellos, while Thom stood with his head bowed, unsure of what it all meant.

  Farnon left them and went to the floating mic.

  “Bailey, there’s something else.” he said. “You said there were twenty of those Sheriffs right? If this is true then there was one missing on the planet. If they thought we were going for the weather station then it could be there now with you.”

  Arc watched the thing over the barrel of his gun as it hung from the high wall of the bridge.

  “Yes, thanks for that info. Just get the cannons ready. Remember, we’ve only got one shot at this.”

  “Ok, we will.” Farnon said. “Watch your back, buddy.”

  The com went dead and Arc muttered “Yeees.”

  It’s shroud hung from it as it tried to creep toward a shadow, presumably leading to an attack. It was completely alien, and sent a shudder down Arc’s torso.

  Staying calm Arc slowly nipped on the trigger and shot at it over again through the navigational hologram. He heard his bullets ricochet from the wall as the weird creature crawled fast around like a bug.

  It had dodged the fire and then taking a chance sprung down to the floor and leaped at Arc underneath the hologram of the planet. It bared those same claws through the body hugging shroud, and Arc fell back and pulled the trigger once more. The bullet kicked into its m
idriff, punching it back over in the air like a rag doll. It screeched out, making a hideous racket in the confines of the hall.

  It slammed down onto the floor and Arc noticed that it had slipped out of its shroud, and rolled aside, naked but for its armour wrap suit.

  Arc turned back to the console, glancing over his shoulder at the figure lying on the far side of the floor. Its bare head was just out of sight he noted.

  Turning his attention to the fleet in the space above, he began entering a set of commands to the touch screens and wheels.

  The floor shuddered slightly as the station began to move slowly in orbit. A moment later and the station fired two of its meagre laser defences at one of the closest warships. Immediately all ships in the fleet began to move in the direction of the station.

  A ship busting uber-ray lit up and flashed in front of the station, missing it either on purpose or as a warning shot. Then other ships began unfurling cannons and huge Merlin class rockets, that would be able to follow its target through into a backspace tunnel, making escape almost impossible.

  Behind him he heard something strange, but looking around at the sheriff he found it was still as dead as before. Arc leaned closer to get a look at the thing but was startled by the voice of the weather stations navcom.

  “Missile closing. Structural danger imminent.” it said, and Arc turned back to the controls.

  He brought up the navigational touch screen and plotted a course, then took one last look down at the planet, and the white shapes of the exile colony just below gaps in the thick flowing cloud cover. He then entered the last command and the station energized the first in a series of relayed gravitational rips needed to tunnel through the solar system.

  The planet below was tugged away from view, or relatively the station was. The sun that had been hidden just behind one of the other moons now glared and began to grow slowly toward view, beyond the hurricane tunnel of backspace.

  The others in the Indus Lynx watched as each of the fleet began their pursuit, disappearing in a hundred brief streaks of light.

  Arc watched as the Narcosia sun suddenly jerked forward and then slowed as the vessel began to break out of its warp.