“Rogan… Rogan, look!”
The Adeona was making a beeline for them. Rather than breach the flaming canopies of the forest and risk retaliation from the Mansa armada above, she ploughed through the trees like a runaway freight train.
Despite his joy at being rescued, Jack felt a pang in his heart. Even with her shields online, her hull was slashed and dented. She looked like she belonged on a scrap heap.
Tuner. Rogan. The Adeona. They’d all put themselves through so much… for him.
For nothing.
She came to a hovering stop not far from them. Brackitt waved urgently from the cockpit window as her loading ramp rolled open.
Rogan hurried to the Adeona as more trees came toppling down around them. Jack stayed put.
“Klik?” He yelled her name over and over until it lost all meaning. “For God’s sake, Klik. Klik!”
Still nobody answered.
He guessed she was gone, too.
The plasma beam was catching up with them again; he could feel the heat licking the sweat from his skin. It hurt to look behind him, so he tried looking for Klik everywhere else instead.
“We have to go, Jack!” Brackitt’s crackling, fragmented voice strobed across the comms. “Come on!”
Jack gave the dying forest one last hopeful glance, then ran for the safety of the ship.
22
The Price of Freedom
Jack and Rogan waited to learn their fate inside the same Mansa battlecruiser that had glassed the surface of Krett only an hour earlier. In his hands Jack carried the Solar Core – the active one he’d kept hidden on the ship. Rogan still clutched what little she had left of Tuner.
The Adeona had been forced to take off from the moon before the relentless plasma beam could eviscerate her. They were lucky Tuner had shared the Mansa High Command’s comm details with Rogan before the accident happened. Without those codes, they never could have reached out to confirm the trade. And without the trade in place, they might never have left the moon at all.
Jack had watched Krett burn from the Adeona’s windows. It was sickening. Mortifying. So much beauty, so much wildlife, so much forgotten history and culture – all purged from existence. Jack knew that it was the Mansa Empire alone that shouldered the blame for the atrocity, but that didn’t stop him feeling guilty about it.
Was it Everett’s fault for hiding his ship someplace forbidden? Or was it Jack’s for knowingly leading the Mansa to him?
How much irreparable damage had the galaxy’s last two humans done between them?
Jack looked down at the Core.
Such immeasurable, incomprehensible power. A sun, sitting in the palm of his hand. Once, it had been his ticket back home. Now, it would hopefully buy him his life.
The Core for their freedom. That was the deal.
Of course, they were supposed to have brought Charon too. He sighed. It was their fault he’d escaped… though Jack doubted the Mansa would see it that way.
Though that raised an interesting point. Could he have handed a trussed-up Charon over to them, now knowing he was Everett Reeves?
At least he wouldn’t have to find that answer out.
Jack glanced at Rogan beside him. She didn’t glance back. He hadn’t expected her to. The cassette-shaped head in her hands kept all of her morose attention.
The room in which they stood was almost featureless. The walls, floor and ceiling were all made of the same plain, golden metal. Grand yet unassuming. Jack wondered if he’d been looking at everything on Paryx wrong. Perhaps gold was the Mansa equivalent of magnolia paint back home.
Behind them lay the dark grey docking bridge that connected the battlecruiser to the Adeona. They hadn’t been permitted to land inside the cruiser’s hangar. This featureless cube was the only room they’d seen since boarding. Jack suspected the Mansa wanted to keep it that way.
The only other things of note were the two armoured guards in front of them, each standing on opposite sides of an otherwise entirely blank wall. If it was anything like the ones Jack had encountered inside the supply convoy, the wall would automatically dismantle itself when the Mansa emissary came to join them.
Whenever that might be. They’d been left to wait by themselves in silence for twenty minutes already.
A further fifteen minutes passed before the emissary arrived. The wall in front of them retracted square by square like a brick wall being constructed in reverse. The two guards stood to attention.
Jack’s chest tightened. Bile nervously crept up his throat. He recognised the alien in front of him from the official planetary welcome message.
Scara Li Ka.
The wall quickly reconstructed itself behind him. Jack only got a brief glimpse of the rest of the ship beyond – dark, twisted metalwork and pulsing strips of blue light. Just as with the Mansa supply ship, the interior of the battlecruiser wasn’t half as glamorous as what people saw from the outside.
The Mansa general stopped a few feet away from them. He was older than the other Mansa Jack had seen – older than his picture, too. But there was no mistaking the grizzled veteran. His armour was half practical and half ceremonial, decorated with dozens of medals and insignias befitting a warrior of his station.
He eyed Jack with scarcely concealed disdain.
“That belongs to us,” he said, pointing at the Core. He pronounced each word slowly as if Jack might not possess the intelligence to follow otherwise.
“Yes, it does.” Jack held it out for him. “You can have it back. I certainly don’t want it.”
“Your accomplice led me to believe that you would have the criminal Charon in your custody. Evidently, you do not. This isn’t the arrangement upon which we agreed.”
Jack’s stomach fell. By your accomplice, he meant Tuner.
“Charon escaped during your assault on his ship,” Jack carefully explained. It didn’t seem wise to lay the blame too heavily at Scara Li Ka’s feet. “But we secured the Solar Core he stole before he could get away. I’m sure an empire as resourceful as yours will have no trouble tracking him down again.”
Scara Li Ka eyed Jack carefully, then reached out and delicately, making sure not to touch Jack’s flesh, plucked the Core from his hand.
“The Core for your freedom. That’s the deal you’re after, yes?”
Jack nodded.
“Yet now I have the Core. And we could have just killed you and taken it anyway. You haven’t much to bargain with.”
“No, I suppose we don’t.”
Another contemplative pause from the distinguished general.
“We’re not stupid, you know.” He twisted the orb open and admired the trapped star inside. “We know it was you who stole this for Charon.”
Despite the extremely high temperature inside the ship – set to simulate ambient conditions back on Paryx – Jack felt his entire body run cold.
“And yet you risked your life – inferior as it is – to bring it back to us. To put things right.” Scara Li Ka closed the Core up and lightly tossed it in his hand. “It’s the principle, really. We can make thousands of these without trouble. It’s everybody else who values them.”
One of the guards stepped forward. Scara Li Ka passed the Core to him. When he turned back to Jack his face was dark and sincere.
“You showed us the true threat. You showed us the wretched creature who wanted to use it. And mark my words – we shall make an example out of him.”
He nodded towards the docking bridge behind Jack.
“If we were to board that ship of yours, what would we find?”
Jack sighed.
“Nothing except my co-pilot and engineer, Brackitt. An automata,” he added. “We had another crew member – Tuner – but we lost him down on Krett.”
Rogan bowed her head even further.
“You give them names,” smirked Scara Li Ka. His fleshy eyebrows quivered. “How interesting. Oh well. I’m sure you can get yourself another one. And the girl?”
&
nbsp; Jack furrowed his brow.
“The Krettelian,” the Mansa general explained impatiently. “The daughter of that miserable resistance leader. What was his name? Sek? We know she escaped Meratyk Tower with you. What happened to her?”
“Oh.” Jack lowered his eyes. “She’s dead, too. Smoke inhalation, I think. We tried to find her before taking off but… but she was gone.”
“Hmm.”
Scara Li Ka’s contempt and distrust for Jack’s species – as with all species other than the Mansa – lingered in the air for a long moment.
“Well that clears one problem off my docket, at least. Look at me when I’m speaking to you.”
Jack jerked his head up, expecting the worst.
“If you ever return to this star system, you will die. If you ever speak of the theft of this Solar Core – or of your involvement in said theft – to anyone, you will die. Do you understand me?”
Jack couldn’t believe his ears. He nodded enthusiastically.
“Good. Now leave. You’ve stained this ship with your presence long enough.”
Scara Li Ka turned on his heels and marched back towards the empty wall. It disassembled upon his approach, then reassembled once the two guards had followed him out. Jack and Rogan were left alone.
“Let’s get out of here before he changes his mind,” Jack whispered. Rogan raised her head for the first time since leaving the Adeona. She nodded without saying a word.
They headed back to the Adeona. The docking bridge was retracted the second their airlock closed.
23
Out of Time
Jack watched as the romantic nebulas and stardust bled like wet paint down a canvas of midnight blue. The Adeona fled through dark, untraceable subspace – destination, unknown.
“You can probably come out now,” he said.
One of the scruffy floor panels towards the front of the cockpit rattled loose. An irritable girl in a grease-stained t-shirt came tumbling out.
“About time,” said Klik, coughing into her fist. “Brackitt could have picked a bigger hiding spot.”
“Those crawlspaces are meant for somebody a little smaller,” replied Brackitt from his co-pilot chair.
Rogan had been sat at the back of the cockpit, minding her own business. She let out a scoffing noise.
By “somebody a little smaller” he meant Tuner, of course. Jack thought he detected resentment in Brackitt’s voice, but maybe Brackitt was just preoccupied with monitoring the Adeona’s vital signs following their calamitous escape from Krett.
If he blamed Jack for Tuner’s death, that was okay. Jack blamed himself, too.
“Are the Mansa coming after us?” asked Klik, brushing the dust off her trousers.
Jack shook his head but continued staring at the distant point of unreachable light outside the windows. They could travel forever without arriving anywhere, at least not until they dropped out of subspace.
“Don’t see why they would. If they wanted to kill us they could have done it back when we were docked.” Now he turned to her. “You’re free, Klik. Dead, officially… but free.”
Klik laughed nervously.
“Yeah. I guess I am.”
“I still can’t quite believe you managed to reach the ship on your own so quickly.”
Another hacking cough. “It’s amazing how fast you can run when the concentrated plasma beam from a captured star is coming towards you,” she replied.
“Well, thank goodness you did. We never would have made it if the Adeona hadn’t known where to come pick us up.”
There was the creak of a chair spinning on its pole as Rogan got up to leave the room. Jack turned around. He considered saying something, then decided to keep his mouth shut. She needed time. They all did.
She still carried what little remained of Tuner around with her. Jack was starting to get it now. To Rogan, it wasn’t some macabre keepsake. It wasn’t even a body part, really. Inside that battered head of his was everything that made Tuner, well… Tuner. His knowledge. His experiences. Every complex line of code that dictated his unique personality.
She carried him like a memory.
Like a bottled soul.
God, he felt like crying.
“I don’t wish to be a pain,” said the Adeona, “but would it be possible for somebody to pick a destination? When it’s convenient, of course. Right now I’m just blasting through subspace to nowhere in particular.”
“Home.” There was no suggestion in Brackitt’s voice. It was a command. “We’re going back to Detri.”
“Hold on,” said Jack. “Everett told me Earth’s coordinates. I can’t go back to Detri without heading there first.”
“Then we can drop you off at Kapamentis and you can make your own way there. I’m sorry, Jack. Things have gone far enough. Tuner’s gone. We’re going home.”
“Come on, man.” Klik came to Jack’s defence. “He just found out his entire species got wiped out. Give the poor guy a break.”
Brackitt paused but still shook his head.
“Detri is still my vote. I think it’s safe to assume that it’ll be Rogan’s choice, too.”
“Well, I vote to head to Earth.” Klik crossed her arms. “You made me a crew member, remember. I must have some say about where we go.”
“That’s two versus two.” Jack sighed. “Deadlock. Great. We can just soar through subspace forever then.”
“Not quite,” said the Adeona. “I’m the ship – it’s only right that I cast the deciding vote on where I’m headed.”
Brackitt leaned back in his chair.
“And? Are you going to side with us automata, or the fleshies?”
“Neither. I’m going to choose the most logical route. Heading to the coordinates Charon gave Jack would require only the slightest detour from any course we set back to Detri. Half a day, tops. Jack can visit Earth – if it’s there – and then we’ll be back home before we know it. Everybody’s happy. Or the least unhappy, I suppose.”
Brackitt made a non-committal noise. Jack nodded and smiled weakly. He could feel his eyes starting to water.
“Thanks, Adeona. I need this. For closure if nothing else.”
“Setting a course for Pudeeta B now.”
Jack turned away from the cockpit’s dashboard. Klik gently placed her hand on his arm.
“Are you all right?”
“Yeah, I’m fine. I think I just need a bit of time to process everything.”
Klik nodded and left Jack to walk back to his quarters alone.
He closed the door behind him and collapsed into the chair beside the window. Pulsing waves of blue-shifted light shot through the black nothingness on the other side of his reflection.
“The road to hell, right?” he mumbled to himself.
He buried his head in his hands and started to cry.
It hardly even mattered if they found Earth or not anymore. Everyone there would be gone. Jack knew in his heart that Everett had been telling the truth. That’s why nobody had ever heard of Earth, why nobody in this vibrant galactic community had ever visited their little blue planet before. Because there was no Earth, or at least not one he could ever hope to recognise.
Amber was dead. It grew no less agonising each time the revelation hit him. Like a sledgehammer to the gut and ribs. She was nothing but forgotten dust on a dead rock savaged by the sun. And he’d never had the chance to say goodbye.
He’d felt it, hadn’t he? When he first came through the wormhole, when he’d first been brought aboard the Adeona.
That he was truly, utterly alone.
But he hadn’t been. Not completely. Because he’d had Rogan, and Tuner, and everyone else who’d put their lives on the line to help him get back to a home that no longer existed, to a wife who…
Jack gritted his teeth in a vain attempt to hold back the sobs. His entire body trembled from the pressure.
He’d built a family, here. And now that family was broken.
Torn apart by hi
s good intentions.
He stared out into the void and screamed.
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About the Author
T.W.M. Ashford is a British novelist living in London. You can call him Tom.
He's written hundreds of scripts and copy for some of the biggest companies in the world, and provides a variety of creative content for Mark Dawson’s Self Publishing Formula. He’s even been known to play a bass guitar on occasion.
Thief of Stars (Final Dawn, Book 2) Page 20