Dolan’s hands flew over the controls. With a flick of her fingers, she shifted the view in the main viewscreen to the aft of the Spartacus.
Space there rippled, the distant stars seeming to flicker and shimmer. Then a new star emerged in the midst of them, a white-hot point of light.
It wasn’t a star, but something else entirely. It grew swiftly into a circle of white energy. A portal, rapidly widening as if melting the fabric of space-time itself.
“Wormhole!” Dolan shouted.
“Oh, balls, no!” Bell said. “It can't be!”
Balth slammed his fists down on his console. “A trap! Damn it! Hawking! Dump the grapplers. Get us moving! Bell, lock all weapons on that wormhole and whatever is coming out of it.”
“Yes, sir,” Bell said soberly. “They’re already—” His voice trailed off into stunned silence.
“What is that?” Dolan said. Her heart was frozen in terror, uncomprehending.
What was emerging from the wormhole now did not have the appearance of any Republic ship. Indeed, her console kept flashing question marks at her; the newcomer did not match any of the profiles on the system.
The blunt nose of it came first. The unknown ship’s hull was black, but glistened like polished obsidian, or maybe… No… It seemed almost oily, slimy… organic.
The wormhole kept expanding as more and more of the ship emerged. Broad, flat, wing-like projections sprouted from the sides of it, giving it the appearance of a manta ray.
The energy readings were literally off the scale. But then the blunt nose of the craft began to glow and pulse.
“Massive readings at the nose of that ship!” Dolan called out. “All across the EM spectrum and some kind of quantum distortion, too. I don’t think it’s the wormhole—I—”
A swarm of glowing missiles of some unknown type, blue-green, swirling and crackling, whirled out of the nose of the thing. Frozen in fear, Dolan watched as if in slow motion as the angry swarm of missiles sped toward them.
And, then, the ship lurched violently. Dolan was thrown forward towards the console, her face slamming down hard onto the surface. She pulled herself back just in time, as a wash of crackling energy—some sort of ionization effect—washed over her console.
Everything was dim for a moment, and then the orange emergency lighting kicked in. The air was almost instantly filled with smoke and klaxons blared.
“All weapons offline!” Bell shouted.
“Thrusters not responding!” Hawking cried.
“They knew just where to hit us,” Balth said.
“Who are they?” Dolan shouted back to him. “No Repub ship could do—”
But her question went unanswered.
The three men on the bridge—Balth, followed by Bell and Hawking—grabbed plasma rifles from the locker on the bridge.
Balth armed his rifle, and the red status light on the side of the chunky weapon flared to life. In a second he was back by Dolan’s side.
Just for a moment, he placed his hand on her shoulder.
“Janny, take the kid and hide in one of the lifeboats. Launch if it looks bad.”
Her husband’s striking gold-brown eyes seem to peer into her soul, but she loved him and trusted him implicitly. It was enough to remove the cold paralysis over her body and get her moving.
As he helped her to her feet, she heard the engineer, Joachim, who was stationed near the rear of the ship, shouting over the comm system.
“Captain, they—the airlock door, it’s melting!”
But Dolan didn’t have time to ponder this, or wonder about the tech’s fate. She ran towards the door at the rear of the control room. The three men had already wrenched the powerless door open and were rushing through; she ran into the corridor and then took a door to the left, to the ship’s lounge area.
Jeremy sat on the long couch set into the wall there, drawing on a big pad of rough brown paper with his crayons, oblivious to all of the noise and chaos around him. Dolan rushed in and grabbed her son up, knowing that there would be no way to briefly explain to him what was going on.
Truthfully, she didn’t really know herself; she only knew that they had to get away, to get to the lifeboat bay. But she felt like she was moving in slow motion, her two children—the one inside her and the seven-year-old in her arms—both weighing her down.
The lifeboat bay was dark, aside from the faint orange light of the emergency lighting. Several open hatches led to tiny emergency lifeboats, which had been scavenged from a damaged Republican vessel.
Oh, God, I hope these things still work, she thought.
The interior of the lifeboat was covered with padded cushions. There were restraint bars that could be pulled down to lock a person in place, but Dolan was struggling enough just to get Jeremy inside.
He clawed at the entrance door, kicking and screaming. He thrashed about and pummeled his fists into her shoulders. She barely managed to get him inside of the cushioned interior of the lifeboat and set him down.
“Jeremy,” she said, stroking his head, trying to calm him as he twisted and thrashed around. “It’s okay. It’s okay.”
But it seemed that he couldn’t hear her words of reassurance. His mind was in place of fear and anger. When he was in a bad way like this, he could go on screaming for hours sometimes.
Suddenly, she had an idea. It was a slight risk, but—
“I’ll go get your drawing stuff,” she said. “Okay? Stay here. Stay here.”
Oh, God.
She ran out, back through the open door into the lounge, grabbed up the pad and took a fistful of crayons that were laying loose there.
Reentering the lifeboat bay, she dropped the pad and crayons in front of Jeremy. He immediately went quiet, picking up a black crayon and studying it with a contemplative expression.
Good, she thought. Maybe they—whoever they are that are boarding the ship—didn’t hear anything.
She crouched, prepared to enter the lifeboat herself…
When she saw movement out of the corner of her eye.
The door from the room to the aft corridor was opened, and something stepped through.
At first, Dolan thought she must be hallucinating, her mind twisting old memories in this time of crisis. Old ghost stories like her grandmother used to tell her. A corpse-ghoul, a skeleton thing, coming at her in the darkness: the type of thing she’d been afraid of as a little girl that made her hide under the covers.
But, no… Even in the faint light, she could see it clearly now. It was a human-like figure: two arms, two legs, a head, but at least seven feet tall…
It was covered in white armor like sculpted bone, ribbed and veined; like an armored space suit, but disturbingly biological. A silvery faceplate obscured any facial features.
But the faceplate itself glistened wetly, as if it were some kind of oily, living membrane.
She heard Balth’s voice in her head: Launch if it looks bad.
She had to get into the lifeboat, had to get away with Jeremy and the child in her belly.
But before she could maneuver her unwieldy body into the lifeboat hatch, the tall creature in the bone-white armor raised its thickly gauntleted fist.
Pain stabbed through Dolan’s head like a million knives criss-crossing through her brain; like cold steel cutting away all thought, all purpose, from her consciousness. She could feel her body going limp, her entire nervous system filled with cold pain.
I just need to lie down, she thought, lie down until it passes. Oh, God. I’m going to die. I want to die. The pain: the cutting, the stabbing in my head…
Launch if it looks bad. Balth’s voice echoed in her head; the only memory that seemed to survive the assault.
The lifeboat’s exterior launch button was set into the panel beside the hatchway. The hexagon of steel alloy, recessed into the panel and trimmed by yellow and black caution lines, seemed to beckon to her.
She mastered all of her remaining strength, flailed out with her leg, kicke
d.
Her foot impacted the button.
The lifeboat hatch slammed down. There was a muffled explosion as it launched.
All Dolan could see was the oily faceplate of the thing leaning over her, patterns in the silvery membrane seeming to shift as the thing studied her.
The pain was leaving her now. And as those cutting knives of agony slid out of her brain, they were replaced with nothing: a welcoming darkness that swallowed all light, all sound, all thought… as she slipped into the relief of oblivion.
1
An explosion rocks the ship. The bridge of the Juno is a chaos of smoke and strobing lights.
Brattain’s suit is sealed, adjusted to atmospheric armor mode, with her face hooded and the transparent visor covering her face.
The hull has been breached, but there is still enough atmosphere for her to hear the blaring klaxons warning of critical damage to the ship.
“Captain!” the pilot shouts from his station in front of her, the message relayed through her suit’s communicator.
Captain Ross is dead, she thinks.
She looks down at the armored figure secured to the chair beside her, the seared torso bobbing in zero-g as his lifeless eyes stare back at her through the faceplate of his visor.
“Commander Brattain, you’re acting Captain now,” says the pilot.
From a remote place in her mind she realizes—
Yes, yes, I am.
But she’s frozen with shock, the situation, having turned from bad to devastating in an instant.
The main view screen flashes and flickers, but she gets a glimpse of the corporate fleet.
The sleek, sharp carriers are like giant knives in space pointed towards the Juno. Their crews are unfaltering cyborgs, minds and bodies wired into the ships, having sacrificed their very humanity in service of the company.
They do not hesitate. They never hesitate.
But Brattain—
“There’s a break in the line,” the astrogator tells her.
“What?” responds the pilot.
“A gap in their formation,” the astrogator says. “We can make our objective if we go now.”
Brattain looks at the astrogator numbly. Time seems to slow. His voice has a calm echoing as if very far away.
“Sir, permission to proceed?” he asks her.
“Our orders were to hold position,” the pilot says.
But the astrogator does not relent.
“Commander Brattain, formation closing, sir. Our last chance. Sir? Sir?”
And Brattain stares ahead, frozen, unable to think.
There’s another explosion and the astrogator is thrown back into his seat, a mist of cloudy red globules of blood rising in the zero-g.
But then, the chaos and the violence fade. The view of the bridge dissipates. A warm yellow light fills her vision.
And a buzzing, not like the ship’s klaxon; rather, it is a purring, insistent tone…
#
“Good morning,” Commander Brattain. “It is oh-six-hundred hours Coreward Mean Time.
Lisette Brattain opened her eyes just a crack, until the yellow light penetrated through her slitted eyelids. Moaning, she stretched her arm over the side of the bunk.
I’m on Auris, she thought.
Morning. Musashi. New assignment.
Had another nightmare, she thought. The Juno is in the past, a past I’ll never get rid of. Why am I trying to fool myself?
There was the temptation just to linger in the bunk, to sink back down into the cushioning foam and close her eyes. Despite having the most technologically advanced sleeping arrangements the Republic could offer, she still felt unrested, unready.
Depression?
No, won’t acknowledge that…
Don’t deserve pity, self-directed or otherwise.
“Stimulant,” she whispered.
Responding to her order, the nanotech bunk formed a projection, nano-plas whipping out from the edge of it, wrapping around her outstretched wrist.
There was a soft hiss. A warm jolt rushed through her.
Energy. Focus.
Good.
And she jerked awake, eyes open.
“Clean,” she commanded. The clinging injector cuff dropped away while the foam sheet, which had been tightly hugging her naked body, bubbled and thickened. It changed in a second to a white, cleansing foam that filled the bunk capsule.
Invisible currents worked under the foam, the fluids massaging every inch of her body. The liquid caresses on her neck, her breasts, and her thighs gave her just the hint of some perverse longing to be touched… Just to be close to someone.
It had been months since she’d seen her betrothed, Wesley. She’d spoken to him only a few times since the incident on the Juno. He’d said all of the right words, had been reassuring… but distant.
Distant, cold, isolated. I feel like that’s my entire existence anymore, she thought.
But, no, I have another chance now—another job. I wonder why Captain Kane wants me on his ship…
But it doesn’t matter.
I’ll give everything to the new position—focus on that and push myself. I’ve always been good at that.
Just keep going. Nothing else to do now.
Nothing else matters.
The cleansing foam drained away and disappeared, and Brattain climbed, nude, from the bunk capsule. She felt currents of warm air blowing across her slightly damp body from the environmental system of her quarters.
Outside the broad windows, the scenery was gorgeous: two suns rising over a forested plateau, a broad crystal-blue river winding through the trees below her.
It might’ve been an ideal vacation spot except that the sprawling complex, of which her room was a part, was a military base and not a resort. The carbon-bonded steel and glass buildings spread out everywhere amidst the trees, as if they were part of some wild organism feeding on the forest itself.
In the distance was a gleaming tube-like tower, a quarter mile in diameter stretching up into the clouds and beyond.
I’ll be taking the beanstalk up, she thought. I suppose that I could’ve demanded a shuttle, but it doesn’t matter.
It’ll give me time to think.
Though, maybe that’s not such a good thing right now…
I just wish Captain Kane had given me access to the crew dossiers; it’d give me something productive to focus on.
“Mirror,” Brattain commanded.
Her own image sprang up before her, life-sized in a nearly opaque hologram.
She wasn’t sure why she bothered to look at herself. Her pale green eyes weren’t bleary or bloodshot. No, the stim-injection had taken care of that.
Her fine, coppery-red hair hung down to her shoulders. Her natural shade, it was unfashionable at a time when bright, primary hair colors were preferred. Her pale alabaster skin was fashionable enough; darker skin tones hadn’t been popular in quite some time.
But the freckles which dotted her face, running over her forehead, under her eyes and across the bridge of her nose—and which also decorated her arms and legs, and spread down to between her breasts—those were never fashionable. It would’ve been easy enough to have them eliminated.
So why don’t I? she thought.
Because they were a record of the past, an accumulation of exposure over time, the sunlight of a dozen worlds having left impressions on her flesh? Or was it because of her father?
Freckle Girl, he used to call me.
No, she thought. It was the former. It was because they were a history of sorts, just like those subtle scars on her right arm, neck and shoulder: the results of the shrapnel explosion on the Juno during their escape to the lifeboats.
As for the rest of her—well, she was fit. The tight glutes of her backside, the contours of her biceps and her defined abs showed that at least she’d never given up on a regimen of physical exercise. True, she was shorter than the current standard of beauty for females, slightly more thickly built wit
h a squat waist, thicker thighs: what her father used to call a gymnast’s build.
Her breasts were smaller than the current trend, too. Wesley had liked them that way; it was the one thing about her body that seemed to arouse him. The only thing about her body that had truly excited him, really. He’d never much appreciated her freckles, or her thick build.
All of this was irrelevant now. It wasn’t like she was some hard-partying orgy girl who spent most of her off-duty time naked. Though she’d known more than a few of those—a couple of them officers.
Indeed, Brattain had a deep sense of modesty, a desire for privacy and for an ideal of sexual monogamy that seemed to go with it.
Sometimes I really wonder what’s wrong with me, she thought. Maybe I belong in the Colonies with the other throwbacks.
“News,” she commanded, seeking a distraction.
A holographic display bloomed in midair. It tilted and shifted, staying in her range of vision as she strode across the room.
“Landmark for a leader,” came the announcer’s voice. “First Consul, H. Gaius Wells, longest-serving official in the High Ministries, celebrates his two-hundredth year in office.”
In the hologram, Wells appeared at a podium. The hardy patrician seemed strong and healthy despite his gray-white hair and wrinkled skin. Behind him, a banner with the Republic's eagle symbol proclaimed: HONOR FREEDOM EQUALITY.
Wells looked down at the podium before speaking. He seemed humble, almost demure.
“Well,” he said, “I don’t think I’ve gotten so much attention since that rumor of my death a few years back.”
There was laughter of the crowd around him.
“However, as I’ve always said to the many presidents I’ve been honored to serve, I’m really only a reference guide, like an encyclopedia with a habit of rambling. Your best political advisors, I tell them, are these three, simple words behind me.”
The crowd rose and broke into enthusiastic applause.
Brattain removed her suit from a compartment on the wall. In its latent form, it was a loose, robe-like garment.
She pulled it over her head, and then slid her hands down the sides of it. Immediately it tightened, whipping around her legs to become a form-fitting jumpsuit.
Space Cruiser Musashi: a space opera novel Page 2