The Spider and the Fly

by C.E. Stalbaum

  Chapter Three

  The Yutara System was, in any measurable sense, completely unremarkable. Its star was a blue dwarf, just like most others in this sector, and none of its six planets supported a significant atmosphere, let alone sentient life. There were no asteroid clusters, comets, nebulae, or any other remotely interesting stellar phenomena nearby; there wasn’t even anything worth mining in the various planetary rings. In short, there was absolutely no reason for any living creature to ever come here.

  Which was precisely why Lord Soren Foln had chosen this particular spot for today’s experiment.

  “We’ve reached the designated coordinates, my lord,” Tayla Grier reported. “The shield projector is ready and standing by.”

  “Excellent,” Foln replied from his command chair. “Activate it and bring us about.”

  The Phoenix rocked slightly as the inertial compensators tried to keep up with the stiff change in direction, and outside the viewport Foln could just barely make out the small, gray sphere floating five hundred meters in front of them. A single red light glimmered on its surface as its projectors came online, but the shields themselves were naturally invisible. Foln glanced over to the tactical hologram on his left to confirm that they had indeed been activated, and then he allowed himself a thin, satisfied smile.

  The projector itself wasn’t important, of course; it was a common bit of technology found in almost every planetary defense system. It was what the sphere represented that he cared about—namely, the first step in taking back their freedom from the Convectorate. The first step in the reascension of the human race.

  “The projector’s shields are at full strength,” Grier said. “The Golem is moving into position. They’re ready whenever we are.”

  A flicker of motion on the right side of the viewport drew Foln’s attention, and his smile vanished when he caught a glimpse of the massive black, misshapen mass of his command ship hanging in the distance. Practically speaking, the vessel was nothing short of an engineering marvel. He wouldn’t have believed the parts of so many disparate ships could be fused together into a functional cruiser if he hadn’t seen the result with his own eyes. Its shields and armament were equally impressive—it was more than a match for any Convectorate military ship outside of a battleship or a dreadnought.

  Yet somehow when he looked upon the Golem, all he could see were the accumulated failures of his species over the past century. A hundred and fifty years ago, humanity had commanded entire fleets of sleek, deadly psionically-powered ships, and the Sarafan Dominion had reigned supreme across the better part of the galaxy. His direct ancestors had lorded over trillions of aliens, and galactic civilization as a whole had enjoyed an unprecedented era of peace and prosperity. Now here they were on the farthest fringes of known space, the last of a motley band of insurgents fighting a hopeless war from inside a mangled abomination generously called a starship.

  How times had changed.

  “My lord,” Grier said softly enough that the others would have trouble overhearing her. “I feel compelled to once again protest this decision. As the master of our house, I don’t believe it is appropriate for you to take the risk of—”

  “Our house,” Foln spat, not bothering to control his own volume. The men and women stuffed into this tiny shuttle were all implicitly loyal, and he felt no obligation to spare them from the truth. It wasn’t like he was going to tell them anything they didn’t already know. “Our house hasn’t been relevant since before your mother was born, Tayla.”

  The young woman winced. “That may be, my lord, but without you we lose our last connection to that lineage. There are others who could do this in your stead, and I’m sure if you asked them, they’d be more than willing to volunteer.”

  “I’m sure they would, but that doesn’t change anything. I have the best chance of making this work, and that’s all that matters.”

  It was an old and tired debate, and for a long moment Foln thought his first officer was going to rehash it one more time. But instead Grier merely sighed and glanced back out to the floating shield projector in the distance. Foln allowed the silence to settle over the bridge before turning to the elderly man busily working at the console to his right.

  “Is everything else ready, Doctor?” he asked.

  “As ready as it’s going to get,” Henri Varm told him. “The fail-safes are in place in case your vitals drop to dangerous levels. For the record, though, I agree with the girl. Someone else should be strapped in that chair.”

  “Maybe someday,” Foln murmured. “Maybe sooner than you think.”

  He glanced down to the restraints binding him into his command chair and couldn’t help but notice how absurd this whole setup would appear to an outsider. Here he was, a ninety-two year old man surrounded largely by people a third his age, and he was pinned down by enough straps to contain a Krosian warrior pumped up on adrenaline boosters. But it was all necessary to ensure his protection…and that of the others.

  “Let’s begin,” he said, taking in a deep breath. None of these tests were ever pleasant, but if everything went as he hoped, it would all be worth it. “Take the core offline.”

  Henri nodded solemnly and began entering commands into his console. A moment later the lights dimmed red as the ship’s primary power core flickered offline. The secondary core kicked in to maintain life-support and gravity, but it would be up to Foln to provide the rest.

  “Primary power is offline,” Grier reported. “Everything is ready.”

  Foln turned to the doctor. “Give me the serum.”

  His old friend swallowed heavily and nodded. “Right.”

  There was the slightest prick as Henri broke the skin with his injection, and Foln forced himself to relax and wait for the sensations to return. During the last trial a few months ago, it had taken almost ten minutes before he’d been able to feel anything.

  Not this time.

  At first it was merely a whisper flitting at the edges of his consciousness, but soon it swelled into an all-out scream. He could once again feel the minds of the others around him, the pulsating thrum of their thoughts pressing against his own. It was all an indecipherable mess at first, but after only a few seconds he could pick out specific emotions: Grier’s worry that this was all a mistake, Henri’s concern about his fluctuating vitals…and then behind them both, buried deeper in their subconscious minds, the desperate hope that this would finally turn their war against the Convectorate around.

  “His blood pressure is spiking,” Henri warned. “One-fifty over eighty and rising. Now one sixty…”

  Foln tuned the doctor out and focused instead on the other tingle stirring in his thoughts. This one was a raw and primal yearning, but it wasn’t coming from the minds of any of his crew—it was coming from the shuttle itself. The Phoenix hungered for power, and he was the only one who could sate it. Just like the grand fleets of psi-ships in the days of the Dominion, this ship’s psionic power core required a human battery to operate. And at long last, he was finally ready to plug himself in.

  “Activating the core,” he announced.

  The thoughts of the others vanished, and the mental tingle was swiftly replaced by a sharp jolt of pain. He felt like he’d just grabbed onto a live wire; his teeth clattered together and his muscles spasmed…and then, as abruptly as it had all begun, it stopped. He could no longer feel his body at all.

  Thankfully, he didn’t need to.

  “Power readings are rising,” Grier said, her voice shaking in amazement. “You’re doing it, my lord!”

  Foln could barely hear her. His mind had fully merged with the shuttle, and it took every scrap of his willpower not to drown beneath the flood of new sensations. He had read about the merging a thousand times in the old holos, and in their last trial he’d gotten a small taste of it…but nothing could have possibly prepared him for this. He could feel everything that happened to the ship as if it were his own body, from the impossible cold of the vacu
um against his skin to the subtle fluctuations in power across its myriad systems. And it was every bit as glorious as he could have possibly imagined.

  Grier and Varm were saying something else now, and Foln forced himself to concentrate on the task at hand. Already he could feel his power waning, and he knew he wouldn’t be able to hold on for much longer. With a flicker of concentration he brought the weapon systems online, and with another he locked them on the shield projector floating just ahead of them. He fired.

  And the moment he did so, a fresh spike of pain lanced through his limbs. He was dimly aware of his body screaming, but it seemed so distant he wasn’t sure if it was real. His control over the shuttle faltered, and the thrum of the crews’ minds around him dissipated. He was once again trapped inside a feeble old body struggling for breath, and with his last conscious thought Foln wondered distantly if death might have been preferable to this miserable, insular existence.

  The one the Tarreen had forced upon them. The one he had yet again failed to escape.