“What’s going on?” he asked.
“Chase, can you hear me?”
The voice seemed familiar. Chase got up and blinked the sun out of his eyes in order to see who had spoken. It was Aphroditis.
“Chase, do you see me?”
Chase’s face hardened, and he clenched his teeth. His anger exploded like a supernova, every muscle in his body tensed up.
“What the hell do you want from me?!”
Aphroditis’ expression changed from loving to shocked. “What’s going on, Chase? Why are you mad at me?”
Chase’s voice was hard and aggressive. “You know very well why. Get the fuck out of my head and never return; you hear me?!”
“I don’t understand.”
Chase raised an open palm toward Aphroditis and created a fireball. It quickly grew in size.
“Then understand this!”
Chase fired at Aphroditis, and everything changed. He was back aboard the Zarlack frigate. His head pounding. It took him a minute to get back his senses fully.
Chase stood and staggered through the ship. He had a hard time reconciling the amount of butchery he saw on his way to the bridge. Had he been responsible for such a massacre? And if so, what did that say about him?
Argos was still intoxicated from the Kyrian snake venom when his holo-screen turned on. He had to expend a large amount of mental energy to focus just to be able to speak.
“You—you better have good news to disturb me at this hour,” said Argos, his voice uneven.
“I apologize for the interruption, master,” said his engineer. “But I do. I have located the system from which the holo-communication was initiated. It was again a rather short transmission, but because I was ready for it, I managed to pinpoint the signal to the third planet of the target system.”
“Well done. Give the coordinates to the bridge and have them set a course. Looks like I’ll have my pound of Olympian flesh after all.”
“As you command, my master.”
“We should go,” insisted Ares.
“I can’t believe he was ready to kill me,” said a trembling Aphroditis.
“Look, that was never an option, it was just a holo-communication.”
“That’s not the point, Ares. He hates me, and I wish I knew why.”
“Something must have happened to him, and perhaps we should try to find out, but right now, we must leave. I detected a feedback signal during your transmission with him.”
“So Argos is tracking us?”
“Him or someone else, but I don’t intend to find out by staying here. It’s no longer safe.”
Aphroditis nodded. “I understand. We should go.”
13
Chase sat on the Zarlack bridge. The chairs where uncomfortable, but that was probably because they were too large for him.
He reconnected his mind to the main Zarlack computer and scanned the area for his StarFury. Chase found it and was surprised to see its energy signature was coming through the Zarlack sensors clearly. Upon further scan, the starfighter seemed powered and waiting in place.
Chase extended his mind to his ship’s computer, closed the canopy, and flew it to the cargo bay. He raised the cargo’s force field and re-established an atmosphere.
Chase then checked the internal sensor array on the frigate to see if any Zarlack might have survived his earlier wrath. Perhaps one hid somewhere. But he found no life signs besides his. It shouldn’t have surprised him Zarlack were no match for a half-Fury, but they were no cowards; they all threw themselves at him with courage. That much he had to admit.
I guess there’s that. I won’t find any clues about Argos on this ship.
The main holo-viewer came to life, a stamp filling it with a blinking red dot on a system half a weeks’ travel at hyperspace speeds. Chase asked the computer to translate the names next to the blinking dot to the Universal language.
Three words: Argos and Ponos One.
Chase must have triggered the search for Argos in the database with his last thought. He probably hadn’t fully disconnected from the Zarlack computer and somehow it picked up on his intention.
Was Argos on Ponos One? It was deep in Obsidian territory, so at least that was a possibility. That part of space was no place for a StarFury to go. A Zarlack frigate, however, would go unnoticed.
Chase exhaled deeply.
He checked the computer’s status of the hyperdrive engines. The auto repair systems were working on rerouting power to the secondary power grid. The primary grid had been all but fried by Chase’s run on the frigate and would require dock repairs at a Zarlack shipyard.
But the ship was in good enough shape to make the trip to Ponos One or at the very least bring him much closer. From there, he could always fly the rest of the way cloaked if need be.
Chase instructed the computer to redirect more bots to the repair of the hyperdrive and already set the course for Ponos One into the navigational systems. Once repaired, the ship would make the jump.
Chase was feeling tired and felt he should get some rest. This adventure had drained him more than he thought it would.
He felt sad for the innocent woman who had been killed by her Zarlack captors. But that only gave Chase one more reason to find Argos and make him pay.
“I’m coming for you, Argos,” said Chase out loud. And the next time we meet will be the last.
Argos beamed into the structure on the third planet on the Relios system with anticipation. Once inside the structure from which the holo-transmissions had been sent, Argos knew something was wrong. He couldn’t feel any life force nearby.
I’m too late. They already left.
Argos couldn’t contain his anger and destroyed a random piece of equipment with a red fireball.
But it mattered not, they now had a way of pinpointing the next holo-communications, so it was only a matter of time until Argos got his hands on the Olympians.
Perhaps he could speed up the process. Argos established communications with his s-engineer on his ship.
“Beam an engineer to my position.”
“With all due respect, my master, shouldn’t I come down myself?”
Argos thought about it, but with his nerves as sharp as a razor’s edge, he didn’t think that was a good idea.
“I want you to supervise the work of the engineer you’ll send, but I want you to stay focused on the task at hand and inform me the next time you’ve triangulated another communication.”
“Your wish is my command. I’ll beam down one member of my team to your coordinates immediately.”
Argos cut the transmission, and almost immediately after, an engineer beamed down next to him.
“Master,” said the Zarlack with a bow.
“Get to work. Check these computer systems and see if you can find out where the people who used this facility went.”
“I will, master.”
The engineer walked toward the nearest console and got to work. Meanwhile, Argos walked toward the viewport in the large room. He crossed his arms against his chest and took in the view.
It was a world devoid of sentient life. Some bugs and primitive rodents were all that could be considered alive on this planet. Vegetation was scarce, and in the distance, desert extended as far as the eye could see.
It reminded Argos of a place he had been on as a child. Though this world wasn’t nearly as inhospitable as the one in Argos’ memory.
For some reason behind his understanding, Argos found the view relaxing, and soon minutes turned to hours, and he didn’t feel the need to move away or retreat to his chambers on the ship.
“My master,” interrupted the engineer.
“Report,” said Argos without turning around.
“I’ve combed through all the systems, and I’m sorry to report I haven’t found any clues on where they went. They’ve covered their tracks well, I’m afraid. There was some data deleted from the memory banks, but it was scrambled beyond repair.”
A
rgos growled and turned. His eyes were glowing red, anger permeating through every pore of his skin. His eyes flashed briefly, and the engineer’s body exploded from the inside out.
“Apology accepted.”
Argos turned back toward the viewport and took one last peek at the semi-barren world.
You can run, Aphroditis, but you can’t hide.
The End
(The story continues with Book 3: Destination Oblivion)
Course Correction
By Christian Kallias
Course Correction is a short story set in between Book 2 (Fury to the Star) and book 3 (Destination Oblivion). It’s a sort of Origin Story for a character appearing in Book 3 (Keera).
I realize the cliffhanger at the end of book 2 was rather brutal (my advice going forward: get used to them ;) ), so in case you want to know what happens next, I won’t blame you. Course Correction can easily be skipped and you would be easily forgiven if you jumped directly into Book 3: Destination Oblivion.
Acknowledgments
Cover artwork by Christian Kallias
[email protected]
www.christiankallias.com
www.facebook.com/ChristianKallias
www.twitter.com/kalliasx
Production Editor & Alpha/ARC Team Lead
Paula Lavattiata Lopez
Editors
Paula Lavattiata Lopez
Proofreaders
Alpha Team (Thank you Daniel P., Buick, Mike L., David K., and Millie. You guys rock!!
Copyright
Copyright © 2018 by Christian Kallias
All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Course Correction
(A Universe in Flames Origins Story)
A laser impacted near Keera’s head, hot sparks burning her face.
That was too close for comfort.
“Some bounty hunter you are!” protested Eleni.
“Not now!” said Keera. “Stay under cover. Unless you want your pretty face blown up.”
“At least give me a weapon; there are three of them out there. We stand a better chance of survival if I can help you return fire.”
“That’s not going to happen. You’re my prisoner; I’m not giving you the means to take me out.”
“You only care about your warrant, and you know very well you’re signing my death warrant, anyway.”
Keera swore inside. This latest mission hadn’t turned out to be the easy “grab the mark and collect the bounty” that she initially hoped for. Ever since she had captured Eleni, things had gone from bad to worse. And, now, they were pinned down.
Laser fire exploded and impacted around them.
“Give us the prisoner, and we’ll let you live,” shouted one of the assailants in the distance. “We don’t care about you.”
But Keera wasn’t accustomed to obeying threats. The past year had been a nightmare with almost none of her warrants going well, to the point where she was dangerously close to losing everything she had been working toward. The early retirement that she had worked so hard to achieve felt more and more out of reach with each passing day.
“Why are you hesitating?” asked Eleni.
“Because my mission is to bring you back alive.”
“I’m dead anyway. The moment you deliver me to your client, he’ll have me executed.”
“And that’s my problem why, exactly? You’re the criminal; I’m just doing my job.”
“Some job.”
“I’m not gonna stand here and debate the value of my profession with the person breaking laws and trying to shame me into letting her go. Believe it or not, I’m sorry to hear your life is over; but if I let my personal feelings get in the way of my warrants, I’d never collect my bounties and be able to support myself.”
Eleni snorted. “Whatever makes you sleep at night.”
Keera ignored Eleni’s ranting and instead tapped her wrist device, which displayed her holo-map that showed their area and overlaid life-sign signatures. The three men currently firing at them were getting closer with each passing minute. Soon, she’d have no other choice but to engage them or give Eleni up.
Except, she couldn’t fail this mission. If she didn’t pay Tron’Tak with this bounty, she’d have to make a run for it, and she could lose her bounty hunter license altogether. What would she do then?
There was no denying that she had grown weary of her job, and as more time passed, the less her heart was in it. Days like these, she wondered why she had taken up the profession in the first place. She knew why, of course. Her first warrant had given her the satisfaction of getting revenge for the loss of her soul mate.
It had not felt as good as she had hoped, though, taking another man’s life. Nor had it given her the closure she craved. It didn’t bring back the person she loved more than anything in this world. It had; however, empowered Keera and made her stronger, tougher, and more determined to bring scum from around the universe to justice. Though only for a short time as the hole in her heart still lingered, fresh and ever painful.
Glancing at her holo-map, Keera noted that she had less than a minute to come up with a plan, or they would both perish. She couldn’t trust Eleni with a weapon, that much Keera’s gut told her with absolute certainty. Her prisoner had tried giving her the slip numerous times in the last couple of days. In fact, she was the reason they were hitching a ride back to this scum-infested transport rather than returning home in Keera’s rental ship. They had lost it, thanks to one of Eleni’s ill-fated attempts to escape.
Keera wasn’t as cold-blooded as she was trying to project. She understood Eleni’s will to survive; in her place, she would have attempted to give her the slip as well, at any turn. But, the job required her to project an image. A weak or emotive bounty hunter was a dead bounty hunter. And, even though she didn’t want to see Eleni die at the end of her warrant, no matter how much of a pain in the butt she had been up until now, she had little choice.
Then again, if scumbags had a king, Tron’Tak was as close to this position as anyone she knew. While she didn’t fear him, per se, she had heard stories about him that would make her pretty green hair turn grey. And, right now, he was holding all the cards. He had both her ship and the precious cargo from her last few runs. Fortunately, Tron’Tak couldn’t put his hands on her personal possessions because she had invested in secret-shielded compartments.
It wasn’t much, but it was all she had left, and without cashing in on her cargo, she’d probably not have enough money to survive the next few days, let alone months. She had to get Eleni’s bounty, pay Tron’Tak, and perhaps reassess her career choice and life path.
“Are you just gonna sit there and get us both killed?” complained Eleni.
“I thought your fate was sealed either way.”
“That doesn’t mean I’m willing to be slaughtered without a fight.”
“Nobody’s dying today; well, except those three men, that is.”
“And yet you’re just hiding here instead of doing something about it.”
“Shut up,” said Keera between clenched teeth. “Or I’ll shoot you myself.”
Eleni narrowed her eyes and shot her a calculating look. “You wouldn’t dare.”
“We’re in this mess because of you, so don’t you dare tell me what I would or wouldn’t do. Now, keep quiet, and let me deal with this mess of yours. Do NOT move from your position; if you do, I swear to the Olympian gods that I’ll end you.”
Eleni threw her arms in the air but didn’t argue further.
More laser fire exploded near Keera’s face. The moment the salvo was over, she leaped out of cover, instinctively lined her blaster toward the only exposed mercenary, and squeezed the trigger, burning a hole between his eyes.
The man fell on his knees, a look of utter shock locked onto his face before falli
ng onto the cold, hard metallic floor. His head made a satisfying wet thud.
One down; two to go.
When a second mercenary rolled on the floor and lined his weapon toward Keera, she tried jumping back behind cover unsuccessfully; laser fire grazed her thigh, burning part of her tight leather suit in the process.
The pain was a reminder that she needed to be more careful if she wanted to live past today. That move had been reckless, and while her shooting skills had paid off, she knew better than to just wing it.
Brain over muscles, Keera, brain over muscles.
Before she could think of her next move, the pounding of distant running footsteps got her attention. She checked her holo-map to see not two but four people converging on her location. They spread out, trying to flank her.
Dammit!
She looked at Eleni, making sure she wasn’t trying to use the chaos to escape once more.
“Give me a weapon,” Eleni murmured.
Keera slowly shook her head from side to side and raised a finger to her lips.
Keera crawled behind some stacked crates, allowing her to stand up. She’d need a distraction of some kind, and she knew very well that trying to eliminate the men one by one would expose her to further danger. The more time she waited to take them down, the more chances additional reinforcements would make their way into the already boiling situation and turn the precarious odds closer to nil.
She quickly glanced over her crate cover, as laser fire scorched a lock of her hair. She crouched and assessed her weapons. She had several options, a couple throwing blades, a spare blaster, a nano-blade, and her trusty light-blade.
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