Ignite (Blackout Book 1)

by Daniel Young

  Blackout: Ignite

  Book 1

  Daniel Young

  Contents

  Foreword

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  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

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  Foreword

  The Blackout series is an homage to a certain type of golden age space opera. Thrilling stories in which hard science isn't a concern and the planets of distant star systems are habitable and full of alien races and strange creatures. In other words, this is old-fashioned adventure sci-fi. I hope you have as much fun reading it as I did writing it!

  —Daniel Young

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  1

  Captain Jackson Keogh clawed his way out of unconsciousness and floundered onto his hands and knees. He couldn’t see anything but fire consuming the bridge.

  “Welch!” he roared over the popping flames. “Kawaguchi! Allen!”

  No one answered him.

  He crawled to where he thought his station should be, but his bloody fingers found only a torn-off pedestal. The console and all the controls were gone.

  The ship was dead in space. He knew the Severance well enough to know when it wasn’t moving under power.

  He squinted through the smoke, searching for any living soul besides himself. He listened for movement.

  Nothing. The flames crackled louder, and a dangerous woof billowed them up to the ceiling. They inched over his head. They would consume the whole bridge soon.

  He cast a desperate glance around. The fire had grown so big now that he could see everything on the bridge cast in an orange hue…including a gaping hole.

  Memories snapped back into place like they’d been downloaded from some distant server. A series of impacts. The ship out of control. A crash landing.

  He looked at the gaping hole again. He was breathing, so the ship wasn’t in space.

  He staggered forward. Two officers lay side by side. The sensor operator, Kawaguchi, stared up at the ceiling, flames reflecting off her unblinking eyes. The tactical officer, Allen, lay next to her, his torso ripped in half under the armpits. Jackson swallowed hard. He didn’t see the bottom half. He spun around, looking for the helmsman, Welch.

  He gagged on smoke. He couldn’t stay here anymore. He plunged through the opening and blessed fresh air flooded his lungs. He paused to let his eyes adjust, and when he turned around, he almost passed out again.

  The Severance lay on its belly—or what would have been its belly, if it still had one. Only the top half of the fuselage remained, and the starboard wing was missing. Charred holes dotted the hull, and the back end had completely caved in.

  Jackson advanced on the remains of his ship. He extended his hand to steady himself, but he drew back when the steel scorched his fingertips. He walked down the hull, yelling through every opening. “Is anyone there?”

  He got all the way to the aft end. His throat tightened. The Severance had left home with a crew of nine. He couldn’t be the only one left, could he?

  He turned away. In a field of black, Jackson beheld a million winking lights carpeting a scene of rolling countryside in front of him. He blinked. He didn’t understand what he was seeing. Was he in space? Were those stars? If that was true, how could the ship have crashed here?

  He started to head back toward the bridge, though he didn’t know why. He couldn’t think of anything else to do. He’d taken one step when a faint voice rasped behind him. “Help me!”

  Jackson spun around fast. He had to listen hard.

  “Captain! Help…please…”

  He stumbled aft again and burned his hand a second time, leaning against the torn fuselage. “Who’s there?”

  “Captain…” The voice faded, but it was only too real. “Captain…”

  Jackson dove inside. He knew that voice. It was Petty Officer Roy Rawlins, one of the gunners. Jackson staggered into the secondary storage section and listened hard. He didn’t hear anything. “Rawlins! Where are you?”

  No one answered. He inched a little further into the dark. He couldn’t see anything, but the heat radiating from the hull got stronger by the second. “Rawlins!”

  The ship creaked, and a steady thump of flame vibrated the walls all around him. The air burned Jackson’s lungs. If he couldn’t help Roy, he should leave now.

  He inhaled as big a breath as he dared and forced himself to stride forward. He bumped into a bulkhead. “Rawlins! I’m here! Where are you, Roy? I’m here to help you!”

  A barely audible husk breathed in the oppressive stillness. “Captain!”

  Jackson dove sideways and smashed his shins on a fallen container. He pawed through debris cluttering the floor. Heat and smoke filled the air.

  He patted the floor in all directions. Random prayers to every conceivable deity flitted through his mind.

  He touched something wet and swiveled toward it. He followed a slick on the smooth floor and touched human hair. He groped all over until he located a body.

  “Roy!” Jackson croaked. “Talk to me!”

  Roy coughed. “Captain, I can’t…move my legs!”

  Jackson’s stomach twisted, imagining Allen ripped in half. But Roy was merely pinned by a heavy case resting across his knees. Jackson heaved it clear as Roy howled in pain, but there was nothing else to be done. Jackson grabbed him and summoned all his reserves to haul Roy to his feet. The two men clung to each other as Jackson started staggering his way to where he hoped the exit would be.

  Roy leaned heavily on him, but at least the bigger man supported himself. Roy stood three inches taller than Jackson and outweighed him by at least forty pounds.

  Jackson stumbled into another bulkhead, and reared back when he burned himself yet again. The hull pulsed with heat now. He took a chance, gripped his sleeve to cover his hand, and deliberately touched the wall in front of him. Smooth metal. “Starboard,” Roy croaked in his ear.

  Jackson stiffened. “Are you sure?”

  “Was…outside it when…” Roy sagged in his grasp again.

  Jackson nodded and turned to his left. In a few steps, he came to the intersection that led to the secondary storage section. From here, he could see the strange lights outside.

  He stumbled out, and blessed cool surrounded both men. Jackson’s legs collapsed, and Roy pitched on the ground. Jackson gasped for breath and Roy rolled onto his back. His thick, muscled arm flopped and didn’t rise.

  Jackson scanned those lights, trying to understand what they meant. For a moment, he thought he must have traveled back to his homeworld of Zenith. He was on top of the Principle Opera House, surveying the city below him. That was the only time he’d seen a sight like this.

  This wasn’t Zenith, though. He didn’t recognize where he was, but he knew for certain he’d never been here before. But it was a city. A massive one.

  Roy coughed, and the sound woke Jackson from his trance. He glanced down at Roy’s legs. Blood stained his pants across the thighs. Jackson needed to do something about that, but the only medical equipment was inside the Severance.


  “Do you have any idea what’s happening, Captain?” Roy rasped.

  “I was honestly hoping you could help me with that, Petty Officer. My memory—my memory seems fuzzy.”

  Roy sat up and chuckled, despite what must be obvious pain in his legs. The man really was a giant now that Jackson saw him clearly. Jackson’s two bridge watches seldom changed, but the gunnery was a different story. He didn’t know Roy well at all.

  “Well, all I know is whatever we were shooting at, they were moving fast and sensors weren’t worth shit.”

  “We were escorting a convoy of colonists and supply ships,” Jackson said hesitantly. More memories seeped into his mind, like coming out of a fog.

  Roy cocked his head and squinted at him. “You are out of it, Captain. Yeah, the convoy from Zenith. We were going fine, as far as I know. On our heading. Not anywhere near trouble. And then—”

  “Hundreds of black shapes appearing out of the void,” Jackson said as the memory flooded back. “Barely showed up on sensor. Fired on the convoy. Fired on the support ships.”

  “Fired on everyone,” Roy said. “Some weird weapons I’d never seen before.”

  “We were on the leading edge. We got hit almost immediately.”

  “There it is,” Roy said, nodding. “If you know more than that, you know more than me. Next thing I know, the whole ship’s out of control.”

  “Do you know where we are?”

  Roy shrugged and looked out at the landscape. “Well, I see something like a city down there. We’re still breathing, and nothing is trying to kill us. So far, so good.”

  Jackson nodded. “Can’t argue with that. If you aren’t up for walking, I can go down there and see if we can—”

  “Damn.” Roy frowned. “I spoke too soon.” He nodded in the direction he was looking, and Jackson turned.

  A squad of fast-moving craft had zoomed out of the city below and were pummeling the ground farther down the hill with charges. The ships looked like perfect little triangular racers Jackson remembered as a child, but the explosions on the hillside were anything but playful. As he watched, the racers rushed up the slope, heading for the Severance.

  Jackson sprang for Roy and snatched one of the big man’s arms. As they stood, the first of the charges smashed into the Severance and the ship exploded. A massive plume of fire and burning gas erupted from the hull as the enemy bombardment hit the port engine housing. More explosions followed.

  After a few seconds, the racers whizzed around the wreck and circled to come at Jackson and Roy from the other direction.

  “Run for it!” Jackson yelled.

  Roy was already on the move. “You think?!”

  Both men dashed down the hill, Roy staggering in pain as he did so, with Jackson trying to keep him upright. They wouldn’t last long like this.

  One backward glance told Jackson these weren’t the black ships that had attacked the convoy. This was something else: yet another unknown.

  The craft surrounded the two men and peppered the ground with shots, but they never hit the fugitives. After several seconds of this, Jackson started to wonder how in hell he was still on his feet. Those racers could hit him easily. They must be deliberately missing.

  “What the hell are they up to?” Roy shouted over the noise. “Nobody is that bad of a shot. And I’ve known some bad shots!”

  The pair ran onward, and soon enough staggered into streets lined with buildings. A few scattered lights showed the way, but with no landmarks to guide him, Jackson didn’t know where he was going. The racers must have, though, because the shooting tapered off. Just enough to keep them moving.

  “We’re being herded like livestock,” Jackson said.

  “Things don’t tend to end well for livestock,” Roy said.

  A moment later, they hit uneven ground, and Roy staggered. Jackson grabbed him and somehow kept his balance. In that desperate moment, he spotted a dark hole off to his left. There was no way to know where it went, but it wasn’t following this main path into the city that the racers overhead seemed to be intent on leading them down. That was enough for him.

  “This way!” He seized the chance and raced for it, dragging Roy with him. They dove into the shadows as the racers streaked angrily overhead.

  2

  Jackson and Roy crashed into a low tunnel barely tall enough to crouch in. Jackson lost his grip on Roy, and the big man landed flat on his stomach. Both men scrambled deeper inside to get out of sight.

  The racers screamed overhead behind them, but for the moment, Jackson and Roy were safe. They cowered in the darkness, rasping for breath. Jackson’s pulse deafened him to everything else.

  “We have to keep moving,” he said. “Whoever’s flying those damn ships won’t give up.”

  “They probably have friends here they were pushing us toward,” Roy said.

  Jackson agreed. Either way, someone would come back and finish the job. He cast a fleeting glance in front of and behind him. The two ends of the tunnel gave the only light, and even then, he couldn’t see anything around him. He picked a direction, and the two of them started off again.

  Soon enough, they emerged in an enclosed courtyard. They sat still for several moments, taking in their surroundings. Four smooth walls blocked them here, but the racers didn’t screech and shoot overhead. The city sounded eerily quiet from in here.

  Stacks of crates and containers lined the walls. Roy sank down on a bench set into the stone and stretched out his legs with a groan. “Gotta do something with these.”

  Jackson knelt down next to him. “You’re moving pretty decent. Not broken, unless it’s hairline.”

  “Naw, not broken,” Roy snarled. “Just cut up.”

  He pulled back the torn edges of his pants to reveal two matched patches of smashed tissue on both thighs. The container had pulverized the flesh when it landed on his legs.

  Jackson checked in one of the nearby crates and found a bundle of cloth. He couldn’t see much in the darkness, but it felt clean and smooth. He tore it with his teeth and ripped it down the middle to make a bandage when a high-pitched squeak made him jump.

  “You pay for that! Expenses paid from wages! You destroy property. You pay!”

  Jackson whipped around to see a creature standing in an open doorway across the courtyard. Two jointed black arms stuck out of its furry body, with another two underneath. Two frond-like antennae wavered from the top of its head, and two globe eyes glistened from what would have been its face. Other than that, it had no visible features at all. Jackson couldn’t see where the voice came from.

  The creature waddled on its gangly lower legs. It crossed to the opposite corner and rummaged in one of the crates while it chirped over its shoulder—except that it didn’t have shoulders. “You pay! Expenses paid from wages.”

  It spoke in a broken galactic standard that was crude but clear enough.

  “We’ll pay for it,” Jackson said, watching the creature’s movements closely. They didn’t appear threatening. “But I need to tend my friend’s wounds here. If you have some supplies you’d like me to use instead, I’d be grateful for your help.”

  “Supplies in bar,” the creature piped. “You come there.”

  It toddled back to the door. Light flooded from inside. A few faint voices drifted to Jackson’s ear. The creature paused and turned around. Jackson couldn’t read the expression in its outlandish countenance.

  “Did that thing just say bar?” Roy asked.

  “Seems so,” Jackson agreed.

  Roy grimaced at the creature. “What the hell are you?”

  The creature wobbled back and forth. “Woolzi. This my place.”

  “Woolzi?” Jackson repeated. “Your name is Woolzi?”

  “It looks like a giant moth,” Roy murmured.

  “It’s one of the Silden,” Jackson said. Another memory flashed in his mind. Silden territory. That’s where the convoy had been when it was attacked. He was sure of it.

  “Yes!” Wo
olzi chirped. “Silden!”

  Roy curled his lip at the creature. “That’s what the Silden look like?”

  Jackson ignored him. “Are we in Silden space, then?”

  “Silden—no. This Keter.”

  Jackson’s head shot up. “Keter! That’s impossible.” But he already knew it wasn’t.

  Roy cursed quietly to himself. “Not good, man.”

  “Forget it. Let’s get your legs fixed up.” Jackson helped Roy limp to Woolzi’s side. “If you can lend us some supplies, I’d appreciate it.”

  Woolzi cocked his head, and his antennae wavered in the breeze. “Lend! You return?”

  “Well, no.”

  The creature made another squeaky noise. “Take. No return.”

  Jackson bit back a grin. “Right.”

  “You come in bar.” It tottered away, and left Jackson and Roy scrambling after.

  Roy grabbed Jackson. “You sure that thing isn’t going to eat us?”

  Jackson shrugged. “No, but we have to trust somebody here.”

  “Does it have to look like that?”

  Jackson pointed behind them. “You want to go see what the things shooting at us look like, be my guest.”

  “Good point,” Roy said as he started moving again.

  Jackson had spent a good deal of time outside Zenith. He’d seen plenty of creatures of all shapes and sizes in his years as a captain. He was beginning to understand that Roy didn’t have that perspective. He’d have to keep an eye on the big man.

  Woolzi led the way into another dim tunnel. It ended in what Jackson would describe as a deserted watering hole like any he’d seen on Zenith, complete with a long bar along one wall.