by Trevor Gregg
She immediately pounced and pinned the being’s arms with her legs, straddling his chest. With a clicking and clanking, Alis’ wrench was already reconfiguring itself in her hands as she brought it to bear. She hovered the wrench in its laser-cutting torch configuration just above the creature’s face. His three eyes went wide when it saw the torch light up as Alis squeezed the trigger.
“Alis! Alis! Please, no, it wasn’t my fault!” he cried, the leathery layered flaps of skin covering his cheeks quivering as he spoke.
“Renmo Graza, you sold me into slavery, you scum!” she cried back, waving the torch in front of his eyes.
“Which eye do I take first, Renmo?” she said maniacally. “Or do I just take them all?”
“You wouldn’t. You’re not that kind of person,” he retorted defiantly. “You crashed that shuttle. That was your mistake, you had to pay for it. Er, I mean you had to pay back the damages. That was the only way I could recover my loss,” he pleaded.
She fully depressed the trigger, a laser beam scoring the floor next to Renmo’s head, the smoke wafting across his face. Part of her really did want to burn the fucker’s eyes out.
“No, please, I’ll give you whatever you want, just don’t hurt me,” he flailed his skinny arms, his long and slender three-fingered hands grasping at her boots.
Alis finally looked back at her companions, and saw Kyren standing behind her, Theophax’s ion pistol in his hands, trained on Renmo.
“I’ve got a shopping list, and I expect you to fill it. Got it?” Alis demanded.
“Well, that depends on what it is. If I don’t have it, I can’t give it to you, can I?” he blustered.
She triggered another laser pulse, holding it for longer this time, the smoke causing Renmo to choke and cough.
“Okay, fine, you made your point. Just let me up and I’ll see what I can do for your list,” Renmo replied lamely.
46
Garloks!
Kyren thought she might actually do it, but after a long moment, Alis withdrew her finger from the torch’s trigger and climbed to her feet, freeing Renmo from his entrapment. He quickly scampered back and into a sitting position. He made a great show out of getting up from the floor, flailing and struggling in exaggerated movements, groaning and sighing heavily.
“Benjam, give this low-life alsacian your list” she instructed.
Benjam quickly rattled off a flurry of components and equipment. Renmo nodded after each item. Once Benjam was finished, he sighed and said, “I’m afraid I don’t have an MSE, though I do have the rest, I believe.”
“Fine, now you come with us to pick them up,” turning, Alis said. “Oh, and give me your chipscan.”
“What? No, you’ve already cleaned me out,” he whined.
A burst from Kyren’s ion pistol flew past Renmo’s head and impacted with the back wall of the room, sending out a shower of sparks. Jumping in terror, he quickly scrambled to pull his chipscan out of his pocket. He went to hand it to Alis.
“No, key it open first. You know better than to give me a locked card,” she instructed.
Begrudgingly, he placed his thumb on the card and it turned green. Alis quickly snatched the card and pocketed it.
“I’ve half a mind to finish you here and now, Renmo. So if there’s any funny business, my friend here blasts you,” she threatened while turning to leave.
“Fine,” Renmo retorted defiantly, and began working at a terminal to prepare the order before heading for the door.
As they followed Renmo to his warehouse, Kyren asked Alis, “So that’s how you wound up aboard the Searcher?”
“Yeah. And that stupid shuttle crash wasn’t even my fault, but I got blamed for it anyway. He had Captain Bulgren’s thugs drag me bodily into the Searcher.”
“How did you wind up there?” Alis turned the question back on him.
He couldn’t hide the look of pain that crossed his face at the memory. He struggled to speak, “I made a terrible mistake. It cost my brother his life.”
She looked at him with concern, touching his shoulder gently, her hand lingering.
“I was supposed to throw a bot-fight but I couldn’t go through with it. The crime boss killed my brother for it,” he said, choking up.
Fighting back the sadness, he continued, “I made for the space station and got off the planet before he could find me. Little did I know his goons would be waiting for me there.”
“That’s terrible, Kyren. I’m so sorry about your brother,” Alis consoled.
“Here we are,” Renmo said, interrupting the conversation, thankfully distracting him from the painful memories.
A grumpy looking vindel with graying fur greeted Renmo at the warehouse entrance, pushing a grav cart loaded with components.
Benjam examined the contents and declared “I do believe this is all the components I requested. I won’t know if they work, though, until I’ve had a chance to examine them all.”
“They’ll all pass muster, you know I’ve never sold junk, Alis. Tell your squiggly friend here everything is fully functional,” Renmo said proudly.
“Well it better be, Renmo. Or I’m coming back for you, or rather, for your eyes,” Alis growled, as Kyren began to push the cart away.
They arrived at the airlock to their ship and he noticed something amiss right away. The airlock door was wide open, and the control panel was detached from the frame, hanging by wires.
“Shit! Someone’s trying to steal the Ashari,” Kyren said, drawing his ion pistol and rushing into the ship.
He broke right and made for the bridge, picking up sounds of commotion. Entering the bridge with the others hot on his heels, Kyren raised his pistol, looking for targets. It took him a moment to comprehend what was going on. A dozen furry creatures the size of small cats swarmed the chamber, scurrying around purposefully on six tarantula legs. The control panels had been opened, revealing circuitry and wires, and the creatures were working on them with tiny tools wielded in four of their arms. They turned their flattened, primate like faces toward the new arrivals, and then promptly returned to their work.
“Garloks!” Alis yelled. “Quick, shoot them Kyren!”
Still confused as to what exactly the creatures were doing, it took him a moment to react. He took aim at the first one and squeezed the trigger. A pulse of blue energy took the nearest creature in the back, dropping it limply to the ground. The others reacted immediately, scattering and scampering away. Kyren began firing rapidly, strafing the room. Several more of the creatures dropped. Kyren watched in dismay as a few disappeared into an open ventilation shaft.
“Oh no! They’re in the ventilation system now, I’ll intercept them, it comes out in engineering. You just keep on the ones in here,” she said, not waiting for Kyren to reply.
Kyren kept firing until all the critters were down. It took moments longer than he had wanted it to. And worst of all, he wasn’t sure he’d gotten them all.
He turned to the Oracle and asked, “What do we do with them?”
“They are stunned, but who knows for how long. I suggest we remove them from the ship before they become conscious again,” she responded.
Benjam snaked out his tentacles and began scooping up the limp forms. Kyren followed suit, then they exited the ship and dropped them in the corridor. They were on their second load when Alis returned from engineering bearing three garloks, two unconscious and one wriggling furiously in her grasp. Alis dropped the other two unceremoniously to the deck and held the mobile one up to her face and growled loudly, then tossed it away. The garlok hit the deck and rolled, coming to its feet and scurrying away down the corridor.
“Kyren, make sure none of those buggers get back on board,” she instructed. “Let’s hope they didn’t do anything I can’t undo.”
Once the new equipment was stowed, Alis repaired the door panel and then sealed the ship up. She and Benjam set about repairing the control panels and attempting to undo the alterations made by the garloks.
It took several hours before the ship was space worthy again. All the while, Kyren was twiddling his thumbs, feeling fairly useless.
As soon as the last panel was buttoned up, Alis hopped into the pilot seat and fired up her controls. She ran through diagnostics and tested the response.
“Looks like we may have dodged a bullet there, it seems they didn’t get very far in their modifications,” she commented as she detached the ship from the docking tube and began to drift back from the station.
“What were those things, anyway?” Kyren asked her.
“Garloks. Really a pain in the ass, they are. They like to tinker, and have no concept of personal property. Sometimes they infest a ship, breeding in the ventilation system or service crawlspaces. They can completely cripple a ship,” she explained to him.
Alis spun the Ashari around and prepared to fire up the engines when the lights went out and emergency power kicked in.
“Shit, what’d they do now?” she said exasperatedly. “Damn, looks like they inverted the lepton coupler,” she said after poring over the control panel for a moment. “It’s okay, I can reconfigure the system,” she said while working furiously at her panel.
“There!” she said as the lights came back on and the engines flared to life.
Alis urged the ship to full throttle as she sped away from Keppa Station, dodging shuttles and space traffic, burning hard for open space.
47
Elarra
“How long will it take you to build your bomb-thingy?” Elarra heard Kyren ask Benjam as they left station traffic control and entered open space.
“I am not entirely sure. It depends on several factors, including the quality of the parts. Of which, I am highly uncertain,” he replied skeptically.
“Well let’s find a nice quiet empty system so we can give you some time to do your work,” Kyren said.
Benjam was already keying in a string into the navigation console. The nav computer accepted the destination and plotted the necessary vector between current location and prospective target, a solitary pulsating Cepheid variable star. Elarra watched in quiet contentment. She had her doubts, of course. She could have misunderstood her visions. But she was more certain every day that this ragtag group might actually be able to stop Tharox and bring an end to the destruction.
After the jump sickness wore off, Alis ordered a scan of the system, and Kyren gave the all clear. Benjam began to squiggle off down the corridor, and the others followed. They entered the large space, at least thirty feet square. There were workbenches lining the walls and a low table in the center. Tools were strewn about and cabinets left open, evidence of Alis’ search for garloks.
The aft wall was the entrance to the engine core, several small crawlspaces leading into the interior. Elarra watched as Benjam and Alis scurried about, bringing parts to workbenches, arraying devices out on the low table. After several minutes, Elarra turned to Kyren, who was obviously bored.
“Shall we go to the galley and let these two work?”
Kyren nodded and they made their way to the small dining room and kitchen. The ship was designed to hold a crew of eight, with four small sleeping quarters. The mess was quite small. A large picnic style table and benches stood in the center of the room, the kitchen lining the fore wall. Kyren sauntered over to the kitchen and began to prepare himself a preserved meal. Connecting the pouch to the rehydrator, he waited until it dinged. Elarra retrieved a protein bar from one of the cabinets, and they sat down at the table to eat.
Even hundreds of years old, the food was still as edible and tasty as the day it was preserved. At least it seemed so by the way Kyren appeared to be enjoying it. She wasn’t so sure about her own meal, it was both dry and pasty at the same time. Edible, yes. Enjoyable, not really. Kyren kept looking at her, as if wanting to speak.
“Yes?” she queried, surprising him.
“I’m just wondering what tidbits of foreknowledge you have for me now,” he replied openly.
“I have shown you much of what I have seen. But yes, there is much I have not shared with you,” she said, wishing she could postpone what was coming.
“I know you haven’t told us everything. You keep saying we will defeat Tharox but how do you know that? And if so, how the hell are we supposed to pull this off? Where’s your drawing for that one?” he said angrily.
“Your frustration is understandable, you do not have the benefit of centuries to teach you patience,” Elarra admonished.
“Okay, so you’re saying you haven’t actually seen us beat Tharox, then?” he said incredulously.
“Let me fetch my journal,” she said, tossing the unappetizing food bar into the trash receptacle and walking from the mess hall.
She returned short moments later with one of her sketchbooks although she didn’t open it. She was silent, pondering how much to tell. Kyren was waiting with feigned patience. She could tell he was brimming with curiosity.
Taking a deep breath and steeling herself, she flipped to the back of the book and withdrew a small sheet of ancient, yellowed paper. Laying it out on the table, Kyren seemed to be struggling to grasp what he was seeing. She watched his face as the image finally registered. Sadness and revulsion played across his features.
“That’s you. And those are Tharox’s bionic hands around your neck, aren’t they?” he said, demeanor having become serious.
“What do you know of liadi?” she asked him, deflecting the question, if only temporarily.
“Only what I’ve learned about them from you,” he replied.
“We start out as normal human children. But around ten or twelve years old, a liadi has their first vision. After which we cease to biologically age. That first vision, it is special.”
“Special, how?” Kyren interrupted.
“The first vision a liadi experiences, is a vision of their own death,” she said gravely.
She watched as recognition spread across Kyren’s face, replaced almost immediately by a look of horror. “You mean you know Tharox is going to kill you?”
Elarra could only nod, finding no words.
48
The Time Bomb
“How exactly does your death at his hands equal victory? Sounds like defeat to me,” Kyren said a little more heated than he had intended.
“Maybe it will help if I explain,” Elarra began to explain. “You’ve seen my sketches. Those sketches are a mere shadow of the full force of the vision. The sketch traps only one brief picture, whereas the vision itself is like living an entirely separate life, complete with not just all the senses, but with feeling. Often times the meaning of the vision is not entirely obvious, other times the purpose rings loud and clear.”
Kyren waited, willing himself to stay calm, even though he felt like screaming. How could they just let this happen to her? There had to be a way to save her, he thought desperately.
The Oracle continued, “I’m afraid you’ll have to be satisfied with my assurances. Our victory over Tharox will happen, of this I am certain, though I know I will not see it firsthand.”
Tears welled up in Kyren’s eyes as the anger melted to sadness. He quickly turned away and made for the hall, not letting her see the tears that had rolled down his cheeks. He made for the bridge, seeking solitude.
Kyren spent the next several hours brooding. He scanned Theo’s data core apathetically, trying to pass the time with a distraction. But his mind kept returning to the Oracle’s revelation. He swore to himself he would find a way to save her, and gave up on the data core. He pulled himself from the command seat and made his way back to engineering.
The door to the engineering bay opened with a quiet whoosh as he approached. He stepped into total chaos. Parts and equipment were strewn throughout the space. On a central table, Alis and Benjam worked.
“No, no, you’ve got it all wrong, Alis. It goes in like this,” Benjam said while flipping the piece of tech over and handing it back to her.
She grunted and attached the device,
using her wrench as a laser torch to fuse it to the frame. Neither had noticed him, so he cleared his throat. Benjam did not even look up, Alis only glanced his way for a second before returning to her work.
“Still working, I see. I’ll leave you to it,” Kyren said to no one in particular, and left engineering.
He returned to the bridge and took a seat in the command station again. Leaning back, he propped his feet up on the console. Hopefully, he thought, they’ll be done by the time I wake up. Closing his eyes and clearing his mind, he drifted off to sleep.
According to the clock, he had been asleep several hours when a gentle hand shook him awake. He stretched and tried to work the kinks out of his neck.
“Are they finished?” he asked Elarra as she stepped back to allow him to exit the console.
“It would seem they are ready,” she informed him.
They exited the bridge into the narrow but well lit corridor that ran the length of the ship’s starboard side. Each half of the ship was a mirror of the other, laid out symmetrically, with the bridge at the front of the craft. They passed amidship and the living quarters. There were four crew quarters with two bunks each, and two officer suites, the larger of which would belong to the captain. They passed the mess and heard the sound of laughter echoing down the halls.
“…and the xalorn said to the alsacian, that’s what she said!” Benjam finished as Kyren and Elarra entered engineering. Alis waved and wiped tears from her eyes, clutching her belly as if it would fall off.
“Sorry, bad science jokes, I’m afraid,” Benjam said by way of apology. “I’m guessing you’re not here for the comedy? Somebody set us up the bomb… c’mon Alis, let’s show them. It uses alpha gravity waves to warp time, creating a time-singularity, sort of a “black hole” of time. It will synchronize with the Epsilon Computer’s own time-singularity core and when we detonate ours, it will go as well.”