A Line in the Sand

by Ryk Brown

  “You could point me to the man in charge,” Robert replied.

  “Are you here to volunteer?”

  “Not exactly,” Robert told her.

  “Well, Del’s a busy guy…”

  “Apparently.”

  “Can you tell me what you want to see him about?” the young woman wondered.

  Robert looked at her. “That’s my ship,” he told her, pointing at the completed XK sitting next to them.

  The young woman’s eyes widened. “You’re Captain Nash?” She suddenly straightened up, raising her hand in salute. “I’m your engineer.”

  Robert looked surprised. “How old are you?”

  “Nineteen, sir!” she snapped back, smart and loud.

  “What’s that in Earth years?” Robert wondered.

  “Uh…” Her eyes shifted back and forth. “I don’t know, sir!” she barked.

  “Relax, kid. You’re going to hurt yourself.” Robert offered his hand. “Robert Nash.”

  The young woman looked confused but reluctantly lowered her salute and shook her new captain’s hand. “Cori Gammen,” she replied.

  “A pleasure to meet you, Miss Gammen.”

  “We weren’t expecting you until tomorrow,” Cori admitted.

  “I just arrived an hour ago,” Robert explained. “I thought I’d stop by and see my new command.”

  Cori looked uncomfortable. She looked at the XK, scratching her head, then back at Robert. “Well, she’s mostly ready. Still a bit messy inside. Final adjustments and all.”

  “Don’t worry,” Robert told him. “I’m not going to hold it against you.”

  “Of course, sir,” she replied.

  The two of them stood silently for a moment.

  “Shall we?” Robert suggested.

  “Sir?”

  “I’d like to see my ship,” Robert explained.

  “Oh, of course!” Cori realized. “Follow me, sir.”

  * * *

  “Both battleships are paralleling us from higher orbits,” Jessica reported.

  “How long are we going to just sit here?” Josh wondered. “We’ve got about a hundred cannons pointed at us right now, and our shields aren’t even up.”

  “The moment we raise our shields, those hundred cannons will open fire,” Jessica assured him.

  “It’s been fifteen minutes,” Nathan reminded Josh. “Not exactly an eternity.”

  “It is when there are a hundred cannons pointed at you,” Josh insisted.

  “For once, I agree with him,” Marcus added.

  “I don’t suppose you have a plan here,” Jessica said.

  “At this point, I’m making it up as I go,” Nathan admitted.

  “And sitting here, shields down, with one hundred cannons pointed at us, seemed like a good plan to you?” Josh questioned.

  “This is Kor-Dom Borrol,” a voice suddenly called over comms.

  “Finally!” Josh exclaimed.

  “Hush!” Nathan scolded, reaching for the comm-panel.

  “Kor-Dom Borrol, this is Nathan Scott, captain of the Karuzari Alliance ship Dalen Voss. Thank you for speaking with us.”

  “And for not blowing us to bits,” Josh said under his breath.

  “How do I know you are Nathan Scott?” Kor-Dom Borrol asked.

  “How do I know you are Kor-Dom Borrol?” Nathan countered.

  “Nathan Scott died seven years ago,” Kor-Dom Borrol replied. “He was executed here on Nor-Patri for crimes against the empire.”

  “I died in one of your prison cells, the night before my execution, from a self-inflicted knife wound. The body you dragged out for public execution was nothing more than a corpse… my corpse.” There was no response. After a minute, Nathan added. “I can recite the menu for my last meal if you’d like. Corintakhat and ergin tota. Trever never told me what the dessert was called, but it was delicious.”

  After another long pause, the Jung leader spoke again. “Assuming for a moment that you are who you claim to be, why would I agree to speak with you?”

  “So that I won’t broadcast that I’m alive to your entire population,” Nathan replied, playing his trump card.

  “Doing so would only change the minds of those who do not support the Tonba-Hon-Venar,” the kor-dom insisted.

  “I suspect it would tip the balance of power among your leadership caste as well,” Nathan told him. “Instability in government can be quite problematic in times of war.”

  Again there was silence.

  “Do you really think threatening them is a good idea?” Josh wondered, pointing out the window. “One hundred cannons, remember?”

  “It’s only a conversation,” Nathan called over comms.

  Another minute passed.

  “What takes this guy so long?” Jessica wondered.

  “A good leader considers the consequences before he acts,” Nathan said. “A good politician considers how his words will be received before he speaks them.”

  “What?”

  “I will speak with you, whoever you are,” Kor-Dom Borrol finally agreed. “But if we are to speak, it must be face-to-face, in my chambers.”

  Nathan smiled. “Not a chance,” Nathan replied. “If we are to speak face-to-face, it will be on board the Voss.”

  “Then I will see that you have clearance to land at the spaceport nearby.”

  “I would prefer someplace remote; someplace as far away from defenses as possible.”

  “Nor-Patri has no such locations,” the kor-dom replied. “However, I do know of a location which may be agreeable. My people will transmit the location. We will notify you when we are ready.”

  “Soon, I hope,” Nathan replied. “And let’s keep it private, shall we?”

  Again there was no reply.

  “I’m receiving a set of surface coordinates,” Jessica announced.

  “I guess that’s a yes then,” Nathan decided.

  “You could have asked him to stop pointin’ them cannons at us,” Marcus commented.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Loki’s eyes opened; slowly at first, the light causing him to squint. He was surrounded by unfamiliar voices and smells. And the air was different here…dry and cold.

  Someone spoke, but in a language he didn’t understand. It sounded familiar, but he couldn’t place it. He had experienced so many languages in his travels. He had even become fluent in Corinairan and Rakuen. But Angla had always been his native tongue.

  The voices were all male except for one. The sole female voice spoke the same language as the others and seemed to be scolding them. The men laughed but appeared to fear her chastisements.

  “Pay them no heed,” the woman said to Loki in English. “They are only trying to scare you.”

  “They don’t need to,” Loki replied. “I’m already scared.”

  The woman placed a device on his head and then connected a set of cables to it.

  “What are you doing?” Loki asked.

  “Nothing that I wish to do,” she told him. She put her hand on his shoulder, looking him in the eyes. “Forgive me, but times require such measures.”

  The woman departed, and a man who appeared unsympathetic stepped up. “You will feel pain…extreme pain.”

  The man’s accent was familiar, but just as with their language, he could not remember from where. “What are you going to do to me?”

  “We must know what is in there,” the man said, putting his finger to Loki’s forehead.

  “Just ask,” Loki told him.

  “Machine is better,” the man said. “Not for you, of course.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “If you have a god, you should speak to him now,” the man advised as he walked over to the device on the cart nearby.

  Loki felt a wave
of panic washing over him. His escape from the myriad of Super Eagles had been nothing short of miraculous, as had surviving the subsequent crash landing. Now, he would die strapped to a table, surrounded by men he did not know, for a reason he did not know.

  Loki locked his eyes on the ceiling and recited an old Rakuen expression he had learned during flight school. “I embrace death as I embrace life, with heart and eyes open.”

  “I would suggest that you embrace life even more,” the man said, turning on the device.

  Loki felt nothing at first, but then his head began to tingle. The tingling intensified, quickly turning into a dull pain. That too increased, and in less than a minute, it became so bad that he cried out, begging for it to end.

  The men in the room had grown quiet, undoubtedly silenced by the horrible screams. The woman was no longer heard from. For all Loki knew, she had left the room. The pain was so intense that he was losing touch with his senses. His sense of smell had left him first, followed by a decrease in hearing and blurring of vision.

  If only his sense of pain would go away as well.

  Suddenly, his wish was granted. The pain began to subside, lessening with each passing second.

  Finally, it was gone. His senses returned. Surprisingly, he found himself alone in the room, bathed in sweat, still bound to the table. His fingers and toes twitched, as did his eyelids. There was a sound…a door. Then someone touched him and removed the device from his head.

  “It is over,” the woman told him. “You survived. You are strong. It kills most men.”

  All Loki could say was, “Why?” He felt a prick in his arm.

  “Like I said, it is a difficult time.”

  It was the last thing he heard as he drifted away.

  * * *

  “You do realize this is a trap,” Jessica reiterated as she followed Nathan into the utility bay where the Ghatazhak were gathered, waiting for them.

  “The thought had crossed my mind,” Nathan assured her.

  “But we’re going through with it anyway,” Jessica surmised.

  “Don’t worry, I have a plan.”

  “Care to let me in on it?”

  “Gentlemen,” Nathan greeted the Ghatazhak, ignoring Jessica’s request. “I’m about to ask you all to take a huge risk. We are about to set down on the surface of Nor-Patri to welcome aboard the leader of the Jung Empire.”

  The Ghatazhak exchanged concerned glances but said nothing.

  “To do so, I will have to set foot on a world that believes me justly executed years ago. Although I do not expect an audience, I doubt very seriously that Kor-Dom Borrol will be alone. At the very least, there will be a security contingent present.”

  “Can we extend our aft shields again?” Kit wondered.

  “We’d still have to drop them to allow the kor-dom inside,” Nathan pointed out.

  “They’ll have snipers,” Mori stated. “Good ones.”

  “Which is why I need all of you,” Nathan told them.

  “You want us to protect you with our personal shields,” Kit surmised. “I should point out that the six of us are not enough to encircle you.”

  “The Voss will be at my back,” Nathan explained. “We’ll drop the aft shield, and I’ll walk out only as far as the shield perimeter. That will reduce my area of exposure by fifty percent. With the kor-dom in front of me, that should reduce it another twenty percent. I need you to cover the remaining thirty percent.”

  “More like forty percent,” Jokay corrected.

  “He’s right,” Jessica agreed. “Their snipers will be excellent.”

  Nathan nodded agreement. “The only reason the kor-dom agreed to meet is because he does not want the general population to discover that I’m still alive. My death was the only thing that prevented the Tonba-Hon-Venar seven years ago. Kor-Dom Borrol probably fears losing control if the public learns the truth. He may not even trust his own security forces.”

  “You should keep your identity hidden from everyone but the kor-dom,” Jessica told him.

  “I planned on wearing a hooded cloak,” Nathan explained. “That’s the best I can do. I do have to show my face to the kor-dom.”

  “And then what?” Kit wondered.

  “We bring him aboard to talk.”

  “The longer we’re sitting on the surface, the higher the risk,” Kit warned.

  “Which is precisely why the kor-dom must come aboard,” Nathan told him. “As long as he is on the Voss, they won’t fire on us.”

  “And the moment he leaves?” Jessica wondered.

  “We jump the hell out.”

  “They’ll shoot us down before we get off the ground,” Kit insisted.

  “Which is why we’re going to jump while we’re on the ground,” Nathan explained. “Before we even fire up the grav-lift.”

  “Can we do that?” Mori wondered.

  Kit thought for a moment. “Technically, the planet’s rotation gives us forward momentum. The trick will be to have a clear jump line. There’re bound to be buildings, or mountains, or something in our way.”

  “We asked for a remote location as an LZ,” Nathan explained. “Luckily, the location they chose is high enough in elevation to be above everything nearby. We’ll have a clear jump line in all directions.”

  “How dumb are these people?” Kit wondered.

  “They’re not dumb,” Nathan assured him. “Not by a long shot. They just don’t have much knowledge about the jump drive or how it works.”

  “Won’t they notice that we’re not powering down our reactors?” Jokay asked.

  “We’ll be powering our shields, so they’ll rightly assume that we need our reactors to be running,” Jessica realized. “They’ve got to know that we’re going to be skittish going into this meeting and that we’d never power down completely.”

  “Isn’t there an energy surge just before a jump?” Mori wondered. “Won’t that tip them off?”

  “Like I said, we’ll never get off the ground,” Kit reiterated.

  “That’s why we’re going to jump while the kor-dom is still on board,” Nathan explained, a mischievous look on his face.

  Kit also smiled. “Oh, I like this plan.”

  “I don’t,” Jessica disagreed.

  “Suit up, gentlemen,” Nathan instructed. “We set down as soon as you’re ready.”

  The Ghatazhak said nothing further, going to their mark two lockers on the starboard bulkhead.

  “Aren’t we going to take a chunk of the planet with us when we jump?” Jessica questioned Nathan as they watched the Ghatazhak don their combat armor.

  “Vlad has adjusted the jump calculations to compensate as best he can,” Nathan explained. “And we’re not jumping to a precise location, just back up to orbit.”

  “It would be better to jump further out,” Jessica urged.

  “The further we try to jump, the longer the detectable energy build-up,” Nathan told her.

  “We’re only talking about a few seconds.”

  “A few seconds could make all the difference,” Nathan replied. “This is the best plan under the circumstances. It mitigates all the risks to acceptable levels.”

  “Oh, I’ve got no problem with risks,” Jessica assured him. “I’m just trying to play Cam here.”

  Nathan looked at her. “She told you to keep an eye on me, didn’t she?”

  “She didn’t have to,” Jessica laughed.

  “Josh?” Nathan called out as the Ghatazhak finished their automatic suit-up cycle. “How are we looking?”

  Josh glanced across his flight displays, quickly scanning all critical systems. He then looked over at Dylan to his right.

  “All set,” Dylan assured him.

  “We’re good to go, Cap’n,” Josh announced.

  “Are you sure this is a good
idea?” Dylan asked Josh.

  “Of course, it ain’t!” Josh exclaimed. “That’s what makes it so much fun!”

  “I can hear you guys, you know,” Nathan reminded them over the intercom.

  “Sorry, sir,” Dylan apologized.

  “Starting our deorbit burn,” Josh announced as he activated the ship’s deceleration thrusters.

  “Escort fighters are decelerating as well,” Dylan reported, his eyes on the sensor display. “They’re going to stay with us.”

  “LZ is on the far side of the planet at the moment,” Josh told him. “I’ll jump us down and then skip around to the LZ once we’re in atmo. That’ll shake ‘em for sure.”

  Vladimir checked the displays on the engineering console in the Voss’s port nacelle. “I’ve finished segmenting the jump energy banks,” he announced. “We should be able to jump back to orbit by using just the energy in the cells. One bank for the bubble, and one to initiate the jump.”

  “And you accounted for the extra mass of dirt and rock we’ll be taking with us?” Nathan inquired over the intercom.

  “As best I could,” Vladimir replied. “I do not know the composition of the LZ or what lies beneath it. I adjusted the bubble size to reduce the amount of matter we’ll take with us, but it’s all a guess at this point.”

  “Just tell me it will get us to orbit,” Nathan asked.

  “Da,” Vladimir assured him. “I think.”

  “Which is it, Vlad?”

  “It will work!”

  “What about over here?” Marcus asked over the intercom.

  “I’ve already configured the starboard nacelle from here,” Vladimir assured him. “You just have to manually cross-connect circuit one five alpha to circuit two-seven bravo. Make sure the connection is tight…”

  “I know how to hook up a jumper,” Marcus snapped.

  The utility bay shook suddenly as the Voss jumped into Nor-Patri’s atmosphere.

  “We shook the escorts,” Josh reported over the intercom. “Two more jumps to the LZ. We should be gear down in less than a minute.”

  “You go out and line up on either side in an open, arrow-tip formation, just inside the shield perimeter,” Jessica instructed the Ghatazhak. “Once we verify the presence of the kor-dom and that there are no immediate threats, we’ll drop the aft shield. Once the shield is down, Nathan will come out and take position at the center of the formation. He will not remove his hood until the kor-dom is standing within your formation, face-to-face with the captain.”