Hallowed Nebula

by Eddie R. Hicks

  The twisted metal that was once the elevator doors were pushed inward with a flick of Tolukei’s wrist. The two hulks twirled about into the newly accessed hall, crashing into a wall at the end, their trek continued.

  The five broke up when they reached the ops station. Like the dark halls, various bodies spun around in the weightless environment, some of them were missing upper or lower bodies. Floating ash proved the reason why.

  EVE worked to repair damaged systems, and Odelea read the computer screens, using her Souyila access codes. The SOM didn’t change them when they took over the refinery. When EVE confirmed there wasn’t anything else for her to do, she left for the airlock, performing a spacewalk along the hull of the station to access its second half that became separated during the battle.

  “Not sure what any of these say,” Foster cut in amongst the Radiance chatter, between Odelea, Tolukei, and Jainuzei.

  “We were right in our suspicions, Captain,” Odelea said. “The SOM sent members to attack and take control of the refinery. Months later, they took critical damage from multiple targets.”

  Foster smirked at the floating bodies of the Marduk cultists. “Karma’s a bitch,” she snorted.

  “They were boarded; most of the crew were called into escape pods,” Odelea revealed.

  “Don’t recall seeing those on our way here,” Jainuzei said.

  “I do not sense the presence of them outside,” Tolukei said.

  Odelea moved to another computer terminal, her helmeted head facing down at its contents. “According to this,” she said. “All escape pods are still in their tubes. So Tolukei is right, nobody made it off the ship.”

  “The Draconian boarding party must have seen to that,” Jainuzei said. “Anything else?”

  Odelea moved closer to the screen, its light reflecting off her visor blocked out her face to Foster. “Two cryo pods are active with positive vitals.”

  “Survivors,” Jainuzei said with a hopeful tone of voice. Foster was quick to make a mental note of it. “Unless there is someone else hidden within the deeper confines of the station.”

  “I do not believe that would be the case,” Tolukei said. “All areas of the station have been exposed to space.”

  Foster gave EVE the heads-up of their next move, locating the two cryo pods, and the remaining four moved out. EVE confirmed and went to restore life support in the cryo chamber, using the exterior of the station to gain access to critical sections via access hatches. After that she planned to continue her trek to the severed half of the refinery, still floating away. According to Odelea, the refinery’s primary data recorder was there.

  The cryo chamber of the station was like the ops station with a maze of corridors linking to it. The room was dark, weightless, silent, and full of partially vaporized bodies of men and women of the five Radiance races, with one difference. It had life support thanks to EVE and an airlock serving as its entrance in case of an emergency, like this Foster figured. With life support active in the cryo chamber, Foster, Odelea, and Jainuzei removed their helmets and took in the breathable air, conserving their suits’ limited oxygen supplies. Gravity was still an issue, but the four were able to manage with that.

  Odelea stood at a wall panel, thumbing a number of Radiance made commands to start the cryo pod revival sequence. The two pods in question lowered from their storage racks up top. Tolukei stood with Jainuzei as he looked down at them, Foster observed his actions the best she could. There was something in the pods he knew about, something that was important to him and keeping secret. Jainuzei brushed his armored gloved hand across the glass surface of both pods, unveiling the people inside.

  One had the young face of a Linl woman, the other, a Javnis man. His lizard face was gold, most likely a result of cosmetic alteration. It was a popular trend among wealthy Javnis back in the 2040s, according to Odelea.

  “Strange,” Odelea said, her face still looking at the panel’s interface screen. “Nephilim is the name of the occupant in the pod ahead of you three. Armuzei is the name of the other . . .”

  “Armuzei . . .” Tolukei said as his four eyes looked down at the pod containing Armuzei, the gold-faced Javnis. “It is a familiar name.”

  Odelea concurred. “Indeed.”

  Armuzei’s pod opened first, a plume of white mist rose away from it. The gold-faced Javnis man floated up and away from it. He opened his eyes, all two of them, the other two had been lost.

  Before Armuzei could speak, Jainuzei rushed to Foster, as fast as his magnetic boots could carry him, pushing her back. Odelea and Tolukei ended up exchanging words with Armuzei in their language.

  “Captain, you must leave now,” Jainuzei whispered to her. “He’s the former Javnis council representative and one of the leaders of the SOM. If he knows we brought you here—”

  “That’ll piss ‘em off good,” she whispered back.

  “And he might not be cooperative. Armuzei believes Tolukei is a Muodiry that came to rescue him, and you should know by now how much the SOM revere the Muodiry.”

  His words left her conflicted. He was right, on one hand, Foster had gained demon-like status among the cult for her actions in Sirius. Leaving the cryo chamber, before Armuzei realized she was there made sense until they got him aboard the Kepler. But that also would leave Jainuzei alone with everyone else. She thought of fifteen different ways how that could go bad.

  Foster placed her helmet back on and went for the cryo chamber’s airlock. If Jainuzei was going to betray them he could have done it already she told herself with every magnetic step she made to the exit.

  In the life supportless corridor, Foster noticed her tattoo’s glow flare up, more so than they were when they arrived at the refinery. She felt a storm coming. She was right.

  Moving to an observation window revealed why.

  Red- and magenta-colored clouds of an ethereal maelstrom were growing from a vortex in space. It looked like a storm in space. It looked like a Draconian fleet was approaching.

  42 Rivera

  ESRS Gerard Kuiper

  Unknown Planet Orbit, Unknown System

  July 19, 2119, 00:43 SST (Sol Standard Time)

  All official reports from both IESA and the UNE government stated that the Gerard Kuiper was destroyed by an accident with all hands lost. A critical structural failure in its reactor core was the reason according to its last QEC transmissions. It happened so fast its onboard EVE wasn’t able to react in time.

  What Rivera saw around her as she pushed away from a computer station on the Gerard Kuiper’s bridge, said otherwise.

  “The colonization habitat ring is gone,” she said with arms folded, staring at the computer screen.

  Penelope floated next to her. “Is that bad?”

  “Well, yeah, it is,” Rivera said. “The one on the Carl Sagan held thousands of colonists, this one is slightly bigger. This ship was supposed to colonize the Kapteyn’s Star system but went to Sirius to help search for us.”

  Penelope eyed the screen displaying the ship’s status, narrowing her red semi-glowing eyes in the low light. “Maybe it dropped them off there?”

  “I’m not an expert at what IESA did after we vanished, but I’m almost positive they didn’t,” Rivera said. “Those colonists signed up to make Jacobus their home, and I’m sure Earth wanted that project to move forward. It’s one of the reasons why this ship left Sirius shortly after it arrived; it was just a detour to Kapteyn’s Star.”

  “Let us check with the knowledge network,” Eicelea said, her dwarfed body floated high enough to make direct eye contact. It was the only way a Vorcambreum could without standing on a stool. “I’m sure your government shared the details of that vessel with us.”

  Rivera nodded. “Good idea—”

  “We can’t connect it here!” The feisty Vorcambreum cut in. “So, now that we’ve determined that. Perhaps it is time for us to depart?”

  Researching the ship made sense, even though Rivera knew Eicelea was scared and
wanted an excuse to leave. Neither of the four was versed with the details of the Gerard Kuiper exactly. The knowledge network or internet, however, was quite versed on everything. Going on a search for missing colonists, when in reality they could have been dropped off in Sirius, was pointless. They needed facts before pushing forward.

  Rivera drifted to the communication station. Her quick hands fingered its cold and idle terminal, searching for its QEC command interface. The Gerard Kuiper’s QEC had been deactivated locally and intentionally according to a prompt on the screen.

  She was denied six times to reconnect the QEC to the network. Understandable, considering the ship was thought to be destroyed, and its connecting QEC node would have been repurposed. Attempting to access the QEC network was a waste, learning that someone turned it off on purpose, however, wasn’t. She began to wonder if the critical error codes, the last messages the QEC had transmitted, were sent on purpose as well.

  Given the extreme remote distance to the rest of the galaxy, it would take years for a standard communication signal to reach anywhere. Revealing what they discovered and searching the knowledge network or the internet for facts, required the four to return to the planet’s surface and back to Takarius via the wormhole. That and Rivera was really tired.

  With no further clues to find, the four made plans to leave the bridge and float back to their transport. Rivera took one last fleeting glance at the bridge, and how similar in design it was to the Carl Sagan, wondering if this ship had become a victim to the disappearing act the Draconians pulled on them when they had vanished from Sirius years earlier.

  The sound of a weapon powering hummed from behind. It was a soft two-second humming noise. It sounded like an ePistol, a common weapon found in the twenty-first century, the century Rivera was from.

  “Who the hell are you?” the voice of a woman called out to the four.

  The four spun to face the newcomer who floated up from the captain’s office, directly below the bridge, aiming their pistol at them. They knew the drill and put their hands up to surrender after a second or two of panic.

  “I’m from IESA!” Rivera felt beads of sweat roll and float away from her face.

  The woman with the pistol floated closer, keeping her hands wrapped around it, and finger close to the trigger. Her long black hair floated wildly like she was taking a swim. Rivera had a hard time figuring out her background, on one hand, she saw Asian features in the woman, but also saw European as well. She wore an IESA uniform, the same type Rivera had worn when she was on the Carl Sagan. The flag of Canada was stitched onto the shoulders of the pistol-wielding woman.

  “How did you get on my ship?” the woman asked.

  A closer look at the woman’s uniform showed the rank pins of a captain. It made Rivera relax a little. It was the surviving captain defending her ship. She wasn’t there to kill them and take hostages.

  “Please, Captain,” Rivera said to the woman. “Just put the gun away. We’re friends, we discovered a transport that belonged to this ship on the surface and rode it up.”

  The captain of the Gerard Kuiper lowered her weapon. “IESA, huh?” she asked. “What ship?”

  “Name’s Jasmine Rivera. As for ships? I’m kinda in between them at the moment, was on the Carl Sagan, and kinda in the process of transferring to the Johannes Kepler along with its crew.”

  “The Carl Sagan?” The captain’s eyes widened, and she made a small grin afterward. “So, you guys finally turned up, huh?” The captain gave Rivera a quick top to bottom look. “Your uniform is different . . . how long have we been gone for?”

  “Well,” Rivera said. “That’s a long story . . . Captain?”

  “Levesque,” the Gerard Kuiper’s captain answered for her. “Captain Alisha Levesque.”

  43 Foster

  Darkened Corridors

  Ethereal Refinery, Interstellar Space

  July 19, 2119, 01:45 SST (Sol Standard Time)

  Human instincts. It didn’t matter if you were on Earth or in space. The moment you came across a threat that might act in a way you really didn’t want them to if they heard you, you learned to shut your mouth and stay silent until it passed.

  Foster found herself doing that exact thing when she saw the ethereal clouds from the maelstrom spill out into the black star-cluttered void of space from the vortex. She kept radio silent, then drifted through the darkened stations corridors, too bad she never got the chance to tell anyone else what was up. Though the moving silently part was probably unnecessary, the section of the station she was in was still exposed to the vacuum of space. Nobody was going to hear anything, especially if they too were wrapped up in a space suit, or combat armor rated for a spacewalk.

  Like the Draconian scout team she saw drifting about.

  She counted three Draconian soldiers. They were dressed head to toe in their armor with metallic looking dragon scales, and nightmare-inducing dragon horns at the tops of their helmets. Mounted lights on their tachyon rifles lit the way as they searched for whatever they came back for. The last glance through the windows saw the lone fleet continue to emerge from the vortex. The three Draconians most likely had stayed behind after they hit the station. Then noticed the Kepler arrive and called for backup.

  The floating Draconian soldiers hovered in the next room full of tables and chairs spinning above. Foster assumed it was the mess hall for the refinery. Uneaten meals, trays, and Radiance cutlery littered the area, all flung up suddenly when gravity was lost, and the violent chaos began. Had Foster not bumped into a spinning tray, and sent it tumbling into the back of one soldier, she might have been able to follow them further. Instead, the soldier flipped around and highlighted Foster in her EVA suit with the light from his rifle. His finger pointed at her and his head jerked, probably frantically shouting to his friend over their comm line that they had company.

  His friends never did get the chance to see what that company was. Foster’s tachyon rifle was already aimed forward. Multiple shots vaporized two of the soldiers. She didn’t have much of a choice, it was them or her. Six brief flashes of blue light cocooned Foster. Her suit’s HUD reported her shields had taken four direct shots to the chest, and two to the head. A warning blared afterward. Her shields had fallen to 13 percent, as the words TAKE COVER flashed on the holographic display.

  She ignored it. Taking cover, when floating, was no easy task. Besides, she was too busy lining up the perfect shot against the last remaining Draconian. When she finished pulling the trigger, its body turned to vapor starting from the stomach out. It was like someone took a thin paper napkin and set it on fire with a lighter from the center. It was visible for one second, then not three later.

  “Foster to Kepler, end radio silence.”

  “Aye, Captain,” Williams’ voice replied over her helmet’s speaker. “Uh, you guys good?”

  She floated and drifted ahead of two wide observation windows that were letting in soft red light from the storm in space ahead. The bio-ships of the Draconian fleet were larger, and the fluttering wings of wyverns, while faint, could be seen in the distance.

  “Nope!” She shook her head, not that Williams could see it.

  “Ah, dragons,” Chang transmitted. “I was really starting to wonder when those assholes would show up.”

  “Tolukei, sorry for the silence,” Foster said. “Draconians were still aboard. What’s your status?”

  His voice replied after a brief two-second delay. “I have returned to the Kepler with everyone else.”

  “You left your captain behind . . .”

  “We couldn’t reach or find you, and assumed the worst when the Draconians arrived,” Tolukei’s voice continued on the comm line. “I had to make a choice.”

  As mesmerizing as it was to watch the maelstrom, the fleet of bio-ships, and dragons that weren’t affected by the harness of space, fly in a formation from the windows, it didn’t do Foster any good when it came to her life expectancy. She pushed off the glass, spun her float
ing body around drifting over the bodies and tables, and made her way back into the corridors. She activated her magnetic boots and made her escape.

  “Captain,” EVE’s voice chimed in. “It would appear a vortex to the maelstrom has opened.”

  Foster snorted. “You’re very observant, EVE!”

  “I have obtained the black box data recorder from the refinery and am currently on the exterior of this station,” EVE said. “I do not have any means of returning to the Kepler. My unit here will be damaged or destroyed should the wyverns or weapons fire come in contact with it.”

  Foster was about to ask how close the threat to EVE was when she felt soft vibrations along the hull of the station. If she were to guess, the nearest Draconian ships dropped off a boarding party, and probably a few wyverns to circle about. She hoped she was wrong, very, very wrong. Combat during a spacewalk was not something she was qualified for.

  “Hang tight, EVE, I’m comin’ for ya!” Foster said as she made her way to the airlock. “Tolukei, meet us on the refinery exterior!”

  Her natural human instincts wanted to scream as she looked out the opened airlock doors. Ahead was the growing storm in space and its bio-ships still closing the distance, and below was what seemed like a bottomless pit full of stars. Every sense in her body told her she’d fall if she took another step forward out the airlock.

  But she knew better. She knew the magnetic boots were making her body think there was still gravity pulling on her, she knew she could just as easily walk on the exterior walls of the refinery. She was in space, there was no up or down. Falling down into the abyss wasn’t her fear. It was getting knocked off the station while her boots had nothing to cling to.

  An object in motion stays in motion with the same speed and direction unless acted upon by an unbalanced force. It was Newton’s first law in motion. And the scourge of wyverns circling the station, and the Draconian soldiers walking on its exterior with their magnetic boots, were the objects that had the power to push Foster off and make her drift away. The thought was terrifying, forcing her to take several deep breaths before she continued, and slowly marched in the direction of EVE’s signal. It kept her mind off the fact tachyon beam strikes from the nearing Draconian fleet could end her if they hit the station, and the fact many of those beams were directed at the Kepler.