Hallowed Nebula

by Eddie R. Hicks

  “And kept its construction secret? While the Captain lied to our faces about it? And it was built while they were in Sirius. That means they knew a maelstrom trip was coming. I wonder—”

  “If their memories were wiped like you guys’?”

  It was possible. The Gerard Kuiper officially vanished from Sirius, not destroyed as previously thought. What happened to it could very well have been the same thing that took the Abyssal Sword and Carl Sagan.

  “You still got the location of Yale’s cryo pod?” Rivera asked.

  Penelope nodded, making her EAD’s scanning holo screen flicker away. “Yes, I’ll take you to it.”

  Beyond numerous cryo pods that held the remains of the crew was the one pod that was assigned to Yale, a member of the crew that didn’t appear in the manifest. Rivera and Penelope floated next to it and flipped it open. It was empty, like it was never in use to start with. EAD scans showed otherwise.

  “Two different people used this pod,” Penelope said, after reading the holo screen’s result. “An Aryile and an Undine. Why would non-humans be using it?”

  “Shipboard psionics back in the day were Radiance before human facilities were created,” Rivera said.

  “The first facilities came online ten years before this left Earth. Wouldn’t its psionic be human by that time?”

  “That’s true.” Rivera’s eyes narrowed looking down at the opened cryo pod she floated next to. “And there was an Undine inside. That’s unexpected—”

  Rivera’s HNI beeped. It was receiving an incoming transmission from the planet’s surface. She accepted the link and Eicelea’s face appeared over her eyes. A notification on the corner of the projection informed her there was a five-second communication delay. “Rivera . . .” Eicelea said drily.

  “What’s wrong, Eicelea?”

  After ten seconds, Eicelea replied. “Why is the Johannes Kepler requesting we leave the premises at once?”

  49 Karklosea

  Wenadei’s Cybernetic Clinic

  Jondia, Pria, Inadrai System

  July 22, 2119, 18:04 SST (Sol Standard Time)

  Karklosea felt little guilt when Wenadei chose to examine her first over everyone else, including the human, Chevallier, sleeping in her cryo pod. What Wenadei did for the people which visited him in secret, would have gotten him in trouble with the Union.

  Performing work on Radiance citizens is okay, helping exiles, humans, and Hashmedai that sneak into the Union is not. Karklosea, being a lord commander of the Templars, used her high rank in the past to discourage anyone from following up on reports of Wenadei’s activity. In return, he placed her above the needs of everyone else whenever she needed upgrades or work done.

  In the past her body was heavily augmented with, what was considered at the time to be, state of the art shipboard psionic implants, with a few of them being experimental. When she made the career switch to a Templar, she had to drop most of them to utilize the new combat armor Templars were required to equip. There were several implants from her old life that couldn’t be removed without killing her. And it was those old redundant parts that became damaged in the recent battles she found herself in that needed maintenance.

  With Karklosea’s battle-damaged cybernetics repaired, and her life expectancy significantly higher, work on Chevallier began. She was curious to see what had become of the mortally wounded human fighter and stopped by the cybernetic workshop for a visit. Mathilda Chevallier was expected to be revived today, after months of resting in medical cryo.

  She heard muffled screams when she entered. It made a number of worrying thoughts cloud Karklosea’s mind. The loud bangs, thuds, and what she guessed was a table being thrown or flipped over didn’t help.

  The sounds of screams and furniture being tossed about guided Karklosea to the workshop and recovery room Chevallier’s body had been resting in. She wasn’t sure what to expect as she approached the door and gazed at the frost-tinted glass windows beside it.

  Did the Soldiers of Marduk infiltrate the building? She hoped not, bad enough there were rumors some of their fighters operated on the planet. It would reflect poorly on her abilities as lord commander of the Templars if they had snuck in and attacked. Chevallier was part of the team that helped defeat Marduk too. Chevallier, in her state, would have been a perfect target.

  Another violent group perhaps? But who? The Terran Legion? Karklosea had no idea but was about to find out as her finger tapped the entry key code on the side wall mounted terminal. The doors swung open, unveiling the interior of the workshop. A terrified Wenadei came running out with the ends of his Linl made lab coat rustling behind him.

  She reached for her redeemer as the doctor hid behind her.

  “Wenadei, are you okay?” she asked him.

  “Yes, yes, yes, I’m fine!” Wenadei pointed into the room he ran from. “She isn’t.”

  “Who else is in there?”

  “The human woman I was paid to mend.”

  “And?”

  “Just her,” Wenadei said with fear in his voice. “She’s the one making the noise.”

  Karklosea entered the room slowly, keeping her hand just above the hilt of her redeemer. There were no further sounds heard other than the clanging footsteps of her armored boots, and the deep panting of Chevallier, cursing randomly in the human tongue.

  Chevallier turned suddenly when she heard Karklosea enter. The human woman placed her hands on her hips, the right one was made out of metal and wires. There were a number of other smaller implants on Chevallier’s body, mostly around her abs, visible from the brief tank top she wore. Karklosea guessed there were many more underneath her skin, now heavily patched up when Wenadei had to cut into her body to install them.

  Words of human origin left Chevallier’s lips, directed at Karklosea. She couldn’t understand them.

  “You must have a lot of questions,” Karklosea said to her, not that she would understand, like all humans she dealt with recently.

  Or so she thought.

  “Who the fuck are you?” Chevallier said, speaking in the native Linl language. “And where the fuck am I?”

  It took Karklosea a moment to process the words. It had been years since she had spoken the primary language of her species. Like all species Radiance assimilated into their collective, they were expected to speak the Radiance language first, and the language of their homeworld second.

  “You speak Linl?” Karklosea asked her.

  “My ex-boyfriend was Linl,” Chevallier said. “Tried learning the language to impress him. What a waste of time that was. Though, it did come in handy when I was in Sirius.”

  “My name is Karklosea, Lord Commander of the Templars.”

  “Master Gunnery Sergeant Mathilda Chevallier, EDF-1.”

  Karklosea performed the Radiance greeting. “Your acquaintance is recognized. And I’m pleased to see you on your feet at last.”

  “Whatever,” Chevallier groaned, rolling her eyes. “Now tell me why the fuck am I here?” Chevallier lifted her artificial arm to her face. She didn’t look impressed. “And my arm? Fuck . . .”

  “The Radiance crew of the Kepler told me you were ambushed and mortally wounded,” Karklosea said. “They made the choice to bring you here to receive unique cybernetic implants to save you.”

  “The Marcus Antonius . . .” Chevallier ran her fingers through her auburn hair, stopping when her left hand touched the side of her head. The hair there had been shaved off, most likely to install another life-saving implant. She didn’t look impressed at that discovery either. “That mech, yeah, I remember that. It’s blank after that. Where is here?”

  “This is Pria, the Linl homeworld.”

  “Fuck me! And Foster? The Kepler?”

  “A lot has happened since you were injured.”

  Chevallier demanded to know what happened over the last few months. Karklosea gave her a rundown the best she could, given the language barrier she was faced with on the Kepler, and that she too spe
nt a few months recovering from injuries suffered in battle. The sentence Chevallier strung together after Karklosea explained it to her, was laced with enough expletives to make even the most hardened sailor on a Radiance cruiser cringe.

  Karklosea’s explanation ended with her last known intel regarding the Kepler. It traveled to one of the ethereal refineries at the end of the system then vanished when it suddenly flew into the fissure. Nobody in Radiance to that day was able to find the ship or hear from it. Earth wasn’t able to either. And as of two days ago, the Kepler’s QEC had been shut off.

  “I lost almost a year of my life,” Chevallier drily said, taking a seat on a chair she threw across the room during her fit of anger. “Guess I should be thankful it wasn’t another sixty-eight.”

  “Are we done?” Wenadei called out from the door, peeking his head into the room like a timid child.

  Karklosea nodded to him. “If she’s good to leave, then, yes.”

  “Excellent,” he said. “I’d like to get back to my clients.”

  “I’d still stay low,” Karklosea said. “There might be Soldiers of Marduk members at large in the city.”

  “I should have charged that human extra . . .” Wenadei made a dejected sigh. “Or took to a month to restore her like I said I would.”

  Chevallier stood facing the wall, looking at her new arm. “My arm . . .” she groaned slowly and then struck the wall with three quick strikes. The first strike made a dent in the wall, the two follow-up ones turned the dent into a hole. Chevallier’s cybernetic arm looked like a blacked blur of colors when she made the punching strikes into the wall. “My fucking arm is gone!”

  “That was the biggest challenge of Wenadei,” Karklosea said, watching as Chevallier continued to put dents or massive holes into the wall. “He had to custom build that arm for you.”

  “I don’t want a fucking mechanical arm; I want the one I was born with back!”

  “It’s gone, I’m sorry.”

  She punched the wall one last time, driving her metal fist through it so deep Karklosea thought Chevallier had broken her new gift. There were no visible dents, scratches, or any other form of damage on her new arm when Chevallier pulled it out from the wall.

  “Fuck this!” she screamed.

  “He knew you were military and designed it to be lightweight, but robust,” Karklosea explained.

  Chevallier approached a computer half the size of her, and probably the same weight. She picked it up and threw it across the workshop, using her new arm. It had enough momentum to keep moving through the air until it hit the wall and broke apart with a loud crashing sound. Both women grinned at the newfound destructive power her arm had.

  “And probably strong enough to kill someone with one punch,” Karklosea finished.

  As abrasive as Chevallier turned out to be, she was honorable. After leaving Wenadei’s clinic, she offered to pay for the damage she did to the workshop and have the computer not only replaced but upgraded to a faster one. Chevallier had months’ worth of credits on her chit, more than enough to pay for the damages.

  Karklosea led her to the UNE embassy located across the city. It was the best place to take her with the Kepler missing and Chevallier now healed and stuck in Radiance territory. It would also keep her safe from possible ambushes from the SOM if they learned she was there.

  The trek to the UNE embassy was a risky one, as both Chevallier and Karklosea were out in the open. Thankfully, Chevallier was still in her armor when she was placed in cryo, and so she wore it. It was damaged of course, but was still functional and provided some protection, certainly a lot better than the tank top and shorts she had on earlier.

  Chevallier was guided inside the embassy with little questions after they confirmed her Earthly origins. Karklosea opted to stick around in the front atrium looking at the plants from Earth that decorated it. She was not surprised by how similar they looked to plants from on Pria. Her plan was to leave after another hour, just in case the two were followed by SOM agents and were waiting for her to step outside the boundaries of the embassy.

  By the time the twenty-minute mark hit, uniformed personnel from Earth approached her, speaking in the Radiance language. “Excuse me, ma’am,” the uniformed human said. “Can you please follow me?”

  She nodded in agreement and was escorted to one of the various back offices. The embassy was Earth territory after all, and subject to Earth rules. It wasn’t her place to reject a simple offer.

  “Is there a problem?” Karklosea asked.

  “Just a security check, ma’am,” the uniformed human said. “With the recent Soldiers of Marduk attacks, we got to screen all non-humans here. I hope you understand.”

  “Of course, do what you must.”

  “Please enter here, the men inside will handle the rest. If there are any problems just let me know, I’ll be right here.”

  The human stepped aside, pushed on the wall-mounted door access panel, and the door slid open. Karklosea walked inside the room but saw no men. Just a table and chairs around it and the smell of human made coffee.

  The door slid shut behind her, manually if she were to guess since she didn’t walk far enough away from it to automatically shut. A second after the doors shut, she heard the clanging sounds of its internal locking mechanisms.

  She knew right away she was led into a trap. And if it wasn’t for the fact someone hit her over the back of her head with a blunt object, she would have pulled out her redeemer and fought her way out, or perhaps unleashed her psionic powers.

  A second blow to her head ensured her head was in enough pain and confusion to prevent any use of psionic powers. By the time the third blow hit, she was on the floor, turning to her side in hopes of getting a better view of the people that stood on the opposite ends of the door, waiting for her.

  Her first thought, which was hard to put together thanks to the pain, was that the men were secretly working for the SOM. But they spoke human words to one another and were armed with human weapons.

  They also wanted her alive. The SOM wanted her dead, she imagined. These were not their men.

  50 Rivera

  ESRS Gerard Kuiper

  Unknown Planet Orbit, Unknown System

  July 22, 2119, 20:39 SST (Sol Standard Time)

  It was hard to see at first thanks to the nebula’s colorful wonders. But the Johannes Kepler had appeared, seemingly out of nowhere, and made a slow approach to the Gerard Kuiper circling in orbit around the unknown rocky planet.

  Five minutes after its arrival, it swung about to latch its airlock into the Gerard Kuiper. What happened after that only Alisha and the small Radiance team aboard knew as Penelope and Rivera weren’t on the bridge and weren’t able to provide any explanation to the people on the surface as to why they had to leave back through the wormhole.

  Penelope floated out of the cryo chamber first as she did have long delayed business with the Kepler. Rivera floated next to an observation window in the corridor, looking at the ethereal nebula in the distance, and asked the question to herself nobody else did, to her knowledge. How did the Kepler get into the nebula?

  And why?

  She made a note to inform Alisha about the secret project in the quarters of a crew member that didn’t exist later. The Kepler was here, the ship she was supposed to be on months ago. She was about to be reunited with lost friends.

  Rivera arrived at the deck where the airlock was and counted eleven Radiance personnel drift out from it, all guiding large crates from the Kepler onto the Kuiper. Penelope floated ahead of the airlock with her long silver hair floating and waving about. It didn’t appear she made it aboard the Kepler despite getting the head start. Rivera had a feeling the Radiance personnel leaving the ship might have played a role in that. They were led by a large hulking Aryile with combat armor, and way too many guns and swords strapped to his back.

  Rivera floated forward to the airlock, peeking inside. There were no signs of the Kepler’s crew coming to greet
her or moving about in the Kepler’s corridors visible from across the airlock. It was an odd sight. The large Aryile man directing the Radiance personnel drifted in between her and the airlock, using his imposing body as a cover, blocking out her view of the interior of the Kepler.

  “Excuse me,” he said to Rivera with his butter-melting voice, examining her uniform. “IESA correct? Are you from the Gerard Kuiper?”

  “No, name’s Rivera,” she said. “Why I’m here . . . is a long complex story I’m sure you’ll hear about soon once we’re done.”

  “Oh, I’ve heard about you,” he said. “I know your story, you were a member of Foster’s team that got separated during the SOM attack at Eiri.”

  “That’s right, how did you know?”

  “I am Weapons Master Jainuzei,” he revealed. “I was brought aboard as Saressea’s replacement.”

  Rivera pivoted to the side, allowing the Radiance team to haul the large crates off the Kepler. Jainuzei remained floating before the airlock door like he was a bouncer. She wasn’t sure what to make of it. “You’re from the Kepler then, Jainuzei?”

  “That is correct; we are here to assist in your operations.”

  “How did you and the Kepler end up here? Let alone know Gerard Kuiper was—”

  “I would love to stay and chat with a gorgeous woman such as you,” Jainuzei interjected as a second group pushed another crate into the weightlessness of the Gerard Kuiper. “But I have much work to be done. Foster made it clear she wants this equipment transferred over.”

  “I don’t understand,” Rivera said. “Why would—”

  “Please, I must get back to my duties.”

  “Of course. Just—”

  “Hey, Jasmine,” Penelope called out from behind.

  Rivera faced her while Jainuzei drifted past the two into the corridors of the Kuiper with the second group of Radiance personnel and the crates they pushed. Penelope motioned with her head to Rivera, she wanted her to get close, close enough to whisper something.