Hallowed Nebula

by Eddie R. Hicks

  “Sayoei and Nyoea are here, sweetie.”

  It took a while, thinking back to the time Rivera first heard those names. It was the fake HNI ID names SOM men and women used to mask their identities. And judging by the movement of Penelope’s face, she was probably scanning every Radiance personnel that floated past the two in the corridors, all of them originating from Jainuzei’s team from the Kepler. Rivera understood Penelope’s hesitation to board it.

  “Actually . . .” Jainuzei called out to Rivera further down the corridor. “Rivera, you are an engineer, correct?”

  She nodded. “I am.”

  “Perhaps you can accompany me to engineering?” Jainuzei asked. “I could use your assistance.”

  Uncomfortable vibes tugged at Rivera’s chest. She looked at Penelope for approval, as she was the one that could scan an HNI with her hacking mods. Penelope nodded, and Rivera drifted ahead catching up with Jainuzei and his team and floated to engineering. The uncomfortable vibes increased, she really hoped it was just THC paranoia.

  A text-only message flashed ahead of her vision sent via HNI. It was a message from Penelope.

  He’s not one of them from what I can tell, which isn’t saying much since he doesn’t have HNI. The other men are so be careful.

  A second message appeared when they neared the entrance to engineering.

  I’m going to board the Kepler. Now would be a good chance to deliver my message and see how many Soldiers of Marduk people are here.

  There were three crates in total removed from the Kepler. One of them was pushed into the elevators traveling up to the habitat ring, the other, which she followed along with Jainuzei and his team, floated into engineering. The third vanished somewhere down in the lower decks. After a suitable place was selected to rest the crate, the four huge panels that boxed in what was inside the crate came off and were placed aside as with its top.

  Inside the crate was a large cylindrical object. It was alien in design with a number of modifications clearly made with Imperial-based tech.

  Rivera floated ahead of it, giving it’s peculiar shape an up and down look. “What is this?”

  Jainuzei tossed a data crystal toward her. It flipped and drifted into her hands as she reached to catch it. “Read the files on that,” he said. “Use its knowledge to install this device into the Kuiper’s power supply. Can I leave you in charge of this project?”

  She agreed, only because Penelope confirmed that his name wasn’t Sayoei. A computer screen that outputted the data crystal’s contents populated one of the monitors in engineering. Rivera committed most of the data to her HNI’s limited storage space, including the name of the device that was brought aboard. It was called the vortex key.

  Saressea’s name was mentioned several times in the files and diagrams that appeared, many of which seemed incomplete, probably because she was arrested before she could finish them. The feeling that lingered in her body wasn’t paranoia. It was her animal senses telling her to get out before it was too late. The files on the data crystal were taken from Saressea, probably without her knowledge. The files and the vortex key were her project for the Kepler.

  Why was it being transferred here? And where was the rest of the Kepler’s crew? It’d been ages since she had seen Foster and the rest. Not one member coming out to greet her was out of character, regardless of the situation at hand.

  Engineering was behind her when she drifted away, assigning another team to look after the vortex key. Rivera wanted answers. She tried to connect with Penelope via HNI, there was no reply. Same went for the Kepler. Jainuzei didn’t reply to any of her hails via the intercom, neither did Alisha. Eicelea and Vynei HNI’s couldn’t be reached, according to the error screen that flashed over her eyes. They weren’t on the planet and most likely stepped back through the wormhole, either that or the Gerard Kuiper’s orbit put it on the opposite end of the planet.

  Radiance guards stood next to the airlock doors, the same ones that were brought aboard from the Kepler. The rifles in their hands sent a nonverbal message to those that floated past, this place is off-limits. Rivera had no other choice but to travel up to the habitat ring, hoping to see what became of the other packages taken from the Kepler.

  Once up in the ring, with gravity holding her down, she searched for signs of the Radiance team. She found none but heard Jainuzei grunt and speak in the Radiance language. He mentioned something about missing locks and asked the personnel around him to find out what happened.

  She crept forward, moving slowly over to the source of Jainuzei’s voice, making little to no sounds. She found him standing next to the locked down quarters she and Penelope discovered. Jainuzei dismissed the men that were with him and pulled out from the crate behind him the limp and motionless body of Nereid. At least, it looked like her, a few years older by the looks, but it was the raven-blue-haired Undine girl with legs Rivera knew.

  Every urge in Rivera’s body told her to run. Get off the ship, steal a transport, and get to the surface. Nereid’s body in Jainuzei’s arms forced her to stay. The thought of knowing Jainuzei might do something horrible to Nereid, while Rivera just turned and ran wouldn’t sit well with her for years to come.

  As Jainuzei entered the quarters with the aquarium, Rivera moved behind him, careful to not make a sound. She watched him open the front glass door of the aquarium, gently placing Nereid’s body in it, and then shut it. From there, he stood before a computer terminal and began to key in a sequence of commands.

  “How long do you plan to stand there?” Jainuzei said.

  Rivera’s chest tightened. Her thumping heart wanted to burst from her chest and run, much like how she now wanted to burst out from the ship and flee. She was caught spying on him. She should have known better than to sneak up on a trained warrior like Jainuzei.

  When she collected herself, she stood up straight and faced him while he continued to face the computer station. Jainuzei didn’t attack or call for help. If he wanted her dead, he could have done so already.

  “How long are you going to keep secrets from me—”

  “I wasn’t talking to you, Rivera,” he cut in, and then faced the door she stood behind.

  His Aryile eyes didn’t make eye contact with her.

  An unexpected voice behind her said. “He’s talking to me.”

  It was Alisha.

  Rivera spun on her heel to see the captain of the Gerard Kuiper pushing the barrel of her pistol into Rivera’s chest. The firm solid feeling of the pistol’s barrel sent a shiver across her body, forcing Rivera’s hands into the air.

  Jainuzei grabbed them, pinning them behind her. The pain that came from his firm grip made her squirm. Alisha lowered her pistol at that point, it gave Rivera the courage to try and fight Jainuzei’s binding grip off. He was too strong. Rivera’s body getting flung backward crashing against the aquarium was proof enough.

  Alisha looked down at her, laughing. Jainuzei stood with Alisha, embracing her romantically and kissed her with passion.

  “What took you so long?” Alisha asked Jainuzei when the kiss was over.

  He smirked. “There were many unexpected turns.”

  Facing Rivera, who managed to get back to her feet, Alisha asked. “What do we do with her?”

  “She’s an engineer,” Jainuzei said. “She should follow orders and get to work.”

  A pair of fists banging and thumping against the glass of the aquarium startled Rivera. She looked behind and saw Nereid standing in the aquarium having awoken, banging against the glass repeatedly, screaming words that couldn’t be heard, probably pleading for help.

  Rivera saw why a second later, looking down at the floor of the aquarium. It was filling up with the goo, covering Nereid’s feet inching upward to her ankles fast.

  Nereid was about to experience whatever it was the Gerard Kuiper’s crew did to the Undine they secretly brought aboard from Sirius.

  51 Foster

  XSV Johannes Kepler

  Unknown
Planet Orbit, Unknown System

  July 22, 2119, 21:22 SST (Sol Standard Time)

  Awakening from cryostasis, when you had little to no memory of entering it intentionally, made Foster shudder. Her racing thoughts expected the worst when she crawled out from her opened cryo pod after it sent the cocktail of stuff that made people wake up and thaw from their cold sleep.

  Her head was still in pain, preserved from the injuries, dried blood covered her hands. She paused for a moment, trying to remember what happened, it was another thing she feared happening the moment you came out of cryo, not remembering what happened. Though, in her case, the fuzzy memories she had was due to head trauma.

  By the time she mustered enough strength to walk, rather than crawl, on the cold floor, it all came back to her. Jainuzei, he was the cause for this. He betrayed the team, and the drone that ran off and infected the Kepler with malware months ago, probably was his doing after all. He and Armuzei were working together. If they were still aboard, they needed to be stopped and thrown out the airlock.

  She checked the time once her wrist terminal reactivated and synced with the Kepler. Only a few days had passed. Better than sixty-eight years. She sighed in relief as the sounds of additional cryo pods behind her powered, revived their occupants, and slowly opened. One by one the rest of the Kepler’s crew joined her in the ship’s cryo chamber. Like her, many of them had been injured, like they were caught in an ambush.

  There was yelling and screaming in the corridors outside the cryo chamber’s door. The voices were in the Radiance language. And they sounded like someone pissed in their coffee.

  Losing days’ worth of time, being held captive in your own cryostasis chamber, getting betrayed . . . The whole situation sucked. Plus, her head really, really hurt. A lot.

  “EVE . . .” Foster groaned. “What’s our status?”

  There was no reply from the Kepler’s AI. After asking three more times, she called it quits and assumed the worst. EVE was taken offline. Jainuzei, Armuzei, and the stowaways that were secretly brought aboard were good, really good. She stood waiting for the rest of the crew to awake, especially Maxwell, LeBoeuf, and Miles. Last time she checked before getting tossed in cryo, they were covered in blood and not moving. People who were dead typically looked like that—

  Gunshots echoed from the corridors outside the door. The pissed off Radiance voices were engaged in combat with another group of pissed off Radiance voices. A new concern grew in her thoughts, the concern for the ship. And the fact Nereid and Lisette weren’t amongst those in cryo pods.

  Foster peeked outside into the corridor when she approached the door. Dead bodies of various Radiance races littered the floor and painted the walls with blood. Some wore combat armor, others grey jumpsuits, all of them killed by Radiance made weapons. The SOM was aboard, likely the same ones she saw coming out of cryo. It looked like rangers and Navy personnel from the Union found out, tried, and failed to do something about it. She retreated into the cryo chamber before anyone saw her, plus, she didn’t have a gun.

  “Captain . . .” Williams’ tired voice called out to her.

  “Dom, what the hell happened?” Foster asked him.

  “Jainuzei, Armuzei, and a bunch of other assholes came after us,” he said. “None of us saw it coming.”

  Tolukei was brought out of his pod last. He needed the help of Chang to keep him steady and on his feet before he crashed to the floor. Williams turned away, addressing Foster, “They took him out first.”

  “Tolukei, the largest threat after Miles and the EDF team,” Foster said, noting that they were already out of the picture by the time Jainuzei and Armuzei’s team made their move. “Where’s EVE, Nereid, and Lisette?”

  “I don’t know, they probably got to them as well,” Williams said. “As for EVE, I guess they figured out how to turn her off.”

  Chang snickered. “Wrong choice of words there, Commander.”

  “You are most certainly correct,” a woman with an English accent said over the cryo chamber’s intercom. “Well, about EVE, not the choice of words. Chang, you cheeky little bastard.”

  Chang shot a confusing glare at the intercom. “Who the fuck is this?” he asked.

  “Diamondrose, Penelope Diamondrose at your service,” the voice said.

  Pierce stopped limping, his face bore the look of surprise at the name reveal. “Penelope?”

  “Is that you, Travis?” Penelope’s voice said. “Why, yes, it is you! Wave to the security cam on the ceiling. Oh, darling, how have you been?”

  “Penelope, are you on the Kepler?” Pierce asked.

  “Me, a couple of Marduk-loving arseholes, and a failed squad of Radiance rangers.”

  “Where are you?”

  “On the bridge,” Penelope said amidst the sound of loud noises in the background of her intercom voice. “For how long? That’s up to you lovelies. I got the door locked and the Marduk boys and girls know it. Act quickly and you might be able to stop them from cutting their way in.”

  “All right,” Foster said to the crew. “Y’all heard the gal, let’s move!”

  Those that weren’t in pain or being treated by Kostelecky nodded and went to rally with Foster. Kostelecky gave her a disapproving glare, marching over to Foster to closely examine her head injury.

  “Captain,” Kostelecky said, pulling Foster forward. “Don’t be reckless.”

  “I’m fine—”

  “The hell you are!”

  “I ain’t gonna sit here while these dickheads take over my ship!” Foster spat, pulling away from Kostelecky’s grip. “Take care of the rest, especially our psionics. I have a feeling we’s gonna need their minds.”

  Kostelecky’s arms folded. “Psionic powers don’t work when the user is suffering from head injuries.”

  That’s when Foster thought back to Tolukei’s injuries and the opening attacks Maxwell and LeBoeuf suffered. Jainuzei and Armuzei went for everyone’s head. The mind is the powerhouse that makes psionic powers go boom, without it, or with it in a lot of pain, they had nothing to flash. And with Nereid MIA, Foster was asking her crew to fight armed enemies with no armor, guns, or psionic support. She failed to see how standing around in the cryo chamber was a better plan of action. She left with Williams and Chang to retake the ship, and a limping Miles, the Marine that refused to quit.

  Blood-soaked Radiance magnetic rifles were acquired from the dead, arming the four as they covertly made their way through the corridors of the Kepler. Voices further up led them to the Kepler’s airlock, discovering it was opened and connected to another ship. Foster wasn’t sure what ship it was exactly, though, its walls looked a lot like the Carl Sagan.

  Blood spilled on the floor of the airlock poured across into the ship, only to float away as it exited past the Kepler’s artificial gravity field. The ship ahead had no gravity. It also attempted to feed two Aryile men and one Linl onto the Kepler. They didn’t look happy to see the four humans staring back at them.

  The bullet exchange was brief. Foster and her team had the gravity advantage and watched as the three hostile targets flew backward, slamming against the wall behind them, spewing weightless blood out from their chests and belly, that looked like oversized cherries.

  Chang darted ahead to shut the airlock doors. Foster and Williams covered him while Miles checked their six. Then they waited, and waited, for the process to finish as Chang returned to the group. With the airlock doors shut and locked, the four backtracked to the Kepler’s cargo bay. Miles insisted on getting into his exosuit and using an Earth made rifle. Williams and Chang wanted the security of the new personal shield generators. Foster did too when she remembered they had them in stock.

  Foster counted six SOM fighters patrolling the cargo bay while she and the team stood on top of the catwalk that hung over top. None of the six below noticed the four rifles take aim at them, or the spray of bullets that hit them, and soaked the cargo crates and floor with gore and blood.

  With the
cargo bay clear, they climbed down the ladder into it. Miles sprinted ahead first for the armory, throwing the magnetic rifle to the floor. He really wanted his suit and gun for this.

  “If you’re wondering,” Penelope said via the armory’s intercom, as the four rummaged through the lockers. “EVE has been deactivated and thrown in engineering.”

  “Noted,” Foster said.

  Miles suited up into his exosuit quickly, displaying the decades of experience he had as a Marine with his speed. Foster glanced at him, having realized he brought aboard several types of exosuits. Some were large, others were of the typical modes she had seen Marines use, while the one he slipped into was smaller and lightweight. A different suit for every occasion she figured, in this case, Miles probably jumped into the smaller one as it was quicker to equip.

  “I’d hurry up,” Penelope’s voice added. “Looks like they know you four got out. You got another group incoming.”

  “Anything else we should know?” Williams asked.

  “You guys are doing a smashing good job! But it’s not enough to deter the men from cutting their way into the bridge, so please hurry.”

  Foster found a crate that was used to store the personal shield packs. She tossed one to Chang, and another to Williams, before clipping hers to the side of her uniform and powering it on. The mechanized joints of Miles’ exosuit whizzed when he approached, holding his assault rifle of Earthly origin. He gave everyone a nod and smiled through his thick ginger beard. Foster went for a rifle of her own, one of Draconian origin.

  “Now what?” Chang asked.

  Penelope’s voice laughed and then said. “You guys come save me!”

  “We need EVE back online first,” Williams said.

  “No, you really need to come get me first,” Penelope reiterated.

  “Yeah, yeah, that too. Don’t worry.”

  Radiance voices grew louder beyond the armory’s door. The second group Penelope spoke of arrived. The hulking Marine took point, peeked out into the cargo bay, then held up four fingers gesturing out into the cargo bay. They had four bad guys.