Just then, a distant explosion somewhere in the space station rattled the walls and caused a small avalanche of scrap metal. An alarm sounded, and red, flashing lights cast a pulsating light upon the group.
“It appears they’ve arrived.” Talon hurried toward the door.
Chapter 7
Another blast hit, closer to their location on the space station than the first. Dani started to panic, and pressed the button on her comm. “Crew, get back to Osirion as soon as you can.”
Howard reevaluated the jump drives once more before finally settling on one. “There, Cruz, that one. It’s an older model, but still compatible with our systems and should be an easy swap. And grab that cloaking device over there, too.”
Cruz complied, easily lifting the components as they made their way to the door. Stepping out into the hallway, they found Cassia, alone.
“Where’s Sylvine?” Dani asked.
“Sylvine went with Talon.” Cassia pointed down the hall.
“Okay, come on,” Dani ordered as they hurried past them toward Osirion. She had gotten a fairly good idea of the layout of the space station by now. She knew they were heading the right direction, because pirates were spilling out of rooms and down the hall toward the hangars.
Talon’s voice cracked over the speakers overhead, “Emergency evacuation. Vaerian ship incoming. Plan Stella is in effect.”
Dani recognized the name immediately. Stella was Jag and Talon’s mother, who died when they were young. Jag very rarely even mentioned her, so Dani was a bit surprised to hear that Talon had named an evacuation plan after her.
They turned another corner, down a hall with a series of transparent walls. Dani was able to quickly spot Osirion. “This way.”
Dani led the charge toward their ship as Jag and Zadria stumbled out of an adjacent hall amid a crowd of pirates. Dani helped steady the pair, who had nearly been knocked off their feet.
Cruz glanced around and grabbed a cart being pushed past them from the pirate steering it.
“Hey, watch it!” the pirate man shouted until he took note of Cruz’s size. His features quickly shifted from anger to fear as he grabbed the box from on top of the cart and continued on his way.
Cruz placed the jump drive and cloaking device on the cart and took over as Jag’s crutch.
Dani gripped the cart handle and pushed it through the crowd, into Osirion’s hangar. She almost wished she’d had the cart sooner, as it helped clear the path from the oncoming pirate horde.
Once inside, she steered the cart toward the lift at Osirion’s loading door. “Go on,” she said to Howard and Zadria as she shoved the cart onto the lift. Zadria quickly grabbed the controls, and they began ascending toward Osirion’s open loading ramp.
“Guys, we have a problem.” Jag nodded toward the door to the hangar. There, a group of armed men and women had gathered and were approaching them, weapons drawn.
“We might be able to take a few of you, but we don’t have room for everyone,” Dani said as she stepped toward them.
A particularly menacing man holding a long-bladed sword with a rifle slung across his back sneered at her. “Then we’ll just have to take the ship.”
Dani stopped in her tracks as he raised his sword and bellowed before the group started running toward her. From behind her, an energy blast flew and hit the man in the chest, causing him to fall to the ground, twitching and writhing in pain. The rest of the mob didn’t so much as blink at their fallen comrade—though a few more shots did cause them to halt their advance and take cover where they could.
“Dani!” Jag shouted.
She turned and saw it was he who fired at the pirates, and she ran back toward him. Zadria had lowered the lift, and Cruz had stuffed Jag and Cassia on it with her, pointing back up at Osirion. A barrage of energy shots and bullets let loose at the lift as it rose toward the safety of Osirion. Jag shielded Cassia and Zadria as he fired back.
Cruz and Dani ducked behind a crate and took turns laying down fire to keep the pirates where they were. It seemed to take longer for the lift to start lowering this time, and as it did, Dani started to get an idea of why.
This time, it was Jag who lowered the lift, firing as he did from his crouched position at the controls. Zadria’s absence wasn’t what worried her so much as the fact Jag’s hands were covered in what looked like blood.
“Let’s go,” Dani said to Cruz as the lift neared the bottom. He followed her over there, and she balked just before getting on. The blood wasn’t just on Jag’s hands; it was all over the floor of the lift, and there was far too much of it.
Cruz gave Dani the shove she needed to get onto the lift, stepping on after her and noticing the blood himself for the first time. He immediately dropped next to Jag and began examining him as the lift began to rise once more.
“I’m fine, I’m fine.” Jag shoved him back, returning fire toward the pirates who continued to shoot at them.
Cruz looked from Jag to Dani, knowing she didn’t have the answers. As soon as his eyes were above the loading door, Cruz climbed up into Osirion.
“It’s bad,” Jag muttered quietly.
Dani was about to ask who was hit, but before she could, the lift rose high enough for her to see. Zadria knelt on the ground, covered in blood and desperately trying to apply pressure to a wound on Cassia’s leg. Dani and Jag scrambled out of the lift to join Cruz, who was already at her side and pushing Zadria out of his way.
Dani hurried and closed the bay door as the lift rattled against it. It sealed just in time as another explosion hit the space station, shearing away a section of the hangar. The overtaxed atmospheric shield flickered and went out. Dani ran back to Cruz and the others. Jag had fetched his medical kit, and Cruz was working on the wound in an effort to stop the bleeding.
Cassia was ghost-white, and her eyes fluttered. She lifted a hand toward Cruz’s face. He reached for her cheek and caressed it with one hand, leaving a stark smear of red against her pale skin. Her eyes rolled back into her head and her hand fell as he returned his attention to the wound.
“Z, stay here with Cruz and do whatever he says. Jag, you’re with me. We have to get out of here.” Dani hated leaving the docking bay, but her medical knowledge was minimal at best and she knew she wouldn’t be much help. Instead, she’d focus on what she could do, which was getting them out of the space station before it was completely destroyed and they lost their window of escape.
“Howard,” Dani said into the comm as she ran toward the bridge. “We’re getting the hell out of here. How’s it coming?”
“Almost finished,” he grunted in response.
Dani quickly slid into the captain’s chair and ran through her preflight checks faster than she ever had before. Just as she was finishing up, Jag made it to his seat. “You doing okay over there? How’s the bite?”
“Don’t worry about me. I’m fine,” he replied as he pulled the weapons relay down. “Let’s do this. Shields are at full power.”
Dani fired up the engines and turned Osirion to fly out of the docking bay when it was struck by another hit. The atmospheric shield flickered before completely shutting down. A secondary explosion caused a shower of debris against Osirion’s hull. Dani cringed and ran a scan of the ship to detect any significant damage as she crept past chunks of shredded space station and far too many bodies to count. A pang of guilt hit her in the stomach.
“You couldn’t have saved them,” Jag stated as if he read her mind.
Outside of the space station was a mess of Vaerian fighters and the rag-tag fleet of pirate ships. Osrion’s shield absorbed blast after blast as Dani attempted to navigate safely through the volley.
“Shields are dropping fast,” Jag alerted her.
Dani caught sight of Talon’s ship as it attacked the destroyer, and she fumbled to hit the buttons to hail him.
“A little busy,” he said as he popped up on the screen.
“I’d love to help you out, but we have to get ou
t of here. One of your men shot Cassia on our way out. It’s bad. We need to get somewhere safe.”
“I understand,” he replied with a wrinkled forehead, seeming genuinely concerned. “I’m transmitting you our rendezvous coordinates and a time. You get your girl patched up.”
Talon blipped off the screen before Dani could respond.
“Shields are at thirteen percent, and weapons are dropping too. I can’t keep them off of us much longer. There’s just too many.”
Dani turned Osirion away from the battle and toward open space. She pushed the engines, but a handful of fighters followed. Jag continued to fire at them as Dani reached out to Howard once more. “Howard, update?”
“Done! Just finished.”
“Great, now get to the loading bay and help Cruz.”
“The loading bay?”
“Just go.” She couldn’t bring herself to tell him over the comm.
“I’m going to jump,” Dani advised Jag as she prepared the system.
“It’s about bloody time,” he sneered as his attack took out another of the fighters.
Everything on Dani’s screen looked good, but when she entered the jump command, nothing happened. She tried again.
“What’s taking so long?” Jag asked as another fighter exploded just above them.
“It’s not working.” Dani hit the console and tried again. “Howard, it’s not working.”
“Shit. I’m on my way back.”
“Shields are at five percent,” Jag said at the same time the alarm went off.
“Scanning for wormholes,” Dani said, doing the only other thing she could think of that would get them far enough away from the Vaerians.
“Normally I’d say you’re crazy, but...” Jag trailed off as he took out another fighter. “Two to go.”
“Found one.” The wormhole’s coordinates popped up on her screen. It was close. Dani guided Osirion toward the coordinates. “Keep us safe until we can get there.”
“Doing my best,” Jag grunted as one of the fighters evaded his attack.
The wormhole came into view, but Dani didn’t like the looks of it. The mouth was more crescent-shaped, like it was starting to collapse in on itself. She squinted at it, then looked at the sensors again. She didn’t have a lot of options without a functioning jump drive.
“Try now,” Howard said through the comm.
Relieved, Dani entered the command, the ship jolting a bit but still not jumping. She tried again. This time the fighters next to Osirion blinked away and distant stars blurred somewhat before coming back into focus. The short hop brought them a lot closer to the wormhole, and the fighters were now quite some distance behind Osirion, but Dani still contemplated their options.
“Howard, it’s still not working.”
Howard muttered a series of profanities, and then Dani heard what sounded like the clanging of metal on metal.
Dani quickly evaluated their situation once more. The fact remained that they were still in the Dead Zone and Dani wasn’t sure if Cruz was able to provide the level of medical attention Cassia needed.
“Jag,” Dani started, “what do you think?”
“I think we outran the fighters,” he answered.
“About the wormhole.”
“I think if we don’t get out of this stretch of space, then we’re going to lose Cassia.” He then added, mumbling, “If we haven’t already.”
“So we’re on the same page. I’m going for it.”
“Let’s just hope there’s no space goo in this one.”
With a reassuring nod from Jag, Dani continued to gun for the wormhole. The shape hadn’t changed since she first saw it, so that was encouraging at least. She just hoped it was stable enough to get them safely through to the other side—though, even if it wasn’t, there was no information on what happened to ships inside during a wormhole collapse.
“Brace yourselves,” Dani announced over the comm before angling Osirion to fit into the narrow opening.
As Osirion slipped into the wormhole, the familiar dense, white fog surrounded them. Dani squinted ahead but was unable to make out the shape of any potential dangers as they barreled through the narrow tunnel. Though, even if the visibility was better, there wasn’t much room to maneuver around any obstacles.
She quickly activated Osirion’s proximity sensors and displayed the scans on the holographic display at the center of the bridge. The increasingly narrow wormhole seemed to be clear of debris for the moment, though she hoped that if they did pick up anything, they’d do so with enough time for her to react.
With a deep breath, Dani refocused her attention to watch both the projection and the main screen to get a feel for the time delay of what the sensors were picking up and processing in relation to how fast they were traveling. The delay was greater than she would have liked, but it was better than flying blind.
Then, Osirion’s aft sensors picked up something peculiar. Behind them, a force of great energy grew and alarms sounded.
“Jag, put up the aft camera on half,” Dani ordered. She wanted to get eyes on what was happening behind them.
As he did, Dani immediately realized what was happening. There, through the white fog, a blackness collapsed in on itself. “The wormhole, it’s collapsing. Divert power from weapons to the engines.”
Jag did as she ordered, giving them a bit of a boost to accelerate along their path. It wasn’t much, but she hoped it was enough to keep them ahead of the collapse.
The proximity sensor sounded an alarm, and a fraction of a second later, Osirion collided with a small asteroid about ten feet in diameter. The hit rocked the ship within the tunnel, but Dani managed to maintain control. “What are we looking at for damage?”
“Looks superficial,” Jag replied as he accessed a different screen. “Running scans now to ensure we’re not venting atmosphere.”
Dani focused her attention on the proximity sensors once more. The increase in speed rendered them nearly useless, but Dani didn’t want to slow down due to the encroaching darkness behind them. Instead, she reached out with her senses and refocused once more. She needed to keep her crew alive and her ship intact. There were too many questions left to answer and too many things to do for her to let them all die now.
Thankfully, the fog began to thin ahead. The scanners confirmed Dani’s hopes that the end of the wormhole was close. Dani bit her lip and pushed the engines a little further, Osirion emerging intact from the wormhole in a mad dash for safety. Once out of the wormhole, Dani slowed the ship to a crawl.
“Running Cruz’s navigation program,” she announced as she sat back in her chair with a sigh.
“I’ll be right back,” Jag said as he pulled himself to his feet and limped out of the bridge.
Dani wanted to check on Cassia, but she couldn’t bring herself to ask Cruz or Zadria how things were going. There was just so much blood. Her mind flashed back to her mother’s disappearance, and she shook her head, trying to rid the image from her thoughts, but was unsuccessful. Dani’s stomach turned as she couldn’t manage to escape the scene, and she turned and vomited into the trash receptacle anchored beneath her console.
She lingered a moment, folded over on her lap with her head between her knees, and took several deep breaths before muttering to herself, “Pull it together, Dani.”
After the queasiness passed, she pushed herself back up into a sitting position and caught sight of their estimated location, which was now presented prominently on the holographic display.
“What the hell?” Dani mumbled as the display, once again, showed the coordinates of S802-P825-C1106-66d. She reset the display and tried again, S802-P825-C1106-66d appearing on the holographic display once more. Dani wrinkled her nose at the device and stared at it a moment before looking up at the bridge’s display screen.
The reality of their location took a moment to sink in, but with the familiarity of the planets, and the insistence of the holographic display, Dani realized there wasn’t
a glitch with the system. The wormhole had brought them to the place where her father had died.
Chapter 8
Dani approached the floor-to-ceiling display in awe. She had never intended to come back to this place, not after her one and only visit years ago brought her to a debris-filled star system. Seeing the shattered remnants of her father’s ship drifting aimlessly through space had haunted her dreams for years. She had gone to find closure, and instead had ripped open a wound that refused to heal.
Now the debris had been cleared out. No doubt collected by pirates and the like, with whatever was left over drifting through space to distant star systems. Still, it felt surreal. She wasn’t sure how long she stood there, searching through the dark of space for any sign that her father gave his life for this star system. It was a sobering experience for Dani. The system was quiet now, almost like the nightmare had never happened. Yet she knew it did.
The tale of his sacrifice, of his death, was widely known throughout the GC. Though, like anything else, details changed from telling to telling. Dani was unaware of the exact chain of events. She knew his ship, the Anchorage, was completely destroyed, which left little evidence of how it happened.
Most of the stories came from the survivors themselves. They said that the Anchorage was significantly damaged. They escaped the battle to attempt an evacuation, but before everyone was off of the ship, there was an explosion. Some died; fewer survived.
Since the incident, anyone who had managed to survive had gone into hiding, aside from Patrick. Dani felt anger surge through her being. She felt that Patrick should have never left her father. She was not surprised that her father insisted that others evacuate before him, but still, Patrick should have ensured her father made it to safety, too.
Dani was finally snapped out of her trance when an alarm went off at Jag’s station. Thankful for the distraction, she made her way to his seat and looked at the console. A tiny atmospheric leak was detected in her quarters. Dani quickly sealed her quarters and entered the override into the system that prevented anyone other than herself from opening the door to her room. She then focused her attention on the rest of the ship to ensure there were no secondary leaks.
The Complete First Season - Episodes 1-5 Page 35
