Free Bird Rising

by Ian J. Malone

  Taylor’s eyes went wide. Please don’t.

  Everyone covered when the stun grenade appeared in Lisa’s hand.

  Boom!

  All five Zuul reeled in anguish, as did Sadeed. This gave Lisa the window she needed to push herself free, while Natona thrust a hand at a nearby console. A split-second later, orange lighting strobed the hangar and a new klaxon sounded.

  “She’s triggered a manual release!” Jack yelled. “We’ve got sixty seconds until our shuttle is ejected from the bay!”

  Natona looked up from the platform. “Valawn, go!”

  “I will not!” Valawn shouted. “Not without you!”

  Seeing the aliens recover, Stan pulled a Firestorm compact he’d hidden in his shirt and opened fire, while Jack retreated into the shuttle’s cargo hold. When the latter returned, he did so with weapons for the others.

  “Cover!” Taylor caught a Firestorm in mid-float then turned it on a Zuul who’d taken aim on Lisa.

  “Thanks,” she said on her way by him.

  “The reporter is in!” Valawn called from the shuttle. “Natona, come on!”

  Still battling her captors, the Rukori female pulled free of one Zuul and shoved another, only to have her wrist grabbed by Coco.

  A single laser bolt deprived the Zuul pilot of his arm. The next one deprived him of his head.

  “Never let it be said I ain’t a man of my word,” Jack muttered with his 14.

  Everyone else turned their fire on the remaining Zuul as Natona made her escape. The Rukori had just cleared the platform and was coasting to the pad toward the shuttle when a lone sound eclipsed the chaos.

  Pop.

  Natona froze, mouth open, and her golden eyes bulged.

  “No!” Valawn screamed. “Natona!”

  His sister never heard him. Instead, she rolled backward, clutching the hole in her chest, and floated away. Meanwhile, Sadeed lowered his rifle and left through the exit.

  “Get him inside!” Taylor shouted. “Quick!”

  Jack grabbed the maddened Rukori and thrust him back as Taylor, Smitty, and Retay fended off the last two Zuul.

  “Time to go, Chief!” Stan yelled, laser bolts pelting the wall behind him.

  Taylor peppered off a volley of return fire then started to backpedal. He’d almost reached the ramp when an earth-shaking kaboom rocked the stargate.

  What in the hell?

  A titanic flash across the viewport, and a lone ship with a trim profile rocketed free of the blast. It wasn’t the Osyrys.

  God in Heaven, what have I done?

  “Chief, look out!” Retay yelped.

  A lone laser bolt sheered through Smitty’s shoulder as she thrust herself in front of her CO. The Aussie screamed.

  “Heads up!” Stan barked.

  Taylor dove forward to catch Smitty, but in doing so, he opened a gap for a Zuul to block his path to the shuttle.

  “Go!” Taylor ordered.

  “But—”

  “I said fargin go, Stan. Now!”

  The sergeant’s expression paled, but he followed the command and retracted the ramp. A moment later, the divider wall between the platform and the docking pad sealed shut, and the shuttle was blown out into space.

  * * * * *

  Part Three

  Chapter 18: Confined

  Taylor jolted awake to the sensation of something hard and cold under his skin. He recoiled, pain shooting through his head like an icepick, and fought through the fogy haze of his mind to recall his final moments of consciousness. He’d been stranded in the stargate’s docking bay with Smitty when the shuttle carrying Jack, Stan, Lisa, and Valawn had been ejected into space. The Krulig had then taken him and Smitty into custody, at which time something solid had struck the back of his skull. Then, blackness.

  Smitty! Taylor staggered to his feet, the rank odors of dust and mold thick in his nose, and squinted through the dim light cast from overhead at his surroundings. He was in a confinement cell. That much was evident. The cold thing from earlier had been the concrete floor under his chest, a decor that, by all appearances, seemed to be the norm throughout the chamber. The only break in the otherwise rock-solid scene came via the iron bars separating Taylor from the stone walk space that led out to the exit.

  “Hey, Smitty.” Taylor listened but heard only the clamor of voices in the distance. “Smitty, you in here?”

  Again, no response.

  “Commander Smith,” Taylor repeated. “Are you present?”

  An audible groan came from one cell over.

  “Smitty, is that you?” Taylor asked.

  “Yu-yeah.” Her voice was groggy and low. Apparently, she’d been knocked out, too. “Where are we?”

  Taylor peered around the grime-covered walls. “Looks like some sort of holdin’ area.”

  “On the stargate?” Smitty asked.

  Taylor spotted sand tracks on the floor and realized there was gravity. “No, I’m thinkin’ they brought us back to Rukoria.”

  Smitty gave another groan, seeming to regain her wits. “How long do you suppose we’ve been here? Hours? Days?”

  Hinges creaked from down the hall, interrupting Taylor’s reply. A few seconds later, two Zuul emerged from the shadows, carrying batons that glowed blue at the ends.

  Yeah, that can’t be good. Taylor stepped back as Zuul one put its hand to the access panel then swung open the cell door. From there, the Zuul entered to face the Human inside.

  “Top of the mornin’, fellas.” Taylor wasn’t sure of the time, but he didn’t figure it mattered. “What can I do for—”

  A jolt of searing pain ripped through Taylor’s side as the baton crackled to life against his ribs. He screamed.

  “Chief!” Smitty pounded her own cell bars. “Come to me, you four-legged sons of bitches! I’ll kill the whole bloody lot of ya!”

  Taylor crumpled to his knees as the baton silenced, his muscles twitching and completely unresponsive. The next sensation he felt was that of the Zuul grabbing him by the shoulders to drag him out, while Smitty continued her protests.

  * * * * *

  Chapter 19: Confessions

  The ensuing three hours were a blur as Taylor faded in and out of consciousness. There was water and heat, followed by ice and freezing cold. There were more baton shocks, followed by the beating from a good old-fashioned blunt-force instrument.

  Such was Taylor’s life for the next five days. At least, that’s how long he thought it’d been. He couldn’t be sure. Even more confusing was the fact that never once in all that time had the Zuul presented him with a question.

  Not even one. Taylor awoke one morning to the cool comfort of his cell floor pressing against his cheek. A week earlier, the same sensation had startled the daylights out of him. Now, it meant solitude, and solitude meant safety.

  Taylor was good with solitude. He shoved himself upright, wiped his matted hair from his face, and found a fresh bathroom bucket waiting beside his cell bars. Small pleasures.

  “Hey Chief?” Smitty’s voice called from the next space over. “You awake over there?”

  Taylor swallowed. “Yeah, Smitty. I’m here.”

  “You all right? From the sound of it, that last walloping you took was a dandy.”

  The aching in Taylor’s extremities said the Aussie was right. “I’m okay. What about you? How’s your shoulder?”

  “You asked me that yesterday,” Smitty said, “and the day before, and the day before that. The shoulder’s fine.”

  Taylor blinked. “Smitty, how long have we been down here?”

  “Today marks day ten, plus or minus a wakeup.”

  Taylor laid his head against the wall to his right. Fargin A, son. “Have the Zuul been comin’ for you, too?”

  “No,” Smitty said. “For whatever reason, you’re the only one they seem to be interested in.”

  Taylor rubbed his face. Lucky me.

  “Do you think Valawn and the others made it back to the badlands?” Smitty a
sked.

  “Man, I sure hope so. I wonder if—” Taylor’s eyes bulged as visions of the Osyrys enveloped in light swept through his mind. “Billy!”

  Smitty’s voice was barely a whisper. “They didn’t make it.”

  “We can’t know that,” Taylor said. “They beat that second warship to the gate. That much we know.”

  Smitty heaved a sigh. “You saw the blast, Chief, just like I did. Trust me, I don’t want to believe it either. The fact is, though, that a flash of that magnitude could only have been generated by a nuclear explosion. That means a reactor. No ship walks away from something like that, not even the Osyrys.”

  Taylor stared at the floor. Most days he liked it when his senior staff could provide perspectives contrary to his own. It helped the decision-making process. Today, however, wasn’t one of those times.

  I don’t want to believe it, either. Taylor considered the undercurrent in Smitty’s tone when she’d said that. Not your business, T. Skip it and move on. “So, how does a nice girl from northeast Australia end up stateside as a sailor in the navy?”

  “That’s quite a long story,” Smitty said.

  “It would appear as if we’ve got time,” Taylor answered.

  Smitty exhaled in her cell. “The short version is my parents were researchers—marine biologists, actually. As kids, we traveled all over the world, until one day my father took a grant from Duke University to study migratory shark patterns off the Carolina coast. I was eleven when we moved to Durham, and had even planned to study marine biology myself. Problem was, in all that moving about, my folks never thought to sock anything aside for their own kids’ education. The navy offered a solution to that.”

  “But you never went to college.” Taylor knew that much from her personnel file.

  “No,” Smitty said. “My mum got sick toward the end of my second tour, and my dad couldn’t afford the nanite treatments. By then, I’d already been approached by Ron Carnegie about joining Steeldriver when I got out. So I took the gig, paid my mum’s med expenses in cash, then ran off into the cosmos to ‘kill aliens, get paid,’ as the expression goes. That’s been my career since.”

  Taylor recalled his own family’s bout with past-due medical bills, as well as his decision to go merc. We all do what we have to, don’t we?

  “Hey, Chief?” Smitty piped up. “Can I ask you something?”

  “Sure, shoot.”

  “Why did Captain Dawson leave the Eagles all those years ago?”

  Taylor’s gaze returned to the floor. Guess we’re goin’ there after all. “I take it Billy never told you that story, huh?”

  “No, sir,” Smitty said. “He did not.”

  The conversation paused when two Rukori females entered the chamber carrying food trays with bread and water. One of them made eye contact with Taylor on her way in.

  “Hi,” he said.

  The girl didn’t answer, nor did she continue looking at him. She put down his tray, slid it through the bars, and scurried out with her companion as quickly as she’d appeared.

  “So, what’ll it be, sir?” Smitty asked once the block door had slammed shut. “You gonna ‘fess up with the story or what?”

  Taylor weighed his options. On one hand, he understood why Billy probably wouldn’t have spoken of these events. It wasn’t anything personal against Smitty. Silence had just been Billy’s way, always.

  At the same time, Taylor also couldn’t forget the laser bolt that Smitty had taken on his behalf. Sorry, brother, but she’s earned it. He cleared his throat. “What do you know about Billy’s life before the navy?”

  Smitty thought about it. “Not much, really. I know he and his family moved to Jax from Lincoln when he was fifteen. After that, he began attending Lee High, which is where he met your brother on the baseball team. The two became friends, and the rest is history.”

  Taylor scratched the beginnings of a full beard on his chin. “I don’t suppose Billy ever mentioned the name Marla McBride, did he?”

  “Can’t say as he did. Why? Was she his girlfriend or something?”

  “Try fiancé.”

  The cell block went quiet.

  “Billy was engaged?” Smitty’s voice trailed up with the question.

  “Is that so hard to believe?”

  “No, it’s just…I guess the captain always struck me as the ‘duty first’ sort. In my experience, guys like that typically don’t have room in their lives for much else, no matter if they’re military, merc, or otherwise.”

  Taylor crossed his legs. “That’s a fair point. Lord knows Billy ain’t what you’d call the sharin’ type.”

  “So, who was she?” Smitty asked. “This would-be Mrs. Dawson?”

  Taylor sighed to the ceiling. “Marla was a local girl, born, bred, and raised in Duval County. She and Billy met during sophomore year at Lee, when her family moved across town into the old Avondale neighborhood. She was smitten with Billy from the jump, almost as much as he was with her.”

  “How did Colonel Van Zant like her?” Smitty asked.

  “Oh, Terry loved her,” Taylor said. “Everybody did. Marla was sweet and fun-lovin’, plus she genuinely seemed to care for Billy. Together, the three of them made for one helluva crew throughout high school, then they kept in touch after Billy and Terry joined the navy. Tick forward another three years or so, and Billy decided the time had come to make things official with a ring.”

  “How long were they engaged?” Smitty asked.

  “Almost five years,” Taylor frowned, “which was part of the problem.”

  A hint of reservation entered Smitty’s tone. “How do you mean?”

  “Had the choice been Marla’s, they’d have been married a month after the proposal,” Taylor said. “By that point, she and Billy had been together almost seven years, and she was ready to settle down. She wanted the house, the dog, and the picket fence. Mostly, though, she wanted a family.”

  “Huh.” Smitty seemed to consider that. “In all the time I’ve known him, the captain never struck me as the anti-kids type.”

  “That’s because he’s not,” Taylor said. “He wasn’t back then, either. He just wanted to change his circumstances a bit before they took that step. You see, Billy’s family didn’t have much growin’ up. His dad was a mechanic, his mom was a waitress, and, while they both loved their kids immensely, neither earned enough in their paychecks to make things like Christmas an event. Billy didn’t want that life for his children or his wife. He wanted them to have nice things, live in a nice house, attend a good school. The Eagles represented his best shot at makin’ those dreams a reality. So he poured everything he had into the company, especially his time.”

  Smitty grunted. “Let me guess. The little missus got tired of sleeping in an empty bed, so she found others to fill it when the captain was away.”

  “Nah, nothin’ like that,” Taylor said. “Marla loved Billy. She always had. At the same time, she was also very Human and extremely lonely.”

  “All right then,” Smitty said. “What happened?”

  Taylor folded his arms. “The Eagles had just come back from fulfillin’ a bigtime contract with the Lumar over in the Jesc Arm. That called for a celebration. So, everybody went out to Cocktail Junction to tie one on and blow off some steam. Everybody, that was, except for Billy.”

  “Where was he?” Smitty asked.

  “He was where Billy always was back then,” Taylor said, “on a transport headed for Karma Station to lock down the company’s next gig. Anyway, Marla got wind that the gang was out, so she got dressed, packed her things, and headed over to Startown to meet up. She had a lot to drink that night. Everyone did.”

  Smitty hesitated with her next question. “Who was it? One of the senior staff?”

  Taylor’s gaze plummeted. “No…It was Terry.”

  “Bloody hell!” Smitty blurted.

  “Yeah,” was all Taylor would say.

  Smitty stewed in silence for a long moment before speaking ag
ain. “I don’t get it. Everyone knew of Terry Van Zant’s reputation with women. But his best friend’s girl? What kind of scumbag does that to someone he’s known since high school?”

  “You’ll get no argument here,” Taylor said. “All I can say is Terry was blackout drunk and stressed as hell when it happened. Same went for Marla. That’s two people with a ton of pent-up issues, a whole lot of history, and a full fifth of River City Blond to pass the night. One thing led to another, and by the time it was over, both parties knew they’d made the biggest mistake of their lives.”

  Smitty grumbled something under her breath. “Please don’t take offense to this, Chief, but if what you’ve said is true, your brother was an evil bastard.”

  Taylor exhaled and reclined against the wall. “Honestly, Smitty? Were Terry still alive to tell this story in person, I’m pretty sure he’d agree with you. But it is what it is.”

  The creak of metal hinges ended the discussion.

  Break time’s over. Taylor got to his feet as the two Zuul from earlier re-entered the cell block. “Time for a fresh round, huh fellas?”

  Zuul one put its hand to the access panel while Zuul two swung open Taylor’s cell door like normal. What happened next, however, wasn’t normal.

  “Lord Prefect Sadeed would like a word with you,” the lead Zuul said. “Move.”

  * * * * *

  Chapter 20: Inquisition

  Once out of his cell, Taylor was escorted down the corridor to a changing area, where he was actually allowed to bathe. After that, he was given new clothes—Rukori rags with makeshift cloth sandals—then shown out into the open, where a blast of pain assaulted his eyes.

  “Let’s go,” the nearest of the two Zuul said.

  Taylor paused long enough to blink through the effects of his first sunlight exposure in ten days then trudged forward in his restraints. He was inside the Krulig compound outside Nyo Colony he’d seen during his first trip down with Billy. The place was bigger than he remembered. At least, that’s the way it felt on the inside. The accommodations were also noticeably better, with larger buildings, spacious quarters, and updated tech throughout. Everything about it was neat, clean, and modern—a stark contrast to the dilapidated filth of the colonies.