Arguing with it was like arguing with the wall.
I spread my lips stiffly over my teeth. But I sure as hell wasn’t smiling.
“Does the Ra’xon still have a doomsday drive?”
“Yes. The doomsday drive can only be accessed by the Captain or anyone elevated to that command.”
I nodded. “When was the doomsday device last updated?”
“When the Ra’xon last had a refit. Approximately 3 years and 42 days ago.”
I smiled, lips spreading easily over my teeth. “And you’re absolutely sure that device has not been touched since then?”
“Doomsday devices cannot be touched, altered, or updated outside of scheduled maintenance.”
“No they can’t,” I agreed.
This was it. This could help me find out exactly what was going on in the Mari Sector.
Doomsday devices weren’t weapons. They were hard drives equipped to be read with even the most simple of technology. They were there in case the worst occurred – civilization as we knew it crumbled. Every flagship of the fleet and even some of the smaller heavy cruisers were equipped with them. Theoretically, even if the Star Forces and the Alliance crumbled, as long as you had at least one of these doomsday drives, you could access the knowledge you would need to restart civilization.
They weren’t updated with every new finding and every new invention. When it came to updating doomsday devices, you did so carefully and only with the utmost attention. If you updated them along with the other hard drives on your ship, you could introduce instabilities or accidentally corrupt the files. The last thing you wanted was for civilization to end and to access a doomsday device only to find a bad write had wiped off all your data.
You also had to be careful not to introduce file corruptions or viruses.
So when it came to updating doomsday devices, they were isolated from the rest of the ship’s mainframe. When the ship came in for serious repairs, a new database would be written, saved on a specialized hard drive, and inserted into the belly of the ship.
Most crew forgot about them. They seemed like a waste of time and space. To your average grunt, the idea that civilization could one day end was a ridiculous fantasy. You could hate what the Star Forces were doing, but at the very least they were keeping the peace. There hadn’t been an existential threat to the galaxy in living memory.
But fortunately for me, doomsday devices still existed. And unfortunately for the Star Forces, there was one on the Ra’xon. As only the strongest ships in the fleet held them, the Star Forces would probably have never worried about one falling into the hands of the resistance.
I had every intention of digging into the Ra’xon’s doomsday drives to find out what it knew about the Mari Sector. The information on that device could not have been updated or wiped by the Enforcement Unit. By now it was bloody clear that they’d altered the galactic wide databases to remove any mention of archaeological sites in the Mari Sector, but I was confident I could find something on the doomsday device.
Happy with my small success, I turned and headed out the door.
I couldn’t be late for my meeting.
Now the Ra’xon was in dry dock and there were no more pending explosions, she’d be safe without me.
…
Ensign Jenks
Now I’d got the idea in my head, I couldn’t get rid of it.
It was unsafe, but I just didn’t care.
I wanted to get to those Omega weapons. I wanted to synthesize as much compound 78 as I could so that I could… so that I could just feel safe. Even if it was only for a while.
Considering most of the crew had emptied from the Ra’xon, this shouldn’t be hard.
What with the fact they’d just dodged an explosion, most of them were too euphoric to notice anything anyway.
It wasn’t hard to find a corridor that was empty.
Ensuring I was completely alone, in a smooth move I whipped off the access panel beside me, ducked inside an access tunnel, and closed the panel with nothing but a flick of my finger.
Now I was inside the tunnel, I was committed. No turning back.
I started crawling forward, fingers and knees indenting against the tough metal grating. Why they’d never bothered to line these cramped tunnels with a softer substance, I didn’t know. The Star Forces, it seemed, were happy to make their crew go through every pain, even if they could have mitigated it easily in the design and fit out.
I clenched my teeth together.
I pushed forward.
I crawled faster and faster, mind set on my task, all other thoughts pushed from my consciousness.
I was exquisitely aware of the pain picking up through my body. The niggling aches, the driving headache.
I hated it all. I just wanted, just needed to feel normal, if only for a few more hours.
I already knew my way through the labyrinthine access tunnels to the target room.
I also knew it would be guarded. Not by people – considering most of the Ra’xon had been evacuated due to the problem with life-support. But there would be sensors running automatically, and they would alert the Captain if anyone went near the Omega weapons.
I had no intention of using the front door though.
I’d already studied the blueprints of the access system on the Ra’xon. Even if they weren’t accurate, I was confident they gave me enough of a picture to make my own path, as it were.
I stopped suddenly, pressing a hand against a wall, half closing my eyes and pressing my teeth hard into my lip.
Then I did it, whipped my hand back, light exploding over my forearm, the wall beside my fingertips suddenly buckling.
It took barely any effort at all.
I pulled off a massive section of wall, with as much effort as an ordinary human folding a leaf of paper in a book.
The section of wall I had opened led to a structural bulkhead. Beyond that structural bulkhead was the room.
The Ra’xon was a massive ship, and considering the speeds she was designed to travel at, ensuring the integrity of the hull was a serious business. There were massive reinforced struts in strategic positions throughout the ship. Some of them were up to 20 meters thick.
The one in front of me, if my quick study of the blueprints was anything to go by, was only a meter and a half thick.
Still, a meter and a half of some of the hardest substances known in the galaxy, was not something to dismiss.
I let both implants activate now, light spreading down in pulses until organized tracks of illumination played down each of my fingers.
I conducted both hands towards the wall of metal before me. I twisted my palms together, and the metal twisted with me. A circle large enough for me to crawl through was gouged right out of the center of the wall.
I didn’t uncork the metal and tug it towards me. Instead I pushed it back, into the cargo room.
I was relatively sure the cargo room was not hermetically sealed. If it was, I would blow out a couple of vents by forcing a cork of metal into the room which would displace a significant volume of air.
Finally I punched my way through to the other side.
There was an enormous clattering as some of the crates in the room were pushed over because a massive disc of metal suddenly slammed into them.
Hopefully it wouldn’t be enough to alert the sensors. Hopefully the Captain had only chosen to hook the sensors up over the doorway, naively believing that it was the only entry to the room.
I crawled through the tunnel I'd just created. It was blisteringly hot, but I didn’t notice – I used my power to protect myself from the heat.
I entered the room.
My heart was beating so hard and fast it felt as if it would tear from my chest and ricochet around the room.
As soon as I locked my gaze on those crates, I shivered. The move was so terribly fast it felt as if it would push me into light speed.
I even staggered forward, reaching out to the first crate I could. It had toppled, over
turning on its side, a few of the Omega guns spreading out on the floor.
I skidded to my knees and grabbed one up. As soon as I pressed it into my chest, I stopped shivering.
I let my eyes shift back, and I breathed.
I breathed.
When the relief passed, I reached behind me and grabbed at the matter synthesizer kit strapped to my back.
With trembling hands, I opened it, and started the process of synthesizing compound 78.
I worked quickly, removing the antimatter from a whole crate of guns.
When I was finished, as an afterthought, I conducted all the other crates in the room until they were neatly piled up along one of the walls once more.
Then I sat there on my haunches, staring around me, aware of the sweat trickling down my brow.
I wasn’t out of breath, just relieved. Soul crushingly relieved.
I even let a few tears trickle down my cheeks.
I’d brought a small med kit with me, and with shaking hands I prepared a dose of compound 78.
I knelt there, electro needle hovering over the center of my chest, eyes blank as I stared around the room at all of those boxes. At all of that salvation. This could be it, couldn’t it? The future I’d been looking for? If I could hold onto the Omega weapons… I could feel normal.
With that thought, I squeezed a few remaining tears from my eyes as I shut them tightly, then stabbed myself in the chest with the electro needle.
As soon as the compound 78 released into my bloodstream, I pitched backwards, head slamming against the floor, body convulsing.
It took almost a minute for the fit to pass, then blessed relief washed in. It felt as if I’d been carried away in the arms of angels. I lay there and breathed, every lungful of air sweeter than the next.
Until finally, finally I could pull myself up.
I had to get out of here, take all the compound 78 I’d synthesized, mop up the scene, and make it back to my quarters before anyone started looking for me.
Removing the evidence would be tricky. I didn’t want to drag all those Omega weapons and an empty crate around. I couldn’t leave them here, either. If the Captain walked in to find this mess, it wouldn’t take long for her to realize she had another telekinetic warrior on board.
My only option was to completely destroy the evidence.
I couldn’t obliterate the matter of the guns. I wasn’t that powerful. Nor could I risk burying them somewhere in a structural support.
There was another option, though.
I stood back, movements smooth, body completely under my control again.
With a smile, I flicked my hair over my ears, then I spread my hands wide.
I gathered all the empty gun casings and the crate together.
Then I started to push them closer together. And closer together. And closer together.
I let power push out from my implants, until they emitted enough light to rival the sun.
I concentrated on condensing the guns and crate into a smaller and smaller point.
It generated enormous heat, toxic gases, and other byproducts.
But I could protect myself and the rest of the room from them easily.
I just concentrated.
I concentrated until what had been a crate was now nothing more than a small lump of metal.
I released my concentration, letting my fingers drop as I took a step backwards.
I breathed.
I waited until the vents in the room dealt with the byproducts of the process. I would need to empty the vent filters when I got to the corridor, in order to leave no trace of what I had done. This was easy.
Especially now… after my dose of precious 78.
I checked that the rest of the crates were neatly stacked, then I walked towards the tunnel I’d punched through the wall.
I was sure the Captain and the rest of the resistance would simply assume that they’d miscounted how many crates were in the cargo bay.
Hopefully they could not even begin to imagine what I’d just done.
I crawled through my tunnel until I reached the access shaft outside. Then I repaired the damage I’d made to the structural supports of the room and corridor.
Now it was only a matter of cleaning out those vent filters.
Oh, and disposing of the small lump that was left of the Omega weapons.
I had it in my hand.
It would not be hard to find a place to stash it.
I smiled. For the first time in what felt like weeks, a genuine grin spread my lips.
I even let out the softest and lightest of laughs.
This was it, the beginning of my life. A normal life.
A normal life.
…
Lieutenant Commander Nathan Shepherd
The meeting went about as well as could be expected.
It seemed that the Captain had given me an impossible task.
Pull together the disparate groups of the resistance? She might as well have told me to turn the universe on its head.
Sure, Lady Argoza seemed to trust me, and with a few exceptions, all the ex-Star Forces members were amenable to my views.
Everyone else, however, saw me as nothing more than a military fly boy who was trying to impose my will.
J’axal was number one amongst my detractors. As soon as I’d mentioned my intel on the Mari Sector, he’d thrown up 1001 reasons why it was useless. To him, we couldn’t allow ourselves to be distracted. We had to keep hitting military targets until the Star Forces finally realized who and what it was dealing with.
The guy might belong to a clan of warriors, but he sure as hell didn’t think like one.
The Star Forces already knew exactly what they were dealing with. We didn’t have to prove how tough we were. This wasn’t a game of posturing. If we wanted to defeat the Alliance, we had to undermine their power. And if they were willing to go to such great lengths to hide whatever was happening in the Mari Sector, I could guarantee it was either a threat to the Alliance, or it was a potential source of power. Incredible power.
I walked away from that meeting about as angry as I could be.
I could see the raw potential of the resistance. We had the Ra’xon, after all. But it wasn’t going to be enough, was it?
There were too many groups who wanted to do different things.
They were pulling each and every way.
The potential of the resistance would never be realized and neither would its true threat to the Alliance, because too many people wanted to do it their way.
I pumped my left fist in and out, feeling the tension snap up the muscles of my arm and into my shoulder.
The Captain had told me it was time to turn in. Though the Ra’xon was going to be retrofitted for the resistance, her crew was still quartered there.
Which was good. My cabin was about the only steady and familiar thing right now.
The damage to the life-support system had been rectified. And the Chief Engineer had promised that she was going to go through the ship centimeter by centimeter to look for any more sabotage. She’d also promised me privately that she was going to shake down the resistance. Part of the calamity with the life-support system had occurred because this base and its environmental controls were not properly maintained.
I let my gaze slice around the hangar bay as I remembered that.
Protocols were in place for a reason, and the resistance needed to start following them.
As if to prove my point, I watched two resistance members trying to move a small hover device designed to shift cargo around.
Either the controls weren’t responding correctly, or it was user error, but they ended up crashing it into the side of the wall.
The floor underneath my feet jolted, and I opened my mouth, ready to shout at them.
I didn’t get the chance.
Out of the corner of my eye I saw none other than Ensign Jenks. She powered towards me.
“Watch out.” Jenks slammed into
my side. She felt like a battering ram, and knocked me out of the way easily.
Before I could protest, I watched a section of scaffolding tear away from the wall and slam down to where I’d been standing. The metal struts popped out of the joints and scattered across the floor.
Jenks had shunted me onto my side, and I watched in pale-faced fright as I realized that scaffolding would undoubtedly have killed me.
Without saying a word, she leaned down and reached a hand out to me. “You okay?”
I accepted her hand and let her pull me up. For a second there, we came face-to-face, eye-to-eye.
That second seemed to spread on and on. Somehow, I picked up every detail of her face. That special hue of her eyes, the fine frown lines around her lips, the pale touch to her cheeks.
“You okay?” she asked again, taking an automatic step away from me to reinstate her personal space.
It took me a moment, but I forced a nod. “Sure, thanks to you.”
She gave a brief nod, then turned to walk away.
I suddenly remembered that our last interaction hadn’t gone well.
I cleared my throat. “Jenks, sorry… I keep prying into your history,” I said, not knowing what I would say until it clumsily fell from my lips.
Strangely enough, this got her to stop. She half turned over her shoulder, locking her wary gaze on me.
She didn’t say anything, and I quickly realized she wanted me to make the next move.
I patted my hands along my trousers, trying to dislodge the sweat that had suddenly built between my fingers.
Before I could say anything, a few resistance members ran up to us to check that we were okay.
As I tersely told them to take better care of their equipment, I saw Jenks slip away.
This time I wasn’t gonna let her go.
I ran across the floor of the hangar bay to catch up with her.
I watched her stiffen as I neared.
“Wait up, I just realized I haven’t checked on you since the life-support incident. How’s your hand?”
I thought she’d continue walking and ignore me. But she didn’t. She turned around and revealed her right hand. She pumped it into a fist, then let the fingers loosen. “It’s fine.”
I nodded, mouth dry for some reason. I pushed my mind into the frantic task of coming up with a question – anything to make her stay.
The Crucible- The Complete Series Page 21
