“Hey?” Ray looked around, puzzled. “Hey,” he shouted, but there was no answer.
SKIP OF A BEAT
“So, how did you end up in the Brotherhood?” Elaine asked, taking small bites from her golden apple, sitting comfortably in the gunship's mess hall. “Gods, these are good.”
Eras smiled. “We have farming grounds seeded on the other side of the mountain formation. The soil there is rich and fertile.” He reached for an apple, carefully cutting it into four pieces. “Brother Cavil, would you like some?”
The old priest snorted. “Bah! They are good, all right, but nowhere near as juicy and tasteful as my kumats. I cannot wait to reach Bunari. If that boy does not give me an hour to pick some from the planet, Light help me, but I will spank him with a slipper!”
Both Eras and Elaine giggled at the old man’s sudden fury over kumat. “Dad tells me the old man loves those things.”
“I can tell.” Eras popped a slice into his mouth. “I was born there, deep inside that cavern. This is actually my first time off my planet.”
“Wow,” Elaine’s brows rose. “You’re taking it awfully calmly. It was a really big deal for me when I first boarded a space ship.”
“Do not get me wrong, Elaine. I am sure I will see many exciting things that will enhance my understanding of the universe. I simply enjoy life as it is.” He smiled, showing his white teeth and making his crooked nose more prominent. The boy was nowhere near handsome, but he had a certain charm, an aura of joy.
Elaine’s face fell. “I’m truly sorry about your injuries. What they did to you—”
“It is all right, Elaine. It is part of our tradition. It may seem strange and cruel to you, but it is what makes us who we are.”
“Who are you really, boy?” Brother Cavil asked, folding his arms. “You are religious zealots, but we have you—a boy with good manners, an interest in books, and enjoyment of the simple things in life. How could someone like you become a suicide bomber or an assassin?”
Eras put the second slice back on his plate and considered his words. “We do not embrace violent ideas. However, there are times the Supreme Leader was simply left with no alternative than to act, where words became futile.” He played idly with his fruit knife, spinning it slowly on the metal table. “We are an ostracized society. The core world separates us from their systems, ideas, politics, and economics—then wants us to act like their herds. And when we step up and act outside of their ethics domain, they label us as terrorists. Do you know how many people died out on the fringes because the Consortium wanted a new mining field in the Kessra asteroid belt? Those asteroids were the water source for two small planets nearby. But their lives were not valuable enough for the sustainability of the Core Worlds’ luxury and consumption. Both those planets’ inhabitants are now dead because of the drought. Do you know how many times the Consortium used Cosmon Brotherhood as a scapegoat for their own operations?”
“So, you are innocent?” Brother Cavil snorted.
“Not really, no.”
Elaine suddenly felt cold. The air in the room chilled, and Brother Cavil was buried deep in thought. “Violence is not an answer.”
“True.” Eras nodded. “Therefore, it has to end on both sides.” His face brightened with a smile. “Maybe it will start with us. The Lohil is the bringer of change. Maybe he will change this corruption for good. Maybe he will bring a new order to the galaxy.”
Elaine sighed. “Amen to that, brother.”
Eras knit his brows, not understanding Elaine but Brother Cavil explained. “She is still getting used to the idea of Raymond being this holy figure, son. We all are, and I am guessing even Raymond himself is still baffled.”
The young eremite smiled, “I understand. We had teachings about the Lohil and his line. The Supreme Leader told us a great many things about their history.”
“Their history? You knew he was not human?” Now it was Elaine’s turn to be surprised.
“Yes. We all knew. The Supreme Leader announced his true identity when I was but a small child. He told us about the war: about the Architects, the Devourer, and the Lohil. We are a small part of a grand design, and we each have our roles to play. He is not the original Archibald Cosmon, but he surely is a better one.”
Sarah’s voice over the comms pulled them all from the conversation. “Ladies and gents, we’ll be arriving at Bunari shortly. Buckle up. Elaine, come take over while I check with your—Oh my—”
“What?” Brother Cavil rose from his seat and hastened to the corridor leading to the bridge. “Something has happened to my Bunari!”
“Wait for me.” Elaine was right behind him, waving Eras to follow.
“Oh no… Oh no…” Brother Cavil was weeping by the time they made their way to the bridge. “Oh Light, no…”
Elaine had no words. Even if she did, she wasn’t sure the terms would be enough to describe the scene before them.
They were at Bunari, all right. At least the navigation charts said so, and the small desert moon orbiting the planet was Tarra. Bunari was changed. A dark brown coating covered the earth as if someone cut down all the trees and removed everything but the dirt. They were still far from the planet, but the dark russet coating flowed like a fluid. Like slime. Dense, slow, and yet, aqueous and visible even from this distance.
“My Bunari…” Brother Cavil cried. “My beautiful forest… My animals… My home…” His eyes reddened. “My home…” his voice turned into a whisper, his hand reaching for his chest. His face strained, and his eyes rolled back, falling to the floor like a sack of grain.
“Brother?” Sarah jumped from her seat, rushing to the aid of the man, checking his pulse. “Elaine. Get me the trauma kit!”
“What?” Elaine couldn’t feel her legs, no matter how much she tried to command them to move.
“No pulse, no breathing. He has a cardiac arrest, move!” Sarah ripped Cavil’s robes apart and started CPR. “Staying alive, staying alive—Elaine, I need that defibrillator right now!”
“Yes, yes!” Elaine came back to her senses, rushing into the corridor connecting the bridge to the living area. She found one of the trauma kits attached to the wall and pulled it off. “Here, Sarah!” She almost threw the box at Sarah, who was still pressing madly on the old man’s chest.
“Open that box,” Sarah ordered, and Elaine obeyed. “Pull out that small device with the pads. Eras, lift his chin up by two fingers, tilt his head back, and go find Samir.” The boy nodded, doing as told in panic, and ran out of the bridge. “Girl, I want you to attach those small pads to his chest.”
Elaine blinked, looking at the pads in her hands, terrified. Sarah barked her name, and Elaine clumsily did as asked. “Will this work?”
“If not, he’s dead. Stay clear,” Sarah ordered, reaching for the small device. She pressed the red button on it, and the thing hummed and beeped, sending little shocks to Brother Cavil’s body, causing convulsions.
“Sarah?” Captain Samir dashed into the bridge, Eras behind him. “What can I do?”
“Get that nano-regulator, set it for heart, and place it on his neck.” She checked the defibrillator. “Good, he has a pulse and breathing. Eras, help me turn him. Gently.” They rolled Brother Cavil slowly to his left and bent his leg. Sarah switched the defibrillator to monitor mode, letting the machine observe its patient in silence.
Captain Samir set the tiny device that would deliver the nanobots into Brother Cavil’s bloodstream and attached it to his neck. “Are we doing this right?” he asked. “It’s been a while since I last administered first aid.”
“Well, I did all I know. We have a pulse and breathing. The defibrillator is not interfering with the pulse. That’s something. And if we didn’t do it right, he’s dead already. The nano-bots should repair the damage quick as best as they can.”
Elaine had no idea when she had started crying again or if she had rubbed her eyes, but they were sore from the salt and burning. “Now what?”
Sarah’s face
was grim. “Now we carry him to the infirmary and wait for those tiny machines to fix him up.”
***
Ray opened his eyes. He had to adjust his breathing for a moment as the realization came to him. He was awake. After what he had been shown in the dream, he had to admit he welcomed his reality.
“Ray,” Sarah was near him. “Are you all right? I’ve been trying to wake you for the last twenty minutes.”
He met Sarah’s eyes with his own. They were hard, tired. “What’s it?”
“We’re here. Near Tarra.”
“What’s wrong?”
“Everything.”
TWISTED EYES
No-one on board Deviator wanted to hear the ship computer’s warning message, not when a murderous alien critter army led by a fixated, infested woman was behind them. So, everyone understood her sentiments perfectly when Rebecca cursed at the announcement.
“What do you mean we are still in the same system!” She didn’t realize she was squeezing the armrest, numbing her fingers, which earned another curse under her breath.
“The drive core, it shut itself down before forming the window, ma’am. We are thirty thousand kilometers away from the scrap yard but still within the same solar system.”
“Mr. Jong,” Rebecca tried hard not to shriek and tear down the command chair, “make that drive work. Right. Now.”
Lieutenant Commander Jong’s gulp was audible around the bridge.
“Mr. Ga’an, you heard this?”
The radio flickered. “Yes, Admiral Conway.”
Rebecca gritted her teeth, “Keep the security teams on high alert. I want them to shoot anything that moves and does not wear a uniform. Coordinate with Mr. Stefanu. Get as many men as you need.”
“Yes, Admiral Conway.”
Rebecca unstrapped herself from the command chair, walking back to the main tactical display. If there was any place she felt at home on the bridge, it was near the huge holographic display. It calmed Rebecca to see what was going on around her ship. She hated being blind. She hated a great many things about all this.
They were out of reach of the infested husk’s pod and plasma fire, but now, the husk was on the move. How the creatures moved the ship without igniting the engines or having a command center to steer was beyond Rebecca, and it terrified her. To defeat your enemy, her father would say, you must understand the enemy. The red triangle approached them steadily. Oh, how she hated the color now. The display did not give enough credit to her enemy. It should be a huge ‘avoid me’ mark instead, with exclamations and flashing lights. She wondered if anyone was left alive, hidden somewhere deep down below one of the cargo decks.
“Mr. Jong?” She kept her eyes on that sick, red triangle.
“Engineering is down at the drive core, ma’am. Seems like there is a capacitor issue with this new hull.”
“How long?”
Lieutenant Commander Jong hesitated. “Twenty hours at least with all hands on deck. Realistically, twenty-five.”
Rebecca closed her eyes, sighing. “A day,” she whispered. They would have to run, hide, or fight with the devil for a day before the team could make the superdreadnought jump capable again. “Mr. Ga’an, leave the task force command to Mr. Stefanu and Major Kasper. I need you here on the bridge.”
Ga’an was a tactician like her. His brutal yet effective strategies had won them the battle over Earth. Now, she needed his advice again, her faithful, fierce, alien first officer. By the time Ga’an was back on the bridge, Rebecca was already deep in cartography screens, discussing with the navigation officer.
“Do we have any idea what kind of cloud this is?”
“It is a type J, ma’am. Dense and probably contains large bodies. It may be tricky to maneuver an eight-kilometer-long ship inside the formation.”
“Mr. Ga’an.” She returned his salute as the tall executive officer joined them near the console. “Mr. Belins here has found us a cloud formation on this side of the system. We can make it there in two hours if we push it hard.”
“You are willing to hide the ship?”
“Yes, but there are many unknowns, and I need my XO’s advice.”
Ga’an scratched his angular chin. “We have no way of knowing if the cloud will hide us from their sight.”
Rebecca nodded. She didn’t even want to entertain the idea of being completely blind inside a dense cloud, only to realize their hunters could see right through the fog while her team struggled with radar going haywire.
Ga’an pushed the cartographer aside, as gently as a towering, muscular warrior could, and took over the console controls. He was now as fluent with the technology as any human officer on her ship, and Rebecca realized how much she admired his adaptability. Their technology was inferior to that of Ga’an’s people, of course, which no doubt eased things, but it must have been tricky to work around the crudeness, no matter how easy it was.
“There,” he pointed to a line on the screen, showing the compound analysis of the cloud formation. “This material, what is it?”
“Mr. Jong?” Rebecca turned to her tactical officer.
The one-eyed man brought an information screen from the ship’s database, sending it to the main display. “It is arxenon, a radioactive and highly volatile gas. It was used in earlier tactical warheads, but the military abandoned the project because of the element’s unpredictability.”
“Mm,” was all Ga’an said.
“Care to elaborate, Mr. Ga’an?”
Her first officer pressed a few buttons and switched back to the map display, focusing on the cloud. Blue bubbles scattered through the huge, dense body, spreading thousands and thousands of kilometers throughout the system. “These blue pockets are arxenon formations inside the cloud. They are not tightly knit, so this ship can move between them. They are also perfect traps.”
Rebecca thought she saw Ga’an smile. Of course, he wasn’t. She wasn’t even sure if she had ever seen him smile. “You plan on igniting the bubbles like mines.”
Ga’an nodded. “A precision strike with one of our guns should destabilize the compound, causing an explosion.”
“It may work,” Lieutenant Commander Jong agreed.
“The question is, gentlemen, how big of an explosion that will be. We may very well end up frying ourselves in the process.” Rebecca chewed her lower lip. “Or, if we miss and they return fire, we might find ourselves springing our own trap.”
Both men went silent.
Until now, the cartographer was mute. Lieutenant Belins coughed. “Ma’am, I cannot say to where before we make a thorough analysis, but if these readings are correct, there is possibly a jump hole somewhere here.” He pointed at a spot close to the center of the cloud formation. “Is it stable, where does it lead, or is it big enough are questions we can only answer after we dig through the sensor data.”
“How long?”
The man gestured, calculating in his head. “Three hours, give or take.”
“Do it. If we cannot fix the jump drive, we may align with the hole to make a blind jump.”
“Our pursuer may follow us through,” Ga’an reasoned.
“Only if they know how to align a navigation matrix with an unstable jump hole. Jump gate stations handle that for ships. Jump holes need on the fly engineering and math without a station to stabilize the connection.” Lieutenant Belins smiled. “We can do that.”
“Do it. We cannot ditch every option solely based on what our pursuers can or cannot achieve. They found us so far but putting distance between us gave us time. For now,” Rebecca sent the cartographer away, turning to address Ga’an, “I want you and Mr. Jong to work on that arxenon mines idea of yours. Keep an eye on our pursuer. I want situation updates every fifteen minutes and notify me of the moment something changes.”
Both men saluted, taking the tactical station to work on their assignments, leaving Rebecca alone with her thoughts, staring at the huge map screen, watching the sick red triangle not falling a mi
llimeter behind in its pursuit.
***
“Take us behind that rock,” Rebecca pointed at the huge asteroid spinning lazily at some two hundred kilometers before them. “Any signs of pursuit?”
“Negative, ma’am,” the one-eyed man shook his head. “It is near-impossible for our instruments to have a solid provision, but the radar shows anomalies in the cloud. I am guessing it is the enemy ship.”
“Explain, Mr. Jong.”
Lieutenant Commander Jong scratched his cheek where his eye-patch touched, seemingly unaware of his new habit. It was a constant reminder of the horrors they had endured during the battle of Earth. “I cannot pinpoint anything farther than three hundred kilometers, but we can lock on some of the large asteroid formations and track the immediate area, thanks to their size. The smaller rocks move at a certain speed. If they accelerate or a sudden change in their direction is reported, it would be a fair assumption that they are bumping into old Deviator’s husk.”
Rebecca nodded reluctantly. It was something but still not good enough. “Do we have any fighters or drones?” She walked back to her chair, rubbing her temples, and dropped onto the seat, letting the chair fasten her belt.
Ga’an was behind her. “Not much, I am afraid, Admiral Conway. Other than the handful craft we have since the separation, we found some old fighters collecting dust at hangar five. Secondary Chief Henson said the flight team found some Kaplan class leftovers.”
“Kaplan class? They were decommissioned even before I was a lieutenant.”
“Secondary Chief Henson was not optimistic about their flight capabilities either, Admiral Conway. Her exact words were, ‘If this thing flies, so can I.’ I am guessing it is not a possibility.”
It took a while to realize her first officer had made a joke behind his stone face. She would have liked the gesture herself, but she could only afford a halfhearted smile. The problem was still before them; they were blind and chased by an enemy of devastating strength. “Tell her to keep digging the hangar bays, and maybe the chief will find me something that can fly if we need a wing out there.”
Balance of Power: The Blackened Prophecy Book 2 Page 22
