Dalida: A Scifi Space Opera Adventure

by G. P. Eliot

  “Just get Hank back,” were the last words that Lory said, before her mind flushed with white noise like the roar of an ocean wave–before turning out like a light.

  “Preparing to dock,” said the Wolverine pilot of the shuttle–a big, solid and usually silent sort of man. Jackal liked that in his employees.

  On the shuttle sensors, the image of the Dalida’s smaller, bubble shuttle was matching their spin with perfect precision. The two ships looked like distant cousins in a way, but the Dalida’s shuttle was the smaller, friendlier version of the larger Bulldog class Union shuttle.

  There was a glow of ethereal blue as streams of attracting gravitons were emitted from each ship’s docking ports, and they slowly drew closer and closer…

  “I guess that this is time for us to part ways, Captain Snider…” the Jackal looked down at the man who was still slumped forward over his metal chair.

  “ShclukOuu!” The Captain swore, his words slurred and difficult to understand through the mangled mess that was his mouth.

  “I’m sorry, I didn’t quite catch that?” the Jackal leaned forward and cupped a hand over his ear.

  Hank growled, spitting blood.

  “Ah well, I am sure that your ship has got a medical facility which can put your face back together…” the Jackal said. “Although, I would like to hear your last thoughts on your experience as my guest. Doctor Vaas would call it patient feedback!” the Jackal took out the same small device he had used before to reconstruct the man’s face and punched it not too gently into his cheek.

  The Jackal watched as the miraculous little nano-bots in the serum reknitted the Captain’s lower jaw and mouth. The Jackal left his squashed nose in exactly the way that it was, because really–did he have to do everything himself?

  Hank wasted no time, “I said, Fu—”

  “You really need to learn the importance of obedience, Snider!” the Jackal said with a sigh. He was feeling better now that the stakes had turned. He had gone from having a useless hostage and nothing to show his superiors to about to be in control of two people who would probably crack under the pressure.

  They would tell him where the Dalida was heading, and what the Message really contained.

  That Lory Cox might be a tough cookie, he reasoned. But even if she didn’t crack under his interrogation techniques, he would still have a very valuable prize to wave under the noses of the Union officials. They might even give him an upgrade to his beloved Pequod…

  “There are two types of people in this world, Commander–those who give the orders, and those who take them,” the Jackal said. The killer didn’t realize it, but it was one of the telltale signs to the rest of his Wolverines that he was in a good mood–if he started lecturing.

  “I think you can take a Dhrub Whale, right up the—” Hank hissed as outside, the two shuttles got closer and closer.

  “It’s not people’s fault that they take orders–it is just a factor of their genetic nature,” the Jackal ignored him. “The human race wouldn’t have made it anywhere if we didn’t have rule-takers and rule-makers, right?”

  “Every person should have the right to determine their own fate,” Hank countered.

  “You see? Precisely the sort of claptrap that the Shimmering Path feed you,” the Jackal even chuckled a little. He undid the clasp on his laser pistol, just in case the crew of the Dalida shuttle had any sudden, heroic intentions.

  “It’s nonsense, complete and utter nonsense! The Shimmering Path tell their operatives to run around like trained monkeys, and of course they do it. Rule-takers and rule-makers, you see?” The Jackal said.

  “It doesn’t have to be like that,” Hank continued to argue.

  “Really? Where else do you think that anyone is really, ever, truly free? The Confederacy? Don’t make me laugh. You must surely know as well as I do that as soon as they get the contents of the Message then they’ll turn out just like our beloved Union! Those at the top–the Confederate Elites–will give all the orders to those below…” the Jackal shrugged. “Just as it has always been, and always will be.”

  The mostly-bruised and maimed Captain at his side looked angrily at the floor for a moment, before saying, “But at least–when we win–the Union will fall. You know as well as I do that the Union is a sham. The whole thing is a lie wrapped up in jackboots.”

  The Jackal was surprised at the fervor he heard in Hank’s voice. “I never took you for an idealist, Captain. A serving military man like you yourself…”

  “That was a mistake,” Hank muttered under his breath. “I will never spend one hour serving the Union again. All I ever did was make the Elites richer.”

  The Jackal gave a weary sigh, “I suppose that you are right of course–but that is the way of human nature, is it not? Rule-makers always rise to the top. The question is, my wild Captain,” the Jackal looked down at him sharply, “do you want to be on the side that wins, or one that loses?”

  “If you believe this so much,” Hank tried to scowl with one eye swollen shut. It didn’t really work. “Then why are you still an employee? Why aren’t you up there yourself, making the rules?”

  The Jackal flinched as if slapped, and anger flared in his heart. He found that his hand was rising by his side, before he remembered why the Captain was here in the first place. To get him, the Jackal, closer to his goal.

  “Maybe I don’t want to be at the top. Maybe I like it where I am,” the Jackal said. But even he could hear the resentment in his own voice. There was something to what the Captain said after all, wasn’t there? This disgraceful, unskilled, and undedicated man had managed to put his finger on the very spot that irked the Jackal the most.

  I give the orders, don’t I? The Jackal hissed inside his own head. He was in charge of the most-feared military unit in the entire human galaxy! He could take executive control over any unit under his rank.

  Under his rank, the thought hit him like a barb. The Union powers that be hadn’t seen fit to make him a General or an Admiral or the Military War Marshal yet, had they?

  But people everywhere were terrified of him. Just the sound of his boots as he walked into a room instilled fear into the hearts of all those that knew what he was capable of!

  “Hit a nerve, have I?” Hank was staring at him with his one good eye, a crooked smile plastered on his jaw.

  Thwack! The Jackal gave him one last, good and hard slap, just as the two shuttles settled into dock with a clunk.

  “Get those doors open. I don’t want to see this piece of slime ever again!” the Jackal growled at the Wolverine, who dutifully did so. And there, on the other side of the doors stood the wanted outlaw and dissident called Steed–a General Steed of the Confederate forces–if the Jackal’s intelligence reports were to be believed.

  “I see you at least aren’t stupid enough to pull a gun on me,” the Jackal drawled at the unarmored man, who merely shrugged.

  “What good would it do?” Steed said. “You’ve got a bloody light destroyer sitting out there with weapons locked and armed.”

  “The Confederacy, I see, is recruiting brighter staff than they used to,” the Jackal said, before hitting the release button on Hank’s magnet locks. Instantly, he groaned and slumped to the floor–but he very slowly got to his feet.

  “Nice and slow now, Captain,” the Jackal said. “We really don’t want any sudden surprises, do we?”

  Hank just glared at him.

  “Where’s my presents!” the Jackal’s face lit up in sadistic glee.

  “Right here,” Steed stepped to one side, where professor Serrano was standing before two floating med-beds, each holding an unconscious form.

  The Jackal’s eyes narrowed. “You never said anything about them being sedated…”

  “Call it a precautionary measure,” everyone was surprised with the Professor Serrano response. “We know what you’ll do to them in there, so I dosed them with enough sedatives to at least give them a few hours rest–before the horror begins.�
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  “How noble of you,” the Jackal winced sarcastically. Just like the dissidents. Too soft-hearted. “Get them on board.”

  “Two for one, Jackal–that was the deal,” Steed nodded to the Captain. “At the same time…”

  “Oh, good grief,” the Jackal groaned at their milky, hesitant and over-cautious antics. No wonder the Confederacy was going to lose! But he did as this Steed had suggested, and in just a few seconds the two med-beds and the Captain were transferred to their respective new homes.

  “I hope to never see you again,” the Jackal waved at Hank as the shuttle doors closed.

  “Oh, I plan on seeing you again,” Hank Snider said through his newly-bleeding mouth. “I’m coming back for Lory–you can bet on it!”

  Thunk. The door closed and, at last; the Jackal had what he wanted. But still, the words of Captain Hank Snider still bounced around his mind.

  Was I really just a rule-taker? The Jackal snarled, and told the Wolverine pilot to leave them behind, now!

  21

  “She’s undergone the procedure, and so there’s no way that she’ll be able to lead the Jackal to us…” Hank was only half paying attention to the Professor as he spoke.

  They stood on the Bridge of the Dalida, watching as the colors outside turned into the mesmeric chaos of warp.

  “It’s not the goddam procedure I’m thinking about,” Hank said. A deep rage burned in his heart. It was hard to get his thoughts into their proper order.

  “It’s the fact that Lory is now going to be back there,” he nodded behind them. Back to the Pequod, and its interrogation chambers. He knew fully well just what was going to be happening to Lory, probably right now.

  Pain. Excruciating, unstoppable, pain.

  “I made sure that we gave her both short-release and long-acting pain suppressant medication, Captain,” Serrano said. But his face was shadowed as well with the horror of what might befall their friend.

  “I made sure she had muscle relaxants and anti-inflammatories, and cortical dampers—” he started to explain, but the dark look from Hank cut him off.

  My life for hers. Hank thought to himself. What sort of trade was that? Why? What could he do any better than she could?

  “Captain,” it was Steed at his side. He didn’t make the mistake of saying anything encouraging or putting a reassuring hand on his shoulder. Instead, the military man just looked at him and nodded. It was enough, and it said everything that needed to be said.

  Raising his eyes, Hank saw that Madigan, too, was also standing grim-faced and resolute with that same expression. Sometimes we make hard choices, and we have to live with them in this life, Hank knew the terrible arithmetic of violence all too well.

  A new kind of resolve welled up inside the Captain. He’d fallen into this quest after a life of misadventures. Of being half-jacked out of his mind on battle stims or alcohol. But now, with the loss of Lory, everything had become terrifyingly real.

  “Right then, crew. You have your stations. You know what to do. We’re going to follow this thing through to the end, and we’re going to get that damn Message.” Hank didn’t realize that he was almost echoing the exact same grim sentiments that Lory had made when she had decided to go back for him.

  “How long have we got until all of that pain medication wears off, Professor?” Hank spared a look at the man. He was clearly in no mood for any sort of scientific preamble.

  “Well, uh–I gave enough to put her to sleep for twelve hours…?” Serrano said a little awkwardly. “But, there really is no way to—”

  “That’ll do, Professor.” Hank nodded. “So, we have twelve hours to find the Message. And when we’re done, we’re going to hunt down the Pequod, and we’re going to tear it apart, panel by panel, until we get Lory out of there, understand?”

  “Sir, yes-sir!” His crew chorused, just as the torment of colors and plasma outside of their forward viewing window faded.

  They had arrived at their destination.

  “Bring them in,” the Jackal muttered to the Wolverines who were carrying the limp and lifeless bodies of the two hostages.

  Both of them he recognized, of course–but Lory Cox he had actually worked with. She had been a deep undercover Union agent, according to her file. Masquerading as a Shimmering Path agent and sent to infiltrate the dissidents.

  But from what the Jackal had seen and guessed at what Lory Cox had been up to–he rather doubted that now. The assassin watched as both forms were carried in and slumped into the simple steel chairs of the interrogation room. There was the hiss and clank as the magnet locks automatically slid into place at their ankles and wrists.

  Neither of his hostages made a move.

  “Hmm.” The Jackal looked at both of them, and then slowly drew out his service knife; a large, fat-bladed thing with a carbon-edge blade on one side and a line of serrated sawing teeth on the other. “Eenie, meenie, miney…” he skipped the blade between each of the forms as he guessed which one to start on.

  “—Mo!”

  His dagger was now pointing directly at one of the hostages. It was double agent Ryan. “Bad luck, soldier,” the Jackal leaned forward and, with incredible precision, pulled the tip of the blade across the tip of the man’s cheek. The skin parted, and a line of blood started to roll from the side of his face.

  Ryan flinched, made a sort of grumbling sound, and slumped to one side. The pain didn’t appear to wake him up.

  “Doctor Vaas?” the Jackal said over his shoulder, as the Union doctor stepped forward and presented a medical scanner to the two unconscious hostages.

  “Ah. I see. Cortico-veprin, Neuroprofen, Malafylic Acid…” the Doctor was saying.

  “I don’t speak gobblydegook, Doctor!” the Jackal said irritably. The Dalida had already jumped–probably right to the destination of the Message itself, and here he was, still trying to get the information out of two senseless bodies.

  “They’ve been dosed with high amounts of drugs to keep them under and not feel anything,” the Doctor said, scrolling through the small screen on his scanner. His face brightened. “Oh! But it seems that this one, patient ‘Ryan’ has a lot less in his system than the female.”

  The Jackal glowered at Ryan’s slack face. If looks could kill… “Well, I guess that the first person that I will be talking to will be our dear old agent Ryan,” he shook his head. He knew that Lory would be the more interesting one to question. But, still, patience is a virtue, he told himself. Perhaps it was better this way–he could deal with Ryan quickly, and then really devote his energies to breaking Lory.

  “Doctor? I want you to pump this man full of every stimulant you have. All I need is for him to be able to talk, I don’t care what you have to do to get him there,” the Jackal muttered, and Doctor Vaas clapped his hands together in glee. That was perhaps the best thing that anyone could say to a man like Doctor Vaas.

  22

  “Is that it?” Hank said, looking at the large grey and brown orb that hung in space before them.

  “It does match the Message coordinates,” said Ida from the forward viewing screen.

  “Hey!” Hank heard his personal Ida say. “I’ll be the one to talk with the Captain, thank you very much,” his personal Ida sounded annoyed.

  “Excuse me–but where were you when the Captain was captured? I was the one to tell the crew that he was still alive!” said the ship-Ida who had stayed behind.

  “I was with the, goddam, you harlot,” Hank’s personal Ida spat’

  “Right! That’s enough you two!” Hank clasped his hands to his forehead. “Ida?” He commanded.

  “Yes, boss?” the two exact same Artificial Intelligences said at the same time.

  Ugh. “I want the pair of you to amalgamate your programming, immediately. Integrate each of your memories and turn into ONE personal intelligence for me–because I really cannot handle any more of you two bickering!” Hank said.

  There was a dull bleep from the forward viewing scre
en and the icon of the second Ida disappeared. “Ah. All better now, boss.” The Ida inside of his suit controls said warmly.

  “Finally. Now; what in the blue blazes is going on with that planet?” Hank asked the entire team around him. “Serrano? Check your calculations again, please.”

  “Yes sir,” the Professor’s hands moved over the console board, only to finally pull a blank face. “There’s no mistake, sir. This is the planet that the first part of the decoded message points to.”