by AJ Super
“Weapons’ system is offline, correct?”
“Affirmative.”
“Why is it offline?”
Silence.
Nyx grinned. Finally, she had something she could tell her father. She could prove to him that she was smart and savvy, and that she was worthy of a ship’s command. Swabbie duty would be a thing of the past. If she brought this news to her father, she would have her choice of ranks. She could even save the Thanatos from being scrapped for a little longer, maybe even captain her instead of the Medusa. She could let Kai and Malcam fight over the Medusa. The Thanatos could stay in the sky for just a little bit longer.
She stood and went to the comm at her door. She punched it, dialing the command deck. Kai should be on duty still. Maybe she could get him to come to her quarters to discuss a strategy to convince her father to reconsider scrapping the Thanatos now that she knew its secret.
“Command deck,” the First Communications Officer’s voice resounded through Nyx’s quarters. “State your business.”
“I need to talk to the acting captain. Kai. I need to talk to Kai. This is the acting ExO.”
“ExO Nyx Marcus, this is the acting captain.” Kai took over the channel. “Get ton cul to the deck. We have a problem. I need you here now. Run.”
Nyx ran the length of the corridors to the bridge. Her arms bristled with gooseflesh as the hip-hugging maroon jumpsuit’s arms whispered around her waist. She broke into a cold sweat as she sped towards the bridge, the lightweight white undertank doing little to keep her warm in the tepid air. If they needed to relay a long-range message, they could do it through the Medusa. There were still problems with the comms; she knew that. She didn’t understand the rush.
At least this time there was sufficient gravity in the cooly-lit passageway as she ran through it. She burst onto the deck, breathless. Kai met her at the door and put his hot hands on her bare shoulders. He drew her close to him and stared at her with concern. His deep umber eyes bespoke a sadness she couldn’t place.
She patted his hand. “I came quickly. But running for the comms array or the weapons systems…”
Kai shook his head. “It’s not any of that. We don’t have a lot of time.” He glanced to the view-screen. “I have to tell you something. It’s about your father.”
Nyx gulped the air. “I have something to tell you, too. We can’t scrap the Thanatos.”
Kai stilled. “What? Why?”
“The Star. I’ve found the Star of Erebus.” She gulped and took a chance. She needed to get over to the Medusa and talk with her father. Kai could get her there quicker. “It’s on board. I think it’s been installed somehow.” Nyx grabbed Kai’s hands, holding them tightly. “We’ve never been sure what this thing looks like. But I think that Matthews put it on the ship. The ship might actually be the weapon.” She couldn’t believe what she was saying. Captain Matthews had made the Thanatos itself into the Star of Erebus, a planet-killer. Then he had destroyed the ability for any other ship to do the same. She whispered, “Captain Matthews installed the Star of Erebus into the aft hull. The weapons’ system is offline, right? I would bet it’s there. Probably utilizing the manual override somehow. We are sitting in the Star itself.”
He gripped her hands and searched her eyes. Nyx registered Kai’s panicked face. His lips pursed. “Proof?”
She bit her cheek. She didn’t have solid proof. Just a really good hunch and a working Sia. “I fixed Sia.”
Kai eyed her. “Do you know for sure? Do you know how to activate it?”
Nyx looked down at her loosely tied boots and shook her head. She had no idea how to turn it on, what its functions were, or how to access those functions. Nothing, she knew nothing. She should have gotten more information from Sia, or even Matthews, before she contacted Kai. She had jumped the gun.
“Damn. And we can’t get our weapons’ system running in time.”
“In time for what?”
The view-screen flickered on. Malcam’s face loomed. He leered at Kai, red with anger. and his dirty-blond, greased hair poking around everywhere.
Kai mouthed silently, “Mutiny.”
5
Nyx squeezed her jaw. An uprising on the Medusa meant her father’s and Kai’s control was less than she estimated. Kai’s influence probably only extended to the people he brought with him on the Thanatos, and the quiet they experienced was just the calm before a storm.
“Did you make a decision, ExO?” Malcam taunted. “Do you plan on surrendering, or will we be boarding the Thanatos by force?”
Kai must have had notice and shut down the docking ramp between the ships before Malcam could board the Thanatos. Nyx’s fists tightened, leaving small crescents in the palms of her hands. There would still be people loyal to her father and Kai over on the Medusa, and Malcam’s people wouldn’t treat them kindly if they spoke up.
Kai stood silently on the deck, shoulders rigid. “You know the command structure, Malcam. If something happens to Captain Xaoc, command goes to me.”
Malcam’s laughter roared across the command deck. “Your highness thinks that he has power left? Now that the old man is gone, only the strong rise.” Malcam’s taunts were meant to goad Kai into a fight, and she could tell by the tension in Kai’s shoulders that it was working.
Malcam leaned forward. “You and I know that you don’t deserve this post. After what you did, even if Nyxie doesn’t remember any more. Only that cold-hearted, old emmerdeur could forgive that. He gave you a way to pay him back too, and you wouldn’t take it.” He shrugged, face darkening. “Not that I care about that salope mother of hers dying. Her crimes warranted execution. All the same, what would Nyx think if she knew the truth?”
Nyx squinted, unsure. “What are you talking about? What don’t I remember? And where is my father? I want to speak to him.”
Kai’s shoulders squared to the screen. “Malcam. Not another word,” he growled, darkness peeling off of every syllable.
Nyx searched the faces of the command deck crew, their set jaws and wide eyes betraying fear and anger. They were a motley collection of personnel. People who followed Kai, not Malcam, and they were mostly Medusa’s secondary crew. She walked to the nearest console and keyed in a silent yellow emergency alert with a narrow-wave message to the crew quarters and personnel areas of the Thanatos. She wanted them to go armed to the docking ramp where the Medusa and Thanatos were linked and secure it. The few who were assigned to primary crew duties were currently resting and would also be loyal to Kai, but they wouldn’t know what the alert meant until Malcam’s people started shooting at them. Nyx hoped that Malcam hadn’t already sent an advance squad to the gangplank. He wasn’t generally a forward thinker, but in this case, he was probably trying to get ready to blow the doors open.
If her people could get there and lock down the airlock, she could start the uncoupling process without having to blow the thing away with the emergency explosives.
She steadied her shaking fingers. She was doing a lot of hoping lately.
“By rights, the Medusa and her crew is mine, Malcam. You know that,” Kai huffed, puffing up his chest.
Malcam sneered at Kai. “But you’re not here, and I’m in command. It’s not my fault the captain slipped and fell out of an airlock while you were gone.”
Nyx paused, hand hovering above her console. Did she hear Malcam right?
Kai turned to her.
Malcam’s cerulean gaze crossed from Kai to where Nyx was standing. “Did you not get a chance to tell her?”
“Malcam,” Kai warned.
Nyx sank next to the console. Her breath stuttered. Her father…was gone? He couldn’t be. He was the last of her blood. The last of her family. Now he was floating in the cold black of space. Dead.
“That’s the way the Medusa works, isn’t it? The strong rise to the top. The weak end up in the black. That’s the way it’s always been. And frankly, his decision to elevate you above me, and to give that princess of his rank
after the debacle over the Star—that was weakness. You don’t show weakness on this ship.” Malcam ground his teeth. “Now, do you surrender? Or do we fight this one out? Please say the latter. I’m itching for a fight.” He snickered.
A lump formed in Nyx’s throat that she couldn’t swallow. Tears burned her eyes. Her father. He may not have been the good guy of her story, but there were quiet nights playing chess, bouncing red balls in his office when she was a child, and many late dinners together so the crew wouldn’t know. The tears shattered down her cheeks into tiny sobs.
Malcam had taken advantage of Kai having most of his loyal people on the Thanatos. She shuddered. The people left on the Medusa who supported Kai and her father would be executed. Malcam had enough supporters to overturn her father, who was, if not fair, at least seen as just according to traditions, except when it came to her.
Her heart threatened to beat from her chest. Nyx didn’t even get the chance to tell him about the Star or prove that she was smart enough and worthy to receive the ExO rank. She sucked her breath in fits. Her father was in the black. She stood up and faced the video screen. “Fils de pute. I’m going to kill you, Malcam.” The words bubbled from her gut and rumbled in her chest. If she ever came face-to-face with him again, she would end him.
Malcam smiled, but there was a flash of something. Sadness? So fleeting, Nyx thought she imagined it.
The world echoed around Nyx. “I will kill you and take back my father’s ship, Malcam.”
“Cut the feed.” Kai paused. “Are our people clear?” His voice reverberated.
“Yes, sir.”
“Shut the door and blow the airlock! Get this boat uncoupled from the Medusa, now!” he commanded. “Immediate evasive maneuvers. Let’s see if Malcam is even organized enough over there to start some kind of offensive yet. And get those weapons up.”
The black tore at her, slowing the movement of the people in the ship, muffling the sounds of the crew. She was in her own personal singularity, one made of grief and regret. She wanted to disappear, to become one with the darkness enveloping her.
“Get me those jump space coordinates, now! Where are my weapons?!” Kai echoed.
Nyx rubbed her hands, shaky. She had to do something. She couldn’t just melt into space and become nothing. Her father wouldn’t let her if he was here. She punched the console in front of her. The jump space coordinates scrolled through her screen. There. There was a moon in dark space. A good hiding spot. She programmed them into the drive. “Jump space coordinates set.”
The door behind her swished open.
The Sia android walked down the second level ramp to her designated console by the captain’s chair.
Kai raised a hand and opened his mouth to confirm.
Sia interrupted, “External source code detected in jump space drive code. Search and eradicate.”
“Belay the jump space order. Continue evasive maneuvers. Have they come to bear on us?”
Nyx’s heart stopped, and she thumbed through the source code flying across her screen as Sia searched it. Thousands of lines, there’s no way she would have found it on her own. Sia had saved them from another jump into a black hole or a sun. And Kai stopped her from executing the jump space drive. He was fast on his feet as a captain. Nyx envied that.
“Not to bear yet, sir,” the Navigation Specialist, a young, amber-skinned man with a thick, Latin American Continental Federation accent. “No. Here they come. Their weapons are hot.”
There had to be something she could do. Waving a hand across her console to clear the code Sia was cleaning up, Nyx brought up the weapons’ system. She keyed through the commands. With every command that she pressed, her console lit up bright red. Arrêtez! Attention! Système verouillé! flashed across the screen.
“Tais-toi! Arrête d’étre aussi chiante, putain de console! Why are you being so picky? Just take a Stars’ damned command!” Nyx pounded on her console.
“Shields to full on the aft, Emlyn.” Kai leaned over Emlyn Rice, the freckled Weapons Specialist’s, console, then turned to the Navigation Specialist as the ship shuddered. “What kind of maneuvers are those, Raphael?” he barked at the man, then glimpsed Sia at her console. He pivoted to Nyx and waved a hand at the android. “You’ve been fixing this pile for how long now?”
Nyx grimaced. “Less than a week. But if we had popped into jump space again, we would have probably run into another singularity thanks to Malcam’s errant code, so thank me for at least that.”
Kai closed his eyes and shook his head. “I suppose. But at least he wouldn’t be chasing us with his guns up notre trouduc.”
“Three incoming torpedoes,” Weapons Specialist Emlyn announced brightly.
The ship jolted as the gravity generators compensated for the explosion against the shields. The ship jerked again and again at two more impacts.
“Shields holding at seventy-eight percent,” Emlyn chirped.
“Come on, Raphael. The Thanatos can maneuver better than the Medusa. Can we try not to get hit next time?” Kai spat.
“Three more incoming torpedoes,” Emlyn announced again.
Nyx swallowed. She couldn’t even get the weapons’ system up and running. How was she supposed to captain a ship? How was she supposed to be an ExO? Everything indicated the system needed a hard reboot from the manual system on the hull. Which meant EVA. And they had no time for that right now.
“Evasive maneuvers, Raphael. Let’s do better,” Kai commanded as the man flipped his black ponytail over his shoulder and leaned into his console.
The ship jolted with the impact. Nyx gripped her console as the gravity generators adjusted. Only one torpedo had hit the shields.
“Shields down to sixty-three percent and three more incoming torpedoes. Measuring radioactivity from the incoming. Projections say one will destroy shields, the rest will destroy the ship.” Emlyn’s face scrunched, worried.
Kai clenched his jaw. “Thank you, Specialist. Then our evasive maneuvering better be extra great, Raphael.” He put his hand on the man’s chair.
“Aye, captain,” the Navigation Specialist ground out.
Kai turned to the android. “Where’s my jump space drive, android?”
“Ninety-nine percent clear. Code reboot in cinq. Quatre.”
“First torpedo hit in cinq. Quatre. Trois.” The freckled Weapons Specialist shivered.
“Brace!” Kai called.
Nyx held onto the console for the impact.
“Reboot successful,” the android intoned through the renting of the shields.
The next two torpedoes would be the end of the Thanatos and the crew. There wasn’t anything more to do. No way to fight back. She would join her father. Nyx closed her eyes. It was too bad. The Thanatos was a great ship and the Star would be a loss. She looked across the bridge to Kai. Her heart pounded. This would be the end of her flying in a pirate ship. Her father would be happy, at least. She found the Star of Erebus, and now it would be destroyed. In death he would have his prize. Her eyes burned, as she wiped at them with the back of her hand. Nyx only wished Kai could hold her hand. She wanted a last moment of warmth, of comfort with the man she grew up with. The last of her family.
Kai mouthed and smiled at Nyx, “Zéro.”
The black would have her after all.
She let her shoulders fall, relaxed.
A bright light illuminated the bridge, blinding Nyx. She covered her eyes.
The light faded away. She expected burning pain, then nothing, oblivion. But she was still standing on the deck of the Thanatos. She was alive.
The rest of the crew rubbed their eyes.
Kai stood staring at Nyx. He gripped the back of the captain’s chair. “For the love of the Seven. Jump us out of here.”
Nyx pressed the jump coordinates and engaged the jump engines.
With a whir, and a slight pressure as the gravity generators adjusted to the press of jump space, the ship jumped into the vast black of folded space.<
br />
Kai looked startled. “What just happened? We shouldn’t be alive.”
“I think… ” Nyx started, “I think the Star saved us.”
6
Nyx gripped the edge of her console as she stood waiting in the silence of the softly lit, eerily quiet command deck. Her forehead sticky with perspiration, she ran the back of her hand across her brow.
The Star had to be what had saved them. It was the only explanation.
Her gaze flashed across the information scrolling across the main view-screen in red. Fatal errors scrolled through the weapons system—a weapons system that none of the crew could access since it was now, mysteriously, offline. Everyone stood dazed as the black flew by on their console displays. She keyed up access to the large view-screen and opened a panorama to the soft whirring of the black of folded space that passed by the ship, a comforting sight proving they were still alive. There was no need for the entire crew to see the tampered information on the weapons system. They didn’t need to know anything other than they were saved.
They were still alive.
“What in the Seven Stars just happened?” Kai swore under his breath.
He must not have been paying attention to the readouts on the main screen. The rest of the crew probably hadn’t been either. They were all in shock. Being alive was a shock.
“The Star saved us?” Nyx opened her mouth to answer, but Kai held up his hand. “You’re telling me that a weapon had the forethought to blast those torpedoes out of the sky? I don’t buy it.” He looked around the deck at the wide-eyed crew. “Can anybody give me a report? Weapons? Shields? Jump drive? Sia? Anything?” He flopped into the black leather captain’s chair and slammed his hand down, barely containing his shaking.
Nyx pulled up the weapons readouts on her display.
“Pulling out of jump space. Now,” Navigation Specialist Raphael intoned.
Nyx looked at the lights on her console, but could barely see it through unshed tears. She rubbed her eyes, still in disbelief. Her father was in the black. He always said he was free as long as he was flying. He was a part of it now, floating frozen for eternity.
