Erebus Dawning: A Space Opera Adventure (Seven Stars Saga Book 1)

by AJ Super

  “Stop that,” Nyx said.

  “Yes…”

  She glared.

  “Okay?” Falak flinched.

  “I’ll be right here, if you need me.” She motioned to the antennae rising from the wing, no taller than herself, and as thick as her body. “But you shouldn’t need me.”

  Falak aborted a salute, nodded instead, and stomped over to the gravity generators.

  Nyx input her command codes and opened a panel on the antenna. An electronic screwdriver sat magnetized to the panel. Generally, it was all she ever needed out here. She poked around in the antenna and found a loose connection to the audio transistor. She tightened it, shaking her head. Every time this ship model got attacked or made landfall, these connections needed tightening. The Thanatos really needed to upgrade long-range communications capabilities.

  “How’s it going out there?” Kai’s voice resounded in the quiet.

  Startled, Nyx bobbled her screwdriver. It floated in front of her, spinning in the empty space of the antennae near where she had just tightened the transistor connections. She snatched it before it punctured the transistor.

  Her heart started beating after a long breath. “Thanks for that. I’m finished,” Nyx said. “Just waiting on the kid.”

  “Okay. While you’re waiting, I need you to turn on the weapons system manually.”

  “That’s on the aft dorsal section. That’s a long EVA jump. Even for me.”

  “If anyone can do it, you can,” Kai whispered. “We need those weapons. We still don’t know what exactly saved us from those torpedoes. How it was triggered, anything. We need to be able to defend ourselves.”

  Nyx sighed. It was obvious to her. The Star overrode the manual shut-off, turned on the weapons system, and fired. How exactly, she didn’t know. But Kai was right. They needed to have control of the system to be able to defend themselves. They may be able to find a way to control the Star if the weapons system was functioning, too.

  “Fine. I’ve got it.” She switched her comms over. “You hear that, kid? I’m going up and over. You stay here.”

  “Yes, sir.” Falak raised a hand, signaling from afar.

  Nyx closed the antenna. This would be a leap of faith. She knew the schematics of the ship, knew where the controls for the manual override for the weapons system were supposed to be, but she couldn’t see them from where she was standing. She also had never EVA jumped that far before. She stood from the back edge of the wing and flexed her legs. A running start never hurt anything. Her heart stuttered, and her breath fogged her helmet glass.

  She peeled her feet from the hull as hard and as fast as she could, and at the edge of the wing, she sprang, turning off her gravity boots. Cold sweat beading on her brow, she shot, flying fast, arms by her side. She concentrated on the horizon of the ship as it flew by, at first far away, then sloping toward her as the dorsal section rose to meet her.

  Nyx curled into a ball, her feet underneath her, pointed to the hull of the ship. She clicked a puff of carbon dioxide to slow down. The moon’s white surface glowed too close above her. The black, shining hull was still too far below her. A moment of panic froze her fingers, and her breath caught. She had over-shot the hull, and she was going to drift out into the black.

  Then she felt the tether tug at her back lightly. Inhaling softly, Nyx flexed her fingers. With time to maneuver and a safety cord, she was fine. She wasn’t going to float.

  She clicked the CO2 to angle her descent to the hull, with the weapons’ system manual controls directly below her. A couple more puffs of CO2, and Nyx extended her legs, grav boots on.

  She snapped onto the hull with barely any whiplash. Not bad for her first long EVA jump.

  “Okay, Kai. I’m up here.” Nyx walked to the manual override and popped in her code to open the panel.

  “That was quick. You really are good at this EVA stuff, aren’t you?”

  She snorted and opened the board. She reached for the large switch and paused. “I have a problem. I can’t flip this switch.”

  “What is it now? Did Malcam leave a bomb or something?” Kai grumbled, exasperated.

  Nyx bit her cheek. “That’s exactly what he did.”

  8

  Nyx stared at the small round explosive. It was no bigger than the palm of her hand, but it didn’t need to be any bigger. It only needed to be big enough to take out the weapons system if anyone tried to operate the manual override switch. It would also maim, or kill, the person who flipped the switch, if they weren’t paying attention.

  She tipped her head back, watching the craters and valleys of the moon speed by as she sat back on her haunches.

  No one else was here to do this. They needed the weapons system running when, not if, Malcam tracked them down.

  The moon’s surface gleamed smooth in a vast expanse where a large asteroid had slammed into its surface and created an ocean-sized crater reflecting a waterless glow.

  Nyx glared at the device. A small antenna poked from the side. It should have gone off already. Malcam didn’t know that the weapons system was down. He had planted this so he could take out the guns without doing damage to the ship as they escaped. It was his back-up plan in case Kai wanted to fight and flee. It would send a short-distance communication burst with a location sequence to the Medusa as well. They’d be sitting ducks wherever they hid. There had to be a way to shut off the signal or redirect it, something to keep Malcam at bay for a little while after the explosive went off and the weapons system rebooted. As it was, she could only surmise that the Star had kept the bomb from exploding in the first place. What she didn’t know about the weapon could fill whole volumes. Too bad Matthews was still on the Medusa. He was their best chance at learning the Star’s secrets.

  Nyx poked through the override compartment, pushing aside a corroded receptacle about the size of her thumb hooked into the system with a single hardline and filled with a sparkling gold powder. The receptacle was useless without an output on it, and there was no need for it to be dangling in the override box. She pushed it aside. It probably came unhooked when the explosive was installed. She’d have to think about minor repairs to the manual override later. Once the explosive went off, there would be massive fixes to the system anyway.

  Right now, figuring out a way to deal with the signal the explosive would send was priority. Then, she needed to figure out how to deal with the explosive itself.

  She could perhaps mimic the signal. There wouldn’t be much time to produce a mimicked copy and piggy-back it to the same place, but maybe it would throw Malcam off enough that he’d go to the wrong location. It would give them enough time to jump away.

  It also meant that Nyx would have to set off the bomb, and someone would have to flip the manual override switch on the weapons system separately after the explosion, since she likely would be in no shape to do it.

  “Nyx?” Kai’s voice sounded agitated. “Nyx, are you there? What’s going on?”

  “I’m thinking.”

  “Just leave it. We can’t have you injured.” Kai paused. “Or worse.”

  “We need the weapons system, don’t we?”

  “Not at the cost of your life.”

  “What about the lives of everyone else on this boat? I’m the ExO. I do have a duty to the crew. Don’t I?”

  Kai was silent.

  The blood rushed in Nyx’s ears. He could talk her out of doing this if he asked her one more time, or if he ordered her not to.

  “Do what you need to do, ExO. Seven Stars be with you.”

  She sighed. “Hey, Falak. I need you at the antennae. There’s a console there. It’s small, but it’ll work. I need you to set it to record, replace our current coordinates with something far from here, and transmit as fast as the damn program will let you. When this thing goes boom, there will be a, maybe, two-second lag between the explosion and the transmission of the locater signal. If we’re lucky. I don’t know. I’m not a specialist.”

  “Shoul
dn’t we, um, wait for a specialist?” Falak’s voice trembled.

  “I don’t know if we have one on board.” There was a damned good one on the Medusa. Red, Malcam’s lackey, was the best with things that went boom.

  “Then what channel should I be looking on?” Falak whispered.

  It wouldn’t be a narrow-wave on a specific channel. The device was too small. It would be a broad-wave, and he would be able to snag it and tag it and resend the same way without knowing a specific wave channel. “Broad-wave. It has to be broad-wave.”

  “If we’re lucky. And if we’re lucky, the resulting EMP won’t take out the weapons system completely,” Kai grumbled.

  “If we’re lucky.” Nyx let out a heavy breath. “I’m going to remove it, instead of just flipping the switch and hoping for the best.”

  “Nyx, don’t,” Kai warned. “At least if you flip it you’ll have a small amount of protection from the blast because of the override’s housing.”

  “If I flip the switch, our weapons system will be hosed for good, mon capitaine. I might have a couple seconds to off-load the bomb.”

  “If by off-load, you mean throw, you better throw it far.”

  Nyx’s heart rate quickened. A few seconds to get it away from her wasn’t going to be enough. They both knew it.

  Fingers shaking, she searched the panel for another electronic screwdriver, hoping the last person decided to do the next a favor and leave a handy tool in the switch box. She had no such luck. So much for praying to the Seven Stars—this would be a yank and chuck operation. Nyx didn’t want the thing going off in her gloved hand. She’d have no hand left.

  “Kai. You know anything about these bombs?”

  “We’ve been scrambling to find someone who does. Here she is. Nyx, this is Elizabet.”

  “What does it look like?” A matter-of-fact voice sounded over the comms.

  “Palm-sized. Flat-ish. Round,” Nyx answered. “Magnetized to the side of the casing so that the manual override handle will pop it off.”

  “Sounds like a magnetic grenade. It’ll be triggered by the magnets being disturbed. Bad news is you’ll probably have less than ten seconds to get the explosive away from you once you start moving it.”

  “Good news?”

  “You have more than five seconds. That’s plenty of time to throw it away from you if you keep your head. And you were in comms, so I’m sure you’ve already considered that it’s likely tied to a locator beacon. It’s what I’d do.” There was a tenseness in her voice.

  Nyx grit her teeth. More than five seconds, less than ten. It wasn’t ideal. She stared at the edge of the smooth white crater as it rose into a shadowy mountain range on the moon. Nothing moved on the glittering surface; dark valleys swallowed the light. She could drown in them.

  “Thanks, Elizabet. You’ve been a great help,” she said wryly. Her knowledge hadn’t been that great a help, but it was nice to have a little more of an idea of timeframe, other than the vague couple of seconds she was planning on having. Still, no more than ten seconds to off-load the explosive wasn’t a lot of time. “You set, Falak?” Nyx’s voice cracked.

  “Yes, sir.”

  Nyx had to stop herself from shaking. Her hands trembled.

  “Kai,” she whispered.

  “You don’t have to do this.” His voice quavered over the comms.

  “Someone has to. And I’m the one who’s here.” She set her jaw. “Kai. I should tell you…”

  “I know,” he said.

  Nyx cleared her throat. “You do? That’s good. I’m going to pull the bomb now.”

  She looked down at the round device, flexed her fingers, wrapped her hand around the bomb, and counted under her breath. “Trois. Deux….Un. Pull.” She froze. “Merde! I didn’t pull it. Sorry, false alarm. I feel like I’m going to pee myself. Putain, I’m so scared.” Her hands trembled and legs cramped as she squatted over the palm-sized bomb.

  Kai laughed in the comms. He swallowed audibly. “It’s okay. You have people to save. You can do it. I know you can. Just pull and throw it as hard as you can.”

  Nyx wrapped her fingers around the disc and yanked the bomb. The red light started flashing as she dragged it from its magnetically sealed seat in the switch box. She pulled harder. The light flashed faster.

  The little round bomb snapped into her hand. She swung her arm back and threw it over her head.

  The explosion knocked her over, peeling her gravity boots from the hull of the ship and snapping her head back. Space spun around her, dizzying. She gasped, trying to stay conscious as she whirled through the darkness.

  The moon soared above her as she flew over the dorsal aft section of the ship in a wide arc. Her suit beeped at her, a breach warning. A small tear in her leg vented atmosphere as her systems tried to compensate for the heat and air loss.

  Instinctively, she put her hand over the tear, but the air seeped between her fingers into the void. Her chest tightened, and her throat dried. She would only have minutes to get back to the airlock. The edges of darkness crept into her periphery.

  Something tugged on her back. Her tether had run out of slack.

  The cold crept into her bones. Soon depressurization would start, the ice crystals would form in her skin, and she would be in so much pain she wouldn’t be able to think.

  Her breath came short. The tether was long because of the distance of the EVA jump to the weapons system, and she would have to pull herself in. Then she had to make it back to the airlock from the comms’ array tether point. It would take too much time, too much effort. Even if she used the tiny CO2 jets to help her along, the tank wouldn’t last, and she didn’t have time.

  Her muscles tensed, ready to fight her way back to the Thanatos, the corners of her vision starting to blur. She had to hold on. She grabbed the tether and pulled.

  The air was thin. She would be better off letting the black take her while she slept. Nyx closed her eyes, feeling the ice form around her mouth and lashes. Soon her body would start to swell and bruise. She exhaled hard. Her lungs might not explode if she didn’t have any air.

  Her hand went slack. She willed it to close around the tether again, but her muscles wouldn’t obey her. She was so tired. She gasped. At least she would be joining her father in the black. A tear iced on the corner of her eye.

  Everything around her turned cold and dark.

  9

  A cool mist spilled off the surface of the sapphire lagoon. The rush of a waterfall lulled Nyx, her eyes drooping in the warmth of the two distant orbiting suns. The soft clattering of long palm fronds whispered as a light breeze grazed her skin. She shielded her eyes. Bulging silver clouds skittered across the bright lavender sky. The evening would bring rain.

  Fine sheets of sporadic rain drip-dropped across a humid forest of wide, supple leaves and crisp, white flowers. In the distance, snowcapped mountains rose in the sterling clouds.

  Relaxing on the reed-woven chaise, she languished in a simple black swimming suit, warmed by the air. The clear water of the lagoon beckoned. A small white butterfly danced across her knees. The suns’ rays pinked her skin.

  Nyx stood and dipped a toe in the lagoon. Her reflection rippled. She stared at it, waving in the crests and troughs. She stepped into the water. The undulating reflection followed her movements with programmed precision. Warmth glided up her calf, wrapping her in an abyss of azure relief.

  Laying on her back, she floated on the blue water, mist coating her skin, soothing the itching burn. She licked the dewy water off her lips; it was cool as it slid down her throat. She closed her eyes. The peal of the waterfall sang through her head, and her hair billowed around her.

  For the moment, she was weightless. She didn’t have to carry the extra seven kilograms that the Elysion’s one-hundred-and-ten percent of Earth-normal made her weigh. It wasn’t much, but it was enough to slow her movements a little, make her tired faster. She wasn’t used to the pull of the gravity, the thickness of the atmosphere
, the humidity in the air. Every moment felt like a rainstorm about to burst.

  She sighed. She had always wanted to go back to Elysion, but the closest she had ever gotten since childhood was the Medusa’s virtual reality database. It had never felt so real as this. Things never rendered right. When she touched them, they pixelated, leaving afterimages. This was different.

  Nyx glanced at her reflection in the water. The reflection glanced back at her, almost as if there was a timed lag in her vision. Her brow furrowed; the reflection’s brow furrowed, and she splashed the image, rippling it into shards of distorted watercolors.

  A red bouncing ball splatted into the lagoon next to her, showering her with a barrage of droplets. Startled, she crumbled in the water and sank. Kicking herself back up through the deep blue crystalline surface, she reached for the red ball as it spun toward the crashing shower of the waterfall. She dove underneath the churning white water and let it thunder over her head.

  Eyes closed, she dove again into the depths of the lagoon, ball clasped in her hands, forcing her way up. She broke the water at the edge of the pool at the feet of a little girl with sable hair and dark sepia eyes.

  Nyx wiped the water out of her face. “Is this yours?”

  The little girl nodded.

  Nyx held the ball up to her.

  “Ny-yx,” a voice knelled. “Nyx.”

  Her heart raced. She knew she shouldn’t be in the lagoon. Her maman would be angry. “Coming, maman.”

  “Coming, maman,” the little girl repeated, turning to the voice, reaching for her red ball. The girl slipped and stumbled forward towards the pool and Nyx.

  Nyx caught the girl as she fell into the deep water. She held her high, dragging the edge of the girl’s dress in the lagoon, but saving her from being drenched. The girl would have to explain to her maman how she got her new black dress wet. Lifting the damp girl above the water, Nyx set her on the edge of the pool and handed her the ball.

  “Nyx. You better not be by the lagoon again,” the voice rang with deep bells of anger.