Backlash Rising

by Brandon Ellis

  Koda

  Starbase Matrona

  Koda followed a few guards, running low. Another blast sent chunks of flooring into the air, and the Brigantia guards dove to the ground, Koda diving with them.

  “This way,” called a guard, pulling Koda to his feet and shoving him under a starfighter belly and behind a landing sled.

  “Where’s my uncle?”

  Tracer fire glanced at the ship and the ebb floor. The guards, a handful in all, took positions around the starfighter, their weapons drawn and ready.

  “Who?” asked a guard, his chest heaving in and out, his face covered in black. He steadied his weapon on the landing sled Koda hid behind, eyeing his scope.

  “I mean, Admiral Shae Lutz.” He looked around. “And my friend, Devon.”

  More gunfire carried across the distance. Koda instinctively ducked. The guards returned fire. Then silence filled the docking bay as all maintained aim but held their fingers off the triggers.

  The guard next to Koda shrugged. “I’m sure they’re safe. I’ve heard no updates otherwise.” The guard brought his hand to his ear, nodding. “XO Stripe has Payson’s men pinned down. We’re on their twelve, she and her team on their six.” The guy brought his hand to his ear again, his eyes almost bulging out of his sockets. “How?”

  Koda noticed the rest of the surrounding guards now eyeing the airlocks.

  “What’s the status?” asked Koda, his voice low, nerves tingling in his hands and feet. He didn’t like the guy’s expression. Did he get word that his uncle died?

  “I don’t understand how, but an ISA agent just informed the XO that Payson and a few of his men got inside an airlock. They locked it down, preparing to release the toxin. The ISA agent has eyes on Payson now.” He spat on the ground. “Shit.”

  More gunfire went off from the opposite direction of the airlocks. Payson probably used a few of his troops as a diversion while he slipped by them.

  “It makes no sense how they could have gotten past us.” He grabbed the back of Koda’s shirt and pulled him out from under the starfighter. “We need you and your weapon. Come with us.”

  They rushed past the launch bay and entered the large hall where the airlocks were located. The Brigantia Guards went to a knee, some finding cover, all focusing their weapons on the row of doors.

  The guard next to Koda held his hand over his ear. He nodded and eyed Koda. “XO Stripe dealt with Payson’s soldiers. She’s on her way to us now.”

  Tracer fire whizzed over Koda’s head in a continuous stream. He went to the floor, quickly crawling toward the closest craft in the launch bay. He turned and placed himself behind another landing sled. The man who had been next to him only moments ago lay on the ground, blood pooling around his head, dead. Koda’s heart dropped. “Oh, no.” A few other guards near the airlocks were face down, not moving.

  Another bullet whizzed by. Koda backtracked and found another craft for cover. He held his gun tightly, his hand shaking, remembering his Star Guild academy training. None of the simulations he went through felt like the real thing, a bone-chilling nightmare. “Concentrate, Koda,” he told himself, his body tense. He checked his gun and flicked the safety off, then pointed it toward the airlocks. He swallowed. He had to stop Payson, but how? If he took a step toward them, he’d end up dead like the guards.

  Louise’s voice carried across the launch bay, and for a moment, Koda relaxed. He quickly shook his head. With Payson in the airlock hangar housing the toxin, okay didn’t exist.

  Boot steps pounded, coming in his direction. He shifted his aim, eyeing the smoke swirling and fogging the street entrance into the docking bay. He lowered his gun when Louise and several guards emerged and headed toward Koda.

  Koda kept low and raised his hand. “Louise, Prime Overseer Koda Lutz here.”

  She paused for an instant, her eyes surveying the dock. She nodded when she made eye contact and motioned for the Marines to follow her. She rushed to Koda’s side. “What do you have for me?” Manning and a few Guards took positions in front of Koda, their rifles aimed toward the airlock hangars.

  “Several Brigantia Guards were shot, I think killed. There might be two or three others alive, but I’m not sure.”

  “Where’s Shae?”

  “I don’t know, but he wasn’t with the Guards or me. Maybe heading back to Sphere Nine?”

  “Probably toward the Space Templars. They have the situation handled, so he’ll be safe there.”

  “Contact him. Find his location.”

  Louise pushed a strand of hair off of her sticky, perspiring forehead. “His comm malfunctioned. I can’t get a hold of him.” She stood. “Stay here.”

  Koda shook his head. He knew which airlock hangar held the toxin. “No, I’m coming. I’ll lead you to the right hangar.”

  “Just tell us the airlock number,” she said.

  Koda thought for a moment. “I don’t know the number.”

  “Dammit, Koda.” She let out a puff of air and hurried forward. “Let’s go.”

  Manning and his men dashed behind a wall that jutted out in front of the line of hangars. Louise and Koda rushed to the wall across from the airlocks and used another jutting wall as cover. Koda eyed several limp bodies on the ground. The Guards he’d taken cover with earlier lay deceased, their blood splattered on the floor. Payson and his men were nowhere in sight and were presumably in the airlock.

  “Which airlock?” asked Louise.

  Koda pointed, his finger extending toward a door, though he couldn’t see the actual number. “That one.”

  “Manning,” said Louse, “take the lead. I’m behind you.” She turned, grabbing Koda’s shirt and scrunching the cloth between her fingers. “Get back to your uncle in Sphere Nine. Got it?”

  Koda put his hands up. “Got it.”

  “Good.”

  She let go and spun on her heels, running after her men. They reached the airlock in no time and kept their distance from the thick ebb wall.

  Koda went to turn, then hesitated, watching Louise take out her ID Card. She said something to Manning and the rest of the Marines, and they went into position, ready to sweep the area or send in massive gunfire. Which, Koda didn’t know. Louise dipped her head at Manning, and he nodded back. She swiped the card, and Manning’s muscles flexed. Then he paused, easing up.

  The door didn’t open. She said something else to her team and swiped again. Nothing. Manning ripped his ID Card from his belt and handed it to Louise. She swiped. The door remained closed.

  Louise clenched her fists, baring her teeth. Koda grimaced. Unless Payson had somehow deactivated the control panel, Koda’s ID would work. He ran forward and reached Louise, resting his back against the wall.

  She shot him a look. “Off the wall. Get to your uncle. That’s an order.”

  He moved away from the wall, remembering his Star Guild training. Never stand against a wall before or when clearing a room, just in case interior blasts tore apart said wall.

  He held up his ID Card. “I used this last time, and it opened the door.”

  Louise raised her eyebrows.

  He wanted to look through the door’s window, but refrained, not wanting a bullet through his head. “Are you sure Payson and his crew are in this one?”

  “Yes, we peeked through the window and eyed Payson and three of his soldiers. They’re opening the air channels. They have a duffle bag and are using a long, thin hose with a device of some sort. That’s all we got.”

  Koda nodded, impressed they’d seen so much with a quick look through the window.

  Louise continued. “My guess is they’ll go from one barrel to the next, sucking the toxin up through the hose and blowing it through the air ducts. Who knows if the strategy will work, but if it does…”

  “They’re wearing gas masks, too,” said Manning. “They came prepared.”

  “Let me see,” said Koda.

  “Quick-like,” replied Louise.

  Koda took a quick look,
his eyes resting on several men all wearing masks, pushing containers toward an air duct attached to the wall. A man glanced at Koda and lifted his weapon. Koda ducked back around. A knot formed in his throat. He tried swallowing it down. His job to keep the people on Starbase Matrona safe had failed on all fronts. He should have opened the airlock when the chance presented itself earlier.

  Louise held up his ID Card. “I can’t get through to the Internal Security Agency for some Guild damn reason, so we can’t override the system and open the airlock. Our next best bet is that we open this door up and send some bullets through their throats.”

  Guards stacked to the side of the door, several positioning themselves low. Koda held his gun up, standing on the other side of the door near Manning and Louise.

  “On my mark, open fire but aim high, chest level. We don’t want to hit any of those barrels, though if we did, it would contain the exposure to that room.” She glared into her soldier’s eyes. “We sweep the room when the exchange stops. If it doesn’t stop, Manning will crawl in a meter, me two meters, and pick them off. Your gunfire should keep them busy.” She held up Koda’s ID Card. “Are you ready?”

  They all nodded.

  “On my mark,” said Louse. “Three…two…one…now.”

  She swiped the card, and the door opened.

  26

  Diana

  Starship Sirona, Eos

  Diana pulled her hair back in a bun. Her door buzzed. She leaned forward and swiped across her desk’s HDC’s holomonitor, pulling up the corridor cams outside her quarters. It was Sleuth. She let out a sigh. “Come in.” She pressed another button, and the door slid open.

  Sleuth walked in his hands behind his back. “Don't let these new people scare you out of the agreement we made with Enlil. They’re here to distract us. Like you’ve said many times, we stay on course.”

  “Are you saying they know?”

  Sleuth took a seat in a chair at the head of her desk. “I think Eden knows we’re in cahoots with whom they claim is the enemy, but I’m sure the rest of those idiot Space Templars don’t agree with her assessment.”

  “My gut’s telling me to trust them.”

  “Trust them?”

  “Yes, Eden and those Space Templar fools. They told me a weapon is heading our way. Enlil never informed us of any such weapon. The contract only involved his people’s fleet, their rookie starfighter pilots, training on our starship. It included his rookie infantry as well. Never, and I repeat, never, did he mention a weapon coming our way.”

  Sleuth choked and covered his mouth. “You’re serious? You’re trusting them? What are you thinking? You don’t want to blow this with Enlil. This is more than just your life, Diana. If we don’t follow through, all lives on this ship are lost.”

  Diana paused and cocked her head to the side. “Are you hard of hearing? I said a massive weapon is heading our way.”

  Sleuth shrugged. “The Space Templars will say anything to get this ship into the air and out of the system. We stand firm and keep our people on this ship safe.”

  Diana almost laughed. Sleuth couldn’t care less about the people onboard Sirona. “I think Skye can be helpful for us. He can get us someplace safe and secure. We won’t need Enlil to do that for us. Not anymore.”

  Sleuth’s face reddened. “Enlil offers riches and our own moon to live on during the next human cycle, a cycle we’d miss, and gladly. That moon is plush. It’s beautiful and suitable for humans.”

  “Have you seen this moon? Do you even know where it’s located? Have you ever stepped foot on it?”

  Sleuth waved a dismissive hand. “You know I haven’t, but that’s not the point. I can’t—”

  “We can do this on our own. You know, leave Eos and find Star Guild and Starbase Matrona or have the Space Templars take us to a safe planet nearby. The only thing stopping us is…you and me.”

  Sleuth’s nostrils flared, and he stiffened as if rooting himself to the seat. “Are you crazy? It’s too late. We stand to be stoned to death if we got this ship up and running.”

  “You’re just as blind as you are hard of hearing. Listen, if we tell everyone on the ship that engineering has fixed…everything…then why the Guild wouldn’t they believe us, let alone me, their captain?”

  “When the engineers claim they didn’t have any hand in repairs, then what?” He huffed. “Let’s kickoff, or kill these newcomers, especially that freak-show, Eden.”

  Killing them would make things much easier for Diana. It would remove an enormous weight off of her shoulders. She could continue on with Enlil’s plan.

  She remembered the look on Eden’s face when Eden told her about the weapon. The woman told the truth, and since she hadn’t lied, that meant Enlil hadn’t been upfront with Diana again. She cleared her throat. “No.”

  “No? Enlil will find us and kill us if we disobey his orders. Are you suicidal?”

  Suicidal, thought Diana. You have no idea.

  “Okay, at least hold off on that thought for a while. It may have to come to that, but I need to clear up one important thing.” She shifted in her seat. About a year ago, Enlil explained the human cycle to her and the Kill-Offs at the end of each. To get some information from Sleuth, she needed to fudge a bit. “I’m confused about the cycle. Enlil spoke of it as if I had full knowledge, but I don’t. Yet you seem to know more than me. He sent you something?”

  “He has. After this current genocide succeeds, this current human cycle ends. That we know. The Anunnaki will then nab thousands of humans on Earth and bring them to Enlil’s labs. Apparently, he needs live subjects. He’ll begin a new batch of humans, using fresh DNA, and begin birthing humans for a new cycle. As they grow, Enlil’s technicians will mold batches of humans into powerful, working machines to gather as much ebb as possible for the Anunnaki. To us, it won’t matter. We’ll be safe on the moon like he promised.”

  Diana ran her hands down her face, rubbing as much stress off as she could. She studied Sleuth’s eyes, his confidence nearly blowing her away. She realized that Enlil had lied and had done so from the first moment they met. Enlil never told her about the labs, about fresh DNA, or about kidnapping thousands of humans. The Monarch held a lot from her. She wouldn’t be surprised if he didn’t tell the truth about this so-called moon. Now, she doubted it even existed. And keeping Sirona and Sirona’s crew alive? Probably fiction.

  For the first time, she saw the truth. She didn’t control any of this, not in the slightest. Sleuth called the shots and had manipulated the shit out of her. She believed she received the orders from Enlil, then passed them on to Sleuth. That was not the case. Sleuth knew her inside and out, having been her right-hand man since first captaining this ship years ago. Sleuth knew the orders before Diana did and helped steer Diana where Enlil wanted her to go. If second thoughts ravaged her mind, he had a way to stop them.

  An image of Sleuth holding a document he claimed he hacked from Fleet Admiral Shae Lutz’s holocomp came to mind. He’d presented it to her a year ago, maybe longer and told her Shae had sent the document to every captain in the Star Guild fleet, explaining his dislike for Captain Diana Johnson and her many mistakes, none of which he had the guts to say in front of her. “She won’t ever be Fleet Admiral material, and I’m monitoring further improper actions in hopes of finding a better reason to demote her.”

  It bit her insides to no end. Captain Boyd Reynolds and Caption Patricia Hannig had denied ever receiving the document. They didn’t deny it to save her feelings. They denied it because they’d never received it, the entire document having been created and manifested by Sleuth. That sly piece of Orion’s broken belt. Sleuth had shown her myriad similar documents, all of which she now knew he cropped up on his own holocomp. The documents gave her impetus to join Enlil when the big guy appeared because screw those who would slight her like she thought Shae had done.

  She shook her head, her eyes set on Sleuth. Through him, Enlil controlled Diana. Sleuth probably knew more than
he was spitting out. Every vein in her body about burst at the thought.

  “You little—” She reached over her desk and snagged Sleuth by the collar, pulling the skinny prick onto her desk, nose to nose. She bared her teeth, seething. “New batch of humans? What more do you know? You know about the weapon, don’t you?”

  Sleuth grabbed her hand, trying to force Diana to release her strong grip. “I…I don't know, Diana. Nothing. Please let me go. I know only what you know.”

  She squeezed his collar tighter. “I’m not letting go until you give me all the information you’re withholding from me.” She pointed to an armor-covered window in her quarters. “Enlil’s fleet attempted genocide on our people and we cooperated. You, me, and Captain Stan Jenkins.” She stood, thrusting her free hand against his neck, wrapping her fingers around his blotchy skin and squeezing.

  He tried to pull back unsuccessfully. The veins in his forehead were bulging, and his face was turning scarlet. She pursed her lips and let out a growl, pushing him away like a rag doll. He landed on his rear, sucking in much-needed air.

  She plopped in her seat and rested her forehead on the edge of her desk. “I almost killed our entire race, all because of lies. Now Enlil’s weapon heads toward Sirona.”

  Sleuth picked himself up. He backed away from her and toward the doorway. “You warned our race. That could have been a huge problem.”

  “I did what?”

  “Starship Sirona was the first to fire when the Anunnaki’s fleet showed.”

  “That wasn’t me. That was our weapon’s operation specialist.”

  “The Anunnaki weren’t on any of our fleet’s radar. I made sure of that. Yet, our weapons specialist knew where they were and fired upon them? The only person who would have been aware of such a threat was you and that buzz-brain Jenkins on Starship Taranis. I sure as hell didn't order those first shots and I know Jenkins didn’t.”

  Diana sat straighter. “There wasn't supposed to be an attack, Sleuth. At least, not to that magnitude. Enlil informed me it would be a quick in and out exercise for his green fleet—his novice pilots.” She pounded her fist on the desk. “Yet nearly half the population perished. All because we wanted riches and a new place to live—planet-side. How stupid could we be?” She paused, another truth forming in her. “Holy Guild. You knew he would send his entire fleet, didn’t you? You knew he’d try to wipe out all of humanity.”