The Corsair Uprising Collection, Books 1-3

by Trevor Schmidt

  Xara’s face was nearly unrecognizable. His purple veins pulsed under his translucent skin, blood pumping furiously. When the last Disciple was taken out he let out a piercing scream. Saturn loosed her bolt of energy, hitting Xara square in the chest. His cloak was immediately charred and he stepped back to keep his balance. Though his skin was burned he was otherwise unfazed.

  “What the hell?” Saturn said to herself, readying another charge.

  More Disciples had heard Xara’s screams and entered from the far side of the chamber. When they saw what was happening they started toward them with surprising speed.

  “Run!” Nix yelled.

  They took off down the winding black corridor, lit only by the tips of their weapons, blue light swirling against the walls like a glut of jellyfish. Liam heard terrible noises behind him but he didn’t dare turn around for fear of losing momentum. There were crashes along the passage to his rear. Liam imagined Xara’s huge frame barreling down the corridor after them. For a moment he wondered if all Ansarans were monsters under lanky facades or if Xara was somehow different than the others. It didn’t matter. They needed to get back to the ship and get the hell off that moon.

  Liam took up the rear, firing a shot backwards down the long hallway, which was promptly met with a scream and the sound of stumbling bodies. Liam didn’t wait for the weapon to charge completely. Instead, he just let a bolt go as soon as it was the size of his fist. Enough to stun a normal Ansaran.

  Up ahead Liam caught sight of the courtyard. Nix was ahead of him struggling to put his mask back on before going outside. When he finally got the straps pulled tight he let out a large gust of air. Liam checked his own mask with his off hand, ensuring it was still secured in place.

  The hallway funneled out into the collection of carved figures, the sun hanging over their heads along with the giant planet Garuda, so large in the sky above. Nix fired his weapon ahead of them, taking out a Disciple hiding among the ruins. Liam hadn’t even seen him, but the Disciple had been in the perfect position to ambush.

  They passed through the courtyard quickly, reaching the far end just as more Disciples, led by Xara, breached the corridor, pouring into the dilapidated ruins. Xara loosed a terrible roar that reverberated through the statues of unknown creatures, causing some of them to crumble around Liam and the crew. Liam avoided a shard of stone and shot a blast of energy behind him without looking. A high-pitched yelp told him that he’d hit his mark.

  Liam sprinted past the entrance to the temple and through the many monolithic pillars lining the path before him. Saturn loosed a bolt of energy behind her, the shot missing and hitting a column. The bolt cracked the base of the pillar and it slowly began to tilt until all Liam could do was watch as it fell, obstructing the path behind them. Xara and three more Disciples leapt over the fallen stone post with ease. Fortunately, Xara’s larger frame slowed him down and he was losing ground on the crew.

  Liam was running out of breath. On the mine he’d never had to run and he’d lost a lot of his stamina. Now he was wishing he’d joined Saturn for laps around the mine. She ran alongside him, her mouth closed, breathing silently through her nose. Even with the sun bearing down overhead she hadn’t broken a sweat. Ju-Long on the other hand looked far more winded than Liam. He’d spent most of his time lifting weights at the mine. Since coming through the wormhole Liam had spotted him lifting crates to stay in shape, which was hardly helpful in that situation.

  Nix jammed his hand inside the pocket of hi cloak and pulled out a flat circular object with a brushed metallic look to it. With his weapon hand he pressed a button in the center and the image of a rotating eye was projected out several centimeters. The image was golden, as though it belonged to another Dinari.

  “I need a pickup,” Nix said with labored breath, voice tinny through his mask. “Bring it in hot.”

  “What are you...talking to?” Liam managed to say in between strides.

  Nix looked back over his shoulder, his eyes betraying a smile. He continued to surprise Liam. Everyone had their secrets. Some more than most. Being one of the latter, Liam could guess there was far more to the scrappy Dinari than he knew.

  Before Nix could answer, the deafening sound of their ship’s engines filled the thin air around them. Liam’s eyes traveled up the ridge in front of him to the white searchlights scanning the ground around him. Liam chanced a glance over his shoulder. Xara’s Disciples were twenty meters behind them and Xara was not much farther back.

  Nix spoke into the circular object once more, but Liam’s ears must have deceived him. He thought Nix had said ‘fire.’

  Out of the sky, a thousand blue pellets of light rained down behind them, cutting through the three Disciples and eating holes into the black soil around them. Xara stopped in his tracks, releasing a howl that resounded against the jagged rocks around them. Liam and the crew stopped, their ship descending in front of them, dwarfing their presence among the rocks and creating a shadow only broken by the dual searchlights.

  Xara’s translucent skin bubbled with the flow of his blood, which rushed to his head until he was blue in the face. He was breathing the limited air of the moon, undeterred by the low oxygen levels. Liam wondered if he’d needed the mask before at all. Could the Disciples have adapted to the barren environment?

  The ship’s copper gun barrel was spinning slowly, winding down after its barrage. Small puffs of smoke floated up from the tip as the metal sizzled. Xara took one look at the weapon and his stance eased up. He stood up straight and retracted his teeth back to their normal length. His deep voice had no trouble reaching Liam and the crew. “I should have expected as much, rake.”

  Nix holstered his energy weapon and adjusted his breathing mask, making it easier for him to speak. “It’s always a pleasure Xara. Until we meet again, then.”

  “Pray we do not,” Xara replied with a sadistic tone.

  Behind him, Liam heard the ship’s landing gear touch down and the ramp lower, cutting into the dark soil as it did. Saturn returned her weapon to its holster and started off toward the ship. Nix turned his back to Xara and raised the hood of his cloak as though disrespecting the Disciple by turning his back to him. The rough brown cloth quivered softly in the breeze. Liam took one more look at Xara before turning and following the crew up the ramp. Ju-Long hovered for a moment at the bottom of the incline.

  “We made another enemy today,” Ju-Long said to Liam through his antiquated mask.

  “It looks like this part of the galaxy is no different than ours.”

  Ju-Long nodded and made his way up the ramp to the cargo hold. Liam took one last look at Xara, so stoic among the dark dust cloud rising from the bullet holes in the ground. His long purple tongue slimed its way through the gaps of his pointed teeth. His face had returned to its normal translucent state, but his eyes were angrier than ever. They hadn’t seen the last of Xara, Liam was sure of it.

  27

  Liam continued up the ship’s ramp, which began to close when he reached the top. The crew stood around the cargo hold waiting for the hatch to close. Upon hearing the satisfying clanks of the airlock clamping shut, Nix flipped a switch on the wall and the atmosphere of the cargo hold changed. Oxygen and Nitrogen poured through the vents overhead until they reached levels on par with Garuda.

  When the indicator next to the switch turned green, Nix turned the handle downward once more, removing his mask to test the air with a long whiff. When he seemed alright the rest of the crew followed suit. Liam found it hard to place his trust in technology with which he was unfamiliar. Then again, it wasn’t as though he had much choice in the matter. All of the technology in this new part of the galaxy was unfamiliar to him. He kept coming back in his mind to the purple energy of the spires. What drove it? How did it work?

  Liam started undoing the chin strap of his mask. Nix kept surprising him with his wit. He wondered how many more tricks Nix had up his sleeve. Liam was determined to get answers one way or another. Nix may have
proven himself a friend, but that didn’t mean he didn’t have some things to explain.

  “When were you going to tell us this ship was voice automated?” Liam asked Nix after removing his mask.

  Nix appeared to be in deep thought for a moment, before replying with a shrug, “When it became relevant.”

  Liam and Nix stared at each other for a several seconds. Finally, Liam cracked a smile and patted the Dinari on his shoulder.

  “Did you see his face?” Liam asked with a broad smile.

  Nix turned giddy at Xara’s mention. Liam had never seen so much emotion cross his face. For once, there seemed to be parity between customs. Across a galaxy and across species, Liam guessed some things were just funny anywhere.

  Nix gushed, “I thought I’d made him mad the last time, but this? Zega’s going to die when he hears!”

  Saturn uncrossed her arms and strode past them toward the cockpit, brushing Liam’s arm as she did. “Children.”

  Ju-Long rolled his eyes and followed her. Though he seemed to be playing it cool, Liam thought he heard Ju-Long mumble, “That was pretty funny.”

  Liam and Nix continued to recount their harrowing escape as they made their way to the front of the ship. Nix entered the cockpit last and sat in the seat farthest back, crossing one leg over the other and leaning back in the chair. “Liam, why don’t you take a crack at it?”

  Liam examined the foreign buttons and switches on the console. Unlike most spaceships from Earth, a lot of the controls were manual switches rather than touchscreens or holographic projections. Many of the switches were old with bits of copper showing through the tarnish. Most were labeled with a foreign script that made sense to him the more he looked at it. He took a seat in the pilot’s chair and placed his hands on the console, running them along the smooth metal to get a feel for the vessel.

  “Are you sure you want to fly this piece of junk?” Saturn asked.

  Liam responded by putting his arm through the loop of metal on the console and grabbing the handle on the other side. The circular rung tightened around his forearm. Saturn quickly found her seat and strapped herself in, ever uneasy when Liam flew. Liam flipped three manual switches to his left out of instinct and hovered his free hand over the accelerator. “Hold on.”

  “I don’t know if it’ll help,” Saturn jeered.

  Liam tilted his forearm up and the ship took off from the ground, a few meters at first, and then accelerating up over the jagged landscape. As he turned the ship he looked out the cockpit window and saw Xara standing there, bellowing a cry that couldn’t pierce the noise of the engines. Liam imagined it was enough to shake the surface.

  “Watch the rocks,” Ju-Long said, pointing to their left out the cockpit window.

  “What are you doing?” Saturn scolded him. “Strap in, you fool.”

  Ju-Long seemed to snap back to the moment and tried to make it to his seat, but a sudden updraft forced him to the ground. Liam couldn’t help but think Ju-Long was bad at this whole flying thing. Nix sat behind him silently, utterly confident in Liam’s abilities as a pilot. That was either encouraging or remarkably foolish of him. Nix didn’t know his track record. Liam had been called reckless on more than one occasion.

  Liam tilted the nose of the ship upward and punched the accelerator. They sped over the top of the gigantic serrated rocks, leaving behind the cold dead surface. The ship gained altitude until they broke through the outer reaches of the thin atmosphere. Once the ship breached the threshold, Liam redirected the ship to Garuda’s surface. Liam instinctively pressed a few switches and toggled a circular knob to the left of the accelerator, adjusting their velocity to match the spin of the planet ahead so they would reach their target at their intended time.

  The ship seemed to know what he wanted before he pressed the buttons. Liam wondered if the ship would have performed those tasks even if he hadn’t pressed anything. Was Nix playing him? The ship seemed aware somehow. It was too responsive to his will.

  “How’s she handle?” Nix asked.

  Liam turned and regarded him, pressing a button to hold the course and slipping his arm out of the loop at the same time. “It’s more responsive than I would’ve imagined. Are there more ships like this on Garuda?”

  Nix dropped his gaze. “Once. But that was a long time ago. As far as I know, she’s the last of her kind.”

  “The last?” Ju-Long asked. “What happened to the others?”

  Nix’s eyes closed as though he was remembering back to another time. “War. The War of a Thousand Years, to be exact.”

  “Just how old is this thing?”

  “She’s seen her share of battles. And it prefers to be called ‘She.’”

  “Prefers?” Liam asked.

  Nix appeared to get a little worked up, defending what he considered his friend. “She has seen countless battles and endured them all. She is the pride of the once feared Dinari fleet.”

  “Does ‘She’ have a name?” Saturn probed.

  Nix seemed to deflate a little, coming back into the moment. “Yes, but that kind of information is...privileged.”

  Nix read Liam’s questioning gaze and continued, “She had a bit of a reputation during the war. If the Ansarans realized this was that vessel they would bring their entire fleet down on her. In the ten years since the war’s end, the stories have begun to fade as fewer Dinari remember the war. It pains me that the Dinari have so quickly become complacent under a rule that does not benefit them.”

  Ju-Long scratched his head, ruffling his short black hair in the process. “Ragnar made it sound like the relationship between the Ansarans and Dinari had always been this way.”

  “The victors write the history books. The War of a Thousand Years had been fizzling out for decades before I was born. Colony after colony fell until the Ansarans ruled it all. In colonies like Garuda the reeducation began when I was a child. It was only through my relationship with Zega that I learned the truth.”

  “Where does this ship come into play?” Liam asked.

  Nix hesitated. Liam sensed he’d touched a nerve. The information Nix had given him was purposely vague. Liam got the feeling they still weren’t trusted. After everything Liam and the crew had been through since passing through the wormhole, he wasn’t surprised trust had to be earned. Already he’d seen at least as much betrayal in this part of the galaxy as he’d seen on Earth.

  Nix chose his words carefully as he spoke. “The Dinari held their own for centuries, controlling several worlds and keeping the Ansarans and, to a lesser extent, the Kraven at bay. There was an escalation of arms as the Ansarans brokered a shaky alliance with the Kraven to share technology and defeat a common enemy. The Dinari had no choice but to escalate as well.

  “This ship, and nearly a hundred like it, were the result. The Kraven attacked first and were defeated handily. They retreated to their home world where they stewed in silence for generations, their pitiful alliance with the Ansarans broken. But the Dinari commanders got greedy, and decided that instead of waiting for the Ansarans to attack one of their colonies, they would strike at the head of the beast. The fleet was sent to Ansara.”

  “The battle was said to be like nothing seen in this system before or since. The azure sky of Ansara burned red. Countless millions turned to ash. The Dinari thought we were winning, but it was a farce. The Ansarans had a fleet that dwarfed our own, hiding around the many moons of our Mother World. When they attacked, our fleet was decimated. A handful of ships were able to get away, though the records do not reflect how. After that, the war was theirs, with only the occasional skirmish fueling the war. Time seemed to have lost track of the other ships until only this one remained.

  Liam tried to understand how so much stock could be placed in a single ship. If a hundred could not destroy the enemy fleet, what use was one ship? She was fast and had performed admirably thus far, but she hardly seemed noteworthy as vessels went. “You hide a ship that important in the middle of the colony? Surely the An
sarans would figure it out?”

  “Her reputation is based mostly on rumors. The shape of the ship itself is pretty typical of many Dinari vessels, save for a few additions.”

  Saturn crossed her arms and asked, “What makes this ship so different, then? Why would the Ansarans fear it if they beat a fleet of them?”

  A red indicator light started to blink on the control console before Nix could answer. Nix uncrossed his legs and stood, making his way across the cockpit until he could lean over the console. “Incoming message. It’s Zega’s frequency.”

  28

  “Open a channel,” Nix ordered.

  Liam’s hand found its way to the proper switch and flipped it up. Zega’s image appeared on the cockpit’s window, projecting up from somewhere behind the console. His image was translucent, the growing yellow surface of Garuda shining through him. Zega looked tired, heavy bags forming under his eyes even visible in the poor projection. Liam heard a crash from somewhere on the other end and Zega’s image sputtered before regaining its clarity.

  “Nix!” Zega yelled through the intermittent feed, “We’re under attack. It’s the Kraven. They mustn’t find her.”

  Nix held his hands up in front of him and said, “Zega, slow down. Our sensors haven’t picked up any other vessels.”

  “They masked their signatures somehow. The Ansarans didn’t know they were coming until the Kraven were already on us.”

  Liam peered out the cockpit’s window to his left, trying to make out the settlement on the horizon. It took only a moment before a faint green light shined in the distance, lighting up the surface. Liam recognized those laser blasts anywhere. Those were Kraven weapons.