by Trevor Scott
27
Liam continued up the ship’s ramp, which began to close automatically when he reached the top. The crew stood around the cargo hold waiting for the hatch to fully 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 Surya.
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 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? Why did it course through the ship as well?
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. “And why do I get the feeling you and Xara have a checkered past?”
Nix appeared to be in deep thought for a moment, before replying with a shrug, “I thought I’d say something when it became relevant.”
Liam and Nix stared at each other for 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 the mention of Xara’s strange form. Liam had never seen so much emotion cross the Dinari’s 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, “It 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.
A grumble from deep within the ship startled Liam. For a moment, he thought he was the only one to hear it, but shortly after, Saturn began looking up at the flowing purple energy in the power conduits.
“Watch it,” Nix said. “She’s sensitive.”
Liam collected himself and put his arm through the loop of metal on the console, 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 and 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 through 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 moon’s thin atmosphere. Once the ship breached the threshold, Liam redirected the ship to Surya’s surface. Liam instinctively pressed a few switches here and toggled a circular knob there, 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. Was it on auto-pilot?
“How’s she handle?” Nix asked as though anticipating the answer.
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 Surya?”
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, far removed. “War. The War of a Thousand Years, to be exact.”
“Just how old is it?”
“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 clearly considered to be his friend, however anthropomorphized. “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 official 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 Akaru, 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 and its colonies.
Nix chose his words carefully as he spoke. “The Dinari held their own for centuries, controlling several worlds and keeping the Ansarans and, to some extent, the Kurazon at bay. There was an escalation of arms as the Ansarans brokered a shaky alliance with the Kurazon 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 Kurazon attacked first and were defeated handily. They retreated to their home world where they stewed in silence for years, their pitiful alliance with the Ansarans broken to pieces. But the Dinari commanders got greedy, deciding 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 burned to ash. We 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 counterattacked, our fleet was decimated. A handful of ships managed to get away, though the records do not reflect how. After that, the war was theirs, with only the occasional skirmish adding fuel to 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 Ansarans 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 hidden…additions.”
Saturn crossed her arms and asked, “What makes this ship so different, then? Why would the Ansarans fear it if they beat an entire fleet of them?”
A red indicator light began 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 nearly translucent, the growing yellow surface of Surya 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 Kurazon. 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 Kurazon were already on top of 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 Kurazon weapons.
“Have they breached the city?” Nix asked.
Zega shook his head. “The spires hold. For now. Tell me you have news from the Disciples of Re.”
Liam and Nix exchanged glances.
“The Gift of Re was in fact real,” Nix began. “It was a device with the power to create a wormhole.”
“What do you mean was?” Zega snapped, his eyes narrowing as though he wasn’t used to Nix disappointing him.
“It was recently stolen by an Ansaran. That’s all we found out before...”
Another crash on the other end shook Zega’s projection. He stammered, “Before what?”
“Before the disciples attacked us,” Liam stated flatly. “Xara sends his regards by the way.”
Zega was silent. He lowered his eyes and shook his head. “I knew that Xara was no good. Still, this information is more important than you realize.”
“How do you mean?” Liam asked.
“It means that the rumors are true. It’s as bad as I feared. Our spies know that Ragnar has been trying to broker an alliance with the Kurazon. The device we spoke of really does exist, and its power could change everything.”
“Why would the Ansarans want a device that could open a wormhole?” Ju-Long asked.
“Isn’t it obvious?” Zega derided him. “The Ansarans planned to use the Kurazon to gain resources and territory. After the War of a Thousand Years, most of the planets and moons in this system had been mined dry. Even today, most of the Ansaran ships are made from melted down debris from the war. But that doesn’t mean the cowards would want to take all the risk themselves.”
“The Disciples said they received the device as a gift from the Ansaran High Council,” Saturn said. “Why would they involve the disciples?”
Nix crossed his arms and said, “One of Ragnar’s supporters must have sent the device to the disciples so it would be easier to access. There’s no way he could have gotten to it on Ansara without having to answer some questions. Their security is far too tight.”
Liam was confused. He tried to organize his thoughts aloud, “So Ragnar has the device sent to the disciples, steals it, and then hands it directly over to the Kurazon? He’d have no cards on the table.”
Nix and Zega appeared confused. Something must have been lost in translation.
Liam continued, “Ragnar would have no reason to hand the device over if he didn’t have a guarantee that the Kurazon would stay true to their word.”
The cockpit was silent, the crew appearing to be deep in thought. Finally, Nix spoke up, “Ragnar would have had a reason. While working in the spire, I overheard him speaking to the High Council on Ansara. The council told him they’d lost faith in his ability to lead. Akaru had long been scrutinized for mismanagement. He was desperate.”
Liam stared once more at the surface of Surya, growing larger by the minute. “If that’s true, then Ragnar wasn’t brokering peace with the Kurazon, he was changing sides.”
Zega cursed. “That means he intends for Akaru to fall.”
In his shaky projection, Zega looked frightened rather than his usual displeased demeanor. He rung his hands together, claws digging into his rough scales. “I have given you more information, and so I call in this one, rather large favor.”
Liam’s jaw tightened and the scar running along his face felt taut along his cheekbone.
Nix seemed surprised. “I have known you many years, but never have you called in a favor from me. The spires are in lockdown. Our abilities from up here are limited.”
Zega’s eyes narrowed and he seethed, “Get me off this planet and consider your slate clean. I don’t care how it’s done.”
“There are more than a million Dinari down there,” Saturn argued. “What about them?”
Zega’s nose scrunched up, the scales seeming to lift at odd angles. He spat, “What’s done is done. The Kurazon have the taste of blood and nothing will stop that now. The Ansarans will fight and they will die. They’ll force the Dinari to fight as well. The Kurazon won’t be satisfied with the deaths of Ansarans. In their eyes the Dinari are just as culpable for their misfortunes as the Ansarans.”
Nix ground his teeth and slammed a clawed fist down on the console, temporarily disrupting the feed. “Enough!” he shouted. “Akaru has been my family’s home for generations and I will not stand by and watch it fall to ash. If the Kurazon want a war, they’ve got one.”
Liam’s eyes grew as he watched their Dinari guide defend his homeland. He knew if it were Earth, he’d feel the same way. For as often as he scorned the corruption and flaws of his home planet, it would always be the place where he grew up. Before the wormhol
e, before the mine, and before traipsing around the solar system looking to make a quick credit, he was a citizen of Earth and damned proud of it.
“What do you think you can accomplish against the Kurazon?” Zega asked. “You’ve got one ship and a crew incapable of flying her. Get me out of here. That’s an order.”
“You of all people should know her capabilities. This is the ship that survived the massacre on Ansara. The ship that single-handedly destroyed a Kurazon Nightstalker, the fabled hunter-killers themselves.”
“That was a long time ago. She’s old, falling apart. The pilots of that age are long since dead and you haven’t got a sliver of their talents.”
“You don’t know her like I do.”
“I won’t say it again whelp, a deal’s a deal. Honor my favor and get me off this rock or...”
“Or what? You’ll sick Riken on me? Your prized fighter won’t do you much good from the inside of the spire’s energy field.”
“You would deny me the right to call in a favor? You would go against the ancient ways of our people?”
Nix looked to Liam as if to apologize for what he was about to say. “I have a counterproposal.”
A large blast shook Zega’s projection once more and he braced himself against the table in front of him. His expression was becoming increasingly desperate. “I’m listening,” he huffed.
“We will stop the Kurazon attack. After they’ve disbanded, if you’d like to leave the planet, I’d be happy to fly you wherever you wish, provided we’re still alive, that is.”
“If you succeed, I’ll have no need of your favor, and if you fail, I’ll have no recompense. You’ve learned well, Nix.”
“So, you agree?”
“If I don’t, I suspect you’ll do it anyway,” Zega said, deflated. “But if you survive this, don’t expect me to sing your praise. If you put a scratch on that ship, I’ll—”
Nix flipped a switch on the control console and Zega’s projection dissipated, his voice along with it. Surya’s massive surface filled their viewport. Its brilliant light growing before them. Liam looked to Saturn and Ju-Long who sat in their chairs silently. If their thoughts were anything like his, they were unsure what exactly had just happened.
