Rogue Shepherd: The Hornet's Nest: Rogue Shepherd Space Opera Series Prequel

by Chris Vaughn

  Luke’s mind drifted now to see a hot branding iron with the red hot R coming towards his forehead. In his dazed state he thought he could smell the smoke and ash from a fire. As the branding iron came to touch his forehead in his thoughts, he cried out with pain.

  The cry woke him. As he jerked forward, his head hit Destin’s head, and he pulled back. He looked around the damp and wet bottom of a dark cave as his dog licked his face.

  “Oh Destin! How can we get out of here?” he asked.

  He checked his watch and noticed the time. He’d been on the smooth bottom of the cave for almost eight hours.

  “I’m late for checking in with my father!” he said to sound of loud humming sound high above his head.

  Chapter 4

  His mind distracted by the loud humming overhead, Luke grabbed the mouth of Destin and made a hush sound and gave him a command to sit. Destin obeyed curled up beside Luke.

  The humming grew louder as Luke could feel glances of wind above his shoulders and head. He looked around in the darkness with only the slightest traces of light to see a dash of shadows moving around. The sides of the cave at the depths here now glowing, but the only light here the distant shaft of light off in the distance that came from high above. Wiping his eyes and shaking his ears to remove any water, he strained his senses to figure out the noise that now was louder to him than the sound of the river running over the rocks.

  With a quick switch of his flashlight he saw the Vespian Hornet hive high on the rooftop with hundreds of thousands of meter length hornets swarming the nest. The light from his flashlight immediately disturbed their light sensitive eyes and Luke could see bright red eyes of hornets in the reflected beam. Not turning off the light he sensed they would swarm the light so Luke threw it with all his might and it landed with the sound of metal hitting metal in the dark distance.

  “I’m late to reach my father. Lost in a cave. And now a hive of Hornet’s. I should have listened to my father and never come near here,” he said to Destin in a low whisper. The two of them crouching as low on the slick bottom of the cave as possible. Hornet's buzzing in the distance at the flashlight's reflection underwater.

  Pulling his radio out of his backpack, he checked to see if the batteries were good and if the radio would work. It booted up correctly with the low glow of the lights on the screen. Luke rolled over on top of it to shield the glow of the screen from the Hornets many meters above his head.

  “I hate to call my father, but I’d rather ask for his mercy than die down here Destin,” he said and switched the radio to transmit. The radio hummed to life.

  “Father, this is Luke, do you read me?”

  He waited for a reply.

  “Father, this is Luke, I need your help?”

  Buzzing overhead grew intense in the high roof of the cave. The hum of the hornets increased as the radio signals agitated them. The sounds of the river was drowned out by the irritated hornets and their buzzing so loud and echoing in the cave.

  “Luke! Luke! Where are you,” his father’s voice came through the speaker, but Luke couldn’t hear the speaker of his radio or the voice of his father speaking from the distraction of the hornets above.

  Luke turned over and looked up and something spoke to him to run. Forgetting the radio was on, he jumped up and slipped on the smooth bottom of the cave. He grabbed his backpack and yelled to Destin, “Come on Destin!” With all his might he splashed in the ankle deep water and ran away from the sound of the humming. The sound of hornets hitting the ground heard followed by the sound of hornets eating the dead bodies of hornets that dived to fast hitting the cave bottom.

  The hornets pheromones worked against Luke as the buzzing and wings flapped behind him. Jumping and running he thought he felt the wings of the hornet’s closing the distance. Destin out paced Luke as the dog ran ahead of him, only for the sound of Destin’s barks and feet splashing in the water to disappear from the echoes of the cave as Destin ran for his life too.

  “Destin!” he cried out as his feet lost their footing and he fell head long down a flight of stairs. Seeing a distant glow of light down a path of some type Luke ran forward. He could see he was in a structure of some sort and ran towards a door as fast as he could.

  “Destin!” he called again. Looking back down the dark hall towards the cave, he could see the hints of light from the underground cave canyon and the flicker of the hornet’s movement as they drew closer.

  “Get in here!” he cried again, “Destin!” Sensing the hornets ever closer, he slammed the metal door shut and locked it. The hornets hit the door and pounded against it as if someone was beating to come in. The Hornets bumped the door with the sounds of their bodies attempting to sting the metal door over and again as Luke twisted to look out the window of the door. The window was black with hornets as they covered the window and blocked out the light.

  Off in the distance he heard the sound of Destin's barks and shrieks of pain. He ran down the hall, his eyes glued towards the low glow on the distant light, and the faint sounds of Destin’s barks. With the full force of a run, Luke ran into a low hanging beam.

  Luke fell back stunned from the beam only to realize the sounds of Destin’s barks and yelps echoed in the distance. Destin barked and yelped until his barks were never heard again.

  Chapter 5

  Luke’s heart hurt realizing the loss of Destin. Although he didn't see Destin die, his thoughts rambled with images filling in the blanks of barks and cries from his dog.

  He must be gone.

  With a tear running down his face, and his stomach hurting at the thought of Destin dying a tortured death, Luke turned his back to the window and slid down the metal door straining to get a feel for his surroundings. Luke strained his eyes to focus on the distant glow of a light that worked down the corridor before him.

  He closed his eyes and thought to himself, “How to get out? What should I do? What will my father say? Will I get out?”

  Luke considered his greatest need was to find out where he was, or what he was in at the bottom of the Vespian Cave. His mind drifted back to the loss of Destin and his stomach hurt with pain as he stood to check the window again. The hornets now gone from attacking the door, but he could see their distant dashes as they flew in and out of what light was available in the deep cave.

  Luke felt the walls. It seemed whatever he was on was metal of some sort. It had the smoothness of perfection and hardness that only metal has to the touch. As he felt in the dark, his hands felt raised surfaces on the wall. He held his watch to the wall and pressed the button so it would glow. Signage attached to the walls, with directions for engineering, crew's quarters, mess hall, etc. Groping around more than once he hit his hand of levers and pipes as his hand guided his way down the hall towards the warmer glow now of white light.

  The corridor grew brighter, and he could see panels and control boards on the wall. Not sure of what the panels did, but understanding the basics of ships from his father's cattle transports, Luke turned and looked for light switches. He flipped the first one he came to. Nothing. He flipped the second one, and running lights along the edges of the floor lit the room up in case of an emergency. Cobwebs abounded in the ship and slick surfaces that age and moisture brings.

  Luke walked around the area of the command center of a ship and wondered what had brought a ship this size to the bottom. Covered by the water of a river, at the bottom of a cave, and protected by hornets, it was a huge ship for these parts. A forgotten ship for a great time. Luke went from section to section checking out the ship. The controls were older than the ships his father and brothers piloted on their cattle transports, but all ships were essentially the same. Cargo holds. Storage compartments. A crews section he thought from the bunk beds three high. Officer quarters. A single gun battery.

  Luke lost himself in exploring the ship. He wondered if he'd ever seen a space ship this size with only two ion cannons. In fact he hadn’t ever been on a space ship of the Twelv
e Clans, or any ship with ion cannons either.

  After exploring the ship as best he could with the dimly lit floor lights, he made his way back to the command section and the big view windows. Because of the angle of the light he couldn’t see out of the windows. Luke wanted to know if the hornets had left when he remembered he had his thermal binoculars in his backpack.

  He scanned outside the ship and turned on the visual imaging option. The colorization of the binoculars discolorized the image but Luke could make out the long deck in the distance and see the river covered the fore section of the ship. He scanned and zoomed finding the retracted stubs of the ion masts for the sails of this older ship.

  Checking his watch for the time he remembered he hadn’t checked in with father. The glow of the watch confirmed his worst fears from his father, "I know I’m in for it now!" he said.

  Luke pulled his radio out and tried to contact his father. The steel sides of the big ship blocked out the weak two way communicator Luke had in his hands. He hit the sides of it hoping to make it work.

  His mind raced with ideas of what to do. He wondered if he could fly the ship out of the cave, but he knew he wasn't sure how to power the ship up.

  "That won't work."

  Luke considered waiting it out and hoping the hornets calmed down enough for him to climb his way out of the cave, but he knew the likelihood of that was an impossibility.

  "No light and no rope. How could I climb out?"

  Looking again with the thermal binoculars he scanned through the glass and watched the heat signatures of the hornets. The top of the cave hundreds and hundreds of meters high was a red spot of heat in the viewer. He checked the deck again. No signs of hornets near the deck and then something caught his eye in the binoculars, and his mind and heart to race. Luke jumped over control a station and found the radio control stack of the ship.

  “I can use the radio in the ship to get in touch with my father. Hornets can't get into here, and if they do, I’ll just wait it out!” he said.

  Luke smiled at himself as a young man does when they think they’ve discovered the solution. He realized the commands of his father to avoid the Vespian Cave, and the discipline his father had promised if he disobeyed. The smile on his face was replaced with angst in his stomach.

  Luke looked at the controls for minutes figuring out what to do. “I wonder if you have enough power on the ship to transmit. Escape lights are still on,” he said. With a quick dart of his eyes he saw what he wanted and flipped the switch to extend the radio mast. The hum of the motors came to life and with a jolt to the still ship, the antennae locked into place.

  Luke checked the window again to make sure the mast extended. “Maybe you can get a good signal out of this cave!”

  Sitting at the radio stack Luke checked everything several times to make sure it was on, the lights blinked and there was static in the speaker as Luke scanned through the frequencies to find the one his family used.

  Before he pressed the transmit button, he checked the settings again. A ship this old, and dormant the radio may not work or short out. Luke wondered if the radio would blow up the first time he pressed transmit.

  Just as he was about to transmit, Luke noticed he could control the transmission power of the radio. “Not sure if my father heard my radio before the hornets attacked, but I want to make sure you can get out there to him,” Luke talked again to the ship.

  He pushed the transmit power to maximum, and then noticed a switch labeled, ‘EMER TRANSMIT POWER’.

  "I'd say now is an emergency," he said.

  Luke engaged that button and pressed the transmit switch. The walls of the cave bounced the signal off and the speaker gave off a high shrill sound that made Luke turn loose of the microphone and cover his ears. The sound of the squeal and the pitch of the frequency of the ships speakers echoed and echoed back into the command center.

  “I guess that’s too much power for you too,” Luke said to the ship still holding his ears.

  The power of the transmission so strong the outer hull sounded as if huge drops of rain fell on it for a ten seconds or more. Luke grabbed the binoculars and checked the window. Dead hornets lay all around the deck as a few more continued to fall.

  “Guess that radio signal knocked you hornets out. Maybe killed you.” Luke said as he continued to look through the binoculars.

  He scanned around and around and he noticed that far off the hornets still flew.

  “Must have killed those just close to the radio mast,” he said. Luke scanned through the binoculars and the thermal sensor got his attention.

  At the top of the cave, Luke could see a mass of heat moving for the ship. Luke knew without exception what it was, but his mind didn’t worry of the thousands of hornets irritated by the radio flying with anger towards the ship. He walked away from the window with a sense of safety and the thought, “I can hit that transmission button again, and maybe kill them a little at a time."

  Luke prepared to watch the hornets hit the glass and bounce off. To his shock the first hornet that hit the glass knocked the window open. His eyes raced to see it wasn't secured and locked. Hornets bunched together flew towards the command center of the ship. As Luke fled down the corridor hornets fought to get through the window, with others hitting the deck and breaking limbs and wings. The sound of hornets consuming their dead crunched in Luke's ears as he ran.

  He remembered a room to the right off the corridor that had one bed, a personal radio stack, and a all the amenities of an office. He ran in the room and locked the door. The sound of hornets stinging the outside of the door sounded like cold rain hitting hot rocks. Luke hoped the windows of the cabin would hold as he watched the hornets repeatedly sting the glass.

  Chapter 6

  The sound of wasps stinging bumped and bumped the outside of the metal hull and portholes. What small amount of light in the cabin from emergency lights on the floor in the hall were nonexistent with the door closed.

  Luke sat and let his eyes adjust to what light there was, or to the lack of it in the room. Standing he felt his way around the cabin and found a desk with a command panel. The command panel was dark and not a single light blinked on the console.

  With no thought of what he may turn on or off, Luke flipped and pressed switches until at last a single overhead desk light was lit. The flicker of the light was weak and faint but enough for Luke to get his bearings in the room.

  Luke sat at the desk rummaging through his backpack. No flashlights and nothing to fight off the hornets. He picked up but threw his radio back in the bag.

  “Why try again from inside the ship? It's too weak to make it out the hull and it will make them even madder,” he thought.

  Luke saw the closet and walked over to it. The word ‘CAPTAIN’ was engraved on the door. He opened the door and looked for a light, a gun, anything he could find to give him hope or something to work with. He dumped the drawers out and emptied them of old ship manuals and log books.

  Walking around he found another door in the cabin, and in there found a small private study with another bed and closet.

  “Nothing. Less I want to be the Captain of this dead ship,” he said out loud.

  Luke walked over to the bed in the room when in the dark a loud piercing scream and blinding flash of light went off outside the ship and flashed through the portholes. The echo of the sound hummed against the hull of the ship. The hornet’s feet bounced all outside the hull of the ship as if in a race.

  A second loud echoing scream, followed by another flash of light! Hornet’s buzzed and the sound of their feet vanished.

  Luke left the private chamber of the office and walked to the door of the cabin. The sound of hornet’s now gone from the hall, Luke wondered if it was safe to open the door and check if the hornets had left.

  As Luke touched the metal door another loud echoing scream reverberated from inside the ship and the flash of light could be seen in the hall under the door. Luke touched the handle
and put his ear to the door to listen. His hand tingled and vibrated from the electrical shock that came through the door. The shock made his arm go limp, and his body unresponsive as he watched the light on the floor grow stronger. Luke heard the sound of footsteps coming down the hall, but stood motionless, his body tingling from the shock.

  Chapter 7

  The door to the cabin shook as someone pounded on the door. For several minutes Luke looked at the door not able to move, stunned by the electrical force that went through him. His mouth dry, Luke thought of words to speak, but none came quickly.

  The pounding continued until with a slow deliberate movement he touched the handle, only to stop.

  “Who is it?” Luke asked with a slow pitched voice.

  " My name is Sorley," the voice replied through the door. "Who are you?"

  With the speed of a dying old man, Luke moved the handle and unlocked the door as his thoughts moved faster than the actions would allow him.

  The hall of the ship now was as dark as it had been when he ran down it chased by hornets. The only light illuminating old man Sorley being the emergency floor lighting.

  Luke recognized the wrinkles and cracks of the old man’s face. The two of them looked at each other across the threshold of the door.

  "Sorley is that you?" Luke asked still with a slow pitch he couldn’t control. "My voice isn’t right," he said and cleared his throat. "Is that your Mr. Sorley?"

  “Yes, I am Sorley. Son, what are you doing down here.” Before Luke could answer, Sorley interrupted him. “Who are you, son?”

  “Luke Shepherd, Mr. Sorley. Son of Jefferson Shepherd, Elder of Bethel 5.”

  “I thought that was you young Shepherd. Did your father give you permission to explore these dangerous Vespian Caves?” Sorley asked with the tone of an elder about to scold a son.

  Luke hung his head as he tried to explain, but his words wouldn't come. After minutes passed, Sorley commanded him to follow him back to the control room.