by Joe Vasicek
He counted not one, not two, but five diminishing fireballs, the auroral glow lighting the planet below with intense light. The fragmented hulls of two KDF cruisers arced overhead, barely missing the shuttle. Though they orbited past in only a split second, Ben clearly saw that the ships were broken apart, completely obliterated.
A tactical Hameji fusillade—exactly like the one at Tajjur that had defeated the Gaian Imperial forces stationed there. Dozens of multi-ton bombs, jumped in impossible unison—a clean sweep. Everything gone. Everything.
Blood drained from his cheeks, and he suddenly felt very weak. They’ve broken our defenses, he thought silently to himself. The fleet is crippled. The battle is as good as over.
We’ve lost.
Through the walls, he heard the distant sound of metal scraping against on metal—the sound of the shuttle’s docking gear making contact with another ship. A slight lurch flung his head down, chin against his chest, but the ship soon righted itself, and the noise stopped.
“We’ve docked,” Ben said, unstrapping himself before the Fasten Seat Restraints sign flashed off. Stella nodded and did the same. In the aisle, the other passengers were already spilling frantically from their seats, pushing past the stewardesses despite their best efforts to keep some semblance of order.
Ben stood up and took his sister by the hand. “Come on,” he said. “Let’s get out of here.”
* * * * *
“Undock with the station,” came Adam’s voice over the intercom. “I’ll be on the bridge in a minute.”
A message from local traffic control flashed across the screen, ordering all vessels to cease undocking operations until properly authorized. James hesitated.
“But Dad,” he said, “the port authority—”
“I don’t care what the port authority says, we’re getting the hell out of here. Do it.”
James swallowed and closed the message. He then sealed the airlock and began powering up the engines. The ship’s computer ran through the warm-up sequence, checking the Llewellyn’s various systems. Everything cleared. Behind him, the low hum of the engine sounded through the walls.
With the undocking process underway, James glanced out the forward window. Several of the other ships at the station had broken away from their airlocks, engines flaring as they desperately scrambled to climb out of Kardunash IV’s gravity well. Out of the corner of his eye, he caught the flash of a larger ship as it passed into jumpspace. James tapped his armrests with his fingers and bit his lip; the Llewellyn was a local freighter, equipped only with sublight engines. No jump drive.
He glanced down at the blue oceans and swirling clouds of Kardunash IV, still nervously tapping his fingers. With the sublight engines, at least they would be able to escape the planet’s gravity well—that was more than the people on the ferry shuttles had. More than—
Ben and Stella.
He bolted upright in his seat. Ben and Stella—they were still on the shuttle! If they didn’t find their way to another ship, then—
The door hissed open behind him, making him jump. His father strode onto the bridge, taking his seat at the pilot’s chair.
“How are we looking?” he asked as he brought up the controls.
“Engine’s at forty-five percent,” said James, his voice quivering. “All other systems are go. We’ve sealed off the airlock and are ready to detach from the station.”
“What news can you give me?” asked his father. “Where’s the fighting worst?”
“The night side,” said James, glancing at the scanners. “Dad—”
“Good. Drop the cargo and plot us a course for a full reversal. I want us climbing the gravity well in the opposite direction before our orbit takes us into the battle.”
James frowned. A full orbital reversal meant using more fuel in ten minutes than they had burned in the last three weeks. Once they hit their target arc, there would be no turning back.
“But Dad—”
“Just do it. It’s the only chance we have to get out of here alive.”
James swallowed and turned to his console, hesitating only a second before keying the command to eject all cargo. Outside, more than fifty tons of high-grade steel jettisoned from the cargo hold. He watched on the display as millions of credits worth of cargo drifted out of the open bay doors and fell slowly toward the peaceful planet below. It was a terrible waste, he knew, but the Llewellyn would never be able to escape in time with all that extra mass weighing them down.
“All systems go,” said Adam. “Detaching from the station. Prepare the bridge gravitic dampers.”
James turned frantically to his father. “Dad, Ben and Stella are still out there. We can’t leave yet—not without them!”
His father hesitated over the controls, as if teetering over the edge of an abyss.
“We can’t do that, Son,” he said, his voice low. “We don’t have time. They’re probably on the surface by now, and if they aren’t, they’re caught up in the middle of the battle. We have to get out now, while we can. I’m sorry.”
“No!” James screamed, sitting upright in his chair. “We can’t just leave them like this!”
“We don’t have a choice, James,” his father shouted. “Now strap in and prepare for launch—that’s an order.”
“Y-yes, sir,” James stammered.
He strapped himself into his seat and activated the gravitic dampers. Outside the main forward window, the stars spun and the station passed out of view as Adam maneuvered the Llewellyn toward the sun, away from the approaching night side of Kardunash IV. James swallowed, choking back tears.
“Prepare for hard burn in five, four, three, two, one—”
An invisible hand pressed James against his seat, starting gradually but gaining strength with each passing second. He glanced down at his computer—ten gees of acceleration outside the gravitic damper field, rising quickly. Inside the bridge, they were at point-five gees, rising to point-six.
He watched on the rear video feed as the station shot away, rapidly growing smaller against the backdrop of the planet’s surface. The drifting drums of steel from the cargo hold shrunk until they were barely visible against the angelic white clouds.
A bright pink flash filled the rear display and the sky to the right of the bridge window. Only a nuclear bomb could cause an explosion that huge. The lights on the bridge flickered as the Llewellyn’s cosmic ray shielding absorbed the radiation from the blast. In the rear video feed, the brilliant afterglow took several seconds to fade.
“Dad, we have to turn around!”
“I’m sorry, Son,” said his father. “We can’t save them.”
The scanners showed the changing path of the Llewellyn as she continued to accelerate at ten gees. The arcs curved up away from the night side of the planet, unraveling like a handful of lighted strands, each pointing to a predicted end-path at their current rate of acceleration.
“But what about—”
“We have no way of knowing where they are or of getting to them. For all we know, they’re already on the surface.”
“You don’t know that,” James said quickly. “They might still be in orbit. They might be waiting for us, for all we—”
“That’s enough,” his father said sharply.
James fell silent. On the scanners, the arc of the Llewellyn’s flight path peeled out from orbit entirely, their trajectory pointing directly away from the planet.
“Map a course for home,” his father said, his voice low. “Help me switch to autopilot.”
The counter ticked up to twenty gees outside—two-point-three on the bridge. Enough to make anyone squirm in their seats. James was hardly aware of it, however. His fingers flew over the keyboard and his eyes danced with the numbers across the screen, but all his motions were merely automatic.
Stella is so much better at this, he thought to himself. She should be the one setting the course—not me.
The thought no sooner entered his head than he remembered h
ow they’d drawn straws to see who got to go planetside first. She was down there because of him.
His fingers became stiff, and his whole body began to shake. His eyes went wide, and his vision went blurry. He drew in a sharp breath, and tried in vain to bring himself under control.
“James,” said his father. “Son, are you all right?”
“It should have been me,” James cried, his voice cracking. He didn’t even care. “Stella should be here—I should be the one down there, not her!”
His father reached out against the growing gee forces and put a hand on his shoulder. “I’m sorry, Son,” he said. “We’re going to get through this. Keep yourself together.”
How am I supposed to keep myself together? James thought to himself, clenching his hands into fists. It should be me down there, not her.
On the rear video feed, a series of nuclear explosions cast brilliant bursts of light across the sky. The explosions faded slowly, reflected in eerie, nebulous hues against the twilight crescent of the night side of the world. He zoomed in and found the remnants of broken and destroyed ships, split hulls and falling debris.
James’s stomach rose in his chest, and a wave of nausea nearly made him vomit. There had been people on those ships—real, living people. Now, they were all dead.
Were Ben and Stella among them?
He activated the feed controls and zoomed in, tracing the field of battle until he came to the Hameji ships. They had regrouped and were flying in formation now, despite all the chaos of the battle zone. As he panned out, the camera fell on a massive tube-like ship nearly twenty kilometers long.
James caught his breath. Blue light flared from the engines behind the enormous vessel, lighting up all the ships and debris behind it. He zoomed out as a massive asteroid shot out the end of the tube. At that resolution, the rock must have been at least half a kilometer in diameter—an awesome size for something moving so fast.
With wide, horrified eyes, he followed the giant chunk of space rock as it hurtled towards the planet. It struck the center of one of Kardunash IV’s domes—one of the continent-sized urban centers, full of billions of people.
He gasped. A giant brown splotch rose up into the atmosphere like mud from the bottom of a stream bed. When it hit the upper atmosphere, it began to trace a teardrop band across the rest of the world, the muddy blackness tainting the white clouds a dirty gray. Not far from the first, a second asteroid struck, kicking up another black cloud of destruction. Down near the equator, a third plume billowed out—and then a fourth.
James felt the blood drain from his face, leaving his skin cold and clammy. He could hardly believe what he was seeing. The mass accelerators, the asteroids—it was Tajjur V and Belarius III all over again. The Hameji were slagging the planet, annihilating everyone and everything on the surface.
Ben, James thought despairingly to himself. Stella—I’m so sorry. His eyes burning with tears, he clenched his teeth together and balled his hands into fists.
No, he told himself. They’re not dead. They can’t be!
* * * * *
For nearly a minute, Ben hardly knew where he was or what he was doing. Sweaty bodies pressed against him on all sides, battering him with unintentional blows as everyone pressed toward the airlock at once. He shoved his way through the panicked crowd, taking care not to let go of Stella’s hand.
He held onto her until they passed through the freight airlock of the Sierra Vista. The corridor opened up significantly, allowing them to move much faster. Together, they ran with the others down the dim, windowless hallway.
“Will we be safe here?” Stella asked, keeping pace.
“Not here,” said Ben. “We’ve got to get deeper.” He didn’t tell her that if the Hameji boarded them, no place would be safe.
The Sierra Vista was a mid-size sublight freighter, built for cargo, not for passengers. The walls were dark and drab, made from industrial grade durasteel. The air was chilly, and the halls below decks were barely more than oversized duct work.
They followed the crowd into a large, dimly lit cargo hold. Except for a few large boxes and piles of crates strapped against the far wall, the room was empty. A few of the frightened refugees pulled up some loose crates to sit on, but most remained standing, still in shock.
This was the end of all they could do, Ben realized. Either the pilot got them out, or they’d all die—or worse.
“Come with me,” Ben said, leading Stella into an empty doorway where they could speak more privately. He stopped and turned to face her.
“If the crowd panics again, I want you to stay calm,” he told her. “We can’t do anything about the Hameji, so there’s no sense worrying about that. Just stay calm, and stick with me.”
She nodded, frightened but comprehending.
The ship lurched, throwing them both against the door. Ben staggered and leaned against the wall for support. It felt as if somebody had tilted the room, and everything was falling towards the side. Most of the boxes were secure, but those that weren’t slid across the room, smashing into the passengers who were struggling to stay on their feet.
An engine burn, thought Ben. A pretty heavy one, too. But they hadn’t turned off the artificial gravity for it—that was odd. Was it because of the passengers they had in the hold, or because they were in a hurry?
As if in answer, a loud clanging noise sounded on the level above, followed by a rush off footsteps, a muffled explosion, and the sound of gunfire. The engines shut off, and the floor stopped tilting.
“Oh my God,” said Stella. The passengers had heard it too, and started screaming.
Boarders.
The gunfire grew louder. Ben stared at the ceiling in mortified silence, listening to the battle through the cold metal walls. His legs weakened, and he clenched his teeth in fear and frustration. In the main hold, the other passengers had begun to panic; he put out his arm to protect Stella from the worst of it.
“What’s going on?” she asked. “Why—”
A strange, greenish gas poured out of the ventilation shafts, filling the room. Everyone tried to run out of the room at once. Stella grabbed onto him and held on tight. He covered his mouth with his shirt and motioned for her to do the same.
All noise faded as the green mist filled the cargo hold. It smelled sickly sweet, like synthetic petroleum. Around them, the world started to spin—slowly at first, but growing steadily faster. In a few moments, everything but his sister was little more than a blur. He held onto her, afraid that she would fall into the void if he let go.
This is not the end, he told himself.
The last of his strength ebbed, and the world turned black. All of his fears faded except for one—that whatever was to come, he wouldn’t be able to protect his sister from it.
Chapter 3
When Stella woke up, she was stiff, sore, and completely naked.
Her eyes flew open and she immediately wrapped her arms around her body, curling up on the cold steel floor. Though she felt the cold air stirring against her bare skin, the room was silent—stuffy, but silent. Moving slowly, she eased herself up to a sitting position and pulled her knees up to her chest, covering herself as best as she could.
The room was dark, the only illumination coming from a caged bulb in the center of the ceiling. As her eyes adjusted to the dim greenish-yellow light, she started to make out her surroundings. The room looked vaguely like a cargo hold—smooth metal walls and floors, berths for crates and containers, long scrape marks that could only have been made by heavy machinery. At least that explained why the room was so cold. She hugged her knees a little tighter and shivered. A faint buzzing sounded in her ear, but she wasn’t sure whether it came from somewhere in the room or just from the dizziness in her head. She made out a number of strange shapes scattered across the floor. They were too lumpy to be crates, but—
One of them moved. She realized at once that they were people, unconscious and as naked as she was.
She yelped i
n surprise and scooted away. As she did, her hand struck something soft and fleshy. She turned and caught sight of a fat, hairy man, completely unconscious, lying on his back. The sight made her cheeks burn with embarrassment, and she scrambled quickly away from him, only to bump into a younger man—definitely a man. He groaned and rolled over as she carefully edged away.
She shuddered and closed her eyes. I hope Ben doesn’t see me like this. The thought no sooner entered her mind than her eyes flew open again.
Ben! Where is he?
“Ben?” she whispered. In the silence, her voice sounded as loud as the roar of an engine. To her right, a wrinkled, elderly woman moaned as she sat with her back propped up against a crate. Unsightly bruises covered her arms, and her wrinkled breasts sagged almost to her waist.
“Ben?” Stella said aloud, unfocusing her eyes to avoid seeing anything else she didn’t want to see. “Ben, are you there?” Answer me!
No one did.
He’s not here. She took in a deep breath and tried to calm herself. The metal floor was so cold on her skin, and the draft in the room made her shiver. She considered standing up and walking to the edge of the room where she could be out of the way, but that would attract too much attention to herself—better to stay where she was.
They were prisoners—that much was clear. But how had they gotten here? She vaguely remembered the freighter—what was it called? The Sierra Vista? The hold of that ship had been similar to the room she was now in, except larger and better lit. She remembered fleeing there to escape the Hameji—she distinctly remembered the nuclear explosions shining through the windows of the shuttle. Then the gas, the screaming, Ben holding her, and darkness. Then this.
The Hameji, she thought to herself. They stripped off my clothes and left me here. Had they done anything else to her while she was unconscious? She shivered, and not just from the cold.
Carefully keeping herself covered, she mentally checked every part of her body. Aside from the soreness, she seemed uninjured—no broken bones, no scars or open wounds. She did have a few bruises though, mostly around her wrists and elbows. How she’d gotten them, she didn’t know.
