Remnant

by Dwayne A Thomason

  “Go!” Sal said, and fired as quickly as he could, first into the rest of the troopers trying to take cover behind the APC, and then at the others still back in the tree line. Yuki’s plasma repeater blazed to life, shooting magnetically constrained bundles of super-hot gas towards the tree line. Every shot that didn’t hit a man set something afire. Soon the whole canopy was smoldering, covered by thick, black gouts of smoke.

  Vance dropped his weapon and ran. Despite the cover fire Sal, Yuki and the rest of the deck crew loosed, not to mention Fish with his turret, several of the security troopers attempted to take out the now-uncovered target. Sal reloaded his pistol and took a chance to watch as bolts of particles and beams of ionized air shot past him, nearly missing him each time. By the time Sal was firing again, Vance was on the ladder. After firing his third shot of the new clip he looked again. He didn’t see Vance. What he did see was the ladder and the wall around it pock marked from impacts, each with a little whisp of smoke flying away from it.

  From his position, Sal couldn’t see if Vance had been hit and was dead or dying behind a pallet of guns, or if he had somehow made it. He turned away from the ladder, and continued firing.

  Yuki’s repeater had used up a tank and he was now feeding a second one in. Salazar wondered who he would send to try it next. Maybe he should try himself? Soon the fast-movers would be on them, and the Jessamine would either be blasted to bits or, worse, impounded.

  The loading bay’s gates swung up, and the whole bay rose. Attackers kept firing, trying to land shots they had no hope of making. Of course, Salazar kept well behind cover until the loading bay was locked in and sealed.

  Salazar stood and looked around.

  “Any casualties?” Sal asked.

  “Nobody dead,” Vance replied, “but Lanjer and Olo are wounded.”

  “Okay, you guys,” Sal said, pointing to the deck hands, “get the wounded to med bay ASAP, then get to your battle stations.”

  “What about the bodies?” Yuki asked.

  Lekem and Yabere’s bodies remained on the loading bay floor. Salazar felt as though he might vomit. His ship had always been a safe space, a place where he could forget about the danger he faced. Lekem’s body was a staunch antagonist to this mindset. He had been Salazar’s friend. Now he was gone.

  “Stow them for now.”

  Salazar shook his head and looked up.

  “You!” he said, jutting his index finger at the Kid. “You’re with me! That was insane!”

  Vance stepped out of the control booth smiling. Sal could see more than one hole in the long folds of his coat.

  “I know! Thanks!”

  The kid grabbed his weapon, strapped it back under his coat, and then followed Salazar through the hatch into the central corridor. As they ran, Sal continued to give orders over the comm.

  “Keep it up, Fish,” he said first. “We can’t take Lekem’s men with us but we might be able to provide some cover fire. Sabella, we’re all buttoned up. Take off.”

  As Sal took the stairs up from the cargo deck to the engineering deck, to the crew deck, he could feel the ship’s powerful engines firing. He felt the suggestion of pressure pushing him first port-ward, then towards the aft of the ship, and Sal knew Sabella was piloting him away from the battlefield.

  Salazar left the stairs on the crew deck and headed towards the Jessamine’s bridge.

  “It wasn’t a compliment!” Salazar said.

  “Huh?” Vance replied.

  “It wasn’t a compliment when I said what you did was insane. I should have you...sent to the brig or something.”

  “We don’t have a brig,” the Kid said.

  “Then I should have you confined to quarters.”

  “For what, saving your life, and your ship?”

  “Why don’t you just—” Sal said, but his words were forgotten as gravity shifted. Blue lights flashed twice, syncopated with a pair of warning klaxons. “Oh no. She’s making for orbit. We’ve got to get to the bridge!”

  Sal and Vance bolted towards the ship’s bow, their boots banging against the wire grid floor. The job got harder as they ran. The Jessamine was climbing hard, and her G-buffers struggled to keep the floor beneath them. Though the corridor was level, running on it felt first like a gentle incline, then a steep ramp. But Sal could see crash chairs ahead. He kept running, feeling like he was climbing a fifty-degree angle. Then he leapt, grabbing hold of a wall strut right next to the emergency seats. He could see the chair with its secure foam and its nice, safe, restraints. He groaned as he tried to haul himself upwards to the chair, then he almost lost his grip as Vance grabbed for his feet. The corridor was now a long vertical shaft, and that wasn’t going to change anytime soon.

  “You’re too heavy!” Sal growled against the whine of the ship’s engines.

  “Hold on!” Vance said.

  Salazar felt the Kid grab his pants at the thigh with his right hand, then his belt with the left. Salazar’s finger’s grew hot with pain. He looked and saw they were turning bone white. Vance grabbed the same strut he was holding, then used Salazar’s shoulder as a step stool. He flopped into the nearest chair, then rolled and grabbed Salazar’s hands.

  “Come on, old man,” the Kid said through gritted teeth. “Climb!”

  With Vance’s help, Salazar climbed up from the strut and collapsed into the seat next to the Kid. The two of them slapped their protective restraints in place. Then, Sal looked at Vance, chuckling through gasps of air. The kid was doing the same. Vance lifted his fist to Sal, and Sal smacked his knuckles against Vance’s. They waited there, chuckling despite their breathlessness, until another blue light flashed, and another tone sounded. Sal unstrapped himself and stood. The floor was, once again, the floor.

  He ran the rest of the way down the corridor and up the stairs to the bridge hatch and opened it.

  The Jessamine’s bridge was small. The pilot and co-pilot’s stations were in front, with matching control yokes, overhead hard controls and eye-level control screens covered with buttons and sliders not to mention gauges and graphs. Behind these and to either side were the communications and navigation stations to the left and right. Behind these were two stations that could be used for various purposes. The front end of the bridge showed whatever the forward scopes picked up, in this case a wide array of stars and the sun, its brilliance toned down for the comfort of viewing eyes.

  Presently, Sabella was in the pilot’s chair, Kahula was at the comms, and Tally Ranjo, Sal’s navigation officer was at her station.

  “Sit,” Salazar said to the Kid. Vance headed for the co-pilot’s chair. Sal grabbed his arm and pushed him to the side. “Not there.”

  Salazar took Sabella by the arm and lifted her up.

  “You get out of my chair.”

  Sabella dropped into the co-pilot’s seat and switched control to that station, all the while giving Sal a look he couldn’t decipher from the corner of his eye. Salazar sat in the pilot’s chair and switched control back to his station.

  “You’re flying us into a trap,” he said. He pointed into the starfield. Sabella peered at the part of the screen he pointed at. She tapped a few controls, and zoomed in. There, hiding in the darkness between stars, sat an Origen class destroyer. Its engines were cold, its skin under heavy refrigeration, and all ports closed to hide it from sensors.

  “How do you always do that?” Sabella asked.

  In answer, Sal opened a general channel and said, “fasten your belts, boys and girls, it’s going to get bumpy.”

  Then he pulled back on the control harness and felt the g-forces shift as he maneuvered the Jessamine into a ninety-degree turn. The cockpit’s artificial view spun. He pushed forward hard on the harness and enjoyed the feeling of momentum warring with the ship’s powerful thrusters.

  “Forward barriers at full,” he said. “All cannons at the ready.”

  “You’re flying us right into those fighters!” Sabella said.

  Salazar shook his
head and watched as a wing of three fighters grew larger. He rarely looked at their images in the cockpit viewer, but instead checked their relative location and velocity with his instruments. The Jessamine told him they were OF-9 Dragonfly multi-purpose fighters, and as such they were neither optimized for space combat, nor for atmospheric combat. They also didn’t have anything other than sub-luminal engines.

  “Ms. Kai, jam their comms and throw every bit of noise you can at them,” Sal said.

  “Yes, Captain,” Kahula said.

  “Tally, make sure we’re clear to make an N-slip at our current bearing.”

  “Yes, Captain,” Tally replied.

  “Get ready, gunners,” he said over the open channel.

  “Aye aye, copy that, yes sir,” came back over the comms in reply.

  At two hundred klicks away, the fighters launched a barrage of missiles.

  “Kahula, you’re up,” Sal said. “scramble those missiles. Yuki, shoot down any Kahula can’t take off course.”

  Salazar didn’t listen for the responses, and in a way, didn’t audibly register them. He was familiar enough with his crew to know they would keep the Jessamine alive. Sabella marked any missiles that fell off course. Salazar could feel, ever so slightly, the hum of the nose-cannon as Yuki opened up on the missiles he deemed too close. On screen, several tiny explosions lit up like firecrackers without the shimmery afterglow.

  The fighters came within range and the Jessamine’s turrets opened fire. Salazar’s gunners, aided by the ship’s software guided aim-assist, tore into them, and all three fighters bloomed in a colorful haze as their energy shields absorbed or refracted fire.

  The fighter in the middle exploded. One of Sal’s gunners must have ruptured a drive. The other two turned off, maneuvering so their main engines could take them as far out of Jessamine’s fire arc as possible.

  “We have a clear path to leave the system, sir,” Tally said. For a moment Sal ignored her, instead watching as the cloud of debris from the destroyed fighter impacted on the Jessamine’s shields. Then he signaled the ship to sound the alarm for an N-space slip. This began a ten-second countdown timer on his screen. Sabella, still sitting next to him, tapped on her screen, preparing the ship to go luminal.

  “Tally,” Salazar said, “begin plotting a jump back to the Raginor system as soon as we can.”

  “You got it, Captain,” Tally said with a giggle in her voice.

  Salazar phased the energy shields for luminal travel and throttled the Jessamine into an N-slip. The stars shifted, moved. The field of space appeared to recede and constrict. Then the lights in the sky flared with blue light. The light bled out into the darkness until the whole cockpit viewscreen turned white.

  Sal turned off the screens, diminishing the light in the cockpit to a faint red glow. Then he stood.

  “First Mate,” he said to Sabella, “the bridge is yours. I’m going to my quarters.”

  “Sal, are you...”

  He waved a hand at her as the bridge hatch opened before him. His hands shook as he entered his cabin. The lights in his quarters turned on as he stepped inside. The door slid closed behind him and he tabbed the lock button in case someone decided to pay him an unwanted visit. He sat down at his bureau and looked in the mirror. He had almost forgotten about the violence on the planet now far away from him, about Lekem’s death. The man in the mirror had splats of dried blood on his face and clothes. He looked like he had escaped the scene of a murder. He struggled to keep his lungs pumping slow, controlled breaths but his chest heaved despite his efforts.

  His friend, Chief Lekem, was dead. His body was on the ship. His blood, red as sin, cried out for vengeance.

  Chapter Four:

  In the Presence of My Enemies

  Ganyasu Naboris tapped off the wall panel and Ensign Coffer’s face disappeared. The Elpizio rumbled again, somewhere deep and distant, but still closer to the girl than he would have liked.

  He stood in the stateroom offered to him for the ride. It was nothing like the places he was used to sleeping in. It was huge, lavish, comfortable and, Gan thought, dangerous. Luxury like this made men weak. It was the kind of thought he would have a year ago, before his life was changed, but it still seemed true. Gan had known he could not afford to get used to comfort, and this was why. Because the ship sent to bring his charge to the governor was under attack and he was on the run again.

  Gan pulled his bedroom’s huge blue and silver rug away and found the section of hardwood flooring. The cut lines between it and the rest of the floor were nearly invisible. He lifted the separated piece and set it aside, revealing a small hatch in the metal undercroft. This he opened as well and pulled from it a black backpack. He opened the backpack and found the small box inside, the control display on the box stating that it was still sealed, that the interior of the box was still in vacuum, and that it had days of battery power left.

  Gan returned the box to the pack and attached it to the back of his smartskin. In an instant the pack was a part of his suit now. He re-hid the hatch beneath the wooden board and that beneath the rug. No cursory examination would expose the hatch he had carved for Remnant’s special cargo.

  Gan stood and strode out of the bedroom, shutting off the lights and closing the door.

  Whichever interloping force had attacked the Elpizio, they could have no other target than Remnant. Pirates intent on booty would never dare attack a governor’s private cruiser, so whoever it was, they were after the girl. They would reach her only over Ganyasu’s corpse, and the corpses of many of their own as well.

  Gan opened the door and strode into the suite’s other bedroom. He found Remnant sitting in prayer on the rug in the room. She didn’t seem to notice his arrival. Her hands were clasped, her eyes squeezed shut and her mouth moved without making sounds. Though Gan was convinced of her power and perhaps of the one she called ‘Master,’ he still had a hard time understanding how she could do this: sit for hours at a time, talking to someone she could not see, hear or touch.

  Gan opened his mouth to call her name, but one of her eyebrows raised and one finger shot up. Gan held back the growl forming in his throat. He crossed his arms, and then realized that such was the reaction of a child and uncrossed them. He found his hands flexing and unflexing, preparing for battle.

  The old jitters had returned, but they were different now, foreign. He heard the old command words in his head, he even moved his mouth to silently articulate them, but they had no more control over him thanks to Remnant. Or at least, thanks to her master.

  Memories flooded back to him as he waited for Remnant’s silent devotions to end, and he couldn’t stop them, much as he desired to. Memories of waking up in his bunk at the temple with no idea of what had transpired before besides the flashes of blood and violence, the ghosts of distant screams and the pain of wounds he didn’t remember receiving.

  Remnant wiped her eyes, then opened them.

  “They’ve come for me,” she said. It wasn’t a question.

  “Yes,” Ganyasu replied. “Not sure who, but they’ve launched a pretty intensive ambush. They have boarding craft on the way. We must leave. Now.

  Remnant stood, stretched and then shook her head.

  “No,” she said.

  “No?” Gan asked, feeling the heat of frustration rising in him.

  “You must escape and take the box with you. There is a place nearby called Lodebar Station. That’s where you need to go. You will meet friends there. They will help you. I must stay.”

  “That’s stupid,” Gan replied, trying to keep his voice calm. He crossed his arms again and this time didn’t stop himself. “If you stay they will take you. If you’re lucky the Captain will scuttle the ship before they can take you off board.”

  “The Captain will not scuttle the ship,” Remnant replied. “And they will take me. But that is how it must be for now.”

  “If you’re staying, I am,” Gan said.

  “If you don’t get that box out
of here, then all is lost. What you hold strapped to your back is far more valuable than me. If I fall into enemy hands, even if I...fail to remain faithful, it will not be the end. But if that box is destroyed or captured, then all is truly lost.”

  “Remnant-“

  “It’s okay, Ganyasu,” Remnant said. She stepped up to him, touching his arm, meeting his eyes with her own. She had to crane her neck up to look at him, but still Gan felt like she was the authority figure here. “I am not afraid of them. And I will see you again, soon.”

  “Promise me they will not harm you,” Gan said.

  Remnant sighed. He held her gaze, believing she wouldn’t lie to him but wishing to be sure.

  “They will not kill me.”

  “That’s not what I said.”

  “I can promise you no more,” Remnant said. “If I have been found worthy to suffer for the Master, then so be it. But I have received his word that he will deliver me from their hand in due time.”

  “I can’t bear,” Ganyasu said through gritted teeth, squeezing his eyes shut, “to think of what they will do to you.”

  He felt Remnant trace the line of his jaw and he opened his eyes again.

  “The Master will give me the power to endure.”

  How could she do that? How could she be so calm in the face of certain, eminent torture? It wasn’t bravado. It wasn’t naivete.

  Gan sighed, and felt the tension in his shoulders release. He nodded.

  “Then I will go and guard this with my life,” he said at last, tapping the backpack.

  “Be safe, my friend,” Remnant said.

  Gan nodded.

  “I can’t say the same to you, can I?”

  Remnant smiled.

  “Not really.”

  Gan sighed, unable to help the sensation of defeat, unable to stop the feeling he would never see this girl again, this girl who had saved his life and more than his life. Then he turned, and left the room, shutting the door.

  Ganyasu thought for a moment, considering his options, then he knew what to do. He felt underneath the large marble table for the hidden switch and flicked it.