The door hissed closed, and I slammed my fist into the eject button without trying to figure out how to strap myself in. The force of the takeoff shot me into a wall. It pinned me against a small chair that bit into my back. In that brief moment I noticed that I wouldn’t have been able to strap in anyway. The pod was big enough for me to fit into, but all of the chairs were made for members of The Hive.
As Kaur’s shuttles descended on The Hive’s ship the video feed I’d been watching closed. One from the escape pod popped up. It didn’t show anything chasing after me. I breathed a sigh of relief but still watched the feed until The Hive’s ship couldn’t be seen anymore.
Chapter Fifteen
I don’t know how long I was in the escape pod. The whole thing didn’t seem real: the attacks, the close calls, the monstrosities. It all seemed like a fevered dream. If I lay on the floor of the pod long enough I’d wake up and this would all fade away into memories that would flit at the edges just out of reach of recognition.
Wake up.
My eyes popped open. I’d taken my helmet off, and my cheek rested on the cool floor. The Hive came from a planet with an oxygen rich atmosphere. My suit had warned me of oxygen toxicity and its symptoms, but I hadn’t really cared. They were in the back of my mind, but at the time I’d grown tired of breathing recycled air. It tasted stale and old like it had come from the past.
The surroundings hadn’t changed. There wasn’t a clock ticking away on my nightstand or the tree outside my window scratching on the glass. The clumps from my roommate walking around the house didn’t resonate through the room. I let out a dejected sigh; it was The Hive’s escape pod.
An image of the escape pod being brought into a ship appeared in my mind. Members of The Hive secured the pod, and I stepped out with helmet in hand. A view screen appeared in front of me, and I began speaking to someone that I didn’t know but recognized as a representative from the Confederacy.
“You’ve come to rescue me,” I said without much feeling.
Yes.
The pod jostled and the door cracked open. A member peered into the space and extended its hand. I pushed myself up and ignored the offered help.
“Who do I have to speak with from the Confederacy?” I said as I exited the pod.
The view screen appeared in front of me. A Planarium with frill fully extended stood onscreen. He wore clothes that looked formal. They sparkled in the light as the color of the cloth changed. It went from red to blue to green to yellow and back, swirling into the next color every time it shifted.
“It’s a pleasure to finally meet you,” said the Planarium. “I am Council member Trillive Sco.” He declined his head slightly.
I cleared my throat and scratched my head. The Hive members didn’t move except for an occasional mandible opening then closing and the antennae waving to and fro.
Tell him of Kaur. Ask for assistance.
“Admiral Kaur of the Terran fleet has -,” I said.
Sco held up his hand and shook his head. “The Confederacy already knows. We have been informed by The Hive, our own instruments and even,” he smiled, “the Vantagax Republic, albeit accusing us of sending the Terran colonists to attack them.”
“So you know how dangerous Kaur is,” I said. “She must be stopped.”
“Bah,” said Sco. He waved his hand in a dismissive manner. “Let the Vantagax deal with her. The colonist fleet is not so mighty that it will defeat them. If Kaur and her sadists inflict serious harm on the Vantagax then all the better for the Confederacy. We can swoop in and mop up the remains of their fleet and win this war.”
“But what about The Hive?” I said. “They were attacked as well. Surely The Confederacy owes them some assistance.”
“Yes,” said Sco. He waved to someone off camera, his tongue held off to the side in a Planarium smile. “The Hive requested assistance. They knew they were traveling into a disputed zone where a known enemy entity was located. The Confederacy will offer recovery assistance but not until the fighting is over. We owe them the barest of aid for their assistance in finding the colonists.”
I felt my anger start to rise. My hands closed into fists then opened. I ground my teeth and spoke through clenched jaw. “The Confederacy has spent so much time and effort looking for the Terran fleet. It has lost two ships and their crews. Do you abandon the quest now, after all of that?”
“Listen, Terran,” said Sco, his tongue flicking out between words, “the Vantagax destroyed those ships and killed those crew members. The Confederacy wanted to try and persuade the Terran colonists to join our side and fight the Vantagax. They’re doing that without our involvement.” He waved his hand at me like one would dismiss a servant. “The Confederacy Council has decided on its course of action. We have no more need of your people or of you.”
The feed closed.
I screamed and tried to punch the view screen. My hand passed through it, and I stumbled forward. I found the wall and steadied myself. The Confederacy had left me twisting in the wind. I felt tears start to leak out and fall down my cheeks. My breath came in sharp gasps as I tried to control myself. The Confederacy had turned their back on me. They had used me and cast me aside.
I slammed my fist into the wall. It stung, and I did it again. It hurt, and I punched the wall with my other fist, then kicked the wall then punched it again. I continued until I’d exhausted myself then slid down the wall to floor. The dents and folds I’d created dug into my back. I put my head in my hands and ran my fingers through my hair trying to come to terms with the situation. The Confederacy had been the good guys. They were the ones that had rescued me. I helped them because they helped me. I thought we’d had an understanding.
The Confederacy acts in the interest of the Confederacy.
“Get the hell out of my head,” I said. I wanted to be alone with my thoughts.
“I thought maybe if you asked for assistance then they would help,” said The Hive members in unison. They crowded around me. In my seated position I could look each one of them straight in the eye. They stared at me and for the first time I noticed they didn’t blink.
“They didn’t,” I sneered. The Hive members didn’t react, and I grunted in annoyance.
“We can’t let Kaur succeed.”
I snorted. “In what? Following her crazy delusions? Who the hell cares if she beats up on the Vantagax and then disappears?”
One of the members put its hand on my shoulder and they said, “There’s something there. I don’t know what it is or how she’s going to free it, but when they came through that tear I sensed that something awoke.”
“So?” I said.
“So, we’re going back,” said The Hive members. “We have to stop Kaur from fulfilling her promise.”
“So something gets loose,” I said. “So what?” I realized I acted like a snarky teenager, lashing out at anyone.
“That thing, that entity,” said The Hive, “doesn’t just want to be free. It has a burning desire to control, to dominate, to subjugate. I imagine that its brethren on the other side, from the small glimpse I’ve gotten, have the same desires.”
I sighed. “So we stop Kaur from breaking it free from its prison.”
“Correct.”
“And then what do we do about Kaur?”
The Hive members didn’t look between each other, but there antennae went back and forth, aiming from one member to the other. “We have to kill her.”
I nodded and said, “Because she’s the link to the entity in the other dimension.”
“Partially,” said The Hive. “If we kill her the connection to the other dimension is severed. Even if we found a way to severe the connection without killing her she’s already too far gone. Her mind is an extension of the other side. There is no turning back for her. She will continue to hunt and to kill in the name of her benefactor.”
“What about the other colonists?”
“The ones that are still with her are probably in the same boat,”
said The Hive. “Their minds are jumbled like a video image coming in over a weak signal. There’s static and interference and while you might get the barest hint of an image you can’t make out what it is.”
I heaved another sigh and avoided looking at the members. Deep down I knew it was right. The colonists’ minds had changed. Their desires had been altered. I’d hoped there would be some redeeming factor, something to latch onto in order to save them, but I’d felt the gnawing at my mind. I’d seen their actions, and the way they conducted themselves. I’d seen their handiwork. There wasn’t a reason to save them beyond one.
I said quietly, “You know what you’re asking me to do.” I avoided making eye contact with The Hive by keeping my head down and my gaze on the floor.
“Yes,” said The Hive.
“You’re asking me to help exterminate my race,” I said.
“You’re not exterminating your race,” said The Hive. “Kaur and the colonists aren’t Terran anymore. They’ve changed.” One of the members put its hand on my shoulder and gave it a quick squeeze. “You’re an endling: the last of your species.”
I sniffed and fought back tears. “So I’m putting a mad dog out of its misery?”
“If it comforts you to think of it that way.”
Kaur was mad. Sanity had long ago left her it seemed, but it surprised me that The Hive was willing to risk itself to fight her.
“Why are you doing this?” I said. “The Vantagax are your enemy just as much as they are the Confederacy’s.”
“I saw into the entity’s mind. I saw what it had in store for this dimension. I can’t stand idly by and let it run amok in order to gain a short term advantage over my enemy,” said The Hive. “Unlike the Confederacy Council I’ve been touched by this entity.”
I didn’t say anything for a while. The members continued to crowd around me. They didn’t move except for an occasional mandible opening or closing and their antennae wobbling back and forth. It didn’t feel right to speak one way or the other in the heat of the moment. The Hive risked sacrificing parts of it in order to save the dimension. It risked the ire of the Confederacy by “helping” the Vantagax. It risked being a continued enemy of the Vantagax. In the end it seemed like doing nothing meant potential extermination of itself and those around it.
But The Hive asked me to act with it. It asked me to stand at its side and assist with defeating Kaur and the colonists, beating back this entity from the other dimension. Acting meant helping to prevent the extermination of countless lives, but acting also meant extermination. Whatever The Hive called me I still saw Kaur and the colonists as Terran. The Hive said they were mad sadists hell-bent on destruction and no amount of help could save them, but I still saw them as Terran. Destroying them meant destroying all that remained of my people.
“Can we simply take out Kaur?” I said. “She’s the entity’s connection to this dimension.”
“It would be the simplest thing to do,” said The Hive. “I’ve got as many ships as I can muster heading towards the colonists’ position. The Vantagax have sent several ships as well, but the combined numbers aren’t enough to completely defeat the colonists. The number of ships needed wouldn’t be able to reach there in time.”
“So we take off the head of the snake and the body dies?” I said.
The Hive members paused. It felt like they rummaged around in my memories looking for a meaning to the saying before responding, “Yes. I think if we take out Kaur the colonists will lose their command structure, the entity will lose its direct hold on them and the work to free the imprisoned creature should hopefully stop.”
“The colonists won’t have their minds returned though? I said. Maybe with a bit of time they could come back from the brink. It was probably the best I could hope for at this time.
“I don’t think so,” said The Hive. “The other dimension has warped their minds, and Kaur has bound them to herself and by extension the entity. They will be mad but in small groups they’ll be manageable.”
“Okay,” I said, nodding. “What happens if they go back to the other dimension?”
“They’ll die. They have no connection to a benefactor there, no one to protect them.”
“So we kill Kaur then?”
“We kill Kaur.”
Chapter Sixteen
I sat in one of The Hive’s shuttles and watched its view screen. The Vantagax fleet had engaged with the colonists before we’d arrived. Yellow blips, the Vantagax ships, were overwhelmed by numbers of red blips, colonist ships. The red blips surrounded and buzzed around the yellow blips creating pockets of ships that looked like flowers on my screen. If I didn’t know there was a battle going on I would have believed it was a drawing by an elementary school student.
The shuttle video feed expanded in my HUD and zoomed in on the fighting. A Vantagax battleship cracked in half expelling a cloud of debris that was most likely a mixture of crew members and bits of ship. Kaur’s flagship grabbed one half and began to absorb it. I didn’t know how many ships the Vantagax had sent, but Kaur’s ship looked much larger than the last time I’d seen it.
Smaller ships flew around each side engaging the other. They weren’t dogfighting but looked to be more maneuvering to get better angles for shots. The Vantagax had figured out some way to counteract the overwhelming of their power systems as some ships fired their energy weapons. Other fired missiles that looped and honed in on their targets. The familiar tracer fire came from some ships as they broke up or sat dead in space, drifting. The smaller ones were set upon by colonist shuttles while the larger ones were consumed by Kaur’s ship.
I pulled back the zoom on the video feed. From our vantage point it looked like fireworks. I couldn’t make out the shapes of the ships or their movements but the pinpricks of light were visible to the naked eye. The dimensional portal with its endless light-sucking blackness made it easy to see the effects of the battle being played out in front of it. A creeping tingle went up my spine as I looked at the portal, and I shivered thinking about what may lay on the other side.
“Have they started trying to break the prisoner free?” I said.
A member of The Hive sat next to me piloting the shuttle. It tapped a few times on its console. A 3D representation of the moon expanded to float in front of us. A small blinking light appeared on the far side.
“An energy current is coming from the portal and aiming at this point,” said The Hive.
“And that’s where the entity is imprisoned?” I said.
The Hive member clacked its mandibles a few times before answering. “No,” it said, drawing out the “oh” sound. “At that point is a geological formation. The first geologists who surveyed the moon knew it wasn’t a natural formation because of its composition and age.”
“Did they investigate it?” I said. It seemed like that should have been the first thing done when finding something new.
“Sort of,” said The Hive. “There are unnatural formations all over the galaxy made by spacefaring races long since gone extinct or ascended. This formation was deemed unimportant, so it was catalogued and forgotten about.”
“If there were formations all over the galaxy why had the monument on Augustine been studied?” I rubbed my temple. It didn’t seem like the greatest time to be getting a lesson in galactic history, but The Hive seemed in no hurry to press forward.
“Because Terrans weren’t a known space faring species.There are no other known races that have developed FTL travel by themselves,” said The Hive.
“So what is the formation then?”
The 3D representation zoomed in on the blinking dot to show a rock structure that looked oblique. It angled back from the ground and slanted off to the right from our viewpoint just a little bit. There were no straight lines on it. Everything rolled or curved. Weathering didn’t appear to have had an impact on it as the rocks around it were pock-marked and worn in contrast to the near smooth surface of the structure.
“I think it’s a d
oorway,” said The Hive. I raised an eyebrow and gave the member of sidelong glance. Even after everything I’d gone through a small part of me still felt like it needed to jump to skepticism. The Hive member continued, “There are stories of gods locked away in a world that is cut off from everywhere and everything except for one entrance.”
“Like a prison cell,” I muttered.
“I think an ancient species locked away this entity in a different dimension. For some reason they were unable to separate the dimension from our own leaving this doorway.”
“And now the doorway is being targeted by Kaur’s benefactor,” I said, staring at the structure. “Not by Kaur?”
“Correct.” The Hive member looked at me. “Are you ready?”
I nodded. My hands and feet tingled. Now that it was time to get started I noticed how on edge my body felt. It was amped and ready to move. My feet tapped on the floor and my fists played my thighs like a drum, but breathing came in a calm and measured pace.
“I’m as ready as I’m going to be,” I said. It almost felt like I knew what I was talking about.
The gentle vibrations I felt through the floor told me the engines were ramped up, and we started to move towards the action. The Hive member continued to tap on its console as I got up and moved into an open area between a set of seats that flanked each wall.
“When you appear be aware of materials around you,” said the member without looking back at me. “Expect Kaur to know what is going on whether or not she immediately pays attention. Head towards her ship. Don’t dawdle. You know what to do when you get on her flagship?”
I nodded. If I could have slept I would have dreamed about it; we’d run over the plan so many times.
“I won’t be able to get close enough to help you.” The Hive member looked back at me. “You’re going to be on your own.”
I nodded again and felt myself bouncing up and down on the balls of my feet.
The Terran Representative Page 11
