Alien Redemption [Clans of Kalquor 06]

by Tracy St. John

  Chapter 1

  Nobek Lidon zeroed in on a two-man fighter in his single-man ship. He felt no remorse as he fired on the other vessel, though it was Kalquorian in origin. Taken in a bloody raid by the Tragooms, the two-man fighter was now the enemy. It had barely been off the assemblage phase on the free-orbiting manufacturing station it was stolen from. The target was so new it hadn’t yet received its navigational link-in frequencies.

  Squad Leader Lidon’s twenty-fighter force was one of five squads. His home ship, a Kalquorian destroyer, sent plasma bursts and percussion blast volleys at the massive Tragoom warship. The opposite of the sleek lines of the Kalquorian craft, the enemy warship was typical of a Tragoom vessel: put together from a myriad of other species’ best technologies, it resembled something a group of semi-bright five-year olds might have constructed. If said five-year olds were also insane.

  The enemy had slipped into Empire space undetected and was now trying to escape with the latest in Kalquor’s famous technology. Five days ago, the marauder had mounted the attack on the manufacturing plant.

  Lidon snarled. Clumsy and ill-fitting as the Tragoom ship looked, it was still a menace.

  Over three hundred Kalquorians had been left dead on the station, another one hundred captured, along with all the newly constructed fighters the Tragooms could fly.

  Tragooms did not bother to develop their own technology. They chose to steal what they could instead. That one of their roving bands of misbegotten raiders had gotten so far into the Empire’s space was the very thing the border was supposed to be guarded against. Heads would certainly roll for this fracture in Kalquor’s supposedly remarkable defenses. Nobek Emperor Yuder would no doubt have it publicly taken out on as many hides as he could find responsible.

  Right now, Lidon had to concentrate on destroying as many stolen fighters as possible. Like the one his targeting computer had just locked in on.

  His fingers flew over the control panel’s lit commands, firing a burst of devastating percussion power on the two-man craft that sadly contained only one enemy Tragoom.

  According to one of the three vids floating before his eyes, his arms-force levels were low.

  Thirteen years of manning a lightning class fighter had Lidon confident he could still render his target into only so much space dust. He was right. The fighter in front of his guns broke apart with the first volley and then shattered utterly with the next. The idiot pilot, unfamiliar with the newest line’s configurations, had never figured out how to raise defensive shielding. Cold satisfaction swept through Lidon.

  His blood was surging and there were still at least fifty more of the enemy to kill.

  Unfortunately, power levels had been depleted. He knew by the time he recharged and rejoined the fight, his fellow attack pilots would have finished the job. He grimaced, though he’d personally taken out fourteen of the bastards himself. “Great is the man who can share glory with others,” his Imdiko father, a temple priest, would say.

  “Can’t keep it all to myself,” Lidon reluctantly agreed with his absent parent. He sighed and commed the destroyer. “Squad Leader Lidon of Rizpah Squad reporting in.”

  The answer was as clear as if the man handling communications sat right next to him. “Go ahead, Squad Leader.”

  “I’m out of firepower. Request permission to dock. This fight’s all but done.”

  “You are clear, Squad Leader. The captain offers his congratulations on your work. This is one of your highest kill runs.”

  Lidon scowled a little. Piras, the destroyer’s captain and Lidon’s Dramok lover for over a year now, knew better than to offer such public praise outside of ceremonial recognition.

  Especially on an open com link. Of course, most knew better than to call Lidon the captain’s pet. The few that might dare to say such a thing to him would be taught better by his fists.

  Still, he’d grown tired of correcting Piras over these niggling oversights. Even the fun of pounding other Nobeks bloody was wearing thin. Reinforcing the fact he had earned his rank and not been given it had lost its charm. He was going to have to have another talk with his would-be clanmate.

  “Squad Leader Lidon to Second of Rizpah.”

  “Second Squad Leader.”

  “I’m done for this little skirmish. You have command.”

  “Acknowledged. Second Squad Leader Resok assuming point.”

  Lidon headed for the destroyer. Skirmish indeed. There had been few good moments in this fight, moments when he’d found an enemy worth his skills. He looked forward to counting the scorch marks on his fighter, to seeing how close he’d enticed death to come before scaring it off with his warrior ferocity. The defense stations on the Empire’s borders usually were enough to dissuade attacks like today’s. It was getting harder all the time to get a good fight going with Tragoom infiltrators.

  The drone of tactical updates and advisories from his com was abruptly interrupted by an intense voice. “Squad Leader Lidon, you’ve got company coming in fast and wagging your tail.”

  Despite keeping a constant eye on his vids, Lidon instantly rechecked everything.

  Instrumentation detected nothing, and he snarled. The lack of information meant only one thing: he had a chameleon-class fighter with signal-cloaking shields closing in. The tail of his craft was vid-blind in the back, not allowing him to call up an image.

  A blip sounded, and Lidon noted a lightning class fighter, one of the stolen ones, coming at him from starboard. “How close is that chameleon?” he asked.

  “Seven clicks, closing on you at a rate of two-point-seven-five.”

  Lidon grinned with feral delight. He was either going to add more bodies to his kill count or meet a glorious death. For a Nobek, both were equally welcome.

  Adjusting his heading and speed to mask the oncoming Tragooms from each other, he muttered, “As the Book of Life says, ‘The enemy’s sins are only redeemed when he offers peace or his throat.’ So come on in, you useless blight on the ass of the galaxy, and find some redemption.”

  Lidon could see the lightning class closing in exactly where he wanted him. He had to count on fortune to keep the chameleon steady on its path to destruction. His grin grew larger and his hinged fangs unfolded from his palate. He waited for brute instinct and hard-won experience to give him the go-ahead.

  The moment came. Lidon pitched the nose of the fighter down and executed a steep roll, effectively turning his course at a right angle. Now his vids showed him the sleek lines of the chameleon as it hurtled over him and in the path of the bulkier but better armed lightning. They collided with gorgeous force, and Lidon howled his victory.

  Damn, he loved his job.

  His moment of triumph was cut short as sensors chimed a warning. Several huge pieces of the chameleon flew straight at him. Too many to avoid being hit. Fingers flying over his navigational computer, faster than he could bark voice commands, Lidon veered hard from the biggest piece. He braced as another hurtling missile closed in.

  He heard the impact before he felt it. Claxons went off, vids blinked frantically, and a flash of fire erupted in front of his face for a bare instant before the cockpit was doused in extinguishing foam, killing the blaze.

  A moment later, the pain hit. Lidon’s leg suddenly screamed in brutal agony, and he screamed with it. It felt as if dozens of huge, jagged blades stabbed into his calf and thigh all at once. He jerked against the torment, but the limb was pinned in its hellish space. The hull had apparently collapsed in that area, crushing and trapping his leg.

  Lidon fought to hold onto consciousness in that grim realm of anguish. Gritting his teeth to keep from screaming again, he said, “Squad Leader Lidon to destroyer.”

  Only now did he realize the constant relaying of information had ceased on his link. He had no communications. As if to taunt him, all the blinking vids went out. Then the entire cockpit went dark as the ship’s power failed. For a moment Lidon was left in utter darkness and overwhelming pain.

>   The backup emergency lighting came on, bathing the smooth and now featureless control panel in orangey-red light. Lidon smashed his fist against the panel in frustration. He left no damage. The ship was designed to take the abuse of irritable Nobeks.

  He hit it again anyway. “Well that’s just fucking great. Someone’s going to have to tow my sorry ass in.”

  The question now was, how badly had he been injured? The leg hurt with a physical misery Lidon had not known in his entire violent life. He stuck his hand in the tight confines where he couldn’t see anything six inches below his groin. Wet heat greeted his touch, and he withdrew the hand. Despite his increasingly hazy vision, he could easily see the blood dripping from his fingers.

  Lidon felt the fighter shudder around him. Someone was firing on his dead ship, finishing him off.

  His lips were tingling and numbing from blood loss. He could hear himself slurring as he closed his eyes and leaned his head back. “Sixteen enemy dead. Glorious death on the battlefield instead of safe in my bed.” A surge of guilt washed through him at those words, though they were what every Nobek hoped for. Why the ancestors had been so kind to deliver him an end he didn’t deserve, Lidon couldn’t fathom.

  He’d face those who had gone before him soon enough. At least the pain would stop. In his last moments, however, Lidon couldn’t seem to stop the flow of words that poured like his life’s blood.

  “Well, Piras, you’ll understand when I don’t make our dinner date. Sorry, but some opportunistic gurluck cancelled by killing me.”

  Also cancelled was the discipline Piras had earned for his public display of affection.

  Discipline the Dramok would no doubt have been looking forward to. Lidon had to admit, he would have taken pleasure in dealing it, though Piras would have given in much too easily.

  The ship continued to shake as it took abuse from the enemy. Somehow its defenses must have held for it to take so long to be destroyed. Lidon looked forward to his death, to getting away from the pain. It was all for the best; no doubt the damage to his leg would leave him crippled had he survived. And what kind of life could a Nobek in his prime enjoy with such a handicap? Not one worth living.

  Lidon welcomed death, begged with all his soul for it to find him. His voice so low that he could barely hear himself speak, he uttered the words his Imdiko father had blessed the bodies of his Dramok and Nobek fathers with: “To every man death must come. Death, the destroyer of sorrows. Death, that dark friend to the sick. Go, and be not afraid.” Lidon snorted. “I was not sickly, nor do I have any hope of being relieved of my remorse, but what the hell.”

  The fighter shook harder than ever. The motion jarred his leg hard, making it shriek with misery. Lidon opened his mouth to shriek with it.

  He wanted to die, to at least relinquish consciousness, but the hurt went on, and on, and on…

  * * * *

  Lidon woke with a gasp to find himself in his lover’s darkened quarters. His leg, his damned leg. Fuck. He’d rolled over onto it in his sleep and had lay there long enough to set off brutal pain. He sat up, grinding his teeth together to keep from making noise and waking Piras.

  Fifteen years after the incident, the agony still possessed the power to take him back to that hideous moment when his life changed. While Lidon was grateful to still have purpose, to be of continued use to the fleet, the harrowing beginning to his ordeal lived on in his nightmares.

  Times like these didn’t invite the words from the Book of Life to comfort Lidon. Not when the torment was intense and much of the sleepless night lay before him. Instead, the long-ago mantra from Nobek training camp ran through his mind.

  Pain is my friend. Pain gives me a challenge to show I have overcome and will continue to do so. I worship my pain, and I invite it to give me strength.

  He looked over at Piras. The Dramok slept like a rock, fortunately. He lightly snored now, arms and legs slung wide, hogging the sleeping mat as he often did. The bed surface was clan-sized, big enough for three men and their Matara should they be so lucky as to have a rare female in their number. Still, Piras managed to take up most of it. Lidon had rolled to the edge to escape, ending up on his bad right leg.

  The Nobek’s gaze wandered over the other man’s body, uncovered by the linens to the waist. Piras was a long, lean, graceful man, tall and elegant to look at. His strong jaw was somewhat at odds with the rest of his delicate face. It probably came from the fact he ground his teeth together so much in near-constant frustration. Those jaw muscles had gotten quite the workout in the last fifteen years. Piras was easily annoyed, and it was often because of Lidon.

  Lidon’s expression as he looked over his longtime lover was a mix of affection and irritation. He debated waking Piras for sex, since he knew he wouldn’t be sleeping for the rest of the night. It would be good to fuck out some of the angst from the nightmare, and Piras was never adverse to being on the bottom. However, he was adverse to missing out on sleep.

  Deprive him of even an hour of his usual rest, and he would be a vicious brute to his crew during his entire shift. For such a docile lover, the captain was an unmitigated bastard outside the sleeping room.

  The ridiculous hard-on had shown up despite the torment of Lidon’s leg. He decided the guilt of watching Piras make everyone else’s life miserable wasn’t worth relieving his erection.

  Nor was it worth listening to his would-be Dramok complain even as he put his ass up in the air for Lidon’s use.

  Lidon thought about his altar in his own cramped quarters. Crew quarters didn’t offer much room for personal items, but the Nobek had managed to make a space for the small wooden shelf where he burned incense and read from the Book of Life. Most Nobeks meditated to calm their primal urges. On a destroyer where a man could only move so far and was in near constant contact with others, serene contemplation was a must. Lidon took it farther than most with a near-religious devotion to the philosophies of the Book’s writers, particularly the first prophet Lozatu’s teachings.

  Meditation was the obvious choice, but Lidon’s heart was still drumming quicker than normal from his nightmare. He didn’t think he could sit still. He needed to move.

  To the bridge then, though little would be happening with the captain asleep. Lidon pushed the covers from his perspiration-sheened body and swung his legs over the side of the sleeping mat.

  Even in the very dim sleep-mode lighting of the room, Lidon could see the differences in his legs. The calves were nearly identical in shape, though the right was crisscrossed with scars.

  The muscles of the lower leg hadn’t been nearly as damaged as the thigh.

  Damaged? His right thigh had been demolished. Crushed and torn, it was a miracle any of it had been salvageable.

  Lidon looked at his leg with consternation and pride. A patchwork of scarred and lumpy flesh, it was a badge of honor many other Nobeks looked at with open envy and awe. Few men received such a horrific battle wound and were able to keep the limb to show off. In fact, the surgeons had begged him to let them replace the shattered leg with a robotic prosthetic. He’d flatly refused though it meant constant pain and the limp of a cripple.

  Pain is my friend, and I invite it in to make me stronger. With such thoughts burned into their brains, it was no wonder most Nobeks were both sadists and masochists.

  Lidon quickly dressed, putting on his red-trimmed black uniform formsuit, which had been tossed on the floor from the night before. He debated going to his quarters for a clean one then decided against it. He’d shower and change before his regular shift. For now, he needed to be engrossed in official business.

  Putting his knee-high boot on the afflicted leg was an exercise in torture, and he hissed despite efforts not to. Piras didn’t react, continuing to snore his way through the night.

  Lidon got to his feet, putting his weight on his left leg as he reached for his brace. The stiff metal contraption kept his weakened leg from collapsing under him. It fit over his boot and ran all the way up to
his groin. The thing looked like an ancient torture device, which was why Lidon used it instead of one of the newer invisible-field braces. The brace elicited respect from other Nobeks. Unfortunately, it also made medics pester him to submit to more surgeries.

  Particularly a certain Imdiko he knew, when Lidon was able to corner him and force him into a conversation.

  Lidon’s utility belt with its collection of tools and knives went on his waist, and he was ready to see how the destroyer’s nightshift was doing. He limped to the door, and it hissed open, letting in a wedge of light. Piras sighed and rolled over. He didn’t wake. Leaving his lover slumbering, Lidon slipped soundlessly from the room.

  The Nobek limped down the corridor heading for the ship’s transport system. In the crew section at this time, it was an utterly blank stretch of hallway. It was only when he crossed from that part into the destroyer’s more functional middle section that he started to see others. Night shift personnel jerked their heads in quick nods to acknowledge him.

  Lidon’s route took him past the medical department. Knowing he was being foolish, but hopeful just the same, the Nobek slowed and peered in. No one was being treated in the examination portion of the unit. A few orderlies and techs were standing around talking. The door to the head doctor’s office near the department entrance stood open, but the room within was dark.

  Lidon sped up again as he passed Medical and got into the nearby transport, a tube-system conveyance that would take him anywhere within the ship. The small room he stood in was every bit as bland as the hallway.

  “Bridge.” The transport’s door closed and he felt the slightest sensation of motion beneath his feet. In less than thirty seconds the door opened again, and he was in the braincenter of the destroyer.

  The bridge during the ship’s normal sleeping hours was quiet, humming with efficiency.

  The room was a half-circle, with the first officer, captain, and weapons command’s podiums at the center of the flat end of the room. Next to weapons command was the security station with five Nobeks keeping tabs on everything from the destroyer’s defensive shielding to simple policing of the ship’s crew.