by A A Warren
The glowing symbols that formed the perimeter of the dark energy portal dimmed and wavered. Flaming wreckage streaked past them through space, plummeting towards the glowing blue hole.
“Something hit us,” Vaki shouted. “Navigation thrusters offline. Shields failing!”
“Can we open our own portal?” Talon asked. The muscles in his arms vibrated as he struggled to pull the lifeboat out of the spinning dive.
Vaki tapped her controls. “I'm activating the dark energy power cell. But you have to keep us out of that star-path! It’s too dangerous to open a second path inside, the interference will—”
Another chunk of debris slammed into the side of the ship, knocking them off the course Talon had plotted. They plunged into the glowing vortex.
A computer's electronic voice called out. "DARK ENERGY LEVELS AT FULL POWER. STAR-PATH OPENING IN 5… 4… 3…"
Talon grit his teeth as he rolled the ship straight. He pulled out of the power dive and swooped back towards the lip of the portal. He grimaced as he watched the thruster level bar drop… the portal was sapping them of their speed.
“I can’t get us clear!” he shouted.
“The distortion from this star-path is interfering with our drive… the readings are all wrong, I don't—”
“STAR-PATH OPEN. PREPARE FOR JUMP,” the computerized voice alerted them. It spoke with no trace of emotion, as the space in front of them spun into another glowing vortex.
“I thought we couldn’t open a star-path inside a star-path?” Talon shouted.
“We can,” she said, grabbing the arms of her chair. “There’s just no telling where it will take us. Or if we’ll make it out the other end!”
A swirl of red light spiraled before them, ringed with glowing mystic symbols. In the center of the red circle, the blue energy from the larger, collapsing portal seemed to tear through. Jagged bolts of purple lightning littered the path before them.
Talon swung the ship left and right, evading the powerful blasts of rampant energy as best he could. As they plunged into the glowing red portal, he saw the space outside the cockpit stretch and distort. He blinked… his vision was a cloudy haze. He turned to Vaki and tried to speak, but his words came out as a muted jumble of sounds.
The ship threaded the intersection between the two glowing star-paths, and he felt his body tingle, then go numb. He struggled to keep his eyes open. His thoughts slowed, as if the neurons in his brain had to fight through a thick, noxious sludge to make contact. He slumped over in the chair, and succumbed to the warm, liquid oblivion that drowned his senses.
As they disappeared from normal space, everything outside the cockpit stretched into a blur of color and sound. Then that too disappeared, and there was only cold, silent darkness left in their wake.
Chapter Six
UNKNOWN PLANETARY BODY
Consortium of Free Worlds
A few days later…
Hello, my warrior… did you miss me?
The words rang through the dark clouds of his mind. He heard them as faint whispers, hovering just beyond the veil of consciousness. Like the echoes of a half-remembered dream, the tendrils of memory tugged and pulled him from oblivion’s warm embrace.
Talon, wake up! You must wake up, quickly!
His eyes fluttered… brief flashes of light interrupted the darkness that engulfed him. “Salena?” he mumbled.
“Talon, wake up!” Vaki screamed. An alarm wailed through the cockpit, and Talon felt the shock of sudden motion as his stomach lurched upwards. A series of thuds and bangs sounded from the hull. The lifeboat was falling, plunging down into a dark abyss.
His eyes snapped open… Instead of darkness, a blinding kaleidoscope of colors greeted him. He shook his head, but the blurred streaks continued to fill his vision. He turned towards Vaki, and felt a sickening yawn of vertigo overpower his senses. The streaks of color bent and shifted around him. He felt as though he were falling in a hundred different directions at once. He couldn’t focus on any one point.
“Some… Something’s wrong,” he said, struggling to form coherent words. His voice sounded thick and slow. “I can’t think right... Can’t… see. Only colors… Shadows…”
He could vaguely make out the shape of Vaki, sitting next to him. She appeared as a streak of black and purple, bobbing in the sea of colored light. The haze surrounding him distorted her voice as she spoke.
“Hyper-neural Dysfunction,” she snapped. “Portal trance. Hold still!”
Her words reverberated through the luminescent smear of colors, as if he were hearing her from the center of an enormous room full of spinning, blinding lights.
“What are you… talking about?” he asked.
“Star-path distortion can affect the human mind. Bigger ships have alpha wave shielding, but this transport wasn't designed to handle that kind of strain. We've both been in a coma for days. Here… this should snap you out of it.”
He felt a sharp sting on his arm, cutting through the warm numbness that filled his body.
“What in blazes was that, woman? That hurt!”
“Vita-stim injection,” she said. “And if you think that hurt, try crashing into a planet!”
Suddenly, his eyes opened wide… the colors streaked past him with sickening speed. He felt nauseous… He couldn’t tell if he was falling, or flying. A tiny dot of white light appeared on the horizon. It rushed closer and closer, engulfing him in a cold, harsh incandescence.
Talon gasped as reality snapped back into focus.
He could see clearly now. He was still seated in the pilot’s chair. Outside, the wind screamed and rushed past, buffeting the tiny craft. Chunks of ice, white and pale blue shards the size of a man’s fist, exploded against the cockpit windows, sending glittering shrapnel through the air.
Talon pulled his sweat-soaked hair from his face, clearing the haze from his mind. His head pounded, and his limbs felt stiff and slow. He rolled his neck and shook his arms, forcing his blood to circulate.
“Where in blazes are we?” he asked.
“How should I know? I just woke up myself,” Vaki shouted back. She tossed an empty med-injector over her shoulder. Her fingers danced across the navigation console. “These coordinates were pre-programed. I think we’re still in Consortium space, but the distortion between the two star-paths may have thrown us off course… we could be almost anywhere.”
Talon pulled up on his control sticks, but the ship didn’t respond. Sparks flew from the consoles. Vaki screamed as a pipe exploded from the wall behind them, flooding the cockpit with glowing steam.
“Shields are down,” she shouted. “We’re getting torn to pieces out here!”
“To hell with the shields! Controls aren’t responding,” Talon shouted back. “We’re going to crash unless I can get her nose up. Can you increase power to avionics? Take it from shields, thrusters, life support… anything!”
Vaki bent down and tore a cluster of cables from under the console. The panel went dark, as the ship spun wildly.
“That didn’t help,” Talon growled.
“Give me a minute!” She drew a knife from her belt. There was an electric pop, and another shower of sparks lit the darkened cockpit as she severed the bundle of wires. Another chunk of ice smacked into the cockpit window. A spiderweb of cracks rippled across the transparent dome. Talon glanced up, and watched as the cracks branched off and grew larger. The lifeboat spun upside down, and he threw his hand onto the console to brace himself.
“Vaki…”
The woman touched a pair of wires together, sending more sparks leaping through the air. The lights on Talon’s console flickered, then glowed to life. She twisted the wires together, and tucked them back under the panel.
“Avionics at fifty percent power,” she said, glancing at the readings on her instruments.
“Better than nothing,” Talon grunted. He spun the ship around, and struggled to level out the plummeting craft. The stick shook and vibrated in his hands.
Beads of sweat dripped down his forehead and stung at his eyes. He paid them no mind. Another white shard slammed into the window. The mosaic of cracks grew larger, now spreading across the entire cockpit.
Suddenly, the wind and haze thinned… the planet’s surface came into view, a craggy maw of towering glaciers and jagged ice shards. A new alarm rang out, joining the cacophony of warnings that flooded the cockpit.
“Talon, we’re running out of time. We’re losing altitude, and—”
“I’m not blind,” Talon muttered, keeping his focus on the view outside the cockpit window. “I can see we’re losing altitude.”
He narrowed his eyes as he peered out the damaged cockpit at the white, ice-covered landscape below. He pointed to a narrow blue line of ice, cutting through a massive glacier to their right.
“There,” he said. “That canyon. That’s our landing zone.”
Vaki consulted her instruments, then looked up at him in shock. “Are you crazy? That trench is only fifteen meters wide.”
Talon forced the vibrating control stick to the right, and the lifeboat lumbered into a slow, jerky turn. “So? How wide is the ship?”
“Fourteen meters!”
Talon wiped the sweat from his brow and shrugged. “Good… so we’ll fit then.”
Vaki tapped a sequence on her panel. With a quiet hiss, a padded crash harness emerged from the side of her chair and snapped around her chest and shoulders. She clenched the snug restraint with a white-knuckled grip.
Talon glanced over at her and grinned, then shook his head. The frozen canyon swung into view as the lifeboat screamed across the planet’s surface. The muscles in his arms tensed, as he fought to keep the tiny ship level. The blue line rushed closer, and they saw the narrow canyon stretch before them. Jagged crystals of ice crisscrossed through the trench.
“Vaki, on my mark I need you to throw all power to reverse thrusters. Can you do that?”
She nodded, and glanced over at him. “Standing by.”
He squinted, peering out the cracked window. The narrow ice trench hung only a few meters below them. The control stick jumped and shook in his hands, but he clenched it in a steel grip, forcing the tiny ship to follow the curves of the twisting ice chasm.
Finally, the canyon’s curves and bends ceased, and a long, straight section stretched ahead of them. “Vaki, now!”
Vaki leaned forward and threw a series of switches on her panel. An array of reverse thrusters fired, and the tiny craft lurched as the rapid deceleration shook the hull. The ship's nose tipped down, throwing Talon forward in his seat. The lifeboat dropped into the canyon, and slammed into the smooth, ice floor.
Metal screeched and tore as the craft skidded down the trench. Talon let go of the stick and braced himself, as they crashed through a glittering formation of ice crystals. The impact shattered the damaged viewing port. Shards of glass cut across his face, and a blast of freezing air swept through the cockpit.
The ship skittered sideways in the trench. The nose dug into a wall of ice, wrenching the ship to the left and crumpling the metal hull. They continued sliding forward, the jagged, torn metal of the nose gouging a deep channel through the pale blue ice. Vaki gasped, as a spray of frost and snow streamed through the shattered windshield.
They crashed through another ice formation, and the ship spun sideways. The hull tipped on edge, then wedged itself into the narrow chasm. Talon and Vaki flew sideways in their chairs as the ship lurched to a stop.
For a moment, there was silence. All Talon could hear was his own panting breaths. Then Vaki coughed, and other sounds forced their way into his consciousness. The groan of bent metal, the crackle and pop of sparking electrodes, the hiss of venting plasma…
Vaki groaned, and released her crash restraint. She stretched, and patted down her arms and legs. “Nothing broken,” she said as she crawled out of her seat. “That’s a good sign.”
Talon dropped from his chair, and stood on the overturned sidewall of the lifeboat. Cold air from outside rushed through the torn hull. He saw Vaki shiver in the frigid breeze. She rubbed the arms of her jumpsuit, and breathed a puff of mist into the air.
He slid open a compartment on the opposite wall, and removed some supplies. The lifeboat’s crash kits contained ration packs, water condenser bottles, radiation tablets… and most importantly, a pair of thick belts lined with silver metal plates. He tossed one to her, then stuffed the emergency supplies in a large pack.
“Here. Regulator belt. Should keep you warm until we can find shelter.”
She buckled the heavy strap around her waist and tapped her wrist display unit. A strip of light on the first metal plaque of the belt glowed red. For a moment, a shimmer rippled through the air around her, but otherwise there was no sign of the energy field surrounding her body.
She immediately ceased her shivering.
“Better?” he asked. He noticed his own breath misting up in the ice-cold air.
“Much, thank you.” She glanced at her wrist display. “According to these readings, it’s going to get even colder outside. It will hit 200 K out there in a few hours… that’s not much warmer than outer space!”
Talon activated his own belt, and felt the stinging chill vanish as the protective energy barrier surrounded his body. The field generated by the belts would keep their body temperature within human norms, and filter out contaminants from the atmosphere. The belts could even generate breathable oxygen for a brief amount of time, although that would drain their energy supply within minutes.
He glanced down at the glowing strip on the belt’s first power cell. “These fields will keep us warm, but the energy packs won’t last forever.”
Vaki narrowed her eyes as she tapped the glowing screen of her wrist unit. “Maybe they won’t have to. Look at this…”
The holo-display shimmered to life above her wrist. The image flickered and blinked in the freezing air, but Talon made out a topographic map of the canyon, rendered in simple blue lines. A red dot marked a distant corner of the map. A series of letters and numbers blinked on and off - coordinates for the crimson point of light.
“What’s that?” he grunted.
“I’m picking up a signal, at the end of this canyon. According to these readings, it’s definitely technological… a beacon of some kind."
Talon squinted at the display. “Those coordinates are at least eight hours walking distance from here.” He glanced over at her, and grimaced. “Maybe twelve, if you slow me down.”
Vaki stabbed a finger into his bare chest. “Hey, hakasekk, I didn’t ask for your help, and I don’t need you to look out for me. I can take care of myself!”
“Hakasekk? What in Nitara’s name does that mean? I told you, I don’t speak—”
Vaki’s belt beeped, and another plate glowed with a red strip of light.
Vaki looked down at the belt and bit her lip. Talon heaved the pack over his shoulder and sighed.
“Well, our hot air won’t keep this boat warm come night fall. We best get started.” He tapped a blinking panel near the exit. The metal door hissed open, sliding sideways into the hull. A blast of frigid air swept into the crashed lifeboat’s cabin, carrying with it a dusting of ice and snow. Even with the belt’s thermal field active, he could still feel the freezing air, stabbing at his skin. Outside, all he could see was a swirling white haze.
He gestured to the open doorway. “After you,” he said with a grin.
Vaki rolled her eyes, and stepped over the side wall. She yelped as her leg sank into the deep snow, and she tumbled from the exit.
Talon chuckled. “Watch your step.”
“Hakasekk,” she hissed again, as she staggered to her feet.
Talon laughed, then leapt down after her. “I think I figured out what that word means.”
Vaki wiped clumps of snow from her hair and shoulders. “Well aren’t you a kufasing genius.” She checked her wrist display, and pointed down the canyon. “This way.” She moved ahead, taking wi
de strides through the deep, freezing snow.
Talon dug his feet into the heavy snow, and marched after her. Suddenly, he paused. He turned and glanced at the jagged, pale blue ice of the canyon walls surrounding them. Through the swirling ice and snow, he made out dark shadows in the cracks and crevasses of the canyon walls.
Vaki looked back at him. “What is it?” she shouted. “I thought you said I would slow you down?”
Talon ignored her… he peered deeper into the shadows for a moment. Finally, he shook his head, and caught up with Vaki.
“I thought I saw something,” he said when he was next to her. “Moving, in the ice.”
A shiver ran through her body. She hugged her chest with her arms. “Well did you see it or not?”
He thought for a moment. “It could have been a trick of the light. A reflection off the ice, maybe." A beep sounded, and one of his power cells glowed red. “Come on, we better get going.” He turned and trudged off into the swirling snow.
Vaki glanced back at the dark shadows of the ice. Then she jogged after Talon, and disappeared into the white haze of the storm.
Chapter Seven
A low howl echoed through the canyon. The wind had died down since they began their trek, and visibility was better. But occasionally it would gust up again. The ice walls acted like a funnel, pummeling Talon and Vaki with the blasts of freezing air. Vaki squinted, shielding her eyes from the icy haze with her hand.
“Not much farther,” she shouted over the wind.
Talon glanced down at the row of glowing power cells on her belt. “Good,” he replied. “These belts are half drained already.”
The wind died down again. Vaki panted for breath as they continued trudging through the deep snow-drifts. A trail of dark footprints stretched out behind them, disappearing into the shadows of the ice canyon.
“So where did you learn to fly like that?” she asked.
Talon shrugged. “I have no idea.”
