by Nick Webb
“Impossible,” muttered Titus.
The Phoenix, rising from the water, suddenly and improbably shot upward.
The sensor officer looked up. “They’re under conventional thruster power. No gravitics.”
Maybe they’ve lost their gravitic drive? Capital ships only rarely blasted off from a planet with conventional thrusters.
“Helm, move to intercept. They’re not getting away this time,” said Trajan as he rounded the command console and came near the captain’s chair. Titus sighed internally and stood up, just in case the Admiral wanted to sit.
“Battle stations,” said Titus. He pointed a gloved finger at the tactical station and the officers sitting there. “Prepare railguns and laser turrets. All flight crews to the fighter bay.”
Titus watched as the Phoenix grew larger on the screen as the Caligula matched its course. Suddenly, the other ship turned and aimed straight for them. A collision course.
Trajan raised an eyebrow—the one over the hole, which, rather than indicate surprise like a normal eyebrow raise only highlighted the absence of sight underneath. “Interesting. Mercer is on the surface with his Security Chief and Chief Engineer. This must be his XO. Megan Po.”
“Is she the suicidal type, sir?”
Trajan didn’t look at Titus as he stared at the screen. “No, she’s not. She’s out for blood. She hates us. Hates the Empire, and will do anything to see us bleed. But not, I am quite sure, throw away her crew’s lives with a suicide run. She’s far too much of a protector than that. A motherly figure.”
How on Corsica can he know that? Titus stroked his chin in wonder, and watched the other ship draw closer. It wasn’t veering away.
“Ready railguns,” he said. The tactical chief nodded his acknowledgement.
“One hundred kilometers and closing fast,” said the sensor officer.
Titus turned expectantly to Admiral Trajan, who remained motionless and silent at his side.
“Seventy kilometers. Phoenix maintaining her course,” the officer continued.
Titus leaned towards Trajan, whispering so that only the other man heard. “Sir?”
Trajan merely shook his head.
“Fifty kilometers, sir.”
Titus approached the command console in front of the viewscreen and watched the readout indicating the rapidly closing distance between the two ships.
“Twenty kilometers.”
“Fire,” said Trajan. “Full spread. Railguns and lasers.”
The ordnance leapt out the front bow of the massive ship, shooting across the narrowing space to the Phoenix, slamming into her pockmarked hull, which answered with volleys of its own. The Caligula rocked as the railgun slugs slammed into the hull, still ravaged and tattered from the battle not two weeks ago.
“Five kilometers. Collision in five seconds.…”
Titus couldn’t take it. “Helm, veer off to starboard. Tactical, transfer targeting options from the forward crews to port and aft.”
Trajan snapped around to pierce Titus with his eye. “What do you think you’re doing?”
The viewscreen now showed the port side of the Phoenix as it soared past, guns blazing. “Saving our lives, sir. They were about to hit us.”
“No, they were not. They would have veered off, Captain.” His sneer turned to a cool tone, “The next time you subvert my orders on this bridge you will be dismissed to your quarters. Is that clear?”
Titus swallowed hard, but nodded. “Yes, sir.”
“Helm,” said Trajan, turning to the navigation station, “Change course to pursuit. Tactical, aim for their gravitics and thrusters. They’re not getting away again.”
***
This is it, she thought. Po gripped the arms of her chair—Jake’s chair—and watched the Caligula grow larger and larger on the screen.
“Eighty klicks, sir,” said Ensign Ayala.
“Helm, prepare to veer away, heading.…” She checked her board: “Two-sixty degrees. Gravitics?” She glanced at the operations station with a pleading look. The solemn shake of the head by the ops officer told her that the engines were still out. “Very well. Lieutenant Grace, this is Commander Po. What’s the situation down there? Are our jocks ready to fly?”
The entire bridge could hear Lieutenant Anya Grace cuss out some deck hand before answering. “Yeah, we’re getting there. Jayce’s boys just left. Kicking my crew’s asses now to get them out. When are you thinking?”
Po grimaced. “Gravitics are still out, conventionals only. The Caligula can easily outrun us. The only area we’ve got them beat is fighters. Theirs are no match for yours.”
“I’m touched, sir,” came Grace’s semi-sarcastic reply. “We’ll be ready in a few minutes. Grace out.”
“Forty klicks, sir,” said Ayala again.
“Prepare to change course on my mark.” She turned back to the tactical octagon. “Weapons ready. Fire when we’re in range. Target their offensive capabilities only—we need to make every shot count, people, we’re running low on ordnance.”
“Thirty klicks.”
Po felt the knot in her stomach tighten as she had a moment of self-doubt. Had she underestimated the ability of the conventional thrusters to get them out of the way in time? Should she be high tailing it out of orbit and hope the Caligula doesn’t follow? The uncertainty and the apprehension gnawed at her, but she refused to let it turn into fear. There was no time for fear. Too many people depended on her for that.
“Helmsman, ch—“
Ayala interrupted her. “Sir, the Caligula has veered off.”
Perfect, Po thought. “Ok, Roshenko, we’re in their heads now. They think we’re crazy enough to kill ourselves. Let’s use that to our advantage. Reverse course. Take a heading opposite theirs and get us into a high, stable orbit. Let’s make them chase us.”
Everyone gripped their consoles or chairs as the Phoenix’s thrusters pushed the ship into a wide arc. Usually, with gravitic propulsion, there was no sensation of changing inertia; conventional thrusters offered no such comfort.
“Doc Nichols here—what the hell are you doing up there, Commander?” Nichols’s harsh smoker’s voice blared over the comm.
“Sorry, Doc, I should have warned you we’re only on conventional. Things are about to get pretty rough. Prepare for casualties.”
“More? I’ve got patients tumbling off their beds from the inertia, and now you tell me we’ve got more coming?” The bridge crew heard several profanities under the doctor’s breath.
“Sorry, Doctor, just trying to keep us alive. Hope you understand. Po out.” She swore. “As if I didn’t have enough to worry about.”
The deckplates started to shake, and the groans of the internal support trusses made Po’s neck hair stand on end. “Hold together, baby,” she whispered to the ship.
“Sir, the Caligula is changing course to match us,” Ayala announced over the rising din of the protesting groans of the ship.
“Very well.” She turned to her comm. “Grace, Commander Po. Scramble the fighters as soon as you can. Your orders are to terminate their offensive capabilities first, then their engines, then their lives.”
Anya’s harried voice sounded over the comm. “Does it have to be in that order?”
Po couldn’t help but smile at her Wing Commander’s retort. “Funny, Grace. Get to work. Good hunting, Lieutenant.”
***
Ben had lost track of time, which, in his delirious frame of mind, he found very fortunate. Whatever setting the freak show had put the collar to seemed excessive at first, as the pain was unbearable.
The collar seemed to produce pain in waves up and down his body, penetrating every joint, muscles he didn’t know he had. Unfortunately, it seemed to have the greatest effect on his head, and the first several hours of it had made Ben want to put a bullet through his own brain—if only he could get his hands on a gun.
But after what he could only guess was most of the day, he’d hung there from his wrists, bl
eeding from the carving the man had made on his chest and back, writhing and contorting with the most cruel pain he’d ever felt. Cruel, because there was no stopping it. It just came, grabbed hold of him, chewed him in its relentless, cold mouth, and he was powerless to even struggle. And somehow, after a few hours, it became manageable. For the first part of the eternity that he hung there, he’d tried to negotiate with the pain. Convince it to go and come again later. To at least spare him a few moments of calm clarity. But it refused, and like most unpleasant things it had become familiar.
Had he fallen asleep? How was that even possible, through that kind of searing pain? A voice. A voice calling him. Now he was sure he was hallucinating. The voice was calling his name. Ben? He was Ben Jemez, right? Oh, God, the pain….
No, the voice was real.
“Ben Jemez.”
It came louder this time, cutting through the swirling clouds of agony.
“Is your name Ben Jemez?”
He cracked his eyes open. No one there. Just the empty dungeon. Knives. Whips. The scientific equipment. He knew it. His mind was falling apart.
“Keep your focus, Ben. He does this at first, but after a few days he’ll stop using the collar and just use … well, other things. You’ll like it. You’ll see.”
Aw, shit. Ben usually never swore, even in his mind, but for the scantest of seconds he’d hoped that the voice was someone to rescue him. That it was Jake. Or Po. But the voice was far too hesitant, too simpering, to be one of them. It was only the wreck of a man that called his captor Master. Six.
“How did you know my name?” he said through gritted teeth. Somehow, talking seemed to make the pain worse and he clamped his mouth shut.
“Easy. You chanted it for hours. My name is Ben Jemez. My name is Ben Jemez. My name is Ben Jemez. Over and over again. I thought you’d already lost your mind.”
“Like you lost yours?” he managed to force out.
The simpering voice laughed. “Me? I didn’t lose mine, I told you. The Master saved me.”
Not that nonsense again. He had to change the subject, or else endure more preening talk of his master. He wasn’t sure if he could endure that.
“Tell me about your ship. The Fury. Tell me about Pritchard. What was it like serving under him?” Speaking was agony, but it focused him. He decided to keep talking—anything to keep his mind off the unimaginable pain still coursing through every digit, every limb, every vessel, every strand of muscle and tendon, every hair, every—
“That monster left me here. He was humbled, you know, after that battle over Earth. He thought he was invincible, the bastard. Thought he had the whole thing planned out. He was a meticulous planner. Every detail, even the small stuff didn’t escape his notice. He thought he was brilliant. Well, he was a fool. An arrogant fool. Nothing more.”
“You keep saying was.”
Six laughed again. “Of course I am. That bastard has been dead for over a year.”
“How could you know that?”
“Because,” sneered Six. “Because when he left me here, we had been planning on going to November space and beg help from those pirates. Can you imagine that? The pirates. After all that time battling the Empire and tyranny and saving puppies, that bastard was going to go hat in hand to the November family. You’ve heard of them, right? Worse than the old Italian mafia. No one enters their space without permission. No one trades on their worlds without their say-so. After restocking at Destiny, that was his plan. Go to the November family. Thought he could convince them to join his cause or some shit like that. And now he’s dead, the arrogant bastard.”
“How do you know?”
“My Master told me.”
Ben managed a gruff laugh. Somehow, even a forced laughter masked the pain. “Right. And you believe what your master tells you?”
“I never told him the Fury was headed off to November space, and yet he came to me one day and told me Pritchard was dead, at the hands of November pirates.”
Whatever. Ben rolled his eyes, then held his breath against another wave of pain. Panting, he forced out another question.
“What’s your name?”
“I told you. Six.”
“Bullshit. What’s your name? Before you came here.”
Six’s voice rose in intensity. “I told you. I was born here. There is no before.”
“But you just talked to me about your ship and Pritchard for five minutes. What was your name there?”
Ben could tell that the cognitive dissonance confused the man, since he hesitated for several seconds before repeating, “I was born here. On that table. You could see the blood on the floor for—“
“Yeah, yeah, you told me that. Come on, man. Don’t do this. Don’t be what he wants you to be. Don’t be a slobbering, cowering prick.”
Six’s voice trembled. “But he makes me so. I can’t be anything else.”
What in the world was he talking about?
But he didn’t get the chance to ask. The door behind him burst open and the quick, erratic clomp of heavy boots on the floor told him Doctor Stone had arrived, and the pace of his steps told Ben that he was excited.
“Seven! You’re still alive! And awake. G—g—good. That tells me something, Seven. It tells me you’re strong. Not like that filth in the corner. Here, let me adjust this for you.…”
And just like that, the pain stopped. At least, the absence of all feeling qualified as being pain-free. He knew, intellectually, that his wrists and shoulders should be on fire from hanging for so long, but the collar-induced pain seemed to have numbed him to all the smaller, lesser feelings.
“There. I bet you feel like a billion credits now.” Stone walked around to face him. Ben couldn’t remember if he’d even looked in the man’s eyes yet. He knew he had, but the past few days were just a hazy fog. Or was it weeks? He opened his eyes. The man stood before him, one hand on his hips. The stubble growing on his shaved head looked like it would be orange if allowed to grow. A white lab coat was still draped over his shoulders, though he now removed it and hung it on a nail sticking out of the wall. To be honest he looked like a scientist. Some nameless engineer who should be hard at work at some lab bench somewhere, but instead was leering at him, an electronic controller in one hand.
“I can tell you’re going to be my favorite. You’re going to be my masterpiece. My magnum opus.” He smiled at him maniacally.
“What the hell do you want?”
“I told you, Seven, I want you to want me. That’s all. Want me. Need me. Submit to me willingly. Want me as your Master. That’s all. It doesn’t have to hurt anymore. Just call me Master and kneel before me.”
“A little hard to kneel hanging up like this,” Ben said, with a forced sigh, hoping the delusional fool would take the bait.
“Patience, Seven. You haven’t even called me Master yet.” Again, the stuttering seemed to melt away as the man got into the swing of things. He apparently thrived off of dominating others, though he probably had to repress it in his professional work. That would explain the stutter, Ben thought.
“Nor will I.”
The man reached up and patted Ben on the cheek. “We’ll see.” He walked over to the table and retrieved a knife that had lain there, unwashed from when he’d used it previously on Ben’s chest. “Tell me, Seven,” he turned back to look at him, “I trust you’ve talked a little to that rag of filth in the corner?”
“What have you done to him?”
“As he’s no doubt told you, I’ve liberated him. But here’s my problem, Seven, and tell me if you can help me out with it.” He walked back over to Ben and came up close, leaning in to his ear and dropping his voice almost to a whisper. “I want someone to serve me willingly. Not like that pile of shit over there.”
“You mean to tell me he wasn’t willing?” Ben asked, not even trying to keep the sarcasm out of his voice.
“No. I injected him with picobots. I invented them, you know. I’m fucking brilliant. I’ve e
ven clocked my own synapses—they run at 146 percent the normal firing rate of a n—n—normal human.” He thumbed back at Six. “And he does everything I tell him to, believes everything I tell him to, without question. He can’t not obey. But after I injected him and programmed him, I knew what I had done was folly. What’s the thrill of having a robot serve you? A fucking machine. No, Seven, I want a willing servant.” He lowered his voice to a whisper. “I want you. Seven: perfection among the numbers, and now the most perfect of my servants.”
Ben snorted. “Look, if all you want is a blow job, just cut me down and I’ll see what I can—“
The man drew a hand back sharply and hit Ben across the face. A gleam came into his eye, which made Ben shudder inside. “You’ll beg me for it. But no. Not yet. I need to break you first. Then, when I buy some more sluts from Velar, I’ll let you join in.”
He held up the knife, poised to carve something else into his torso. Ben held his breath and clenched his jaw in anticipation. The man paused. “Seven, just know that you have no escape, and no choice. You either do this, or you die, because if you don’t I’ll inject you like I injected him. I’d rather have a fucking robot than a dead body. At least they can pleasure me. And really, you don’t want that shit in you. The picobots are good, but I’ve still got to pass six sigmas of reliability before I make my final delivery to the Empire.” He paused, and shook his head with a leering smile. “And I’ve only got two. Who knows what that’ll do to you? It seemed to be enough for that Admiral, though. He made a surprise visit. Just delivered a box of the stuff to him yesterday.”
Stone leered at him, and brought the knife to bear. Ben closed his eyes and waited for the cold blade.
The pain wouldn’t hurt if he welcomed it, would it?
***
Gavin couldn’t take his eyes off the deck crew, which scurried about on the flight deck, loading armaments, refueling, re-oiling, and frantically preparing every fighter in the vast, long bay for takeoff. He leaned over to Jet, who sat next to him on one of the benches lining the bulkhead.
