by Trevor Wyatt
The Tyreesians didn’t have qualms against torturing. Jeryl knew this all too well; the Tyreesians had their fill with him once. Hell, they had people that were specifically trained for that purpose. In fact, it was a trade in the Tyreesian home world—they were called interrogators, and they traded in torture.
For a brief moment, Jeryl, while still battling his physiology going haywire, envisioned Ashley hanging from the wall, bloodied and unconscious with holes all over her body.
He shook his head in spite of his vertigo. Slowly, he opened his eyes again and saw that he was in a small high-walled room. The room was completely bare. It stretched up for about three stories; the walls were whitewashed and completely stark, and the entire ceiling was made of lights that flooded all the way down to the ground.
A small metal table was affixed to one corner, with a small chair behind it. Behind him and to the opposite corner from the table was a swinging door. There were no windows and no obvious ducts for ventilation—just like how the Tyreesians liked it.
Jeryl could feel the almost indiscernible vibration of engines underneath his palm. He had a feeling he was on the ring-like station he’d seen through his view screen.
Jeryl had always known the Tyreesians to be big builders. Whenever they built something, they always went for big; their houses, their vehicles, their structures…even their space ships and space stations. It didn’t make sense considering their size, but then when you thought of the ego and pride that was so suffused in their culture, you could understand the rationale behind such an approach.
It was a compensatory mechanism. If they couldn’t beat others with their small hands, they beat them with their big guns.
Well, it seems to be working well for them, Jeryl thought.
Jeryl tried to rise to his feet. He started by leaning away from his palms and putting his weight and that of his stomach on his knees. His body trembled with the hot flashes that poured over him. It passed after a few seconds.
Jeryl opened his eyes once more. Gently, he got himself to his feet. His legs were weak and wobbling, but it held his weight. Once he was standing, he remained in one position for up to a minute, while his body adjusted to the idea of consciousness again.
“Fucking bastards,” Jeryl muttered to himself, his words echoing inside his head like gunshots. Not happy with just stunning and dragging him back to their ship, it almost felt like the Tyreesians wanted him to suffer.
When he was sure he could move without throwing up, Jeryl walked over the table and checked it out.
The table was firmly fixed to the wall, and it had sharp edges. This wouldn’t happen in a Terran Union correctional facility, but apparently the Tyreesians didn’t feel that way. For a race that was probably more advanced than others, their practices still seemed barbaric.
It made Jeryl wonder whether life was really a cycle.
Could species advance so greatly in technology that they return to the barbarisms of ancient times? Was that where the Terran Union was headed?
The table didn’t offer anything to Jeryl in terms of makeshift weaponry. He hobbled over to the chair and checked it out. It was also tightly fixed to the ground. It didn’t bulge, not under Jeryl’s weak hands. Jeryl felt the immense urge to sit down and rest, but he decided against it.
His wife was in imminent danger. He had to get out of there. He had to get them all out of there. Jeryl walked around cell, looking for something he could take advantage of.
He found nothing.
The walls were made of a material that was just as tough and reinforced like concrete. There weren’t any cameras visible in the room. It didn’t mean anything, Jeryl knew, because when dealing with the Tyreesians it was given that they’ve thought of everything and put contingencies in place to handle every eventuality.
Jeryl paused. He realized he was just kidding himself by looking around for a way to escape. He knew very well that the only way he was getting out of that cell was if someone helped him break out of it. His only hope, now, were either the junior officers the Tyreesians had in the airlock, or the away team he had left on the Sonali vessel.
His chest started to tighten as he thought about Ashley.
Jeryl had endured a lot of things and had kept on moving. He had seen violence and death in copious quantities, and that was way more than what most men would see in ten lifetimes. Yet, he’d remained sane. He hadn’t broken down with PTSD and the major reason for that was Ashley. She was there with him, holding his hand and guiding him through with her words, courage and support.
If they took her away from him—if they even dared take her away from him—he would explode. He would kill them all and damn the consequences. And when he was done, when he had exerted his vengeance, he wasn’t sure what would become of him.
What was life when Ashley was out of it? There was no reason to keep on pushing. It was Ashley that made space exploration exotic and interesting—not just space all by itself. Every single thing they did together always felt like an adventure. Ashley was his best friend, his other half, his everything.
And now…
Jeryl sat on the chair and tried to push out the murderous thoughts from his mind. Ashley wasn’t gone. He still had time. He could convince the Tyreesians that whatever they had planned could be gained in more humane ways.
Suddenly, the door opened and a Tyreesian, one taller than most, stepped in. He was still quite short by Terran standard, standing at barely four and a half feet; his skin color was a deeper shade of brown and his facial slits were shorter than most, both the slits for hearing on both sides of his bulbous head and the ones for sight. His lips were thin and grim. His third eye was shut, as it should be. But it did something weird—it fluttered every now and then.
Jeryl had never met any Tyreesian whose third eye opened. There wasn’t much information about it as the Tyreesians were intensely secretive with what the eye was for. The only thing Jeryl knew about it is that a Tyreesian with an open third eye was a dead Tyreesian.
However, Jeryl was beginning to believe that the eye was responsible for why they were such bastards.
The Tyreesian was dressed in standard interrogator fatigue. He wore khaki pants with a utility belt tightly holding it to his waist along with his neatly pressed shirt. Tucked neatly and professionally in the pouches of his utility belt were several laser knives, torches, whips and a few guns.
As he walked into the room, he had a grim smile on his face. In his darkened eyes, Jeryl could see the shadow of a psychopath.
The Tyreesian left the door opened, and through it, Jeryl could see a very narrow hallway. He could hear the clipped footfalls of marching patrol soldiers, the occasional beep of machinery and scattered conversations. The translator implant that was now standard for all officers translated clearly and without any lag.
“Open feed in interrogation cell number one,” the Tyreesian said, and a life sized image of another Tyreesian appeared to the side of the interrogator. Jeryl recognized him fast—it was Leader Greer.
He had a wild, almost delirious smile on his face.
“Well, hello, Captain Montgomery!”
Jeryl was already burning with anger and hatred.
“Greer! You have crossed the line this time. I’ll—”
“What? You will do what?” Greer clipped back. “I will tell you what you will be doing—nothing. You will do nothing except what you are told. Oh, and this is my son, Interrogator Veld.”
Jeryl glanced back at the interrogator, who remained silent the entire time. He glanced between the two and saw no similarities whatsoever. While Greer’s head was more ovular, Veld’s was bulbous. While Greer was short, Veld was taller.
“I didn’t know ugliness ran in the family,” Jeryl shot back, his words bitter and sharp.
Greer’s smirk disappeared and was replaced with a sneer.
“Let’s see if you keep on being such a shinka when he’s done with you.”
The feed vanished.
Jeryl let out a short breath of air—his heart was already pounding.
Oblivious to Jeryl’s terror, Veld smiled and closed the distance between them.
“We want you to broadcast to the entire galaxy a statement of your surrender to the Tyreesians.”
Jeryl was about to rebuff the idea, when the Tyreesian went out of the room and returned with a gagged and shackled human prisoner.
“And because we know you like to be motivated to cooperate, we have this to keep you in line.”
Jeryl’s defenses melted at the sight of Ashley before him.
Chapter 10
Mahesh felt like he was leading the away team and the Sonali survivor on a wild goose hunt. They spent almost two hours searching every inch of the lifeless vessel. Even the makeshift armory where they kept some weapons to use to defend themselves against space pirates and thieves was affected by whatever happened to the ship.
The particle guns were all nonfunctional, and the laser blades were dead. The darkness and eeriness of the place was beginning to get to Mahesh and his crew. They just shuffled about with their shoulders sagged.
Sef tried to keep everyone’s spirit alive by occasionally talking with zest in his voice. But the truth was that they all just wanted to survive and go help the crew of the Seeker. Who knew what was being done to them? Who knew what evil the Tyreesians were hatching?
Once again, they came back empty handed to the shuttle bay where the pod was situated. All the buttons they pushed and the levers they pulled—everything they did turned into a failure. Vu even tried restarting the main power engines to no avail. They were mechanically and physically fine. From all he could tell, they hadn’t been damaged. But there just was no light in them. There was no life. The thing that made them run was not there.
“What thing?” Mahesh asked Vu, annoyed at his mystical choice of words.
“I would say electricity, but it’s more than that,” Vu replied. “It’s basically the electrons that exist in the wiring of the ship. They seem to have dissipated.”
“But I thought everything had electrons,” Mahesh replied. “Matter is composed of compounds, which are made from elements. Elements are made of atoms that have electrons circulating them. Hence, everything that exists in this material plane is made of electrons, including the wiring of this ship. If what you say is correct, and the electrons have somehow dissipated the electrical subsystems, then this ship, or at least its wiring, shouldn’t exist because the electrons keep the nucleus together.”
Of course, Adachi and Sef looked lost, but Vu smiled with intrigue that Mahesh hadn’t seen in him for a long time.
“You’re correct on all counts, doc,” he said. “But, you see, I’m not referring to the electrons in the atomic structure of the materials used in conducting. I’m referring to the materials being conducted. You know that electricity is really electrons in motion, right?”
Mahesh nodded. Even laymen knew that.
“They’re electrons in motion, not atoms or elements. Electrons. You need to understand that the electrons flowing through the wiring of this ship are not the electrons that are bound in the atomic structures of the conducting materials,” Vu said.
“They’re not?” Mahesh replied, seeing where he got it wrong.
“No, they’re not,” Vu replied. “So, you see, the electrons in the atomic structure of the wiring are still intact. At least that’s what my handheld is telling me. They’re still quite in place. However, the electrons that are needed to carry information and so on are gone. Mute. No more.”
“And that’s why nothing’s working on this ship, right?” Adachi quipped in at the end. “Because the…electrons are no more?”
Vu nodded.
The team headed back to the pod. Mahesh noticed that the pod’s lights weren’t as bright as they were when they first arrived there. He checked the status of his EVA suit. It showed that he had about thirty minutes before his batteries died out and needed to recharge.
“Check your EVA suits, everyone,” Mahesh said. “You too, Sef. Check your breather.”
“It says about forty minutes,” said Adachi.
“Mine is less than thirty,” Vu replied.
“It says three hours,” Sef followed.
“Well, that’s because it’s just a breather,” Vu replied. “And you haven’t been using it as long as we have.”
Vu and Sef were getting along well since their last brush up in the control room.
“Plus, he’s a light breather himself,” Mahesh said. He sighed.
They were all standing around the pod and looking about the massive space. No one wanted to enter the tight-spaced pod. Mahesh knew he would have to order them all inside so they could drain the batteries off the pod to charge their EVA suits. At least they would be able to get a full charge before the pod died out.
Mahesh looked out of the open shuttle bay door into space. It seemed as though more darkness poured into the ship from there. Far off in the distance, he could see a spray of twinkling stars. He wondered which one of those stars was Earth’s sun, and which one belonged to New Washington.
“What if we flooded the wiring with electrons?” Adachi said aloud.
Mahesh turned to see her sitting on the ground. Her assault rifle stood on the ground, leaning against her legs.
“It doesn’t work that way, Commander,” Mahesh replied. “Electrons aren’t something you can create like that. Some materials have an abundance of electrons, which makes them easy to conduct electricity, while some materials don’t. What Vu was saying is that the ship’s critical wiring has been turned into a non-conductible material. Right, Vu?”
There was silence.
Mahesh glanced at Vu. The man seemed to be deep in his thoughts.
“Right, Vu?”
Vu pulled out his handheld and began to input some information.
“Lieutenant Commander,” Mahesh said, mildly authoritative.
“Sir, Adachi may not be wrong,” Vu said. “Yes, sir, you’re right. The wiring has been made non-conductible. But we can reverse that. We can make it conduct again. And we can use the pod. Hopefully, it has enough charge to ‘jump start’ the ship’s systems again. We just need a powerful surge of electricity through the wiring and we could have the vessel running again.”
He looked down at his handheld, saying, “I just need to make some calculations to know if…”
Vu’s shoulders slumped.
“Any luck?” Mahesh asked.
“The power requirements to reverse what was done to this vessel are beyond what the pod can provide.” Vu looked up at Mahesh. “We’re back at square one.”
“Not necessarily,” said Sef.
All eyes were on him.
“Where do we need to go? In pursuit of your ship, right?” He asked.
“Yes,” Mahesh said. “We need to rescue them.”
“So all we need is for the ship to move,” Sef said. “Perhaps, there are no weapons aboard the ship that we can use to fire on the Tyreesians…”
This made Adachi stand to her feet.
“What are you saying, Sef?” she asked. “Is there a way to fire up the engine with Vu’s plan?”
Sef shook his head. “No, the FTL drives and thrusters are all linked to the main power. We can’t get them up and running without powering up the whole ship. But the LPS—the laser drill—isn’t linked directly to the main system.”
“Doesn’t matter,” Vu said. “It would have been fried the same way as the rest of the ship.”
“Yes,” Sef replied. “But it’s a self-contained system. We can detach it from the main wiring…”
“…and fire it up alone,” Vu said with a smile that lit up his face. “Sef, you just may be the most brilliant person I’ve ever met.”
Sef’s cheek turned a deep shade of blue. “Well, I highly doubt that…”
“He was just joking, Sef,” Adachi chirped in. She, too, was smiling.
“Oh,” Sef said then laughed.
> “So, what you’re saying is you can get the LPS on,” Mahesh said. “Will it generate enough power to get the ship running again?”
Vu answered that one. “Technically, yes. But we don’t have the equipment nor the time to build one that would be able to convert the heat or electromagnetic energy generated.”
“So, how does the LPS help us?” Mahesh asked.
“We use it as propulsion,” Sef said. He was already making the calculations on his handheld. He went over to the pod and scanned its energy cells.
“We have just about the right amount of energy to get the LPS started.”
“Sef, go prep the systems,” Vu said. “Take every cable you can find and connect them to the outlet.”
Sef nodded and disappeared under the archway.
Vu turned to Adachi and said, “We need to get the pod as close to the exit as possible.”
Adachi nodded and marched into the pod.
“What’s the plan?” Mahesh said. He seemed to be the only one who didn’t get what the plan was.
“We know the bearing that the Seeker went in,” Vu said. “I believe that if we fire the LPS, it will generate a massive pulse of energy. And Newton’s first law of motion…”
Mahesh nodded. “For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.”
“Yes,” Vu said. “The force will push us in the direction the Tyreesian ship went. We’ll be moving at a great speed. Coupled with our momentum, we can crash this vessel into the ship and if we’re lucky, we can steer it to crash while we get away.”
Mahesh nodded. “That should provide the necessary chaos and distraction for our people to break out. But we need to be cautious with that too, as we don’t know where exactly the crew is.”
Vu nodded. “Yes, sir. I’ll go check on Sef and see to it that he gets the connection right.”
“Great work, Vu,” Mahesh said.
Vu disappeared into the archway.
Mahesh stood by and watched as Adachi managed to pilot the pod to the very edge of the shuttle bay, where the metal ended and space began.
She left the pod depressurized and the hatch open and went over to the energy cells panel to remove the covering. Then, she began to work on the wiring, removing them from their plugs and exposing the raw power source.
