by Trevor Wyatt
Tira bolted for Ferriero upon seeing him. They hugged fiercely.
Everyone came around the captain to either shake hands with him or wish him well.
Mahesh saw the hope come alive in the crew’s eyes. He saw how they looked up to their captain, whose presence had given them another reason to push on.
“We may have been captured, beaten, threatened, killed, tortured…” Captain Montgomery said once he was free to speak, “but we won’t give up. The Tyreesians think they’ve captured us, but we will not remain down trodden.
“I want every crew member here to take find a weapon. We’ve killed enough these bastards and we can kill more. Take anything you can find. We’re going to take over this station. We’re going to find our ship. We’re going to destroy anyone or anything that gets in our way and we are going to be victorious.”
The crew cheered.
* * *
Jeryl spent the next few minutes dividing the crew into a series of teams, with different team leaders and objectives. It was in the midst of this that Ashley and Adachi joined them.
“Sir, I want to lead a team and I want Adachi with me,” Ashley said with a straight face, even though she was still breathing heavily, her forehead creased as if she was still in pain.
Jeryl was at a loss for words. He just stared at Ashley.
“You need to rest, Ashley,” Mahesh said, filling in the void. “You just endured…what no one should have endured.”
The crew was deadly silent.
“I’ll rest when I’m dead or back in Terran Space, whichever comes first,” Ashley said to Mahesh. She turned to Jeryl and said, “Sir?”
Jeryl drew in his breath. The look in his wife’s eyes left no room for doubts—she wouldn’t back down. “Fine. You and Adachi will take the third team to the fifth floor.”
Ashley nodded like everything was okay, and Mahesh noticed that Adachi had cleaned her up nicely.
Mahesh knew that the crew was poorly equipped for battle. They were mostly noncombat officers who had to fight highly-trained Tyreesians with knives, whips, and blades. It was hardly fair…yet, it was necessary.
“Before we go,” Mahesh said, calling everyone’s attention to himself. “A little advice. We may be ill-equipped for this venture, but our physically-imposing biology and the locked-down nature of this quadrant can be used to our advantage.”
“That’s right, Mahesh,” Jeryl said. “You’re with me. Let’s move out!”
Ashley and Adachi were the first to march out of the holding cells section.
She didn’t even spare Jeryl another look.
Chapter 18
Ashley was trying her best to keep moving. She didn’t want to be a liability to the team or to her captain. She didn’t want to look weak or broken. So she came out of the cell with Adachi behind her and requested an assignment.
“You’re not ready, Ashley,” Adachi told her; she was one of the closest people Ashley had on the crew. In fact, Adachi was more than a crew member—she was a friend. They talked about everything, including Jeryl and their relationship.
For instance, Ashley knew that Adachi had a secret crush on the good doctor. So, when the opportunity came for the doctor to go on an away mission, Ashley didn’t think twice. She convinced Adachi to go, too. What were friends for?
Ashley ignored the tactical officer’s complaints and sat up. It was then that Ashley realized she was naked, except for her undergarments. She felt a huge amount of insufferable shame engulfing her. She somehow created a barrier over her mind to protect her consciousness from going back to the horrifying event of the past two hours.
She knew that the least thing on her mind should be how she looked. But she couldn’t help thinking about it.
“Ada, did the crew see me like this?” Ashley asked.
“Yes, Ash,” Adachi said.
“Oh my God,” Ashley replied.
Adachi helped her get into her clothes. Ashley still felt weak and drained, and pain still ran cold inside her—but at least now it was manageable.
“It was just Tira and Mahesh,” Adachi said. “Those were the only crew members that saw you. The rest haven’t had the chance to come in here.”
Ashley felt her shame roll back a degree. She stepped into her boots and then walked over to the heap of Tyreesian bodies. Veld was lying just on top of the three guards. Even though he was stunned, he had a smirk on his face.
Ashley took another step towards Veld, then felt a hand hold her back. She glanced to see Adachi flash her a surly gaze.
“Don’t, Ash,” Adachi said. “Jeryl had him stunned. He wants to take him back to the Union for him to stand trial for what he did to you.”
Ashley wasn’t sure why she felt the way she did, but she was flooded with rage when Adachi said that name. It was like a storm of liquid fire. It coursed through her being, incontrollable. She felt like she was going to strangle Adachi for even speaking of Jeryl.
Adachi must have noticed the change in Ashley’s demeanor, because she let go of her and took a step back. She didn’t raise her weapon, but her stance was defensive.
Ashley closed her eyes, which she felt were beginning to water. She didn’t want to hate Jeryl. She knew he did what he thought was best. She was trying so hard not to hate him for allowing the Tyreesian scum torture her over and over again while he just sat and watched, but it was so hard.
It was so hard not to hate Jeryl…and the worst part was, she knew she’d have done the same were the sides reversed.
“I’m sorry if I said anything that offended you, Ash,” Adachi said. She stepped forward to Ashley, holding her again in a loving way.
Ashley let go of Adachi. Then, for the first time since she woke up, Ashley let her tears come out. She leaned onto Adachi’s shoulders and cried her heart out.
The experience was more emotionally damaging than anything else. She felt betrayed. She felt violated and shattered. She felt broken.
She felt so many bitter things that no words could describe. And the object of those emotions wasn’t the interrogator. No. It was Jeryl. Ashley was trying not to feel a crushing wave of hatred for him.
“It’s so hard,” Ashley said when she could talk without breaking down. “It’s so hard not to…not to hate him.”
“I don’t expect you not to feel that way, Ash,” Adachi said. “You’ve been through a lot. It’s a miracle that you survived and held out this long. What kept you going?”
Ashley didn’t reply for a moment. Then she said, “You know, at first I thought it was love. Love for life. Love for space. Love for the ship…and for Jeryl. But the more Veld stabbed me and stunned me and…” she took a moment, sucked in a deep breath and only then continues. “The thought of love evaporated under the heat of pain.” Ashley sobbed loudly. “I was left with rage. Bitterness. Pain. Hatred. This was what kept me going. Hatred.”
Adachi looked into Ashley’s eyes—it was true, there was hatred in there.
Adachi sighed. “Well, we could use a little hatred, now that we are about to break out of here.” She grabbed a rifle from the ground and handed it over to Ashley.
“I don’t exactly agree with what I’m about to advise you, but I think it’s important that you do it,” Adachi said. “You need to keep your mind occupied. You need Tyreesians to burn. You need bodies to transfer your aggression on. You need to go back into battle.”
Ashley took the weapon from her hands.
“Are you sure?” Ashley said. “I was hoping you’d talk me out of this.”
Adachi nodded. “Positive. Otherwise, you will just relive your experience with Veld over and over again. People have gone insane for a lot less. Heck, people have died for a lot less.”
Then Ashley remembered that she was on the brink of death.
“How did Mahesh save me?” asked Ashley.
“He used some Tyreesian experimental medication,” Adachi replied.
“Let me guess,” Ashley said with a wry smile. “You quoted regul
ations for the captain?”
Adachi smiled, her cheeks turning a distinctive shade of red. “You know me, babe. But this time I held my tongue—I don’t care about regulations when it’s your life on the line.”
Ashley sighed. She looked at the weapon in her hand then tightened her grip on it.
“I’ll let hatred boil inside me, then,” she said finally.
“Good,” Adachi said. “Then let’s go kill some Tyreesians. Let’s make them pay.”
After being assigned as the head of team five, Ashley led them out of the holding cell first. They were a team of fifteen crew members, all of whom were noncombatants. They were also poorly armed.
Ashley and Adachi were the only ones who were armed with Tyreesian pulse weapons. The rest were armed with laser whips, blades, and knives. What good could blades do when your enemy would be charging towards you with assault rifles?
Thankfully, on their way to the fifth floor, they met with little resistance. The ones they met ended up having to fight with their bare hands. Ashley’s crew excelled at decapitating the Tyreesians because of their deficient height.
The corridors were narrow, which made their heights an advantage. From room to room, Ashley and Adachi led the team, their weapons constantly letting loose lethal pulses of compact air. They were set to cause maximum damage, a setting with sliced in half any unfortunate Tyreesian caught in the blast.
As they made their way through the fifth floor, they noticed that the openings connecting the current quadrant to the next were being locked down with metal barriers. Even the windows were being closed by metal barriers.
“They’re extending their lockdown,” Ashley said to Adachi, as they led their crew down the final corridor that led to an airlock.
“It means they must be afraid,” Adachi said, squeezing her trigger and killing the Tyreesians that burst out of a door ahead and to the right.
Three more Tyreesians came out, guns blazing. Ashley and Adachi dived out of the way, shooting as they hit the ground. The Tyreesians were killed instantly, but this time, members of her team were caught in the fire and their screams punctuated the air.
Three had been hit by the Tyreesians’ blast and were lying sliced across the midsection.
“We don’t have time to grieve,” Ashley barked, bringing up her weapon to her eye level. “We keep moving.”
Without waiting, she moved onwards. Adachi joined her a few seconds later.
“Give them a break, Ash,” Adachi withered. “They just watched their friends die.”
“You were the one who told me to channel my anger to this,” Ashley said through gritted teeth. “That’s exactly what I’m doing.”
They got to the end of the hallway, which opened into a wide lobby-like area. Ashley and Adachi entered the lobby, shooting. Ashley thought she counted about seven Tyreesians in the lobby. Only three were armed with pulse weapons, and these were the ones Ashley and Adachi aimed at first, while the rest of the team engaged the others.
Unfortunately for the armed Tyreesians, they aimed at the wrong people—the team members without guns. This gave Ashley and Adachi the time and latitude to aim and fire. They lost two more team members, but they killed the three Tyreesians and allowed the remaining teammates to exert their anger on the remaining Tyreesians.
As the Tyreesians fell down dead, Ashley watched their fore eyes open up with a flash of light that died out immediately.
“I wonder what they see on the brink of death,” Adachi said at her side.
Ashley shrugged. “Maybe they see all the piss poor choices that they’ve made while they were alive.”
“Or maybe they see how many chances they had to be crueler, but they just missed them.”
Ashley chuckled. “Thanks,” she said to Adachi.
“Please don’t say that to me,” Adachi said. “I did nothing for you.”
Adachi pointed at the airlock. There was a metal barrier sealing it in, in spite of the fact that the walkway between this quadrant and the next had been retracted.
“There goes our escape route, then,” Ashley said.
“Captain Montgomery to team five, come in,” said Jeryl’s voice over the comms.
Ashley froze upon hearing Jeryl’s voice.
Adachi touched her arm to calm her down and said to her comms, “Go ahead, captain,”
“All levels have reported complete lockdown,” he said. “What’s your status?”
“Lockdown is in effect here as well, sir,” Adachi replied.
“Roger that,” Captain Jeryl said.
Then the line went dead.
Chapter 19
Jeryl could still feel the heat of Ashley’s anger. It was as if someone took the sun and held it above his head. Her deep seethed anger washed all over him.
He and Mahesh, along with a string of seven crew members, including Tira Avae and the head of his personal security detail, Lieutenant Kaia Madsen, stood along both walls of the narrow corridor that led into the officers’ mess.
The Tyreesian device showed most of the Tyreesian population in this area of the quadrant, and the hatch connecting this section of the quadrant to the other was still open. All other connections had been severed by the lockdown protocol. If they could secure the officers’ mess, they could secure their way into the next quadrant.
Jeryl was at the head of the team alongside Kaia. Mahesh was right behind him, hoisting a Tyreesian pulse weapon that he intended on using in a fight.
“You don’t have to go on fighting, Mahesh,” Jeryl told him when it was just their team left in the holding facility. He could see the eagerness with which Mahesh was holding the gun. He could also see the man’s apprehension. He knew Mahesh had an aversion to death—all kinds of death.
He also knew Mahesh had more reasons than anyone to detest death. Yet, all throughout this mission into Tyreesian space, he had to break his oath and do things that were frowned upon by his profession. He had to relive the horrors of his past just so he could save Jeryl, whose lapse in judgment had put the crew in the quagmire they found themselves in.
Jeryl knew everything that was happening was his fault. He’d been so blinded by his hubris and place in history that he had ignored the danger of the Tyreesian Collective and he’d jumped at the chance to go into their space and stick it to them. He had let unresolved anger and pride get the better of him. He even violated a direct order from Admiral Gan. And now, many of his crew had died, including Vu Le, the science officer. Their deaths were all on his conscience, and he knew that someday he was going to pay for that.
Ashley had to go through the horrors of Tyreesian torture because of him. And now their future was unsure. Jeryl felt Ashley’s hatred the moment their eyes met when she regained consciousness. The way she’d looked at him was still shocking to him. He didn’t know how he was going repair their relationship.
“I want to fight,” Mahesh replied. “It’s my duty.”
Mahesh sounded so sure that he could have fooled the captain. His white jumpsuit was soaked in blood. His upper body had generous streaks of red.
“No, it’s not,” Jeryl had replied him. “Your duty is to make sure me and the rest of the crew are fit to fight. You’re not a fighter, Mahesh. You’re a doctor. If Armada Medical found out they’d have my head.”
Mahesh smiled at that. “Well, captain, I won’t say anything if you don’t.”
Jeryl chuckled. For a moment, the two friends enjoyed the lack of tension in the air. It was amazing that, in this hell-hole of a station, they could find peace and happiness. The only thing sad about it was that he was enjoying it with Mahesh and not Ashley. Not that he didn’t like Mahesh, but Ashley was his wife. She should come first…but she had come second to the Armada in that Tyreesian cell.
“Captain, I think you should know,” Mahesh began. “The Sonali ship that we found. It was disabled by what we believe is a new Tyreesian weapon. Some sort of EMP pulse. It knocked out all critical systems on the Sonali ship in one hit.
I think this…whatever this is, is tied to the weapon. Almost as if it’s being tested and part of the elaborate mouse trap that we’re in.”
Jeryl’s darkened mood returned, wiping the smile off his face.
Mahesh noticed this and became serious.
“My duty is to you and the crew. It’s in discharging this duty that I’m going with you and right now our duty is to take this information back to the Terran Union,” he said.
Jeryl shook his head. He had lost so many good officers today. He wasn’t about to lose Mahesh too.
“This isn’t a game, Doc,” he said. “People have died. People will die.”
“I know,” Mahesh replied. “I’ve been running around this damn space station longer than you have. And I’m alive. I think I can hold myself.”
“Don’t confuse luck with skill, Mahesh,” Jeryl said. “If it’s all the same to you, I’d like you to stay back and keep an eye on Veld. We may need him if we are going to get out of here alive.”
“No, Jeryl,” he replied. “It’s not all the same to me. I want in on the action. Perhaps, I need to see that you’re okay. I have to be near in case you have a breakdown.”
That caught Jeryl’s attention. He glanced over at Mahesh. “What? You think I’m going to crack?”
Mahesh was about to reply, but Jeryl just kept going.
“I’ve been in worse situations, Mahesh,” he replied. “Hell, I’ve been tortured by the damn Tyreesians before. I fought in the Earth-Sonali War for five goddamn years, and I’m still standing. No, Mahesh, I’m not going to crack. The only person you should be more concerned about is Commander Gavin.”
“What she endured was terrible, true. It was unimaginable. Plain evil. And it’ll take her time to recover,” Mahesh said. “But so do you. What you experienced today was… emotional and psychological. No one is ever prepared for the mental abuse that follows after seeing a loved one being tortured. This doesn’t exempt you.”
Jeryl looked away from the man. He wasn’t ready to hear his doctor tell him he was unfit for duty, especially when there were crew members in earshot, who were depending on him, and when they were still in very hostile territory with an uncertain escape plan.
