Five Empires: An Epic Space Opera

by Steven J Shelley

  By the time Fusar had clambered up the cybomancer was already hauling the second pilot from his chair. A knife hilt protruded from his forehead. Verity dumped the body unceremoniously, signaling to Mandie way up on the ridge. The mercenary came bounding down the sand.

  “Get in the back,” Jake barked abruptly as he emerged from the underside. “Fusar, take the nav chair.”

  Fusar was more than happy with that plan, but did Mandie scowl? There was no time to consider that possibility as Jake closed the hatch and plugged in a direct course for Grode Airbase.

  “… the airbase?” Fusar asked incredulously.

  “This tub doesn’t have drift capability,” Jake said bitterly. “We’re gonna have to find one that does.”

  Fusar nodded hesitantly. These transports were probably only used for ferrying troops to various hot spots on Bullhead.

  “Surely a smaller facility would be more manageable?” Fusar reasoned.

  “The airbase will be expecting every one of these units back,” Jake said. “If we fly off in the other direction we’ll have fighters all over us. This way we have the element of surprise.

  Fusar consulted the ship’s systems as Jake thrummed the dashboard impatiently. The hold diagnostic confirmed that Verity and Mandie were secure in their wall harnesses.

  Once Jake’s course glowed green, he released the prop bulb and the craft rose into the air. Irian fire peppered the port wing, threatening to clip the vessel for good, but Jake spun the craft around and let rip with the flak gun mounted under the cockpit. It was relatively weak as air-to-ground flak went, but enough to send the snipers scurrying for cover.

  Fusar hoped the lizards would emerge victorious in that particular battle - they’d seen enough misery to last several lifetimes. She regretted not getting a chance to distribute the med packs she lifted from the humans. All she could do was press on, and if she survived, press for the destruction of this horrible place.

  The immediate danger averted, Jake relinquished manual control and slumped into his chair. The autopilot did its best to correct for the missing wing, promising Jake that he wouldn’t need to intervene too often.

  Fusar looked across at her savior, the man she had grown to depend on.

  “We made it, Le Sondre,” she said lightly.

  The duellist grinned. She loved how it lifted the scar under his eye.

  “We haven’t made nuttin’,” he scolded gently. “Plenty of work to do yet, grasshopper.”

  “Grasshopper?”

  “You’re still so young,” Jake explained. “Not a relic about to turn to dust, like me.”

  Fusar chuckled at that, but it was forced.

  “I’ll take ‘young’,” she said. “It’s better then ‘catalyst’, or ‘chosen one’.”

  Jake’s face briefly clouded over. “I’m sorry I exposed you to that,” he said. “It must seem very strange.”

  “I don’t think you’re crazy, for what it’s worth,” Fusar said, worried she’d offended the only person she really trusted. “I just find it hard to believe that I can influence this galaxy in any way.”

  Jake was silent for a while. Fusar sensed he was consumed with sadness.

  “I thought my father was dead for a long time,” he said finally. “Then he returned from his … ‘travel’ … forever changed. Sometimes I wonder if he’d been better off staying where he was.”

  “The black hole you mentioned,” Fusar said gently. “In the Quavar system. Have you ever seen it?”

  Jake shook his head. “They say it isn’t far from Solitude, the Aegisi home world.”

  He looked at Fusar intently, his eyes moist. “The black hole is supermassive. It blocks out so many stars you think you’ve entered some netherworld. My father never talked about it much. Only the future he’d seen. Only what we needed to do to prevent the Norgaardi from destroying all sentient life in this galaxy.”

  “Five catalysts,” Fusar mused doubtfully, still unable to bring herself to believe it. She wanted to, desperately. She felt like she was letting Jake down with her cynicism. But if he was hurt by her lack of faith, he didn’t show it.

  “Michael Danner was the first,” he said. “I think his purpose was to liberate Cerulean. Now that Solitude has fallen, the Aegisi have a new home.”

  “You’re the second catalyst, aren’t you?” Fusar asked, feeling bold all of a sudden.

  Jake shifted uncomfortably. “I think so,” he admitted. “My purpose is fairly obvious.”

  “To save me,” Fusar said glumly.

  “No,” he said, his ice-blue eyes drilling through her. “To inspire you.”

  Fusar’s heart lurched. What did that mean? There was some kind of primitive energy between them, something just out of reach. And yet as soon as it arrived, the moment passed. Fusar had so many questions, but she knew Jake couldn’t answer them. She needed to shape her own destiny, as Jake had said all along.

  But that meant nothing to her. All she knew was that she wanted to be near him.

  Bullhead undulated beneath them in a scorched blend of yellow, orange and red. From this altitude the hellish trenches were more benign, like the lazy sketchings of some gargantuan being. Grode Airbase could be seen on the western horizon, a hazy gray smudge speckled with blinking red lights.

  “Stay strapped in,” Jake advised the others over the internal com. “I’m aiming for the control tower.”

  Another crash landing didn’t appeal to Fusar at all, but the plan made sense. Disabling enemy coms was probably the only way they could buy enough time to steal a ship with drift capability.

  Fort Grode resolved itself too quickly for her liking. Jake spent several minutes light-sketching possible vectors of approach.

  Fusar resented the constant motion, the relentless danger surrounding them. She just wanted to talk to Jake about simple things. About his colorful life. About where he’d been, what he’d seen. Even that seemed too much to ask in their current predicament. It angered and saddened her at the same time.

  When the duellist took the steerage bar, assuming manual control of the troop ship, she knew the die had been cast.

  buzzed an authoritative command over the com. Jake signaled for Fusar to speak. It was nigh impossible to imitate the guttural tones of a Jaj.

  “Copy that, Control,” she said, wincing. If her coms etiquette was sufficiently suspicious they’d be fired upon. Plus, she was a woman. Female Jaj didn’t sound worlds away from males, particularly over a com unit, but there was a difference. For the moment, their approach was accepted. Jake gave the craft subtle altitude, preparing to dive when the moment came.

 

  “Copy that, Control,” Fusar blurted. “We’ve sustained damage to our starboard wing and correction systems. Over.”

 

  Fusar shook her head and took a deep breath. Although her bald explanation appeared to have worked, this exchange was shredding her nerves into little pieces.

  “Not long now,” Jake murmured. The airbase now filled the cockpit window. It was a circular structure, walled and secure. An open flight zone chewed up most of the surface area. There were hangars along the northern perimeter, barracks, control and administration to the south.

  The tarmac was dotted with at least sixty returned troop carriers, their Irian cargoes successfully deployed. Fusar felt angry just looking at them. The lizards were always the ones who ultimately suffered.

  “Hold tight,” Jake said over the internal com. He gripped the steerage bar so tightly his knuckles were bloodless.

  “Fusar,” he said, eyes roaming the airbase for enemy placements, “When the time comes, stay close behind me. Promise?”

  “Got it, Jake.”

  “Good girl.”

  The troop carrier was now less than two hundred feet from the control tower. It was becoming increasingly difficult to justify their current course.

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  “Coming in to land, control,” Fusar said, drawing a smile from Jake. The sight made her skin tingle. A second later the ship was locked into an aggressive nosedive.

  Fusar was securely strapped into the nav chair, but for the next few seconds she was certain she would die. The control tower rose to meet them, rigid and impervious. Jake aimed for the apex, a command desk walled in aquamarine glass. A place where a score of Jaj officers controlled the desert skies. The cool, reflective surface glided toward them with bleak inevitability.

  The building’s shield flared magenta and provided a modicum of resistance. Fusar was thrown about her seat like a rag doll, sure every one of her limbs would snap.

  The crash of glass seemed cataclysmic, like the universe was shattering around her. The snub-nosed troop ship was buffeted so many times Fusar could only jam her eyes shut and hope for the best. At last the horrendous contact ceased as the ship broke through the other side.

  Not willing to open her eyes just yet, Fusar was vaguely aware of a clamoring siren and the sickening lurch of a vessel hopelessly out of control.

  “You OK?” Jake asked to her left. She opened an eye. Blood cascaded down the duellist’s forehead, pooling in his left eye.

  “You need gauze and dressing, I -”

  “Stay focused, Fusar,” he said brusquely, fighting to regain control of the steerage bar.

  The ship was spinning laterally some twenty yards above the tarmac. Diagnostics reported that it had been severely weakened by the tower collision. Shields were toast and the fore hull was about to shatter once and for all. If they crashed into one of the parked troop carriers they were unlikely to survive.

  Fusar was itching to check on Mandie and Verity, but didn’t dare leave her seat just yet.

  “We need a defendable position,” Jake muttered. Jaj ground troops were massing by the huge hangar doors to the north. Jake constantly worked the steerage bar, coaxing it back into his control.

  The ship scudded over the top of a stationary fuel truck, clipping a radio antenna from the cabin roof. The vessel’s nose dipped and they seemed destined to slam into a parked ship, but Jake lowered the steerage bar just enough to leapfrog the enemy ship and reach the empty tarmac in the northwest corner. He brought her down to a skidding, ungainly halt in front of a sentry station.

  58

  Two lightly-armored Jaj carrying plasma rifles emerged and circled the smoking ship. Jake groaned as he killed the ailing prop bulb.

  “See to the others,” he said. “I’ll clear the way.”

  Fusar nodded and headed out back. Her legs were wobbly and her head spun. Mandie’s harness had failed and she was lying on the floor. For a moment Fusar feared the worst, but Mandie was conscious and had no broken bones. Fusar checked on Verity, who hadn’t made a sound. Her skin was pale and her abdominal wound had begun bleeding again.

  “Verity …?”

  She wasn’t breathing.

  “Verity!”

  Fusar pulled her free and lay her gently on the floor. Trying not to panic, she watched on as Mandie tried resuscitation. After three cycles they were forced to concede defeat - Verity was dead.

  Shell shocked, Fusar allowed Mandie to drag her from the ship. Jake was stripping a rifle from a dead guard on the tarmac.

  “You took your time,” he said angrily. “Five hundred soldiers are heading this way.”

  He noticed that Verity wasn’t with them. Fusar looked him in the eye and shook her head. He nodded.

  “We need to move,” he said with a fortitude that seemed other-worldly. The fugitives approached a maintenance bay set into the northwest perimeter. Several Jaj mechanics were at work in there, but they merely glared at the intruders. In Jaj society one had a niche and that was it.

  Jake led the women into a murky tunnel lit by green phos tubes. A vast array of tools were stored in gear cages to left and right.

  Fusar’s heart was heavy with grief as she tried to keep up with Jake. She hadn’t really known Verity for long, but the cybomancer was Jake’s sister and therefore a powerful ally in her eyes. Verity had been instrumental in her liberation from St Fidelis - for that alone she would always command a special place in Fusar’s heart.

  For all the horror of her short life, the Jaj fugitive wasn’t quite used to death. Not when it visited friends and companions, anyway. She’d seen plenty of monks sacrifice themselves to the white worms of St Fidelis, but she had no emotional attachment to them at all. The moment she was rescued, an entirely new emotional landscape was available to her, and it was proving to be bittersweet.

  The maintenance tunnel appeared to skirt the airbase. Jake grunted in satisfaction as they reached an intersection. Their chaotic landing would’ve thrown communications into disarray, but it wouldn’t be long before the Jaj conducted a thorough search . The further they crawled into the bowels of the airbase, the better their chances of securing an escape vessel.

  Jake’s chosen tunnel drew them into what appeared to be a dead end, but there was ventilation access in the ceiling. He used his tough rifle to get the stiff handle moving. Once inside he gave an all-clear.

  Fusar climbed into a circular shaft that bristled with power. Mandie came next, closing the hatch behind her. The fugitives advanced down a shaft that was gun-barrel straight.

  “Like the spokes of a wheel,” Jake said. “From the hub we might be able to reach one of the hangars.”

  Padding silently through the shaft set Fusar’s nerves on edge. She half expected the passage to be flooded with water, or worse, at any moment. At length they reached a circular hub that granted access to several branching shafts.

  Jake used his wristpad compass to determine which direction to take. Now that they were on the right track, he kept a breathless pace until they reached the access hatch at the end. With a little elbow grease they had it open and were soon standing in a polished chrome corridor overlooking an expansive hangar. The strident alarm from earlier hadn’t dissipated. A gruff Jaj voice was barking instructions over the general com.

  “They’ve re-established central command,” Jake said. “Hopefully we’ve gotten in behind their security perimeter.”

  The trio padded silently down the corridor and entered an observation area, where they enjoyed a commanding view of the hangar floor. Fusar’s heart soared. There were a multitude of troop carriers, but also a few deep space vessels. A sleek corvette caught her attention.

  “How do we get down there?” she asked. The floor was crawling with scarlet-clad Jaj troops.

  “They know what we’re after,” Jake said. “Besides, the deep space rides will be DNA-activated.”

  “Then how do we escape?” Fusar asked, exasperated.

  “I’m hoping we won’t need to,” Jake replied cryptically.

  Fusar exchanged a look with Mandie - she was also confused.

  “Do you trust me?” the duellist asked with a mischievous grin.

  Both women nodded.

  “Then follow,” he said confidently. Fusar followed, but she didn’t like it. Jake could be infuriating sometimes. He ushered them into a drop shaft at the rear of the obs deck and plunged them to the hangar floor. All Fusar and Mandie could do was stay close as he strode out onto the floor as if he owned it. Incredibly, they remained unchallenged for several seconds.

  “This is called ‘normalized cloaking’,” Jake said with relish. “It can last a good half minute.”

  A Jaj engineer crossed their path, head buried in a roving schematic. Jake grabbed his braids and drove him forward.

  “Got a clan?” he growled in his ear.

  The man either didn’t understand Foundation or refused to answer.

  “Cooperate if you plan on seeing them again,” the duellist said calmly. He liked to boast that the quickest way to blackmail a Jaj was to mention their clan. Of course, the flip side was the fierce resentment it engendered.

  Jake and his prisoner ambled to t
he center of the floor. Again, Mandie and Fusar had no choice but to follow. By this stage a number of soldiers were alert to their presence.

  “Will you prime the corvette for us?” Jake asked in a loud voice.

  The mechanic paused as if it was a trick question.

  “No,” he growled.

  “Fine,” Jake sighed, letting go of his braids and handing over his rifle.

  “Will no one here offer passage to Ebessa!” he shouted, making Fusar flinch. Had Jake finally gone crazy? Too much sun? Too much battle?

  Soldiers had encircled the trio and were liable to fire at any moment. A large Jaj with officer’s epaulets strode toward them.

  “On what basis do you make such demands, prisoner?” he snarled.

  Fusar was suddenly conscious of the curious eyes trained on her. After all, she was Jaj herself, and a woman at that.

  “We aren’t prisoners,” Jake replied. “Not any more. We broke your prison system through fair battle. We broke this facility through fair battle. And now we surrender ourselves to your sense of duty.”

  The officer was silent for several moments. None of this made sense to Fusar. She felt like she was missing something critical.

  “You were the ones that defeated the pardernine,” the Jaj finally said.

  “That is correct.”

  “You have killed at least fifty Jaj soldiers this day,” the officer said. “All in fair battle. I am inclined to offer safe passage to Ebessa, where your story must be told.”

  The officer clipped his heels and walked away. The fugitives were surrounded by soldiers, who escorted them to a spartan holding room off the hangar floor.

  “What the fuck just happened?” Mandie muttered to Jake.

  “The thing you need to understand about the Jaj,” Jake reminded her, “is that they value deeds above all else. It doesn’t matter that we are prisoners. They’re not interested in what we know. All that matters is we bested them in fair battle. Now we get to tell that story to their leaders.”