The Last Stryker (Dark Universe Series Book 1)

by Alex Sheppard

  Sosa’s voice was fading. The world around Ramya started to swirl at the edges like a giant wind spinner. When a heavy darkness poured over her senses and embraced her tired body, Ramya had no strength left to fight. She drifted unwillingly into a dreamless slumber.

  12

  It was awfully quiet when Ramya opened her eyes. For a second or two, she couldn’t recall where she was. She simply lay staring at the metal rafters crisscrossing the ceiling. Then it came to her in a manic rush—her father’s letter, Concert Night, sneaking out of the CAWStrat, the man attacked in the alley, taking off on the Endeavor, the Pterostrich attack. The memories left her shaking. Other details, such as the SLH Troopers boarding the Endeavor for a scan, trickled in.

  She remembered the hidden room through the cabinet where Sosa had left her. Across from her was another bed where the man—the sole survivor of the mysterious space fleet wipeout in Sector 22—was sleeping. Ramya squinted to read the CHS monitor hooked to his bed. The numbers on it were a red blur.

  She gave up trying to read the CHS and counted the rafters for a while. After she had done that three times over, Ramya decided to study her wounds. The largest and deepest gash was right below her left shoulder where the Pterostrich chick had sunk its talons. There were smaller tears on her arms and legs and a few scratches on her face. The wounds didn’t bother her as much as the pain all over her body. Even moving a finger seemed to hurt.

  If only Isbet could see me now, Ramya chuckled at the thought. Her friend would’ve wagged a wise finger at her.

  “What were you thinking, Rami?” she would say. “How could you let your guard down around a Pterostrich? It’s like meeting a boy with no makeup on.”

  “It wasn’t a full-grown bird, Isbet. Just a chick.”

  Isbet would roll her eyes for effect. “It was still a Pterostrich, wasn’t it? And what are you doing on that ship? Wait, is that even a ship? It looks to me like someone fit an engine to a tin can and chucked it into space. Get out of there, Rami. This doesn’t befit you. Your father wouldn’t approve.”

  Ramya banished the Isbet of her thoughts away. By the God of the stars, Isbet, did you have to bring up my father?

  Tired of lying around and letting people lecture her in her thoughts, Ramya tried to sit up, but her back refused to help. “What did you feed me, Sosa?” Ramya muttered. The lack of strength was frustrating, and even though she could do little while inside the room where Sosa had her sequestered, Ramya craved for mobility like a beached fish yearning for water.

  “Take some rest while you can. Stop being so impatient,” Ramya chided herself, but that only helped for a minute or two.

  “I’m not touching another drop of your Pax, Sosa,” Ramya grumbled to herself as she struggled to push her uncooperative body out of bed. Lying helpless in bed, even in a hidden chamber, was unacceptable, especially when SLH Troopers were out and about. What if, by some weird stroke of luck, they found their way in here? She’d be a proverbial sitting duck. And what would happen if they were actually looking for her?

  They couldn’t be looking for her. Her father wasn’t going to announce to the galaxy that the heiress of House Kiroff had run away. It would be shameful for him to admit that.

  But even if the troopers weren’t after her, they could recognize her. They would then surely tell Trysten Kiroff. And then?

  They won’t, Rami, very few people actually know your face. True, she was not one of those celebrities whose images were flashing on every billboard on Nikoor. Nor was she a most wanted fugitive.

  Ramya was about to fade into a blackness when the sound of a groan drifted to her ears. It was not faint, but not loud either. It was perfectly timed. Ramya’s senses alerted and focused on it, the weight from her limbs receded. Another groan and Ramya had found the strength to push herself off her bed. With slow, clunky steps, she crossed the distance—a seemingly endless ten paces—between the two beds.

  The man was twitching, his face puckered. He was in pain, Ramya deduced. Her eyes scooted to the CHS monitor: four hundred and ten. His condition had improved, that was for sure. The man muttered something and shook his head a little.

  Sosa needed to be here! Ramya stumbled back to the door and tugged the handle, but it didn’t budge. Sosa had locked it from outside.

  “Hey,” a voice rang across the room, making Ramya freeze. She turned around slowly, wondering if she had heard right. The voice she heard was strong and could not be coming from a man who had been unconscious for a day. She wanted to rush to check on him, but she still wavered for a second or two. This, after all, was a man who had been the pilot of a ship marked with the dreaded black talons.

  Ramya shuddered at the thought. Once again memories of that box in her father’s office barged in. Ramya shook her head to drive away the nightmare she couldn’t shake away even after ten years . . . the box . . . inside it a pair of severed human limbs. She still remembered the ear-splitting screams, a rush of running feet, tears . . . Her father had not held her close to console her. Instead, his anger toward her had multiplied.

  “Never ever get into my office again, do you understand?” he had hissed while she sobbed in a cold, dark corner. “And not a word of this to anyone.”

  She hadn’t dared tell anyone. The secret had stayed between her and her nightmares.

  “Please, come here,” the voice, insistent, dragged her into the present.

  Leave him alone, Rami, every fiber in her being screamed. Yet Ramya didn’t turn away. He was just a sick man. What harm could he do anyway? Besides, she’d just listen to what he wanted to say. She was the medic’s assistant after all, and that was part of her duties. Ramya tiptoed back to his bedside and froze again.

  The man was staring at her. It wasn’t a vacant look, but boring into her with the sharpness of a well maintained drill.

  “We’re still on the Endeavor, I’m guessing?” The man paused to glance around. “Although this room doesn’t seem familiar.”

  Ramya drew a long breath. A moment or two ago this man was comatose. How could he be so coherent?

  “He sent you,” the man said. “I was expecting him to be here, not his daughter.”

  “W-what?” Ramya barely managed a stutter. It was unbelievable enough that he was talking lucidly, but what was he talking about?

  “I was expecting your father, Lord Paramount Kiroff, to come and get me.”

  A jumbled mess of words, thoughts, and fears streaked inside Ramya, leaving her gasping for breath.

  He has recognized me. He knows I’m Trysten Kiroff’s daughter. Ramya whirled around to check the door. It was still closed. Good. Now she had to convince him that she wasn’t who he thought she was before Sosa came back in.

  “What in the stars are you talking about?” Ramya replied casually, adding a chuckle here and there to make light of the situation. “Trysten Kiroff, you mean the head of House Kiroff, is my father? I think Sosa needs to up your medication some more.”

  The man’s eyes narrowed. “I may be sick, but I’d recognize those eyes anywhere.”

  Ramya blinked. She did have her father’s blue-gray eyes, but no one had told her the resemblance was that strong. Either way, she had to have him talking about something else until she found out a way to cover this up.

  “I’m no Kiroff,” she said firmly. Walking over to the panel that controlled the various medications Sosa had arranged for the man, she ran a hand over it. She wanted him to buy the part she was playing, of Sosa’s assistant. “But never mind that. How are you feeling? I have to report to my boss, the medic.”

  The man smiled, a disbelieving, mocking smile. “The Kiroff heiress works for a Norgoran medic on a junk ship like this? That’s something I won’t forget in a hurry.”

  Ramya was not going to indulge him. She decided to steer the conversation away. “What’s your name?” she asked, even though she knew he didn’t remember it. Sosa had told her.

  “My family name’s Habardein,” he said, smiling.

>   “They said you couldn’t remember,” Ramya said.

  He chuckled. “I told them that. They were not letting me get out of this junk, so I got a little annoyed. But . . .”

  The man’s smile faded. He closed his eyes, brows coming together in a troubled knot. “I still can’t remember my full name,” he muttered, and took in a long, deep breath. “I just can’t . . .”

  Ramya leaned closer. “What exactly happened at Sector 22? Do you remember that?”

  “There was a flash, a huge one. Something the other Strykers did. I don’t know what. I remember hitting the beacon generator, and then nothing . . .”

  “Other Strykers? They only found you and nothing else but debris.”

  “Yes, so they told me,” the man said. He sounded tired. “But there were five Strykers in all. The rest of the fleet were regular GSO fighters.”

  So, there were GSO fighters in the destroyed fleet. That added up nicely. But why did the Stryker have that other logo on it? And what did her father have to do with any of this? This man should have been expecting a Confederacy officer, not Trysten Kiroff.

  Ramya decided to probe some more. “The Stryker sure looks different from anything else in the fleet. Is it a new prototype of something?”

  The man eyed her suspiciously. “You’re a Kiroff. You don’t know?”

  Ramya leaned forward and looked him in the eye. “I’m not a Kiroff. It’s flattering that I look like golden-touch Kiroff, but I’m just a . . . nobody. Sorry.”

  That was not far from truth. Fact was, she could be a Kiroff a hundred times over, but she would still not know any of this. Her father wouldn’t tell her even if he had partnered with another house in designing the Stryker. He didn’t consider her worthy of anything, let alone secrets of a new prototype. Now, if he could get Ramya married into the right house, he’d surely groom her husband. Hell, he’d groom a pedigreed dog. Anyone but a girl.

  But then, Ramya didn’t always wait for her father to tell her. She had been hacking her way into the Kiroff data network for a while now. Ramya knew the Kiroff holdings, especially every factory that manufactured spacecraft. There was nothing in the Kiroff database about Sector 22, and no hint of a craft as unusual as the Stryker. Yet, this man was implying a Kiroff involvement. Could it be true?

  The CHS monitor beeped and called for Ramya’s attention. Three hundred, it said. He was destabilizing again. Sosa! She was about to try the door again when the man cried out.

  “Wait,” he said between short, raspy gasps, “stop.” He was breathing fast, an odd wheeze sounded every time he inhaled. “You have to get my Stryker to your father. Fast.”

  The monitor had fallen to two hundred and ninety. He was fading quickly, and Ramya didn’t want to spend any more time debating her identity.

  “Why?”

  “Because he needs to figure out what happened in that factory of his in Sector 22.”

  Ramya drew a breath. A Kiroff factory in Sector 22? Now that was news. As far as she knew, they didn’t have a factory there. Heck, the Kiroffs didn’t even have planetary rights anywhere in Sector 22. Was the man lying? Or maybe his lucidity was just on the outside when in reality he was not in his senses at all.

  The man wheezed and continued in a tired voice, “He needs to find out what happened to the other four Strykers.”

  “What’s special about these Strykers?”

  The man paused to catch his breath, possibly to ponder how dependable an audience she could be. “They have Locustan tech fused into them.” He heaved laboriously. “We were out in space testing out some new modules. We were doing well, but something went wrong with the others. I think they attacked the GSO fleet.”

  Perhaps that’s how an entire fleet got decimated. But . . . four Strykers? Only four of them blew up hundred GSO crafts to pieces? Was that really possible?

  A shudder rushed up Ramya’s spine as thoughts bombarded her head. Just how powerful were these Strykers?

  The man heaved. “I think they—”

  He stopped, his words swamped by a gurgle. Drops of blood trickled past his lips.

  “Sosa,” Ramya screamed. She wanted to run to the door and pound it until someone opened it, but she stopped when the man struggled to speak.

  “I think,” he said, “I think the other Strykers might’ve signaled the Locustans. If they hear the call, there’d be war again.” He stopped and wheezed. “And . . . and this time they’ll have help on the inside.”

  What did that mean? If the Locustans heard the call, would they somehow open Anomaly Point again? Anomaly Point, the gateway to the Locustan world, had closed at the end of the Locusta-Vanga war. It had stayed closed since, but the worry remained that it could open again someday. Not knowing why it had opened and how to stop it in case it did again, the Confederacy had since erected stationary defenses in the area and also positioned several Confederacy fleets around it. But seeing how effortlessly the four Strykers had decimated the GSO fleet, would it be foolish to think they could easily bring down Confederacy defenses at Anomaly Point?

  “I never thought this would happen, that the Strykers would . . . m-morph . . .”

  Ramya had never heard of such a curious thing—a Stryker, a space fighter, morphed? What was it, a living being? And what did it morph into?

  “Morph into what? What do you mean?”

  The man didn’t seem to hear her question. A vacant look had spread across his eyes. He went on, eyes drooping as he wheezed out words. “There’s a spindle in my bag . . . tell Trysten they went rogue and . . .”

  More blood welled up in his mouth. Ramya didn’t wait to hear any more. She ran to the door and pounded it with every bit of strength she could muster.

  13

  Ramya sat stiffly on a chair with a meshed-metal back in Captain Milos’s chamber. His room was sizable, fairly massive compared to what Ramya had been assigned, but it wasn’t opulent or luxurious. A long desk with papers strewn all over it was on one end of the room, and a metal-frame bed that looked worn and lumpy stood on the other. The space between the two was taken up by cabinets of various shapes, all of them full of paper books in every size and condition. There were few knickknacks; some of them were interesting, like a large model of the galaxy at the center of the seating area where Ramya had been asked to wait.

  Terenze Milos sat on an upholstered couch with ornate flower-patterned upholstery that made Ramya think of art from a Terran civilization. He drank a hot mix of milk and ground noja beans. It wasn’t made the way Ramya was used to seeing it made. When mixed the right way with frothy milk, a noja was supposed to be a pretty shade of crimson. The one the captain was drinking was blood red and runny, which meant it had to be bitter as hell and near undrinkable. The captain kept sipping at it with such nonchalance though it almost felt like he was enjoying the taste.

  A door opened noisily behind her and someone rushed in. Ramya did not have to look to know it was Ross. That was whom the captain had been waiting for before he started questioning Ramya.

  “How’s he?” Ross asked about the sick man as soon as he had closed the door.

  “He has slipped into a coma. Sosa’s trying to stabilize him, but I’m not holding out hope.”

  “Damn those SLH Troopers. They barely even checked the main level. We prepped for nothing. If Sosa were there with him, she could’ve intervened early.”

  “I wonder why the Troopers even bothered visiting,” the captain said. “Anyway, Ross, have a seat. Are we all set for Alameda?”

  “Yes, we’re set,” Ross replied while busily pouring himself a cup of noja from the fat flask set on a teapoy next to the captain’s couch. “I haven’t sent a message to the Confederacy HQ yet.”

  Captain Milos waved distractedly. “No need for that. We can announce ourselves when we get closer.” The captain fell silent and thoughtfully rubbed his chin. “Something’s brewing, Ross, and it’s . . . not good.”

  Ross nodded and walked to the wall behind the couch. He leaned
on it and took a long sip at his drink before squinting at Ramya. It was annoying to be watched like that. A highborn like her was used being stared at, but not like this, at close quarters and as if she was a saboteur caught in the act. Thankfully, even though it felt like forever, Ross did not look at her for more than a blistering second or two.

  “So, why are we here, Captain?” he said, tearing his suspicious gaze away from Ramya’s face.

  “Our refugee, Habardein, has said some curious things to her,” Captain Milos said. Behind him, Ross scrunched his face and glanced suspiciously at Ramya again. The captain continued, “I wanted you to hear this.”

  “Habardein?” Ross asked. “Is that his name? He told you?”

  The last part of his question was directed at Ramya, and Ramya thought she caught a whiff of indignation in the commander’s voice.

  “Yes, he did,” she replied, keeping a firm grip on her own annoyance.

  “How did that miracle happen?” Ross asked bluntly. He left the wall and took a few steps toward the seating area. He looked at the captain and shrugged. “We’ve questioned him so many times and he hasn’t once said his name.”

  “Memory can be tricky sometimes, Ross,” the captain said.

  “It’s just plain weird,” Ross said. “I presume he shared more than just his name or we wouldn’t be here. All he’s been saying to us is, ‘Take me to Trysten Kiroff.’ What’s so special about this girl that—”

  “Easy, Commander,” the captain interjected. “Rami’s helping us here. It’s commendable that an ensign had the presence of mind to get any information from that man, especially after barely surviving a Pterostrich attack. I don’t think she needs us attacking her now.”

  Ensign? Ramya straightened hearing the word. Did the captain just call her an ensign? That was the lowest denomination possible, so why was she feeling so giddy on hearing the moniker?

  Ross pursed his lips and fell back a step, a frown still deeply etched on his forehead. A trickle of joy bubbled in Ramya’s heart and she fought to suppress a grin. It almost sounded like the captain was proud of her, almost . . .