by R. E. Vega
“That ship is the one that jammed all our sensors,” Thad said after a moment. “But I can’t tell exactly how. Whatever technology they’re using, I’ve never seen anything like it.”
“Go figure out what they did to our starboard shields,” the captain said.
Thad straightened. “But Captain, I—”
“Now,” Captain Arleth said. “We need as many of our defenses up as possible in case…”
She didn’t need to finish that sentence.
Thad nodded and hurried out the door. Brax was still staring at the ship, torn between confusion and dread. Normally, it was his job to communicate with other vessels, to decide whether they were friend or foe—but with the comm offline, that was out of the question. Who were these people and what did they want? They’d left the Defiance virtually helpless—and without knowing even a thing about their potential attackers.
“What are they waiting for?” he mused out loud. “Why haven’t they done anything yet?”
If their goal was to destroy Defiance, they’d had plenty of time. If they meant to communicate some other message, then why hadn’t they initiated contact?
It was all too strange.
For the first time all day, their purple-eyed pursuers felt like the least of their worries.
“Maybe they’re just passing by,” Dayna said. “Maybe they don’t mean us any harm at all, they just don’t want any trouble.”
“A ship like that is looking for trouble,” the captain replied.
“Not from a little ship like us,” Brax said. “You build a ship like that, you’re expecting to come up against something far more powerful than Defiance.”
A knock on the door behind them made all of them jump. The panel slid open before any of them could respond, and a very awkward-looking man walked onto the bridge. Brax blinked, confused, until he realized this poorly disguised fellow was most likely their precious cargo.
The captain confirmed it immediately.
“Sir, you shouldn’t be up here. It isn’t safe,” she said.
The man—former vice president Barner, Brax gathered—straightened. “I felt us get hit and I…” His voice trailed off and his eyes widened as he spotted the giant ship in front of them. “What the dreck is that?”
“You don’t know?” the captain asked. “Have you seen anything like it?”
Barner shook his head. “Never.”
“So it’s definitely not any sort of government vessel?”
“If it is, then President Harcrow was keeping a lot of secrets from me.” He stepped closer to the glass. “What makes you think it’s government? I don’t see any official markings.”
“We have no idea what it is,” the captain replied. “We’re just trying to rule out the obvious.”
Barner’s eyes were still wide with shock, but Brax had to respect the man’s composure at a time like this.
“Is that what hit us?” Barner asked.
Captain Arleth gave a single shake of her head. “We took care of our attackers. But we’re not sure if this lot means us harm or not.”
Silence fell again on the bridge, all of them staring and waiting. The minutes crept on, and Brax felt himself growing restless, agitated. It didn’t help that his foot was throbbing again, or that the ache in his head was starting to make him feel dizzy.
Finally, Dayna spoke again. “I think they’re just passing us. They would have done something by now.”
“Maybe they have done something, we just don’t know it yet,” Brax said. “If they’ve scanned us or—”
“We’d know if they’d done anything.”
“Would we? You said yourself that none of your instruments seem to be—”
“No arguing,” Captain Arleth snapped. “There’s no way of knowing whether they’ve done something or not, but in any case it doesn’t look like they’re going to fire on us, either.”
“So what do we do, Captain?” Brax asked.
“We wait. We continue to sit here until they go on their merry way.”
And wait they did. The large vessel moved with unbearable slowness, and every moment it was in sight, Brax felt his stomach tighten. He didn’t like surprises, and he’d had far too many of them today.
Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed Dayna furiously scribbling something on one of her screens with a stylus. He glanced over, curious, but he couldn’t see what she was doing.
“What are you writing?” he asked her.
“I’m not writing. I’m sketching. If our instruments can’t scan that ship, I want to make sure we have a record of what it looks like, at least. I want us to have as many details as possible on file in case we encounter them again—or another vessel like them.”
It was a good idea. Brax stood and hobbled over behind her. Moving made him feel even dizzier, but he was determined to look at her drawing. It was only a rough sketch, but she’d captured the shape well enough.
“You should make a note about how they used some sort of damper on our systems,” he said, rubbing his aching head. “And how they avoided detection on our—”
“I know,” Dayna said. “I’m not an idiot.”
“I just want to make sure you—”
He was cut off by a loud curse coming from the captain. Brax looked up just in time to see a beam of bright white light surging toward them from the huge ship. There was no time to react, not even enough time for his short but exciting life to flash before his eyes. There was only enough time to acknowledge, with startling clarity, that he was about to die. That they all were about to die.
His hand fell onto Dayna’s shoulder almost reflexively, and he gripped it, bracing himself for the impact.
Bright white light exploded around them, blinding him. He felt a strange pulse move through his body, and his shocked mind had just enough juice left to think, Huh, death is a lot less painful than I thought it would be.
And then, just as quickly as it had come, the white light was gone.
The pulse was gone, too, though it left his body feeling odd and shivery. He blinked, trying to clear the strange flashes from his vision, and as he looked around he realized he was still standing on the bridge. His hand was still on Dayna’s shoulder—and she looked just as stunned as he felt.
The captain was still there, too. And Barner. Everyone looked confused and startled, but they appeared to be alive and well.
Unless death is a whole lot different than I expected.
The throbbing in his head was worse, though. And the pain in his foot had renewed with a startling intensity. He almost fell over, but his grip on Dayna kept him from completely collapsing.
“What the hell just happened?” the captain demanded. “Dayna, can we get a damage report?”
“No. Everything is still acting the same,” Dayna said. “All of our sensors seem to be going haywire.”
“We need to get a report from Thad,” the captain said. Her eyes fell on Brax. “Go grab him and bring him back here immediately.”
“Yes, sir.”
He made it about three limping steps toward the door. The searing pain in his foot was agonizing, almost as bad as it had been before the captain had treated it, but it was ultimately bearable. His head, on the other hand, was feeling stranger and stranger by the second. Whatever had just happened had only made him more lightheaded, and he stumbled, reaching out toward whatever he could reach to help him stay upright.
Unfortunately, there was nothing to break his fall. The edges of his vision were growing darker by the second—it was too late. He was dimly aware of his legs collapsing beneath him, of the floor rushing toward his face.
And then everything went black.
DAYNA
Blackness enveloped Dayna. There was barely enough light to see the room they were being held in—and Dayna still wasn’t sure how they had even come to be there. One second, she was watching Brax cross the bridge to go find Thad, and the next second…nothing.
At first, she’d thought the seari
ng pain in her head was caused by Brax’s incessant arguing with her—that maybe she’d finally had enough. But she was pretty sure it had something to do with the white light that had illuminated the entire bridge in the moments before she’d lost consciousness.
And she hadn’t noticed Brax in the room with her until a few moments after she’d awakened. He was lying a few feet from her, but she hadn’t known it until she tripped over him when she was trying to find an escape route. And while it was too dark to see anything very clearly, she knew it was him. She couldn’t explain how she knew…but she definitely knew.
Dayna was a little worried that he hadn’t awakened yet, but she could hear his pained breaths, so it was clear he was breathing. And there were more important concerns than Brax’s health status at the moment—namely, getting the hell out of there.
But she’d been over every inch of the tiny room—touched every wall looking for a door or a window. They seemed to be in some sort of cell, but hell if she could figure out how they’d gotten in there. Or how they could get out.
She decided to go over every wall again, starting from the floor this time and working her way up to as close to the ceiling as she could reach. But there was nothing. The walls were made of something cold and smooth—some sort of metal, she guessed. They must have been dropped from the ceiling, but it was too dark to see if there was some sort of door up there, and it was far too high for her to reach. She couldn’t see how high, but she was tall enough that she could touch the top of most normal rooms if she jumped—but not this one. She wasn’t even sure if she’d be able to touch it if Brax was awake and she was standing on his shoulders. But that didn’t make sense, either. If they’d been dropped into this cell, they would have been injured if they’d fallen from that great a height.
Dayna nudged Brax with her toe, and he groaned this time. For as annoying as he was, she would still appreciate the company of someone—anyone—to help her figure out how to get the hell out of there.
She sat down beside him, giving his shoulder a slight shake. He groaned again, and taking that as a good sign, she gave him another shake, this one a little stronger.
He groaned loudly, shifting around on the ground. “My head…” He grumbled for a moment before he finally sat. “Where am I?” He was still grumbling, and she could hear him rubbing his hand on his head, though she wasn’t able to see it.
“No idea.” She edged the slightest bit closer to him—she didn’t want to give him the wrong idea, but there was something about the tone of his voice that made her want to reassure him all the same. “Are you okay?”
“Dayna?” She could tell he was surprised by the slight rise of his voice. “Where are we?”
“No idea, like I said. I think we’re in some sort of cell, but—”
“Then we need to figure out a way to break out.” He rose to his feet. “You take that side of the room, and I’ll…” He tumbled back to the ground next to her not a second later. “What the dreck is wrong with my head?”
God, it was difficult not to come back with a snarky comment to that—it was almost too easy. And if they’d been aboard the Defiance, she would have taken the opportunity to get a dig or two in before she gave him her real answer. But now…now wasn’t the most opportune time for the insults they both seemed to enjoy throwing at each other. “I…I don’t know. What’s the last thing you remember?”
He sat up. “Everything went white before it went black. There was this pain in my head—almost like it was splitting in half—”
“I think the same thing happened to me. Everything was white and my head…” She nodded, not that he could see it. “I think it was the same.”
“And my foot…fuck. I can barely walk, Dayna.”
“Well, from my understanding, you are the one who shot yourself, Brax.” She immediately felt a twinge of guilt in her gut at her words. “We just have to figure out a way to get out of here.”
“I…I don’t think I can help.” He paused for a moment. “You should feel around the walls. I’ll crawl over and see what I can feel from my level on the ground—you start from the ceiling and—”
“You think I didn’t already do that? Seriously, Brax, you think I’m that stupid? You think I’ve just been sitting here for the past few hours wringing my hands over you? Hoping you’d wake up? You really think I’m that pathetic?”
“No, I…” He let out a low whistle. “I just can’t win with you, can I?”
“What the hell is that supposed to mean? You can’t win with me? You treat me like I’m some idiot little girl, and you expect me to—”
“I do not treat you like an idiot, Dayna. I don’t…” His voice trailed off. “Okay, maybe I do treat you like that, but I don’t actually think that.”
“Well, you have an odd way of showing it.” She let out a breath—as much as she loved arguing with him, this was not the time or place. “I’ve already been over every inch of this room that I can reach. The ceiling is high—I can’t tell how high. But there is nothing on the walls. I think they’re metal—there’s no door, no windows. No entry or exit. I thought maybe we’d been dropped in—”
“If the ceiling is as high as you say, we’d both be injured. I don’t feel anything broken—my head still hurts like a son of a bitch, and my foot does, too. But—”
“I know, Brax. You could let me finish a sentence once in a while, you know.”
“I know.” He paused. “Was there anything else?”
“About what?”
“About the room.” He sounded almost annoyed with her. “You asked me to let you finish, and—”
“You just have to insult me, don’t you? You have to do whatever you can to make me feel as small as possible. You have to—”
She wasn’t sure how it happened. Or why. But she was interrupted, not by an insult this time but by him pulling her into his arms.
His face was close to hers—almost impossibly close. She could feel his breath on her lips when he spoke. “Dayna, I do not think you’re stupid. And I do not mean to make you feel small. I don’t…I don’t even know why I like arguing with you so much. Only that I do. And if we really are trapped here—wherever here is—maybe we should make the most of our time together.”
She raised her hands, shoving against his shoulders to get out of his grip. “You are so full of shit, Brax.” She scooted away from him, backing herself against the other wall, which wasn’t even close to far enough away. “You really think I’m going to fall for that line?”
He let out a long sigh. “It’s not a line, Dayna. I just thought—”
“I’m not that bored, Brax. Maybe if we’re in here another few months…” She almost growled the words. “And probably not even then.”
He chuckled. “If we’re in here more than a few more hours with no food…and no latrine…we’re going to have far bigger issues than boredom.”
But they didn’t have to wait a few more hours—or even a few more minutes. It was only a second later that the room illuminated with the same bright white light that they’d seen on the bridge of the Defiance, and only a second after that when it felt like her head was splitting in two again.
And then there was nothing but black.
ULAN
There were white lights blinking behind his eyes.
He groaned and rolled over. There was cold metal beneath him, but he couldn’t remember lying down. He pushed himself up on his elbows and looked around, trying to remember where he was and what had happened.
He appeared to be in the corridor, not far from Defiance’s sleeping quarters. Slowly, it all came back to him—he’d walked their passenger back to her bunk, and shortly after seeing her safely there, they’d been hit. The force of it had nearly knocked him over. It had only been one hit, though, and all had been quiet as he’d rushed back to the bridge. But then a strange white light had flashed across his vision. After that…
Ulan stood. He had to see the captain. Now.
He prac
tically ran to the bridge. When he got there, he froze, dread building inside of him.
The first thing he saw was Brax, lying on the floor only a few steps from where Ulan stood at the threshold. A short way past him, Dayna was slumped over the controls. And in front of her, Captain Arleth was on the floor, an unconscious, poorly disguised Barner nearby.
As he stood there, Captain Arleth began to stir. He rushed to her side.
“Captain?” he said. “Are you all right? What happened?”
The captain blinked and looked around. When her eyes fell on the glass separating them from the void of space beyond, something seemed to click in her mind. She jerked her arm out of his grasp and leaped to her feet.
“What happened?” she demanded, staring out the viewport. “Where did they go?”
“Where did who go, Captain?” Ulan asked.
Captain Arleth spun around. Her eyes fell on Ulan and then shifted to the various other crewmembers.
A groan behind him alerted him that Brax must have been regaining consciousness.
“See to Jackson,” Captain Arleth told Ulan. “I’m going to see if I can wake Barner.”
As she crouched down next to the former vice president, Ulan walked over to Dayna and gently shook her shoulder. She made a soft, almost whimpering sound, but she seemed to wake. After a moment, her eyes fluttered open. She sat up, looking around her with shock in her eyes.
“What the hell just happened?” Brax demanded.
“I think we’d all like to know that,” the captain said.
“The giant ship is gone,” Brax said.
Ulan glanced around. “Giant ship?”
“It came out of nowhere,” Captain Arleth said. “None of us recognized it. It wasn’t government or from any private fleet we recognized.”
“And it shot at us?”
“More or less,” the captain responded. She rubbed her forehead. “Everything went dark—”
“Maybe we’re all dead,” Brax said. “Maybe this is just what heaven looks like.”
