Primal Darkness

by Ryan Kirk

  As the team ran, they were separated by about two meters apiece. It was the standard that Tev had been taught in his training with the team, making sure that in conditions like these, each pilot had time to react to the events happening to the others in his group. Tev was still in position in the back of the line, covering the rear.

  They were running down a straight section of corridor, Murphy just a few steps ahead of Tev, when a pressure seal shot down in between them. Tev tried to stop, but it happened so quickly he didn’t have a chance. He ran into the door, alerting his team ahead what had happened.

  Murphy turned around. “Commander, pressure seal just trapped Tev behind us.”

  Tev could hear the panic in Aki’s voice. “We can’t worry about that right now. Tev, connect with Destiny and try to find an alternate route home. We’ll see you back there.”

  With that, the commander took off running down the hall. With one last glance at Tev, Murphy did the same. Suddenly, in the space of only a few seconds, Tev was alone.

  “Kindra. I need another way out.”

  “I’m working on it.”

  It was ten long seconds by the clock that Tev had in the corner of his vision before Kindra responded.

  “I’m sorry Tev, I can’t see any way to get you out of that ship in time to meet up with Destiny.”

  Kindra fought the urge to hold her head in her hands. Even though the Destiny had to move away, it would still take some time for Hellbringer to spin up its jump drive. There had to be options. She linked up with Eleta, who had been following the events down at her station in mechanical in the Vigilance.

  “Any ideas?”

  Eleta didn’t respond right away, and Kindra was tempted to repeat her question, but before she could, her friend responded. “Maybe? I have an idea, but there’s no guarantee it will work.”

  “What is it?”

  “It’ll be faster if I just chip in.” Eleta connected herself to Kindra’s secure channel to Tev. “Tev, can you hear me clearly?”

  Kindra wanted to slap her palm against her forehead. Of course he could. But he responded in the affirmative.

  “Good. I need you to follow the directions to this place. Go as quickly as you can.”

  Tev hesitated, and Kindra figured she knew why. The directions Eleta was giving him led back toward the bridge. If he wanted to escape from the ship, it was exactly the wrong direction to go.

  Kindra chimed in. “Trust her, Tev. If there’s anyone who can get you out of there, it’s going to be Eleta.”

  In the corner of her screen, Kindra saw that Eleta was attempting to upload several large data packets to Tev’s suit. Kindra opened a private channel to her. “What are you doing?”

  “Tev’s going to encounter a number of locked doors where he’s going. I’ve written a few programs that can help him out.”

  “Why didn’t you load them earlier?”

  “They were something I didn’t want Fleet to know I had. A bit of a result of Derreck’s requests to us. We’re probably going to get in a lot of trouble for this.”

  Kindra understood. Regardless, it was worth it to get Tev off that ship. But then another question came to her mind.

  “Wait. If you had this, why not just use it on the pressure seal that separated Tev from his squad?”

  “Pressure seals are a different system than bulkheads. My programs won’t touch them.”

  Kindra nodded. She supposed the difference in systems made sense. Together, they watched as Tev worked his way past the bridge and into the heart of Hellbringer, into engineering. As Eleta had predicted, the door was locked, but she guided Tev through the process of linking his suit to the door. After a few tense moments, Tev was in.

  Kindra watched the entire process from her screens, unable to do anything but offer her silent support. She was far outside her area of expertise. She took a moment to thank their stars for Eleta. Whatever hacks she was running were high-level.

  Eleta spoke to Kindra over their private channel. “Kindra, can you tell me what direction Hellbringer’s main laser is pointing?”

  Kindra wasn’t even sure how to look that information up, but with a little bit of digging into the battle net, she was able to query Destiny’s AI, who answered her.

  “It’s pointing into the middle of nowhere.”

  “Excellent.”

  Kindra watched, interested, to see what Eleta was up to. She was giving directions to Tev, and he was following them to the letter, but Eleta never bothered to explain why she was doing anything, or what her programs did.

  Suddenly, every alarm in Destiny seemed to go off at the same time. Red lights were flashing, and Captain Absalon’s image appeared in her neurodisplay, overriding everything else. “All hands, battle stations. I repeat, all hands, battle stations. Prepare for impact.”

  Once his image disappeared from her view, Kindra could hear Eleta chuckling softly in the background. “What the hell is going on?”

  Eleta didn’t explain. “Don’t worry. We’re not under attack, although I didn’t consider the fact that Destiny’s sensors would pick up on that. Oops.”

  Kindra, confused, decided to trust Eleta. She didn’t go to battle stations, but instead remained in her command chair, watching what Tev was doing.

  From one perspective, it wasn’t very exciting. He was at a console, a wire from his suit connected to a plug that had been exposed by tearing open some paneling. Physically, he wasn’t doing much, just shifting his weight from foot to foot.

  From a desire to do anything, she opened her channel to him. “How are you doing, Tev?”

  “Fine?”

  She could tell he was just as confused as her, but she didn’t have any additional comfort to offer him.

  Suddenly, all of her attention was focused on Vigilance and her screens. Even the dropship was shouting warnings now. Large laser emissions had been detected, jumper class. At first, Kindra thought perhaps everything had spiraled out of control. Hellbringer was attacking Destiny, breaking every iota of law and decency that existed in the galaxy.

  Kindra had never been on a ship that was subjected to laser attack, but from everything she could tell, nothing had happened. The screens flashed again and again, and Kindra sealed up Vigilance. Even if Destiny was destroyed, maybe, just maybe, they could live through this.

  As quickly as it started, the warnings stopped streaming across her display. She ran a quick diagnostic on her ship, but everything seemed to be in order. Destiny was in one piece, as was her own command. Whatever had happened, Eleta had been right, they weren’t really in any danger.

  “Eleta, what did you do?”

  Eleta didn’t respond to her, instead focusing on giving Tev further directions.

  Eventually she got her answer. “I had Tev do an emergency discharge of their capacitors, several times over. The easiest way for the ships to do that is to discharge their main laser. We didn’t have access to any weapons protocols, so we weren’t able to aim the laser at all, but being as you told us we were safe, I just had him fire the laser over and over again. Now they don’t have any energy to jump.”

  Kindra nodded her head in appreciation. Such an idea never would have occurred to her. Once Eleta explained it thought, it seemed obvious, but it still wasn’t anything she ever would have come up with. “Nice work. Now what do you have him up to?”

  “Well, I figured that when they wake up from their sleep, Tev is going to have a lot of furious rebellion people after him. I ordered him to the shuttle bay. We’re going to have him steal a shuttle and come on over.”

  Kindra admired the simplicity of the plan. “Will that work?”

  “So long as Tev gets back here before they figure out what’s going on when they wake up. There’s no way of telling for sure, but based on the timing of their jump sequence, Tev should just be able to make it back here before they wake.”

  “Won’t their AI prevent him from leaving?”

  “Maybe, but I was able to hack into t
heir clearance codes from your little expedition over there, and I’m utilizing a ton of Destiny’s AI to keep Hellbringer occupied.”

  Kindra actually laughed out loud as Tev boarded a shuttle and took off. She realized the programming that was going on behind the scenes was incredibly deep, but from a visual perspective, it was almost ridiculously easy.

  It was only a matter of minutes before Tev was in space, safely between the two ships. Eleta reported that he had passed the point of no return, and Kindra collapsed back into her chair, not even realizing how tense she’d been during the entire ordeal. She shook her head and laughed.

  Just when Kindra thought it was all over, Derreck’s voice came over the intercom. “What the hell is going on?”

  Kindra tried to sit up straight, but it seemed like too much effort. “What do you mean?”

  “For the past hour, I’ve been trying to access the command net, but I’ve been locked out the entire time, and now that it’s back, I’m getting all sorts of very strange, very disturbing messages.”

  Kindra didn’t even know where to start. “I’ll tell you later.”

  Derreck seemed to be wrestling with something, but eventually gave in. “Very well, Derreck out.”

  Eleta spoke next. “Kindra, we might have a bit of a problem here.”

  “What do you mean? Is Tev okay?”

  “Yeah, he’s fine. He’ll be aboard Destiny in a few minutes.”

  Suddenly, Eleta’s feed cut out, which caused Kindra to sit straight up. What could have happened to cause that? Did they have saboteurs on the ship?

  Kindra was surprised when she heard the airlock to the Vigilance cycle open. She hadn’t triggered it, but someone had forced it open from the outside. Her instinct was to try to find some sort of weapon to defend herself, but that was silly. She was aboard her own jumper, and they knew no one had broken in. She pulled up the video feed and saw that it was Captain Absalon.

  Kindra shook her head. She wasn’t sure what Absalon was doing on the Vigilance, but right now, she didn’t care. She laid back in her seat and covered her eyes, reflecting on how close they had come to losing Tev.

  When she turned around, she was surprised to see Captain Absalon, not alone, but with two exosuits next to him. “What’s going on, captain?” She couldn’t help her rebellious streak, as much as she knew it was going to get her into trouble.

  “Commander Kindra, under Fleet Regulation 86.3.4, I hereby order your immediate arrest.”

  Kindra had always known that the brig existed on jumpers, but she had never really spent any time thinking about it. Most of the time, it was used as a holding cell for people who had a little too much to drink on their off-hours. By and large, there wasn’t much need for it.

  She had to confess, she had been expecting something a little different. The brig on Destiny was a single large room, well lit, with some comfortable beds and a small privacy area for personal hygiene. Everything was monitored in more ways than Kindra cared to count, but it wasn’t a half-bad space.

  Her confinement was made even better by the fact that she wasn’t alone. Eleta was next to her, dressed in a simple set of shirt and pants that matched Kindra’s. Kindra was trying to remember the last time she had seen Eleta outside of some sort of Fleet uniform. It made her sad. Of all the people aboard Vigilance, Eleta was probably the person she had the most in common with, but they were friends only in regards to work. They never went on shore leave together.

  They had plenty of time together now. At first, Kindra had wanted to talk about what had happened. She had tons of questions, not the least of which was what she had done to justify arrest. She had no idea what regulation Absalon had cited at her, and he had been tight-lipped as they dragged her down to the brig.

  Kindra had tried to probe Eleta, but she hadn’t said anything, and it was only after about a half hour of trying that Kindra figured out she didn’t want to say anything that would further implicate them. Eventually Kindra took the hint, embarrassed it had taken her so long to figure it out. She wasn’t used to being under arrest. Her rebellions had always been petty, but at heart, she was square.

  It wasn’t long after they were put in the brig that Derreck came to visit them. Kindra assumed it was his first order of business after getting everything finished up with his suit.

  Derreck walked into the brig, and the first thing he did was come up and give Kindra a huge hug. Kindra frowned. It was entirely out of character for him. For everything they had been through in their years of service together, Derreck always kept his demeanor professional. Regardless, Kindra accepted the hug, comforted by the embrace.

  After just a moment, Derreck stepped back and gave Eleta a hug as well. The surprise on her face was worth everything that had happened to them so far today. Kindra smiled.

  They sat down, but Derreck made it clear he didn’t have time for a long visit. He wanted to make sure they were doing well, and let them know he was doing all that he could to get to the bottom of what had happened.

  Kindra couldn’t resist any longer. He had to know more than she did. “Derreck, why are we even here?”

  Derreck and Eleta shared a look that indicated that Kindra needed to catch up. There was something obvious that she was missing.

  Derreck chose his words with care. “Well, we’re still investigating what happened today, but it appears that somehow, some very illegal software was used in combat today, resulting in the discharge of anti-ship weaponry from a hostile capital ship. If the perpetrators are ever discovered, there might be a set of laws and treaties which would almost certainly require that said perpetrators are thrown out of an airlock.”

  Kindra was taken aback. She would never have guessed that their actions would carry such severe consequences. A glance at Eleta, though, made it clear that her friend had already considered it. She wasn’t surprised by anything that Derreck said. A whole host of questions sprinted through Kindra’s mind. Did they get some sort of trial? If they didn’t, why were they still alive? It was obvious Captain Absalon knew exactly what had happened. They had spoken over secure channels, but it wouldn’t take an investigative genius to put the pieces together and recognize who was responsible.

  Some small part of her recognized that this was not the time or place to ask questions. Derreck’s voice was calm and reassuring. “Don’t worry. I’m working closely with Captain Absalon to figure out what happened, and we will clear your good names before long. Is that clear?”

  Kindra nodded her head, not sure what else she could do.

  “Good. Now, get some rest, you two. We’re going to be very busy moving forward, and I want you two to take this opportunity to get prepared for what comes next.”

  With that, Derreck left, leaving Kindra with far more worries and concerns than she had when she had first been thrown in the brig.

  There was no clock in the brig, and after pulling up the clock on her own personal display several times, Kindra gave up. There was simply nothing to do, and Eleta seemed drawn inside herself. Kindra was grateful when the lights dimmed, indicating it was time for bed.

  After lying sleepless for a time, Kindra heard Eleta stir. “Kindra, are you awake?”

  A part of Kindra, the part of her upset that Eleta hadn’t spoken more than a few words to her all day, wanted to not respond; but she was desperate to have a conversation, to know how her friend was feeling.

  “Yeah, I’m awake.”

  “We should be able to talk freely now. Derreck slipped me a small piece of my equipment when he came in. I don’t want to use it too much, but we should have a little bit of time.”

  Kindra’s first reaction was one of anger. The whole reason Derreck had hugged her was so that he would have the cover to slip something to Eleta? The man was horrible. Jealousy raged, and she wondered why Derreck hadn’t brought anything into the brig for her.

  It took a few seconds, but eventually rationality prevailed. What would Derreck have been able to bring her anyway? She was a bio
logist, far out of her comfort zone. A test tube wouldn’t do anyone any good here.

  The first part of their conversation was quick, and Kindra was happy to hear that Eleta was feeling fine. She had appeared sullen all day, but in reality she had just been bored and frustrated at not being able to speak openly. Once Kindra was reassured on that point, it opened up the way for her to ask the question that had really been on her mind since Derreck had come in.

  “You knew the consequences of what you were doing, didn’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “So why did you do it?”

  “Tev is part of our crew, and that was the only way I could think of to get him off safely.”

  The answer seemed overly simplistic to Kindra, but she was willing to let it slide. She wasn’t the type of person to push her friends for deeper answers than they gave. Fortunately, after a few seconds of silence, Eleta went deeper on her answer herself.

  “Perhaps this will sound silly to you, Kindra, but your actions have changed my outlook in the past few months.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The actions you took when Kenan went rogue, back on Tev’s planet? I struggled with those for a very long time. When it all happened, it happened so fast I don’t think I really had time to think about it. I didn’t like the decisions you made, not at first. My philosophy was much more that crew needs to stick together no matter what. I felt like you were betraying Kenan, even though what he was doing was horrible.

  “Your decision to go after him, to use Tev the way that you did, it wasn’t just a crazy idea. It was also honorable. You put the good of strangers, aliens you had never met before, over the life of your own crew when it was the right thing to do. I didn’t see it at first. I’m not sure that I could have. But that was the right action to take. I think a part of me recognized that even at the time, which was why I didn’t make more of a fuss.