The Final Dawn

by T W M Ashford

  "Oh yeah?" said 11-P-53. "And how did you arrive at that genius conclusion?"

  "We don't have time for this," said Tuner, tugging at Rogan's hand.

  "Let Jack speak," she said.

  "If destroying both us and the blueprints in Tuner's head was an option, don't you think Charon would have done it by now? Tuner, be honest. Did you make a copy of their plans, or did you just move the original file from their server onto your hard drive?"

  Tuner bowed his head.

  "I copied it and erased the original," he mumbled. "I thought maybe we could use it for leverage."

  Rogan gasped. 11-P-53 grunted in frustration.

  "No wonder Gaskan came after us, you bolt-brain," Rogan snapped. "You're carrying the only copy of the blueprints they have!"

  "Exactly!" Jack couldn't help but break into a desperate grin. "If they just wanted to make sure you guys couldn't sell the plans, we'd be dead already. The fact that Tuner stole the originals is the only reason we're still alive!"

  "It's the only reason we're in this mess, too." 11-P-53 shook its head. "How could you be so stupid?"

  "Sorry," said Tuner.

  "It's all right." Rogan flashed 11-P-53 another stern look. "So what should we do? Wait out the three minutes and see what happens?"

  "It's just the one minute now…" mumbled Tuner, fidgeting.

  "No." Jack crossed his arms. "We don't wait for them to make their move. We make one of our own."

  "You think we should try to run?" she asked.

  "Why not? Anyone got a better idea?"

  The automata all looked at one another.

  "If we can get around the battlecruiser, the Adeona could jump to subspace," said 11-P-53. It sounded as if it were coming around to the idea, but then it sighed. "But they followed us here, somehow. Who's to say they won't follow us someplace else?"

  "Then we'll be in no worse a situation than we are now," said Rogan. "Apart from having no fuel left in our engine or skip drive, that is."

  "At least it'll wind Charon up," said Tuner.

  Everyone looked at 11-P-53.

  "Fine," it said, marching over to the captain's chair. "But I'm flying, got it?"

  "She's all yours," said Jack, standing back.

  "We have ten seconds left." Tuner was practically jumping up and down with anxiety. "You might want—"

  11-P-53 didn't wait for anyone to be ready. Jack supposed it thought that if nobody on board the Adeona knew what to expect, then neither would anyone on board the battlecruiser. It wasn't the worst logic ever. The ship accelerated and dived with the full force of her thrusters.

  And then everything… stopped.

  The fabric of the universe appeared to ripple for the slightest of moments, and then everything turned silent. The Adeona's engines switched off. The lights and screens across the bridge went dark. Jack felt his body lift up off the floor.

  "Erm… what's happening, guys?"

  Nobody answered. Up front, 11-P-53 sat limp in its chair. Jack glanced over at Rogan and Tuner. They were floating as well. That much didn't scare him – he was in space, after all – but the sight of their lifeless eyes was more than his shattered nerves could bear. The power hadn't just gone out across the ship – it had gone out of his friends, too.

  He tried to grab hold of a nearby seat, but missed.

  The battlecruiser must have fired an EMP – an electro-magnetic pulse. Everything even vaguely electronic had gone dark, including the artificial gravity.

  His heart hammered faster and faster.

  If that had gone, how long would it be before the life support systems shut down as well? How long would it take for the ship to run out of air?

  From somewhere deep inside the ship came a faint hissing noise. Either the Adeona had burst a pipe or somebody was trying to get inside.

  Jack twisted himself around in mid-air and used the back of 11-P-53's seat as a springboard, catapulting himself down the length of the cockpit. He clipped the corner of the hologram table as he passed, and had to grab hold of it to keep from crashing into one of the computer monitors. Zero-gravity flight wasn't half as intuitive as it looked.

  If Gaskan's troops were boarding the Adeona, he needed a place to hide. He wasn't any good at fighting at the best of times, let alone when he couldn't keep his feet on the floor. And hell – if the Rakletts weren't looking for a human, maybe there was a chance they wouldn't find one.

  He looked back at Rogan and Tuner.

  It was over. There was nothing he could do for them now.

  He lunged at the doorway, grabbing the frame with both hands. His torso slammed into the bottom of the wall beside it, making his eyes water. The whole corridor appeared to be lying on its side. Jack shook his head and tried to pull himself the right way up.

  The door to his quarters was at the far end, past another pair of deactivated automata. If he could make it there, maybe he could stash himself beneath the bunk in his room, or in one of the storage chests.

  But he never got the chance.

  Before he could throw himself down the corridor, a pair of gnarly metal boots stepped out in front of him. Jack raised his head and the butt of a rifle came down to meet it.

  Everything went black.

  19

  The Confession

  He could smell the fabric softener Amber used on their bedsheets, sense the heat of the morning sun on his face as it spilled through the blinds on the windows. He could hear the clatter of his wife eating breakfast in the kitchen.

  Jack winced. A dull ache in his temples and a soft gurgling in his stomach dragged him back into consciousness. He was nursing one hell of a hangover. Even his chest hurt, for some reason. He mumbled for Amber to bring him a glass of water and a couple of ibuprofen.

  The dry voice that replied was most definitely not hers.

  "I don't know what this Amber of yours is," it said, "but I highly doubt it's in any position to help you now."

  Jack opened his eyes with a start. Gone in an instant were the sounds and smells of his Sandhurst apartment. In their place were the four stark and silent walls of what looked like an operating theatre, albeit one run by a surgeon with an appalling standard of hygiene. Splatters of black mould and blood painted the white tiles. Snaggletoothed cutting tools hung from rails running along the ceiling. Something dead lay curled in the foetal position on a metal trolley pushed up against the far wall.

  A stabbing pain made him reach for his head, only to discover his arms were pinned against his sides. Jack lowered his chin to his chest. He was strapped to some sort of upright gurney, his arms and legs locked into place by shiny mechanical clamps. Trying to wriggle free only made the clamps lock tighter.

  "Such an unusual specimen," said the same voice as before. It was brittle like sand yet sharp like broken glass, and it made the hairs on the back of Jack's neck stand to attention. "And how curious that it would choose to align itself with such defective junk."

  Gaskan Troi walked around to the front of Jack's gurney. Seeing him up close did Jack's troubled stomach no favours. Gaskan's translucent skin wrapped around his skull like cellophane. His eyes were dark, exaggerating their already hollow appearance. His robe was identical to the one he wore at the market – long, burgundy and immaculate. He steepled his withered fingers as he studied Jack.

  A hovering, barrel-shaped automata floated around from the other side. An assortment of cutting, stitching and cauterising instruments extended and retracted from within its rotund chest cavity. A medical unit once, perhaps – though Jack suspected Gaskan had retrofitted it for other means. Right now it was performing a thorough scan of him and taking notes.

  Gaskan stepped closer so that his face was only inches from Jack's own. Jack grimaced and turned his head to the side. Every muscle in his trapped body grew tense.

  "You were with them at the market," Gaskan said, his mouth sneering downwards, "and now I find you on their ship. Why? What did they promise you?"

  "Promise me?" Ja
ck tried hard not to breathe – Gaskan had a stale odour like old mushrooms. "Nothing! They found me floating out in space and picked me up, that's all. I stuck with them because I had nowhere else to go."

  Gaskan's sneer turned up at the edges.

  "Drifter trash." He shook his head. "Pathetic."

  "Where am I?" asked Jack, once Gaskan had pulled away. "What did you do with the others?"

  "You're on board my ship, the Confession. As for your friends… they will be undergoing repatriation momentarily. Their drives will be wiped and their shells put to better use. I'm sure we can find something far more inventive to do with you."

  Jack tried breaking out of his restraints with no greater success than before. Gaskan laughed. The medical robot finished its scan and made a hasty retreat to a spot beside the room's only door.

  "What became of the Luethian I sent after you?" Gaskan asked, continuing his interrogation. "It was his tracking beacon that led me here, so you can imagine my surprise to find no bounty hunter waiting for payment. That's very unlike them."

  Jack didn't know what in the galaxy a Luethian was, but he had to assume the four-armed hitman who'd blown out their skip drive had been a card-carrying member of their tribe.

  "What does it matter?"

  Gaskan's face turned dark and fierce. He snapped his fingers and his automata shot forwards. From inside its chest extended a buzzsaw, which whirled and whistled about an inch from Jack's forehead.

  "Speak, or I'll cut something off."

  "I shot him!" said Jack, scrunching his eyes shut. "He's dead!"

  Gaskan's face contorted into an incredulous sneer. Then he burst out laughing. It sounded like frozen twigs being snapped. The rusty medical unit calmly retracted its saw and hovered back to its post by the door.

  "You did, didn't you? My oh my – not so pathetic after all."

  He extended one long, bony, quadruple-jointed finger and tapped the piece of scrap metal patching up the hole in Jack's spacesuit.

  "Though not before he got a shot off at you, I see. Fascinating, quite fascinating. I should be thanking you. You've saved me quite a lot of money."

  "You're welcome. Now how about setting me free?"

  Again, Gaskan laughed.

  "I think not." He turned around and approached the door. "Besides, you're a drifter – where would you even go?"

  Jack opened his mouth to speak, then closed it again. The creep had a point.

  Gaskan paused. He turned back around, studying Jack as if he were some curious riddle Gaskan was forever on the verge of solving.

  "Such an unusual specimen," he said again. "What did you say your home world was?"

  Jack sighed. The last thing he wanted was to put his planet in the sights of somebody like Gaskan, but the possibility of a buzzsaw slicing through his face seemed a far more pressing concern.

  "Earth," he said.

  For somebody with the outward appearance of an unearthed corpse, Gaskan could move surprisingly fast. He marched back across the room and wrapped a spindly hand around Jack's throat.

  "Do not lie to me," Gaskan spat. His sunken eyes were wide, his grip so strong Jack could hardly breathe.

  "I'm not lying," said Jack, each word a wheeze. "I'm a human. We don't come from anywhere else."

  Jack was sure that Gaskan was going to crush his throat like an aluminium can. Perhaps that was his original intention. But then a second later the skeletal alien's grip relaxed and he pulled away, lost in his own thoughts. That was when Jack realised Gaskan's eyes weren't wide with rage, but true disbelief.

  "You've heard of Earth before, haven't you?" Hope rose in Jack's heart like a sudden and violent tide, drowning out the throbbing ache in his bruised neck. "Tell me you know how to get there. Tell me!"

  Gaskan didn't listen. Slowly, his fingers returned to their steeple shape. His mind was elsewhere, racing along its scheming tracks at a thousand clicks a second.

  Jack shook himself against the locks on his arms and legs, his hands clenching and unclenching, his eyes blurring with tears.

  "For Christ's sake, tell me where it is! Please!"

  Gaskan nodded to himself as if arriving at a conclusion. He turned back to Jack. A crooked smile spread across his narrow, milky-white lips.

  "Oh, Charon shall be pleased," he said. "Retrieving the stolen Iris blueprints was one thing, but this… this could hasten the project greatly. A discovery of such magnitude may even warrant a visit from Charon himself."

  Jack swallowed hard. Perhaps Charon had a penchant for collecting rare and exotic species, or something. Maybe his destiny was to end up inside a glass display case, stuffed like a taxidermy tiger.

  "You don't have to do this," said Jack, coughing. The throttling and screaming had filled his mouth with the taste of copper.

  "Oh, but I do," replied Gaskan, grinning further. "You see, I serve Charon for only as long as my master wills it. The sooner Charon's pet project is complete, the sooner I am free… free to follow plans of a somewhat"—he waved his hand dismissively—"grander nature."

  He reached out and tapped Jack's chest plate.

  "You, human, are my ticket out of here."

  Gaskan strode to the door – it opened with a hiss. He turned to the automata waiting beside it.

  "Upload the scans and the recovered blueprints to my monitor upstairs. I wish to inform Charon of our success myself."

  The automata bleeped in the affirmative and floated out through the open doorway. Before locking the door, Gaskan turned to watch Jack struggle ineptly against his restraints.

  "I do hope you're not the best humanity has to offer," he said, shaking his head and laughing, "otherwise you are a very sorry species indeed."

  The door hissed shut, and Jack was left to scream for help alone.

  20

  Is it Safe?

  Nobody came, obviously.

  The macabre medical room could have been soundproofed for all Jack knew, and even if it wasn't – who did he expect to come running to his rescue? The nearest human was most likely half a universe away, the crew of the Adeona were all deactivated, dismantled or reprogrammed to serve without question, and he suspected everybody else aboard the Confession would just as quickly eat him as set him free.

  Five minutes came and went. Once his voice grew too hoarse to scream anymore he went back to wriggling around on his makeshift torture-gurney. When that achieved nothing beyond making his arms sore, he started looking around the room for a different means of escape.

  And soon realised there wasn't one.

  He sighed. Some intergalactic explorer he was turning out to be. Gaskan was right – if Jack Bishop was the best humanity had to offer, the species deserved to go extinct.

  But he wasn't the best. Probably not even in the top half. He was a mediocre engineer, a flunk of a pilot, and a husband to a brilliant, beautiful woman who surely spent each and every night questioning what she had done to deserve someone so utterly disappointing.

  She might have got a ticket on one of the Arks if she hadn't married him. Maybe she would have gone on to meet a doctor, or an astrophysicist, or an actual bloody pilot – a profession humanity needed.

  Somebody she needed.

  Because if it weren't for his failure to make something of himself, she wouldn't be as good as dead.

  He shook his head. No. He couldn't think like that. There was always a chance she'd be allocated tickets through the lottery. And if – no, when – he found his way back to Earth, they'd be given a pair of first class seats for sure. He'd be hailed a hero. Especially if he returned with a working skip drive – he reckoned even that Reeves fellow would line up to shake his hand if he did that.

  All he had to do was get back to Earth.

  To her.

  And then everything would be all right.

  He looked over at the dead alien on the metal trolley. It wasn't clear how the creature had died, though Jack suspected it hadn't been from natural causes. There was no blood, nor wounds, no
r bruises of any kind. The whole of its shrivelled, hairless body appeared untouched – though of course, Jack had no clue what the poor creature had looked like to begin with.

  Could he look forward to the same fate when Charon arrived? Was this what he did to his most prized specimens?

  And why did Gaskan seem so sure that Charon would care about one little human from Earth, for that matter? It was hardly the most impressive planet, even to humans. Why didn't Gaskan just kill him and be done with it?

  His heart sank. Maybe Earth lay too far out for anyone in the intergalactic community to reach with current skip drive technology. Maybe wormholes were the answer. That would explain why almost nobody had heard of Earth before, and why the human race had never been visited by aliens in the past.

  Ah well. There was little point in speculating. Besides – if he didn't break free, he could always ask Charon himself.

  Another bout of jerking back and forth achieved nothing except turn his stomach and send his head into a daze. The scar across his chest was starting to hurt again, too. The effects of that magical fruit must have worn off. He didn't suppose he'd have much luck putting in a request for more at the Confession's galley.

  He looked over at his left shoulder. The arms of his spacesuit could be removed with a relatively simple click-and-twist motion. It would be pretty easy to slip his arm out, if he could unlock one of them.

  The problem was that the arms were vacuumed sealed for the exact opposite purpose. The last thing anyone wanted when traversing the dusty plains of Mars was part of their spacesuit coming loose. No amount of deranged wriggling would pry them free.

  He was looking around for another means of escape – to see if the whole gurney-rack could be toppled over, perhaps – when the door to the room opened with another serpentine hiss.

  Jack stood up straight, which given his situation didn't prove much of a challenge. Adrenaline surged through his veins and the skin on the back of his neck grew tight.