Recollection: Age of Expansion - A Kurtherian Gambit Series (The Ghost Squadron Book 6)

by Sarah Noffke

  “There you are,” Cheng said, his gaze skipping down to the box at Knox’s feet. “Is that…?”

  “Stay back!” Knox yelled.

  “Son?” Cheng asked, looking hurt. “It’s me. You don’t have to worry. Now, is that the Tangle Thief?”

  Knox lifted his pair of goggles to his eyes. Before he could adjust them, his father dove at him, wrapping his hands around his waist and knocking him hard against the wall. Knox’s comm fell out of his ear upon impact.

  He brought the hand holding the client around hard, knocking his father—or rather, the Saverus pretending to be his father—in the side of the head. Cheng would never attack him; he didn’t have a violent bone in his body.

  Whoever was on top of Knox was purely evil. The imposter wrapped his hands around Knox’s head, lifting it up before knocking his skull hard against the metal below him.

  The blinding pain took over, stealing Knox’s breath. He let out a long groan.

  The form of Cheng jumped off him and darted for the box. Knox rolled around onto his stomach and reached for the Saverus’s foot, pulling it off the ground. The Saverus fell to the tile floor, the box tumbling out of its hands, and both remaining pieces bouncing in different directions.

  The foot that Knox had just grabbed kicked him in the nose. He heard a crunching noise as searing pain exploded across his face, and Knox knew at once that his nose had been broken. He covered his face with his hands, the blood like a fountain, draining straight into his mouth.

  He pushed up to a standing position, knocking into the wall. His eyes were watering so badly he could hardly make out the scene in front of him. Wiping his eyes, he blinked. He couldn’t fight or do anything, mostly blind and his nose shattered. When his vision cleared he would have rather seen anything than what he found.

  The hallway was empty and the Tangle Thief was gone.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  Outskirts Junkyard, Planet L2SCQ-6 in Frontier space

  Julianna shot the form of Cheng that she’d tracked through the junkyard. A moment after being hit, it morphed into its natural snake form.

  “Another Saverus has bitten the dust,” Julianna said into the comm.

  “Good work. The team is all loaded up,” Fletcher announced.

  Pip, can you bring the Q-Ships over to our location?

  You know I can.

  Will you?

  Please?

  Now.

  I’m on it, boss.

  “I’ve just taken down the one who was posing as me,” Eddie said. “That fucker was definitely not as handsome though. I hope you didn’t fall for his act.”

  “I used the goggles,” Julianna admitted.

  “Whatever. Call the ship,” Eddie said.

  “Copy that,” Julianna said.

  “Knox, what’s your status?” Eddie asked.

  There was no reply.

  “Knox, are you there?” Julianna asked, sprinting around the battlecruiser, to the open end.

  Her attention was suddenly stolen by three chrome transport ships, lifting into the air in the distance. They hovered high up for a moment and then shot forward, speeding for space.

  “The Saverus are leaving!” Julianna sang.

  “That’s a good sign,” Eddie said at her back. She turned, offering him a wide smile.

  “I wonder why,” Julianna said.

  Knox materialized on the fifth deck, looking down at them, his face covered in blood.

  Julianna shot a look of horror at Eddie, who returned it. “Knox, you have the Tangle Thief?” Julianna asked.

  Knox shook his head. “They took it.”

  ~~~

  Eddie and Julianna used the Saverus goggles on everyone in both Q-Ships before taking off. From the air, Eddie was able to see how much the Saverus cared for their Petigrens. They’d left them all behind. The rats were scurrying among the wreckage and spreading throughout the junkyard.

  “The Petigrens are going to take over that poor planet,” Julianna said over the comm, as her ship hovered next to Eddie’s.

  “Yeah. Once they breach the borders of the junkyard, there will be no stopping those blood suckers,” Eddie said.

  “They aren’t natural,” Fletcher said, an edge to his voice.

  “If I may,” Hatch imparted from the main ship. “I’ve been monitoring the situation on the ground, and I might have a solution.”

  “What’s that?” Eddie asked, staring down at the junkyard. He watched as the Petigrens covered the fire tower in the center like a hoard of ants. A moment later, the structure fell to the ground in a cloud of smoke.

  “The leveling laser is complete,” Hatch said.

  “Oh!” Eddie chirped.

  “Can we confine the leveling to the junkyard?” Julianna asked.

  “Absolutely, I have the settings honed with great precision,” Hatch said.

  “Because you’re a fucking rockstar,” Eddie cheered.

  “Do you want me to activate it?” Hatch asked, ignoring Eddie, as usual.

  “Do we agree that if hundreds of Petigrens are left on this planet, they’ll destroy it?” Julianna asked.

  “Destroy it and its people, who have already suffered enough,” Eddie said emphatically.

  “Not to mention that the battlecruiser will finally be destroyed, releasing a lot of the energy it stole,” Pip reasoned.

  “And preventing it from stealing anymore,” Knox agreed.

  “Okay, Hatch. Activate the leveling laser,” Julianna ordered.

  A moment later, the mechanic reported, “Laser has been triggered. It will deploy in three… two… one…”

  From where Ricky Bobby hung in space, a red laser beam shot down and connected with the junkyard. For a moment, nothing happened. Then the laser beam brightened and expanded, casting everything within the perimeter in red.

  Eddie sucked in a breath as a great cloud of dust and smoke shot into the air. When it settled, there was nothing left where the junkyard had been but flat land, covered in ash.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  Infirmary, Ricky Bobby, Tangki System

  Knox turned the client over in his hands. He hadn’t let the piece go since he first picked it up in the severed battlecruiser. For some reason, holding onto it made him feel better.

  His nose had been completely repaired, and the Petigren bite bandaged hours ago, but he still sat on a bed in the infirmary. It felt wrong for him to leave when he still felt so broken.

  Eddie and Julianna said that losing the Tangle Thief was their fault—that one of them should have been with him. Cheng had told him that he was proud of him. They’d all tried to convince him that there was nothing else he could have done. After rolling the events around in his head—he had given that fight all he had—Knox had to agree. But after all this time, after everything, losing the Tangle Thief was a brutal blow.

  “Are you still in here feeling sorry for yourself?” Hatch asked from the door.

  Knox shrugged. “This seemed like the right place for me at the moment.”

  Hatch’s tentacles moved rhythmically as he shuffled into the room. “So we lost the Tangle Thief. So what?”

  “How can you say that?”

  “Because if it wasn’t for you, we would have lost it a long time ago,” Hatch stated.

  Knox blinked at him, confused.

  “The Saverus have been after that device for over ten years,” Hatch continued. “If it had been in Area 126, it would already be in their hands. Hell, if you hadn’t taken it from your house, they probably would have gotten it a long time ago.”

  “But they have it now, and that’s what we’ve been fighting against,” Knox lamented.

  “And we will continue to fight,” Hatch countered. “Sometimes you win and sometimes you lose. Today, we had a setback… but do you think that means Ghost Squadron is going to give up?”

  Knox shook his head. “I can’t imagine Eddie and Julianna ever giving up.”

  Hatch sort of smiled, a gesture t
hat was rare for the Londil. “Me either. You know, in a way, I think it’s better that the Saverus have the Tangle Thief now.”

  “What? What do you mean?” Knox asked.

  “They are up to something, and I have a feeling it’s major,” Hatch explained. “If we had beaten them to the Tangle Thief, do you think they’d give up?”

  Knox considered this for a moment. The Saverus wanted the Tangle Thief for a reason, one that was no doubt sinister, knowing what kind of evil race they were.

  “No, they’d find another way to accomplish whatever they are up to.”

  Hatch pointed a tentacle at Knox. “You got it, Gunner. At least this way, they have a device that I know how to track. Once they start operating the Tangle Thief, it’s going to set off many red flags.”

  “But the tears and radiation, they are deadly,” Knox stated.

  Hatch leaned in closer. “Don’t tell anyone, but there are tears and radiation all over the galaxy. They are just in places where they don’t affect anything, or we have them under control.”

  “You’re trying to make me feel better,” Knox said, giving Hatch an accusatory expression.

  “I would never dream of doing such a thing. I’m simply saying that we are in a better place to stop the Saverus, now that we can follow them.”

  “Yeah, I guess.” Knox turned the client over in his hands.

  “There’s something else that’s worth celebrating,” Hatch ventured.

  Knox looked up, curious. “What’s that?”

  “This whole journey. You’ve found your father, recaptured your memories, and found the missing piece of your puzzle.” Hatch pointed to the client.

  “My puzzle?” Knox asked.

  “Son, I’ve always thought you had a unique talent that most people in a pool of a million couldn’t match. An instinct that could make you possibly the best mechanical engineer of your generation.” Hatch cleared his throat, looking down at the client. “But what you’ve lacked all along isn’t something I can teach you, or even give to you… When you hold that client in your hands, what are you thinking about?”

  Knox found himself smiling. “It reminds me of how I felt before everything in my life fell apart. When I picked up this client for the first time, I had such confidence that it would bring me back to my father. Fix things.”

  “And in a way, it did,” Hatch said. “It just took a little longer than you expected. But if that Tangle Thief didn’t send you on the journey that it did, you might have never found your father again; the Federation might have placed you in a home, and you would have been brought up by a nice family, but there would have been no visit to Planet L2SCQ-6, and certainly no Ghost Squadron.”

  “So you think the Tangle Thief actually saved my life?” Knox asked.

  “I think that it’s all about perspective. Two people can look at a situation, and where one sees a tragedy, the other might see a miracle.”

  Knox nodded, thinking. “Do you think that, when I lost my father and used the Tangle Thief, I lost my confidence?”

  “Do you think that?” Hatch fired back at him.

  “Yeah, I think it makes sense that I would have lost my nerve then.”

  “And maybe it changes things now that you have perspective. Maybe you see that everything turned out for the best and that you made the right decisions,” Hatch said.

  Knox tilted the client in his hands, noticing how ordinary this complex object was. “So confidence is the one thing I’m lacking that you can’t teach me?”

  “Confidence is the one thing that we all need in order to be successful at anything,” Hatch said, a meaningful expression in his dark eyes.

  “You sound like you’re speaking from experience,” Knox observed.

  “Gunner, I’ve been doing this for a long time, and even I sometimes lose my confidence.” Hatch reached out and plucked the client from his hands, holding it up in front of his face. “But the important thing to remember is that no matter what we lose, we can always get it back.”

  Brig, Ricky Bobby, Tangki System

  “You requested to see us,” Julianna said matter-of-factly.

  Eddie threw a contemptuous glare at the Saverus and then said to Julianna, “We have to keep this short. We have more pressing issues to deal with than looking at this snake-piece-of-shit.”

  The Saverus swayed behind the bars of her cell. “I’ve been thinking…”

  “That you don’t want to be thrown out the airlock?” Eddie pretended to ask.

  The Saverus shook her giant head. “That you were right. The council has turned their backs on me; my partner put my life at risk. I’m serving the Saverus when they won’t do anything to serve me.”

  “What does that mean?” Julianna pried.

  “It means that I’ll tell you whatever you want to know. I’ll talk,” the Saverus said.

  “How do we know you won’t betray us, like you did before?” Eddie challenged.

  “Because I have no reason to,” she said.

  “You want to live. This could be purely out of self-preservation,” Eddie reasoned.

  The snake’s eyes glowed bright for a moment. “My entire race has betrayed me. Believe me when I say that I’ve considered death to be a better way out of all of this.”

  “That’s morbid,” Eddie stated.

  “The truth is that what you said made me think. My race is ruthless and selfish. They know that using the Tangle Thief has major repercussions—Dr. Cheng Sung told us that much—but the elders don’t care,” the Saverus said.

  Eddie glanced at his watch, tapping his foot and ignoring the Saverus. “Jules, can this wait? We’ve got somewhere to be.”

  She squinted at him. “If you’re throwing me a surprise birthday party, I’m going to kick you in the nuts.”

  The Saverus laughed, which sounded strange, marked as it was by the hissing. Both Eddie and Julianna gave her sideways looks.

  “What?” she asked, sinking back. “That was funny.”

  Julianna shook her head. “We will consider your offer. If you talk, we’ll keep you alive…but we can’t offer you any more than that.”

  “And we want to know everything,” Eddie pressed.

  The Saverus nodded. “I’ll cooperate. I’ll tell you what the Saverus are up to, how they operate, and where the Petigren colonies can be found.”

  Julianna looked at Eddie, suddenly teeming with quiet excitement. She wanted to stay, question the Saverus. They needed to know as much as possible, and quickly.

  However, Eddie tapped his watch, that anxious look in his eyes.

  “Okay, fine,” Julianna finally said. “We will return tomorrow to learn everything you have to offer,” she assured the prisoner.

  Eddie strode for the door and pulled it open. Again, he tapped his foot.

  “Oh, and one more thing,” the Saverus said.

  Julianna cast a quick glance over her shoulder, her facial expression saying, ‘What?’

  “My name is Penrae,” the Saverus said.

  ~~~

  “We lost the battle, but we have a great advantage now,” Julianna said, her tone urgent.

  She hadn’t stopped talking since they left the brig.

  “Right, right.” Eddie ran his hands absentmindedly over his stubbled chin.

  “If we can take out the Petigren colonies, that’s their brute force. The Saverus will be mostly powerless,” Julianna continued.

  Eddie halted in front of a door, holding a hand up to pause Julianna. “Can we put that Saverus business aside for a moment?”

  Julianna’s mouth popped open like she was going to argue. She nodded, seeming to resign a bit.

  “Good,” Eddie chirped. “Now, I realize that, with the mission, you’ve been distracted. And, I know I give you a ton of shit for risking your life for things I deem silly, but I want to take a moment to commend you. Jules, you’re the most stubborn person I’ve ever worked with. You’re a control freak at times, and you drive me downright fucking bonkers.
”

  “Please tell me this is going somewhere, or I really will kick you in the balls,” Julianna said.

  Eddie turned the handle for the door, but kept it closed. “Yes. My point is that I wouldn’t have you any other way. I may not always understand you, but when all is said and done, you’ve never let me down. You’ve never let any of us down. You, Commander Fregin, are fucking amazing.”

  Eddie stepped back as he opened the door, throwing his arm out in presentation.

  Standing squarely in the middle of the room was a dog that looked almost like Harley. It was Harley, but…he was bigger, his brown coat was sleeker. When Julianna stepped into the room, Harley stood at attention, his ears perking up.

  Julianna blinked down at the beautiful, almost regal dog. She tilted her head to the side, trying to compute all the emotions that were piling up one on top of the other inside her.

  Eddie’s words. The fact that Harley had made it. Everything that had happened. All stirred together, it made something in her chest thump hard. Julianna found herself smiling down at the dog. His bright eyes seemed to smile back.

  Hello, Julianna, Harley said in her head.

  Hello, Harley, she said, a little unnerved.

  Thank you for saving me…again.

  I did what I felt was right.

  Harley stood, gracefully strolled over to Julianna, twirled around, and sat down dutifully at her feet.

  Well, staying by your side feels like the right thing for me to do, he said, looking up at her with deep loyalty shining in his eyes.

  FINIS

  Author Notes - Sarah Noffke

  March 31st, 2018

  I work a lot. Craig Martelle writes a book in the time it takes me to clean my downstairs half-bathroom. He’s a machine who reports to work eighty-hours a week. I don’t think I work that many hours, but I’m also a full-time mom to a six-year old. I work as much as makes sense to get the books written, which usually leaves me with little time to socialize, which isn’t a problem for me since I have friends in my head. But my “real” friends, who don’t fly Q-Ships and have badass super powers, have communicated a concern that I don’t spend enough time partying. Well, I have one friend in particular.