by T. R. Harris
Orange and purple lights whirled overhead, making the creepy shadows even more sinister than they might otherwise have been. From ahead, two of her fellow crewmates—Lopez and Greco—crouched and looked around a twisted alien bulkhead, their projectile rifles held at the ready. Drake had heard Kincaid’s order about using plasma swords only, and like most the rich kid’s other commands, he promptly chose to ignore it. If his crew was going aboard an alien warship, they were going in armed, and with something that could take out a target at fifty meters. Lopez turned back and gestured to the two techs to come up even with them.
“Seen anything?” Steve asked.
An acrid, smoky haze hung in the corridor, and in the distance there was the sound of an ongoing electrical short.
Greco whispered into his mic, “This is one creeptastic funkhole; however, so far, so good.”
Drake's voice came into their ears. “I’m in the aft launch bay. Meet me there. I want to show you something.”
“We’re on our way, Captain,” Lopez replied. “Which way is the aft launch bay?”
“Aft, you idiot. Just keep following the main corridor. If you end up floating in space you’ve gone too far.”
Claudia smiled. Drake really was in a mood, and when he got this way, he spared no one’s feelings.
The four members of the Kai Shek’s crew entered the voluminous launch bay by the dancing beams of their helmet lights. The ship had been black as a singularity since the moment they boarded, and only the internal heat from their suits kept them from freezing. The two other members of the crew remained aboard the Kai Shek, and Claudia could picture them with their feet up on the consoles and getting a real kick out of watching the shaky videos from the helmet cams and listening to Captain Drake browbeat the younger members of the crew.
Drake was easy to spot. The white beam from his helmet light was rising and falling along the starboard bulkhead and exploding in dozens of tiny flashes along the wall as it did so.
“That’s weird,” Claudia remarked as she walked up to him. She placed her own light beam on the bulkhead and began to nod her head up and down. The light hitting the surface created the same effect even though the wall looked perfectly smooth.
“It’s reflecting off of something, but I can’t see what,” Drake said, and sent his light up and down the wall. “It doesn’t do the same thing if I go sideways.”
Claudia turned her beam from the wall and had it sweep the room. “Did you find anything here that actually means something, or have you been playing with your kaleidoscope all this time?”
Drake didn’t stop what he was doing. “Nah, empty…just like the rest of the ship. I guess if you can say interesting about anything, it’s the fact that this ship has been stripped, and all the way down to the bones.”
“Hey, knock it off…Captain!” Claudia scolded. There was only one person in the galaxy who could talk to Drake like this, and she knew it was her. “Head. In. Game. Dickhead,” she said. “If there’s nothing here then let’s move on. It’s too cold to get sidetracked.”
“I hear ya.” Drake stopped his radical head movements. “The cargo holds are on the portside. We might find something it there.”
Claudia and Drake led Greco and Lopez across the wide, grated floor of the launch bay. At one time this chamber could hold fifty fighters or more. Now it was empty, which only made it appear larger.
“You coming, Nash?” Greco called out when he noticed Steve still had his nose stuck on the starboard bulkhead.
“Yeah, just a minute. I think I see joining seams. There’s a whole bunch of things stacked in here. And they appear to have tiny circuit boards. That could have been what was reflecting the light.”
“Good job, Sherlock,” Drake said. They reached the cargo hold doors and began to scour the frame for an access panel. “Anytime you want to join us feel free. After all, the last time I checked you were part of my crew.”
“Sorry, sir, but I just about got one of these things out.”
“You what?” Drake turned and could see the young technician prying at something with his utility knife. He was too far away to see what it was, but the man suddenly turned around and held up an odd-shaped cube of some kind.
“Got it,” he called out with pride. “The whole wall seems to be covered in them.”
“In what?”
Drake saw him counting something on the object. “It’s an icosahedron,” Nash announced proudly.
“I thought they went extinct millions of years ago?” Lopez said. The line would have been funny if Claudia didn’t know he was serious.
“No, that’s what a twenty-sided object is called.”
“There’s a name for something like that?”
“Yeah,” Nash answered. “It’s called an icosahedron.”
Claudia was relieved when Lopez didn’t repeat his first line. It was embarrassing enough being the only female on a ship comprised of male geniuses. What surprised her most was that Nash knew how to pronounce the word correctly.
“There’s a couple of them in here with orange stripes.” He pulled a pair of objects off the wall. “Here’s two more!”
“Put them down, Nash,” Drake ordered. “Unless they’re made out of pure gold I’m not interested. Now get over here and help us get this—”
He stopped talking when he saw flickering light on the door to the cargo hold. He stepped back. Maybe he had triggered something? And then he noticed his shadow on the door and realized the source of the flashes was behind him.
When he turned he saw Steven Nash standing a few feet away from a floating cube of the objects he’d pulled from the wall. There was no gravity in the ship—he and the others remained secured to the metal deck by use of the magnets in their boots—but the objects seemed to spin slowly as if under their own power. The combined larger cube was emitting a soft, electric blue light with a series of tiny lightning flashes sparking within the halo. The launch bay began to brighten.
“That seems to be getting stronger, Nash,” Claudia said. “Do you know how to turn it off?”
“I don’t know how I turned it on.”
“Typical,” Claudia whispered. She looked over at Drake and could see the worry on his face though the lens of his helmet.
Just then four more of the objects shot off the wall and joined up with the other spinning mass. Immediately the glow intensified and the sparks increased.
“Mr. Nash, please turn off the growing, sparking, angry-looking ball of lightning. That’s an order.” Drake’s voice was calm as he motioned for the others to head for the large exit door to the launch bay.
“I don’t—”
Suddenly more of the objects began to stream off the bulkhead and join with the others.
“Everyone, get the hell out of here!”
This was an order everyone followed without question, even Steve Nash.
Claudia, Greco, Lopez and Drake were through the bay door and into the processing room by the time Nash broke away and began running across the metal deck. One couldn’t run very fast in magnetized boots. Claudia turned as she heard and felt a crackling boom from behind and witnessed Nash being hit in the back by a brilliant tentacle of lightning. His boots lost contact with the deck and he began to float in the zero gravity, flailing helplessly.
Nash’s crewmates stopped and Drake turned to run back inside; however, before he could take another step a much larger bolt lashed out from the cube and struck Nash again. His body tensed, his arms and legs sprang out to his sides in a classic Vitruvian Man imitation, and then the lightning bolt exited his chest, leaving an eight-inch diameter hole.
Drake stopped and covered his face against the brilliance.
“He’s gone, Bondel!” Claudia screamed. “Leave him.”
Drake backed away from the roiling mass of electricity and lifted his plasma rifle. He took aim and pulled the trigger.
A snake-like whip of light contacted the exiting plasma stream and the two seemed to join before e
xploding. The concussion blew Drake backwards, past the other three crew members, and hard against the forward wall of the processing room. When he bounced off, several of the odd-shaped objects drifted away from the wall as well.
Claudia was at Drake’s side in a flash. He was conscious yet groggy. She attached a utility line to his suit so she could tow him off the ship as he floated in air.
“Grab a couple of these things each,” she ordered Greco and Lopez.
“Are you crazy? You saw what they just did to Steve.”
“Don’t take any that have orange markings. Two each, and keep them away from each other.”
“Why do you want them?”
“Because I don’t know what they are. They may be valuable.”
Both men nodded and proceeded to snatch a pair each as the objects slowly floated by. And then they were off again, this time not stopping along the way until they reached the point where the umbilical was attached.
Three minutes later they were back aboard the Kai Shek, still dressed in their suits.
“Secure the hatch!” Claudia ordered as she slipped into the pilot’s seat.
“What about the umbilical?”
“Screw it. We have got to go, and go now!”
The moment the hatch was dogged, Claudia engaged the engines and steered the Kai Shek away from the dark starship. As she watched the rear monitor she could see that the huge ship did have some portholes, because they were now filled with the angry blue light from within. The Vixx’r starship shrunk on the screen until she could see it no more—and then it exploded.
It was a blinding flash of white, yellow and blue light that only lasted a second before it was gone. The Kai Shek was faster than the shockwave so it felt no sensation from the explosion.
“Those things fried Steve!” Lopez cried out. And now we have six of them onboard.”
“Secure them in separate radiation chambers and keep them at opposite ends of the ship.”
“Let’s throw them out the frickin’ airlock!” Everly Kombutu said. He hadn’t been aboard the Vixx’r ship yet he’d watched the entire tragedy unfold on video.
“Negative. They stay onboard, at least until Captain Drake regains his senses. He’ll make the final decision.”
“Drake, what the hell was that?” Kincaid’s voice screamed through the comm.
Claudia fingered the controls. “Drake’s a little incapacitated at the moment, but he’ll be fine.”
“All right, so I’ll ask you: What the hell was that?”
“The last Vixx’r ship in the convoy—the converted four-master. And before you go all ballistic on me, it was empty.”
“So why did you blow it up?”
“I—we—didn’t. Let me explain what just happened….”
11
VICTORIA Simms wasn’t used to being interrupted, especially in the inner sanctum of her private office. After forty years of relentless struggle to attain this level of power and prestige, she felt she was entitled to a little peace and quiet when she chose. But now her Earl Gray tea was growing cold as she was forced to endure the presence of First-Secretary Kyle Patel and his ongoing, bombastic tirade.
“I know he’s a favorite of yours—for some odd, strange reason—but do you know what your Robert Kincaid has gone and done now?”
Patel paused for his superior to respond, yet when all she did was stare at him with an annoyed look, he continued. “He’s taken that damn junkyard ship of his and attacked a civilian Vixx’r convoy, and one out of Crinous of all places! What are you going to do about this?”
A slight frown invaded Victoria’s already wrinkled forehead. “The last time I checked we are still at war with the Vixx’r, so what do you want me to do about it, give him a medal?”
“You can’t be serious—a medal! The man’s a renegade, a rogue agent, who could upset all that we have in the works.”
“Mister First-Secretary, I would ask that you remember who you’re talking to, even if we are in my private office.”
Patel passed in front of Victoria’s expansive desk for the fourth time since entering the office. He had refused to take the offered seat. Now he paused in his agitated pacing and turned to her again. “Forgive me, Madam President, but I thought I had permission to speak freely when in private. I always have in the past. What is it about Kincaid that you like so much?”
“Maybe it’s his tenacity, Kyle,” Victoria answered. “Even though we deserted his homeworld, he resigned his commission and returned, volunteering to live under the yoke of the Vixx’r. But now it appears he has resurfaced and is once again taking the fight to our enemy.”
“He attacked a civilian convoy, one carrying precious metals. That sounds more like an act of piracy rather than a military operation. And he used an official government vessel to stage the attack. Already the Vixx’r delegation is raising hell. They demand we do something about it.”
“Or what?”
“Or they’re threatening to cancel the peace talks.”
“All because of the actions of one rogue captain and his ship, and in a region they control completely? I don’t think so. They’re just seeing how far we’ll go to preserve the talks so they’ll know how far they can push us. And from the look of things, Mr. Secretary, that appears to be all the way to where we chastise one of our own senior officers and war hero.”
“How many times must I repeat that it was a civilian convoy?”
“There are no civilians in Vixx’r society and you know it, Kyle. Their entire race thinks and acts as one. The distinction between military and civilian is so faint as to be nonexistent. Everything is based upon their weird religion, and every Vixxie—military and civilian alike—subscribes to its tenets.”
Patel regarded the President of the United Peoples of Earth with a look of stark disbelief. “Are you saying you don’t believe in the peace process that’s taking place? You think it’s already a lost cause?”
Victoria cast a thin smirk at the second-most powerful person in the UPE. “We’ve been fighting the Vixx’r for twelve years, Kyle, and I’ve never seen any moderation in their basic methods. Now they say they want peace. Why? Their goals haven’t been met, and since their entire society is built around the solitary mission in life to conquer and destroy, I don’t see how they’ll honor any ceasefire, let alone a peace treaty. War to the Vixx’r is not a burden but rather a way of life.”
“Then why even bother if you’ve already written off any effort as simply a waste of time?”
“Because we’re Human, Mr. Secretary; we don’t view war the same as the Vixx’r. If any kind of cessation of hostilities can be achieved—however brief—then lives will be saved, and that I do support. So I will do what my office demands of me, even though my confidence in a lasting peace with the Vixx’r is sorely lacking.”
Patel finally lowered himself into one of the two ornate chairs in front of her desk. He placed his hands on the edge of the desk. “I’m not quite sure how to process this information, Madam President, but I am relieved to hear that you will let the peace process continue.”
“Unfortunately, I surrendered my personal beliefs and biases when I assumed this office. Now I represent all the peoples of the UPE and I will do whatever is in the best interest of the Human race, if even temporary.” Victoria then leaned forward until Patel and she were only a few feet apart. “But just because I will publically support the peace talks doesn’t mean I will let down my guard. That is a luxury I can’t afford.”
“You make it sound like I’m some kind naïve peacenik with my head in the clouds,” Patel said, his jaw tightening with anger. “That is not true. I know the history of the Vixx’r as well as anyone, Victoria, and we’ve been together in this fight from the very beginning. But maybe I just have a little more faith than you in the negotiations. This time it’s different. It’s been twelve years, and we’ve reached a relative stalemate in the war. The Vixx’r may be alien, but they’re not stupid. They have to know it’s nea
rly impossible to defeat the UPE. I have to believe that even creatures such as the Vixx’r have some modicum of common sense.”
“And where is your evidence of that, Kyle?”
“Well, for one, they haven’t exterminated the Humans in the Reaches.”
“That’s because they serve a purpose. If they didn’t, then I’m sure it would be a different story altogether.”
Patel leaned back in the chair and smiled. “In that regard, they are a lot like us; pragmatic and practical.”
Victoria was about to counter with a statement about how Humans don’t go around engaging in genocide, but then she caught herself at the last moment. That certainly wouldn’t have been a true statement, not when one considered the checkered past of the Human race. But now she was growing tired of the debate. “So what do you want me to do about our Captain Malicious?”
“Make him stop! Condemn him, publically. Make an example out of him. Military operations are one thing, but piracy of any kind cannot be tolerated.”
“And what if he doesn’t comply?”
The First-Secretary was taken aback by the statement. “What do you mean? He’s an officer in the service of the UPE. He must obey.”
“Former officer, Kyle; he left the Navy three years ago and returned to his home and family business. Whatever he’s engaged in now, we’ve provided him with no material support, no orders, no reinforcements and absolutely no backing whatsoever. In light of all that, do you really think he’ll follow my orders?”
“Then crucify the arrogant bastard! Strip of him of his wealth and property and also that of his pirate crew. Take away his ship and then publically denounce his actions as not representing the will of the government.”
“I could do all that, Mr. Secretary—if the Vixx’r let me. You have to remember they control the Reaches now, not us. He’s behind enemy lines, and the only way I can wrest control of the Righteous from him and confiscate his property would be with the permission of the aliens. And do you know how ridiculous that sounds: to ask our enemy—an enemy in possession of sovereign Human territory—for permission to punish one of our own military war heroes? When did things get so turned around, Mister Secretary?” She allowed the implication to hang in the air between them: When did things get so turned around...for you?
