“Ouch. That’s going to have to wait until I can get you out of your suit back on the Inquisitor.”
The shuttle shuddered with another impact, a reminder of why they couldn’t remove their suits here.
Addy crouched down on the other side of him, her face pinched with grief. “We just left him,” she said.
“Who?” Lucien asked.
“Tinker.”
He shook his head. “There’s no way he survived. Troo got hit with the same thing, and she died almost instantly…” He trailed off with a frown. She’d died saving him.
Fortunately, death was only a temporary condition. They’d be able to bring her back as soon as they returned to Astralis.
Lucien struggled to his feet with Garek’s help, and Brak sat slumped on one of the benches along the side of the shuttle, cradling his stump.
“You okay, buddy?” Lucien asked.
Brak hissed. “It is just a scratch.”
Lucien nodded. They’d be able to start growing a new hand for him even before they got back to Astralis.
Lucien walked up to the cockpit. “How are we doing?” he asked.
Jalisa gave no reply. Her hands flew over the shuttle’s controls, working magic to escape the Faros. Tyra sat beside her, watching Jalisa with wide eyes, obviously afraid to interrupt the other woman’s concentration.
He nodded to Tyra, and asked her via text message what they were up against.
Tyra glanced up at him, and her reply popped up on his ARCs.
They sent fighters after us, but Pandora launched ours as soon as she saw us take off from the surface. She’s using them to draw enemy fire and help us get away.
What are they shooting us with?
Missiles and lasers mostly, why?
Lucien shook his head. After their battle on the surface of Arachnai-1, he half-expected the Faros to have some kind of supernatural weapons. Their battle on the ground had been shocking to say the least—balls of plasma shooting from palms, impossibly strong personal shields, levitation, telepathy… the Faros made the Paragons look like toy soldiers, and they did it with remarkably little visible technology.
Lucien nodded to Tyra. “We need to fire back.”
“Right…”
Lucien watched while she hurried to power the ship’s one and only weapon emplacement—a light laser cannon, unaffectionately known as the tickler.
She grabbed the joystick at her station and targeted incoming missiles with the laser cannon. She managed to shoot down about a dozen missiles, but there were hundreds more still incoming.
Then more lasers joined theirs. Crimson streaks of light flashed to all sides of them, simulated by the shuttle’s combat computer. They’d come into range of the Inquisitor’s guns, and now the bigger ship was laying down covering fire for them to escape.
Simulated explosions freckled space against the not-so-distant backdrop of Arachnai-1 as the Inquisitor knocked out both the fighters and missiles chasing them up from the surface.
The blue fuzz of a static shield swept over them as they glided into Shuttle Bay One. Tyra sat back with a sigh and shook out her hand from gripping the joystick in a white-knuckled fist. The targeting screen for the rear-facing turret showed the hangar shields brighten suddenly as they intensified to keep anything from following them in. A split second later, multiple explosions flashed against that barrier as the remaining missiles roared in and detonated against the shield.
A muffled thunk sounded from the hull as the Inquisitor’s boarding tube connected to the shuttle’s damaged airlock; then a dazzling flash of light suffused the cockpit.
Lucien squinted against the glare, wondering what kind of over-sized missile had just hit them. But when the brightness faded, there were no subsequent explosions, and Arachnai-1 was no longer visible on the shuttle’s viewscreens or scopes.
The Inquisitor had just jumped away.
“Welcome back,” Pandora said over the comms, her voice resonating inside their helmets. “Now that we’re safely away, would someone please explain who pissed off the blue monkeys?”
“We’ll be right up,” Tyra replied. “And start plotting our next jump,” she added.
“Aye, Captain. Are we jumping anywhere in particular?”
“Back to Astralis. We have a few crew mates to resurrect—and a warning to deliver.”
“A warning, ma’am?”
“Etherus was right. It is dangerous beyond the red line.”
Hunted
Chapter 20
“First off—what in the netherworld were we fighting?” Addy asked.
Lucien shook his head, while trying desperately to scratch his shoulders through his jumpsuit. Garek had popped his shoulders back into their sockets, and he’d used nanites to rapidly repair the damage to the surrounding muscles and ligaments, so at least the pain was gone. Unfortunately, itching was a side effect of using nanites to repair damaged tissues.
Garek leaned forward and folded his hands on the table. They were all seated in the Captain’s Ready Room—all except for Pandora, who was on the bridge, calculating their next micro-jump in a series of randomly zagging jumps on their way back to Astralis. There was no known way to track a quantum jump, but Tyra wanted to be careful. She’d already sent a message to Astralis, summarizing what they’d encountered, but Astralis couldn’t send a secure message back without knowing the Inquisitor’s location, and Tyra didn’t want to risk sending them those coordinates—not even over supposedly secure vector-based comms.
Garek was the first to venture an answer to Addy’s question. “Before we left, back when Etherus responded to the petition, he mentioned someone who started the rebellion in Etheria.”
“The evil one,” Lucien replied, nodding.
“I think that’s who we met,” Garek added.
“It said it was a god, like Etherus,” Tyra put in.
Lucien arched an eyebrow at her. “Suddenly you’re a believer in the supernatural?”
“I didn’t say that, but clearly we were up against something very powerful. I wonder if the abilities that alien demonstrated are unique to him, or something that all Faros possess.”
Lucien frowned. “How did he beat us back to the shuttle?”
“Maybe he can quantum jump inside of a magnetic field,” Brak suggested.
“No…” Tyra shook her head. “If he could do that, then he would have jumped past our jamming fields to get aboard our shuttle, or the Inquisitor.”
“We can jump around on our ships and New Earth, despite their jamming fields,” Lucien pointed out.
“From one quantum junction to another,” Tyra added. “That’s different than jumping to an arbitrary location.”
“Maybe that’s what he did,” Jalisa said. “There may have been a junction at the landing pad.”
“True,” Tyra replied. “What about levitation?”
“Grav boosters in his boots,” Garek suggested.
Tyra nodded. “And his sword?”
“Razor-shielded like ours,” Jalisa replied.
“His whip wasn’t razor-shielded,” Lucien said. “That was something else.”
“A flexible conduit with a strong power source,” Tyra said. “You just need the right material with the right amount of resistance, and a very high melting point.”
Jalisa nodded. “I’d like to try building one of those when we bring Tinker back.”
They shared brief silence at the reminder of the people they’d lost.
“What about the rest?” Tyra asked. “That shield must have been generated by an incredibly dense power source.”
“Maybe he had one hidden under his robes,” Addy suggested.
“That’s what I thought, too,” Tyra replied. “I bet those golden accessories he wore were some kind of shield projectors, and the balls of plasma shooting from his fingertips were just focused bursts of energy from the power source, relayed by the shield.”
“What about his super-human strength?” Lucien asked. “He stood toe-to-toe
with Brak, and Brak was wearing an exosuit.”
The Gor grunted at that and hissed with displeasure. “Yesss. This is curious to me as well.”
“Bio-mechanical enhancements,” Tyra suggested. “He could have nano-fibers for muscles and bones laced with nanotubes for all we know.”
“And the telepathy? He knew our names,” Lucien said.
“You mean he knew yours,” Addy replied, looking at him with sudden suspicion.
“And Brak’s.”
“Didn’t you two apprentice together as Tyros?” Addy asked. “You would have served on the same galleon and met all the same aliens.”
Lucien frowned and slowly shook his head. “I’d remember meeting the Faros.”
“Maybe you didn’t meet them,” Tyra suggested. “They could have been watching you from afar, eavesdropping on your comms.”
“And we just happened to come across the same group of Faros here, and one of them just happened to recognize me more than a year after my apprenticeship?”
“It’s possible,” Tyra insisted, “but I agree, it’s less likely than the possibility that our implants were hacked. Besides, he knew other things, too—our language, for one.”
Jalisa nodded. “When you asked him about that, he said that they’d been eavesdropping on our comms.”
“And if they can do that, then they’ve hacked our encryptions before,” Lucien said.
“There’s still the mystery of why you share a name with an alien warlord,” Addy said, looking at Lucien again.
“It could be a lie,” Garek suggested. “To put us off balance.”
Tyra nodded. “I agree. I wouldn’t trust anything these Faros say. They’re obviously a nihilistic society.”
“Nihilistic?” Brak asked. “I do not know this word.”
“It means they reject all religious beliefs and moral codes,” Tyra explained.
“Sounds like you,” Brak said.
Garek barked a laugh. “True!”
“I don’t reject all moral systems,” Tyra replied. “I just don’t think they come from on-high. Morality is an evolutionary adaption for any sentient species. Our survival is promoted by working together, and any group requires a moral code to govern its behavior or else it will fall apart.”
“Tell that to the Faros,” Addy said.
“They obviously have some kind of morality, but it doesn’t apply equally to other species, or even to the green-skinned members of their race. They seem to value power and wealth above all else, which means there’s a definitive hierarchy in their culture. They probably think of other sentient species the way we’d think about a colony of ants.”
“That fits with their superior attitude,” Addy said.
“Even amongst themselves I bet they’ll be cut-throat and deceitful, with a much weaker set of morals than our own,” Tyra said.
Lucien nodded. “If your moral code is all about evolutionary advantage, or the survival of self, then there’s no sense to acting selflessly—unless by doing so you can get some reciprocal behavior from someone else.”
“And most of the time we do,” Tyra pointed out. “Tit for tat. That’s exactly how morality is adaptive.”
“So how do you explain Troo?”
“I’m sorry?”
“She died saving my life,” Lucien said.
“Her death isn’t permanent, and she knew that,” Tyra replied.
Lucien narrowed his eyes at her. “All right, fine, but there are plenty of examples in history of people risking their lives for strangers before the advent of immortality.”
“And many of them thought they would receive a reward from their God for doing so.”
“Then you’re admitting that morals guided by belief in a higher power are superior to those guided by evolution,” Lucien said.
Tyra shrugged. “If by superior you mean more selfless in the short term, then yes. I don’t think you can have true altruism without feeling accountable to a higher power, but that’s not proof that a higher power exists.”
“I thought science was about observable evidence,” Lucien said.
“It is…” Tyra replied.
“So what do you call selfless behavior that can’t be explained by evolution or any other natural process? There’s your observable evidence that Etherus is who he says he is.”
Tyra regarded him with a frown, but the others were all smiling. She glanced around the ready room, noting their smug expressions. “Imagined rewards from imaginary deities are an extension of evolution, a by-product. Our imaginations serve our survival very well, but that doesn’t mean that they always do. Evolution isn’t a straight path. How does homosexual behavior suit the survival of the species? It doesn’t, and yet we’ve found plenty of genes that promote homosexuality.”
No one was smiling after that rebuttal.
“Anyway, we’re getting off topic. This conversation isn’t about Etherus, and he’s a long way from helping us now. If you’re so sure he’s God, then you’re welcome to pray to him, or meditate on him, or whatever else it is that you think will compel him to help us on our journey, but as for me, I’m not waiting for a ghost to show up and save us. We need a real plan to deal with these Faros. Anyone?”
Jalisa was the first to reply: “I’m starting to think that coming on this mission was a bad idea.”
Garek grunted. “That makes two of us.”
Tyra’s gaze skipped around the room. “I see. Anyone else having second thoughts?”
“We all decided to come along for a reason,” Addy said quietly. “I think I speak for all of us when I say that we didn’t make those decisions lightly.” Heads bobbed as people grudgingly agreed with that sentiment. “We want to see this through. Maybe we’re here to prove that Etherus is real, and maybe you’re here to prove that He isn’t, but until we actually find proof one way or the other, I think it would be best if we didn’t constantly argue about it. It’s undermining our ability to work together, and if these Faros are any indication of what we’re going to encounter out here, then we’re going to need to work together more than ever to reach the cosmic horizon.”
Lucien adjusted his mental opinion of Addy. She wasn’t just a pretty face.
“You make an excellent point, Lieutenant Gallia,” Tyra said. “The next time our conversations stray like that, you have my permission to interrupt and remind us that we’re all on the same side. Believe or don’t believe, that’s a personal choice, and it’s up to you. Fair enough?”
They all nodded once more.
“Good. Now, has anyone seen the engagement report from the battle we fought while our shuttle was escaping?” Tyra asked.
“Not yet,” Lucien said. The others reiterated that sentiment.
“Well, here it is,” Tyra said. She waved the holo projector in the center of the table to life, and they all studied the engagement report. Casualties were high on their side. Almost all of their fighters had been destroyed—thirty in all—and out of the sixteen enemy fighters chasing them up from the planet, they’d only destroyed eight.
“Looks like one of their fighters is worth more than three of ours,” Garek said.
“Look past the numbers. Check the time-stamp beside each kill, and watch the replay,” Tyra said.
They watched as ship icons moved on a 2-D grid, firing at each other with simulated missiles and lasers.
“They only lost six fighters to ours. The Inquisitor’s main cannons took out another two right before we jumped.”
“We were distracted, focusing fire on their missiles,” Lucien pointed out.
“Missiles that were all fired from their fighters—not from the surface,” Tyra replied.
“How’s that possible?” Lucien remembered how many missiles had been swarming toward them. “They must have fired a hundred missiles at us.”
“Over a thousand, actually,” Tyra replied, pointing to the engagement report. “That means each fighter fired more than fifty each.”
“Are their fight
ers a lot larger than ours?” Lucien asked.
“They’re smaller.”
“Then…”
“Their missiles are smaller, too. About as long as your forearm,” Tyra said.
“Are we sure that they really were missiles?” Addy asked. “Maybe they were projectiles fired from cannons.”
“They were definitely tracking us,” Tyra replied.
“And they pack a punch,” Garek said. “We only got hit by the shock waves as they exploded in close proximity to our shuttle, but that was enough to fracture the hull in several places. We’re lucky the shuttle didn’t rip itself apart before Jalisa could get us back to the Inquisitor.”
“So the Faros’ shields and their weapons are superior to ours,” Lucien said.
Tyra nodded. “Exactly. I think it’s safe to say that if we got into a straight fight with them, we’d lose, and badly. We need to avoid further confrontations at all costs.”
“What about the slaves?” Brak asked.
“We’re not out here to free slaves,” Tyra said. “And even if we were, I don’t think we’d be able to.”
Brak bared his teeth. “Coward.”
Tyra looked straight at him. “We never talked about what you did when our shuttle landed.”
Brak gazed unblinkingly back at her.
“Give me your insignia,” she said, holding out her hand.
Brak hissed, but made no move to obey the order. The single crimson bar of a champion remained glittering over the right breast of his jumpsuit.
“Lucien?” Tyra prompted.
He stood from the table with a grimace. “I’m sorry, buddy,” he said, walking over to his friend. It was Brak’s own fault. Even in the Paragons he would have been court-martialed for his behavior.
“I save all of you!” Brak roared, slamming his palm and his severed stump down on the table with a resounding boom.
“And we’re grateful for that,” Tyra said, “but it doesn’t change what you did.”
Lucien reached for Brak’s insignia and twisted it to deactivate the magnetic lock. The crimson bar fell away in his hand, and he walked back to hand it to Tyra.
“Your acts of restitution will be considered at your trial, but I think it’s safe to say that you won’t be allowed to join any future expeditions,” she said.
Dark Space Universe by Jasper T. Scott Page 13
