by Justin Sloan
It didn’t matter what species one was, simple acceptance of destruction of self and those you love was not natural. Fighting for freedom and justice was. Fighting for that last breath was. And fighting for your loved ones certainly was.
He stopped at the point in the wall where he had often stood before, contemplating, when on this planet. It was a newer etching, describing the fall of his people.
There in its center, at the base of the dome of Heirachon, was his Noraldian in all her splendor. Her hair trailed out behind her, arms spread up with hands out as if to push back the invasion that had taken her life. Hadrian would give anything to go back to that moment and change it all, to somehow die in her stead, or save them all if there had been a way.
But time had its rules. It could be bent, manipulated to degrees, but never completely controlled.
For all he knew, going back could result in the destruction of the entire defensive alliance.
His thoughts turned to Karstrack, who he had also thought long dead.
How could it be that the man had survived? That he was out there, giving access to the enemy through the gates?
On an evening like this, Karstrack had taken Hadrian aside on that first day of his coming of age training, and told him he would look out for him. He had been there when Hadrian and Noraldian met, even been the one to give each of them the gentle nudge they needed to end up together.
The first day of the invasion by the Great Deceivers, it had been Karstrack who had run to them and given them the warning that could have saved both their lives, but only saved Hadrian’s.
For so long now he had been convinced he was the last of his kind. What else was he wrong about? So many relied on him, trusted in him. But as he stared at the engraving, he felt that he knew nothing.
None of them did.
But that didn’t mean he would stop fighting for what he believed. Knowledge was the ultimate reward, but belief the ultimate motivator.
Belief that they were in the right, that living was the correct path over destruction. And belief that Karstrack, a warrior who had once been like a brother to him, needed to be confronted.
If he had betrayed them all, then he would face justice.
Finger tracing the outline of his lover’s hair on the wall, he closed his eyes, breathed a deep breath, and then steeled his emotions.
It was time.
18
ENTONO FOS PRIME: FLIGHT TO SPACE
The team began boarding Hadrian’s ship, and Samantha paused as the others passed, looking back out at the rolling hills. The hills weren’t so different from images she had seen of the California coast, aside from the strange vegetation and brilliance of colors.
Whatever journey they were about to find themselves on, Samantha knew she would think back to her time here and remember one moment of peace, one calm before the storm.
The Elders’ intelligence operatives had briefed them that there had once been a jump in the portion of the universe known as the Black Stars, so named because no light made it this far. But the jump was gone. They couldn’t find it anymore, so Hadrian’s team would go in through the closest gate and make their way over.
A neutral planet nearby could show them the way: an old outpost still manned by a tribe of Kolack who had broken off from the rest of their species and sworn off the mercenary ways.
“Ferder and your new friends are escorting us to this Kolack outpost, then we’ll be joined by two Kolack ships before flying into the Black Stars,” Hadrian briefed them all from the mess hall of the Noraldian.
“Our mission,” he continued, “is to take out the target, set up a new jump point, and then get the hell out.”
“And the dragon things we saw out there?” Samantha asked.
“That’s where the alliance comes in,” Hadrian replied with a raise of his eyebrow. “We take out the main threats, they move in and clean up our leftovers.”
“He calls three space dragons leftovers,” Napalm noted with a bark of a laugh. “Classic.”
“Well, that and the fact that the six of us won’t really be able to do much more than slow them down. We’ll need a whole army to send them away.”
“Not kill them?” Samantha asked with a frown.
Hadrian turned to her with an amused gaze. “That would be quite impossible, Sam. Though if we find a way, please, let’s kill them.”
Samantha chuckled. “Challenge accepted.”
THE NORALDIAN FLEW OUT FIRST, pressing into space and making ten gravities of flight feel like a river cruise. They were followed by their escort—two A-Fighters, named for their style of fighting that was often more similar to incoming asteroids than jet fighters. As Napalm understood it, the fighters would slip in toward their opponents and dump charges into space around them. Then they would fly out with a series of reverse shots that would hit the charges and send their enemies into a barrage of explosions.
They were able to see it in action on the second day of the journey.
The announcement of rogue fighters incoming sounded while they were eating breakfast. Napalm pointed Samantha to the windows of the mess hall.
“You’ll want to see this,” he said, hoping the Noraldian’s lasers and turrets didn’t take out all of the attacking ships.
“Are they with our enemy?” Samantha asked. “I mean, how’d they intercept us so fast?”
He shook his head. “They might not be, not specifically. The war in these parts is strong, but there are still bandits, pirates, and bounty hunters. Considering our ship and who we have on board, I wouldn’t be surprised at any of those likelihoods.”
She glanced up, wanting more of an explanation.
But Napalm smiled and ignored her silent question, eyes following the action as the A-Fighters charged in. “Here we go!”
A series of explosions and bright flashes of light, and they were flying past the space debris of their would-be assailants.
“Well, that was a pretty show, but not exactly eventful,” Napalm stated, a bit let down.
“You wanted our lives at risk?” a voice said from behind, and he turned to see that Hadrian had joined them. Lately he had taken to appearing as the disfigured old man. He had the others in tow, and motioned to a round table in the center of the dining hall.
Everyone moved to join him, and he sat. For a long moment he stared down at the table, lost in thought.
“Uh, boss?” Carma broke the silence.
Hadrian glanced up at them all, his good eye roaming across their faces. “What you saw just now was a simple display of our power. We have, in addition to our defensive turrets and three mounted lasers, approximately five hundred megaton fusion warheads onboard, one hundred antimatter warheads, and of course the special skills you’ve seen in Napalm, Samantha, and myself.
“If anyone wants to take us down, it’s going to be a tough battle on their part. Then you add our escorts to the mix, and I’d say the enemy would have to send several military-grade destroyers our way if they even wanted to stand a chance.” He scrunched his nose in thought. “Or… one of those space dragons.”
“Which we left in our dust, no?” Napalm asked.
“For the time being, it’s not a concern. However, if Karstrack is behind them, as I suspect he is, and if he thinks we’re moving in on him, I wouldn’t be surprised if we get a chance to butt heads with one again soon.”
“I get my chance to take one down, you mean.” Samantha leaned back, her sleek body armor giving her the appearance of a much older warrior despite her youthful face. “You all doubt me, but I’m slaying me a dragon.”
Hadrian almost smiled at that, but instead just nodded. “For all of our sakes, let’s hope you do. As of this moment, we are essentially members of the alliance, an elite team meant to pull off missions such as this.”
Napalm leaned in. “We already chose a name, boss.”
“You did?” Hadrian raised an eyebrow, impressed. “Well, don’t keep me in suspense.”
Ever
yone looked to Samantha, since she had been the one to come up with it.
“The Shadow Corps,” she said, hopeful.
Silence followed, broken by a laugh from Hadrian. “It’s perfect. And who will be leading this Shadow Corps?”
At this, everyone looked around, confused.
“Is that not you?” Kwan asked.
“I’ll do what I can,” he replied. “But as the fight expands, I’ll be needed elsewhere. Consider me the General assigned to this endeavor, but the type of general who runs out at the front of the troops from time to time, leading the charge. We still need to establish chain of command, for once we’re on the ground. I can’t have everyone just doing whatever the hell they please. That’d be chaos, and won’t work once we come across a cohesive enemy unit.”
A sound came from Dex, and both Carma and Hadrian considered, then turned to Samantha.
“Dex votes for you,” Hadrian said.
Napalm frowned, confused by this, then nodded. “Actually, that’s not a bad idea. The rest of us have our egos to get in the way.”
“I don’t have an ego?” Samantha asked with a laugh. “Come on, everyone of you is fifty times more experienced than I am.”
“Which means they have habits, ways of fighting their own wars that might not be the best when we come across this enemy.”
Kwan nodded. “Agreed. If I’m answering to Red Company as well, I don’t want split considerations judging every command I might make. And seeing what you can do,” he turned to Samantha, eyes full of respect, “you can count on me to follow you into battle.”
It was clear she was overwhelmed, but to her credit she sat straight, doing her best to not show it. With a lick of her lips, she looked to Carma and then back to Dex.
“You—you all are sure?”
Dex bowed, almost a nod.
“I’m here to do what’s best for the team,” Carma replied. “Not to feed my ego. So yeah, screw it. I’m yours, oh capitan.”
“Technically,” Hadrian interrupted, “you all are somewhere between a squad and a fireteam, with the difference here being that each of you are essentially equals. We’ll have Sam calling shots, but you all have your unique experience. I know you better than to think that I have to tell you to speak up if you see a problem, and I know that some of you are already mentoring Sam here in a way. So keep up the good work. Keep training. We will run into more trouble, and we can’t afford to have any of you injured or worse. So that’s your first order from me—don’t get hit. Got it?”
They all nodded, and he smiled. “Well then, get back to training, you slackers. What are you all sitting around staring at my pretty mug for?”
A chuckle went around the table, but then he stopped smiling. “Seriously, get back to work.”
WHILE JUMP GATES had been scarce after leaving Earth, going to their new destination wasn’t a problem at all.
“Think of it like a game, where the more gates you use, the more they can track us,” Napalm said, doing his best to explain it to Samantha as they moved through the obstacle courses. “At least, as long as Karstrack lives.”
“So we can be tracked using the gates?” Samantha asked as she ducked under several rotating bags of sand that simulated strikes, then came up and delivered two quick jabs and a right hook to the targets that appeared.
He nodded.
“But… not anyone can just use the gates, right?”
“If one of Hadrian’s people, like Karstrack, is close enough to sense a gate being used, the gate enters into his consciousness. Then he, and anyone he wills, can locate the gate and use it.”
She paused, turning to look at him. “That’s messed up. So having another Hadrian out there…”
“Not a good thing, in this case,” Napalm said, coming up behind her. His eyes went wide and he said, “Look out!”
WHAP! Too late, as one of the sandbags swung down and smacked her on the head. This time when she turned to hit it, she was pissed. Her strike burst the bag open and sent sand everywhere.
“Nice going, kid,” Napalm said with a chuckle, then wiped sweat from his brow as he exited the obstacle course. “I’m hitting the showers while you clean this up. Meet for dinner?”
She groaned, glancing around for a broom. “Yeah, sure.”
A sucking sound came from the floor. She glanced down to see a section of the wall had detached and floated over, then sucked up the sand. It then floated back to the wall, and reattached so tightly she couldn’t even see the seams.
She made a note to remember to ask Hadrian where she could get one of those for herself, if she ever had a home again outside of this spaceship.
She walked over to the wall of swords and lifted hers, smiling at the feel of it in her hands again. As much as she had once been against the idea of swords, it felt like a part of her now. It was too bad Hadrian had put a hold on grinding for upgrades. She wanted to be ready when they arrived at their destination, but he said it was too risky with Karstrack out there. While that didn’t make sense to her, yet, she had to trust that he had his reasons and would let her know soon enough.
So she was stuck performing katas that Dex had been kind enough to show her. There was no way she could ever hope to have his skill level, but as she turned and thrust, parried and lunged, twisting the blade and then striking upward, she knew her form was damn good.
From everything she had gathered from picking the brains of Napalm and the others, their mission was to get in there, deal with Karstrack to block the jumps for the bad guys, and then reestablish a jump for the good guys.
That would be easy enough, except for the fact that they had to travel through what Carma had called the universe’s butt hole to get there.
“The what?” Samantha had asked.
Carma had laughed. “The only jump to where the prisoner said Karstrack would be is through a specific jump point, set up purposefully by him, deep within the planet Dex comes from.”
“I hear his relatives are real friendly,” Samantha said sarcastically. What she had heard was, in fact, the opposite.
“Don’t joke about them,” Carma replied. “You’re not going to feel so jovial once you have to face them in battle.”
Samantha had nodded and excused herself. She had seen Dex in action, and certainly didn’t want to ever have to face anyone like it.
That was their destination. The butt hole of the universe. Great. Instead of heading to the showers, she stuck around for a bit. It wasn’t like she wanted to use them while Napalm was there anyway. Although the ship had separate showers, they were still in the same room, just separated by stalls. That, and she didn’t fully trust the water filtration system that filtered it between uses, so wanted to give it as much time as possible. No matter how many times Hadrian told her how it actually worked, she couldn’t quite accept it.
Having been through her share of crappy bathing situations on Earth, ranging from communal showers to canteen showers—or, as she’d been forced to do one time, a sand shower—this was like living the high life.
So, when she had the chance, she rather enjoyed being picky.
As she made her next sword thrust, she noticed a figure out of the corner of her eye. She made sure to end the form in a graceful bow to an imaginary enemy, then turned to see who it was.
To her surprise, it was the pilot, Jackal. He had his helmet at his side and, for the first time, she got a good glimpse of his face. To her surprise, he appeared in every way to be a human. His nose was slightly longer and more hooked than most men she knew, but other than that he looked like a lanky version of Goose from Top Gun. One of the LRR fighters had plastered his room with old Top Gun images he’d found in a magazine, and had been obsessed with Goose. The guy had a major crush on a figure who had lived some fifty years before. It was creepy, but also a little cute.
“I’m sorry for staring,” she said, blushing when she realized that she hadn’t pulled her eyes away nor said anything for an uncomfortable amount of time. “It�
��s just… are you from Earth?”
He nodded. “My government asked for volunteers without telling us what it was. But the moment I got up here and met Hadrian, I swore to never leave his side if he’d have me.”
She pursed her lips, frowning.
“Ah, you thought you were the only one,” he said with a smile. “Hey, you’re not the only human, but you are special. I’ve heard Hadrian go on about you… I’ve seen what you can do. Don’t you doubt that for a minute.”
“Thanks,” she said, putting the sword back on the wall. “You’re from …?”
“From Australia, though the accent’s long gone. It happens up here.” He smiled, then his voice took on a distinct Australian twang. “We start to forget who we are, mate.”
“You’re off duty, I take it?”
“Even we have to take shifts, you know? Make sure we get some sleep so we don’t crash this thing into a meteor storm or something.”
Samantha gulped nervously at the thought of that.
He turned to go, but seemed to want to say something to her and paused. “You know, the answer’s yes.”
“What’s that?”
“Is it all real. Yes, it is.” He smiled, and gave her a friendly wave. “I asked myself that every night for the better part of a year when I first came out here. The sooner you realize you can stop pinching yourself, the better.”
She laughed. “Good night, Jackal.”
He winked. “Jack works, when I’m not behind the captain’s seat.”
“Night, Jack.”
When he was gone, she wasn’t in the mood to train any more. And it was getting late, at least according to her body’s internal clock.
As she was walking toward the showers, she passed the mess hall and saw Hadrian and a very tired looking Jackal talking. She caught a portion of Jackal saying, “You have to tell her.” Then when they both noticed her, they stopped talking and walked off.
That was odd.
Ignoring it for now, she made her way to the shower, got cleaned up, and went back to her room. She took one of the pairs of pajamas prepared for her, slipped into them and lay down.
