“An Eve’Zon jump? In atmo? You sure you didn’t suffer any brain damage while sealed in your suit?” Khai snapped.
“No,” Sibrex answered plainly. “We used to do it all the time when I was in the military.”
“You’re kidding,” Dah laughed.
“Not at all,” Sibrex said. “In fact, if I remember, it was quite exhilarating.”
The ship bucked again and started listing to the right. “Starboard hoverpad is damaged, shields are failing,” Dah announced.
Khai looked at Dah, then Sibrex, mulled it over in his head for a few seconds and turned to Sibrex and said, “Prime the Eve’Zon drive. Set a course for somewhere just outside Seryys One’s gravity well.”
“Course plotted,” Sibrex said almost instantly after, then said, “I would suggest reaching a higher altitude. At this elevation, there is the possibility of bringing ground debris into the black hole with us.”
“Roger that,” Khai said, pulling back on the yoke and heading straight for the sky.
The ship groaned in protest as the stress of such a sudden change in atmospheric conditions lashed out at the ship’s hull. The pursuing ship didn’t skip a beat and continued firing as Dah returned fire with the cannon turrets. He knew he couldn’t hit the ship, but if he could make the ship juke more, maybe, just maybe, he could slow it down even a little bit.
“Eve’Zon drive is primed and ready,” Sibrex announced.
Without another word, Khai activated it. The micro-black hole yawned open to swallow them. Only peripherally, did Khai notice that the Shark Interceptor broke off its pursuit and was leveling out, heading back to the city. The ship rumbled beneath their seats, systems flickered on and off, sparks spat across the cockpit causing Dah to cover his face lest he get burned and main power fluctuated as the ship was gulped by the void. Khai’s white-knuckled hands held the controls tightly as the ship winked out of existence for a millisecond. Instantly, the ship was spewed from the maw on the other side just outside the almost-planetoid of Seryys I’s gravity well. The tiny dead rock spun slowly before them. The Seryys Sun cast long shadows on the pockmarked planet that tilted as the rock spun.
“That was something else!” Khai whispered excitedly.
“What a rush!” Dah exclaimed.
“Indeed,” Sibrex agreed. “Exhilarating.”
“Okay, Sibrex,” Khai said, shaking off the adrenalin. “Set a course for Seryys. Let’s get this over with.”
“I cannot,” Sibrex said, his gravelly voice betraying a bit of concern.
“Why not?”
“The Eve’Zon drive is not responding.”
“What do you mean?” Khai asked.
“I have red lights across the Eve’Zon status board. Apparently opening a black hole in the atmosphere of a planet overtaxed the power conduits between the engine core and the drive. They will need to be replaced.”
“How long will it take us to get home at full power?” Khai asked his friend.
“Roughly eight days,” said Sibrex with a grimace.
“That’s not gonna work,” Khai said bluntly. “Can you fix the problem?”
“Possibly—if we possess the right parts.”
“Fine,” Khai said. “Get started on that, I’ll contact Prime Minister Puar and let him know that we have Alarr’s family.” Though Sibrex didn’t say anything, his eyes betrayed more bad news. “Oh no. What else is wrong?”
“As far as I can tell, communications are down, along with main power and life-support.”
“What about backup power?” Khai asked.
Sibrex shook his head. “Gone. From the jump, I assume.”
“Meaning?” Dah asked.
“Meaning, we have roughly four hours of air left before we suffocate,” Sibrex clarified.
“Joon,” Khai called out. “Give me a status?” Nothing. “Joon?”
“It would appear that your onboard AI is also damaged,” Sibrex added.
“Okay,” Khai sighed. “Sibrex, get started on repairing the power conduits, have Kay help you; Dah, see what you can do about getting communications back online and use Puar, too; I’ll go talk to the Alarrs and see if they can offer anything useful.”
He got determined nods from both of them and all three stormed off. Dah was headed for Khai’s quarters to get Puar. Khai and Sibrex entered the main hold one right behind the other. Khai stopped and Sibrex stormed past to the aft portion of the ship.
Khai stopped and folded his arms with a cocky grin on his face. “It’s time to earn your keep, Alarr.”
“I’m not going to help you, you integrationist scum!” Alarr hissed.
“Oh, I beg to differ,” Khai counted, not rising to the bait. “Can you do anything useful? Do you know your way around a ship?”
“I was a career navy captain, General Khail. I’ve been on a few ships.”
“Good. I need you to help get main power back online,” Khai said.
“And if I refuse?” Alarr grumbled.
“Well, a couple things could happen,” Khai said with a mischievous grin. “I could space you right now.”
“Or?” Alarr asked.
“Or you could not help and suffocate. No power equals no life-support, genius! You want your wife and kids to die in the cold of space? I’m sure this ship would make a great oversized coffin.”
“Fine,” Alarr growled. “But I’ll need access to the crawlspace below decks.”
“Access granted… with one exception,” Khai said, walking to a storage closet.
“Which is?”
“You have to wear this.” Khai pulled out a length of steel rope with an eyehole fashioned at the end of it. Khai fed one side of a pair of wrist restraints through the hole and fastened the other to Alarrr’s wrist. “Since ol’ Brix here can’t fit down there, you’ll wear this. At even a remote sign of trouble, I’ll have him drag you out of there like a rodent from a hole. Understood?”
“Yes,” Alarr snapped.
“Good. Now get to work.”
Brix followed Alarr back to the forward side of the engineering room. Sibrex was already elbow-deep in one of the access hatches beside the Eve’Zon drive and Kay was knelt down behind it running a diagnostic. Alarr opened one of the lockers and removed a tool pouch complete with a diagnostic computer. Then, he crouched down, removed the crawlspace hatch and wriggled down into the small compartment which was just big enough for him to sit upright on his knees. The main power core was located in the engine room and, at a glance, looked to be operational so there must have been an issue with the power distribution module—which was located directly beneath it. He crawled on his hands and knees until he found it. Power pulsed through the power emitter of the core into the module, but from there it disbursed.
A small port on the side of the module was designed to accept many different types of diagnostic computers. He plugged it in and started typing away on the keypad. While he worked on the module, he ever-so-slowly started pulling extra lengths of rope toward him. Finally, it stopped and Brix actually tugged back pulling all the slack he had just freed.
“Brix!” he shouted. “Give me some slack! I can’t reach the power core from where I am.”
“Fine!” Brix’s voice boomed.
“Thank you!” Alarr spat and yanked the rope as hard as he could. He freed up a good four feet of extra rope and pinned it under his knee.
He looked around for anything he could use to cut the rope. His plan was to fix the ship and then commandeer it. He knew how he was going to rid himself of Sibrex, Kay and Brix, but hadn’t formulated a plan to get the other three, just yet. Suddenly a spark shot out from one of the power conduits to his left causing him to flinch. Then he had another idea. The conduit was partially exposed where the rubber insulation had cracked. Risking getting shocked to death, he took the extra length of rope, held it in two hands, cringed and touched the rope to the exposed wire. A loud crack sounded all the way down the crawlspace and gave him quite the jolt, knocking him agai
nst the opposite wall.
“Ouch!” he shouted.
“What’s wrong? What’d you do?” Brix demanded.
“Nothing,” he called back, looking at the frayed woven ends of the steel rope. “Just touched an exposed wire. Gave me quite the shock, but you needn’t worry. I’m fine.”
“Mm,” Brix grunted, the closest thing to concern Alarr imagined he would get from the giant.
Once again, pinning the extra rope under his knee, he got back to work. It took only a few moments to get the module back up and running. It was simply a matter of rebooting it. The power surge from the jump temporarily disabled it. Once he knew it was working again, he waited for Sibrex and Kay to finish replacing the power conduits. He knew it would take a few hours so he sat and rested.
“What the hell is taking so long?” Brix asked.
“Do you know how to reconfigure and repair a core power distribution module?” Brix said nothing. “I thought not. Now shut up and let me concentrate.”
While he waited, he cut power to the communications array in case Puar and Dah did manage to fix it. A few moments passed and Brix called down.
“Hey! Puar says that he lost power to the com controls.”
“Yes. I had to disable that power conduit while I’m down here because that’s the one that shocked me. I know you don’t care, but I don’t particularly see death by electrocution as a very pleasant experience.”
He heard Brix shout something unintelligible and then a faint shout back.
“How long?” Brix asked for Puar.
“As long as I’m down here,” Alarr shouted angrily.
That seemed to quell that for a while. Come on, Sibrex. Fix those conduits already.
After another half hour, Alarr had disconnected a minor power conduit and spooled several feet of the power cable at his feet when Sibrex announced that he was done. The conduits were replaced.
“Okay, give me a few more moments to do a final check of the distribution module.”
Now was Alarr’s chance.
He set a timer on the computer still plugged into the module. He set it to send a test surge in two minutes. With everything hooked and ready to go, the surge would build up in the Eve’Zon drive and a failsafe would kick in and release the energy. That would electrify the whole engine room, rendering both Kay and Sibrex unconscious and providing a sufficient distraction to take down Brix with the lose power conduit. He then returned power to communications as to not arouse suspicion.
Holding the rope in one hand and his new improvised weapon in the other, he crawled back to the hatch. He sat in the hole, looking up at Brix. The giant man stared back down at him with confusion.
“Are you coming out or what?” he snapped.
Suddenly a light flashed blue and arcs of lightning danced across the engine room striking both Kay and Sibrex. Having had several thousand volts of electricity course through their bodies, they crumpled to the floor in a heap. Brix moved to help, but Alarr leapt from the hole and jabbed the hot end of the conduit into the back of Brix’s calf muscle. He squawked and went rigid for a full second before falling face first to the floor.
Alarr quickly clambered out of the hole, grabbed a large wrench and made his way to the main hold where his wife was bound and tied to a chair with his children. He quickly cut their bonds, ordered the kids to find a hiding spot and took his wife to Khai’s quarters where Puar and Dah were doing their repairs.
“No!” Alarr heard Puar growl. “This green one goes there, the purple one goes there!”
“Have you ever worked on a com board before?” Dah snapped. “If you swap those two wires, you’ll burn out the control panel! And then where will we be?”
With both their heads in the access panel, they didn’t notice Alarr slip in. With the wrench he procured from the engine room, he took Dah down first. As he fell to the floor Puar spun around.
“What the f-” Bam! He took the wrench in the face and collapsed to the floor.
“Now, let’s get Khail,” Alarr whispered to his wife. She nodded and followed him.
Khai was sitting in the cockpit looking out the canopy at the slowly-spinning planet. Alarr crept up behind him, raised the wrench and struck down. At the last minute, Khai leaned to his right and the wrench bounced off the headrest of the pilot’s seat. Moving faster than Alarr had seen him move ever, Khai grabbed the wrench with his right hand and struck Mrs. Alarr in the throat hard enough to stun her, but not kill her. As she dropped to the floor making a choking sound, Khai used his overwhelming strength to force Mr. Alarr out of the cockpit and jammed him up against the wall where the short corridor forked.
Alarr took a shot at Khai’s arm, striking at the elbow. Khai’s reflex package kicked in and he bashed his forehead into Alarr’s nose, breaking it and effectively stopping the attack. As blood bubbled from his nose, Alarr tried to break Khai’s iron grip but couldn’t. Khai dragged him into the main hold and threw him on the floor. Alarr quickly got to his feet and reared up for another attack.
“Think about what you’re doing,” Khai warned. “I don’t want to hurt you, but I will if you leave me with no choice.”
Alarr attacked again, a wild horizontal swing. Khai ducked under it and came up with a devastating uppercut that sent Alarr spitting teeth and sprawling to his back.
And it was all over. Without another word or struggle, they allowed Khai to bind them with adhesive strips and put them in the engine room under the watchful eye of a very, very irritated Brix.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Khai sat in the cockpit—had been for the last hour or so—brooding over everything that had happened in the last few days. It seemed that Warthol’s influence ran far deeper than anyone had initially thought. He had mere hours to save the fragile peace that he had helped usher in through blood and sweat between his people and the Vyysarri. His ship was crippled, his crew was weary, and he had no idea how he was going to get out of this one, not to mention the fact that for a week or so, he thought his wife was dead and now that he knew she was alive, he couldn’t get to her soon enough. The Vyysarri would start firing on Seryys ships in a matter of hours and everything for which he fought for the last few years was about to go up in flames.
He thought of his crew, his friends. They had fought, bled, and suffered loss together. It was like being in the SCGF again. Only this time, he was directly responsible for his friends’ lives. Back when he was a colonel, he was normally following orders from superiors, and his direct actions were less impactful. He had already lost thousands of crew when the Vyysarri was destroyed, and though he hid it well, it affected him profoundly. Now, as it stood, he and his crew were going to suffocate in an hour unless they could get primary power back online. They had exhausted the backup battery and things were cooling off in a hurry. With each breath, his lungs felt cramped, like someone was sitting on his chest, and with each exhale a puff of steam fogged up the cockpit canopy.
Though he never really believed in divine providence, he promised the Founders to go to church for the rest of his life if they could intervene. Almost like clockwork, the lighting in the cockpit flickered on and a stale puff of warm air buffeted his face. He smiled, as he had crossed his fingers when making the promise to the Founders.
“Khai,” Sibrex’s deep voice came over the intership com. “Kay and I have restored power. Let us hope that Lieutenant Puar and Captain Dah are having similar luck with long-range communications.”
“Good work, you two. Now that the immediate threats of suffocating or freezing to death are things of the past, let’s see if we can’t get propulsion back online.”
“We’re on it,” Kay added.
Not an hour later, Puar’s voice came over the com. “Khai, I’ve got some magic happening here.”
“Yeah?” Khai asked, not letting his hopes get too high.
“I’ve found a way to call home. I need you to come here, though.”
“On my way.” Khai hefted his bulk off the ch
air and sauntered to his quarters where the main com station was located and a very proud Puar stood with a cocky grin on his face.
“Okay,” Khai said. “I’m here. Impress me.”
“Okay. Less than two thousand miles from here, is a SpySat.”
“Okay?” Khai was anything but surprised. “There are hundreds of those floating around. We still have eyes on our boarders. What does this have to do with our current predicament?”
“Intership communication is basically short-range communication. Whenever you are talking ship-to-ship within an armada, you’re using intership coms!”
“Which has a range of five thousand miles,” Khai was starting to share Puar’s excitement.
“So we can ricochet a short-range signal off of the satellite and get a signal home!” Puar was nearly shouting.
“Good work, guys. I still don’t see why this warranted you asking me to leave the cockpit.”
“Two reasons: one, the signal is strongest from the main console, and two, commandeering the SpySat takes access codes higher than what I have. Only you and Sibrex have the authority and I thought, given the current situation, it would be better to have your codes than his.”
“You’re right, good thinking. I’ll take it over from here, guys.”
Prime Minister Pual’Kin Puar was pacing a path into the carpet of the Honorifical Office when he was paged. He almost clambered over his desk to get the call.
“Prime Minister Puar,” he answered smoothly, not betraying any of the apprehension he was feeling.
“Sir, I have an urgent call from someone claiming to be General Khail.”
Claiming to be? “Can you clarify that?”
“Yes. I’m receiving a call being made through one of our SpySats on the edge of the system. Man on the line says he’s General Khail. But why would he be using a SpySat to make a call?”
“Did you ask him?” Puar asked, annoyed.
“Not exactly, sir.” Puar could almost see his aide cringing.
“What did you ask, exactly?”
“I asked him how he could prove this wasn’t a ploy by the Resistance.”
The Seryys Chronicles: Of Nightmares Page 20
