He should have tried harder.
He could have prevented this.
“We will be in contact. You will have the full resources of the Academy and the United Galactic Coalition Army. This must be contained,” the Admiral said one last time.
He nodded his head. As he stood up to salute, the Admiral ended the call without a goodbye.
That left him in silence. There was nothing to distract him save for the constant, dull hum of the ship's engines.
Without hesitation, he strode over to the navigational panel and checked his course.
Though he could have sought out the locations of the Fifth and Twelfth fleets, and navigated his ship to rendezvous with them, he didn't.
As the Admiral had already said, nobody knew where Nida's ship was. Somehow, it had dropped out of sensor range. Which meant it had already left the solar system, or that, indeed, the entity had some way of hiding an entire vessel from the very sophisticated sensor net of Earth.
Clutching a hand onto his chin as he tried to think this problem through, it took a long time for Carson to decide what to do next.
He would head to Remus 12.
That was the only strategy that made any sense. Yes, the Admiral had ordered him to try to track down Nida’s ship, but she had also extended his authority and essentially given him the power to choose what he would do next.
And this was what he would do.
He would return to that planet, he would find his scanner, and he would finally ascertain exactly what had happened to Cadet Nida Harper all those days ago.
Though it was good to have a plan, this time it offered him no resolve. Because this time he truly understood there was no room for failure, and worse than that, he could not afford to waste even a nanosecond of his time.
With Nida in a stolen ship infected by god knows what, the United Galactic Coalition was relying on him.
With that heavy thought, he briefly closed his eyes and then sat down roughly in his seat.
He waited.
But this time he did not fall asleep.
He sat there and he thought and he planned and he pleaded with the universe for things to turn out right.
Chapter 25
Cadet Nida Harper
She kept falling in and out of consciousness. But it didn't seem to matter. The presence in her mind commanded the ship, and there was little Nida could do but simply sit there and watch.
Yet as time passed, slowly her attention returned to her. In scraps at first, and it was hard won, but eventually she could string together enough concentration to really consider what had just happened to her.
She had broken out of the Academy hospital, stolen this vessel, and was now travelling at many times light speed, back to a planet she had only visited once but now called home.
The more Nida pondered those facts, the more they scared her.
Who knew what forces were after her, and far more chillingly, who knew what the presence in her mind had really done to everyone at the Academy. Yet whenever she questioned that fact, the presence always reassured her that nobody had been hurt.
But the fact was she had left the Academy and Earth far behind her now.
She was on her own in this tiny cruiser.
Nida had very rarely travelled in spaceships. She'd certainly been in her fair share of hover transports over the years, but she had never had cause to embark on interstellar travel. In fact, her recent mission to Remus 12 was the furthest she'd ever been from Earth.
Yet now, as she stared at the view screen before her and the black depths of space streaked with the lines and speckles of stars, she felt as if she had seen this exact sight millions of times before.
It was such an alien sensation that it did not take her long to realise it was not hers.
It belonged to the presence in her mind.
Home. All it wanted was to get home.
That one word seemed to calm her more than anything else could, because it focused the presence in her mind. And when the presence was focused, its influence on Nida lessened.
She tried to talk to it, but there was little it would say beyond the fact they were returning home. Yet occasionally, and quite frighteningly, it would point out that if they did not return fast enough, they would become corrupted.
At the word corrupted, she would always see the same visions flash before her eyes. Walking through the halls of the Academy, destroying the building as she passed. Or standing on the surface of Remus 12 and watching the entire planet break up into dust and stone, and swirl around her in a vortex of destruction.
That was what the entity meant by corrupted.
And it scared Nida senseless.
As time wound on, and the days ticked by, slowly she learnt more about the entity.
It seemed it could only speak certain words, and when it tried to convey other information, it did so with half remembered dreams and contorted imagery.
So, in a fugue of dreams, visions, and sleepy hours spent staring at the view screen, time wound on.
As it did, she truly awakened as her natural faculties returned to her, until the sharpness of her attention and focus rivalled that which it had once been.
Yet with her intelligence and focus came a fear far more exquisite then she had experienced before. Now she had the faculties to understand exactly what was happening to her, it crippled her.
All she could do was sit there and stare at the view screen and wait, wait for the ship to reach Remus 12.
She had to get there. She had to return the entity to the statue.
She had to do it before they became corrupted.
Occasionally Nida tried talking to herself, or humming, or listening to music, but nothing would distract her.
She did try, however, to use the ship's communication functions to get in contact with the Academy, or to scan all frequencies for any news.
She couldn't do it.
The computer would block her out, and all too soon, she realised the entity in her mind did not want her to make contact.
Because it could not be stopped.
If she tried to reach the Academy, they would find out where she was. If they found out where she was, they would stop her. They would prevent Nida and the entity from returning to Remus 12.
Feeling far more trapped than she ever had in her life, Nida somehow managed to soldier on.
As the minutes ticked by into hours, she did not crumple her hands over her eyes and burst into sorrowful tears.
She simply sat there and she tried to think about what would happen next.
After she got to the planet. After she returned the entity to its home.
. . .
Then what? Could she go back to the Academy?
Though Nida had always been an optimistic and hopeful girl, she doubted it.
In fact, she could paint an almost perfect picture of what would happen to her. She'd be remanded into custody, studied, and quite possibly kept in a laboratory for the rest of her life.
Okay, the Academy was a lot more ethical than that, but her future would not be bright.
Trying not to think of it, she distracted herself by reading the navigational data displayed on the ship's primary console. It charted a path through the various solar systems they were yet to traverse on their way to Remus 12.
She remembered from her time aboard the United Galactic Coalition heavy cruiser Orion that Remus 12 was very close to the outer border of the United Galactic Coalition. In fact, it was in an area that had once seen very heavy activity by the Kore Empire.
While the United Galactic Coalition was by far the most powerful group in all of the galaxy, it still had adversaries. Though thankfully there had been no open hostilities for years, occasionally there were skirmishes, and areas like the solar system Remus 12 belonged to, were not considered 100 percent safe.
Occasionally you could run across Kore scouting ships. Far more frightful though, very occasionally you could run into the Barbarians.
> The Barbarians were a tightly organised alliance of about 10 alien races from the far rim of the Milky Way. Though they were a small group, they were incredibly powerful.
While the Kore were the primary threat to the United Galactic Coalition, the Barbarians, in many ways, were far more dangerous. They had an insatiable desire for technology, and would often engage in industrial espionage, peaceful or violent, to glean the secrets of new Coalition devices.
Worse than that, the Barbarians were not above capturing passing transports and survey vessels to kidnap the crew, steal the cargo, and strip down the vessel for parts.
They were vicious, underhanded, and desperate. By all means, a deadly combination of traits. And when you factored in that the two main races of the Barbarians were two of the most violent alien species in all of the Milky Way, you would begin to understand how truly and terrifyingly dangerous the Barbarians were.
Still, when Nida had been aboard the Orion, she'd learnt there hadn't been any Barbarian or Kore activity in this system for a very long time.
She held onto that fact now. Tightly. The last thing she could put up with right now was another surprise.
“Come on, come on, come on,” she said to herself, her quiet voice nonetheless echoing through the small cockpit of the ship.
Though the ship barely had any amenities, and just enough to keep one person alive, that fact alone did not bother her. She did not seem to need much food; the blue light infesting her palm somehow kept her energised.
Still, incapable of distracting herself further, Nida pushed up from her seat, and walked all of about a meter to the tiny receptacle that manufactured food. She pressed several buttons, and soon got a glob of grey substance known as a complete nutritional mass.
She stood with her back pressed against one of the cramped walls as she nibbled at the unappetizing food, picking at bits of the lump with the tips of her fingers and considering them with little enthusiasm before popping them in her mouth.
As she stood there, the presence stirred, and for about the millionth time it told her they were heading home.
Home.
That one word lifted Nida's world, and suddenly the terrible food she was eating tasted like the very ambrosia of the gods.
Her levity would not last.
For despite the entity's assurance, they would not get home.
Chapter 26
Carson Blake
The past several days had been hell. He'd paced this enormous and lonely ship looking for answers. Searching his mind, searching the computer's records, doing whatever he could to come up with a strong, airtight plan. But the problem was, his memory could only tell him so much, and computer files could tell him even less.
Though of course there were various mentions of peculiar entities over the years, nothing like the thing that now resided in Nida.
At least there were occasional mentions though, and Carson whiled away the hours by poring over them, separating out each fact and analysing it as if it held the secrets of the universe.
When he wasn't accessing the computer's scant knowledge on strange entities, he was using the gym. He ran, he lifted weights, and he distracted himself by keeping fit.
It was somewhere around the third day, when they entered an area bordering the Remus system, that the computer alerted him to a glitch with the scanners.
Frowning, he checked the readings on the panel in his armrest.
Immediately he jumped to his feet. “Computer, upgrade defences now,” he snapped.
“No immediate threat has been detected,” the computer countered in a dull, electronic tone.
“Upgrade defences now,” he snapped again.
The computer did not question him this time; it simply set the ship on a yellow alert. The usually bright light of the bridge glowed with a yellow tinge, and a warning tone filtered through the room. He could also hear the hum of the engines change as their output increased.
“The ship's defensive plating has been activated. Localised force fields are in place, and inertia barriers have been generated.”
“Inertia barriers?” Carson questioned.
“This ship is equipped with an experimental device designed to alter its gravitational properties and exploit these to increase or decrease inertia, affecting any incoming objects.”
He blinked, impressed, then he returned to the ever-present task at hand.
Swiping at the sweat collecting over his brow, he stared up at the view screen.
And he waited.
“No enemy vessels have been detected, neither have the scanners picked up any spatial deformities,” the computer explained to him patiently.
“Just keep the defences upgraded,” he snarled back.
“Yes,” the computer responded.
He could take the time to explain his logic to the computer, but it wasn't necessary. It would only follow his orders, and though it seemed to question him now, he could turn that function off with a single command.
Taking several stiff steps back, he whirled on his foot and walked across to one of the sleek panels embedded in the wall. As he typed something into it, he frowned at the readings that played across the panel's small screen.
Though the past several days had convinced Carson there was so much he couldn't do, there were still certain things he had mastered.
And this was one of them.
Even though the computer remained convinced there was nothing out there, Carson knew better.
He'd seen scanner malfunctions like this before, always in areas on the rim of Coalition space.
He knew what they meant, and it wasn't that the scanner array needed recalibrating.
His few years as a lieutenant and the commander of the Force had brought him against the Barbarians before, and he knew what to look for.
The alignment of the scanners was off by 0.5 percent, enough for the effects of the misalignment to be almost negligible. But that wasn’t the only fact that now saw Carson rush over to a panel that gave him direct access to the ship’s weapons.
No. The scanners were picking up a greater concentration of particles throughout the system. Worse than that, the readings from his engine core indicated slight interference in the magnifying coils.
All of these three things combined reminded him of when the Barbarians had snuck up on ships in the past.
So right now, he acted with lightning speed to bring the Farsight’s defences online.
As soon as the weapons were charged and those new, nifty inertia fields were in place, he allowed himself a single moment to relax.
Then he saw it.
Only several kilometres off the bow of the Farsight, a ship materialised. In a cascade of green particles that darted off the emerging ship's hull, a long, sleek vessel came into view.
Carson doubled back, but almost immediately he commanded the computer to lock weapons on the vessel.
“Prepare countermeasures for any incoming attack,” he spat, “keep the plasma turrets charged.” He didn’t need to command the computer to do those things; it was doing them anyway, it was part of the defensive upgrade he’d ordered. But the sudden pressure of the situation meant he had to do something.
The long sleek vessel that had just materialised. was unlike any design he’d ever seen. But that wasn’t much of a surprise, not when you considered the Barbarians were involved.
They hunted out new technologies voraciously. Though they were rarely brash enough to penetrate deep into Coalitions space, they often ran sorties to planets they could safely reach, obliterating laboratories and research facilities, and stealing what they could. Which often included the scientists themselves.
Of all the United Galactic Coalition's enemies, the Barbarians were by far the most fearsome, even if they were not technically the most powerful. What they had was a desire, a never-ending drive to capture whatever power they could, and that was what made them more dangerous than any other race or empire.
Carson had no doubt they we
re now after his ship. The Farsight was the cutting edge of the Academy’s technology; it would represent an incredible prize for the Barbarians.
As he stood there, waiting for them to make the first move so he could capitalise on it with the Farsight’s superior speed and weaponry, his mind raced with the possibilities.
There weren’t many technologies in existence in the Milky Way that could hide an entire vessel from view. And the ones that did exist were enormous, taking up half a planet.
Yet the Barbarians had clearly managed to get their hands on some kind of technology small enough and hardy enough to be used on a spaceship.
That fact alone was truly unnerving, but it gave way to a far more worrying thought.
With technology like that, the Barbarians could have infested multiple solar systems, lying in wait with their hidden vessels until something they wanted drifted on by.
Yes, that’s probably what had happened here. That Barbarian vessel had been hiding out in this system for god knows how long, waiting for something juicy enough to fly past and into their trap.
But, with luck he hardly deserved, Carson had seen through the trap before he'd mindlessly wandered into it.
Suddenly the computed beeped, and it told him in its never wavering tone that the ship was receiving a message.
A visual message.
The Barbarians were clearly trying to contact him.
“Go ahead,” he commanded the computer. Seconds later the view of the vessel was replaced with the snarling face of an alien.
A Xerk, to be precise. One of the most militant, dangerous races in all of the galaxy.
Carson had fought them before, and he could point to more than a dozen old injuries they had inflicted on him.
This Xerk, as was characteristic for his race, had three large sunken eyes that were the yellowed colour of jaundiced skin. Slit-like, black pupils now focused wide as the alien stared at him.
It was not large. By rule, Xerks weren't. They were a little smaller than your average human was, yet they had more strength, more agility, and more speed than a human could ever wish to enjoy. And worse than that, Xerks had no morals, no compunctions, no voice in their head telling them to hold back. Their brutality went to a level that was beyond description. Think of the very worst criminals and despots of Earth’s history, and combine them into one snarling face equipped with tusks for teeth and ragged, tendril-like brown locks for hair.
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