The Corrupted Star

by Martin HC

  “You're looking very frightened, for a god,” she shouted out to him across the deck.

  The floor vibrated under the force of a nuclear strike, at the same time Arterou's shoulder exploded. His arm fell to the floor from his body, and the pen shaped laser bounced off down the steps.

  He opened his mouth, but no noise came out as his back opened up next. The second exploding bug blew bits of bone and flesh across the floor, and his neck fell forward, held only to his body by strings of muscle and flesh at his throat.

  Jill kept the nastiness in her smile while watching his body pitch forward down the steps to land in a heap of burning mess.

  Now happy the broken god would not get up again, she looked down to Haydn. The ship's deck heaved following another nuke strike, smashing against its already opened up armour.

  Pulse cannons burned in from every direction tearing the hull to shreds, the last Ferren ship of the fleet stood alone. Her captain, following the silence from the flag deck, fought her to the death.

  Y'Riell watched on from the captain's cavernous command room after inviting herself down for once, wanting to witness the Ferren flagship die with her own eyes, and the good Captain Hilden was only to happy to oblige.

  She wasn't sure what caused the internal explosion in her enemies nose but she had her suspicions. Shot after shot pounded the Ferren ship, another two nukes slammed into massive holes in her hull, finally breaking up the oversized flagship.

  Despite her hatred towards this particular enemy, she was still amazed at their willingness to die fighting. Missile after missile struck home, turning the broken and ripped up pieces of the Ferren flagship to little more than slag and gas.

  Underestimating this enemy would be deadly, she'd witnessed this on multiple occasions now and respected their voracity for death in the face of defeat. She didn't underestimate them and neither had her battle commander, who now stood victorious beside her. With minimal losses they took down the entire enemy fleet.

  Minor Mishaps

  “I understand you're bored but this is too much, the situation in that bar was bad enough but this is beyond excusable.”

  “I swear, I had no idea that would happen.”

  “Of course you didn't, you had no idea what any control in that room would be for, let alone the controls for the construction deck's airlock,” Y'Riell scolded Haydn, before asking. “Which begs the question, why in this great expanse would you ever consider flicking switches, turning nobs and pushing buttons at random?”

  “I didn't turn any nobs,” he told her sulkily, sitting on a chair across the desk from the admiral. “There wasn't any nobs.”

  “I don't care what you didn't do or what there wasn't, it's what you did do that opened the entire hanger to space, de-pressurising everything and scattering almost three hundred starship construction workers. It took nearly four hours to find and retrieve them all, consider yourself lucky mandatory health and safety dictates they wear de-pressurisation equipment.”

  “I said I was sorry.”

  “Well I should hope so, it wasn't you that had to sit with the dockmaster and station director herself to go over the details of your stunt, this will set back the finalisation of the frigate by three full days. Not to mention the financial repercussions which fleet have agreed to pay.”

  “Well there should have been a warning at least, a flashing message or something telling me not to press that last flashy button.”

  “There were multiple, you even looked out the window, in fact, lets review the footage together, you haven't seen it so maybe we can count together just how many warnings there were.”

  “Do we have to?”

  “I think we do, so yes,” she finished speaking by swiping a video file from her desk up onto a display beside them.

  It started off with a typical introduction, Haydn was led into a room by a woman wearing some very executable clothing, she held herself well and her hair was tightly wrapped and pinned in a bun. A man stood from a desk nearby and approached the pair, reaching his hand out eagerly, which Haydn took and shook.

  “This would be better with sound, don't you think, you'll find out why I turned the sound off later,” Y'Riell told him casually, turning the mute off.

  “...OK,” he replied uncertainly as the audio played out loudly.

  “....to a meeting, so I'll be leaving him here in your capable hands, Mr Turgle.”

  “Absolutely not a problem, I would be delighted to host our guest for a few hours.”

  “Fantastic, I'll be off then,” the station director told the pair with a smile before turning and leaving.

  “So you'll be wondering what we do here?”

  “Yes a little, I was told this was where the new frigate was being built.”

  “Ah, yes the new frigate, it's a priority project, construction was ramped up for an early finish and some custom additions were made last minute. Which is odd I will say for a Mergence fleet contract, but not unheard off.”

  “So it's nearly finished then?”

  “Oh yes, one more day and she'll be ready for flight testing, would you like to see her?”

  “Yes please, can I take a picture? The new crew would love to see it too.”

  “Imagery of any kind is forbidden I'm afraid, for security purposes you understand.”

  “Shame, but I guess at least this way it won't ruin the surprise.”

  “Very true, sir,” the dock master answered as he tapped away at a console running the length of a four metre long window, filled with buttons, switches, displays and more, no nobs though.

  The window turned from black to show a frigate in a construction bay, people moved back and forth along a gangway at its centre, and others worked away on the ship itself where the gangway ended.

  “It looks ready now,” he said. “Is this a video?”

  “For all intents and purposes it is ready, we could flight test it now. What they're doing is installing the radar arrays, so that we can at least see past her nose while they test it,” the man laughed at his little joke, Haydn laughed too although his eyes didn't. “And to answer you're question it's not video, that is the construction hanger. This room looks directly onto it, I just blackout the window on occasion to help me concentrate.

  “Why are they all bouncing around like that?”

  “We keep the gravity in there very very low, it assists greatly for construction purposes, and sometimes we turn it off all together but always in a controlled manner, although never for too long as we wouldn't someone forgetting a tether and floating off eh,” he laughed again, and once more Haydn mimicked the man, not wanting to hurt his feelings.

  “It's quite a big ship.”

  “For a frigate it is, she is the first of her kind to be built with a twin antimatter core, additional drive stabilisers, harder hitting weapons, she's the fastest ship we've ever built. Even has a separate modified gravity drive used to kick start the star drive, so she requires only forty five seconds spool up time.”

  “That sounds fast.”

  “Yes well you see, we were informed she was to be built as a larger version of a runner, so we thought a separate gravity drive would be more beneficial. Despite the conflicting nature of drive dynamics it wasn't too difficult to achieve, the polar density of the materials were of equivalent mass when divided into the root of the necessary component mass, meaning...,” Mr Turgle stopped his small lecture mid track, Haydn thought the blank expression on his face told the man all he needed to know. “I get that look a lot he smiled, people often ask why the dockmaster knows so much about the science. I should have mentioned at the beginning, I'm actually the project's chief engineer, but I double up as the dockmaster, as I spend so much time in this room. You know if you like to speak about these things, I have the technical specifications in the back, I can take you through them.”

  “That's really not necessary, I'd hate to trouble you.”

  “Oh no, it's quite alright, I enjoy going over them,” he fin
ished by turning and cheerily leaving out the room through a door to the rear.

  Haydn turned to the window now, looked out of it in dismay and began speaking away to himself.

  “Great, couldn't just have said I'm not interested,” he flicked a random switch on the control console, nothing happened, “now he'll come back and start talking about flux capacitors and quantum jiggle pins,” he continued, flicking another switch and again nothing happened. “If he starts talking about trans-dimensional nonsense, I'm going to a bar,” he said, flicking another, this time a series of beeps snapped his attention down to the panel.

  His focus now fixed on the controls, he flicked the switch again and the beeps re-occurred, now he pressed a button that began to flash and a warning message lit up the display in front of him.

  “That was the first warning,” Y'Riell cut in.

  “I can't read it.”

  “You understand multiple languages but can't read.”

  “I can read,” he said defensively, before adding. “In my own language.”

  “let's keep watching,” the admiral replied dryly.

  He flicked another switch, a series of buzzing beeps stuttered out the console, and a flashing warning light began to signal its disagreement with his actions.

  “There was the second warning.”

  With a press on a second blinking button, giant amber lamps began to flash around the construction hanger. The workers inside the hanger looked around in startled confusion, several pointed at the dockmaster's window, waved and signalled, but received no response.

  Haydn's stare was fixed directly on the console, he flicked the switch directly beside the previous one.

  An audible alarm beeped on and off on the console, and its noise was mirrored in the giant sound proofed hanger where the frigate sat. A blinking blue button flashed brightly under his right hand and he looked up now. The workers could all be seen moving in a slow panic up the gangway, it was a comical show for him seeing three hundred people bounding slowly in large arcs, like a slow motion moon race without the massive suits.

  “That was the third warning,” Y'Riell told him.

  Like a magnet to iron, his finger found the button and for a second he stopped, it looked as though he was considering what might actually happen, and if possibly the actions of the construction work force and the giant flashing lights were of his doing. He laughed at their comical run.

  “Must be lunch.”

  With six hundred metres on either side to clear, the massive airlock doors moved fast. Anything that wasn't bolted to the floor was gone, including the workers.

  Mr Turgle returned at this point, looking down at a holo tablet as he made his entrance and approached his guest. Looking up the first thing to catch his eye was the guest's finger pressed firmly down on a button, a particularly important button, the next thing he noticed was the incredibly guilty look of someone knowing their finger should not be on that button.

  His eyes tracked past said guilty looking person to the hanger behind him with the large flashing amber lights, blinking away their warning every second. What caused him to drop the tablet he carried was his view of the gaping doors at the end of the hanger, leading to the hard vacuum of space.

  The video froze as his tablet hit the floor.

  “Can you for any reason think why I muted the video at this point?”

  “Mr Turgle started screaming,” Haydn answered quietly.

  “Well done, Mr Turgle started to scream, and I counted three obvious warnings. There were more subtle ones too, how many did you count?”

  Haydn mirrored now the same guilty look still paused on the display as he failed to answer. Y'Riell sighed and relaxed a little, the angry headmistress look about her face softened a little.

  “Look, I understand you don't want to be here, that she left without you, and from what I understand for good reason. She didn't abandon you, and I strongly believe she's coming back soon, but I can't continue to babysit you like this.”

  “She told you where she was going?”

  Tira wanted to take the journey alone, feeling it was something she needed to do after her vision, and she wasn't entirely certain she could protect him if it turned violent.

  He tried to reason with her but it was no use, she dropped him off with Y'Riell, who was to reunite him with Damon, and with a final promise to return for him, left to get her carrier before embarking.

  “Yes, and more,” she answered, remembering the girl's dark warning to the admiral over the private comms device, not heard by Haydn himself.

  'If you hurt him, if you try to take him and use him to get to me in any way, I will not submit, but I will take apart piece by piece every ship, station and colony you have until I find him again, alive or dead, and Admiral, if it's the latter, I will burn you and any fleet you stand with to its core.'

  Her eyes burned blue with an untouchable energy which laced its way through her skin, making the warning only all the more sinister, and believable.

  “Listen, there's been reports of unrest out near the uncharted borders, vessels appearing from past the unknown. I have to take the fleets and coordinate patrols, so stay put and keep yourself out of trouble.”

  “The Ferrens?”

  “We don't believe so, it's too far outside their space, it's looking more along the lines of refugee ships fleeing into our space. Something from the other side of the galaxy is driving them our way.”

  “I wonder what?”

  “That's what we're to try and assess. Osthorpe will be here in one week with the rest of them to take command of the new frigate. I'll be back then to greet them and hand it over officially.”

  “Yeah OK, I guess coming along with you is out of the question.”

  “Completely.”

  Haydn nodded and decided to change the subject.

  “Nice of you to give them a frigate, it's three times bigger than the Ophelia.”

  “Yes,” she agreed, seeing the statement for what it was and handing him another get out of jail free card. “Well you were all instrumental in the defeat of Babaidou's fleet, and with that super weapon he had, I can't even be sure we would have won in the end.”

  Y'Riell stopped to ponder her last sentence before shaking off the words and speaking again.

  “So it was more than deserved given he lost his own, and the least we could do to thank you all personally. Especially after handing us Babaidou himself, we've gleaned a lot from him.”

  “I suppose.”

  “OK, I'm leaving now, but I'll be back when Osthorpe gets here. I understand you and Jill have a thing, so I should think you would want to remain out of trouble until she gets here.”

  “Mmm, she left with Damon before, needed time to process everything that's happened... because I nearly died.”

  “Well, I'm sure she'll be feeling better when she gets here, and you'll be back together in no time.”

  “Yeah, me too.”

  “OK then we're clear, I won't be here to bail you out again. So I'm trusting you to keep out of trouble, which includes staying away from the construction bay and the dockmaster,” she told him, the headmistress look back in her eye again. “Am I clear?”

  “Yes ma'am.”

  Epilogue

  “What are you doing, Haydn?” Jill asked. “You've been in here all night.”

  “Jill, you have to see this, I've been reading up on the Desian Empire, and looking through all their history, trying to figure out what happened to them,” he answered excitedly, before continuing. “The information is scattered and broken, but I've been piecing it together, bit by bit.”

  His eyes were bloodshot and straining through a heavy lack of sleep, now Jill was getting worried. He hadn't been sleeping or eating properly recently, and fatigue was taking it's toll. The energy supplements he took to keep himself awake were good, but not meant for large periods of time.

  “We know what happened to the Desians, their empire collapsed after fighting with the Da
rkspace guardians.”

  “Yeah, but I mean about everything leading up to it, I'll show you, you have to see,” Haydn dropped to his knees and scrambled around, sifting through data pads strewn about the floor. Jill didn't even know they had so many of the things. “Come on, help me find it, I need to find it, you need to see it.”

  “Haydn stop, what you need is sleep, you haven't slept in days and you're exhausted.” Jill pleaded, grabbing his arm and hauling him back of the floor.

  “I feel fine, I don't need to sleep, and don't you want to know why the Desians went into the Darkspace?” Haydn asked her, confused by her lack of interest in his discovery.