The Last Star Warden - Tales of Adventure and Mystery from Frontier Space - Volume 1

by Jason McCuiston

  “Form a circle,” the Warden said, drifting weightless in the black. Touching his visor, the world turned green. A nightmare world of screeching, disfigured faces and clawing hands.

  Shouts, curses, and screams from beside him joined the harrowing cacophony.

  He grabbed his floating companions, turned them to face outward. To face the nightmare surrounding, enveloping them. “Fire!”

  Three blinding jets of electricity seared the thinning air, filling his nostrils with burnt ozone and his eyes with white blindness. The sizzle and crackle of direct current continued for several moments.

  The screams ended.

  He crashed to the floor amid a chaos of limbs and torsos.

  “Light’s back on!” Rook grunted. “Get up and get offa me.”

  The Warden switched his visor back to normal vision. The specters were gone.

  And so was Ramirez.

  ---

  Rook watched the Warden’s back as he led them deeper into the accursed station. He could sense the rage boiling off the mysterious lawman. Straining against the weight of the heavy spools in his hands, the Warden moved with a violent purpose. He’d allowed them to patch up his side, but he’d refused to go back to medical in spite of the blood loss and tissue trauma.

  Which, all things considered, was perfectly fine by Rook.

  He didn’t mind letting the Warden take point. Let the uppity bastard be the next one snatched by the ghosties or become target practice for the whacko with the shotgun. That’d just leave the blue beanpole alien to deal with when the dust settled. What bothered Rook was the notion that the Warden hadn’t seemed truly angry until Ramirez vanished.

  And that anger suddenly inspired the barest inkling of fear in Rook’s gut.

  Rook wasn’t used to fear. To his way of thinking, it was a useless sensation. Something that either made you freeze up in the face of danger, flee from opportunities, or take stupid risks. Despite all the crazy, weird nonsense he’d seen since boarding this station, Rook hadn’t known a moment of fear. Not until now.

  He’d already decided he hated the Warden. But now, he realized, he feared him. And Rook just couldn’t abide being afraid of any man.

  “What to do about it?”

  “What?” Brock asked beside him.

  Rook glanced at her. “Just thinking out loud… It occurs to me that if this alien’s plan works, we might save the station, but we could be trapped on it with a boatload of nut-jobs crazier than the one toting your weapon… Just something to chew on.”

  “It wasn’t supposed to be like this…”

  Rook raised an eyebrow. “What did you say?”

  Brock shook her head. “Nothing. I’m just scared… Look, we’re almost to the power plant.”

  ---

  The automated doors opened, and the lights came up. The Warden led the remaining salvagers into the power plant, a towering circular chamber built around the atomic heart of the facility. The reactor was probably no larger than a good-sized lavatory, but the protective casing surrounding it looked like a glistening metallic cylinder ten meters wide and fifteen tall. Most of this surface area glimmered and flashed with readout displays and control panels, or it bristled with reinforced PermaSteel couplings feeding into energy conduits.

  The nuclear behemoth was far and away outside the Warden’s level of technological acumen. He turned to Brock, trying hard not to blame her for freeing and arming Carter. If the madman hadn’t ambushed them, they might not have been swarmed by the phasal anomalies. Ramirez might still be with them. He might have a reason to stay in this time.

  “Well, let’s get started.”

  Brock glared at him. “Just watch my back. If I get ghosted before these settings are reconfigured, you lot won’t be far behind me.”

  Rook dropped his spools of cable at Brock’s feet. “Just shut up and get to work.” Taking her welder, he slid out of the power pack. “Strega, you watch the door. Me and the Warden will go up to that catwalk and walk the perimeter.”

  The Warden picked up the pack and followed Rook as he climbed the metal steps. “I take it you want to talk.”

  Rook glanced at him. “You could say that… I don’t know what happened between you and Ramirez in that med bay—”

  The Warden grabbed him, almost spinning the bigger man off the stair. “Nothing happened.” He spoke through gnashed teeth. “And I don’t like the insinuation.”

  Rook snarled, freeing himself from the Warden’s grip. “Fine. Like I said, I don’t know, and I don’t care. I just want to make sure you don’t hold me responsible for what happened to her. She was a member of my crew, after all.”

  The Warden took a deep breath. “Right. I can see how their loss has taken its toll on you. You’re all broke up.”

  Rook’s wicked grin returned. “Salvage is a tough job, Warden. It pays, but it don’t pay enough to get attached. I thought someone like you’d understand that, seeing as how you’re the last of your crew.”

  The Warden narrowed his eyes behind his visor. Staring at that wolfish grin, he knew he’d made a mistake by letting Rook and his people stay on the station. He’d let his foolish hope of getting back to his own time cloud his judgment. That had fooled him into thinking there had been a connection with Ramirez, which had only lowered his guard even more. The imagined connection had ultimately gotten her killed.

  He had no right to blame Rook or Brock, or even Carter, or anyone else for that matter. It was his fault.

  “Got it,” the engineer called from below. “Now, let’s get the other ends of these cables down and into that hole.”

  ---

  Rook carried the two spools again, carefully feeding the high-voltage cables behind him. Again, he let the Warden lead the way to the lower decks, carrying his own pair of spools. The going was much slower now, and they only had Strega’s welder for security. Carrying a supply pack tethered to another person while feeding the cables was just too unwieldy a process. Brock carried her pistol in one hand, her small welder in the other, keeping an eye out for Carter’s next ambush or the next ghost attack.

  The lights continued to flicker, and each step made Rook feel drunk. The gravity wasn’t constant, fluctuating between low-G and heavy-G with each pulse of the overhead fluorescents. The walls and decks creaked, rattled and groaned, sometimes louder than the constant wail and moan of the unseen wraiths.

  “That’s new.” Rook glanced at Brock. “Think it’s what you did in the power plant?”

  Brock shrugged, gave him a blank look.

  “Quantum.” The Warden tapped his com. “What’s happening to the structural integrity?”

  The alien’s voice came over the open channel. “The rift is widening. It appears that some incarnations of the station within the trans-dimensional void are breaking up. This is having a rippling effect across the space-time continuum.”

  Rook growled. “In modern cant, if you don’t mind.”

  “The big hole you saw earlier that I told you was not actually a hole in the station? Well, now it is a hole. At least in some realities, and it is spreading across all realities like a shockwave across water.”

  Rook grunted. “Then we’d best hurry.”

  The Warden had already broken into a dead run, the spools in his hands making a sizzling, whirring sound as the thick black cables unfurled behind him.

  Rook shook his head. “Ain’t no way we can keep up with you, Warden! Slow down!”

  The Warden didn’t answer as he disappeared around the next curve. A splash of brilliant red and violet light painted the walls at that curve. Gravity came back at full strength.

  But on the wrong axis.

  Rook and his remaining crew plummeted straight for the glowing wall as if they’d fallen through a trap door.

  ---

  The Warden stepped from the corridor and into infinity.

  One second, he ran through the station’s flickering lights and curving halls, the next he fell into the cosmic void of the sp
ace-time continuum. He let go of one spool and grabbed the cable of the other.

  After a moment or a century, he stopped falling.

  Hanging from the cable, he stared at the vast array of ultimate mysteries unfolding around him. In the blink of an eye, stars were born, lived millions of years, and died in apocalyptic conflagrations or simply faded to nothing. Species rose from primordial muck to found vast, interstellar empires before descending back into elemental chaos. Perspective and time were meaningless in the void. The Warden hung a hand’s breath from the surface of a flaring sun within a Dyson sphere one instant, then hovered above a crowd of barbaric humanoids on the hunt the next.

  The experience was at once soul-rending, mind-shattering, and… exquisitely beautiful.

  As the vista shifted and coalesced, the Warden noticed something familiar. An armada of hulking alien ships battled a swarm of sleek silver craft at the edge of a black hole. Straining his eyes, he watched as the Ranger VII landed on the alien flagship alongside three other Star Warden ships.

  He and seven other Wardens boarded the enemy command ship with the intent to force it into the black hole’s event horizon.

  “If I could only reach them… reach me…”

  The Warden stretched out his right hand, willing the perspective to change as it had so many times during the eons he hung suspended in the void.

  “Warden!”

  A huge figure dropped into his vision. Followed by two more people. These also clung to the high-voltage cables.

  It took the Warden several moments or decades to recognize Rook, Brock, and Strega. Their bodies shifted and warped, fractaling across every racial and gender spectrum, as if an infinity of possibilities were being shuffled to determine the exact circumstances that might define these individuals. Gradually they coalesced into the familiar forms they had worn on the station in their native reality.

  “What the hell?” Rook gasped, sweat glistening on his stubbled, wide-eyed face.

  Brock shut her eyes tight and vomited.

  Strega clung to the cable, breathing heavily, the bone ridges on his head flaring up and down like a bellows.

  The vision of the battle at the edge of the black hole vanished, replaced by the sight of pieces of flaming debris descending on a barren world in a tiny system shrouded in the cloud of an ancient comet.

  The Warden closed his extended fist and shook his head. “We’ve got to climb back up and into what’s left of the station so Quantum can flip the switch.”

  Rook looked up the cable. “Then let’s go.”

  The ascent was maddening. They could see the lip of the rift above, like a jagged window onto the station. But it was never constant. One moment it was within arm’s reach, the next it seemed a kilometer away. At times, they climbed for unknown hours without seeing the opening move at all.

  And then, without warning, the Warden hauled himself back onto the rubberized deck of the station. He turned and helped Rook and the others over the lip of the rift. The four of them knelt or lay on the deck, panting and solemn.

  “Warden?” Quantum’s voice came over the coms. “Are you there, Warden? What’s going on?”

  Regaining his feet, the Warden took a deep breath to respond. In that instant, he caught a nod from Rook. His instincts warned him a split second before Strega moved.

  The huge saurian struck with preternatural speed. Forewarned, the Warden rolled with the impact. He used his judo training to flip Strega across his body. The alien had hoped to bull-rush him into the opened rift.

  Instead, Strega was the one who had fallen.

  The Warden found himself again stretched out on the deck. This time he held Strega’s massive wrist with both hands to keep the reptilian bruiser from tumbling into infinity.

  He heard Rook step behind him. Heard the man’s blaster pistol clear its plastic holster. Straining against the burning pain in his arms and shoulders, the Warden said through gnashed teeth, “Rook, you shoot me and Strega dies.”

  He was not surprised by the reply. “With what I’ll make off this station, it won’t be hard to hire a whole new crew, Warden… I wish I could say it’s nothing personal, that it’s just business. But, truth to tell, I never liked you from the moment I set eyes on you. And you know what? I thought you’d be taller.”

  “Rook.” It was Brock’s voice. “You don’t need to do this. We can still make out okay with what’s not battened down on the station once we close this rift. Nobody else needs to die.”

  “Shut up.” Rook’s voice was cruel and gloating, savoring the moment. “Just be ready. Once this thing closes, the first thing we’re lifting is whatever is in that lab.”

  The Warden’s grip weakened. Fire raged up and down the muscles of his upper body. He looked into Strega’s emotionless eyes. “Hold on. Just don’t let go.” Though he knew they were both about to die.

  A gunshot boomed behind him.

  The Warden winced, expecting oblivion. But it wasn’t a blaster shot. It was a ballistic firearm.

  Screams and shouts… more shots… blaster fire...

  Someone stepped on the Warden’s back, tripped, and fell over his head.

  He looked up to see two figures tumble into the star-filled rift. A terrified Rook struggled against a bloody and gibbering Carter. Locked in a mortal embrace, they struck Strega’s broad back and bounced. The impact knocked the massive alien from the Warden’s failing grasp. All three disappeared into the shimmering infinity of the space-time continuum.

  The Warden stared a moment longer, waiting for the image of the battle at the black hole to return.

  “Warden.” Brock grabbed his shoulder. “Come on. We’ve got to go.”

  He shook off the growing ennui and rose to his feet. With a nod, he followed her up the corridor at a run. “Quantum, we’re clear. Flip the switch.”

  “Affirmative.”

  A pulse of energy surged through the station, hummed through the high-voltage cables at their feet. The stale air smelled of burning ozone, and the overhead lighting flickered and went out. The walls and bulkheads creaked, shuddered, and groaned. The sound of a titanic explosion reverberated from the lowest decks.

  The shockwave hit a moment later.

  Knocked to the floor, the Warden gasped for breath and tried to stand. The deck shook and swayed as gravity shifted on multiple axes. A wave of nausea hit him with the force of one of Strega’s punches. The Warden staggered, helped Brock to her feet, and kept moving.

  “Quantum! What’s happening?”

  “I… I believe it is working.”

  “You couldn’t tell by me.”

  The lights came up and gravity settled back to normal. The Warden and Brock stumbled against the automated doors and fell into the medical bay.

  Rolling over onto his back, the Warden stared at Quantum seated at the computer terminal. “Status report.”

  Quantum glanced at the console. “All systems normal. Hull integrity at one hundred percent… Security cameras back online, displaying no anomalies. It appears the rift is closed. Apparently, the direct current also shorted out the gate’s circuitry. You were successful.”

  They sat in silence for a while, absorbing this. Brock exhaled and closed her eyes. “Hear that? Quiet… No ghosts.”

  The Warden pushed his bruised and battered body up against the wall, feeling anything but successful. “What about life signs? The crew?” He thought of Ramirez, hoping she, at least, was somewhere safe and sane on the station.

  Quantum shook his head. “I am sorry. We three are the only persons aboard the station at present.”

  The Warden rubbed his face. “What a nightmare… I am curious about one thing, however.” He turned to Brock. “I overheard you say something to Rook on the way to the power plant. You said, ‘It wasn’t supposed to be like this.’”

  Brock dropped her gaze, but not before the Warden saw tears forming. She took another deep breath, rubbed her smudged nose. “I’m with the Frontier Freedom Society.”
<
br />   The Warden and Quantum exchanged blank looks and waited for elaboration.

  “You haven’t heard of the F.F.S.? We’re dedicated to forcing the United Planetary Council to reopen the Frontier to independent colonization, without having to jump through all the corporate slag.”

  Quantum suggested, “An Undoc militant organization?”

  “Something like that. Freedom fighters if your family is starving to death on an overpopulated, overtaxed planet in the Civilized Worlds or eking out subsistence on a barren rock while hiding from government agents somewhere on the Frontier. Terrorists to the corporations and the politicians suckling on their bloated teats.”

  The Warden hated this new era in which he found himself. Too many gray areas, and not enough lit in clean, clear black and white. He shook his head, wondering if it had ever been that simple, even in his own time. “What’s all that got to do with this station?”

  Brock cleared her throat. “We had a man here, in deep cover. He was just supposed to do a little sabotage and gain enough intel so we could force the U.P.C. to back off, lest we leak the story to the independent press.”

  The Warden sighed. “But it all went wrong.”

  “We knew they had some Tuatha tech and were conducting unlicensed experimentation. We just didn’t know how dangerous it was… So, what are you going to do with me now?”

  The Warden stared at her, but Brock didn’t flinch. She was willing to face the music. And though he knew she had been about to space Carter at Rook’s behest, he couldn’t forget that she could have shot him while he lay staring into the void. Or even just left him there.

  Instead, she had gotten him on his feet and moving.

  The Warden stood. “Quantum and I are going down to that lab to disassemble and destroy the gate. If you’re still here when we get back, I’ll have no choice but to put you in a detention cell until we can get a Star Cav ship out here for processing.”

  With that he led Quantum out of the med bay, confident she and the Magpie 6 would be long gone before they were done with their task.