Renegade Dawn_An Intergalactic Space Opera Adventure

by J. N. Chaney

  “Get your ships out of here,” I ordered, breaking in. “Siggy, call ahead and tell them to prep the med pod.”

  “Was someone hurt?” asked Octavia.

  “Yeah, one of the trilobites broke in,” I answered, flying past the other ships. “Get your asses clear of this pit and, whatever you do, stay away from the godsdamn walls.”

  SEVEN

  The med pod was inside one of the rooms near my office. Like so many other facilities we’d thrown together in the last few months, this was never meant to be permanent. In fact, the med pods should have been moved to a larger space weeks ago, but since our only medical issues involved a twisted ankle and a mild case of dehydration, we’d just never gotten around to it.

  In other words, this shit was on me, and I damn well knew it.

  We rushed Petra into the room while Dressler powered on the machine. “It may take a few moments for the pod’s system to boot,” explained the doctor.

  “How long?” asked Octavia.

  “Five minutes,” said Dressler.

  “Why wasn’t it already set up?!” asked Freddie, filled with so much fear I thought he might pass out.

  “It requires power, and we’re running on generators at the moment,” explained Dressler. “Now, if you have a spare Tritium Core sitting around somewhere that I don’t know about—”

  “Put her inside the pod,” I interrupted, looking at Freddie. “Okay?”

  “O-Okay,” he muttered. “Inside.”

  Dressler raised the lid and pulled it to the side, allowing us to gently set an unconscious Petra inside the device. Once she was in, the doctor closed the seal and finally proceeded to activate the startup sequence.

  Athena manifested beside the doctor, appearing in a quick flash of blue light. Her eyes fell on the girl in the pod, but she remained as composed as ever. “Assessing damage,” said the Cognitive. “I can take it from here, Doctor. Thank you.”

  Dressler nodded and motioned for everyone to move away from the pod. “Give her some space, please.”

  Freddie stepped back, but his eyes stayed on the glass. “Do you think—” He paused, fidgeting his hands. “—it can fix her? Can it regrow her—” He swallowed. “—her arm?”

  “I don’t know,” I said, honestly.

  “It fixed Octavia’s legs,” he went on. “That’s a good sign, right?”

  I didn’t answer this time. I only stood there, watching as Athena did her work. The hard-light constructs inside the pod materialized, each one giving off a faint glow. They moved carefully around Petra’s shoulder, quickly sealing the exposed flesh, cooling it, and then providing the new layer of skin.

  “The process will require some time,” said Athena, looking directly at Freddie. “Her body will need to rest for several hours, but you may stay if you wish.”

  Freddie stepped closer to the pod, placing a hand on the glass as the light illuminated his face. It was clear he wouldn’t be leaving anytime soon.

  Dressler turned away from the pod and walked up beside me, nudging my arm with her own. “A word,” she whispered, before leaving for the outer hall.

  Abigail was already there, watching from a distance. She and I followed Dressler to my office, a few rooms down the hall, and I made sure to close the door behind us.

  “I hate to be like this, but we need to talk about that machine,” said Dressler, keeping her voice down.

  “The pod?” I asked.

  “I think she means the trilobite,” answered Abigail.

  “Oh, that,” I said. “What about it?”

  “It needs to be dissected and analyzed so that we may find a solution to—”

  “Is this really the best time for that?” asked Abigail.

  Dressler paused, probably more out of courtesy than anything. “There’s nothing we can do about Petra right now,” she continued, after a moment. “She’s in a sophisticated medical pod, with one of the most advanced lifeforms in the galaxy looking after her. I’m not sure the three of us will make much of a difference in that room.”

  “Frederick might disagree,” said Abigail.

  “Perhaps so,” conceded the doctor. “But he is not in the right state of mind to see things objectively, and I would caution the two of you to take a step back.”

  “You don’t think we’re thinking clearly?” I asked.

  “Your friend is in distress. It is natural to feel a desire to help him,” she explained.

  “And you don’t feel that?” asked Abigail.

  “On the contrary,” answered Dressler. “I feel it very much. The difference is that I choose to take a more practical approach to how I react. What happened to Petra is done and cannot be reversed, but we may yet find a way to see that nothing like this ever happens again.”

  “What did you have in mind?” I asked, sitting on the edge of my desk and crossing my arms.

  “As I said, dissection of the machine, for a start,” she said.

  “And after that?” I asked.

  “Simply put, Captain, if we can understand what makes it tick, we may yet find a way to deactivate it. At the very least, it will teach us something we don’t already know, and that is always a good thing.”

  I couldn’t argue with that. The woman might be cold, but she certainly knew how to make her case. “I had Verne take the trilobite to a separate area to watch until we were done here,” I explained.

  “On this floor?” she asked.

  “Different building,” I said. “The one we’re in the middle of clearing out.”

  Abigail cocked her brow. “Where the new classroom is?”

  “The very same,” I said, matter of factly.

  “Jace, don’t tell me you had them drop that death machine off in the classroom itself,” said Abby.

  “Fine, I won’t tell you that,” I said with a shrug.

  She scowled at me, but I ignored it. “Doc, if you want that thing dissected, you’d best get on it soon. I want that thing out of this city within the next twelve hours.”

  “That might not be enough time,” she cautioned.

  “I don’t care,” I replied. “If the new arrivals see or hear about it, if they find out we’ve got a trilobite—even a dead one—they’ll lose their collective shit.”

  Dressler seemed to understand my point, so she didn’t argue, but she made no effort to hide her annoyance. “I’ll need to be fast, then. If you wouldn’t mind, Captain, I’d like to borrow Sigmond.”

  As soon as she said his name, Sigmond appeared beside us, causing both women to flinch. “Gods,” Abigail blurted out.

  “I’m more than happy to assist you, Doctor,” said Sigmond.

  Dressler relaxed and nodded. “I take it I won’t need to explain everything again, Sigmond?”

  “You assume correctly,” he answered.

  “Good,” she said, then looked at me. “Would you be so kind as to lend me that mobile emitter, Captain?”

  I reached in my pocket and tossed it to her. So far, my office and most of this floor were the only areas in the city with active emitters already installed, which meant I had to carry that spiffy piece of tech around with me everywhere I went. I didn’t much like the idea of lending it out, but special circumstances and all that. “Don’t break it,” I said, plainly.

  She scoffed. “You forget who I am, Captain.”

  * * *

  I thought about going with Dressler to dissect the trilobite, and very nearly did, until Abigail talked me into staying.

  “Freddie needs us here,” she said, once Dressler had taken the mobile emitter and left the office. “That woman knows what she’s doing better than either of us.”

  I grunted my agreement, but the truth was I had little interest in sitting in that room and watching my friend suffer beside that pod. None of it would do anyone any good. Dressler, for all her practicality, had been right about that.

  Still, Freddie was my friend and I was willing to stand there with him if it made the moment easier for him to bear, al
though I suspected it wouldn’t.

  Hours passed, yet the three of us remained. Freddie kept beside the pod, always watching from the other side of the glass, while Abigail and I stayed against the wall, near the door. A light would blink occasionally, stirring Freddie’s attention and giving him a palpable sense of dread. Had something gone wrong? Was the machine having problems?

  No, nothing at all, and we all knew as much, yet it plagued Freddie all the same.

  Eventually, the screen beside the pod changed, drawing our attention, and Athena appeared beside us. “I apologize for the delay, everyone,” she said, walking to the end of the pod. “The graph has set. Would you like me to wake her?”

  “What about the rest of her arm?” asked Freddie, confusion all over his face. “That can’t be the end of it. Does she need to come back later?”

  “No, not later,” said Athena, frowning at the man before her. “There are limits to the regeneration pods. They can repair nerves and tissue, but they cannot grow a limb.”

  Freddie’s eyes widened, briefly, and then he sank back into his chair. In that moment, I suddenly saw what it meant for him to be truly defeated. Through all our battles, all our trials and tribulations, I had never seen him in this way.

  I had to say, I didn’t like it. “There has to be something,” I said, still watching him. “Athena, I know you can do more.”

  “Can’t you regrow organs?” asked Abigail. “Karin said you had the ability.”

  “Organs, yes,” said the Cognitive. “But I’m afraid—”

  “Whole limbs are different,” muttered Freddie.

  Athena looked at him, then slowly nodded. “Yes.”

  I got to my feet and walked to Freddie’s side, placing a hand on his shoulder. “Go ahead and wake her, then.”

  “As you wish,” said Athena.

  Abigail joined us at the pod. “When she opens her eyes, she’ll react based on how we look. If we seem distressed, she’ll panic, so we have to look collected and calm.”

  I squeezed Freddie shoulder. “He gets it,” I said. “Don’t you, Fred?”

  He nodded, sitting up in his seat and pretending to smile. It wasn’t much—no teeth or the goofy grin I was so used to—but it was enough for what he needed it to be. Enough to make it through the worst hour of that poor woman’s life.

  EIGHT

  Petra was better about the arm than I’d expected. She didn’t cry or scream when she saw it, but there was a clear sense of loss in her eyes. An empty look where rage and fear should be, but I recognized it for it was.

  Shock.

  The tears would come later, maybe tonight or tomorrow. Maybe in a week. But they would come, and it would rip her apart.

  Freddie would be there for all of it, not because he had to, but because he wanted to, with every piece of himself. I knew it the second he leapt across the ship.

  Whatever reservations Freddie had about meeting that woman’s parents, it was clear how he felt for her. He just didn’t understand how deeply she’d infected him with it.

  But I knew.

  “Dressler says she thinks she can have something by tomorrow,” said Abigail, her cheek buried in my chest as we lay together in my bed. “I told her it will have to wait until after we address the new arrivals.”

  “Smart,” I said, staring into the darkness of the room. It was after midnight and I had to be up in five hours. My eyes burned from exhaustion, but my mind couldn’t let the day go.

  Abigail turned her head to look at me, and I caught a flicker of light in her eye. “Where are you right now?” she asked. “You feel so far away.”

  “I was just asking myself the same thing,” I said.

  “Were you?” she asked.

  I gave her a soft grunt. “We’ve come all the way to Earth and still, it’s all a mystery. Dead soil, cities in the sky, and trilobites. I don’t know what to make of any of it.”

  “Does that mean you regret coming here?”

  I considered that question for a second, but then dismissed it. “No. It’s not that. I just need to know what I’m up against.”

  “Does that bother you?” she asked. “Not knowing the variables?”

  “I’ve always had a plan,” I told her. “And when that plan failed, I had another ready to take its place. I can’t do that here. There’s too much we just don’t know.”

  “But we can find out,” she responded. “Dressler is working on that trilobite right now. We might wake in the morning to hear she’s discovered something.”

  “Maybe,” I conceded. “Whatever happens, we’ll still need to go back inside that pit, and when we do, I don’t know if I’ll be able to protect everyone.”

  She smiled. “You know,” she said, nudging herself closer to my neck. “For a brigand and an outlaw, you care an awful lot about your friends.”

  “Don’t start with that again,” I said, wrapping my arm around her shoulder. “I’ll boot your ass out of bed.”

  She smacked my chest. “Try it and see what happens.”

  * * *

  Beneath a blanket of storm clouds, I struggled to breathe.

  Brigham’s hand gripped my throat, squeezing with such intensity that the prospect of dying seemed like an absolute certainty.

  An inevitability.

  “You lose, Hughes!” said the old, ragged man as blood seeped from the wound in his cheek. “Let yourself die with some dignity.”

  His eyes were savage, like a deranged animal. There was fire in them, burning at the prospect of my death, and it fueled him. This man, this monster, who’d chased me across a galaxy—he’d never give up until everything I loved was reduced to ash.

  I pushed against him with all the force I had in me. “Sorry Marcus,” I wheezed, reaching inside his helmet for a piece of his shattered visor, slicing my own fingers in the process. “Ain’t never had much in the way of dignity.”

  I pulled my hand up, then slammed it down in the soft spot between his neck and chest piece, burying the shard and twisting.

  He screamed with such intensity that it hurt my ears, the agony of pain like a demon’s shriek, but I knew I had him. I knew I had won.

  But then he stopped his wailing and instead went still and cold, closing his mouth and looking down at me again with the most vacant expression I’d ever seen on him.

  The shard in his neck was still there, blood oozing out of him, sliding down his skin and through his clothes before pooling in his shirt. His eyes widened, and his lips twisted into a thin smile, showing blackened, razor sharp teeth. “They’re coming for you, Jace.”

  I stiffened at the sound of my name.

  “The whole fucking galaxy is coming for you and that girl.”

  “Quiet!” I barked.

  “Everything you’ve built is going to burn because of what you’ve done,” he said in a voice I no longer recognized. It was deeper, more vile and toxic, almost otherworldly. “All because of you, Jacey!”

  Brigham’s eyes morphed and twisted, his face changing into a disfigured blob of flesh, the shard still in his neck, bobbing and moving as the meat continued to shift and bend.

  “Jacey,” he said, but not from a mouth. There was no more mouth, eyes, or nose. “Jacey, Jacey, Jacey.”

  My chest heaved as my heart began to pound like a drum in my chest, ready to explode. I reached up and took the shard, yanking it free of the meat. Blood sprayed out like a hose, filling the air with mist. “Shut the fuck up!” I raged, jamming the glass inside his throat, up beneath his jaw and into his brain.

  Brigham let out a scream so loud it tore the sky asunder, replacing gray with red. I clutched my ears with both hands and screamed.

  I was going to die. Everyone was going to die.

  By the gods, what have I done?

  * * *

  I woke in a cold sweat, heart racing and breathing heavily.

  Abigail stirred the second I sat up, but she didn’t wake right away.

  I sat there for a long moment, trying to
calm down. It took me a second to orient myself, to remember where I was and what I was doing here. I had to remind myself that the fight with Brigham—that had been months ago, far away from this planet. He was dead and buried now, no threat to anyone.

  And yet, the old man’s words still haunted me, like needles tapping the back of my brain. He’d warned me that the Union would never stop chasing me, told me I’d always be on the run, and I believed it. They’d been crippled, sure, but never killed. Those people wanted Lex, the Earth, and all the potential they represented. I had to stay ahead of them, keep my eyes open for any signs of movement, searching for any hint of a threat or sabotage.

  When they attacked—and I was sure they would—the rest of us would have to be ready.

  After a quick shower, I guzzled down two cups of coffee to make up for the lack of rest, and then rushed out to my office. Sigmond was already standing there when I walked in, waiting to greet me with his usual, pleasant smile.

  “Good morning, sir,” said the Cognitive. “Are you prepared for today’s schedule?”

  “Not even a little,” I commented, picking up the pad on my desk. Twenty minutes to go before I was set to meet the new colonists, which only gave me a short while to grab some food from my cabinet.

  I snatched a small chocolate muffin I’d stolen from Titan’s storage locker and ripped into it with a quick bite. It was gone in less than a minute, but I didn’t mind. That might be the only food I’d have all morning.

  Entering the hallway, I spotted a cracked door—the one for the temporary medical room we’d placed the pod. As I approached, the pod slowly came into view, along with the nearby seat and the figure sitting in it.

  Freddie was fast asleep beside Petra, his arms hanging on the side of the open pod, still wearing the same clothes as yesterday.

  I thought about waking him but decided against it. For him to still be here, he must have been awake for half the night.

  Standing next to the door, I let out a long sigh, then turned away. As I did, I heard something stir from inside the room. “Captain?” whispered a voice. “Is that you?”