by Finn Gray
“Preparing QE drive,” Shepherd said. “Counting down from ten… nine…”
Just then, Cassier’s voice came across the comm.
“Mongoose C1971L, this is Dragonfly command. Please identify.”
Shepherd continued to count. “Four… three…”
“Dragonfly, this is Sabre. Just need to run a quick errand. Toodles!”
“Sabre, what in the…”
“Jumping,” Shepherd said.
The world seemed to ripple. For a brief second everything went utterly dark and completely silent. And then a red-tinted world swam back into view as they arrived at the Scarn Nebula.
And into the midst of a Memnon fleet.
“Oh my Gods!” Shepherd said. “How many are there?”
Sabre quickly scanned RADS. A pair of Memnon dreadnoughts loomed in the distance. A swarm of Reapers was headed their way.”
“They’ve already spotted us?” Spartan said.
“No,” Sabre said. “They’re chasing our recon bird.” She tapped the RADS display. An imperial Mongoose was fleeing the pursuing Memnon fighters.
Just then, a voice came in on the comm.
“Unidentified Mongoose, this is Recess. Are you a friendly?”
“That depends on your point of view, I suppose,” Sabre said.
“Sabre, thank the gods. These bastards were on us the second we arrived. We can’t get them off our tails long enough to make the jump.”
“Roger that, Recess.” Sabre fired the thrusters and zipped toward them. “You’ve done well to stay alive this long.”
“We’ve been ducking in and out of the nebula. Scary as the hells, but it worked. It was Stine’s idea.”
“Which one is Stine?” Sabre asked.
“The one who still doesn’t have a callsign,” Shapiro said, his fingers flying across the controls as he armed the weapons systems.
“We’ve got to do something about that.” Her casual banter was a front. Inside, her heart was racing, adrenaline coursing through her body as they closed on the fleeing Mongoose and the pursuing Memnon squadron.
“Ferenchick has done some pretty impressive flying,” Recess said. “I think he might be a more natural flyer than you.”
“Like you’re qualified to judge that,” Sabre said. Cold sweat dripped down her brow. How was she going to get them out of this?
“The Memnons are scrambling more fighters,” Shepherd said. “They’ll be on us soon.”
Sabre gritted her teeth. She was almost out of time.
“Guess what?” Recess said. He was talking fast, trying too hard to sound nonchalant. But Sabre could hear the fear in his voice. Poor kid. He was only a fledgie. “I got four kills. But now we’re out of missiles.”
“Four kills is good,” Ferenchick chimed in. “But you should have left out the part about exhausting our missile supply in order to do it.” He forced a laugh that was echoed by the other pilots.
“Why are the dreadnoughts hanging back?” Spartan asked, glancing at RADS.
“They’ll know by now that the Mongoose is equipped with a nuke,” Shepherd said.
“Not enough to take out a dreadnought, but we could deal them out some serious damage.”
Nukes! Sabre would have smacked herself in the forehead if she hadn’t been wearing a helmet. She was so accustomed to flying Cobras that she had forgotten that the scout ship also packed a punch. Maybe there was a chance.
“Everybody, listen up,” she said. “I’ve got a plan.”
Chapter 26
Facility C, Soria
They made a run for it, scrambling across the rubble that bridged the moat. Rory found himself listening for the cries of the pursuing creatures but heard nothing. That was particularly unsettling. The silence.
Within the walls they found themselves in what felt like a park. Straight rows of fruit trees ran diagonally across a carefully landscaped ground. The space had obviously seen regular maintenance and care. The area was free of debris and here and there an obvious footpath snaked between the trees.
“There is nowhere to find cover in here,” Cassidy said.
“The we’ll just have to outrun them,” Rory said. He ignored Oates’ sharp, sarcastic laugh as they sprinted ahead, following the most well-worn path.
“Any sign of them?” Cassidy huffed.
Trent grimaced. “Shut up and keep running.”
It wasn’t long until Rory heard the first sounds of pursuit. The sharp crack of a snapping tree branch behind them. Would they have to stand and fight?
Trent seemed to have read his mind.
“See anywhere we can take cover?”
Rory had been looking and hadn’t seen anything. He did, however, see light in the distance.
“I think there’s an open area up ahead.”
“That’s the opposite of what we’re looking for,” Oates said.
They broke through the trees onto a strip of grass a hundred meters across. Up ahead loomed a low, gray building, featureless except for the heavy double doors that were slowly swinging open.
“Think that’s the welcome wagon?” Cassidy asked.
Rory certainly hoped so. He was exhausted from the ordeal of the past few days. He felt every bump and bruise. Every footfall sent a jolt of pain up his spine and into his aching head.
The answer came almost immediately. Out of the doors zipped a flat-bed, all-terrain vehicle. Its engine emitted a throaty roar as it accelerated. It barreled toward them, the driver hunched over behind the steering wheel. Rory caught a glimpse of a shaved head and brown skin.
There was a high-pitched, bestial cry. Rory stole a glance over his shoulder and saw one of the dinosaurs moving closer. He looked again at the oncoming ATV. It was too far away. They weren’t going to make it in time. Knowing he had to do something, he stopped and turned around.
“What are you doing? Keep running?” Cassidy shouted at Rory.
He ignored her. He dropped to one knee, took careful aim. The target was narrow and fast-moving. He locked in on the center of its mass. He had time for a single aimed shot.
It wasn’t wasted.
He squeezed the trigger, felt the rifle buck. The bullet found its mark and the creature shrieked. But it kept coming. Rory fired twice more, neither as carefully aimed as his first shot. He did not know for certain if either bullet found its target, but the dinosaur slowed, stumbled, and fell.
Behind him he heard the sound of the approaching ATV. He spun around and stumbled in the direction his friends were running. The vehicle slowed just enough for the others to pile on. Rory reached them a few seconds later. He was exhausted, so he did not mind very much when Oates grabbed him by the belt and heaved him up onto the flat bed in the back before climbing on alongside him.
The driver was a tall, brown-skinned man with whiskey-colored eyes. He wore navy blue coveralls with no identifying marks. The sun glinted off his shaved scalp. He shouted above the roar of the engine.
“Hang on tight. Those raptors are fast.”
“That’s what they’re called?” Rory asked as the ATV zipped toward the double doors.
“That’s what we’re calling them.”
“Who is we?” Cassidy asked. “Are there more of you?”
The man glanced back, narrowed his eyes. “I think I should concentrate on driving. I’ll explain when we’re safe.”
Rory saw the way her face tightened. He knew what she was thinking. What if this was a Memnon facility? He supposed it did not matter now. What was important was that they got away from the raptors alive. They’d have to find a way to deal with whatever came next.
He focused on the heavy double doors that beckoned to them. They seemed impossibly far away, even though the distance was quite short.
“They’re closing in!” Trent warned. She drew her sidearm, took aim, and fired.
The beasts kept advancing.
“If we don’t slow them down, they’ll follow us inside,” Oates shouted.
“I�
�m trying.” Trent fired again.
Only ten meters separated them now. Suddenly, it felt to Rory as if the four people riding in the bed of the ATV were entrees on a platter.
“I’ve got this.” Oates drew a grenade and armed it.
“You’d better time that right.” Trent’s tone of voice suggested she wasn’t concerned, but issued the warning out of habit.
Oates flashed a wolfish grin and made a show of counting down before tossing it at the horde of pursuers.
“What’s the blast radius of that thing?” Cassidy asked.
There was no time to answer. An explosion rocked their ATV and sent it skidding off to the left. They tilted crazily, and then bounced back down onto all four fat tires. Behind them the creatures turned and ran.
And then they passed through the doorway and into darkness.
Chapter 27
Battlecruiser Kestrel
“I must confess, Lieutenant, I can’t find anything wrong with your work.” Jude let out a frustrated sigh. It wasn’t that he minded admitting failure; trial and error were an essential part of the scientific process. But in this case, his very survival likely depended on his ability to solve this knotty problem.
“Ordinarily, the fact that Jude Vatcher could find no fault with my work would fill me with joy,” Drazen Modric, Kestrel’s science officer, said. “But in this case, I must confess I was hoping that I had missed something obvious.”
“Not that I’ve found so far.”
“And you don’t believe it’s a problem with the software?” Modric asked for the fourth time.
“We’ve checked them all. Unless you want to go line by line through every bit of code, which, considering how many systems are at work on this ship, will take many more cycles than you or I can hope to live.”
Jude stood and began to pace the small cabin to which he and Magda had been assigned. It was cramped, almost bare, but it was a private room with its own toilet facilities, which made Magda happy. He hoped this giving them their own quarters was a sign that Commander Begay had at least some measure of trust in them.
“I’ve been at this post for a full cycle. We’ve performed our scheduled monthly jumps and had no issues.” Modric scrolled through a display on his tablet. “The last problem was three cycles ago, and that was a hardware failure. The ship simply did not jump. I don’t see any record of navigational failures.”
Jude racked his brain for what could have caused this course error. If there had been no plotting error, he was at a loss as to what else could have caused this to happen.
“Could it have been some sort of stellar phenomenon?” Modric asked.
Jude frowned. “Such as?”
Modric’s cheeks reddened and he glanced down for a moment. “I was thinking perhaps a wormhole opened up at just the right time. Well, the wrong time, I suppose. That would explain why there appears to be nothing wrong with the ship, and yet we’re in the wrong place.”
Jude resisted the urge to mock the young officer. After all, Jude could not categorically deny the possibility, although “remote” did not begin to describe it. A wormhole was a speculative link between different points in spacetime. Depending on the theory, a wormhole could connect two different physical locations, or it could form a bridge between two points in time. But no one had ever proven their existence.
“Wormholes are theoretical, Lieutenant.”
“But they are possible in theory,” Modric said.
“So is a woman who isn’t prone to dramatic mood swings, but neither has ever been spotted in the wild, to use the vernacular.”
“I heard that,” Magda called from the other side of the bathroom door. Although Commander Begay kept a tidy skip, Magda nevertheless found the battlecruiser dirty, and thus had spent a great deal of time soaking in the tiny bathtub.
“Turn your music up, darling,” Jude called. “After all, this is all classified.”
Modric chuckled. “Hardly. The commander doesn’t expect it will be long before word gets out. The pilots know and they’re shit at keeping secrets. There’s something about being a pilot that draws in the loquacious and the braggadocious.”
“Careful, Lieutenant. That sounds like something I might say.”
“It’s the truth,” Modric said. “But back to the wormhole idea. I know it’s the stuff of science fiction, but until the Memnons arrived, so was technology like their Brick .”
Jude nodded thoughtfully. According to Modric, the Memnons had prevented the Aquarian fleet from jumping to safety due to a disruptive weapon the Aquarians had dubbed the Brick. It had been destroyed in the battle, thus allowing the fleet to jump away. Jude would have dearly loved to have seen it, understand the physics of it.
“Maybe the Memnons had a wormhole weapon, too,” Modric continued. “They fired it at us and that’s how we ended up here.”
Jude saw no harm in considering the possibility, if only for the mental exercise.
“Let us suppose, for argument’s sake, that wormhole theory is correct, and that the Memnons have developed the technology to create a wormhole. Why, then, did they not use that technology to take us utterly by surprise?”
“That’s true,” Modric said. “And they wouldn’t have needed pioneer ships. They could have put people directly onto the ground, or at least used more conventional means of transport.”
“And why send your enemy through a wormhole if your objective is eradication of the fleet?”
“You’re right, of course, Doctor.” Modric’s shoulders sagged, but then he perked back up. “What if the destruction of the Brick caused it? It’s a disruptive force we don’t understand. The wormhole was created by accident. It would have only had to exist for a second.”
Jude scratched his chin. He doubted it, but a few days ago he would have doubted the possibility of a weapon like the Brick.
“If that is the case, then we are well and truly screwed.”
A sharp knock came at the door.
“Lieutenant Modric,” a woman’s voice called.
“Coming.” Modric rose from his seat, crossed the room, and opened the door.
Jude recognized the young petty officer at the door as Inola Bonebrake, another of Begay’s Echotan favorites. They’d had a friendly chat earlier, a conversation in which she had revealed that her name meant Black Fox. She had winked when she said that, but he did not know what he was supposed to infer. He smiled and nodded but her eyes scarcely registered his presence before she asked to speak with Modric out in the hallway. She seemed nervous.
No sooner had the door closed then Jude had his ear pressed against its cold surface.
“…still have no idea?” Bonebrake asked.
“We’ve been over everything,” Modric said. “But we’re not giving up.”
“The commander wants a detailed report. Every step you’ve taken, every possible theory you’ve discussed.”
“There’s nothing we haven’t considered,” Modric said. “Gods, we were just discussing Memnon wormhole weapons.”
Jude winced. That wouldn’t help his credibility.
“Vatcher was talking about Memnon weapons?” There was an odd note to Bonebrake’s voice. “What did he say, exactly?”
“It was nothing, really. I floated the idea and he poked a thousand holes in it.”
“Hold on,” Bonebrake said. “The moment you brought up Memnon technology and he immediately shot you down? Like he didn’t want you to even consider the possibility?”
Jude frowned. He did not care for what the woman was implying.
“We were talking about wormholes. What are you on about? Are you stirring up another conspiracy theory, Bonebrake?”
“I’m not a conspiracy theorist. I’m a skeptic with strong critical thinking skills.”
“And you’ve been applying your critical thinking skills to our current situation?” Modric asked.
“He came from what he admits was a Memnon facility. He arrived here at literally the last possible seco
nd under very strange circumstance. And he got here at the exact same time as a transport full of people from a secret Memnon lab.”
Jude’s heart raced. Sweat ran down the back of his neck. He suddenly felt dizzy and had to grab the door facing for support.
Hold it together, Jude. She doesn’t know anything, and she clearly doesn’t have much credibility. In fact, better someone like her air these suspicions than someone held in higher esteem.
“There was no connection between those two ships.”
Bonebrake lowered her voice. “I heard that one of the patients recognized him.”
“Everyone recognizes him,” Modric said. “He’s on the vids all the time. That’s sort of how being famous works.”
“You don’t think there’s something sketchy about him?” Bonebrake asked.
“No. I think he’s shell-shocked and exhausted like the rest of us.”
“But you can’t deny it’s weird,” Bonebrake said. “I mean, what are the odds that he and his wife escape at the exact moment a Mongoose sets down on a Memnon island for repairs?”
“You realized you just implied that Hunter and his copilot are part of a Memnon conspiracy.” Modric’s icy words took all the fire out of Bonebrake.
“Gods, you’re right. I know Hunter. Forget I said anything.”
“Don’t worry. I won’t tell him.”
“It’s not him I’m worried about,” Bonebrake said. “It’s Vera. That old lady scares me.”
Relieved, Jude stepped away from the door and mopped the sweat from his brow. It was a reprieve, if only a temporary one. There was still time.
“I have got to find a way to get us back to the fleet.”
Chapter 28
The Scarn Nebula
For a moment, the blue light rippled like a shining pool. The pilots gazed at it, mesmerized. The surface of the pool went perfectly smooth, like glass.
“It’s beautiful,” Gwen breathed.
And then it shattered.
Sparks flew. Lances of flame shot out in every direction. The pilots hit the deck as the world flickered, strobelike. A low rumbling filled the air.
