by A. K. DuBoff
She stuck her hand into the mat of fibers covering the stone column, working them inward and tearing away the covering to expose the stone underneath.
Kira replied to the AI.
She pressed her fingertips into the rock. They sank in slightly, where the field around her suit made contact with the stone, breaking apart the bonds that held it together.
Jasmine smiled in her mind.
An electric spark shocked Kira’s arm, but she blocked out the discomfort. Curling her fingers into a fist, she punched into the stone.
Her hand disappeared into the column, up to her wrist.
The electromagnetic overlay returned to Kira’s vision. She could see the outline of the shield around her hand and where her fist was in relation to the conduit. She’d need to go as deep as her elbow to reach it.
She worked her arm in until her fist was brushing the edge of the conduit. Then, she dragged it downward to create a vertical slit in the column wall large enough to slip the module inside.
While sliding her right arm up and down to keep the hole from closing, she readied the module in her left hand.
Kira quickly withdrew her right arm and then carefully slid the device into place, the pronged end pointed toward the conduit. The rock stayed clear of the field surrounding the device.
When the prongs were in contact with the conduit, Kira slid her arm out from the opening.
Jasmine was silent for two minutes while she became acquainted with the network.
A moment later, a chirp sounded in Kira’s comm.
“Raven, can you hear me?” she asked.
“Kira! Thank the stars,” Sandren replied. “It’s been over two hours. What happened?”
“Ran into some moving passageways and mutant rock-dogs. The usual.”
The major was silent. “Are… you okay?”
“Yes, sir. I’m at one of the inner nodes now.”
“Wait, what?” Kyle said, jumping on the communication link. “You were only supposed to tap into one of the conduits running to the node.”
“Yeah, well, that plan didn’t work. It was a great idea, but this ship is all kinds of foked up.”
“What do you mean?” the major asked, concern evident in his tone.
“The components aren’t integrated in the way we had anticipated,” Jasmine supplied. “I have come to believe that this group of Trols is a rogue faction.”
“Meaning there are other Trols?” Sandren clarified.
“Possibly, sir. This is all speculation,” Kira responded. “But this ship isn’t built-out. It’s like a bunch of disaggregated parts were thrown together by a group of people who don’t want to work together.”
“I’m not sure I follow, Captain…”
“I’ll explain once I’m back, sir. The important part is that we needed to get to this central node in order to access the necessary parts. Jasmine has a wedge in the door for you.”
“Yes! I see the access point,” Kyle said.
“It’s going to take some time to trace the defensive controls,” Nia said, speaking up for the first time in the conversation.
“Good, because we’ll need some time to get out of here,” Kira said. “It’d be nice to have a chance to get back to you before the Conquest blows this thing.”
“You might want to be careful about vocalizing those plans,” Sandren cautioned.
“Pretty sure they picked up our intention when the Conquest attacked last time.”
“We have your back. Get out of there, ma’am,” Kyle said.
“I’ll see you soon,” Kira told her teammates. She muted the comm.
Kira ran toward the open passageway leading in the direction of the shuttle. She’d gone no more than four steps when a chorus of voices filled her mind.
“Where are you going, Kira? We’re not finished with you yet.”
CHAPTER 19
Kira froze in her tracks—not restrained by a physical force, but by a command in her mind.
Her heart pounded in her ears. They hadn’t been able to overpower her—not since she faced off against Reya on Mysar, when the Trol was inside Chancellor Hale.
Fok. Kira tugged against the invisible restraints binding her, but she couldn’t trace where they were coming from. It was as though the air in the room had congealed around her.
Her mind raced as she thought about the possibilities—what might make this encounter different than the others.
The AI was quiet—too quiet for Kira’s liking.
“You don’t need to fight it, Kira,” the chorus of voices said in her mind. They spoke together, but there were distinct tones layered in the statements, like they wanted to talk together but weren’t well-rehearsed. “You’ve run for so long, you’ve never even heard what we have to say.”
“Fine, then talk,” she replied, with no genuine intention of hearing them out. The moment she had the upper hand, she would be out of there and on her ship, headed back to the Conquest, and then they’d blow these Trol fokers into oblivion once and for all.
The bonds holding her loosened ever so slightly, allowing her to place her foot, which had been left awkwardly in midair when she was frozen midstride, on the ground.
“You assume we are the enemy, but you know nothing of us.”
“I don’t know where you come from,” Kira retorted, “but around here, we have an ancient expression that states ‘actions speak louder than words’. I know you communicate telepathically and all, but the same principle still applies. So, let’s go over what you’ve done—that I know of. First, there was holding a bunch of people prisoner. Then there were the people whose bodies you stole for your own. And then there’s the whole part about forcing genetic modifications on people. You can say you’re not our enemy, but that’s pretty antagonistic.”
The chorus laughed. “Is it wrong to enslave animals for slaughter and consume a lesser being? You do it all the time.”
“That’s for food—for our survival.”
“As you are to us.”
Kira returned her attention to the aliens. “If Tarans and others like us are so inferior to you, then why bother talking to me?”
“We left our physical forms long ago, but some of us have come to miss the pleasures of a corporeal existence,” the chorus replied.
“Yeah, well, that doesn’t give you an excuse to go take whatever body you see fit.”
“We do not wish to take the form of those we have seen. They are imperfect and lack a sufficient connection to the innate universal energies. We wish to move at will.”
“Does part of your being reside in subspace?”
“You would not understand the nature of an existence that isn’t tied to one place or time.”
“Above time?” Kira’s heart leaped. “Are you suggesting that you’re fifth-dimensional beings?”
The chorus laughed again. “You Tarans and your simple concepts. All you must know is that we have been seeking a vessel to return us to our corporeal roots—one which we may inhabit for as long as we see fit, jumping between bodies and gaining power from their use.”
“You mean sending a soldier into war and gaining pleasure from its pain.”
“Pain and anger… those have always been the greatest fuels. The others never agreed, but that is why they have remained weak.”
“What others?” Kira asked.
She and Jasmine had discussed the possibility at length over the past month, speculating about other Trols who were drawn to the positive emotional spectrum for their fuel. Jasmine’s discovery about the ship earlier in the day had supported that theory, but this was the first admission from a Trol that there might, indeed, be others with a counter point of view. It was a glimmer of hope that defeating this ship might offer a lasting chance at peace and not just another reprieve until a bigger assault.
The chorus chattered amongst itself for a moment—a cacophony Kira couldn’t begin to decipher. It would seem there was some disagreement regarding the other Trols.
“The others have no ties to us,” the chorus replied at last. “They remain one, but we are many.”
“Yet you still speak as a ‘we’,” Kira pointed out, hoping to get some kind of rise out of them.
“And you speak of your nations as if all citizens are one, even though you emphasize individuality. Are we not afforded the same distinctions?”
“An interesting argument, given how flippantly you disregarded individual life when it came to inhabiting Kaen and Hale.”
“Necessary pawns to further our ends.”
“Yeah, well, maybe we aren’t as simple as you think we are. You insist on your superiority and the worth of your life over ours, but we continue to best you.”
The chorus closed around her like a dark cloud. “When you destroyed our world in Gaelon, we learned from you. You can’t stop us now.”
Kira ignored them.
She smiled at the Trols inside her mind. “Yeah, see, you talk a big game, and yet you haven’t been able to stop us. Are you going to deny that I stuck my hand right through your walls and planted that device? You can make all the threats you want, but the fact remains that you can’t remove that module, or you would have done it already. For all your talk of ‘we’ and your collective, you’re so intent on destruction that you’ve forgotten how to work together. And that’s where we have you beat. We are driven by bonds of love and duty—and those will always be stronger than anger and hate.”
“We have you, Kira. If you could have escaped, you would have done so by now.”
“See, that’s where you’re wrong.” She smirked. “I’ve been stalling.”
In the background, Kira had been keeping part of her mind focused on the comm link to the Raven while giving her mini-speech. The link grounded her, offering a tangible connection to her friends—her work family—for whom she’d do anything. That bond had always been a force to use against the Trols, and it was no different now.
When transforming in the past, she had often used anger as her fuel. This time, she was building her reserves on the positive spectrum. She was going to beat the Trols, and it would be on her terms.
With a surge of energy, she snapped the invisible bonds holding her, using the momentum to spur a transformation into her Robus state.
The Trols were caught off-guard, the chorus crying out in her mind with surprise and anger.
“You can’t hold me,” she told them. “You may be many, but the strength of individuals working together for good will always be more powerful than those seeking destruction.”
Her body broadened into the powerful fighting beast that had always been in her heart, even when she didn’t have the physical form to match. Now she was complete, and she was going to make sure this bad batch of Trols wouldn’t be able to harm anyone again.
— — —
“We have a connection!” exclaimed the Conquest’s comm tech.
Kaen jumped up from his seat in Central Command.
“Patch me through to the Raven.”
Major Sandren appeared onscreen, standing to the side of Kyle and Nia, who were seated at workstations in the Raven’s hangar.
“What’s your status, Major?” Kaen asked.
“We just made contact with Kira. I have good news and bad,” he replied. “She was able to install the device, and my team has successfully infiltrated the Trol vessel’s systems. However, we haven’t yet gained access to the defensive systems that previously prevented the disruptor from performing.”
Kaen nodded. “We figured this wouldn’t be instantaneous. You just need more time?”
“Correct, sir. Jasmine gave us a big head start, and we’re close.”
“I don’t see what’s bad about any of that.”
“It’s not about the hack, sir. Kira needed to venture deeper into the ship than we’d anticipated. She’s presently more than twenty-three kilometers beneath the surface.”
Kaen’s heart sank. “Is she on her way out?”
“We… think so.”
“Major?”
Sandren shook his head. “We lost verbal contact with her shortly after we established the connection with the ship’s system. The comm link is open but muted.”
“Then let’s find her! If you’re patched into the ship’s systems, then surely you can locate her.”
“It’s taking all of our computer resources and know-how to keep the backdoor open. Jasmine added in some extra measures that we hadn’t accounted for.”
Kaen’s brow knitted. “Like what?”
“She seems to have reprogrammed the internal layout of the ship.”
“How is that possible?”
“We’ll need to wait for them to get back here to explain, sir. But the point is, the ship has a mind of its own, and it’s rather angry about what we’re doing to it.”
“Sir!” Rianne interrupted. “The alien vessel increased velocity.”
“Match its speed,” Kaen said.
Next to him, Jason tensed. “Estimated time to arrival in the Elvar system decreased by seven hours at our new speed.”
Shite, if we get any closer than six hours, the debris field will be too close to the system to hide. “She’ll need to be out in the next hour,” he replied.
“Hopefully it will be less than that, sir,” Sandren said, having overhead the conversation. “I don’t think Kyle and Nia will be able to hold off the counter-defenses for more tha
n another twenty minutes, even with CACI’s assistance.”
“Don’t underestimate us, sir,” Kyle said with a slight smile from the workstation behind him. “We could do this all day.”
“You’re being a showy ass,” Nia countered with bite in her tone, eyes narrowed. “We’re barely holding it together. Be honest.”
“Okay, yeah, things could be better,” Kyle admitted.
“Sir, we’re to the final security block,” Nia continued. “Once we break through this, the ship’s defenses will come down. After we execute, we’ll have five minutes tops.”
“Can you hold here?” Kaen asked.
Kyle and Nia exchanged glances. “For a little while, but we can’t say for how long,” he replied.
Guard soldiers are prepared to die for the greater good, Kaen reminded himself.
Kira entered that ship knowing full well she might not make it out again. The way of the soldier. Honor. Courage. Commitment. The ideals were the foundation of the Guard. But it wasn’t just her in there; Jasmine was along for the ride. Though created through alternate means, hers was a sentient life, all the same.
Two lives in exchange for a system.
The math was easy, but Kaen wouldn’t throw away two soldiers’ lives while there was still a chance to save everyone.
“How do you want to proceed?” Jason asked.
Stars! I can’t fire on Kira—not until it’s our last resort. He switched back to the comm link with the Raven. “Continue to hold.”
“Yes, sir,” Sandren confirmed. “The Trols are putting up a bomaxed good fight, but we have the upper hand for now.”
“And there’s no way to identify Kira’s position?”
“Not without putting our other efforts in jeopardy. We’re waiting for acknowledgement that she’s at the shuttle.”
Shite, where is she? Kaen nodded. “Alert me as soon as she’s en route, or if the Trols are at risk of regaining control of the defensive systems. We’ll give her every moment we can spare.”
CHAPTER 20
Telepathic bonds tried to pin Kira, but she slashed them back with a mental scythe. “I’m not some lab specimen for you to possess!”
